initial commit of ebook 27597HEADmain

340 files changed, 30723 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/27597-8.txt b/27597-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e526ea9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9889 @@
+Project Gutenberg's The English Utilitarians, Volume I., by Leslie Stephen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The English Utilitarians, Volume I.
+
+Author: Leslie Stephen
+
+Release Date: December 23, 2008 [EBook #27597]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH UTILITARIANS, VOLUME I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto, Paul Dring, Henry Craig and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ENGLISH UTILITARIANS
+
+_By_
+
+LESLIE STEPHEN
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+LONDON
+
+_DUCKWORTH and CO._
+
+3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
+
+1900
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This book is a sequel to my _History of English Thought in the
+Eighteenth Century_. The title which I then ventured to use was more
+comprehensive than the work itself deserved: I felt my inability to
+write a continuation which should at all correspond to a similar title
+for the nineteenth century. I thought, however, that by writing an
+account of the compact and energetic school of English Utilitarians I
+could throw some light both upon them and their contemporaries. I had
+the advantage for this purpose of having been myself a disciple of the
+school during its last period. Many accidents have delayed my completion
+of the task; and delayed also its publication after it was written. Two
+books have been published since that time, which partly cover the same
+ground; and I must be content with referring my readers to them for
+further information. They are _The English Radicals_, by Mr. C. B.
+Roylance Kent; and _English Political Philosophy from Hobbes to Maine_,
+by Professor Graham.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                     PAGE
+  INTRODUCTORY                          1
+
+
+  CHAPTER I
+
+  POLITICAL CONDITIONS
+
+    I. The British Constitution        12
+
+   II. The Ruling Class                18
+
+  III. Legislation and Administration  22
+
+   IV. The Army and Navy               30
+
+    V. The Church                      35
+
+   VI. The Universities                43
+
+  VII. Theory                          51
+
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  THE INDUSTRIAL SPIRIT
+
+    I. The Manufacturers               57
+
+   II. The Agriculturists              69
+
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  SOCIAL PROBLEMS
+
+    I. Pauperism                       87
+
+   II. The Police                      99
+
+  III. Education                      108
+
+   IV. The Slave-Trade                113
+
+    V. The French Revolution          121
+
+   VI. Individualism                  130
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  PHILOSOPHY
+
+    I. John Horne Tooke               137
+
+   II. Dugald Stewart                 142
+
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  BENTHAM'S LIFE
+
+    I. Early Life                     169
+
+   II. First Writings                 175
+
+  III. The Panopticon                 193
+
+   IV. Utilitarian Propaganda         206
+
+    V. Codification                   222
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  BENTHAM'S DOCTRINE
+
+    I. First Principles               235
+
+   II. Springs of Action              249
+
+  III. The Sanctions                  255
+
+   IV. Criminal Law                   263
+
+    V. English Law                    271
+
+   VI. Radicalism                     282
+
+  VII. Individualism                  307
+
+
+  NOTE ON BENTHAM'S WRITINGS          319
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+
+The English Utilitarians of whom I am about to give some account were a
+group of men who for three generations had a conspicuous influence upon
+English thought and political action. Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and
+John Stuart Mill were successively their leaders; and I shall speak of
+each in turn. It may be well to premise a brief indication of the method
+which I have adopted. I have devoted a much greater proportion of my
+work to biography and to consideration of political and social
+conditions than would be appropriate to the history of a philosophy. The
+reasons for such a course are very obvious in this case, inasmuch as the
+Utilitarian doctrines were worked out with a constant reference to
+practical applications. I think, indeed, that such a reference is often
+equally present, though not equally conspicuous, in other philosophical
+schools. But in any case I wish to show how I conceive the relation of
+my scheme to the scheme more generally adopted by historians of abstract
+speculation.
+
+I am primarily concerned with the history of a school or sect, not with
+the history of the arguments by which it justifies itself in the court
+of pure reason. I must therefore consider the creed as it was actually
+embodied in the dominant beliefs of the adherents of the school, not as
+it was expounded in lecture-rooms or treatises on first principles. I
+deal not with philosophers meditating upon Being and not-Being, but with
+men actively engaged in framing political platforms and carrying on
+popular agitations. The great majority even of intelligent partisans are
+either indifferent to the philosophic creed of their leaders or take it
+for granted. Its postulates are more or less implied in the doctrines
+which guide them in practice, but are not explicitly stated or
+deliberately reasoned out. Not the less the doctrines of a sect,
+political or religious, may be dependent upon theories which for the
+greater number remain latent or are recognised only in their concrete
+application. Contemporary members of any society, however widely they
+differ as to results, are employed upon the same problems and, to some
+extent, use the same methods and make the same assumptions in attempting
+solutions. There is a certain unity even in the general thought of any
+given period. Contradictory views imply some common ground. But within
+this wider unity we find a variety of sects, each of which may be
+considered as more or less representing a particular method of treating
+the general problem: and therefore principles which, whether clearly
+recognised or not, are virtually implied in their party creed and give a
+certain unity to their teaching.
+
+One obvious principle of unity, or tacit bond of sympathy which holds a
+sect together depends upon the intellectual idiosyncrasy of the
+individuals. Coleridge was aiming at an important truth when he said
+that every man was born an Aristotelian or a Platonist.[1] Nominalists
+and realists, intuitionists and empiricists, idealists and materialists,
+represent different forms of a fundamental antithesis which appears to
+run through all philosophy. Each thinker is apt to take the postulates
+congenial to his own mind as the plain dictates of reason. Controversies
+between such opposites appear to be hopeless. They have been aptly
+compared by Dr. Venn to the erection of a snow-bank to dam a river. The
+snow melts and swells the torrent which it was intended to arrest. Each
+side reads admitted truths into its own dialect, and infers that its own
+dialect affords the only valid expression. To regard such antitheses as
+final and insoluble would be to admit complete scepticism. What is true
+for one man would not therefore be true--or at least its truth would not
+be demonstrable--to another. We must trust that reconciliation is
+achievable by showing that the difference is really less vital and
+corresponds to a difference of methods or of the spheres within which
+each mode of thought may be valid. To obtain the point of view from
+which such a conciliation is possible should be, I hold, one main end of
+modern philosophising.
+
+The effect of this profound intellectual difference is complicated by
+other obvious influences. There is, in the first place, the difference
+of intellectual horizon. Each man has a world of his own and sees a
+different set of facts. Whether his horizon is that which is visible
+from his parish steeple or from St. Peter's at Rome, it is still
+strictly limited: and the outside universe, known vaguely and
+indirectly, does not affect him like the facts actually present to his
+perception. The most candid thinkers will come to different conclusions
+when they are really provided with different sets of fact. In political
+and social problems every man's opinions are moulded by his social
+station. The artisan's view of the capitalist, and the capitalist's view
+of the artisan, are both imperfect, because each has a first-hand
+knowledge of his own class alone: and, however anxious to be fair, each
+will take a very different view of the working of political
+institutions. An apparent concord often covers the widest divergence
+under the veil of a common formula, because each man has his private
+mode of interpreting general phrases in terms of concrete fact.
+
+This, of course, implies the further difference arising from the
+passions which, however illogically, go so far to determine opinions.
+Here we have the most general source of difficulty in considering the
+actual history of a creed. We cannot limit ourselves to the purely
+logical factor. All thought has to start from postulates. Men have to
+act before they think: before, at any rate, reasoning becomes distinct
+from imagining or guessing. To explain in early periods is to fancy and
+to take a fancy for a perception. The world of the primitive man is
+constructed not only from vague conjectures and hasty analogies but from
+his hopes and fears, and bears the impress of his emotional nature. When
+progress takes place some of his beliefs are confirmed, some disappear,
+and others are transformed: and the whole history of thought is a
+history of this gradual process of verification. We begin, it is said,
+by assuming: we proceed by verifying, and we only end by demonstrating.
+The process is comparatively simple in that part of knowledge which
+ultimately corresponds to the physical sciences. There must be a certain
+harmony between beliefs and realities in regard to knowledge of ordinary
+matters of fact, if only because such harmony is essential to the life
+of the race. Even an ape must distinguish poisonous from wholesome food.
+Beliefs as to physical facts require to be made articulate and distinct;
+but we have only to recognise as logical principles the laws of nature
+which we have unconsciously obeyed and illustrated--to formulate
+dynamics long after we have applied the science in throwing stones or
+using bows and arrows. But what corresponds to this in the case of the
+moral and religious beliefs? What is the process of verification? Men
+practically are satisfied with their creed so long as they are satisfied
+with the corresponding social order. The test of truth so suggested is
+obviously inadequate: for all great religions, however contradictory to
+each other, have been able to satisfy it for long periods. Particular
+doctrines might be tested by experiment. The efficacy of witchcraft
+might be investigated like the efficacy of vaccination. But faith can
+always make as many miracles as it wants: and errors which originate in
+the fancy cannot be at once extirpated by the reason. Their form may be
+changed but not their substance. To remove them requires not disproof of
+this or that fact, but an intellectual discipline which is rare even
+among the educated classes. A religious creed survives, as poetry or art
+survives,--not so long as it contains apparently true statements of fact
+but--so long as it is congenial to the whole social state. A philosophy
+indeed is a poetry stated in terms of logic. Considering the natural
+conservatism of mankind, the difficulty is to account for progress, not
+for the persistence of error. When the existing order ceases to be
+satisfactory; when conquest or commerce has welded nations together and
+brought conflicting creeds into cohesion; when industrial development
+has modified the old class relations; or when the governing classes have
+ceased to discharge their functions, new principles are demanded and new
+prophets arise. The philosopher may then become the mouthpiece of the
+new order, and innocently take himself to be its originator. His
+doctrines were fruitless so long as the soil was not prepared for the
+seed. A premature discovery if not stamped out by fire and sword is
+stifled by indifference. If Francis Bacon succeeded where Roger Bacon
+failed, the difference was due to the social conditions, not to the men.
+The cause of the great religious as well as of the great political
+revolutions must be sought mainly in the social history. New creeds
+spread when they satisfy the instincts or the passions roused to
+activity by other causes. The system has to be so far true as to be
+credible at the time; but its vitality depends upon its congeniality as
+a whole to the aspirations of the mass of mankind.
+
+The purely intellectual movement no doubt represents the decisive
+factor. The love of truth in the abstract is probably the weakest of
+human passions; but truth when attained ultimately gives the fulcrum for
+a reconstruction of the world. When a solid core of ascertained and
+verifiable truth has once been formed and applied to practical results
+it becomes the fixed pivot upon which all beliefs must ultimately turn.
+The influence, however, is often obscure and still indirect. The more
+cultivated recognise the necessity of bringing their whole doctrine into
+conformity with the definitely organised and established system; and, at
+the present day, even the uneducated begin to have an inkling of
+possible results. Yet the desire for logical consistency is not one
+which presses forcibly upon the less cultivated intellects. They do not
+feel the necessity of unifying knowledge or bringing their various
+opinions into consistency and into harmony with facts. There are easy
+methods of avoiding any troublesome conflict of belief. The philosopher
+is ready to show them the way. He, like other people, has to start from
+postulates, and to see how they will work. When he meets with a
+difficulty it is perfectly legitimate that he should try how far the old
+formula can be applied to cover the new applications. He may be led to a
+process of 'rationalising' or 'spiritualising' which is dangerous to
+intellectual honesty. The vagueness of the general conceptions with
+which he is concerned facilitates the adaptation; and his words slide
+into new meanings by imperceptible gradations. His error is in taking a
+legitimate tentative process for a conclusive test; and inferring that
+opinions are confirmed because a non-natural interpretation can be
+forced upon them. This, however, is only the vicious application of the
+normal process through which new ideas are diffused or slowly infiltrate
+the old systems till the necessity of a thoroughgoing reconstruction
+forces itself upon our attention. Nor can it be denied that an opposite
+fallacy is equally possible, especially in times of revolutionary
+passion. The apparent irreconcilability of some new doctrine with the
+old may lead to the summary rejection of the implicit truth, together
+with the error involved in its imperfect recognition. Hence arises the
+necessity for faking into account not only a man's intellectual
+idiosyncrasies and the special intellectual horizon, but all the
+prepossessions due to his personal character, his social environment,
+and his consequent sympathies and antipathies. The philosopher has his
+passions like other men. He does not really live in the thin air of
+abstract speculation. On the contrary, he starts generally, and surely
+is right in starting, with keen interest in the great religious,
+ethical, and social problems of the time. He wishes--honestly and
+eagerly--to try them by the severest tests, and to hold fast only what
+is clearly valid. The desire to apply his principles in fact justifies
+his pursuit, and redeems him from the charge that he is delighting in
+barren intellectual subtleties. But to an outsider his procedure may
+appear in a different light. His real problem comes to be: how the
+conclusions which are agreeable to his emotions can be connected with
+the postulates which are congenial to his intellect? He may be
+absolutely honest and quite unconscious that his conclusions were
+prearranged by his sympathies. No philosophic creed of any importance
+has ever been constructed, we may well believe, without such sincerity
+and without such plausibility as results from its correspondence to at
+least some aspects of the truth. But the result is sufficiently shown by
+the perplexed controversies which arise. Men agree in their conclusions,
+though starting from opposite premises; or from the same premises reach
+the most diverging conclusions. The same code of practical morality, it
+is often said, is accepted by thinkers who deny each other's first
+principles; dogmatism often appears to its opponents to be thoroughgoing
+scepticism in disguise, and men establish victoriously results which
+turn out in the end to be really a stronghold for their antagonists.
+
+Hence there is a distinction between such a history of a sect as I
+contemplate and a history of scientific inquiry or of pure philosophy. A
+history of mathematical or physical science would differ from a direct
+exposition of the science, but only in so far as it would state truths
+in the order of discovery, not in the order most convenient for
+displaying them as a system. It would show what were the processes by
+which they were originally found out, and how they have been afterwards
+annexed or absorbed in some wider generalisation. These facts might be
+stated without any reference to the history of the discoverers or of the
+society to which they belonged. They would indeed suggest very
+interesting topics to the general historian or 'sociologist.' He might
+be led to inquire under what conditions men came to inquire
+scientifically at all; why they ceased for centuries to care for
+science; why they took up special departments of investigation; and what
+was the effect of scientific discoveries upon social relations in
+general. But the two inquiries would be distinct for obvious reasons. If
+men study mathematics they can only come to one conclusion. They will
+find out the same propositions of geometry if they only think clearly
+enough and long enough, as certainly as Columbus would discover America
+if he only sailed far enough. America was there, and so in a sense are
+the propositions. We may therefore in this case entirely separate the
+two questions: what leads men to think? and what conclusions will they
+reach? The reasons which guided the first discoverers are just as valid
+now, though they can be more systematically stated. But in the 'moral
+sciences' this distinction is not equally possible. The intellectual and
+the social evolution are closely and intricately connected, and each
+reacts upon the other. In the last resort no doubt a definitive system
+of belief once elaborated would repose upon universally valid truths
+and determine, instead of being determined by, the corresponding social
+order. But in the concrete evolution which, we may hope, is
+approximating towards this result, the creeds current among mankind have
+been determined by the social conditions as well as helped to determine
+them. To give an account of that process it is necessary to specify the
+various circumstances which may lead to the survival of error, and to
+the partial views of truth taken by men of different idiosyncrasies
+working upon different data and moved by different passions and
+prepossessions. A history written upon these terms would show primarily
+what, as a fact, were the dominant beliefs during a given period, and
+state which survived, which disappeared, and which were transformed or
+engrafted upon other systems of thought. This would of course raise the
+question of the truth or falsehood of the doctrines as well as of their
+vitality: for the truth is at least one essential condition of permanent
+vitality. The difference would be that the problem would be approached
+from a different side. We should ask first what beliefs have flourished,
+and afterwards ask why they flourished, and how far their vitality was
+due to their partial or complete truth. To write such a history would
+perhaps require an impartiality which few people possess and which I do
+not venture to claim. I have my own opinions for which other people may
+account by prejudice, assumption, or downright incapacity. I am quite
+aware that I shall be implicitly criticising myself in criticising
+others. All that I can profess is that by taking the questions in this
+order, I shall hope to fix attention upon one set of considerations
+which are apt, as I fancy, to be unduly neglected. The result of
+reading some histories is to raise the question: how people on the other
+side came to be such unmitigated fools? Why were they imposed upon by
+such obvious fallacies? That may be answered by considering more fully
+the conditions under which the opinions were actually adopted, and one
+result may be to show that those opinions had a considerable element of
+truth, and were held by men who were the very opposite of fools. At any
+rate I shall do what I can to write an account of this phase of thought,
+so as to bring out what were its real tenets; to what intellectual type
+they were naturally congenial; what were the limitations of view which
+affected the Utilitarians' conception of the problems to be solved; and
+what were the passions and prepossessions due to the contemporary state
+of society and to their own class position, which to some degree
+unconsciously dictated their conclusions. So far as I can do this
+satisfactorily, I hope that I may throw some light upon the intrinsic
+value of the creed, and the place which it should occupy in a definitive
+system.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[1] _Table-Talk_, 3 July 1830.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+POLITICAL CONDITIONS
+
+
+I. THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION
+
+The English Utilitarians represent one outcome of the speculations
+current in England during the later part of the eighteenth century. For
+the reasons just assigned I shall begin by briefly recalling some of the
+social conditions which set the problems for the coming generation and
+determined the mode of answering them. I must put the main facts in
+evidence, though they are even painfully familiar. The most obvious
+starting-point is given by the political situation. The supremacy of
+parliament had been definitively established by the revolution of 1688,
+and had been followed by the elaboration of the system of party
+government. The centre of gravity of the political world lay in the
+House of Commons. No minister could hold power unless he could command a
+majority in this house. Jealousy of the royal power, however, was still
+a ruling passion. The party line between Whig and Tory turned ostensibly
+upon this issue. The essential Whig doctrine is indicated by Dunning's
+famous resolution (6 April 1780) that 'the power of the crown had
+increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished.' The resolution
+was in one sense an anachronism. As in many other cases, politicians
+seem to be elaborately slaying the slain and guarding against the
+attacks of extinct monsters. There was scarcely more probability under
+George III. than there is under Victoria that the king would try to
+raise taxes without consent of parliament. George III., however, desired
+to be more than a contrivance for fixing the great seal to official
+documents. He had good reason for thinking that the weakness of the
+executive was an evil. The king could gain power not by attacking the
+authority of parliament but by gaining influence within its walls. He
+might form a party of 'king's friends' able to hold the balance between
+the connections formed by the great families and so break up the system
+of party government. Burke's great speech (11 Feb. 1780) upon
+introducing his plan 'for the better security of the independence of
+parliament and the economical reformation of the civil and other
+establishments' explains the secret and reveals the state of things
+which for the next half century was to supply one main theme for the
+eloquence of reformers. The king had at his disposal a vast amount of
+patronage. There were relics of ancient institutions: the principality
+of Wales, the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, and the earldom of
+Chester; each with its revenue and establishment of superfluous
+officials. The royal household was a complex 'body corporate' founded in
+the old days of 'purveyance.' There was the mysterious 'Board of Green
+Cloth' formed by the great officers and supposed to have judicial as
+well as administrative functions. Cumbrous mediæval machinery thus
+remained which had been formed in the time when the distinction between
+a public trust and private property was not definitely drawn or which
+had been allowed to remain for the sake of patronage, when its functions
+had been transferred to officials of more modern type. Reform was
+foiled, as Burke put it, because the turnspit in the king's kitchen was
+a member of parliament. Such sinecures and the pensions on the civil
+list or the Irish establishment provided the funds by which the king
+could build up a personal influence, which was yet occult,
+irresponsible, and corrupt. The measure passed by Burke in 1782[2] made
+a beginning in the removal of such abuses.
+
+Meanwhile the Whigs were conveniently blind to another side of the
+question. If the king could buy, it was because there were plenty of
+people both able and willing to sell. Bubb Dodington, a typical example
+of the old system, had five or six seats at his disposal: subject only
+to the necessity of throwing a few pounds to the 'venal wretches' who
+went through the form of voting, and by dealing in what he calls this
+'merchantable ware' he managed by lifelong efforts to wriggle into a
+peerage. The Dodingtons, that is, sold because they bought. The 'venal
+wretches' were the lucky franchise-holders in rotten boroughs. The
+'Friends of the People'[3] in 1793 made the often-repeated statement
+that 154 individuals returned 307 members, that is, a majority of the
+house. In Cornwall, again, 21 boroughs with 453 electors controlled by
+about 15 individuals returned 42 members,[4] or, with the two county
+members, only one member less than Scotland; and the Scottish members
+were elected by close corporations in boroughs and by the great
+families in counties. No wonder if the House of Commons seemed at times
+to be little more than an exchange for the traffic between the
+proprietors of votes and the proprietors of offices and pensions.
+
+The demand for the reforms advocated by Burke and Dunning was due to the
+catastrophe of the American War. The scandal caused by the famous
+coalition of 1783 showed that a diminution of the royal influence might
+only make room for selfish bargains among the proprietors of
+parliamentary influence. The demand for reform was taken up by Pitt. His
+plan was significant. He proposed to disfranchise a few rotten boroughs;
+but to soften this measure he afterwards suggested that a million should
+be set aside to buy such boroughs as should voluntarily apply for
+disfranchisement. The seats obtained were to be mainly added to county
+representation; but the franchise was to be extended so as to add about
+99,000 voters in boroughs, and additional seats were to be given to
+London and Westminster and to Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and
+Sheffield. The Yorkshire reformers, who led the movement, were satisfied
+with this modest scheme. The borough proprietors were obviously too
+strong to be directly attacked, though they might be induced to sell
+some of their power.
+
+Here was a mass of anomalies, sufficient to supply topics of
+denunciation for two generations of reformers, and, in time, to excite
+fears of violent revolution. Without undertaking the easy task of
+denouncing exploded systems, we may ask what state of mind they implied.
+Our ancestors were perfectly convinced that their political system was
+of almost unrivalled excellence: they held that they were freemen
+entitled to look down upon foreigners as the slaves of despots. Nor can
+we say that their satisfaction was without solid grounds. The boasting
+about English freedom implied some misunderstanding. But it was at least
+the boast of a vigorous race. Not only were there individuals capable of
+patriotism and public spirit, but the body politic was capable of
+continuous energy. During the eighteenth century the British empire
+spread round the world. Under Chatham it had been finally decided that
+the English race should be the dominant element in the new world; if the
+political connection had been severed by the bungling of his successors,
+the unbroken spirit of the nation had still been shown in the struggle
+against France, Spain, and the revolted colonies; and whatever may be
+thought of the motives which produced the great revolutionary wars, no
+one can deny the qualities of indomitable self-reliance and high courage
+to the men who led the country through the twenty years of struggle
+against France, and for a time against France with the continent at its
+feet. If moralists or political theorists find much to condemn in the
+ends to which British policy was directed, they must admit that the
+qualities displayed were not such as can belong to a simply corrupt and
+mean-spirited government.
+
+One obvious remark is that, on the whole, the system was a very good
+one--as systems go. It allowed free play to the effective political
+forces. Down to the revolutionary period, the nation as a whole was
+contented with its institutions. The political machinery provided a
+sufficient channel for the really efficient force of public opinion.
+There was as yet no large class which at once had political aspirations
+and was unable to gain a hearing. England was still in the main an
+agricultural country: and the agricultural labourer was fairly
+prosperous till the end of the century, while his ignorance and
+isolation made him indifferent to politics. There might be a bad squire
+or parson, as there might be a bad season; but squire and parson were as
+much parts of the natural order of things as the weather. The farmer or
+yeoman was not much less stolid; and his politics meant at most a choice
+between allegiance to one or other of the county families. If in the
+towns which were rapidly developing there was growing up a discontented
+population, its discontent was not yet directed into political channels.
+An extended franchise meant a larger expenditure on beer, not the
+readier acceptance of popular aspirations. To possess a vote was to have
+a claim to an occasional bonus rather than a right to influence
+legislation. Practically, therefore, parliament might be taken to
+represent what might be called 'public opinion,' for anything that
+deserved to be called public opinion was limited to the opinions of the
+gentry and the more intelligent part of the middle classes. There was no
+want of complaints of corruption, proposals to exclude placemen from
+parliament and the like; and in the days of Wilkes, Chatham, and Junius,
+when the first symptoms of democratic activity began to affect the
+political movement, the discontent made itself audible and alarming. But
+a main characteristic of the English reformers was the constant appeal
+to precedent, even in their most excited moods. They do not mention the
+rights of man; they invoke the 'revolution principles' of 1688; they
+insist upon the 'Bill of Rights' or Magna Charta. When keenly roused
+they recall the fate of Charles I.; and their favourite toast is the
+cause for which Hampden died on the field and Sidney on the scaffold.
+They believe in the jury as the 'palladium of our liberties'; and are
+convinced that the British Constitution represents an unsurpassable
+though unfortunately an ideal order of things, which must have existed
+at some indefinite period. Chatham in one of his most famous speeches,
+appeals, for example, to the 'iron barons' who resisted King John, and
+contrasts them with the silken courtiers which now compete for place and
+pensions. The political reformers of the time, like religious reformers
+in most times, conceive of themselves only as demanding the restoration
+of the system to its original purity, not as demanding its abrogation.
+In other words, they propose to remedy abuses but do not as yet even
+contemplate a really revolutionary change. Wilkes was not a 'Wilkite,'
+nor was any of his party, if Wilkite meant anything like Jacobin.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[2] 22 George III. c. 82.
+
+[3] _Parl. Hist._ xxx. 787.
+
+[4] _State Trials_, xxiv. 382.
+
+
+II. THE RULING CLASS
+
+Thus, however anomalous the constitution of parliament, there was no
+thought of any far-reaching revolution. The great mass of the population
+was too ignorant, too scattered and too poor to have any real political
+opinions. So long as certain prejudices were not aroused, it was content
+to leave the management of the state to the dominant class, which alone
+was intelligent enough to take an interest in public affairs and strong
+enough to make its interest felt. This class consisted in the first
+place of the great landed interest. When Lord North opposed Pitt's
+reform in 1785 he said[5] that the Constitution was 'the work of
+infinite wisdom ... the most beautiful fabric that had ever existed
+since the beginning of time.' He added that 'the bulk and weight' of the
+house ought to be in 'the hands of the country-gentlemen, the best and
+most respectable objects of the confidence of the people,' The speech,
+though intended to please an audience of country-gentlemen, represented
+a genuine belief.[6] The country-gentlemen formed the class to which not
+only the constitutional laws but the prevailing sentiment of the country
+gave the lead in politics as in the whole social system. Even reformers
+proposed to improve the House of Commons chiefly by increasing the
+number of county-members, and a county-member was almost necessarily a
+country-gentleman of an exalted kind. Although the country-gentleman was
+very far from having all things his own way, his ideals and prejudices
+were in a great degree the mould to which the other politically
+important class conformed. There was indeed a growing jealousy between
+the landholders and the 'monied-men.' Bolingbroke had expressed this
+distrust at an earlier part of the century. But the true representative
+of the period was his successful rival, Walpole, a thorough
+country-gentleman who had learned to understand the mysteries of finance
+and acquired the confidence of the city. The great merchants of London
+and the rising manufacturers in the country were rapidly growing in
+wealth and influence. The monied-men represented the most active,
+energetic, and growing part of the body politic. Their interests
+determined the direction of the national policy. The great wars of the
+century were undertaken in the interests of British trade. The extension
+of the empire in India was carried on through a great commercial
+company. The growth of commerce supported the sea-power which was the
+main factor in the development of the empire. The new industrial
+organisation which was arising was in later years to represent a class
+distinctly opposed to the old aristocratic order. At present it was in a
+comparatively subordinate position. The squire was interested in the
+land and the church; the merchant thought more of commerce and was apt
+to be a dissenter. But the merchant, in spite of some little jealousies,
+admitted the claims of the country-gentleman to be his social superior
+and political leader. His highest ambition was to be himself admitted to
+the class or to secure the admission of his family. As he became rich he
+bought a solid mansion at Clapham or Wimbledon, and, if he made a
+fortune, might become lord of manors in the country. He could not as yet
+aspire to become himself a peer, but he might be the ancestor of peers.
+The son of Josiah Child, the great merchant of the seventeenth century,
+became Earl Tylney, and built at Wanstead one of the noblest mansions in
+England. His contemporary Sir Francis Child, Lord Mayor, and a founder
+of the Bank of England, built Osterley House, and was ancestor of the
+earls of Jersey and Westmoreland. The daughter of Sir John Barnard, the
+typical merchant of Walpole's time, married the second Lord Palmerston.
+Beckford, the famous Lord Mayor of Chatham's day, was father of the
+author of _Vathek_, who married an earl's daughter and became the father
+of a duchess. The Barings, descendants of a German pastor, settled in
+England early in the century and became country-gentlemen, baronets,
+and peers. Cobbett, who saw them rise, reviled the stockjobbers who were
+buying out the old families. But the process had begun long before his
+days, and meant that the heads of the new industrial system were being
+absorbed into the class of territorial magnates. That class represented
+the framework upon which both political and social power was moulded.
+
+This implies an essential characteristic of the time. A familiar topic
+of the admirers of the British Constitution was the absence of the sharp
+lines of demarcation between classes and of the exclusive aristocratic
+privileges which, in France, provoked the revolution. In England the
+ruling class was not a 'survival': it had not retained privileges
+without discharging corresponding functions. The essence of
+'self-government,' says its most learned commentator,[7] is the organic
+connection 'between State and society.' On the Continent, that is,
+powers were intrusted to a centralised administrative and judicial
+hierarchy, which in England were left to the class independently strong
+by its social position. The landholder was powerful as a product of the
+whole system of industrial and agricultural development; and he was
+bound in return to perform arduous and complicated duties. How far he
+performed them well is another question. At least, he did whatever was
+done in the way of governing, and therefore did not sink into a mere
+excrescence or superfluity. I must try to point out certain results
+which had a material effect upon English opinion in general and, in
+particular, upon the Utilitarians.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[5] _Parl. Hist._ xxv. 472.
+
+[6] The country-gentlemen, said Wilberforce in 1800, are the 'very
+nerves and ligatures of the body politic.'--_Correspondence_, i. 219.
+
+[7] Gneist's _Self-Government_ (3rd edition, 1871), p. 879.
+
+
+III. LEGISLATION AND ADMINISTRATION
+
+The country-gentlemen formed the bulk of the law-making body, and the
+laws gave the first point of assault of the Utilitarian movement. One
+explanation is suggested by a phrase attributed to Sir Josiah Child.[8]
+The laws, he said, were a heap of nonsense, compiled by a few ignorant
+country-gentlemen, who hardly knew how to make good laws for the
+government of their own families, much less for the regulation of
+companies and foreign commerce. He meant that the parliamentary
+legislation of the century was the work of amateurs, not of specialists;
+of an assembly of men more interested in immediate questions of policy
+or personal intrigue than in general principles, and not of such a
+centralised body as would set a value upon symmetry and scientific
+precision. The country-gentleman had strong prejudices and enough common
+sense to recognise his own ignorance. The product of a traditional
+order, he clung to traditions, and regarded the old maxims as sacred
+because no obvious reason could be assigned for them. He was suspicious
+of abstract theories, and it did not even occur to him that any such
+process as codification or radical alteration of the laws was
+conceivable. For the law itself he had the profound veneration which is
+expressed by Blackstone. It represented the 'wisdom of our ancestors';
+the system of first principles, on which the whole order of things
+reposed, and which must be regarded as an embodiment of right reason.
+The common law was a tradition, not made by express legislation, but
+somehow existing apart from any definite embodiment, and revealed to
+certain learned hierophants. Any changes, required by the growth of new
+social conditions, had to be made under pretence of applying the old
+rules supposed to be already in existence. Thus grew up the system of
+'judge-made law,' which was to become a special object of the
+denunciations of Bentham. Child had noticed the incompetence of the
+country-gentlemen to understand the regulation of commercial affairs.
+The gap was being filled up, without express legislation, by judicial
+interpretations of Mansfield and his fellows. This, indeed, marks a
+characteristic of the whole system. 'Our constitution,' says Professor
+Dicey,[9] 'is a judge-made constitution, and it bears on its face all
+the features, good and bad, of judge-made law.' The law of landed
+property, meanwhile, was of vital and immediate interest to the
+country-gentleman. But, feeling his own incompetence, he had called in
+the aid of the expert. The law had been developed in mediæval times, and
+bore in all its details the marks of the long series of struggles
+between king and nobles and parliaments. One result had been the
+elaborate series of legal fictions worked out in the conflict between
+private interests and public policy, by which lawyers had been able to
+adapt the rules fitted for an ancient state of society to another in
+which the very fundamental conceptions were altered. A mysterious system
+had thus grown up, which deterred any but the most resolute students. Of
+Fearne's essay upon 'Contingent remainders'(published in 1772) it was
+said that no work 'in any branch of science could afford a more
+beautiful instance of analysis.' Fearne had shown the acuteness of 'a
+Newton or a Pascal.' Other critics dispute this proposition; but in any
+case the law was so perplexing that it could only be fully understood by
+one who united antiquarian knowledge to the subtlety of a great
+logician. The 'vast and intricate machine,' as Blackstone calls it, 'of
+a voluminous family settlement' required for its explanation the
+dialectical skill of an accomplished schoolman. The poor
+country-gentleman could not understand the terms on which he held his
+own estate without calling in an expert equal to such a task. The man
+who has acquired skill so essential to his employer's interests is not
+likely to undervalue it or to be over anxious to simplify the labyrinth
+in which he shone as a competent guide.
+
+The lawyers who played so important a part by their familiarity with the
+mysteries of commercial law and landed property, naturally enjoyed the
+respect of their clients, and were rewarded by adoption into the class.
+The English barrister aspired to success by himself taking part in
+politics and legislation. The only path to the highest positions really
+open to a man of ability, not connected by blood with the great
+families, was the path which led to the woolsack or to the judge's
+bench. A great merchant might be the father or father-in-law of peers; a
+successful soldier or sailor might himself become a peer, but generally
+he began life as a member of the ruling classes, and his promotion was
+affected by parliamentary influence. But a successful lawyer might fight
+his way from a humble position to the House of Lords. Thurlow, son of a
+country-gentleman; Dunning, son of a country attorney; Ellenborough, son
+of a bishop and descendant of a long line of North-country 'statesmen';
+Kenyon, son of a farmer; Eldon, son of a Newcastle coal merchant,
+represent the average career of a successful barrister. Some of them
+rose to be men of political importance, and Thurlow and Eldon had the
+advantage of keeping George III's conscience--an unruly faculty which
+had an unfortunately strong influence upon affairs. The leaders of the
+legal profession, therefore, and those who hoped to be leaders, shared
+the prejudices, took a part in the struggles, and were rewarded by the
+honours of the dominant class.
+
+The criminal law became a main topic of reformers. There, as elsewhere,
+we have a striking example of traditional modes of thought surviving
+with singular persistence. The rough classification of crimes into
+felony and misdemeanour, and the strange technical rules about 'benefit
+of clergy' dating back to the struggles of Henry II. and Becket,
+remained like ultimate categories of thought. When the growth of social
+conditions led to new temptations or the appearance of a new criminal
+class, and particular varieties of crime became conspicuous, the only
+remedy was to declare that some offence should be 'felony without
+benefit of clergy,' and therefore punishable by death. By unsystematic
+and spasmodic legislation the criminal law became so savage as to shock
+every man of common humanity. It was tempered by the growth of technical
+rules, which gave many chances of escape to the criminal; and by
+practical revolt against its excesses, which led to the remission of the
+great majority of capital sentences.[10] The legislators were clumsy,
+not intentionally cruel; and the laws, though sanguinary in reality,
+were more sanguinary in theory than in practice. Nothing, on the other
+hand, is more conspicuous than the spirit of fair play to the criminal,
+which struck foreign observers.[11] It was deeply rooted in the whole
+system. The English judge was not an official agent of an inquisitorial
+system, but an impartial arbitrator between the prisoner and the
+prosecutor. In political cases especially a marked change was brought
+about by the revolution of 1688. If our ancestors talked some nonsense
+about trial by jury, the system certainly insured that the persons
+accused of libel or sedition should have a fair trial, and very often
+something more. Judges of the Jeffreys type had become inconceivable,
+though impartiality might disappear in cases where the prejudices of
+juries were actively aroused. Englishmen might fairly boast of their
+immunity from the arbitrary methods of continental rulers; and their
+unhesitating confidence in the fairness of the system became so
+ingrained as to be taken as a matter of course, and scarcely received
+due credit from later critics of the system.
+
+The country-gentleman, again, was not only the legislator but a most
+important figure in the judicial and administrative system. As justice
+of the peace, he was the representative of law and order to his country
+neighbours. The preface of 1785 to the fifteenth edition of Burn's
+_Justice of the Peace_, published originally in 1755, mentions that in
+the interval between these dates, some three hundred statutes had been
+passed affecting the duties of justices, while half as many had been
+repealed or modified. The justice was of course, as a rule, a
+superficial lawyer, and had to be prompted by his clerk, the two
+representing on a small scale the general relation between the lawyers
+and the ruling class. Burn tells the justice for his comfort that the
+judges will take a lenient view of any errors into which his ignorance
+may have led him. The discharge of such duties by an independent
+gentleman was thought to be so desirable and so creditable to him that
+his want of efficiency must be regarded with consideration. Nor, though
+the justices have been a favourite butt for satirists, does it appear
+that the system worked badly. When it became necessary to appoint paid
+magistrates in London, and the pay, according to the prevalent system,
+was provided by fees, the new officials became known as 'trading
+justices,' and their salaries, as Fielding tells us, were some of the
+'dirtiest money upon earth.' The justices might perhaps be hard upon a
+poacher (as, indeed, the game laws became one of the great scandals of
+the system), or liable to be misled by a shrewd attorney; but they were
+on the whole regarded as the natural and creditable representatives of
+legal authority in the country.
+
+The justices, again, discharged functions which would elsewhere belong
+to an administrative hierarchy, Gneist observes that the power of the
+justices of the peace represents the centre of gravity of the whole
+administrative system.[12] Their duties had become so multifarious and
+perplexed that Burn could only arrange them under alphabetical heads.
+Gneist works out a systematic account, filling many pages of elaborate
+detail, and showing how large a part they played in the whole social
+structure. An intense jealousy of central power was one correlative
+characteristic. Blackstone remarks in his more liberal humour that the
+number of new offices held at pleasure had greatly extended the
+influence of the crown. This refers to the custom-house officers, excise
+officers, stamp distributors and postmasters. But if the tax-gatherer
+represented the state, he represented also part of the patronage at the
+disposal of politicians. A voter was often in search of the place of a
+'tidewaiter'; and, as we know, the greatest poet of the day could only
+be rewarded by making him an exciseman. Any extension of a system which
+multiplied public offices was regarded with suspicion. Walpole, the
+strongest minister of the century, had been forced to an ignominious
+retreat when he proposed to extend the excise. The cry arose that he
+meant to enslave the country and extend the influence of the crown over
+all the corporations in England. The country-gentleman had little reason
+to fear that government would diminish his importance by tampering with
+his functions. The justices of the peace were called upon to take a
+great and increasing share in the administration of the poor-law. They
+were concerned in all manner of financial details; they regulated such
+police as existed; they looked after the old laws by which the trades
+were still restricted; and, in theory at least, could fix the rate of
+wages. Parliament did not override, but only gave the necessary sanction
+to their activity. If we looked through the journals of the House of
+Commons during the American War, for example, we should get the
+impression that the whole business of the legislature was to arrange
+administrative details. If a waste was to be enclosed, a canal or a
+highroad to be constructed, there was no public department to be
+consulted. The gentry of the neighbourhood joined to obtain a private
+act of parliament which gave the necessary powers to the persons
+interested. No general enclosure act could be passed, though often
+suggested. It would imply a central commission, which would only, as was
+suggested, give rise to jobbery and take power out of the natural hands.
+Parliament was omnipotent; it could regulate the affairs of the empire
+or of a parish; alter the most essential laws or act as a court of
+justice; settle the crown or arrange for a divorce or for the alteration
+of a private estate. But it objected to delegate authority even to a
+subordinate body, which might tend to become independent. Thus, if it
+was the central power and source of all legal authority, it might also
+be regarded as a kind of federal league, representing the wills of a
+number of partially independent persons. The gentry could meet there and
+obtain the sanction of their allies for any measure required in their
+own little sphere of influence. But they had an instinctive aversion to
+the formation of any organised body representing the state. The
+neighbourhood which wanted a road got powers to make it, and would
+concur in giving powers to others. But if the state were to be intrusted
+to make roads, ministers would have more places to give, and roads
+might be made which they did not want. The English roads had long been
+infamous, but neither was money wasted, as in France, on roads where
+there was no traffic.[13] Thus we have the combination of an absolute
+centralisation of legislative power with an utter absence of
+administrative centralisation. The units meeting in parliament formed a
+supreme assembly; but they did not sink their own individuality. They
+only met to distribute the various functions among themselves.
+
+The English parish with its squire, its parson, its lawyer and its
+labouring population was a miniature of the British Constitution in
+general. The squire's eldest son could succeed to his position; a second
+son might become a general or an admiral; a third would take the family
+living; a fourth, perhaps, seek his fortune at the bar. This implies a
+conception of other political conditions which curiously illustrate some
+contemporary conceptions.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[8] See _Dictionary of National Biography_.
+
+[9] _The Law of the Constitution_, p. 209.
+
+[10] See Sir J. F. Stephen's _History of the Criminal Law_ (1883), i.
+470. He quotes Blackstone's famous statement that there were 160
+felonies without benefit of clergy, and shows that this gives a very
+uncertain measure of the severity of the law. A single act making
+larceny in general punishable by death would be more severe than fifty
+separate acts, making fifty different varieties of larceny punishable by
+death. He adds, however, that the scheme of punishment was 'severe to
+the highest degree, and destitute of every sort of principle or system.'
+The number of executions in the early part of this century varied
+apparently from a fifth to a ninth of the capital sentences passed. See
+Table in Porter's _Progress of the Nation_ (1851), p. 635.
+
+[11] See the references to Cottu's report of 1822 in Stephen's
+_History_, i. 429, 439, 451. Cottu's book was translated by Blanco
+White.
+
+[12] Gneist's _Self-Government_ (1871), p. 194. It is characteristic
+that J. S. Mill, in his _Representative Government_, remarks that the
+'Quarter Sessions' are formed in the 'most anomalous' way; that they
+represent the old feudal principle, and are at variance with the
+fundamental principles of representative government (_Rep. Gov._ (1867),
+p. 113). The mainspring of the old system had become a simple anomaly to
+the new radicalism.
+
+[13] See Arthur Young, _passim_. There was, however, an improvement even
+in the first half of the century. See Cunningham's _Growth of English
+Industry, etc. (Modern Times)_, p. 378.
+
+
+IV. THE ARMY AND NAVY
+
+We are often amused by the persistency of the cry against a 'standing
+army' in England. It did not fairly die out until the revolutionary
+wars. Blackstone regards it as a singularly fortunate circumstance 'that
+any branch of the legislature might annually put an end to the legal
+existence of the army by refusing to concur in the continuance' of the
+mutiny act. A standing army was obviously necessary; but by making
+believe very hard, we could shut our eyes to the facts, and pretend
+that it was a merely temporary arrangement.[14] The doctrine had once
+had a very intelligible meaning. If James II. had possessed a
+disciplined army of the continental pattern, with Marlborough at its
+head, Marlborough would hardly have been converted by the prince of
+Orange. But loyal as the gentry had been at the restoration, they had
+taken very good care that the Stuarts should not have in their hand such
+a weapon as had been possessed by Cromwell. When the Puritan army was
+disbanded, they had proceeded to regulate the militia. The officers were
+appointed by the lords-lieutenants of counties, and had to possess a
+property qualification; the men raised by ballot in their own districts;
+and their numbers and length of training regulated by Act of Parliament.
+The old 'train-bands' were suppressed, except in the city of London, and
+thus the recognised military force of the country was a body essentially
+dependent upon the country gentry. The militia was regarded with favour
+as the 'old constitutional force' which could not be used to threaten
+our liberties. It was remodelled during the Seven Years' War and
+embodied during that and all our later wars. It was, however,
+ineffective by its very nature. An aristocracy which chose to carry on
+wars must have a professional army in fact, however careful it might be
+to pretend that it was a provision for a passing necessity. The pretence
+had serious consequences. Since the army was not to have interests
+separate from the people, there was no reason for building barracks. The
+men might be billeted on publicans, or placed under canvas, while they
+were wanted. When the great war came upon us, large sums had to be spent
+to make up for the previous neglect. Fox, on 22nd February 1793,
+protested during a lively debate upon this subject that sound
+constitutional principles condemned barracks, because to mix the army
+with the people was the 'best security against the danger of a standing
+army.'[15]
+
+In fact a large part of the army was a mere temporary force. In 1762,
+towards the end of the Seven Years' War, we had about 100,000 men in
+pay; and after the peace, the force was reduced to under 20,000. Similar
+changes took place in every war. The ruling class took advantage of the
+position. An army might be hired from Germany for the occasion. New
+regiments were generally raised by some great man who gave commissions
+to his own relations and dependants. When the Pretender was in Scotland,
+for example, fifteen regiments were raised by patriotic nobles, who gave
+the commissions, and stipulated that although they were to be employed
+only in suppressing the rising, the officers should have permanent
+rank.[16] So, as was shown in Mrs. Clarke's case, a patent for raising a
+regiment might be a source of profit to the undertaker, who again might
+get it by bribing the mistress of a royal duke. The officers had,
+according to the generally prevalent system, a modified property in
+their commissions; and the system of sale was not abolished till our own
+days. We may therefore say that the ruling class, on the one hand,
+objected to a standing army, and, on the other, since such an army was
+a necessity, farmed it from the country and were admitted to have a
+certain degree of private property in the concern. The prejudice against
+any permanent establishment made it necessary to fill the ranks on
+occasion by all manner of questionable expedients. Bounties were offered
+to attract the vagrants who hung loose upon society. Smugglers,
+poachers, and the like were allowed to choose between military service
+and transportation. The general effect was to provide an army of
+blackguards commanded by gentlemen. The army no doubt had its merits as
+well as its defects. The continental armies which it met were collected
+by equally demoralising methods until the French revolution led to a
+systematic conscription. The bad side is suggested by Napier's famous
+phrase, the 'cold shade of our aristocracy'; while Napier gives facts
+enough to prove both the brutality too often shown by the private
+soldier and the dogged courage which is taken to be characteristic even
+of the English blackguard. By others,--by such men as the duke of
+Wellington and Lord Palmerston, for example, types of the true
+aristocrat--the system was defended[17] as bringing men of good family
+into the army and so providing it, as the duke thought, with the best
+set of officers in Europe. No doubt they and the royal dukes who
+commanded them were apt to be grossly ignorant of their business; but it
+may be admitted by a historian that they often showed the qualities of
+which Wellington was himself a type. The English officer was a gentleman
+before he was a soldier, and considered the military virtues to be a
+part of his natural endowment. But it was undoubtedly a part of his
+traditional code of honour to do his duty manfully and to do it rather
+as a manifestation of his own spirit than from any desire for rewards or
+decorations. The same quality is represented more strikingly by the
+navy. The English admiral represents the most attractive and stirring
+type of heroism in our history. Nelson and the 'band of brothers' who
+served with him, the simple and high-minded sailors who summed up the
+whole duty of man in doing their best to crush the enemies of their
+country, are among the finest examples of single-souled devotion to the
+calls of patriotism. The navy, indeed, had its ugly side no less than
+the army. There was corruption at Greenwich[18] and in the dockyards,
+and parliamentary intrigue was a road to professional success. Voltaire
+notes the queer contrast between the English boast of personal liberty
+and the practice of filling up the crews by pressgangs. The discipline
+was often barbarous, and the wrongs of the common sailor found
+sufficient expression in the mutiny at the Nore. A grievance, however,
+which pressed upon a single class was maintained from the necessity of
+the case and the inertness of the administrative system. The navy did
+not excite the same jealousy as the army; and the officers were more
+professionally skilful than their brethren. The national qualities come
+out, often in their highest form, in the race of great seamen upon whom
+the security of the island power essentially depended.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[14] See _Military Forces of the Crown_, by Charles M. Clode (1869), for
+a full account of the facts.
+
+[15] _Parl. Hist._ xxx. 490. Clode states (i. 222) that £9,000,000 was
+spent upon barracks by 1804, and, it seems, without proper authority.
+
+[16] Debate in _Parl. Hist._ xiii. 1382, etc., and see Walpole's
+_Correspondence_, i. 400, for some characteristic comments.
+
+[17] Clode, ii. 86.
+
+[18] See the famous case in 1778 in which Erskine made his first
+appearance, in _State Trials_, xxi. Lord St. Vincent's struggle against
+the corruption of his time is described by Prof. Laughton in the
+_Dictionary of National Biography_, (_s.v._ Sir John Jervis). In 1801
+half a million a year was stolen, besides all the waste due to
+corruption and general muddling.
+
+
+V. THE CHURCH
+
+I turn, however, to the profession which was more directly connected
+with the intellectual development of the country. The nature of the
+church establishment gives the most obvious illustration of the
+connection between the intellectual position on the one hand and the
+social and political order on the other, though I do not presume to
+decide how far either should be regarded as effect and the other as
+cause.
+
+What is the church of England? Some people apparently believe that it is
+a body possessing and transmitting certain supernatural powers. This
+view was in abeyance for the time for excellent reasons, and, true or
+false, is no answer to the constitutional question. It does not enable
+us to define what was the actual body with which lawyers and politicians
+have to deal. The best answer to such questions in ordinary case would
+be given by describing the organisation of the body concerned. We could
+then say what is the authority which speaks in its name; and what is the
+legislature which makes its laws, alters its arrangements, and defines
+the terms of membership. The supreme legislature of the church of
+England might appear to be parliament. It is the Act of Uniformity which
+defines the profession of belief exacted from the clergy; and no
+alteration could be made in regard to the rights and duties of the
+clergy except by parliamentary authority. The church might therefore be
+regarded as simply the religious department of the state. Since 1688,
+however, the theory and the practice of toleration had introduced
+difficulties. Nonconformity was not by itself punishable though it
+exposed a man to certain disqualifications. The state, therefore,
+recognised that many of its members might legally belong to other
+churches, although it had, as Warburton argued, formed an 'alliance'
+with the dominant church. The spirit of toleration was spreading
+throughout the century. The old penal laws, due to the struggles of the
+seventeenth century, were becoming obsolete in practice and were
+gradually being repealed. The Gordon riots of 1780 showed that a
+fanatical spirit might still be aroused in a mob which wanted an excuse
+for plunder; but the laws were not explicitly defended by reasonable
+persons and were being gradually removed by legislation towards the end
+of the century. Although, therefore, parliament was kept free from
+papists, it could hardly regard church and state as identical, or
+consider itself as entitled to act as the representative body of the
+church. No other body, indeed, could change the laws of the church; but
+parliament recognised its own incompetence to deal with them. Towards
+the end of the century, various attempts were made to relax the terms of
+subscription. It was proposed, for example, to substitute a profession
+of belief in the Bible for a subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles.
+But the House of Commons sensibly refused to expose itself by venturing
+upon any theological innovations. A body more ludicrously incompetent
+could hardly have been invented.
+
+Hence we must say that the church had either no supreme body which could
+speak in its name and modify its creed, its ritual, its discipline, or
+the details of its organisation; or else, that the only body which had
+in theory a right to interfere was doomed, by sufficient considerations,
+to absolute inaction. The church, from a secular point of view, was not
+so much a department of the state as an aggregate of offices, the
+functions of which were prescribed by unalterable tradition. It
+consisted of a number of bishops, deans and chapters, rectors, vicars,
+curates, and so forth, many of whom had certain proprietary rights in
+their position, and who were bound by law to discharge certain
+functions. But the church, considered as a whole, could hardly be called
+an organism at all, or, if an organism, it was an organism with its
+central organ in a permanent state of paralysis. The church, again, in
+this state was essentially dependent upon the ruling classes. A glance
+at the position of the clergy shows their professional position. At
+their head were the bishops, some of them enjoying princely revenues,
+while others were so poor as to require that their incomes should be
+eked out by deaneries or livings held _in commendam_. The great sees,
+such as Canterbury, Durham, Ely, and Winchester, were valued at between,
+£20,000 and £30,000 a year; while the smaller, Llandaff, Bangor,
+Bristol, and Gloucester, were worth less than £2000. The bishops had
+patronage which enabled them to provide for relatives or for deserving
+clergymen. The average incomes of the parochial clergy, meanwhile, were
+small. In 1809 they were calculated to be worth £255, while nearly four
+thousand livings were worth under £150; and there were four or five
+thousand curates with very small pay. The profession, therefore, offered
+a great many blanks with a few enormous prizes. How were those prizes
+generally obtained? When the reformers published the _Black Book_ in
+1820, they gave a list of the bishops holding sees in the last year of
+George III.; and, as most of these gentlemen were on their promotion at
+the end of the previous century. I give the list in a note.[19]
+
+There were twenty-seven bishoprics including Sodor and Man. Of these
+eleven were held by members of noble families; fourteen were held by men
+who had been tutors in, or in other ways personally connected with the
+royal family or the families of ministers and great men; and of the
+remaining two, one rested his claim upon political writing in defence of
+Pitt, while the other seems to have had the support of a great city
+company. The system of translation enabled the government to keep a hand
+upon the bishops. Their elevation to the more valuable places or leave
+to hold subsidiary preferments depended upon their votes in the House of
+Lords. So far, then, as secular motives operated, the tendency of the
+system was clear. If Providence had assigned to you a duke for a father
+or an uncle, preferment would fall to you as of right. A man of rank who
+takes orders should be rewarded for his condescension. If that
+qualification be not secured, you should aim at being tutor in a great
+family, accompany a lad on the grand tour, or write some pamphlet on a
+great man's behalf. Paley gained credit for independence at Cambridge,
+and spoke with contempt of the practice of 'rooting,' the cant phrase
+for patronage hunting. The text which he facetiously suggested for a
+sermon when Pitt visited Cambridge, 'There is a young man here who has
+six loaves and two fishes, but what are they among so many?' hit off the
+spirit in which a minister was regarded at the universities. The memoirs
+of Bishop Watson illustrate the same sentiment. He lived in his pleasant
+country house at Windermere, never visiting his diocese, and according
+to De Quincey, talking Socinianism at his table. He felt himself to be a
+deeply injured man, because ministers had never found an opportunity
+for translating him to a richer diocese, although he had written
+against Paine and Gibbon. If they would not reward their friends, he
+argued, why should he take up their cause by defending Christianity?
+
+The bishops were eminently respectable. They did not lead immoral lives,
+and if they gave a large share of preferment to their families, that at
+least was a domestic virtue. Some of them, Bishop Barrington of Durham,
+for example, took a lead in philanthropic movements; and, if considered
+simply as prosperous country-gentlemen, little fault could be found with
+them. While, however, every commonplace motive pointed so directly
+towards a career of subserviency to the ruling class among the laity, it
+could not be expected that they should take a lofty view of their
+profession. The Anglican clergy were not like the Irish priesthood, in
+close sympathy with the peasantry, or like the Scottish ministers, the
+organs of strong convictions spreading through the great mass of the
+middle and lower classes. A man of energy, who took his faith seriously,
+was, like the Evangelical clergy, out of the road to preferment, or,
+like Wesley, might find no room within the church at all. His colleagues
+called him an 'enthusiast,' and disliked him as a busybody if not a
+fanatic. They were by birth and adoption themselves members of the
+ruling class; many of them were the younger sons of squires, and held
+their livings in virtue of their birth. Advowsons are the last offices
+to retain a proprietary character. The church of that day owed such a
+representative as Horne Tooke to the system which enabled his father to
+provide for him by buying a living. From the highest to the lowest ranks
+of clergy, the church was as Matthew Arnold could still call it, an
+'appendage of the barbarians.' The clergy, that is, as a whole, were an
+integral but a subsidiary part of the aristocracy or the great landed
+interest. Their admirers urged that the system planted a cultivated
+gentleman in every parish in the country. Their opponents replied, like
+John Sterling, that he was a 'black dragoon with horse meat and man's
+meat'--part of the garrison distributed through the country to support
+the cause of property and order. In any case the instinctive
+prepossessions, the tastes and favourite pursuits of the profession were
+essentially those of the class with which it was so intimately
+connected. Arthur Young,[20] speaking of the French clergy, observes
+that at least they are not poachers and foxhunters, who divide their
+time between hunting, drinking, and preaching. You do not in France find
+such advertisements as he had heard of in England, 'Wanted a curacy in a
+good sporting country, where the duty is light and the neighbourhood
+convivial.' The proper exercise for a country clergyman, he rather
+quaintly observes, is agriculture. The ideal parson, that is, should be
+a squire in canonical dress. The clergy of the eighteenth century
+probably varied between the extremes represented by Trulliber and the
+Vicar of Wakefield. Many of them were excellent people, with a mild
+taste for literature, contributing to the _Gentleman's Magazine_,
+investigating the antiquities of their county, occasionally confuting a
+deist, exerting a sound judgment in cultivating their glebes or
+improving the breed of cattle, and respected both by squire and farmers.
+The 'Squarson,' in Sydney Smith's facetious phrase, was the ideal
+clergyman. The purely sacerdotal qualities, good or bad, were at a
+minimum. Crabbe, himself a type of the class, has left admirable
+portraits of his fellows. Profound veneration for his noble patrons and
+hearty dislike for intrusive dissenters were combined in his own case
+with a pure domestic life, a keen insight into the uglier realities of
+country life and a good sound working morality. Miss Austen, who said
+that she could have been Crabbe's wife, has given more delicate pictures
+of the clergyman as he appeared at the tea-tables of the time. He varies
+according to her from the squire's excellent younger brother, who is
+simply a squire in a white neck-cloth, to the silly but still
+respectable sycophant, who firmly believes his lady patroness to be a
+kind of local deity. Many of the real memoirs of the day give pleasant
+examples of the quiet and amiable lives of the less ambitious clergy.
+There is the charming Gilbert White (1720-1793) placidly studying the
+ways of tortoises, and unconsciously composing a book which breathes an
+undying charm from its atmosphere of peaceful repose; William Gilpin
+(1724-1804) founding and endowing parish schools, teaching the
+catechism, and describing his vacation tours in narratives which helped
+to spread a love of natural scenery; and Thomas Gisborne (1758-1846),
+squire and clergyman, a famous preacher among the evangelicals and a
+poet after the fashion of Cowper, who loved his native Needwood Forest
+as White loved Selborne and Gilpin loved the woods of Boldre; and Cowper
+himself (1731-1800) who, though not a clergyman, lived in a clerical
+atmosphere, and whose gentle and playful enjoyment of quiet country life
+relieves the painfully deep pathos of his disordered imagination; and
+the excellent W. L. Bowles (1762-1850), whose sonnets first woke
+Coleridge's imagination, who spent eighty-eight years in an amiable and
+blameless life, and was country-gentleman, magistrate, antiquary,
+clergyman, and poet.[21] Such names are enough to recall a type which
+has not quite vanished, and which has gathered a new charm in more
+stirring and fretful times. These most excellent people, however, were
+not likely to be prominent in movements destined to break up the placid
+environment of their lives nor, in truth, to be sources of any great
+intellectual stir.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[19] The list, checked from other sources of information, is as
+follows:--Manners Sutton, archbishop of Canterbury, was grandson of the
+third duke of Rutland; Edward Vernon, archbishop of York, was son of the
+first Lord Vernon and cousin of the third Lord Harcourt, whose estates
+he inherited; Shute Barrington, bishop of Durham, was son of the first
+and brother of the second Viscount Barrington; Brownlow North, bishop of
+Winchester, was uncle to the earl of Guildford; James Cornwallis, bishop
+of Lichfield, was uncle to the second marquis, whose peerage he
+inherited; George Pelham, bishop of Exeter, was brother of the earl of
+Chichester; Henry Bathurst, bishop of Norwich, was nephew of the first
+earl; George Henry Law, bishop of Chester, was brother of the first Lord
+Ellenborough; Edward Legge, bishop of Oxford, was son of the second earl
+of Dartmouth; Henry Ryder, bishop of Gloucester, was brother to the earl
+of Harrowby; George Murray, bishop of Sodor and Man, was nephew-in-law
+to the duke of Athol and brother-in-law to the earl of Kinnoul. Of the
+fourteen tutors, etc., mentioned above, William Howley, bishop of
+London, had been tutor to the prince of Orange at Oxford; George
+Pretyman Tomline, bishop of Lincoln, had been Pitt's tutor at Cambridge;
+Richard Beadon, bishop of Bath and Wells, had been tutor to the duke of
+Gloucester at Cambridge; Folliott Cornewall, bishop of Worcester, had
+been made chaplain to the House of Commons by the influence of his
+cousin, the Speaker; John Buckner, bishop of Chichester, had been tutor
+to the duke of Richmond; Henry William Majendie, bishop of Bangor, was
+the son of Queen Charlotte's English master, and had been tutor to
+William IV.; George Isaac Huntingford, bishop of Hereford, had been
+tutor to Addington, prime minister; Thomas Burgess, bishop of St.
+David's, was a personal friend of Addington; John Fisher, bishop of
+Salisbury, had been tutor to the duke of Kent; John Luxmoore, bishop of
+St. Asaph, had been tutor to the duke of Buccleugh; Samuel Goodenough,
+bishop of Carlisle, had been tutor to the sons of the third duke of
+Portland and was connected with Addington; William Lort Mansel, bishop
+of Bristol, had been tutor to Perceval at Cambridge, and owed to
+Perceval the mastership of Trinity; Walter King, bishop of Rochester,
+had been secretary to the duke of Portland; and Bowyer Edward Sparke,
+bishop of Ely, had been tutor to the duke of Rutland. The two remaining
+bishops were Herbert Marsh, bishop of Peterborough, who had established
+a claim by defending Pitt's financial measures in an important pamphlet;
+and William Van Mildert, bishop of Llandaff, who had been chaplain to
+the Grocers' Company and became known as a preacher in London.
+
+[20] _Travels in France_ (1892), p. 327.
+
+[21] See _A Country Clergyman of the Eighteenth Century_ (Thomas
+Twining), 1882, for a pleasant picture of the class.
+
+
+VI. THE UNIVERSITIES
+
+The effect of these conditions is perhaps best marked in the state of
+the universities. Universities have at different periods been great
+centres of intellectual life. The English universities of the eighteenth
+century are generally noted only as embodiments of sloth and prejudice.
+The judgments of Wesley and Gibbon and Adam Smith and Bentham coincide
+in regard to Oxford; and Johnson's love of his university is an
+equivocal testimony to its intellectual merits. We generally think of it
+as of a sleepy hollow, in which portly fellows of colleges, like the
+convivial Warton, imbibed port wine and sneered at Methodists, though
+few indeed rivalled Warton's services to literature. The universities in
+fact had become, as they long continued to be, high schools chiefly for
+the use of the clergy, and if they still aimed at some wider
+intellectual training, were sinking to be institutions where the pupils
+of the public schools might, if they pleased, put a little extra polish
+upon their classical and mathematical knowledge. The colleges preserved
+their mediæval constitution; and no serious changes of their statutes
+were made until the middle of the present century. The clergy had an
+almost exclusive part in the management, and dissenters were excluded
+even from entering Oxford as students.[22] But the clergyman did not as
+a rule devote himself to a life of study. He could not marry as a
+fellow, but he made no vows of celibacy. The college, therefore, was
+merely a stepping-stone on the way to the usual course of preferment. A
+fellow looked forwards to settling in a college living, or if he had the
+luck to act as tutor to a nobleman, he might soar to a deanery or a
+bishopric. The fellows who stayed in their colleges were probably those
+who had least ambition, or who had a taste for an easy bachelor's life.
+The universities, therefore, did not form bodies of learned men
+interested in intellectual pursuits; but at most, helped such men in
+their start upon a more prosperous career. The studies flagged in
+sympathy. Gray's letters sufficiently reveal the dulness which was felt
+by a man of cultivation confined within the narrow society of college
+dons of the day. The scholastic philosophy which had once found
+enthusiastic cultivators in the great universities had more or less held
+its own through the seventeenth century, though repudiated by all the
+rising thinkers. Since the days of Locke and Berkeley, it had fallen
+utterly out of credit. The bright common sense of the polished society
+of the day looked upon the old doctrine with a contempt, which, if not
+justified by familiarity, was an implicit judgment of the tree by its
+fruits. Nobody could suppose the divines of the day to be the
+depositaries of an esoteric wisdom which the vulgar were not worthy to
+criticise. They were themselves chiefly anxious to prove that their
+sacred mysteries were really not at all mysterious, but merely one way
+of expressing plain common sense. At Oxford, indeed, the lads were still
+crammed with Aldrich, and learned the technical terms of a philosophy
+which had ceased to have any real life in it. At Cambridge, ardent young
+radicals spoke with contempt of this 'horrid jargon--fit only to be
+chattered by monkies in a wilderness.'[23] Even at Cambridge, they still
+had disputations on the old form, but they argued theses from Locke's
+essay, and thought that their mathematical studies were a check upon
+metaphysical 'jargon.' It is indeed characteristic of the respect for
+tradition that at Cambridge even mathematics long suffered from a
+mistaken patriotism which resented any improvement upon the methods of
+Newton. There were some signs of reviving activity. The fellowships were
+being distributed with less regard to private interest. The mathematical
+tripos founded at Cambridge in the middle of the century became the
+prototype of all competitive examinations; and half a century later
+Oxford followed the precedent by the Examination Statute of 1800. A
+certain number of professorships of such modern studies as anatomy,
+history, botany, and geology were founded during the eighteenth century,
+and show a certain sense of a need of broader views. The lectures upon
+which Blackstone founded his commentaries were the product of the
+foundation of the Vinerian professorship in 1751; and the most recent of
+the Cambridge colleges, Downing College, shows by its constitution that
+a professoriate was now considered to be desirable. Cambridge in the
+last years of the century might have had a body of very eminent
+professors. Watson, second wrangler of 1759, had delivered lectures upon
+chemistry, of which it was said by Davy that hardly any conceivable
+change in the science could make them obsolete.[24] Paley, senior
+wrangler in 1763, was an almost unrivalled master of lucid exposition,
+and one of his works is still a textbook at Cambridge. Isaac Milner,
+senior wrangler in 1774, afterwards held the professorships of
+mathematics and natural philosophy, and was famous as a sort of
+ecclesiastical Dr. Johnson. Gilbert Wakefield, second wrangler in 1776,
+published an edition of Lucretius, and was a man of great ability and
+energy. Herbert Marsh, second wrangler in 1779, was divinity professor
+from 1807, and was the first English writer to introduce some knowledge
+of the early stages of German criticism. Porson, the greatest Greek
+scholar of his time, became professor in 1790; Malthus, ninth wrangler
+in 1788, who was to make a permanent mark upon political economy, became
+fellow of Jesus College in 1793. Waring, senior wrangler in 1757, Vince,
+senior wrangler in 1775, and Wollaston, senior wrangler in 1783, were
+also professors and mathematicians of reputation. Towards the end of the
+century ten professors were lecturing.[25] A large number were not
+lecturing, though Milner was good enough to be 'accessible to
+students.' Paley and Watson had been led off into the path of
+ecclesiastical preferment. Marsh too became a bishop in 1816. There was
+no place for such talents as those of Malthus, who ultimately became
+professor at Haileybury. Wakefield had the misfortune of not being able
+to cover his heterodoxy with the conventional formula. Porson suffered
+from the same cause, and from less respectable weaknesses; but it seems
+that the university had no demand for services of the great scholar, and
+he did nothing for his £40 a year. Milner was occupied in managing the
+university in the interests of Pitt and Protestantism, and in waging war
+against Jacobins and intruders. There was no lack of ability; but there
+was no inducement to any intellectual activity for its own sake; and
+there were abundant temptations for any man of energy to diverge to the
+career which offered more intelligible rewards.
+
+The universities in fact supplied the demand which was actually
+operative. They provided the average clergyman with a degree; they
+expected the son of the country-gentleman or successful lawyer to
+acquire the traditional culture of his class, and to spend three or four
+years pleasantly, or even, if he chose, industriously. But there was no
+such thing as a learned society, interested in the cultivation of
+knowledge for its own sake, and applauding the devotion of life to its
+extension or discussion. The men of the time who contributed to the
+progress of science owed little or nothing to the universities, and were
+rather volunteers from without, impelled by their own idiosyncrasies.
+Among the scientific leaders, for example, Joseph Black (1728-1799) was
+a Scottish professor; Priestley (1733-1804) a dissenting minister;
+Cavendish (1731-1810) an aristocratic recluse, who, though he studied at
+Cambridge, never graduated; Watt (1736-1819) a practical mechanician;
+and Dalton (1766-1844) a Quaker schoolmaster. John Hunter (1728-1793)
+was one of the energetic Scots who forced their way to fame without help
+from English universities. The cultivation of the natural sciences was
+only beginning to take root; and the soil, which it found congenial, was
+not that of the great learned institutions, which held to their old
+traditional studies.
+
+I may, then, sum up the result in a few words. The church had once
+claimed to be an entirely independent body, possessing a supernatural
+authority, with an organisation sanctioned by supernatural powers, and
+entitled to lay down the doctrines which gave the final theory of life.
+Theology was the queen of the sciences and theologians the interpreters
+of the first principles of all knowledge and conduct. The church of
+England, on the other hand, at our period had entirely ceased to be
+independent: it was bound hand and foot by acts of parliament: there was
+no ecclesiastical organ capable of speaking in its name, altering its
+laws or defining its tenets: it was an aggregate of offices the
+appointment to which was in the hands either of the political ministers
+or of the lay members of the ruling class. It was in reality simply a
+part of the ruling class told off to perform divine services: to
+maintain order and respectability and the traditional morality. It had
+no distinctive philosophy or theology, for the articles of belief
+represented simply a compromise; an attempt to retain as much of the old
+as was practicable and yet to admit as much of the new as was made
+desirable by political considerations. It was the boast of its more
+liberal members that they were not tied down to any definite dogmatic
+system; but could have a free hand so long as they did not wantonly come
+into conflict with some of the legal formulæ laid down in a previous
+generation. The actual teaching showed the effects of the system. It had
+been easy to introduce a considerable leaven of the rationalism which
+suited the lay mind; to explain away the mysterious doctrines upon which
+an independent church had insisted as manifestations of its spiritual
+privileges, but which were regarded with indifference or contempt by the
+educated laity now become independent. The priest had been disarmed and
+had to suit his teaching to the taste of his patrons and congregations.
+The divines of the eighteenth century had, as they boasted, confuted the
+deists; but it was mainly by showing that they could be deists in all
+but the name. The dissenters, less hampered by legal formulæ, had
+drifted towards Unitarianism. The position of such divines as Paley,
+Watson, and Hey was not so much that the Unitarians were wrong, as that
+the mysterious doctrines were mere sets of words, over which it was
+superfluous to quarrel. The doctrine was essentially traditional; for it
+was impossible to represent the doctrines of the church of England as
+deductions from any abstract philosophy. But the traditions were not
+regarded as having any mysterious authority. Abstract philosophy might
+lead to deism or infidelity. Paley and his like rejected such philosophy
+in the spirit of Locke or even Hume. But it was always possible to treat
+a tradition like any other statement of fact. It could be proved by
+appropriate evidence. The truth of Christianity was therefore merely a
+question of facts like the truth of any other passages of history. It
+was easy enough to make out a case for the Christian miracles, and then
+the mysteries, after it had been sufficiently explained that they really
+meant next to nothing, could be rested upon the authority of the
+miracles. In other words, the accepted doctrines, like the whole
+constitution of the church, could be so modified as to suit the
+prejudices and modes of thought of the laity. The church, it may be
+said, was thoroughly secularised. The priest was no longer a wielder of
+threats and an interpreter of oracles, but an entirely respectable
+gentleman, who fully sympathised with the prejudices of his patron and
+practically admitted that he had very little to reveal, beyond
+explaining that his dogmas were perfectly harmless and eminently
+convenient. He preached, however, a sound common sense morality, and was
+not divided from his neighbours by setting up the claims characteristic
+of a sacerdotal caste. Whether he has become on the whole better or
+worse by subsequent changes is a question not to be asked here; but
+perhaps not quite so easily answered as is sometimes supposed.
+
+The condition of the English church and universities may be contrasted
+with that of their Scottish rivals. The Scottish church and universities
+had no great prizes to offer and no elaborate hierarchy. But the church
+was a national institution in a sense different from the English. The
+General Assembly was a powerful body, not overshadowed by a great
+political rival. To rise to be a minister was the great ambition of poor
+sons of farmers and tradesmen. They had to study at the universities in
+the intervals, perhaps, of agricultural labour; and if the learning was
+slight and the scholarship below the English standard, the young
+aspirant had at least to learn to preach and to acquire such philosophy
+as would enable him to argue upon grace and freewill with some
+hard-headed Davie Deans. It was doubtless owing in part to these
+conditions that the Scottish universities produced many distinguished
+teachers throughout the century. Professors had to teach something which
+might at least pass for philosophy, though they were more or less
+restrained by the necessity of respecting orthodox prejudices. At the
+end of the century, the only schools of philosophy in the island were to
+be found in Scotland, where Reid (1710-1796) and Adam Smith (1723-1790)
+had found intelligent disciples, and where Dugald Stewart, of whom I
+shall speak presently, had become the recognised philosophical
+authority.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[22] At Cambridge subscription was abolished for undergraduates in 1775;
+and bachelors of arts had only to declare themselves '_bona-fide_
+members of the church of England.'
+
+[23] Gilbert Wakefield's _Memoirs_, ii. 149.
+
+[24] De Quincey, _Works_ (1863), ii. 106.
+
+[25] Wordsworth's _University Life, etc._ (1874), 83-87.
+
+
+VII. THEORY
+
+What theory corresponds to this practical order? It implies, in the
+first place, a constant reference to tradition. The system has grown up
+without any reference to abstract principles or symmetrical plan. The
+legal order supposes a traditional common law, as the ecclesiastical
+order a traditional creed, and the organisation is explicable only by
+historical causes. The system represents a series of compromises, not
+the elaboration of a theory. If the squire undertook by way of
+supererogation to justify his position he appealed to tradition and
+experience. He invoked the 'wisdom of our ancestors,' the system of
+'checks and balances' which made our Constitution an unrivalled mixture
+of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy deserving the 'dread and envy
+of the world.' The prescription for compounding that mixture could
+obviously be learned by nothing but experiment. Traditional means
+empirical. By instinct, rather than conscious reasoning, Englishmen had
+felt their way to establishing the 'palladia of our liberties': trial by
+jury, the 'Habeas Corpus' Act, and the substitution of a militia for a
+standing army. The institutions were cherished because they had been
+developed by long struggles and were often cherished when their real
+justification had disappeared. The Constitution had not been 'made' but
+had 'grown'; or, in other words, the one rule had been the rule of
+thumb. That is an excellent rule in its way, and very superior to an
+abstract rule which neglects or overrides experience. The 'logic of
+facts,' moreover, may be trusted to produce a certain harmony: and
+general principles, though not consciously invoked, tacitly govern the
+development of institutions worked out under uniform conditions. The
+simple reluctance to pay money without getting money's worth might
+generate the important principle that representation should go with
+taxation, without embodying any theory of a 'social contract' such as
+was offered by an afterthought to give a philosophical sanction.
+Englishmen, it is said, had bought their liberties step by step, because
+at each step they were in a position to bargain with their rulers. What
+they had bought they were determined to keep and considered to be their
+inalienable property. One result is conspicuous. In England the ruling
+classes did not so much consider their privileges to be something
+granted by the state, as the power of the state to be something derived
+from their concessions. Though the lord-lieutenant and the justices of
+the peace were nominated by the crown, their authority came in fact as
+an almost spontaneous consequence of their birthright or their acquired
+position in the country. They shone by their own light and were really
+the ultimate sources of authority. Seats in parliament, preferments in
+the church, commissions in the army belonged to them like their estates;
+and they seemed to be qualified by nature, rather than by appointment,
+to act in judicial and administrative capacities. The system of
+'self-government' embodies this view. The functions of government were
+assigned to men already powerful by their social position. The absence
+of the centralised hierarchy of officials gave to Englishmen the sense
+of personal liberty which compelled the admiration of Voltaire and his
+countrymen in the eighteenth century. In England were no _lettres de
+cachet_, and no Bastille. A man could say what he thought and act
+without fear of arbitrary rule. There was no such system as that which,
+in France, puts the agents of the central power above the ordinary law
+of the land. This implies what has been called the 'rule of the law' in
+England. 'With us every official from the prime minister down to a
+constable or a collector of taxes' (as Professor Dicey explains the
+principle) 'is under the same responsibility for every act done without
+legal justification as any other citizen.'[26] The early centralisation
+of the English monarchy had made the law supreme, and instead of
+generating a new structure had combined and regulated the existing
+social forces. The sovereign power was thus farmed to the aristocracy
+instead of forming an organ of its own. Instead of resigning power they
+were forced to exercise it on condition of thorough responsibility to
+the central judiciary. Their privileges were not destroyed but were
+combined with the discharge of corresponding duties. Whatever their
+shortcomings, they were preserved from the decay which is the inevitable
+consequence of a divorce of duties from privileges.
+
+Another aspect of the case is equally clear. If the privilege is
+associated with a duty, the duty may also be regarded as a privilege.
+The doctrine seems to mark a natural stage in the evolution of the
+conception of duty to the state. The power which is left to a member of
+the ruling class is also part of his dignity. Thus we have an
+amalgamation between the conceptions of private property and public
+trust. 'In so far as the ideal of feudalism is perfectly realised,' it
+has been said,[27] 'all that we can call public law is merged in private
+law; jurisdiction is property; office is property; the kingship itself
+is property.' This feudal ideal was still preserved with many of the
+institutions descended from feudalism. The king's right to his throne
+was regarded as of the same kind as the right to a private estate. His
+rights as king were also his rights as the owner of the land.[28]
+Subordinate landowners had similar rights, and as the royal power
+diminished greater powers fell to the aggregate of constitutional
+kinglets who governed the country. Each of them was from one point of
+view an official, but each also regarded his office as part of his
+property. The country belonged to him and his class rather than he to
+the country. We occasionally find the quaint theory which deduced
+political rights from property in land. The freeholders were the owners
+of the soil and might give notice to quit to the rest of the
+population.[29] They had therefore a natural right to carry on
+government in their own interests. The ruling classes, however, were not
+marked off from others by any deep line of demarcation; they could sell
+their own share in the government to anybody who was rich enough to buy
+it, and there was a constant influx of new blood. Moreover, they did in
+fact improve their estate with very great energy, and discharged
+roughly, but in many ways efficiently, the duties which were also part
+of their property. The nobleman or even the squire was more than an
+individual; as head of a family he was a life tenant of estates which he
+desired to transmit to his descendants. He was a 'corporation sole' and
+had some of the spirit of a corporation. A college or a hospital is
+founded to discharge a particular function; its members continue perhaps
+to recognise their duty; but they resent any interference from outside
+as sacrilege or confiscation. It is for them alone to judge how they can
+best carry out, and whether they are actually carrying out, the aims of
+the corporate life. In the same way the great noble took his part in
+legislation, church preferment, the command of the army, and so forth,
+and fully admitted that he was bound in honour to play his part
+effectively; but he was equally convinced that he was subject to nothing
+outside of his sense of honour. His duties were also his rights. The
+naïf expression of this doctrine by a great borough proprietor, 'May I
+not do what I like with my own?' was to become proverbial.[30]
+
+This, finally, suggests that a doctrine of 'individualism' is implied
+throughout. The individual rights are the antecedent and the rights of
+the state a consequent or corollary. Every man has certain sacred rights
+accruing to him in virtue of 'prescription' or tradition, through his
+inherited position in the social organism. The 'rule of law' secures
+that he shall exercise them without infringing the privileges of his
+neighbour. He may moreover be compelled by the law to discharge them on
+due occasion. But, as there is no supreme body which can sufficiently
+superintend, stimulate, promote, or dismiss, the active impulse must
+come chiefly from his own sense of the fitness of things. The efficiency
+therefore depends upon his being in such a position that his duty may
+coincide with his personal interest. The political machinery can only
+work efficiently on the assumption of a spontaneous activity of the
+ruling classes, prompted by public spirit or a sense of personal
+dignity. Meanwhile, 'individualism' in a different sense was represented
+by the forces which made for progress rather than order, and to them I
+must now turn.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[26] Professor Dicey's _Lectures on the Law of the Constitution_ (1885),
+p. 178. Professor Dicey gives an admirable exposition of the 'rule of
+law.'
+
+[27] Pollock and Maitland's _History of English Law_, i. 208.
+
+[28] A characteristic consequence is that Hale and Blackstone make no
+distinction between public and private law. Austin (_Jurisprudence_
+(1869), 773-76) applauds them for this peculiarity, which he regards as
+a proof of originality, though it would rather seem to be an acceptance
+of the traditional view. Austin, however, retorts the charge of
+_Verwirrung_ upon German critics.
+
+[29] This is the theory of Defoe in his _Original Power of the People of
+England_ (Works by Hazlitt, vol iii. See especially p. 57).
+
+[30] The fourth duke of Newcastle in the House of Lords, 3 Dec. 1830.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE INDUSTRIAL SPIRIT
+
+
+I. THE MANUFACTURERS
+
+The history of England during the eighteenth century shows a curious
+contrast between the political stagnancy and the great industrial
+activity. The great constitutional questions seemed to be settled; and
+the statesmen, occupied mainly in sharing power and place, took a very
+shortsighted view (not for the first time in history) of the great
+problems that were beginning to present themselves. The British empire
+in the East was not won by a towering ambition so much as forced upon a
+reluctant commercial company by the necessities of its position. The
+English race became dominant in America; but the political connection
+was broken off mainly because English statesmen could only regard it
+from the shopkeeping point of view. When a new world began to arise at
+the Antipodes, our rulers saw an opportunity not for planting new
+offshoots of European civilisation, but for ridding themselves of the
+social rubbish no longer accepted in America. With purblind energy, and
+eyes doggedly fixed upon the ground at their feet, the race had somehow
+pressed forwards to illustrate the old doctrine that a man never goes so
+far as when he does not know whither he is going. While thinking of
+earning an honest penny by extending the trade, our 'monied-men' were
+laying the foundation of vast structures to be developed by their
+descendants.
+
+Politicians, again, had little to do with the great 'industrial
+revolution' which marked the last half of the century. The main facts
+are now a familiar topic of economic historians; nor need I speak of
+them in detail. Though agriculture was still the main industry, and the
+landowners almost monopolised political power, an ever growing
+proportion of the people was being collected in towns; the artisans were
+congregating in large factories; and the great cloud of coal-smoke,
+which has never dwindled, was already beginning to darken our skies. The
+change corresponds to the difference between a fully developed organism
+possessed of a central brain, with an elaborate nervous system, and some
+lower form in which the vital processes are still carried on by a number
+of separate ganglia. The concentration of the population in the great
+industrial centres implied the improvement of the means of commerce; new
+organisation of industry provided with a corresponding apparatus of
+machinery; and the systematic exploitation of the stored-up forces of
+nature. Each set of changes was at once cause and effect, and each was
+carried on separately, although in relation to the other. Brindley,
+Arkwright, and Watt may be taken as typical representatives of the three
+operations. Canals, spinning-jennies, and steam-engines were changing
+the whole social order.
+
+The development of means of communication had been slow till the last
+half of the century. The roads had been little changed since they had
+been first laid down as part of the great network which bound the Roman
+empire together. Turnpike acts, sanctioning the construction of new
+roads, became numerous. Palmer's application of the stage-coaches to the
+carriage of the mails marked an epoch in 1784; and De Quincey's prose
+poem, 'The Mail-coach,' shows how the unprecedented speed of Palmer's
+coaches, then spreading the news of the first battles in the Peninsula,
+had caused them to tyrannise over the opium-eater's dreams. They were
+discharging at once a political and an industrial function. Meanwhile
+the Bridgewater canal, constructed between 1759 and 1761, was the first
+link in a great network which, by the time of the French revolution,
+connected the seaports and the great centres of industry. The great
+inventions of machinery were simultaneously enabling manufacturers to
+take advantage of the new means of communication. The cotton manufacture
+sprang up soon after 1780 with enormous rapidity. Aided by the
+application of steam (first applied to a cotton mill in 1785) it passed
+the woollen trade, the traditional favourite of legislators, and became
+the most important branch of British trade. The iron trade had made a
+corresponding start. While the steam-engine, on which Watt had made the
+first great improvement in 1765, was transforming the manufacturing
+system, and preparing the advent of the steamship and railroad, Great
+Britain had become the leading manufacturing and commercial country in
+the world. The agricultural interest was losing its pre-eminence; and
+huge towns with vast aggregations of artisan population were beginning
+to spring up with unprecedented rapidity. The change was an
+illustration upon a gigantic scale of the doctrines expounded in the
+_Wealth of Nations_. Division of labour was being applied to things more
+important than pin-making, involving a redistribution of functions not
+as between men covered by the same roof, but between whole classes of
+society; between the makers of new means of communication and the
+manufacturers of every kind of material. The whole industrial community
+might be regarded as one great organism. Yet the organisation was formed
+by a multitude of independent agencies without any concerted plan. It
+was thus a vast illustration of the doctrine that each man by pursuing
+his own interests promoted the interests of the whole, and that
+government interference was simply a hindrance. The progress of
+improvement, says Adam Smith, depends upon 'the uniform, constant, and
+uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition,' which often
+succeeds in spite of the errors of government, as nature often overcomes
+the blunders of doctors. It is, as he infers, 'the highest impertinence
+and presumption for kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the
+economy of private people' by sumptuary laws and taxes upon imports.[31]
+To the English manufacturer or engineer government appeared as a
+necessary evil. It allowed the engineer to make roads and canals, after
+a troublesome and expensive process of application. It granted patents
+to the manufacturer, but the patents were a source of perpetual worry
+and litigation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer might look with
+complacency upon the development of a new branch of trade; but it was
+because he was lying in wait to come down upon it with a new tax or
+system of duties.
+
+The men who were the chief instruments of the process were 'self-made';
+they were the typical examples of Mr. Smiles's virtue of self-help; they
+owed nothing to government or to the universities which passed for the
+organs of national culture. The leading engineers began as ordinary
+mechanics. John Metcalf (1717-1810), otherwise 'blind Jack of
+Knaresborough,' was a son of poor parents. He had lost his sight by
+smallpox at the age of six, and, in spite of his misfortune, became a
+daring rider, wrestler, soldier, and carrier, and made many roads in the
+north of England, executing surveys and constructing the works himself.
+James Brindley (1716-1772), son of a midland collier, barely able to
+read or write, working out plans by processes which he could not
+explain, and lying in bed till they took shape in his brain, a rough
+mechanic, labouring for trifling weekly wages, created the canals which
+mainly enabled Manchester and Liverpool to make an unprecedented leap in
+prosperity. The two great engineers, Thomas Telford (1757-1834), famous
+for the Caledonian canal and the Menai bridge; and John Rennie
+(1761-1821), drainer of Lincolnshire fens, and builder of Waterloo
+bridge and the Plymouth breakwater, rose from the ranks. Telford
+inherited and displayed in a different direction the energies of Eskdale
+borderers, whose achievements in the days of cattle-stealing were to be
+made famous by Scott: Rennie was the son of an East Lothian farmer. Both
+of them learned their trade by actual employment as mechanics. The
+inventors of machinery belonged mainly to the lower middle classes. Kay
+was a small manufacturer; Hargreaves a hand-loom weaver; Crompton the
+son of a small farmer; and Arkwright a country barber. Watt, son of a
+Greenock carpenter, came from the sturdy Scottish stock, ultimately of
+covenanting ancestry, from which so many eminent men have sprung.
+
+The new social class, in which such men were the leaders, held
+corresponding principles. They owed whatever success they won to their
+own right hands. They were sturdy workers, with eyes fixed upon success
+in life, and success generally of course measured by a money criterion.
+Many of them showed intellectual tastes, and took an honourable view of
+their social functions. Watt showed his ability in scientific inquiries
+outside of the purely industrial application; Josiah Wedgwood, in whose
+early days the Staffordshire potters had led a kind of gipsy life,
+settling down here and there to carry on their trade, had not only
+founded a great industry, but was a man of artistic taste, a patron of
+art, and a lover of science. Telford, the Eskdale shepherd, was a man of
+literary taste, and was especially friendly with the typical man of
+letters, Southey. Others, of course, were of a lower type. Arkwright
+combined the talents of an inventor with those of a man of business. He
+was a man, says Baines (the historian of the cotton trade), who was sure
+to come out of an enterprise with profit, whatever the result to his
+partners. He made a great fortune, and founded a county family. Others
+rose in the same direction. The Peels, for example, represented a line
+of yeomen. One Peel founded a cotton business; his son became a baronet
+and an influential member of parliament; and his grandson went to
+Oxford, and became the great leader of the Conservative party, although
+like Walpole, he owed his power to a kind of knowledge in which his
+adopted class were generally deficient.
+
+The class which owed its growing importance to the achievements of such
+men was naturally imbued with their spirit. Its growth meant the
+development of a class which under the old order had been strictly
+subordinate to the ruling class, and naturally regarded it with a
+mingled feeling of respect and jealousy. The British merchant felt his
+superiority in business to the average country-gentleman; he got no
+direct share of the pensions and sinecures which so profoundly affected
+the working of the political machinery, and yet his highest ambition was
+to rise to be himself a member of the class, and to found a family which
+might flourish in the upper atmosphere. The industrial classes were
+inclined to favour political progress within limits. They were
+dissenters because the church was essentially part of the aristocracy;
+and they were readiest to denounce the abuses from which they did not
+profit. The agitators who supported Wilkes, solid aldermen and rich
+merchants, represented the view which was popular in London and other
+great cities. They were the backbone of the Whig party when it began to
+demand a serious reform. Their radicalism, however, was not thoroughly
+democratic. Many of them aspired to become members of the ruling class,
+and a shopkeeper does not quarrel too thoroughly with his customers. The
+politics of individuals were of course determined by accidents. Some of
+them might retain the sympathy of the class from which they sprang, and
+others might adopt an even extreme version of the opinions of the class
+to which they desired to rise. But, in any case, the divergence of
+interest between the capitalists and the labourers was already making
+itself felt. The self-made man, it is said, is generally the hardest
+master. He approves of the stringent system of competition, of which he
+is himself a product. It clearly enables the best man to win, for is he
+not himself the best man? The class which was the great seat of movement
+had naturally to meet all the prejudices which are roused by change. The
+farmers near London, as Adam Smith tells us,[32] petitioned against an
+extension of turnpike roads, which would enable more distant farmers to
+compete in their market. But the farmers were not the only prejudiced
+persons. All the great inventors of machinery, Kay and Arkwright and
+Watt, had constantly to struggle against the old workmen who were
+displaced by their inventions. Although, therefore, the class might be
+Whiggish, it did not share the strongest revolutionary passions. The
+genuine revolutionists were rather the men who destroyed the
+manufacturer's machines, and were learning to regard him as a natural
+enemy. The manufacturer had his own reasons for supporting government.
+Our foreign policy during the century was in the long run chiefly
+determined by the interests of our trade, however much the trade might
+at times be hampered by ill-conceived regulations. It is remarkable that
+Adam Smith[33] argues that, although the capitalist is acuter that the
+country-gentleman, his acuteness is chiefly displayed by knowing his own
+interests better. Those interests, he thinks, do not coincide so much as
+the interests of the country-gentleman with the general interests of the
+country. Consequently the country-gentleman, though less intelligent,
+is more likely to favour a national and liberal policy. The merchant, in
+fact, was not a free-trader because he had read Adam Smith or
+consciously adopted Smith's principles, but because or in so far as
+particular restrictions interfered with him. Arthur Young complains
+bitterly of the manufacturers who supported the prohibition to export
+English wool, and so protected their own class at the expense of
+agriculturists. Wedgwood, though a good liberal and a supporter of
+Pitt's French treaty in 1786, joined in protesting against the proposal
+for free-trade with Ireland. The Irish, he thought, might rival his
+potteries. Thus, though as a matter of fact the growing class of
+manufacturers and merchants were inclined in the main to liberal
+principles, it was less from adhesion to any general doctrine than from
+the fact that the existing restrictions and prejudices generally
+conflicted with their plain interests.
+
+Another characteristic is remarkable. Though the growth of manufactures
+and commerce meant the growth of great towns, it did not mean the growth
+of municipal institutions. On the contrary, as I shall presently have to
+notice, the municipalities were sinking to their lowest ebb.
+Manufactures, in the first instance, spread along the streams into
+country districts: and to the great manufacturer, working for his own
+hand, his neighbours were competitors as much as allies. The great
+towns, however, which were growing up, showed the general tendencies of
+the class. They were centres not only of manufacturing but of
+intellectual progress. The population of Birmingham, containing the
+famous Soho works of Boulton and Watt, had increased between 1740 and
+1780 from 24,000 to 74,000 inhabitants. Watt's partner Boulton started
+the 'Lunar Society' at Birmingham.[34] Its most prominent member was
+Erasmus Darwin, famous then for poetry which is chiefly remembered by
+the parody in the _Anti-Jacobin_; and now more famous as the advocate of
+a theory of evolution eclipsed by the teaching of his more famous
+grandson, and, in any case, a man of remarkable intellectual power.
+Among those who joined in the proceedings was Edgeworth, who in 1768 was
+speculating upon moving carriages by steam, and Thomas Day, whose
+_Sandford and Merton_ helped to spread in England the educational
+theories of Rousseau. Priestley, who settled at Birmingham in 1780,
+became a member, and was helped in his investigations by Watt's counsels
+and Wedgwood's pecuniary help. Among occasional visitors were Smeaton,
+Sir Joseph Banks, Solander, and Herschel of scientific celebrity; while
+the literary magnate, Dr. Parr, who lived between Warwick and
+Birmingham, occasionally joined the circle. Wedgwood, though too far off
+to be a member, was intimate with Darwin and associated in various
+enterprises with Boulton. Wedgwood's congenial partner, Thomas Bentley
+(1731-1780), had been in business at Manchester and at Liverpool. He had
+taken part in founding the Warrington 'Academy,' the dissenting seminary
+(afterwards moved to Manchester) of which Priestley was tutor
+(1761-1767), and had lectured upon art at the academy founded at
+Liverpool in 1773. Another member of the academy was William Roscoe
+(1753-1831), whose literary taste was shown by his lives of Lorenzo de
+Medici and Leo X., and who distinguished himself by opposing the
+slave-trade, then the infamy of his native town. Allied with him in this
+movement were William Rathbone and James Currie (1756-1805) the
+biographer of Burns, a friend of Darwin and an intelligent physician. At
+Manchester Thomas Perceval (1740-1804) founded the 'Literary and
+Philosophical Society' in 1780. He was a pupil of the Warrington
+Academy, which he afterwards joined on removing to Manchester, and he
+formed the scheme afterwards realised by Owens College. He was an early
+advocate of sanitary measures and factory legislation, and a man of
+scientific reputation. Other members of the society were: John Ferriar
+(1761-1815), best known by his _Illustrations of Sterne_, but also a man
+of literary and scientific reputation; the great chemist, John Dalton
+(1766-1844), who contributed many papers to its transactions; and, for a
+short time, the Socialist Robert Owen, then a rising manufacturer. At
+Norwich, then important as a manufacturing centre, was a similar circle.
+William Taylor, an eminent Unitarian divine, who died at the Warrington
+Academy in 1761, had lived at Norwich. One of his daughters married
+David Martineau and became the mother of Harriet Martineau, who has
+described the Norwich of her early years. John Taylor, grandson of
+William, was father of Mrs. Austin, wife of the jurist. He was a man of
+literary tastes, and his wife was known as the Madame Roland of Norwich.
+Mrs. Opie (1765-1853) was daughter of James Alderson, a physician of
+Norwich, and passed most of her life there. William Taylor (1761-1836),
+another Norwich manufacturer, was among the earliest English students of
+German literature. Norwich had afterwards the unique distinction of
+being the home of a provincial school of artists. John Crome
+(1788-1821), son of a poor weaver, and John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) were
+its leaders; they formed a kind of provincial academy, and exhibited
+pictures which have been more appreciated since their death. At Bristol,
+towards the end of the century, were similar indications of intellectual
+activity. Coleridge and Southey found there a society ready to listen to
+their early lectures, and both admired Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808), a
+physician, a chemist, a student of German, an imitator of Darwin in
+poetry, and an assailant of Pitt in pamphlets. He had married one of
+Edgeworth's daughters. With the help and advice of Wedgwood and Watt, he
+founded the 'Pneumatic Institute' at Clifton in 1798, and obtained the
+help of Humphry Davy, who there made some of his first discoveries. Davy
+was soon transported to the Royal Institution, founded at the suggestion
+of Count Rumford in 1799, which represented the growth of a popular
+interest in the scientific discoveries.
+
+The general tone of these little societies represents, of course, the
+tendency of the upper stratum of the industrial classes. In their own
+eyes they naturally represented the progressive element of society. They
+were Whigs--for 'radicalism' was not yet invented--but Whigs of the left
+wing; accepting the aristocratic precedency, but looking askance at the
+aristocratic prejudices. They were rationalists, too, in principle, but
+again within limits: openly avowing the doctrines which in the
+Established church had still to be sheltered by ostensible conformity to
+the traditional dogmas. Many of them professed the Unitarianism to which
+the old dissenting bodies inclined. 'Unitarianism,' said shrewd old
+Erasmus Darwin, 'is a feather-bed for a dying Christian.' But at present
+such men as Priestley and Price were only so far on the road to a
+thorough rationalism as to denounce the corruptions of Christianity, as
+they denounced abuses in politics, without anticipating a revolutionary
+change in church and state. Priestley, for example, combined
+'materialism' and 'determinism' with Christianity and a belief in
+miracles, and controverted Horsley upon one side and Paine on the other.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[31] _Wealth of Nations_, bk. ii. ch. iii.
+
+[32] _Wealth of Nations_, bk. i. ch. xi. § 1.
+
+[33] _Ibid._ bk. i. ch. xi. conclusion.
+
+[34] Smiles's _Watt and Boulton_, p. 292.
+
+
+II. THE AGRICULTURISTS
+
+The general spirit represented by such movements was by no means
+confined to the commercial or manufacturing classes; and its most
+characteristic embodiment is to be found in the writings of a leading
+agriculturist.
+
+Arthur Young,[35] born in 1741, was the son of a clergyman, who had also
+a small ancestral property at Bradfield, near Bury St. Edmunds.
+Accidents led to his becoming a farmer at an early age. He showed more
+zeal than discretion, and after trying three thousand experiments on his
+farm, he was glad to pay £100 to another tenant to take his farm off his
+hands. This experience as a practical agriculturist, far from
+discouraging him, qualified him in his own opinion to speak with
+authority, and he became a devoted missionary of the gospel of
+agricultural improvement. The enthusiasm with which he admired more
+successful labourers in the cause, and the indignation with which he
+regards the sluggish and retrograde, are charming. His kindliness, his
+keen interest in the prosperity of all men, rich or poor, his ardent
+belief in progress, combined with his quickness of observation, give a
+charm to the writings which embody his experience. Tours in England and
+a temporary land-agency in Ireland supplied him with materials for books
+which made him known both in England and on the Continent. In 1779 he
+returned to Bradfield, where he soon afterwards came into possession of
+his paternal estate, which became his permanent home. In 1784 he tried
+to extend his propaganda by bringing out the _Annals of Agriculture_--a
+monthly publication, of which forty-five half-yearly volumes appeared.
+He had many able contributors and himself wrote many interesting
+articles, but the pecuniary results were mainly negative. In 1791 his
+circulation was only 350 copies.[36] Meanwhile his acquaintance with the
+duc de Liancourt led to tours in France from 1788 to 1790. His _Travels
+in France_, first published in 1792, has become a classic. In 1793 Young
+was made secretary to the Board of Agriculture, of which I shall speak
+presently. He became known in London society as well as in agricultural
+circles. He was a handsome and attractive man, a charming companion, and
+widely recognised as an agricultural authority. The empress of Russia
+sent him a snuff-box; 'Farmer George' presented a merino ram; he was
+elected member of learned societies; he visited Burke at Beaconsfield,
+Pitt at Holmwood, and was a friend of Wilberforce and of Jeremy Bentham.
+
+Young had many domestic troubles. His marriage was not congenial; the
+loss of a tenderly loved daughter in 1797 permanently saddened him; he
+became blind, and in his later years sought comfort in religious
+meditation and in preaching to his poorer neighbours. He died 20th April
+1820. He left behind him a gigantic history of agriculture, filling ten
+folio volumes of manuscript, which, though reduced to six by an
+enthusiastic disciple after his death, have never found their way to
+publication.
+
+The _Travels in France_, Young's best book, owes one merit to the advice
+of a judicious friend, who remarked that the previous tours had suffered
+from the absence of the personal details which interest the common
+reader. The insertion of these makes Young's account of his French tours
+one of the most charming as well as most instructive books of the kind.
+It gives the vivid impression made upon a keen and kindly observer in
+all their freshness. He sensibly retained the expressions of opinion
+made at the time. 'I may remark at present,' he says,[37] 'that although
+I was totally mistaken in my prediction, yet, on a revision, I think I
+was right in it.' It was right, he means, upon the data then known to
+him, and he leaves the unfulfilled prediction as it was. The book is
+frequently cited in justification of the revolution, and it may be
+fairly urged that his authority is of the more weight, because he does
+not start from any sympathy with revolutionary principles. Young was in
+Paris when the oath was taken at the tennis-court; and makes his
+reflections upon the beauty of the British Constitution, and the folly
+of visionary reforms, in a spirit which might have satisfied Burke. He
+was therefore not altogether inconsistent when, after the outrages, he
+condemned the revolution, however much the facts which he describes may
+tend to explain the inevitableness of the catastrophe. At any rate, his
+views are worth notice by the indications which they give of the mental
+attitude of a typical English observer.
+
+Young in his vivacious way struck out some of the phrases which became
+proverbial with later economists. 'Give a man the secure possession of a
+bleak rock and he will turn it into a garden. Give him a nine years'
+lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert.'[38] 'The magic
+of PROPERTY turns sand to gold.'[39] He is delighted with the comfort of
+the small proprietors near Pau, which reminds him of English districts
+still inhabited by small yeomen.[40] Passing to a less fortunate region,
+he explains that the prince de Soubise has a vast property there. The
+property of a grand 'seigneur' is sure to be a desert.[41] The signs
+which indicate such properties are 'wastes, _landes_, deserts, fern,
+ling.' The neighbourhood of the great residences is well peopled--'with
+deer, wild boars, and wolves,' 'Oh,' he exclaims, 'if I was the
+legislator of France for a day, I would make such great lords skip
+again!' 'Why,' he asked, 'were the people miserable in lower Savoy?'
+'_Because_', was the reply, '_there are seigneurs everywhere_'.[42]
+Misery in Brittany was due 'to the execrable maxims of despotism or the
+equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility.'[43] There was
+nothing, he said, in the province but 'privileges and poverty,'[44]
+privileges of the nobles and poverty of the peasants.
+
+Young was profoundly convinced, moreover, that, as he says more than
+once[45] 'everything in this world depends on government.' He is
+astonished at the stupidity and ignorance of the provincial population,
+and ascribes it to the lethargy produced by despotism.[46] He contrasts
+it with 'the energetic and rapid circulation of wealth, animation, and
+intelligence of England,' where 'blacksmiths and carpenters' would
+discuss every political event. And yet he heartily admires some of the
+results of a centralised monarchy. He compares the miserable roads in
+Catalonia on the Spanish side of the frontier with the magnificent
+causeways and bridges on the French side. The difference is due to the
+'one all-powerful cause that instigates mankind ... government.'[47] He
+admires the noble public works, the canal of Languedoc, the harbours at
+Cherbourg and Havre, and the _école vétérinaire_ where agriculture is
+taught upon scientific principles. He is struck by the curious contrast
+between France and England. In France the splendid roads are used by few
+travellers, and the inns are filthy pothouses; in England there are
+detestable roads, but a comparatively enormous traffic. When he wished
+to make the great nobles 'skip' he does not generally mean confiscation.
+He sees indeed one place where in 1790 the poor had seized a piece of
+waste land, declaring that the poor were the nation, and that the waste
+belonged to the nation. He declares[48] that he considers their action
+'wise, rational, and philosophical,' and wishes that there were a law to
+make such conduct legal in England. But his more general desire is that
+the landowners should be compelled to do their duty. He complains that
+the nobles live in 'wretched holes' in the country in order to save the
+means of expenditure upon theatres, entertainments, and gambling in the
+towns.[49] 'Banishment alone will force the French nobility to do what
+the English do for pleasure--to reside upon and adorn their
+estates.'[50] He explains to a French friend that English agriculture
+has flourished 'in spite of the teeth of our ministers'; we have had
+many Colberts, but not one Sully[51]; and we should have done much
+better, he thinks, had agriculture received the same attention as
+commerce. This is the reverse of Adam Smith's remark upon the superior
+liberality of the English country-gentleman, who did not, like the
+manufacturers, invoke protection and interference. In truth, Young
+desired both advantages, the vigour of a centralised government and the
+energy of an independent aristocracy. His absence of any general theory
+enables him to do justice in detail at the cost of consistency in
+general theory. In France, as he saw, the nobility had become in the
+main an encumbrance, a mere dead weight upon the energies of the
+agriculturist. But he did not infer that large properties in land were
+bad in themselves; for in England he saw that the landowners were the
+really energetic and improving class. He naturally looked at the problem
+from the point of view of an intelligent land-agent. He is full of
+benevolent wishes for the labourer, and sympathises with the attempt to
+stimulate their industry and improve their dwellings, and denounces
+oppression whether in France or Ireland with the heartiest goodwill. But
+it is characteristic of the position that such a man--an enthusiastic
+advocate of industrial progress--was a hearty admirer of the English
+landowner. He sets out upon his first tour, announcing that he does not
+write for farmers, of whom not one in five thousand reads anything, but
+for the country-gentlemen, who are the great improvers. Tull, who
+introduced turnips; Weston, who introduced clover; Lord Townshend and
+Allen, who introduced 'marling' in Norfolk, were all country-gentlemen,
+and it is from them that he expects improvement. He travels everywhere,
+delighting in their new houses and parks, their picture galleries, and
+their gardens laid out by Kent or 'Capability Brown'; he admires
+scenery, climbs Skiddaw, and is rapturous over views of the Alps and
+Pyrenees; but he is thrown into a rage by the sight of wastes, wherever
+improvement is possible. What delights him is an estate with a fine
+country-house of Palladian architecture ('Gothic' is with him still a
+term of abuse),[52] with grounds well laid out and a good home-farm,
+where experiments are being tried, and surrounded by an estate in which
+the farm-buildings show the effects of the landlord's good example and
+judicious treatment of his tenantry. There was no want of such examples.
+He admires the marquis of Rockingham, at once the most honourable of
+statesmen and most judicious of improvers. He sings the praises of the
+duke of Portland, the earl of Darlington, and the duke of
+Northumberland. An incautious announcement of the death of the duke of
+Grafton, remembered chiefly as one of the victims of Junius, but known
+to Young for his careful experiments in sheep-breeding, produced a burst
+of tears, which, as he believed, cost him his eyesight. His friend, the
+fifth duke of Bedford (died 1802), was one of the greatest improvers for
+the South, and was succeeded by another friend, the famous Coke of
+Holkham, afterwards earl of Leicester, who is said to have spent half a
+million upon the improvement of his property. Young appeals to the class
+in which such men were leaders, and urges them, not against their
+wishes, we may suppose, and, no doubt, with much good sense, to take to
+their task in the true spirit of business. Nothing, he declares, is more
+out of place than the boast of some great landowners that they never
+raise their rents.[53] High rents produce industry. The man who doubles
+his rents benefits the country more than he benefits himself. Even in
+Ireland,[54] a rise of rents is one great cause of improvement, though
+the rent should not be excessive, and the system of middlemen is
+altogether detestable. One odd suggestion is characteristic.[55] He
+hears that wages are higher in London than elsewhere. Now, he says, in a
+trading country low wages are essential. He wonders, therefore, that the
+legislature does not limit the growth of London.
+
+This, we may guess, is one of the petulant utterances of early years
+which he would have disavowed or qualified upon maturer reflection. But
+Young is essentially an apostle of the 'glorious spirit of
+improvement,'[56] which has converted Norfolk sheep-walks into arable
+fields, and was spreading throughout the country and even into Ireland.
+His hero is the energetic landowner, who makes two blades of grass grow
+where one grew before; who introduces new breeds of cattle and new
+courses of husbandry. He is so far in sympathy with the _Wealth of
+Nations_, although he says of that book that, while he knows of 'no
+abler work,' he knows of none 'fuller of poisonous errors.'[57] Young,
+that is, sympathised with the doctrine of the physiocrats that
+agriculture was the one source of real wealth, and took Smith to be too
+much on the side of commerce. Young, however, was as enthusiastic a
+free-trader as Smith. He naturally denounces the selfishness of the
+manufacturers who, in 1788, objected to the free export of English
+wool,[58] but he also assails monopoly in general. The whole system, he
+says (on occasion of Pitt's French treaty), is rotten to the core. The
+'vital spring and animating soul of commerce is LIBERTY.'[59] Though he
+talks of the balance of trade, he argues in the spirit of Smith or
+Cobden that we are benefited by the wealth of our customers. If we have
+to import more silk, we shall export more cloth. Young, indeed, was
+everything but a believer in any dogmatic or consistent system of
+Political Economy, or, as he still calls it, Political Arithmetic. His
+opinions were not of the kind which can be bound to any rigid formulæ.
+After investigating the restrictions of rent and wages in different
+districts, he quietly accepts the conclusion that the difference is due
+to accident.[60] He has as yet no fear of Malthus before his eyes. He
+is roused to indignation by the pessimist theory then common, that
+population was decaying.[61] Everywhere he sees signs of progress;
+buildings, plantations, woods, and canals. Employment, he says, creates
+population, stimulates industry, and attracts labour from backward
+districts. The increase of numbers is an unqualified benefit. He has no
+dread of excess. In Ireland, he observes, no one is fool enough to deny
+that population is increasing, though people deny it in England, 'even
+in the most productive period of her industry and wealth.'[62] One cause
+of this blessing is the absence or the poor-law. The English poor-law is
+detestable to him for a reason which contrasts significantly with the
+later opinion. The laws were made 'in the very spirit of depopulation';
+they are 'monuments of barbarity and mischief'; for they give to every
+parish an interest in keeping down the population. This tendency was in
+the eyes of the later economist a redeeming feature in the old system;
+though it had been then so modified as to stimulate what they took to be
+the curse, as Young held it to be the blessing, of a rapid increase of
+population.
+
+With such views Young was a keen advocate of the process of enclosure
+which was going on with increasing rapidity. He found a colleague, who
+may be briefly noticed as a remarkable representative of the same
+movement. Sir John Sinclair (1754-1835)[63] was heir to an estate of
+sixty thousand acres in Caithness which produced only £2300 a year,
+subject to many encumbrances. The region was still in a primitive
+state. There were no roads: agriculture was of the crudest kind; part of
+the rent was still paid in feudal services; the natives were too
+ignorant or lazy to fish, and there were no harbours. Trees were scarce
+enough to justify Johnson, and a list of all the trees in the country
+included currant-bushes.[64] Sinclair was a pupil of the poet Logan:
+studied under Blair at Edinburgh and Millar at Glasgow; became known to
+Adam Smith, and, after a short time at Oxford, was called to the English
+bar. Sinclair was a man of enormous energy, though not of vivacious
+intellect. He belonged to the prosaic breed, which created the 'dismal
+science,' and seems to have been regarded as a stupendous bore. Bores,
+however, represent a social force not to be despised, and Sinclair was
+no exception.
+
+His father died when he was sixteen. When twenty years old he collected
+his tenants, and in one night made a road across a hill which had been
+pronounced impracticable. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Gaelic
+traditions; defended the authenticity of Ossian; supported Highland
+games, and brought Italian travellers to listen to the music of the
+bagpipes. When he presented himself to his tenants in the Highland
+costume, on the withdrawal of its prohibition, they expected him to lead
+them in a foray upon the lowlands in the name of Charles Edward. He
+afterwards raised a regiment of 'fencibles' which served in Ireland in
+1798, and, when disbanded, sent a large contingent to the Egyptian
+expedition. But he rendered more peaceful services to his country. He
+formed new farms; he enclosed several thousand acres; as head of the
+'British Wool Society,' he introduced the Cheviots or 'long sheep' to
+the North--an improvement which is said to have doubled the rents of
+many estates; he introduced agricultural shows; he persuaded government
+in 1801 to devote the proceeds of the confiscated estates of Jacobites
+to the improvement of Scottish communications; he helped to introduce
+fisheries and even manufactures; and was a main agent in the change
+which made Caithness one of the most rapidly improving parts of the
+country. His son assures us that he took every means to obviate the
+incidental evils which have been the pretexts of denunciators of similar
+improvements. Sinclair gained a certain reputation by a _History of the
+Revenue_ (1785-90), and, like Malthus, travelled on the Continent to
+improve his knowledge. His first book finished, he began the great
+statistical work by which he is best remembered. He is said to have
+introduced into English the name of 'statistics,' for the researches of
+which all economical writers were beginning to feel the necessity. He
+certainly did much to introduce the reality. Sinclair circulated a
+number of queries (upon 'natural history,' 'population,' 'productions,'
+and 'miscellaneous' informations) to every parish minister in Scotland.
+He surmounted various jealousies naturally excited, and the ultimate
+result was the _Statistical Account of Scotland_, which appeared in
+twenty-one volumes between 1791 and 1799.[65] It gives an account of
+every parish in Scotland, and was of great value as supplying a basis
+for all social investigations. Sinclair bore the expense, and gave the
+profits to the 'Sons of the Clergy.' In 1793 Sinclair, who had been in
+parliament since 1780, made himself useful to Pitt in connection with
+the issue of exchequer bills to meet the commercial crisis. He begged in
+return for the foundation of a Board of Agriculture. He became the
+president and Arthur Young the secretary;[66] and the board represented
+their common aspirations. It was a rather anomalous body, something
+between a government office and such an institution as the Royal
+Society; and was supported by an annual grant of £3000. The first aim of
+the board was to produce a statistical account of England on the plan of
+the Scottish account. The English clergy, however, were suspicious; they
+thought, it seems, that the collection of statistics meant an attack
+upon tithes; and Young's frequent denunciation of tithes as discouraging
+agricultural improvement suggests some excuse for the belief. The plan
+had to be dropped; a less thoroughgoing description of the counties was
+substituted; and a good many 'Views' of the agriculture of different
+counties were published in 1794 and succeeding years. The board did its
+best to be active with narrow means. It circulated information,
+distributed medals, and brought agricultural improvers together. It
+encouraged the publication of Erasmus Darwin's _Phytologia_ (1799), and
+procured a series of lectures from Humphry Davy, afterwards published as
+_Elements of Agricultural Chemistry_ (1813). Sinclair also claims to
+have encouraged Macadam (1756-1836), the road-maker, and Meikle, the
+inventor of the thrashing-machine. One great aim of the board was to
+promote enclosures. Young observes in the introductory paper to the
+_Annals_ that within forty years nine hundred bills had been passed
+affecting about a million acres. This included wastes, but the greater
+part was already cultivated under the 'constraint and imperfection of
+the open field system,' a relic of the 'barbarity of our ancestors.'
+Enclosures involved procuring acts of parliament--a consequent
+expenditure, as Young estimates, of some £2000 in each case;[67] and as
+they were generally obtained by the great landowners, there was a
+frequent neglect of the rights of the poor and of the smaller holders.
+The remedy proposed was a general enclosure act; and such an act passed
+the House of Commons in 1798, but was thrown out by the Lords. An act
+was not obtained till after the Reform Bill. Sinclair, however, obtained
+some modification of the procedure; which, it is said, facilitated the
+passage of private bills. They became more numerous in later years,
+though other causes obviously co-operated. Meanwhile, it is
+characteristic that Sinclair and Young regarded wastes as a backwoodsman
+regarded a forest. The incidental injury to poor commoners was not
+unnoticed, and became one of the topics of Cobbett's eloquence. But to
+the ardent agriculturist the existence of a bit of waste land was a
+simple proof of barbarism. Sinclair's favourite toast, we are told, was
+'May commons become uncommon'--his one attempt at a joke. He prayed that
+Epping Forest and Finchley Common might pass under the yoke as well as
+our foreign enemies. Young is driven out of all patience by the sight of
+'fern, ling, and other trumpery' usurping the place of possible arable
+fields.[68] He groans in spirit upon Salisbury Plain, which might be
+made to produce all the corn we import.[69] Enfield Chase, he declares,
+is a 'real nuisance to the public.'[70] We may be glad that the zeal for
+enclosure was not successful in all its aims; but this view of
+philanthropic and energetic improvers is characteristic.
+
+It is said[71] that Young and Sinclair ruined the Board of Agriculture
+by making it a kind of political debating club. It died in 1822.
+Sinclair obtained an appointment in Scotland, and continued to labour
+unremittingly. He carried on a correspondence with all manner of people,
+including Washington, Eldon, Catholic bishops in Ireland, financiers and
+agriculturists on the Continent, and the most active economists in
+England. He suggested a subject for a poem to Scott.[72] He wrote
+pamphlets about cash-payments, Catholic Emancipation, and the Reform
+Bill, always disagreeing with all parties. He projected four codes which
+were to summarise all human knowledge upon health, agriculture,
+political economy, and religion. _The Code of Health_ (4 vols., 1807)
+went through six editions; _The Code of Agriculture_ appeared in 1829;
+but the world has not been enriched by the others. He died at Edinburgh
+on the 21st September 1835.
+
+I have dwelt so far upon Young because he is the best representative of
+that 'glorious spirit of improvement' which was transforming the whole
+social structure. Young's view of the French revolution indicates one
+marked characteristic of that spirit. He denounces the French seigneur
+because he is lethargic. He admires the English nobleman because he is
+energetic. The French noble may even deserve confiscation; but he has
+not the slightest intention of applying the same remedy in England,
+where squires and noblemen are the very source of all improvement. He
+holds that government is everything, and admires the great works of the
+French despotism: and yet he is a thorough admirer of the liberties
+enjoyed under the British Constitution, the essential nature of which
+makes similar works impossible. I need not ask whether Young's logic
+could be justified; though it would obviously require for justification
+a thoroughly 'empirical' view, or, in other words, the admission that
+different circumstances may require totally different institutions. The
+view, however, which was congenial to the prevalent spirit of
+improvement must be noted.
+
+It might be stated as a paradox that, whereas in France the most
+palpable evils arose from the excessive power of the central government,
+and in England the most palpable evils arose from the feebleness of the
+central government, the French reformers demanded more government and
+the English reformers demanded less government. 'Everything for the
+people, nothing by the people,' was, as Mr. Morley remarks,[73] the
+maxim of the French economists. The solution seems to be easy. In
+France, reformers such as Turgot and the economists were in favour of an
+enlightened despotism, because the state meant a centralised power which
+might be turned against the aristocracy. Once 'enlightened' it would
+suppress the exclusive privileges of a class which, doing nothing in
+return, had become a mere burthen or dead weight encumbering all social
+development. But in England the privileged class was identical with the
+governing class. The political liberty of which Englishmen were
+rightfully proud, the 'rule of law' which made every official
+responsible to the ordinary course of justice, and the actual discharge
+of their duties by the governing order, saved it from being the objects
+of a jealous class hatred. While in France government was staggering
+under an ever-accumulating resentment against the aristocracy, the
+contemporary position in England was, on the whole, one of political
+apathy. The country, though it had lost its colonies, was making
+unprecedented progress in wealth; commerce, manufactures, and
+agriculture were being developed by the energy of individuals; and Pitt
+was beginning to apply Adam Smith's principles to finance. The cry for
+parliamentary reform died out: neither Whigs nor Tories really cared for
+it; and the 'glorious spirit of improvement' showed itself in an energy
+which had little political application. The nobility was not an incubus
+suppressing individual energy and confronted by the state, but was
+itself the state; and its individual members were often leaders in
+industrial improvement. Discontent, therefore, took in the main a
+different form. Some government was, of course, necessary, and the
+existing system was too much in harmony, even in its defects, with the
+social order to provoke any distinct revolutionary sentiment. Englishmen
+were not only satisfied with their main institutions, but regarded them
+with exaggerated complacency. But, though there was no organic disorder,
+there were plenty of abuses to be remedied. The ruling class, it seemed,
+did its duties in the main, but took unconscionable perquisites in
+return. If it 'farmed' them, it was right that it should have a
+beneficial interest in the concern; but that interest might be
+excessive. In many directions abuses were growing up which required
+remedy, though not a subversion of the system under which they had been
+generated. It was not desired--unless by a very few theorists--to make
+any sweeping redistribution of power; but it was eminently desirable to
+find some means of better regulating many evil practices. The attack
+upon such practices might ultimately suggest--as, in fact, it did
+suggest--the necessity of far more thoroughgoing reforms. For the
+present, however, the characteristic mark of English reformers was this
+limitation of their schemes, and a mark which is especially evident in
+Bentham and his followers. I will speak, therefore, of the many
+questions which were arising, partly for these reasons and partly
+because the Utilitarian theory was in great part moulded by the
+particular problems which they had to argue.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[35] Young's _Travels in France_ was republished in 1892, with a preface
+and short life by Miss Betham Edwards. She has since (1898) published
+his autobiography. See also the autobiographical sketch in the _Annals
+of Agriculture_, xv. 152-97. Young's _Farmer's Letters_ first appeared
+in 1767; his _Tours_ in the Southern, Northern, and Eastern Counties in
+1768, 1770, and 1771; his _Tour in Ireland_ in 1780; and his _Travels in
+France_ in 1792. A useful bibliography, containing a list of his many
+publications, is appended to the edition of the _Tour in Ireland_ edited
+by Mr. A. W. Hutton in 1892.
+
+[36] _Annals_, xv. 166.
+
+[37] _Travels in France_ (1892), p. 184 _n._
+
+[38] _Travels in France_, p. 54.
+
+[39] _Ibid._ p. 109.
+
+[40] _Ibid._ p. 61.
+
+[41] _Ibid._ p. 70.
+
+[42] _Ibid._ p. 279.
+
+[43] _Travels in France_, p. 125.
+
+[44] _Ibid._ p. 131.
+
+[45] _Ibid._ pp. 198, 298.
+
+[46] _Ibid._ pp. 55, 193, 199, 237.
+
+[47] _Ibid._ p. 43.
+
+[48] _Travels in France_, pp. 291-92.
+
+[49] _Ibid._ p. 132.
+
+[50] _Ibid._ p. 66.
+
+[51] _Ibid._ p. 131.
+
+[52] e.g. _Southern Tour_, p. 103; _Northern Tour_, p. 180 (York
+Cathedral).
+
+[53] _Northern Tour_, iv. 344, 377.
+
+[54] _Irish Tour_, ii. 114.
+
+[55] _Southern Tour_, p. 326.
+
+[56] _Southern Tour_, p. 22.
+
+[57] _Annals_, i. 380.
+
+[58] _Ibid._ vol, x.
+
+[59] _Ibid._ iv. 17.
+
+[60] _Southern Tour_, p. 262; _Northern Tour_, ii. 412.
+
+[61] _Northern Tour_, iv. 410, etc.
+
+[62] _Irish Tour_, ii. 118-19.
+
+[63] _Memoirs of Sir John Sinclair_, by his son. 2 vols., 1837.
+
+[64] _Memoirs_, i. 338.
+
+[65] _A New Statistical Account_, replacing this, appeared in
+twenty-four volumes from 1834 to 1844.
+
+[66] He was president for the first five years, and again, from 1806
+till 1813. For an account of this, see Sir Ernest Clarke's _History of
+the Board of Agriculture_, 1898.
+
+[67] _Northern Tour_, i. 222-32.
+
+[68] _Northern Tour_, ii. 186.
+
+[69] _Southern Tour_, p. 20.
+
+[70] _Northern Tour_, iii. 365.
+
+[71] Arthur Young had a low opinion of Sinclair, whom he took to be a
+pushing and consequential busybody, more anxious to make a noise than to
+be useful. See Young's _Autobiography_ (1898), pp. 243, 315, 437. Sir
+Ernest Clarke points out the injury done by Sinclair's hasty and
+blundering extravagance; but also shows that the board did great service
+in stimulating agricultural improvement.
+
+[72] Scott's _Letters_, i. 202.
+
+[73] Essay on 'Turgot.' See, in Daire's Collection of the _Économistes_,
+the arguments of Quesnay (p. 81), Dupont de Nemours (p. 360), and
+Mercier de la Rivière in favour of a legal (as distinguished from an
+'arbitrary') despotism.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SOCIAL PROBLEMS
+
+
+I. PAUPERISM
+
+Perhaps the gravest of all the problems which were to occupy the coming
+generation was the problem of pauperism. The view taken by the
+Utilitarians was highly characteristic and important. I will try to
+indicate the general position of intelligent observers at the end of the
+century by referring to the remarkable book of Sir Frederick Morton
+Eden. Its purport is explained by the title: 'The State of the Poor; or,
+an History of the Labouring Classes of England from the Norman Conquest
+to the present period; in which are particularly considered their
+domestic economy, with respect to diet, dress, fuel, and habitation; and
+the various plans which have from time to time been proposed and adopted
+for the relief of the poor' (3 vols. 4to, 1797). Eden[74] (1766-1809)
+was a man of good family and nephew of the first Lord Auckland, who
+negotiated Pitt's commercial treaty. He graduated as B.A. from Christ
+Church, Oxford, in 1787; married in 1792, and at his death (14th Nov.
+1809) was chairman of the Globe Insurance Company. He wrote various
+pamphlets upon economical topics; contributed letters signed
+'Philanglus' to Cobbett's _Porcupine_, the anti-jacobin paper of the
+day; and is described by Bentham[75] as a 'declared disciple' and a
+'highly valued friend.' He may be reckoned, therefore, as a Utilitarian,
+though politically he was a Conservative. He seems to have been a man of
+literary tastes as well as a man of business, and his book is a clear
+and able statement of the points at issue.
+
+Eden's attention had been drawn to the subject by the distress which
+followed the outbreak of the revolutionary war. He employed an agent who
+travelled through the country for a year with a set of queries drawn up
+after the model of those prepared by Sinclair for his _Statistical
+Account of Scotland_. He thus anticipated the remarkable investigation
+made in our own time by Mr. Charles Booth. Eden made personal inquiries
+and studied the literature of the subject. He had a precursor in Richard
+Burn (1709-1785), whose _History of the Poor-laws_ appeared in 1764, and
+a competitor in John Ruggles, whose _History of the Poor_ first appeared
+in Arthur Young's _Annals_, and was published as a book in 1793 (second
+edition, 1797). Eden's work eclipsed Ruggles's. It has a permanent value
+as a collection of facts; and was a sign of the growing sense of the
+importance of accurate statistical research. The historian of the social
+condition of the people should be grateful to one who broke ground at a
+time when the difficulty of obtaining a sound base for social inquiries
+began to make itself generally felt. The value of the book for
+historical purposes lies beyond my sphere. His first volume, I may say,
+gives a history of legislation from the earliest period; and contains
+also a valuable account of the voluminous literature which had grown up
+during the two preceding centuries. The other two summarise the reports
+which he had received. I will only say enough to indicate certain
+critical points. Eden's book unfortunately was to mark, not a solution
+of the difficulty but, the emergence of a series of problems which were
+to increase in complexity and ominous significance through the next
+generation.
+
+The general history of the poor-law is sufficiently familiar.[76] The
+mediæval statutes take us to a period at which the labourer was still
+regarded as a serf; and a man who had left his village was treated like
+a fugitive slave. A long series of statutes regulated the treatment of
+the 'vagabond.' The vagabond, however, had become differentiated from
+the pauper. The decay of the ancient order of society and its
+corresponding institutions had led to a new set of problems; and the
+famous statute of Elizabeth (1601) had laid down the main lines of the
+system which is still in operation.
+
+When the labourer was regarded as in a servile condition, he might be
+supported from the motives which lead an owner to support his slaves, or
+by the charitable energies organised by ecclesiastical institutions. He
+had now ceased to be a serf, and the institutions which helped the poor
+man or maintained the beggar were wrecked. The Elizabethan statute gave
+him, therefore, a legal claim to be supported, and, on the other hand,
+directed that he should be made to work for his living. The assumption
+is still that every man is a member of a little social circle. He
+belongs to his parish, and it is his fellow-parishioners who are bound
+to support him. So long as this corresponded to facts, the system could
+work satisfactorily. With the spread of commerce, and the growth of a
+less settled population, difficulties necessarily arose. The pauper and
+the vagabond represent a kind of social extravasation; the 'masterless
+man' who has strayed from his legitimate place or has become a
+superfluity in his own circle. The vagabond could be flogged, sent to
+prison, or if necessary hanged, but it was more difficult to settle what
+to do with a man who was not a criminal, but simply a product in excess
+of demand. All manner of solutions had been suggested by philanthropists
+and partly adopted by the legislature. One point which especially
+concerns us is the awkwardness or absence of an appropriate
+administrative machinery.
+
+The parish, the unit on which the pauper had claims, meant the persons
+upon whom the poor-rate was assessed. These were mainly farmers and
+small tradesmen who formed the rather vague body called the vestry.
+'Overseers' were appointed by the ratepayers themselves; they were not
+paid, and the disagreeable office was taken in turn for short periods.
+The most obvious motive with the average ratepayer was of course to keep
+down the rates and to get the burthen of the poor as much as possible
+out of his own parish. Each parish had at least an interest in economy.
+But the economical interest also produced flagrant evils.
+
+In the first place, there was the war between parishes. The law of
+settlement--which was to decide to what parish a pauper
+belonged--originated in an act of 1662. Eden observes that the short
+clause in this short act had brought more profit to the lawyers than
+'any other point in the English jurisprudence.'[77] It is said that the
+expense of such a litigation before the act of 1834 averaged from
+£300,000 to £350,000 a year.[78] Each parish naturally endeavoured to
+shift the burthen upon its neighbours; and was protected by laws which
+enabled it to resist the immigration of labourers or actually to expel
+them when likely to become chargeable. This law is denounced by Adam
+Smith[79] as a 'violation of natural liberty and justice.' It was often
+harder, he declared, for a poor man to cross the artificial boundaries
+of his parish than to cross a mountain ridge or an arm of the sea. There
+was, he declared, hardly a poor man in England over forty who had not
+been at some time 'cruelly oppressed' by the working of this law. Eden
+thinks that Smith had exaggerated the evil: but a law which operated by
+preventing a free circulation of labour, and made it hard for a poor man
+to seek the best price for his only saleable commodity, was, so far,
+opposed to the fundamental principles common to Smith and Eden. The law,
+too, might be used oppressively by the niggardly and narrow-minded. The
+overseer, as Burn complained,[80] was often a petty tyrant: his aim was
+to depopulate his parish; to prevent the poor from obtaining a
+settlement; to make the workhouse a terror by placing it under the
+management of a bully; and by all kinds of chicanery to keep down the
+rates at whatever cost to the comfort and morality of the poor. This
+explains the view taken by Arthur Young, and generally accepted at the
+period, that the poor-law meant depopulation. Workhouses had been
+started in the seventeenth century[81] with the amiable intention of
+providing the industrious poor with work. Children might be trained to
+industry and the pauper might be made self-supporting. Workhouses were
+expected that is, to provide not only work but wages. Defoe, in his
+_Giving Alms no Charity_, pointed out the obvious objections to the
+workhouse considered as an institution capable of competing with the
+ordinary industries. Workhouses, in fact, soon ceased to be profitable.
+Their value, however, in supplying a test for destitution was
+recognised; and by an act of 1722, parishes were allowed to set up
+workhouses, separately or in combination, and to strike off the lists of
+the poor those who refused to enter them. This was the germ of the later
+'workhouse test.'[82] When grievances arose, the invariable plan, as
+Nicholls observes,[83] was to increase the power of the justices. Their
+discretion was regarded 'as a certain cure for every shortcoming of the
+law and every evil arising out of it.' The great report of 1834 traces
+this tendency[84] to a clause in an act passed in the reign of William
+III., which was intended to allow the justices to check the extravagance
+of parish officers. They were empowered to strike off persons improperly
+relieved. This incidental regulation, widened by subsequent
+interpretations, allowed the magistrates to order relief, and thereby
+introduced an incredible amount of demoralisation.
+
+The course was natural enough, and indeed apparently inevitable. The
+justices of the peace represented the only authority which could be
+called in to regulate abuses arising from the incapacity and narrow
+local interests of the multitudinous vestries. The schemes of
+improvement generally involved some plan for a larger area. If a hundred
+or a county were taken for the unit, the devices which depopulated a
+parish would no longer be applicable.[85] The only scheme actually
+carried was embodied in 'Gilbert's act' (1782), obtained by Thomas
+Gilbert (1720-1798), an agent of the duke of Bridgewater, and an active
+advocate of poor-law reform in the House of Commons. This scheme was
+intended as a temporary expedient during the distress caused by the
+American War; and a larger and more permanent scheme which it was to
+introduce failed to become law. It enabled parishes to combine if they
+chose to provide common workhouses, and to appoint 'guardians.' The
+justices, as usual, received more powers in order to suppress the harsh
+dealing of the old parochial authorities. The guardians, it was assumed,
+could always find 'work,' and they were to relieve the able-bodied
+without applying the workhouse test. The act, readily adopted, thus
+became a landmark in the growth of laxity.[86]
+
+At the end of the century a rapid development of pauperism had taken
+place. The expense, as Eden had to complain, had doubled in twenty
+years. This took place simultaneously with the great development of
+manufactures. It is not perhaps surprising, though it may be melancholy,
+that increase of wealth shall be accompanied by increase of pauperism.
+Where there are many rich men, there will be a better field for thieves
+and beggars. A life of dependence becomes easier though it need not
+necessarily be adopted. Whatever may have been the relation of the two
+phenomena, the social revolution made the old social arrangements more
+inadequate. Great aggregations of workmen were formed in towns, which
+were still only villages in a legal sense. Fluctuations of trade, due to
+war or speculation, brought distress to the improvident; and the old
+assumption that every man had a proper place in a small circle, where
+his neighbours knew all about him, was further than ever from being
+verified. One painful result was already beginning to show itself.
+Neglected children in great towns had already excited compassion. Thomas
+Coram (1668?-1751) had been shocked by the sight of dying children
+exposed in the streets of London, and succeeded in establishing the
+Foundling Hospital (founded in 1742). In 1762, Jonas Hanway (1712-1786)
+obtained a law for boarding out children born within the bills of
+mortality. The demand for children's labour, produced by the factories,
+seemed naturally enough to offer a better chance for extending such
+charities. Unfortunately among the people who took advantage of it were
+parish officials, eager to get children off their hands, and
+manufacturers concerned only to make money out of childish labour.
+Hence arose the shameful system for which remedies (as I shall have to
+notice) had to be sought in a later generation.
+
+Meanwhile the outbreak of the revolutionary war had made the question
+urgent. When Manchester trade suffered, as Eden tells us in his reports,
+many workmen enlisted in the army, and left their children to be
+supported by the parish. Bad seasons followed in 1794 and 1795, and
+there was great distress in the agricultural districts. The governing
+classes became alarmed. In December 1795 Whitbread introduced a bill
+providing that the justices of the peace should fix a minimum rate of
+wages. Upon a motion for the second reading, Pitt made the famous speech
+(12th December) including the often-quoted statement that when a man had
+a family, relief should be 'a matter of right and honour, instead of a
+ground of opprobrium and contempt.'[87] Pitt had in the same speech
+shown his reading of Adam Smith by dwelling upon the general objections
+to state interference with wages, and had argued that more was to be
+gained by removing the restrictions upon the free movement of labour. He
+undertook to produce a comprehensive measure; and an elaborate bill of
+130 clauses was prepared in 1796.[88] The rates were to be used to
+supplement inadequate wages; 'schools of industry' were to be formed for
+the support of superabundant children; loans might be made to the poor
+for the purchase of a cow;[89] and the possession of property was not to
+disqualify for the receiving relief. In short, the bill seems to have
+been a model of misapplied benevolence. The details were keenly
+criticised by Bentham, and the bill never came to the birth. Other
+topics were pressing enough at this time to account for the failure of a
+measure so vast in its scope. Meanwhile something had to be done. On 6th
+May 1795 the Berkshire magistrates had passed certain resolutions called
+from their place of meeting, the 'Speenhamland Act of Parliament.' They
+provided that the rate of wages of a labourer should be increased in
+proportion to the price of corn and to the number of his family--a rule
+which, as Eden observes, tended to discourage economy of food in times
+of scarcity. They also sanctioned the disastrous principle of paying
+part of the wages out of rates. An act passed in 1796 repealed the old
+restrictions upon out-door relief; and thus, during the hard times that
+were to follow, the poor-laws were adapted to produce the state of
+things in which, as Cobbett says (in 1821) 'every labourer who has
+children is now regularly and constantly a pauper.'[90] The result
+represents a curious compromise. The landowners, whether from
+benevolence or fear of revolution, desired to meet the terrible distress
+of the times. Unfortunately their spasmodic interference was guided by
+no fixed principles, and acted upon a class of institutions not
+organised upon any definite system. The general effect seems to have
+been that the ratepayers, no longer allowed to 'depopulate,' sought to
+turn the compulsory stream of charity partly into their own pockets. If
+they were forced to support paupers, they could contrive to save the
+payment of wages. They could use the labour of the rate-supported
+pauper instead of employing independent workmen. The evils thus produced
+led before long to most important discussions.[91] The ordinary view of
+the poor-law was inverted. The prominent evil was the reckless increase
+of a degraded population instead of the restriction of population.
+Eden's own view is sufficiently indicative of the light in which the
+facts showed themselves to intelligent economists. As a disciple of Adam
+Smith, he accepts the rather vague doctrine of his master about the
+'balance' between labour and capital. If labour exceeds capital, he
+says, the labourer must starve 'in spite of all political
+regulations.'[92] He therefore looks with disfavour upon the whole
+poor-law system. It is too deeply rooted to be abolished, but he thinks
+that the amount to be raised should not be permitted to exceed the sum
+levied on an average of previous years. The only certain result of
+Pitt's measure would be a vast expenditure upon a doubtful experiment:
+and one main purpose of his publication was to point out the objections
+to the plan. He desires what seemed at that time to be almost hopeless,
+a national system of education; but his main doctrine is the wisdom of
+reliance upon individual effort. The truth of the maxim '_pas trop
+gouverner_,' he says,[93] has never been better illustrated than by the
+contrast between friendly societies and the poor-laws. Friendly
+societies had been known, though they were still on a humble scale, from
+the beginning of the century, and had tended to diminish pauperism in
+spite of the poor-laws. Eden gives many accounts of them. They seem to
+have suggested a scheme proposed by the worthy Francis Maseres[94]
+(1731-1824) in 1772 for the establishment of life annuities. A bill to
+give effect to this scheme passed the House of Commons in 1773 with the
+support of Burke and Savile, but was thrown out in the House of Lords.
+In 1786 John Acland (died 1796), a Devonshire clergyman and justice of
+the peace, proposed a scheme for uniting the whole nation into a kind of
+friendly society for the support of the poor when out of work and in old
+age. It was criticised by John Howlett (1731-1804), a clergyman who
+wrote much upon the poor-laws. He attributes the growth of pauperism to
+the rise of prices, and calculates that out of an increased expenditure
+of £700,000, £219,000 had been raised by the rich, and the remainder
+'squeezed out of the flesh, blood, and bones of the poor,' An act for
+establishing Acland's crude scheme failed next year in parliament.[95]
+The merit of the societies, according to Eden, was their tendency to
+stimulate self-help; and how to preserve that merit, while making them
+compulsory, was a difficult problem. I have said enough to mark a
+critical and characteristic change of opinion. One source of evil
+pointed out by contemporaries had been the absence of any central power
+which could regulate and systematise the action of the petty local
+bodies. The very possibility of such organisation, however, seems to
+have been simply inconceivable. When the local bodies became lavish
+instead of over-frugal, the one remedy suggested was to abolish the
+system altogether.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[74] See _Dictionary of National Biography_.
+
+[75] _Works_, i. 255.
+
+[76] See Sir G. Nicholls's _History of the Poor-law_, 1854. A new
+edition, with life by H. G. Willink, appeared in 1898.
+
+[77] _History_, i. 175.
+
+[78] M'Culloch's note to _Wealth of Nations_, p. 65. M'Culloch in his
+appendix makes some sensible remarks upon the absence of any properly
+constituted parochial 'tribunal.'
+
+[79] _Wealth of Nations_, bk. i. ch. x.
+
+[80] See passage quoted in Eden's _History_, i. 347.
+
+[81] Thomas Firmin (1632-1677), a philanthropist, whose Socinianism did
+not exclude him from the friendship of such liberal bishops as Tillotson
+and Fowler, started a workhouse in 1676.
+
+[82] Nicholls (1898), ii. 14.
+
+[83] _Ibid._ (1898), ii. 123.
+
+[84] _Report_, p. 67.
+
+[85] William Hay, for example, carried resolutions in the House of
+Commons in 1735, but failed to carry a bill which had this object. See
+Eden's _History_, i. 396. Cooper in 1763 proposed to make the hundred
+the unit.--Nicholls's _History_, i. 58. Fielding proposes a similar
+change in London. Dean Tucker speaks of the evil of the limited area in
+his _Manifold Causes of the Increase of the Poor_ (1760).
+
+[86] Nicholls, ii. 88.
+
+[87] _Parl. Hist._ xxxii. 710.
+
+[88] A full abstract is given in Edens _History_, iii. ccclxiii. etc.
+
+[89] Bentham observes (_Works_, viii. 448) that the cow will require the
+three acres to keep it.
+
+[90] Cobbett's _Political Works_, vi. 64
+
+[91] I need only note here that the first edition of Malthus's _Essay_
+appeared in 1798, the year after Eden's publication.
+
+[92] Eden's _History_, i. 583.
+
+[93] _Ibid._ i. 587.
+
+[94] Maseres, an excellent Whig, a good mathematician, and a respected
+lawyer, is perhaps best known at present from his portrait in Charles
+Lamb's _Old Benchers_.
+
+[95] It maybe noticed as an anticipation of modern schemes that in 1792
+Paine proposed a system of 'old age pensions,' for which the necessary
+funds were to be easily obtained when universal peace had abolished all
+military charges. See _State Trials_, xxv. 175.
+
+
+II. THE POLICE
+
+The system of 'self-government' showed its weak side in this direction.
+It meant that an important function was intrusted to small bodies, quite
+incompetent of acting upon general principles, and perfectly capable of
+petty jobbing, when unrestrained by any effective supervision. In
+another direction the same tendency was even more strikingly
+illustrated. Municipal institutions were almost at their lowest point of
+decay. Manchester and Birmingham were two of the largest and most
+rapidly growing towns. By the end of the century Manchester had a
+population of 90,000 and Birmingham of 70,000. Both were ruled, as far
+as they were ruled, by the remnants of old manorial institutions.
+Aikin[96] observes that 'Manchester (in 1795) remains an open town;
+destitute (probably to its advantage) of a corporation, and
+unrepresented in parliament.' It was governed by a 'boroughreeve' and
+two constables elected annually at the court-leet. William Hutton, the
+quaint historian of Birmingham, tells us in 1783 that the town was still
+legally a village, with a high and low bailiff, a 'high and low taster,'
+two 'affeerers,' and two 'leather-sealers,' In 1752 it had been provided
+with a 'court of requests' for the recovery of small debts, and in 1769
+with a body of commissioners to provide for lighting the town. This was
+the system by which, with some modifications, Birmingham was governed
+till after the Reform Bill.[97] Hutton boasts[98] that no town was
+better governed or had fewer officers. 'A town without a charter,' he
+says, 'is a town without a shackle.' Perhaps he changed his opinions
+when his warehouses were burnt in 1791, and the town was at the mercy of
+the mob till a regiment of 'light horse' could be called in. Aikin and
+Hutton, however, reflect the general opinion at a time when the town
+corporations had become close and corrupt bodies, and were chiefly
+'shackles' upon the energy of active members of the community. I must
+leave the explanation of this decay to historians. I will only observe
+that what would need explanation would seem to be rather the absence
+than the presence of corruption. The English borough was not stimulated
+by any pressure from a central government; nor was it a semi-independent
+body in which every citizen had the strongest motives for combining to
+support its independence against neighbouring towns or invading nobles.
+The lower classes were ignorant, and probably would be rather hostile
+than favourable to any such modest interference with dirt and disorder
+as would commend themselves to the officials. Naturally, power was left
+to the little cliques of prosperous tradesmen, who formed close
+corporations, and spent the revenues upon feasts or squandered them by
+corrupt practices. Here, as in the poor-law, the insufficiency of the
+administrative body suggests to contemporaries, not its reform, but its
+superfluity.
+
+The most striking account of some of the natural results is in
+Colquhoun's[99] _Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis_. Patrick
+Colquhoun (1745-1820), an energetic Scot, was born at Dumbarton in 1745,
+had been in business at Glasgow, where he was provost in 1782 and 1783,
+and in 1789 settled in London. In 1792 he obtained through Dundas an
+appointment to one of the new police magistracies created by an act of
+that year. He took an active part in many schemes of social reform; and
+his book gives an account of the investigations by which his schemes
+were suggested and justified. It must be said, however, parenthetically,
+that his statistics scarcely challenge implicit confidence. Like
+Sinclair and Eden, he saw the importance of obtaining facts and figures,
+but his statements are suspiciously precise and elaborate.[100] The
+broad facts are clear enough.
+
+London was, he says, three miles broad and twenty-five in circumference.
+The population in 1801 was 641,000. It was the largest town, and
+apparently the most chaotic collection of dwellings in the civilised
+world. There were, as Colquhoun asserts[101] in an often-quoted passage,
+20,000 people in it, who got up every morning without knowing how they
+would get through the day. There were 5000 public-houses, and 50,000
+women supported, wholly or partly, by prostitution. The revenues raised
+by crime amounted, as he calculates, to an annual sum of, £2,000,000.
+There were whole classes of professional thieves, more or less organised
+in gangs, which acted in support of each other. There were gangs on the
+river, who boarded ships at night, or lay in wait round the warehouses.
+The government dockyards were systematically plundered, and the same
+article often sold four times over to the officials. The absence of
+patrols gave ample chance to the highwaymen then peculiar to England.
+Their careers, commemorated in the _Newgate Calendar_, had a certain
+flavour of Robin Hood romance, and their ranks were recruited from
+dissipated apprentices and tradesmen in difficulty. The fields round
+London were so constantly plundered that the rent was materially
+lowered. Half the hackney coachmen, he says,[102] were in league with
+thieves. The number of receiving houses for stolen goods had increased
+in twenty years from 300 to 3000.[103] Coining was a flourishing trade,
+and according to Colquhoun employed several thousand persons.[104]
+Gambling had taken a fresh start about 1777 and 1778[105]; and the
+keepers of tables had always money enough at command to make convictions
+almost impossible. French refugees at the revolution had introduced
+_rouge et noir_; and Colquhoun estimates the sums yearly lost in
+gambling-houses at over £7,000,000. The gamblers might perhaps appeal
+not only to the practices of their betters in the days of Fox, but to
+the public lotteries. Colquhoun had various correspondents, who do not
+venture to propose the abolition of a system which sanctioned the
+practice, but who hope to diminish the facility for supplementary
+betting on the results of the official drawing.
+
+The war had tended to increase the number of loose and desperate
+marauders who swarmed in the vast labyrinth of London streets. When we
+consider the nature of the police by which these evils were to be
+checked, and the criminal law which they administered, the wonder is
+less that there were sometimes desperate riots (as in 1780) than that
+London should have been ever able to resist a mob. Colquhoun, though a
+patriotic Briton, has to admit that the French despots had at last
+created an efficient police. The emperor, Joseph II., he says, inquired
+for an Austrian criminal supposed to have escaped to Paris. You will
+find him, replied the head of the French police, at No. 93 of such a
+street in Vienna on the second-floor room looking upon such a church;
+and there he was. In England a criminal could hide himself in a herd of
+his like, occasionally disturbed by the inroad of a 'Bow Street runner,'
+the emissary of the 'trading justices,' formerly represented by the two
+Fieldings. An act of 1792 created seven new offices, to one of which
+Colquhoun had been appointed. They had one hundred and eighty-nine paid
+officers under them. There were also about one thousand constables.
+These were small tradesmen or artisans upon whom the duty was imposed
+without remuneration for a year by their parish, that is, by one of
+seventy independent bodies. A 'Tyburn ticket,' given in reward for
+obtaining the conviction of a criminal exempted a man from the discharge
+of such offices, and could be bought for from £15 to £25. There were
+also two thousand watchmen receiving from 8-1/2d. up to 2s. a night.
+These were the true successors of Dogberry; often infirm or aged persons
+appointed to keep them out of the workhouse. The management of this
+distracted force thus depended upon a miscellaneous set of bodies; the
+paid magistrates, the officials of the city, the justices of the peace
+for Middlesex, and the seventy independent parishes.
+
+The law was as defective as the administration. Colquhoun represents the
+philanthropic impulse of the day, and notices[106] that in 1787 Joseph
+II. had abolished capital punishment. His chief authority for more
+merciful methods is Beccaria; and it is worth remarking, for reasons
+which will appear hereafter, that he does not in this connection refer
+to Bentham, although he speaks enthusiastically[107] of Bentham's model
+prison, the Panopticon. Colquhoun shows how strangely the severity of
+the law was combined with its extreme capaciousness. He quotes
+Bacon[108] for the statement that the law was a 'heterogeneous mass
+concocted too often on the spur of the moment,' and gives sufficient
+proofs of its truth. He desires, for example, a law to punish receivers
+of stolen goods, and says that there were excellent laws in existence.
+Unfortunately one law applied exclusively to the case of pewter-pots,
+and another exclusively to the precious metals; neither could be used as
+against receivers of horses or bank notes.[109] So a man indicted under
+an act against stealing from ships on navigable rivers escaped, because
+the barge from which he stole happened to be aground. Gangs could afford
+to corrupt witnesses or to pay knavish lawyers skilled in applying these
+vagaries of legislation. Juries also disliked convicting when the
+penalty for coining sixpence was the same as the penalty for killing a
+mother. It followed, as he shows by statistics, that half the persons
+committed for trial escaped by petty chicanery or corruption, or the
+reluctance of juries to convict for capital offences. Only about
+one-fifth of the capital sentences were executed; and many were pardoned
+on condition of enlisting to improve the morals of the army. The
+criminals, who were neither hanged nor allowed to escape, were sent to
+prisons, which were schools of vice. After the independence of the
+American colonies, the system of transportation to Australia had begun
+(in 1787); but the expense was enormous, and prisoners were huddled
+together in the hulks at Woolwich and Portsmouth, which had been used as
+a temporary expedient. Thence they were constantly discharged, to return
+to their old practices. A man, says Colquhoun,[110] would deserve a
+statue who should carry out a plan for helping discharged prisoners. To
+meet these evils, Colquhoun proposes various remedies, such as a
+metropolitan police, a public prosecutor, or even a codification or
+revision of the Criminal Code, which he sees is likely to be delayed. He
+also suggested, in a pamphlet of 1799, a kind of charity organisation
+society to prevent the waste of funds. Many other pamphlets of similar
+tendencies show his active zeal in promoting various reforms. Colquhoun
+was in close correspondence with Bentham from the year 1798,[111] and
+Bentham helped him by drawing the Thames Police Act, passed in 1800, to
+give effect to some of the suggestions in the _Treatise_.[112]
+
+Another set of abuses has a special connection with Bentham's activity.
+Bentham had been led in 1778 to attend to the prison question by reading
+Howard's book on _Prisons_; and he refers to the 'venerable friend who
+had lived an apostle and died a martyr.'[113] The career of John Howard
+(1726-1790) is familiar. The son of a London tradesman, he had inherited
+an estate in Bedfordshire. There he erected model cottages and village
+schools; and, on becoming sheriff of the county in 1773, was led to
+attend to abuses in the prisons. Two acts of parliament were passed in
+1774 to remedy some of the evils exposed, and he pursued the inquiry at
+home and abroad. His results are given in his _State of the Prisons in
+England and Wales_ (1779, fourth edition, 1792), and his _Account of the
+Principal Lazarettos in Europe_ (1789). The prisoners, he says, had
+little food, sometimes a penny loaf a day, and sometimes nothing; no
+water, no fresh air, no sewers, and no bedding. The stench was
+appalling, and gaol fever killed more than died on the gallows. Debtors
+and felons, men, women and children, were huddled together; often with
+lunatics, who were shown by the gaolers for money. 'Garnish' was
+extorted; the gaolers kept drinking-taps; gambling flourished: and
+prisoners were often cruelly ironed, and kept for long periods before
+trial. At Hull the assizes had only been held once in seven years, and
+afterwards once in three. It is a comfort to find that the whole number
+of prisoners in England and Wales amounted, in 1780, to about 4400, 2078
+of whom were debtors, 798 felons, and 917 petty offenders. An act passed
+in 1779 provided for the erection of two penitentiaries. Howard was to
+be a supervisor. The failure to carry out this act led, as we shall see,
+to one of Bentham's most characteristic undertakings. One peculiarity
+must be noted. Howard found prisons on the continent where the
+treatment was bad and torture still occasionally practised; but he
+nowhere found things so bad as in England. In Holland the prisons were
+so neat and clean as to make it difficult to believe that they were
+prisons: and they were used as models for the legislation of 1779. One
+cause of this unenviable distinction of English prisons had been
+indicated by an earlier investigation. General Oglethorpe (1696-1785)
+had been started in his philanthropic career by obtaining a committee of
+the House of Commons in 1729 to inquire into the state of the gaols. The
+foundation of the colony of Georgia as an outlet for the population was
+one result of the inquiry. It led, in the first place, however, to a
+trial of persons accused of atrocious cruelties at the Fleet
+prison.[114] The trial was abortive. It appeared in the course of the
+proceedings that the Fleet prison was a 'freehold,' A patent for
+rebuilding it had been granted to Sir Jeremy Whichcot under Charles II.,
+and had been sold to one Higgins, who resold it to other persons for
+£5000. The proprietors made their investment pay by cruel ill-treatment
+of the prisoners, oppressing the poor and letting off parts of the
+prison to dealers in drink. This was the general plan in the prisons
+examined by Howard, and helps to account for the gross abuses. It is one
+more application of the general system. As the patron was owner of a
+living, and the officer of his commission, the keeper of a prison was
+owner of his establishment. The paralysis of administration which
+prevailed throughout the country made it natural to farm out paupers to
+the master of a workhouse, and prisoners to the proprietor of a gaol.
+The state of prisoners may be inferred not only from Howard's authentic
+record but from the fictions of Fielding, Smollett and Goldsmith; and
+the last echoes of the same complaints may be found in _Pickwick_ and
+_Little Dorrit_. The Marshalsea described in the last was also a
+proprietary concern. We shall hereafter see how Bentham proposed to
+treat the evils revealed by Oglethorpe and Howard.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[96] Aikin's _Country Round Manchester_.
+
+[97] Bunce's _History of the Corporation of Birmingham_ (1878).
+
+[98] _History of Birmingham_ (2nd edition), p. 327.
+
+[99] The first edition, 1795, the sixth, from which I quote, in 1800. In
+Benthams _Works_, x. 330, it is said that in 1798, 7500 copies of this
+book had been sold.
+
+[100] In 1814 Colquhoun published an elaborate account of the _Resources
+of the British Empire_, showing similar qualities.
+
+[101] _Police_, p. 310.
+
+[102] _Police_, p. 105.
+
+[103] _Ibid._ p. 13.
+
+[104] _Ibid._ p. 211.
+
+[105] _Ibid._ p. 136.
+
+[106] _Police_, p. 60.
+
+[107] _Ibid._ p. 481.
+
+[108] _Ibid._ p. 7.
+
+[109] _Ibid._ p. 298.
+
+[110] _Police_, p. 99.
+
+[111] Bentham's _Works_, x. 329 _seq._
+
+[112] _Ibid._ v. 335.
+
+[113] Bentham's _Works_, iv. 3, 121.
+
+[114] Cobbett's _State Trials_, xvii. 297-626.
+
+
+III. EDUCATION
+
+Another topic treated by Colquhoun marks the initial stage of
+controversies which were soon to grow warm. Colquhoun boasts of the
+number of charities for which London was already conspicuous. A growing
+facility for forming associations of all kinds, political, religious,
+scientific, and charitable, is an obvious characteristic of modern
+progress. Where in earlier times a college or a hospital had to be
+endowed by a founder and invested by charter with corporate personality,
+it is now necessary only to call a meeting, form a committee, and appeal
+for subscriptions. Societies of various kinds had sprung up during the
+century. Artists, men of science, agriculturists, and men of literary
+tastes, had founded innumerable academies and 'philosophical
+institutes.' The great London hospitals, dependent upon voluntary
+subscriptions, had been founded during the first half of the century.
+Colquhoun counts the annual revenue of various charitable institutions
+at £445,000, besides which the endowments produced £150,000, and the
+poor-rates £255,000.[115] Among these a considerable number were
+intended to promote education. Here, as in some other cases, it seems
+that people at the end of the century were often taking up an impulse
+given a century before. So the Society for promoting Christian
+Knowledge, founded in 1699, and the Society for the Propagation of the
+Gospel, founded in 1701, were supplemented by the Church Missionary
+Society and the Religious Tract Society, both founded in 1799. The
+societies for the reformation of manners, prevalent at the end of the
+seventeenth century, were taken as a model by Wilberforce and his
+friends at the end of the eighteenth.[116] In the same way, the first
+attempts at providing a general education for the poor had been made by
+Archbishop Tenison, who founded a parochial school about 1680 in order
+'to check the growth of popery.' Charity schools became common during
+the early part of the eighteenth century and received various
+endowments. They were attacked as tending to teach the poor too much--a
+very needless alarm--and also by free thinkers, such as Mandeville, as
+intended outworks of the established church. This last objection was a
+foretaste of the bitter religious controversies which were to accompany
+the growth of an educational system. Colquhoun says that there were 62
+endowed schools in London, from Christ's Hospital downwards, educating
+about 5000 children; 237 parish schools with about 9000 children, and
+3730 'private schools.' The teaching was, of course, very imperfect, and
+in a report of a committee of the House of Commons in 1818, it is
+calculated that about half the children in a large district were
+entirely uneducated. There was, of course, nothing in England deserving
+the name of a system in educational more than in any other matters. The
+grammar schools throughout the country provided more or less for the
+classes which could not aspire to the public schools and universities.
+About a third of the boys at Christ's Hospital were, as Coleridge tells
+us, sons of clergymen.[117] The children of the poor were either not
+educated, or picked up their letters at some charity school or such a
+country dame's school as is described by Shenstone. A curious proof,
+however, of rising interest in the question is given by the Sunday
+Schools movement at the end of the century. Robert Raikes (1735-1811), a
+printer in Gloucester and proprietor of a newspaper, joined with a
+clergyman to set up a school in 1780 at a total cost of 1s. 6d. a week.
+Within three or four years the plan was taken up everywhere, and the
+worthy Raikes, whose newspaper had spread the news, found himself
+revered as a great pioneer of philanthropy. Wesley took up the scheme
+warmly; bishops condescended to approve; the king and queen were
+interested, and within three or four years the number of learners was
+reckoned at two or three hundred thousand. A Sunday School Association
+was formed in 1785 with well known men of business at its head. Queen
+Charlotte's friend, Mrs. Trimmer (1741-1810), took up the work near
+London, and Hannah More (1745-1833) in Somersetshire. Hannah More gives
+a strange account of the utter absence of any civilising agencies in the
+district around Cheddar where she and her sisters laboured. She was
+accused of 'methodism' and a leaning to Jacobinism, although her views
+were of the most moderate kind. She wished the poor to be able to read
+their Bibles and to be qualified for domestic duties, but not to write
+or to be enabled to read Tom Paine or be encouraged to rise above their
+position. The literary light of the Whigs, Dr. Parr (1747-1825), showed
+his liberality by arguing that the poor ought to be taught, but admitted
+that the enterprise had its limits. The 'Deity Himself had fixed a great
+gulph between them and the poor.' A scanty instruction given on Sundays
+alone was not calculated to facilitate the passage of that gulf. By the
+end of the century, however, signs of a more systematic movement were
+showing themselves. Bell and Lancaster, of whom I shall have to speak,
+were rival claimants for the honour of initiating a new departure in
+education. The controversy which afterwards raged between the supporters
+of the two systems marked a complete revolution of opinion. Meanwhile,
+although the need of schools was beginning to be felt, the appliances
+for education in England were a striking instance of the general
+inefficiency in every department which needed combined action. In
+Scotland the system of parish schools was one obvious cause of the
+success of so many of the Scotsmen which excited the jealousy of
+southern competitors. Even in Ireland there appears to have been a more
+efficient set of schools. And yet, one remark must be suggested. There
+is probably no period in English history at which a greater number of
+poor men have risen to distinction. The greatest beyond comparison of
+self-taught poets was Burns (1759-1796). The political writer who was at
+the time producing the most marked effect was Thomas Paine (1737-1809),
+son of a small tradesman. His successor in influence was William Cobbett
+(1762-1835), son of an agricultural labourer, and one of the pithiest of
+all English writers. William Gifford (1756-1826), son of a small
+tradesman in Devonshire, was already known as a satirist and was to lead
+Conservatives as editor of the _The Quarterly Review_. John Dalton
+(1766-1842), son of a poor weaver, was one of the most distinguished men
+of science. Porson (1759-1808), the greatest Greek scholar of his time,
+was son of a Norfolk parish clerk, though sagacious patrons had sent him
+to Eton in his fifteenth year. The Oxford professor of Arabic, Joseph
+White (1746-1814), was son of a poor weaver in the country and a man of
+reputation for learning, although now remembered only for a rather
+disreputable literary squabble. Robert Owen and Joseph Lancaster, both
+sprung from the ranks, were leaders in social movements. I have already
+spoken of such men as Watt, Telford, and Rennie; and smaller names might
+be added in literature, science, and art. The individualist virtue of
+'self-help' was not confined to successful money-making or to the
+wealthier classes. One cause of the literary excellence of Burns, Paine,
+and Cobbett may be that, when literature was less centralised, a writer
+was less tempted to desert his natural dialect. I mention the fact,
+however, merely to suggest that, whatever were then the difficulties of
+getting such schooling as is now common, an energetic lad even in the
+most neglected regions might force his way to the front.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[115] _Police_, p. 340.
+
+[116] Wilberforce started on this plan a 'society for enforcing the
+king's proclamation' in 1786, which was supplemented by the society for
+'the Suppression of Vice' in 1802. I don't suppose that vice was much
+suppressed. Sydney Smith ridiculed its performances in the _Edinburgh_
+for 1809. The article is in his works. A more interesting society was
+that for 'bettering the condition of the poor,' started by Sir Thomas
+Bernard and Wilberforce in 1796.
+
+[117] _Biographia Literaria_ (1847), ii. 327.
+
+
+IV. THE SLAVE-TRADE
+
+I have thus noticed the most conspicuous of the contemporary problems
+which, as we shall see, provided the main tasks of Bentham and his
+followers. One other topic must be mentioned as in more ways than one
+characteristic of the spirit of the time. The parliamentary attack upon
+the slave-trade began just before the outbreak of the revolution. It is
+generally described as an almost sudden awakening of the national
+conscience. That it appealed to that faculty is undeniable, and,
+moreover, it is at least a remarkable instance of legislative action
+upon purely moral grounds. It is true that in this case the conscience
+was the less impeded because it was roused chiefly by the sins of men's
+neighbours. The slave-trading class was a comparative excrescence. Their
+trade could be attacked without such widespread interference with the
+social order as was implied, for example, in remedying the grievances of
+paupers or of children in factories. The conflict with morality, again,
+was so plain as to need no demonstration. It seems to be a questionable
+logic which assumes the merit of a reformer to be in proportion to the
+flagrancy of the evil assailed. The more obvious the case, surely the
+less the virtue needed in the assailant. However this may be, no one can
+deny the moral excellence of such men as Wilberforce and Clarkson, nor
+the real change in the moral standard implied by the success of their
+agitation. But another question remains, which is indicated by a later
+controversy. The followers of Wilberforce and of Clarkson were jealous
+of each other. Each party tried to claim the chief merit for its hero.
+Each was, I think, unjust to the other. The underlying motive was the
+desire to obtain credit for the 'Evangelicals' or their rivals as the
+originators of a great movement. Without touching the personal details
+it is necessary to say something of the general sentiments implied. In
+his history of the agitation,[118] Clarkson gives a quaint chart,
+showing how the impulse spread from various centres till it converged
+upon a single area, and his facts are significant.
+
+That a great change had taken place is undeniable. Protestant England
+had bargained with Catholic Spain in the middle of the century for the
+right of supplying slaves to America, while at the peace of 1814 English
+statesmen were endeavouring to secure a combination of all civilised
+powers against the trade. Smollett, in 1748, makes the fortune of his
+hero, Roderick Random, by placing him as mate of a slave-ship under the
+ideal sailor, Bowling. About the same time John Newton (1725-1807),
+afterwards the venerated teacher of Cowper and the Evangelicals, was in
+command of a slaver, and enjoying 'sweeter and more frequent hours of
+divine communion' than he had elsewhere known. He had no scruples,
+though he had the grace to pray 'to be fixed in a more humane calling.'
+In later years he gave the benefit of his experience to the
+abolitionists.[119] A new sentiment, however, was already showing
+itself. Clarkson collects various instances. Southern's Oroonoco,
+founded on a story by Mrs. Behn, and Steele's story of Inkle and Yarico
+in an early _Spectator_, Pope's poor Indian in the _Essay on Man_, and
+allusions by Thomson, Shenstone, and Savage, show that poets and
+novelists could occasionally turn the theme to account. Hutcheson, the
+moralist, incidentally condemns slavery; and divines such as Bishops
+Hayter and Warburton took the same view in sermons before the Society
+for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. Johnson, 'last of the
+Tories' though he was, had a righteous hatred for the system.[120] He
+toasted the next insurrection of negroes in the West Indies, and asked
+why we always heard the 'loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of
+negroes'? Thomas Day (1748-1789), as an ardent follower of Rousseau,
+wrote the _Dying Negro_ in 1773, and, in the same spirit, denounced the
+inconsistencies of slave-holding champions of American liberty.
+
+Such isolated utterances showed a spreading sentiment. The honour of the
+first victory in the practical application must be given to Granville
+Sharp[121] (1735-1813), one of the most charming and, in the best sense,
+'Quixotic' of men. In 1772 his exertions had led to the famous decision
+by Lord Mansfield in the case of the negro Somerset.[122] Sharp in 1787
+became chairman of the committee formed to attack the slave-trade by
+collecting the evidence of which Wilberforce made use in parliament. The
+committee was chiefly composed of Quakers; as indeed, Quakers are pretty
+sure to be found in every philanthropic movement of the period. I must
+leave the explanation to the historian of religious movements; but the
+fact is characteristic. The Quakers had taken the lead in America. The
+Quaker was both practical and a mystic. His principles put him outside
+of the ordinary political interests, and of the military world. He
+directed his activities to helping the poor, the prisoner, and the
+oppressed. Among the Quakers of the eighteenth century were John Woolman
+(1720-1772), a writer beloved by the congenial Charles Lamb and Antoine
+Benezet (1713-1784), born in France, and son of a French refugee who
+settled in Philadelphia. When Clarkson wrote the prize essay upon the
+slave-trade (1785), which started his career, it was from Benezet's
+writings that he obtained his information. By their influence the
+Pennsylvanian Quakers were gradually led to pronounce against
+slavery[123]; and the first anti-slavery society was founded in
+Philadelphia in 1775, the year in which the skirmish at Lexington began
+the war of independence. That suggests another influence. The
+Rationalists of the eighteenth century were never tired of praising the
+Quakers. The Quakers were, by their essential principles, in favour of
+absolute toleration, and their attitude towards dogma was not
+dissimilar. 'Rationalisation' and 'Spiritualisation' are in some
+directions similar. The general spread of philanthropic sentiment,
+which found its formula in the _Rights of Man_, fell in with the Quaker
+hatred of war and slavery. Voltaire heartily admires Barclay, the Quaker
+apologist. It is, therefore, not surprising to find the names of the
+deists, Franklin and Paine, associated with Quakers in this movement.
+Franklin was an early president of the new association, and Paine wrote
+an article to support the early agitation.[124] Paine himself was a
+Quaker by birth, who had dropped his early creed while retaining a
+respect for its adherents. When the agitation began it was in fact
+generally approved by all except the slave-traders. Sound Whig divines,
+Watson and Paley and Parr; Unitarians such as Priestley and Gilbert
+Wakefield and William Smith; and the great methodist, John Wesley, were
+united on this point. Fox and Burke and Pitt rivalled each other in
+condemning the system. The actual delay was caused partly by the
+strength of the commercial interests in parliament, and partly by the
+growth of the anti-Jacobin sentiment.
+
+The attempt to monopolise the credit of the movement by any particular
+sect is absurd. Wilberforce and his friends might fairly claim the glory
+of having been worthy representatives of a new spirit of philanthropy;
+but most certainly they did not create or originate it. The general
+growth of that spirit throughout the century must be explained, so far
+as 'explanation' is possible, by wider causes. It was, as I must venture
+to assume, a product of complex social changes which were bringing
+classes and nations into closer contact, binding them together by new
+ties, and breaking up the old institutions which had been formed under
+obsolete conditions. The true moving forces were the same whether these
+representatives announced the new gospel of the 'rights of man'; or
+appealed to the traditional rights of Englishmen; or rallied supporters
+of the old order so far as it still provided the most efficient
+machinery for the purpose. The revival of religion under Wesley and the
+Evangelicals meant the direction of the stream into one channel. The
+paralytic condition of the Church of England disqualified it for
+appropriating the new energy. The men who directed the movements were
+mainly stimulated by moral indignation at the gross abuses, and the
+indolence of the established priesthood naturally gave them an
+anti-sacerdotal turn. They simply accepted the old Protestant tradition.
+They took no interest in the intellectual questions involved.
+Rationalism, according to them, meant simply an attack upon the
+traditional sanctions of morality; and it scarcely occurred to them to
+ask for any philosophical foundation of their creed. Wilberforce's book,
+_A Practical View_, attained an immense popularity, and is
+characteristic of the position. Wilberforce turns over the infidel to be
+confuted by Paley, whom he takes to be a conclusive reasoner. For
+himself he is content to show what needed little proof, that the
+so-called Christians of the day could act as if they had never heard of
+the New Testament. The Evangelical movement had in short no distinct
+relation to speculative movements. It took the old tradition for
+granted, and it need not here be further considered.
+
+One other remark is suggested by the agitation against the slave-trade.
+It set a precedent for agitation of a kind afterwards familiar. The
+committee appealed to the country, and got up petitions. Sound Tories
+complained of them in the early slave-trade debates, as attempts to
+dictate to parliament by democratic methods. Political agitators had
+formed associations, and found a convenient instrument in the 'county
+meetings,' which seems to have possessed a kind of indefinite legal
+character.[125] Such associations of course depend for the great part of
+their influence upon the press. The circulation of literature was one
+great object. Paine's _Rights of Man_ was distributed by the
+revolutionary party, and Hannah More wrote popular tracts to persuade
+the poor that they had no grievances. It is said that two millions of
+her little tracts, 'Village Politics by Will Chip,' the 'Shepherd of
+Salisbury Plain,' and so forth were circulated. The demand, indeed,
+showed rather the eagerness of the rich to get them read than the
+eagerness of the poor to read them. They failed to destroy Paine's
+influence, but they were successful enough to lead to the foundation of
+the Religious Tract Society. The attempt to influence the poor by cheap
+literature shows that these opinions were beginning to demand
+consideration. Cobbett and many others were soon to use the new weapon.
+Meanwhile the newspapers circulated among the higher ranks were passing
+through a new phase, which must be noted. The great newspapers were
+gaining power. The _Morning Chronicle_ was started by Woodfall in 1769,
+the _Morning Post_ and _Morning Herald_ by Dudley Bate in 1772 and 1780,
+and the _Times_ by Walter in 1788. The modern editor was to appear
+during the war. Stoddart and Barnes of the _Times_, Perry and Black of
+the _Morning Chronicle_, were to become important politically. The
+revolutionary period marks the transition from the old-fashioned
+newspaper, carried on by a publisher and an author, to the modern
+newspaper, which represents a kind of separate organism, elaborately
+'differentiated' and worked by a whole army of co-operating editors,
+correspondents, reporters, and contributors. Finally, one remark may be
+made. The literary class in England was not generally opposed to the
+governing classes. The tone of Johnson's whole circle was conservative.
+In fact, since Harley's time, government had felt the need of support in
+the press, and politicians on both sides had their regular organs. The
+opposition might at any time become the government; and their supporters
+in the press, poor men who were only too dependent, had no motive for
+going beyond the doctrines of their principals. They might be bought by
+opponents, or they might be faithful to a patron. They did not form a
+band of outcasts, whose hand would be against every one. The libel law
+was severe enough, but there had been no licensing system since the
+early days of William and Mary. A man could publish what he chose at his
+own peril. When the current of popular feeling was anti-revolutionary,
+government might obtain a conviction, but even in the worst times there
+was a chance that juries might be restive. Editors had at times to go to
+prison, but even then the paper was not suppressed. Cobbett, for
+example, continued to publish his _Registrar_ during an imprisonment of
+two years (1810-12). Editors had very serious anxieties, but they could
+express with freedom any opinion which had the support of a party.
+English liberty was so far a reality that a very free discussion of the
+political problems of the day was permitted and practised. The English
+author, therefore, as such, had not the bitterness of a French man of
+letters, unless, indeed, he had the misfortune to be an uncompromising
+revolutionist.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[118] _History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the
+Abolition of the Slave-trade by the British Parliament_ (1808). Second
+enlarged edition 1839. The chart was one cause of the offence taken by
+Wilberforce's sons.
+
+[119] Cf. Sir J. Stephen's _Ecclesiastical Biography_ (The Evangelical
+Succession).
+
+[120] See passages collected in Birkbeck Hill's _Boswell_, ii. 478-80,
+and cf. iii. 200-204. Boswell was attracted by Clarkson, but finally
+made up his mind that the abolition of the slave-trade would 'shut the
+gates of mercy on mankind.'
+
+[121] See the account of G. Sharp in Sir J. Stephen's _Ecclesiastical
+Biography_ (Clapham Sect).
+
+[122] Cobbett's _State Trials_, xx. 1-82.
+
+[123] The Society determined in 1760 'to disown' any Friend concerned in
+the slave-trade.
+
+[124] Mr. Conway, in his _Life of Paine_, attributes, I think, a little
+more to his hero than is consistent with due regard to his predecessors;
+but, in any case, he took an early part in the movement.
+
+[125] See upon this subject Mr. Jephson's interesting book on _The
+Platform_.
+
+
+V. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
+
+The English society which I have endeavoured to characterise was now to
+be thrown into the vortex of the revolutionary wars. The surpassing
+dramatic interest of the French Revolution has tended to obscure our
+perception of the continuity of even English history. It has been easy
+to ascribe to the contagion of French example political movements which
+were already beginning in England and which were modified rather than
+materially altered by our share in the great European convulsion. The
+impression made upon Englishmen by the French Revolution is, however, in
+the highest degree characteristic. The most vehement sympathies and
+antipathies were aroused, and showed at least what principles were
+congenial to the various English parties. To praise or blame the
+revolution, as if it could be called simply good or bad, is for the
+historian as absurd as to praise or blame an earthquake. It was simply
+inevitable under the conditions. We may, of course, take it as an
+essential stage in a social evolution, which if described as progress is
+therefore to be blessed, or if as degeneration may provoke lamentation.
+We may, if we please, ask whether superior statesmanship might have
+attained the good results without the violent catastrophes, or whether a
+wise and good man who could appreciate the real position would have
+approved or condemned the actual policy. But to answer such problems
+with any confidence would imply a claim to a quasi-omniscience.
+Partisans at the time, however, answered them without hesitation, and
+saw in the Revolution the dawn of a new era of reason and justice, or
+the outburst of the fires of hell. Their view is at any rate indicative
+of their own position. The extreme opinions need no exposition. They are
+represented by the controversy between Burke and Paine. The general
+doctrine of the 'Rights of Men'--that all men are by nature free and
+equal--covered at least the doctrine that the inequality and despotism
+of the existing order was hateful, and people with a taste for abstract
+principles accepted this short cut to political wisdom. The 'minor'
+premise being obviously true, they took the major for granted. To Burke,
+who idealised the traditional element in the British Constitution, and
+so attached an excessive importance to historical continuity, the new
+doctrine seemed to imply the breaking up of the very foundations of
+order and the pulverisation of society. Burke and Paine both assumed too
+easily that the dogmas which they defended expressed the real and
+ultimate beliefs, and that the belief was the cause, not the
+consequence, of the political condition. Without touching upon the logic
+of either position, I may notice how the problem presented itself to the
+average English politician whose position implied acceptance of
+traditional compromises and who yet prided himself on possessing the
+liberties which were now being claimed by Frenchmen. The Whig could
+heartily sympathise with the French Revolution so long as it appeared to
+be an attempt to assimilate British principles. When Fox hailed the
+fall of the Bastille as the greatest and best event that had ever
+happened, he was expressing a generous enthusiasm shared by all the
+ardent and enlightened youth of the time. The French, it seemed, were
+abolishing an arbitrary despotism and adopting the principles of Magna
+Charta and the 'Habeas Corpus' Act. Difficulties, however, already
+suggested themselves to the true Whig. Would the French, as Young asked
+just after the same event, 'copy the constitution of England, freed from
+its faults, or attempt, from theory, to frame something absolutely
+speculative'?[126] On that issue depended the future of the country. It
+was soon decided in the sense opposed to Young's wishes. The reign of
+terror alienated the average Whig. But though the argument from
+atrocities is the popular one, the opposition was really more
+fundamental. Burke put the case, savagely and coarsely enough, in his
+'Letter to a noble Lord.' How would the duke of Bedford like to be
+treated as the revolutionists were treating the nobility in France? The
+duke might be a sincere lover of political liberty, but he certainly
+would not be prepared to approve the confiscation of his estates. The
+aristocratic Whigs, dependent for their whole property and for every
+privilege which they prized upon ancient tradition and prescription,
+could not really be in favour of sweeping away the whole complex social
+structure, levelling Windsor Castle as Burke put it in his famous
+metaphor, and making a 'Bedford level' of the whole country. The Whigs
+had to disavow any approval of the Jacobins; Mackintosh, who had given
+his answer to Burke's diatribes, met Burke himself on friendly terms
+(9th July 1797), and in 1800 took an opportunity of public recantation.
+He only expressed the natural awakening of the genuine Whig to the
+aspects of the case which he had hitherto ignored. The effect upon the
+middle-class Whigs is, however, more to my purpose. It may be
+illustrated by the history of John Horne Tooke[127] (1736-1812), who at
+this time represented what may be called the home-bred British
+radicalism. He was the son of a London tradesman, who had distinguished
+himself by establishing, and afterwards declining to enforce, certain
+legal rights against Frederick Prince of Wales. The prince recognised
+the tradesman's generosity by making his antagonist purveyor to his
+household. A debt of some thousand pounds was thus run up before the
+prince's death which was never discharged. Possibly the son's hostility
+to the royal family was edged by this circumstance. John Horne, forced
+to take orders in order to hold a living, soon showed himself to have
+been intended by nature for the law. He took up the cause of Wilkes in
+the early part of the reign; defended him energetically in later years;
+and in 1769 helped to start the 'Society for supporting the Bill of
+Rights.' He then attacked Wilkes, who, as he maintained, misapplied for
+his own private use the funds subscribed for public purposes to this
+society; and set up a rival 'Constitutional Society.' In 1775, as
+spokesman of this body, he denounced the 'king's troops' for 'inhumanly
+murdering' their fellow-subjects at Lexington for the sole crime of
+'preferring death to slavery.' He was imprisoned for the libel, and thus
+became a martyr to the cause. When the country associations were formed
+in 1780 to protest against the abuses revealed by the war, Horne became
+a member of the 'Society for Constitutional Information,' of which Major
+Cartwright--afterwards the revered, but rather tiresome, patriarch of
+the Radicals--was called the 'father.' Horne Tooke (as he was now
+named), by these and other exhibitions of boundless pugnacity, became a
+leader among the middle-class Whigs, who found their main support among
+London citizens, such as Beckford, Troutbeck and Oliver; supported them
+in his later days; and after the American war, preferred Pitt, as an
+advocate of parliamentary reform, to Fox, the favourite of the
+aristocratic Whigs. He denounced the Fox coalition ministry, and in
+later years opposed Fox at Westminster. The 'Society for Constitutional
+Information' was still extant in the revolutionary period, and Tooke, a
+bluff, jovial companion, who had by this time got rid of his clerical
+character, often took the chair at the taverns where they met to talk
+sound politics over their port. The revolution infused new spirit into
+politics. In March 1791[128] Tooke's society passed a vote of thanks to
+Paine for the first part of his _Rights of Man_. Next year Thomas Hardy,
+a radical shoemaker, started a 'Corresponding Society.' Others sprang up
+throughout the country, especially in the manufacturing towns.[129]
+These societies took Paine for their oracle, and circulated his writings
+as their manifesto. They communicated occasionally with Horne Tooke's
+society, which more or less sympathised with them. The Whigs of the
+upper sphere started the 'Friends of the People' in April 1792, in order
+to direct the discontent into safer channels. Grey, Sheridan and Erskine
+were members; Fox sympathised but declined to join; Mackintosh was
+secretary; and Sir Philip Francis drew up the opening address, citing
+the authority of Pitt and Blackstone, and declaring that the society
+wished 'not to change but to restore.'[130] It remonstrated cautiously
+with the other societies, and only excited their distrust. Grey, as its
+representative, made a motion for parliamentary reform which was
+rejected (May 1793) by two hundred and eighty-two to forty-one. Later
+motions in May 1797 and April 1800 showed that, for the present,
+parliamentary reform was out of the question. Meanwhile the English
+Jacobins got up a 'convention' which met at Edinburgh at the end of
+1793. The very name was alarming: the leaders were tried and
+transported; the cruelty of the sentences and the severity of the
+judges, especially Braxfield, shocked such men as Parr and Jeffrey, and
+unsuccessful appeals for mercy were made in parliament. The Habeas
+Corpus Act was suspended in 1794: Horne Tooke and Hardy were both
+arrested and tried for high treason in November. An English jury
+fortunately showed itself less subservient than the Scottish; the judge
+was scrupulously fair: and both Hardy and Horne Tooke were acquitted.
+The societies, however, though they were encouraged for a time, were
+attacked by severe measures passed by Pitt in 1795. The 'Friends of the
+People' ceased to exist The seizure of the committee of the
+Corresponding Societies in 1798 put an end to their activity. A report
+presented to parliament in 1799[131] declares that the societies had
+gone to dangerous lengths: they had communicated with the French
+revolutionists and with the 'United Irishmen' (founded 1791); and
+societies of 'United Englishmen' and 'United Scotsmen' had had some
+concern in the mutinies of the fleet in 1797 and in the Irish rebellion
+of 1798. Place says, probably with truth, that the danger was much
+exaggerated: but in any case, an act for the suppression of the
+Corresponding Societies was passed in 1799, and put an end to the
+movement.
+
+This summary is significant of the state of opinion. The genuine
+old-fashioned Whig dreaded revolution, and guarded himself carefully
+against any appearance of complicity. Jacobinism, on the other hand, was
+always an exotic. Such men as the leading Nonconformists Priestley and
+Price were familiar with the speculative movement on the continent, and
+sympathised with the enlightenment. Young men of genius, like Wordsworth
+and Coleridge, imbibed the same doctrines more or less thoroughly, and
+took Godwin for their English representative. The same creed was
+accepted by the artisans in the growing towns, from whom the
+Corresponding Societies drew their recruits. But the revolutionary
+sentiment was not so widely spread as its adherents hoped or its enemies
+feared. The Birmingham mob of 1791 acted, with a certain unconscious
+humour, on the side of church and king. They had perhaps an instinctive
+perception that it was an advantage to plunder on the side of the
+constable. In fact, however, the general feeling in all classes was
+anti-Jacobin. Place, an excellent witness, himself a member of the
+Corresponding Societies, declares that the repressive measures were
+generally popular even among the workmen.[132] They were certainly not
+penetrated with revolutionary fervour. Had it been otherwise, the
+repressive measures, severe as they were, would have stimulated rather
+than suppressed the societies, and, instead of silencing the
+revolutionists, have provoked a rising.
+
+At the early period the Jacobin and the home-bred Radical might combine
+against government. A manifesto of the Corresponding Societies begins by
+declaring that 'all men are by nature free and equal and independent of
+each other,' and argues also that these are the 'original principles of
+English government.'[133] Magna Charta is an early expression of the
+Declaration of Rights, and thus pure reason confirms British tradition.
+The adoption of a common platform, however, covered a profound
+difference of sentiment. Horne Tooke represents the old type of
+reformer. He was fully resolved not to be carried away by the enthusiasm
+of his allies. 'My companions in a stage,' he said to Cartwright, 'may
+be going to Windsor: I will go with them to Hounslow. But there I will
+get out: no further will I go, by God!'[134] When Sheridan supported a
+vote of sympathy for the French revolutionists, Tooke insisted upon
+adding a rider declaring the content of Englishmen with their own
+constitution.[135] He offended some of his allies by asserting that the
+'main timbers' of the constitution were sound though the dry-rot had
+got into the superstructure. He maintained, according to Godwin,[136]
+that the best of all governments had been that of England under George
+I. Though Cartwright said at the trial that Horne Tooke was taken to
+'have no religion whatever,' he was, according to Stephens, 'a great
+stickler for the church of England': and stood up for the House of Lords
+as well as the church on grounds of utility.[137] He always ridiculed
+Paine and the doctrine of abstract rights,[138] and told Cartwright that
+though all men had an equal right to a share of property, they had not a
+right to an equal share. Horne Tooke's Radicalism (I use the word by
+anticipation) was that of the sturdy tradesman. He opposed the
+government because he hated war, taxation and sinecures. He argued
+against universal suffrage with equal pertinacity. A comfortable old
+gentleman, with a good cellar of Madeira, and proud of his wall-fruit in
+a well-tilled garden, had no desire to see George III. at the
+guillotine, and still less to see a mob supreme in Lombard Street or
+banknotes superseded by assignats. He might be jealous of the great
+nobles, but he dreaded mob-rule. He could denounce abuses, but he could
+not desire anarchy. He is said to have retorted upon some one who had
+boasted that English courts of justice were open to all classes: 'So is
+the London tavern--to all who can pay.'[139] That is in the spirit of
+Bentham; and yet Bentham complains that Horne Tooke's disciple, Burdett,
+believed in the common law, and revered the authority of Coke.[140] In
+brief, the creed of Horne Tooke meant 'liberty' founded upon tradition.
+I shall presently notice the consistency of this with what may be called
+his philosophy. Meanwhile it was only natural that radicals of this
+variety should retire from active politics, having sufficiently burnt
+their fingers by flirtation with the more thoroughgoing party. How they
+came to life again will appear hereafter. Horne Tooke himself took
+warning from his narrow escape. He stayed quietly in his house at
+Wimbledon.[141] There he divided his time between his books and his
+garden, and received his friends to Sunday dinners. Bentham, Mackintosh,
+Coleridge, and Godwin were among his visitors. Coleridge calls him a
+'keen iron man,' and reports that he made a butt of Godwin as he had
+done of Paine.[142] Porson and Boswell encountered him in drinking
+matches and were both left under the table.[143] The house was thus a
+small centre of intellectual life, though the symposia were not
+altogether such as became philosophers. Horne Tooke was a keen and
+shrewd disputant, well able to impress weaker natures. His neighbour,
+Sir Francis Burdett, became his political disciple, and in later years
+was accepted as the radical leader. Tooke died at Wimbledon 18th March
+1812.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[126] _France_, p. 206 (20th July 1789).
+
+[127] See the _Life of Horne Tooke_, by Alexander Stephens (2 vols. 8vo,
+1813). John Horne added the name Tooke in 1782.
+
+[128] _Parl. Hist._ xxxi. 751.
+
+[129] The history of these societies may be found in the trials reported
+in the twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth volumes of
+Cobbett's _State Trials_, and in the reports of the secret committees in
+the thirty-first and thirty-fourth volumes of the _Parl. History_. There
+are materials in Place's papers in the British Museum which have been
+used in E. Smith's _English Jacobins_.
+
+[130] _Parl. Hist._ xxix. 1300-1341.
+
+[131] _Parl. Hist._ xxxiv. 574-655.
+
+[132] Mr. Wallas's _Life of Place_, p. 25 _n._
+
+[133] _State Trials_, xxiv. 575.
+
+[134] _Ibid._ xxv. 330.
+
+[135] _Ibid._ xxv. 390.
+
+[136] Paul's _Godwin_, i. 147.
+
+[137] Stephens, ii. 48, 477.
+
+[138] _Ibid._ ii. 34-41, 323, 478-481.
+
+[139] _Ibid._ ii. 483.
+
+[140] Bentham's _Works_, x. 404.
+
+[141] He was member for Old Sarum 1801-2; but his career ended by a
+declaratory act disqualifying for a seat men who had received holy
+orders.
+
+[142] Bentham's _Works_, x. 404; _Life of Mackintosh_, i. 52; Paul's
+_Godwin_, i. 71; Coleridge's _Table-Talk_, 8th May 1830 and 16th August
+1833.
+
+[143] Stephens, ii. 316, 334, 438.
+
+
+VI. INDIVIDUALISM
+
+The general tendencies which I have so far tried to indicate will have
+to be frequently noticed in the course of the following pages. One
+point may be emphasised before proceeding: a main characteristic of the
+whole social and political order is what is now called its
+'individualism.' That phrase is generally supposed to convey some
+censure. It may connote, however, some of the most essential virtues
+that a race can possess. Energy, self-reliance, and independence, a
+strong conviction that a man's fate should depend upon his own character
+and conduct, are qualities without which no nation can be great. They
+are the conditions of its vital power. They were manifested in a high
+degree by the Englishmen of the eighteenth century. How far they were
+due to the inherited qualities of the race, to the political or social
+history, or to external circumstances, I need not ask. They were the
+qualities which had especially impressed foreign observers. The fierce,
+proud, intractable Briton was elbowing his way to a high place in the
+world, and showing a vigour not always amiable, but destined to bring
+him successfully through tremendous struggles. In the earlier part of
+the century, Voltaire and French philosophers admired English freedom of
+thought and free speech, even when it led to eccentricity and brutality
+of manners, and to barbarism in matters of taste. Englishmen, conscious
+and proud of their 'liberty,' were the models of all who desired liberty
+for themselves. Liberty, as they understood it, involved, among other
+things, an assault upon the old restrictive system, which at every turn
+hampered the rising industrial energy. This is the sense in which
+'Individualism,' or the gospel according to Adam Smith--_laissez faire_,
+and so forth--has been specially denounced in recent times. Without
+asking at present how far such attacks are justifiable, I must be
+content to assume that the old restrictive system was in its actual form
+mischievous, guided by entirely false theories, and the great barrier to
+the development of industry. The same spirit appeared in purely
+political questions. 'Liberty,' as is often remarked, may be interpreted
+in two ways; not necessarily consistent with each other. It means
+sometimes simply the diminution of the sphere of law and the power of
+legislators, or, again, the transference to subjects of the power of
+legislating, and, therefore, not less control, but control by self-made
+laws alone. The Englishman, who was in presence of no centralised
+administrative power, who regarded the Government rather as receiving
+power from individuals than as delegating the power of a central body,
+took liberty mainly in the sense of restricting law. Government in
+general was a nuisance, though a necessity; and properly employed only
+in mediating between conflicting interests, and restraining the violence
+of individuals forced into contact by outward circumstances. When he
+demanded that a greater share of influence should be given to the
+people, he always took for granted that their power would be used to
+diminish the activity of the sovereign power; that there would be less
+government and therefore less jobbery, less interference with free
+speech and free action, and smaller perquisites to be bestowed in return
+for the necessary services. The people would use their authority to tie
+the hands of the rulers, and limit them strictly to their proper and
+narrow functions.
+
+The absence, again, of the idea of a state in any other sense implies
+another tendency. The 'idea' was not required. Englishmen were concerned
+rather with details than with first principles. Satisfied, in a general
+way, with their constitution, they did not want to be bothered with
+theories. Abstract and absolute doctrines of right, when imported from
+France, fell flat upon the average Englishman. He was eager enough to
+discuss the utility of this or that part of the machinery, but without
+inquiring into first principles of mechanism. The argument from
+'utility' deals with concrete facts, and presupposes an acceptance of
+some common criterion of the useful. The constant discussion of
+political matters in parliament and the press implied a tacit acceptance
+on all hands of constitutional methods. Practical men, asking whether
+this or that policy shall be adopted in view of actual events, no more
+want to go back to right reason and 'laws of nature' than a surveyor to
+investigate the nature of geometrical demonstration. Very important
+questions were raised as to the rights of the press, for example, or the
+system of representation. But everybody agreed that the representative
+system and freedom of speech were good things; and argued the immediate
+questions of fact. The order, only established by experience and
+tradition, was accepted, subject to criticism of detail, and men turned
+impatiently from abstract argument, and left the inquiry into 'social
+contracts' to philosophers, that is, to silly people in libraries.
+Politics were properly a matter of business, to be discussed in a
+business-like spirit. In this sense, 'individualism' is congenial to
+'empiricism,' because it starts from facts and particular interests, and
+resents the intrusion of first principles.
+
+The characteristic individualism, again, suggests one other remark.
+Individual energy and sense of responsibility are good--as even extreme
+socialists may admit--if they do not exclude a sense of duties to
+others. It may be a question how far the stimulation of individual
+enterprise and the vigorous spirit of industrial competition really led
+to a disregard of the interests of the weaker. But it would be a
+complete misunderstanding of the time if we inferred that it meant a
+decline of humane feeling. Undoubtedly great evils had grown up, and
+some continued to grow which were tolerated by the indifference, or even
+stimulated by the selfish aims, of the dominant classes. But, in the
+first place, many of the most active prophets of the individualist
+spirit were acting, and acting sincerely, in the name of humanity. They
+were attacking a system which they held, and to a great extent, I
+believe, held rightly, to be especially injurious to the weakest
+classes. Possibly they expected too much from the simple removal of
+restrictions; but certainly they denounced the restrictions as unjust to
+all, not simply as hindrances to the wealth of the rich. Adam Smith's
+position is intelligible: it was, he thought, a proof of a providential
+order that each man, by helping himself, unintentionally helped his
+neighbours. The moral sense based upon sympathy was therefore not
+opposed to, but justified, the economic principles that each man should
+first attend to his own interest. The unintentional co-operation would
+thus become conscious and compatible with the established order. And, in
+the next place, so far from there being a want of humane feeling, the
+most marked characteristic of the eighteenth century was precisely the
+growth of humanity. In the next generation, the eighteenth century came
+to be denounced as cold, heartless, faithless, and so forth. The
+established mode of writing history is partly responsible for this
+perversion. Men speak as though some great man, who first called
+attention to an evil, was a supernatural being who had suddenly dropped
+into the world from another sphere. His condemnation of evil is
+therefore taken to be a proof that the time must be evil. Any century is
+bad if we assume all the good men to be exceptions. But the great man is
+really also the product of his time. He is the mouthpiece of its
+prevailing sentiments, and only the first to see clearly what many are
+beginning to perceive obscurely. The emergence of the prophet is a proof
+of the growing demand of his hearers for sound teaching. Because he is
+in advance of men generally, he sees existing abuses more clearly, and
+we take his evidence against his contemporaries as conclusive. But the
+fact that they listened shows how widely the same sensibility to evil
+was already diffused. In fact, as I think, the humane spirit of the
+eighteenth century, due to the vast variety of causes which we call
+social progress or evolution--not to the teaching of any individual--was
+permeating the whole civilised world, and showed itself in the
+philosophic movement as well as in the teaching of the religious
+leaders, who took the philosophers to be their enemies. I have briefly
+noticed the various philanthropic movements which were characteristic of
+the period. Some of them may indicate the growth of new evils; others,
+that evils which had once been regarded with indifference were now
+attracting attention and exciting indignation. But even the growth of
+new evils does not show general indifference so much as the incapacity
+of the existing system to deal with new conditions. It may, I think, be
+safely said that a growing philanthropy was characteristic of the whole
+period, and in particular animated the Utilitarian movement, as I shall
+have to show in detail. Modern writers have often spoken of the Wesleyan
+propaganda and the contemporary 'evangelical revival' as the most
+important movements of the time. They are apt to speak, in conformity
+with the view just described, as though Wesley or some of his
+contemporaries had originated or created the better spirit. Without
+asking what was good or bad in some aspects of these movements, I fully
+believe that Wesley was essentially a moral reformer, and that he
+deserves corresponding respect. But instead of holding that his
+contemporaries were bad people, awakened by a stimulus from without, I
+hold that the movement, so far as really indicating moral improvement,
+must be set down to the credit of the century itself. It was one
+manifestation of a general progress, of which Bentham was another
+outcome. Though Bentham might have thought Wesley a fanatic or perhaps a
+hypocrite, and Wesley would certainly have considered that Bentham's
+heart was much in need of a change, they were really allies as much as
+antagonists, and both mark a great and beneficial change.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PHILOSOPHY
+
+
+I. JOHN HORNE TOOKE
+
+I have so far dwelt upon the social and political environment of the
+early Utilitarian movement; and have tried also to point out some of the
+speculative tendencies fostered by the position. If it be asked what
+philosophical doctrines were explicitly taught, the answer must be a
+very short one. English philosophy barely existed. Parr was supposed to
+know something about metaphysics--apparently because he could write good
+Latin. But the inference was hasty. Of one book, however, which had a
+real influence, I must say something, for though it contained little
+definite philosophy, it showed what kind of philosophy was congenial to
+the common sense of the time.
+
+The sturdy radical, Horne Tooke, had been led to the study of philology
+by a characteristic incident. The legal question had arisen whether the
+words, '_She, knowing that Crooke had been indicted for forgery_,' did
+so and so, contained an averment that Crooke had been indicted. Tooke
+argued in a letter to Dunning[144] that they did; because they were
+equivalent to the phrase, 'Crooke had been indicted for forgery: she,
+_knowing that_,' did so and so. This raises the question: What is the
+meaning of 'that'? Tooke took up the study, thinking, as he says, that
+it would throw light upon some philosophical questions. He learned some
+Anglo-Saxon and Gothic to test his theory and, of course, confirmed
+it.[145] The book shows ingenuity, shrewdness, and industry, and Tooke
+deserves credit for seeing the necessity of applying a really historical
+method to his problem, though his results were necessarily crude in the
+pre-scientific stage of philology.
+
+The book is mainly a long string of etymologies, which readers of
+different tastes have found intolerably dull or an amusing collection of
+curiosities. Tooke held, and surely with reason, that an investigation
+of language, the great instrument of thought, may help to throw light
+upon the process of thinking. He professes to be a disciple of Locke in
+philosophy as in politics. Locke, he said,[146] made a lucky mistake in
+calling his book an essay upon human understanding; for he thus
+attracted many who would have been repelled had he called it what it
+really was, 'a treatise upon words and language.' According to Tooke, in
+fact,[147] what we call 'operations of mind' are only 'operations of
+language.' The mind contemplates nothing but 'impressions,' that is,
+'sensations or feelings,' which Locke called 'ideas,' Locke mistook
+composition of terms for composition of ideas. To compound ideas is
+impossible. We can only use one term as a sign of many ideas. Locke,
+again, supposed that affirming and denying were operations of the mind,
+whereas they are only artifices of language.[148]
+
+The mind, then, can only contemplate, separately or together, aggregates
+of 'ideas,' ultimate atoms, incapable of being parted or dissolved.
+There are, therefore, only two classes of words, nouns and verbs; all
+others, prepositions, conjunctions, and so forth, being abbreviations, a
+kind of mental shorthand to save the trouble of enumerating the separate
+items. Tooke, in short, is a thoroughgoing nominalist. The realities,
+according to him, are sticks, stones, and material objects, or the
+'ideas' which 'represent' them. They can be stuck together or taken
+apart, but all the words which express relations, categories, and the
+like, are in themselves meaningless. The special objects of his scorn
+are 'Hermes' Harris, and Monboddo, who had tried to defend Aristotle
+against Locke. Monboddo had asserted that 'every kind of relation' is a
+pure 'idea of the intellect' not to be apprehended by sense.[149] If so,
+according to Tooke, it would be a nonentity.
+
+This doctrine gives a short cut to the abolition of metaphysics. The
+word 'metaphysics,' says Tooke,[150] is nonsense. All metaphysical
+controversies are 'founded on the grossest ignorance of words and the
+nature of speech.' The greatest part of his second volume is concerned
+with etymologies intended to prove that an 'abstract idea' is a mere
+word. Abstract words, he says,[151] are generally 'participles without
+a substantive and therefore in construction used as substantives.' From
+a misunderstanding of this has arisen 'metaphysical jargon' and 'false
+morality.' In illustration he gives a singular list of words, including
+'fate, chance, heaven, hell, providence, prudence, innocence, substance,
+fiend, angel, apostle, spirit, true, false, desert, merit, faith, etc.,
+all of which are mere participles poetically embodied and substantiated
+by those who use them.' A couple of specific applications, often quoted
+by later writers, will sufficiently indicate his drift.
+
+Such words, he remarks,[152] as 'right' and 'just' mean simply that
+which is ordered or commanded. The chapter is headed 'rights of man,'
+and Tooke's interlocutor naturally observes that this is a singular
+result for a democrat. Man, it would seem, has no rights except the
+rights created by the law. Tooke admits the inference to be correct, but
+replies that the democrat in disobeying human law may be obeying the law
+of God, and is obeying the law of God when he obeys the law of nature.
+The interlocutor does not inquire what Tooke could mean by the 'law of
+nature.' We can guess what Tooke would have said to Paine in the
+Wimbledon garden. In fact, however, Tooke is here, as elsewhere,
+following Hobbes, though, it seems, unconsciously. Another famous
+etymology is that of 'truth' from 'troweth.'[153] Truth is what each man
+thinks. There is no such thing, therefore, as 'eternal, immutable,
+everlasting truth, unless mankind, _such as they are at present_, be
+eternal, immutable, everlasting.' Two persons may contradict each other
+and yet each may be speaking what is true for him. Truth may be a vice
+as well as a virtue; for on many occasions it is wrong to speak the
+truth.
+
+These phrases may possibly be interpreted in a sense less paradoxical
+than the obvious one. Tooke's philosophy, if so it is to be called, was
+never fully expounded. He burned his papers before his death, and we do
+not know what he would have said about 'verbs,' which must have led, one
+would suppose, to some further treatment of relations, nor upon the
+subject, which as Stephens tells us, was most fully treated in his
+continuation, the value of human testimony.
+
+If Tooke was not a philosopher he was a man of remarkably shrewd cynical
+common sense, who thought philosophy idle foppery. His book made a great
+success. Stephens tells us[154] that it brought him £4000 or £5000.
+Hazlitt in 1810 published a grammar professing to incorporate for the
+first time Horne Tooke's 'discoveries.' The book was admired by
+Mackintosh,[155] who, of course, did not accept the principles, and had
+a warm disciple in Charles Richardson (1775-1865), who wrote in its
+defence against Dugald Stewart and accepted its authority in his
+elaborate dictionary of the English language.[156] But its chief
+interest for us is that it was a great authority with James Mill. Mill
+accepts the etymologies, and there is much in common between the two
+writers, though Mill had learned his main doctrines elsewhere,
+especially from Hobbes. What the agreement really shows is how the
+intellectual idiosyncrasy which is congenial to 'nominalism' in
+philosophy was also congenial to Tooke's matter of fact radicalism and
+to the Utilitarian position of Bentham and his followers.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[144] Published originally in 1778; reprinted in edition of EPEA
+PTEROENTA or _Diversions of Purley_, by Richard Taylor (1829), to which
+I refer. The first part of the _Diversions of Purley_ appeared in 1786;
+and the second part (with a new edition of the first) in 1798.
+
+[145] _Diversions of Purley_ (1829), i. 12, 131.
+
+[146] _Ibid._ ii. 362. Locke's work, says Prof. Max Müller in his
+_Science of Thought_, p. 295, 'is, as Lange in his _History of
+Materialism_ rightly perceived, a critique of language which, together
+with Kant's _Critique of the Pure Reason_, forms the starting-point of
+modern philosophy.' _See_ Lange's _Materialism_, (1873), i. 271.
+
+[147] _Ibid._ i. 49.
+
+[148] _Diversions of Purley_, i. 36, 42.
+
+[149] _Ibid._ i. 373.
+
+[150] _Ibid._ i. 374.
+
+[151] _Diversions of Purley_, ii. 18. Cf. Mill's statement in
+_Analysis_, i. 304, that 'abstract terms are concrete terms with the
+connotation dropped.'
+
+[152] _Ibid._ ii. 9, etc.
+
+[153] _Ibid._ ii. 399.
+
+[154] Stephens, ii. 497.
+
+[155] _Life of Mackintosh_, ii. 235-37.
+
+[156] Begun for the _Encyclopædia Metropolitana_ in 1818; and published
+in 1835-37. Dugald Stewart's chief criticism is in his Essays (_Works_,
+v. 149-188). John Fearn published his _Anti-Tooke_ in 1820.
+
+
+II. DUGALD STEWART
+
+If English philosophy was a blank, there was still a leader of high
+reputation in Scotland. Dugald Stewart (1753-1828) had a considerable
+influence upon the Utilitarians. He represented, on the one hand, the
+doctrines which they thought themselves specially bound to attack, and
+it may perhaps be held that in some ways he betrayed to them the key of
+the position. Stewart[157] was son of a professor of mathematics at
+Edinburgh. He studied at Glasgow (1771-72) where he became Reid's
+favourite pupil and devoted friend. In 1772 he became the assistant, and
+in 1775 the colleague, of his father, and he appears to have had a
+considerable knowledge of mathematics. In 1785 he succeeded Adam
+Ferguson as professor of moral philosophy and lectured continuously
+until 1810. He then gave up his active duties to Thomas Brown, devoting
+himself to the completion and publication of the substance of his
+lectures. Upon Brown's death in 1820, he resigned a post to which he was
+no longer equal. A paralytic stroke in 1822 weakened him, though he was
+still able to write. He died in 1828.
+
+If Stewart now makes no great mark in histories of philosophy, his
+personal influence was conspicuous. Cockburn describes him as of
+delicate appearance, with a massive head, bushy eyebrows, gray
+intelligent eyes, flexible mouth and expressive countenance. His voice
+was sweet and his ear exquisite. Cockburn never heard a better reader,
+and his manners, though rather formal, were graceful and dignified.
+James Mill, after hearing Pitt and Fox, declared that Stewart was their
+superior in eloquence. At Edinburgh, then at the height of its
+intellectual activity, he held his own among the ablest men and
+attracted the loyalty of the younger. Students came not only from
+Scotland but from England, the United States, France and Germany.[158]
+Scott won the professor's approval by an essay on the 'Customs of the
+Northern Nations.' Jeffrey, Horner, Cockburn and Mackintosh were among
+his disciples. His lectures upon Political Economy were attended by
+Sydney Smith, Jeffrey and Brougham, and one of his last hearers was Lord
+Palmerston. Parr looked up to him as a great philosopher, and
+contributed to his works an essay upon the etymology of the word
+'sublime,' too vast to be printed whole. Stewart was an upholder of Whig
+principles, when the Scottish government was in the hands of the
+staunchest Tories. The irreverent young Edinburgh Reviewers treated him
+with respect, and to some extent applied his theory to politics.
+Stewart was the philosophical heir of Reid; and, one may say, was a Whig
+both in philosophy and in politics. He was a rationalist, but within the
+limits fixed by respectability; and he dreaded the revolution in
+politics, and believed in the surpassing merits of the British
+Constitution as interpreted by the respectable Whigs.
+
+Stewart represents the 'common sense' doctrine. That name, as he
+observes, lends itself to an equivocation. Common sense is generally
+used as nearly synonymous with 'mother wit,' the average opinion of
+fairly intelligent men; and he would prefer to speak of the 'fundamental
+laws of belief.'[159] There can, however, be no doubt that the doctrine
+derived much of its strength from the apparent confirmation of the
+'average opinion' by the 'fundamental laws.' On one side, said Reid, are
+all the vulgar; on the other all the philosophers. 'In this division, to
+my great humiliation, I find myself classed with the vulgar.'[160] Reid,
+in fact, had opposed the theories of Hume and Berkeley because they led
+to a paradoxical scepticism. If it be, as Reid held, a legitimate
+inference from Berkeley that a man may as well run his head against a
+post, there can be no doubt that it is shocking to common sense in every
+acceptation of the word. The reasons, however, which Reid and Stewart
+alleged for not performing that feat took a special form, which I am
+compelled to notice briefly because they set up the mark for the whole
+intellectual artillery of the Utilitarians. Reid, in fact, invented what
+J. S. Mill called 'intuitions.' To confute intuitionists and get rid of
+intuitions was one main purpose of all Mill's speculations. What, then,
+is an 'intuition'? To explain that fully it would be necessary to write
+once more that history of the philosophical movement from Descartes to
+Hume, which has been summarised and elucidated by so many writers that
+it should be as plain as the road from St. Paul's to Temple Bar. I am
+forced to glance at the position taken by Reid and Stewart because it
+has a most important bearing upon the whole Utilitarian scheme. Reid's
+main service to philosophy was, in his own opinion,[161] that he refuted
+the 'ideal system' of Descartes and his followers. That system, he says,
+carried in its womb the monster, scepticism, which came to the birth in
+1739,[162] the date of Hume's early _Treatise_. To confute Hume,
+therefore, which was Reid's primary object, it was necessary to go back
+to Descartes, and to show where he deviated from the right track. In
+other words, we must trace the genealogy of 'ideas.' Descartes, as Reid
+admitted, had rendered immense services to philosophy. He had exploded
+the scholastic system, which had become a mere mass of logomachies and
+an incubus upon scientific progress. He had again been the first to
+'draw a distinct line between the material and the intellectual
+world'[163]; and Reid apparently assumes that he had drawn it correctly.
+One characteristic of the Cartesian school is obvious. Descartes, a
+great mathematician at the period when mathematical investigations were
+showing their enormous power, invented a mathematical universe.
+Mathematics presented the true type of scientific reasoning and
+determined his canons of inquiry. The 'essence' of matter, he said, was
+space. The objective world, as we have learned to call it, is simply
+space solidified or incarnate geometry. Its properties therefore could
+be given as a system of deductions from first principles, and it forms a
+coherent and self-subsistent whole. Meanwhile the essence of the soul is
+thought. Thought and matter are absolutely opposed. They are contraries,
+having nothing in common. Reality, however, seems to belong to the world
+of space. The brain, too, belongs to that world, and motions in the
+brain must be determined as a part of the material mechanism. In some
+way or other 'ideas' correspond to these motions; though to define the
+way tried all the ingenuity of Descartes' successors. In any case an
+idea is 'subjective': it is a thought, not a thing. It is a shifting,
+ephemeral entity not to be fixed or grasped. Yet, somehow or other, it
+exists, and it 'represents' realities; though the divine power has to be
+called in to guarantee the accuracy of the representation. The objective
+world, again, does not reveal itself to us as simply made up of 'primary
+qualities'; we know of it only as somehow endowed with 'secondary' or
+sense-given qualities: as visible, tangible, audible, and so forth.
+These qualities are plainly 'subjective'; they vary from man to man, and
+from moment to moment: they cannot be measured or fixed; and must be
+regarded as a product in some inexplicable way of the action of matter
+upon mind; unreal or, at any rate, not independent entities.
+
+In Locke's philosophy, the 'ideas,' legitimate or illegitimate
+descendants of the Cartesian theories, play a most prominent part.
+Locke's admirable common sense made him the leader who embodied a
+growing tendency. The empirical sciences were growing; and Locke, a
+student of medicine, could note the fallacies which arise from
+neglecting observation and experiment, and attempting to penetrate to
+the absolute essences and entities. Newton's great success was due to
+neglecting impossible problems about the nature of force in
+itself--'action at a distance' and so forth--and attention to the sphere
+of visible phenomena. The excessive pretensions of the framers of
+metaphysical systems had led to hopeless puzzles and merely verbal
+solutions. Locke, therefore, insisted upon the necessity of ascertaining
+the necessary limits of human knowledge. All our knowledge of material
+facts is obviously dependent in some way upon our sensations--however
+fleeting or unreal they may be. Therefore, the material sciences must
+depend upon sense-given data or upon observation and experiment. Hume
+gives the ultimate purpose, already implied in Locke's essay, when he
+describes his first treatise (on the title page) as an 'attempt to
+introduce the experimental mode of reasoning into moral subjects.' Now,
+as Reid thinks, the effect of this was to construct our whole knowledge
+out of the representative ideas. The empirical factor is so emphasised
+that we lose all grasp of the real world. Locke, indeed, though he
+insists upon the derivation of our whole knowledge from 'ideas,' leaves
+reality to the 'primary qualities' without clearly expounding their
+relation to the secondary. But Berkeley, alarmed by the tendency of the
+Cartesian doctrines to materialism and mechanical necessity, reduces the
+'primary' to the level of the 'secondary,' and proceeds to abolish the
+whole world of matter. We are thus left with nothing but 'ideas,' and
+the ideas are naturally 'subjective' and therefore in some sense
+unreal. Finally Hume gets rid of the soul as well as the outside world;
+and then, by his theory of 'causation,' shows that the ideas themselves
+are independent atoms, cohering but not rationally connected, and
+capable of being arbitrarily joined or separated in any way whatever.
+Thus the ideas have ousted the facts. We cannot get beyond ideas, and
+yet ideas are still purely subjective. The 'real' is separated from the
+phenomenal, and truth divorced from fact. The sense-given world is the
+whole world, and yet is a world of mere accidental conjunctions and
+separation. That is Hume's scepticism, and yet according to Reid is the
+legitimate development of Descartes' 'ideal system.' Reid, I take it,
+was right in seeing that there was a great dilemma. What was required to
+escape from it? According to Kant, nothing less than a revision of
+Descartes' mode of demarcation between object and subject. The 'primary
+qualities' do not correspond in this way to an objective world radically
+opposed to the subjective. Space is not a form of things, but a form
+imposed upon the data of experience by the mind itself. This, as Kant
+says, supposes a revolution in philosophy comparable to the revolution
+made by Copernicus in astronomy. We have completely to invert our whole
+system of conceiving the world. Whatever the value of Kant's doctrine,
+of which I need here say nothing, it was undoubtedly more prolific than
+Reid's. Reid's was far less thoroughgoing. He does not draw a new line
+between object and subject, but simply endeavours to show that the
+dilemma was due to certain assumptions about the nature of 'ideas.'
+
+The real had been altogether separated from the phenomenal, or truth
+divorced from fact. You can only have demonstrations by getting into a
+region beyond the sensible world; while within that world--that is, the
+region of ordinary knowledge and conduct--you are doomed to hopeless
+uncertainty. An escape, therefore, must be sought by some thorough
+revision of the assumed relation, but not by falling back upon the
+exploded philosophy of the schools. Reid and his successors were quite
+as much alive as Locke to the danger of falling into mere scholastic
+logomachy. They, too, will in some sense base all knowledge upon
+experience. Reid constantly appeals to the authority of Bacon, whom he
+regards as the true founder of inductive science. The great success of
+Bacon's method in the physical sciences, encouraged the hope, already
+expressed by Newton, that a similar result might be achieved in 'moral
+philosophy.'[164] Hume had done something to clear the way, but Reid
+was, as Stewart thinks, the first to perceive clearly and justly the
+'analogy between these two different branches of human knowledge.' The
+mind and matter are two co-ordinate things, whose properties are to be
+investigated by similar methods. Philosophy thus means essentially
+psychology. The two inquiries are two 'branches' of inductive science,
+and the problem is to discover by a perfectly impartial examination what
+are the 'fundamental laws of mind' revealed by an accurate analysis of
+the various processes of thought. The main result of Reid's
+investigations is given most pointedly in his early _Inquiry_, and was
+fully accepted by Stewart. Briefly it comes to this. No one can doubt
+that we believe, as a fact, in an external world. We believe that there
+are sun and moon, stones, sticks, and human bodies. This belief is
+accepted by the sceptic as well as by the dogmatist, although the
+sceptic reduces it to a mere blind custom or 'association of ideas.' Now
+Reid argues that the belief, whatever its nature, is not and cannot be
+derived from the sensations. We do not construct the visible and
+tangible world, for example, simply out of impressions made upon the
+senses of sight and touch. To prove this, he examines what are the
+actual data provided by these senses, and shows, or tries to show, that
+we cannot from them alone construct the world of space and geometry.
+Hence, if we consider experience impartially and without preconception,
+we find that it tells us something which is not given by the senses. The
+senses are not the material of our perceptions, but simply give the
+occasions upon which our belief is called into activity. The sensation
+is no more like the reality in which we believe than the pain of a wound
+is like the edge of the knife. Perception tells us directly and
+immediately, without the intervention of ideas, that there is, as we all
+believe, a real external world.
+
+Reid was a vigorous reasoner, and credit has been given to him by some
+disciples of Kant's doctrine of time and space. Schopenhauer[165] says
+that Reid's 'excellent work' gives a complete 'negative proof of the
+Kantian truths'; that is to say, that Reid proves satisfactorily that we
+cannot construct the world out of the sense-given data alone. But,
+whereas Kant regards the senses as supplying the materials moulded by
+the perceiving mind, Reid regards them as mere stimuli exciting certain
+inevitable beliefs. As a result of Reid's method, then, we have
+'intuitions.' Reid's essential contention is that a fair examination of
+experience will reveal certain fundamental beliefs, which cannot be
+explained as mere manifestations of the sensations, and which, by the
+very fact that they are inexplicable, must be accepted as an
+'inspiration.'[166] Reid professes to discover these beliefs by
+accurately describing facts. He finds them there as a chemist finds an
+element. The 'intuition' is made by substituting for 'ideas' a
+mysterious and inexplicable connection between the mind and matter.[167]
+The chasm exists still, but it is somehow bridged by a quasi-miracle.
+Admitting, therefore, that Reid shows a gap to exist in the theory, his
+result remains 'negative.' The philosopher will say that it is not
+enough to assert a principle dogmatically without showing its place in a
+reasoned system of thought. The psychologist, on the other hand, who
+takes Reid's own ground, may regard the statement only as a useful
+challenge to further inquiry. The analysis hitherto given may be
+insufficient, but where Reid has failed, other inquirers may be more
+successful. As soon, in fact, as we apply the psychological method, and
+regard the 'philosophy of mind' as an 'inductive science,' it is
+perilous, if not absolutely inconsistent, to discover 'intuitions' which
+will take us beyond experience. The line of defence against empiricism
+can only be provisional and temporary. In his main results, indeed, Reid
+had the advantage of being on the side of 'common sense.' Everybody was
+already convinced that there were sticks and stones, and everybody is
+prepared to hear that their belief is approved by philosophy. But a
+difficulty arises when a similar method is applied to a doctrine
+sincerely disputed. To the statement, 'this is a necessary belief,' it
+is a sufficient answer to reply, 'I don't believe it,' In that case, an
+intuition merely amounts to a dogmatic assumption that I am infallible,
+and must be supported by showing its connection with beliefs really
+universal and admittedly necessary.
+
+Dugald Stewart followed Reid upon this main question, and with less
+force and originality represents the same point of view. He accepts
+Reid's view of the two co-ordinate departments of knowledge; the science
+of which mind, and the science of which body, is the object. Philosophy
+is not a 'theory of knowledge' or of the universe; but, as it was then
+called, 'a philosophy of the human mind.' 'Philosophy' is founded upon
+inductive psychology; and it only becomes philosophy in a wider sense in
+so far as we discover that as a fact we have certain fundamental
+beliefs, which are thus given by experience, though they take us in a
+sense beyond experience. Jeffrey, reviewing Stewart's life of Reid, in
+the _Edinburgh Review_ of 1804, makes a significant inference from this.
+Bacon's method, he said, had succeeded in the physical sciences, because
+there we could apply experiment. But experiment is impossible in the
+science of mind; and therefore philosophy will never be anything but a
+plaything or a useful variety of gymnastic. Stewart replied at some
+length in his _Essays_,[168] fully accepting the general conception, but
+arguing that the experimental method was applicable to the science of
+mind. Jeffrey observes that it was now admitted that the 'profoundest
+reasonings' had brought us back to the view of the vulgar, and this,
+too, is admitted by Stewart so far as the cardinal doctrine of 'the
+common sense' philosophy, the theory of perception, is admitted.
+
+From this, again, it follows that the 'notions we annex to the words
+Matter and Mind are merely relative.'[169] We know that mind exists as
+we know that matter exists; or, if anything, we know the existence of
+mind more certainly because more directly. The mind is suggested by 'the
+subjects of our consciousness'; the body by the objects 'of our
+perception.' But, on the other hand, we are totally 'ignorant of the
+essence of either.'[170] We can discover the laws either of mental or
+moral phenomena; but a law, as he explains, means in strictness nothing
+but a 'general fact.'[171] It is idle, therefore, to explain the nature
+of the union between the two unknowable substances; we can only discover
+that they are united and observe the laws according to which one set of
+phenomena corresponds to the other. From a misunderstanding of this
+arise all the fallacies of scholastic ontology, 'the most idle and
+absurd speculation that ever employed the human faculties.'[172] The
+destruction of that pseudo-science was the great glory of Bacon and
+Locke; and Reid has now discovered the method by which we may advance to
+the establishment of a truly inductive 'philosophy of mind.'
+
+It is not surprising that Stewart approximates in various directions to
+the doctrines of the empirical school. He leans towards them whenever he
+does not see the results to which he is tending. Thus, for example, he
+is a thoroughgoing nominalist;[173] and on this point he deserts the
+teaching of Reid. He defends against Reid the attack made by Berkeley
+and Hume upon 'abstract ideas.' Rosmini,[174] in an elaborate criticism,
+complains that Stewart did not perceive the inevitable tendency of
+nominalism to materialism.[175] Stewart, in fact, accepts a good deal of
+Horne Tooke's doctrine,[176] though calling Tooke an 'ingenious
+grammarian, not a very profound philosopher,' but holds, as we shall
+see, that the materialistic tendency can be avoided. As becomes a
+nominalist, he attacks the syllogism upon grounds more fully brought out
+by J. S. Mill. Upon another essential point, he agrees with the pure
+empiricists. He accepts Hume's view of causation in all questions of
+physical science. In natural philosophy, he declares causation means
+only conjunction. The senses can never give us the 'efficient' cause of
+any phenomenon. In other words, we can never see a 'necessary
+connection' between any two events. He collects passages from earlier
+writers to show how Hume had been anticipated; and holds that Bacon's
+inadequate view of this truth was a main defect in his theories.[177]
+Hence we have a characteristic conclusion. He says, when discussing the
+proofs of the existence of God,[178] that we have an 'irresistible
+conviction of the _necessity_ of a cause' for every change. Hume,
+however, has shown that this can never be a logical necessity. It must
+then, argues Stewart, be either a 'prejudice' or an 'intuitive
+judgment.' Since it is shown by 'universal consent' not to be a
+prejudice, it must be an intuitive judgment. Thus Hume's facts are
+accepted; but his inference denied. The actual causal nexus is
+inscrutable. The conviction that there must be a connection between
+events attributed by Hume to 'custom' is attributed by Stewart to
+intuitive belief. Stewart infers that Hume's doctrine is really
+favourable to theology. It implies that God gives us the conviction, and
+perhaps, as Malebranche held, that God is 'the constantly operating
+efficient Cause in the material world.'[179] Stewart's successor, Thomas
+Brown, took up this argument on occasion of the once famous 'Leslie
+controversy'; and Brown's teaching was endorsed by James Mill and by
+John Stuart Mill.
+
+According to J. S. Mill, James Mill and Stewart represented opposite
+poles of philosophic thought. I shall have to consider this dictum
+hereafter. On the points already noticed Stewart must be regarded as an
+ally rather than an opponent of the Locke and Hume tradition. Like them
+he appeals unhesitatingly to experience, and cannot find words strong
+enough to express his contempt for 'ontological' and scholastic methods.
+His 'intuitions' are so far very harmless things, which fall in with
+common sense, and enable him to hold without further trouble the beliefs
+which, as a matter of fact, are held by everybody. They are an excuse
+for not seeking any ultimate explanation in reason. He is, indeed,
+opposed to the school which claimed to be the legitimate successor to
+Locke, but which evaded Hume's scepticism by diverging towards
+materialism. The great representative of this doctrine in England had
+been Hartley, and in Stewart's day Hartley's lead had been followed by
+Priestley, who attacked Reid from a materialist point of view, by
+Priestley's successor, Thomas Belsham, and by Erasmus Darwin. We find
+Stewart, in language which reminds us of later controversy, denouncing
+the 'Darwinian School'[180] for theories about instinct incompatible
+with the doctrine of final causes. It might appear that a philosopher
+who has re-established the objective existence of space in opposition to
+Berkeley, was in danger of that materialism which had been Berkeley's
+bugbear. But Stewart escapes the danger by his assertion that our
+knowledge of matter is 'relative' or confined to phenomena. Materialism
+is for him a variety of ontology, involving the assumption that we know
+the essence of matter. To speak with Hartley of 'vibrations,' animal
+spirits, and so forth, is to be led astray by a false analogy. We can
+discover the laws of correspondence of mind and body, but not the
+ultimate nature of either.[181] Thus he regards the 'physiological
+metaphysics of the present day' as an 'idle waste of labour and
+ingenuity on questions to which the human mind is altogether
+incompetent.'[182] The principles found by inductive observation are as
+independent of these speculations as Newton's theory of gravitation of
+an ultimate mechanical cause of gravitation.
+
+Hartley's followers, however, could drop the 'vibration' theory; and
+their doctrine then became one of 'association of ideas.' To this famous
+theory, which became the sheet-anchor of the empirical school, Stewart
+is not altogether opposed. We find him speaking of 'indissoluble
+association' in language which reminds us of the Mills.[183] Hume had
+spoken of association as comparable to gravitation--the sole principle
+by which our 'ideas' and 'impressions' are combined into a whole; a
+theory, of course, corresponding to his doctrine of 'belief' as a mere
+custom of associating. Stewart uses the principle rather as Locke had
+done, as explaining fallacies due to 'casual associations.' It supposes,
+as he says, the previous existence of certain principles, and cannot be
+an ultimate explanation. The only question can be at what point we have
+reached an 'original principle,' and are therefore bound to stop our
+analysis.[184] Over this question he glides rather too lightly, as is
+his custom; but from his point of view the belief, for example, in an
+external world, cannot be explained by association, inasmuch as it
+reveals itself as an ultimate datum.
+
+In regard to the physical sciences, then, Stewart's position
+approximates very closely to the purely 'empirical' view. When we come
+to a different application of his principles, we find him taking a
+curiously balanced position between different schools. 'Common sense'
+naturally wishes to adapt itself to generally accepted beliefs; and with
+so flexible a doctrine as that of 'intuitions' it is not difficult to
+discover methods of proving the ordinary dogmas. Stewart's theology is
+characteristic of this tendency. He describes the so-called _a priori_
+proof, as formulated by Clarke. But without denying its force, he does
+not like to lay stress upon it. He dreads 'ontology' too much. He
+therefore considers that the argument at once most satisfactory to the
+philosopher and most convincing to ordinary men is the argument from
+design. The belief in God is not 'intuitive,' but follows immediately
+from two first principles: the principle that whatever exists has a
+cause, and the principle that a 'combination of means implies a
+designer.'[185] The belief in a cause arises on our perception of change
+as our belief in the external world arises upon our sensations. The
+belief in design must be a 'first principle' because it includes a
+belief in 'necessity' which cannot arise from mere observation of
+'contingent truths.'[186] Hence Stewart accepts the theory of final
+causes as stated by Paley. Though Paley's ethics offended him, he has
+nothing but praise for the work upon _Natural Theology_.[187] Thus,
+although 'common sense' does not enable us to lay down the central
+doctrine of theology as a primary truth, it does enable us to interpret
+experience in theological terms. In other words, his theology is of the
+purely empirical kind, which was, as we shall see, the general
+characteristic of the time.
+
+In Stewart's discussion of ethical problems the same doctrine of 'final
+causes' assumes a special importance. Stewart, as elsewhere, tries to
+hold an intermediate position; to maintain the independence of morality
+without committing himself to the 'ontological' or purely logical view;
+and to show that virtue conduces to happiness without allowing that its
+dictates are to be deduced from its tendency to produce happiness. His
+doctrine is to a great extent derived from the teaching of Hutcheson and
+Bishop Butler. He really approximates most closely to Hutcheson, who
+takes a similar view of Utilitarianism, but he professes the warmest
+admiration of Butler. He explicitly accepts Butler's doctrine of the
+'supremacy of the conscience'--a doctrine which as he says, the bishop,
+'has placed in the strongest and happiest light.'[188] He endeavours,
+again, to approximate to the 'intellectual school,' of which Richard
+Price (1723-1791) was the chief English representative at the time. Like
+Kant, Price deduces the moral law from principles of pure reason. The
+truth of the moral law, 'Thou shalt do to others as you wish that they
+should do to you,' is as evident as the truth of the law in geometry,
+'things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.'
+Stewart so far approves that he wishes to give to the moral law what is
+now called all possible 'objectivity,' while the 'moral sense' of
+Hutcheson apparently introduced a 'subjective' element. He holds,
+however, that our moral perceptions 'involve a feeling of the heart,' as
+well as a 'judgment of the understanding,'[189] and ascribes the same
+view to Butler. But then, by using the word 'reason' so as to include
+the whole nature of a rational being, we may ascribe to it the 'origin
+of those simple ideas which are not excited in the mind by the operation
+of the senses, but which arise in consequence of the operation of the
+intellectual powers among the various objects.'[190] Hutcheson, he says,
+made his 'moral sense' unsatisfactory by taking his illustrations from
+the 'secondary' instead of the 'primary qualities,'[191] and thus with
+the help of intuitive first principles, Stewart succeeds in believing
+that it would be as hard for a man to believe that he ought to sacrifice
+another man's happiness to his own as to believe that three angles of a
+triangle are equal to one right angle.[192] It is true that a feeling
+and a judgment are both involved; but the 'intellectual judgment' is the
+groundwork of the feeling, not the feeling of the judgment.[193] In
+spite, however, of this attempt to assimilate his principles to those of
+the intellectual school, the substance of Stewart's ethics is
+essentially psychological. It rests, in fact, upon his view that
+philosophy depends upon inductive psychology, and, therefore,
+essentially upon experience subject to the cropping up of convenient
+'intuitions.'
+
+This appears from the nature of his argument against the Utilitarians.
+In his time, this doctrine was associated with the names of Hartley,
+Tucker, Godwin, and especially Paley. He scarcely refers to
+Bentham.[194] Paley is the recognised anvil for the opposite school. Now
+he agrees, as I have said, with Paley's view of natural theology and
+entirely accepts therefore the theory of 'final causes.' The same theory
+becomes prominent in his ethical teaching. We may perhaps say that
+Stewart's view is in substance an inverted Utilitarianism. It may be
+best illustrated by an argument familiar in another application. Paley
+and his opponents might agree that the various instincts of an animal
+are so constituted that in point of fact they contribute to his
+preservation and his happiness. But from one point of view this appears
+to be simply to say that the conditions of existence necessitate a
+certain harmony, and that the harmony is therefore to be a consequence
+of his self-preservation. From the opposite point of view, which Stewart
+accepts, it appears that the self-preservation is the consequence of a
+pre-established harmony, which has been divinely appointed in order that
+he may live. Stewart, in short, is a 'teleologist' of the Paley variety.
+Psychology proves the existence of design in the moral world, as anatomy
+or physiology proves it in the physical.
+
+Stewart therefore fully agrees that virtue generally produces happiness.
+If it be true (a doctrine, he thinks, beyond our competence to decide)
+that 'the sole principle of action in the Deity' is benevolence, it may
+be that he has commanded us to be virtuous because he sees virtue to be
+useful. In this case utility may be the final cause of morality; and the
+fact that virtue has this tendency gives the plausibility to utilitarian
+systems.[195] But the key to the difficulty is the distinction between
+'final' and 'efficient' causes; for the efficient cause of morality is
+not the desire for happiness, but a primitive and simple instinct,
+namely, the moral faculty.
+
+Thus he rejects Paley's notorious doctrine that virtue differs from
+prudence only in regarding the consequences in another world instead of
+consequences in this.[196] Reward and punishment 'presuppose the notions
+of right and wrong' and cannot be the source of those notions. The
+favourite doctrine of association, by which the Utilitarians explained
+unselfishness, is only admissible as accounting for modifications, such
+as are due to education and example, but 'presupposes the existence of
+certain principles which are common to all mankind.' The evidence of
+such principles is established by a long and discursive psychological
+discussion. It is enough to say that he admits two rational principles,
+'self-love' and the 'moral faculty,' the coincidence of which is learned
+only by experience. The moral faculty reveals simple 'ideas' of right
+and wrong, which are incapable of any further analysis. But besides
+these, there is a hierarchy of other instincts or desires, which he
+calls 'implanted' because 'for aught we know' they may be of 'arbitrary
+appointment.'[197] Resentment, for example, is an implanted instinct, of
+which the 'final cause' is to defend us against 'sudden violence.'[198]
+Stewart's analysis is easygoing and suggests more problems than it
+solves. The general position, however, is clear enough, and not, I
+think, without much real force as against the Paley form of
+utilitarianism.
+
+The acceptance of the doctrine of 'final causes' was the inevitable
+course for a philosopher who wishes to retain the old creeds and yet to
+appeal unequivocally to experience. It suits the amiable optimism for
+which Stewart is noticeable. To prove the existence of a perfect deity
+from the evidence afforded by the world, you must of course take a
+favourable view of the observable order. Stewart shows the same tendency
+in his Political Economy, where he is Adam Smith's disciple, and fully
+shares Smith's beliefs that the harmony between the interests of the
+individual and the interests of the society is an evidence of design in
+the Creator of mankind. In this respect Stewart differs notably from
+Butler, to whose reasonings he otherwise owed a good deal. With Butler
+the conscience implies a dread of divine wrath and justifies the
+conception of a world alienated from its maker. Stewart's 'moral
+faculty' simply recognises or reveals the moral law; but carries no
+suggestion of supernatural penalties. The doctrines by which Butler
+attracted some readers and revolted others throw no shadow over his
+writings. He is a placid enlightened professor, whose real good feeling
+and frequent shrewdness should not be overlooked in consequence of the
+rather desultory and often superficial mode of reasoning. This, however,
+suggests a final remark upon Stewart's position.
+
+In the preface[199] to his _Active and Moral Powers_ (1828) Stewart
+apologises for the large space given to the treatment of Natural
+Religion. The lectures, he says, which form the substance of the book,
+were given at a time when 'enlightened zeal for liberty' was associated
+with the 'reckless boldness of the uncompromising freethinker.' He
+wished, therefore, to show that a man could be a liberal without being
+an atheist. This gives the position characteristic of Stewart and his
+friends. The group of eminent men who made Edinburgh a philosophical
+centre was thoroughly in sympathy with the rationalist movement of the
+eighteenth century. The old dogmatic system of belief could be held very
+lightly even by the more educated clergy. Hume's position is
+significant. He could lay down the most unqualified scepticism in his
+writings; but he always regarded his theories as intended for the
+enlightened; he had no wish to disturb popular beliefs in theology, and
+was a strong Tory in politics. His friends were quite ready to take him
+upon that footing. The politeness with which 'Mr. Hume's' speculations
+are noticed by men like Stewart and Reid is in characteristic contrast
+to the reception generally accorded to more popular sceptics. They were
+intellectual curiosities not meant for immediate application. The real
+opinion of such men as Adam Smith and Stewart was probably a rather
+vague and optimistic theism. In the professor's chair they could talk to
+lads intended for the ministry without insulting such old Scottish
+prejudice (there was a good deal of it) as survived: and could cover
+rationalising opinions under language which perhaps might have a
+different meaning for their hearers. The position was necessarily one of
+tacit compromise. Stewart considers himself to be an inductive
+philosopher appealing frankly to experience and reason; and was in
+practice a man of thoroughly liberal and generous feelings. He was
+heartily in favour of progress as he understood it. Only he will not
+sacrifice common sense; that is to say, the beliefs which are in fact
+prevalent and congenial to existing institutions. Common sense, of
+course, condemns extremes: and if logic seems to be pushing a man
+towards scepticism in philosophy or revolution in practice, he can
+always protest by the convenient device of intuitions.
+
+I have gone so far in order to illustrate the nature of the system which
+the Utilitarians took to be the antithesis of their own. It may be
+finally remarked that at present both sides were equally ignorant of
+contemporary developments of German thought. When Stewart became aware
+that there was such a thing as Kant's philosophy, he tried to read it in
+a Latin version. Parr, I may observe, apparently did not know of this
+version, and gave up the task of reading German. Stewart's example was
+not encouraging. He had abandoned the 'undertaking in despair' partly
+from the scholastic barbarism of the style, partly 'my utter inability
+to comprehend the author's meaning.' He recognises similarity between
+Kant and Reid, but thinks Reid's simple statement of the fact that space
+cannot be derived from the senses more philosophical than Kant's
+'superstructure of technical mystery.'[200]
+
+I have dwelt upon the side in which Stewart's philosophy approximates to
+the empirical school, because the Utilitarians were apt to misconceive
+the position. They took Stewart to be the adequate representative of all
+who accepted one branch of an inevitable dilemma. The acceptance of
+'intuitions,' that is, was the only alternative to thoroughgoing
+acceptance of 'experience.' They supposed, too, that persons vaguely
+described as 'Kant and the Germans' taught simply a modification of the
+'intuitionist' view. I have noticed how emphatically Stewart claimed to
+rely upon experience and to base his philosophy upon inductive
+psychology, and was so far admitting the first principles and the
+general methods of his opponents. The Scottish philosophy, however,
+naturally presented itself as an antagonistic force to the Utilitarians.
+The 'intuitions' represented the ultimate ground taken, especially in
+religious and ethical questions, by men who wished to be at once liberal
+philosophers and yet to avoid revolutionary extremes. 'Intuitions' had
+in any case a negative value, as protests against the sufficiency of the
+empirical analysis. It might be quite true, for example, that Hume's
+analysis of certain primary mental phenomena--of our belief in the
+external world or of the relation of cause and effect--was radically
+insufficient. He had not given an adequate explanation of the facts. The
+recognition of the insufficiency of his reasoning was highly important
+if only as a stimulus to inquiry. It was a warning to his and to
+Hartley's followers that they had not thoroughly unravelled the
+perplexity but only cut the knot. But when the insufficiency of the
+explanation was interpreted as a demonstration that all explanation was
+impossible, and the 'intuition' an ultimate 'self-evident' truth, it
+became a refusal to inquire just where inquiry was wanted; a positive
+command to stop analysis at an arbitrary point; and a round assertion
+that the adversary could not help believing precisely the doctrine which
+he altogether declined to believe. Naturally the empiricists refused to
+bow to an authority which was simply saying, 'Don't inquire further,'
+without any ground for the prohibition except the '_ipse dixitism_'
+which declared that inquiry must be fruitless. Stewart, in fact, really
+illustrated the equivocation between the two meanings of 'common sense.'
+If by that name he understood, as he professed to understand, ultimate
+'laws of thought,' his position was justifiable as soon as he could
+specify the laws and prove that they were ultimate. But so far as he
+virtually took for granted that the average beliefs of intelligent
+people were such laws, and on that ground refused to examine the
+evidence of their validity, he was inconsistent, and his position only
+invited assault. As a fact, I believe that his 'intuitions' covered many
+most disputable propositions; and that the more clearly they were
+stated, the more they failed to justify his interpretations. He was not
+really answering the most vital and critical questions, but implicitly
+reserving them, and putting an arbitrary stop to investigations
+desirable on his own principles.
+
+The Scottish philosophy was, however, accepted in England, and made a
+considerable impression in France, as affording a tenable barrier
+against scepticism. It was, as I have said, in philosophy what
+Whiggism was in politics. Like political Whiggism it included a large
+element of enlightened and liberal rationalism; but like Whiggism it
+covered an aversion to thoroughgoing logic. The English politician was
+suspicious of abstract principles, but could cover his acceptance of
+tradition and rule of thumb by general phrases about liberty and
+toleration. The Whig in philosophy equally accepted the traditional
+creed, sufficiently purified from cruder elements, and sheltered his
+doctrine by speaking of 'intuitions and laws of thought.' In both
+positions there was really, I take it, a great deal of sound practical
+wisdom; but they also implied a marked reluctance to push inquiry too
+far, and a tacit agreement to be content with what the Utilitarians
+denounced as 'vague generalities'--phrases, that is, which might be
+used either to conceal an underlying scepticism, or really to stop
+short in the path which led to scepticism. In philosophy as in
+politics, the Utilitarians boasted of being thoroughgoing Radicals,
+and hated compromises which to them appeared to be simply obstructive.
+I need not elaborate a point which will meet us again. If I were
+writing a history of thought in general I should have to notice other
+writers, though there were none of much distinction, who followed the
+teaching of Stewart or of his opponents of the Hartley and Darwin
+school. It would be necessary also to insist upon the growing interest
+in the physical sciences, which were beginning not only to make
+enormous advances, but to attract popular attention. For my purpose,
+however, it is I think sufficient to mention these writers, each of
+whom had a very special relation to the Utilitarians. I turn,
+therefore, to Bentham.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[157] Nine volumes of Dugald Stewart's works, edited by Sir W. Hamilton,
+appeared from 1854 to 1856; a tenth, including a life of Stewart by J.
+Veitch, appeared in 1858, and an eleventh, with an index to the whole,
+in 1860. The chief books are the _Elements of the Philosophy of the
+Human Mind_ (in vols. ii., iii. and iv., originally in 1792, 1814,
+1827); _Philosophical Essays_ (in vol. v., originally 1810); _Philosophy
+of the Active and Moral Powers of Man_ (vols. vi. and vii., originally
+in 1828); _Dissertation on the Progress of Philosophy_ (in vol. i.;
+originally in _Encyclopædia Britannica_, in 1815 and 1821). The lectures
+on Political Economy first appeared in the _Works_, vols. viii. and ix.
+
+[158] _Works_, vi. ('Preface').
+
+[159] _Works_ (Life of Reid), x. 304-8.
+
+[160] Reid's _Works_ (Hamilton), p. 302.
+
+[161] Reid's _Works_ (Hamilton), p. 88.
+
+[162] _Ibid._ 206.
+
+[163] _Ibid._ 267.
+
+[164] Stewart's remarks on his life of Reid: Reid's _Works_, p. 12, etc.
+
+[165] _The World as Will and Idea_ (Haldane & Kemp), ii. 186. Reid's
+'_Inquiry_,' he adds, is ten times better worth reading than all the
+philosophy together which has been written since Kant.
+
+[166] 'We are inspired with the sensation, as we are inspired with the
+corresponding perception, by means unknown.'--Reid's _Works_, 188.
+'This,' says Stewart, 'is a plain statement of fact.'--Stewart's
+_Works_, ii. 111-12.
+
+[167] See Rosmini's _Origin of Ideas_ (English translation), i. p. 91,
+where, though sympathising with Reid's aim, he admits a 'great blunder.'
+
+[168] Stewart's _Works_, v. 24-53. Hamilton says in a note (p. 41) that
+Jeffrey candidly confessed Stewart's reply to be satisfactory.
+
+[169] _Ibid._ ii. 46.
+
+[170] _Ibid._ ii. 45-67.
+
+[171] _Ibid._ ii. 159.
+
+[172] _Ibid._ v. 21.
+
+[173] Stewart's _Works_, ii. 165-93; iii. 81-97. Schopenhauer (_The
+World as Will and Idea_, ii. 240) admires Reid's teaching upon this
+point, and recommends us not 'to waste an hour over the scribblings of
+this shallow writer' (Stewart).
+
+[174] Rosmini's _Origin of Ideas_ (English translation), i. 96-176.
+
+[175] _Ibid._ i. 147 _n._
+
+[176] Stewart's _Works_, iv. 29, 35, 38, and v. 149-88.
+
+[177] _Ibid._ ii. 97, etc., and iii. 235, 389, 417.
+
+[178] _Works_, vii. 13-34.
+
+[179] _Ibid._ vii. 26, etc.
+
+[180] _Works_, iv. 265.
+
+[181] _Ibid._ ii. 52.
+
+[182] _Ibid._ v. 10.
+
+[183] _Works_, ii. 155.
+
+[184] _Ibid._ ii. 337.
+
+[185] _Works_, vi. 46; vii. 11.
+
+[186] _Ibid._ vii. 46.
+
+[187] _Ibid._ i. 357.
+
+[188] _Works_, vi. 320.
+
+[189] _Ibid._ vi. 279.
+
+[190] _Ibid._ vi. 297.
+
+[191] _Works_, vi. 295. Cf. v. 83.
+
+[192] _Ibid._ vi. 298-99.
+
+[193] _Ibid._ v. 84.
+
+[194] In _Works_, vi. 205-6, he quotes Dumont's _Bentham_; but his
+general silence is the more significant, as in the lectures on Political
+Economy he makes frequent and approving reference to Bentham's tract
+upon usury.
+
+[195] _Works_, vii. 236-38.
+
+[196] _Ibid._ vi. 221.
+
+[197] _Works_, vi. 213.
+
+[198] _Ibid._ vi. 199.
+
+[199] _Works_, vi. 111.
+
+[200] _Works_, v. 117 18. I have given some details as to Stewart's
+suffering under an English proselyte of Kant in my _Studies of a
+Biographer_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BENTHAM'S LIFE
+
+
+I. EARLY LIFE
+
+Jeremy Bentham,[201] the patriarch of the English Utilitarians, sprang
+from the class imbued most thoroughly with the typical English
+prejudices. His first recorded ancestor, Brian Bentham, was a
+pawnbroker, who lost money by the stop of the Exchequer in 1672, but was
+neither ruined, nor, it would seem, alienated by the king's dishonesty.
+He left some thousands to his son, Jeremiah, an attorney and a strong
+Jacobite. A second Jeremiah, born 2nd December 1712, carried on his
+father's business, and though his clients were not numerous, increased
+his fortune by judicious investments in houses and lands. Although
+brought up in Jacobite principles, he transferred his attachment to the
+Hanoverian dynasty when a relation of his wife married a valet of George
+II. The wife, Alicia Grove, was daughter of a tradesman who had made a
+small competence at Andover. Jeremiah Bentham had fallen in love with
+her at first sight, and wisely gave up for her sake a match with a
+fortune of £10,000. The couple were fondly attached to each other and to
+their children. The marriage took place towards the end of 1744, and the
+eldest son, Jeremy, was born in Red Lion Street, Houndsditch, 4th
+February 1747-48 (o.s.) The only other child who grew up was Samuel,
+afterwards Sir Samuel Bentham, born 11th January 1757. When eighty years
+old, Jeremy gave anecdotes of his infancy to his biographer, Bowring,
+who says that their accuracy was confirmed by contemporary documents,
+and proved his memory to be as wonderful as his precocity. Although the
+child was physically puny, his intellectual development was amazing.
+Before he was two he burst into tears at the sight of his mother's
+chagrin upon his refusal of some offered dainty. Before he was
+'breeched,' an event which happened when he was three and a quarter, he
+ran home from a dull walk, ordered a footman to bring lights and place a
+folio _Rapin_ upon the table, and was found plunged in historical
+studies when his parents returned to the house. In his fourth year he
+was imbibing the Latin grammar, and at the age of five years nine months
+and nineteen days, as his father notes, he wrote a scrap of Latin,
+carefully pasted among the parental memoranda. The child was not always
+immured in London. His parents spent their Sundays with the grandfather
+Bentham at Barking, and made occasional excursions to the house of Mrs.
+Bentham's mother at Browning Hill, near Reading. Bentham remembered the
+last as a 'paradise,' and a love of flowers and gardens became one of
+his permanent passions.
+
+Jeremy cherished the memory of his mother's tenderness. The father,
+though less sympathetic, was proud of his son's precocity, and
+apparently injudicious in stimulating the unformed intellect. The boy
+was almost a dwarf in size. When sixteen he grew ahead,[202] and was so
+feeble that he could scarcely drag himself upstairs. Attempts to teach
+him dancing failed from the extreme weakness of his knees.[203] He
+showed a taste for music, and could scrape a minuet on the fiddle at six
+years of age. He read all such books as came in his way. His parents
+objected to light literature, and he was crammed with such solid works
+as _Rapin_, Burnet's _Theory of the Earth_, and Cave's _Lives of the
+Apostles_. Various accidents, however, furnished him with better food
+for the imagination. He wept for hours over _Clarissa Harlowe_, studied
+_Gulliver's Travels_ as an authentic document, and dipped into a variety
+of such books as then drifted into middle-class libraries. A French
+teacher introduced him to some remarkable books. He read _Télémaque_,
+which deeply impressed him, and, as he thought, implanted in his mind
+the seeds of later moralising. He attacked unsuccessfully some of
+Voltaire's historical works, and even read _Candide_, with what emotions
+we are not told. The servants meanwhile filled his fancy with ghosts and
+hobgoblins. To the end of his days he was still haunted by the imaginary
+horrors in the dark,[204] and he says[205] that they had been among the
+torments of his life. He had few companions of his own age, and though
+he was 'not unhappy' and was never subjected to corporal punishment, he
+felt more awe than affection for his father. His mother, to whom he was
+strongly attached, died on 6th January 1759.
+
+Bentham was thus a strangely precocious, and a morbidly sensitive child,
+when it was decided in 1755 to send him to Westminster. The headmaster,
+Dr. Markham, was a friend of his father's. Westminster, he says,
+represented 'hell' for him when Browning Hill stood for paradise. The
+instruction 'was wretched,' The fagging system was a 'horrid despotism.'
+The games were too much for his strength. His industry, however, enabled
+him to escape the birch, no small achievement in those days,[206] and he
+became distinguished in the studies such as they were. He learned the
+catechism by heart, and was good at Greek and Latin verses, which he
+manufactured for his companions as well as himself. He had also the
+rarer accomplishment, acquired from his early tutor, of writing more
+easily in French than English. Some of his writings were originally
+composed in French. He was, according to Bowring, elected to one of the
+King's scholarships when between nine and ten, but as 'ill-usage was
+apprehended' the appointment was declined.[207] He was at a
+boarding-house, and the life of the boys on the foundation was probably
+rougher. In June 1760 his father took him to Oxford, and entered him as
+a commoner at Queen's College. He came into residence in the following
+October, when only twelve years old. Oxford was not more congenial than
+Westminster. He had to sign the Thirty-nine Articles in spite of
+scruples suppressed by authority. The impression made upon him by this
+childish compliance never left him to the end of his life.[208] His
+experience resembled that of Adam Smith and Gibbon. Laziness and vice
+were prevalent. A gentleman commoner of Queen's was president of a
+'hellfire club,' and brutal horseplay was still practised upon the
+weaker lads. Bentham, still a schoolboy in age, continued his schoolboy
+course. He wrote Latin verses, and one of his experiments, an ode upon
+the death of George II., was sent to Johnson, who called it 'a very
+pretty performance for a young man.' He also had to go through the form
+of disputation in the schools. Queen's College had some reputation at
+this time for teaching logic.[209] Bentham was set to read Watt's
+_Logic_ (1725), Sanderson's _Compendium artis Logicae_ (1615), and
+Rowning's _Compendious System of Natural Philosophy_ (1735-42). Some
+traces of these studies remained in his mind.
+
+In 1763 Bentham took his B.A. degree, and returned to his home. It is
+significant that when robbed of all his money at Oxford he did not
+confide in his father. He was paying by a morbid reserve for the
+attempts made to force him into premature activity. He accepted the
+career imposed by his father's wishes, and in November 1763 began to eat
+his dinners in Lincoln's Inn. He returned, however, to Oxford in
+December to hear Blackstone's lectures. These lectures were then a
+novelty at an English university. The Vinerian professorship had been
+founded in 1758 in consequence of the success of a course voluntarily
+given by Blackstone; and his lectures contained the substance of the
+famous Commentaries, first published 1765-1769. They had a great effect
+upon Bentham. He says that he 'immediately detected Blackstone's fallacy
+respecting natural rights,' thought other doctrines illogical, and was
+so much occupied by these reflections as to be unable to take notes.
+Bentham's dissatisfaction with Blackstone had not yet made him an
+opponent of the constituted order. He was present at some of the
+proceedings against Wilkes, and was perfectly bewitched by Lord
+Mansfield's '_Grim-gibber_,' that is, taken in by his pompous
+verbiage.[210]
+
+In 1765 his father married Mrs. Abbot, the mother of Charles Abbot,
+afterwards Lord Colchester. Bentham's dislike of his step-mother
+increased the distance between him and his father. He took his M.A.
+degree in 1766 and in 1767 finally left Oxford for London to begin, as
+his father fondly hoped, a flight towards the woolsack. The lad's
+diffidence and extreme youth had indeed prevented him from forming the
+usual connections which his father anticipated as the result of a
+college life. His career as a barrister was short and grievously
+disappointing to the parental hopes. His father, like the Elder Fairford
+in _Redgauntlet_, had 'a cause or two at nurse' for the son. The son's
+first thought was to 'put them to death,' A brief was given to him in a
+suit, upon which £50 depended. He advised that the suit should be
+dropped and the money saved. Other experiences only increased his
+repugnance to his profession.[211] A singularly strong impression had
+been made upon him by the _Memoirs_ of Teresa Constantia Phipps, in
+which there is an account of vexatious legal proceedings as to the
+heroine's marriage. He appears to have first read this book
+in 1759. Then, he says, the 'Demon of Chicane appeared to me
+in all his hideousness. I vowed war against him. My vow has been
+accomplished!'[212] Bentham thus went to the bar as a 'bear to the
+stake.' He diverged in more than one direction. He studied chemistry
+under Fordyce (1736-1802), and hankered after physical science. He was
+long afterwards (1788) member of a club to which Sir Joseph Banks, John
+Hunter, R. L. Edgeworth, and other men of scientific reputation
+belonged.[213] But he had drifted into a course of speculation, which,
+though more germane to legal studies, was equally fatal to professional
+success. The father despaired, and he was considered to be a 'lost
+child.'
+
+NOTES:
+
+[201] The main authority for Bentham's Life is Bowring's account in the
+two last volumes of the _Works_. Bain's _Life of James Mill_ gives some
+useful facts as to the later period. There is comparatively little
+mention of Bentham in contemporary memoirs. Little is said of him in
+Romilly's _Life_. Parr's _Works_, i. and viii., contains some letters.
+See also R. Dale Owen's _Threading my Way_ pp. 175-78. A little book
+called _Utilitarianism Unmasked_, by the Rev. J. F. Colls, D.D. (1844),
+gives some reminiscences by Colls, who had been Bentham's amanuensis for
+fourteen years. Colls, who took orders, disliked Bentham's religious
+levity, and denounces his vanity, but admits his early kindness.
+Voluminous collections of the papers used by Bowring are at University
+College, and at the British Museum.
+
+[202] _Works_, x. 33.
+
+[203] _Ibid._ x. 31.
+
+[204] _Ibid._ ix. 84.
+
+[205] _Ibid._ x. 18.
+
+[206] Southey was expelled from Westminster in 1792 for attacking the
+birch in a schoolboy paper.
+
+[207] _Works_, x. 38. Bowring's confused statement, I take it, means
+this. Bentham, in any case, was not on the foundation. See Welsh's
+_Alumni West_.
+
+[208] _Works_, x. 37.
+
+[209] _Ibid._ viii. 113, 217.
+
+[210] _Works_, x. 45.
+
+[211] _Ibid._ x. 51, 78, 83.
+
+[212] _Works_, x. 35, 77. References are given to this book in _Works_,
+vii. 219-20 ('Rationale of Evidence'). Several editions appeared from
+1725 to 1761. See _Works_, vi. 465, for a recollection of similar
+experiences.
+
+[213] _Ibid._ viii. 148 _n._; x. 183.
+
+
+II. FIRST WRITINGS
+
+Though lost to the bar, he had really found himself. He had taken the
+line prescribed by his idiosyncrasy. His father's injudicious forcing
+had increased his shyness at the bar, and he was like an owl in
+daylight. But no one, as we shall see, was less diffident in
+speculation. Self-confidence in a philosopher is often the private
+credit which he opens with his imagination to compensate for his
+incapacity in the rough struggles of active life. Bentham shrank from
+the world in which he was easily browbeaten to the study in which he
+could reign supreme. He had not the strong passions which prompt
+commonplace ambition, and cared little for the prizes for which most men
+will sacrifice their lives. Nor, on the other hand, can he be credited
+with that ardent philanthropy or vehement indignation which prompts to
+an internecine struggle with actual wrongdoers. He had not the ardour
+which led Howard to devote a life to destroy abuses, or that which
+turned Swift's blood to gall in the struggle against triumphant
+corruption. He was thoroughly amiable, but of kindly rather than
+energetic affections. He, therefore, desired reform, but so far from
+regarding the ruling classes with rancour, took their part against the
+democrats. 'I was a great reformist,' he says, 'but never suspected that
+the "people in power" were against reform. I supposed they only wanted
+to know what was good in order to embrace it.'[214] The most real of
+pleasures for him lay in speculating upon the general principles by
+which the 'people in power' should be guided. To construct a general
+chart for legislation, to hunt down sophistries, to explode mere noisy
+rhetoric, to classify and arrange and re-classify until his whole
+intellectual wealth was neatly arranged in proper pigeon-holes, was a
+delight for its own sake. He wished well to mankind; he detested abuses,
+but he hated neither the corrupted nor the corruptors; and it might
+almost seem that he rather valued the benevolent end, because it gave
+employment to his faculties, than valued the employment because it led
+to the end. This is implied in his remark made at the end of his life.
+He was, he said, as selfish as a man could be; but 'somehow or other'
+selfishness had in him taken the form of benevolence.[215] He was at any
+rate in the position of a man with the agreeable conviction that he has
+only to prove the wisdom of a given course in order to secure its
+adoption. Like many mechanical inventors, he took for granted that a
+process which was shown to be useful would therefore be at once adopted,
+and failed to anticipate the determined opposition of the great mass of
+'vested interests' already in possession.
+
+At this period he made the discovery, or what he held to be the
+discovery, which governed his whole future career. He laid down the
+principle which was to give the clue to all his investigations; and, as
+he thought, required only to be announced to secure universal
+acceptance. When Bentham revolted against the intellectual food provided
+at school and college, he naturally took up the philosophy which at that
+period represented the really living stream of thought. To be a man of
+enlightenment in those days was to belong to the school of Locke. Locke
+represented reason, free thought, and the abandonment of prejudice.
+Besides Locke, he mentions Hume, Montesquieu, Helvétius, Beccaria, and
+Barrington. Helvétius especially did much to suggest to him his leading
+principle, and upon country trips which he took with his father and
+step-mother, he used to lag behind studying Helvétius' _De
+l'Esprit_.[216] Locke, he says in an early note (1773-1774), should give
+the principles, Helvétius the matter, of a complete digest of the law.
+He mentions with especial interest the third volume of Hume's _Treatise
+on Human Nature_ for its ethical views: 'he felt as if scales fell from
+his eyes' when he read it.[217] Daines Barrington's _Observations on the
+Statutes_ (1766) interested him by miscellaneous suggestions. The book,
+he says,[218] was a 'great treasure.' 'It is everything, _à propos_ of
+everything; I wrote volumes upon this volume.' Beccaria's treatise upon
+crimes and punishments had appeared in 1764, and had excited the
+applause of Europe. The world was clearly ready for a fundamental
+reconstruction of legislative theories. Under the influence of such
+studies Bentham formulated his famous principle--a principle which to
+some seemed a barren truism, to others a mere epigram, and to some a
+dangerous falsehood. Bentham accepted it not only as true, but as
+expressing a truth of extraordinary fecundity, capable of guiding him
+through the whole labyrinth of political and legislative speculation.
+His 'fundamental axiom' is that 'the greatest happiness of the greatest
+number is the measure of right and wrong.'[219] Bentham himself[220]
+attributes the authorship of the phrase to Beccaria or Priestley. The
+general order of thought to which this theory belongs was of course not
+the property of any special writer or any particular period. Here I need
+only observe that this embodiment of the general doctrine of utility or
+morality had been struck out by Hutcheson in the attempt (as his title
+says) 'to introduce a mathematical calculation on subjects of morality.'
+This defines the exact reason which made it acceptable to Bentham. For
+the vague reference to utility which appears in Hume and other writers
+of his school, he substituted a formula, the terms of which suggest the
+possibility of an accurate quantitative comparison of different sums of
+happiness. In Bentham's mind the difference between this and the more
+general formula was like the difference between the statement that the
+planets gravitate towards the sun, and the more precise statement that
+the law of gravitation varies inversely as the square of the distance.
+Bentham hoped for no less an achievement than to become the Newton of
+the moral world.
+
+Bentham, after leaving Oxford, took chambers in Lincoln's Inn. His
+father on his second marriage had settled some property upon him, which
+brought in some £90 a year. He had to live like a gentleman upon this,
+and to give four guineas a year to the laundress, four to his barber,
+and two to his shoeblack. In spite of Jeremy's deviation from the path
+of preferment, the two were on friendly terms, and when the hopes of the
+son's professional success grew faint, the father showed sympathy with
+his literary undertakings. Jeremy visited Paris in 1770, but made few
+acquaintances, though he was already regarded as a 'philosopher.' In
+1778 he was in correspondence with d'Alembert, the abbé Morellet, and
+other philanthropic philosophers, but it does not appear at what time
+this connection began.[221] He translated Voltaire's _Taureau
+Blanc_[222]--a story which used to 'convulse him with laughter.' A
+reference to it will show that Bentham by this time took the Voltairean
+view of the Old Testament. Bentham, however, was still on the side of
+the Tories. His first publication was a defence of Lord Mansfield in
+1770 against attacks arising out of the prosecution of Woodfall for
+publishing Junius's letter to the king. This defence, contained in two
+letters, signed Irenæus, was published in the _Gazetteer_. Bentham's
+next performance was remarkable in the same sense. Among the few friends
+who drifted to his chambers was John Lind (1737-1781), who had been a
+clergyman, and after acting as tutor to a prince in Poland, had returned
+to London and become a writer for the press. He had business relations
+with the elder Bentham, and the younger Bentham was to some extent his
+collaborator in a pamphlet[223] which defended the conduct of ministers
+to the American colonies. Bentham observes that he was prejudiced
+against the Americans by the badness of their arguments, and thought
+from the first, as he continued to think, that the Declaration of
+Independence was a hodge-podge of confusion and absurdity, in which the
+thing to be proved is all along taken for granted.[224] Two other
+friendships were formed by Bentham about this time: one with James
+Trail, an unsuccessful barrister, who owed a seat in Parliament and
+some minor offices to Lord Hertford, and is said by Romilly to have been
+a man of great talent; and one with George Wilson, afterwards a leader
+of the Norfolk circuit, who had become known to him through a common
+interest in Dr. Fordyce's lectures upon chemistry. Wilson became a bosom
+friend, and was one of Bentham's first disciples, though they were
+ultimately alienated.[225]
+
+At this time, Bentham says, that his was 'truly a miserable life.'[226]
+Yet he was getting to work upon his grand project. He tells his father
+on 1st October 1776 that he is writing his _Critical Elements of
+Jurisprudence_, the book of which a part was afterwards published as the
+_Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation_.[227] In the
+same year he published his first important work, the _Fragment on
+Government_. The year was in many ways memorable. The Declaration of
+Independence marked the opening of a new political era. Adam Smith's
+_Wealth of Nations_ and Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_ formed landmarks in
+speculation and in history; and Bentham's volume, though it made no such
+impression, announced a serious attempt to apply scientific methods to
+problems of legislation. The preface contained the first declaration of
+his famous formula which was applied to the confutation of Blackstone.
+Bentham was apparently roused to this effort by recollections of the
+Oxford lectures. The _Commentaries_ contained a certain quantity of
+philosophical rhetoric; and as Blackstone was much greater in a literary
+than in a philosophical sense, the result was naturally unsatisfactory
+from a scientific point of view. He had vaguely appealed to the sound
+Whig doctrine of social compact, and while disavowing any strict
+historical basis had not inquired too curiously what was left of his
+supposed foundation. Bentham pounced upon the unfortunate bit of
+verbiage; insisted upon asking for a meaning when there was nothing but
+a rhetorical flourish, and tore the whole flimsy fabric to rags and
+tatters. A more bitter attack upon Blackstone, chiefly, as Bowring says,
+upon his defence of the Jewish law, was suppressed for fear of the law
+of libel.[228] The _Fragment_ was published anonymously, but Bentham had
+confided the secret to his father by way of suggesting some slight
+set-off against his apparent unwillingness to emerge from obscurity. The
+book was at first attributed to Lord Mansfield, Lord Camden, and to
+Dunning. It was pirated in Dublin; and most of the five hundred copies
+printed appear to have been sold, though without profit to the author.
+The father's indiscretion let out the secret; and the sale, when the
+book was known to be written by a nobody, fell off at once, or so
+Bentham believed. The anonymous writer, however, was denounced and
+accused of being the author of much ribaldry, and among other
+accusations was said to be not only the translator but the writer of the
+_White Bull_.[229]
+
+Bentham had fancied that all manner of 'torches from the highest
+regions' would come to light themselves at his 'farthing candle.' None
+of them came, and he was left for some years in obscurity, though still
+labouring at the great work which was one day to enlighten the world.
+At last, however, partial recognition came to him in a shape which
+greatly influenced his career. Lord Shelburne, afterwards marquis of
+Lansdowne, had been impressed by the _Fragment_, and in 1781 sought out
+Bentham at his chambers. Shelburne's career was to culminate in the
+following year with his brief tenure of the premiership (3rd July 1782
+to 24th February 1783). Rightly or wrongly his contemporaries felt the
+distrust indicated by his nickname 'Malagrida,' which appears to have
+been partly suggested by a habit of overstrained compliment. He incurred
+the dislike not unfrequently excited by men who claim superiority of
+intellect without possessing the force of character which gives a
+corresponding weight in political affairs. Although his education had
+been bad, he had something of that cosmopolitan training which enabled
+many members of the aristocracy to look beyond the narrow middle-class
+prejudices and share in some degree the wider philosophical movements of
+the day. He had enjoyed the friendship of Franklin, and had been the
+patron of Priestley, who made some of his chemical discoveries at
+Bowood, and to whom he allowed an annuity. He belonged to that section
+of the Whigs which had most sympathy with the revolutionary movement.
+His chief political lieutenants were Dunning and Barré, who at the time
+sat for his borough Calne. He now rapidly formed an intimacy with
+Bentham, who went to stay at Bowood in the autumn of 1781. Bentham now
+and then in later years made some rather disparaging remarks upon
+Shelburne, whom he apparently considered to be rather an amateur than a
+serious philosopher, and who in the House of Lords talked 'vague
+generalities'--the sacred phrase by which the Utilitarians denounced all
+preaching but their own--in a way to impose upon the thoughtless. He
+respected Shelburne, however, as one who trusted the people, and was
+distrusted by the Whig aristocracy. He felt, too, a real affection and
+gratitude for the patron to whom he owed so much. Shelburne had done him
+a great service.[230] 'He raised me from the bottomless pit of
+humiliation. He made me feel I was something.' The elder Bentham was
+impressed by his son's acquaintance with a man in so eminent a position,
+and hoped that it might lead by a different path to the success which
+had been missed at the bar. At Bowood Bentham stayed over a month upon
+his first visit, and was treated in the manner appropriate to a
+philosopher. The men showed him friendliness, dashed with occasional
+contempt, and the ladies petted him. He met Lord Camden and Dunning and
+young William Pitt, and some minor adherents of the great man. Pitt was
+'very good-natured and a little raw.' I was monstrously 'frightened at
+him,' but, when I came to talk with him, he seemed 'frightened at
+me.'[231] Bentham, however, did not see what ideas they were likely to
+have in common. In fact there was the usual gulf between the speculative
+thinker and the practical man. 'All the statesmen,' so thought the
+philosopher, 'were wanting in the great elements of statesmanship': they
+were always talking about 'what was' and seldom or never about 'what
+ought to be.'[232] Occasionally, it would seem, they descended lower,
+and made a little fun of the shy and over-sensitive intruder.[233] The
+ladies, however, made it up to him. Shelburne made him read his 'dry
+metaphysics' to them,[234] and they received it with feminine docility.
+Lord Shelburne had lately (1779) married his second wife, Louisa,
+daughter of the first earl of Upper Ossory. Her sister, Lady Mary
+Fitz-Patrick, married in 1766 to Stephen Fox, afterwards Lord Holland,
+was the mother of the Lord Holland of later days and of Miss Caroline
+Fox, who survived till 1845, and was at this time a pleasant girl of
+thirteen or fourteen. Lady Shelburne had also two half-sisters,
+daughters of her mother's second marriage to Richard Vernon. Lady
+Shelburne took a fancy to Bentham, and gave him the 'prodigious
+privilege' of admission to her dressing-room. Though haughty in manner,
+she was mild in reality, and after a time she and her sister indulged in
+'innocent gambols.' In her last illness, Bentham was one of the only two
+men whom she would see, and upon her death in 1789, he was the only male
+friend to whom her husband turned for consolation. Miss Fox seems to
+have been the only woman who inspired Bentham with a sentiment
+approaching to passion. He wrote occasional letters to the ladies in the
+tone of elephantine pleasantry natural to one who was all his life both
+a philosopher and a child.[235] He made an offer of marriage to Miss Fox
+in 1805, when he was nearer sixty than fifty, and when they had not met
+for sixteen years. The immediate occasion was presumably the death of
+Lord Lansdowne. She replied in a friendly letter, regretting the pain
+which her refusal would inflict. In 1827 Bentham, then in his eightieth
+year, wrote once more, speaking of the flower she had given him 'in the
+green lane,' and asking for a kind answer. He was 'indescribably hurt
+and disappointed' by a cold and distant reply. The tears would come into
+the old man's eyes as he dealt upon the cherished memories of
+Bowood.[236] It is pleasant to know that Bentham was once in love;
+though his love seems to have been chiefly for a memory associated with
+what he called the happiest time of his life.
+
+Shelburne had a project for a marriage between Bentham and the widow of
+Lord Ashburton (Dunning), who died in 1783.[237] He also made some
+overtures of patronage. 'He asked me,' says Bentham,[238] 'what he could
+do for me? I told him, nothing,' and this conduct--so different from
+that of others, 'endeared me to him.' Bentham declined one offer in
+1788; but in 1790 he suddenly took it into his head that Lansdowne had
+promised him a seat in parliament; and immediately set forth his claims
+in a vast argumentative letter of sixty-one pages.[239] Lansdowne
+replied conclusively that he had not made the supposed promise, and had
+had every reason to suppose that Bentham preferred retirement to
+politics. Bentham accepted the statement frankly, though a short
+coolness apparently followed. The claim, in fact, only represented one
+of those passing moods to which Bentham was always giving way at odd
+moments.
+
+Bentham's intimacy at Bowood led to more important results. In 1788 he
+met Romilly and Dumont at Lord Lansdowne's table.[240] He had already
+met Romilly in 1784 through Wilson, but after this the intimacy became
+close. Romilly had fallen in love with the _Fragment_, and in later
+life he became Bentham's adviser in practical matters, and the chief if
+not the sole expounder of Bentham's theories in parliament.[241] The
+alliance with Dumont was of even greater importance. Dumont, born at
+Geneva in 1759, had become a Protestant minister; he was afterwards
+tutor to Shelburne's son, and in 1788 visited Paris with Romilly and
+made acquaintance with Mirabeau. Romilly showed Dumont some of Bentham's
+papers written in French. Dumont offered to rewrite and to superintend
+their publication. He afterwards received other papers from Bentham
+himself, with whom he became personally acquainted after his return from
+Paris.[242] Dumont became Bentham's most devoted disciple, and laboured
+unweariedly upon the translation and condensation of his master's
+treatise. One result is odd enough. Dumont, it is said, provided
+materials for some of Mirabeau's 'most splendid' speeches; and some of
+these materials came from Bentham.[243] One would like to see how
+Bentham's prose was transmuted into an oratory by Mirabeau. In any case,
+Dumont's services to Bentham were invaluable. It is painful to add that
+according to Bowring the two became so much alienated in the end, that
+in 1827 Bentham refused to see Dumont, and declared that his chief
+interpreter did 'not understand a word of his meaning.' Bowring
+attributes this separation to a remark made by Dumont about the
+shabbiness of Bentham's dinners as compared with those at Lansdowne
+House--a comparison which he calls 'offensive, uncalled-for, and
+groundless.'[244] Bentham apparently argued that a man who did not like
+his dinners could not appreciate his theories: a fallacy excusable only
+by the pettishness of old age. Bowring, however, had a natural dulness
+which distorted many anecdotes transmitted through him; and we may hope
+that in this case there was some exaggeration.
+
+Bentham's emergence was, meanwhile, very slow. The great men whom he met
+at Lord Lansdowne's were not specially impressed by the shy philosopher.
+Wedderburn, so he heard, pronounced the fatal word 'dangerous' in regard
+to the _Fragment_.[245] How, thought Bentham, can utility be dangerous?
+Is this not self-contradictory? Later reflection explained the puzzle.
+What is useful to the governed need not be therefore useful to the
+governors. Mansfield, who was known to Lind, said that in some parts the
+author of the _Fragment_ was awake and in others was asleep. In what
+parts? Bentham wondered. Awake, he afterwards considered, in the parts
+where Blackstone, the object of Mansfield's personal 'heart-burning,'
+was attacked; asleep where Mansfield's own despotism was threatened.
+Camden was contemptuous; Dunning only 'scowled' at him; and Barré, after
+taking in his book, gave it back with the mysterious information that he
+had 'got into a scrape.'[246] The great book, therefore, though printed
+in 1781,[247] 'stuck for eight years,'[248] and the writer continued his
+obscure existence in Lincoln's Inn.[249] An opinion which he gave in
+some question as to the evidence in Warren Hastings's trial made, he
+says, an impression in his favour. Before publication was achieved,
+however, a curious episode altered Bentham's whole outlook. His brother
+Samuel (1757-1831), whose education he had partly superintended,[250]
+had been apprenticed to a shipwright at Woolwich, and in 1780 had gone
+to Russia in search of employment. Three years later he was sent by
+Prince Potemkin to superintend a great industrial establishment at
+Kritchev on a tributary of the Dnieper. There he was to be
+'Jack-of-all-trades--building ships, like Harlequin, of odds and ends--a
+rope-maker, a sail-maker, a distiller, brewer, malster, tanner,
+glass-man, glass-grinder, potter, hemp-spinner, smith, and
+coppersmith.'[251] He was, that is, to transplant a fragment of
+ready-made Western civilisation into Russia. Bentham resolved to pay a
+visit to his brother, to whom he was strongly attached. He left England
+in August 1785, and stayed some time at Constantinople, where he met
+Maria James (1770-1836), the wife successively of W. Reveley and of John
+Gisborne, and the friend of Shelley. Thence he travelled by land to
+Kritchev, and settled with his brother at the neighbouring estate of
+Zadobras. Bentham here passed a secluded life, interested in his
+brother's occupations and mechanical inventions, and at the same time
+keeping up his own intellectual labours. The most remarkable result was
+the _Defence of Usury_, written in the beginning of 1787. Bentham
+appends to it a respectful letter to Adam Smith, who had supported the
+laws against usury inconsistently with his own general principles. The
+disciple was simply carrying out those principles to the logical
+application from which the master had shrunk. The manuscript was sent to
+Wilson, who wished to suppress it.[252] The elder Bentham obtained it,
+and sent it to the press. The book met Bentham as he was returning. It
+was highly praised by Thomas Reid,[253] and by the _Monthly Review_; it
+was translated into various languages, and became one of the sacred
+books of the Economists. Wilson is described as 'cold and cautious,' and
+he suppressed another pamphlet upon prison discipline.[254] In a letter
+to Bentham, dated 26th February 1787, however, Wilson disavows any
+responsibility for the delay in the publication of the great book. 'The
+cause,' he says, 'lies in your constitution. With one-tenth part of your
+genius, and a common degree of steadiness, both Sam and you would long
+since have risen to great eminence. But your history, since I have known
+you, has been to be always running from a good scheme to a better. In
+the meantime life passes away and nothing is completed.' He entreated
+Bentham to return, and his entreaties were seconded by Trail, who
+pointed out various schemes of reform, especially of the poor-laws, in
+which Bentham might be useful. Wilson had mentioned already another
+inducement to publication. 'There is,' he says, on 24th September 1786,
+'a Mr. Paley, a parson and archdeacon of Carlisle, who has written a
+book called _Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy_, in quarto,
+and it has gone through two editions with prodigious applause.' He fears
+that Bentham will be charged with stealing from Paley, and exhorts him
+to come home and 'establish a great literary reputation in your own
+language, and in this country which you despise.'[255] Bentham at last
+started homewards. He travelled through Poland, Germany, and Holland,
+and reached London at the beginning of February 1788. He settled at a
+little farmhouse at Hendon, bought a 'superb harpsichord,' resumed his
+occupations, and saw a small circle of friends. Wilson urged him to
+publish his _Introduction_ without waiting to complete the vast scheme
+to which it was to be a prologue. Copies of the printed book were
+already abroad, and there was a danger of plagiarism. Thus urged,
+Bentham at last yielded, and the _Introduction to the Principles of
+Morals and Legislation_ appeared in 1789. The preface apologised for
+imperfections due to the plan of his work. The book, he explained, laid
+down the principles of all his future labours, and was to stand to him
+in the relation of a treatise upon pure mathematics to a treatise upon
+the applied sciences. He indicated ten separate departments of
+legislation, each of which would require a treatise in order to the
+complete execution of his scheme.
+
+The book gives the essence of Bentham's theories, and is the one large
+treatise published by himself. The other works were only brought to
+birth by the help of disciples. Dumont, in the discourse prefixed to the
+_Traités_, explains the reason. Bentham, he says, would suspend a whole
+work and begin a new one because a single proposition struck him as
+doubtful. A problem of finance would send him to a study of Political
+Economy in general. A question of procedure would make him pause until
+he had investigated the whole subject of judicial organisation. While at
+work, he felt only the pleasure of composition. When his materials
+required form and finish, he felt only the fatigue. Disgust succeeded to
+charm; and he could scarcely be induced to interrupt his labours upon
+fresh matter in order to give to his interpreter the explanations
+necessary for the elucidation of his previous writings. He was without
+the literary vanity or the desire for completion which may prompt to
+premature publication, but may at least prevent the absolute waste of
+what has been already achieved. His method of writing was
+characteristic. He began by forming a complete logical scheme for the
+treatment of any subject, dividing and subdividing so as to secure an
+exhaustive classification of the whole matter of discussion. Then taking
+up any subdivision, he wrote his remarks upon sheets, which were put
+aside after being marked with references indicating their place in the
+final treatise. He never turned to these again. In time he would exhaust
+the whole subject, and it would then be the duty of his disciples simply
+to put together the bricks according to the indications placed upon each
+in order to construct the whole edifice.[256] As, however, the plan
+would frequently undergo a change, and as each fragment had been written
+without reference to the others, the task of ultimate combination and
+adaptation of the ultimate atoms was often very perplexing. Bentham, as
+we shall see, formed disciples ardent enough to put together these
+scattered documents as the disciples of Mahomet put together the Koran.
+Bentham's revelation was possibly less influential than Mahomet's; but
+the logical framework was far more coherent.
+
+Bentham's mind was for the present distracted. He had naturally returned
+full of information about Russia. The English ministry were involved in
+various negotiations with Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, the purpose of
+which was to thwart the designs of Russia in the East. Bentham wrote
+three letters to the _Public Advertiser_, signed Anti-Machiavel,[257]
+protesting against the warlike policy. Bentham himself believed that the
+effect was decisive, and that the 'war was given up' in consequence of
+his arguments. Historians[258] scarcely sanction this belief, which is
+only worth notice because it led to another belief, oddly characteristic
+of Bentham. A letter signed 'Partizan' in the _Public Advertiser_
+replied to his first two letters. Who was 'Partizan'? Lord Lansdowne
+amused himself by informing Bentham that he was no less a personage than
+George III. Bentham, with even more than his usual simplicity, accepted
+this hoax as a serious statement. He derived no little comfort from the
+thought; for to the antipathy thus engendered in the 'best of kings' he
+attributed the subsequent failure of his Panopticon scheme.[259]
+
+NOTES:
+
+[214] _Works_, x. 66.
+
+[215] _Ibid._ xi. 95.
+
+[216] _Works_, x. 54.
+
+[217] _Ibid._ i. 268 _n._
+
+[218] _Works_, x. 121.
+
+[219] _Ibid._ i. 227.
+
+[220] _Ibid._ x. 79, 142. See also _Deontology_, i. 298-302, where
+Bentham speaks of discovering the phrase in Priestley's _Essay on
+Government_ in 1768. Priestley says (p. 17) that 'the good and happiness
+of the members, that is of the majority of the members, of any state is
+the great standard by which everything relating to that state must be
+finally determined.' So Le Mercier de la Rivière says, in 1767, that the
+ultimate end of society is _assurer le plus grand bonheur possible à la
+plus grande population possible_ (Daire's _Économistes_, p. 470).
+Hutcheson's _Enquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil_, 1725, see iii. §
+8, says 'that action is best which secures the greatest happiness of the
+greatest number.' Beccaria, in the preface to his essay, speaks of _la
+massima felicità divisa nel maggior numero_. J. S. Mill says that he
+found the word 'Utilitarian' in Galt's _Annals of the Parish_, and gave
+the name to the society founded by him in 1822-1823 (_Autobiography_, p.
+79). The word had been used by Bentham himself in 1781, and he suggested
+it to Dumont in 1802 as the proper name of the party, instead of
+'Benthamite' (_Works_, x. 92, 390). He afterwards thought it a bad name,
+because it gave a 'vague idea' (_Works_, x. 582), and substituted
+'greatest happiness principle' for 'principle of utility' (_Works_, i.
+'Morals and Legislation').
+
+[221] A letter in the Additional MSS. 33, 537, shows that Bentham sent
+his 'Fragment' and his 'Hard Labour' pamphlet to d'Alembert in 1778,
+apparently introducing himself for the first time. Cf. _Works_, x.
+87-88, 193-94.
+
+[222] The translation of 1774. See Lowndes' _Manual_ under Voltaire,
+_Works_, x. 83 _n._
+
+[223] _Review of the Acts of the Thirteenth Parliament, etc._ (1775).
+
+[224] _Works_, x. 57, 63.
+
+[225] _Works_, x. 133-35.
+
+[226] _Ibid._ x. 84.
+
+[227] _Ibid._ x. 77.
+
+[228] _Works_, x. 82.
+
+[229] _Works_, x. 77-82. Blackstone took no notice of the work, except
+by some allusions in the preface to his next edition. Bentham criticised
+Blackstone respectfully in the pamphlet upon the Hard Labour Bill
+(1778). Blackstone sent a courteous but 'frigidly cautious' reply to the
+author.--_Works_, i. 255.
+
+[230] _Works_, x. 115-17, 186
+
+[231] _Ibid._ x. 100.
+
+[232] _Ibid._ x. 122.
+
+[233] _Ibid._ x. 118; i. 253.
+
+[234] _Works_, x. 97; i. 252.
+
+[235] _Ibid._ x. 219, 265.
+
+[236] _Works_, x. 118, 419, 558.
+
+[237] _Ibid._ i. 253.
+
+[238] _Ibid._ x. 116, 182.
+
+[239] _Ibid._ x. 228-42.
+
+[240] _Ibid._ x. 186.
+
+[241] _Works_, v. 370.
+
+[242] _Souvenirs sur Mirabeau_ (preface).
+
+[243] _Works_, x. 185.
+
+[244] _Works_, x. 185. Colls (p. 41) tells the same story.
+
+[245] _Works_ ('Fragment, etc.'), i. 245, and _Ibid._ ii. 463 _n._
+
+[246] _Ibid._ i. 246, 250, 251.
+
+[247] _Ibid._ i. 252.
+
+[248] _Ibid._ x. 185.
+
+[249] Bentham says (_Works_, i. 240) that he was a member of a club of
+which Johnson was the despot. The only club possible seems to be the
+Essex Street Club, of which Daines Barrington was a member. If so, it
+was in 1783, though Bentham seems to imply an earlier date.
+
+[250] _Works_, x. 77.
+
+[251] _Ibid._ x. 147.
+
+[252] _Works_, x. 176.
+
+[253] Reid's _Works_ (Hamilton), p. 73.
+
+[254] _Works_, x. 171.
+
+[255] _Works_, x. 163-64. Cf. _Ibid._ x. 195, where Wilson is often
+'tempted to think'--erroneously, of course--that Paley must have known
+something of Bentham's work. Paley's chief source was Abraham Tucker.
+
+[256] See J. H. Burton in _Works_, i. 11.
+
+[257] Given in _Works_, x. 201-12.
+
+[258] See Lecky's _Eighteenth Century_, x. 210-97, for an account of
+these transactions.
+
+[259] Bowring tells this gravely, and declares that George III. also
+wrote letters to the _Gazette de Leyde_. George III. certainly
+contributed some letters to Arthur Young's _Annals of Agriculture_, and
+is one of the suggested authors of Junius.
+
+
+III. THE PANOPTICON
+
+The crash of the French revolution was now to change the whole course of
+European politics, and to bring philosophical jurists face to face with
+a long series of profoundly important problems. Bentham's attitude
+during the early stages of the revolution and the first war period is
+significant, and may help to elucidate some characteristics of the
+Utilitarian movement. Revolutions are the work of passion: the product
+of a social and political condition in which the masses are permeated
+with discontent, because the social organs have ceased to discharge
+their functions. They are not ascribable to the purely intellectual
+movement alone, though it is no doubt an essential factor. The
+revolution came in any case because the social order was out of joint,
+not simply because Voltaire or Rousseau or Diderot had preached
+destructive doctrines. The doctrines of the 'rights of man' are obvious
+enough to have presented themselves to many minds at many periods. The
+doctrines became destructive because the old traditions were shaken, and
+the traditions were shaken because the state of things to which they
+corresponded had become intolerable. The French revolution meant (among
+other things) that in the mind of the French peasant there had
+accumulated a vast deposit of bitter enmity against the noble who had
+become a mere parasite upon the labouring population, retaining, as
+Arthur Young said, privileges for himself, and leaving poverty to the
+lower classes. The peasant had not read Rousseau; he had read nothing.
+But when his discontent began to affect the educated classes, men who
+had read Rousseau found in his works the dialect most fitted to express
+the growing indignation. Rousseau's genius had devised the appropriate
+formula; for Rousseau's sensibility had made him prescient of the rising
+storm. What might be a mere commonplace for speculative students
+suddenly became the warcry in a social upheaval. In England, as I have
+tried to show, there was no such popular sentiment behind the political
+theories: and reformers were content with measures which required no
+appeal to absolute rights and general principles. Bentham was no
+Rousseau; and the last of men to raise a warcry. Passion and
+sentimentalism were to him a nuisance. His theories were neither
+suggested nor modified by the revolution. He looked on with curious
+calmness, as though the revolutionary disturbances were rather a
+transitory interruption to the progress of reform than indicative of a
+general convulsion. His own position was isolated. He had no strong
+reforming party behind him. The Whigs, his main friends, were powerless,
+discredited, and themselves really afraid to support any vigorous
+policy. They had in the main to content themselves with criticising the
+warlike policy which, for the time, represented the main current of
+national sentiment. Bentham shared many of their sympathies. He hated
+the abstract 'rights of man' theory as heartily as Burke. It was to him
+a 'hodge-podge' of fallacies. On the other hand, he was absolutely
+indifferent to the apotheosis of the British Constitution constructed by
+Burke's imagination. He cared nothing for history in general, or
+regarded it, from a Voltairean point of view, as a record of the follies
+and crimes of mankind. He wished to deal with political, and especially
+with legal, questions in a scientific spirit--but 'scientific' would
+mean not pure mathematics but pure empiricism. He was quite as far from
+Paine's abstract methods as from Burke's romantic methods. Both of
+them, according to him, were sophists: though one might prefer logical
+and the other sentimental sophistries. Dumont, when he published (1802)
+his versions of Bentham, insisted upon this point. Nothing, he says, was
+more opposed to the trenchant dogmatism of the abstract theorists about
+'rights of man' and 'equality' than Bentham's thoroughly scientific
+procedure (_Discours Préliminaire_). Bentham's intellectual position in
+this respect will require further consideration hereafter. All his
+prejudices and sympathies were those of the middle class from which he
+sprang. He was no democrat: he had no particular objection to the
+nobility, though he preferred Shelburne to the king's friends or to the
+Whig aristocracy. The reforms which he advocated were such as might be
+adopted by any enlightened legislator, not only by Shelburne but even by
+Blackstone. He had only, he thought, to convert a few members of
+parliament to gain the acceptance for a rational criminal code. It had
+hardly even occurred to him that there was anything wrong in the general
+political order, though he was beginning to find out that it was not so
+modifiable as he could have wished by the new ideas which he propounded.
+
+Bentham's activity during the first revolutionary war corresponded to
+this position. The revolution, whatever else it might do, obviously gave
+a chance to amateur legislators. There was any amount of work to be done
+in the way of codifying and reforming legislative systems. The deviser
+of Utopias had such an opening as had never occurred in the world's
+history. Lord Lansdowne, on the 3rd January 1789, expresses his pleasure
+at hearing that Bentham intends to 'take up the cause of the people in
+France.'[260] Bentham, as we have seen, was already known to some of the
+French leaders, and he was now taking time by the forelock. He sent to
+the abbé Morellet a part of his treatise on Political Tactics, hoping to
+have it finished by the time of the meeting of the States General.[261]
+This treatise, civilly accepted by Morellet, and approved with some
+qualifications by Bentham's counsellors, Romilly, Wilson, and Trail, was
+an elaborate account of the organisation and procedure of a legislative
+assembly, founded chiefly on the practice of the House of Commons. It
+was published in 1816 by Dumont in company with _Anarchic Fallacies_, a
+vigorous exposure of the _Declaration of Rights_, which Bentham had
+judiciously kept on his shelf. Had the French known of it, he remarks
+afterwards, they would have been little disposed to welcome him.[262] An
+elaborate scheme for the organisation of the French judiciary was
+suggested by a report to the National Assembly, and published in March
+1790. In 1791, Bentham offered to go to France himself in order to
+establish a prison on his new scheme (to be mentioned directly), and
+become 'gratuitously the gaoler thereof.'[263] The Assembly acknowledged
+his 'ardent love of humanity,' and ordered an extract from his scheme to
+be printed for their instruction. The tactics actually adopted by the
+French revolutionists for managing assemblies and their methods of
+executing justice form a queer commentary on the philosopher who, like
+Voltaire's Mamres in the _White Bull_, continued to 'meditate
+profoundly' in placid disregard of facts. He was in fact proposing that
+the lava boiling up in a volcanic eruption should arrange itself
+entirely according to his architectural designs. But his proposal to
+become a gaoler during the revolution reaches the pathetic by its
+amiable innocence. On 26th August 1792, Bentham was one of the men upon
+whom the expiring Assembly, anxious to show its desire of universal
+fraternity, conferred the title of citizen. With Bentham were joined
+Priestley, Paine, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Washington, and others. The
+September massacres followed. On 18th October the honour was
+communicated to Bentham. He replied in a polite letter, pointing out
+that he was a royalist in London for the same reason which would make
+him a republican in France. He ended by a calm argument against the
+proscription of refugees.[264] The Convention, if it read the letter,
+and had any sense of humour, must have been amused. The war and the
+Reign of Terror followed. Bentham turned the occasion to account by
+writing a pamphlet (not then published) exhorting the French to
+'emancipate their colonies.' Colonies were an aimless burthen, and to
+get rid of them would do more than conquest to relieve their finances.
+British fleets and the insurrection of St. Domingo were emancipating by
+very different methods.
+
+Bentham was, of course, disgusted by the divergence of his clients from
+the lines chalked out by proper respect for law and order. On 31st
+October 1793 he writes to a friend, expressing his wish that Jacobinism
+could be extirpated; no price could be too heavy to pay for such a
+result: but he doubts whether war or peace would be the best means to
+the end, and protests against the policy of appropriating useless and
+expensive colonies instead of 'driving at the heart of the
+monster.'[265] Never was an adviser more at cross-purposes with the
+advised. It would be impossible to draw a more striking portrait of the
+abstract reasoner, whose calculations as to human motives omit all
+reference to passion, and who fancied that all prejudice can be
+dispelled by a few bits of logic.
+
+Meanwhile a variety of suggestions more or less important and connected
+with passing events were seething in his fertile brain. He wrote one of
+his most stinging pamphlets, '_Truth versus Ashhurst_' in December 1792,
+directed against a judge who, in the panic suggested by the September
+massacres, had eulogised the English laws. Bentham's aversion to Jacobin
+measures by no means softened his antipathy to English superstitions;
+and his attack was so sharp that Romilly advised and obtained its
+suppression for the time. Projects as to war-taxes suggested a couple of
+interesting pamphlets written in 1793, and published in 1795. In
+connection with this, schemes suggested themselves to him for improved
+systems of patents, for limited liability companies and other
+plans.[266] His great work still occupied him at intervals. In 1793 he
+offers to Dundas to employ himself in drafting Statutes, and remarks
+incidentally that he could legislate for Hindostan, should legislation
+be wanted there, as easily as for his own parish.[267] In 1794, Dumont
+is begging him to 'conquer his repugnance' to bestowing a few hints upon
+his interpreter.[268] In 1796, Bentham writes long letters suggesting
+that he should be sent to France with Wilberforce, in order to
+re-establish friendly relations.[269] In 1798 he is corresponding at
+great length with Patrick Colquhoun upon plans for improving the
+Metropolitan police.[270] In 1801 he says[271] that for two years and a
+half 'he has thought of scarce anything else' than a plan for
+interest-bearing notes, which he carefully elaborated and discussed with
+Nicholas Vansittart and Dr. Beeke. In September 1800, however, he had
+found time to occupy himself with a proposed _frigidarium_ or ice-house
+for the preservation of fish, fruits, and vegetables; and invited Dr.
+Roget, a nephew of Romilly, to come to his house and carry out the
+necessary experiments.[272] In January 1802 he writes to Dumont[273]
+proposing to send him a trifling specimen of the Panopticon, a set of
+hollow fire-irons invented by his brother, which may attract the
+attention of Buonaparte and Talleyrand. He proceeds to expound the
+merits of Samuel's invention for making wheels by machinery. Dumont
+replies, that fire-irons are 'superfluities'--(fire-arms might have been
+more to Buonaparte's taste)--and that the Panopticon itself was coldly
+received.
+
+This Panopticon was to be Bentham's masterpiece. It occupied his chief
+attention from his return to England until the peace of Amiens. His
+brother had returned from Russia in 1791. Their father died 28th March
+1792, dividing his property equally between his sons. Jeremy's share
+consisted of the estate at Queen's Square Place, Westminster, and of
+landed property producing £500 or £600 a year. The father, spite of the
+distance between them, had treated his son with substantial kindness,
+and had learned to take a pride in achievements very unlike those which
+he had at first desired.[274] Bentham's position, however, was improved
+by the father's death. The Westminster estate included the house in
+which he lived for the rest of his life. There was a garden in which he
+took great delight, though London smoke gradually destroyed the plants:
+and in the garden was the small house where Milton had once lived.[275]
+Here, with the co-operation of his brother and his increased income, he
+had all the means necessary for launching his grand scheme.
+
+The Panopticon, as defined by its inventor to Brissot, was a 'mill for
+grinding rogues honest, and idle men industrious.'[276] It was suggested
+by a plan designed by his brother in Russia for a large house to be
+occupied by workmen, and to be so arranged that they could be under
+constant inspection. Bentham was working on the old lines of
+philanthropic reform. He had long been interested in the schemes of
+prison reform, to which Howard's labours had given the impetus.
+Blackstone, with the help of William Eden, afterwards Lord Auckland, had
+prepared the 'Hard Labour Bill,' which Bentham had carefully criticised
+in 1778. The measure was passed in 1779, and provided for the management
+of convicts, who were becoming troublesome, as transportation to America
+had ceased to be possible. Howard, whose relation to Bentham I have
+already noticed, was appointed as one of the commissioners to carry out
+the provisions of the Act. The commissioners disagreed; Howard resigned;
+and though at last an architect (William Blackburn) was appointed who
+possessed Howard's confidence, and who constructed various prisons in
+the country, the scheme was allowed to drop. Bentham now hoped to solve
+the problem with his Panopticon. He printed an account of it in 1791. He
+wrote to his old antagonist, George III., describing it, together with
+another invention of Samuel's for enabling armies to cross rivers, which
+might be more to his Majesty's taste.[277] In March 1792 he made a
+proposal to the government offering to undertake the charge of a
+thousand convicts upon the Panopticon system.[278] After delays
+suspicious in the eyes of Bentham, but hardly surprising at such a
+period, an act of parliament was obtained in 1794 to adopt his schemes.
+Bentham had already been making preparations. He says[279] (14th
+September 1794) that he has already spent £6000, and is spending at the
+rate of £2000 a year, while his income was under £600 a year. He
+obtained, however, £2000 from the government. He had made models and
+architectural plans, in which he was helped by Reveley, already known to
+him at Constantinople. This sum, it appears, was required in order to
+keep together the men whom he employed. The nature of their employment
+is remarkable.[280] Samuel, a man of singular mechanical skill, which
+was of great use to the navy during the war, had devised machinery for
+work in wood and metal. Bentham had joined his brother, and they were
+looking out for a steam-engine. It had now occurred to them to employ
+convicts instead of steam, and thus to combine philanthropy with
+business. Difficulties of the usual kind arose as to the procurement of
+a suitable site. The site secured under the provisions of the 'Hard
+Labour Bill' was for some reason rejected; and Bentham was almost in
+despair. It was not until 1799 that he at last acquired for £12,000 an
+estate at Millbank, which seemed to be suitable. Meanwhile Bentham had
+found another application for his principle. The growth of pauperism was
+alarming statesmen. Whitbread proposed in February 1796 to fix a minimum
+rate of wages. The wisest thing that government could do, he said, was
+to 'offer a liberal premium for the encouragement of large families.'
+Pitt proceeded to prepare the abortive Poor-law Bill,[281] upon which
+Bentham (in February 1797) sent in some very shrewd criticisms. They
+were not published, but are said to have 'powerfully contributed to the
+abandonment of the measure.'[282] They show Bentham's power of incisive
+criticism, though they scarcely deal with the general principle. In the
+following autumn Bentham contributed to Arthur Young's _Annals of
+Agriculture_ upon the same topic. It had struck him that an application
+of his Panopticon would give the required panacea. He worked out details
+with his usual zeal, and the scheme attracted notice among the
+philanthropists of the time. It was to be a 'succedaneum' to Pitt's
+proposal. Meanwhile the finance committee, appointed in 1797, heard
+evidence from Bentham's friend, Patrick Colquhoun, upon the Panopticon,
+and a report recommending it was proposed by R. Pole Carew, a friend of
+Samuel Bentham. Although this report was suppressed, the scheme
+apparently received an impetus. The Millbank estate was bought in
+consequence of these proceedings, and a sum of only £1000 was wanted to
+buy out the tenant of one piece of land. Bentham was constantly in
+attendance at a public office, expecting a final warrant for the money.
+It never came, and, as Bentham believed, the delay was due to the malice
+of George III. Had any other king been on the throne, Panopticon in both
+'the prisoner branch and the pauper branch' would have been set at
+work.[283] Such are the consequences of newspaper controversies with
+monarchs! After this, in any case, the poor Panopticon, as the old
+lawyers said, 'languishing did live,' and at last 'languishing did die.'
+Poor Bentham seems to have struggled vainly for a time. He appealed to
+Pitt's friend, Wilberforce; he appealed to his step-brother Abbot; he
+wrote to members of parliament, but all was in vain.
+
+Romilly induced him in 1802 to suppress a statement of his grievances
+which could only have rendered ministers implacable.[284] But he found
+out what would hardly have been a discovery to most people, that
+officials can be dilatory and evasive; and certain discoveries about the
+treatment of convicts in New South Wales convinced him that they could
+even defy the laws and the Constitution when they were beyond
+inspection. He published (1803) a _Plea for the Constitution_, showing
+the enormities committed in the colony, 'in breach of Magna Charta, the
+Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act, and the Bill of Rights.'
+Romilly in vain told him that the attorney-general could not recommend
+the author of such an effusion to be keeper of a Panopticon.[285] The
+actual end did not come till 1811. A committee then reported against the
+scheme. They noticed one essential and very characteristic weakness. The
+whole system turned upon the profit to be made from the criminals'
+labour by Bentham and his brother. The committee observed that, however
+unimpeachable might be the characters of the founders, the scheme might
+lead to abuses in the hands of their successors. The adoption of this
+principle of 'farming' had in fact led to gross abuses both in gaols and
+in workhouses; but it was, as I have said, in harmony with the whole
+'individualist' theory. The committee recommended a different plan; and
+the result was the foundation of Millbank penitentiary, opened in
+1816.[286] Bentham ultimately received £23,000 by way of compensation in
+1813.[287] The objections of the committee would now be a commonplace,
+but Bentham saw in them another proof of the desire to increase
+government patronage. He was well out of the plan. There were probably
+few men in England less capable of managing a thousand convicts, in
+spite of his theories about 'springs of action.' If anything else had
+been required to ensure failure, it would have been association with a
+sanguine inventor of brilliant abilities.
+
+Bentham's agitation had not been altogether fruitless. His plan had been
+partly adopted at Edinburgh by one of the Adams,[288] and his work
+formed an important stage in the development of the penal system.
+
+Bentham, though he could not see that his failure was a blessing in
+disguise, had learned one lesson worth learning. He was ill-treated,
+according to impartial observers. 'Never,' says Wilberforce,[289] 'was
+any one worse used. I have seen the tears run down the cheeks of that
+strong-minded man through vexation at the pressing importunity of his
+creditors, and the indolence of official underlings when day after day
+he was begging at the Treasury for what was indeed a mere matter of
+right.' Wilberforce adds that Bentham was 'quite soured,' and attributes
+his later opinions to this cause. When the _Quarterly Review_ long
+afterwards taunted him as a disappointed man, Bentham declared himself
+to be in 'a state of perpetual and unruffled gaiety,' and the
+'mainspring' of the gaiety of his own circle.[290] No one, indeed, could
+be less 'soured' so far as his habitual temper was concerned. But
+Wilberforce's remark contained a serious truth. Bentham had made a
+discovery. He had vowed war in his youth against the 'demon of chicane.'
+He had now learned that the name of the demon was 'Legion.' To cast him
+out, it would be necessary to cast out the demon of officialism; and we
+shall see what this bit of knowledge presently implied.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[260] _Works_, x. 195.
+
+[261] _Ibid._ x. 198-99.
+
+[262] _Ibid._ x. 317.
+
+[263] _Ibid._ x. 270.
+
+[264] _Works_, x. 282.
+
+[265] _Works_, x. 296.
+
+[266] _Ibid._ x. 304.
+
+[267] _Ibid._ x. 292.
+
+[268] _Ibid._ x. 300.
+
+[269] _Works_, x. 315.
+
+[270] _Ibid._ x. 329.
+
+[271] _Ibid._ x. 366.
+
+[272] _Ibid._ x. 346.
+
+[273] _Ibid._ x. 381.
+
+[274] See his letter to Lansdowne, sending a portrait to
+Jeremy.--_Works_, x. 224.
+
+[275] _Works_, xi. 81.
+
+[276] _Ibid._ x. 226.
+
+[277] _Works_, x. 260. It is doubtful whether the letter was sent.
+
+[278] The Panopticon story is confusedly told in Bowring's life. The
+_Panopticon Correspondence_, in the eleventh volume, gives fragments
+from a 'history of the war between Jeremy Bentham and George III.,'
+written by Bentham in 1830-31, and selections from a voluminous
+correspondence.
+
+[279] _Works_, x. 301.
+
+[280] _Ibid._ xi. 167.
+
+[281] The plan, according to Bentham (_Works_, xi. 102), was suggested
+by Ruggles, author of the work upon the poor-laws, first printed in
+Young's _Annals_.
+
+[282] _Works_, viii. 440.
+
+[283] _Works_, xi. 102-3.
+
+[284] _Ibid._ x. 400.
+
+[285] _Works_, xi. 144.
+
+[286] For its later history see _Memorials of Millbank_, by Arthur
+Griffiths. 2 vols., 1875.
+
+[287] _Works_, xi. 106.
+
+[288] _Ibid._ x. 294.
+
+[289] Wilberforce's _Life_, ii. 71.
+
+[290] _Works_, x. 541.
+
+
+IV. THE UTILITARIAN PROPAGANDA
+
+Bentham in 1802 had reached the respectable age of fifty-four. He had
+published his first work twenty-six years, and his most elaborate
+treatise thirteen years, previously. He had been brought into contact
+with many of the eminent politicians and philanthropists of the day.
+Lansdowne had been a friendly patron: his advice had been treated with
+respect by Pitt, Dundas, and even by Blackstone; he was on friendly
+terms with Colquhoun, Sir F. Eden, Arthur Young, Wilberforce, and others
+interested in philanthropic movements, and his name at least was known
+to some French politicians. But his reputation was still obscure; and
+his connections did not develop into intimacies. He lived as a recluse
+and avoided society. His introduction to great people at Bowood had
+apparently rather increased than softened his shyness. The little circle
+of intimates, Romilly and Wilson and his own brother, must have
+satisfied his needs for social intercourse. It required an elaborate
+negotiation to bring about a meeting between him and Dr. Parr, the great
+Whig prophet, although they had been previously acquainted, and Parr
+was, as Romilly said by way of introduction, a profound admirer and
+universal panegyrist.[291] He refused to be introduced by Parr to Fox,
+because he had 'nothing particular to say' to the statesman, and
+considered that to be 'always a sufficient reason for declining
+acquaintance.'[292]
+
+But, at last, Bentham's fame was to take a start. Bentham, I said, had
+long before found himself. Dumont had now found Bentham. After long and
+tedious labours and multiplied communications between the master and the
+disciple, Dumont in the spring of 1802 brought out his _Traités de
+Législation de M. Jérémie Bentham_. The book was partly a translation
+from Bentham's published and unpublished works,[293] and partly a
+statement of the pith of the new doctrine in Dumont's own language. It
+had the great merit of putting Bentham's meaning vigorously and
+compactly, and free from many of the digressions, minute discussions of
+minor points and arguments requiring a special knowledge of English law,
+which had impeded the popularity of Bentham's previous works.
+
+The Jacobin controversies were passing into the background: and Bentham
+began to attain a hearing as a reformer upon different lines. In 1803
+Dumont visited St. Petersburg, and sent home glowing reports of
+Bentham's rising fame. As many copies of the _Traités_ had been sold
+there as in London. Codes were wanted; laws were being digested; and
+Bentham's work would supply the principles and the classification. A
+magnificent translation was ordered, and Russian officials wrote glowing
+letters in which Bentham was placed in a line with Bacon, Newton, and
+Adam Smith--each the founder of a new science.[294] At home the new book
+was one of the objects of what Dumont calls the 'scandalous irreverence'
+of the _Edinburgh Review_.[295] This refers to a review of the _Traités_
+in the _Edinburgh Review_ of April 1804. Although patronising in tone,
+and ridiculing some of Bentham's doctrines as commonplace and condemning
+others as criminal, it paid some high compliments to his ability. The
+irreverence meant at least that Bentham had become one of the persons
+worth talking about, and that he was henceforth to influence the rising
+generation. In January 1807 the _Edinburgh_ itself (probably Jeffrey)
+suggested that Bentham should be employed in a proposed reform of the
+Scottish judicial system. His old friend, Lansdowne, died on 7th May
+1805, and in one of his last letters expresses a hope that Bentham's
+principles are at last beginning to spread.[296] The hope was
+fulfilled.
+
+During the eighteenth century Benthamism had gone through its period of
+incubation. It was now to become an active agency, to gather proselytes,
+and to have a marked influence not only upon legislative but upon
+political movements. The immediate effect upon Bentham of the decline of
+the Panopticon, and his consequent emancipation from immediately
+practical work, was apparently his return to his more legitimate
+employment of speculative labour. He sent to Dumont at St.
+Petersburg[297] part of the treatise upon Political Economy, which had
+been naturally suggested by his later work: and he applied himself to
+the Scottish judiciary question, to which many of his speculations had a
+close application. He published a work upon this subject in 1808. To the
+period between 1802 and 1812 belongs also the book, or rather the
+collection of papers, afterwards transformed into the book, upon
+Evidence, which is one of his most valuable performances.
+
+A letter, dated 1st November 1810, gives a characteristic account of his
+position. He refers to hopes of the acceptance of some of his principles
+in South America. In Spain Spaniards are prepared to receive his laws
+'as oracles.' 'Now at length, when I am just ready to drop into the
+grave' (he had still twenty years of energetic work before him), 'my
+fame has spread itself all over the civilised world.' Dumont's
+publication of 1802 is considered to have superseded all previous
+writings on legislation. In Germany and France codes have been prepared
+by authorised lawyers, who have 'sought to do themselves credit by
+references to that work.'[298] It has been translated into Russian. Even
+in England he is often mentioned in books and in parliament. 'Meantime I
+am here scribbling on in my hermitage, never seeing anybody but for some
+special reason, always bearing relation to the service of mankind.'[299]
+Making all due allowance for the deceptive views of the outer world
+which haunt every 'hermitage,' it remains true that Bentham's fame was
+emerging from obscurity.
+
+The end of this period, moreover, was bringing him into closer contact
+with English political life. Bentham, as we have seen, rejected the
+whole Jacobin doctrine of abstract rights. So long as English politics
+meant either the acceptance of a theory which, for whatever reason,
+gathered round it no solid body of support, or, on the other hand, the
+acceptance of an obstructive and purely conservative principle, to which
+all reform was radically opposed, Bentham was necessarily in an isolated
+position. He had 'nothing particular to say' to Fox. He was neither a
+Tory nor a Jacobin, and cared little for the paralysed Whigs. He allied
+himself therefore, so far as he was allied with any one, with the
+philanthropic agitators who stood, like him, outside the lines of party.
+The improvement of prisons was not a party question. A marked
+change--not always, I think, sufficiently emphasised by historians--had
+followed the second war. The party-divisions began to take the form
+which was to become more marked as time went on. The old issues between
+Jacobin and Anti-Jacobin no longer existed. Napoleon had become the heir
+of the revolution. The great struggle was beginning in which England
+commanded the ocean, while the Continent was at the feet of the empire.
+For a time the question was whether England, too, should be invaded.
+After Trafalgar invasion became hopeless. The Napoleonic victories
+threatened to exclude English trade from the Continent: while England
+retorted by declaring that the Continent should trade with nobody else.
+Upon one side the war was now appealing to higher feelings. It was no
+longer a crusade against theories, but a struggle for national existence
+and for the existence of other nations threatened by a gigantic
+despotism. Men like Wordsworth and Coleridge, who could not be
+Anti-Jacobins, had been first shocked by the Jacobin treatment of
+Switzerland, and now threw themselves enthusiastically into the cause
+which meant the rescue of Spain and Germany from foreign oppression. The
+generous feeling which had resented the attempt to forbid Frenchmen to
+break their own bonds, now resented the attempts of Frenchmen to impose
+bonds upon others. The patriotism which prompted to a crusade had seemed
+unworthy, but the patriotism which was now allied with the patriotism of
+Spain and Germany involved no sacrifice of other sentiment. Many men had
+sympathised with the early revolution, not so much from any strong
+sentiment of evils at home as from a belief that the French movement was
+but a fuller development of the very principles which were partially
+embodied in the British Constitution. They had no longer to choose
+between sympathising with the enemies of England and sympathising with
+the suppressors of the old English liberties.
+
+But, on the other hand, an opposite change took place. The
+disappearance of the Jacobin movement allowed the Radicalism of home
+growth to display itself more fully. English Whigs of all shades had
+opposed the war with certain misgivings. They had been nervously anxious
+not to identify themselves with the sentiments of the Jacobins. They
+desired peace with the French, but had to protest that it was not for
+love of French principles. That difficulty was removed. There was no
+longer a vision--such as Gillray had embodied in his caricatures--of a
+guillotine in St. James's Street: or of a Committee of Public Safety
+formed by Fox, Paine, and Horne Tooke. Meanwhile Whig prophecies of the
+failure of the war were not disproved by its results. Though the English
+navy had been victorious, English interference on the Continent had been
+futile. Millions of money had been wasted: and millions were flowing
+freely. Even now we stand astonished at the reckless profusion of the
+financiers of the time. And what was there to show for it? The French
+empire, so far from being destroyed, had been consolidated. If we
+escaped for the time, could we permanently resist the whole power of
+Europe? When the Peninsular War began we had been fighting, except for
+the short truce of Amiens, for sixteen years; and there seemed no reason
+to believe that the expedition to Portugal in 1808 would succeed better
+than previous efforts. The Walcheren expedition of 1809 was a fresh
+proof of our capacity for blundering. Pauperism was still increasing
+rapidly, and forebodings of a war with America beginning to trouble men
+interested in commerce. The English Opposition had ample texts for
+discourses; and a demand for change began to spring up which was no
+longer a reflection of foreign sympathies. An article in the _Edinburgh_
+of January 1808, which professed to demonstrate the hopelessness of the
+Peninsular War, roused the wrath of the Tories. The _Quarterly Review_
+was started by Canning and Scott, and the _Edinburgh_, in return, took a
+more decidedly Whig colour. The Radicals now showed themselves behind
+the Whigs. Cobbett, who had been the most vigorous of John Bull
+Anti-Jacobins, was driven by his hatred of the tax-gatherer and the
+misery of the agricultural labourers into the opposite camp, and his
+_Register_ became the most effective organ of Radicalism. Demands for
+reform began again to make themselves heard in parliament. Sir Francis
+Burdett, who had sat at the feet of Horne Tooke, and whose return with
+Cochrane for Westminster in 1807 was the first parliamentary triumph of
+the reformers, proposed a motion on 15th June 1809, which was, of
+course, rejected, but which was the first of a series, and marked the
+revival of a serious agitation not to cease till the triumph of 1832.
+
+Meanwhile Bentham, meditating profoundly upon the Panopticon, had at
+last found out that he had begun at the wrong end. His reasoning had
+been thrown away upon the huge dead weight of official indifference, or
+worse than indifference. Why did they not accept the means for producing
+the greatest happiness of the greatest number? Because statesmen did not
+desire the end. And why not? To answer that question, and to show how a
+government could be constructed which should desire it, became a main
+occupation of Bentham's life. Henceforward, therefore, instead of merely
+treating of penal codes and other special reforms, his attention is
+directed to the previous question of political organisation; while at
+times he diverges to illustrate incidentally the abuses of what he
+ironically calls the 'matchless constitution.' Bentham's principal
+occupation, in a word, was to provide political philosophy for radical
+reformers.[300]
+
+Bentham remained as much a recluse as ever. He seldom left Queen's
+Square Place except for certain summer outings. In 1807 he took a house
+at Barrow Green, near Oxted, in Surrey, lying in a picturesque hollow at
+the foot of the chalk hills.[301] It was an old-fashioned house,
+standing in what had been a park, with a lake and a comfortable kitchen
+garden. Bentham pottered about in the grounds and under the old
+chestnut-trees, codifying, gardening, and talking to occasional
+disciples. He returned thither in following years; but in 1814, probably
+in consequence of his compensation for the Panopticon, took a larger
+place, Ford Abbey, near Chard in Somersetshire. It was a superb
+residence,[302] with chapel, cloisters, and corridors, a hall eighty
+feet long by thirty high, and a great dining parlour. Parts of the
+building dated from the twelfth century or the time of the Commonwealth,
+or had undergone alterations attributed to Inigo Jones. No Squire
+Western could have cared less for antiquarian associations, but Bentham
+made a very fair monk. The place, for which he paid £315 a year, was
+congenial. He rode his favourite hobby of gardening, and took his
+regular 'ante-jentacular' and 'post-prandial' walks, and played
+battledore and shuttlecock in the intervals of codification. He liked it
+so well that he would have taken it for life, but for the loss of £8000
+or £10,000 in a Devonshire marble-quarry.[303] In 1818 he gave it up,
+and thenceforward rarely quitted Queen's Square Place. His life was
+varied by few incidents, although his influence upon public affairs was
+for the first time becoming important. The busier journalists and
+platform orators did not trouble themselves much about philosophy. But
+they were in communication with men of a higher stamp, Romilly, James
+Mill, and others, who formed Bentham's innermost council. Thus the
+movements in the outside world set up an agitation in Bentham's study;
+and the recluse was prompted to set himself to work upon elaborating his
+own theories in various directions, in order to supply the necessary
+substratum of philosophical doctrine. If he had not the power of gaining
+the public ear, his oracles were transmitted through the disciples who
+also converted some of his raw materials into coherent books.
+
+The most important of Bentham's disciples for many years was James Mill,
+and I shall have to say what more is necessary in regard to the active
+agitation when I speak of Mill himself. For the present, it is enough to
+say that Mill first became Bentham's proselyte about 1808. Mill stayed
+with Bentham at Barrow Green and at Ford Abbey. Though some differences
+caused superficial disturbances of their harmony, no prophet could have
+had a more zealous, uncompromising, and vigorous disciple. Mill's force
+of character qualified him to become the leader of the school; but his
+doctrine was always essentially the doctrine of Bentham, and for the
+present he was content to be the transmitter of his master's message to
+mankind. He was at this period a contributor to the _Edinburgh Review_;
+and in October 1809 he inserted some praises of Bentham in a review of a
+book upon legislation by S. Scipion Bexon. The article was cruelly
+mangled by Jeffrey, according to his custom, and Jeffrey's most powerful
+vassal, Brougham, thought that the praises which remained were
+excessive.[304]
+
+Obviously the orthodox Whigs were not prepared to swear allegiance to
+Bentham. He was drawing into closer connection with the Radicals. In
+1809 Cobbett was denouncing the duke of York in consequence of the Mrs.
+Clarke scandal. Bentham wrote to him, but anonymously and cautiously, to
+obtain documents in regard to a previous libel case,[305] and proceeded
+to write a pamphlet on the _Elements of the Art of Packing (as applied
+to Special Juries)_, so sharp that his faithful adviser, Romilly,
+procured its suppression for the time.[306] Copies, however, were
+printed and privately given to a few who could be trusted. Bentham next
+wrote (1809) a 'Catechism of Parliamentary Reform,' which he
+communicated to Cobbett (16th November 1810), with a request for its
+publication in the _Register_.[307] Cobbett was at this time in prison
+for his attack upon flogging militia men; and, though still more hostile
+to government, was bound to be more cautious in his line of assault. The
+plan was not published, whether because too daring or too dull; but it
+was apparently printed. Bentham's opinion of Cobbett was anything but
+flattering. Cobbett, he thought in 1812, was a 'vile rascal,' and was
+afterwards pronounced to be 'filled with the _odium humani generis_--his
+malevolence and lying beyond everything.'[308] Cobbett's radicalism, in
+fact, was of the type most hostile to the Utilitarians. John Hunt, in
+the _Examiner_, was 'trumpeting' Bentham and Romilly in 1812, and was
+praised accordingly.[309] Bentham formed an alliance with another
+leading Radical. He had made acquaintance by 1811 with Sir F. Burdett,
+to whom he then appealed for help in an attack upon the delays of
+Chancery.[310] Burdett, indeed, appeared to him to be far inferior to
+Romilly and Brougham, but he thought that so powerful a 'hero of the
+mob' ought to be turned to account in the good cause.[311] Burdett seems
+to have courted the old philosopher; and a few years later a closer
+alliance was brought about. The peace of 1815 was succeeded by a period
+of distress, the more acutely felt from the disappointment of natural
+hopes of prosperity; and a period of agitation, met by harsh repression,
+followed. Applications were made, to Bentham for permission to use his
+'Catechism,' which was ultimately published (1818) in a cheap form by
+Wooler, well known as the editor of the democratic _Black Dwarf_.[312]
+Burdett applied for a plan of parliamentary reform. Henry Bickersteth
+(1783-1851), afterwards Lord Langdale and Master of the Rolls, at this
+time a rising barrister of high character, wrote an appeal to Bentham
+and Burdett to combine in setting forth a scheme which, with such
+authority, must command general acceptance. The result was a series of
+resolutions moved by Burdett in the House of Commons on 2nd June
+1818,[313] demanding universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and vote by
+ballot. Bentham had thus accepted the conclusions reached in a different
+way by the believers in that 'hodge-podge' of absurdities, the
+declaration of the rights of man. Curiously enough, his assault upon
+that document appeared in Dumont's French version in the year 1816, at
+the very time when he was accepting its practical conclusions.
+
+The schemes in which Mill was interested at this time drew Bentham's
+attention in other directions. In 1813 the Quaker, William Allen, who
+had been a close ally of Mill, induced Bentham to invest money in the
+New Lanark establishment. Owen, whose benevolent schemes had been
+hampered by his partners, bought them out, the new capital being partly
+provided by Allen, Bentham, and others. Bentham afterwards spoke
+contemptuously of Owen, who, as he said, 'began in vapour and ended in
+smoke,'[314] and whose disciples came in after years into sharp conflict
+with the Utilitarians. Bentham, however, took pleasure, it seems, in
+Owen's benevolent schemes for infant education, and made money by his
+investment, for once combining business with philanthropy
+successfully.[315] Probably he regarded New Lanark as a kind of
+Panopticon. Owen had not as yet become a prophet of Socialism.
+
+Another set of controversies in which Mill and his friends took an
+active part, started Bentham in a whole series of speculations. A plan
+(which I shall have to mention in connection with Mill), was devised in
+1815 for a 'Chrestomathic school,' which was to give a sound education
+of proper Utilitarian tendencies to the upper and middle classes.
+Brougham, Mackintosh, Ricardo, William Allen, and Place were all
+interested in this undertaking.[316] Bentham offered a site at Queen's
+Square Place, and though the scheme never came to the birth, it set him
+actively at work. He wrote a series of papers during his first year at
+Ford Abbey[317] upon the theory of education, published in 1816 as
+_Chrestomathia_; and to this was apparently due a further excursion
+beyond the limits of jurisprudence. Educational controversy in that
+ignorant day was complicated by religious animosity; the National
+Society and the 'British and Foreign' Society were fighting under the
+banners of Bell and Lancaster, and the war roused excessive bitterness.
+Bentham finding the church in his way, had little difficulty in
+discovering that the whole ecclesiastical system was part of the general
+complex of abuse against which he was warring. He fell foul of the
+Catechism; he exposed the abuses of non-residence and episcopal wealth;
+he discovered that the Thirty-nine Articles contained gross fallacies;
+he went on to make an onslaught upon the Apostle St Paul, whose evidence
+as to his conversion was exposed to a severe cross-examination; and,
+finally, he wrote, or supplied the materials for, a remarkable _Analysis
+of Natural Religion_, which was ultimately published by Grote under the
+pseudonym 'Philip Beauchamp,' in 1822. This procedure from the
+particular case of the Catechism in schools up to the general problem of
+the utility of religion in general, is curiously characteristic of
+Bentham.
+
+Bentham's mind was attracted to various other schemes by the disciples
+who came to sit at his feet, and professed, with more or less sincerity,
+to regard him as a Solon. Foreigners had been resorting to him from all
+parts of the world, and gave him hopes of new fields for codifying. As
+early as 1808 he had been visited at Barrow Green by the strange
+adventurer, politician, lawyer, and filibuster, Aaron Burr, famous for
+the duel in which he killed Alexander Hamilton, and now framing wild
+schemes for an empire in Mexico. Unscrupulous, restlessly active and
+cynical, he was a singular contrast to the placid philosopher, upon whom
+his confidences seem to have made an impression of not unpleasing
+horror. Burr's conversation suggested to Bentham a singular scheme for
+emigrating to Mexico. He applied seriously for introductions to Lord
+Holland, who had passed some time in Spain, and to Holland's friend,
+Jovellanos (1749-1812), a member of the Spanish Junta, who had written
+treatises upon legislation (1785), of which Bentham approved.[318] The
+dream of Mexico was succeeded by a dream of Venezuela. General Miranda
+spent some years in England, and had become well known to James Mill. He
+was now about to start upon an unfortunate expedition to Venezuela, his
+native country. He took with him a draft of a law for the freedom of the
+press, which Bentham drew up, and he proposed that when his new state
+was founded, Bentham should be its legislator.[319] Miranda was betrayed
+to the Spanish government in 1812, and died (1816) in the hands of the
+Inquisition. Bolivar, who was also in London in 1810 and took some
+notice of Joseph Lancaster, applied in flattering terms to Bentham. Long
+afterwards, when dictator of Columbia, he forbade the use of Bentham's
+works in the schools, to which, however, the privilege of reading him
+was restored, and, let us hope, duly valued, in 1835.[320] Santander,
+another South American hero, was also a disciple, and encouraged the
+study of Bentham. Bentham says in 1830 that forty thousand copies of
+Dumont's _Traités_ had been sold in Paris for the South American
+trade.[321] What share Bentham may have had in modifying South American
+ideas is unknown to me. In the United States he had many disciples of a
+more creditable kind than Burr. He appealed in 1811 to Madison, then
+President, for permission to construct a 'Pannomion' or complete body of
+law, for the use of the United States; and urged his claims both upon
+Madison and the Governor of Pennsylvania in 1817, when peace had been
+restored. He had many conversations upon this project with John Quincy
+Adams, who was then American minister in England.[322] This, of course,
+came to nothing, but an eminent American disciple, Edward Livingston
+(1764-1836), between 1820 and 1830 prepared codes for the State of
+Louisiana, and warmly acknowledged his obligations to Bentham.[323] In
+1830 Bentham also acknowledges a notice of his labours, probably
+resulting from this, which had been made in one of General Jackson's
+presidential messages.[324] In his later years the United States became
+his ideal, and he never tired of comparing its cheap and honest
+enactment with the corruption and extravagance at home.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[291] _Works_, x. 403.
+
+[292] _Ibid._ x. 62.
+
+[293] Bentham had himself written some of his papers in French.
+
+[294] _Works_, x. 407, 410, 413, 419.
+
+[295] _Ibid._ x. 415.
+
+[296] Lord E. Fitzmaurice's _Life of Shelburne_.
+
+[297] _Works_, x. 413.
+
+[298] This statement, I believe, refers to a complimentary reference to
+Bentham in the preface to the French Code.
+
+[299] _Works_, x. 458.
+
+[300] Bentham says that he reached these conclusions some time before
+1809: _Works_, iii. 435. Cf. _Ibid._ v. 278.
+
+[301] _Works_, x. 425.
+
+[302] See description in Bain's _James Mill_, 129-36.
+
+[303] _Works_, x. 479, 573.
+
+[304] _Works_, x. 452-54.; Bain's _James Mill_, 104.
+
+[305] The case of the 'King _v._ Cobbett,' (1804), which led to the
+proceedings against Mr. Justice Johnson in 1805.--Cobbett's _State
+Trials_, xxix.
+
+[306] _Works_, x. 448-49.
+
+[307] _Ibid._ x. 458.
+
+[308] _Works_, x. 471, 570.
+
+[309] _Ibid._ x. 471.
+
+[310] _Ibid._ x. 461.
+
+[311] _Ibid._ x. 471.
+
+[312] _Ibid._ x. 490.
+
+[313] Printed in _Works_, x. 495-97.
+
+[314] _Ibid._ x. 570.
+
+[315] _Ibid._ x. 476.
+
+[316] _Works_, x. 485.
+
+[317] Bain's _James Mill_, 136. _Church of Englandism_ and _Not Paul but
+Jesus_ were also written at Ford Abbey.
+
+[318] _Works_, x. 433, 448.
+
+[319] _Ibid._ x. 457-58; Bain's _James Mill_, 79.
+
+[320] _Works_, 553-54, 565.
+
+[321] _Ibid._ xi. 53.
+
+[322] See _Memoirs of J. Q. Adams_ (1874), iii. 511, 520, 532, 535-39,
+540, 544, 560, 562-63. and Bentham's letter to Adams in _Works_, x. 554.
+
+[323] _Works_, xi. 23.
+
+[324] _Ibid._ xi. 40.
+
+
+V. CODIFICATION
+
+The unsettled conditions which followed the peace in various European
+countries found Bentham other employment. In 1809 Dumont did some
+codifying for the Emperor of Russia, and in 1817 was engaged to do the
+same service for Geneva. He was employed for some years, and is said to
+have introduced a Benthamite Penal Code and Panopticon, and an
+application of the Tactics.[325] In 1820 and 1821 Bentham was consulted
+by the Constitutional party in Spain and Portugal, and wrote elaborate
+tracts for their enlightenment. He made an impression upon at least one
+Spaniard. Borrow, when travelling in Spain some ten years after
+Bentham's death, was welcomed by an Alcalde on Cape Finisterre, who had
+upon his shelves all the works of the 'grand Baintham,' and compared him
+to Solon, Plato, and even Lope de Vega.[326] The last comparison
+appeared to Borrow to be overstrained. Bentham even endeavoured in
+1822-23 to administer some sound advice to the government of Tripoli,
+but his suggestions for 'remedies against misrule' seem never to have
+been communicated.[327] In 1823 and 1824 he was a member of the Greek
+Committee; he corresponded with Mavrocordato and other leaders; and he
+begged Parr to turn some of his admonitions into 'Parrian' Greek for the
+benefit of the moderns.[328] Blaquière and Stanhope, two ardent members
+of the committee, were disciples; and Stanhope carried with him to
+Greece Bentham's _Table of the Springs of Action_, with which he tried
+to indoctrinate Byron. The poet, however, thought with some plausibility
+that he was a better judge of human passions than the philosopher.
+Parry, the engineer, who joined Byron at the same time, gives a queer
+account of the old philosopher trotting about London in the service of
+the Greeks.[329] The coarse and thoughtless might laugh, and perhaps
+some neither coarse nor thoughtless might smile. But Bowring tells us
+that these were days of boundless happiness for Bentham.[330] Tributes
+of admiration were pouring in from all sides, and the true Gospel was
+spreading across the Atlantic and along the shores of the Mediterranean.
+
+At home the Utilitarian party was consolidating itself; and the struggle
+which resulted in the Reform Bill was slowly beginning. The veteran
+Cartwright, Bentham's senior by eight years, tried in 1821 to persuade
+him to come out as one of a committee of 'Guardians of Constitutional
+Reform,' elected at a public meeting.[331] Bentham wisely refused to be
+drawn from his privacy. He left it to his friends to agitate, while he
+returned to labour in his study. The demand for legislation which had
+sprung up in so many parts of the world encouraged Bentham to undertake
+the last of his great labours. The Portuguese Cortes voted in December
+1821 that he should be invited to prepare an 'all-comprehensive code';
+and in 1822 he put out a curious 'Codification proposal,' offering to do
+the work for any nation in need of a legislator, and appending
+testimonials to his competence for the work. He set to work upon a
+'Constitutional Code,' which occupied him at intervals during the
+remainder of his life, and embodied the final outcome of his
+speculations. He diverged from this main purpose to write various
+pamphlets upon topics of immediate interest; and was keenly interested
+in the various activities of his disciples. The Utilitarians now thought
+themselves entitled to enter the field of politics as a distinct body.
+An organ to defend their cause was desirable, and Bentham supplied the
+funds for the _Westminster Review_, of which the first number appeared
+in April 1824.
+
+The editorship fell chiefly into the hands of Bowring (1792-1872).
+Bowring had travelled much upon the Continent for a commercial house,
+and his knowledge of Spanish politics had brought him into connection
+with Bentham, to whom Blaquière recommended him in 1820.[332] A strong
+attachment sprang up between the two. Bentham confided all his thoughts
+and feelings to the young man, and Bowring looked up to his teacher with
+affectionate reverence. In 1828 Bentham says that Bowring is 'the most
+intimate friend he has.'[333] Bowring complains of calumnies, by which
+he was assailed, though they failed to alienate Bentham. What they may
+have been matters little; but it is clear that a certain jealousy arose
+between this last disciple and his older rivals. James Mill's stern and
+rigid character had evidently produced some irritation at intervals; and
+to him it would naturally appear that Bowring was the object of a senile
+favouritism. In any case it is to be regretted that Bentham thus became
+partly alienated from his older friends[334]. Mill was too proud to
+complain; and never wavered in his allegiance to the master's
+principles. But one result, and to us the most important, was that the
+new attachment led to the composition of one of the worst biographies in
+the language, out of materials which might have served for a
+masterpiece. Bowring was a great linguist, and an energetic man of
+business. He wrote hymns, and one of them, 'In the cross of Christ I
+glory,' is said to have 'universal fame.' A Benthamite capable of so
+singular an eccentricity judiciously agreed to avoid discussions upon
+religious topics with his master. To Bowring we also owe the
+_Deontology_, which professes to represent Bentham's dictation. The
+Mills repudiated this version, certainly a very poor one, of their
+teacher's morality, and held that it represented less Bentham than such
+an impression of Bentham as could be stamped upon a muddle-headed
+disciple.[335]
+
+The last years of his life brought Bentham into closer connection with
+more remarkable men. The Radicals had despised the Whigs as trimmers and
+half-hearted reformers, and James Mill expressed this feeling very
+frankly in the first numbers of the _Westminster Review_. Reform,
+however, was now becoming respectable, and the Whigs were gaining the
+courage to take it up seriously. Foremost among the Edinburgh Reviewers
+was the great Henry Brougham, whose fame was at this time almost as
+great as his ambition could desire, and who considered himself to be the
+natural leader of all reform. He had shown eagerness to distinguish
+himself in lines fully approved by Bentham. His admirers regarded him
+as a giant; and his opponents, if they saw in him a dash of the
+charlatan, could not deny his amazing energy and his capacity as an
+orator. The insatiable vanity which afterwards ruined his career already
+made it doubtful whether he fought for the cause or the glory. But he
+was at least an instrument worth having. He was a kind of half-disciple.
+If in 1809 he had checked Mill's praise of Bentham, he was soon
+afterwards in frequent communication with the master. In July 1812
+Bentham announces that Brougham is at last to be admitted to a dinner,
+for which he had been 'intriguing any time this six months,' and expects
+that his proselyte will soon be the first man in the House of Commons,
+and eclipse even Romilly.[336] In later years they had frequent
+communications; and when in 1827 Brougham was known to be preparing an
+utterance upon law reform, Bentham's hopes rose high. He offered to his
+disciple 'some nice little sweet pap of my own making,' sound teaching
+that is, upon evidence, judicial establishments and codification.
+Brougham thanks his 'dear grandpapa,' and Bentham offers further
+supplies to his 'dear, sweet little poppet.'[337] But when the orator
+had spoken Bentham declares (9th February 1828) that the mountain has
+been delivered of a mouse. Brougham was 'not the man to set up' simple
+and rational principles. He was the sham adversary but the real
+accomplice of Peel, pulling up lies by the root to plant others equally
+noxious.[338] In 1830 Bentham had even to hold up 'Master Peel' as a
+'model good boy' to the self-styled reformer. Brougham needs a dose of
+jalap instead of pap, for he cannot even spell the 'greatest happiness
+principle' properly.[339] Bentham went so far as to write what he fondly
+took to be an epigram upon Brougham:
+
+    'So foolish and so wise, so great, so small,
+     Everything now, to-morrow nought at all.'[340]
+
+In September 1831 Brougham as Chancellor announced a scheme for certain
+changes in the constitution of the courts. The proposal called forth
+Bentham's last pamphlet, _Lord Brougham displayed_.[341] Bentham laments
+that his disciple has 'stretched out the right hand of fellowship to
+jobbers of all sorts.'[342] In vain had Brougham in his speech called
+Bentham 'one of the great sages of the law.' Bentham acknowledges his
+amiability and his genius; but laments over the untrustworthy character
+of a man who could only adopt principles so far as they were subservient
+to his own vanity.
+
+Another light of the _Edinburgh Review_, who at this time took Brougham
+at his own valuation, did an incidental service to Bentham. Upon the
+publication of the _Book of Fallacies_ in 1825, Sydney Smith reviewed or
+rather condensed it in the _Edinburgh Review_, and gave the pith of the
+whole in his famous _Noodle's Oration_. The noodle utters all the
+commonplaces by which the stupid conservatives, with Eldon at their
+head, met the demands of reformers. Nothing could be wittier than
+Smith's brilliant summary. Whigs and Radicals for the time agreed in
+ridiculing blind prejudice. The day was to come when the Whigs at least
+would see that some principles might be worse than prejudice. All the
+fools, said Lord Melbourne, 'were against Catholic Emancipation, and
+the worst of it is, the fools were in the right.' Sydney Smith was glad
+to be Bentham's mouthpiece for the moment: though, when Benthamism was
+applied to church reform, Smith began to perceive that Noodle was not so
+silly as he seemed.
+
+One other ally of Bentham deserves notice. O'Connell had in 1828, in
+speaking of legal abuses, called himself 'an humble disciple of the
+immortal Bentham.'[343] Bentham wrote to acknowledge the compliment. He
+invited O'Connell to become an inmate of his hermitage at Queen's Square
+Place, and O'Connell responded warmly to the letters of his 'revered
+master.' Bentham's aversion to Catholicism was as strong as his
+objection to Catholic disqualifications, and he took some trouble to
+smooth down the difficulties which threatened an alliance between ardent
+believers and thoroughgoing sceptics. O'Connell had attacked some who
+were politically upon his side. 'Dan, dear child,' says Bentham, 'whom
+in imagination I am at this moment pressing to my fond bosom, put off,
+if it be possible, your intolerance.'[344] Their friendship, however,
+did not suffer from this discord, and their correspondence is in the
+same tone till the end. In one of Bentham's letters he speaks of a
+contemporary correspondence with another great man, whom he does not
+appear to have met personally. He was writing long letters, entreating
+the duke of Wellington to eclipse Cromwell by successfully attacking the
+lawyers. The duke wrote 'immediate answers in his own hand,' and took
+good-humouredly a remonstrance from Bentham upon the duel with Lord
+Winchilsea in 1829.[345] Bentham was ready to the end to seek allies in
+any quarter. When Lord Sidmouth took office in 1812, Bentham had an
+interview with him, and had some hopes of being employed to prepare a
+penal code.[346] Although experience had convinced him of the futility
+of expectations from the Sidmouths and Eldons, he was always on the look
+out for sympathy; and the venerable old man was naturally treated with
+respect by people who had little enough of real interest in his
+doctrines.
+
+During the last ten years of his life, Bentham was cheered by symptoms
+of the triumph of his creed. The approach of the millennium seemed to be
+indicated by the gathering of the various forces which carried Roman
+Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill. Bentham still received
+testimonies of his fame abroad. In 1825 he visited Paris to consult some
+physicians. He was received with the respect which the French can always
+pay to intellectual eminence.[347] All the lawyers in a court of justice
+rose to receive him, and he was placed at the president's right hand. On
+the revolution of 1830, he addressed some good advice to the country of
+which he had been made a citizen nearly forty years before. In 1832,
+Talleyrand, to whom he had talked about the Panopticon in 1792, dined
+with him alone in his hermitage.[348] When Bowring observed to the
+prince that Bentham's works had been plundered, the polite diplomatist
+replied, _et pillé de tout le monde, il est toujours riche_. Bentham was
+by this time failing. At eighty-two he was still, as he put it,
+'codifying like any dragon.'[349] On 18th May 1832 he did his last bit
+of his lifelong labour, upon the 'Constitutional Code.' The great
+reform agitation was reaching the land of promise, but Bentham was to
+die in the wilderness. He sank without a struggle on 6th June 1832, his
+head resting on Bowring's bosom. He left the characteristic direction
+that his body should be dissected for the benefit of science. An
+incision was formally made; and the old gentleman, in his clothes as he
+lived, his face covered by a wax mask, is still to be seen at University
+College in Gower Street.
+
+Bentham, as we are told, had a strong personal resemblance to Benjamin
+Franklin. Sagacity, benevolence, and playfulness were expressed in both
+physiognomies. Bentham, however, differed from the man whose intellect
+presents many points of likeness, in that he was not a man of the
+market-place or the office. Bentham was in many respects a child through
+life:[350] a child in simplicity, good humour, and vivacity; his health
+was unbroken; he knew no great sorrow; and after emerging from the
+discouragement of his youth, he was placidly contemplating a continuous
+growth of fame and influence. He is said to have expressed the wish that
+he could awake once in a century to contemplate the prospect of a world
+gradually adopting his principles and so making steady progress in
+happiness and wisdom.
+
+No man could lead a simpler life. His chief luxuries at table were
+fruit, bread, and tea. He had a 'sacred teapot' called Dick, with
+associations of its own, and carefully regulated its functions. He
+refrained from wine during the greatest part of his life, and was never
+guilty of a single act of intemperance. In later life he took a daily
+half-glass of Madeira. He was scrupulously neat in person, and wore a
+Quaker-like brown coat, brown cassimere breeches, white worsted
+stockings and a straw hat. He walked or 'rather trotted' with his stick
+Dapple, and took his 'ante-prandial' and other 'circumgyrations' with
+absolute punctuality. He loved pets; he had a series of attached cats;
+and cherished the memory of a 'beautiful pig' at Hendon, and of a donkey
+at Ford Abbey. He encouraged mice to play in his study--a taste which
+involved some trouble with his cats, and suggests problems as to the
+greatest happiness of the greatest number. Kindness to animals was an
+essential point of his moral creed. 'I love everything,' he said, 'that
+has four legs.' He had a passion for flowers, and tried to introduce
+useful plants. He loved music--especially Handel--and had an organ in
+his house. He cared nothing for poetry: 'Prose,' he said,[351] 'is when
+all the lines except the last go on to the margin. Poetry is when some
+of them fall short of it.' He was courteous and attentive to his guests,
+though occasionally irritable when his favourite crotchets were
+transgressed, or especially if his fixed hours of work were deranged.
+
+His regularity in literary work was absolute. He lived by a time-table,
+working in the morning and turning out from ten to fifteen folio pages
+daily. He read the newspapers regularly, but few books, and cared
+nothing for criticisms on his own writings. His only substantial meal
+was a dinner at six or half-past, to which he occasionally admitted a
+few friends as a high privilege. He liked to discuss the topics of which
+his mind was full, and made notes beforehand of particular points to be
+introduced in conversation. He was invariably inaccessible to visitors,
+even famous ones, likely to distract his thoughts. 'Tell Mr. Bentham
+that Mr. Richard Lovell Edgeworth desires to see him.' 'Tell Mr. Richard
+Lovell Edgeworth that Mr. Bentham does not desire to see him' was the
+reply. When Mme. de Staël came to England, she said to Dumont: 'Tell
+Bentham I shall see nobody till I have seen him.' 'I am sorry for it,'
+said Bentham, 'for then she will never see anybody.' And he summed up
+his opinion of the famous author of _Corinne_ by calling her 'a trumpery
+magpie.'[352] There is a simplicity and vivacity about some of the
+sayings reported by Bowring, which prove that Bentham could talk well,
+and increase our regret for the absence of a more efficient Boswell. At
+ten Bentham had his tea, at eleven his nightcap, and by twelve all his
+guests were ignominiously expelled. He was left to sleep on a hard bed.
+His sleep was light, and much disturbed by dreams.
+
+Bentham was certainly amiable. The 'surest way to gain men,' he said,
+'is to appear to love them, and the surest way to appear to love them is
+to love them in reality.' The least pleasing part of his character,
+however, is the apparent levity of his attachments. He was, as we have
+seen, partly alienated from Dumont, though some friendly communications
+are recorded in later years, and Dumont spoke warmly of Bentham only a
+few days before his death in 1829.[353] He not only cooled towards James
+Mill, but, if Bowring is to be trusted, spoke of him with great
+harshness.[354] Bowring was not a judicious reporter, indeed, and
+capable of taking hasty phrases too seriously. What Bentham's remarks
+upon these and other friends suggest is not malice or resentment, but
+the flippant utterance of a man whose feelings are wanting in depth
+rather than kindliness. It is noticeable that, after his early visit at
+Bowood, no woman seems to have counted for anything in Bentham's life.
+He was not only never in love, but it looks as if he never even talked
+to any woman except his cook or housemaid.
+
+The one conclusion that I need draw concerns a question not, I think,
+hard to be solved. It would be easy to make a paradox by calling Bentham
+at once the most practical and most unpractical of men. This is to point
+out the one-sided nature of Bentham's development. Bentham's habits
+remind us in some ways of Kant; and the thought may be suggested that he
+would have been more in his element as a German professor of
+philosophies. In such a position he might have devoted himself to the
+delight of classifying and co-ordinating theories, and have found
+sufficient enjoyment in purely intellectual activity. After a fashion
+that was the actual result. How far, indeed, Bentham could have achieved
+much in the sphere of pure philosophy, and what kind of philosophy he
+would have turned out, must be left to conjecture. The circumstances of
+his time and country, and possibly his own temperament generally, turned
+his thoughts to problems of legislation and politics, that is to say, of
+direct practical interest. He was therefore always dealing with concrete
+facts, and a great part of his writings may be considered as raw
+material for acts of parliament. Bentham remained, however, unpractical,
+in the sense that he had not that knowledge which we ascribe either to
+the poet or to the man of the world. He had neither the passion nor the
+sympathetic imagination. The springs of active conduct which Byron knew
+from experience were to Bentham nothing more than names in a careful
+classification. Any shrewd attorney or Bow Street runner would have been
+a better judge of the management of convicts; and here were dozens of
+party politicians, such as Rigby and Barré, who could have explained to
+him beforehand those mysteries in the working of the political
+machinery, which it took him half a lifetime to discover. In this sense
+Bentham was unpractical in the highest degree, for at eighty he had not
+found out of what men are really made. And yet by his extraordinary
+intellectual activity and the concentration of all his faculties upon
+certain problems, he succeeded in preserving an example, and though not
+a unique yet an almost unsurpassable example, of the power which belongs
+to the man of one idea.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[325] See correspondence upon his codification plans in Russia, America,
+and Geneva in _Works_, iv. 451-594.
+
+[326] Borrow's _Bible in Spain_, ch. xxx.
+
+[327] _Works_, viii. 555-600.
+
+[328] _Ibid._ x. 534. See Blaquière's enthusiastic letter to
+Bentham.--_Works_, x. 475.
+
+[329] See, however, Bentham's reference to this story.--_Works_, xi. 66.
+
+[330] _Works_, x. 539.
+
+[331] _Ibid._ x. 522.
+
+[332] _Works_, x. 516.
+
+[333] _Ibid._ x. 591.
+
+[334] A letter from Mill in the University College MSS. describes a
+misunderstanding about borrowed books, a fertile, but hardly adequate,
+cause of quarrel.
+
+[335] Bowring's religious principles prevented him from admitting some
+of Bentham's works to the collective edition.
+
+[336] _Works_, x. 471-72.
+
+[337] _Ibid._ x. 576.
+
+[338] _Ibid._ x. 588.
+
+[339] _Works_, xi. 37. Papers preserved at University College show that
+during Peel's law reforms at this time Bentham frequently communicated
+with him.
+
+[340] _Ibid._ xi. 50.
+
+[341] _Ibid._ v. 549.
+
+[342] _Ibid._ v. 609.
+
+[343] _Works_, x. 594.
+
+[344] _Ibid._ xi. 26.
+
+[345] _Ibid._ xi. 13, 28.
+
+[346] _Works_, x. 468.
+
+[347] _Ibid._ x. 551.
+
+[348] _Ibid._ xi. 75.
+
+[349] _Ibid._ xi. 33.
+
+[350] Mill's _Dissertations_, i. 354 and 392 _n._
+
+[351] _Works_, x. 442.
+
+[352] _Works_, x. 467; xi. 79.
+
+[353] _Ibid._ xi. 23-24.
+
+[354] _Ibid._ x. 450.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+BENTHAM'S DOCTRINE
+
+
+I. FIRST PRINCIPLES
+
+Bentham's position is in one respect unique. There have been many
+greater thinkers; but there has been hardly any one whose abstract
+theory has become in the same degree the platform of an active political
+party. To accept the philosophy was to be also pledged to practical
+applications of Utilitarianism. What, then, was the revelation made to
+the Benthamites, and to what did it owe its influence? The central
+doctrine is expressed in Bentham's famous formula: the test of right and
+wrong is the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.' There was
+nothing new in this assertion. It only expresses the fact that Bentham
+accepted one of the two alternatives which have commended themselves to
+conflicting schools ever since ethical speculation was erected into a
+separate department of thought. Moreover, the side which Bentham took
+was, we may say, the winning side. The ordinary morality of the time was
+Utilitarian in substance. Hutcheson had invented the sacred phrase: and
+Hume had based his moral system upon 'utility.'[355] Bentham had
+learned much from Helvétius the French freethinker, and had been
+anticipated by Paley the English divine. The writings in which Bentham
+deals explicitly with the general principles of Ethics would hardly
+entitle him to a higher position than that of a disciple of Hume without
+Hume's subtlety; or of Paley without Paley's singular gift of
+exposition. Why, then, did Bentham's message come upon his disciples
+with the force and freshness of a new revelation? Our answer must be in
+general terms that Bentham founded not a doctrine but a method: and that
+the doctrine which came to him simply as a general principle was in his
+hands a potent instrument applied with most fruitful results to
+questions of immediate practical interest.
+
+Beyond the general principle of utility, therefore, we have to consider
+the 'organon' constructed by him to give effect to a general principle
+too vague to be applied in detail. The fullest account of this is
+contained in the _Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
+Legislation_. This work unfortunately is a fragment, but it gives his
+doctrine vigorously and decisively, without losing itself in the minute
+details which become wearisome in his later writings. Bentham intended
+it as an introduction to a penal code; and his investigation sent him
+back to more general problems. He found it necessary to settle the
+relations of the penal code to the whole body of law; and to settle
+these he had to consider the principles which underlie legislation in
+general. He had thus, he says, to 'create a new science,' and then to
+elaborate one department of the science. The 'introduction' would
+contain prolegomena not only for the penal code but for the other
+departments of inquiry which he intended to exhaust.[356] He had to lay
+down primary truths which should be to this science what the axioms are
+to mathematical sciences.[357] These truths therefore belong to the
+sphere of conduct in general, and include his ethical theory.
+
+'Nature has placed mankind' (that is his opening phrase) 'under the
+governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them
+alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we
+shall do.' There is the unassailable basis. It had been laid down as
+unequivocally by Locke,[358] and had been embodied in the brilliant
+couplets of Pope's _Essay on Man_.[359] At the head of the curious table
+of universal knowledge, given in the _Chrestomathia_, we have Eudæmonics
+as an all-comprehensive name of which every art is a branch.[360]
+Eudæmonics, as an art, corresponds to the science 'ontology.' It covers
+the whole sphere of human thought. It means knowledge in general as
+related to conduct. Its first principle, again, requires no more proof
+than the primary axioms of arithmetic or geometry. Once understood, it
+is by the same act of the mind seen to be true. Some people, indeed, do
+not see it. Bentham rather ignores than answers some of their arguments.
+But his mode of treating opponents indicates his own position.
+'Happiness,' it is often said, is too vague a word to be the keystone of
+an ethical system; it varies from man to man: or it is 'subjective,'
+and therefore gives no absolute or independent ground for morality. A
+morality of 'eudæmonism' must be an 'empirical' morality, and we can
+never extort from it that 'categorical imperative,' without which we
+have instead of a true morality a simple system of 'expediency.' From
+Bentham's point of view the criticism must be retorted. He regards
+'happiness' as precisely the least equivocal of words; and 'happiness'
+itself as therefore affording the one safe clue to all the intricate
+problems of human conduct. The authors of the _Federalist_, for example,
+had said that justice was the 'end of government.' 'Why not happiness?'
+asks Bentham. 'What happiness is every man knows, because what pleasure
+is, every man knows, and what pain is, every man knows. But what justice
+is--this is what on every occasion is the subject-matter of
+dispute.'[361] That phrase gives his view in a nutshell. Justice is the
+means, not the end. That is just which produces a maximum of happiness.
+Omit all reference to Happiness, and Justice becomes a meaningless word
+prescribing equality, but not telling us equality of what. Happiness, on
+the other hand, has a substantial and independent meaning from which the
+meaning of justice can be deduced. It has therefore a logical priority:
+and to attempt to ignore this is the way to all the labyrinths of
+hopeless confusion by which legislation has been made a chaos. Bentham's
+position is indicated by his early conflict with Blackstone, not a very
+powerful representative of the opposite principle. Blackstone, in fact,
+had tried to base his defence of that eminently empirical product, the
+British Constitution, upon some show of a philosophical groundwork. He
+had used the vague conception of a 'social contract,' frequently invoked
+for the same purpose at the revolution of 1688, and to eke out his
+arguments applied the ancient commonplaces about monarchy, aristocracy,
+and democracy. He thus tried to invest the constitution with the
+sanctity derived from this mysterious 'contract,' while appealing also
+to tradition or the incarnate 'wisdom of our ancestors,' as shown by
+their judicious mixture of the three forms. Bentham had an easy task,
+though he performed it with remarkable vigour, in exposing the weakness
+of this heterogeneous aggregate. Look closely, and this fictitious
+contract can impose no new obligation: for the obligation itself rests
+upon Utility. Why not appeal to Utility at once? I am bound to obey, not
+because my great-grandfather may be regarded as having made a bargain,
+which he did not really make, with the great-grandfather of George III.;
+but simply because rebellion does more harm than good. The forms of
+government are abstractions, not names of realities, and their 'mixture'
+is a pure figment. King, Lords, and Commons are not really incarnations
+of power, wisdom, and goodness. Their combination forms a system the
+merits of which must in the last resort be judged by its working. 'It is
+the principle of utility, accurately apprehended and steadily applied,
+that affords the only clew to guide a man through these streights.'[362]
+So much in fact Bentham might learn from Hume; and to defend upon any
+other ground the congeries of traditional arrangements which passed for
+the British Constitution was obviously absurd. It was in this warfare
+against the shifting and ambiguous doctrines of Blackstone that Bentham
+first showed the superiority of his own method: for, as between the two,
+Bentham's position is at least the most coherent and intelligible.
+
+Blackstone, however, represents little more than a bit of rhetoric
+embodying fragments of inconsistent theories. The _Morals and
+Legislation_ opens by briefly and contemptuously setting aside more
+philosophical opponents of Utilitarianism. The 'ascetic' principle, for
+example, is the formal contradiction of the principle of Utility, for it
+professedly declares pleasure to be evil. Could it be consistently
+carried out it would turn earth into hell. But in fact it is at bottom
+an illegitimate corollary from the very principle which it ostensibly
+denies. It professes to condemn pleasure in general; it really means
+that certain pleasures can only be bought at an excessive cost of pain.
+Other theories are contrivances for avoiding the appeal 'to any external
+standard'; and in substance, therefore, they make the opinion of the
+individual theorist an ultimate and sufficient reason. Adam Smith by his
+doctrine of 'sympathy' makes the sentiment of approval itself the
+ultimate standard. My feeling echoes yours, and reciprocally; each
+cannot derive authority from the other. Another man (Hutcheson) invents
+a thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and what is wrong and
+calls it a 'moral sense.' Beattie substitutes 'common' for 'moral'
+sense, and his doctrine is attractive because every man supposes himself
+to possess common sense. Others, like Price, appeal to the
+Understanding, or, like Clarke, to the 'Fitness of Things,' or they
+invent such phrases as 'Law of Nature,' or 'Right Reason' or 'Natural
+Justice,' or what you please. Each really means that whatever he says
+is infallibly true and self-evident. Wollaston discovers that the only
+wrong thing is telling a lie; or that when you kill your father, it is a
+way of saying that he is not your father, and the same method is
+applicable to any conduct which he happens to dislike. The 'fairest and
+openest of them all' is the man who says, 'I am of the number of the
+Elect'; God tells the Elect what is right: therefore if you want to know
+what is right, you have only to come to me.[363] Bentham is writing here
+in his pithiest style. His criticism is of course of the rough and ready
+order; but I think that in a fashion he manages to hit the nail pretty
+well on the head.
+
+His main point, at any rate, is clear. He argues briefly that the
+alternative systems are illusory because they refer to no 'external
+standard.' His opponents, not he, really make morality arbitrary. This,
+whatever the ultimate truth, is in fact the essential core of all the
+Utilitarian doctrine descended from or related to Benthamism. Benthamism
+aims at converting morality into a science. Science, according to him,
+must rest upon facts. It must apply to real things, and to things which
+have definite relations and a common measure. Now, if anything be real,
+pains and pleasures are real. The expectation of pain or pleasure
+determines conduct; and, if so, it must be the sole determinant of
+conduct. The attempt to conceal or evade this truth is the fatal source
+of all equivocation and confusion. Try the experiment. Introduce a
+'moral sense.' What is its relation to the desire for happiness? If the
+dictates of the moral sense be treated as ultimate, an absolutely
+arbitrary element is introduced; and we have one of the 'innate ideas'
+exploded by Locke, a belief summarily intruded into the system without
+definite relations to any other beliefs: a dogmatic assertion which
+refuses to be tested or to be correlated with other dogmas; a reduction
+therefore of the whole system to chaos. It is at best an instinctive
+belief which requires to be justified and corrected by reference to some
+other criterion. Or resolve morality into 'reason,' that is, into some
+purely logical truth, and it then remains in the air--a mere nonentity
+until experience has supplied some material upon which it can work. Deny
+the principle of utility, in short, as he says in a vigorous
+passage,[364] and you are involved in a hopeless circle. Sooner or later
+you appeal to an arbitrary and despotic principle and find that you have
+substituted words for thoughts.
+
+The only escape from this circle is the frank admission that happiness
+is, in fact, the sole aim of man. There are, of course, different kinds
+of happiness as there are different kinds of physical forces. But the
+motives to action are, like the physical forces, commensurable. Two
+courses of conduct can always be compared in respect of the happiness
+produced, as two motions of a body can be compared in respect of the
+energy expended. If, then, we take the moral judgment to be simply a
+judgment of amounts of happiness, the whole theory can be systematised,
+and its various theorems ranged under a single axiom or consistent set
+of axioms. Pain and pleasure give the real value of actions; they are
+the currency with a definite standard into which every general rule may
+be translated. There is always a common measure applicable in every
+formula for the estimation of conduct. If you admit your Moral Sense,
+you profess to settle values by some standard which has no definite
+relation to the standard which in fact governs the normal transactions.
+But any such double standard, in which the two measures are absolutely
+incommensurable, leads straight to chaos. Or, if again you appeal to
+reason in the abstract, you are attempting to settle an account by pure
+arithmetic without reference to the units upon which your operation is
+performed. Two pounds and two pounds will make four pounds whatever a
+pound may be; but till I know what it is, the result is nugatory.
+Somewhere I must come upon a basis of fact, if my whole construction is
+to stand.
+
+This is the fundamental position implied in Bentham's doctrine. The
+moral judgment is simply one case of the judgment of happiness. Bentham
+is so much convinced of this that to him there appeared to be in reality
+no other theory. What passed for theories were mere combinations of
+words. Having said this, we know where to lay the foundations of the new
+science. It deals with a vast complicity of facts: it requires
+'investigations as severe as mathematical ones, but beyond all
+comparison more intricate and extensive.'[365] Still it deals with
+facts, and with facts which have a common measure, and can, therefore,
+be presented as a coherent system. To present this system, or so much of
+it as is required for purposes of legislation, is therefore his next
+task. The partial execution is the chief substance of the
+_Introduction_. Right and wrong conduct, we may now take for granted,
+mean simply those classes of conduct which are conducive to or opposed
+to happiness; or, in the sacred formula, to act rightly means to promote
+the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The legislator, like
+every one else, acts rightly in so far as he is guided by the principle
+(to use one of the phrases coined by Bentham) of 'maximising' happiness.
+He seeks to affect conduct; and conduct can be affected only by annexing
+pains or pleasures to given classes of actions. Hence we have a vitally
+important part of his doctrine--the theory of 'sanctions.' Pains and
+pleasures as annexed to action are called 'sanctions.' There are
+'physical or natural,' 'political, 'moral or popular,' and 'religious'
+sanctions. The 'physical' sanctions are such pleasures and pains as
+follow a given course of conduct independently of the interference of
+any other human or supernatural being; the 'political' those which are
+annexed by the action of the legislator; the 'moral or popular' those
+which are annexed by other individuals not acting in a corporate
+capacity; and the 'religious' those which are annexed by a 'superior
+invisible being,' or, as he says elsewhere,[366] 'such as are capable of
+being expected at the hands of an invisible Ruler of the Universe.' The
+three last sanctions, he remarks, 'operate through the first.' The
+'magistrate' or 'men at large' can only operate, and God is supposed
+only to operate, 'through the powers of nature,' that is, by applying
+some of the pains and pleasures which may also be natural sanctions. A
+man is burnt: if by his own imprudence, that is a 'physical' sanction;
+if by the magistrate, it is a 'political' sanction; if by some neglect
+of his neighbours, due to their dislike of his 'moral character,' a
+'moral' sanction; if by the immediate act of God or by distraction
+caused by dread of God's displeasure, it is a 'religious' sanction. Of
+these, as Bentham characteristically observes[367] in a later writing
+the political is much stronger than the 'moral' or 'religious.' Many men
+fear the loss of character or the 'wrath of Heaven,' but all men fear
+the scourge and the gallows.[368] He admits, however, that the religious
+sanction and the additional sanction of 'benevolence' have the advantage
+of not requiring that the offender should be found out.[369] But in any
+case, the 'natural' and religious sanctions are beyond the legislator's
+power. His problem, therefore, is simply this: what sanctions ought he
+to annex to conduct, or remembering that 'ought' means simply 'conducive
+to happiness,' what political sanctions will increase happiness?
+
+To answer this fully will be to give a complete system of legislation;
+but in order to answer it we require a whole logical and psychological
+apparatus. Bentham shows this apparatus at work, but does not expound
+its origin in any separate treatise. Enough information, however, is
+given as to his method in the curious collection of the fragments
+connected with the _Chrestomathia_. A logical method upon which he
+constantly insisted is that of 'bipartition,'[370] called also the
+'dichotomous' or 'bifurcate' method, and exemplified by the so-called
+'Porphyrian Tree.' The principle is, of course, simple. Take any genus:
+divide it into two classes, one of which has and the other has not a
+certain mark. The two classes must be mutually exclusive and together
+exhaustive. Repeat the operation upon each of the classes and continue
+the process as long as desired.[371] At every step you thus have a
+complete enumeration of all the species, varieties, and so on, each of
+which excludes all the others. No mere logic, indeed, can secure the
+accuracy and still less the utility of the procedure. The differences
+may be in themselves ambiguous or irrelevant. If I classify plants as
+'trees' and 'not trees,' the logical form is satisfied: but I have still
+to ask whether 'tree' conveys a determinate meaning, and whether the
+distinction corresponds to a difference of any importance. A perfect
+classification, however, could always be stated in this form. Each
+species, that is, can be marked by the presence or absence of a given
+difference, whether we are dealing with classes of plants or actions:
+and Bentham aims at that consummation though he admits that centuries
+may be required for the construction of an accurate classification in
+ethical speculations.[372] He exaggerates the efficiency of his method,
+and overlooks the tendency of tacit assumptions to smuggle themselves
+into what affects to be a mere enumeration of classes. But in any case,
+no one could labour more industriously to get every object of his
+thought arranged and labelled and put into the right pigeon-hole of his
+mental museum. To codify[373] is to classify, and Bentham might be
+defined as a codifying animal.
+
+Things thus present themselves to Bentham's mind as already prepared to
+fit into pigeon-holes. This is a characteristic point, and it appears in
+what we must call his metaphysical system. 'Metaphysics,' indeed,
+according to him, is simply 'a sprig,' and that a small one, of the
+'branch termed Logic.'[374] It is merely the explanation of certain
+general terms such as 'existence,' 'necessity,' and so forth.[375] Under
+this would apparently fall the explanation of 'reality' which leads to a
+doctrine upon which he often insists, and which is most implicitly given
+in the fragment called _Ontology_. He there distinguishes 'real' from
+'fictitious entities,' a distinction which, as he tells us,[376] he
+first learned from d'Alembert's phrase _Êtres fictifs_ and which he
+applies in his _Morals and Legislation_. 'Real entities,' according to
+him,[377] are 'individual perceptions,' 'impressions,' and 'ideas.' In
+this, of course, he is following Hume, though he applies the Johnsonian
+argument to Berkeley's immaterialism.[378] A 'fictitious entity' is a
+name which does note 'raise up in the mind any correspondent
+images.'[379] Such names owe their existence to the necessities of
+language. Without employing such fictions, however, 'the language of man
+could not have risen above the language of brutes';[380] and he
+emphatically distinguishes them from 'unreal' or 'fabulous entities.' A
+'fictitious entity' is not a 'nonentity.'[381] He includes among such
+entities all Aristotle's 'predicaments' except the first:
+'substance.'[382] Quantity, quality, relation, time, place are all
+'physical fictitious entities.' This is apparently equivalent to saying
+that the only 'physical entities' are concrete things--sticks, stones,
+bodies, and so forth--the 'reality' of which he takes for granted in the
+ordinary common sense meaning. It is also perfectly true that things are
+really related, have quantity and quality, and are in time and space.
+But we cannot really conceive the quality or relation apart from the
+concrete things so qualified and related. We are forced by language to
+use substantives which in their nature have only the sense of
+adjectives. He does not suppose that a body is not really square or
+round; but he thinks it a fiction to speak of squareness or roundness or
+space in general as something existing apart from matter and, in some
+sense, alongside of matter.
+
+This doctrine, which brings us within sight of metaphysical problems
+beyond our immediate purpose, becomes important to his moral
+speculation. His special example of a 'fictitious entity' in politics is
+'obligation.'[383] Obligations, rights, and similar words are
+'fictitious entities.' Obligation in particular implies a metaphor. The
+statement that a man is 'obliged' to perform an act means simply that he
+will suffer pain if he does not perform it. The use of the word
+obligation, as a noun substantive, introduces the 'fictitious entity'
+which represents nothing really separable from the pain or pleasure.
+Here, therefore, we have the ground of the doctrine already noticed.
+'Pains and pleasures' are real.[384] 'Their existence,' he says,[385]
+'is matter of universal and constant experience.' But other various
+names referring to these: emotion, inclination, vice, virtue, etc., are
+only 'psychological entities.' 'Take away pleasures and pains, not only
+happiness but justice and duty and obligation and virtue--all of which
+have been so elaborately held up to view as independent of them--are so
+many empty sounds.'[386] The ultimate facts, then, are pains and
+pleasures. They are the substantives of which these other words are
+properly the adjectives. A pain or a pleasure may exist by itself, that
+is without being virtuous or vicious: but virtue and vice can only exist
+in so far as pain and pleasure exists.
+
+This analysis of 'obligation' is a characteristic doctrine of the
+Utilitarian school. We are under an 'obligation' so far as we are
+affected by a 'sanction.' It appeared to Bentham so obvious as to need
+no demonstration, only an exposition of the emptiness of any verbal
+contradiction. Such metaphysical basis as he needed is simply the
+attempt to express the corresponding conception of reality which, in his
+opinion, only requires to be expressed to carry conviction.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[355] See note under Bentham's life, _ante_, p. 178.
+
+[356] Preface to _Morals and Legislation_.
+
+[357] _Works_, i. ('Morals and Legislation'), ii. _n._
+
+[358] _Essay_, bk. ii. ch. xxi. § 39-§ 44. The will, says Locke, is
+determined by the 'uneasiness of desire.' What moves desire? Happiness,
+and that alone. Happiness is pleasure, and misery pain. What produces
+pleasure we call good; and what produces pain we call evil. Locke,
+however, was not a consistent Utilitarian.
+
+[359] Epistle iv., opening lines.
+
+[360] _Works_, vii. 82.
+
+[361] _Works_ ('Constitutional Code'), ix. 123.
+
+[362] _Works_ ('Fragment'), i. 287.
+
+[363] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 8-10. Mill quotes this
+passage in his essay on Bentham in the first volume of his
+_Dissertations_. This essay, excellent in itself must be specially
+noticed as an exposition by an authoritative disciple.
+
+[364] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 13.
+
+[365] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. v.
+
+[366] _Works_ ('Evidence'), vi. 261.
+
+[367] _Works_ ('Evidence'), vii. 116.
+
+[368] _Ibid._ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 14, etc.; _Ibid._ vi. 260.
+In _Ibid._ ('Evidence') vii. 116, 'humanity,' and in 'Logical
+Arrangements,' _Ibid._ ii. 290, 'sympathy' appears as a fifth sanction.
+Another modification is suggested in _Ibid._ i. 14 _n._
+
+[369] _Ibid._ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 67.
+
+[370] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 96 _n._
+
+[371] See especially _Ibid._ viii. 104, etc.; 253, etc.; 289, etc.
+
+[372] _Ibid._ viii. 106.
+
+[373] 'Codify' was one of Bentham's successful neologisms.
+
+[374] _Works_ ('Logic'), viii. 220.
+
+[375] Here Bentham coincides with Horne Tooke, to whose 'discoveries' he
+refers in the _Chrestomathia_ (_Works_, viii. 120, 185, 188).
+
+[376] _Works_, iii. 286; viii. 119.
+
+[377] _Ibid._ ('Ontology') viii. 196 _n._
+
+[378] _Ibid._ viii, 197 _n._
+
+[379] _Ibid._ viii. 263.
+
+[380] _Works_ ('Ontology'), viii. 119.
+
+[381] _Ibid._ viii. 198.
+
+[382] _Ibid._ viii. 199.
+
+[383] _Ibid._ viii. 206, 247.
+
+[384] Helvétius adds to this that the only real pains and pleasures are
+the physical, but Bentham does not follow him here. See Helvétius,
+_OEuvres_ (1781), ii. 121, etc.
+
+[385] _Works_, i. 211 ('Springs of Action').
+
+[386] _Ibid._ i. 206.
+
+
+II. SPRINGS OF ACTION
+
+Our path is now clear. Pains and pleasures give us what mathematicians
+call the 'independent variable.' Our units are (in Bentham's phrase)
+'lots' of pain or pleasure. We have to interpret all the facts in terms
+of pain or pleasure, and we shall have the materials for what has since
+been called a 'felicific calculus.' To construct this with a view to
+legislation is his immediate purpose. The theory will fall into two
+parts: the 'pathological,' or an account of all the pains and pleasures
+which are the primary data; and the 'dynamical,' or an account of the
+various modes of conduct determined by expectations of pain and
+pleasure. This gives the theory of 'springs of action,' considered in
+themselves, and of 'motives,' that is, of the springs as influencing
+conduct.[387] The 'pathology' contains, in the first place, a discussion
+of the measure of pain and pleasure in general; secondly, a discussion
+of the various species of pain and pleasure; and thirdly, a discussion
+of the varying sensibilities of different individuals to pain and
+pleasure.[388] Thus under the first head, we are told that the value of
+a pleasure, considered by itself, depends upon its intensity, duration,
+certainty, and propinquity; and, considered with regard to modes of
+obtaining it, upon its fecundity (or tendency to produce other pains and
+pleasures) and its purity (or freedom from admixture of other pains and
+pleasures). The pain or pleasure is thus regarded as an entity which is
+capable of being in some sense weighed and measured.[389] The next step
+is to classify pains and pleasures, which though commensurable as
+psychological forces, have obviously very different qualities. Bentham
+gives the result of his classification without the analysis upon which
+it depends. He assures us that he has obtained an 'exhaustive' list of
+'simple pleasures.' It must be confessed that the list does not commend
+itself either as exhaustive or as composed of 'simple pleasures.' He
+does not explain the principle of his analysis because he says, it was
+of 'too metaphysical a cast,'[390] but he thought it so important that
+he published it, edited with considerable modifications by James Mill,
+in 1817, as a _Table of the Springs of Action_.[391]
+
+J. S. Mill remarks that this table should be studied by any one who
+would understand Bentham's philosophy. Such a study would suggest some
+unfavourable conclusions. Bentham seems to have made out his table
+without the slightest reference to any previous psychologist. It is
+simply constructed to meet the requirements of his legislative theories.
+As psychology it would be clearly absurd, especially if taken as giving
+the elementary or 'simple' feelings. No one can suppose, for example,
+that the pleasures of 'wealth' or 'power' are 'simple' pleasures. The
+classes therefore are not really distinct, and they are as far from
+being exhaustive. All that can be said for the list is that it gives a
+sufficiently long enumeration to call attention from his own point of
+view to most of the ordinary pleasures and pains; and contains as much
+psychology as he could really turn to account for his purpose.
+
+The omissions with which his greatest disciple charges him are certainly
+significant. We find, says Mill, no reference to 'Conscience,'
+'Principle,' 'Moral Rectitude,' or 'Moral Duty' among the 'springs of
+action,' unless among the synonyms of a 'love of reputation,' or in so
+far as 'Conscience' and 'Principle' are sometimes synonymous with the
+'religious' motive or the motive of 'sympathy.' So the sense of
+'honour,' the love of beauty, and of order, of power (except in the
+narrow sense of power over our fellows) and of action in general are all
+omitted. We may conjecture what reply Bentham would have made to this
+criticism. The omission of the love of beauty and æsthetic pleasures may
+surprise us when we remember that Bentham loved music, if he cared
+nothing for poetry. But he apparently regarded these as 'complex
+pleasures,'[392] and therefore not admissible into his table, if it be
+understood as an analysis into the simple pleasures alone. The pleasures
+of action are deliberately omitted, for Bentham pointedly gives the
+'pains' of labour as a class without corresponding pleasure; and this,
+though indicative, I think, of a very serious error, is characteristic
+rather of his method of analysis than of his real estimate of pleasure.
+Nobody could have found more pleasure than Bentham in intellectual
+labour, but he separated the pleasure from the labour. He therefore
+thought 'labour,' as such, a pure evil, and classified the pleasure as a
+pleasure of 'curiosity.' But the main criticism is more remarkable. Mill
+certainly held himself to be a sound Utilitarian; and yet he seems to be
+condemning Bentham for consistent Utilitarianism. Bentham, by admitting
+the 'conscience' into his simple springs of action, would have fallen
+into the very circle from which he was struggling to emerge. If, in
+fact, the pleasures of conscience are simple pleasures, we have the
+objectionable 'moral sense' intruded as an ultimate factor of human
+nature. To get rid of that 'fictitious entity' is precisely Bentham's
+aim. The moral judgment is to be precisely equivalent to the judgment:
+'this or that kind of conduct increases or diminishes the sum of human
+pains or pleasures.' Once allow that among the pains and pleasures
+themselves is an ultimate conscience--a faculty not constructed out of
+independent pains and pleasures--and the system becomes a vicious
+circle. Conscience on any really Utilitarian scheme must be a
+derivative, not an ultimate, faculty. If, as Mill seems to say, the
+omission is a blunder, Bentham's Utilitarianism at least must be an
+erroneous system.
+
+We have now our list both of pains and pleasures and of the general
+modes of variation by which their value is to be measured. We must also
+allow for the varying sensibilities of different persons. Bentham
+accordingly gives a list of thirty-two 'circumstances influencing
+sensibility.'[393] Human beings differ in constitution, character,
+education, sex, race, and so forth, and in their degrees of sensibility
+to all the various classes of pains and pleasures; the consideration of
+these varieties is of the highest utility for the purposes of the judge
+and the legislator.[394] The 'sanctions' will operate differently in
+different cases. A blow will have different effects upon the sick and
+upon the healthy; the same fine imposed upon the rich and the poor will
+cause very different pains; and a law which is beneficent in Europe may
+be a scourge in America.
+
+We have thus our 'pathology' or theory of the passive sensibilities of
+man. We know what are the 'springs of action,' how they vary in general,
+and how they vary from one man to another. We can therefore pass to the
+dynamics.[395] We have described the machinery in rest, and can now
+consider it in motion. We proceed as before by first considering action
+in general: which leads to consideration of the 'intention' and the
+'motive' implied by any conscious action: and hence of the relation of
+these to the 'springs of action' as already described. The discussion is
+minute and elaborate; and Bentham improves as he comes nearer to the
+actual problems of legislation and further from the ostensible bases of
+psychology. The analysis of conduct, and of the sanctions by which
+conduct is modified, involves a view of morals and of the relations
+between the spheres of morality and legislation which is of critical
+importance for the whole Utilitarian creed. 'Moral laws' and a 'Positive
+law' both affect human action. How do they differ? Bentham's treatment
+of the problem shows, I think, a clearer appreciation of some
+difficulties than might be inferred from his later utterances. In any
+case, it brings into clear relief a moral doctrine which deeply affected
+his successors.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[387] _Works_, i. 205; and Dumont's _Traités_ (1820), i. xxv, xxvi. The
+word 'springs of action' perhaps comes from the marginal note to the
+above-mentioned passage of Locke (bk. ii. chap. xxvi, § 41, 42).
+
+[388] _Morals and Legislation_, chaps. iv., v., vi.
+
+[389] See 'Codification Proposal' (_Works_, iv. 540), where Bentham
+takes money as representing pleasure, and shows how the present value
+may be calculated like that of a sum put out to interest. The same
+assumption is often made by Political Economists in regard to
+'utilities.'
+
+[390] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 17 _n._
+
+[391] It is not worth while to consider this at length; but I give the
+following conjectural account of the list as it appears in the _Morals
+and Legislation_ above. In classifying pain or pleasures, Bentham is, I
+think, following the clue suggested by his 'sanctions.' He is really
+classifying according to their causes or the way in which they are
+'annexed.' Thus pleasures may or may not be dependent upon other
+persons, or if upon other persons, may be indirectly or directly caused
+by their pleasures or pains. Pleasures not caused by persons correspond
+to the 'physical sanction,' and are those (1) of the 'senses,' (2) of
+wealth, _i.e._ caused by the possession of things, and (3) of 'skill,'
+_i.e._ caused by our ability to use things. Pleasures caused by persons
+indirectly correspond first to the 'popular or moral sanction,' and are
+pleasures (4) of 'amity,' caused by the goodwill of individuals, and (5)
+of a 'good name,' caused by the goodwill of people in general; secondly,
+to 'political sanction,' namely (6) pleasures of 'power'; and thirdly,
+to the 'religious sanction,' or (7) pleasures of 'piety.' All these are
+'self-regarding pleasures.' The pleasures caused directly by the
+pleasure of others are those (8) of 'benevolence,' and (9) of
+malevolence. We then have what is really a cross division by classes of
+'derivative' pleasures; these being due to (10) memory, (11)
+imagination, (12) expectation, (13) association. To each class of
+pleasures corresponds a class of pains, except that there are no pains
+corresponding to the pleasures of wealth or power. We have, however, a
+general class of pains of 'privation,' which might include pains of
+poverty or weakness: and to these are opposed (14) pleasures of
+'relief,' _i.e._ of the privation of pains. In the _Table_, as
+separately published, Bentham modified this by dividing pleasures of
+sense into three classes, the last of which includes the two first; by
+substituting pleasures of 'curiosity' for pleasures of 'skill' by
+suppressing pleasures of relief and pains of privation; and by adding,
+as a class of 'pains' without corresponding pleasures, pains (1) of
+labour, (2) of 'death, and bodily pains in general.' These changes seem
+to have been introduced in the course of writing his _Introduction_,
+where they are partly assumed. Another class is added to include all
+classes of 'self-regarding pleasures or pains.' He is trying to give a
+list of all 'synonyms' for various pains and pleasures, and has
+therefore to admit classes corresponding to general names which include
+other classes.
+
+[392] _Works_ i. 210, where he speaks of pleasures of the 'ball-room,'
+the 'theatre,' and the 'fine arts' as derivable from the 'simple and
+elementary' pleasures.
+
+[393] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 22 etc.
+
+[394] _Ibid._ i. 33.
+
+[395] _Morals and Legislation_, ch. vii. to xi.
+
+
+III. THE SANCTIONS
+
+Let us first take his definitions of the fundamental conceptions. All
+action of reasonable beings implies the expectation of consequences. The
+agent's 'intention' is defined by the consequences actually
+contemplated. The cause of action is the hope of the consequent
+pleasures or the dread of the consequent pains. This anticipated
+pleasure or pain constitutes the 'internal motive' (a phrase used by
+Bentham to exclude the 'external motive' or event which causes the
+anticipation).[396] The motive, or 'internal motive,' is the
+anticipation of pain to be avoided or pleasure to be gained. Actions are
+good or bad simply and solely as they are on the whole 'productive of a
+balance of pleasure or pain.' The problem of the legislator is how to
+regulate actions so as to incline the balance to the right side. His
+weapons are 'sanctions' which modify 'motives.' What motives, then,
+should be strengthened or checked? Here we must be guided by a principle
+which is, in fact, the logical result of the doctrines already laid
+down. We are bound to apply our 'felicific calculus' with absolute
+impartiality. We must therefore assign equal value to all motives. 'No
+motives,' he says,[397] are 'constantly good or constantly bad.'
+Pleasure is itself a good; pain itself an evil: nay, they are 'the only
+good and the only evil.' This is true of every sort of pain and
+pleasure, even of the pains and pleasures of illwill. The pleasures of
+'malevolence' are placed in his 'table' by the side of pleasures of
+'benevolence.' Hence it 'follows immediately and incontestably, that
+there is no such thing as any sort of motive that is in itself a bad
+one.' The doctrine is no doubt a logical deduction from Bentham's
+assumptions, and he proceeds to illustrate its meaning. A 'motive'
+corresponds to one of his 'springs of action.' He shows how every one of
+the motives included in his table may lead either to good or to bad
+consequences. The desire of wealth may lead me to kill a man's enemy or
+to plough his field for him; the fear of God may prompt to fanaticism
+or to charity; illwill may lead to malicious conduct or may take the
+form of proper 'resentment,' as, for example, when I secure the
+punishment of my father's murderer. Though one act, he says, is approved
+and the other condemned, they spring from the same motive, namely,
+illwill.[398] He admits, however, that some motives are more likely than
+others to lead to 'useful' conduct; and thus arranges them in a certain
+'order of pre-eminence.'[399] It is obvious that 'goodwill,' 'love of
+reputation,' and the 'desire of amity' are more likely than others to
+promote general happiness. 'The dictates of utility,' as he observes,
+are simply the 'dictates of the most extensive and enlightened (that is,
+_well advised_) benevolence.' It would, therefore, seem more appropriate
+to call the 'motive' good; though no one doubts that when directed by an
+erroneous judgment it may incidentally be mischievous.
+
+The doctrine that morality depends upon 'consequences' and not upon
+'motives' became a characteristic Utilitarian dogma, and I shall have to
+return to the question. Meanwhile, it was both a natural and, I think,
+in some senses, a correct view, when strictly confined to the province
+of legislation. For reasons too obvious to expand, the legislator must
+often be indifferent to the question of motives. He cannot know with
+certainty what are a man's motives. He must enforce the law whatever may
+be the motives for breaking it; and punish rebellion, for example, even
+if he attributes it to misguided philanthropy. He can, in any case,
+punish only such crimes as are found out; and must define crimes by
+palpable 'external' marks. He must punish by such coarse means as the
+gallows and the gaol: for his threats must appeal to the good and the
+bad alike. He depends, therefore, upon 'external' sanctions, sanctions,
+that is, which work mainly upon the fears of physical pain; and even if
+his punishments affect the wicked alone, they clearly cannot reach the
+wicked as wicked, nor in proportion to their wickedness. That is quite
+enough to show why in positive law motives are noticed indirectly or not
+at all. It shows also that the analogy between the positive and the
+moral law is treacherous. The exclusion of motive justifiable in law may
+take all meaning out of morality. The Utilitarians, as we shall see,
+were too much disposed to overlook the difference, and attempt to apply
+purely legal doctrine in the totally uncongenial sphere of ethical
+speculation. To accept the legal classification of actions by their
+external characteristics is, in fact, to beg the question in advance.
+Any outward criterion must group together actions springing from
+different 'motives' and therefore, as other moralists would say,
+ethically different.
+
+There is, however, another meaning in this doctrine which is more to the
+purpose here. Bentham was aiming at a principle which, true or false, is
+implied in all ethical systems based upon experience instead of pure
+logic or _a priori_ 'intuitions.' Such systems must accept human nature
+as a fact, and as the basis of a scientific theory. They do not aim at
+creating angels but at developing the existing constitution of mankind.
+So far as an action springs from one of the primitive or essential
+instincts of mankind, it simply proves the agent to be human, not to be
+vicious or virtuous, and therefore is no ground for any moral judgment.
+If Bentham's analysis could be accepted, this would be true of his
+'springs of action.' The natural appetites have not in themselves a
+moral quality: they are simply necessary and original data in the
+problem. The perplexity is introduced by Bentham's assumption that
+conduct can be analysed so that the 'motive' is a separate entity which
+can be regarded as the sole cause of a corresponding action. That
+involves an irrelevant abstraction. There is no such thing as a single
+'motive.' One of his cases is a mother who lets her child die for love
+of 'ease.' We do not condemn her because she loves ease, which is a
+motive common to all men and therefore unmoral, not immoral. But neither
+do we condemn her merely for the bad consequences of a particular
+action. We condemn her because she loves ease better than she loves her
+child: that is, because her whole character is 'unnatural' or
+ill-balanced, not on account of a particular element taken by itself.
+Morality is concerned with concrete human beings, and not with 'motives'
+running about by themselves. Bentham's meaning, if we make the necessary
+correction, would thus be expressed by saying that we don't blame a man
+because he has the 'natural' passions, but because they are somehow
+wrongly proportioned or the man himself wrongly constituted. Passions
+which may make a man vicious may also be essential to the highest
+virtue. That is quite true; but the passion is not a separate agent,
+only one constituent of the character.
+
+Bentham admits this in his own fashion. If 'motives' cannot be properly
+called good or bad, is there, he asks, nothing good or bad in the man
+who on a given occasion obeys a certain motive? 'Yes, certainly,' he
+replies, 'his disposition.'[400] The disposition, he adds, is a
+'fictitious entity, and designed for the convenience of discourse in
+order to express what there is supposed to be permanent in a man's frame
+of mind.' By 'fictitious,' as we have seen, he means not 'unreal' but
+simply not tangible, weighable, or measurable--like sticks and stones,
+or like pains and pleasures. 'Fictitious' as they may be, therefore, the
+fiction enables us to express real truths, and to state facts which are
+of the highest importance to the moralist and the legislator. Bentham
+discusses some cases of casuistry in order to show the relation between
+the tendency of an action and the intention and motives of the agent.
+Ravaillac murders a good king; Ravaillac's son enables his father to
+escape punishment, or conveys poison to his father to enable him to
+avoid torture by suicide.[401] What is the inference as to the son's
+disposition in either case? The solution (as he substantially and, I
+think, rightly suggests) will have to be reached by considering whether
+the facts indicate that the son's disposition was mischievous or
+otherwise; whether it indicates political disloyalty or filial
+affection, and so forth, and in what proportions. The most interesting
+case perhaps is that of religious persecution, where the religious
+motive is taken to be good, and the action to which it leads is yet
+admitted to be mischievous. The problem is often puzzling, but we are
+virtually making an inference as to the goodness or badness of the
+'disposition' implied by the given action under all the supposed
+circumstances. This gives what Bentham calls the 'meritoriousness'[402]
+of the disposition. The 'intention' is caused by the 'motive.' The
+'disposition' is the 'sum of the intentions'; that is to say, it
+expresses the agent's sensibility to various classes of motives; and the
+merit therefore will be in proportion to the total goodness or badness
+of the disposition thus indicated. The question of merit leads to
+interesting moral problems. Bentham, however, observes that he is not
+here speaking from the point of view of the moralist but of the
+legislator. Still, as a legislator he has to consider what is the
+'depravity' of disposition indicated by different kinds of conduct. This
+consideration is of great importance. The 'disposition' includes
+sensibility to what he calls 'tutelary motives'--motives, that is, which
+deter a man from such conduct as generally produces mischievous
+consequences. No motive can be invariably, though some, especially the
+motive of goodwill, and in a minor degree those of 'amity' and a 'love
+of reputation,' are generally, on the right side. The legislator has to
+reinforce these 'tutelary motives' by 'artificial tutelary motives,' and
+mainly by appealing to the 'love of ease,' that is, by making
+mischievous conduct more difficult, and to 'self-preservation,' that is,
+by making it more dangerous.[403] He has therefore to measure the force
+by which these motives will be opposed; or, in other words, the
+'strength of the temptation.' Now the more depraved a man's disposition,
+the weaker the temptation which will seduce him to crime. Consequently
+if an act shows depravity, it will require a stronger counter-motive or
+a more severe punishment, as the disposition indicated is more
+mischievous. An act, for example, which implies deliberation proves a
+greater insensibility to these social motives which, as Bentham
+remarks,[404] determine the 'general tenor of a man's life,' however
+depraved he may be. The legislator is guided solely by 'utility,' or
+aims at maximising happiness without reference to its quality. Still, so
+far as action implies disposition, he has to consider the depravity as a
+source of mischief. The legislator who looks solely at the moral quality
+implied is wrong; and, if guided solely by his sympathies, has no
+measure for the amount of punishment to be inflicted. These
+considerations will enable us to see what is the proper measure of
+resentment.[405]
+
+The doctrine of the neutrality or 'unmorality' of motive is thus
+sufficiently clear. Bentham's whole aim is to urge that the criterion of
+morality is given by the consequences of actions. To say the conduct is
+good or bad is to say in other words that it produces a balance of
+pleasure or pain. To make the criterion independent, or escape the
+vicious circle, we must admit the pleasures and pains to be in
+themselves neutral; to have, that is, the same value, if equally strong,
+whatever their source. In our final balance-sheet we must set down pains
+of illwill and of goodwill, of sense and of intellect with absolute
+impartiality, and compare them simply in respect of intensity. We must
+not admit a 'conscience' or 'moral sense' which would be autocratic;
+nor, indeed, allow moral to have any meaning as applied to the separate
+passions. But it is quite consistent with this to admit that some
+motives, goodwill in particular, generally tend to bring out the
+desirable result, that is, a balance of pleasure for the greatest
+number. The pains and pleasures are the ultimate facts, and the
+'disposition' is a 'fictitious entity' or a name for the sum of
+sensibilities. It represents the fact that some men are more inclined
+than others to increase the total of good or bad.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[396] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 46.
+
+[397] _Ibid._ i. 48.
+
+[398] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 56.
+
+[399] _Ibid._ i. 56.
+
+[400] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 60.
+
+[401] _Ibid._ i. 62.
+
+[402] _Ibid._ i. 65.
+
+[403] These are the two classes of 'springs of action' omitted in the
+_Table_.
+
+[404] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 68.
+
+[405] Here Bentham lays down the rule that punishment should rise with
+the strength of the temptation, a theory which leads to some curious
+casuistical problems. He does not fully discuss, and I cannot here
+consider, them. I will only note that it may conceivably be necessary to
+increase the severity of punishment, instead of removing the temptation
+or strengthening the preventive action. If so, the law becomes immoral
+in the sense of punishing more severely as the crime has more moral
+excuse. This was often true of the old criminal law, which punished
+offences cruelly because it had no effective system of police. Bentham
+would of course have agreed that the principle in this case was a bad
+one.
+
+
+IV. CRIMINAL LAW
+
+We have now, after a long analysis, reached the point at which the
+principles can be applied to penal law. The legislator has to discourage
+certain classes of conduct by annexing 'tutelary motives.' The classes
+to be suppressed are of course those which diminish happiness. Pursuing
+the same method, and applying results already reached, we must in the
+first place consider how the 'mischief of an act' is to be
+measured.[406] Acts are mischievous as their 'consequences' are
+mischievous; and the consequences may be 'primary' or 'secondary.'
+Robbery causes pain to the loser of the money. That is a primary evil.
+It alarms the holders of money; it suggests the facility of robbery to
+others; and it weakens the 'tutelary motive' of respect for property.
+These are secondary evils. The 'secondary' evil may be at times the most
+important. The non-payment of a tax may do no appreciable harm in a
+particular case. But its secondary effects in injuring the whole
+political fabric may be disastrous and fruitful beyond calculation.
+Bentham proceeds to show carefully how the 'intentions' and 'motives' of
+the evildoer are of the greatest importance, especially in determining
+these secondary consequences, and must therefore be taken into account
+by the legislator. A homicide may cause the same primary evil, whether
+accidental or malignant; but accidental homicide may cause no alarm,
+whereas the intentional and malignant homicide may cause any quantity of
+alarm and shock to the general sense of security. In this way,
+therefore, the legislator has again indirectly to take into account the
+moral quality which is itself dependent upon utility.
+
+I must, however, pass lightly over a very clear and interesting
+discussion to reach a further point of primary importance to the
+Utilitarian theory, as to the distinction between the moral and legal
+spheres.[407] Bentham has now 'made an analysis of evil.' He has, that
+is, classified the mischiefs produced by conduct, measured simply by
+their effect upon pleasures or pains, independently of any consideration
+as to virtue and vice. The next problem is: what conduct should be
+criminal?--a subject which is virtually discussed in two chapters (xv.
+and xix.) 'on cases unmeet for punishment' and on 'the limits between
+Private Ethics and the act of legislation.' We must, of course, follow
+the one clue to the labyrinth. We must count all the 'lots' of pain and
+pleasure indifferently. It is clear, on the one hand, that the pains
+suffered by criminals are far less than the pains which would be
+suffered were no such sanctions applied. On the other hand, all
+punishment is an evil, because punishment means pain, and it is
+therefore only to be inflicted when it excludes greater pain. It must,
+therefore, not be inflicted when it is 'groundless,' 'inefficacious,'
+'unprofitable,' or 'needless.' 'Needless' includes all the cases in
+which the end may be attained 'as effectually at a cheaper rate.'[408]
+This applies to all 'dissemination of pernicious principles'; for in
+this case reason and not force is the appropriate remedy. The sword
+inflicts more pain, and is less efficient than the pen. The argument
+raises the wider question, What are the true limits of legislative
+interference? Bentham, in his last chapter, endeavours to answer this
+problem. 'Private ethics,' he says, and 'legislation' aim at the same
+end, namely, happiness, and the 'acts with which they are conversant are
+_in great measure_ the same.' Why, then, should they have different
+spheres? Simply because the acts 'are not _perfectly and throughout_ the
+same.'[409] How, then, are we to draw the line? By following the
+invariable clue of 'utility.' We simply have to apply an analysis to
+determine the cases in which punishment does more harm than good. He
+insists especially upon the cases in which punishment is 'unprofitable';
+upon such offences as drunkenness and sexual immorality, where the law
+could only be enforced by a mischievous or impossible system of minute
+supervision, and such offences as ingratitude or rudeness, where the
+definition is so vague that the judge could not safely be entrusted with
+the power to punish.'[410] He endeavours to give a rather more precise
+distinction by subdividing 'ethics in general' into three classes. Duty
+may be to oneself, that is 'prudence'; or to one's neighbour negatively,
+that is 'probity'; or to one's neighbour positively, that is
+'benevolence.'[411] Duties of the first class must be left chiefly to
+the individual, because he is the best judge of his own interest. Duties
+of the third class again are generally too vague to be enforced by the
+legislator, though a man ought perhaps to be punished for failing to
+help as well as for actually injuring. The second department of ethics,
+that of 'probity,' is the main field for legislative activity.[412] As a
+general principle, 'private ethics' teach a man how to pursue his own
+happiness, and the art of legislation how to pursue the greatest
+happiness of the community. It must be noticed, for the point is one of
+importance, that Bentham's purely empirical method draws no definite
+line. It implies that no definite line can be drawn. It does not suggest
+that any kind of conduct whatever is outside the proper province of
+legislator except in so far as the legislative machinery may happen to
+be inadequate or inappropriate.
+
+Our analysis has now been carried so far that we can proceed to consider
+the principles by which we should be guided in punishing. What are the
+desirable properties of a 'lot of punishment'? This occupies two
+interesting chapters. Chapter xvi., 'on the proportion between
+punishments and offences,' gives twelve rules. The punishment, he urges,
+must outweigh the profit of the offence; it must be such as to make a
+man prefer a less offence to a greater--simple theft, for example, to
+violent robbery; it must be such that the punishment must be adaptable
+to the varying sensibility of the offender; it must be greater in
+'value' as it falls short of certainty; and, when the offence indicates
+a habit, it must outweigh not only the profit of the particular offence,
+but of the undetected offences. In chapter xvii. Bentham considers the
+properties which fit a punishment to fulfil these conditions. Eleven
+properties are given. The punishment must be (1) 'variable,' that is,
+capable of adjustment to particular cases; and (2) equable, or
+inflicting equal pain by equal sentences. Thus the 'proportion' between
+punishment and crimes of a given class can be secured. In order that the
+punishments of different classes of crime may be proportional, the
+punishments should (3) be commensurable. To make punishments efficacious
+they should be (4) 'characteristical' or impressive to the imagination;
+and that they may not be excessive they should be (5) exemplary or
+likely to impress others, and (6) frugal. To secure minor ends they
+should be (7) reformatory; (8) disabling, _i.e._ from future offences;
+and (9) compensatory to the sufferer. Finally, to avoid collateral
+disadvantages they should be (10) popular, and (11) remittable. A
+twelfth property, simplicity, was added in Dumont's redaction. Dumont
+calls attention here to the value of Bentham's method.[413] Montesquieu
+and Beccaria had spoken in general terms of the desirable qualities of
+punishment. They had spoken of 'proportionality,' for example, but
+without that precise or definite meaning which appears in Bentham's
+Calculus. In fact, Bentham's statement, compared to the vaguer
+utterances of his predecessors, but still more when compared to the
+haphazard brutalities and inconsistencies of English criminal law,
+gives the best impression of the value of his method.
+
+Bentham's next step is an elaborate classification of offences, worked
+out by a further application of his bifurcatory method.[414] This would
+form the groundwork of the projected code. I cannot, however, speak of
+this classification, or of many interesting remarks contained in the
+_Principles of Penal Law_, where some further details are considered. An
+analysis scarcely does justice to Bentham, for it has to omit his
+illustrations and his flashes of real vivacity. The mere dry logical
+framework is not appetising. I have gone so far in order to illustrate
+the characteristic of Bentham's teaching. It was not the bare appeal to
+utility, but the attempt to follow the clue of utility systematically
+and unflinchingly into every part of the subject. This one doctrine
+gives the touchstone by which every proposed measure is to be tested;
+and which will give to his system not such unity as arises from the
+development of an abstract logical principle, but such as is introduced
+into the physical sciences when we are able to range all the
+indefinitely complex phenomena which arise under some simple law of
+force. If Bentham's aim could have been achieved, 'utility' would have
+been in legislative theories what gravitation is in astronomical
+theories. All human conduct being ruled by pain and pleasure, we could
+compare all motives and actions, and trace out the consequences of any
+given law. I shall have hereafter to consider how this conception worked
+in different minds and was applied to different problems: what were the
+tenable results to which it led, and what were the errors caused by the
+implied oversight of some essential considerations.
+
+Certain weaknesses are almost too obvious to be specified. He claimed to
+be constructing a science, comparable to the physical sciences. The
+attempt was obviously chimerical if we are to take it seriously. The
+makeshift doctrine which he substitutes for psychology would be a
+sufficient proof of the incapacity for his task. He had probably not
+read such writers as Hartley or Condillac, who might have suggested some
+ostensibly systematic theory. If he had little psychology he had not
+even a conception of 'sociology.' The 'felicific calculus' is enough to
+show the inadequacy of his method. The purpose is to enable us to
+calculate the effects of a proposed law. You propose to send robbers to
+the gallows or the gaol. You must, says Bentham, reckon up all the evils
+prevented: the suffering to the robbed, and to those who expect to be
+robbed, on the one hand; and, on the other, the evils caused, the
+suffering to the robber, and to the tax-payer who keeps the constable;
+then strike your balance and make your law if the evils prevented exceed
+the evils caused. Some such calculation is demanded by plain common
+sense. It points to the line of inquiry desirable. But can it be
+adequate? To estimate the utility of a law we must take into account all
+its 'effects.' What are the 'effects' of a law against robbery? They are
+all that is implied in the security of property. They correspond to the
+difference between England in the eighteenth century and England in the
+time of Hengist and Horsa; between a country where the supremacy of law
+is established, and a country still under the rule of the strong hand.
+Bentham's method may be applicable at a given moment, when the social
+structure is already consolidated and uniform. It would represent the
+practical arguments for establishing the police-force demanded by
+Colquhoun, and show the disadvantages of the old constables and
+watchmen. Bentham, that is, gives an admirable method for settling
+details of administrative and legislative machinery, and dealing with
+particular cases when once the main principles of law and order are
+established. Those principles, too, may depend upon 'utility,' but
+utility must be taken in a wider sense when we have to deal with the
+fundamental questions. We must consider the 'utility' of the whole
+organisation, not the fitness of separate details. Finally, if Bentham
+is weak in psychology and in sociology, he is clearly not satisfactory
+in ethics. Morality is, according to him, on the same plane with law.
+The difference is not in the sphere to which they apply, or in the end
+to which they are directed; but solely in the 'sanction.' The legislator
+uses threats of physical suffering; the moralist threats of 'popular'
+disapproval. Either 'sanction' may be most applicable to a given case;
+but the question is merely between different means to the same end under
+varying conditions. This implies the 'external' character of Bentham's
+morality, and explains his insistence upon the neutrality of motives. He
+takes the average man to be a compound of certain instincts, and merely
+seeks to regulate their action by supplying 'artificial tutelary
+motives.' The 'man' is given; the play of his instincts, separately
+neutral, makes his conduct more or less favourable to general happiness;
+and the moralist and the legislator have both to correct his deviations
+by supplying appropriate 'sanctions.' Bentham, therefore, is inclined to
+ignore the intrinsic character of morality, or the dependence of a man's
+morality upon the essential structure of his nature. He thinks of the
+superficial play of forces, not of their intimate constitution. The man
+is not to be changed in either case; only his circumstances. Such
+defects no doubt diminish the value of Bentham's work. Yet, after all,
+in his own sphere they are trifles. He did very well without philosophy.
+However imperfect his system might be considered as a science or an
+ultimate explanation of society and human nature, it was very much to
+the point as an expression of downright common sense. Dumont's eulogy
+seems to be fully deserved, when we contrast Bentham's theory of
+punishment with the theories (if they deserve the name) of contemporary
+legislators. His method involved a thoroughgoing examination of the
+whole body of laws, and a resolution to apply a searching test to every
+law. If that test was not so unequivocal or ultimate as he fancied, it
+yet implied the constant application of such considerations as must
+always carry weight, and, perhaps, be always the dominant
+considerations, with the actual legislator or jurist. What is the use of
+you? is a question which may fairly be put to every institution and to
+every law; and it concerns legislators to find some answer, even though
+the meaning of the word 'use' is not so clear as we could wish.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[406] _Morals and Legislation_, ch. xii.
+
+[407] _Morals and Legislation_, ch. xiv. (a chapter inserted from
+Dumont's _Traités_).
+
+[408] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. p. 86.
+
+[409] _Ibid._ i. 144.
+
+[410] _Ibid._ i. 145.
+
+[411] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 143.
+
+[412] _Ibid._ i. 147-48.
+
+[413] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i 406 _n._
+
+[414] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 96 _n._
+
+
+V. ENGLISH LAW
+
+The practical value of Bentham's method is perhaps best illustrated by
+his _Rationale of Evidence_. The composition of the papers ultimately
+put together by J. S. Mill had occupied Bentham from 1802 to 1812. The
+changed style is significant. Nobody could write more pointedly, or with
+happier illustrations, than Bentham in his earlier years. He afterwards
+came to think that a didactic treatise should sacrifice every other
+virtue to fulness and precision. To make a sentence precise, every
+qualifying clause must be somehow forced into the original formula.
+Still more characteristic is his application of what he calls the
+'substantive-preferring principle.'[415] He would rather say, 'I give
+extension to an object,' than 'I extend an object.' Where a substantive
+is employed, the idea is 'stationed upon a rock'; if only a verb, the
+idea is 'like a leaf floating on a stream.' A verb, he said,[416] 'slips
+through your fingers like an eel.' The principle corresponds to his
+'metaphysics.' The universe of thought is made up of a number of
+separate 'entities' corresponding to nouns-substantive, and when these
+bundles are distinctly isolated by appropriate nouns, the process of
+arranging and codifying according to the simple relations indicated by
+the copula is greatly facilitated. The ideal language would resemble
+algebra, in which symbols, each representing a given numerical value,
+are connected by the smallest possible number of symbols of operation,
++, -, =, and so forth. To set two such statements side by side, or to
+modify them by inserting different constants, is then a comparatively
+easy process, capable of being regulated by simple general rules.
+Bentham's style becomes tiresome, and was often improperly called
+obscure. It requires attention, but the meaning is never doubtful--and
+to the end we have frequent flashes of the old vivacity.
+
+The _Rationale of Evidence_, as Mill remarks,[417] is 'one of the
+richest in matter of all Bentham's productions.' It contains, too, many
+passages in Bentham's earlier style, judiciously preserved by his young
+editor; indeed, so many that I am tempted even to call the book amusing.
+In spite of the wearisome effort to say everything, and to force
+language into the mould presented by his theory, Bentham attracts us by
+his obvious sincerity. The arguments may be unsatisfactory, but they are
+genuine arguments. They represent conviction; they are given because
+they have convinced; and no reader can deny that they really tend to
+convince. We may complain that there are too many words, and that the
+sentences are cumbrous; but the substance is always to the point. The
+main purpose may be very briefly indicated. Bentham begins by general
+considerations upon evidence, in which he and his youthful editor
+indicate their general adherence to the doctrines of Hume.[418] This
+leads to an application of the methods expounded in the 'Introduction,'
+in order to show how the various motives or 'springs of action' and the
+'sanctions' based upon them may affect the trustworthiness of evidence.
+Any motive whatever may incidentally cause 'mendacity.' The second book,
+therefore, considers what securities may be taken for 'securing
+trustworthiness.' We have, for example, a discussion of the value of
+oaths (he thinks them valueless), of the advantages and disadvantages of
+reducing evidence to writing, of interrogating witnesses, and of the
+publicity or privacy of evidence. Book iii. deals with the 'extraction
+of evidence.' We have to compare the relative advantages of oral and
+written evidence, the rules for cross-examining witnesses and for taking
+evidence as to their character. Book iv. deals with 'pre-appointed
+evidence,' the cases, that is, in which events are recorded at the time
+of occurrence with a view to their subsequent use as evidence. We have
+under this head to consider the formalities which should be required in
+regard to contracts and wills; and the mode of recording judicial and
+other official decisions and registering births, deaths, and marriages.
+In Books v. and vi. we consider two kinds of evidence which is in one
+way or other of inferior cogency, namely, 'circumstantial evidence,' in
+which the evidence if accepted still leaves room for a process of more
+or less doubtful inference; and 'makeshift evidence,' such evidence as
+must sometimes be accepted for want of the best, of which the most
+conspicuous instance is 'hearsay evidence.' Book vii. deals with the
+'authentication' of evidence. Book viii. is a consideration of the
+'technical' system, that namely which was accepted by English lawyers;
+and finally Book ix. deals with a special point, namely, the exclusion
+of evidence. Bentham announces at starting[419] that he shall establish
+'one theorem' and consider two problems. The problems are: 'what
+securities can be taken for the truth of evidence?' and 'what rules can
+be given for estimating the value of evidence?' The 'theorem' is that no
+evidence should be excluded with the professed intention of obtaining a
+right decision; though some must be excluded to avoid expense, vexation,
+and delay. This, therefore, as his most distinct moral, is fully treated
+in the last book.
+
+Had Bentham confined himself to a pithy statement of his leading
+doctrines, and confirmed them by a few typical cases, he would have been
+more effective in a literary sense. His passion for 'codification,' for
+tabulating and arranging facts in all their complexity, and for applying
+his doctrine at full length to every case that he can imagine, makes him
+terribly prolix. On the other hand, this process no doubt strengthened
+his own conviction and the conviction of his disciples as to the value
+of his process. Follow this clue of utility throughout the whole
+labyrinth, see what a clear answer it offers at every point, and you
+cannot doubt that you are in possession of the true compass for such a
+navigation. Indeed, it seems to be indisputable that Bentham's arguments
+are the really relevant and important arguments. How can we decide any
+of the points which come up for discussion? Should a witness be
+cross-examined? Should his evidence be recorded? Should a wife be
+allowed to give evidence against her husband? or the defendant to give
+evidence about his own case? These and innumerable other points can only
+be decided by reference to what Bentham understood by 'utility.' This or
+that arrangement is 'useful' because it enables us to get quickly and
+easily at the evidence, to take effective securities for its
+truthfulness, to estimate its relevance and importance, to leave the
+decision to the most qualified persons, and so forth. These points,
+again, can only be decided by a careful appeal to experience, and by
+endeavouring to understand the ordinary play of 'motives' and
+'sanctions.' What generally makes a man lie, and how is lying to be made
+unpleasant? By rigorously fixing our minds at every point on such
+issues, we find that many questions admit of very plain answers, and are
+surprised to discover what a mass of obscurity has been dispelled. It
+is, however, true that although the value of the method can hardly be
+denied unless we deny the value of all experience and common sense, we
+may dispute the degree in which it confirms the general principle. Every
+step seems to Bentham to reflect additional light upon his primary
+axiom. Yet it is possible to hold that witnesses should be encouraged to
+speak the truth, and that experience may help us to discover the best
+means to that end without, therefore, admitting the unique validity of
+the 'greatest happiness' principle. That principle, so far as true, may
+be itself a deduction from some higher principle; and no philosopher of
+any school would deny that 'utility' should be in some way consulted by
+the legislator.
+
+The book illustrates the next critical point in Bentham's system--the
+transition from law to politics. He was writing the book at the period
+when the failure of the Panopticon was calling his attention to the
+wickedness of George III. and Lord Eldon, and when the English demand
+for parliamentary reform was reviving and supplying him with a
+sympathetic audience. Now, in examining the theory of evidence upon the
+plan described, Bentham found himself at every stage in conflict with
+the existing system, or rather the existing chaos of unintelligible
+rules. English lawyers, he discovered, had worked out a system of rules
+for excluding evidence. Sometimes the cause was pure indolence. 'This
+man, were I to hear him,' says the English judge, 'would come out with a
+parcel of lies. It would be a plague to hear him: I have heard enough
+already; shut the door in his face.'[420] But, as Bentham shows with
+elaborate detail, a reason for suspecting evidence is not a reason for
+excluding it. A convicted perjurer gives evidence, and has a pecuniary
+interest in the result. That is excellent ground for caution; but the
+fact that the man makes a certain statement may still be a help to the
+ascertainment of truth. Why should that help be rejected? Bentham
+scarcely admits of any exception to the general rule of taking any
+evidence you can get--one exception being the rather curious one of
+confession to a Catholic priest; secrecy in such cases is on the whole,
+he thinks, useful. He exposes the confusion implied in an exclusion of
+evidence because it is not fully trustworthy, which is equivalent to
+working in the dark because a partial light may deceive. But this is
+only a part of a whole system of arbitrary, inconsistent, and technical
+rules worked out by the ingenuity of lawyers. Besides the direct injury
+they gave endless opportunity for skilful manoeuvring to exclude or
+admit evidence by adopting different forms of procedure. Rules had been
+made by judges as they were wanted and precedents established of
+contradictory tendency and uncertain application. Bentham contrasts the
+simplicity of the rules deducible from 'utility' with the amazing
+complexity of the traditional code of technical rules. Under the
+'natural' system, that of utility, you have to deal with a quarrel
+between your servants or children. You send at once for the disputants,
+confront them, take any relevant evidence, and make up your mind as to
+the rights of the dispute. In certain cases this 'natural' procedure has
+been retained, as, for example, in courts-martial, where rapid decision
+was necessary. Had the technical system prevailed, the country would
+have been ruined in six weeks.[421] But the exposure of the technical
+system requires an elaborate display of intricate methods involving at
+every step vexation, delay, and injustice. Bentham reckons up nineteen
+separate devices employed by the courts. He describes the elaborate
+processes which had to be gone through before a hearing could be
+obtained; the distance of courts from the litigants; the bandying of
+cases from court to court; the chicaneries about giving notice; the
+frequent nullification of all that had been done on account of some
+technical flaw; the unintelligible jargon of Latin and Law-French which
+veiled the proceedings from the public; the elaborate mysteries of
+'special pleading'; the conflict of jurisdictions, and the manufacture
+of new 'pleas' and new technical rules; the 'entanglement of
+jurisdictions,' and especially the distinction between law and equity,
+which had made confusion doubly confounded. English law had become a
+mere jungle of unintelligible distinctions, contradictions, and cumbrous
+methods through which no man could find his way without the guidance of
+the initiated, and in which a long purse and unscrupulous trickery gave
+the advantage over the poor to the rich, and to the knave over the
+honest man. One fruitful source of all these evils was the 'judge-made'
+law, which Bentham henceforth never ceased to denounce. His ideal was a
+distinct code which, when change was required, should be changed by an
+avowed and intelligible process. The chaos which had grown up was the
+natural result of the gradual development of a traditional body of law,
+in which new cases were met under cover of applying precedents from
+previous decisions, with the help of reference to the vague body of
+unwritten or 'common law,' and of legal fictions permitting some
+non-natural interpretation of the old formulæ. It is the judges, he had
+already said in 1792,[422] 'that make the common law. Do you know how
+they make it? Just as a man makes laws for his dog. When your dog does
+anything you want to break him of, you wait till he does it and then
+beat him. This is the way you make laws for your dog, and this is the
+way the judges make laws for you and me.' The 'tyranny of judge-made
+law' is 'the most all-comprehensive, most grinding, and most crying of
+all grievances,'[423] and is scarcely less bad than 'priest-made
+religion.'[424] Legal fictions, according to him, are simply lies. The
+permission to use them is a 'mendacity licence.' In 'Rome-bred law ...
+fiction' is a 'wart which here and there disfigures the face of justice.
+In English law fiction is a syphilis which runs into every vein and
+carries into every part of the system the principle of rottenness.'[425]
+
+The evils denounced by Bentham were monstrous. The completeness of the
+exposure was his great merit; and his reputation has suffered, as we are
+told on competent authority, by the very efficiency of his attack. The
+worst evils are so much things of the past, that we forget the extent
+of the evil and the merits of its assailant. Bentham's diagnosis of the
+evil explains his later attitude. He attributes all the abuses to
+consciously corrupt motives even where a sufficient explanation can be
+found in the human stupidity and honest incapacity to look outside of
+traditional ways of thought. He admits, indeed, the personal purity of
+English judges. No English judge had ever received a bribe within living
+memory.[426] But this, he urges, is only because the judges find it more
+profitable as well as safer to carry out a radically corrupt system. A
+synonym for 'technical' is 'fee-gathering.' Lawyers of all classes had a
+common interest in multiplying suits and complicating procedure: and
+thus a tacit partnership had grown up which he describes as 'Judge and
+Co.' He gives statistics showing that in the year 1797 five hundred and
+forty-three out of five hundred and fifty 'writs of error' were 'shams,'
+or simply vexatious contrivances for delay, and brought a profit to the
+Chief Justice of over £1400.[427] Lord Eldon was always before him as
+the typical representative of obstruction and obscurantism. In his
+_Indications respecting Lord Eldon_ (1825) he goes into details which it
+must have required some courage to publish. Under Eldon, he says,
+'equity has become an instrument of fraud and extortion.'[428] He
+details the proceedings by which Eldon obtained the sanction of
+parliament for a system of fee-taking, which he had admitted to be
+illegal, and which had been denounced by an eminent solicitor as leading
+to gross corruption. Bentham intimates that the Masters in Chancery were
+'swindlers,'[429] and that Eldon was knowingly the protector and sharer
+of their profits. Romilly, who had called the Court of Chancery 'a
+disgrace to a civilised nation,' had said that Eldon was the cause of
+many of the abuses, and could have reformed most of the others. Erskine
+had declared that if there was a hell, the Court of Chancery was
+hell.[430] Eldon, as Bentham himself thought, was worse than Jeffreys.
+Eldon's victims had died a lingering death, and the persecutor had made
+money out of their sufferings. Jeffreys was openly brutal; while Eldon
+covered his tyranny under the 'most accomplished indifference.'[431]
+
+Yet Eldon was but the head of a band. Judges, barristers, and solicitors
+were alike. The most hopeless of reforms would be to raise a
+'thorough-paced English lawyer' to the moral level of an average
+man.[432] To attack legal abuses was to attack a class combined under
+its chiefs, capable of hoodwinking parliament and suppressing open
+criticism. The slave-traders whom Wilberforce attacked were
+comparatively a powerless excrescence. The legal profession was in the
+closest relations to the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the whole
+privileged and wealthy class. They were welded into a solid 'ring.' The
+king, and his ministers who distributed places and pensions; the
+borough-mongers who sold votes for power; the clergy who looked for
+bishoprics; the monied men who aspired to rank and power, were all parts
+of a league. It was easy enough to talk of law reform. Romilly had
+proposed and even carried a 'reformatiuncle' or two;[433] but to achieve
+a serious success required not victory in a skirmish or two, not the
+exposure of some abuse too palpable to be openly defended even by an
+Eldon, but a prolonged war against an organised army fortified and
+entrenched in the very heart of the country.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[415] _Works_, iii. 267.
+
+[416] _Ibid._ x. 569
+
+[417] _Autobiography_, p. 116.
+
+[418] The subject is again treated in Book v. on 'Circumstantial
+Evidence.'
+
+[419] _Works_, vi. 204.
+
+[420] _Works_, vii. 391.
+
+[421] _Works_, vii. 321-25. Court-martials are hardly a happy example
+now.
+
+[422] 'Truth _v._ Ashhurst' (1792), _Works_, v. 235.
+
+[423] _Works_ ('Codification Petition'), v. 442.
+
+[424] _Ibid._ vi. 11.
+
+[425] _Ibid._ v. 92.
+
+[426] _Works_, vii. 204, 331; ix. 143.
+
+[427] _Ibid._ vii. 214.
+
+[428] _Ibid._ v. 349.
+
+[429] _Ibid._ v. 364.
+
+[430] _Works_, v. 371.
+
+[431] _Ibid._ v. 375.
+
+[432] _Ibid._ vii. 188.
+
+[433] _Ibid._ v. 370.
+
+
+VI. RADICALISM
+
+Thus Bentham, as his eyes were opened, became a Radical. The political
+purpose became dominant, although we always see that the legal abuses
+are uppermost in his mind; and that what he really seeks is a fulcrum
+for the machinery which is to overthrow Lord Eldon. Some of the
+pamphlets deal directly with the special instruments of corruption. The
+_Elements of the Art of Packing_ shows how the crown managed to have a
+permanent body of special 'jurors' at its disposal. The 'grand and
+paramount use'[434] of this system was to crush the liberty of the
+press. The obscure law of libel, worked by judges in the interest of the
+government, enabled them to punish any rash Radical for 'hurting the
+feelings' of the ruling classes, and to evade responsibility by help of
+a 'covertly pensioned' and servile jury. The pamphlet, though tiresomely
+minute and long-winded, contained too much pointed truth to be published
+at the time. The _Official Aptitude minimised_ contains a series of
+attacks upon the system of patronage and pensions by which the machinery
+of government was practically worked. In the _Catechism_ of reformers,
+written in 1809, Bentham began the direct application of his theories to
+the constitution; and the final and most elaborate exposition of these
+forms the _Constitutional Code_, which was the main work of his later
+years. This book excited the warmest admiration of Bentham's
+disciples.[435] J. S. Mill speaks of its 'extraordinary power ... of at
+once seizing comprehensive principles and scheming out minute details,'
+and of its 'surpassing intellectual vigour.' Nor, indeed, will any one
+be disposed to deny that it is a singular proof of intellectual
+activity, when we remember that it was begun when the author was over
+seventy, and that he was still working at eighty-four.[436] In this book
+Bentham's peculiarities of style reach their highest development, and it
+cannot be recommended as light reading. Had Bentham been a mystical
+philosopher, he would, we may conjecture, have achieved a masterpiece of
+unintelligibility which all his followers would have extolled as
+containing the very essence of his teaching. His method condemned him to
+be always intelligible, however crabbed and elaborate. Perhaps, however,
+the point which strikes one most is the amazing simple-mindedness of the
+whole proceeding. Bentham's light-hearted indifference to the
+distinction between paper constitutions and operative rules of conduct
+becomes almost pathetic.
+
+Bentham was clearly the victim of a common delusion. If a system will
+work, the minutest details can be exhibited. Therefore, it is inferred,
+an exhibition of minute detail proves that it will work. Unfortunately,
+the philosophers of Laputa would have had no more difficulty in filling
+up details than the legislators of England or the United States. When
+Bentham had settled in his 'Radical Reform Bill'[437] that the
+'voting-box' was to be a double cube of cast-iron, with a slit in the
+lid, into which cards two inches by one, white on one side and black on
+the other, could be inserted, he must have felt that he had got very
+near to actual application: he can picture the whole operation and
+nobody can say that the scheme is impracticable for want of working
+plans of the machinery. There will, doubtless, be no difficulty in
+settling the shape of the boxes, when we have once agreed to have the
+ballot. But a discussion of such remote details of Utopia is of
+incomparably less real interest than the discussion in the _Rationale of
+Evidence_ of points, which, however minute, were occurring every day,
+and which were really in urgent need of the light of common sense.
+
+Bentham's general principles may be very simply stated. They are, in
+fact, such as were suggested by his view of legal grievances. Why, when
+he had demonstrated that certain measures would contribute to the
+'greatest happiness of the greatest number,' were they not at once
+adopted? Because the rulers did not desire the greatest happiness of the
+greatest number. This, in Bentham's language, is to say that they were
+governed by a 'sinister interest.' Their interest was that of their
+class, not that of the nation; they aimed at the greatest happiness of
+some, not at the greatest happiness of all. A generalisation of this
+remark gives us the first axioms of all government. There are two
+primary principles: the 'self-preference' principle, in virtue of which
+every man always desires his own greatest happiness'; and the 'greatest
+happiness' principle, in virtue of which 'the right and proper end' of
+government is the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.'[438] The
+'actual end' of every government, again, is the greatest happiness of
+the governors. Hence the whole problem is to produce a coincidence of
+the two ends, by securing an identity of interest between governors and
+governed. To secure that we have only to identify the two classes or to
+put the government in the hands of all.[439] In a monarchy, the ruler
+aims at the interest of one--himself; in a 'limited monarchy' the aim is
+at the happiness of the king and the small privileged class; in a
+democracy, the end is the right one--the greatest happiness of the
+greatest number. This is a short cut to all constitutional questions.
+Probably it has occurred in substance to most youthful members of
+debating societies. Bentham's confidence in his logic lifts him above
+any appeal to experience; and he occasionally reminds us of the proof
+given in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ that the queen must live in the Tower of
+London. The 'monarch,' as he observes,[440] 'is naturally the very
+worst--the most maleficent member of the whole community.' Wherever an
+aristocracy differs from the democracy, their judgment will be
+erroneous.[441] The people will naturally choose 'morally apt agents,'
+and men who wish to be chosen will desire truly to become 'morally apt,'
+for they can only recommend themselves by showing their desire to serve
+the general interest.[442] 'All experience testifies to this theory,'
+though the evidence is 'too bulky' to be given. Other proofs, however,
+may at once be rendered superfluous by appealing to 'the uninterrupted
+and most notorious experience of the United States.'[443] To that happy
+country he often appeals indeed[444] as a model government. In it, there
+is no corruption, no useless expenditure, none of the evils illustrated
+by our 'matchless constitution.'
+
+The constitution deduced from these principles has at least the merit of
+simplicity. We are to have universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and
+vote by ballot. He inclines to give a vote to women.[445] There is to be
+no king, no house of peers, no established church. Members of parliament
+are not to be re-eligible, till after an interval. Elaborate rules
+provide for their regular attendance and exclusive devotion to their
+masters' business. They are to be simply 'deputies,' not
+'representatives.' They elect a prime minister who holds office for four
+years. Officials are to be appointed by a complex plan of competitive
+examination; and they are to be invited to send in tenders for doing the
+work at diminished salary. When once in office, every care is taken for
+their continual inspection by the public and the verification of their
+accounts. They are never for an instant to forget that they are
+servants, not the masters, of the public.
+
+Bentham, of course, is especially minute and careful in regard to the
+judicial organisation--a subject upon which he wrote much, and much to
+the purpose. The functions and fees of advocates are to be narrowly
+restricted, and advocates to be provided gratuitously for the poor. They
+are not to become judges: to make a barrister a judge is as sensible as
+it would be to select a procuress for mistress of a girls' school.[446]
+Judges should be everywhere accessible: always on duty, too busy to have
+time for corruption, and always under public supervision. One
+characteristic device is his quasi-jury. The English system of requiring
+unanimity was equivalent to enforcing perjury by torture. Its utility as
+a means of resisting tyranny would disappear when tyranny had become
+impossible. But public opinion might be usefully represented by a
+'quasi-jury' of three or five, who should not pronounce a verdict, but
+watch the judge, interrogate, if necessary, and in case of need demand a
+rehearing. Judges, of course, were no longer to make law, but to propose
+amendments in the 'Pannomion' or universal code, when new cases arose.
+
+His leading principle may be described in one word as 'responsibility,'
+or expressed in his leading rule, 'Minimise Confidence.'[447] 'All
+government is in itself one vast evil.'[448] It consists in applying
+evil to exclude worse evil. Even 'to reward is to punish,'[449] when
+reward is given by government. The less government, then, the better;
+but as governors are a necessary evil, they must be limited by every
+possible device to the sole legitimate aim, and watched at every turn by
+the all-seeing eye of public opinion. Every one must admit that this is
+an application of a sound principle, and that one condition of good
+government is the diffusion of universal responsibility. It must be
+admitted, too, that Bentham's theory represents a vigorous embodiment
+and unflinching application of doctrines which since his time have
+spread and gained more general authority. Mill says that granting one
+assumption, the Constitutional Code is 'admirable.'[450] That assumption
+is that it is for the good of mankind to be under the absolute authority
+of a majority. In other words, it would justify what Mill calls the
+'despotism of public opinion.' To protest against that despotism was one
+of the main purposes of Mill's political writings. How was it that the
+disciple came to be in such direct opposition to his master? That
+question cannot be answered till we have considered Mill's own position.
+But I have now followed Bentham far enough to consider the more general
+characteristics of his doctrine.
+
+I have tried, in the first place, to show what was the course of
+Bentham's own development; how his observation of certain legal abuses
+led him to attempt the foundation of a science of jurisprudence; how the
+difficulty of obtaining a hearing for his arguments led him to discover
+the power of 'Judge and Co.'; how he found out that behind 'Judge and
+Co.' were George III. and the base Sidmouth, and the whole band of
+obstructors entrenched within the 'matchless constitution'; and how thus
+his attack upon the abuses of the penal law led him to attack the whole
+political framework of the country. I have also tried to show how
+Bentham's development coincided with that of the English reformers
+generally. They too began with attacking specific abuses. They were for
+'reform, not revolution.' The constitution satisfied them in the main:
+they boasted of the palladia of their liberties, 'trial by jury' and the
+'Habeas Corpus' Act, and held Frenchmen to be frog-eating slaves in
+danger of _lettres de cachet_ and the Bastille. English public opinion
+in spite of many trammels had a potent influence. Their first impulse,
+therefore, was simply to get rid of the trammels--the abuses which had
+grown up from want of a thorough application of the ancient principles
+in their original purity. The English Whig, even of the more radical
+persuasion, was profoundly convinced that the foundations were sound,
+however unsatisfactory might be the superstructure. Thus, both Bentham
+and the reformers generally started--not from abstract principles, but
+from the assault upon particular abuses. This is the characteristic of
+the whole English movement, and gives the meaning of their claim to be
+'practical.' The Utilitarians were the reformers on the old lines; and
+their philosophy meant simply a desire to systematise the ordinary
+common sense arguments. The philosophy congenial to this vein is the
+philosophy which appeals to experience. Locke had exploded 'innate
+ideas.' They denounced 'intuitions,' or beliefs which might override
+experience as 'innate ideas' in a new dress; and the attempt to carry
+out this view systematically became the distinctive mark of the whole
+school. Bentham accepted, though he did little to elaborate, this
+doctrine. That task remained for his disciples. But the tendency is
+shown by his view of a rival version of Radicalism.
+
+Bentham, as we have seen, regarded the American Declaration of
+Independence as so much 'jargon.' He was entirely opposed to the theory
+of the 'rights of man,' and therefore to the 'ideas of 1789.' From that
+theory the revolutionary party professed to deduce their demands for
+universal suffrage, the levelling of all privileges, and the absolute
+supremacy of the people. Yet Bentham, repudiating the premises, came to
+accept the conclusion. His Constitutional Code scarcely differs from the
+ideal of the Jacobins', except in pushing the logic further. The
+machinery by which he proposed to secure that the so-called rulers
+should become really the servants of the people was more thoroughgoing
+and minutely worked out than that of any democratic constitution that
+has ever been adopted. How was it that two antagonist theories led to
+identical results; and that the 'rights of man,' absurd in philosophy,
+represented the ideal state of things in practice?
+
+The general answer may be that political theories are not really based
+upon philosophy. The actual method is to take your politics for granted
+on the one side and your philosophy for granted on the other, and then
+to prove their necessary connection. But it is, at any rate, important
+to see what was the nature of the philosophical assumptions implicitly
+taken for granted by Bentham.
+
+The 'rights of man' doctrine confounds a primary logical canon with a
+statement of fact. Every political theory must be based upon facts as
+well as upon logic. Any reasonable theory about politics must no doubt
+give a reason for inequality and a reason, too, for equality. The maxim
+that all men were, or ought to be, 'equal' asserts correctly that there
+must not be arbitrary differences. Every inequality should have its
+justification in a reasonable system. But when this undeniable logical
+canon is taken to prove that men actually are equal, there is an obvious
+begging of the question. In point of fact, the theorists immediately
+proceeded to disfranchise half the race on account of sex, and a third
+of the remainder on account of infancy. They could only amend the
+argument by saying that all men were equal in so far as they possessed
+certain attributes. But those attributes could only be determined by
+experience, or, as Bentham would have put it, by an appeal to 'utility.'
+It is illogical, said the anti-slavery advocate, to treat men
+differently on account of the colour of their skins. No doubt it is
+illogical if, in fact, the difference of colour does not imply a
+difference of the powers which fit a man for the enjoyment of certain
+rights. We may at least grant that the burden of proof should be upon
+those who would disfranchise all red-haired men. But this is because
+experience shows that the difference of colour does not mark a relevant
+difference. We cannot say, _a priori_, whether the difference between a
+negro and a white man may not be so great as to imply incapacity for
+enjoyment of equal rights. The black skin might--for anything a mere
+logician can say--indicate the mind of a chimpanzee. The case against
+slavery does not rest on the bare fact that negroes and whites both
+belong to the class 'man,' but on the fact that the negro has powers and
+sensibilities which fit him to hold property, to form marriages, to
+learn his letters, and so forth. But that fact is undeniably to be
+proved, not from the bare logic, but from observation of the particular
+case.
+
+Bentham saw with perfect clearness that sound political theory requires
+a basis of solid fact. The main purpose of his whole system was to carry
+out that doctrine thoroughly. His view is given vigorously in the
+'Anarchical Fallacies'--a minute examination of the French Declaration
+of Rights in 1791. His argument is of merciless length, and occasionally
+so minute as to sound like quibbling. The pith, however, is clear
+enough. 'All men are born and remain free and equal in respect of
+rights' are the first words of the Declaration. Nobody is 'born free,'
+retorts Bentham. Everybody is born, and long remains, a helpless child.
+All men born free! Absurd and miserable nonsense! Why, you are
+complaining in the same breath that nearly everybody is a slave.[451] To
+meet this objection, the words might be amended by substituting 'ought
+to be' for 'is.' This, however, on Bentham's showing, at once introduces
+the conception of utility, and therefore leads to empirical
+considerations. The proposition, when laid down as a logical necessity,
+claims to be absolute. Therefore it implies that all authority is bad;
+the authority, for example, of parent over child, or of husband over
+wife; and moreover, that all laws to the contrary are _ipso facto_ void.
+That is why it is 'anarchical.' It supposes a 'natural right,' not only
+as suggesting reasons for proposed alterations of the legal right, but
+as actually annihilating the right and therefore destroying all
+government. '_Natural rights_,' says Bentham,[452] is simple nonsense;
+natural and imprescriptible rights 'rhetorical nonsense--nonsense upon
+stilts.' For 'natural right' substitute utility, and you have, of
+course, a reasonable principle, because an appeal to experience. But lay
+down 'liberty' as an absolute right and you annihilate law, for every
+law supposes coercion. One man gets liberty simply by restricting the
+liberty of others.[453] What Bentham substantially says, therefore, is
+that on this version absolute rights of individuals could mean nothing
+but anarchy; or that no law can be defended except by a reference to
+facts, and therefore to 'utility.'
+
+One answer might be that the demand is not for absolute liberty, but for
+as much liberty as is compatible with equal liberty for all. The fourth
+article of the Declaration says: 'Liberty consists in being able to do
+that which is not hurtful to another, and therefore the exercise of the
+natural rights of each man has no other bounds than those which ensure
+to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.'
+This formula corresponds to a theory held by Mr. Herbert Spencer; and,
+as he observes,[454] held on different grounds by Kant. Bentham's view,
+indicated by his criticism of this article in the 'Anarchical
+Fallacies,' is therefore worth a moment's notice. The formula does not
+demand the absolute freedom which would condemn all coercion and all
+government; but it still seems to suggest that liberty, not utility, is
+the ultimate end. Bentham's formula, therefore, diverges. All
+government, he holds, is an evil, because coercion implies pain. We must
+therefore minimise, though we cannot annihilate, government; but we must
+keep to utility as the sole test. Government should, of course, give to
+the individual all such rights as are 'useful'; but it does not follow,
+without a reference to utility, that men should not be restrained even
+in 'self-regarding' conduct. Some men, women, and children require to be
+protected against the consequences of their own 'weakness, ignorance, or
+imprudence.'[455] Bentham adheres, that is, to the strictly empirical
+ground. The absolute doctrine requires to be qualified by a reference to
+actual circumstances: and, among those circumstances, as Bentham
+intimates, we must include the capacity of the persons concerned to
+govern themselves. Carried out as an absolute principle, it would imply
+the independence of infants; and must therefore require some reference
+to 'utility.'
+
+Bentham, then, objects to the Jacobin theory as too absolute and too
+'individualist.' The doctrine begs the question; it takes for granted
+what can only be proved by experience; and therefore lays down as
+absolute theories which are only true under certain conditions or with
+reference to the special circumstances to which they are applied. That
+is inconsistent with Bentham's thoroughgoing empiricism. But he had
+antagonists to meet upon the other side: and, in meeting them, he was
+led to a doctrine which has been generally condemned for the very same
+faults--as absolute and individualist. We have only to ask in what sense
+Bentham appealed to 'experience' to see how he actually reached his
+conclusions. The adherents of the old tradition appealed to experience
+in their own way. The English people, they said, is the freest, richest,
+happiest in the world; it has grown up under the British Constitution:
+therefore the British Constitution is the best in the world, as Burke
+tells you, and the British common law, as Blackstone tells you, is the
+'perfection of wisdom.' Bentham's reply was virtually that although he,
+like Burke, appealed to experience, he appealed to experience
+scientifically organised, whereas Burke appealed to mere blind
+tradition. Bentham is to be the founder of a new science, founded like
+chemistry on experiment, and his methods are to be as superior to those
+of Burke as those of modern chemists to those of the alchemists who also
+invoked experience. The true plan was not to throw experience aside
+because it was alleged by the ignorant and the prejudiced, but to
+interrogate experience systematically, and so to become the Bacon or the
+Newton of legislation, instead of wandering off into the _a priori_
+constructions of a Descartes or a Leibniz.
+
+Bentham thus professes to use an 'inductive' instead of the deductive
+method of the Jacobins; but reaches the same practical conclusions from
+the other end. The process is instructive. He objected to the existing
+inequalities, not as inequalities simply, but as mischievous
+inequalities. He, as well as the Jacobins, would admit that inequality
+required justification; and he agreed with them that, in this case,
+there was no justification. The existing privileges did not promote the
+'greatest happiness of the greatest number.' The attack upon the
+'Anarchical Fallacies' must be taken with the _Book of Fallacies_, and
+the _Book of Fallacies_ is a sustained and vigorous, though a curiously
+cumbrous, assault upon the Conservative arguments. Its pith may be found
+in Sydney Smith's _Noodle's Oration_; but it is itself well worth
+reading by any one who can recognise really admirable dialectical power,
+and forgive a little crabbedness of style in consideration of genuine
+intellectual vigour. I only notice Bentham's assault upon the 'wisdom of
+our ancestors.' After pointing out how much better we are entitled to
+judge now that we have got rid of so many superstitions, and have
+learned to read and write, he replies to the question, 'Would you have
+us speak and act as if we never had any ancestors?' 'By no means,' he
+replies; 'though their opinions were of little value, their practice is
+worth attending to; but chiefly because it shows the bad consequences of
+their opinions.' 'From foolish opinion comes foolish conduct; from
+foolish conduct the severest disaster; and from the severest disaster
+the most useful warning. It is from the folly, not from the wisdom, of
+our ancestors that we have so much to learn.'[456] Bentham has become an
+'ancestor,' and may teach us by his errors. Pointed and vigorous as is
+his exposure of many of the sophistries by which Conservatives defended
+gross abuses and twisted the existence of any institution into an
+argument for its value, we get some measure from this of Bentham's view
+of history. In attacking an abuse, he says, we have a right to inquire
+into the utility of any and every arrangement. The purpose of a court of
+justice is to decide litigation; it has to ascertain facts and apply
+rules: does it then ascertain facts by the methods most conducive to the
+discovery of truth? Are the rules needlessly complex, ambiguous,
+calculated to give a chance to knaves, or to the longest purse? If so,
+undoubtedly they are mischievous. Bentham had done inestimable service
+in stripping away all the disguises and technical phrases which had
+evaded the plain issue, and therefore made of the laws an unintelligible
+labyrinth. He proceeded to treat in the same way of government
+generally. Does it work efficiently for its professed ends? Is it worked
+in the interests of the nation, or of a special class, whose interests
+conflict with those of the nation? He treated, that is, of government as
+a man of business might investigate a commercial undertaking. If he
+found that clerks were lazy, ignorant, making money for themselves, or
+bullying and cheating the customers, he would condemn the management.
+Bentham found the 'matchless constitution' precisely in this state. He
+condemned political institutions worked for the benefit of a class, and
+leading, especially in legal matters, to endless abuses and chicanery.
+The abuses everywhere imply 'inequality' in some sense; for they arise
+from monopoly. The man who holds a sinecure, or enjoys a privilege, uses
+it for his own private interest. The 'matter of corruption,' as Bentham
+called it, was provided by the privilege and the sinecure. The Jacobin
+might denounce privileges simply as privileges, and Bentham denounce
+them because they were used by the privileged class for corrupt
+purposes. So far, Bentham and the Jacobins were quite at one. It
+mattered little to the result which argument they preferred to use, and
+without doubt they had a very strong case, and did in fact express a
+demand for justice and for a redress of palpable evils. The difference
+seems to be that in one case the appeal is made in the name of justice
+and equality; in the other case, in the name of benevolence and utility.
+
+The important point here, however, is to understand Bentham's implicit
+assumptions. J. S. Mill, in criticising his master, points out very
+forcibly the defects arising from Bentham's attitude to history. He
+simply continued, as Mill thinks, the hostility with which the critical
+or destructive school of the eighteenth century regarded their
+ancestors. To the revolutionary party history was a record of crimes and
+follies and of little else. The question will meet us again; and here it
+is enough to ask what is the reason of his tacit implication of
+Bentham's position. Bentham's whole aim, as I have tried to show, was to
+be described as the construction of a science of legislation. The
+science, again, was to be purely empirical. It was to rest throughout
+upon the observation of facts. That aim--an admirable aim--runs through
+his whole work and that of his successors. I have noticed, indeed, how
+easily Bentham took for granted that his makeshift classification of
+common motives amounted to a scientific psychology. A similar assumption
+that a rough sketch of a science is the same thing as its definite
+constitution is characteristic of the Utilitarians in general. A
+scientific spirit is most desirable; but the Utilitarians took a very
+short cut to scientific certainty. Though appealing to experience, they
+reach formulæ as absolute as any 'intuitionist' could desire. What is
+the logical process implied? To constitute an empirical science is to
+show that the difference between different phenomena is due simply to
+'circumstances.' The explanation of the facts becomes sufficient when
+the 'law' can be stated, as that of a unit of constant properties placed
+in varying positions. This corresponds to the procedure in the physical
+sciences, where the ultimate aim is to represent all laws as
+corresponding to the changes of position of uniform atoms. In social and
+political changes the goal is the same. J. S. Mill states in the end of
+his _Autobiography_[457] that one main purpose of his writing was to
+show that 'differences between individuals, races, or sexes' are due to
+'differences in circumstances.' In fact, this is an aim so
+characteristic from the beginning of the whole school, that it may be
+put down almost as a primary postulate. It was not, indeed, definitely
+formulated; but to 'explain' a social theorem was taken to be the same
+thing as to show how differences of character or conduct could be
+explained by 'circumstance'--meaning by 'circumstance' something not
+given in the agent himself. We have, however, no more right as good
+empiricists to assert than to deny that all difference comes from
+'circumstance.' If we take 'man' as a constant quantity in our
+speculations, it requires at least a great many precautions before we
+can assume that our abstract entity corresponds to a real concrete unit.
+Otherwise we have a short cut to a doctrine of 'equality.' The theory of
+'the rights of man' lays down the formula, and assumes that the facts
+will correspond. The Utilitarian assumes the equality of fact, and of
+course brings out an equally absolute formula. 'Equality,' in some
+sense, is introduced by a side wind, though not explicitly laid down as
+an axiom.[458] This underlying tendency may partly explain the
+coincidence of results--though it would require a good many
+qualifications in detail; but here I need only take Bentham's more or
+less unconscious application.
+
+Bentham's tacit assumption, in fact, is that there is an average 'man.'
+Different specimens of the race, indeed, may vary widely according to
+age, sex, and so forth; but, for purposes of legislation, he may serve
+as a unit. We can assume that he has on the average certain qualities
+from which his actions in the mass can be determined with sufficient
+accuracy, and we are tempted to assume that they are mainly the
+qualities obvious to an inhabitant of Queen's Square Place about the
+year 1800. Mill defends Bentham against the charge that he assumed his
+codes to be good for all men everywhere. To that, says Mill,[459] the
+essay upon the 'Influence of Time and Place in Matters of Legislation'
+is a complete answer. Yet Mill[460] admits in the same breath that
+Bentham omitted all reference to 'national character.' In fact, as we
+have seen, Bentham was ready to legislate for Hindoostan as well as for
+his own parish; and to make codes not only for England, Spain, and
+Russia, but for Morocco. The Essay mentioned really explains the point.
+Bentham not only admitted but asserted as energetically as became an
+empiricist, that we must allow for 'circumstances'; and circumstances
+include not only climate and so forth, but the varying beliefs and
+customs of the people under consideration. The real assumption is that
+all such circumstances are superficial, and can be controlled and
+altered indefinitely by the 'legislator.' The Moor, the Hindoo, and the
+Englishman are all radically identical; and the differences which must
+be taken into account for the moment can be removed by judicious means.
+Without pausing to illustrate this from the Essay, I may remark that for
+many purposes such an assumption is justifiable and guides ordinary
+common sense. If we ask what would be the best constitution for a
+commercial company, or the best platform for a political party, we can
+form a fair guess by arguing from the average of Bentham and his
+contemporaries--especially if we are shrewd attornies or political
+wirepullers. Only we are not therefore in a position to talk about the
+'science of human nature' or to deal with problems of 'sociology.' This,
+however, gives Bentham's 'individualism' in a sense of the phrase
+already explained. He starts from the 'ready-made man,' and deduces all
+institutions or legal arrangements from his properties. I have tried to
+show how naturally this view fell in with the ordinary political
+conceptions of the time. It shows, again, why Bentham disregards
+history. When we have such a science, empirical or _a priori_, history
+is at most of secondary importance. We can deduce all our maxims of
+conduct from the man himself as he is before us. History only shows how
+terribly he blundered in the pre-scientific period. The blunders may
+give us a hint here and there. Man was essentially the same in the first
+and the eighteenth century, and the differences are due to the clumsy
+devices which he made by rule of thumb. We do not want to refer to them
+now, except as illustrations of errors. We may remark how difficult it
+was to count before the present notation was invented; but when it has
+once been invented, we may learn to use it without troubling our heads
+about our ancestors' clumsy contrivances for doing without it. This
+leads to the real shortcoming. There is a point at which the historical
+view becomes important--the point, namely, where it is essential to
+remember that man is not a ready-made article, but the product of a long
+and still continuing 'evolution.' Bentham's attack (in the _Fragment_)
+upon the 'social contract' is significant. He was, no doubt, perfectly
+right in saying that an imaginary contract could add no force to the
+ultimate grounds for the social union. Nobody would now accept the
+fiction in that stage. And yet the 'social contract' may be taken to
+recognise a fact; namely, that the underlying instincts upon which
+society alternately rests correspond to an order of reasons from those
+which determine more superficial relations. Society is undoubtedly
+useful, and its utility may be regarded as its ground. But the utility
+of society means much more than the utility of a railway company or a
+club, which postulates as existing a whole series of already established
+institutions. To Bentham an 'utility' appeared to be a kind of permanent
+and ultimate entity which is the same at all periods--it corresponds to
+a psychological currency of constant value. To show, therefore, that the
+social contract recognises 'utility' is to show that the whole organism
+is constructed just as any particular part is constructed. Man comes
+first and 'society' afterwards. I have already noticed how this applies
+to his statements about the utility of a law; how his argument assumes
+an already constituted society, and seems to overlook the difference
+between the organic law upon which all order essentially depends, and
+some particular modification or corollary which may be superinduced. We
+now have to notice the political version of the same method. The 'law,'
+according to Bentham, is a rule enforced by a 'sanction.' The imposer of
+the rule in the phrase which Hobbes had made famous is the 'sovereign.'
+Hobbes was a favourite author, indeed, of the later Utilitarians, though
+Bentham does not appear to have studied him. The relation is one of
+natural affinity. When in the _Constitutional Code_ Bentham transfers
+the 'sovereignty' from the king to the 'people,'[461] he shows the
+exact difference between his doctrine and that of the _Leviathan_. Both
+thinkers are absolutists in principle, though Hobbes gives to a monarch
+the power which Bentham gives to a democracy. The attributes remain
+though their subject is altered. The 'sovereign,' in fact, is the
+keystone of the whole Utilitarian system. He represents the ultimate
+source of all authority, and supplies the motive for all obedience. As
+Hobbes put it, he is a kind of mortal God.
+
+Mill's criticism of Bentham suggests the consequences. There are, he
+says,[462] three great questions: What government is for the good of the
+people? How are they to be induced to obey it? How is it to be made
+responsible? The third question, he says, is the only one seriously
+considered by Bentham; and Bentham's answer, we have seen, leads to that
+'tyranny of the majority' which was Mill's great stumbling-block. Why,
+then, does Bentham omit the other questions? or rather, how would he
+answer them? for he certainly assumes an answer. People, in the first
+place, are 'induced to obey' by the sanctions. They don't rob that they
+may not go to prison. That is a sufficient answer at a given moment. It
+assumes, indeed, that the law will be obeyed. The policeman, the gaoler,
+and the judge will do what the sovereign--whether despot or
+legislature--orders them to do. The jurist may naturally take this for
+granted. He does not go 'behind the law.' That is the law which the
+sovereign has declared to be the law. In that sense, the sovereign is
+omnipotent. He can, as a fact, threaten evildoers with the gallows; and
+the jurist simply takes the fact for granted, and assumes that the
+coercion is an ultimate fact. No doubt it is ultimate for the individual
+subject. The immediate restraint is the policeman, and we need not ask
+upon what does the policeman depend. If, however, we persist in asking,
+we come to the historical problems which Bentham simply omits. The law
+itself, in fact, ultimately rests upon 'custom,'--upon the whole system
+of instincts, beliefs, and passions which induce people to obey
+government, and are, so to speak, the substance out of which loyalty and
+respect for the law is framed. These, again, are the product of an
+indefinitely long elaboration, which Bentham takes for granted. He
+assumes as perfectly natural and obvious that a number of men should
+meet, as the Americans or Frenchmen met, and create a constitution. That
+the possibility of such a proceeding involves centuries of previous
+training does not occur to him. It is assumed that the constitution can
+be made out of hand, and this assumption is of the highest importance,
+not only historically, but for immediate practice. Mill assumes too
+easily that Bentham has secured responsibility. Bentham assumes that an
+institution will work as it is intended to work--perhaps the commonest
+error of constitution-mongers. If the people use the instruments which
+he provides, they have a legal method for enforcing obedience. To infer
+that they will do so is to infer that all the organic instincts will
+operate precisely as he intends; that each individual, for example, will
+form an independent opinion upon legislative questions, vote for men who
+will apply his opinions, and see that his representatives perform his
+bidding honestly. That they should do so is essential to his scheme; but
+that they will do so is what he takes for granted. He assumes, that is,
+that there is no need for inquiring into the social instincts which lie
+beneath all political action. You can make your machine and assume the
+moving force. That is the natural result of considering political and
+legislative problems without taking into account the whole character of
+the human materials employed in the construction. Bentham's sovereign is
+thus absolute. He rules by coercion, as a foreign power may rule by the
+sword in a conquered province. Thus, force is the essence of government,
+and it is needless to go further. To secure the right application of the
+force, we have simply to distribute it among the subjects. Government
+still means coercion, and ultimately nothing else; but then, as the
+subjects are simply moved by their own interests, that is, by utility,
+they will apply the power to secure those interests. Therefore, all that
+is wanted is this distribution, and Mill's first problem, What
+government is for the good of the people? is summarily answered. The
+question, how obedience is to be secured, is evaded by confining the
+answer to the 'sanctions,' and taking for granted that the process of
+distributing power is perfectly simple, or that a new order can be
+introduced as easily as parliament can pass an act for establishing a
+new police in London. The 'social contract' is abolished; but it is
+taken for granted that the whole power of the sovereign can be
+distributed, and rules made for its application by the common sense of
+the various persons interested. Finally, the one bond outside of the
+individual is the sovereign. He represents all that holds society
+together; his 'sanctions,' as I have said, are taken to be on the same
+plane with the 'moral sanctions'--not dependent upon them, but other
+modes of applying similar motives. As the sovereign, again, is in a
+sense omnipotent, and yet can be manufactured, so to speak, by voluntary
+arrangements among the individual members of society, there is no limit
+to the influence which he may exercise. I note, indeed, that I am
+speaking rather of the tendencies of the theory than of definitely
+formulated conclusions. Most of the Utilitarians were exceedingly
+shrewd, practical people, whose regard for hard facts imposed limits
+upon their speculations. They should have been the last people to
+believe too implicitly in the magical efficacy of political
+contrivances, for they were fully aware that many men are knaves and
+most men fools. They probably put little faith in Bentham's Utopia,
+except as a remote ideal, and an ideal of unimaginative minds. The
+Utopia was constructed on 'individualist' principles, because common
+sense naturally approves individualism. The whole social and political
+order is clearly the sum of the individuals, who combine to form an
+aggregate; and theories about social bonds take one to the mystical and
+sentimental. The absolute tendency is common to Bentham and the
+Jacobins. Whether the individual be taken as a unit of constant
+properties, or as the subject of absolute rights, we reach equally
+absolute conclusions. When all the social and political regulations are
+regarded as indefinitely modifiable, the ultimate laws come to depend
+upon the absolute framework of unalterable fact. This, again, is often
+the right point of view for immediate questions in which we may take for
+granted that the average individual is in fact constant; and, as I have
+said in regard to Bentham's legislative process, leads to very relevant
+and important, though not ultimate, questions. But there are certain
+other results which require to be noticed. 'Individualism,' like other
+words that have become watchwords of controversy, has various shades of
+meaning, and requires a little more definition.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[434] _Works_, v. 97, etc.
+
+[435] See preface to _Constitutional Code_ in vol. ix.
+
+[436] Bentham's nephew, George, who died when approaching his
+eighty-fourth birthday, devoted the last twenty-five years of his life
+with equal assiduity to his _Genera Plantarum_. See a curious anecdote
+of his persistence in the _Dictionary of National Biography_.
+
+[437] _Works_, iii. 573.
+
+[438] _Works_, ix. 5, 8.
+
+[439] The theory, as Mill reminds us, had been very pointedly
+anticipated by Helvétius. Bentham's practical experience, however, had
+forced it upon his attention.
+
+[440] _Works_, ix. 141. The general principle, however, is confirmed by
+the case of George III.
+
+[441] _Ibid._ ix. 45.
+
+[442] _Ibid._ ix. 98.
+
+[443] _Works_, ix. 98.
+
+[444] e.g. _Ibid._ ix. 38, 50, 63, 99, etc.
+
+[445] _Ibid._ ('Plan of Parliamentary Reform,') iii. 463.
+
+[446] _Works_, ix. 594.
+
+[447] _Ibid._ ix. 62.
+
+[448] _Ibid._ ix. 24.
+
+[449] _Ibid._ ix. 48.
+
+[450] _Dissertations_, i. 377.
+
+[451] _Works_, ii. 497.
+
+[452] _Ibid._ ii. 501.
+
+[453] _Ibid._ ii. 503.
+
+[454] _Justice_, p. 264; so Price, in his _Observations on Liberty_,
+lays it down that government is never to entrench upon private liberty,
+'except so far as private liberty entrenches on the liberty of others.'
+
+[455] _Works_, ii. 506.
+
+[456] _Works_, ii. 401.
+
+[457] _Autobiography_, p. 274.
+
+[458] Hobbes, in the _Leviathan_ (chap. xiii.), has in the same way to
+argue for the _de facto_ equality of men.
+
+[459] _Dissertations_, i. 375.
+
+[460] I remark by anticipation that this expression implies a reference
+to Mill's _Ethology_, of which I shall have to speak.
+
+[461] _Works_, ix. 96, 113.
+
+[462] _Dissertations_, i. 376.
+
+
+VII. INDIVIDUALISM
+
+'Individualism' in the first place is generally mentioned in a different
+connection. The 'ready-made' man of whom I have spoken becomes the
+'economic man.' Bentham himself contributed little to economic theory.
+His most important writing was the _Defence of Usury_, and in this, as
+we have seen, he was simply adding a corollary to the _Wealth of
+Nations_. The _Wealth of Nations_ itself represented the spirit of
+business; the revolt of men who were building up a vast industrial
+system against the fetters imposed by traditional legislation and by
+rulers who regarded industry in general, as Telford is said to have
+regarded rivers. Rivers were meant to supply canals, and trade to supply
+tax-gatherers. With this revolt, of course, Bentham was in full
+sympathy, but here I shall only speak of one doctrine of great interest,
+which occurs both in his political treatises and his few economical
+remarks. Bentham objected, as we have seen, to the abstract theory of
+equality; yet it was to the mode of deduction rather than to the
+doctrine itself which he objected. He gave, in fact, his own defence;
+and it is one worth notice.[463] The principle of equality is
+derivative, not ultimate. Equality is good because equality increases
+the sum of happiness. Thus, as he says,[464] if two men have £1000, and
+you transfer £500 from one to the other, you increase the recipient's
+wealth by one-third, and diminish the loser's wealth by one-half. You
+therefore add less pleasure than you subtract. The principle is given
+less mathematically[465] by the more significant argument that
+'felicity' depends not simply on the 'matter of felicity' or the
+stimulus, but also on the sensibility to felicity which is necessarily
+limited. Therefore by adding wealth--taking, for example, from a
+thousand labourers to give to one king--you are supersaturating a
+sensibility already glutted by taking away from others a great amount of
+real happiness. With this argument, which has of late years become
+conspicuous in economics, he connects another of primary importance. The
+first condition of happiness, he says, is not 'equality' but 'security.'
+Now you can only equalise at the expense of security. If I am to have my
+property taken away whenever it is greater than my neighbour's, I can
+have no security.[466] Hence, if the two principles conflict, equality
+should give way. Security is the primary, which must override the
+secondary, aim. Must the two principles, then, always conflict? No; but
+'time is the only mediator.'[467] The law may help to accumulate
+inequalities; but in a prosperous state there is a 'continual progress
+towards equality.' The law has to stand aside; not to maintain
+monopolies; not to restrain trade; not to permit entails; and then
+property will diffuse itself by a natural process, already exemplified
+in the growth of Europe. The 'pyramids' heaped up in feudal times have
+been lowered, and their '_débris_ spread abroad' among the industrious.
+Here again we see how Bentham virtually diverges from the _a priori_
+school. Their absolute tendencies would introduce 'equality' by force;
+he would leave it to the spontaneous progress of security. Hence Bentham
+is in the main an adherent of what he calls[468] the '_laissez-nous
+faire_' principle. He advocates it most explicitly in the so-called
+_Manual of Political Economy_--a short essay first printed in 1798.[469]
+The tract, however, such as it is, is less upon political economy proper
+than upon economic legislation; and its chief conclusion is that almost
+all legislation is improper. His main principle is 'Be quiet' (the
+equivalent of the French phrase, which surely should have been excluded
+from so English a theory). Security and freedom are all that industry
+requires; and industry should say to government only what Diogenes said
+to Alexander, 'Stand out of my sunshine.'[470]
+
+Once more, however, Bentham will not lay down the 'let alone' principle
+absolutely. His adherence to the empirical method is too decided. The
+doctrine 'be quiet,' though generally true, rests upon utility, and may,
+therefore, always be qualified by proving that in a particular case the
+balance of utility is the other way. In fact, some of Bentham's
+favourite projects would be condemned by an absolute adherent of the
+doctrine. The Panopticon, for example, though a 'mill to grind rogues
+honest' could be applied to others than rogues, and Bentham hoped to
+make his machinery equally effective in the case of pauperism. A system
+of national education is also included in his ideal constitution. It is,
+in fact, important to remember that the 'individualism' of Benthamism
+does not necessarily coincide with an absolute restriction of government
+interference. The general tendency was in that direction; and in purely
+economical questions, scarcely any exception was admitted to the rule.
+Men are the best judges, it was said, of their own interest; and the
+interference of rulers in a commercial transaction is the interference
+of people inferior in knowledge of the facts, and whose interests are
+'sinister' or inconsistent with those of the persons really concerned.
+Utility, therefore, will, as a rule, forbid the action of government:
+but, as utility is always the ultimate principle, and there may be cases
+in which it does not coincide with the 'let alone' principle, we must
+always admit the possibility that in special cases government can
+interfere usefully, and, in that case, approve the interference.
+
+Hence we have the ethical application of these theories. The
+individualist position naturally tends to take the form of egoism. The
+moral sentiments, whatever they may be, are clearly an intrinsic part of
+the organic social instincts. They are intimately involved in the whole
+process of social evolution. But this view corresponds precisely to the
+conditions which Bentham overlooks. The individual is already there. The
+moral and the legal sanctions are 'external'; something imposed by the
+action of others; corresponding to 'coercion,' whether by physical force
+or the dread of public opinion; and, in any case, an accretion or
+addition, not a profound modification of his whole nature. The
+Utilitarian 'man' therefore inclines to consider other people as merely
+parts of the necessary machinery. Their feelings are relevant only as
+influencing their outward conduct. If a man gives me a certain 'lot' of
+pain or pleasure, it does not matter what may be his motives. The
+'motive' for all conduct corresponds in all cases to the pain or
+pleasure accruing to the agent. It is true that his happiness will be
+more or less affected by his relations to others. But as conduct is
+ruled by a calculation of the balance of pains or pleasures dependent
+upon any course of action, it simplifies matters materially, if each man
+regards his neighbour's feelings simply as instrumental, not
+intrinsically interesting. And thus the coincidence between that conduct
+which maximises my happiness and that conduct which maximises happiness
+in general, must be regarded as more or less accidental or liable in
+special cases to disappear. If I am made happier by action which makes
+others miserable, the rule of utility will lead to my preference of
+myself.
+
+Here we have the question whether the Utilitarian system be essentially
+a selfish system. Bentham, with his vague psychology, does not lay down
+the doctrine absolutely. After giving this list of self-regarding
+'springs of action,' he proceeds to add the pleasures and pains of
+'sympathy' and 'antipathy' which, he says, are not self-regarding.
+Moreover, as we have seen, he has some difficulty in denying that
+'benevolence' is a necessarily moral motive: it is only capable of
+prompting to bad conduct in so far as it is insufficiently enlightened;
+and it is clear that a moralist who makes the 'greatest happiness of the
+greatest number' his universal test, has some reason for admitting as an
+elementary pleasure the desire for the greatest happiness. This comes
+out curiously in the _Constitutional Code_. He there lays down the
+'self-preference principle'--the principle, namely, that 'every human
+being' is determined in every action by his judgment of what will
+produce the greatest happiness to himself, 'whatsoever be the effect ...
+in relation to the happiness of other similar beings, any or all of them
+taken together.'[471] Afterwards, however, he observes that it is 'the
+constant and arduous task of every moralist' and of every legislator who
+deserves the name to 'increase the influence of sympathy at the expense
+of that of self-regard and of sympathy for the greater number at the
+expense of sympathy for the lesser number.'[472] He tries to reconcile
+these views by the remark 'that even sympathy has its root in
+self-regard,' and he argues, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has done more fully,
+that if Adam cared only for Eve and Eve only for Adam--neither caring at
+all for himself or herself--both would perish in less than a year.
+Self-regard, that is, is essential, and sympathy supposes its existence.
+Hence Bentham puts himself through a catechism.[473] What is the 'best'
+government? That which causes the greatest happiness of the given
+community. What community? 'Any community, which is as much as to say,
+every community.' But _why_ do you desire this happiness? Because the
+establishment of that happiness would contribute to _my_ greatest
+happiness. And _how_ do you prove that you desire this result? By my
+labours to obtain it, replies Bentham. This oddly omits the more obvious
+question, how can you be sure that your happiness will be promoted by
+the greatest happiness of all? What if the two criteria differ? I desire
+the general happiness, he might have replied, because my benevolence is
+an original or elementary instinct which can override my self-love; or
+I desire it, he would perhaps have said, because I know as a fact that
+the happiness of others will incidentally contribute to my own. The
+first answer would fall in with some of his statements; but the second
+is, as I think must be admitted, more in harmony with his system.
+Perhaps, indeed, the most characteristic thing is Bentham's failure to
+discuss explicitly the question whether human action is or is not
+necessarily 'selfish.' He tells us in regard to the 'springs of action'
+that all human action is always 'interested,' but explains that
+the word properly includes actions in which the motive is not
+'self-regarding.'[474] It merely means, in fact, that all conduct has
+motives. The statement, which I have quoted about the 'self-preference'
+principle may only mean a doctrine which is perfectly compatible with a
+belief in 'altruism'--the doctrine, namely, that as a fact most people
+are chiefly interested by their own affairs. The legislator, he tells
+us, should try to increase sympathy, but the less he takes sympathy for
+the 'basis of his arrangements'--that is, the less call he makes upon
+purely unselfish motives--the greater will be his success.[475] This is
+a shrewd and, I should say, a very sound remark, but it implies--not
+that all motives are selfish in the last analysis, but--that the
+legislation should not assume too exalted a level of ordinary morality.
+The utterances in the very unsatisfactory _Deontology_ are of little
+value, and seem to imply a moral sentiment corresponding to a petty form
+of commonplace prudence.[476]
+
+Leaving this point, however, the problem necessarily presented itself
+to Bentham in a form in which selfishness is the predominating force,
+and any recognition of independent benevolence rather an incumbrance
+than a help. If we take the 'self-preference principle' absolutely, the
+question becomes how a multitude of individuals, each separately
+pursuing his own happiness, can so arrange matters that their joint
+action may secure the happiness of all. Clearly a man, however selfish,
+has an interest generally in putting down theft and murder. He is
+already provided with a number of interests to which security, at least,
+and therefore a regular administration of justice, is essential. His
+shop could not be carried on without the police; and he may agree to pay
+the expenses, even if others reap the benefit in greater proportion. A
+theory of legislation, therefore, which supposes ready formed all the
+instincts which make a decent commercial society possible can do without
+much reference to sympathy or altruism. Bentham's man is not the
+colourless unit of _a priori_ writing, nor the noble savage of Rousseau,
+but the respectable citizen with a policeman round the corner. Such a
+man may well hold that honesty is the best policy; he has enough
+sympathy to be kind to his old mother, and help a friend in distress;
+but the need of romantic and elevated conduct rarely occurs to him; and
+the heroic, if he meets it, appears to him as an exception, not far
+removed from the silly. He does not reflect--especially if he cares
+nothing for history--how even the society in which he is a contented
+unit has been built up, and how much loyalty and heroism has been needed
+for the work; nor even, to do him justice, what unsuspected capacities
+may lurk in his own commonplace character. The really characteristic
+point is, however, that Bentham does not clearly face the problem. He is
+content to take for granted as an ultimate fact that the self-interest
+principle in the long run coincides with the greatest 'happiness'
+principle, and leaves the problem to his successors. There we shall meet
+it again.
+
+Finally, Bentham's view of religion requires a word. The short reply,
+however, would be sufficient, that he did not believe in any theology,
+and was in the main indifferent to the whole question till it
+encountered him in political matters. His first interest apparently was
+roused by the educational questions which I have noticed, and the
+proposal to teach the catechism. Bentham, remembering the early bullying
+at Oxford, examines the catechism; and argues in his usual style that to
+enforce it is to compel children to tell lies. But this leads him to
+assail the church generally; and he regards the church simply as a part
+of the huge corrupt machinery which elsewhere had created Judge and Co.
+He states many facts about non-residence and bloated bishoprics which
+had a very serious importance; and he then asks how the work might be
+done more cheaply. As a clergyman's only duty is to read weekly services
+and preach sermons, he suggests (whether seriously may be doubted) that
+this might be done as well by teaching a parish boy to read properly,
+and provide him with the prayer-book and the homilies.[477] A great deal
+of expense would be saved. This, again, seems to have led him to attack
+St. Paul, whom he took to be responsible for dogmatic theology, and
+therefore for the catechism; and he cross-examines the apostle, and
+confronts his various accounts of the conversion with a keenness worthy
+of a professional lawyer. In one of the MSS. at University College the
+same method is applied to the gospels. Bentham was clearly not capable
+of anticipating Renan. From these studies he was led to the far more
+interesting book, published under the name of _Philip Beauchamp_.
+Bentham supplied the argument in part; but to me it seems clear that it
+owes so much to the editor, Grote, that it may more fitly be discussed
+hereafter.
+
+The limitations and defects of Bentham's doctrine have been made
+abundantly evident by later criticism. They were due partly to his
+personal character, and partly to the intellectual and special
+atmosphere in which he was brought up. But it is more important to
+recognise the immense real value of his doctrine. Briefly, I should say,
+that there is hardly an argument in Bentham's voluminous writings which
+is not to the purpose so far as it goes. Given his point of view, he is
+invariably cogent and relevant. And, moreover, that is a point of view
+which has to be taken. No ethical or political doctrine can, as I hold,
+be satisfactory which does not find a place for Bentham, though he was
+far, indeed, from giving a complete theory of his subject. And the main
+reason of this is that which I have already indicated. Bentham's whole
+life was spent in the attempt to create a science of legislation. Even
+where he is most tiresome, there is a certain interest in his unflagging
+working out of every argument, and its application to all conceivable
+cases. It is all genuine reasoning; and throughout it is dominated by a
+respect for good solid facts. His hatred of 'vague generalities'[478]
+means that he will be content with no formula which cannot be
+interpreted in terms of definite facts. The resolution to insist upon
+this should really be characteristic of every writer upon similar
+subjects, and no one ever surpassed Bentham in attention to it. Classify
+and re-classify, to make sure that at every point your classes
+correspond to realities. In the effort to carry out these principles,
+Bentham at least brought innumerable questions to a sound test, and
+exploded many pestilent fallacies. If he did not succeed further, if
+whole spheres of thought remained outside of his vision, it was because
+in his day there was not only no science of 'sociology' or
+psychology--there are no such sciences now--but no adequate perception
+of the vast variety of investigation which would be necessary to lay a
+basis for them. But the effort to frame a science is itself valuable,
+indeed of surpassing value, so far as it is combined with a genuine
+respect for facts. It is common enough to attempt to create a science by
+inventing technical terminology. Bentham tried the far wider and far
+more fruitful method of a minute investigation of particular facts. His
+work, therefore, will stand, however different some of the results may
+appear when fitted into a different framework. And, therefore, however
+crudely and imperfectly, Bentham did, as I believe, help to turn
+speculation into a true and profitable channel. Of that, more will
+appear hereafter; but, if any one doubts Bentham's services, I will only
+suggest to him to compare Bentham with any of his British
+contemporaries, and to ask where he can find anything at all comparable
+to his resolute attempt to bring light and order into a chaotic infusion
+of compromise and prejudice.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[463] _Works_, 'Civil Code' (from Dumont), i. 302, 305; _Ibid._
+('Principles of Constitutional Code') ii. 271; _Ibid._ ('Constitutional
+Code') ix. 15-18.
+
+[464] _Works_, i. 306 _n._
+
+[465] _Ibid._ ix. 15.
+
+[466] _Ibid._ ('Principles of Penal Code') i. 311.
+
+[467] _Ibid._ i. 312.
+
+[468] _Works_, x. 440.
+
+[469] _Ibid._ iii. 33, etc.
+
+[470] _Ibid._ iii. 35.
+
+[471] _Works_, ix. 5.
+
+[472] _Ibid._ ix. 192.
+
+[473] _Ibid._ ix. 7.
+
+[474] _Works_, i. 212.
+
+[475] _Ibid._ ix. 192.
+
+[476] See, _e.g._, i. 83, where sympathy seems to be taken as an
+ultimate pleasure; and ii. 133, where he says 'dream not that men will
+move their little finger to serve you unless their advantage in so doing
+be obvious to them.' See also the apologue of 'Walter Wise,' who becomes
+Lord Mayor, and 'Timothy Thoughtless,' who ends at Botany Bay (i. 118),
+giving the lowest kind of prudential morality. The manuscript of the
+_Deontology_, now in University College, London, seems to prove that
+Bentham was substantially the author, though the Mills seem to have
+suspected Bowring of adulterating the true doctrine. He appears to have
+been an honest if not very intelligent editor; though the rewriting,
+necessary in all Bentham's works, was damaging in this case; and he is
+probably responsible for some rhetorical amplification, especially in
+the later part.
+
+[477] _Church of Englandism_ (Catechism examined), p. 207.
+
+[478] See this phrase expounded in _Works_ ('Book of Fallacies'), ii.
+440, etc.
+
+END OF VOL. I
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON BENTHAM'S WRITINGS
+
+
+The following account of Bentham's writings may be of some use. The
+arrangement is intended to show what were the topics which attracted his
+attention at successive periods.
+
+The collected _Works_, edited by Bowring, appeared from 1838 to 1843 in
+eleven volumes, the last two containing the life and an elaborate index.
+The first nine volumes consist partly of the works already published;
+partly of works published for the first time from Bentham's MSS.; and
+partly of versions of Dumont's redactions of Bentham. Dumont's
+publications were (1) _Traités de Legislation civile et pénale_ (1802;
+second edition, revised, 1820): [vol. i. contains _Principes généraux de
+Legislation_ and _Principes du Code civil_; vol. ii. _Principes du Code
+pénal_; and vol. iii. _Mémoire sur le Panoptique_, _De la Promulgation
+des Lois_, _De l'Influence du Temps et des Lieux_, and _Vue générale
+d'un Corps complet des Lois_]; (2) _Théorie des Peines et des
+Récompenses_, 1811, 1818, 1825; (3) _Tactiques des Assemblées
+déliberantes et Traité des Sophismes politiques_, 1816; (4) _Traité des
+Preuves judiciaires_, 1823; and (5) _De l'Organisation judiciaire et de
+la Codification_, 1823.
+
+In the following I give references to the place of each work in
+Bowring's edition.
+
+Bentham's first book was the _Fragment on Government_, 1776 (i.
+221-295). An interesting 'historical preface,' intended for a second
+edition (i. 240-259), was first printed in 1828. The _Fragment_, edited
+by Mr. F. C. Montague, was republished in 1891.
+
+The _Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation_ was
+published in 1789, in one vol. 4to (i. 1-154). It had been printed in
+1780. A second edition, in two vols. 8vo, appeared in 1823. It was
+intended as an introduction to the plan of a penal code. Bentham says in
+his preface that his scheme would be completed by a series of works
+applying his principles to (1) civil law; (2) penal law; (3) procedure;
+(4) reward; (5) constitutional law; (6) political tactics; (7)
+international law; (8) finance; and (9) political economy, and by a
+tenth treatise giving a plan of a body of law 'considered in respect of
+its form,' that is, upon 'nomography.' He wrote more or less in the
+course of his life upon all these topics. Dumont's _Traités_ of 1802
+were based partly upon the _Introduction_ and partly upon Bentham's MSS.
+corresponding to unfinished parts of this general scheme.
+
+The two first sections of this scheme are represented in the _Works_ by
+_Principles of the Civil Code_ (i. 297-364) and _Principles of Penal
+Law_ (i. 365-580). The _Principles of the Civil Code_ is translated from
+Dumont's _Traités_, where it follows a condensed statement of 'general
+principles' taken from the opening chapters of the _Introduction_. An
+appendix 'on the levelling system' is added in the _Works_ from
+Bentham's MSS. The _Principles of Penal Law_ consists of three parts:
+the first and third (on 'political remedies for the evil of offences'
+and on 'indirect means of preventing crimes') are translated from parts
+2 and 4 of Dumont's _Principes du Code pénal_ (parts 1 and 3 of Dumont
+being adaptations from the _Introduction to Morals and Legislation_).
+The second part of the _Penal Law_, or _The Rationale of Punishment_ is
+from Dumont's _Théorie des Peines et des Récompenses_. Dumont took it
+from a MS. written by Bentham in 1775. (See Bentham's _Works_, i. 388.)
+An appendix on 'Death Punishment,' addressed by Bentham to the French
+people in 1830, is added to Part II. in the _Works_ (i. 525-532). No. 4
+of Bentham's general scheme corresponds to the _Rationale of Reward_,
+founded upon two MSS., one in French and one in English, used by Dumont
+in the _Théorie des Peines et des Récompenses_. The English version in
+the _Works_, chiefly translated from Dumont and compared with the
+original manuscript, was first published in 1825 (ii. 189-266). Richard
+Smith 'of the Stamps and Taxes' was the editor of this and of an edition
+of the _Rationale of Punishment_ in 1831, and of various minor
+treatises. (Bentham's _Works_, x. 548 _n._)
+
+The _Table of the Springs of Action_ (i. 195-220), written at an early
+period, was printed in 1815, and published, with modifications, in 1817.
+The _Vue générale_ included in the _Traités_ of 1802 was intended by
+Bentham as a sketch for his own guidance, and is translated as _View of
+a Complete Code of Laws_ in the _Works_ (iii. 154-210). The two essays
+in the 1802 _Traités_ on 'the promulgation of laws' and the 'influence
+of time and place in matters of legislation' are translated in _Works_
+(i. 157-194). A fragment on _International Law_--a phrase invented by
+Bentham--written between 1786 and 1789, first appeared in the _Works_
+(ii. 535-571), with _Junctiana proposal_--a plan for a canal between the
+Atlantic and the Pacific--written in 1822, as an appendix.
+
+Besides the above, all written before 1789 in pursuance of his scheme,
+Bentham had published in 1778 his _View of the Hard Labour Bill_ (iv.
+1-36); and in 1787 his _Defence of Usury_ (iii. 1-29). A third edition
+of the last (with the 'protest against law taxes') was published in
+1816.
+
+During the following period (1789-1802) Bentham wrote various books,
+more or less suggested by the French revolution. The _Essay on Political
+Tactics_ (ii. 299-373), (corresponding to No. 6 of the scheme), was sent
+to Morellet in 1789, but first published by Dumont in 1816. With it
+Dumont also published the substance of the _Anarchical Fallacies_ (ii.
+489-534), written about 1791. A _Draught of a Code for the Organisation
+of the Judicial Establishment of France_, dated March 1790, is reprinted
+in _Works_ iv. 285-406. _Truth v. Ashhurst_, written in 1792 (v.
+231-237), was first published in 1823. A _Manual of Political Economy_,
+written by 1793 (see _Works_, iii. 73 _n._), corresponds to No. 9 of his
+scheme. A chapter appeared in the _Bibliothèque Britannique_ in 1798. It
+was partly used in Dumont's _Théorie des Récompenses_, and first
+published in English in _Works_ (iii. 31-84). _Emancipate your
+Colonies_ (iv. 407-481) was privately printed in 1793, and first
+published for sale in 1830. A _Protest against Law Taxes_, printed in
+1793, was published in 1795 together with _Supply without Burthen, or
+Escheat vice Taxation_, written in 1794. To them is appended a short
+paper called _Tax with Monopoly_ (ii. 573-600). _A Plan for saving all
+Trouble and Expense in the Transfer of Stock_, written and partly
+printed in 1800, was first published in _Works_ (iii. 105-153).
+
+During this period Bentham was also occupied with the Panopticon, and
+some writings refer to it. _The Panopticon, or the Inspection House_
+(iv. 37-172), written in 1787, was published in 1791. _The Panopticon
+versus New South Wales_ (iv. 173-248) appeared in 1802; and _A Plea for
+the Constitution_ (on transportation to New South Wales) (iv. 249-284),
+in 1803. Closely connected with these are _Poor-laws and Pauper
+Management_ (viii. 358-461), reprinted from Arthur Young's _Annals_ of
+September 1797 and following months; and _Observations on the Poor Bill_
+(viii. 440-459), written in February 1797, privately printed in 1838,
+and first published in the _Works_.
+
+About 1802 Bentham returned to jurisprudence. James Mill prepared from
+the papers then written an _Introductory View of the Rationale of
+Evidence_, finished and partly printed in 1812 (see _Works_, x. 468 _n._
+and Bain's _James Mill_, 105, 120). Dumont's _Traité des Preuves
+judiciaires_ (1823) was a redaction of the original papers, and an
+English translation of this appeared in 1825. The parts referring to
+English Law were omitted. The _Rationale of Evidence_ (5 vols. 8vo,
+1827), edited by J. S. Mill, represents a different and fuller redaction
+of the same papers. It is reprinted in vols. vi. and vii. of the _Works_
+with the _Introductory View_ (now first published) prefixed. To the same
+period belongs _Scotch Reform_, with a _Summary View of a Plan for a
+Judicatory_, 1808 (second edition 1811, v. 1-60).
+
+After 1808 Bentham's attention was especially drawn to political
+questions. His _Catechism of Parliamentary Reform_ (iii. 433-557),
+written in 1809, was first published with a long 'introduction' in the
+_Pamphleteer_ for January 1817. Bentham's _Radical Reform Bill, with
+explanations_ (iii. 558-597) followed in December 1819. _Radicalism not
+dangerous_ (iii. 598-622), written at the same time, first appeared in
+the _Works_ (iii. 398-622). _Elements of the Art of Packing as applied
+to Special Juries, especially in Cases of Libel Law_ (v. 61-186),
+written in 1809, was published in 1821. _Swear not at all_ (v. 188-229)
+(referring chiefly to Oxford tests), written in 1813, was published in
+1817. _The King against Edmonds_ and _The King against Wolseley_ (v.
+239-261) were published in 1820. _Official Aptitude minimized; Official
+Expense limited_ (v. 263-286), is a series of papers, first collected in
+1831. It contains a _Defence of Economy against Burke_, and a _Defence
+of Economy against George Rose_, both written in 1810, and published in
+the _Pamphleteer_ in 1817, with _Observations_ on a speech by Peel in
+1825, and _Indications respecting Lord Eldon_. The two last appeared in
+1825. Connected with these political writings is the _Book of Fallacies_
+(ii. 375-488), edited by Bingham in 1824, from the 'most unfinished of
+all Bentham's writings.' Allusions seem to show that the original MSS.
+were written from 1810 to 1819. It was partly published by Dumont with
+the _Tactique, etc._
+
+Bentham, during this period (1808-1820), was also led into various
+outlying questions. _The Pannomial Fragments_, _Nomography_, and
+_Appendix on Logical Arrangements employed by Jeremy Bentham_ (iii.
+211-295) were first published in the _Works_ from MSS. written from 1813
+to 1831. With the _Chrestomathia_ (viii. 1-192), first published in
+1816, are connected fragments upon 'Ontology,' 'Language,' and
+'Universal Grammar' (viii. 193-358), first published in _Works_ from
+fragments of MSS. of 1813 and later. George Bentham's _Outline of a New
+System of Logic_ was partly founded upon his uncle's papers. Bentham at
+the Ford Abbey time (1814-1818) was also writing his _Church of
+Englandism and its Catechism examined_, 1818. The _Analysis of the
+Influence of Natural Religion upon the Temporal Happiness of Mankind_,
+by Philip Beauchamp, edited by George Grote, appeared in 1822; and _Not
+Paul but Jesus_, by Gamaliel Smith, in 1823. Francis Place helped in
+preparing this at Ford Abbey in 1817 (Mr. Wallas's _Life of Place_, p.
+83). _Mother Church of England relieved by Bleeding_ (1823) and the
+_Book of Church Reform_ (1831) are extracted from _Church of
+Englandism_. Bowring did not admit these works to his collection.
+
+In his later years (1820-1832) Bentham began to be specially occupied
+with codification. _Papers upon Codification and Public Instruction_
+(iv. 451-534) consist chiefly of letters, written from 1811 to 1815,
+offering himself for employment in codification in America and Russia,
+and first published in 1817. In 1821 appeared _Three Tracts relating to
+Spanish and Portuguese Affairs, with a Continual Eye to English ones_;
+and in 1822 _Three Letters to Count Toreno on the proposed Penal Code_
+(in Spain) (viii. 460-554). A short tract on _Liberty of the Press_ was
+addressed to the Spanish people in 1821 (ii. 275-299). _Codification
+Proposals_ (iv. 535-594) appeared in 1823, offering to prepare an
+'all-comprehensive code of law' for 'any nation professing liberal
+opinions.' _Securities against Misrule addressed to a Mahommedan State,
+and prepared with a special Reference to Tripoli_, written in 1822-23,
+was first published in the _Works_ (viii. 551-600). A tract on the
+_Leading Principles of a Constitutional Code_ (ii. 267-274) appeared in
+the _Pamphleteer_ in 1823. The first volume of the _Constitutional
+Code_, printed in 1827, was published with the first chapter of the
+second volume in 1830. The whole book, edited by R. Doane from papers
+written between 1818 and 1832, was published in 1841, and forms volume
+ix. of the _Works_. Doane also edited _Principles of Judicial Procedure_
+(ii. 1-188) from papers written chiefly from 1820 to 1827, though part
+had been written in 1802. Several thousand pages upon this subject--the
+third part of the original scheme--were left by Bentham at his death.
+
+During his last years Bentham also wrote a _Commentary on Mr. Humphrey's
+Real Property Code_, published in the _Westminster Review_ for October
+1826 (v. 387-416); _Justice and Codification Petitions_ (v. 437-548),
+printed in 1829; _Jeremy Bentham to his Fellow-Citizens in France on
+Houses of Peers and Senates_ (iv. 419-450), dated 15th October 1830;
+_Equity Dispatch Court Proposals_ (iii. 297-432), first published in
+_Works_ and written from 1829 to 1831; _Outline of a Plan of a General
+Register of Real Property_ (v. 417-435), published in the Report of the
+Real Property Commission in 1832; and _Lord Brougham Displayed_ (v.
+549-612), 1832.
+
+The _Deontology_ or _Science of Morality_ was published by Bowring in
+two vols. 8vo in 1834, but omitted from the _Works_, as the original
+edition was not exhausted. The MS. preserved at University College,
+London, shows that a substantial beginning had been made in 1814; most
+of the remainder about 1820. The second volume, made, as Bowring says,
+from a number of scraps, is probably more 'Bowringised' than the first.
+
+Dumont's _Traités_ were translated into Spanish in 1821, and the _Works_
+in 1841-43. There are also Russian and Italian translations. In 1830 a
+translation from Dumont, edited by F. E. Beneke, as _Grundsätze der
+Civil- und Criminal-Gesetzgebung_, etc., was published at Berlin. Beneke
+observes that Bentham had hitherto received little attention in Germany,
+though well known in other countries. He reports a saying attributed to
+Mme. de Staël that the age was that of Bentham, not of Byron or
+Buonaparte. The neglect of Bentham in Germany was due, as Beneke says,
+to the prevalence of the Kantian philosophy. Bentham, however, had been
+favourably noticed in the _Hermes_ for 1822, and his merits since
+acknowledged by Mittermaier and Warnkönig in the _Zeitschrift für
+Rechtswissenschaft_. Beneke (1798-1854) was opposed to the Hegelian
+tendencies of his time, and much influenced by Herbart. See Ueberweg's
+_History of Philosophy_ (English translation, 1874, ii. 281, etc.) and
+the account of Bentham in Robert von Mohl's _Staatswissenschaften_, etc.
+(1853), iii. 595-635.
+
+A great mass of Bentham MSS. belongs to University College, London. They
+are contained in 148 boxes, which were examined and catalogued by Mr. T.
+Whittaker in 1892. A few of these contain correspondence, part of which
+was printed by Bowring. Others are the manuscripts of published works.
+Some are upon the same subjects as the published works, and others refer
+to topics not included in his publications. Besides the _Deontology_
+manuscripts and a fragment upon 'Political Deontology,' there is a
+discussion of the means of suppressing duels, an argument against the
+legal punishment of certain offences against decency, and a criticism of
+the gospel narrative similar to _Not Paul_, etc. I have not thought it
+necessary to examine these fragments after reading Mr. Whittaker's
+report. Bentham's principles are sufficiently stated in his published
+works; and the papers which have been reposing in the cellars of
+University College can have had no influence upon the world. There is
+another large collection of MSS. in the British Museum from the papers
+of Bentham and his brother, Sir Samuel. Ten folio volumes contain
+correspondence, much of it referring only to Sir Samuel. A long
+correspondence upon the acquisition of the 'Panopticon' land is
+included. Another volume contains many of Bentham's school and college
+exercises. There are also the manuscripts of the _Nomography_, _Logical
+Arrangements_, etc. This collection was used by Bowring and by Lady
+Bentham in the life of her husband.
+
+Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty at the Edinburgh
+University Press
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The English Utilitarians, Volume I., by 
+Leslie Stephen
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH UTILITARIANS, VOLUME I ***
+
+***** This file should be named 27597-8.txt or 27597-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/7/5/9/27597/
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto, Paul Dring, Henry Craig and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/27597-8.zip b/27597-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c7d0463
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-8.zip
diff --git a/27597-h.zip b/27597-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..371fdd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-h.zip
diff --git a/27597-h/27597-h.htm b/27597-h/27597-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44fafb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-h/27597-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,10929 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The English Utilitarians, by Leslie Stephen.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+body {
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {
+    text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+p {
+    margin-top: .75em;
+    text-align: justify;
+    margin-bottom: .75em;
+}
+
+.scs {text-align: center; font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 2em;}
+
+hr {
+    width: 33%;
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    margin-bottom: 2em;
+    margin-left: auto;
+    margin-right: auto;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+div.centered {text-align: center;} /* work around for IE centering with
+ CSS problem part 1 */
+    div.centered table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;
+ text-align: left;} /* work around for IE centering with CSS problem part 2 */
+.tdr {text-align: right; font-size: .9em;}
+.tdl {text-align: left;}
+.tdc {text-align: center;}
+
+.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+    /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+    position: absolute;
+    left: 92%;
+    font-size: smaller;
+    text-align: right;
+} /* page numbers */
+
+.center   {text-align: center;}
+
+.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+a {text-decoration: none;}
+
+/* Images */
+.figcenter   {
+    margin: auto;
+    text-align: center;
+}
+
+/* Footnotes */
+.footnotes        { text-align: left; margin-top: 1.5em;}
+
+.footnote         {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;}
+
+.footnote .label  {position: absolute; right: 83%; text-align: right;}
+
+.fnanchor {
+    vertical-align: super;
+    font-size: .7em;
+    text-decoration:
+    none;
+}
+
+/* Poetry */
+.poem {
+    margin-left:10%;
+    margin-right:10%;
+    text-align: left;
+}
+
+.poem br {display: none;}
+
+.poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;}
+
+.poem span.i0 {
+    display: block;
+    margin-left: 0em;
+    padding-left: 3em;
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+// -->
+/* XML end  ]]>*/
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's The English Utilitarians, Volume I., by Leslie Stephen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The English Utilitarians, Volume I.
+
+Author: Leslie Stephen
+
+Release Date: December 23, 2008 [EBook #27597]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH UTILITARIANS, VOLUME I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto, Paul Dring, Henry Craig and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>THE ENGLISH UTILITARIANS</h1>
+
+<p class="center">
+<br />
+<br />
+<i>By</i>
+</p>
+
+<h2>LESLIE STEPHEN</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100px;"><br /><br />
+<img src="images/i001a.jpg" width="100" height="107" alt="logo" title="logo" />
+<br /><br />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">LONDON<br /><br />
+<i>DUCKWORTH and CO.</i><br /><br />
+3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.<br /><br />
+1900</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 33%;" />
+
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>
+This book is a sequel to my <i>History of English Thought in the
+Eighteenth Century</i>. The title which I then ventured to use was more
+comprehensive than the work itself deserved: I felt my inability to
+write a continuation which should at all correspond to a similar title
+for the nineteenth century. I thought, however, that by writing an
+account of the compact and energetic school of English Utilitarians I
+could throw some light both upon them and their contemporaries. I had
+the advantage for this purpose of having been myself a disciple of the
+school during its last period. Many accidents have delayed my
+completion of the task; and delayed also its publication after it was
+written. Two books have been published since that time, which partly
+cover the same ground; and I must be content with referring my readers
+to them for further information. They are <i>The English Radicals</i>, by
+Mr. C. B. Roylance Kent; and <i>English Political Philosophy from Hobbes
+to Maine</i>, by Professor Graham.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 33%;" />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" width="60%" cellspacing="4" summary="CONTENTS">
+<tr>
+  <td></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><small>PAGE</small><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td></td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#INTRODUCTORY">INTRODUCTORY</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">1</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td></td>
+  <td class="tdc"><br /><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a><br /><br />POLITICAL CONDITIONS</td>
+  <td></td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#I_I">The British Constitution</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">12</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#I_II">The Ruling Class</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">18</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#I_III">Legislation and Administration</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">22</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#I_IV">The Army and Navy</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">30</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">V.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#I_V">The Church</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">35</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#I_VI">The Universities</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">43</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">VII.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#I_VII">Theory</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">51</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td></td>
+  <td class="tdc"><br /><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a><br /><br />THE INDUSTRIAL SPIRIT</td>
+  <td></td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#II_I">The Manufacturers</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">57</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#II_II">The Agriculturists</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">69</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td></td>
+  <td class="tdc"><br /><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a><br /><br />SOCIAL PROBLEMS</td>
+  <td></td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#III_I">Pauperism</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">87</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#III_II">The Police</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">99</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#III_III">Education</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">108</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#III_IV">The Slave-Trade</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span></td>
+  <td class="tdr">113</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">V.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#III_V">The French Revolution</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">121</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#III_VI">Individualism</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">130</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td></td>
+  <td class="tdc"><br /><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a><br /><br />PHILOSOPHY</td>
+  <td></td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#IV_I">John Horne Tooke</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">137</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#IV_II">Dugald Stewart</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">142</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td></td>
+  <td class="tdc"><br /><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a><br /><br />BENTHAM'S LIFE</td>
+  <td></td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#V_I">Early Life</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">169</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#V_II">First Writings</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">175</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#V_III">The Panopticon</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">193</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#V_IV">Utilitarian Propaganda</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">206</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">V.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#V_V">Codification</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">222</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td></td>
+  <td class="tdc"><br /><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a><br /><br />BENTHAM'S DOCTRINE</td>
+  <td></td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#VI_I">First Principles</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">235</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#VI_II">Springs of Action</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">249</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#VI_III">The Sanctions</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">255</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#VI_IV">Criminal Law</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">263</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">V.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#VI_V">English Law</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">271</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#VI_VI">Radicalism</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">282</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">VII.</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#VI_VII">Individualism</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">307</td>
+ </tr>
+<tr><td colspan="5">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td></td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#NOTE_ON_BENTHAMS_WRITINGS">NOTE ON BENTHAM'S WRITINGS</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">319</td>
+ </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 33%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTORY" id="INTRODUCTORY"></a>INTRODUCTORY</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span>
+The English Utilitarians of whom I am about to give some account were
+a group of men who for three generations had a conspicuous influence
+upon English thought and political action. Jeremy Bentham, James Mill,
+and John Stuart Mill were successively their leaders; and I shall
+speak of each in turn. It may be well to premise a brief indication of
+the method which I have adopted. I have devoted a much greater
+proportion of my work to biography and to consideration of political
+and social conditions than would be appropriate to the history of a
+philosophy. The reasons for such a course are very obvious in this
+case, inasmuch as the Utilitarian doctrines were worked out with a
+constant reference to practical applications. I think, indeed, that
+such a reference is often equally present, though not equally
+conspicuous, in other philosophical schools. But in any case I wish to
+show how I conceive the relation of my scheme to the scheme more
+generally adopted by historians of abstract speculation.</p>
+
+<p>I am primarily concerned with the history of a school or sect, not
+with the history of the arguments by which it justifies itself in the
+court of pure reason. I must therefore consider the creed as it was
+actually embodied in the dominant beliefs of the adherents of the
+school, not as it was expounded in lecture-rooms or
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> treatises on
+first principles. I deal not with philosophers meditating upon Being
+and not-Being, but with men actively engaged in framing political
+platforms and carrying on popular agitations. The great majority even
+of intelligent partisans are either indifferent to the philosophic
+creed of their leaders or take it for granted. Its postulates are more
+or less implied in the doctrines which guide them in practice, but are
+not explicitly stated or deliberately reasoned out. Not the less the
+doctrines of a sect, political or religious, may be dependent upon
+theories which for the greater number remain latent or are recognised
+only in their concrete application. Contemporary members of any
+society, however widely they differ as to results, are employed upon
+the same problems and, to some extent, use the same methods and make
+the same assumptions in attempting solutions. There is a certain unity
+even in the general thought of any given period. Contradictory views
+imply some common ground. But within this wider unity we find a
+variety of sects, each of which may be considered as more or less
+representing a particular method of treating the general problem: and
+therefore principles which, whether clearly recognised or not, are
+virtually implied in their party creed and give a certain unity to
+their teaching.</p>
+
+<p>One obvious principle of unity, or tacit bond of sympathy which holds
+a sect together depends upon the intellectual idiosyncrasy of the
+individuals. Coleridge was aiming at an important truth when he said
+that every man was born an Aristotelian or a Platonist.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Nominalists
+and realists, intuitionists and empiricists, idealists and
+materialists, represent different forms of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+a fundamental antithesis
+which appears to run through all philosophy. Each thinker is apt to
+take the postulates congenial to his own mind as the plain dictates of
+reason. Controversies between such opposites appear to be hopeless.
+They have been aptly compared by Dr. Venn to the erection of a
+snow-bank to dam a river. The snow melts and swells the torrent which
+it was intended to arrest. Each side reads admitted truths into its
+own dialect, and infers that its own dialect affords the only valid
+expression. To regard such antitheses as final and insoluble would be
+to admit complete scepticism. What is true for one man would not
+therefore be true&mdash;or at least its truth would not be demonstrable&mdash;to
+another. We must trust that reconciliation is achievable by showing
+that the difference is really less vital and corresponds to a
+difference of methods or of the spheres within which each mode of
+thought may be valid. To obtain the point of view from which such a
+conciliation is possible should be, I hold, one main end of modern
+philosophising.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this profound intellectual difference is complicated by
+other obvious influences. There is, in the first place, the difference
+of intellectual horizon. Each man has a world of his own and sees a
+different set of facts. Whether his horizon is that which is visible
+from his parish steeple or from St. Peter's at Rome, it is still
+strictly limited: and the outside universe, known vaguely and
+indirectly, does not affect him like the facts actually present to his
+perception. The most candid thinkers will come to different
+conclusions when they are really provided with different sets of fact.
+In political and social problems every man's opinions are
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+moulded by
+his social station. The artisan's view of the capitalist, and the
+capitalist's view of the artisan, are both imperfect, because each has
+a first-hand knowledge of his own class alone: and, however anxious to
+be fair, each will take a very different view of the working of
+political institutions. An apparent concord often covers the widest
+divergence under the veil of a common formula, because each man has
+his private mode of interpreting general phrases in terms of concrete
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>This, of course, implies the further difference arising from the
+passions which, however illogically, go so far to determine opinions.
+Here we have the most general source of difficulty in considering the
+actual history of a creed. We cannot limit ourselves to the purely
+logical factor. All thought has to start from postulates. Men have to
+act before they think: before, at any rate, reasoning becomes distinct
+from imagining or guessing. To explain in early periods is to fancy
+and to take a fancy for a perception. The world of the primitive man
+is constructed not only from vague conjectures and hasty analogies but
+from his hopes and fears, and bears the impress of his emotional
+nature. When progress takes place some of his beliefs are confirmed,
+some disappear, and others are transformed: and the whole history of
+thought is a history of this gradual process of verification. We
+begin, it is said, by assuming: we proceed by verifying, and we only
+end by demonstrating. The process is comparatively simple in that part
+of knowledge which ultimately corresponds to the physical sciences.
+There must be a certain harmony between beliefs and realities in
+regard to knowledge of ordinary matters of fact, if only because such
+harmony is essential
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+to the life of the race. Even an ape must
+distinguish poisonous from wholesome food. Beliefs as to physical
+facts require to be made articulate and distinct; but we have only to
+recognise as logical principles the laws of nature which we have
+unconsciously obeyed and illustrated&mdash;to formulate dynamics long after
+we have applied the science in throwing stones or using bows and
+arrows. But what corresponds to this in the case of the moral and
+religious beliefs? What is the process of verification? Men
+practically are satisfied with their creed so long as they are
+satisfied with the corresponding social order. The test of truth so
+suggested is obviously inadequate: for all great religions, however
+contradictory to each other, have been able to satisfy it for long
+periods. Particular doctrines might be tested by experiment. The
+efficacy of witchcraft might be investigated like the efficacy of
+vaccination. But faith can always make as many miracles as it wants:
+and errors which originate in the fancy cannot be at once extirpated
+by the reason. Their form may be changed but not their substance. To
+remove them requires not disproof of this or that fact, but an
+intellectual discipline which is rare even among the educated classes.
+A religious creed survives, as poetry or art survives,&mdash;not so long as
+it contains apparently true statements of fact but&mdash;so long as it is
+congenial to the whole social state. A philosophy indeed is a poetry
+stated in terms of logic. Considering the natural conservatism of
+mankind, the difficulty is to account for progress, not for the
+persistence of error. When the existing order ceases to be
+satisfactory; when conquest or commerce has welded nations together
+and brought conflicting creeds into cohesion; when industrial
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+development has modified the old class relations; or when the
+governing classes have ceased to discharge their functions, new
+principles are demanded and new prophets arise. The philosopher may
+then become the mouthpiece of the new order, and innocently take
+himself to be its originator. His doctrines were fruitless so long as
+the soil was not prepared for the seed. A premature discovery if not
+stamped out by fire and sword is stifled by indifference. If Francis
+Bacon succeeded where Roger Bacon failed, the difference was due to
+the social conditions, not to the men. The cause of the great
+religious as well as of the great political revolutions must be sought
+mainly in the social history. New creeds spread when they satisfy the
+instincts or the passions roused to activity by other causes. The
+system has to be so far true as to be credible at the time; but its
+vitality depends upon its congeniality as a whole to the aspirations
+of the mass of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>The purely intellectual movement no doubt represents the decisive
+factor. The love of truth in the abstract is probably the weakest of
+human passions; but truth when attained ultimately gives the fulcrum
+for a reconstruction of the world. When a solid core of ascertained
+and verifiable truth has once been formed and applied to practical
+results it becomes the fixed pivot upon which all beliefs must
+ultimately turn. The influence, however, is often obscure and still
+indirect. The more cultivated recognise the necessity of bringing
+their whole doctrine into conformity with the definitely organised and
+established system; and, at the present day, even the uneducated begin
+to have an inkling of possible results. Yet the desire for logical
+consistency is not one which presses
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+forcibly upon the less
+cultivated intellects. They do not feel the necessity of unifying
+knowledge or bringing their various opinions into consistency and into
+harmony with facts. There are easy methods of avoiding any troublesome
+conflict of belief. The philosopher is ready to show them the way. He,
+like other people, has to start from postulates, and to see how they
+will work. When he meets with a difficulty it is perfectly legitimate
+that he should try how far the old formula can be applied to cover the
+new applications. He may be led to a process of 'rationalising' or
+'spiritualising' which is dangerous to intellectual honesty. The
+vagueness of the general conceptions with which he is concerned
+facilitates the adaptation; and his words slide into new meanings by
+imperceptible gradations. His error is in taking a legitimate
+tentative process for a conclusive test; and inferring that opinions
+are confirmed because a non-natural interpretation can be forced upon
+them. This, however, is only the vicious application of the normal
+process through which new ideas are diffused or slowly infiltrate the
+old systems till the necessity of a thoroughgoing reconstruction
+forces itself upon our attention. Nor can it be denied that an
+opposite fallacy is equally possible, especially in times of
+revolutionary passion. The apparent irreconcilability of some new
+doctrine with the old may lead to the summary rejection of the
+implicit truth, together with the error involved in its imperfect
+recognition. Hence arises the necessity for faking into account not
+only a man's intellectual idiosyncrasies and the special intellectual
+horizon, but all the prepossessions due to his personal character, his
+social environment, and his consequent sympathies and antipathies. The
+philosopher has
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+his passions like other men. He does not really live
+in the thin air of abstract speculation. On the contrary, he starts
+generally, and surely is right in starting, with keen interest in the
+great religious, ethical, and social problems of the time. He
+wishes&mdash;honestly and eagerly&mdash;to try them by the severest tests, and
+to hold fast only what is clearly valid. The desire to apply his
+principles in fact justifies his pursuit, and redeems him from the
+charge that he is delighting in barren intellectual subtleties. But to
+an outsider his procedure may appear in a different light. His real
+problem comes to be: how the conclusions which are agreeable to his
+emotions can be connected with the postulates which are congenial to
+his intellect? He may be absolutely honest and quite unconscious that
+his conclusions were prearranged by his sympathies. No philosophic
+creed of any importance has ever been constructed, we may well
+believe, without such sincerity and without such plausibility as
+results from its correspondence to at least some aspects of the truth.
+But the result is sufficiently shown by the perplexed controversies
+which arise. Men agree in their conclusions, though starting from
+opposite premises; or from the same premises reach the most diverging
+conclusions. The same code of practical morality, it is often said, is
+accepted by thinkers who deny each other's first principles; dogmatism
+often appears to its opponents to be thoroughgoing scepticism in
+disguise, and men establish victoriously results which turn out in the
+end to be really a stronghold for their antagonists.</p>
+
+<p>Hence there is a distinction between such a history of a sect as I
+contemplate and a history of scientific inquiry or of pure philosophy.
+A history of mathematical or
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+physical science would differ from a
+direct exposition of the science, but only in so far as it would state
+truths in the order of discovery, not in the order most convenient for
+displaying them as a system. It would show what were the processes by
+which they were originally found out, and how they have been
+afterwards annexed or absorbed in some wider generalisation. These
+facts might be stated without any reference to the history of the
+discoverers or of the society to which they belonged. They would
+indeed suggest very interesting topics to the general historian or
+'sociologist.' He might be led to inquire under what conditions men
+came to inquire scientifically at all; why they ceased for centuries
+to care for science; why they took up special departments of
+investigation; and what was the effect of scientific discoveries upon
+social relations in general. But the two inquiries would be distinct
+for obvious reasons. If men study mathematics they can only come to
+one conclusion. They will find out the same propositions of geometry
+if they only think clearly enough and long enough, as certainly as
+Columbus would discover America if he only sailed far enough. America
+was there, and so in a sense are the propositions. We may therefore in
+this case entirely separate the two questions: what leads men to
+think? and what conclusions will they reach? The reasons which guided
+the first discoverers are just as valid now, though they can be more
+systematically stated. But in the 'moral sciences' this distinction is
+not equally possible. The intellectual and the social evolution are
+closely and intricately connected, and each reacts upon the other. In
+the last resort no doubt a definitive system of belief once elaborated
+would repose upon universally
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+valid truths and determine, instead of
+being determined by, the corresponding social order. But in the
+concrete evolution which, we may hope, is approximating towards this
+result, the creeds current among mankind have been determined by the
+social conditions as well as helped to determine them. To give an
+account of that process it is necessary to specify the various
+circumstances which may lead to the survival of error, and to the
+partial views of truth taken by men of different idiosyncrasies
+working upon different data and moved by different passions and
+prepossessions. A history written upon these terms would show
+primarily what, as a fact, were the dominant beliefs during a given
+period, and state which survived, which disappeared, and which were
+transformed or engrafted upon other systems of thought. This would of
+course raise the question of the truth or falsehood of the doctrines
+as well as of their vitality: for the truth is at least one essential
+condition of permanent vitality. The difference would be that the
+problem would be approached from a different side. We should ask first
+what beliefs have flourished, and afterwards ask why they flourished,
+and how far their vitality was due to their partial or complete truth.
+To write such a history would perhaps require an impartiality which
+few people possess and which I do not venture to claim. I have my own
+opinions for which other people may account by prejudice, assumption,
+or downright incapacity. I am quite aware that I shall be implicitly
+criticising myself in criticising others. All that I can profess is
+that by taking the questions in this order, I shall hope to fix
+attention upon one set of considerations which are apt, as I fancy, to
+be unduly neglected. The result of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+reading some histories is to raise
+the question: how people on the other side came to be such unmitigated
+fools? Why were they imposed upon by such obvious fallacies? That may
+be answered by considering more fully the conditions under which the
+opinions were actually adopted, and one result may be to show that
+those opinions had a considerable element of truth, and were held by
+men who were the very opposite of fools. At any rate I shall do what I
+can to write an account of this phase of thought, so as to bring out
+what were its real tenets; to what intellectual type they were
+naturally congenial; what were the limitations of view which affected
+the Utilitarians' conception of the problems to be solved; and what
+were the passions and prepossessions due to the contemporary state of
+society and to their own class position, which to some degree
+unconsciously dictated their conclusions. So far as I can do this
+satisfactorily, I hope that I may throw some light upon the intrinsic
+value of the creed, and the place which it should occupy in a
+definitive system.
+</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Table-Talk</i>, 3 July 1830.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 33%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>POLITICAL CONDITIONS</h3>
+
+<p class="scs">I. <a name="I_I" id="I_I"></a>THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+The English Utilitarians represent one outcome of the speculations
+current in England during the later part of the eighteenth century.
+For the reasons just assigned I shall begin by briefly recalling some
+of the social conditions which set the problems for the coming
+generation and determined the mode of answering them. I must put the
+main facts in evidence, though they are even painfully familiar. The
+most obvious starting-point is given by the political situation. The
+supremacy of parliament had been definitively established by the
+revolution of 1688, and had been followed by the elaboration of the
+system of party government. The centre of gravity of the political
+world lay in the House of Commons. No minister could hold power unless
+he could command a majority in this house. Jealousy of the royal
+power, however, was still a ruling passion. The party line between
+Whig and Tory turned ostensibly upon this issue. The essential Whig
+doctrine is indicated by Dunning's famous resolution (6 April 1780)
+that 'the power of the crown had increased, was increasing, and ought
+to be diminished.' The resolution
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+was in one sense an anachronism. As
+in many other cases, politicians seem to be elaborately slaying the
+slain and guarding against the attacks of extinct monsters. There was
+scarcely more probability under George <small>III.</small> than there is under
+Victoria that the king would try to raise taxes without consent of
+parliament. George <small>III.</small>, however, desired to be more than a
+contrivance for fixing the great seal to official documents. He had
+good reason for thinking that the weakness of the executive was an
+evil. The king could gain power not by attacking the authority of
+parliament but by gaining influence within its walls. He might form a
+party of 'king's friends' able to hold the balance between the
+connections formed by the great families and so break up the system of
+party government. Burke's great speech (11 Feb. 1780) upon introducing
+his plan 'for the better security of the independence of parliament
+and the economical reformation of the civil and other establishments'
+explains the secret and reveals the state of things which for the next
+half century was to supply one main theme for the eloquence of
+reformers. The king had at his disposal a vast amount of patronage.
+There were relics of ancient institutions: the principality of Wales,
+the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, and the earldom of Chester;
+each with its revenue and establishment of superfluous officials. The
+royal household was a complex 'body corporate' founded in the old days
+of 'purveyance.' There was the mysterious 'Board of Green Cloth'
+formed by the great officers and supposed to have judicial as well as
+administrative functions. Cumbrous medi&aelig;val machinery thus remained
+which had been formed in the time when the distinction between
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+a
+public trust and private property was not definitely drawn or which
+had been allowed to remain for the sake of patronage, when its
+functions had been transferred to officials of more modern type.
+Reform was foiled, as Burke put it, because the turnspit in the king's
+kitchen was a member of parliament. Such sinecures and the pensions on
+the civil list or the Irish establishment provided the funds by which
+the king could build up a personal influence, which was yet occult,
+irresponsible, and corrupt. The measure passed by Burke in 1782<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
+made a beginning in the removal of such abuses.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the Whigs were conveniently blind to another side of the
+question. If the king could buy, it was because there were plenty of
+people both able and willing to sell. Bubb Dodington, a typical
+example of the old system, had five or six seats at his disposal:
+subject only to the necessity of throwing a few pounds to the 'venal
+wretches' who went through the form of voting, and by dealing in what
+he calls this 'merchantable ware' he managed by lifelong efforts to
+wriggle into a peerage. The Dodingtons, that is, sold because they
+bought. The 'venal wretches' were the lucky franchise-holders in
+rotten boroughs. The 'Friends of the People'<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> in 1793 made the
+often-repeated statement that 154 individuals returned 307 members,
+that is, a majority of the house. In Cornwall, again, 21 boroughs with
+453 electors controlled by about 15 individuals returned 42
+members,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> or, with the two county members, only one member less than
+Scotland; and the Scottish members were elected by close corporations
+in boroughs
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+and by the great families in counties. No wonder if the
+House of Commons seemed at times to be little more than an exchange
+for the traffic between the proprietors of votes and the proprietors
+of offices and pensions.</p>
+
+<p>The demand for the reforms advocated by Burke and Dunning was due to
+the catastrophe of the American War. The scandal caused by the famous
+coalition of 1783 showed that a diminution of the royal influence
+might only make room for selfish bargains among the proprietors of
+parliamentary influence. The demand for reform was taken up by Pitt.
+His plan was significant. He proposed to disfranchise a few rotten
+boroughs; but to soften this measure he afterwards suggested that a
+million should be set aside to buy such boroughs as should voluntarily
+apply for disfranchisement. The seats obtained were to be mainly added
+to county representation; but the franchise was to be extended so as
+to add about 99,000 voters in boroughs, and additional seats were to
+be given to London and Westminster and to Manchester, Leeds,
+Birmingham, and Sheffield. The Yorkshire reformers, who led the
+movement, were satisfied with this modest scheme. The borough
+proprietors were obviously too strong to be directly attacked, though
+they might be induced to sell some of their power.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a mass of anomalies, sufficient to supply topics of
+denunciation for two generations of reformers, and, in time, to excite
+fears of violent revolution. Without undertaking the easy task of
+denouncing exploded systems, we may ask what state of mind they
+implied. Our ancestors were perfectly convinced that their political
+system was of almost unrivalled excellence: they held that they were
+freemen entitled to look down upon
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+foreigners as the slaves of
+despots. Nor can we say that their satisfaction was without solid
+grounds. The boasting about English freedom implied some
+misunderstanding. But it was at least the boast of a vigorous race.
+Not only were there individuals capable of patriotism and public
+spirit, but the body politic was capable of continuous energy. During
+the eighteenth century the British empire spread round the world.
+Under Chatham it had been finally decided that the English race should
+be the dominant element in the new world; if the political connection
+had been severed by the bungling of his successors, the unbroken
+spirit of the nation had still been shown in the struggle against
+France, Spain, and the revolted colonies; and whatever may be thought
+of the motives which produced the great revolutionary wars, no one can
+deny the qualities of indomitable self-reliance and high courage to
+the men who led the country through the twenty years of struggle
+against France, and for a time against France with the continent at
+its feet. If moralists or political theorists find much to condemn in
+the ends to which British policy was directed, they must admit that
+the qualities displayed were not such as can belong to a simply
+corrupt and mean-spirited government.</p>
+
+<p>One obvious remark is that, on the whole, the system was a very good
+one&mdash;as systems go. It allowed free play to the effective political
+forces. Down to the revolutionary period, the nation as a whole was
+contented with its institutions. The political machinery provided a
+sufficient channel for the really efficient force of public opinion.
+There was as yet no large class which at once had political
+aspirations and was unable to gain a hearing.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+England was still in
+the main an agricultural country: and the agricultural labourer was
+fairly prosperous till the end of the century, while his ignorance and
+isolation made him indifferent to politics. There might be a bad
+squire or parson, as there might be a bad season; but squire and
+parson were as much parts of the natural order of things as the
+weather. The farmer or yeoman was not much less stolid; and his
+politics meant at most a choice between allegiance to one or other of
+the county families. If in the towns which were rapidly developing
+there was growing up a discontented population, its discontent was not
+yet directed into political channels. An extended franchise meant a
+larger expenditure on beer, not the readier acceptance of popular
+aspirations. To possess a vote was to have a claim to an occasional
+bonus rather than a right to influence legislation. Practically,
+therefore, parliament might be taken to represent what might be called
+'public opinion,' for anything that deserved to be called public
+opinion was limited to the opinions of the gentry and the more
+intelligent part of the middle classes. There was no want of
+complaints of corruption, proposals to exclude placemen from
+parliament and the like; and in the days of Wilkes, Chatham, and
+Junius, when the first symptoms of democratic activity began to affect
+the political movement, the discontent made itself audible and
+alarming. But a main characteristic of the English reformers was the
+constant appeal to precedent, even in their most excited moods. They
+do not mention the rights of man; they invoke the 'revolution
+principles' of 1688; they insist upon the 'Bill of Rights' or Magna
+Charta. When keenly roused they recall the fate of Charles <small>I.</small>; and
+their
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+favourite toast is the cause for which Hampden died on the
+field and Sidney on the scaffold. They believe in the jury as the
+'palladium of our liberties'; and are convinced that the British
+Constitution represents an unsurpassable though unfortunately an ideal
+order of things, which must have existed at some indefinite period.
+Chatham in one of his most famous speeches, appeals, for example, to
+the 'iron barons' who resisted King John, and contrasts them with the
+silken courtiers which now compete for place and pensions. The
+political reformers of the time, like religious reformers in most
+times, conceive of themselves only as demanding the restoration of the
+system to its original purity, not as demanding its abrogation. In
+other words, they propose to remedy abuses but do not as yet even
+contemplate a really revolutionary change. Wilkes was not a 'Wilkite,'
+nor was any of his party, if Wilkite meant anything like Jacobin.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> 22 George <small>III</small>. c. 82.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Parl. Hist.</i> xxx. 787.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>State Trials</i>, xxiv. 382.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">II. <a name="I_II" id="I_II"></a>THE RULING CLASS</p>
+
+<p>Thus, however anomalous the constitution of parliament, there was no
+thought of any far-reaching revolution. The great mass of the
+population was too ignorant, too scattered and too poor to have any
+real political opinions. So long as certain prejudices were not
+aroused, it was content to leave the management of the state to the
+dominant class, which alone was intelligent enough to take an interest
+in public affairs and strong enough to make its interest felt. This
+class consisted in the first place of the great landed interest. When
+Lord North opposed Pitt's reform in 1785 he said<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> that the
+Constitution
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+was 'the work of infinite wisdom ... the most beautiful
+fabric that had ever existed since the beginning of time.' He added
+that 'the bulk and weight' of the house ought to be in 'the hands of
+the country-gentlemen, the best and most respectable objects of the
+confidence of the people,' The speech, though intended to please an
+audience of country-gentlemen, represented a genuine belief.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> The
+country-gentlemen formed the class to which not only the
+constitutional laws but the prevailing sentiment of the country gave
+the lead in politics as in the whole social system. Even reformers
+proposed to improve the House of Commons chiefly by increasing the
+number of county-members, and a county-member was almost necessarily a
+country-gentleman of an exalted kind. Although the country-gentleman
+was very far from having all things his own way, his ideals and
+prejudices were in a great degree the mould to which the other
+politically important class conformed. There was indeed a growing
+jealousy between the landholders and the 'monied-men.' Bolingbroke had
+expressed this distrust at an earlier part of the century. But the
+true representative of the period was his successful rival, Walpole, a
+thorough country-gentleman who had learned to understand the mysteries
+of finance and acquired the confidence of the city. The great
+merchants of London and the rising manufacturers in the country were
+rapidly growing in wealth and influence. The monied-men represented
+the most active, energetic, and growing part of the body politic.
+Their interests determined the direction of the national policy. The
+great wars of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+century were undertaken in the interests of British
+trade. The extension of the empire in India was carried on through a
+great commercial company. The growth of commerce supported the
+sea-power which was the main factor in the development of the empire.
+The new industrial organisation which was arising was in later years
+to represent a class distinctly opposed to the old aristocratic order.
+At present it was in a comparatively subordinate position. The squire
+was interested in the land and the church; the merchant thought more
+of commerce and was apt to be a dissenter. But the merchant, in spite
+of some little jealousies, admitted the claims of the
+country-gentleman to be his social superior and political leader. His
+highest ambition was to be himself admitted to the class or to secure
+the admission of his family. As he became rich he bought a solid
+mansion at Clapham or Wimbledon, and, if he made a fortune, might
+become lord of manors in the country. He could not as yet aspire to
+become himself a peer, but he might be the ancestor of peers. The son
+of Josiah Child, the great merchant of the seventeenth century, became
+Earl Tylney, and built at Wanstead one of the noblest mansions in
+England. His contemporary Sir Francis Child, Lord Mayor, and a founder
+of the Bank of England, built Osterley House, and was ancestor of the
+earls of Jersey and Westmoreland. The daughter of Sir John Barnard,
+the typical merchant of Walpole's time, married the second Lord
+Palmerston. Beckford, the famous Lord Mayor of Chatham's day, was
+father of the author of <i>Vathek</i>, who married an earl's daughter and
+became the father of a duchess. The Barings, descendants of a German
+pastor, settled in England early in the century
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+and became
+country-gentlemen, baronets, and peers. Cobbett, who saw them rise,
+reviled the stockjobbers who were buying out the old families. But the
+process had begun long before his days, and meant that the heads of
+the new industrial system were being absorbed into the class of
+territorial magnates. That class represented the framework upon which
+both political and social power was moulded.</p>
+
+<p>This implies an essential characteristic of the time. A familiar topic
+of the admirers of the British Constitution was the absence of the
+sharp lines of demarcation between classes and of the exclusive
+aristocratic privileges which, in France, provoked the revolution. In
+England the ruling class was not a 'survival': it had not retained
+privileges without discharging corresponding functions. The essence of
+'self-government,' says its most learned commentator,<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> is the
+organic connection 'between State and society.' On the Continent, that
+is, powers were intrusted to a centralised administrative and judicial
+hierarchy, which in England were left to the class independently
+strong by its social position. The landholder was powerful as a
+product of the whole system of industrial and agricultural
+development; and he was bound in return to perform arduous and
+complicated duties. How far he performed them well is another
+question. At least, he did whatever was done in the way of governing,
+and therefore did not sink into a mere excrescence or superfluity. I
+must try to point out certain results which had a material effect upon
+English opinion in general and, in particular, upon the Utilitarians.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Parl. Hist.</i> xxv. 472.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> The country-gentlemen, said Wilberforce in 1800, are the
+'very nerves and ligatures of the body politic.'&mdash;<i>Correspondence</i>, i.
+219.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Gneist's <i>Self-Government</i> (3rd edition, 1871), p. 879.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">III. <a name="I_III" id="I_III"></a>LEGISLATION AND ADMINISTRATION</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+The country-gentlemen formed the bulk of the law-making body, and the
+laws gave the first point of assault of the Utilitarian movement. One
+explanation is suggested by a phrase attributed to Sir Josiah
+Child.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> The laws, he said, were a heap of nonsense, compiled by a
+few ignorant country-gentlemen, who hardly knew how to make good laws
+for the government of their own families, much less for the regulation
+of companies and foreign commerce. He meant that the parliamentary
+legislation of the century was the work of amateurs, not of
+specialists; of an assembly of men more interested in immediate
+questions of policy or personal intrigue than in general principles,
+and not of such a centralised body as would set a value upon symmetry
+and scientific precision. The country-gentleman had strong prejudices
+and enough common sense to recognise his own ignorance. The product of
+a traditional order, he clung to traditions, and regarded the old
+maxims as sacred because no obvious reason could be assigned for them.
+He was suspicious of abstract theories, and it did not even occur to
+him that any such process as codification or radical alteration of the
+laws was conceivable. For the law itself he had the profound
+veneration which is expressed by Blackstone. It represented the
+'wisdom of our ancestors'; the system of first principles, on which
+the whole order of things reposed, and which must be regarded as an
+embodiment of right reason. The common law was a tradition, not made
+by express legislation, but somehow existing apart from any definite
+embodiment, and revealed
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+to certain learned hierophants. Any changes,
+required by the growth of new social conditions, had to be made under
+pretence of applying the old rules supposed to be already in
+existence. Thus grew up the system of 'judge-made law,' which was to
+become a special object of the denunciations of Bentham. Child had
+noticed the incompetence of the country-gentlemen to understand the
+regulation of commercial affairs. The gap was being filled up, without
+express legislation, by judicial interpretations of Mansfield and his
+fellows. This, indeed, marks a characteristic of the whole system.
+'Our constitution,' says Professor Dicey,<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> 'is a judge-made
+constitution, and it bears on its face all the features, good and bad,
+of judge-made law.' The law of landed property, meanwhile, was of
+vital and immediate interest to the country-gentleman. But, feeling
+his own incompetence, he had called in the aid of the expert. The law
+had been developed in medi&aelig;val times, and bore in all its details the
+marks of the long series of struggles between king and nobles and
+parliaments. One result had been the elaborate series of legal
+fictions worked out in the conflict between private interests and
+public policy, by which lawyers had been able to adapt the rules
+fitted for an ancient state of society to another in which the very
+fundamental conceptions were altered. A mysterious system had thus
+grown up, which deterred any but the most resolute students. Of
+Fearne's essay upon 'Contingent remainders'(published in 1772) it was
+said that no work 'in any branch of science could afford a more
+beautiful instance of analysis.' Fearne had shown the acuteness of 'a
+Newton or a Pascal.' Other critics dispute this proposition; but in
+any
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+case the law was so perplexing that it could only be fully
+understood by one who united antiquarian knowledge to the subtlety of
+a great logician. The 'vast and intricate machine,' as Blackstone
+calls it, 'of a voluminous family settlement' required for its
+explanation the dialectical skill of an accomplished schoolman. The
+poor country-gentleman could not understand the terms on which he held
+his own estate without calling in an expert equal to such a task. The
+man who has acquired skill so essential to his employer's interests is
+not likely to undervalue it or to be over anxious to simplify the
+labyrinth in which he shone as a competent guide.</p>
+
+<p>The lawyers who played so important a part by their familiarity with
+the mysteries of commercial law and landed property, naturally enjoyed
+the respect of their clients, and were rewarded by adoption into the
+class. The English barrister aspired to success by himself taking part
+in politics and legislation. The only path to the highest positions
+really open to a man of ability, not connected by blood with the great
+families, was the path which led to the woolsack or to the judge's
+bench. A great merchant might be the father or father-in-law of peers;
+a successful soldier or sailor might himself become a peer, but
+generally he began life as a member of the ruling classes, and his
+promotion was affected by parliamentary influence. But a successful
+lawyer might fight his way from a humble position to the House of
+Lords. Thurlow, son of a country-gentleman; Dunning, son of a country
+attorney; Ellenborough, son of a bishop and descendant of a long line
+of North-country 'statesmen'; Kenyon, son of a farmer; Eldon, son of a
+Newcastle coal merchant, represent the average career of a successful
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+barrister. Some of them rose to be men of political importance, and
+Thurlow and Eldon had the advantage of keeping George <small>III</small>'s
+conscience&mdash;an unruly faculty which had an unfortunately strong
+influence upon affairs. The leaders of the legal profession,
+therefore, and those who hoped to be leaders, shared the prejudices,
+took a part in the struggles, and were rewarded by the honours of the
+dominant class.</p>
+
+<p>The criminal law became a main topic of reformers. There, as
+elsewhere, we have a striking example of traditional modes of thought
+surviving with singular persistence. The rough classification of
+crimes into felony and misdemeanour, and the strange technical rules
+about 'benefit of clergy' dating back to the struggles of Henry <small>II.</small>
+and Becket, remained like ultimate categories of thought. When the
+growth of social conditions led to new temptations or the appearance
+of a new criminal class, and particular varieties of crime became
+conspicuous, the only remedy was to declare that some offence should
+be 'felony without benefit of clergy,' and therefore punishable by
+death. By unsystematic and spasmodic legislation the criminal law
+became so savage as to shock every man of common humanity. It was
+tempered by the growth of technical rules, which gave many chances of
+escape to the criminal; and by practical revolt against its excesses,
+which led to the remission of the great majority of capital
+sentences.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> The legislators were clumsy, not intentionally cruel;
+and the laws, though
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+sanguinary in reality, were more sanguinary in
+theory than in practice. Nothing, on the other hand, is more
+conspicuous than the spirit of fair play to the criminal, which struck
+foreign observers.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> It was deeply rooted in the whole system. The
+English judge was not an official agent of an inquisitorial system,
+but an impartial arbitrator between the prisoner and the prosecutor.
+In political cases especially a marked change was brought about by the
+revolution of 1688. If our ancestors talked some nonsense about trial
+by jury, the system certainly insured that the persons accused of
+libel or sedition should have a fair trial, and very often something
+more. Judges of the Jeffreys type had become inconceivable, though
+impartiality might disappear in cases where the prejudices of juries
+were actively aroused. Englishmen might fairly boast of their immunity
+from the arbitrary methods of continental rulers; and their
+unhesitating confidence in the fairness of the system became so
+ingrained as to be taken as a matter of course, and scarcely received
+due credit from later critics of the system.</p>
+
+<p>The country-gentleman, again, was not only the legislator but a most
+important figure in the judicial and administrative system. As justice
+of the peace, he was the representative of law and order to his
+country neighbours. The preface of 1785 to the fifteenth edition of
+Burn's <i>Justice of the Peace</i>, published originally in 1755,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+mentions
+that in the interval between these dates, some three hundred statutes
+had been passed affecting the duties of justices, while half as many
+had been repealed or modified. The justice was of course, as a rule, a
+superficial lawyer, and had to be prompted by his clerk, the two
+representing on a small scale the general relation between the lawyers
+and the ruling class. Burn tells the justice for his comfort that the
+judges will take a lenient view of any errors into which his ignorance
+may have led him. The discharge of such duties by an independent
+gentleman was thought to be so desirable and so creditable to him that
+his want of efficiency must be regarded with consideration. Nor,
+though the justices have been a favourite butt for satirists, does it
+appear that the system worked badly. When it became necessary to
+appoint paid magistrates in London, and the pay, according to the
+prevalent system, was provided by fees, the new officials became known
+as 'trading justices,' and their salaries, as Fielding tells us, were
+some of the 'dirtiest money upon earth.' The justices might perhaps be
+hard upon a poacher (as, indeed, the game laws became one of the great
+scandals of the system), or liable to be misled by a shrewd attorney;
+but they were on the whole regarded as the natural and creditable
+representatives of legal authority in the country.</p>
+
+<p>The justices, again, discharged functions which would elsewhere belong
+to an administrative hierarchy, Gneist observes that the power of the
+justices of the peace represents the centre of gravity of the whole
+administrative system.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> Their duties had become so multifarious
+and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+perplexed that Burn could only arrange them under alphabetical
+heads. Gneist works out a systematic account, filling many pages of
+elaborate detail, and showing how large a part they played in the
+whole social structure. An intense jealousy of central power was one
+correlative characteristic. Blackstone remarks in his more liberal
+humour that the number of new offices held at pleasure had greatly
+extended the influence of the crown. This refers to the custom-house
+officers, excise officers, stamp distributors and postmasters. But if
+the tax-gatherer represented the state, he represented also part of
+the patronage at the disposal of politicians. A voter was often in
+search of the place of a 'tidewaiter'; and, as we know, the greatest
+poet of the day could only be rewarded by making him an exciseman. Any
+extension of a system which multiplied public offices was regarded
+with suspicion. Walpole, the strongest minister of the century, had
+been forced to an ignominious retreat when he proposed to extend the
+excise. The cry arose that he meant to enslave the country and extend
+the influence of the crown over all the corporations in England. The
+country-gentleman had little reason to fear that government would
+diminish his importance by tampering with his functions. The justices
+of the peace were called upon to take a great and increasing share in
+the administration of the poor-law. They were concerned in all manner
+of financial details; they regulated such police as existed; they
+looked after the old laws by which the trades were still restricted;
+and, in theory at least,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+could fix the rate of wages. Parliament did
+not override, but only gave the necessary sanction to their activity.
+If we looked through the journals of the House of Commons during the
+American War, for example, we should get the impression that the whole
+business of the legislature was to arrange administrative details. If
+a waste was to be enclosed, a canal or a highroad to be constructed,
+there was no public department to be consulted. The gentry of the
+neighbourhood joined to obtain a private act of parliament which gave
+the necessary powers to the persons interested. No general enclosure
+act could be passed, though often suggested. It would imply a central
+commission, which would only, as was suggested, give rise to jobbery
+and take power out of the natural hands. Parliament was omnipotent; it
+could regulate the affairs of the empire or of a parish; alter the
+most essential laws or act as a court of justice; settle the crown or
+arrange for a divorce or for the alteration of a private estate. But
+it objected to delegate authority even to a subordinate body, which
+might tend to become independent. Thus, if it was the central power
+and source of all legal authority, it might also be regarded as a kind
+of federal league, representing the wills of a number of partially
+independent persons. The gentry could meet there and obtain the
+sanction of their allies for any measure required in their own little
+sphere of influence. But they had an instinctive aversion to the
+formation of any organised body representing the state. The
+neighbourhood which wanted a road got powers to make it, and would
+concur in giving powers to others. But if the state were to be
+intrusted to make roads, ministers would have more
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+places to give,
+and roads might be made which they did not want. The English roads had
+long been infamous, but neither was money wasted, as in France, on
+roads where there was no traffic.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> Thus we have the combination of
+an absolute centralisation of legislative power with an utter absence
+of administrative centralisation. The units meeting in parliament
+formed a supreme assembly; but they did not sink their own
+individuality. They only met to distribute the various functions among
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The English parish with its squire, its parson, its lawyer and its
+labouring population was a miniature of the British Constitution in
+general. The squire's eldest son could succeed to his position; a
+second son might become a general or an admiral; a third would take
+the family living; a fourth, perhaps, seek his fortune at the bar.
+This implies a conception of other political conditions which
+curiously illustrate some contemporary conceptions.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> See <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>The Law of the Constitution</i>, p. 209.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> See Sir J. F. Stephen's <i>History of the Criminal Law</i>
+(1883), i. 470. He quotes Blackstone's famous statement that there
+were 160 felonies without benefit of clergy, and shows that this gives
+a very uncertain measure of the severity of the law. A single act
+making larceny in general punishable by death would be more severe
+than fifty separate acts, making fifty different varieties of larceny
+punishable by death. He adds, however, that the scheme of punishment
+was 'severe to the highest degree, and destitute of every sort of
+principle or system.' The number of executions in the early part of
+this century varied apparently from a fifth to a ninth of the capital
+sentences passed. See Table in Porter's <i>Progress of the Nation</i>
+(1851), p. 635.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> See the references to Cottu's report of 1822 in
+Stephen's <i>History</i>, i. 429, 439, 451. Cottu's book was translated by
+Blanco White.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Gneist's <i>Self-Government</i> (1871), p. 194. It is
+characteristic that J. S. Mill, in his <i>Representative Government</i>,
+remarks that the 'Quarter Sessions' are formed in the 'most anomalous'
+way; that they represent the old feudal principle, and are at variance
+with the fundamental principles of representative government (<i>Rep.
+Gov.</i> (1867), p. 113). The mainspring of the old system had become a
+simple anomaly to the new radicalism.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> See Arthur Young, <i>passim</i>. There was, however, an
+improvement even in the first half of the century. See Cunningham's
+<i>Growth of English Industry, etc. (Modern Times)</i>, p. 378.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">IV. <a name="I_IV" id="I_IV"></a>THE ARMY AND NAVY</p>
+
+<p>We are often amused by the persistency of the cry against a 'standing
+army' in England. It did not fairly die out until the revolutionary
+wars. Blackstone regards it as a singularly fortunate circumstance
+'that any branch of the legislature might annually put an end to the
+legal existence of the army by refusing to concur in the continuance'
+of the mutiny act. A standing army was obviously necessary; but by
+making believe very hard,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+we could shut our eyes to the facts, and
+pretend that it was a merely temporary arrangement.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> The doctrine
+had once had a very intelligible meaning. If James <small>II.</small> had possessed a
+disciplined army of the continental pattern, with Marlborough at its
+head, Marlborough would hardly have been converted by the prince of
+Orange. But loyal as the gentry had been at the restoration, they had
+taken very good care that the Stuarts should not have in their hand
+such a weapon as had been possessed by Cromwell. When the Puritan army
+was disbanded, they had proceeded to regulate the militia. The
+officers were appointed by the lords-lieutenants of counties, and had
+to possess a property qualification; the men raised by ballot in their
+own districts; and their numbers and length of training regulated by
+Act of Parliament. The old 'train-bands' were suppressed, except in
+the city of London, and thus the recognised military force of the
+country was a body essentially dependent upon the country gentry. The
+militia was regarded with favour as the 'old constitutional force'
+which could not be used to threaten our liberties. It was remodelled
+during the Seven Years' War and embodied during that and all our later
+wars. It was, however, ineffective by its very nature. An aristocracy
+which chose to carry on wars must have a professional army in fact,
+however careful it might be to pretend that it was a provision for a
+passing necessity. The pretence had serious consequences. Since the
+army was not to have interests separate from the people, there was no
+reason for building barracks. The men might be billeted on publicans,
+or placed
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+under canvas, while they were wanted. When the great war
+came upon us, large sums had to be spent to make up for the previous
+neglect. Fox, on 22nd February 1793, protested during a lively debate
+upon this subject that sound constitutional principles condemned
+barracks, because to mix the army with the people was the 'best
+security against the danger of a standing army.'<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p>In fact a large part of the army was a mere temporary force. In 1762,
+towards the end of the Seven Years' War, we had about 100,000 men in
+pay; and after the peace, the force was reduced to under 20,000.
+Similar changes took place in every war. The ruling class took
+advantage of the position. An army might be hired from Germany for the
+occasion. New regiments were generally raised by some great man who
+gave commissions to his own relations and dependants. When the
+Pretender was in Scotland, for example, fifteen regiments were raised
+by patriotic nobles, who gave the commissions, and stipulated that
+although they were to be employed only in suppressing the rising, the
+officers should have permanent rank.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> So, as was shown in Mrs.
+Clarke's case, a patent for raising a regiment might be a source of
+profit to the undertaker, who again might get it by bribing the
+mistress of a royal duke. The officers had, according to the generally
+prevalent system, a modified property in their commissions; and the
+system of sale was not abolished till our own days. We may therefore
+say that the ruling class, on the one hand, objected to a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+standing
+army, and, on the other, since such an army was a necessity, farmed it
+from the country and were admitted to have a certain degree of private
+property in the concern. The prejudice against any permanent
+establishment made it necessary to fill the ranks on occasion by all
+manner of questionable expedients. Bounties were offered to attract
+the vagrants who hung loose upon society. Smugglers, poachers, and the
+like were allowed to choose between military service and
+transportation. The general effect was to provide an army of
+blackguards commanded by gentlemen. The army no doubt had its merits
+as well as its defects. The continental armies which it met were
+collected by equally demoralising methods until the French revolution
+led to a systematic conscription. The bad side is suggested by
+Napier's famous phrase, the 'cold shade of our aristocracy'; while
+Napier gives facts enough to prove both the brutality too often shown
+by the private soldier and the dogged courage which is taken to be
+characteristic even of the English blackguard. By others,&mdash;by such men
+as the duke of Wellington and Lord Palmerston, for example, types of
+the true aristocrat&mdash;the system was defended<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> as bringing men of
+good family into the army and so providing it, as the duke thought,
+with the best set of officers in Europe. No doubt they and the royal
+dukes who commanded them were apt to be grossly ignorant of their
+business; but it may be admitted by a historian that they often showed
+the qualities of which Wellington was himself a type. The English
+officer was a gentleman before he was a soldier, and considered the
+military virtues to be a part of his natural endowment. But it
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+was
+undoubtedly a part of his traditional code of honour to do his duty
+manfully and to do it rather as a manifestation of his own spirit than
+from any desire for rewards or decorations. The same quality is
+represented more strikingly by the navy. The English admiral
+represents the most attractive and stirring type of heroism in our
+history. Nelson and the 'band of brothers' who served with him, the
+simple and high-minded sailors who summed up the whole duty of man in
+doing their best to crush the enemies of their country, are among the
+finest examples of single-souled devotion to the calls of patriotism.
+The navy, indeed, had its ugly side no less than the army. There was
+corruption at Greenwich<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> and in the dockyards, and parliamentary
+intrigue was a road to professional success. Voltaire notes the queer
+contrast between the English boast of personal liberty and the
+practice of filling up the crews by pressgangs. The discipline was
+often barbarous, and the wrongs of the common sailor found sufficient
+expression in the mutiny at the Nore. A grievance, however, which
+pressed upon a single class was maintained from the necessity of the
+case and the inertness of the administrative system. The navy did not
+excite the same jealousy as the army; and the officers were more
+professionally skilful than their brethren. The national qualities
+come out, often in their highest form, in the race of great seamen
+upon whom the security of the island power essentially depended.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> See <i>Military Forces of the Crown</i>, by Charles M. Clode
+(1869), for a full account of the facts.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <i>Parl. Hist.</i> xxx. 490. Clode states (i. 222) that
+&pound;9,000,000 was spent upon barracks by 1804, and, it seems, without
+proper authority.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Debate in <i>Parl. Hist.</i> xiii. 1382, etc., and see
+Walpole's <i>Correspondence</i>, i. 400, for some characteristic comments.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Clode, ii. 86.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> See the famous case in 1778 in which Erskine made his
+first appearance, in <i>State Trials</i>, xxi. Lord St. Vincent's struggle
+against the corruption of his time is described by Prof. Laughton in
+the <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>, (<i>s.v.</i> Sir John Jervis). In
+1801 half a million a year was stolen, besides all the waste due to
+corruption and general muddling.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">V. <a name="I_V" id="I_V"></a>THE CHURCH</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+I turn, however, to the profession which was more directly connected
+with the intellectual development of the country. The nature of the
+church establishment gives the most obvious illustration of the
+connection between the intellectual position on the one hand and the
+social and political order on the other, though I do not presume to
+decide how far either should be regarded as effect and the other as
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>What is the church of England? Some people apparently believe that it
+is a body possessing and transmitting certain supernatural powers.
+This view was in abeyance for the time for excellent reasons, and,
+true or false, is no answer to the constitutional question. It does
+not enable us to define what was the actual body with which lawyers
+and politicians have to deal. The best answer to such questions in
+ordinary case would be given by describing the organisation of the
+body concerned. We could then say what is the authority which speaks
+in its name; and what is the legislature which makes its laws, alters
+its arrangements, and defines the terms of membership. The supreme
+legislature of the church of England might appear to be parliament. It
+is the Act of Uniformity which defines the profession of belief
+exacted from the clergy; and no alteration could be made in regard to
+the rights and duties of the clergy except by parliamentary authority.
+The church might therefore be regarded as simply the religious
+department of the state. Since 1688, however, the theory and the
+practice of toleration had introduced difficulties. Nonconformity was
+not by itself punishable though it exposed a man
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+to certain
+disqualifications. The state, therefore, recognised that many of its
+members might legally belong to other churches, although it had, as
+Warburton argued, formed an 'alliance' with the dominant church. The
+spirit of toleration was spreading throughout the century. The old
+penal laws, due to the struggles of the seventeenth century, were
+becoming obsolete in practice and were gradually being repealed. The
+Gordon riots of 1780 showed that a fanatical spirit might still be
+aroused in a mob which wanted an excuse for plunder; but the laws were
+not explicitly defended by reasonable persons and were being gradually
+removed by legislation towards the end of the century. Although,
+therefore, parliament was kept free from papists, it could hardly
+regard church and state as identical, or consider itself as entitled
+to act as the representative body of the church. No other body,
+indeed, could change the laws of the church; but parliament recognised
+its own incompetence to deal with them. Towards the end of the
+century, various attempts were made to relax the terms of
+subscription. It was proposed, for example, to substitute a profession
+of belief in the Bible for a subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles.
+But the House of Commons sensibly refused to expose itself by
+venturing upon any theological innovations. A body more ludicrously
+incompetent could hardly have been invented.</p>
+
+<p>Hence we must say that the church had either no supreme body which
+could speak in its name and modify its creed, its ritual, its
+discipline, or the details of its organisation; or else, that the only
+body which had in theory a right to interfere was doomed, by
+sufficient considerations, to absolute inaction. The church, from
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+a
+secular point of view, was not so much a department of the state as an
+aggregate of offices, the functions of which were prescribed by
+unalterable tradition. It consisted of a number of bishops, deans and
+chapters, rectors, vicars, curates, and so forth, many of whom had
+certain proprietary rights in their position, and who were bound by
+law to discharge certain functions. But the church, considered as a
+whole, could hardly be called an organism at all, or, if an organism,
+it was an organism with its central organ in a permanent state of
+paralysis. The church, again, in this state was essentially dependent
+upon the ruling classes. A glance at the position of the clergy shows
+their professional position. At their head were the bishops, some of
+them enjoying princely revenues, while others were so poor as to
+require that their incomes should be eked out by deaneries or livings
+held <i>in commendam</i>. The great sees, such as Canterbury, Durham, Ely,
+and Winchester, were valued at between, &pound;20,000 and &pound;30,000 a year;
+while the smaller, Llandaff, Bangor, Bristol, and Gloucester, were
+worth less than &pound;2000. The bishops had patronage which enabled them to
+provide for relatives or for deserving clergymen. The average incomes
+of the parochial clergy, meanwhile, were small. In 1809 they were
+calculated to be worth &pound;255, while nearly four thousand livings were
+worth under &pound;150; and there were four or five thousand curates with
+very small pay. The profession, therefore, offered a great many blanks
+with a few enormous prizes. How were those prizes generally obtained?
+When the reformers published the <i>Black Book</i> in 1820, they gave a
+list of the bishops holding sees in the last year of George <small>III.</small>; and,
+as most of these gentlemen were on
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+their promotion at the end of the
+previous century. I give the list in a note.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<p>There were twenty-seven bishoprics including Sodor
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+and Man. Of these
+eleven were held by members of noble families; fourteen were held by
+men who had been tutors in, or in other ways personally connected with
+the royal family or the families of ministers and great men; and of
+the remaining two, one rested his claim upon political writing in
+defence of Pitt, while the other seems to have had the support of a
+great city company. The system of translation enabled the government
+to keep a hand upon the bishops. Their elevation to the more valuable
+places or leave to hold subsidiary preferments depended upon their
+votes in the House of Lords. So far, then, as secular motives
+operated, the tendency of the system was clear. If Providence had
+assigned to you a duke for a father or an uncle, preferment would fall
+to you as of right. A man of rank who takes orders should be rewarded
+for his condescension. If that qualification be not secured, you
+should aim at being tutor in a great family, accompany a lad on the
+grand tour, or write some pamphlet on a great man's behalf. Paley
+gained credit for independence at Cambridge, and spoke with contempt
+of the practice of 'rooting,' the cant phrase for patronage hunting.
+The text which he facetiously suggested for a sermon when Pitt visited
+Cambridge, 'There is a young man here who has six loaves and two
+fishes, but what are they among so many?' hit off the spirit in which
+a minister was regarded at the universities. The memoirs of Bishop
+Watson illustrate the same sentiment. He lived in his pleasant country
+house at Windermere, never visiting his diocese, and according to De
+Quincey, talking Socinianism at his table. He felt himself to be a
+deeply injured man, because ministers had never found an opportunity
+for
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+translating him to a richer diocese, although he had written
+against Paine and Gibbon. If they would not reward their friends, he
+argued, why should he take up their cause by defending Christianity?</p>
+
+<p>The bishops were eminently respectable. They did not lead immoral
+lives, and if they gave a large share of preferment to their families,
+that at least was a domestic virtue. Some of them, Bishop Barrington
+of Durham, for example, took a lead in philanthropic movements; and,
+if considered simply as prosperous country-gentlemen, little fault
+could be found with them. While, however, every commonplace motive
+pointed so directly towards a career of subserviency to the ruling
+class among the laity, it could not be expected that they should take
+a lofty view of their profession. The Anglican clergy were not like
+the Irish priesthood, in close sympathy with the peasantry, or like
+the Scottish ministers, the organs of strong convictions spreading
+through the great mass of the middle and lower classes. A man of
+energy, who took his faith seriously, was, like the Evangelical
+clergy, out of the road to preferment, or, like Wesley, might find no
+room within the church at all. His colleagues called him an
+'enthusiast,' and disliked him as a busybody if not a fanatic. They
+were by birth and adoption themselves members of the ruling class;
+many of them were the younger sons of squires, and held their livings
+in virtue of their birth. Advowsons are the last offices to retain a
+proprietary character. The church of that day owed such a
+representative as Horne Tooke to the system which enabled his father
+to provide for him by buying a living. From the highest to the lowest
+ranks of clergy, the church was as Matthew Arnold could
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+still call
+it, an 'appendage of the barbarians.' The clergy, that is, as a whole,
+were an integral but a subsidiary part of the aristocracy or the great
+landed interest. Their admirers urged that the system planted a
+cultivated gentleman in every parish in the country. Their opponents
+replied, like John Sterling, that he was a 'black dragoon with horse
+meat and man's meat'&mdash;part of the garrison distributed through the
+country to support the cause of property and order. In any case the
+instinctive prepossessions, the tastes and favourite pursuits of the
+profession were essentially those of the class with which it was so
+intimately connected. Arthur Young,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> speaking of the French clergy,
+observes that at least they are not poachers and foxhunters, who
+divide their time between hunting, drinking, and preaching. You do not
+in France find such advertisements as he had heard of in England,
+'Wanted a curacy in a good sporting country, where the duty is light
+and the neighbourhood convivial.' The proper exercise for a country
+clergyman, he rather quaintly observes, is agriculture. The ideal
+parson, that is, should be a squire in canonical dress. The clergy of
+the eighteenth century probably varied between the extremes
+represented by Trulliber and the Vicar of Wakefield. Many of them were
+excellent people, with a mild taste for literature, contributing to
+the <i>Gentleman's Magazine</i>, investigating the antiquities of their
+county, occasionally confuting a deist, exerting a sound judgment in
+cultivating their glebes or improving the breed of cattle, and
+respected both by squire and farmers. The 'Squarson,' in Sydney
+Smith's facetious phrase, was the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+ideal clergyman. The purely
+sacerdotal qualities, good or bad, were at a minimum. Crabbe, himself
+a type of the class, has left admirable portraits of his fellows.
+Profound veneration for his noble patrons and hearty dislike for
+intrusive dissenters were combined in his own case with a pure
+domestic life, a keen insight into the uglier realities of country
+life and a good sound working morality. Miss Austen, who said that she
+could have been Crabbe's wife, has given more delicate pictures of the
+clergyman as he appeared at the tea-tables of the time. He varies
+according to her from the squire's excellent younger brother, who is
+simply a squire in a white neck-cloth, to the silly but still
+respectable sycophant, who firmly believes his lady patroness to be a
+kind of local deity. Many of the real memoirs of the day give pleasant
+examples of the quiet and amiable lives of the less ambitious clergy.
+There is the charming Gilbert White (1720-1793) placidly studying the
+ways of tortoises, and unconsciously composing a book which breathes
+an undying charm from its atmosphere of peaceful repose; William
+Gilpin (1724-1804) founding and endowing parish schools, teaching the
+catechism, and describing his vacation tours in narratives which
+helped to spread a love of natural scenery; and Thomas Gisborne
+(1758-1846), squire and clergyman, a famous preacher among the
+evangelicals and a poet after the fashion of Cowper, who loved his
+native Needwood Forest as White loved Selborne and Gilpin loved the
+woods of Boldre; and Cowper himself (1731-1800) who, though not a
+clergyman, lived in a clerical atmosphere, and whose gentle and
+playful enjoyment of quiet country life relieves the painfully deep
+pathos of his disordered
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+imagination; and the excellent W. L. Bowles
+(1762-1850), whose sonnets first woke Coleridge's imagination, who
+spent eighty-eight years in an amiable and blameless life, and was
+country-gentleman, magistrate, antiquary, clergyman, and poet.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a>
+Such names are enough to recall a type which has not quite vanished,
+and which has gathered a new charm in more stirring and fretful times.
+These most excellent people, however, were not likely to be prominent
+in movements destined to break up the placid environment of their
+lives nor, in truth, to be sources of any great intellectual stir.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> The list, checked from other sources of information, is
+as follows:&mdash;Manners Sutton, archbishop of Canterbury, was grandson of
+the third duke of Rutland; Edward Vernon, archbishop of York, was son
+of the first Lord Vernon and cousin of the third Lord Harcourt, whose
+estates he inherited; Shute Barrington, bishop of Durham, was son of
+the first and brother of the second Viscount Barrington; Brownlow
+North, bishop of Winchester, was uncle to the earl of Guildford; James
+Cornwallis, bishop of Lichfield, was uncle to the second marquis,
+whose peerage he inherited; George Pelham, bishop of Exeter, was
+brother of the earl of Chichester; Henry Bathurst, bishop of Norwich,
+was nephew of the first earl; George Henry Law, bishop of Chester, was
+brother of the first Lord Ellenborough; Edward Legge, bishop of
+Oxford, was son of the second earl of Dartmouth; Henry Ryder, bishop
+of Gloucester, was brother to the earl of Harrowby; George Murray,
+bishop of Sodor and Man, was nephew-in-law to the duke of Athol and
+brother-in-law to the earl of Kinnoul. Of the fourteen tutors, etc.,
+mentioned above, William Howley, bishop of London, had been tutor to
+the prince of Orange at Oxford; George Pretyman Tomline, bishop of
+Lincoln, had been Pitt's tutor at Cambridge; Richard Beadon, bishop of
+Bath and Wells, had been tutor to the duke of Gloucester at Cambridge;
+Folliott Cornewall, bishop of Worcester, had been made chaplain to the
+House of Commons by the influence of his cousin, the Speaker; John
+Buckner, bishop of Chichester, had been tutor to the duke of Richmond;
+Henry William Majendie, bishop of Bangor, was the son of Queen
+Charlotte's English master, and had been tutor to William <small>IV.</small>; George
+Isaac Huntingford, bishop of Hereford, had been tutor to Addington,
+prime minister; Thomas Burgess, bishop of St. David's, was a personal
+friend of Addington; John Fisher, bishop of Salisbury, had been tutor
+to the duke of Kent; John Luxmoore, bishop of St. Asaph, had been
+tutor to the duke of Buccleugh; Samuel Goodenough, bishop of Carlisle,
+had been tutor to the sons of the third duke of Portland and was
+connected with Addington; William Lort Mansel, bishop of Bristol, had
+been tutor to Perceval at Cambridge, and owed to Perceval the
+mastership of Trinity; Walter King, bishop of Rochester, had been
+secretary to the duke of Portland; and Bowyer Edward Sparke, bishop of
+Ely, had been tutor to the duke of Rutland. The two remaining bishops
+were Herbert Marsh, bishop of Peterborough, who had established a
+claim by defending Pitt's financial measures in an important pamphlet;
+and William Van Mildert, bishop of Llandaff, who had been chaplain to
+the Grocers' Company and became known as a preacher in London.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> <i>Travels in France</i> (1892), p. 327.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> See <i>A Country Clergyman of the Eighteenth Century</i>
+(Thomas Twining), 1882, for a pleasant picture of the class.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">VI. <a name="I_VI" id="I_VI"></a>THE UNIVERSITIES</p>
+
+<p>The effect of these conditions is perhaps best marked in the state of
+the universities. Universities have at different periods been great
+centres of intellectual life. The English universities of the
+eighteenth century are generally noted only as embodiments of sloth
+and prejudice. The judgments of Wesley and Gibbon and Adam Smith and
+Bentham coincide in regard to Oxford; and Johnson's love of his
+university is an equivocal testimony to its intellectual merits. We
+generally think of it as of a sleepy hollow, in which portly fellows
+of colleges, like the convivial Warton, imbibed port wine and sneered
+at Methodists, though few indeed rivalled Warton's services to
+literature. The universities in fact had become, as they long
+continued to be, high schools chiefly for the use of the clergy, and
+if they still aimed at some wider intellectual training, were sinking
+to be
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+institutions where the pupils of the public schools might, if
+they pleased, put a little extra polish upon their classical and
+mathematical knowledge. The colleges preserved their medi&aelig;val
+constitution; and no serious changes of their statutes were made until
+the middle of the present century. The clergy had an almost exclusive
+part in the management, and dissenters were excluded even from
+entering Oxford as students.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> But the clergyman did not as a rule
+devote himself to a life of study. He could not marry as a fellow, but
+he made no vows of celibacy. The college, therefore, was merely a
+stepping-stone on the way to the usual course of preferment. A fellow
+looked forwards to settling in a college living, or if he had the luck
+to act as tutor to a nobleman, he might soar to a deanery or a
+bishopric. The fellows who stayed in their colleges were probably
+those who had least ambition, or who had a taste for an easy
+bachelor's life. The universities, therefore, did not form bodies of
+learned men interested in intellectual pursuits; but at most, helped
+such men in their start upon a more prosperous career. The studies
+flagged in sympathy. Gray's letters sufficiently reveal the dulness
+which was felt by a man of cultivation confined within the narrow
+society of college dons of the day. The scholastic philosophy which
+had once found enthusiastic cultivators in the great universities had
+more or less held its own through the seventeenth century, though
+repudiated by all the rising thinkers. Since the days of Locke and
+Berkeley, it had fallen utterly out of credit. The bright common
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+sense of the polished society of the day looked upon the old doctrine
+with a contempt, which, if not justified by familiarity, was an
+implicit judgment of the tree by its fruits. Nobody could suppose the
+divines of the day to be the depositaries of an esoteric wisdom which
+the vulgar were not worthy to criticise. They were themselves chiefly
+anxious to prove that their sacred mysteries were really not at all
+mysterious, but merely one way of expressing plain common sense. At
+Oxford, indeed, the lads were still crammed with Aldrich, and learned
+the technical terms of a philosophy which had ceased to have any real
+life in it. At Cambridge, ardent young radicals spoke with contempt of
+this 'horrid jargon&mdash;fit only to be chattered by monkies in a
+wilderness.'<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> Even at Cambridge, they still had disputations on the
+old form, but they argued theses from Locke's essay, and thought that
+their mathematical studies were a check upon metaphysical 'jargon.' It
+is indeed characteristic of the respect for tradition that at
+Cambridge even mathematics long suffered from a mistaken patriotism
+which resented any improvement upon the methods of Newton. There were
+some signs of reviving activity. The fellowships were being
+distributed with less regard to private interest. The mathematical
+tripos founded at Cambridge in the middle of the century became the
+prototype of all competitive examinations; and half a century later
+Oxford followed the precedent by the Examination Statute of 1800. A
+certain number of professorships of such modern studies as anatomy,
+history, botany, and geology were founded during the eighteenth
+century, and show a certain sense of a need of broader views. The
+lectures
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+upon which Blackstone founded his commentaries were the
+product of the foundation of the Vinerian professorship in 1751; and
+the most recent of the Cambridge colleges, Downing College, shows by
+its constitution that a professoriate was now considered to be
+desirable. Cambridge in the last years of the century might have had a
+body of very eminent professors. Watson, second wrangler of 1759, had
+delivered lectures upon chemistry, of which it was said by Davy that
+hardly any conceivable change in the science could make them
+obsolete.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> Paley, senior wrangler in 1763, was an almost unrivalled
+master of lucid exposition, and one of his works is still a textbook
+at Cambridge. Isaac Milner, senior wrangler in 1774, afterwards held
+the professorships of mathematics and natural philosophy, and was
+famous as a sort of ecclesiastical Dr. Johnson. Gilbert Wakefield,
+second wrangler in 1776, published an edition of Lucretius, and was a
+man of great ability and energy. Herbert Marsh, second wrangler in
+1779, was divinity professor from 1807, and was the first English
+writer to introduce some knowledge of the early stages of German
+criticism. Porson, the greatest Greek scholar of his time, became
+professor in 1790; Malthus, ninth wrangler in 1788, who was to make a
+permanent mark upon political economy, became fellow of Jesus College
+in 1793. Waring, senior wrangler in 1757, Vince, senior wrangler in
+1775, and Wollaston, senior wrangler in 1783, were also professors and
+mathematicians of reputation. Towards the end of the century ten
+professors were lecturing.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> A large number were not lecturing,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+though Milner was good enough to be 'accessible to students.' Paley
+and Watson had been led off into the path of ecclesiastical
+preferment. Marsh too became a bishop in 1816. There was no place for
+such talents as those of Malthus, who ultimately became professor at
+Haileybury. Wakefield had the misfortune of not being able to cover
+his heterodoxy with the conventional formula. Porson suffered from the
+same cause, and from less respectable weaknesses; but it seems that
+the university had no demand for services of the great scholar, and he
+did nothing for his &pound;40 a year. Milner was occupied in managing the
+university in the interests of Pitt and Protestantism, and in waging
+war against Jacobins and intruders. There was no lack of ability; but
+there was no inducement to any intellectual activity for its own sake;
+and there were abundant temptations for any man of energy to diverge
+to the career which offered more intelligible rewards.</p>
+
+<p>The universities in fact supplied the demand which was actually
+operative. They provided the average clergyman with a degree; they
+expected the son of the country-gentleman or successful lawyer to
+acquire the traditional culture of his class, and to spend three or
+four years pleasantly, or even, if he chose, industriously. But there
+was no such thing as a learned society, interested in the cultivation
+of knowledge for its own sake, and applauding the devotion of life to
+its extension or discussion. The men of the time who contributed to
+the progress of science owed little or nothing to the universities,
+and were rather volunteers from without, impelled by their own
+idiosyncrasies. Among the scientific leaders, for example, Joseph
+Black (1728-1799) was a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+Scottish professor; Priestley (1733-1804) a
+dissenting minister; Cavendish (1731-1810) an aristocratic recluse,
+who, though he studied at Cambridge, never graduated; Watt (1736-1819)
+a practical mechanician; and Dalton (1766-1844) a Quaker schoolmaster.
+John Hunter (1728-1793) was one of the energetic Scots who forced
+their way to fame without help from English universities. The
+cultivation of the natural sciences was only beginning to take root;
+and the soil, which it found congenial, was not that of the great
+learned institutions, which held to their old traditional studies.</p>
+
+<p>I may, then, sum up the result in a few words. The church had once
+claimed to be an entirely independent body, possessing a supernatural
+authority, with an organisation sanctioned by supernatural powers, and
+entitled to lay down the doctrines which gave the final theory of
+life. Theology was the queen of the sciences and theologians the
+interpreters of the first principles of all knowledge and conduct. The
+church of England, on the other hand, at our period had entirely
+ceased to be independent: it was bound hand and foot by acts of
+parliament: there was no ecclesiastical organ capable of speaking in
+its name, altering its laws or defining its tenets: it was an
+aggregate of offices the appointment to which was in the hands either
+of the political ministers or of the lay members of the ruling class.
+It was in reality simply a part of the ruling class told off to
+perform divine services: to maintain order and respectability and the
+traditional morality. It had no distinctive philosophy or theology,
+for the articles of belief represented simply a compromise; an attempt
+to retain as much of the old as was practicable and yet to admit as
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+much of the new as was made desirable by political considerations. It
+was the boast of its more liberal members that they were not tied down
+to any definite dogmatic system; but could have a free hand so long as
+they did not wantonly come into conflict with some of the legal
+formul&aelig; laid down in a previous generation. The actual teaching showed
+the effects of the system. It had been easy to introduce a
+considerable leaven of the rationalism which suited the lay mind; to
+explain away the mysterious doctrines upon which an independent church
+had insisted as manifestations of its spiritual privileges, but which
+were regarded with indifference or contempt by the educated laity now
+become independent. The priest had been disarmed and had to suit his
+teaching to the taste of his patrons and congregations. The divines of
+the eighteenth century had, as they boasted, confuted the deists; but
+it was mainly by showing that they could be deists in all but the
+name. The dissenters, less hampered by legal formul&aelig;, had drifted
+towards Unitarianism. The position of such divines as Paley, Watson,
+and Hey was not so much that the Unitarians were wrong, as that the
+mysterious doctrines were mere sets of words, over which it was
+superfluous to quarrel. The doctrine was essentially traditional; for
+it was impossible to represent the doctrines of the church of England
+as deductions from any abstract philosophy. But the traditions were
+not regarded as having any mysterious authority. Abstract philosophy
+might lead to deism or infidelity. Paley and his like rejected such
+philosophy in the spirit of Locke or even Hume. But it was always
+possible to treat a tradition like any other statement of fact. It
+could be proved by appropriate evidence. The truth of Christianity
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+was therefore merely a question of facts like the truth of any other
+passages of history. It was easy enough to make out a case for the
+Christian miracles, and then the mysteries, after it had been
+sufficiently explained that they really meant next to nothing, could
+be rested upon the authority of the miracles. In other words, the
+accepted doctrines, like the whole constitution of the church, could
+be so modified as to suit the prejudices and modes of thought of the
+laity. The church, it may be said, was thoroughly secularised. The
+priest was no longer a wielder of threats and an interpreter of
+oracles, but an entirely respectable gentleman, who fully sympathised
+with the prejudices of his patron and practically admitted that he had
+very little to reveal, beyond explaining that his dogmas were
+perfectly harmless and eminently convenient. He preached, however, a
+sound common sense morality, and was not divided from his neighbours
+by setting up the claims characteristic of a sacerdotal caste. Whether
+he has become on the whole better or worse by subsequent changes is a
+question not to be asked here; but perhaps not quite so easily
+answered as is sometimes supposed.</p>
+
+<p>The condition of the English church and universities may be contrasted
+with that of their Scottish rivals. The Scottish church and
+universities had no great prizes to offer and no elaborate hierarchy.
+But the church was a national institution in a sense different from
+the English. The General Assembly was a powerful body, not
+overshadowed by a great political rival. To rise to be a minister was
+the great ambition of poor sons of farmers and tradesmen. They had to
+study at the universities in the intervals, perhaps, of agricultural
+labour; and if
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+the learning was slight and the scholarship below the
+English standard, the young aspirant had at least to learn to preach
+and to acquire such philosophy as would enable him to argue upon grace
+and freewill with some hard-headed Davie Deans. It was doubtless owing
+in part to these conditions that the Scottish universities produced
+many distinguished teachers throughout the century. Professors had to
+teach something which might at least pass for philosophy, though they
+were more or less restrained by the necessity of respecting orthodox
+prejudices. At the end of the century, the only schools of philosophy
+in the island were to be found in Scotland, where Reid (1710-1796) and
+Adam Smith (1723-1790) had found intelligent disciples, and where
+Dugald Stewart, of whom I shall speak presently, had become the
+recognised philosophical authority.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> At Cambridge subscription was abolished for
+undergraduates in 1775; and bachelors of arts had only to declare
+themselves '<i>bona-fide</i> members of the church of England.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Gilbert Wakefield's <i>Memoirs</i>, ii. 149.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> De Quincey, <i>Works</i> (1863), ii. 106.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Wordsworth's <i>University Life, etc.</i> (1874), 83-87.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">VII. <a name="I_VII" id="I_VII"></a>THEORY</p>
+
+<p>What theory corresponds to this practical order? It implies, in the
+first place, a constant reference to tradition. The system has grown
+up without any reference to abstract principles or symmetrical plan.
+The legal order supposes a traditional common law, as the
+ecclesiastical order a traditional creed, and the organisation is
+explicable only by historical causes. The system represents a series
+of compromises, not the elaboration of a theory. If the squire
+undertook by way of supererogation to justify his position he appealed
+to tradition and experience. He invoked the 'wisdom of our ancestors,'
+the system of 'checks and balances' which made our Constitution an
+unrivalled mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+deserving
+the 'dread and envy of the world.' The prescription for compounding
+that mixture could obviously be learned by nothing but experiment.
+Traditional means empirical. By instinct, rather than conscious
+reasoning, Englishmen had felt their way to establishing the 'palladia
+of our liberties': trial by jury, the 'Habeas Corpus' Act, and the
+substitution of a militia for a standing army. The institutions were
+cherished because they had been developed by long struggles and were
+often cherished when their real justification had disappeared. The
+Constitution had not been 'made' but had 'grown'; or, in other words,
+the one rule had been the rule of thumb. That is an excellent rule in
+its way, and very superior to an abstract rule which neglects or
+overrides experience. The 'logic of facts,' moreover, may be trusted
+to produce a certain harmony: and general principles, though not
+consciously invoked, tacitly govern the development of institutions
+worked out under uniform conditions. The simple reluctance to pay
+money without getting money's worth might generate the important
+principle that representation should go with taxation, without
+embodying any theory of a 'social contract' such as was offered by an
+afterthought to give a philosophical sanction. Englishmen, it is said,
+had bought their liberties step by step, because at each step they
+were in a position to bargain with their rulers. What they had bought
+they were determined to keep and considered to be their inalienable
+property. One result is conspicuous. In England the ruling classes did
+not so much consider their privileges to be something granted by the
+state, as the power of the state to be something derived from their
+concessions. Though
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+the lord-lieutenant and the justices of the peace
+were nominated by the crown, their authority came in fact as an almost
+spontaneous consequence of their birthright or their acquired position
+in the country. They shone by their own light and were really the
+ultimate sources of authority. Seats in parliament, preferments in the
+church, commissions in the army belonged to them like their estates;
+and they seemed to be qualified by nature, rather than by appointment,
+to act in judicial and administrative capacities. The system of
+'self-government' embodies this view. The functions of government were
+assigned to men already powerful by their social position. The absence
+of the centralised hierarchy of officials gave to Englishmen the sense
+of personal liberty which compelled the admiration of Voltaire and his
+countrymen in the eighteenth century. In England were no <i>lettres de
+cachet</i>, and no Bastille. A man could say what he thought and act
+without fear of arbitrary rule. There was no such system as that
+which, in France, puts the agents of the central power above the
+ordinary law of the land. This implies what has been called the 'rule
+of the law' in England. 'With us every official from the prime
+minister down to a constable or a collector of taxes' (as Professor
+Dicey explains the principle) 'is under the same responsibility for
+every act done without legal justification as any other citizen.'<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a>
+The early centralisation of the English monarchy had made the law
+supreme, and instead of generating a new structure had combined and
+regulated the existing social forces. The sovereign power was thus
+farmed to the aristocracy
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+instead of forming an organ of its own.
+Instead of resigning power they were forced to exercise it on
+condition of thorough responsibility to the central judiciary. Their
+privileges were not destroyed but were combined with the discharge of
+corresponding duties. Whatever their shortcomings, they were preserved
+from the decay which is the inevitable consequence of a divorce of
+duties from privileges.</p>
+
+<p>Another aspect of the case is equally clear. If the privilege is
+associated with a duty, the duty may also be regarded as a privilege.
+The doctrine seems to mark a natural stage in the evolution of the
+conception of duty to the state. The power which is left to a member
+of the ruling class is also part of his dignity. Thus we have an
+amalgamation between the conceptions of private property and public
+trust. 'In so far as the ideal of feudalism is perfectly realised,' it
+has been said,<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> 'all that we can call public law is merged in
+private law; jurisdiction is property; office is property; the
+kingship itself is property.' This feudal ideal was still preserved
+with many of the institutions descended from feudalism. The king's
+right to his throne was regarded as of the same kind as the right to a
+private estate. His rights as king were also his rights as the owner
+of the land.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> Subordinate landowners had similar rights, and as the
+royal power diminished
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+greater powers fell to the aggregate of
+constitutional kinglets who governed the country. Each of them was
+from one point of view an official, but each also regarded his office
+as part of his property. The country belonged to him and his class
+rather than he to the country. We occasionally find the quaint theory
+which deduced political rights from property in land. The freeholders
+were the owners of the soil and might give notice to quit to the rest
+of the population.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> They had therefore a natural right to carry on
+government in their own interests. The ruling classes, however, were
+not marked off from others by any deep line of demarcation; they could
+sell their own share in the government to anybody who was rich enough
+to buy it, and there was a constant influx of new blood. Moreover,
+they did in fact improve their estate with very great energy, and
+discharged roughly, but in many ways efficiently, the duties which
+were also part of their property. The nobleman or even the squire was
+more than an individual; as head of a family he was a life tenant of
+estates which he desired to transmit to his descendants. He was a
+'corporation sole' and had some of the spirit of a corporation. A
+college or a hospital is founded to discharge a particular function;
+its members continue perhaps to recognise their duty; but they resent
+any interference from outside as sacrilege or confiscation. It is for
+them alone to judge how they can best carry out, and whether they are
+actually carrying out, the aims of the corporate life. In the same way
+the great noble took his part in legislation,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+church preferment, the
+command of the army, and so forth, and fully admitted that he was
+bound in honour to play his part effectively; but he was equally
+convinced that he was subject to nothing outside of his sense of
+honour. His duties were also his rights. The na&iuml;f expression of this
+doctrine by a great borough proprietor, 'May I not do what I like with
+my own?' was to become proverbial.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
+
+<p>This, finally, suggests that a doctrine of 'individualism' is implied
+throughout. The individual rights are the antecedent and the rights of
+the state a consequent or corollary. Every man has certain sacred
+rights accruing to him in virtue of 'prescription' or tradition,
+through his inherited position in the social organism. The 'rule of
+law' secures that he shall exercise them without infringing the
+privileges of his neighbour. He may moreover be compelled by the law
+to discharge them on due occasion. But, as there is no supreme body
+which can sufficiently superintend, stimulate, promote, or dismiss,
+the active impulse must come chiefly from his own sense of the fitness
+of things. The efficiency therefore depends upon his being in such a
+position that his duty may coincide with his personal interest. The
+political machinery can only work efficiently on the assumption of a
+spontaneous activity of the ruling classes, prompted by public spirit
+or a sense of personal dignity. Meanwhile, 'individualism' in a
+different sense was represented by the forces which made for progress
+rather than order, and to them I must now turn.
+</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Professor Dicey's <i>Lectures on the Law of the
+Constitution</i> (1885), p. 178. Professor Dicey gives an admirable
+exposition of the 'rule of law.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Pollock and Maitland's <i>History of English Law</i>, i.
+208.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> A characteristic consequence is that Hale and Blackstone
+make no distinction between public and private law. Austin
+(<i>Jurisprudence</i> (1869), 773-76) applauds them for this peculiarity,
+which he regards as a proof of originality, though it would rather
+seem to be an acceptance of the traditional view. Austin, however,
+retorts the charge of <i>Verwirrung</i> upon German critics.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> This is the theory of Defoe in his <i>Original Power of
+the People of England</i> (Works by Hazlitt, vol iii. See especially p.
+57).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> The fourth duke of Newcastle in the House of Lords, 3
+Dec. 1830.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 33%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>THE INDUSTRIAL SPIRIT</h3>
+
+<p class="scs">I. <a name="II_I" id="II_I"></a>THE MANUFACTURERS</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+The history of England during the eighteenth century shows a curious
+contrast between the political stagnancy and the great industrial
+activity. The great constitutional questions seemed to be settled; and
+the statesmen, occupied mainly in sharing power and place, took a very
+shortsighted view (not for the first time in history) of the great
+problems that were beginning to present themselves. The British empire
+in the East was not won by a towering ambition so much as forced upon
+a reluctant commercial company by the necessities of its position. The
+English race became dominant in America; but the political connection
+was broken off mainly because English statesmen could only regard it
+from the shopkeeping point of view. When a new world began to arise at
+the Antipodes, our rulers saw an opportunity not for planting new
+offshoots of European civilisation, but for ridding themselves of the
+social rubbish no longer accepted in America. With purblind energy,
+and eyes doggedly fixed upon the ground at their feet, the race had
+somehow pressed forwards to illustrate the old doctrine that a man
+never goes so far as when he does
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+not know whither he is going. While
+thinking of earning an honest penny by extending the trade, our
+'monied-men' were laying the foundation of vast structures to be
+developed by their descendants.</p>
+
+<p>Politicians, again, had little to do with the great 'industrial
+revolution' which marked the last half of the century. The main facts
+are now a familiar topic of economic historians; nor need I speak of
+them in detail. Though agriculture was still the main industry, and
+the landowners almost monopolised political power, an ever growing
+proportion of the people was being collected in towns; the artisans
+were congregating in large factories; and the great cloud of
+coal-smoke, which has never dwindled, was already beginning to darken
+our skies. The change corresponds to the difference between a fully
+developed organism possessed of a central brain, with an elaborate
+nervous system, and some lower form in which the vital processes are
+still carried on by a number of separate ganglia. The concentration of
+the population in the great industrial centres implied the improvement
+of the means of commerce; new organisation of industry provided with a
+corresponding apparatus of machinery; and the systematic exploitation
+of the stored-up forces of nature. Each set of changes was at once
+cause and effect, and each was carried on separately, although in
+relation to the other. Brindley, Arkwright, and Watt may be taken as
+typical representatives of the three operations. Canals,
+spinning-jennies, and steam-engines were changing the whole social
+order.</p>
+
+<p>The development of means of communication had been slow till the last
+half of the century. The roads had
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+been little changed since they had
+been first laid down as part of the great network which bound the
+Roman empire together. Turnpike acts, sanctioning the construction of
+new roads, became numerous. Palmer's application of the stage-coaches
+to the carriage of the mails marked an epoch in 1784; and De Quincey's
+prose poem, 'The Mail-coach,' shows how the unprecedented speed of
+Palmer's coaches, then spreading the news of the first battles in the
+Peninsula, had caused them to tyrannise over the opium-eater's dreams.
+They were discharging at once a political and an industrial function.
+Meanwhile the Bridgewater canal, constructed between 1759 and 1761,
+was the first link in a great network which, by the time of the French
+revolution, connected the seaports and the great centres of industry.
+The great inventions of machinery were simultaneously enabling
+manufacturers to take advantage of the new means of communication. The
+cotton manufacture sprang up soon after 1780 with enormous rapidity.
+Aided by the application of steam (first applied to a cotton mill in
+1785) it passed the woollen trade, the traditional favourite of
+legislators, and became the most important branch of British trade.
+The iron trade had made a corresponding start. While the steam-engine,
+on which Watt had made the first great improvement in 1765, was
+transforming the manufacturing system, and preparing the advent of the
+steamship and railroad, Great Britain had become the leading
+manufacturing and commercial country in the world. The agricultural
+interest was losing its pre-eminence; and huge towns with vast
+aggregations of artisan population were beginning to spring up with
+unprecedented rapidity. The change
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+was an illustration upon a
+gigantic scale of the doctrines expounded in the <i>Wealth of Nations</i>.
+Division of labour was being applied to things more important than
+pin-making, involving a redistribution of functions not as between men
+covered by the same roof, but between whole classes of society;
+between the makers of new means of communication and the manufacturers
+of every kind of material. The whole industrial community might be
+regarded as one great organism. Yet the organisation was formed by a
+multitude of independent agencies without any concerted plan. It was
+thus a vast illustration of the doctrine that each man by pursuing his
+own interests promoted the interests of the whole, and that government
+interference was simply a hindrance. The progress of improvement, says
+Adam Smith, depends upon 'the uniform, constant, and uninterrupted
+effort of every man to better his condition,' which often succeeds in
+spite of the errors of government, as nature often overcomes the
+blunders of doctors. It is, as he infers, 'the highest impertinence
+and presumption for kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the
+economy of private people' by sumptuary laws and taxes upon
+imports.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> To the English manufacturer or engineer government
+appeared as a necessary evil. It allowed the engineer to make roads
+and canals, after a troublesome and expensive process of application.
+It granted patents to the manufacturer, but the patents were a source
+of perpetual worry and litigation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer
+might look with complacency upon the development of a new branch of
+trade; but it
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+was because he was lying in wait to come down upon it
+with a new tax or system of duties.</p>
+
+<p>The men who were the chief instruments of the process were
+'self-made'; they were the typical examples of Mr. Smiles's virtue of
+self-help; they owed nothing to government or to the universities
+which passed for the organs of national culture. The leading engineers
+began as ordinary mechanics. John Metcalf (1717-1810), otherwise
+'blind Jack of Knaresborough,' was a son of poor parents. He had lost
+his sight by smallpox at the age of six, and, in spite of his
+misfortune, became a daring rider, wrestler, soldier, and carrier, and
+made many roads in the north of England, executing surveys and
+constructing the works himself. James Brindley (1716-1772), son of a
+midland collier, barely able to read or write, working out plans by
+processes which he could not explain, and lying in bed till they took
+shape in his brain, a rough mechanic, labouring for trifling weekly
+wages, created the canals which mainly enabled Manchester and
+Liverpool to make an unprecedented leap in prosperity. The two great
+engineers, Thomas Telford (1757-1834), famous for the Caledonian canal
+and the Menai bridge; and John Rennie (1761-1821), drainer of
+Lincolnshire fens, and builder of Waterloo bridge and the Plymouth
+breakwater, rose from the ranks. Telford inherited and displayed in a
+different direction the energies of Eskdale borderers, whose
+achievements in the days of cattle-stealing were to be made famous by
+Scott: Rennie was the son of an East Lothian farmer. Both of them
+learned their trade by actual employment as mechanics. The inventors
+of machinery belonged mainly to the lower middle classes. Kay was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> a
+small manufacturer; Hargreaves a hand-loom weaver; Crompton the son of
+a small farmer; and Arkwright a country barber. Watt, son of a
+Greenock carpenter, came from the sturdy Scottish stock, ultimately of
+covenanting ancestry, from which so many eminent men have sprung.</p>
+
+<p>The new social class, in which such men were the leaders, held
+corresponding principles. They owed whatever success they won to their
+own right hands. They were sturdy workers, with eyes fixed upon
+success in life, and success generally of course measured by a money
+criterion. Many of them showed intellectual tastes, and took an
+honourable view of their social functions. Watt showed his ability in
+scientific inquiries outside of the purely industrial application;
+Josiah Wedgwood, in whose early days the Staffordshire potters had led
+a kind of gipsy life, settling down here and there to carry on their
+trade, had not only founded a great industry, but was a man of
+artistic taste, a patron of art, and a lover of science. Telford, the
+Eskdale shepherd, was a man of literary taste, and was especially
+friendly with the typical man of letters, Southey. Others, of course,
+were of a lower type. Arkwright combined the talents of an inventor
+with those of a man of business. He was a man, says Baines (the
+historian of the cotton trade), who was sure to come out of an
+enterprise with profit, whatever the result to his partners. He made a
+great fortune, and founded a county family. Others rose in the same
+direction. The Peels, for example, represented a line of yeomen. One
+Peel founded a cotton business; his son became a baronet and an
+influential member of parliament; and his grandson went to Oxford, and
+became the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+great leader of the Conservative party, although like
+Walpole, he owed his power to a kind of knowledge in which his adopted
+class were generally deficient.</p>
+
+<p>The class which owed its growing importance to the achievements of
+such men was naturally imbued with their spirit. Its growth meant the
+development of a class which under the old order had been strictly
+subordinate to the ruling class, and naturally regarded it with a
+mingled feeling of respect and jealousy. The British merchant felt his
+superiority in business to the average country-gentleman; he got no
+direct share of the pensions and sinecures which so profoundly
+affected the working of the political machinery, and yet his highest
+ambition was to rise to be himself a member of the class, and to found
+a family which might flourish in the upper atmosphere. The industrial
+classes were inclined to favour political progress within limits. They
+were dissenters because the church was essentially part of the
+aristocracy; and they were readiest to denounce the abuses from which
+they did not profit. The agitators who supported Wilkes, solid
+aldermen and rich merchants, represented the view which was popular in
+London and other great cities. They were the backbone of the Whig
+party when it began to demand a serious reform. Their radicalism,
+however, was not thoroughly democratic. Many of them aspired to become
+members of the ruling class, and a shopkeeper does not quarrel too
+thoroughly with his customers. The politics of individuals were of
+course determined by accidents. Some of them might retain the sympathy
+of the class from which they sprang, and others might adopt an even
+extreme version of the opinions of the class to which they
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+desired to
+rise. But, in any case, the divergence of interest between the
+capitalists and the labourers was already making itself felt. The
+self-made man, it is said, is generally the hardest master. He
+approves of the stringent system of competition, of which he is
+himself a product. It clearly enables the best man to win, for is he
+not himself the best man? The class which was the great seat of
+movement had naturally to meet all the prejudices which are roused by
+change. The farmers near London, as Adam Smith tells us,<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a>
+petitioned against an extension of turnpike roads, which would enable
+more distant farmers to compete in their market. But the farmers were
+not the only prejudiced persons. All the great inventors of machinery,
+Kay and Arkwright and Watt, had constantly to struggle against the old
+workmen who were displaced by their inventions. Although, therefore,
+the class might be Whiggish, it did not share the strongest
+revolutionary passions. The genuine revolutionists were rather the men
+who destroyed the manufacturer's machines, and were learning to regard
+him as a natural enemy. The manufacturer had his own reasons for
+supporting government. Our foreign policy during the century was in
+the long run chiefly determined by the interests of our trade, however
+much the trade might at times be hampered by ill-conceived
+regulations. It is remarkable that Adam Smith<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> argues that,
+although the capitalist is acuter that the country-gentleman, his
+acuteness is chiefly displayed by knowing his own interests better.
+Those interests, he thinks, do not coincide so much as the interests
+of the country-gentleman with the general interests of the country.
+Consequently the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+country-gentleman, though less intelligent, is more
+likely to favour a national and liberal policy. The merchant, in fact,
+was not a free-trader because he had read Adam Smith or consciously
+adopted Smith's principles, but because or in so far as particular
+restrictions interfered with him. Arthur Young complains bitterly of
+the manufacturers who supported the prohibition to export English
+wool, and so protected their own class at the expense of
+agriculturists. Wedgwood, though a good liberal and a supporter of
+Pitt's French treaty in 1786, joined in protesting against the
+proposal for free-trade with Ireland. The Irish, he thought, might
+rival his potteries. Thus, though as a matter of fact the growing
+class of manufacturers and merchants were inclined in the main to
+liberal principles, it was less from adhesion to any general doctrine
+than from the fact that the existing restrictions and prejudices
+generally conflicted with their plain interests.</p>
+
+<p>Another characteristic is remarkable. Though the growth of
+manufactures and commerce meant the growth of great towns, it did not
+mean the growth of municipal institutions. On the contrary, as I shall
+presently have to notice, the municipalities were sinking to their
+lowest ebb. Manufactures, in the first instance, spread along the
+streams into country districts: and to the great manufacturer, working
+for his own hand, his neighbours were competitors as much as allies.
+The great towns, however, which were growing up, showed the general
+tendencies of the class. They were centres not only of manufacturing
+but of intellectual progress. The population of Birmingham, containing
+the famous Soho works of Boulton and Watt, had increased between 1740
+and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+1780 from 24,000 to 74,000 inhabitants. Watt's partner Boulton
+started the 'Lunar Society' at Birmingham.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> Its most prominent
+member was Erasmus Darwin, famous then for poetry which is chiefly
+remembered by the parody in the <i>Anti-Jacobin</i>; and now more famous as
+the advocate of a theory of evolution eclipsed by the teaching of his
+more famous grandson, and, in any case, a man of remarkable
+intellectual power. Among those who joined in the proceedings was
+Edgeworth, who in 1768 was speculating upon moving carriages by steam,
+and Thomas Day, whose <i>Sandford and Merton</i> helped to spread in
+England the educational theories of Rousseau. Priestley, who settled
+at Birmingham in 1780, became a member, and was helped in his
+investigations by Watt's counsels and Wedgwood's pecuniary help. Among
+occasional visitors were Smeaton, Sir Joseph Banks, Solander, and
+Herschel of scientific celebrity; while the literary magnate, Dr.
+Parr, who lived between Warwick and Birmingham, occasionally joined
+the circle. Wedgwood, though too far off to be a member, was intimate
+with Darwin and associated in various enterprises with Boulton.
+Wedgwood's congenial partner, Thomas Bentley (1731-1780), had been in
+business at Manchester and at Liverpool. He had taken part in founding
+the Warrington 'Academy,' the dissenting seminary (afterwards moved to
+Manchester) of which Priestley was tutor (1761-1767), and had lectured
+upon art at the academy founded at Liverpool in 1773. Another member
+of the academy was William Roscoe (1753-1831), whose literary taste
+was shown by his lives of Lorenzo de Medici and Leo <small>X.</small>,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> and who
+distinguished himself by opposing the slave-trade, then the infamy of
+his native town. Allied with him in this movement were William
+Rathbone and James Currie (1756-1805) the biographer of Burns, a
+friend of Darwin and an intelligent physician. At Manchester Thomas
+Perceval (1740-1804) founded the 'Literary and Philosophical Society'
+in 1780. He was a pupil of the Warrington Academy, which he afterwards
+joined on removing to Manchester, and he formed the scheme afterwards
+realised by Owens College. He was an early advocate of sanitary
+measures and factory legislation, and a man of scientific reputation.
+Other members of the society were: John Ferriar (1761-1815), best
+known by his <i>Illustrations of Sterne</i>, but also a man of literary and
+scientific reputation; the great chemist, John Dalton (1766-1844), who
+contributed many papers to its transactions; and, for a short time,
+the Socialist Robert Owen, then a rising manufacturer. At Norwich,
+then important as a manufacturing centre, was a similar circle.
+William Taylor, an eminent Unitarian divine, who died at the
+Warrington Academy in 1761, had lived at Norwich. One of his daughters
+married David Martineau and became the mother of Harriet Martineau,
+who has described the Norwich of her early years. John Taylor,
+grandson of William, was father of Mrs. Austin, wife of the jurist. He
+was a man of literary tastes, and his wife was known as the Madame
+Roland of Norwich. Mrs. Opie (1765-1853) was daughter of James
+Alderson, a physician of Norwich, and passed most of her life there.
+William Taylor (1761-1836), another Norwich manufacturer, was among
+the earliest English students of German literature. Norwich had
+afterwards the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+unique distinction of being the home of a provincial
+school of artists. John Crome (1788-1821), son of a poor weaver, and
+John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) were its leaders; they formed a kind of
+provincial academy, and exhibited pictures which have been more
+appreciated since their death. At Bristol, towards the end of the
+century, were similar indications of intellectual activity. Coleridge
+and Southey found there a society ready to listen to their early
+lectures, and both admired Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808), a physician, a
+chemist, a student of German, an imitator of Darwin in poetry, and an
+assailant of Pitt in pamphlets. He had married one of Edgeworth's
+daughters. With the help and advice of Wedgwood and Watt, he founded
+the 'Pneumatic Institute' at Clifton in 1798, and obtained the help of
+Humphry Davy, who there made some of his first discoveries. Davy was
+soon transported to the Royal Institution, founded at the suggestion
+of Count Rumford in 1799, which represented the growth of a popular
+interest in the scientific discoveries.</p>
+
+<p>The general tone of these little societies represents, of course, the
+tendency of the upper stratum of the industrial classes. In their own
+eyes they naturally represented the progressive element of society.
+They were Whigs&mdash;for 'radicalism' was not yet invented&mdash;but Whigs of
+the left wing; accepting the aristocratic precedency, but looking
+askance at the aristocratic prejudices. They were rationalists, too,
+in principle, but again within limits: openly avowing the doctrines
+which in the Established church had still to be sheltered by
+ostensible conformity to the traditional dogmas. Many of them
+professed the Unitarianism to which the old
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+dissenting bodies
+inclined. 'Unitarianism,' said shrewd old Erasmus Darwin, 'is a
+feather-bed for a dying Christian.' But at present such men as
+Priestley and Price were only so far on the road to a thorough
+rationalism as to denounce the corruptions of Christianity, as they
+denounced abuses in politics, without anticipating a revolutionary
+change in church and state. Priestley, for example, combined
+'materialism' and 'determinism' with Christianity and a belief in
+miracles, and controverted Horsley upon one side and Paine on the
+other.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <i>Wealth of Nations</i>, bk. ii. ch. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <i>Wealth of Nations</i>, bk. i. ch. xi. &sect; 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> bk. i. ch. xi. conclusion.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Smiles's <i>Watt and Boulton</i>, p. 292.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">II. <a name="II_II" id="II_II"></a>THE AGRICULTURISTS</p>
+
+<p>The general spirit represented by such movements was by no means
+confined to the commercial or manufacturing classes; and its most
+characteristic embodiment is to be found in the writings of a leading
+agriculturist.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur Young,<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> born in 1741, was the son of a clergyman, who had
+also a small ancestral property at Bradfield, near Bury St. Edmunds.
+Accidents led to his becoming a farmer at an early age. He showed more
+zeal than discretion, and after trying three thousand experiments on
+his farm, he was glad to pay &pound;100 to another tenant to take his farm
+off his hands. This experience as a practical agriculturist, far from
+discouraging him, qualified him in his own opinion to speak with
+authority,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+and he became a devoted missionary of the gospel of
+agricultural improvement. The enthusiasm with which he admired more
+successful labourers in the cause, and the indignation with which he
+regards the sluggish and retrograde, are charming. His kindliness, his
+keen interest in the prosperity of all men, rich or poor, his ardent
+belief in progress, combined with his quickness of observation, give a
+charm to the writings which embody his experience. Tours in England
+and a temporary land-agency in Ireland supplied him with materials for
+books which made him known both in England and on the Continent. In
+1779 he returned to Bradfield, where he soon afterwards came into
+possession of his paternal estate, which became his permanent home. In
+1784 he tried to extend his propaganda by bringing out the <i>Annals of
+Agriculture</i>&mdash;a monthly publication, of which forty-five half-yearly
+volumes appeared. He had many able contributors and himself wrote many
+interesting articles, but the pecuniary results were mainly negative.
+In 1791 his circulation was only 350 copies.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> Meanwhile his
+acquaintance with the duc de Liancourt led to tours in France from
+1788 to 1790. His <i>Travels in France</i>, first published in 1792, has
+become a classic. In 1793 Young was made secretary to the Board of
+Agriculture, of which I shall speak presently. He became known in
+London society as well as in agricultural circles. He was a handsome
+and attractive man, a charming companion, and widely recognised as an
+agricultural authority. The empress of Russia sent him a snuff-box;
+'Farmer George' presented a merino ram; he was elected member of
+learned societies; he visited
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+Burke at Beaconsfield, Pitt at
+Holmwood, and was a friend of Wilberforce and of Jeremy Bentham.</p>
+
+<p>Young had many domestic troubles. His marriage was not congenial; the
+loss of a tenderly loved daughter in 1797 permanently saddened him; he
+became blind, and in his later years sought comfort in religious
+meditation and in preaching to his poorer neighbours. He died 20th
+April 1820. He left behind him a gigantic history of agriculture,
+filling ten folio volumes of manuscript, which, though reduced to six
+by an enthusiastic disciple after his death, have never found their
+way to publication.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Travels in France</i>, Young's best book, owes one merit to the
+advice of a judicious friend, who remarked that the previous tours had
+suffered from the absence of the personal details which interest the
+common reader. The insertion of these makes Young's account of his
+French tours one of the most charming as well as most instructive
+books of the kind. It gives the vivid impression made upon a keen and
+kindly observer in all their freshness. He sensibly retained the
+expressions of opinion made at the time. 'I may remark at present,' he
+says,<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> 'that although I was totally mistaken in my prediction, yet,
+on a revision, I think I was right in it.' It was right, he means,
+upon the data then known to him, and he leaves the unfulfilled
+prediction as it was. The book is frequently cited in justification of
+the revolution, and it may be fairly urged that his authority is of
+the more weight, because he does not start from any sympathy with
+revolutionary principles. Young was in Paris when the oath was taken
+at the tennis-court; and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+makes his reflections upon the beauty of the
+British Constitution, and the folly of visionary reforms, in a spirit
+which might have satisfied Burke. He was therefore not altogether
+inconsistent when, after the outrages, he condemned the revolution,
+however much the facts which he describes may tend to explain the
+inevitableness of the catastrophe. At any rate, his views are worth
+notice by the indications which they give of the mental attitude of a
+typical English observer.</p>
+
+<p>Young in his vivacious way struck out some of the phrases which became
+proverbial with later economists. 'Give a man the secure possession of
+a bleak rock and he will turn it into a garden. Give him a nine years'
+lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert.'<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> 'The
+magic of <small>PROPERTY</small> turns sand to gold.'<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> He is delighted with the
+comfort of the small proprietors near Pau, which reminds him of
+English districts still inhabited by small yeomen.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> Passing to a
+less fortunate region, he explains that the prince de Soubise has a
+vast property there. The property of a grand 'seigneur' is sure to be
+a desert.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> The signs which indicate such properties are 'wastes,
+<i>landes</i>, deserts, fern, ling.' The neighbourhood of the great
+residences is well peopled&mdash;'with deer, wild boars, and wolves,' 'Oh,'
+he exclaims, 'if I was the legislator of France for a day, I would
+make such great lords skip again!' 'Why,' he asked, 'were the people
+miserable in lower Savoy?' '<i>Because</i>', was the reply, '<i>there are
+seigneurs everywhere</i>'.<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> Misery in Brittany was due 'to the
+execrable maxims of despotism
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+or the equally detestable prejudices of
+a feudal nobility.'<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> There was nothing, he said, in the province
+but 'privileges and poverty,'<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> privileges of the nobles and poverty
+of the peasants.</p>
+
+<p>Young was profoundly convinced, moreover, that, as he says more than
+once<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> 'everything in this world depends on government.' He is
+astonished at the stupidity and ignorance of the provincial
+population, and ascribes it to the lethargy produced by despotism.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a>
+He contrasts it with 'the energetic and rapid circulation of wealth,
+animation, and intelligence of England,' where 'blacksmiths and
+carpenters' would discuss every political event. And yet he heartily
+admires some of the results of a centralised monarchy. He compares the
+miserable roads in Catalonia on the Spanish side of the frontier with
+the magnificent causeways and bridges on the French side. The
+difference is due to the 'one all-powerful cause that instigates
+mankind ... government.'<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> He admires the noble public works, the
+canal of Languedoc, the harbours at Cherbourg and Havre, and the
+<i>&eacute;cole v&eacute;t&eacute;rinaire</i> where agriculture is taught upon scientific
+principles. He is struck by the curious contrast between France and
+England. In France the splendid roads are used by few travellers, and
+the inns are filthy pothouses; in England there are detestable roads,
+but a comparatively enormous traffic. When he wished to make the great
+nobles 'skip' he does not generally mean confiscation. He sees indeed
+one place where in 1790 the poor had seized a piece of waste land,
+declaring that the poor were the nation, and that the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+waste belonged
+to the nation. He declares<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> that he considers their action 'wise,
+rational, and philosophical,' and wishes that there were a law to make
+such conduct legal in England. But his more general desire is that the
+landowners should be compelled to do their duty. He complains that the
+nobles live in 'wretched holes' in the country in order to save the
+means of expenditure upon theatres, entertainments, and gambling in
+the towns.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> 'Banishment alone will force the French nobility to do
+what the English do for pleasure&mdash;to reside upon and adorn their
+estates.'<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> He explains to a French friend that English agriculture
+has flourished 'in spite of the teeth of our ministers'; we have had
+many Colberts, but not one Sully<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a>; and we should have done much
+better, he thinks, had agriculture received the same attention as
+commerce. This is the reverse of Adam Smith's remark upon the superior
+liberality of the English country-gentleman, who did not, like the
+manufacturers, invoke protection and interference. In truth, Young
+desired both advantages, the vigour of a centralised government and
+the energy of an independent aristocracy. His absence of any general
+theory enables him to do justice in detail at the cost of consistency
+in general theory. In France, as he saw, the nobility had become in
+the main an encumbrance, a mere dead weight upon the energies of the
+agriculturist. But he did not infer that large properties in land were
+bad in themselves; for in England he saw that the landowners were the
+really energetic and improving class. He naturally looked at the
+problem from the point of view of an
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+intelligent land-agent. He is
+full of benevolent wishes for the labourer, and sympathises with the
+attempt to stimulate their industry and improve their dwellings, and
+denounces oppression whether in France or Ireland with the heartiest
+goodwill. But it is characteristic of the position that such a man&mdash;an
+enthusiastic advocate of industrial progress&mdash;was a hearty admirer of
+the English landowner. He sets out upon his first tour, announcing
+that he does not write for farmers, of whom not one in five thousand
+reads anything, but for the country-gentlemen, who are the great
+improvers. Tull, who introduced turnips; Weston, who introduced
+clover; Lord Townshend and Allen, who introduced 'marling' in Norfolk,
+were all country-gentlemen, and it is from them that he expects
+improvement. He travels everywhere, delighting in their new houses and
+parks, their picture galleries, and their gardens laid out by Kent or
+'Capability Brown'; he admires scenery, climbs Skiddaw, and is
+rapturous over views of the Alps and Pyrenees; but he is thrown into a
+rage by the sight of wastes, wherever improvement is possible. What
+delights him is an estate with a fine country-house of Palladian
+architecture ('Gothic' is with him still a term of abuse),<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> with
+grounds well laid out and a good home-farm, where experiments are
+being tried, and surrounded by an estate in which the farm-buildings
+show the effects of the landlord's good example and judicious
+treatment of his tenantry. There was no want of such examples. He
+admires the marquis of Rockingham, at once the most honourable of
+statesmen and most judicious of improvers. He sings the praises of the
+duke of Portland, the earl of Darlington,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+and the duke of
+Northumberland. An incautious announcement of the death of the duke of
+Grafton, remembered chiefly as one of the victims of Junius, but known
+to Young for his careful experiments in sheep-breeding, produced a
+burst of tears, which, as he believed, cost him his eyesight. His
+friend, the fifth duke of Bedford (died 1802), was one of the greatest
+improvers for the South, and was succeeded by another friend, the
+famous Coke of Holkham, afterwards earl of Leicester, who is said to
+have spent half a million upon the improvement of his property. Young
+appeals to the class in which such men were leaders, and urges them,
+not against their wishes, we may suppose, and, no doubt, with much
+good sense, to take to their task in the true spirit of business.
+Nothing, he declares, is more out of place than the boast of some
+great landowners that they never raise their rents.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> High rents
+produce industry. The man who doubles his rents benefits the country
+more than he benefits himself. Even in Ireland,<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> a rise of rents is
+one great cause of improvement, though the rent should not be
+excessive, and the system of middlemen is altogether detestable. One
+odd suggestion is characteristic.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> He hears that wages are higher
+in London than elsewhere. Now, he says, in a trading country low wages
+are essential. He wonders, therefore, that the legislature does not
+limit the growth of London.</p>
+
+<p>This, we may guess, is one of the petulant utterances of early years
+which he would have disavowed or qualified upon maturer reflection.
+But Young is essentially
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+an apostle of the 'glorious spirit of
+improvement,'<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> which has converted Norfolk sheep-walks into arable
+fields, and was spreading throughout the country and even into
+Ireland. His hero is the energetic landowner, who makes two blades of
+grass grow where one grew before; who introduces new breeds of cattle
+and new courses of husbandry. He is so far in sympathy with the
+<i>Wealth of Nations</i>, although he says of that book that, while he
+knows of 'no abler work,' he knows of none 'fuller of poisonous
+errors.'<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> Young, that is, sympathised with the doctrine of the
+physiocrats that agriculture was the one source of real wealth, and
+took Smith to be too much on the side of commerce. Young, however, was
+as enthusiastic a free-trader as Smith. He naturally denounces the
+selfishness of the manufacturers who, in 1788, objected to the free
+export of English wool,<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> but he also assails monopoly in general.
+The whole system, he says (on occasion of Pitt's French treaty), is
+rotten to the core. The 'vital spring and animating soul of commerce
+is <small>LIBERTY</small>.'<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> Though he talks of the balance of trade, he argues in
+the spirit of Smith or Cobden that we are benefited by the wealth of
+our customers. If we have to import more silk, we shall export more
+cloth. Young, indeed, was everything but a believer in any dogmatic or
+consistent system of Political Economy, or, as he still calls it,
+Political Arithmetic. His opinions were not of the kind which can be
+bound to any rigid formul&aelig;. After investigating the restrictions of
+rent and wages in different districts, he quietly accepts the
+conclusion that the difference is due to accident.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> He
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+has as yet
+no fear of Malthus before his eyes. He is roused to indignation by the
+pessimist theory then common, that population was decaying.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a>
+Everywhere he sees signs of progress; buildings, plantations, woods,
+and canals. Employment, he says, creates population, stimulates
+industry, and attracts labour from backward districts. The increase of
+numbers is an unqualified benefit. He has no dread of excess. In
+Ireland, he observes, no one is fool enough to deny that population is
+increasing, though people deny it in England, 'even in the most
+productive period of her industry and wealth.'<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> One cause of this
+blessing is the absence or the poor-law. The English poor-law is
+detestable to him for a reason which contrasts significantly with the
+later opinion. The laws were made 'in the very spirit of
+depopulation'; they are 'monuments of barbarity and mischief'; for
+they give to every parish an interest in keeping down the population.
+This tendency was in the eyes of the later economist a redeeming
+feature in the old system; though it had been then so modified as to
+stimulate what they took to be the curse, as Young held it to be the
+blessing, of a rapid increase of population.</p>
+
+<p>With such views Young was a keen advocate of the process of enclosure
+which was going on with increasing rapidity. He found a colleague, who
+may be briefly noticed as a remarkable representative of the same
+movement. Sir John Sinclair (1754-1835)<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> was heir to an estate of
+sixty thousand acres in Caithness which produced only &pound;2300 a year,
+subject to many encumbrances.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+The region was still in a primitive
+state. There were no roads: agriculture was of the crudest kind; part
+of the rent was still paid in feudal services; the natives were too
+ignorant or lazy to fish, and there were no harbours. Trees were
+scarce enough to justify Johnson, and a list of all the trees in the
+country included currant-bushes.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> Sinclair was a pupil of the poet
+Logan: studied under Blair at Edinburgh and Millar at Glasgow; became
+known to Adam Smith, and, after a short time at Oxford, was called to
+the English bar. Sinclair was a man of enormous energy, though not of
+vivacious intellect. He belonged to the prosaic breed, which created
+the 'dismal science,' and seems to have been regarded as a stupendous
+bore. Bores, however, represent a social force not to be despised, and
+Sinclair was no exception.</p>
+
+<p>His father died when he was sixteen. When twenty years old he
+collected his tenants, and in one night made a road across a hill
+which had been pronounced impracticable. He was an enthusiastic
+admirer of Gaelic traditions; defended the authenticity of Ossian;
+supported Highland games, and brought Italian travellers to listen to
+the music of the bagpipes. When he presented himself to his tenants in
+the Highland costume, on the withdrawal of its prohibition, they
+expected him to lead them in a foray upon the lowlands in the name of
+Charles Edward. He afterwards raised a regiment of 'fencibles' which
+served in Ireland in 1798, and, when disbanded, sent a large
+contingent to the Egyptian expedition. But he rendered more peaceful
+services to his country. He formed new farms; he enclosed several
+thousand acres; as head
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+of the 'British Wool Society,' he introduced
+the Cheviots or 'long sheep' to the North&mdash;an improvement which is
+said to have doubled the rents of many estates; he introduced
+agricultural shows; he persuaded government in 1801 to devote the
+proceeds of the confiscated estates of Jacobites to the improvement of
+Scottish communications; he helped to introduce fisheries and even
+manufactures; and was a main agent in the change which made Caithness
+one of the most rapidly improving parts of the country. His son
+assures us that he took every means to obviate the incidental evils
+which have been the pretexts of denunciators of similar improvements.
+Sinclair gained a certain reputation by a <i>History of the Revenue</i>
+(1785-90), and, like Malthus, travelled on the Continent to improve
+his knowledge. His first book finished, he began the great statistical
+work by which he is best remembered. He is said to have introduced
+into English the name of 'statistics,' for the researches of which all
+economical writers were beginning to feel the necessity. He certainly
+did much to introduce the reality. Sinclair circulated a number of
+queries (upon 'natural history,' 'population,' 'productions,' and
+'miscellaneous' informations) to every parish minister in Scotland. He
+surmounted various jealousies naturally excited, and the ultimate
+result was the <i>Statistical Account of Scotland</i>, which appeared in
+twenty-one volumes between 1791 and 1799.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> It gives an account of
+every parish in Scotland, and was of great value as supplying a basis
+for all social investigations. Sinclair bore the expense, and gave the
+profits to the 'Sons of the Clergy.
+'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+In 1793 Sinclair, who had been
+in parliament since 1780, made himself useful to Pitt in connection
+with the issue of exchequer bills to meet the commercial crisis. He
+begged in return for the foundation of a Board of Agriculture. He
+became the president and Arthur Young the secretary;<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> and the board
+represented their common aspirations. It was a rather anomalous body,
+something between a government office and such an institution as the
+Royal Society; and was supported by an annual grant of &pound;3000. The
+first aim of the board was to produce a statistical account of England
+on the plan of the Scottish account. The English clergy, however, were
+suspicious; they thought, it seems, that the collection of statistics
+meant an attack upon tithes; and Young's frequent denunciation of
+tithes as discouraging agricultural improvement suggests some excuse
+for the belief. The plan had to be dropped; a less thoroughgoing
+description of the counties was substituted; and a good many 'Views'
+of the agriculture of different counties were published in 1794 and
+succeeding years. The board did its best to be active with narrow
+means. It circulated information, distributed medals, and brought
+agricultural improvers together. It encouraged the publication of
+Erasmus Darwin's <i>Phytologia</i> (1799), and procured a series of
+lectures from Humphry Davy, afterwards published as <i>Elements of
+Agricultural Chemistry</i> (1813). Sinclair also claims to have
+encouraged Macadam (1756-1836), the road-maker, and Meikle, the
+inventor of the thrashing-machine.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+One great aim of the board was to
+promote enclosures. Young observes in the introductory paper to the
+<i>Annals</i> that within forty years nine hundred bills had been passed
+affecting about a million acres. This included wastes, but the greater
+part was already cultivated under the 'constraint and imperfection of
+the open field system,' a relic of the 'barbarity of our ancestors.'
+Enclosures involved procuring acts of parliament&mdash;a consequent
+expenditure, as Young estimates, of some &pound;2000 in each case;<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> and
+as they were generally obtained by the great landowners, there was a
+frequent neglect of the rights of the poor and of the smaller holders.
+The remedy proposed was a general enclosure act; and such an act
+passed the House of Commons in 1798, but was thrown out by the Lords.
+An act was not obtained till after the Reform Bill. Sinclair, however,
+obtained some modification of the procedure; which, it is said,
+facilitated the passage of private bills. They became more numerous in
+later years, though other causes obviously co-operated. Meanwhile, it
+is characteristic that Sinclair and Young regarded wastes as a
+backwoodsman regarded a forest. The incidental injury to poor
+commoners was not unnoticed, and became one of the topics of Cobbett's
+eloquence. But to the ardent agriculturist the existence of a bit of
+waste land was a simple proof of barbarism. Sinclair's favourite
+toast, we are told, was 'May commons become uncommon'&mdash;his one attempt
+at a joke. He prayed that Epping Forest and Finchley Common might pass
+under the yoke as well as our foreign enemies. Young is driven out of
+all patience by the sight of 'fern, ling, and other trumpery'
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+usurping the place of possible arable fields.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> He groans in spirit
+upon Salisbury Plain, which might be made to produce all the corn we
+import.<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> Enfield Chase, he declares, is a 'real nuisance to the
+public.'<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> We may be glad that the zeal for enclosure was not
+successful in all its aims; but this view of philanthropic and
+energetic improvers is characteristic.</p>
+
+<p>It is said<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> that Young and Sinclair ruined the Board of Agriculture
+by making it a kind of political debating club. It died in 1822.
+Sinclair obtained an appointment in Scotland, and continued to labour
+unremittingly. He carried on a correspondence with all manner of
+people, including Washington, Eldon, Catholic bishops in Ireland,
+financiers and agriculturists on the Continent, and the most active
+economists in England. He suggested a subject for a poem to Scott.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a>
+He wrote pamphlets about cash-payments, Catholic Emancipation, and the
+Reform Bill, always disagreeing with all parties. He projected four
+codes which were to summarise all human knowledge upon health,
+agriculture, political economy, and religion. <i>The Code of Health</i> (4
+vols., 1807) went through six editions; <i>The Code of Agriculture</i>
+appeared in 1829; but the world has not been enriched by the others.
+He died at Edinburgh on the 21st September 1835.</p>
+
+<p>I have dwelt so far upon Young because he is the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
+best representative
+of that 'glorious spirit of improvement' which was transforming the
+whole social structure. Young's view of the French revolution
+indicates one marked characteristic of that spirit. He denounces the
+French seigneur because he is lethargic. He admires the English
+nobleman because he is energetic. The French noble may even deserve
+confiscation; but he has not the slightest intention of applying the
+same remedy in England, where squires and noblemen are the very source
+of all improvement. He holds that government is everything, and
+admires the great works of the French despotism: and yet he is a
+thorough admirer of the liberties enjoyed under the British
+Constitution, the essential nature of which makes similar works
+impossible. I need not ask whether Young's logic could be justified;
+though it would obviously require for justification a thoroughly
+'empirical' view, or, in other words, the admission that different
+circumstances may require totally different institutions. The view,
+however, which was congenial to the prevalent spirit of improvement
+must be noted.</p>
+
+<p>It might be stated as a paradox that, whereas in France the most
+palpable evils arose from the excessive power of the central
+government, and in England the most palpable evils arose from the
+feebleness of the central government, the French reformers demanded
+more government and the English reformers demanded less government.
+'Everything for the people, nothing by the people,' was, as Mr. Morley
+remarks,<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> the maxim of the French
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+economists. The solution seems
+to be easy. In France, reformers such as Turgot and the economists
+were in favour of an enlightened despotism, because the state meant a
+centralised power which might be turned against the aristocracy. Once
+'enlightened' it would suppress the exclusive privileges of a class
+which, doing nothing in return, had become a mere burthen or dead
+weight encumbering all social development. But in England the
+privileged class was identical with the governing class. The political
+liberty of which Englishmen were rightfully proud, the 'rule of law'
+which made every official responsible to the ordinary course of
+justice, and the actual discharge of their duties by the governing
+order, saved it from being the objects of a jealous class hatred.
+While in France government was staggering under an ever-accumulating
+resentment against the aristocracy, the contemporary position in
+England was, on the whole, one of political apathy. The country,
+though it had lost its colonies, was making unprecedented progress in
+wealth; commerce, manufactures, and agriculture were being developed
+by the energy of individuals; and Pitt was beginning to apply Adam
+Smith's principles to finance. The cry for parliamentary reform died
+out: neither Whigs nor Tories really cared for it; and the 'glorious
+spirit of improvement' showed itself in an energy which had little
+political application. The nobility was not an incubus suppressing
+individual energy and confronted by the state, but was itself the
+state; and its individual members were often leaders in industrial
+improvement. Discontent, therefore, took in the main a different form.
+Some government was, of course, necessary, and the existing system was
+too much in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+harmony, even in its defects, with the social order to
+provoke any distinct revolutionary sentiment. Englishmen were not only
+satisfied with their main institutions, but regarded them with
+exaggerated complacency. But, though there was no organic disorder,
+there were plenty of abuses to be remedied. The ruling class, it
+seemed, did its duties in the main, but took unconscionable
+perquisites in return. If it 'farmed' them, it was right that it
+should have a beneficial interest in the concern; but that interest
+might be excessive. In many directions abuses were growing up which
+required remedy, though not a subversion of the system under which
+they had been generated. It was not desired&mdash;unless by a very few
+theorists&mdash;to make any sweeping redistribution of power; but it was
+eminently desirable to find some means of better regulating many evil
+practices. The attack upon such practices might ultimately
+suggest&mdash;as, in fact, it did suggest&mdash;the necessity of far more
+thoroughgoing reforms. For the present, however, the characteristic
+mark of English reformers was this limitation of their schemes, and a
+mark which is especially evident in Bentham and his followers. I will
+speak, therefore, of the many questions which were arising, partly for
+these reasons and partly because the Utilitarian theory was in great
+part moulded by the particular problems which they had to argue.
+</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> Young's <i>Travels in France</i> was republished in 1892,
+with a preface and short life by Miss Betham Edwards. She has since
+(1898) published his autobiography. See also the autobiographical
+sketch in the <i>Annals of Agriculture</i>, xv. 152-97. Young's <i>Farmer's
+Letters</i> first appeared in 1767; his <i>Tours</i> in the Southern,
+Northern, and Eastern Counties in 1768, 1770, and 1771; his <i>Tour in
+Ireland</i> in 1780; and his <i>Travels in France</i> in 1792. A useful
+bibliography, containing a list of his many publications, is appended
+to the edition of the <i>Tour in Ireland</i> edited by Mr. A. W. Hutton in
+1892.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>Annals</i>, xv. 166.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>Travels in France</i> (1892), p. 184 <i>n.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>Travels in France</i>, p. 54.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 109.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 61.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 70.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 279.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> <i>Travels in France</i>, p. 125.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 131.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> pp. 198, 298.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> pp. 55, 193, 199, 237.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 43.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> <i>Travels in France</i>, pp. 291-92.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 132.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 66.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 131.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> e.g. <i>Southern Tour</i>, p. 103; <i>Northern Tour</i>, p. 180
+(York Cathedral).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> <i>Northern Tour</i>, iv. 344, 377.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> <i>Irish Tour</i>, ii. 114.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> <i>Southern Tour</i>, p. 326.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> <i>Southern Tour</i>, p. 22.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> <i>Annals</i>, i. 380.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> vol, x.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> iv. 17.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> <i>Southern Tour</i>, p. 262; <i>Northern Tour</i>, ii. 412.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> <i>Northern Tour</i>, iv. 410, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> <i>Irish Tour</i>, ii. 118-19.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> <i>Memoirs of Sir John Sinclair</i>, by his son. 2 vols.,
+1837.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> <i>Memoirs</i>, i. 338.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> <i>A New Statistical Account</i>, replacing this, appeared in
+twenty-four volumes from 1834 to 1844.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> He was president for the first five years, and again,
+from 1806 till 1813. For an account of this, see Sir Ernest Clarke's
+<i>History of the Board of Agriculture</i>, 1898.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> <i>Northern Tour</i>, i. 222-32.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> <i>Northern Tour</i>, ii. 186.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> <i>Southern Tour</i>, p. 20.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> <i>Northern Tour</i>, iii. 365.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> Arthur Young had a low opinion of Sinclair, whom he took
+to be a pushing and consequential busybody, more anxious to make a
+noise than to be useful. See Young's <i>Autobiography</i> (1898), pp. 243,
+315, 437. Sir Ernest Clarke points out the injury done by Sinclair's
+hasty and blundering extravagance; but also shows that the board did
+great service in stimulating agricultural improvement.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> Scott's <i>Letters</i>, i. 202.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> Essay on 'Turgot.' See, in Daire's Collection of the
+<i>&Eacute;conomistes</i>, the arguments of Quesnay (p. 81), Dupont de Nemours (p.
+360), and Mercier de la Rivi&egrave;re in favour of a legal (as distinguished
+from an 'arbitrary') despotism.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 33%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>SOCIAL PROBLEMS</h3>
+
+<p class="scs">I. <a name="III_I" id="III_I"></a>PAUPERISM</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+Perhaps the gravest of all the problems which were to occupy the
+coming generation was the problem of pauperism. The view taken by the
+Utilitarians was highly characteristic and important. I will try to
+indicate the general position of intelligent observers at the end of
+the century by referring to the remarkable book of Sir Frederick
+Morton Eden. Its purport is explained by the title: 'The State of the
+Poor; or, an History of the Labouring Classes of England from the
+Norman Conquest to the present period; in which are particularly
+considered their domestic economy, with respect to diet, dress, fuel,
+and habitation; and the various plans which have from time to time
+been proposed and adopted for the relief of the poor' (3 vols. 4to,
+1797). Eden<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> (1766-1809) was a man of good family and nephew of the
+first Lord Auckland, who negotiated Pitt's commercial treaty. He
+graduated as B.A. from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1787; married in
+1792, and at his death (14th Nov. 1809) was chairman of the Globe
+Insurance Company. He wrote
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+various pamphlets upon economical topics;
+contributed letters signed 'Philanglus' to Cobbett's <i>Porcupine</i>, the
+anti-jacobin paper of the day; and is described by Bentham<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> as a
+'declared disciple' and a 'highly valued friend.' He may be reckoned,
+therefore, as a Utilitarian, though politically he was a Conservative.
+He seems to have been a man of literary tastes as well as a man of
+business, and his book is a clear and able statement of the points at
+issue.</p>
+
+<p>Eden's attention had been drawn to the subject by the distress which
+followed the outbreak of the revolutionary war. He employed an agent
+who travelled through the country for a year with a set of queries
+drawn up after the model of those prepared by Sinclair for his
+<i>Statistical Account of Scotland</i>. He thus anticipated the remarkable
+investigation made in our own time by Mr. Charles Booth. Eden made
+personal inquiries and studied the literature of the subject. He had a
+precursor in Richard Burn (1709-1785), whose <i>History of the
+Poor-laws</i> appeared in 1764, and a competitor in John Ruggles, whose
+<i>History of the Poor</i> first appeared in Arthur Young's <i>Annals</i>, and
+was published as a book in 1793 (second edition, 1797). Eden's work
+eclipsed Ruggles's. It has a permanent value as a collection of facts;
+and was a sign of the growing sense of the importance of accurate
+statistical research. The historian of the social condition of the
+people should be grateful to one who broke ground at a time when the
+difficulty of obtaining a sound base for social inquiries began to
+make itself generally felt. The value of the book for historical
+purposes lies beyond my sphere. His first volume, I may say, gives a
+history of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+legislation from the earliest period; and contains also a
+valuable account of the voluminous literature which had grown up
+during the two preceding centuries. The other two summarise the
+reports which he had received. I will only say enough to indicate
+certain critical points. Eden's book unfortunately was to mark, not a
+solution of the difficulty but, the emergence of a series of problems
+which were to increase in complexity and ominous significance through
+the next generation.</p>
+
+<p>The general history of the poor-law is sufficiently familiar.<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> The
+medi&aelig;val statutes take us to a period at which the labourer was still
+regarded as a serf; and a man who had left his village was treated
+like a fugitive slave. A long series of statutes regulated the
+treatment of the 'vagabond.' The vagabond, however, had become
+differentiated from the pauper. The decay of the ancient order of
+society and its corresponding institutions had led to a new set of
+problems; and the famous statute of Elizabeth (1601) had laid down the
+main lines of the system which is still in operation.</p>
+
+<p>When the labourer was regarded as in a servile condition, he might be
+supported from the motives which lead an owner to support his slaves,
+or by the charitable energies organised by ecclesiastical
+institutions. He had now ceased to be a serf, and the institutions
+which helped the poor man or maintained the beggar were wrecked. The
+Elizabethan statute gave him, therefore, a legal claim to be
+supported, and, on the other hand, directed that he should be made to
+work for his living. The assumption is still that every man is a
+member of a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+little social circle. He belongs to his parish, and it is
+his fellow-parishioners who are bound to support him. So long as this
+corresponded to facts, the system could work satisfactorily. With the
+spread of commerce, and the growth of a less settled population,
+difficulties necessarily arose. The pauper and the vagabond represent
+a kind of social extravasation; the 'masterless man' who has strayed
+from his legitimate place or has become a superfluity in his own
+circle. The vagabond could be flogged, sent to prison, or if necessary
+hanged, but it was more difficult to settle what to do with a man who
+was not a criminal, but simply a product in excess of demand. All
+manner of solutions had been suggested by philanthropists and partly
+adopted by the legislature. One point which especially concerns us is
+the awkwardness or absence of an appropriate administrative machinery.</p>
+
+<p>The parish, the unit on which the pauper had claims, meant the persons
+upon whom the poor-rate was assessed. These were mainly farmers and
+small tradesmen who formed the rather vague body called the vestry.
+'Overseers' were appointed by the ratepayers themselves; they were not
+paid, and the disagreeable office was taken in turn for short periods.
+The most obvious motive with the average ratepayer was of course to
+keep down the rates and to get the burthen of the poor as much as
+possible out of his own parish. Each parish had at least an interest
+in economy. But the economical interest also produced flagrant evils.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, there was the war between parishes. The law of
+settlement&mdash;which was to decide to what parish a pauper
+belonged&mdash;originated in an act of 1662.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+Eden observes that the short
+clause in this short act had brought more profit to the lawyers than
+'any other point in the English jurisprudence.'<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> It is said that
+the expense of such a litigation before the act of 1834 averaged from
+&pound;300,000 to &pound;350,000 a year.<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> Each parish naturally endeavoured to
+shift the burthen upon its neighbours; and was protected by laws which
+enabled it to resist the immigration of labourers or actually to expel
+them when likely to become chargeable. This law is denounced by Adam
+Smith<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> as a 'violation of natural liberty and justice.' It was
+often harder, he declared, for a poor man to cross the artificial
+boundaries of his parish than to cross a mountain ridge or an arm of
+the sea. There was, he declared, hardly a poor man in England over
+forty who had not been at some time 'cruelly oppressed' by the working
+of this law. Eden thinks that Smith had exaggerated the evil: but a
+law which operated by preventing a free circulation of labour, and
+made it hard for a poor man to seek the best price for his only
+saleable commodity, was, so far, opposed to the fundamental principles
+common to Smith and Eden. The law, too, might be used oppressively by
+the niggardly and narrow-minded. The overseer, as Burn complained,<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a>
+was often a petty tyrant: his aim was to depopulate his parish; to
+prevent the poor from obtaining a settlement; to make the workhouse a
+terror by placing it under the management of a bully; and by all
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+kinds of chicanery to keep down the rates at whatever cost to the
+comfort and morality of the poor. This explains the view taken by
+Arthur Young, and generally accepted at the period, that the poor-law
+meant depopulation. Workhouses had been started in the seventeenth
+century<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> with the amiable intention of providing the industrious
+poor with work. Children might be trained to industry and the pauper
+might be made self-supporting. Workhouses were expected that is, to
+provide not only work but wages. Defoe, in his <i>Giving Alms no
+Charity</i>, pointed out the obvious objections to the workhouse
+considered as an institution capable of competing with the ordinary
+industries. Workhouses, in fact, soon ceased to be profitable. Their
+value, however, in supplying a test for destitution was recognised;
+and by an act of 1722, parishes were allowed to set up workhouses,
+separately or in combination, and to strike off the lists of the poor
+those who refused to enter them. This was the germ of the later
+'workhouse test.'<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> When grievances arose, the invariable plan, as
+Nicholls observes,<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> was to increase the power of the justices.
+Their discretion was regarded 'as a certain cure for every shortcoming
+of the law and every evil arising out of it.' The great report of 1834
+traces this tendency<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> to a clause in an act passed in the reign of
+William <small>III.</small>, which was intended to allow the justices to check the
+extravagance of parish officers. They were empowered to strike off
+persons improperly relieved. This incidental regulation, widened by
+subsequent interpretations,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+allowed the magistrates to order relief,
+and thereby introduced an incredible amount of demoralisation.</p>
+
+<p>The course was natural enough, and indeed apparently inevitable. The
+justices of the peace represented the only authority which could be
+called in to regulate abuses arising from the incapacity and narrow
+local interests of the multitudinous vestries. The schemes of
+improvement generally involved some plan for a larger area. If a
+hundred or a county were taken for the unit, the devices which
+depopulated a parish would no longer be applicable.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> The only
+scheme actually carried was embodied in 'Gilbert's act' (1782),
+obtained by Thomas Gilbert (1720-1798), an agent of the duke of
+Bridgewater, and an active advocate of poor-law reform in the House of
+Commons. This scheme was intended as a temporary expedient during the
+distress caused by the American War; and a larger and more permanent
+scheme which it was to introduce failed to become law. It enabled
+parishes to combine if they chose to provide common workhouses, and to
+appoint 'guardians.' The justices, as usual, received more powers in
+order to suppress the harsh dealing of the old parochial authorities.
+The guardians, it was assumed, could always find 'work,' and they were
+to relieve the able-bodied without applying the workhouse test. The
+act, readily adopted, thus became a landmark in the growth of
+laxity.<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+At the end of the century a rapid development of pauperism had taken
+place. The expense, as Eden had to complain, had doubled in twenty
+years. This took place simultaneously with the great development of
+manufactures. It is not perhaps surprising, though it may be
+melancholy, that increase of wealth shall be accompanied by increase
+of pauperism. Where there are many rich men, there will be a better
+field for thieves and beggars. A life of dependence becomes easier
+though it need not necessarily be adopted. Whatever may have been the
+relation of the two phenomena, the social revolution made the old
+social arrangements more inadequate. Great aggregations of workmen
+were formed in towns, which were still only villages in a legal sense.
+Fluctuations of trade, due to war or speculation, brought distress to
+the improvident; and the old assumption that every man had a proper
+place in a small circle, where his neighbours knew all about him, was
+further than ever from being verified. One painful result was already
+beginning to show itself. Neglected children in great towns had
+already excited compassion. Thomas Coram (1668?-1751) had been shocked
+by the sight of dying children exposed in the streets of London, and
+succeeded in establishing the Foundling Hospital (founded in 1742). In
+1762, Jonas Hanway (1712-1786) obtained a law for boarding out
+children born within the bills of mortality. The demand for children's
+labour, produced by the factories, seemed naturally enough to offer a
+better chance for extending such charities. Unfortunately among the
+people who took advantage of it were parish officials, eager to get
+children off their hands, and manufacturers concerned only to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> make
+money out of childish labour. Hence arose the shameful system for
+which remedies (as I shall have to notice) had to be sought in a later
+generation.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the outbreak of the revolutionary war had made the question
+urgent. When Manchester trade suffered, as Eden tells us in his
+reports, many workmen enlisted in the army, and left their children to
+be supported by the parish. Bad seasons followed in 1794 and 1795, and
+there was great distress in the agricultural districts. The governing
+classes became alarmed. In December 1795 Whitbread introduced a bill
+providing that the justices of the peace should fix a minimum rate of
+wages. Upon a motion for the second reading, Pitt made the famous
+speech (12th December) including the often-quoted statement that when
+a man had a family, relief should be 'a matter of right and honour,
+instead of a ground of opprobrium and contempt.'<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> Pitt had in the
+same speech shown his reading of Adam Smith by dwelling upon the
+general objections to state interference with wages, and had argued
+that more was to be gained by removing the restrictions upon the free
+movement of labour. He undertook to produce a comprehensive measure;
+and an elaborate bill of 130 clauses was prepared in 1796.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> The
+rates were to be used to supplement inadequate wages; 'schools of
+industry' were to be formed for the support of superabundant children;
+loans might be made to the poor for the purchase of a cow;<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> and the
+possession of property was not to disqualify for
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+the receiving
+relief. In short, the bill seems to have been a model of misapplied
+benevolence. The details were keenly criticised by Bentham, and the
+bill never came to the birth. Other topics were pressing enough at
+this time to account for the failure of a measure so vast in its
+scope. Meanwhile something had to be done. On 6th May 1795 the
+Berkshire magistrates had passed certain resolutions called from their
+place of meeting, the 'Speenhamland Act of Parliament.' They provided
+that the rate of wages of a labourer should be increased in proportion
+to the price of corn and to the number of his family&mdash;a rule which, as
+Eden observes, tended to discourage economy of food in times of
+scarcity. They also sanctioned the disastrous principle of paying part
+of the wages out of rates. An act passed in 1796 repealed the old
+restrictions upon out-door relief; and thus, during the hard times
+that were to follow, the poor-laws were adapted to produce the state
+of things in which, as Cobbett says (in 1821) 'every labourer who has
+children is now regularly and constantly a pauper.'<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> The result
+represents a curious compromise. The landowners, whether from
+benevolence or fear of revolution, desired to meet the terrible
+distress of the times. Unfortunately their spasmodic interference was
+guided by no fixed principles, and acted upon a class of institutions
+not organised upon any definite system. The general effect seems to
+have been that the ratepayers, no longer allowed to 'depopulate,'
+sought to turn the compulsory stream of charity partly into their own
+pockets. If they were forced to support paupers, they could contrive
+to save the payment of wages. They could use the labour of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+rate-supported pauper instead of employing independent workmen. The
+evils thus produced led before long to most important discussions.<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a>
+The ordinary view of the poor-law was inverted. The prominent evil was
+the reckless increase of a degraded population instead of the
+restriction of population. Eden's own view is sufficiently indicative
+of the light in which the facts showed themselves to intelligent
+economists. As a disciple of Adam Smith, he accepts the rather vague
+doctrine of his master about the 'balance' between labour and capital.
+If labour exceeds capital, he says, the labourer must starve 'in spite
+of all political regulations.'<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> He therefore looks with disfavour
+upon the whole poor-law system. It is too deeply rooted to be
+abolished, but he thinks that the amount to be raised should not be
+permitted to exceed the sum levied on an average of previous years.
+The only certain result of Pitt's measure would be a vast expenditure
+upon a doubtful experiment: and one main purpose of his publication
+was to point out the objections to the plan. He desires what seemed at
+that time to be almost hopeless, a national system of education; but
+his main doctrine is the wisdom of reliance upon individual effort.
+The truth of the maxim '<i>pas trop gouverner</i>,' he says,<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> has never
+been better illustrated than by the contrast between friendly
+societies and the poor-laws. Friendly societies had been known, though
+they were still on a humble scale, from the beginning of the century,
+and had tended to diminish pauperism in spite of the poor-laws. Eden
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+gives many accounts of them. They seem to have suggested a scheme
+proposed by the worthy Francis Maseres<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> (1731-1824) in 1772 for the
+establishment of life annuities. A bill to give effect to this scheme
+passed the House of Commons in 1773 with the support of Burke and
+Savile, but was thrown out in the House of Lords. In 1786 John Acland
+(died 1796), a Devonshire clergyman and justice of the peace, proposed
+a scheme for uniting the whole nation into a kind of friendly society
+for the support of the poor when out of work and in old age. It was
+criticised by John Howlett (1731-1804), a clergyman who wrote much
+upon the poor-laws. He attributes the growth of pauperism to the rise
+of prices, and calculates that out of an increased expenditure of
+&pound;700,000, &pound;219,000 had been raised by the rich, and the remainder
+'squeezed out of the flesh, blood, and bones of the poor,' An act for
+establishing Acland's crude scheme failed next year in parliament.<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a>
+The merit of the societies, according to Eden, was their tendency to
+stimulate self-help; and how to preserve that merit, while making them
+compulsory, was a difficult problem. I have said enough to mark a
+critical and characteristic change of opinion. One source of evil
+pointed out by contemporaries had been the absence of any central
+power which could regulate and systematise the action of the petty
+local bodies. The very possibility
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+of such organisation, however,
+seems to have been simply inconceivable. When the local bodies became
+lavish instead of over-frugal, the one remedy suggested was to abolish
+the system altogether.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> See <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, i. 255.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> See Sir G. Nicholls's <i>History of the Poor-law</i>, 1854. A
+new edition, with life by H. G. Willink, appeared in 1898.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> <i>History</i>, i. 175.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> M'Culloch's note to <i>Wealth of Nations</i>, p. 65.
+M'Culloch in his appendix makes some sensible remarks upon the absence
+of any properly constituted parochial 'tribunal.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> <i>Wealth of Nations</i>, bk. i. ch. x.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> See passage quoted in Eden's <i>History</i>, i. 347.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Thomas Firmin (1632-1677), a philanthropist, whose
+Socinianism did not exclude him from the friendship of such liberal
+bishops as Tillotson and Fowler, started a workhouse in 1676.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> Nicholls (1898), ii. 14.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> (1898), ii. 123.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> <i>Report</i>, p. 67.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> William Hay, for example, carried resolutions in the
+House of Commons in 1735, but failed to carry a bill which had this
+object. See Eden's <i>History</i>, i. 396. Cooper in 1763 proposed to make
+the hundred the unit.&mdash;Nicholls's <i>History</i>, i. 58. Fielding proposes
+a similar change in London. Dean Tucker speaks of the evil of the
+limited area in his <i>Manifold Causes of the Increase of the Poor</i>
+(1760).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> Nicholls, ii. 88.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> <i>Parl. Hist.</i> xxxii. 710.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> A full abstract is given in Edens <i>History</i>, iii.
+ccclxiii. etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> Bentham observes (<i>Works</i>, viii. 448) that the cow will
+require the three acres to keep it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> Cobbett's <i>Political Works</i>, vi. 64</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> I need only note here that the first edition of
+Malthus's <i>Essay</i> appeared in 1798, the year after Eden's
+publication.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> Eden's <i>History</i>, i. 583.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 587.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> Maseres, an excellent Whig, a good mathematician, and a
+respected lawyer, is perhaps best known at present from his portrait
+in Charles Lamb's <i>Old Benchers</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> It maybe noticed as an anticipation of modern schemes
+that in 1792 Paine proposed a system of 'old age pensions,' for which
+the necessary funds were to be easily obtained when universal peace
+had abolished all military charges. See <i>State Trials</i>, xxv. 175.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">II. <a name="III_II" id="III_II"></a>THE POLICE</p>
+
+<p>The system of 'self-government' showed its weak side in this
+direction. It meant that an important function was intrusted to small
+bodies, quite incompetent of acting upon general principles, and
+perfectly capable of petty jobbing, when unrestrained by any effective
+supervision. In another direction the same tendency was even more
+strikingly illustrated. Municipal institutions were almost at their
+lowest point of decay. Manchester and Birmingham were two of the
+largest and most rapidly growing towns. By the end of the century
+Manchester had a population of 90,000 and Birmingham of 70,000. Both
+were ruled, as far as they were ruled, by the remnants of old manorial
+institutions. Aikin<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> observes that 'Manchester (in 1795) remains an
+open town; destitute (probably to its advantage) of a corporation, and
+unrepresented in parliament.' It was governed by a 'boroughreeve' and
+two constables elected annually at the court-leet. William Hutton, the
+quaint historian of Birmingham, tells us in 1783 that the town was
+still legally a village, with a high and low bailiff, a 'high and low
+taster,' two 'affeerers,' and two 'leather-sealers,' In 1752 it had
+been provided with a 'court of requests' for the recovery of small
+debts, and in 1769 with a body of commissioners to provide for
+lighting the town. This
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+was the system by which, with some
+modifications, Birmingham was governed till after the Reform Bill.<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a>
+Hutton boasts<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> that no town was better governed or had fewer
+officers. 'A town without a charter,' he says, 'is a town without a
+shackle.' Perhaps he changed his opinions when his warehouses were
+burnt in 1791, and the town was at the mercy of the mob till a
+regiment of 'light horse' could be called in. Aikin and Hutton,
+however, reflect the general opinion at a time when the town
+corporations had become close and corrupt bodies, and were chiefly
+'shackles' upon the energy of active members of the community. I must
+leave the explanation of this decay to historians. I will only observe
+that what would need explanation would seem to be rather the absence
+than the presence of corruption. The English borough was not
+stimulated by any pressure from a central government; nor was it a
+semi-independent body in which every citizen had the strongest motives
+for combining to support its independence against neighbouring towns
+or invading nobles. The lower classes were ignorant, and probably
+would be rather hostile than favourable to any such modest
+interference with dirt and disorder as would commend themselves to the
+officials. Naturally, power was left to the little cliques of
+prosperous tradesmen, who formed close corporations, and spent the
+revenues upon feasts or squandered them by corrupt practices. Here, as
+in the poor-law, the insufficiency of the administrative body suggests
+to contemporaries, not its reform, but its superfluity.</p>
+
+<p>The most striking account of some of the natural
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+results is in
+Colquhoun's<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> <i>Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis</i>. Patrick
+Colquhoun (1745-1820), an energetic Scot, was born at Dumbarton in
+1745, had been in business at Glasgow, where he was provost in 1782
+and 1783, and in 1789 settled in London. In 1792 he obtained through
+Dundas an appointment to one of the new police magistracies created by
+an act of that year. He took an active part in many schemes of social
+reform; and his book gives an account of the investigations by which
+his schemes were suggested and justified. It must be said, however,
+parenthetically, that his statistics scarcely challenge implicit
+confidence. Like Sinclair and Eden, he saw the importance of obtaining
+facts and figures, but his statements are suspiciously precise and
+elaborate.<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> The broad facts are clear enough.</p>
+
+<p>London was, he says, three miles broad and twenty-five in
+circumference. The population in 1801 was 641,000. It was the largest
+town, and apparently the most chaotic collection of dwellings in the
+civilised world. There were, as Colquhoun asserts<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> in an
+often-quoted passage, 20,000 people in it, who got up every morning
+without knowing how they would get through the day. There were 5000
+public-houses, and 50,000 women supported, wholly or partly, by
+prostitution. The revenues raised by crime amounted, as he calculates,
+to an annual sum of, &pound;2,000,000. There were whole classes of
+professional thieves, more or less organised in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+gangs, which acted in
+support of each other. There were gangs on the river, who boarded
+ships at night, or lay in wait round the warehouses. The government
+dockyards were systematically plundered, and the same article often
+sold four times over to the officials. The absence of patrols gave
+ample chance to the highwaymen then peculiar to England. Their
+careers, commemorated in the <i>Newgate Calendar</i>, had a certain flavour
+of Robin Hood romance, and their ranks were recruited from dissipated
+apprentices and tradesmen in difficulty. The fields round London were
+so constantly plundered that the rent was materially lowered. Half the
+hackney coachmen, he says,<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> were in league with thieves. The
+number of receiving houses for stolen goods had increased in twenty
+years from 300 to 3000.<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> Coining was a flourishing trade, and
+according to Colquhoun employed several thousand persons.<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a>
+Gambling had taken a fresh start about 1777 and 1778<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a>; and the
+keepers of tables had always money enough at command to make
+convictions almost impossible. French refugees at the revolution had
+introduced <i>rouge et noir</i>; and Colquhoun estimates the sums yearly
+lost in gambling-houses at over &pound;7,000,000. The gamblers might perhaps
+appeal not only to the practices of their betters in the days of Fox,
+but to the public lotteries. Colquhoun had various correspondents, who
+do not venture to propose the abolition of a system which sanctioned
+the practice, but who hope to diminish the facility for supplementary
+betting on the results of the official drawing.</p>
+
+<p>The war had tended to increase the number of loose
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+and desperate
+marauders who swarmed in the vast labyrinth of London streets. When we
+consider the nature of the police by which these evils were to be
+checked, and the criminal law which they administered, the wonder is
+less that there were sometimes desperate riots (as in 1780) than that
+London should have been ever able to resist a mob. Colquhoun, though a
+patriotic Briton, has to admit that the French despots had at last
+created an efficient police. The emperor, Joseph <small>II.</small>, he says,
+inquired for an Austrian criminal supposed to have escaped to Paris.
+You will find him, replied the head of the French police, at No. 93 of
+such a street in Vienna on the second-floor room looking upon such a
+church; and there he was. In England a criminal could hide himself in
+a herd of his like, occasionally disturbed by the inroad of a 'Bow
+Street runner,' the emissary of the 'trading justices,' formerly
+represented by the two Fieldings. An act of 1792 created seven new
+offices, to one of which Colquhoun had been appointed. They had one
+hundred and eighty-nine paid officers under them. There were also
+about one thousand constables. These were small tradesmen or artisans
+upon whom the duty was imposed without remuneration for a year by
+their parish, that is, by one of seventy independent bodies. A 'Tyburn
+ticket,' given in reward for obtaining the conviction of a criminal
+exempted a man from the discharge of such offices, and could be bought
+for from &pound;15 to &pound;25. There were also two thousand watchmen receiving
+from 8&frac12;d. up to 2s. a night. These were the true successors of
+Dogberry; often infirm or aged persons appointed to keep them out of
+the workhouse.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+The management of this distracted force thus depended
+upon a miscellaneous set of bodies; the paid magistrates, the
+officials of the city, the justices of the peace for Middlesex, and
+the seventy independent parishes.</p>
+
+<p>The law was as defective as the administration. Colquhoun represents
+the philanthropic impulse of the day, and notices<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a> that in 1787
+Joseph <small>II.</small> had abolished capital punishment. His chief authority for
+more merciful methods is Beccaria; and it is worth remarking, for
+reasons which will appear hereafter, that he does not in this
+connection refer to Bentham, although he speaks enthusiastically<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a>
+of Bentham's model prison, the Panopticon. Colquhoun shows how
+strangely the severity of the law was combined with its extreme
+capaciousness. He quotes Bacon<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> for the statement that the law was
+a 'heterogeneous mass concocted too often on the spur of the moment,'
+and gives sufficient proofs of its truth. He desires, for example, a
+law to punish receivers of stolen goods, and says that there were
+excellent laws in existence. Unfortunately one law applied exclusively
+to the case of pewter-pots, and another exclusively to the precious
+metals; neither could be used as against receivers of horses or bank
+notes.<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> So a man indicted under an act against stealing from ships
+on navigable rivers escaped, because the barge from which he stole
+happened to be aground. Gangs could afford to corrupt witnesses or to
+pay knavish lawyers skilled in applying these vagaries of legislation.
+Juries also disliked convicting when the penalty for coining sixpence
+was the same as the penalty for killing a mother. It followed, as he
+shows by statistics, that half the persons committed for
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> trial
+escaped by petty chicanery or corruption, or the reluctance of juries
+to convict for capital offences. Only about one-fifth of the capital
+sentences were executed; and many were pardoned on condition of
+enlisting to improve the morals of the army. The criminals, who were
+neither hanged nor allowed to escape, were sent to prisons, which were
+schools of vice. After the independence of the American colonies, the
+system of transportation to Australia had begun (in 1787); but the
+expense was enormous, and prisoners were huddled together in the hulks
+at Woolwich and Portsmouth, which had been used as a temporary
+expedient. Thence they were constantly discharged, to return to their
+old practices. A man, says Colquhoun,<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> would deserve a statue who
+should carry out a plan for helping discharged prisoners. To meet
+these evils, Colquhoun proposes various remedies, such as a
+metropolitan police, a public prosecutor, or even a codification or
+revision of the Criminal Code, which he sees is likely to be delayed.
+He also suggested, in a pamphlet of 1799, a kind of charity
+organisation society to prevent the waste of funds. Many other
+pamphlets of similar tendencies show his active zeal in promoting
+various reforms. Colquhoun was in close correspondence with Bentham
+from the year 1798,<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> and Bentham helped him by drawing the Thames
+Police Act, passed in 1800, to give effect to some of the suggestions
+in the <i>Treatise</i>.<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a></p>
+
+<p>Another set of abuses has a special connection with Bentham's
+activity. Bentham had been led in 1778 to attend to the prison
+question by reading Howard's book on <i>Prisons</i>; and he refers to the
+'venerable friend
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+who had lived an apostle and died a martyr.'<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a>
+The career of John Howard (1726-1790) is familiar. The son of a London
+tradesman, he had inherited an estate in Bedfordshire. There he
+erected model cottages and village schools; and, on becoming sheriff
+of the county in 1773, was led to attend to abuses in the prisons. Two
+acts of parliament were passed in 1774 to remedy some of the evils
+exposed, and he pursued the inquiry at home and abroad. His results
+are given in his <i>State of the Prisons in England and Wales</i> (1779,
+fourth edition, 1792), and his <i>Account of the Principal Lazarettos in
+Europe</i> (1789). The prisoners, he says, had little food, sometimes a
+penny loaf a day, and sometimes nothing; no water, no fresh air, no
+sewers, and no bedding. The stench was appalling, and gaol fever
+killed more than died on the gallows. Debtors and felons, men, women
+and children, were huddled together; often with lunatics, who were
+shown by the gaolers for money. 'Garnish' was extorted; the gaolers
+kept drinking-taps; gambling flourished: and prisoners were often
+cruelly ironed, and kept for long periods before trial. At Hull the
+assizes had only been held once in seven years, and afterwards once in
+three. It is a comfort to find that the whole number of prisoners in
+England and Wales amounted, in 1780, to about 4400, 2078 of whom were
+debtors, 798 felons, and 917 petty offenders. An act passed in 1779
+provided for the erection of two penitentiaries. Howard was to be a
+supervisor. The failure to carry out this act led, as we shall see, to
+one of Bentham's most characteristic undertakings. One peculiarity
+must be noted.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+Howard found prisons on the continent where the
+treatment was bad and torture still occasionally practised; but he
+nowhere found things so bad as in England. In Holland the prisons were
+so neat and clean as to make it difficult to believe that they were
+prisons: and they were used as models for the legislation of 1779. One
+cause of this unenviable distinction of English prisons had been
+indicated by an earlier investigation. General Oglethorpe (1696-1785)
+had been started in his philanthropic career by obtaining a committee
+of the House of Commons in 1729 to inquire into the state of the
+gaols. The foundation of the colony of Georgia as an outlet for the
+population was one result of the inquiry. It led, in the first place,
+however, to a trial of persons accused of atrocious cruelties at the
+Fleet prison.<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> The trial was abortive. It appeared in the course
+of the proceedings that the Fleet prison was a 'freehold,' A patent
+for rebuilding it had been granted to Sir Jeremy Whichcot under
+Charles <small>II.</small>, and had been sold to one Higgins, who resold it to other
+persons for &pound;5000. The proprietors made their investment pay by cruel
+ill-treatment of the prisoners, oppressing the poor and letting off
+parts of the prison to dealers in drink. This was the general plan in
+the prisons examined by Howard, and helps to account for the gross
+abuses. It is one more application of the general system. As the
+patron was owner of a living, and the officer of his commission, the
+keeper of a prison was owner of his establishment. The paralysis of
+administration which prevailed throughout the country made it natural
+to farm out paupers to the master of a workhouse, and prisoners to the
+proprietor of a gaol.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+The state of prisoners may be inferred not only
+from Howard's authentic record but from the fictions of Fielding,
+Smollett and Goldsmith; and the last echoes of the same complaints may
+be found in <i>Pickwick</i> and <i>Little Dorrit</i>. The Marshalsea described
+in the last was also a proprietary concern. We shall hereafter see how
+Bentham proposed to treat the evils revealed by Oglethorpe and Howard.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> Aikin's <i>Country Round Manchester</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> Bunce's <i>History of the Corporation of Birmingham</i>
+(1878).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> <i>History of Birmingham</i> (2nd edition), p. 327.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> The first edition, 1795, the sixth, from which I quote,
+in 1800. In Benthams <i>Works</i>, x. 330, it is said that in 1798, 7500
+copies of this book had been sold.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> In 1814 Colquhoun published an elaborate account of the
+<i>Resources of the British Empire</i>, showing similar qualities.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> <i>Police</i>, p. 310.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> <i>Police</i>, p. 105.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 211.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 136.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> <i>Police</i>, p. 60.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 481.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 298.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> <i>Police</i>, p. 99.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> Bentham's <i>Works</i>, x. 329 <i>seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> v. 335.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> Bentham's <i>Works</i>, iv. 3, 121.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> Cobbett's <i>State Trials</i>, xvii. 297-626.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">III. <a name="III_III" id="III_III"></a>EDUCATION</p>
+
+<p>Another topic treated by Colquhoun marks the initial stage of
+controversies which were soon to grow warm. Colquhoun boasts of the
+number of charities for which London was already conspicuous. A
+growing facility for forming associations of all kinds, political,
+religious, scientific, and charitable, is an obvious characteristic of
+modern progress. Where in earlier times a college or a hospital had to
+be endowed by a founder and invested by charter with corporate
+personality, it is now necessary only to call a meeting, form a
+committee, and appeal for subscriptions. Societies of various kinds
+had sprung up during the century. Artists, men of science,
+agriculturists, and men of literary tastes, had founded innumerable
+academies and 'philosophical institutes.' The great London hospitals,
+dependent upon voluntary subscriptions, had been founded during the
+first half of the century. Colquhoun counts the annual revenue of
+various charitable institutions at &pound;445,000, besides which the
+endowments produced &pound;150,000, and the poor-rates
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+&pound;255,000.<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a> Among
+these a considerable number were intended to promote education. Here,
+as in some other cases, it seems that people at the end of the century
+were often taking up an impulse given a century before. So the Society
+for promoting Christian Knowledge, founded in 1699, and the Society
+for the Propagation of the Gospel, founded in 1701, were supplemented
+by the Church Missionary Society and the Religious Tract Society, both
+founded in 1799. The societies for the reformation of manners,
+prevalent at the end of the seventeenth century, were taken as a model
+by Wilberforce and his friends at the end of the eighteenth.<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a> In
+the same way, the first attempts at providing a general education for
+the poor had been made by Archbishop Tenison, who founded a parochial
+school about 1680 in order 'to check the growth of popery.' Charity
+schools became common during the early part of the eighteenth century
+and received various endowments. They were attacked as tending to
+teach the poor too much&mdash;a very needless alarm&mdash;and also by free
+thinkers, such as Mandeville, as intended outworks of the established
+church. This last objection was a foretaste of the bitter religious
+controversies which were to accompany the growth of an educational
+system. Colquhoun says that there were 62 endowed schools in London,
+from
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+Christ's Hospital downwards, educating about 5000 children; 237
+parish schools with about 9000 children, and 3730 'private schools.'
+The teaching was, of course, very imperfect, and in a report of a
+committee of the House of Commons in 1818, it is calculated that about
+half the children in a large district were entirely uneducated. There
+was, of course, nothing in England deserving the name of a system in
+educational more than in any other matters. The grammar schools
+throughout the country provided more or less for the classes which
+could not aspire to the public schools and universities. About a third
+of the boys at Christ's Hospital were, as Coleridge tells us, sons of
+clergymen.<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> The children of the poor were either not educated, or
+picked up their letters at some charity school or such a country
+dame's school as is described by Shenstone. A curious proof, however,
+of rising interest in the question is given by the Sunday Schools
+movement at the end of the century. Robert Raikes (1735-1811), a
+printer in Gloucester and proprietor of a newspaper, joined with a
+clergyman to set up a school in 1780 at a total cost of 1s. 6d. a
+week. Within three or four years the plan was taken up everywhere, and
+the worthy Raikes, whose newspaper had spread the news, found himself
+revered as a great pioneer of philanthropy. Wesley took up the scheme
+warmly; bishops condescended to approve; the king and queen were
+interested, and within three or four years the number of learners was
+reckoned at two or three hundred thousand. A Sunday School Association
+was formed in 1785 with well known men of business at its head. Queen
+Charlotte's friend, Mrs. Trimmer
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+(1741-1810), took up the work near
+London, and Hannah More (1745-1833) in Somersetshire. Hannah More
+gives a strange account of the utter absence of any civilising
+agencies in the district around Cheddar where she and her sisters
+laboured. She was accused of 'methodism' and a leaning to Jacobinism,
+although her views were of the most moderate kind. She wished the poor
+to be able to read their Bibles and to be qualified for domestic
+duties, but not to write or to be enabled to read Tom Paine or be
+encouraged to rise above their position. The literary light of the
+Whigs, Dr. Parr (1747-1825), showed his liberality by arguing that the
+poor ought to be taught, but admitted that the enterprise had its
+limits. The 'Deity Himself had fixed a great gulph between them and
+the poor.' A scanty instruction given on Sundays alone was not
+calculated to facilitate the passage of that gulf. By the end of the
+century, however, signs of a more systematic movement were showing
+themselves. Bell and Lancaster, of whom I shall have to speak, were
+rival claimants for the honour of initiating a new departure in
+education. The controversy which afterwards raged between the
+supporters of the two systems marked a complete revolution of opinion.
+Meanwhile, although the need of schools was beginning to be felt, the
+appliances for education in England were a striking instance of the
+general inefficiency in every department which needed combined action.
+In Scotland the system of parish schools was one obvious cause of the
+success of so many of the Scotsmen which excited the jealousy of
+southern competitors. Even in Ireland there appears to have been a
+more efficient set of schools. And yet, one remark must be suggested.
+There is
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+probably no period in English history at which a greater
+number of poor men have risen to distinction. The greatest beyond
+comparison of self-taught poets was Burns (1759-1796). The political
+writer who was at the time producing the most marked effect was Thomas
+Paine (1737-1809), son of a small tradesman. His successor in
+influence was William Cobbett (1762-1835), son of an agricultural
+labourer, and one of the pithiest of all English writers. William
+Gifford (1756-1826), son of a small tradesman in Devonshire, was
+already known as a satirist and was to lead Conservatives as editor of
+the <i>The Quarterly Review</i>. John Dalton (1766-1842), son of a poor
+weaver, was one of the most distinguished men of science. Porson
+(1759-1808), the greatest Greek scholar of his time, was son of a
+Norfolk parish clerk, though sagacious patrons had sent him to Eton in
+his fifteenth year. The Oxford professor of Arabic, Joseph White
+(1746-1814), was son of a poor weaver in the country and a man of
+reputation for learning, although now remembered only for a rather
+disreputable literary squabble. Robert Owen and Joseph Lancaster, both
+sprung from the ranks, were leaders in social movements. I have
+already spoken of such men as Watt, Telford, and Rennie; and smaller
+names might be added in literature, science, and art. The
+individualist virtue of 'self-help' was not confined to successful
+money-making or to the wealthier classes. One cause of the literary
+excellence of Burns, Paine, and Cobbett may be that, when literature
+was less centralised, a writer was less tempted to desert his natural
+dialect. I mention the fact, however, merely to suggest that, whatever
+were then the difficulties of getting such
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+schooling as is now
+common, an energetic lad even in the most neglected regions might
+force his way to the front.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> <i>Police</i>, p. 340.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> Wilberforce started on this plan a 'society for
+enforcing the king's proclamation' in 1786, which was supplemented by
+the society for 'the Suppression of Vice' in 1802. I don't suppose
+that vice was much suppressed. Sydney Smith ridiculed its performances
+in the <i>Edinburgh</i> for 1809. The article is in his works. A more
+interesting society was that for 'bettering the condition of the
+poor,' started by Sir Thomas Bernard and Wilberforce in 1796.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> <i>Biographia Literaria</i> (1847), ii. 327.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">IV. <a name="III_IV" id="III_IV"></a>THE SLAVE-TRADE</p>
+
+<p>I have thus noticed the most conspicuous of the contemporary problems
+which, as we shall see, provided the main tasks of Bentham and his
+followers. One other topic must be mentioned as in more ways than one
+characteristic of the spirit of the time. The parliamentary attack
+upon the slave-trade began just before the outbreak of the revolution.
+It is generally described as an almost sudden awakening of the
+national conscience. That it appealed to that faculty is undeniable,
+and, moreover, it is at least a remarkable instance of legislative
+action upon purely moral grounds. It is true that in this case the
+conscience was the less impeded because it was roused chiefly by the
+sins of men's neighbours. The slave-trading class was a comparative
+excrescence. Their trade could be attacked without such widespread
+interference with the social order as was implied, for example, in
+remedying the grievances of paupers or of children in factories. The
+conflict with morality, again, was so plain as to need no
+demonstration. It seems to be a questionable logic which assumes the
+merit of a reformer to be in proportion to the flagrancy of the evil
+assailed. The more obvious the case, surely the less the virtue needed
+in the assailant. However this may be, no one can deny the moral
+excellence of such men as Wilberforce and Clarkson, nor the real
+change in the moral standard implied by the success of their
+agitation. But another question remains, which is indicated by a later
+controversy.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+The followers of Wilberforce and of Clarkson were
+jealous of each other. Each party tried to claim the chief merit for
+its hero. Each was, I think, unjust to the other. The underlying
+motive was the desire to obtain credit for the 'Evangelicals' or their
+rivals as the originators of a great movement. Without touching the
+personal details it is necessary to say something of the general
+sentiments implied. In his history of the agitation,<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> Clarkson
+gives a quaint chart, showing how the impulse spread from various
+centres till it converged upon a single area, and his facts are
+significant.</p>
+
+<p>That a great change had taken place is undeniable. Protestant England
+had bargained with Catholic Spain in the middle of the century for the
+right of supplying slaves to America, while at the peace of 1814
+English statesmen were endeavouring to secure a combination of all
+civilised powers against the trade. Smollett, in 1748, makes the
+fortune of his hero, Roderick Random, by placing him as mate of a
+slave-ship under the ideal sailor, Bowling. About the same time John
+Newton (1725-1807), afterwards the venerated teacher of Cowper and the
+Evangelicals, was in command of a slaver, and enjoying 'sweeter and
+more frequent hours of divine communion' than he had elsewhere known.
+He had no scruples, though he had the grace to pray 'to be fixed in a
+more humane calling.' In later years he gave the benefit of his
+experience to the abolitionists.<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> A new sentiment, however, was
+already showing itself.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+Clarkson collects various instances.
+Southern's Oroonoco, founded on a story by Mrs. Behn, and Steele's
+story of Inkle and Yarico in an early <i>Spectator</i>, Pope's poor Indian
+in the <i>Essay on Man</i>, and allusions by Thomson, Shenstone, and
+Savage, show that poets and novelists could occasionally turn the
+theme to account. Hutcheson, the moralist, incidentally condemns
+slavery; and divines such as Bishops Hayter and Warburton took the
+same view in sermons before the Society for the Propagation of
+Christian Knowledge. Johnson, 'last of the Tories' though he was, had
+a righteous hatred for the system.<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> He toasted the next
+insurrection of negroes in the West Indies, and asked why we always
+heard the 'loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes'?
+Thomas Day (1748-1789), as an ardent follower of Rousseau, wrote the
+<i>Dying Negro</i> in 1773, and, in the same spirit, denounced the
+inconsistencies of slave-holding champions of American liberty.</p>
+
+<p>Such isolated utterances showed a spreading sentiment. The honour of
+the first victory in the practical application must be given to
+Granville Sharp<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a> (1735-1813), one of the most charming and, in the
+best sense, 'Quixotic' of men. In 1772 his exertions had led to the
+famous decision by Lord Mansfield in the case of the negro
+Somerset.<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> Sharp in 1787 became chairman of the committee formed
+to attack the slave-trade
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+by collecting the evidence of which
+Wilberforce made use in parliament. The committee was chiefly composed
+of Quakers; as indeed, Quakers are pretty sure to be found in every
+philanthropic movement of the period. I must leave the explanation to
+the historian of religious movements; but the fact is characteristic.
+The Quakers had taken the lead in America. The Quaker was both
+practical and a mystic. His principles put him outside of the ordinary
+political interests, and of the military world. He directed his
+activities to helping the poor, the prisoner, and the oppressed. Among
+the Quakers of the eighteenth century were John Woolman (1720-1772), a
+writer beloved by the congenial Charles Lamb and Antoine Benezet
+(1713-1784), born in France, and son of a French refugee who settled
+in Philadelphia. When Clarkson wrote the prize essay upon the
+slave-trade (1785), which started his career, it was from Benezet's
+writings that he obtained his information. By their influence the
+Pennsylvanian Quakers were gradually led to pronounce against
+slavery<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a>; and the first anti-slavery society was founded in
+Philadelphia in 1775, the year in which the skirmish at Lexington
+began the war of independence. That suggests another influence. The
+Rationalists of the eighteenth century were never tired of praising
+the Quakers. The Quakers were, by their essential principles, in
+favour of absolute toleration, and their attitude towards dogma was
+not dissimilar. 'Rationalisation' and 'Spiritualisation' are in some
+directions similar. The general spread of philanthropic sentiment,
+which
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+found its formula in the <i>Rights of Man</i>, fell in with the
+Quaker hatred of war and slavery. Voltaire heartily admires Barclay,
+the Quaker apologist. It is, therefore, not surprising to find the
+names of the deists, Franklin and Paine, associated with Quakers in
+this movement. Franklin was an early president of the new association,
+and Paine wrote an article to support the early agitation.<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a> Paine
+himself was a Quaker by birth, who had dropped his early creed while
+retaining a respect for its adherents. When the agitation began it was
+in fact generally approved by all except the slave-traders. Sound Whig
+divines, Watson and Paley and Parr; Unitarians such as Priestley and
+Gilbert Wakefield and William Smith; and the great methodist, John
+Wesley, were united on this point. Fox and Burke and Pitt rivalled
+each other in condemning the system. The actual delay was caused
+partly by the strength of the commercial interests in parliament, and
+partly by the growth of the anti-Jacobin sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>The attempt to monopolise the credit of the movement by any particular
+sect is absurd. Wilberforce and his friends might fairly claim the
+glory of having been worthy representatives of a new spirit of
+philanthropy; but most certainly they did not create or originate it.
+The general growth of that spirit throughout the century must be
+explained, so far as 'explanation' is possible, by wider causes. It
+was, as I must venture to assume, a product of complex social changes
+which were bringing classes and nations into closer contact, binding
+them
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+together by new ties, and breaking up the old institutions which
+had been formed under obsolete conditions. The true moving forces were
+the same whether these representatives announced the new gospel of the
+'rights of man'; or appealed to the traditional rights of Englishmen;
+or rallied supporters of the old order so far as it still provided the
+most efficient machinery for the purpose. The revival of religion
+under Wesley and the Evangelicals meant the direction of the stream
+into one channel. The paralytic condition of the Church of England
+disqualified it for appropriating the new energy. The men who directed
+the movements were mainly stimulated by moral indignation at the gross
+abuses, and the indolence of the established priesthood naturally gave
+them an anti-sacerdotal turn. They simply accepted the old Protestant
+tradition. They took no interest in the intellectual questions
+involved. Rationalism, according to them, meant simply an attack upon
+the traditional sanctions of morality; and it scarcely occurred to
+them to ask for any philosophical foundation of their creed.
+Wilberforce's book, <i>A Practical View</i>, attained an immense
+popularity, and is characteristic of the position. Wilberforce turns
+over the infidel to be confuted by Paley, whom he takes to be a
+conclusive reasoner. For himself he is content to show what needed
+little proof, that the so-called Christians of the day could act as if
+they had never heard of the New Testament. The Evangelical movement
+had in short no distinct relation to speculative movements. It took
+the old tradition for granted, and it need not here be further
+considered.</p>
+
+<p>One other remark is suggested by the agitation against the
+slave-trade. It set a precedent for agitation of a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+kind afterwards
+familiar. The committee appealed to the country, and got up petitions.
+Sound Tories complained of them in the early slave-trade debates, as
+attempts to dictate to parliament by democratic methods. Political
+agitators had formed associations, and found a convenient instrument
+in the 'county meetings,' which seems to have possessed a kind of
+indefinite legal character.<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> Such associations of course depend
+for the great part of their influence upon the press. The circulation
+of literature was one great object. Paine's <i>Rights of Man</i> was
+distributed by the revolutionary party, and Hannah More wrote popular
+tracts to persuade the poor that they had no grievances. It is said
+that two millions of her little tracts, 'Village Politics by Will
+Chip,' the 'Shepherd of Salisbury Plain,' and so forth were
+circulated. The demand, indeed, showed rather the eagerness of the
+rich to get them read than the eagerness of the poor to read them.
+They failed to destroy Paine's influence, but they were successful
+enough to lead to the foundation of the Religious Tract Society. The
+attempt to influence the poor by cheap literature shows that these
+opinions were beginning to demand consideration. Cobbett and many
+others were soon to use the new weapon. Meanwhile the newspapers
+circulated among the higher ranks were passing through a new phase,
+which must be noted. The great newspapers were gaining power. The
+<i>Morning Chronicle</i> was started by Woodfall in 1769, the <i>Morning
+Post</i> and <i>Morning Herald</i> by Dudley Bate in 1772 and 1780, and the
+<i>Times</i> by Walter in 1788. The modern editor was to appear during the
+war. Stoddart and Barnes of the <i>Times</i>, Perry and Black of the
+<i>Morning Chronicle</i>,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+were to become important politically. The
+revolutionary period marks the transition from the old-fashioned
+newspaper, carried on by a publisher and an author, to the modern
+newspaper, which represents a kind of separate organism, elaborately
+'differentiated' and worked by a whole army of co-operating editors,
+correspondents, reporters, and contributors. Finally, one remark may
+be made. The literary class in England was not generally opposed to
+the governing classes. The tone of Johnson's whole circle was
+conservative. In fact, since Harley's time, government had felt the
+need of support in the press, and politicians on both sides had their
+regular organs. The opposition might at any time become the
+government; and their supporters in the press, poor men who were only
+too dependent, had no motive for going beyond the doctrines of their
+principals. They might be bought by opponents, or they might be
+faithful to a patron. They did not form a band of outcasts, whose hand
+would be against every one. The libel law was severe enough, but there
+had been no licensing system since the early days of William and Mary.
+A man could publish what he chose at his own peril. When the current
+of popular feeling was anti-revolutionary, government might obtain a
+conviction, but even in the worst times there was a chance that juries
+might be restive. Editors had at times to go to prison, but even then
+the paper was not suppressed. Cobbett, for example, continued to
+publish his <i>Registrar</i> during an imprisonment of two years (1810-12).
+Editors had very serious anxieties, but they could express with
+freedom any opinion which had the support of a party. English liberty
+was so far a reality that a very free discussion of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+the political
+problems of the day was permitted and practised. The English author,
+therefore, as such, had not the bitterness of a French man of letters,
+unless, indeed, he had the misfortune to be an uncompromising
+revolutionist.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> <i>History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of
+the Abolition of the Slave-trade by the British Parliament</i> (1808).
+Second enlarged edition 1839. The chart was one cause of the offence
+taken by Wilberforce's sons.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> Cf. Sir J. Stephen's <i>Ecclesiastical Biography</i> (The
+Evangelical Succession).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> See passages collected in Birkbeck Hill's <i>Boswell</i>,
+ii. 478-80, and cf. iii. 200-204. Boswell was attracted by Clarkson,
+but finally made up his mind that the abolition of the slave-trade
+would 'shut the gates of mercy on mankind.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> See the account of G. Sharp in Sir J. Stephen's
+<i>Ecclesiastical Biography</i> (Clapham Sect).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> Cobbett's <i>State Trials</i>, xx. 1-82.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a> The Society determined in 1760 'to disown' any Friend
+concerned in the slave-trade.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> Mr. Conway, in his <i>Life of Paine</i>, attributes, I
+think, a little more to his hero than is consistent with due regard to
+his predecessors; but, in any case, he took an early part in the
+movement.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a> See upon this subject Mr. Jephson's interesting book on
+<i>The Platform</i>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">V. <a name="III_V" id="III_V"></a>THE FRENCH REVOLUTION</p>
+
+<p>The English society which I have endeavoured to characterise was now
+to be thrown into the vortex of the revolutionary wars. The surpassing
+dramatic interest of the French Revolution has tended to obscure our
+perception of the continuity of even English history. It has been easy
+to ascribe to the contagion of French example political movements
+which were already beginning in England and which were modified rather
+than materially altered by our share in the great European convulsion.
+The impression made upon Englishmen by the French Revolution is,
+however, in the highest degree characteristic. The most vehement
+sympathies and antipathies were aroused, and showed at least what
+principles were congenial to the various English parties. To praise or
+blame the revolution, as if it could be called simply good or bad, is
+for the historian as absurd as to praise or blame an earthquake. It
+was simply inevitable under the conditions. We may, of course, take it
+as an essential stage in a social evolution, which if described as
+progress is therefore to be blessed, or if as degeneration may provoke
+lamentation. We may, if we please, ask whether superior statesmanship
+might have attained the good results without the violent catastrophes,
+or whether a wise and good man who could appreciate the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+real position
+would have approved or condemned the actual policy. But to answer such
+problems with any confidence would imply a claim to a
+quasi-omniscience. Partisans at the time, however, answered them
+without hesitation, and saw in the Revolution the dawn of a new era of
+reason and justice, or the outburst of the fires of hell. Their view
+is at any rate indicative of their own position. The extreme opinions
+need no exposition. They are represented by the controversy between
+Burke and Paine. The general doctrine of the 'Rights of Men'&mdash;that all
+men are by nature free and equal&mdash;covered at least the doctrine that
+the inequality and despotism of the existing order was hateful, and
+people with a taste for abstract principles accepted this short cut to
+political wisdom. The 'minor' premise being obviously true, they took
+the major for granted. To Burke, who idealised the traditional element
+in the British Constitution, and so attached an excessive importance
+to historical continuity, the new doctrine seemed to imply the
+breaking up of the very foundations of order and the pulverisation of
+society. Burke and Paine both assumed too easily that the dogmas which
+they defended expressed the real and ultimate beliefs, and that the
+belief was the cause, not the consequence, of the political condition.
+Without touching upon the logic of either position, I may notice how
+the problem presented itself to the average English politician whose
+position implied acceptance of traditional compromises and who yet
+prided himself on possessing the liberties which were now being
+claimed by Frenchmen. The Whig could heartily sympathise with the
+French Revolution so long as it appeared to be an attempt to
+assimilate British principles.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+When Fox hailed the fall of the
+Bastille as the greatest and best event that had ever happened, he was
+expressing a generous enthusiasm shared by all the ardent and
+enlightened youth of the time. The French, it seemed, were abolishing
+an arbitrary despotism and adopting the principles of Magna Charta and
+the 'Habeas Corpus' Act. Difficulties, however, already suggested
+themselves to the true Whig. Would the French, as Young asked just
+after the same event, 'copy the constitution of England, freed from
+its faults, or attempt, from theory, to frame something absolutely
+speculative'?<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a> On that issue depended the future of the country.
+It was soon decided in the sense opposed to Young's wishes. The reign
+of terror alienated the average Whig. But though the argument from
+atrocities is the popular one, the opposition was really more
+fundamental. Burke put the case, savagely and coarsely enough, in his
+'Letter to a noble Lord.' How would the duke of Bedford like to be
+treated as the revolutionists were treating the nobility in France?
+The duke might be a sincere lover of political liberty, but he
+certainly would not be prepared to approve the confiscation of his
+estates. The aristocratic Whigs, dependent for their whole property
+and for every privilege which they prized upon ancient tradition and
+prescription, could not really be in favour of sweeping away the whole
+complex social structure, levelling Windsor Castle as Burke put it in
+his famous metaphor, and making a 'Bedford level' of the whole
+country. The Whigs had to disavow any approval of the Jacobins;
+Mackintosh, who had given his answer to Burke's diatribes, met Burke
+himself on friendly terms (9th July
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+1797), and in 1800 took an
+opportunity of public recantation. He only expressed the natural
+awakening of the genuine Whig to the aspects of the case which he had
+hitherto ignored. The effect upon the middle-class Whigs is, however,
+more to my purpose. It may be illustrated by the history of John Horne
+Tooke<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a> (1736-1812), who at this time represented what may be
+called the home-bred British radicalism. He was the son of a London
+tradesman, who had distinguished himself by establishing, and
+afterwards declining to enforce, certain legal rights against
+Frederick Prince of Wales. The prince recognised the tradesman's
+generosity by making his antagonist purveyor to his household. A debt
+of some thousand pounds was thus run up before the prince's death
+which was never discharged. Possibly the son's hostility to the royal
+family was edged by this circumstance. John Horne, forced to take
+orders in order to hold a living, soon showed himself to have been
+intended by nature for the law. He took up the cause of Wilkes in the
+early part of the reign; defended him energetically in later years;
+and in 1769 helped to start the 'Society for supporting the Bill of
+Rights.' He then attacked Wilkes, who, as he maintained, misapplied
+for his own private use the funds subscribed for public purposes to
+this society; and set up a rival 'Constitutional Society.' In 1775, as
+spokesman of this body, he denounced the 'king's troops' for
+'inhumanly murdering' their fellow-subjects at Lexington for the sole
+crime of 'preferring death to slavery.' He was imprisoned for the
+libel, and thus became a martyr to the cause. When
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+the country
+associations were formed in 1780 to protest against the abuses
+revealed by the war, Horne became a member of the 'Society for
+Constitutional Information,' of which Major Cartwright&mdash;afterwards the
+revered, but rather tiresome, patriarch of the Radicals&mdash;was called
+the 'father.' Horne Tooke (as he was now named), by these and other
+exhibitions of boundless pugnacity, became a leader among the
+middle-class Whigs, who found their main support among London
+citizens, such as Beckford, Troutbeck and Oliver; supported them in
+his later days; and after the American war, preferred Pitt, as an
+advocate of parliamentary reform, to Fox, the favourite of the
+aristocratic Whigs. He denounced the Fox coalition ministry, and in
+later years opposed Fox at Westminster. The 'Society for
+Constitutional Information' was still extant in the revolutionary
+period, and Tooke, a bluff, jovial companion, who had by this time got
+rid of his clerical character, often took the chair at the taverns
+where they met to talk sound politics over their port. The revolution
+infused new spirit into politics. In March 1791<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a> Tooke's society
+passed a vote of thanks to Paine for the first part of his <i>Rights of
+Man</i>. Next year Thomas Hardy, a radical shoemaker, started a
+'Corresponding Society.' Others sprang up throughout the country,
+especially in the manufacturing towns.<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> These societies took Paine
+for their oracle, and circulated his writings as their manifesto. They
+communicated
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+occasionally with Horne Tooke's society, which more or
+less sympathised with them. The Whigs of the upper sphere started the
+'Friends of the People' in April 1792, in order to direct the
+discontent into safer channels. Grey, Sheridan and Erskine were
+members; Fox sympathised but declined to join; Mackintosh was
+secretary; and Sir Philip Francis drew up the opening address, citing
+the authority of Pitt and Blackstone, and declaring that the society
+wished 'not to change but to restore.'<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a> It remonstrated cautiously
+with the other societies, and only excited their distrust. Grey, as
+its representative, made a motion for parliamentary reform which was
+rejected (May 1793) by two hundred and eighty-two to forty-one. Later
+motions in May 1797 and April 1800 showed that, for the present,
+parliamentary reform was out of the question. Meanwhile the English
+Jacobins got up a 'convention' which met at Edinburgh at the end of
+1793. The very name was alarming: the leaders were tried and
+transported; the cruelty of the sentences and the severity of the
+judges, especially Braxfield, shocked such men as Parr and Jeffrey,
+and unsuccessful appeals for mercy were made in parliament. The Habeas
+Corpus Act was suspended in 1794: Horne Tooke and Hardy were both
+arrested and tried for high treason in November. An English jury
+fortunately showed itself less subservient than the Scottish; the
+judge was scrupulously fair: and both Hardy and Horne Tooke were
+acquitted. The societies, however, though they were encouraged for a
+time, were attacked by severe measures passed by Pitt in 1795. The
+'Friends of the People' ceased to exist The
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+seizure of the committee
+of the Corresponding Societies in 1798 put an end to their activity. A
+report presented to parliament in 1799<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a> declares that the
+societies had gone to dangerous lengths: they had communicated with
+the French revolutionists and with the 'United Irishmen' (founded
+1791); and societies of 'United Englishmen' and 'United Scotsmen' had
+had some concern in the mutinies of the fleet in 1797 and in the Irish
+rebellion of 1798. Place says, probably with truth, that the danger
+was much exaggerated: but in any case, an act for the suppression of
+the Corresponding Societies was passed in 1799, and put an end to the
+movement.</p>
+
+<p>This summary is significant of the state of opinion. The genuine
+old-fashioned Whig dreaded revolution, and guarded himself carefully
+against any appearance of complicity. Jacobinism, on the other hand,
+was always an exotic. Such men as the leading Nonconformists Priestley
+and Price were familiar with the speculative movement on the
+continent, and sympathised with the enlightenment. Young men of
+genius, like Wordsworth and Coleridge, imbibed the same doctrines more
+or less thoroughly, and took Godwin for their English representative.
+The same creed was accepted by the artisans in the growing towns, from
+whom the Corresponding Societies drew their recruits. But the
+revolutionary sentiment was not so widely spread as its adherents
+hoped or its enemies feared. The Birmingham mob of 1791 acted, with a
+certain unconscious humour, on the side of church and king. They had
+perhaps an instinctive perception that it was an advantage to plunder
+on
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+the side of the constable. In fact, however, the general feeling
+in all classes was anti-Jacobin. Place, an excellent witness, himself
+a member of the Corresponding Societies, declares that the repressive
+measures were generally popular even among the workmen.<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> They were
+certainly not penetrated with revolutionary fervour. Had it been
+otherwise, the repressive measures, severe as they were, would have
+stimulated rather than suppressed the societies, and, instead of
+silencing the revolutionists, have provoked a rising.</p>
+
+<p>At the early period the Jacobin and the home-bred Radical might
+combine against government. A manifesto of the Corresponding Societies
+begins by declaring that 'all men are by nature free and equal and
+independent of each other,' and argues also that these are the
+'original principles of English government.'<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> Magna Charta is an
+early expression of the Declaration of Rights, and thus pure reason
+confirms British tradition. The adoption of a common platform,
+however, covered a profound difference of sentiment. Horne Tooke
+represents the old type of reformer. He was fully resolved not to be
+carried away by the enthusiasm of his allies. 'My companions in a
+stage,' he said to Cartwright, 'may be going to Windsor: I will go
+with them to Hounslow. But there I will get out: no further will I go,
+by God!'<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a> When Sheridan supported a vote of sympathy for the
+French revolutionists, Tooke insisted upon adding a rider declaring
+the content of Englishmen with their own constitution.<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a> He
+offended some of his allies by asserting that the 'main timbers' of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+the constitution were sound though the dry-rot had got into the
+superstructure. He maintained, according to Godwin,<a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a> that the best
+of all governments had been that of England under George <small>I.</small> Though
+Cartwright said at the trial that Horne Tooke was taken to 'have no
+religion whatever,' he was, according to Stephens, 'a great stickler
+for the church of England': and stood up for the House of Lords as
+well as the church on grounds of utility.<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a> He always ridiculed
+Paine and the doctrine of abstract rights,<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> and told Cartwright
+that though all men had an equal right to a share of property, they
+had not a right to an equal share. Horne Tooke's Radicalism (I use the
+word by anticipation) was that of the sturdy tradesman. He opposed the
+government because he hated war, taxation and sinecures. He argued
+against universal suffrage with equal pertinacity. A comfortable old
+gentleman, with a good cellar of Madeira, and proud of his wall-fruit
+in a well-tilled garden, had no desire to see George <small>III</small>. at the
+guillotine, and still less to see a mob supreme in Lombard Street or
+banknotes superseded by assignats. He might be jealous of the great
+nobles, but he dreaded mob-rule. He could denounce abuses, but he
+could not desire anarchy. He is said to have retorted upon some one
+who had boasted that English courts of justice were open to all
+classes: 'So is the London tavern&mdash;to all who can pay.'<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> That is
+in the spirit of Bentham; and yet Bentham complains that Horne Tooke's
+disciple, Burdett, believed in the common law, and revered the
+authority of Coke.<a name="FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a> In
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+brief, the creed of Horne Tooke meant
+'liberty' founded upon tradition. I shall presently notice the
+consistency of this with what may be called his philosophy. Meanwhile
+it was only natural that radicals of this variety should retire from
+active politics, having sufficiently burnt their fingers by flirtation
+with the more thoroughgoing party. How they came to life again will
+appear hereafter. Horne Tooke himself took warning from his narrow
+escape. He stayed quietly in his house at Wimbledon.<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a> There he
+divided his time between his books and his garden, and received his
+friends to Sunday dinners. Bentham, Mackintosh, Coleridge, and Godwin
+were among his visitors. Coleridge calls him a 'keen iron man,' and
+reports that he made a butt of Godwin as he had done of Paine.<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id="FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a>
+Porson and Boswell encountered him in drinking matches and were both
+left under the table.<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a> The house was thus a small centre of
+intellectual life, though the symposia were not altogether such as
+became philosophers. Horne Tooke was a keen and shrewd disputant, well
+able to impress weaker natures. His neighbour, Sir Francis Burdett,
+became his political disciple, and in later years was accepted as the
+radical leader. Tooke died at Wimbledon 18th March 1812.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> <i>France</i>, p. 206 (20th July 1789).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a> See the <i>Life of Horne Tooke</i>, by Alexander Stephens (2
+vols. 8vo, 1813). John Horne added the name Tooke in 1782.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a> <i>Parl. Hist.</i> xxxi. 751.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a> The history of these societies may be found in the
+trials reported in the twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth
+volumes of Cobbett's <i>State Trials</i>, and in the reports of the secret
+committees in the thirty-first and thirty-fourth volumes of the <i>Parl.
+History</i>. There are materials in Place's papers in the British Museum
+which have been used in E. Smith's <i>English Jacobins</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> <i>Parl. Hist.</i> xxix. 1300-1341.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a> <i>Parl. Hist.</i> xxxiv. 574-655.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a> Mr. Wallas's <i>Life of Place</i>, p. 25 <i>n</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> <i>State Trials</i>, xxiv. 575.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> xxv. 330.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> xxv. 390.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a> Paul's <i>Godwin</i>, i. 147.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> Stephens, ii. 48, 477.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 34-41, 323, 478-481.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 483.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a> Bentham's <i>Works</i>, x. 404.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a> He was member for Old Sarum 1801-2; but his career
+ended by a declaratory act disqualifying for a seat men who had
+received holy orders.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a> Bentham's <i>Works</i>, x. 404; <i>Life of Mackintosh</i>, i. 52;
+Paul's <i>Godwin</i>, i. 71; Coleridge's <i>Table-Talk</i>, 8th May 1830 and
+16th August 1833.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a> Stephens, ii. 316, 334, 438.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs"><a name="III_VI" id="III_VI"></a>VI. INDIVIDUALISM</p>
+
+<p>The general tendencies which I have so far tried to indicate will have
+to be frequently noticed in the course of the following pages. One
+point may be emphasised before proceeding: a main characteristic of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+the whole social and political order is what is now called its
+'individualism.' That phrase is generally supposed to convey some
+censure. It may connote, however, some of the most essential virtues
+that a race can possess. Energy, self-reliance, and independence, a
+strong conviction that a man's fate should depend upon his own
+character and conduct, are qualities without which no nation can be
+great. They are the conditions of its vital power. They were
+manifested in a high degree by the Englishmen of the eighteenth
+century. How far they were due to the inherited qualities of the race,
+to the political or social history, or to external circumstances, I
+need not ask. They were the qualities which had especially impressed
+foreign observers. The fierce, proud, intractable Briton was elbowing
+his way to a high place in the world, and showing a vigour not always
+amiable, but destined to bring him successfully through tremendous
+struggles. In the earlier part of the century, Voltaire and French
+philosophers admired English freedom of thought and free speech, even
+when it led to eccentricity and brutality of manners, and to barbarism
+in matters of taste. Englishmen, conscious and proud of their
+'liberty,' were the models of all who desired liberty for themselves.
+Liberty, as they understood it, involved, among other things, an
+assault upon the old restrictive system, which at every turn hampered
+the rising industrial energy. This is the sense in which
+'Individualism,' or the gospel according to Adam Smith&mdash;<i>laissez
+faire</i>, and so forth&mdash;has been specially denounced in recent times.
+Without asking at present how far such attacks are justifiable, I
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+must be content to assume that the old restrictive system was in its
+actual form mischievous, guided by entirely false theories, and the
+great barrier to the development of industry. The same spirit appeared
+in purely political questions. 'Liberty,' as is often remarked, may be
+interpreted in two ways; not necessarily consistent with each other.
+It means sometimes simply the diminution of the sphere of law and the
+power of legislators, or, again, the transference to subjects of the
+power of legislating, and, therefore, not less control, but control by
+self-made laws alone. The Englishman, who was in presence of no
+centralised administrative power, who regarded the Government rather
+as receiving power from individuals than as delegating the power of a
+central body, took liberty mainly in the sense of restricting law.
+Government in general was a nuisance, though a necessity; and properly
+employed only in mediating between conflicting interests, and
+restraining the violence of individuals forced into contact by outward
+circumstances. When he demanded that a greater share of influence
+should be given to the people, he always took for granted that their
+power would be used to diminish the activity of the sovereign power;
+that there would be less government and therefore less jobbery, less
+interference with free speech and free action, and smaller perquisites
+to be bestowed in return for the necessary services. The people would
+use their authority to tie the hands of the rulers, and limit them
+strictly to their proper and narrow functions.</p>
+
+<p>The absence, again, of the idea of a state in any other sense implies
+another tendency. The 'idea' was not required. Englishmen were
+concerned rather with
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+details than with first principles. Satisfied,
+in a general way, with their constitution, they did not want to be
+bothered with theories. Abstract and absolute doctrines of right, when
+imported from France, fell flat upon the average Englishman. He was
+eager enough to discuss the utility of this or that part of the
+machinery, but without inquiring into first principles of mechanism.
+The argument from 'utility' deals with concrete facts, and presupposes
+an acceptance of some common criterion of the useful. The constant
+discussion of political matters in parliament and the press implied a
+tacit acceptance on all hands of constitutional methods. Practical
+men, asking whether this or that policy shall be adopted in view of
+actual events, no more want to go back to right reason and 'laws of
+nature' than a surveyor to investigate the nature of geometrical
+demonstration. Very important questions were raised as to the rights
+of the press, for example, or the system of representation. But
+everybody agreed that the representative system and freedom of speech
+were good things; and argued the immediate questions of fact. The
+order, only established by experience and tradition, was accepted,
+subject to criticism of detail, and men turned impatiently from
+abstract argument, and left the inquiry into 'social contracts' to
+philosophers, that is, to silly people in libraries. Politics were
+properly a matter of business, to be discussed in a business-like
+spirit. In this sense, 'individualism' is congenial to 'empiricism,'
+because it starts from facts and particular interests, and resents the
+intrusion of first principles.</p>
+
+<p>The characteristic individualism, again, suggests one other remark.
+Individual energy and sense of responsibility
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+are good&mdash;as even
+extreme socialists may admit&mdash;if they do not exclude a sense of duties
+to others. It may be a question how far the stimulation of individual
+enterprise and the vigorous spirit of industrial competition really
+led to a disregard of the interests of the weaker. But it would be a
+complete misunderstanding of the time if we inferred that it meant a
+decline of humane feeling. Undoubtedly great evils had grown up, and
+some continued to grow which were tolerated by the indifference, or
+even stimulated by the selfish aims, of the dominant classes. But, in
+the first place, many of the most active prophets of the individualist
+spirit were acting, and acting sincerely, in the name of humanity.
+They were attacking a system which they held, and to a great extent, I
+believe, held rightly, to be especially injurious to the weakest
+classes. Possibly they expected too much from the simple removal of
+restrictions; but certainly they denounced the restrictions as unjust
+to all, not simply as hindrances to the wealth of the rich. Adam
+Smith's position is intelligible: it was, he thought, a proof of a
+providential order that each man, by helping himself, unintentionally
+helped his neighbours. The moral sense based upon sympathy was
+therefore not opposed to, but justified, the economic principles that
+each man should first attend to his own interest. The unintentional
+co-operation would thus become conscious and compatible with the
+established order. And, in the next place, so far from there being a
+want of humane feeling, the most marked characteristic of the
+eighteenth century was precisely the growth of humanity. In the next
+generation, the eighteenth century came to be denounced as cold,
+heartless, faithless, and so forth.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+The established mode of writing
+history is partly responsible for this perversion. Men speak as though
+some great man, who first called attention to an evil, was a
+supernatural being who had suddenly dropped into the world from
+another sphere. His condemnation of evil is therefore taken to be a
+proof that the time must be evil. Any century is bad if we assume all
+the good men to be exceptions. But the great man is really also the
+product of his time. He is the mouthpiece of its prevailing
+sentiments, and only the first to see clearly what many are beginning
+to perceive obscurely. The emergence of the prophet is a proof of the
+growing demand of his hearers for sound teaching. Because he is in
+advance of men generally, he sees existing abuses more clearly, and we
+take his evidence against his contemporaries as conclusive. But the
+fact that they listened shows how widely the same sensibility to evil
+was already diffused. In fact, as I think, the humane spirit of the
+eighteenth century, due to the vast variety of causes which we call
+social progress or evolution&mdash;not to the teaching of any
+individual&mdash;was permeating the whole civilised world, and showed
+itself in the philosophic movement as well as in the teaching of the
+religious leaders, who took the philosophers to be their enemies. I
+have briefly noticed the various philanthropic movements which were
+characteristic of the period. Some of them may indicate the growth of
+new evils; others, that evils which had once been regarded with
+indifference were now attracting attention and exciting indignation.
+But even the growth of new evils does not show general indifference so
+much as the incapacity of the existing system to deal with new
+conditions. It may, I think,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+be safely said that a growing
+philanthropy was characteristic of the whole period, and in particular
+animated the Utilitarian movement, as I shall have to show in detail.
+Modern writers have often spoken of the Wesleyan propaganda and the
+contemporary 'evangelical revival' as the most important movements of
+the time. They are apt to speak, in conformity with the view just
+described, as though Wesley or some of his contemporaries had
+originated or created the better spirit. Without asking what was good
+or bad in some aspects of these movements, I fully believe that Wesley
+was essentially a moral reformer, and that he deserves corresponding
+respect. But instead of holding that his contemporaries were bad
+people, awakened by a stimulus from without, I hold that the movement,
+so far as really indicating moral improvement, must be set down to the
+credit of the century itself. It was one manifestation of a general
+progress, of which Bentham was another outcome. Though Bentham might
+have thought Wesley a fanatic or perhaps a hypocrite, and Wesley would
+certainly have considered that Bentham's heart was much in need of a
+change, they were really allies as much as antagonists, and both mark
+a great and beneficial change.
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 33%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>PHILOSOPHY</h3>
+
+<p class="scs">I. <a name="IV_I" id="IV_I"></a>JOHN HORNE TOOKE</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+I have so far dwelt upon the social and political environment of the
+early Utilitarian movement; and have tried also to point out some of
+the speculative tendencies fostered by the position. If it be asked
+what philosophical doctrines were explicitly taught, the answer must
+be a very short one. English philosophy barely existed. Parr was
+supposed to know something about metaphysics&mdash;apparently because he
+could write good Latin. But the inference was hasty. Of one book,
+however, which had a real influence, I must say something, for though
+it contained little definite philosophy, it showed what kind of
+philosophy was congenial to the common sense of the time.</p>
+
+<p>The sturdy radical, Horne Tooke, had been led to the study of
+philology by a characteristic incident. The legal question had arisen
+whether the words, '<i>She, knowing that Crooke had been indicted for
+forgery</i>,' did so and so, contained an averment that Crooke had been
+indicted. Tooke argued in a letter to Dunning<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id="FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a> that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+they did;
+because they were equivalent to the phrase, 'Crooke had been indicted
+for forgery: she, <i>knowing that</i>,' did so and so. This raises the
+question: What is the meaning of 'that'? Tooke took up the study,
+thinking, as he says, that it would throw light upon some
+philosophical questions. He learned some Anglo-Saxon and Gothic to
+test his theory and, of course, confirmed it.<a name="FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a> The book shows
+ingenuity, shrewdness, and industry, and Tooke deserves credit for
+seeing the necessity of applying a really historical method to his
+problem, though his results were necessarily crude in the
+pre-scientific stage of philology.</p>
+
+<p>The book is mainly a long string of etymologies, which readers of
+different tastes have found intolerably dull or an amusing collection
+of curiosities. Tooke held, and surely with reason, that an
+investigation of language, the great instrument of thought, may help
+to throw light upon the process of thinking. He professes to be a
+disciple of Locke in philosophy as in politics. Locke, he said,<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a>
+made a lucky mistake in calling his book an essay upon human
+understanding; for he thus attracted many who would have been repelled
+had he called it what it really was, 'a treatise upon words and
+language.' According to Tooke, in fact,<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id="FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> what we call 'operations
+of mind' are only 'operations of language.' The mind contemplates
+nothing but 'impressions,' that is, 'sensations or feelings,' which
+Locke called 'ideas,' Locke
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+mistook composition of terms for
+composition of ideas. To compound ideas is impossible. We can only use
+one term as a sign of many ideas. Locke, again, supposed that
+affirming and denying were operations of the mind, whereas they are
+only artifices of language.<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id="FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a></p>
+
+<p>The mind, then, can only contemplate, separately or together,
+aggregates of 'ideas,' ultimate atoms, incapable of being parted or
+dissolved. There are, therefore, only two classes of words, nouns and
+verbs; all others, prepositions, conjunctions, and so forth, being
+abbreviations, a kind of mental shorthand to save the trouble of
+enumerating the separate items. Tooke, in short, is a thoroughgoing
+nominalist. The realities, according to him, are sticks, stones, and
+material objects, or the 'ideas' which 'represent' them. They can be
+stuck together or taken apart, but all the words which express
+relations, categories, and the like, are in themselves meaningless.
+The special objects of his scorn are 'Hermes' Harris, and Monboddo,
+who had tried to defend Aristotle against Locke. Monboddo had asserted
+that 'every kind of relation' is a pure 'idea of the intellect' not to
+be apprehended by sense.<a name="FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a> If so, according to Tooke, it would be a
+nonentity.</p>
+
+<p>This doctrine gives a short cut to the abolition of metaphysics. The
+word 'metaphysics,' says Tooke,<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id="FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a> is nonsense. All metaphysical
+controversies are 'founded on the grossest ignorance of words and the
+nature of speech.' The greatest part of his second volume is concerned
+with etymologies intended to prove that an 'abstract idea' is a mere
+word. Abstract words, he
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+says,<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id="FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a> are generally 'participles
+without a substantive and therefore in construction used as
+substantives.' From a misunderstanding of this has arisen
+'metaphysical jargon' and 'false morality.' In illustration he gives a
+singular list of words, including 'fate, chance, heaven, hell,
+providence, prudence, innocence, substance, fiend, angel, apostle,
+spirit, true, false, desert, merit, faith, etc., all of which are mere
+participles poetically embodied and substantiated by those who use
+them.' A couple of specific applications, often quoted by later
+writers, will sufficiently indicate his drift.</p>
+
+<p>Such words, he remarks,<a name="FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a> as 'right' and 'just' mean simply that
+which is ordered or commanded. The chapter is headed 'rights of man,'
+and Tooke's interlocutor naturally observes that this is a singular
+result for a democrat. Man, it would seem, has no rights except the
+rights created by the law. Tooke admits the inference to be correct,
+but replies that the democrat in disobeying human law may be obeying
+the law of God, and is obeying the law of God when he obeys the law of
+nature. The interlocutor does not inquire what Tooke could mean by the
+'law of nature.' We can guess what Tooke would have said to Paine in
+the Wimbledon garden. In fact, however, Tooke is here, as elsewhere,
+following Hobbes, though, it seems, unconsciously. Another famous
+etymology is that of 'truth' from 'troweth.'<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id="FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a> Truth is what each
+man thinks. There is no such thing, therefore, as 'eternal, immutable,
+everlasting truth, unless mankind, <i>such as they are at present</i>,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> be
+eternal, immutable, everlasting.' Two persons may contradict each
+other and yet each may be speaking what is true for him. Truth may be
+a vice as well as a virtue; for on many occasions it is wrong to speak
+the truth.</p>
+
+<p>These phrases may possibly be interpreted in a sense less paradoxical
+than the obvious one. Tooke's philosophy, if so it is to be called,
+was never fully expounded. He burned his papers before his death, and
+we do not know what he would have said about 'verbs,' which must have
+led, one would suppose, to some further treatment of relations, nor
+upon the subject, which as Stephens tells us, was most fully treated
+in his continuation, the value of human testimony.</p>
+
+<p>If Tooke was not a philosopher he was a man of remarkably shrewd
+cynical common sense, who thought philosophy idle foppery. His book
+made a great success. Stephens tells us<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id="FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a> that it brought him &pound;4000
+or &pound;5000. Hazlitt in 1810 published a grammar professing to
+incorporate for the first time Horne Tooke's 'discoveries.' The book
+was admired by Mackintosh,<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> who, of course, did not accept the
+principles, and had a warm disciple in Charles Richardson (1775-1865),
+who wrote in its defence against Dugald Stewart and accepted its
+authority in his elaborate dictionary of the English language.<a name="FNanchor_156_156" id="FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a>
+But its chief interest for us is that it was a great authority with
+James Mill. Mill accepts the etymologies, and there is much in common
+between the two writers, though Mill had learned his main
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> doctrines
+elsewhere, especially from Hobbes. What the agreement really shows is
+how the intellectual idiosyncrasy which is congenial to 'nominalism'
+in philosophy was also congenial to Tooke's matter of fact radicalism
+and to the Utilitarian position of Bentham and his followers.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a> Published originally in 1778; reprinted in edition of
+&#917;&#928;&#917;&#913; &#928;&#932;&#917;&#929;&#927;&#917;&#925;&#932;&#913; or <i>Diversions of Purley</i>, by Richard Taylor (1829), to
+which I refer. The first part of the <i>Diversions of Purley</i> appeared
+in 1786; and the second part (with a new edition of the first) in
+1798.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a> <i>Diversions of Purley</i> (1829), i. 12, 131.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 362. Locke's work, says Prof. Max M&uuml;ller in
+his <i>Science of Thought</i>, p. 295, 'is, as Lange in his <i>History of
+Materialism</i> rightly perceived, a critique of language which, together
+with Kant's <i>Critique of the Pure Reason</i>, forms the starting-point of
+modern philosophy.' <i>See</i> Lange's <i>Materialism</i>, (1873), i. 271.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 49.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a> <i>Diversions of Purley</i>, i. 36, 42.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 373.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 374.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a> <i>Diversions of Purley</i>, ii. 18. Cf. Mill's statement in
+<i>Analysis</i>, i. 304, that 'abstract terms are concrete terms with the
+connotation dropped.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 9, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 399.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a> Stephens, ii. 497.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a> <i>Life of Mackintosh</i>, ii. 235-37.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a> Begun for the <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia Metropolitana</i> in 1818; and
+published in 1835-37. Dugald Stewart's chief criticism is in his
+Essays (<i>Works</i>, v. 149-188). John Fearn published his <i>Anti-Tooke</i> in
+1820.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">II. <a name="IV_II" id="IV_II"></a>DUGALD STEWART</p>
+
+<p>If English philosophy was a blank, there was still a leader of high
+reputation in Scotland. Dugald Stewart (1753-1828) had a considerable
+influence upon the Utilitarians. He represented, on the one hand, the
+doctrines which they thought themselves specially bound to attack, and
+it may perhaps be held that in some ways he betrayed to them the key
+of the position. Stewart<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id="FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a> was son of a professor of mathematics at
+Edinburgh. He studied at Glasgow (1771-72) where he became Reid's
+favourite pupil and devoted friend. In 1772 he became the assistant,
+and in 1775 the colleague, of his father, and he appears to have had a
+considerable knowledge of mathematics. In 1785 he succeeded Adam
+Ferguson as professor of moral philosophy and lectured continuously
+until 1810. He then gave up his active duties to Thomas Brown,
+devoting himself to the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+completion and publication of the substance
+of his lectures. Upon Brown's death in 1820, he resigned a post to
+which he was no longer equal. A paralytic stroke in 1822 weakened him,
+though he was still able to write. He died in 1828.</p>
+
+<p>If Stewart now makes no great mark in histories of philosophy, his
+personal influence was conspicuous. Cockburn describes him as of
+delicate appearance, with a massive head, bushy eyebrows, gray
+intelligent eyes, flexible mouth and expressive countenance. His voice
+was sweet and his ear exquisite. Cockburn never heard a better reader,
+and his manners, though rather formal, were graceful and dignified.
+James Mill, after hearing Pitt and Fox, declared that Stewart was
+their superior in eloquence. At Edinburgh, then at the height of its
+intellectual activity, he held his own among the ablest men and
+attracted the loyalty of the younger. Students came not only from
+Scotland but from England, the United States, France and Germany.<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id="FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a>
+Scott won the professor's approval by an essay on the 'Customs of the
+Northern Nations.' Jeffrey, Horner, Cockburn and Mackintosh were among
+his disciples. His lectures upon Political Economy were attended by
+Sydney Smith, Jeffrey and Brougham, and one of his last hearers was
+Lord Palmerston. Parr looked up to him as a great philosopher, and
+contributed to his works an essay upon the etymology of the word
+'sublime,' too vast to be printed whole. Stewart was an upholder of
+Whig principles, when the Scottish government was in the hands of the
+staunchest Tories. The irreverent young Edinburgh Reviewers treated
+him with respect, and to some
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+extent applied his theory to politics.
+Stewart was the philosophical heir of Reid; and, one may say, was a
+Whig both in philosophy and in politics. He was a rationalist, but
+within the limits fixed by respectability; and he dreaded the
+revolution in politics, and believed in the surpassing merits of the
+British Constitution as interpreted by the respectable Whigs.</p>
+
+<p>Stewart represents the 'common sense' doctrine. That name, as he
+observes, lends itself to an equivocation. Common sense is generally
+used as nearly synonymous with 'mother wit,' the average opinion of
+fairly intelligent men; and he would prefer to speak of the
+'fundamental laws of belief.'<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id="FNanchor_159_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a> There can, however, be no doubt
+that the doctrine derived much of its strength from the apparent
+confirmation of the 'average opinion' by the 'fundamental laws.' On
+one side, said Reid, are all the vulgar; on the other all the
+philosophers. 'In this division, to my great humiliation, I find
+myself classed with the vulgar.'<a name="FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a> Reid, in fact, had opposed the
+theories of Hume and Berkeley because they led to a paradoxical
+scepticism. If it be, as Reid held, a legitimate inference from
+Berkeley that a man may as well run his head against a post, there can
+be no doubt that it is shocking to common sense in every acceptation
+of the word. The reasons, however, which Reid and Stewart alleged for
+not performing that feat took a special form, which I am compelled to
+notice briefly because they set up the mark for the whole intellectual
+artillery of the Utilitarians. Reid, in fact, invented what J. S. Mill
+called 'intuitions.' To confute intuitionists and get rid of
+intuitions was one main purpose of all Mill's speculations.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+What,
+then, is an 'intuition'? To explain that fully it would be necessary
+to write once more that history of the philosophical movement from
+Descartes to Hume, which has been summarised and elucidated by so many
+writers that it should be as plain as the road from St. Paul's to
+Temple Bar. I am forced to glance at the position taken by Reid and
+Stewart because it has a most important bearing upon the whole
+Utilitarian scheme. Reid's main service to philosophy was, in his own
+opinion,<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id="FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a> that he refuted the 'ideal system' of Descartes and his
+followers. That system, he says, carried in its womb the monster,
+scepticism, which came to the birth in 1739,<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id="FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a> the date of Hume's
+early <i>Treatise</i>. To confute Hume, therefore, which was Reid's primary
+object, it was necessary to go back to Descartes, and to show where he
+deviated from the right track. In other words, we must trace the
+genealogy of 'ideas.' Descartes, as Reid admitted, had rendered
+immense services to philosophy. He had exploded the scholastic system,
+which had become a mere mass of logomachies and an incubus upon
+scientific progress. He had again been the first to 'draw a distinct
+line between the material and the intellectual world'<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id="FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a>; and Reid
+apparently assumes that he had drawn it correctly. One characteristic
+of the Cartesian school is obvious. Descartes, a great mathematician
+at the period when mathematical investigations were showing their
+enormous power, invented a mathematical universe. Mathematics
+presented the true type of scientific reasoning and determined his
+canons of inquiry. The 'essence' of matter, he said, was space. The
+objective world, as we
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+have learned to call it, is simply space
+solidified or incarnate geometry. Its properties therefore could be
+given as a system of deductions from first principles, and it forms a
+coherent and self-subsistent whole. Meanwhile the essence of the soul
+is thought. Thought and matter are absolutely opposed. They are
+contraries, having nothing in common. Reality, however, seems to
+belong to the world of space. The brain, too, belongs to that world,
+and motions in the brain must be determined as a part of the material
+mechanism. In some way or other 'ideas' correspond to these motions;
+though to define the way tried all the ingenuity of Descartes'
+successors. In any case an idea is 'subjective': it is a thought, not
+a thing. It is a shifting, ephemeral entity not to be fixed or
+grasped. Yet, somehow or other, it exists, and it 'represents'
+realities; though the divine power has to be called in to guarantee
+the accuracy of the representation. The objective world, again, does
+not reveal itself to us as simply made up of 'primary qualities'; we
+know of it only as somehow endowed with 'secondary' or sense-given
+qualities: as visible, tangible, audible, and so forth. These
+qualities are plainly 'subjective'; they vary from man to man, and
+from moment to moment: they cannot be measured or fixed; and must be
+regarded as a product in some inexplicable way of the action of matter
+upon mind; unreal or, at any rate, not independent entities.</p>
+
+<p>In Locke's philosophy, the 'ideas,' legitimate or illegitimate
+descendants of the Cartesian theories, play a most prominent part.
+Locke's admirable common sense made him the leader who embodied a
+growing tendency. The empirical sciences were growing; and Locke, a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+student of medicine, could note the fallacies which arise from
+neglecting observation and experiment, and attempting to penetrate to
+the absolute essences and entities. Newton's great success was due to
+neglecting impossible problems about the nature of force in
+itself&mdash;'action at a distance' and so forth&mdash;and attention to the
+sphere of visible phenomena. The excessive pretensions of the framers
+of metaphysical systems had led to hopeless puzzles and merely verbal
+solutions. Locke, therefore, insisted upon the necessity of
+ascertaining the necessary limits of human knowledge. All our
+knowledge of material facts is obviously dependent in some way upon
+our sensations&mdash;however fleeting or unreal they may be. Therefore, the
+material sciences must depend upon sense-given data or upon
+observation and experiment. Hume gives the ultimate purpose, already
+implied in Locke's essay, when he describes his first treatise (on the
+title page) as an 'attempt to introduce the experimental mode of
+reasoning into moral subjects.' Now, as Reid thinks, the effect of
+this was to construct our whole knowledge out of the representative
+ideas. The empirical factor is so emphasised that we lose all grasp of
+the real world. Locke, indeed, though he insists upon the derivation
+of our whole knowledge from 'ideas,' leaves reality to the 'primary
+qualities' without clearly expounding their relation to the secondary.
+But Berkeley, alarmed by the tendency of the Cartesian doctrines to
+materialism and mechanical necessity, reduces the 'primary' to the
+level of the 'secondary,' and proceeds to abolish the whole world of
+matter. We are thus left with nothing but 'ideas,' and the ideas are
+naturally 'subjective' and therefore in some sense unreal.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> Finally
+Hume gets rid of the soul as well as the outside world; and then, by
+his theory of 'causation,' shows that the ideas themselves are
+independent atoms, cohering but not rationally connected, and capable
+of being arbitrarily joined or separated in any way whatever. Thus the
+ideas have ousted the facts. We cannot get beyond ideas, and yet ideas
+are still purely subjective. The 'real' is separated from the
+phenomenal, and truth divorced from fact. The sense-given world is the
+whole world, and yet is a world of mere accidental conjunctions and
+separation. That is Hume's scepticism, and yet according to Reid is
+the legitimate development of Descartes' 'ideal system.' Reid, I take
+it, was right in seeing that there was a great dilemma. What was
+required to escape from it? According to Kant, nothing less than a
+revision of Descartes' mode of demarcation between object and subject.
+The 'primary qualities' do not correspond in this way to an objective
+world radically opposed to the subjective. Space is not a form of
+things, but a form imposed upon the data of experience by the mind
+itself. This, as Kant says, supposes a revolution in philosophy
+comparable to the revolution made by Copernicus in astronomy. We have
+completely to invert our whole system of conceiving the world.
+Whatever the value of Kant's doctrine, of which I need here say
+nothing, it was undoubtedly more prolific than Reid's. Reid's was far
+less thoroughgoing. He does not draw a new line between object and
+subject, but simply endeavours to show that the dilemma was due to
+certain assumptions about the nature of 'ideas.'</p>
+
+<p>The real had been altogether separated from the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+phenomenal, or truth
+divorced from fact. You can only have demonstrations by getting into a
+region beyond the sensible world; while within that world&mdash;that is,
+the region of ordinary knowledge and conduct&mdash;you are doomed to
+hopeless uncertainty. An escape, therefore, must be sought by some
+thorough revision of the assumed relation, but not by falling back
+upon the exploded philosophy of the schools. Reid and his successors
+were quite as much alive as Locke to the danger of falling into mere
+scholastic logomachy. They, too, will in some sense base all knowledge
+upon experience. Reid constantly appeals to the authority of Bacon,
+whom he regards as the true founder of inductive science. The great
+success of Bacon's method in the physical sciences, encouraged the
+hope, already expressed by Newton, that a similar result might be
+achieved in 'moral philosophy.'<a name="FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a> Hume had done something to clear
+the way, but Reid was, as Stewart thinks, the first to perceive
+clearly and justly the 'analogy between these two different branches
+of human knowledge.' The mind and matter are two co-ordinate things,
+whose properties are to be investigated by similar methods. Philosophy
+thus means essentially psychology. The two inquiries are two
+'branches' of inductive science, and the problem is to discover by a
+perfectly impartial examination what are the 'fundamental laws of
+mind' revealed by an accurate analysis of the various processes of
+thought. The main result of Reid's investigations is given most
+pointedly in his early <i>Inquiry</i>, and was fully accepted by Stewart.
+Briefly it comes to this. No one can doubt that we believe, as a fact,
+in an external world. We believe
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+that there are sun and moon, stones,
+sticks, and human bodies. This belief is accepted by the sceptic as
+well as by the dogmatist, although the sceptic reduces it to a mere
+blind custom or 'association of ideas.' Now Reid argues that the
+belief, whatever its nature, is not and cannot be derived from the
+sensations. We do not construct the visible and tangible world, for
+example, simply out of impressions made upon the senses of sight and
+touch. To prove this, he examines what are the actual data provided by
+these senses, and shows, or tries to show, that we cannot from them
+alone construct the world of space and geometry. Hence, if we consider
+experience impartially and without preconception, we find that it
+tells us something which is not given by the senses. The senses are
+not the material of our perceptions, but simply give the occasions
+upon which our belief is called into activity. The sensation is no
+more like the reality in which we believe than the pain of a wound is
+like the edge of the knife. Perception tells us directly and
+immediately, without the intervention of ideas, that there is, as we
+all believe, a real external world.</p>
+
+<p>Reid was a vigorous reasoner, and credit has been given to him by some
+disciples of Kant's doctrine of time and space. Schopenhauer<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id="FNanchor_165_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a> says
+that Reid's 'excellent work' gives a complete 'negative proof of the
+Kantian truths'; that is to say, that Reid proves satisfactorily that
+we cannot construct the world out of the sense-given data alone. But,
+whereas Kant regards the senses as supplying
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+the materials moulded by
+the perceiving mind, Reid regards them as mere stimuli exciting
+certain inevitable beliefs. As a result of Reid's method, then, we
+have 'intuitions.' Reid's essential contention is that a fair
+examination of experience will reveal certain fundamental beliefs,
+which cannot be explained as mere manifestations of the sensations,
+and which, by the very fact that they are inexplicable, must be
+accepted as an 'inspiration.'<a name="FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a> Reid professes to discover these
+beliefs by accurately describing facts. He finds them there as a
+chemist finds an element. The 'intuition' is made by substituting for
+'ideas' a mysterious and inexplicable connection between the mind and
+matter.<a name="FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a> The chasm exists still, but it is somehow bridged by a
+quasi-miracle. Admitting, therefore, that Reid shows a gap to exist in
+the theory, his result remains 'negative.' The philosopher will say
+that it is not enough to assert a principle dogmatically without
+showing its place in a reasoned system of thought. The psychologist,
+on the other hand, who takes Reid's own ground, may regard the
+statement only as a useful challenge to further inquiry. The analysis
+hitherto given may be insufficient, but where Reid has failed, other
+inquirers may be more successful. As soon, in fact, as we apply the
+psychological method, and regard the 'philosophy of mind' as an
+'inductive science,' it is perilous, if not absolutely inconsistent,
+to discover 'intuitions' which will take us beyond experience. The
+line of defence against empiricism
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+can only be provisional and
+temporary. In his main results, indeed, Reid had the advantage of
+being on the side of 'common sense.' Everybody was already convinced
+that there were sticks and stones, and everybody is prepared to hear
+that their belief is approved by philosophy. But a difficulty arises
+when a similar method is applied to a doctrine sincerely disputed. To
+the statement, 'this is a necessary belief,' it is a sufficient answer
+to reply, 'I don't believe it,' In that case, an intuition merely
+amounts to a dogmatic assumption that I am infallible, and must be
+supported by showing its connection with beliefs really universal and
+admittedly necessary.</p>
+
+<p>Dugald Stewart followed Reid upon this main question, and with less
+force and originality represents the same point of view. He accepts
+Reid's view of the two co-ordinate departments of knowledge; the
+science of which mind, and the science of which body, is the object.
+Philosophy is not a 'theory of knowledge' or of the universe; but, as
+it was then called, 'a philosophy of the human mind.' 'Philosophy' is
+founded upon inductive psychology; and it only becomes philosophy in a
+wider sense in so far as we discover that as a fact we have certain
+fundamental beliefs, which are thus given by experience, though they
+take us in a sense beyond experience. Jeffrey, reviewing Stewart's
+life of Reid, in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> of 1804, makes a significant
+inference from this. Bacon's method, he said, had succeeded in the
+physical sciences, because there we could apply experiment. But
+experiment is impossible in the science of mind; and therefore
+philosophy will never be anything but a plaything or a useful variety
+of gymnastic. Stewart replied
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+at some length in his <i>Essays</i>,<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id="FNanchor_168_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a>
+fully accepting the general conception, but arguing that the
+experimental method was applicable to the science of mind. Jeffrey
+observes that it was now admitted that the 'profoundest reasonings'
+had brought us back to the view of the vulgar, and this, too, is
+admitted by Stewart so far as the cardinal doctrine of 'the common
+sense' philosophy, the theory of perception, is admitted.</p>
+
+<p>From this, again, it follows that the 'notions we annex to the words
+Matter and Mind are merely relative.'<a name="FNanchor_169_169" id="FNanchor_169_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a> We know that mind exists as
+we know that matter exists; or, if anything, we know the existence of
+mind more certainly because more directly. The mind is suggested by
+'the subjects of our consciousness'; the body by the objects 'of our
+perception.' But, on the other hand, we are totally 'ignorant of the
+essence of either.'<a name="FNanchor_170_170" id="FNanchor_170_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a> We can discover the laws either of mental or
+moral phenomena; but a law, as he explains, means in strictness
+nothing but a 'general fact.'<a name="FNanchor_171_171" id="FNanchor_171_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a> It is idle, therefore, to explain
+the nature of the union between the two unknowable substances; we can
+only discover that they are united and observe the laws according to
+which one set of phenomena corresponds to the other. From a
+misunderstanding of this arise all the fallacies of scholastic
+ontology, 'the most idle and absurd speculation that ever employed the
+human faculties.'<a name="FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a> The destruction of that pseudo-science was the
+great glory of Bacon and Locke; and Reid has now discovered the method
+by which we may advance to the establishment of a truly inductive
+'philosophy of mind.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+It is not surprising that Stewart approximates in various directions
+to the doctrines of the empirical school. He leans towards them
+whenever he does not see the results to which he is tending. Thus, for
+example, he is a thoroughgoing nominalist;<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id="FNanchor_173_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a> and on this point he
+deserts the teaching of Reid. He defends against Reid the attack made
+by Berkeley and Hume upon 'abstract ideas.' Rosmini,<a name="FNanchor_174_174" id="FNanchor_174_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a> in an
+elaborate criticism, complains that Stewart did not perceive the
+inevitable tendency of nominalism to materialism.<a name="FNanchor_175_175" id="FNanchor_175_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a> Stewart, in
+fact, accepts a good deal of Horne Tooke's doctrine,<a name="FNanchor_176_176" id="FNanchor_176_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a> though
+calling Tooke an 'ingenious grammarian, not a very profound
+philosopher,' but holds, as we shall see, that the materialistic
+tendency can be avoided. As becomes a nominalist, he attacks the
+syllogism upon grounds more fully brought out by J. S. Mill. Upon
+another essential point, he agrees with the pure empiricists. He
+accepts Hume's view of causation in all questions of physical science.
+In natural philosophy, he declares causation means only conjunction.
+The senses can never give us the 'efficient' cause of any phenomenon.
+In other words, we can never see a 'necessary connection' between any
+two events. He collects passages from earlier writers to show how Hume
+had been anticipated; and holds that Bacon's inadequate view of this
+truth was a main defect in his theories.<a name="FNanchor_177_177" id="FNanchor_177_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a> Hence we have a
+characteristic conclusion. He says, when
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+discussing the proofs of the
+existence of God,<a name="FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a> that we have an 'irresistible conviction of the
+<i>necessity</i> of a cause' for every change. Hume, however, has shown
+that this can never be a logical necessity. It must then, argues
+Stewart, be either a 'prejudice' or an 'intuitive judgment.' Since it
+is shown by 'universal consent' not to be a prejudice, it must be an
+intuitive judgment. Thus Hume's facts are accepted; but his inference
+denied. The actual causal nexus is inscrutable. The conviction that
+there must be a connection between events attributed by Hume to
+'custom' is attributed by Stewart to intuitive belief. Stewart infers
+that Hume's doctrine is really favourable to theology. It implies that
+God gives us the conviction, and perhaps, as Malebranche held, that
+God is 'the constantly operating efficient Cause in the material
+world.'<a name="FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a> Stewart's successor, Thomas Brown, took up this argument
+on occasion of the once famous 'Leslie controversy'; and Brown's
+teaching was endorsed by James Mill and by John Stuart Mill.</p>
+
+<p>According to J. S. Mill, James Mill and Stewart represented opposite
+poles of philosophic thought. I shall have to consider this dictum
+hereafter. On the points already noticed Stewart must be regarded as
+an ally rather than an opponent of the Locke and Hume tradition. Like
+them he appeals unhesitatingly to experience, and cannot find words
+strong enough to express his contempt for 'ontological' and scholastic
+methods. His 'intuitions' are so far very harmless things, which fall
+in with common sense, and enable him to hold without further trouble
+the beliefs which, as a matter of fact, are held by everybody. They
+are an excuse for not seeking any
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+ultimate explanation in reason. He
+is, indeed, opposed to the school which claimed to be the legitimate
+successor to Locke, but which evaded Hume's scepticism by diverging
+towards materialism. The great representative of this doctrine in
+England had been Hartley, and in Stewart's day Hartley's lead had been
+followed by Priestley, who attacked Reid from a materialist point of
+view, by Priestley's successor, Thomas Belsham, and by Erasmus Darwin.
+We find Stewart, in language which reminds us of later controversy,
+denouncing the 'Darwinian School'<a name="FNanchor_180_180" id="FNanchor_180_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a> for theories about instinct
+incompatible with the doctrine of final causes. It might appear that a
+philosopher who has re-established the objective existence of space in
+opposition to Berkeley, was in danger of that materialism which had
+been Berkeley's bugbear. But Stewart escapes the danger by his
+assertion that our knowledge of matter is 'relative' or confined to
+phenomena. Materialism is for him a variety of ontology, involving the
+assumption that we know the essence of matter. To speak with Hartley
+of 'vibrations,' animal spirits, and so forth, is to be led astray by
+a false analogy. We can discover the laws of correspondence of mind
+and body, but not the ultimate nature of either.<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id="FNanchor_181_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a> Thus he regards
+the 'physiological metaphysics of the present day' as an 'idle waste
+of labour and ingenuity on questions to which the human mind is
+altogether incompetent.'<a name="FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a> The principles found by inductive
+observation are as independent of these speculations as Newton's
+theory of gravitation of an ultimate mechanical cause of gravitation.</p>
+
+<p>Hartley's followers, however, could drop the 'vibration'
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+theory; and
+their doctrine then became one of 'association of ideas.' To this
+famous theory, which became the sheet-anchor of the empirical school,
+Stewart is not altogether opposed. We find him speaking of
+'indissoluble association' in language which reminds us of the
+Mills.<a name="FNanchor_183_183" id="FNanchor_183_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a> Hume had spoken of association as comparable to
+gravitation&mdash;the sole principle by which our 'ideas' and 'impressions'
+are combined into a whole; a theory, of course, corresponding to his
+doctrine of 'belief' as a mere custom of associating. Stewart uses the
+principle rather as Locke had done, as explaining fallacies due to
+'casual associations.' It supposes, as he says, the previous existence
+of certain principles, and cannot be an ultimate explanation. The only
+question can be at what point we have reached an 'original principle,'
+and are therefore bound to stop our analysis.<a name="FNanchor_184_184" id="FNanchor_184_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_184_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a> Over this question
+he glides rather too lightly, as is his custom; but from his point of
+view the belief, for example, in an external world, cannot be
+explained by association, inasmuch as it reveals itself as an ultimate
+datum.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the physical sciences, then, Stewart's position
+approximates very closely to the purely 'empirical' view. When we come
+to a different application of his principles, we find him taking a
+curiously balanced position between different schools. 'Common sense'
+naturally wishes to adapt itself to generally accepted beliefs; and
+with so flexible a doctrine as that of 'intuitions' it is not
+difficult to discover methods of proving the ordinary dogmas.
+Stewart's theology is characteristic of this tendency. He describes
+the so-called <i>a priori</i>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+proof, as formulated by Clarke. But without
+denying its force, he does not like to lay stress upon it. He dreads
+'ontology' too much. He therefore considers that the argument at once
+most satisfactory to the philosopher and most convincing to ordinary
+men is the argument from design. The belief in God is not 'intuitive,'
+but follows immediately from two first principles: the principle that
+whatever exists has a cause, and the principle that a 'combination of
+means implies a designer.'<a name="FNanchor_185_185" id="FNanchor_185_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a> The belief in a cause arises on our
+perception of change as our belief in the external world arises upon
+our sensations. The belief in design must be a 'first principle'
+because it includes a belief in 'necessity' which cannot arise from
+mere observation of 'contingent truths.'<a name="FNanchor_186_186" id="FNanchor_186_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_186_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a> Hence Stewart accepts
+the theory of final causes as stated by Paley. Though Paley's ethics
+offended him, he has nothing but praise for the work upon <i>Natural
+Theology</i>.<a name="FNanchor_187_187" id="FNanchor_187_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a> Thus, although 'common sense' does not enable us to
+lay down the central doctrine of theology as a primary truth, it does
+enable us to interpret experience in theological terms. In other
+words, his theology is of the purely empirical kind, which was, as we
+shall see, the general characteristic of the time.</p>
+
+<p>In Stewart's discussion of ethical problems the same doctrine of
+'final causes' assumes a special importance. Stewart, as elsewhere,
+tries to hold an intermediate position; to maintain the independence
+of morality without committing himself to the 'ontological' or purely
+logical view; and to show that virtue conduces to happiness without
+allowing that its dictates are to be deduced from
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+its tendency to
+produce happiness. His doctrine is to a great extent derived from the
+teaching of Hutcheson and Bishop Butler. He really approximates most
+closely to Hutcheson, who takes a similar view of Utilitarianism, but
+he professes the warmest admiration of Butler. He explicitly accepts
+Butler's doctrine of the 'supremacy of the conscience'&mdash;a doctrine
+which as he says, the bishop, 'has placed in the strongest and
+happiest light.'<a name="FNanchor_188_188" id="FNanchor_188_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a> He endeavours, again, to approximate to the
+'intellectual school,' of which Richard Price (1723-1791) was the
+chief English representative at the time. Like Kant, Price deduces the
+moral law from principles of pure reason. The truth of the moral law,
+'Thou shalt do to others as you wish that they should do to you,' is
+as evident as the truth of the law in geometry, 'things which are
+equal to the same thing are equal to each other.' Stewart so far
+approves that he wishes to give to the moral law what is now called
+all possible 'objectivity,' while the 'moral sense' of Hutcheson
+apparently introduced a 'subjective' element. He holds, however, that
+our moral perceptions 'involve a feeling of the heart,' as well as a
+'judgment of the understanding,'<a name="FNanchor_189_189" id="FNanchor_189_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a> and ascribes the same view to
+Butler. But then, by using the word 'reason' so as to include the
+whole nature of a rational being, we may ascribe to it the 'origin of
+those simple ideas which are not excited in the mind by the operation
+of the senses, but which arise in consequence of the operation of the
+intellectual powers among the various objects.'<a name="FNanchor_190_190" id="FNanchor_190_190"></a><a href="#Footnote_190_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a> Hutcheson, he
+says, made his 'moral sense' unsatisfactory by taking his
+illustrations from the 'secondary' instead of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
+'primary
+qualities,'<a name="FNanchor_191_191" id="FNanchor_191_191"></a><a href="#Footnote_191_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a> and thus with the help of intuitive first principles,
+Stewart succeeds in believing that it would be as hard for a man to
+believe that he ought to sacrifice another man's happiness to his own
+as to believe that three angles of a triangle are equal to one right
+angle.<a name="FNanchor_192_192" id="FNanchor_192_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_192_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a> It is true that a feeling and a judgment are both
+involved; but the 'intellectual judgment' is the groundwork of the
+feeling, not the feeling of the judgment.<a name="FNanchor_193_193" id="FNanchor_193_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_193_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a> In spite, however, of
+this attempt to assimilate his principles to those of the intellectual
+school, the substance of Stewart's ethics is essentially
+psychological. It rests, in fact, upon his view that philosophy
+depends upon inductive psychology, and, therefore, essentially upon
+experience subject to the cropping up of convenient 'intuitions.'</p>
+
+<p>This appears from the nature of his argument against the Utilitarians.
+In his time, this doctrine was associated with the names of Hartley,
+Tucker, Godwin, and especially Paley. He scarcely refers to
+Bentham.<a name="FNanchor_194_194" id="FNanchor_194_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_194_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a> Paley is the recognised anvil for the opposite school.
+Now he agrees, as I have said, with Paley's view of natural theology
+and entirely accepts therefore the theory of 'final causes.' The same
+theory becomes prominent in his ethical teaching. We may perhaps say
+that Stewart's view is in substance an inverted Utilitarianism. It may
+be best illustrated by an argument familiar in another application.
+Paley and his opponents might agree that the various instincts of an
+animal are so constituted that in point of fact they contribute to
+his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+preservation and his happiness. But from one point of view this
+appears to be simply to say that the conditions of existence
+necessitate a certain harmony, and that the harmony is therefore to be
+a consequence of his self-preservation. From the opposite point of
+view, which Stewart accepts, it appears that the self-preservation is
+the consequence of a pre-established harmony, which has been divinely
+appointed in order that he may live. Stewart, in short, is a
+'teleologist' of the Paley variety. Psychology proves the existence of
+design in the moral world, as anatomy or physiology proves it in the
+physical.</p>
+
+<p>Stewart therefore fully agrees that virtue generally produces
+happiness. If it be true (a doctrine, he thinks, beyond our competence
+to decide) that 'the sole principle of action in the Deity' is
+benevolence, it may be that he has commanded us to be virtuous because
+he sees virtue to be useful. In this case utility may be the final
+cause of morality; and the fact that virtue has this tendency gives
+the plausibility to utilitarian systems.<a name="FNanchor_195_195" id="FNanchor_195_195"></a><a href="#Footnote_195_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a> But the key to the
+difficulty is the distinction between 'final' and 'efficient' causes;
+for the efficient cause of morality is not the desire for happiness,
+but a primitive and simple instinct, namely, the moral faculty.</p>
+
+<p>Thus he rejects Paley's notorious doctrine that virtue differs from
+prudence only in regarding the consequences in another world instead
+of consequences in this.<a name="FNanchor_196_196" id="FNanchor_196_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a> Reward and punishment 'presuppose the
+notions of right and wrong' and cannot be the source of those notions.
+The favourite doctrine of association,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+by which the Utilitarians
+explained unselfishness, is only admissible as accounting for
+modifications, such as are due to education and example, but
+'presupposes the existence of certain principles which are common to
+all mankind.' The evidence of such principles is established by a long
+and discursive psychological discussion. It is enough to say that he
+admits two rational principles, 'self-love' and the 'moral faculty,'
+the coincidence of which is learned only by experience. The moral
+faculty reveals simple 'ideas' of right and wrong, which are incapable
+of any further analysis. But besides these, there is a hierarchy of
+other instincts or desires, which he calls 'implanted' because 'for
+aught we know' they may be of 'arbitrary appointment.'<a name="FNanchor_197_197" id="FNanchor_197_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a>
+Resentment, for example, is an implanted instinct, of which the 'final
+cause' is to defend us against 'sudden violence.'<a name="FNanchor_198_198" id="FNanchor_198_198"></a><a href="#Footnote_198_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a> Stewart's
+analysis is easygoing and suggests more problems than it solves. The
+general position, however, is clear enough, and not, I think, without
+much real force as against the Paley form of utilitarianism.</p>
+
+<p>The acceptance of the doctrine of 'final causes' was the inevitable
+course for a philosopher who wishes to retain the old creeds and yet
+to appeal unequivocally to experience. It suits the amiable optimism
+for which Stewart is noticeable. To prove the existence of a perfect
+deity from the evidence afforded by the world, you must of course take
+a favourable view of the observable order. Stewart shows the same
+tendency in his Political Economy, where he is Adam Smith's disciple,
+and fully shares Smith's beliefs that the harmony between
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> the
+interests of the individual and the interests of the society is an
+evidence of design in the Creator of mankind. In this respect Stewart
+differs notably from Butler, to whose reasonings he otherwise owed a
+good deal. With Butler the conscience implies a dread of divine wrath
+and justifies the conception of a world alienated from its maker.
+Stewart's 'moral faculty' simply recognises or reveals the moral law;
+but carries no suggestion of supernatural penalties. The doctrines by
+which Butler attracted some readers and revolted others throw no
+shadow over his writings. He is a placid enlightened professor, whose
+real good feeling and frequent shrewdness should not be overlooked in
+consequence of the rather desultory and often superficial mode of
+reasoning. This, however, suggests a final remark upon Stewart's
+position.</p>
+
+<p>In the preface<a name="FNanchor_199_199" id="FNanchor_199_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_199_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a> to his <i>Active and Moral Powers</i> (1828) Stewart
+apologises for the large space given to the treatment of Natural
+Religion. The lectures, he says, which form the substance of the book,
+were given at a time when 'enlightened zeal for liberty' was
+associated with the 'reckless boldness of the uncompromising
+freethinker.' He wished, therefore, to show that a man could be a
+liberal without being an atheist. This gives the position
+characteristic of Stewart and his friends. The group of eminent men
+who made Edinburgh a philosophical centre was thoroughly in sympathy
+with the rationalist movement of the eighteenth century. The old
+dogmatic system of belief could be held very lightly even by the more
+educated clergy. Hume's position is significant. He could lay down the
+most
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+unqualified scepticism in his writings; but he always regarded
+his theories as intended for the enlightened; he had no wish to
+disturb popular beliefs in theology, and was a strong Tory in
+politics. His friends were quite ready to take him upon that footing.
+The politeness with which 'Mr. Hume's' speculations are noticed by men
+like Stewart and Reid is in characteristic contrast to the reception
+generally accorded to more popular sceptics. They were intellectual
+curiosities not meant for immediate application. The real opinion of
+such men as Adam Smith and Stewart was probably a rather vague and
+optimistic theism. In the professor's chair they could talk to lads
+intended for the ministry without insulting such old Scottish
+prejudice (there was a good deal of it) as survived: and could cover
+rationalising opinions under language which perhaps might have a
+different meaning for their hearers. The position was necessarily one
+of tacit compromise. Stewart considers himself to be an inductive
+philosopher appealing frankly to experience and reason; and was in
+practice a man of thoroughly liberal and generous feelings. He was
+heartily in favour of progress as he understood it. Only he will not
+sacrifice common sense; that is to say, the beliefs which are in fact
+prevalent and congenial to existing institutions. Common sense, of
+course, condemns extremes: and if logic seems to be pushing a man
+towards scepticism in philosophy or revolution in practice, he can
+always protest by the convenient device of intuitions.</p>
+
+<p>I have gone so far in order to illustrate the nature of the system
+which the Utilitarians took to be the antithesis of their own. It may
+be finally remarked that at present
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+both sides were equally ignorant
+of contemporary developments of German thought. When Stewart became
+aware that there was such a thing as Kant's philosophy, he tried to
+read it in a Latin version. Parr, I may observe, apparently did not
+know of this version, and gave up the task of reading German.
+Stewart's example was not encouraging. He had abandoned the
+'undertaking in despair' partly from the scholastic barbarism of the
+style, partly 'my utter inability to comprehend the author's meaning.'
+He recognises similarity between Kant and Reid, but thinks Reid's
+simple statement of the fact that space cannot be derived from the
+senses more philosophical than Kant's 'superstructure of technical
+mystery.'<a name="FNanchor_200_200" id="FNanchor_200_200"></a><a href="#Footnote_200_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a></p>
+
+<p>I have dwelt upon the side in which Stewart's philosophy approximates
+to the empirical school, because the Utilitarians were apt to
+misconceive the position. They took Stewart to be the adequate
+representative of all who accepted one branch of an inevitable
+dilemma. The acceptance of 'intuitions,' that is, was the only
+alternative to thoroughgoing acceptance of 'experience.' They
+supposed, too, that persons vaguely described as 'Kant and the
+Germans' taught simply a modification of the 'intuitionist' view. I
+have noticed how emphatically Stewart claimed to rely upon experience
+and to base his philosophy upon inductive psychology, and was so far
+admitting the first principles and the general methods of his
+opponents. The Scottish philosophy, however, naturally presented
+itself as an antagonistic force to the Utilitarians. The 'intuitions'
+represented
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+the ultimate ground taken, especially in religious and
+ethical questions, by men who wished to be at once liberal
+philosophers and yet to avoid revolutionary extremes. 'Intuitions' had
+in any case a negative value, as protests against the sufficiency of
+the empirical analysis. It might be quite true, for example, that
+Hume's analysis of certain primary mental phenomena&mdash;of our belief in
+the external world or of the relation of cause and effect&mdash;was
+radically insufficient. He had not given an adequate explanation of
+the facts. The recognition of the insufficiency of his reasoning was
+highly important if only as a stimulus to inquiry. It was a warning to
+his and to Hartley's followers that they had not thoroughly unravelled
+the perplexity but only cut the knot. But when the insufficiency of
+the explanation was interpreted as a demonstration that all
+explanation was impossible, and the 'intuition' an ultimate
+'self-evident' truth, it became a refusal to inquire just where
+inquiry was wanted; a positive command to stop analysis at an
+arbitrary point; and a round assertion that the adversary could not
+help believing precisely the doctrine which he altogether declined to
+believe. Naturally the empiricists refused to bow to an authority
+which was simply saying, 'Don't inquire further,' without any ground
+for the prohibition except the '<i>ipse dixitism</i>' which declared that
+inquiry must be fruitless. Stewart, in fact, really illustrated the
+equivocation between the two meanings of 'common sense.' If by that
+name he understood, as he professed to understand, ultimate 'laws of
+thought,' his position was justifiable as soon as he could specify the
+laws and prove that they were ultimate. But so far as he virtually
+took for granted that the average beliefs of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+intelligent people were
+such laws, and on that ground refused to examine the evidence of their
+validity, he was inconsistent, and his position only invited assault.
+As a fact, I believe that his 'intuitions' covered many most
+disputable propositions; and that the more clearly they were stated,
+the more they failed to justify his interpretations. He was not really
+answering the most vital and critical questions, but implicitly
+reserving them, and putting an arbitrary stop to investigations
+desirable on his own principles.</p>
+
+<p>The Scottish philosophy was, however, accepted in England, and made a
+considerable impression in France, as affording a tenable barrier
+against scepticism. It was, as I have said, in philosophy what
+Whiggism was in politics. Like political Whiggism it included a large
+element of enlightened and liberal rationalism; but like Whiggism it
+covered an aversion to thoroughgoing logic. The English politician was
+suspicious of abstract principles, but could cover his acceptance of
+tradition and rule of thumb by general phrases about liberty and
+toleration. The Whig in philosophy equally accepted the traditional
+creed, sufficiently purified from cruder elements, and sheltered his
+doctrine by speaking of 'intuitions and laws of thought.' In both
+positions there was really, I take it, a great deal of sound practical
+wisdom; but they also implied a marked reluctance to push inquiry too
+far, and a tacit agreement to be content with what the Utilitarians
+denounced as 'vague generalities'&mdash;phrases, that is, which might be
+used either to conceal an underlying scepticism, or really to stop
+short in the path which led to scepticism. In philosophy as in
+politics, the Utilitarians boasted of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+being thoroughgoing Radicals,
+and hated compromises which to them appeared to be simply obstructive.
+I need not elaborate a point which will meet us again. If I were
+writing a history of thought in general I should have to notice other
+writers, though there were none of much distinction, who followed the
+teaching of Stewart or of his opponents of the Hartley and Darwin
+school. It would be necessary also to insist upon the growing interest
+in the physical sciences, which were beginning not only to make
+enormous advances, but to attract popular attention. For my purpose,
+however, it is I think sufficient to mention these writers, each of
+whom had a very special relation to the Utilitarians. I turn,
+therefore, to Bentham.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a> Nine volumes of Dugald Stewart's works, edited by Sir
+W. Hamilton, appeared from 1854 to 1856; a tenth, including a life of
+Stewart by J. Veitch, appeared in 1858, and an eleventh, with an index
+to the whole, in 1860. The chief books are the <i>Elements of the
+Philosophy of the Human Mind</i> (in vols. ii., iii. and iv., originally
+in 1792, 1814, 1827); <i>Philosophical Essays</i> (in vol. v., originally
+1810); <i>Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man</i> (vols. vi.
+and vii., originally in 1828); <i>Dissertation on the Progress of
+Philosophy</i> (in vol. i.; originally in <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica</i>, in
+1815 and 1821). The lectures on Political Economy first appeared in
+the <i>Works</i>, vols. viii. and ix.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, vi. ('Preface')</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a> <i>Works</i> (Life of Reid), x. 304-8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a> Reid's <i>Works</i> (Hamilton), p. 302.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a> Reid's <i>Works</i> (Hamilton), p. 88.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> 206.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> 267.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a> Stewart's remarks on his life of Reid: Reid's <i>Works</i>,
+p. 12, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a> <i>The World as Will and Idea</i> (Haldane &amp; Kemp), ii. 186.
+Reid's '<i>Inquiry</i>,' he adds, is ten times better worth reading than
+all the philosophy together which has been written since Kant.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a> 'We are inspired with the sensation, as we are inspired
+with the corresponding perception, by means unknown.'&mdash;Reid's <i>Works</i>,
+188. 'This,' says Stewart, 'is a plain statement of fact.'&mdash;Stewart's
+<i>Works</i>, ii. 111-12.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a> See Rosmini's <i>Origin of Ideas</i> (English translation),
+i. p. 91, where, though sympathising with Reid's aim, he admits a
+'great blunder.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_168_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a> Stewart's <i>Works</i>, v. 24-53. Hamilton says in a note
+(p. 41) that Jeffrey candidly confessed Stewart's reply to be
+satisfactory.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 46.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_170_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 45-67.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_171_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 159.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_172_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> v. 21.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a> Stewart's <i>Works</i>, ii. 165-93; iii. 81-97. Schopenhauer
+(<i>The World as Will and Idea</i>, ii. 240) admires Reid's teaching upon
+this point, and recommends us not 'to waste an hour over the
+scribblings of this shallow writer' (Stewart).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_174_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a> Rosmini's <i>Origin of Ideas</i> (English translation), i.
+96-176.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_175_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 147 <i>n.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_176_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a> Stewart's <i>Works</i>, iv. 29, 35, 38, and v. 149-88.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_177_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 97, etc., and iii. 235, 389, 417.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_178_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, vii. 13-34.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> vii. 26, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_180_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, iv. 265.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_181_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 52.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_182_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> v. 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_183_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, ii. 155.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_184_184" id="Footnote_184_184"></a><a href="#FNanchor_184_184"><span class="label">[184]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 337.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_185_185" id="Footnote_185_185"></a><a href="#FNanchor_185_185"><span class="label">[185]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, vi. 46; vii. 11.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_186_186" id="Footnote_186_186"></a><a href="#FNanchor_186_186"><span class="label">[186]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> vii. 46.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_187_187" id="Footnote_187_187"></a><a href="#FNanchor_187_187"><span class="label">[187]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 357.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_188_188" id="Footnote_188_188"></a><a href="#FNanchor_188_188"><span class="label">[188]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, vi. 320.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_189_189" id="Footnote_189_189"></a><a href="#FNanchor_189_189"><span class="label">[189]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> vi. 279.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_190_190" id="Footnote_190_190"></a><a href="#FNanchor_190_190"><span class="label">[190]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> vi. 297.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_191_191" id="Footnote_191_191"></a><a href="#FNanchor_191_191"><span class="label">[191]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, vi. 295. Cf. v. 83.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_192_192" id="Footnote_192_192"></a><a href="#FNanchor_192_192"><span class="label">[192]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> vi. 298-99.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_193_193" id="Footnote_193_193"></a><a href="#FNanchor_193_193"><span class="label">[193]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> v. 84.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_194_194" id="Footnote_194_194"></a><a href="#FNanchor_194_194"><span class="label">[194]</span></a> In <i>Works</i>, vi. 205-6, he quotes Dumont's <i>Bentham</i>;
+but his general silence is the more significant, as in the lectures on
+Political Economy he makes frequent and approving reference to
+Bentham's tract upon usury.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_195_195" id="Footnote_195_195"></a><a href="#FNanchor_195_195"><span class="label">[195]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, vii. 236-38.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_196_196" id="Footnote_196_196"></a><a href="#FNanchor_196_196"><span class="label">[196]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> vi. 221.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_197_197" id="Footnote_197_197"></a><a href="#FNanchor_197_197"><span class="label">[197]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, vi. 213.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_198_198" id="Footnote_198_198"></a><a href="#FNanchor_198_198"><span class="label">[198]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> vi. 199.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_199_199" id="Footnote_199_199"></a><a href="#FNanchor_199_199"><span class="label">[199]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, vi. 111.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_200_200" id="Footnote_200_200"></a><a href="#FNanchor_200_200"><span class="label">[200]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, v. 117 18. I have given some details as to
+Stewart's suffering under an English proselyte of Kant in my <i>Studies
+of a Biographer</i>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 33%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>BENTHAM'S LIFE</h3>
+
+<p class="scs">I. <a name="V_I" id="V_I"></a>EARLY LIFE</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+Jeremy Bentham,<a name="FNanchor_201_201" id="FNanchor_201_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_201_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a> the patriarch of the English Utilitarians, sprang
+from the class imbued most thoroughly with the typical English
+prejudices. His first recorded ancestor, Brian Bentham, was a
+pawnbroker, who lost money by the stop of the Exchequer in 1672, but
+was neither ruined, nor, it would seem, alienated by the king's
+dishonesty. He left some thousands to his son, Jeremiah, an attorney
+and a strong Jacobite. A second Jeremiah, born 2nd December 1712,
+carried on his father's business, and though his clients were not
+numerous, increased his fortune by judicious investments in houses and
+lands. Although brought up in Jacobite
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+principles, he transferred his
+attachment to the Hanoverian dynasty when a relation of his wife
+married a valet of George <small>II.</small> The wife, Alicia Grove, was daughter of
+a tradesman who had made a small competence at Andover. Jeremiah
+Bentham had fallen in love with her at first sight, and wisely gave up
+for her sake a match with a fortune of &pound;10,000. The couple were fondly
+attached to each other and to their children. The marriage took place
+towards the end of 1744, and the eldest son, Jeremy, was born in Red
+Lion Street, Houndsditch, 4th February 1747-48 (o.s.) The only other
+child who grew up was Samuel, afterwards Sir Samuel Bentham, born 11th
+January 1757. When eighty years old, Jeremy gave anecdotes of his
+infancy to his biographer, Bowring, who says that their accuracy was
+confirmed by contemporary documents, and proved his memory to be as
+wonderful as his precocity. Although the child was physically puny,
+his intellectual development was amazing. Before he was two he burst
+into tears at the sight of his mother's chagrin upon his refusal of
+some offered dainty. Before he was 'breeched,' an event which happened
+when he was three and a quarter, he ran home from a dull walk, ordered
+a footman to bring lights and place a folio <i>Rapin</i> upon the table,
+and was found plunged in historical studies when his parents returned
+to the house. In his fourth year he was imbibing the Latin grammar,
+and at the age of five years nine months and nineteen days, as his
+father notes, he wrote a scrap of Latin, carefully pasted among the
+parental memoranda. The child was not always immured in London. His
+parents spent their Sundays with the grandfather Bentham at Barking,
+and made
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+occasional excursions to the house of Mrs. Bentham's mother
+at Browning Hill, near Reading. Bentham remembered the last as a
+'paradise,' and a love of flowers and gardens became one of his
+permanent passions.</p>
+
+<p>Jeremy cherished the memory of his mother's tenderness. The father,
+though less sympathetic, was proud of his son's precocity, and
+apparently injudicious in stimulating the unformed intellect. The boy
+was almost a dwarf in size. When sixteen he grew ahead,<a name="FNanchor_202_202" id="FNanchor_202_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_202_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a> and was
+so feeble that he could scarcely drag himself upstairs. Attempts to
+teach him dancing failed from the extreme weakness of his knees.<a name="FNanchor_203_203" id="FNanchor_203_203"></a><a href="#Footnote_203_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a>
+He showed a taste for music, and could scrape a minuet on the fiddle
+at six years of age. He read all such books as came in his way. His
+parents objected to light literature, and he was crammed with such
+solid works as <i>Rapin</i>, Burnet's <i>Theory of the Earth</i>, and Cave's
+<i>Lives of the Apostles</i>. Various accidents, however, furnished him
+with better food for the imagination. He wept for hours over <i>Clarissa
+Harlowe</i>, studied <i>Gulliver's Travels</i> as an authentic document, and
+dipped into a variety of such books as then drifted into middle-class
+libraries. A French teacher introduced him to some remarkable books.
+He read <i>T&eacute;l&eacute;maque</i>, which deeply impressed him, and, as he thought,
+implanted in his mind the seeds of later moralising. He attacked
+unsuccessfully some of Voltaire's historical works, and even read
+<i>Candide</i>, with what emotions we are not told. The servants meanwhile
+filled his fancy with ghosts and hobgoblins. To the end of his days he
+was still haunted by the imaginary horrors in the dark,<a name="FNanchor_204_204" id="FNanchor_204_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a> and he
+says<a name="FNanchor_205_205" id="FNanchor_205_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a> that they had been among the torments of his life. He had
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+few companions of his own age, and though he was 'not unhappy' and was
+never subjected to corporal punishment, he felt more awe than
+affection for his father. His mother, to whom he was strongly
+attached, died on 6th January 1759.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham was thus a strangely precocious, and a morbidly sensitive
+child, when it was decided in 1755 to send him to Westminster. The
+headmaster, Dr. Markham, was a friend of his father's. Westminster, he
+says, represented 'hell' for him when Browning Hill stood for
+paradise. The instruction 'was wretched,' The fagging system was a
+'horrid despotism.' The games were too much for his strength. His
+industry, however, enabled him to escape the birch, no small
+achievement in those days,<a name="FNanchor_206_206" id="FNanchor_206_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a> and he became distinguished in the
+studies such as they were. He learned the catechism by heart, and was
+good at Greek and Latin verses, which he manufactured for his
+companions as well as himself. He had also the rarer accomplishment,
+acquired from his early tutor, of writing more easily in French than
+English. Some of his writings were originally composed in French. He
+was, according to Bowring, elected to one of the King's scholarships
+when between nine and ten, but as 'ill-usage was apprehended' the
+appointment was declined.<a name="FNanchor_207_207" id="FNanchor_207_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a> He was at a boarding-house, and the
+life of the boys on the foundation was probably rougher. In June 1760
+his father took him to Oxford, and entered him as a commoner at
+Queen's College. He came into residence in the following October, when
+only twelve
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+years old. Oxford was not more congenial than
+Westminster. He had to sign the Thirty-nine Articles in spite of
+scruples suppressed by authority. The impression made upon him by this
+childish compliance never left him to the end of his life.<a name="FNanchor_208_208" id="FNanchor_208_208"></a><a href="#Footnote_208_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a> His
+experience resembled that of Adam Smith and Gibbon. Laziness and vice
+were prevalent. A gentleman commoner of Queen's was president of a
+'hellfire club,' and brutal horseplay was still practised upon the
+weaker lads. Bentham, still a schoolboy in age, continued his
+schoolboy course. He wrote Latin verses, and one of his experiments,
+an ode upon the death of George <small>II.</small>, was sent to Johnson, who called
+it 'a very pretty performance for a young man.' He also had to go
+through the form of disputation in the schools. Queen's College had
+some reputation at this time for teaching logic.<a name="FNanchor_209_209" id="FNanchor_209_209"></a><a href="#Footnote_209_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a> Bentham was set
+to read Watt's <i>Logic</i> (1725), Sanderson's <i>Compendium artis Logicae</i>
+(1615), and Rowning's <i>Compendious System of Natural Philosophy</i>
+(1735-42). Some traces of these studies remained in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>In 1763 Bentham took his B.A. degree, and returned to his home. It is
+significant that when robbed of all his money at Oxford he did not
+confide in his father. He was paying by a morbid reserve for the
+attempts made to force him into premature activity. He accepted the
+career imposed by his father's wishes, and in November 1763 began to
+eat his dinners in Lincoln's Inn. He returned, however, to Oxford in
+December to hear Blackstone's lectures. These lectures were then a
+novelty at an English university. The Vinerian professorship had been
+founded in 1758 in consequence of the success of a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+course voluntarily
+given by Blackstone; and his lectures contained the substance of the
+famous Commentaries, first published 1765-1769. They had a great
+effect upon Bentham. He says that he 'immediately detected
+Blackstone's fallacy respecting natural rights,' thought other
+doctrines illogical, and was so much occupied by these reflections as
+to be unable to take notes. Bentham's dissatisfaction with Blackstone
+had not yet made him an opponent of the constituted order. He was
+present at some of the proceedings against Wilkes, and was perfectly
+bewitched by Lord Mansfield's '<i>Grim-gibber</i>,' that is, taken in by
+his pompous verbiage.<a name="FNanchor_210_210" id="FNanchor_210_210"></a><a href="#Footnote_210_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a></p>
+
+<p>In 1765 his father married Mrs. Abbot, the mother of Charles Abbot,
+afterwards Lord Colchester. Bentham's dislike of his step-mother
+increased the distance between him and his father. He took his M.A.
+degree in 1766 and in 1767 finally left Oxford for London to begin, as
+his father fondly hoped, a flight towards the woolsack. The lad's
+diffidence and extreme youth had indeed prevented him from forming the
+usual connections which his father anticipated as the result of a
+college life. His career as a barrister was short and grievously
+disappointing to the parental hopes. His father, like the Elder
+Fairford in <i>Redgauntlet</i>, had 'a cause or two at nurse' for the son.
+The son's first thought was to 'put them to death,' A brief was given
+to him in a suit, upon which &pound;50 depended. He advised that the suit
+should be dropped and the money saved. Other experiences only
+increased his repugnance to his profession.<a name="FNanchor_211_211" id="FNanchor_211_211"></a><a href="#Footnote_211_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a> A singularly strong
+impression had been made upon him by the <i>Memoirs</i> of Teresa
+Constantia Phipps, in which
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+there is an account of vexatious legal
+proceedings as to the heroine's marriage. He appears to have first
+read this book in 1759. Then, he says, the 'Demon of Chicane appeared
+to me in all his hideousness. I vowed war against him. My vow has been
+accomplished!'<a name="FNanchor_212_212" id="FNanchor_212_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_212_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a> Bentham thus went to the bar as a 'bear to the
+stake.' He diverged in more than one direction. He studied chemistry
+under Fordyce (1736-1802), and hankered after physical science. He was
+long afterwards (1788) member of a club to which Sir Joseph Banks,
+John Hunter, R. L. Edgeworth, and other men of scientific reputation
+belonged.<a name="FNanchor_213_213" id="FNanchor_213_213"></a><a href="#Footnote_213_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a> But he had drifted into a course of speculation, which,
+though more germane to legal studies, was equally fatal to
+professional success. The father despaired, and he was considered to
+be a 'lost child.'</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_201_201" id="Footnote_201_201"></a><a href="#FNanchor_201_201"><span class="label">[201]</span></a> The main authority for Bentham's Life is Bowring's
+account in the two last volumes of the <i>Works</i>. Bain's <i>Life of James
+Mill</i> gives some useful facts as to the later period. There is
+comparatively little mention of Bentham in contemporary memoirs.
+Little is said of him in Romilly's <i>Life</i>. Parr's <i>Works</i>, i. and
+viii., contains some letters. See also R. Dale Owen's <i>Threading my
+Way</i> pp. 175-78. A little book called <i>Utilitarianism Unmasked</i>, by
+the Rev. J. F. Colls, D.D. (1844), gives some reminiscences by Colls,
+who had been Bentham's amanuensis for fourteen years. Colls, who took
+orders, disliked Bentham's religious levity, and denounces his vanity,
+but admits his early kindness. Voluminous collections of the papers
+used by Bowring are at University College, and at the British Museum.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_202_202" id="Footnote_202_202"></a><a href="#FNanchor_202_202"><span class="label">[202]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 33.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_203_203" id="Footnote_203_203"></a><a href="#FNanchor_203_203"><span class="label">[203]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 31.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_204_204" id="Footnote_204_204"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204_204"><span class="label">[204]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ix. 84.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_205_205" id="Footnote_205_205"></a><a href="#FNanchor_205_205"><span class="label">[205]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 18.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_206_206" id="Footnote_206_206"></a><a href="#FNanchor_206_206"><span class="label">[206]</span></a> Southey was expelled from Westminster in 1792 for
+attacking the birch in a schoolboy paper.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_207_207" id="Footnote_207_207"></a><a href="#FNanchor_207_207"><span class="label">[207]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 38. Bowring's confused statement, I take
+it, means this. Bentham, in any case, was not on the foundation. See
+Welsh's <i>Alumni West</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_208_208" id="Footnote_208_208"></a><a href="#FNanchor_208_208"><span class="label">[208]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 37.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_209_209" id="Footnote_209_209"></a><a href="#FNanchor_209_209"><span class="label">[209]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> viii. 113, 217.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_210_210" id="Footnote_210_210"></a><a href="#FNanchor_210_210"><span class="label">[210]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 45.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_211_211" id="Footnote_211_211"></a><a href="#FNanchor_211_211"><span class="label">[211]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 51, 78, 83.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_212_212" id="Footnote_212_212"></a><a href="#FNanchor_212_212"><span class="label">[212]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 35, 77. References are given to this book
+in <i>Works</i>, vii. 219-20 ('Rationale of Evidence'). Several editions
+appeared from 1725 to 1761. See <i>Works</i>, vi. 465, for a recollection
+of similar experiences.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_213_213" id="Footnote_213_213"></a><a href="#FNanchor_213_213"><span class="label">[213]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> viii. 148 <i>n.</i>; x. 183.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">II. <a name="V_II" id="V_II"></a>FIRST WRITINGS</p>
+
+<p>Though lost to the bar, he had really found himself. He had taken the
+line prescribed by his idiosyncrasy. His father's injudicious forcing
+had increased his shyness at the bar, and he was like an owl in
+daylight. But no one, as we shall see, was less diffident in
+speculation. Self-confidence in a philosopher is often the private
+credit which he opens with his imagination to compensate for his
+incapacity in the rough struggles of active life. Bentham shrank from
+the world in which he was easily browbeaten to the study in which he
+could reign supreme. He had not the strong passions which prompt
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+commonplace ambition, and cared little for the prizes for which most
+men will sacrifice their lives. Nor, on the other hand, can he be
+credited with that ardent philanthropy or vehement indignation which
+prompts to an internecine struggle with actual wrongdoers. He had not
+the ardour which led Howard to devote a life to destroy abuses, or
+that which turned Swift's blood to gall in the struggle against
+triumphant corruption. He was thoroughly amiable, but of kindly rather
+than energetic affections. He, therefore, desired reform, but so far
+from regarding the ruling classes with rancour, took their part
+against the democrats. 'I was a great reformist,' he says, 'but never
+suspected that the "people in power" were against reform. I supposed
+they only wanted to know what was good in order to embrace it.'<a name="FNanchor_214_214" id="FNanchor_214_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_214_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a>
+The most real of pleasures for him lay in speculating upon the general
+principles by which the 'people in power' should be guided. To
+construct a general chart for legislation, to hunt down sophistries,
+to explode mere noisy rhetoric, to classify and arrange and
+re-classify until his whole intellectual wealth was neatly arranged in
+proper pigeon-holes, was a delight for its own sake. He wished well to
+mankind; he detested abuses, but he hated neither the corrupted nor
+the corruptors; and it might almost seem that he rather valued the
+benevolent end, because it gave employment to his faculties, than
+valued the employment because it led to the end. This is implied in
+his remark made at the end of his life. He was, he said, as selfish as
+a man could be; but 'somehow or other' selfishness had in him taken
+the form of benevolence.<a name="FNanchor_215_215" id="FNanchor_215_215"></a><a href="#Footnote_215_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a> He was at any rate in the position of a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+man with the agreeable conviction that he has only to prove the wisdom
+of a given course in order to secure its adoption. Like many
+mechanical inventors, he took for granted that a process which was
+shown to be useful would therefore be at once adopted, and failed to
+anticipate the determined opposition of the great mass of 'vested
+interests' already in possession.</p>
+
+<p>At this period he made the discovery, or what he held to be the
+discovery, which governed his whole future career. He laid down the
+principle which was to give the clue to all his investigations; and,
+as he thought, required only to be announced to secure universal
+acceptance. When Bentham revolted against the intellectual food
+provided at school and college, he naturally took up the philosophy
+which at that period represented the really living stream of thought.
+To be a man of enlightenment in those days was to belong to the school
+of Locke. Locke represented reason, free thought, and the abandonment
+of prejudice. Besides Locke, he mentions Hume, Montesquieu, Helv&eacute;tius,
+Beccaria, and Barrington. Helv&eacute;tius especially did much to suggest to
+him his leading principle, and upon country trips which he took with
+his father and step-mother, he used to lag behind studying Helv&eacute;tius'
+<i>De l'Esprit</i>.<a name="FNanchor_216_216" id="FNanchor_216_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_216_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a> Locke, he says in an early note (1773-1774),
+should give the principles, Helv&eacute;tius the matter, of a complete digest
+of the law. He mentions with especial interest the third volume of
+Hume's <i>Treatise on Human Nature</i> for its ethical views: 'he felt as
+if scales fell from his eyes' when he read it.<a name="FNanchor_217_217" id="FNanchor_217_217"></a><a href="#Footnote_217_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a> Daines
+Barrington's <i>Observations on the Statutes</i> (1766) interested him by
+miscellaneous suggestions.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+The book, he says,<a name="FNanchor_218_218" id="FNanchor_218_218"></a><a href="#Footnote_218_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a> was a 'great
+treasure.' 'It is everything, <i>&agrave; propos</i> of everything; I wrote
+volumes upon this volume.' Beccaria's treatise upon crimes and
+punishments had appeared in 1764, and had excited the applause of
+Europe. The world was clearly ready for a fundamental reconstruction
+of legislative theories. Under the influence of such studies Bentham
+formulated his famous principle&mdash;a principle which to some seemed a
+barren truism, to others a mere epigram, and to some a dangerous
+falsehood. Bentham accepted it not only as true, but as expressing a
+truth of extraordinary fecundity, capable of guiding him through the
+whole labyrinth of political and legislative speculation. His
+'fundamental axiom' is that 'the greatest happiness of the greatest
+number is the measure of right and wrong.'<a name="FNanchor_219_219" id="FNanchor_219_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_219_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a> Bentham himself<a name="FNanchor_220_220" id="FNanchor_220_220"></a><a href="#Footnote_220_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a>
+attributes the authorship of the phrase to Beccaria or Priestley. The
+general order of thought to which this theory belongs was of course
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+not the property of any special writer or any particular period. Here
+I need only observe that this embodiment of the general doctrine of
+utility or morality had been struck out by Hutcheson in the attempt
+(as his title says) 'to introduce a mathematical calculation on
+subjects of morality.' This defines the exact reason which made it
+acceptable to Bentham. For the vague reference to utility which
+appears in Hume and other writers of his school, he substituted a
+formula, the terms of which suggest the possibility of an accurate
+quantitative comparison of different sums of happiness. In Bentham's
+mind the difference between this and the more general formula was like
+the difference between the statement that the planets gravitate
+towards the sun, and the more precise statement that the law of
+gravitation varies inversely as the square of the distance. Bentham
+hoped for no less an achievement than to become the Newton of the
+moral world.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham, after leaving Oxford, took chambers in Lincoln's Inn. His
+father on his second marriage had settled some property upon him,
+which brought in some &pound;90 a year. He had to live like a gentleman upon
+this, and to give four guineas a year to the laundress, four to his
+barber, and two to his shoeblack. In spite of Jeremy's deviation from
+the path of preferment, the two were on friendly terms, and when the
+hopes of the son's professional success grew faint, the father showed
+sympathy with his literary undertakings. Jeremy visited Paris in 1770,
+but made few acquaintances, though he was already regarded as a
+'philosopher.' In 1778 he was in correspondence with d'Alembert, the
+abb&eacute; Morellet, and other philanthropic philosophers, but it
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+does not
+appear at what time this connection began.<a name="FNanchor_221_221" id="FNanchor_221_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_221_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a> He translated
+Voltaire's <i>Taureau Blanc</i><a name="FNanchor_222_222" id="FNanchor_222_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_222_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a>&mdash;a story which used to 'convulse him
+with laughter.' A reference to it will show that Bentham by this time
+took the Voltairean view of the Old Testament. Bentham, however, was
+still on the side of the Tories. His first publication was a defence
+of Lord Mansfield in 1770 against attacks arising out of the
+prosecution of Woodfall for publishing Junius's letter to the king.
+This defence, contained in two letters, signed Iren&aelig;us, was published
+in the <i>Gazetteer</i>. Bentham's next performance was remarkable in the
+same sense. Among the few friends who drifted to his chambers was John
+Lind (1737-1781), who had been a clergyman, and after acting as tutor
+to a prince in Poland, had returned to London and become a writer for
+the press. He had business relations with the elder Bentham, and the
+younger Bentham was to some extent his collaborator in a pamphlet<a name="FNanchor_223_223" id="FNanchor_223_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_223_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a>
+which defended the conduct of ministers to the American colonies.
+Bentham observes that he was prejudiced against the Americans by the
+badness of their arguments, and thought from the first, as he
+continued to think, that the Declaration of Independence was a
+hodge-podge of confusion and absurdity, in which the thing to be
+proved is all along taken for granted.<a name="FNanchor_224_224" id="FNanchor_224_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_224_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a> Two other friendships were
+formed by Bentham about this time: one with James Trail, an
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+unsuccessful barrister, who owed a seat in Parliament and some minor
+offices to Lord Hertford, and is said by Romilly to have been a man of
+great talent; and one with George Wilson, afterwards a leader of the
+Norfolk circuit, who had become known to him through a common interest
+in Dr. Fordyce's lectures upon chemistry. Wilson became a bosom
+friend, and was one of Bentham's first disciples, though they were
+ultimately alienated.<a name="FNanchor_225_225" id="FNanchor_225_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_225_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a></p>
+
+<p>At this time, Bentham says, that his was 'truly a miserable
+life.'<a name="FNanchor_226_226" id="FNanchor_226_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_226_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a> Yet he was getting to work upon his grand project. He
+tells his father on 1st October 1776 that he is writing his <i>Critical
+Elements of Jurisprudence</i>, the book of which a part was afterwards
+published as the <i>Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
+Legislation</i>.<a name="FNanchor_227_227" id="FNanchor_227_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_227_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a> In the same year he published his first important
+work, the <i>Fragment on Government</i>. The year was in many ways
+memorable. The Declaration of Independence marked the opening of a new
+political era. Adam Smith's <i>Wealth of Nations</i> and Gibbon's <i>Decline
+and Fall</i> formed landmarks in speculation and in history; and
+Bentham's volume, though it made no such impression, announced a
+serious attempt to apply scientific methods to problems of
+legislation. The preface contained the first declaration of his famous
+formula which was applied to the confutation of Blackstone. Bentham
+was apparently roused to this effort by recollections of the Oxford
+lectures. The <i>Commentaries</i> contained a certain quantity of
+philosophical rhetoric; and as Blackstone was much greater in a
+literary than in a philosophical sense, the result was naturally
+unsatisfactory from a scientific point
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+of view. He had vaguely
+appealed to the sound Whig doctrine of social compact, and while
+disavowing any strict historical basis had not inquired too curiously
+what was left of his supposed foundation. Bentham pounced upon the
+unfortunate bit of verbiage; insisted upon asking for a meaning when
+there was nothing but a rhetorical flourish, and tore the whole flimsy
+fabric to rags and tatters. A more bitter attack upon Blackstone,
+chiefly, as Bowring says, upon his defence of the Jewish law, was
+suppressed for fear of the law of libel.<a name="FNanchor_228_228" id="FNanchor_228_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_228_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a> The <i>Fragment</i> was
+published anonymously, but Bentham had confided the secret to his
+father by way of suggesting some slight set-off against his apparent
+unwillingness to emerge from obscurity. The book was at first
+attributed to Lord Mansfield, Lord Camden, and to Dunning. It was
+pirated in Dublin; and most of the five hundred copies printed appear
+to have been sold, though without profit to the author. The father's
+indiscretion let out the secret; and the sale, when the book was known
+to be written by a nobody, fell off at once, or so Bentham believed.
+The anonymous writer, however, was denounced and accused of being the
+author of much ribaldry, and among other accusations was said to be
+not only the translator but the writer of the <i>White Bull</i>.<a name="FNanchor_229_229" id="FNanchor_229_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_229_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a></p>
+
+<p>Bentham had fancied that all manner of 'torches from the highest
+regions' would come to light themselves at his 'farthing candle.' None
+of them came, and he was left for some years in obscurity, though
+still labouring at
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+the great work which was one day to enlighten the
+world. At last, however, partial recognition came to him in a shape
+which greatly influenced his career. Lord Shelburne, afterwards
+marquis of Lansdowne, had been impressed by the <i>Fragment</i>, and in
+1781 sought out Bentham at his chambers. Shelburne's career was to
+culminate in the following year with his brief tenure of the
+premiership (3rd July 1782 to 24th February 1783). Rightly or wrongly
+his contemporaries felt the distrust indicated by his nickname
+'Malagrida,' which appears to have been partly suggested by a habit of
+overstrained compliment. He incurred the dislike not unfrequently
+excited by men who claim superiority of intellect without possessing
+the force of character which gives a corresponding weight in political
+affairs. Although his education had been bad, he had something of that
+cosmopolitan training which enabled many members of the aristocracy to
+look beyond the narrow middle-class prejudices and share in some
+degree the wider philosophical movements of the day. He had enjoyed
+the friendship of Franklin, and had been the patron of Priestley, who
+made some of his chemical discoveries at Bowood, and to whom he
+allowed an annuity. He belonged to that section of the Whigs which had
+most sympathy with the revolutionary movement. His chief political
+lieutenants were Dunning and Barr&eacute;, who at the time sat for his
+borough Calne. He now rapidly formed an intimacy with Bentham, who
+went to stay at Bowood in the autumn of 1781. Bentham now and then in
+later years made some rather disparaging remarks upon Shelburne, whom
+he apparently considered to be rather an amateur than a serious
+philosopher, and who in the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+House of Lords talked 'vague
+generalities'&mdash;the sacred phrase by which the Utilitarians denounced
+all preaching but their own&mdash;in a way to impose upon the thoughtless.
+He respected Shelburne, however, as one who trusted the people, and
+was distrusted by the Whig aristocracy. He felt, too, a real affection
+and gratitude for the patron to whom he owed so much. Shelburne had
+done him a great service.<a name="FNanchor_230_230" id="FNanchor_230_230"></a><a href="#Footnote_230_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a> 'He raised me from the bottomless pit
+of humiliation. He made me feel I was something.' The elder Bentham
+was impressed by his son's acquaintance with a man in so eminent a
+position, and hoped that it might lead by a different path to the
+success which had been missed at the bar. At Bowood Bentham stayed
+over a month upon his first visit, and was treated in the manner
+appropriate to a philosopher. The men showed him friendliness, dashed
+with occasional contempt, and the ladies petted him. He met Lord
+Camden and Dunning and young William Pitt, and some minor adherents of
+the great man. Pitt was 'very good-natured and a little raw.' I was
+monstrously 'frightened at him,' but, when I came to talk with him, he
+seemed 'frightened at me.'<a name="FNanchor_231_231" id="FNanchor_231_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_231_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a> Bentham, however, did not see what
+ideas they were likely to have in common. In fact there was the usual
+gulf between the speculative thinker and the practical man. 'All the
+statesmen,' so thought the philosopher, 'were wanting in the great
+elements of statesmanship': they were always talking about 'what was'
+and seldom or never about 'what ought to be.'<a name="FNanchor_232_232" id="FNanchor_232_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_232_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a> Occasionally, it
+would seem, they descended lower, and made a little fun of the shy and
+over-sensitive intruder.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_233_233" id="FNanchor_233_233"></a><a href="#Footnote_233_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a> The ladies, however, made it up to him.
+Shelburne made him read his 'dry metaphysics' to them,<a name="FNanchor_234_234" id="FNanchor_234_234"></a><a href="#Footnote_234_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a> and they
+received it with feminine docility. Lord Shelburne had lately (1779)
+married his second wife, Louisa, daughter of the first earl of Upper
+Ossory. Her sister, Lady Mary Fitz-Patrick, married in 1766 to Stephen
+Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, was the mother of the Lord Holland of
+later days and of Miss Caroline Fox, who survived till 1845, and was
+at this time a pleasant girl of thirteen or fourteen. Lady Shelburne
+had also two half-sisters, daughters of her mother's second marriage
+to Richard Vernon. Lady Shelburne took a fancy to Bentham, and gave
+him the 'prodigious privilege' of admission to her dressing-room.
+Though haughty in manner, she was mild in reality, and after a time
+she and her sister indulged in 'innocent gambols.' In her last
+illness, Bentham was one of the only two men whom she would see, and
+upon her death in 1789, he was the only male friend to whom her
+husband turned for consolation. Miss Fox seems to have been the only
+woman who inspired Bentham with a sentiment approaching to passion. He
+wrote occasional letters to the ladies in the tone of elephantine
+pleasantry natural to one who was all his life both a philosopher and
+a child.<a name="FNanchor_235_235" id="FNanchor_235_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_235_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a> He made an offer of marriage to Miss Fox in 1805, when
+he was nearer sixty than fifty, and when they had not met for sixteen
+years. The immediate occasion was presumably the death of Lord
+Lansdowne. She replied in a friendly letter, regretting the pain which
+her refusal would inflict. In 1827 Bentham, then in his eightieth
+year, wrote once more, speaking of the flower she had
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+given him 'in
+the green lane,' and asking for a kind answer. He was 'indescribably
+hurt and disappointed' by a cold and distant reply. The tears would
+come into the old man's eyes as he dealt upon the cherished memories
+of Bowood.<a name="FNanchor_236_236" id="FNanchor_236_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_236_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a> It is pleasant to know that Bentham was once in love;
+though his love seems to have been chiefly for a memory associated
+with what he called the happiest time of his life.</p>
+
+<p>Shelburne had a project for a marriage between Bentham and the widow
+of Lord Ashburton (Dunning), who died in 1783.<a name="FNanchor_237_237" id="FNanchor_237_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_237_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a> He also made some
+overtures of patronage. 'He asked me,' says Bentham,<a name="FNanchor_238_238" id="FNanchor_238_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_238_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a> 'what he
+could do for me? I told him, nothing,' and this conduct&mdash;so different
+from that of others, 'endeared me to him.' Bentham declined one offer
+in 1788; but in 1790 he suddenly took it into his head that Lansdowne
+had promised him a seat in parliament; and immediately set forth his
+claims in a vast argumentative letter of sixty-one pages.<a name="FNanchor_239_239" id="FNanchor_239_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_239_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a>
+Lansdowne replied conclusively that he had not made the supposed
+promise, and had had every reason to suppose that Bentham preferred
+retirement to politics. Bentham accepted the statement frankly, though
+a short coolness apparently followed. The claim, in fact, only
+represented one of those passing moods to which Bentham was always
+giving way at odd moments.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham's intimacy at Bowood led to more important results. In 1788 he
+met Romilly and Dumont at Lord Lansdowne's table.<a name="FNanchor_240_240" id="FNanchor_240_240"></a><a href="#Footnote_240_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a> He had already
+met Romilly in 1784 through Wilson, but after this the intimacy became
+close. Romilly had fallen in love with the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+<i>Fragment</i>, and in later
+life he became Bentham's adviser in practical matters, and the chief
+if not the sole expounder of Bentham's theories in parliament.<a name="FNanchor_241_241" id="FNanchor_241_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_241_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a>
+The alliance with Dumont was of even greater importance. Dumont, born
+at Geneva in 1759, had become a Protestant minister; he was afterwards
+tutor to Shelburne's son, and in 1788 visited Paris with Romilly and
+made acquaintance with Mirabeau. Romilly showed Dumont some of
+Bentham's papers written in French. Dumont offered to rewrite and to
+superintend their publication. He afterwards received other papers
+from Bentham himself, with whom he became personally acquainted after
+his return from Paris.<a name="FNanchor_242_242" id="FNanchor_242_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_242_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a> Dumont became Bentham's most devoted
+disciple, and laboured unweariedly upon the translation and
+condensation of his master's treatise. One result is odd enough.
+Dumont, it is said, provided materials for some of Mirabeau's 'most
+splendid' speeches; and some of these materials came from
+Bentham.<a name="FNanchor_243_243" id="FNanchor_243_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_243_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a> One would like to see how Bentham's prose was transmuted
+into an oratory by Mirabeau. In any case, Dumont's services to Bentham
+were invaluable. It is painful to add that according to Bowring the
+two became so much alienated in the end, that in 1827 Bentham refused
+to see Dumont, and declared that his chief interpreter did 'not
+understand a word of his meaning.' Bowring attributes this separation
+to a remark made by Dumont about the shabbiness of Bentham's dinners
+as compared with those at Lansdowne House&mdash;a comparison which he calls
+'offensive, uncalled-for, and groundless.'<a name="FNanchor_244_244" id="FNanchor_244_244"></a><a href="#Footnote_244_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a> Bentham apparently
+argued that a man
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+who did not like his dinners could not appreciate
+his theories: a fallacy excusable only by the pettishness of old age.
+Bowring, however, had a natural dulness which distorted many anecdotes
+transmitted through him; and we may hope that in this case there was
+some exaggeration.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham's emergence was, meanwhile, very slow. The great men whom he
+met at Lord Lansdowne's were not specially impressed by the shy
+philosopher. Wedderburn, so he heard, pronounced the fatal word
+'dangerous' in regard to the <i>Fragment</i>.<a name="FNanchor_245_245" id="FNanchor_245_245"></a><a href="#Footnote_245_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a> How, thought Bentham,
+can utility be dangerous? Is this not self-contradictory? Later
+reflection explained the puzzle. What is useful to the governed need
+not be therefore useful to the governors. Mansfield, who was known to
+Lind, said that in some parts the author of the <i>Fragment</i> was awake
+and in others was asleep. In what parts? Bentham wondered. Awake, he
+afterwards considered, in the parts where Blackstone, the object of
+Mansfield's personal 'heart-burning,' was attacked; asleep where
+Mansfield's own despotism was threatened. Camden was contemptuous;
+Dunning only 'scowled' at him; and Barr&eacute;, after taking in his book,
+gave it back with the mysterious information that he had 'got into a
+scrape.'<a name="FNanchor_246_246" id="FNanchor_246_246"></a><a href="#Footnote_246_246" class="fnanchor">[246]</a> The great book, therefore, though printed in 1781,<a name="FNanchor_247_247" id="FNanchor_247_247"></a><a href="#Footnote_247_247" class="fnanchor">[247]</a>
+'stuck for eight years,'<a name="FNanchor_248_248" id="FNanchor_248_248"></a><a href="#Footnote_248_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a> and the writer continued his obscure
+existence in Lincoln's Inn.<a name="FNanchor_249_249" id="FNanchor_249_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_249_249" class="fnanchor">[249]</a> An opinion
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+which he gave in some
+question as to the evidence in Warren Hastings's trial made, he says,
+an impression in his favour. Before publication was achieved, however,
+a curious episode altered Bentham's whole outlook. His brother Samuel
+(1757-1831), whose education he had partly superintended,<a name="FNanchor_250_250" id="FNanchor_250_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_250_250" class="fnanchor">[250]</a> had
+been apprenticed to a shipwright at Woolwich, and in 1780 had gone to
+Russia in search of employment. Three years later he was sent by
+Prince Potemkin to superintend a great industrial establishment at
+Kritchev on a tributary of the Dnieper. There he was to be
+'Jack-of-all-trades&mdash;building ships, like Harlequin, of odds and
+ends&mdash;a rope-maker, a sail-maker, a distiller, brewer, malster,
+tanner, glass-man, glass-grinder, potter, hemp-spinner, smith, and
+coppersmith.'<a name="FNanchor_251_251" id="FNanchor_251_251"></a><a href="#Footnote_251_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a> He was, that is, to transplant a fragment of
+ready-made Western civilisation into Russia. Bentham resolved to pay a
+visit to his brother, to whom he was strongly attached. He left
+England in August 1785, and stayed some time at Constantinople, where
+he met Maria James (1770-1836), the wife successively of W. Reveley
+and of John Gisborne, and the friend of Shelley. Thence he travelled
+by land to Kritchev, and settled with his brother at the neighbouring
+estate of Zadobras. Bentham here passed a secluded life, interested in
+his brother's occupations and mechanical inventions, and at the same
+time keeping up his own intellectual labours. The most remarkable
+result was the <i>Defence of Usury</i>, written in the beginning of 1787.
+Bentham appends to it a respectful letter to Adam Smith, who had
+supported the laws against usury inconsistently with his own general
+principles. The
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+disciple was simply carrying out those principles to
+the logical application from which the master had shrunk. The
+manuscript was sent to Wilson, who wished to suppress it.<a name="FNanchor_252_252" id="FNanchor_252_252"></a><a href="#Footnote_252_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a> The
+elder Bentham obtained it, and sent it to the press. The book met
+Bentham as he was returning. It was highly praised by Thomas
+Reid,<a name="FNanchor_253_253" id="FNanchor_253_253"></a><a href="#Footnote_253_253" class="fnanchor">[253]</a> and by the <i>Monthly Review</i>; it was translated into various
+languages, and became one of the sacred books of the Economists.
+Wilson is described as 'cold and cautious,' and he suppressed another
+pamphlet upon prison discipline.<a name="FNanchor_254_254" id="FNanchor_254_254"></a><a href="#Footnote_254_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a> In a letter to Bentham, dated
+26th February 1787, however, Wilson disavows any responsibility for
+the delay in the publication of the great book. 'The cause,' he says,
+'lies in your constitution. With one-tenth part of your genius, and a
+common degree of steadiness, both Sam and you would long since have
+risen to great eminence. But your history, since I have known you, has
+been to be always running from a good scheme to a better. In the
+meantime life passes away and nothing is completed.' He entreated
+Bentham to return, and his entreaties were seconded by Trail, who
+pointed out various schemes of reform, especially of the poor-laws, in
+which Bentham might be useful. Wilson had mentioned already another
+inducement to publication. 'There is,' he says, on 24th September
+1786, 'a Mr. Paley, a parson and archdeacon of Carlisle, who has
+written a book called <i>Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy</i>,
+in quarto, and it has gone through two editions with prodigious
+applause.' He fears that Bentham will be charged with stealing from
+Paley, and exhorts him to come home and 'establish a great literary
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+reputation in your own language, and in this country which you
+despise.'<a name="FNanchor_255_255" id="FNanchor_255_255"></a><a href="#Footnote_255_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a> Bentham at last started homewards. He travelled through
+Poland, Germany, and Holland, and reached London at the beginning of
+February 1788. He settled at a little farmhouse at Hendon, bought a
+'superb harpsichord,' resumed his occupations, and saw a small circle
+of friends. Wilson urged him to publish his <i>Introduction</i> without
+waiting to complete the vast scheme to which it was to be a prologue.
+Copies of the printed book were already abroad, and there was a danger
+of plagiarism. Thus urged, Bentham at last yielded, and the
+<i>Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation</i> appeared in
+1789. The preface apologised for imperfections due to the plan of his
+work. The book, he explained, laid down the principles of all his
+future labours, and was to stand to him in the relation of a treatise
+upon pure mathematics to a treatise upon the applied sciences. He
+indicated ten separate departments of legislation, each of which would
+require a treatise in order to the complete execution of his scheme.</p>
+
+<p>The book gives the essence of Bentham's theories, and is the one large
+treatise published by himself. The other works were only brought to
+birth by the help of disciples. Dumont, in the discourse prefixed to
+the <i>Trait&eacute;s</i>, explains the reason. Bentham, he says, would suspend a
+whole work and begin a new one because a single proposition struck him
+as doubtful. A problem of finance would send him to a study of
+Political Economy in general. A question of procedure would
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+make him
+pause until he had investigated the whole subject of judicial
+organisation. While at work, he felt only the pleasure of composition.
+When his materials required form and finish, he felt only the fatigue.
+Disgust succeeded to charm; and he could scarcely be induced to
+interrupt his labours upon fresh matter in order to give to his
+interpreter the explanations necessary for the elucidation of his
+previous writings. He was without the literary vanity or the desire
+for completion which may prompt to premature publication, but may at
+least prevent the absolute waste of what has been already achieved.
+His method of writing was characteristic. He began by forming a
+complete logical scheme for the treatment of any subject, dividing and
+subdividing so as to secure an exhaustive classification of the whole
+matter of discussion. Then taking up any subdivision, he wrote his
+remarks upon sheets, which were put aside after being marked with
+references indicating their place in the final treatise. He never
+turned to these again. In time he would exhaust the whole subject, and
+it would then be the duty of his disciples simply to put together the
+bricks according to the indications placed upon each in order to
+construct the whole edifice.<a name="FNanchor_256_256" id="FNanchor_256_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_256_256" class="fnanchor">[256]</a> As, however, the plan would
+frequently undergo a change, and as each fragment had been written
+without reference to the others, the task of ultimate combination and
+adaptation of the ultimate atoms was often very perplexing. Bentham,
+as we shall see, formed disciples ardent enough to put together these
+scattered documents as the disciples of Mahomet put together the
+Koran. Bentham's revelation was possibly less influential than
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+Mahomet's; but the logical framework was far more coherent.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham's mind was for the present distracted. He had naturally
+returned full of information about Russia. The English ministry were
+involved in various negotiations with Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, the
+purpose of which was to thwart the designs of Russia in the East.
+Bentham wrote three letters to the <i>Public Advertiser</i>, signed
+Anti-Machiavel,<a name="FNanchor_257_257" id="FNanchor_257_257"></a><a href="#Footnote_257_257" class="fnanchor">[257]</a> protesting against the warlike policy. Bentham
+himself believed that the effect was decisive, and that the 'war was
+given up' in consequence of his arguments. Historians<a name="FNanchor_258_258" id="FNanchor_258_258"></a><a href="#Footnote_258_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a> scarcely
+sanction this belief, which is only worth notice because it led to
+another belief, oddly characteristic of Bentham. A letter signed
+'Partizan' in the <i>Public Advertiser</i> replied to his first two
+letters. Who was 'Partizan'? Lord Lansdowne amused himself by
+informing Bentham that he was no less a personage than George <small>III.</small>
+Bentham, with even more than his usual simplicity, accepted this hoax
+as a serious statement. He derived no little comfort from the thought;
+for to the antipathy thus engendered in the 'best of kings' he
+attributed the subsequent failure of his Panopticon scheme.<a name="FNanchor_259_259" id="FNanchor_259_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_259_259" class="fnanchor">[259]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_214_214" id="Footnote_214_214"></a><a href="#FNanchor_214_214"><span class="label">[214]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 66.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_215_215" id="Footnote_215_215"></a><a href="#FNanchor_215_215"><span class="label">[215]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> xi. 95.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_216_216" id="Footnote_216_216"></a><a href="#FNanchor_216_216"><span class="label">[216]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 54.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_217_217" id="Footnote_217_217"></a><a href="#FNanchor_217_217"><span class="label">[217]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 268 <i>n.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_218_218" id="Footnote_218_218"></a><a href="#FNanchor_218_218"><span class="label">[218]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 121.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_219_219" id="Footnote_219_219"></a><a href="#FNanchor_219_219"><span class="label">[219]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 227.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_220_220" id="Footnote_220_220"></a><a href="#FNanchor_220_220"><span class="label">[220]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 79, 142. See also <i>Deontology</i>, i. 298-302,
+where Bentham speaks of discovering the phrase in Priestley's <i>Essay
+on Government</i> in 1768. Priestley says (p. 17) that 'the good and
+happiness of the members, that is of the majority of the members, of
+any state is the great standard by which everything relating to that
+state must be finally determined.' So Le Mercier de la Rivi&egrave;re says,
+in 1767, that the ultimate end of society is <i>assurer le plus grand
+bonheur possible &agrave; la plus grande population possible</i> (Daire's
+<i>&Eacute;conomistes</i>, p. 470). Hutcheson's <i>Enquiry concerning Moral Good and
+Evil</i>, 1725, see iii. &sect; 8, says 'that action is best which secures the
+greatest happiness of the greatest number.' Beccaria, in the preface
+to his essay, speaks of <i>la massima felicit&agrave; divisa nel maggior
+numero</i>. J. S. Mill says that he found the word 'Utilitarian' in
+Galt's <i>Annals of the Parish</i>, and gave the name to the society
+founded by him in 1822-1823 (<i>Autobiography</i>, p. 79). The word had
+been used by Bentham himself in 1781, and he suggested it to Dumont in
+1802 as the proper name of the party, instead of 'Benthamite'
+(<i>Works</i>, x. 92, 390). He afterwards thought it a bad name, because it
+gave a 'vague idea' (<i>Works</i>, x. 582), and substituted 'greatest
+happiness principle' for 'principle of utility' (<i>Works</i>, i. 'Morals
+and Legislation').</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_221_221" id="Footnote_221_221"></a><a href="#FNanchor_221_221"><span class="label">[221]</span></a> A letter in the Additional <small>MSS.</small> 33, 537, shows that
+Bentham sent his 'Fragment' and his 'Hard Labour' pamphlet to
+d'Alembert in 1778, apparently introducing himself for the first time.
+Cf. <i>Works</i>, x. 87-88, 193-94.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_222_222" id="Footnote_222_222"></a><a href="#FNanchor_222_222"><span class="label">[222]</span></a> The translation of 1774. See Lowndes' <i>Manual</i> under
+Voltaire, <i>Works</i>, x. 83 <i>n.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_223_223" id="Footnote_223_223"></a><a href="#FNanchor_223_223"><span class="label">[223]</span></a> <i>Review of the Acts of the Thirteenth Parliament, etc.</i>
+(1775).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_224_224" id="Footnote_224_224"></a><a href="#FNanchor_224_224"><span class="label">[224]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 57, 63.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_225_225" id="Footnote_225_225"></a><a href="#FNanchor_225_225"><span class="label">[225]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 133-35.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_226_226" id="Footnote_226_226"></a><a href="#FNanchor_226_226"><span class="label">[226]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 84.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_227_227" id="Footnote_227_227"></a><a href="#FNanchor_227_227"><span class="label">[227]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 77.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_228_228" id="Footnote_228_228"></a><a href="#FNanchor_228_228"><span class="label">[228]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 82.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_229_229" id="Footnote_229_229"></a><a href="#FNanchor_229_229"><span class="label">[229]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 77-82. Blackstone took no notice of the
+work, except by some allusions in the preface to his next edition.
+Bentham criticised Blackstone respectfully in the pamphlet upon the
+Hard Labour Bill (1778). Blackstone sent a courteous but 'frigidly
+cautious' reply to the author.&mdash;<i>Works</i>, i. 255.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_230_230" id="Footnote_230_230"></a><a href="#FNanchor_230_230"><span class="label">[230]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 115-17, 186</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_231_231" id="Footnote_231_231"></a><a href="#FNanchor_231_231"><span class="label">[231]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 100.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_232_232" id="Footnote_232_232"></a><a href="#FNanchor_232_232"><span class="label">[232]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 122.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_233_233" id="Footnote_233_233"></a><a href="#FNanchor_233_233"><span class="label">[233]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 118; i. 253.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_234_234" id="Footnote_234_234"></a><a href="#FNanchor_234_234"><span class="label">[234]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 97; i. 252.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_235_235" id="Footnote_235_235"></a><a href="#FNanchor_235_235"><span class="label">[235]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 219, 265.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_236_236" id="Footnote_236_236"></a><a href="#FNanchor_236_236"><span class="label">[236]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 118, 419, 558.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_237_237" id="Footnote_237_237"></a><a href="#FNanchor_237_237"><span class="label">[237]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 253.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_238_238" id="Footnote_238_238"></a><a href="#FNanchor_238_238"><span class="label">[238]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 116, 182.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_239_239" id="Footnote_239_239"></a><a href="#FNanchor_239_239"><span class="label">[239]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 228-42.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_240_240" id="Footnote_240_240"></a><a href="#FNanchor_240_240"><span class="label">[240]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 186.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_241_241" id="Footnote_241_241"></a><a href="#FNanchor_241_241"><span class="label">[241]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, v. 370.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_242_242" id="Footnote_242_242"></a><a href="#FNanchor_242_242"><span class="label">[242]</span></a> <i>Souvenirs sur Mirabeau</i> (preface).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_243_243" id="Footnote_243_243"></a><a href="#FNanchor_243_243"><span class="label">[243]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 185.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_244_244" id="Footnote_244_244"></a><a href="#FNanchor_244_244"><span class="label">[244]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 185. Colls (p. 41) tells the same story.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_245_245" id="Footnote_245_245"></a><a href="#FNanchor_245_245"><span class="label">[245]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Fragment, etc.'), i. 245, and <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 463
+<i>n.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_246_246" id="Footnote_246_246"></a><a href="#FNanchor_246_246"><span class="label">[246]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 246, 250, 251.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_247_247" id="Footnote_247_247"></a><a href="#FNanchor_247_247"><span class="label">[247]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 252.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_248_248" id="Footnote_248_248"></a><a href="#FNanchor_248_248"><span class="label">[248]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 185.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_249_249" id="Footnote_249_249"></a><a href="#FNanchor_249_249"><span class="label">[249]</span></a> Bentham says (<i>Works</i>, i. 240) that he was a member of
+a club of which Johnson was the despot. The only club possible seems
+to be the Essex Street Club, of which Daines Barrington was a member.
+If so, it was in 1783, though Bentham seems to imply an earlier date.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_250_250" id="Footnote_250_250"></a><a href="#FNanchor_250_250"><span class="label">[250]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 77.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_251_251" id="Footnote_251_251"></a><a href="#FNanchor_251_251"><span class="label">[251]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 147.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_252_252" id="Footnote_252_252"></a><a href="#FNanchor_252_252"><span class="label">[252]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 176.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_253_253" id="Footnote_253_253"></a><a href="#FNanchor_253_253"><span class="label">[253]</span></a> Reid's <i>Works</i> (Hamilton), p. 73.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_254_254" id="Footnote_254_254"></a><a href="#FNanchor_254_254"><span class="label">[254]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 171.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_255_255" id="Footnote_255_255"></a><a href="#FNanchor_255_255"><span class="label">[255]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 163-64. Cf. <i>Ibid.</i> x. 195, where Wilson is
+often 'tempted to think'&mdash;erroneously, of course&mdash;that Paley must have
+known something of Bentham's work. Paley's chief source was Abraham
+Tucker.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_256_256" id="Footnote_256_256"></a><a href="#FNanchor_256_256"><span class="label">[256]</span></a> See J. H. Burton in <i>Works</i>, i. 11.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_257_257" id="Footnote_257_257"></a><a href="#FNanchor_257_257"><span class="label">[257]</span></a> Given in <i>Works</i>, x. 201-12.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_258_258" id="Footnote_258_258"></a><a href="#FNanchor_258_258"><span class="label">[258]</span></a> See Lecky's <i>Eighteenth Century</i>, x. 210-97, for an
+account of these transactions.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_259_259" id="Footnote_259_259"></a><a href="#FNanchor_259_259"><span class="label">[259]</span></a> Bowring tells this gravely, and declares that George
+<small>III.</small> also wrote letters to the <i>Gazette de Leyde</i>. George <small>III.</small>
+certainly contributed some letters to Arthur Young's <i>Annals of
+Agriculture</i>, and is one of the suggested authors of Junius.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">III. <a name="V_III" id="V_III"></a>THE PANOPTICON</p>
+
+<p>The crash of the French revolution was now to change the whole course
+of European politics, and to bring philosophical jurists face to face
+with a long series of profoundly important problems. Bentham's
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+attitude during the early stages of the revolution and the first war
+period is significant, and may help to elucidate some characteristics
+of the Utilitarian movement. Revolutions are the work of passion: the
+product of a social and political condition in which the masses are
+permeated with discontent, because the social organs have ceased to
+discharge their functions. They are not ascribable to the purely
+intellectual movement alone, though it is no doubt an essential
+factor. The revolution came in any case because the social order was
+out of joint, not simply because Voltaire or Rousseau or Diderot had
+preached destructive doctrines. The doctrines of the 'rights of man'
+are obvious enough to have presented themselves to many minds at many
+periods. The doctrines became destructive because the old traditions
+were shaken, and the traditions were shaken because the state of
+things to which they corresponded had become intolerable. The French
+revolution meant (among other things) that in the mind of the French
+peasant there had accumulated a vast deposit of bitter enmity against
+the noble who had become a mere parasite upon the labouring
+population, retaining, as Arthur Young said, privileges for himself,
+and leaving poverty to the lower classes. The peasant had not read
+Rousseau; he had read nothing. But when his discontent began to affect
+the educated classes, men who had read Rousseau found in his works the
+dialect most fitted to express the growing indignation. Rousseau's
+genius had devised the appropriate formula; for Rousseau's sensibility
+had made him prescient of the rising storm.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+What might be a mere
+commonplace for speculative students suddenly became the warcry in a
+social upheaval. In England, as I have tried to show, there was no
+such popular sentiment behind the political theories: and reformers
+were content with measures which required no appeal to absolute rights
+and general principles. Bentham was no Rousseau; and the last of men
+to raise a warcry. Passion and sentimentalism were to him a nuisance.
+His theories were neither suggested nor modified by the revolution. He
+looked on with curious calmness, as though the revolutionary
+disturbances were rather a transitory interruption to the progress of
+reform than indicative of a general convulsion. His own position was
+isolated. He had no strong reforming party behind him. The Whigs, his
+main friends, were powerless, discredited, and themselves really
+afraid to support any vigorous policy. They had in the main to content
+themselves with criticising the warlike policy which, for the time,
+represented the main current of national sentiment. Bentham shared
+many of their sympathies. He hated the abstract 'rights of man' theory
+as heartily as Burke. It was to him a 'hodge-podge' of fallacies. On
+the other hand, he was absolutely indifferent to the apotheosis of the
+British Constitution constructed by Burke's imagination. He cared
+nothing for history in general, or regarded it, from a Voltairean
+point of view, as a record of the follies and crimes of mankind. He
+wished to deal with political, and especially with legal, questions in
+a scientific spirit&mdash;but 'scientific' would mean not pure mathematics
+but pure empiricism. He was quite as far from Paine's abstract methods
+as from Burke's romantic methods.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+Both of them, according to him,
+were sophists: though one might prefer logical and the other
+sentimental sophistries. Dumont, when he published (1802) his versions
+of Bentham, insisted upon this point. Nothing, he says, was more
+opposed to the trenchant dogmatism of the abstract theorists about
+'rights of man' and 'equality' than Bentham's thoroughly scientific
+procedure (<i>Discours Pr&eacute;liminaire</i>). Bentham's intellectual position
+in this respect will require further consideration hereafter. All his
+prejudices and sympathies were those of the middle class from which he
+sprang. He was no democrat: he had no particular objection to the
+nobility, though he preferred Shelburne to the king's friends or to
+the Whig aristocracy. The reforms which he advocated were such as
+might be adopted by any enlightened legislator, not only by Shelburne
+but even by Blackstone. He had only, he thought, to convert a few
+members of parliament to gain the acceptance for a rational criminal
+code. It had hardly even occurred to him that there was anything wrong
+in the general political order, though he was beginning to find out
+that it was not so modifiable as he could have wished by the new ideas
+which he propounded.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham's activity during the first revolutionary war corresponded to
+this position. The revolution, whatever else it might do, obviously
+gave a chance to amateur legislators. There was any amount of work to
+be done in the way of codifying and reforming legislative systems. The
+deviser of Utopias had such an opening as had never occurred in the
+world's history. Lord Lansdowne, on the 3rd January 1789, expresses
+his pleasure at hearing that Bentham intends to 'take up the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+cause of
+the people in France.'<a name="FNanchor_260_260" id="FNanchor_260_260"></a><a href="#Footnote_260_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a> Bentham, as we have seen, was already
+known to some of the French leaders, and he was now taking time by the
+forelock. He sent to the abb&eacute; Morellet a part of his treatise on
+Political Tactics, hoping to have it finished by the time of the
+meeting of the States General.<a name="FNanchor_261_261" id="FNanchor_261_261"></a><a href="#Footnote_261_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a> This treatise, civilly accepted by
+Morellet, and approved with some qualifications by Bentham's
+counsellors, Romilly, Wilson, and Trail, was an elaborate account of
+the organisation and procedure of a legislative assembly, founded
+chiefly on the practice of the House of Commons. It was published in
+1816 by Dumont in company with <i>Anarchic Fallacies</i>, a vigorous
+exposure of the <i>Declaration of Rights</i>, which Bentham had judiciously
+kept on his shelf. Had the French known of it, he remarks afterwards,
+they would have been little disposed to welcome him.<a name="FNanchor_262_262" id="FNanchor_262_262"></a><a href="#Footnote_262_262" class="fnanchor">[262]</a> An elaborate
+scheme for the organisation of the French judiciary was suggested by a
+report to the National Assembly, and published in March 1790. In 1791,
+Bentham offered to go to France himself in order to establish a prison
+on his new scheme (to be mentioned directly), and become 'gratuitously
+the gaoler thereof.'<a name="FNanchor_263_263" id="FNanchor_263_263"></a><a href="#Footnote_263_263" class="fnanchor">[263]</a> The Assembly acknowledged his 'ardent love
+of humanity,' and ordered an extract from his scheme to be printed for
+their instruction. The tactics actually adopted by the French
+revolutionists for managing assemblies and their methods of executing
+justice form a queer commentary on the philosopher who, like
+Voltaire's Mamres in the <i>White Bull</i>, continued to 'meditate
+profoundly' in placid disregard of facts. He was in fact proposing
+that the lava boiling up in a volcanic
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+eruption should arrange itself
+entirely according to his architectural designs. But his proposal to
+become a gaoler during the revolution reaches the pathetic by its
+amiable innocence. On 26th August 1792, Bentham was one of the men
+upon whom the expiring Assembly, anxious to show its desire of
+universal fraternity, conferred the title of citizen. With Bentham
+were joined Priestley, Paine, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Washington, and
+others. The September massacres followed. On 18th October the honour
+was communicated to Bentham. He replied in a polite letter, pointing
+out that he was a royalist in London for the same reason which would
+make him a republican in France. He ended by a calm argument against
+the proscription of refugees.<a name="FNanchor_264_264" id="FNanchor_264_264"></a><a href="#Footnote_264_264" class="fnanchor">[264]</a> The Convention, if it read the
+letter, and had any sense of humour, must have been amused. The war
+and the Reign of Terror followed. Bentham turned the occasion to
+account by writing a pamphlet (not then published) exhorting the
+French to 'emancipate their colonies.' Colonies were an aimless
+burthen, and to get rid of them would do more than conquest to relieve
+their finances. British fleets and the insurrection of St. Domingo
+were emancipating by very different methods.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham was, of course, disgusted by the divergence of his clients
+from the lines chalked out by proper respect for law and order. On
+31st October 1793 he writes to a friend, expressing his wish that
+Jacobinism could be extirpated; no price could be too heavy to pay for
+such a result: but he doubts whether war or peace would be the best
+means to the end, and protests against the policy of appropriating
+useless and expensive colonies
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+instead of 'driving at the heart of
+the monster.'<a name="FNanchor_265_265" id="FNanchor_265_265"></a><a href="#Footnote_265_265" class="fnanchor">[265]</a> Never was an adviser more at cross-purposes with
+the advised. It would be impossible to draw a more striking portrait
+of the abstract reasoner, whose calculations as to human motives omit
+all reference to passion, and who fancied that all prejudice can be
+dispelled by a few bits of logic.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile a variety of suggestions more or less important and
+connected with passing events were seething in his fertile brain. He
+wrote one of his most stinging pamphlets, '<i>Truth versus Ashhurst</i>' in
+December 1792, directed against a judge who, in the panic suggested by
+the September massacres, had eulogised the English laws. Bentham's
+aversion to Jacobin measures by no means softened his antipathy to
+English superstitions; and his attack was so sharp that Romilly
+advised and obtained its suppression for the time. Projects as to
+war-taxes suggested a couple of interesting pamphlets written in 1793,
+and published in 1795. In connection with this, schemes suggested
+themselves to him for improved systems of patents, for limited
+liability companies and other plans.<a name="FNanchor_266_266" id="FNanchor_266_266"></a><a href="#Footnote_266_266" class="fnanchor">[266]</a> His great work still
+occupied him at intervals. In 1793 he offers to Dundas to employ
+himself in drafting Statutes, and remarks incidentally that he could
+legislate for Hindostan, should legislation be wanted there, as easily
+as for his own parish.<a name="FNanchor_267_267" id="FNanchor_267_267"></a><a href="#Footnote_267_267" class="fnanchor">[267]</a> In 1794, Dumont is begging him to 'conquer
+his repugnance' to bestowing a few hints upon his interpreter.<a name="FNanchor_268_268" id="FNanchor_268_268"></a><a href="#Footnote_268_268" class="fnanchor">[268]</a> In
+1796, Bentham writes long letters suggesting that he should be sent to
+France with Wilberforce, in order to re-establish friendly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+relations.<a name="FNanchor_269_269" id="FNanchor_269_269"></a><a href="#Footnote_269_269" class="fnanchor">[269]</a> In 1798 he is corresponding at great length with
+Patrick Colquhoun upon plans for improving the Metropolitan
+police.<a name="FNanchor_270_270" id="FNanchor_270_270"></a><a href="#Footnote_270_270" class="fnanchor">[270]</a> In 1801 he says<a name="FNanchor_271_271" id="FNanchor_271_271"></a><a href="#Footnote_271_271" class="fnanchor">[271]</a> that for two years and a half 'he
+has thought of scarce anything else' than a plan for interest-bearing
+notes, which he carefully elaborated and discussed with Nicholas
+Vansittart and Dr. Beeke. In September 1800, however, he had found
+time to occupy himself with a proposed <i>frigidarium</i> or ice-house for
+the preservation of fish, fruits, and vegetables; and invited Dr.
+Roget, a nephew of Romilly, to come to his house and carry out the
+necessary experiments.<a name="FNanchor_272_272" id="FNanchor_272_272"></a><a href="#Footnote_272_272" class="fnanchor">[272]</a> In January 1802 he writes to Dumont<a name="FNanchor_273_273" id="FNanchor_273_273"></a><a href="#Footnote_273_273" class="fnanchor">[273]</a>
+proposing to send him a trifling specimen of the Panopticon, a set of
+hollow fire-irons invented by his brother, which may attract the
+attention of Buonaparte and Talleyrand. He proceeds to expound the
+merits of Samuel's invention for making wheels by machinery. Dumont
+replies, that fire-irons are 'superfluities'&mdash;(fire-arms might have
+been more to Buonaparte's taste)&mdash;and that the Panopticon itself was
+coldly received.</p>
+
+<p>This Panopticon was to be Bentham's masterpiece. It occupied his chief
+attention from his return to England until the peace of Amiens. His
+brother had returned from Russia in 1791. Their father died 28th March
+1792, dividing his property equally between his sons. Jeremy's share
+consisted of the estate at Queen's Square Place, Westminster, and of
+landed property producing &pound;500 or &pound;600 a year. The father, spite of
+the distance between them, had treated his son with substantial
+kindness, and had learned to take a pride in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+achievements very unlike
+those which he had at first desired.<a name="FNanchor_274_274" id="FNanchor_274_274"></a><a href="#Footnote_274_274" class="fnanchor">[274]</a> Bentham's position, however,
+was improved by the father's death. The Westminster estate included
+the house in which he lived for the rest of his life. There was a
+garden in which he took great delight, though London smoke gradually
+destroyed the plants: and in the garden was the small house where
+Milton had once lived.<a name="FNanchor_275_275" id="FNanchor_275_275"></a><a href="#Footnote_275_275" class="fnanchor">[275]</a> Here, with the co-operation of his brother
+and his increased income, he had all the means necessary for launching
+his grand scheme.</p>
+
+<p>The Panopticon, as defined by its inventor to Brissot, was a 'mill for
+grinding rogues honest, and idle men industrious.'<a name="FNanchor_276_276" id="FNanchor_276_276"></a><a href="#Footnote_276_276" class="fnanchor">[276]</a> It was
+suggested by a plan designed by his brother in Russia for a large
+house to be occupied by workmen, and to be so arranged that they could
+be under constant inspection. Bentham was working on the old lines of
+philanthropic reform. He had long been interested in the schemes of
+prison reform, to which Howard's labours had given the impetus.
+Blackstone, with the help of William Eden, afterwards Lord Auckland,
+had prepared the 'Hard Labour Bill,' which Bentham had carefully
+criticised in 1778. The measure was passed in 1779, and provided for
+the management of convicts, who were becoming troublesome, as
+transportation to America had ceased to be possible. Howard, whose
+relation to Bentham I have already noticed, was appointed as one of
+the commissioners to carry out the provisions of the Act. The
+commissioners disagreed; Howard resigned; and though at last an
+architect (William Blackburn) was appointed who possessed
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> Howard's
+confidence, and who constructed various prisons in the country, the
+scheme was allowed to drop. Bentham now hoped to solve the problem
+with his Panopticon. He printed an account of it in 1791. He wrote to
+his old antagonist, George <small>III.</small>, describing it, together with another
+invention of Samuel's for enabling armies to cross rivers, which might
+be more to his Majesty's taste.<a name="FNanchor_277_277" id="FNanchor_277_277"></a><a href="#Footnote_277_277" class="fnanchor">[277]</a> In March 1792 he made a proposal
+to the government offering to undertake the charge of a thousand
+convicts upon the Panopticon system.<a name="FNanchor_278_278" id="FNanchor_278_278"></a><a href="#Footnote_278_278" class="fnanchor">[278]</a> After delays suspicious in
+the eyes of Bentham, but hardly surprising at such a period, an act of
+parliament was obtained in 1794 to adopt his schemes. Bentham had
+already been making preparations. He says<a name="FNanchor_279_279" id="FNanchor_279_279"></a><a href="#Footnote_279_279" class="fnanchor">[279]</a> (14th September 1794)
+that he has already spent &pound;6000, and is spending at the rate of &pound;2000
+a year, while his income was under &pound;600 a year. He obtained, however,
+&pound;2000 from the government. He had made models and architectural plans,
+in which he was helped by Reveley, already known to him at
+Constantinople. This sum, it appears, was required in order to keep
+together the men whom he employed. The nature of their employment is
+remarkable.<a name="FNanchor_280_280" id="FNanchor_280_280"></a><a href="#Footnote_280_280" class="fnanchor">[280]</a> Samuel, a man of singular mechanical skill, which was
+of great use to the navy during the war, had devised machinery for
+work in wood and metal. Bentham had joined his brother, and they were
+looking out for a steam-engine. It had now occurred to them to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> employ
+convicts instead of steam, and thus to combine philanthropy with
+business. Difficulties of the usual kind arose as to the procurement
+of a suitable site. The site secured under the provisions of the 'Hard
+Labour Bill' was for some reason rejected; and Bentham was almost in
+despair. It was not until 1799 that he at last acquired for &pound;12,000 an
+estate at Millbank, which seemed to be suitable. Meanwhile Bentham had
+found another application for his principle. The growth of pauperism
+was alarming statesmen. Whitbread proposed in February 1796 to fix a
+minimum rate of wages. The wisest thing that government could do, he
+said, was to 'offer a liberal premium for the encouragement of large
+families.' Pitt proceeded to prepare the abortive Poor-law Bill,<a name="FNanchor_281_281" id="FNanchor_281_281"></a><a href="#Footnote_281_281" class="fnanchor">[281]</a>
+upon which Bentham (in February 1797) sent in some very shrewd
+criticisms. They were not published, but are said to have 'powerfully
+contributed to the abandonment of the measure.'<a name="FNanchor_282_282" id="FNanchor_282_282"></a><a href="#Footnote_282_282" class="fnanchor">[282]</a> They show
+Bentham's power of incisive criticism, though they scarcely deal with
+the general principle. In the following autumn Bentham contributed to
+Arthur Young's <i>Annals of Agriculture</i> upon the same topic. It had
+struck him that an application of his Panopticon would give the
+required panacea. He worked out details with his usual zeal, and the
+scheme attracted notice among the philanthropists of the time. It was
+to be a 'succedaneum' to Pitt's proposal. Meanwhile the finance
+committee, appointed in 1797, heard evidence from Bentham's friend,
+Patrick Colquhoun, upon the Panopticon, and a report recommending
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+it
+was proposed by R. Pole Carew, a friend of Samuel Bentham. Although
+this report was suppressed, the scheme apparently received an impetus.
+The Millbank estate was bought in consequence of these proceedings,
+and a sum of only &pound;1000 was wanted to buy out the tenant of one piece
+of land. Bentham was constantly in attendance at a public office,
+expecting a final warrant for the money. It never came, and, as
+Bentham believed, the delay was due to the malice of George <small>III.</small> Had
+any other king been on the throne, Panopticon in both 'the prisoner
+branch and the pauper branch' would have been set at work.<a name="FNanchor_283_283" id="FNanchor_283_283"></a><a href="#Footnote_283_283" class="fnanchor">[283]</a> Such
+are the consequences of newspaper controversies with monarchs! After
+this, in any case, the poor Panopticon, as the old lawyers said,
+'languishing did live,' and at last 'languishing did die.' Poor
+Bentham seems to have struggled vainly for a time. He appealed to
+Pitt's friend, Wilberforce; he appealed to his step-brother Abbot; he
+wrote to members of parliament, but all was in vain.</p>
+
+<p>Romilly induced him in 1802 to suppress a statement of his grievances
+which could only have rendered ministers implacable.<a name="FNanchor_284_284" id="FNanchor_284_284"></a><a href="#Footnote_284_284" class="fnanchor">[284]</a> But he found
+out what would hardly have been a discovery to most people, that
+officials can be dilatory and evasive; and certain discoveries about
+the treatment of convicts in New South Wales convinced him that they
+could even defy the laws and the Constitution when they were beyond
+inspection. He published (1803) a <i>Plea for the Constitution</i>, showing
+the enormities committed in the colony, 'in breach of Magna Charta,
+the Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act, and the Bill of Rights.'
+Romilly in vain told him that the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+attorney-general could not
+recommend the author of such an effusion to be keeper of a
+Panopticon.<a name="FNanchor_285_285" id="FNanchor_285_285"></a><a href="#Footnote_285_285" class="fnanchor">[285]</a> The actual end did not come till 1811. A committee
+then reported against the scheme. They noticed one essential and very
+characteristic weakness. The whole system turned upon the profit to be
+made from the criminals' labour by Bentham and his brother. The
+committee observed that, however unimpeachable might be the characters
+of the founders, the scheme might lead to abuses in the hands of their
+successors. The adoption of this principle of 'farming' had in fact
+led to gross abuses both in gaols and in workhouses; but it was, as I
+have said, in harmony with the whole 'individualist' theory. The
+committee recommended a different plan; and the result was the
+foundation of Millbank penitentiary, opened in 1816.<a name="FNanchor_286_286" id="FNanchor_286_286"></a><a href="#Footnote_286_286" class="fnanchor">[286]</a> Bentham
+ultimately received &pound;23,000 by way of compensation in 1813.<a name="FNanchor_287_287" id="FNanchor_287_287"></a><a href="#Footnote_287_287" class="fnanchor">[287]</a> The
+objections of the committee would now be a commonplace, but Bentham
+saw in them another proof of the desire to increase government
+patronage. He was well out of the plan. There were probably few men in
+England less capable of managing a thousand convicts, in spite of his
+theories about 'springs of action.' If anything else had been required
+to ensure failure, it would have been association with a sanguine
+inventor of brilliant abilities.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham's agitation had not been altogether fruitless. His plan had
+been partly adopted at Edinburgh by one of the Adams,<a name="FNanchor_288_288" id="FNanchor_288_288"></a><a href="#Footnote_288_288" class="fnanchor">[288]</a> and his
+work formed an important stage in the development of the penal system.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+Bentham, though he could not see that his failure was a blessing in
+disguise, had learned one lesson worth learning. He was ill-treated,
+according to impartial observers. 'Never,' says Wilberforce,<a name="FNanchor_289_289" id="FNanchor_289_289"></a><a href="#Footnote_289_289" class="fnanchor">[289]</a> 'was
+any one worse used. I have seen the tears run down the cheeks of that
+strong-minded man through vexation at the pressing importunity of his
+creditors, and the indolence of official underlings when day after day
+he was begging at the Treasury for what was indeed a mere matter of
+right.' Wilberforce adds that Bentham was 'quite soured,' and
+attributes his later opinions to this cause. When the <i>Quarterly
+Review</i> long afterwards taunted him as a disappointed man, Bentham
+declared himself to be in 'a state of perpetual and unruffled gaiety,'
+and the 'mainspring' of the gaiety of his own circle.<a name="FNanchor_290_290" id="FNanchor_290_290"></a><a href="#Footnote_290_290" class="fnanchor">[290]</a> No one,
+indeed, could be less 'soured' so far as his habitual temper was
+concerned. But Wilberforce's remark contained a serious truth. Bentham
+had made a discovery. He had vowed war in his youth against the 'demon
+of chicane.' He had now learned that the name of the demon was
+'Legion.' To cast him out, it would be necessary to cast out the demon
+of officialism; and we shall see what this bit of knowledge presently
+implied.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_260_260" id="Footnote_260_260"></a><a href="#FNanchor_260_260"><span class="label">[260]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 195.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_261_261" id="Footnote_261_261"></a><a href="#FNanchor_261_261"><span class="label">[261]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 198-99.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_262_262" id="Footnote_262_262"></a><a href="#FNanchor_262_262"><span class="label">[262]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 317.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_263_263" id="Footnote_263_263"></a><a href="#FNanchor_263_263"><span class="label">[263]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 270.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_264_264" id="Footnote_264_264"></a><a href="#FNanchor_264_264"><span class="label">[264]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 282.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_265_265" id="Footnote_265_265"></a><a href="#FNanchor_265_265"><span class="label">[265]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 296.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_266_266" id="Footnote_266_266"></a><a href="#FNanchor_266_266"><span class="label">[266]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 304.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_267_267" id="Footnote_267_267"></a><a href="#FNanchor_267_267"><span class="label">[267]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 292.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_268_268" id="Footnote_268_268"></a><a href="#FNanchor_268_268"><span class="label">[268]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 300.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_269_269" id="Footnote_269_269"></a><a href="#FNanchor_269_269"><span class="label">[269]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 315.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_270_270" id="Footnote_270_270"></a><a href="#FNanchor_270_270"><span class="label">[270]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 329.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_271_271" id="Footnote_271_271"></a><a href="#FNanchor_271_271"><span class="label">[271]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 366.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_272_272" id="Footnote_272_272"></a><a href="#FNanchor_272_272"><span class="label">[272]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 346.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_273_273" id="Footnote_273_273"></a><a href="#FNanchor_273_273"><span class="label">[273]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 381.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_274_274" id="Footnote_274_274"></a><a href="#FNanchor_274_274"><span class="label">[274]</span></a> See his letter to Lansdowne, sending a portrait to
+Jeremy.&mdash;<i>Works</i>, x. 224.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_275_275" id="Footnote_275_275"></a><a href="#FNanchor_275_275"><span class="label">[275]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, xi. 81.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_276_276" id="Footnote_276_276"></a><a href="#FNanchor_276_276"><span class="label">[276]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 226.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_277_277" id="Footnote_277_277"></a><a href="#FNanchor_277_277"><span class="label">[277]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 260. It is doubtful whether the letter was
+sent.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_278_278" id="Footnote_278_278"></a><a href="#FNanchor_278_278"><span class="label">[278]</span></a> The Panopticon story is confusedly told in Bowring's
+life. The <i>Panopticon Correspondence</i>, in the eleventh volume, gives
+fragments from a 'history of the war between Jeremy Bentham and George
+<small>III.</small>,' written by Bentham in 1830-31, and selections from a voluminous
+correspondence.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_279_279" id="Footnote_279_279"></a><a href="#FNanchor_279_279"><span class="label">[279]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 301.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_280_280" id="Footnote_280_280"></a><a href="#FNanchor_280_280"><span class="label">[280]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> xi. 167.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_281_281" id="Footnote_281_281"></a><a href="#FNanchor_281_281"><span class="label">[281]</span></a> The plan, according to Bentham (<i>Works</i>, xi. 102), was
+suggested by Ruggles, author of the work upon the poor-laws, first
+printed in Young's <i>Annals</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_282_282" id="Footnote_282_282"></a><a href="#FNanchor_282_282"><span class="label">[282]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, viii. 440.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_283_283" id="Footnote_283_283"></a><a href="#FNanchor_283_283"><span class="label">[283]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, xi. 102-3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_284_284" id="Footnote_284_284"></a><a href="#FNanchor_284_284"><span class="label">[284]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 400.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_285_285" id="Footnote_285_285"></a><a href="#FNanchor_285_285"><span class="label">[285]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, xi. 144.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_286_286" id="Footnote_286_286"></a><a href="#FNanchor_286_286"><span class="label">[286]</span></a> For its later history see <i>Memorials of Millbank</i>, by
+Arthur Griffiths. 2 vols., 1875.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_287_287" id="Footnote_287_287"></a><a href="#FNanchor_287_287"><span class="label">[287]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, xi. 106.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_288_288" id="Footnote_288_288"></a><a href="#FNanchor_288_288"><span class="label">[288]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 294.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_289_289" id="Footnote_289_289"></a><a href="#FNanchor_289_289"><span class="label">[289]</span></a> Wilberforce's <i>Life</i>, ii. 71.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_290_290" id="Footnote_290_290"></a><a href="#FNanchor_290_290"><span class="label">[290]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 541.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">IV. <a name="V_IV" id="V_IV"></a>THE UTILITARIAN PROPAGANDA</p>
+
+<p>Bentham in 1802 had reached the respectable age of fifty-four. He had
+published his first work twenty-six years, and his most elaborate
+treatise thirteen years, previously. He had been brought into contact
+with many of the eminent politicians and philanthropists of the day.
+Lansdowne had been a friendly patron: his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+advice had been treated
+with respect by Pitt, Dundas, and even by Blackstone; he was on
+friendly terms with Colquhoun, Sir F. Eden, Arthur Young, Wilberforce,
+and others interested in philanthropic movements, and his name at
+least was known to some French politicians. But his reputation was
+still obscure; and his connections did not develop into intimacies. He
+lived as a recluse and avoided society. His introduction to great
+people at Bowood had apparently rather increased than softened his
+shyness. The little circle of intimates, Romilly and Wilson and his
+own brother, must have satisfied his needs for social intercourse. It
+required an elaborate negotiation to bring about a meeting between him
+and Dr. Parr, the great Whig prophet, although they had been
+previously acquainted, and Parr was, as Romilly said by way of
+introduction, a profound admirer and universal panegyrist.<a name="FNanchor_291_291" id="FNanchor_291_291"></a><a href="#Footnote_291_291" class="fnanchor">[291]</a> He
+refused to be introduced by Parr to Fox, because he had 'nothing
+particular to say' to the statesman, and considered that to be 'always
+a sufficient reason for declining acquaintance.'<a name="FNanchor_292_292" id="FNanchor_292_292"></a><a href="#Footnote_292_292" class="fnanchor">[292]</a></p>
+
+<p>But, at last, Bentham's fame was to take a start. Bentham, I said, had
+long before found himself. Dumont had now found Bentham. After long
+and tedious labours and multiplied communications between the master
+and the disciple, Dumont in the spring of 1802 brought out his
+<i>Trait&eacute;s de L&eacute;gislation de M. J&eacute;r&eacute;mie Bentham</i>. The book was partly a
+translation from Bentham's published and unpublished works,<a name="FNanchor_293_293" id="FNanchor_293_293"></a><a href="#Footnote_293_293" class="fnanchor">[293]</a> and
+partly a statement of the pith of the new doctrine in Dumont's own
+language. It had the great merit of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+putting Bentham's meaning
+vigorously and compactly, and free from many of the digressions,
+minute discussions of minor points and arguments requiring a special
+knowledge of English law, which had impeded the popularity of
+Bentham's previous works.</p>
+
+<p>The Jacobin controversies were passing into the background: and
+Bentham began to attain a hearing as a reformer upon different lines.
+In 1803 Dumont visited St. Petersburg, and sent home glowing reports
+of Bentham's rising fame. As many copies of the <i>Trait&eacute;s</i> had been
+sold there as in London. Codes were wanted; laws were being digested;
+and Bentham's work would supply the principles and the classification.
+A magnificent translation was ordered, and Russian officials wrote
+glowing letters in which Bentham was placed in a line with Bacon,
+Newton, and Adam Smith&mdash;each the founder of a new science.<a name="FNanchor_294_294" id="FNanchor_294_294"></a><a href="#Footnote_294_294" class="fnanchor">[294]</a> At
+home the new book was one of the objects of what Dumont calls the
+'scandalous irreverence' of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>.<a name="FNanchor_295_295" id="FNanchor_295_295"></a><a href="#Footnote_295_295" class="fnanchor">[295]</a> This refers
+to a review of the <i>Trait&eacute;s</i> in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> of April 1804.
+Although patronising in tone, and ridiculing some of Bentham's
+doctrines as commonplace and condemning others as criminal, it paid
+some high compliments to his ability. The irreverence meant at least
+that Bentham had become one of the persons worth talking about, and
+that he was henceforth to influence the rising generation. In January
+1807 the <i>Edinburgh</i> itself (probably Jeffrey) suggested that Bentham
+should be employed in a proposed reform of the Scottish judicial
+system. His old friend, Lansdowne, died on 7th May 1805, and in one of
+his last letters expresses a hope that Bentham's principles
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> are at
+last beginning to spread.<a name="FNanchor_296_296" id="FNanchor_296_296"></a><a href="#Footnote_296_296" class="fnanchor">[296]</a> The hope was fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>During the eighteenth century Benthamism had gone through its period
+of incubation. It was now to become an active agency, to gather
+proselytes, and to have a marked influence not only upon legislative
+but upon political movements. The immediate effect upon Bentham of the
+decline of the Panopticon, and his consequent emancipation from
+immediately practical work, was apparently his return to his more
+legitimate employment of speculative labour. He sent to Dumont at St.
+Petersburg<a name="FNanchor_297_297" id="FNanchor_297_297"></a><a href="#Footnote_297_297" class="fnanchor">[297]</a> part of the treatise upon Political Economy, which had
+been naturally suggested by his later work: and he applied himself to
+the Scottish judiciary question, to which many of his speculations had
+a close application. He published a work upon this subject in 1808. To
+the period between 1802 and 1812 belongs also the book, or rather the
+collection of papers, afterwards transformed into the book, upon
+Evidence, which is one of his most valuable performances.</p>
+
+<p>A letter, dated 1st November 1810, gives a characteristic account of
+his position. He refers to hopes of the acceptance of some of his
+principles in South America. In Spain Spaniards are prepared to
+receive his laws 'as oracles.' 'Now at length, when I am just ready to
+drop into the grave' (he had still twenty years of energetic work
+before him), 'my fame has spread itself all over the civilised world.'
+Dumont's publication of 1802 is considered to have superseded all
+previous writings on legislation. In Germany and France codes have
+been prepared by authorised lawyers, who have 'sought
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> to do
+themselves credit by references to that work.'<a name="FNanchor_298_298" id="FNanchor_298_298"></a><a href="#Footnote_298_298" class="fnanchor">[298]</a> It has been
+translated into Russian. Even in England he is often mentioned in
+books and in parliament. 'Meantime I am here scribbling on in my
+hermitage, never seeing anybody but for some special reason, always
+bearing relation to the service of mankind.'<a name="FNanchor_299_299" id="FNanchor_299_299"></a><a href="#Footnote_299_299" class="fnanchor">[299]</a> Making all due
+allowance for the deceptive views of the outer world which haunt every
+'hermitage,' it remains true that Bentham's fame was emerging from
+obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>The end of this period, moreover, was bringing him into closer contact
+with English political life. Bentham, as we have seen, rejected the
+whole Jacobin doctrine of abstract rights. So long as English politics
+meant either the acceptance of a theory which, for whatever reason,
+gathered round it no solid body of support, or, on the other hand, the
+acceptance of an obstructive and purely conservative principle, to
+which all reform was radically opposed, Bentham was necessarily in an
+isolated position. He had 'nothing particular to say' to Fox. He was
+neither a Tory nor a Jacobin, and cared little for the paralysed
+Whigs. He allied himself therefore, so far as he was allied with any
+one, with the philanthropic agitators who stood, like him, outside the
+lines of party. The improvement of prisons was not a party question. A
+marked change&mdash;not always, I think, sufficiently emphasised by
+historians&mdash;had followed the second war. The party-divisions began to
+take the form which was to become more marked as time went on. The old
+issues between Jacobin and Anti-Jacobin no longer existed. Napoleon
+had become the heir of the revolution. The
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> great struggle was
+beginning in which England commanded the ocean, while the Continent
+was at the feet of the empire. For a time the question was whether
+England, too, should be invaded. After Trafalgar invasion became
+hopeless. The Napoleonic victories threatened to exclude English trade
+from the Continent: while England retorted by declaring that the
+Continent should trade with nobody else. Upon one side the war was now
+appealing to higher feelings. It was no longer a crusade against
+theories, but a struggle for national existence and for the existence
+of other nations threatened by a gigantic despotism. Men like
+Wordsworth and Coleridge, who could not be Anti-Jacobins, had been
+first shocked by the Jacobin treatment of Switzerland, and now threw
+themselves enthusiastically into the cause which meant the rescue of
+Spain and Germany from foreign oppression. The generous feeling which
+had resented the attempt to forbid Frenchmen to break their own bonds,
+now resented the attempts of Frenchmen to impose bonds upon others.
+The patriotism which prompted to a crusade had seemed unworthy, but
+the patriotism which was now allied with the patriotism of Spain and
+Germany involved no sacrifice of other sentiment. Many men had
+sympathised with the early revolution, not so much from any strong
+sentiment of evils at home as from a belief that the French movement
+was but a fuller development of the very principles which were
+partially embodied in the British Constitution. They had no longer to
+choose between sympathising with the enemies of England and
+sympathising with the suppressors of the old English liberties.</p>
+
+<p>But, on the other hand, an opposite change took
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> place. The
+disappearance of the Jacobin movement allowed the Radicalism of home
+growth to display itself more fully. English Whigs of all shades had
+opposed the war with certain misgivings. They had been nervously
+anxious not to identify themselves with the sentiments of the
+Jacobins. They desired peace with the French, but had to protest that
+it was not for love of French principles. That difficulty was removed.
+There was no longer a vision&mdash;such as Gillray had embodied in his
+caricatures&mdash;of a guillotine in St. James's Street: or of a Committee
+of Public Safety formed by Fox, Paine, and Horne Tooke. Meanwhile Whig
+prophecies of the failure of the war were not disproved by its
+results. Though the English navy had been victorious, English
+interference on the Continent had been futile. Millions of money had
+been wasted: and millions were flowing freely. Even now we stand
+astonished at the reckless profusion of the financiers of the time.
+And what was there to show for it? The French empire, so far from
+being destroyed, had been consolidated. If we escaped for the time,
+could we permanently resist the whole power of Europe? When the
+Peninsular War began we had been fighting, except for the short truce
+of Amiens, for sixteen years; and there seemed no reason to believe
+that the expedition to Portugal in 1808 would succeed better than
+previous efforts. The Walcheren expedition of 1809 was a fresh proof
+of our capacity for blundering. Pauperism was still increasing
+rapidly, and forebodings of a war with America beginning to trouble
+men interested in commerce. The English Opposition had ample texts for
+discourses; and a demand for change began to spring up which was no
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+longer a reflection of foreign sympathies. An article in the
+<i>Edinburgh</i> of January 1808, which professed to demonstrate the
+hopelessness of the Peninsular War, roused the wrath of the Tories.
+The <i>Quarterly Review</i> was started by Canning and Scott, and the
+<i>Edinburgh</i>, in return, took a more decidedly Whig colour. The
+Radicals now showed themselves behind the Whigs. Cobbett, who had been
+the most vigorous of John Bull Anti-Jacobins, was driven by his hatred
+of the tax-gatherer and the misery of the agricultural labourers into
+the opposite camp, and his <i>Register</i> became the most effective organ
+of Radicalism. Demands for reform began again to make themselves heard
+in parliament. Sir Francis Burdett, who had sat at the feet of Horne
+Tooke, and whose return with Cochrane for Westminster in 1807 was the
+first parliamentary triumph of the reformers, proposed a motion on
+15th June 1809, which was, of course, rejected, but which was the
+first of a series, and marked the revival of a serious agitation not
+to cease till the triumph of 1832.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Bentham, meditating profoundly upon the Panopticon, had at
+last found out that he had begun at the wrong end. His reasoning had
+been thrown away upon the huge dead weight of official indifference,
+or worse than indifference. Why did they not accept the means for
+producing the greatest happiness of the greatest number? Because
+statesmen did not desire the end. And why not? To answer that
+question, and to show how a government could be constructed which
+should desire it, became a main occupation of Bentham's life.
+Henceforward, therefore, instead of merely treating of penal codes and
+other special reforms, his attention is
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> directed to the previous
+question of political organisation; while at times he diverges to
+illustrate incidentally the abuses of what he ironically calls the
+'matchless constitution.' Bentham's principal occupation, in a word,
+was to provide political philosophy for radical reformers.<a name="FNanchor_300_300" id="FNanchor_300_300"></a><a href="#Footnote_300_300" class="fnanchor">[300]</a></p>
+
+<p>Bentham remained as much a recluse as ever. He seldom left Queen's
+Square Place except for certain summer outings. In 1807 he took a
+house at Barrow Green, near Oxted, in Surrey, lying in a picturesque
+hollow at the foot of the chalk hills.<a name="FNanchor_301_301" id="FNanchor_301_301"></a><a href="#Footnote_301_301" class="fnanchor">[301]</a> It was an old-fashioned
+house, standing in what had been a park, with a lake and a comfortable
+kitchen garden. Bentham pottered about in the grounds and under the
+old chestnut-trees, codifying, gardening, and talking to occasional
+disciples. He returned thither in following years; but in 1814,
+probably in consequence of his compensation for the Panopticon, took a
+larger place, Ford Abbey, near Chard in Somersetshire. It was a superb
+residence,<a name="FNanchor_302_302" id="FNanchor_302_302"></a><a href="#Footnote_302_302" class="fnanchor">[302]</a> with chapel, cloisters, and corridors, a hall eighty
+feet long by thirty high, and a great dining parlour. Parts of the
+building dated from the twelfth century or the time of the
+Commonwealth, or had undergone alterations attributed to Inigo Jones.
+No Squire Western could have cared less for antiquarian associations,
+but Bentham made a very fair monk. The place, for which he paid &pound;315 a
+year, was congenial. He rode his favourite hobby of gardening, and
+took his regular 'ante-jentacular' and 'post-prandial' walks, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+played battledore and shuttlecock in the intervals of codification. He
+liked it so well that he would have taken it for life, but for the
+loss of &pound;8000 or &pound;10,000 in a Devonshire marble-quarry.<a name="FNanchor_303_303" id="FNanchor_303_303"></a><a href="#Footnote_303_303" class="fnanchor">[303]</a> In 1818
+he gave it up, and thenceforward rarely quitted Queen's Square Place.
+His life was varied by few incidents, although his influence upon
+public affairs was for the first time becoming important. The busier
+journalists and platform orators did not trouble themselves much about
+philosophy. But they were in communication with men of a higher stamp,
+Romilly, James Mill, and others, who formed Bentham's innermost
+council. Thus the movements in the outside world set up an agitation
+in Bentham's study; and the recluse was prompted to set himself to
+work upon elaborating his own theories in various directions, in order
+to supply the necessary substratum of philosophical doctrine. If he
+had not the power of gaining the public ear, his oracles were
+transmitted through the disciples who also converted some of his raw
+materials into coherent books.</p>
+
+<p>The most important of Bentham's disciples for many years was James
+Mill, and I shall have to say what more is necessary in regard to the
+active agitation when I speak of Mill himself. For the present, it is
+enough to say that Mill first became Bentham's proselyte about 1808.
+Mill stayed with Bentham at Barrow Green and at Ford Abbey. Though
+some differences caused superficial disturbances of their harmony, no
+prophet could have had a more zealous, uncompromising, and vigorous
+disciple. Mill's force of character qualified him to become the leader
+of the school; but his doctrine was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+always essentially the doctrine
+of Bentham, and for the present he was content to be the transmitter
+of his master's message to mankind. He was at this period a
+contributor to the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>; and in October 1809 he inserted
+some praises of Bentham in a review of a book upon legislation by S.
+Scipion Bexon. The article was cruelly mangled by Jeffrey, according
+to his custom, and Jeffrey's most powerful vassal, Brougham, thought
+that the praises which remained were excessive.<a name="FNanchor_304_304" id="FNanchor_304_304"></a><a href="#Footnote_304_304" class="fnanchor">[304]</a></p>
+
+<p>Obviously the orthodox Whigs were not prepared to swear allegiance to
+Bentham. He was drawing into closer connection with the Radicals. In
+1809 Cobbett was denouncing the duke of York in consequence of the
+Mrs. Clarke scandal. Bentham wrote to him, but anonymously and
+cautiously, to obtain documents in regard to a previous libel
+case,<a name="FNanchor_305_305" id="FNanchor_305_305"></a><a href="#Footnote_305_305" class="fnanchor">[305]</a> and proceeded to write a pamphlet on the <i>Elements of the
+Art of Packing (as applied to Special Juries)</i>, so sharp that his
+faithful adviser, Romilly, procured its suppression for the time.<a name="FNanchor_306_306" id="FNanchor_306_306"></a><a href="#Footnote_306_306" class="fnanchor">[306]</a>
+Copies, however, were printed and privately given to a few who could
+be trusted. Bentham next wrote (1809) a 'Catechism of Parliamentary
+Reform,' which he communicated to Cobbett (16th November 1810), with a
+request for its publication in the <i>Register</i>.<a name="FNanchor_307_307" id="FNanchor_307_307"></a><a href="#Footnote_307_307" class="fnanchor">[307]</a> Cobbett was at
+this time in prison for his attack upon flogging militia men; and,
+though still more hostile to government, was bound to be more cautious
+in his line of assault. The plan was not published, whether because
+too daring or too dull; but it was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> apparently printed. Bentham's
+opinion of Cobbett was anything but flattering. Cobbett, he thought in
+1812, was a 'vile rascal,' and was afterwards pronounced to be 'filled
+with the <i>odium humani generis</i>&mdash;his malevolence and lying beyond
+everything.'<a name="FNanchor_308_308" id="FNanchor_308_308"></a><a href="#Footnote_308_308" class="fnanchor">[308]</a> Cobbett's radicalism, in fact, was of the type most
+hostile to the Utilitarians. John Hunt, in the <i>Examiner</i>, was
+'trumpeting' Bentham and Romilly in 1812, and was praised
+accordingly.<a name="FNanchor_309_309" id="FNanchor_309_309"></a><a href="#Footnote_309_309" class="fnanchor">[309]</a> Bentham formed an alliance with another leading
+Radical. He had made acquaintance by 1811 with Sir F. Burdett, to whom
+he then appealed for help in an attack upon the delays of
+Chancery.<a name="FNanchor_310_310" id="FNanchor_310_310"></a><a href="#Footnote_310_310" class="fnanchor">[310]</a> Burdett, indeed, appeared to him to be far inferior to
+Romilly and Brougham, but he thought that so powerful a 'hero of the
+mob' ought to be turned to account in the good cause.<a name="FNanchor_311_311" id="FNanchor_311_311"></a><a href="#Footnote_311_311" class="fnanchor">[311]</a> Burdett
+seems to have courted the old philosopher; and a few years later a
+closer alliance was brought about. The peace of 1815 was succeeded by
+a period of distress, the more acutely felt from the disappointment of
+natural hopes of prosperity; and a period of agitation, met by harsh
+repression, followed. Applications were made, to Bentham for
+permission to use his 'Catechism,' which was ultimately published
+(1818) in a cheap form by Wooler, well known as the editor of the
+democratic <i>Black Dwarf</i>.<a name="FNanchor_312_312" id="FNanchor_312_312"></a><a href="#Footnote_312_312" class="fnanchor">[312]</a> Burdett applied for a plan of
+parliamentary reform. Henry Bickersteth (1783-1851), afterwards Lord
+Langdale and Master of the Rolls, at this time a rising barrister of
+high character, wrote an appeal to Bentham and Burdett to combine in
+setting forth a scheme which, with such authority, must command
+general acceptance.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+The result was a series of resolutions moved by
+Burdett in the House of Commons on 2nd June 1818,<a name="FNanchor_313_313" id="FNanchor_313_313"></a><a href="#Footnote_313_313" class="fnanchor">[313]</a> demanding
+universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and vote by ballot. Bentham
+had thus accepted the conclusions reached in a different way by the
+believers in that 'hodge-podge' of absurdities, the declaration of the
+rights of man. Curiously enough, his assault upon that document
+appeared in Dumont's French version in the year 1816, at the very time
+when he was accepting its practical conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>The schemes in which Mill was interested at this time drew Bentham's
+attention in other directions. In 1813 the Quaker, William Allen, who
+had been a close ally of Mill, induced Bentham to invest money in the
+New Lanark establishment. Owen, whose benevolent schemes had been
+hampered by his partners, bought them out, the new capital being
+partly provided by Allen, Bentham, and others. Bentham afterwards
+spoke contemptuously of Owen, who, as he said, 'began in vapour and
+ended in smoke,'<a name="FNanchor_314_314" id="FNanchor_314_314"></a><a href="#Footnote_314_314" class="fnanchor">[314]</a> and whose disciples came in after years into
+sharp conflict with the Utilitarians. Bentham, however, took pleasure,
+it seems, in Owen's benevolent schemes for infant education, and made
+money by his investment, for once combining business with philanthropy
+successfully.<a name="FNanchor_315_315" id="FNanchor_315_315"></a><a href="#Footnote_315_315" class="fnanchor">[315]</a> Probably he regarded New Lanark as a kind of
+Panopticon. Owen had not as yet become a prophet of Socialism.</p>
+
+<p>Another set of controversies in which Mill and his friends took an
+active part, started Bentham in a whole series of speculations. A plan
+(which I shall have to mention in connection with Mill), was devised
+in 1815
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+for a 'Chrestomathic school,' which was to give a sound
+education of proper Utilitarian tendencies to the upper and middle
+classes. Brougham, Mackintosh, Ricardo, William Allen, and Place were
+all interested in this undertaking.<a name="FNanchor_316_316" id="FNanchor_316_316"></a><a href="#Footnote_316_316" class="fnanchor">[316]</a> Bentham offered a site at
+Queen's Square Place, and though the scheme never came to the birth,
+it set him actively at work. He wrote a series of papers during his
+first year at Ford Abbey<a name="FNanchor_317_317" id="FNanchor_317_317"></a><a href="#Footnote_317_317" class="fnanchor">[317]</a> upon the theory of education, published
+in 1816 as <i>Chrestomathia</i>; and to this was apparently due a further
+excursion beyond the limits of jurisprudence. Educational controversy
+in that ignorant day was complicated by religious animosity; the
+National Society and the 'British and Foreign' Society were fighting
+under the banners of Bell and Lancaster, and the war roused excessive
+bitterness. Bentham finding the church in his way, had little
+difficulty in discovering that the whole ecclesiastical system was
+part of the general complex of abuse against which he was warring. He
+fell foul of the Catechism; he exposed the abuses of non-residence and
+episcopal wealth; he discovered that the Thirty-nine Articles
+contained gross fallacies; he went on to make an onslaught upon the
+Apostle St Paul, whose evidence as to his conversion was exposed to a
+severe cross-examination; and, finally, he wrote, or supplied the
+materials for, a remarkable <i>Analysis of Natural Religion</i>, which was
+ultimately published by Grote under the pseudonym 'Philip Beauchamp,'
+in 1822. This procedure from the particular case of the Catechism in
+schools up to the general problem of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> utility of religion in
+general, is curiously characteristic of Bentham.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham's mind was attracted to various other schemes by the disciples
+who came to sit at his feet, and professed, with more or less
+sincerity, to regard him as a Solon. Foreigners had been resorting to
+him from all parts of the world, and gave him hopes of new fields for
+codifying. As early as 1808 he had been visited at Barrow Green by the
+strange adventurer, politician, lawyer, and filibuster, Aaron Burr,
+famous for the duel in which he killed Alexander Hamilton, and now
+framing wild schemes for an empire in Mexico. Unscrupulous, restlessly
+active and cynical, he was a singular contrast to the placid
+philosopher, upon whom his confidences seem to have made an impression
+of not unpleasing horror. Burr's conversation suggested to Bentham a
+singular scheme for emigrating to Mexico. He applied seriously for
+introductions to Lord Holland, who had passed some time in Spain, and
+to Holland's friend, Jovellanos (1749-1812), a member of the Spanish
+Junta, who had written treatises upon legislation (1785), of which
+Bentham approved.<a name="FNanchor_318_318" id="FNanchor_318_318"></a><a href="#Footnote_318_318" class="fnanchor">[318]</a> The dream of Mexico was succeeded by a dream of
+Venezuela. General Miranda spent some years in England, and had become
+well known to James Mill. He was now about to start upon an
+unfortunate expedition to Venezuela, his native country. He took with
+him a draft of a law for the freedom of the press, which Bentham drew
+up, and he proposed that when his new state was founded, Bentham
+should be its legislator.<a name="FNanchor_319_319" id="FNanchor_319_319"></a><a href="#Footnote_319_319" class="fnanchor">[319]</a> Miranda was betrayed to the Spanish
+government in 1812, and died (1816) in the hands of the Inquisition.
+Bolivar,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+who was also in London in 1810 and took some notice of
+Joseph Lancaster, applied in flattering terms to Bentham. Long
+afterwards, when dictator of Columbia, he forbade the use of Bentham's
+works in the schools, to which, however, the privilege of reading him
+was restored, and, let us hope, duly valued, in 1835.<a name="FNanchor_320_320" id="FNanchor_320_320"></a><a href="#Footnote_320_320" class="fnanchor">[320]</a> Santander,
+another South American hero, was also a disciple, and encouraged the
+study of Bentham. Bentham says in 1830 that forty thousand copies of
+Dumont's <i>Trait&eacute;s</i> had been sold in Paris for the South American
+trade.<a name="FNanchor_321_321" id="FNanchor_321_321"></a><a href="#Footnote_321_321" class="fnanchor">[321]</a> What share Bentham may have had in modifying South
+American ideas is unknown to me. In the United States he had many
+disciples of a more creditable kind than Burr. He appealed in 1811 to
+Madison, then President, for permission to construct a 'Pannomion' or
+complete body of law, for the use of the United States; and urged his
+claims both upon Madison and the Governor of Pennsylvania in 1817,
+when peace had been restored. He had many conversations upon this
+project with John Quincy Adams, who was then American minister in
+England.<a name="FNanchor_322_322" id="FNanchor_322_322"></a><a href="#Footnote_322_322" class="fnanchor">[322]</a> This, of course, came to nothing, but an eminent
+American disciple, Edward Livingston (1764-1836), between 1820 and
+1830 prepared codes for the State of Louisiana, and warmly
+acknowledged his obligations to Bentham.<a name="FNanchor_323_323" id="FNanchor_323_323"></a><a href="#Footnote_323_323" class="fnanchor">[323]</a> In 1830 Bentham also
+acknowledges a notice of his labours, probably resulting from this,
+which had been made in one of General Jackson's presidential
+messages.<a name="FNanchor_324_324" id="FNanchor_324_324"></a><a href="#Footnote_324_324" class="fnanchor">[324]</a> In his later years the United States became his ideal,
+and he never tired of comparing its cheap and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+honest enactment with
+the corruption and extravagance at home.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_291_291" id="Footnote_291_291"></a><a href="#FNanchor_291_291"><span class="label">[291]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 403.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_292_292" id="Footnote_292_292"></a><a href="#FNanchor_292_292"><span class="label">[292]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 62.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_293_293" id="Footnote_293_293"></a><a href="#FNanchor_293_293"><span class="label">[293]</span></a> Bentham had himself written some of his papers in
+French.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_294_294" id="Footnote_294_294"></a><a href="#FNanchor_294_294"><span class="label">[294]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 407, 410, 413, 419.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_295_295" id="Footnote_295_295"></a><a href="#FNanchor_295_295"><span class="label">[295]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 415.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_296_296" id="Footnote_296_296"></a><a href="#FNanchor_296_296"><span class="label">[296]</span></a> Lord E. Fitzmaurice's <i>Life of Shelburne</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_297_297" id="Footnote_297_297"></a><a href="#FNanchor_297_297"><span class="label">[297]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 413.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_298_298" id="Footnote_298_298"></a><a href="#FNanchor_298_298"><span class="label">[298]</span></a> This statement, I believe, refers to a complimentary
+reference to Bentham in the preface to the French Code.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_299_299" id="Footnote_299_299"></a><a href="#FNanchor_299_299"><span class="label">[299]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 458.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_300_300" id="Footnote_300_300"></a><a href="#FNanchor_300_300"><span class="label">[300]</span></a> Bentham says that he reached these conclusions some
+time before 1809: <i>Works</i>, iii. 435. Cf. <i>Ibid.</i> v. 278.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_301_301" id="Footnote_301_301"></a><a href="#FNanchor_301_301"><span class="label">[301]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 425.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_302_302" id="Footnote_302_302"></a><a href="#FNanchor_302_302"><span class="label">[302]</span></a> See description in Bain's <i>James Mill</i>, 129-36.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_303_303" id="Footnote_303_303"></a><a href="#FNanchor_303_303"><span class="label">[303]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 479, 573.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_304_304" id="Footnote_304_304"></a><a href="#FNanchor_304_304"><span class="label">[304]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 452-54.; Bain's <i>James Mill</i>, 104.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_305_305" id="Footnote_305_305"></a><a href="#FNanchor_305_305"><span class="label">[305]</span></a> The case of the 'King <i>v.</i> Cobbett,' (1804), which led
+to the proceedings against Mr. Justice Johnson in 1805.&mdash;Cobbett's
+<i>State Trials</i>, xxix.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_306_306" id="Footnote_306_306"></a><a href="#FNanchor_306_306"><span class="label">[306]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 448-49.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_307_307" id="Footnote_307_307"></a><a href="#FNanchor_307_307"><span class="label">[307]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 458.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_308_308" id="Footnote_308_308"></a><a href="#FNanchor_308_308"><span class="label">[308]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 471, 570.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_309_309" id="Footnote_309_309"></a><a href="#FNanchor_309_309"><span class="label">[309]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 471.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_310_310" id="Footnote_310_310"></a><a href="#FNanchor_310_310"><span class="label">[310]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 461.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_311_311" id="Footnote_311_311"></a><a href="#FNanchor_311_311"><span class="label">[311]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 471.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_312_312" id="Footnote_312_312"></a><a href="#FNanchor_312_312"><span class="label">[312]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 490.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_313_313" id="Footnote_313_313"></a><a href="#FNanchor_313_313"><span class="label">[313]</span></a> Printed in <i>Works</i>, x. 495-97.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_314_314" id="Footnote_314_314"></a><a href="#FNanchor_314_314"><span class="label">[314]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 570.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_315_315" id="Footnote_315_315"></a><a href="#FNanchor_315_315"><span class="label">[315]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 476.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_316_316" id="Footnote_316_316"></a><a href="#FNanchor_316_316"><span class="label">[316]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 485.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_317_317" id="Footnote_317_317"></a><a href="#FNanchor_317_317"><span class="label">[317]</span></a> Bain's <i>James Mill</i>, 136. <i>Church of Englandism</i> and
+<i>Not Paul but Jesus</i> were also written at Ford Abbey.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_318_318" id="Footnote_318_318"></a><a href="#FNanchor_318_318"><span class="label">[318]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 433, 448.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_319_319" id="Footnote_319_319"></a><a href="#FNanchor_319_319"><span class="label">[319]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 457-58; Bain's <i>James Mill</i>, 79.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_320_320" id="Footnote_320_320"></a><a href="#FNanchor_320_320"><span class="label">[320]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, 553-54, 565.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_321_321" id="Footnote_321_321"></a><a href="#FNanchor_321_321"><span class="label">[321]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> xi. 53.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_322_322" id="Footnote_322_322"></a><a href="#FNanchor_322_322"><span class="label">[322]</span></a> See <i>Memoirs of J. Q. Adams</i> (1874), iii. 511, 520,
+532, 535-39, 540, 544, 560, 562-63. and Bentham's letter to Adams in
+<i>Works</i>, x. 554.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_323_323" id="Footnote_323_323"></a><a href="#FNanchor_323_323"><span class="label">[323]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, xi. 23.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_324_324" id="Footnote_324_324"></a><a href="#FNanchor_324_324"><span class="label">[324]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> xi. 40.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">V. <a name="V_V" id="V_V"></a>CODIFICATION</p>
+
+<p>The unsettled conditions which followed the peace in various European
+countries found Bentham other employment. In 1809 Dumont did some
+codifying for the Emperor of Russia, and in 1817 was engaged to do the
+same service for Geneva. He was employed for some years, and is said
+to have introduced a Benthamite Penal Code and Panopticon, and an
+application of the Tactics.<a name="FNanchor_325_325" id="FNanchor_325_325"></a><a href="#Footnote_325_325" class="fnanchor">[325]</a> In 1820 and 1821 Bentham was
+consulted by the Constitutional party in Spain and Portugal, and wrote
+elaborate tracts for their enlightenment. He made an impression upon
+at least one Spaniard. Borrow, when travelling in Spain some ten years
+after Bentham's death, was welcomed by an Alcalde on Cape Finisterre,
+who had upon his shelves all the works of the 'grand Baintham,' and
+compared him to Solon, Plato, and even Lope de Vega.<a name="FNanchor_326_326" id="FNanchor_326_326"></a><a href="#Footnote_326_326" class="fnanchor">[326]</a> The last
+comparison appeared to Borrow to be overstrained. Bentham even
+endeavoured in 1822-23 to administer some sound advice to the
+government of Tripoli, but his suggestions for 'remedies against
+misrule' seem never to have been communicated.<a name="FNanchor_327_327" id="FNanchor_327_327"></a><a href="#Footnote_327_327" class="fnanchor">[327]</a> In 1823 and 1824
+he was a member of the Greek Committee; he corresponded with
+Mavrocordato and other leaders; and he begged Parr to turn some of his
+admonitions into 'Parrian' Greek for the benefit of the moderns.<a name="FNanchor_328_328" id="FNanchor_328_328"></a><a href="#Footnote_328_328" class="fnanchor">[328]</a>
+Blaqui&egrave;re and Stanhope, two ardent members of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+committee, were
+disciples; and Stanhope carried with him to Greece Bentham's <i>Table of
+the Springs of Action</i>, with which he tried to indoctrinate Byron. The
+poet, however, thought with some plausibility that he was a better
+judge of human passions than the philosopher. Parry, the engineer, who
+joined Byron at the same time, gives a queer account of the old
+philosopher trotting about London in the service of the Greeks.<a name="FNanchor_329_329" id="FNanchor_329_329"></a><a href="#Footnote_329_329" class="fnanchor">[329]</a>
+The coarse and thoughtless might laugh, and perhaps some neither
+coarse nor thoughtless might smile. But Bowring tells us that these
+were days of boundless happiness for Bentham.<a name="FNanchor_330_330" id="FNanchor_330_330"></a><a href="#Footnote_330_330" class="fnanchor">[330]</a> Tributes of
+admiration were pouring in from all sides, and the true Gospel was
+spreading across the Atlantic and along the shores of the
+Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>At home the Utilitarian party was consolidating itself; and the
+struggle which resulted in the Reform Bill was slowly beginning. The
+veteran Cartwright, Bentham's senior by eight years, tried in 1821 to
+persuade him to come out as one of a committee of 'Guardians of
+Constitutional Reform,' elected at a public meeting.<a name="FNanchor_331_331" id="FNanchor_331_331"></a><a href="#Footnote_331_331" class="fnanchor">[331]</a> Bentham
+wisely refused to be drawn from his privacy. He left it to his friends
+to agitate, while he returned to labour in his study. The demand for
+legislation which had sprung up in so many parts of the world
+encouraged Bentham to undertake the last of his great labours. The
+Portuguese Cortes voted in December 1821 that he should be invited to
+prepare an 'all-comprehensive code'; and in 1822 he put out a curious
+'Codification proposal,' offering to do the work for any nation in
+need of a legislator, and appending testimonials
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+to his competence
+for the work. He set to work upon a 'Constitutional Code,' which
+occupied him at intervals during the remainder of his life, and
+embodied the final outcome of his speculations. He diverged from this
+main purpose to write various pamphlets upon topics of immediate
+interest; and was keenly interested in the various activities of his
+disciples. The Utilitarians now thought themselves entitled to enter
+the field of politics as a distinct body. An organ to defend their
+cause was desirable, and Bentham supplied the funds for the
+<i>Westminster Review</i>, of which the first number appeared in April
+1824.</p>
+
+<p>The editorship fell chiefly into the hands of Bowring (1792-1872).
+Bowring had travelled much upon the Continent for a commercial house,
+and his knowledge of Spanish politics had brought him into connection
+with Bentham, to whom Blaqui&egrave;re recommended him in 1820.<a name="FNanchor_332_332" id="FNanchor_332_332"></a><a href="#Footnote_332_332" class="fnanchor">[332]</a> A strong
+attachment sprang up between the two. Bentham confided all his
+thoughts and feelings to the young man, and Bowring looked up to his
+teacher with affectionate reverence. In 1828 Bentham says that Bowring
+is 'the most intimate friend he has.'<a name="FNanchor_333_333" id="FNanchor_333_333"></a><a href="#Footnote_333_333" class="fnanchor">[333]</a> Bowring complains of
+calumnies, by which he was assailed, though they failed to alienate
+Bentham. What they may have been matters little; but it is clear that
+a certain jealousy arose between this last disciple and his older
+rivals. James Mill's stern and rigid character had evidently produced
+some irritation at intervals; and to him it would naturally appear
+that Bowring was the object of a senile favouritism. In any case it is
+to be regretted that Bentham thus became partly alienated from his
+older
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+friends<a name="FNanchor_334_334" id="FNanchor_334_334"></a><a href="#Footnote_334_334" class="fnanchor">[334]</a>. Mill was too proud to complain; and never wavered
+in his allegiance to the master's principles. But one result, and to
+us the most important, was that the new attachment led to the
+composition of one of the worst biographies in the language, out of
+materials which might have served for a masterpiece. Bowring was a
+great linguist, and an energetic man of business. He wrote hymns, and
+one of them, 'In the cross of Christ I glory,' is said to have
+'universal fame.' A Benthamite capable of so singular an eccentricity
+judiciously agreed to avoid discussions upon religious topics with his
+master. To Bowring we also owe the <i>Deontology</i>, which professes to
+represent Bentham's dictation. The Mills repudiated this version,
+certainly a very poor one, of their teacher's morality, and held that
+it represented less Bentham than such an impression of Bentham as
+could be stamped upon a muddle-headed disciple.<a name="FNanchor_335_335" id="FNanchor_335_335"></a><a href="#Footnote_335_335" class="fnanchor">[335]</a></p>
+
+<p>The last years of his life brought Bentham into closer connection with
+more remarkable men. The Radicals had despised the Whigs as trimmers
+and half-hearted reformers, and James Mill expressed this feeling very
+frankly in the first numbers of the <i>Westminster Review</i>. Reform,
+however, was now becoming respectable, and the Whigs were gaining the
+courage to take it up seriously. Foremost among the Edinburgh
+Reviewers was the great Henry Brougham, whose fame was at this time
+almost as great as his ambition could desire, and who considered
+himself to be the natural leader of all reform. He had shown eagerness
+to distinguish himself in lines fully
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+approved by Bentham. His
+admirers regarded him as a giant; and his opponents, if they saw in
+him a dash of the charlatan, could not deny his amazing energy and his
+capacity as an orator. The insatiable vanity which afterwards ruined
+his career already made it doubtful whether he fought for the cause or
+the glory. But he was at least an instrument worth having. He was a
+kind of half-disciple. If in 1809 he had checked Mill's praise of
+Bentham, he was soon afterwards in frequent communication with the
+master. In July 1812 Bentham announces that Brougham is at last to be
+admitted to a dinner, for which he had been 'intriguing any time this
+six months,' and expects that his proselyte will soon be the first man
+in the House of Commons, and eclipse even Romilly.<a name="FNanchor_336_336" id="FNanchor_336_336"></a><a href="#Footnote_336_336" class="fnanchor">[336]</a> In later years
+they had frequent communications; and when in 1827 Brougham was known
+to be preparing an utterance upon law reform, Bentham's hopes rose
+high. He offered to his disciple 'some nice little sweet pap of my own
+making,' sound teaching that is, upon evidence, judicial
+establishments and codification. Brougham thanks his 'dear grandpapa,'
+and Bentham offers further supplies to his 'dear, sweet little
+poppet.'<a name="FNanchor_337_337" id="FNanchor_337_337"></a><a href="#Footnote_337_337" class="fnanchor">[337]</a> But when the orator had spoken Bentham declares (9th
+February 1828) that the mountain has been delivered of a mouse.
+Brougham was 'not the man to set up' simple and rational principles.
+He was the sham adversary but the real accomplice of Peel, pulling up
+lies by the root to plant others equally noxious.<a name="FNanchor_338_338" id="FNanchor_338_338"></a><a href="#Footnote_338_338" class="fnanchor">[338]</a> In 1830 Bentham
+had even to hold up 'Master Peel' as a 'model good boy' to the
+self-styled reformer. Brougham needs a dose of jalap instead of pap,
+for he cannot even spell the 'greatest
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+happiness principle'
+properly.<a name="FNanchor_339_339" id="FNanchor_339_339"></a><a href="#Footnote_339_339" class="fnanchor">[339]</a> Bentham went so far as to write what he fondly took to
+be an epigram upon Brougham:</p>
+
+<div class="centered table">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="60%" cellspacing="0" summary="POEM">
+<tr><td>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'So foolish and so wise, so great, so small,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;Everything now, to-morrow nought at all.'<a name="FNanchor_340_340" id="FNanchor_340_340"></a><a href="#Footnote_340_340" class="fnanchor">[340]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</td></tr></table>
+</div>
+
+<p>In September 1831 Brougham as Chancellor announced a scheme for
+certain changes in the constitution of the courts. The proposal called
+forth Bentham's last pamphlet, <i>Lord Brougham displayed</i>.<a name="FNanchor_341_341" id="FNanchor_341_341"></a><a href="#Footnote_341_341" class="fnanchor">[341]</a> Bentham
+laments that his disciple has 'stretched out the right hand of
+fellowship to jobbers of all sorts.'<a name="FNanchor_342_342" id="FNanchor_342_342"></a><a href="#Footnote_342_342" class="fnanchor">[342]</a> In vain had Brougham in his
+speech called Bentham 'one of the great sages of the law.' Bentham
+acknowledges his amiability and his genius; but laments over the
+untrustworthy character of a man who could only adopt principles so
+far as they were subservient to his own vanity.</p>
+
+<p>Another light of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, who at this time took
+Brougham at his own valuation, did an incidental service to Bentham.
+Upon the publication of the <i>Book of Fallacies</i> in 1825, Sydney Smith
+reviewed or rather condensed it in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, and gave
+the pith of the whole in his famous <i>Noodle's Oration</i>. The noodle
+utters all the commonplaces by which the stupid conservatives, with
+Eldon at their head, met the demands of reformers. Nothing could be
+wittier than Smith's brilliant summary. Whigs and Radicals for the
+time agreed in ridiculing blind prejudice. The day was to come when
+the Whigs at least would see that some principles might be worse than
+prejudice. All the fools, said Lord Melbourne, 'were against Catholic
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+Emancipation, and the worst of it is, the fools were in the right.'
+Sydney Smith was glad to be Bentham's mouthpiece for the moment:
+though, when Benthamism was applied to church reform, Smith began to
+perceive that Noodle was not so silly as he seemed.</p>
+
+<p>One other ally of Bentham deserves notice. O'Connell had in 1828, in
+speaking of legal abuses, called himself 'an humble disciple of the
+immortal Bentham.'<a name="FNanchor_343_343" id="FNanchor_343_343"></a><a href="#Footnote_343_343" class="fnanchor">[343]</a> Bentham wrote to acknowledge the compliment.
+He invited O'Connell to become an inmate of his hermitage at Queen's
+Square Place, and O'Connell responded warmly to the letters of his
+'revered master.' Bentham's aversion to Catholicism was as strong as
+his objection to Catholic disqualifications, and he took some trouble
+to smooth down the difficulties which threatened an alliance between
+ardent believers and thoroughgoing sceptics. O'Connell had attacked
+some who were politically upon his side. 'Dan, dear child,' says
+Bentham, 'whom in imagination I am at this moment pressing to my fond
+bosom, put off, if it be possible, your intolerance.'<a name="FNanchor_344_344" id="FNanchor_344_344"></a><a href="#Footnote_344_344" class="fnanchor">[344]</a> Their
+friendship, however, did not suffer from this discord, and their
+correspondence is in the same tone till the end. In one of Bentham's
+letters he speaks of a contemporary correspondence with another great
+man, whom he does not appear to have met personally. He was writing
+long letters, entreating the duke of Wellington to eclipse Cromwell by
+successfully attacking the lawyers. The duke wrote 'immediate answers
+in his own hand,' and took good-humouredly a remonstrance from Bentham
+upon the duel with Lord Winchilsea in 1829.<a name="FNanchor_345_345" id="FNanchor_345_345"></a><a href="#Footnote_345_345" class="fnanchor">[345]</a> Bentham was ready to
+the end to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
+seek allies in any quarter. When Lord Sidmouth took office
+in 1812, Bentham had an interview with him, and had some hopes of
+being employed to prepare a penal code.<a name="FNanchor_346_346" id="FNanchor_346_346"></a><a href="#Footnote_346_346" class="fnanchor">[346]</a> Although experience had
+convinced him of the futility of expectations from the Sidmouths and
+Eldons, he was always on the look out for sympathy; and the venerable
+old man was naturally treated with respect by people who had little
+enough of real interest in his doctrines.</p>
+
+<p>During the last ten years of his life, Bentham was cheered by symptoms
+of the triumph of his creed. The approach of the millennium seemed to
+be indicated by the gathering of the various forces which carried
+Roman Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill. Bentham still
+received testimonies of his fame abroad. In 1825 he visited Paris to
+consult some physicians. He was received with the respect which the
+French can always pay to intellectual eminence.<a name="FNanchor_347_347" id="FNanchor_347_347"></a><a href="#Footnote_347_347" class="fnanchor">[347]</a> All the lawyers
+in a court of justice rose to receive him, and he was placed at the
+president's right hand. On the revolution of 1830, he addressed some
+good advice to the country of which he had been made a citizen nearly
+forty years before. In 1832, Talleyrand, to whom he had talked about
+the Panopticon in 1792, dined with him alone in his hermitage.<a name="FNanchor_348_348" id="FNanchor_348_348"></a><a href="#Footnote_348_348" class="fnanchor">[348]</a>
+When Bowring observed to the prince that Bentham's works had been
+plundered, the polite diplomatist replied, <i>et pill&eacute; de tout le monde,
+il est toujours riche</i>. Bentham was by this time failing. At
+eighty-two he was still, as he put it, 'codifying like any
+dragon.'<a name="FNanchor_349_349" id="FNanchor_349_349"></a><a href="#Footnote_349_349" class="fnanchor">[349]</a> On 18th May 1832 he did his last bit of his lifelong
+labour, upon the 'Constitutional Code.' The great
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+reform agitation
+was reaching the land of promise, but Bentham was to die in the
+wilderness. He sank without a struggle on 6th June 1832, his head
+resting on Bowring's bosom. He left the characteristic direction that
+his body should be dissected for the benefit of science. An incision
+was formally made; and the old gentleman, in his clothes as he lived,
+his face covered by a wax mask, is still to be seen at University
+College in Gower Street.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham, as we are told, had a strong personal resemblance to Benjamin
+Franklin. Sagacity, benevolence, and playfulness were expressed in
+both physiognomies. Bentham, however, differed from the man whose
+intellect presents many points of likeness, in that he was not a man
+of the market-place or the office. Bentham was in many respects a
+child through life:<a name="FNanchor_350_350" id="FNanchor_350_350"></a><a href="#Footnote_350_350" class="fnanchor">[350]</a> a child in simplicity, good humour, and
+vivacity; his health was unbroken; he knew no great sorrow; and after
+emerging from the discouragement of his youth, he was placidly
+contemplating a continuous growth of fame and influence. He is said to
+have expressed the wish that he could awake once in a century to
+contemplate the prospect of a world gradually adopting his principles
+and so making steady progress in happiness and wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>No man could lead a simpler life. His chief luxuries at table were
+fruit, bread, and tea. He had a 'sacred teapot' called Dick, with
+associations of its own, and carefully regulated its functions. He
+refrained from wine during the greatest part of his life, and was
+never guilty of a single act of intemperance. In later life he took a
+daily half-glass of Madeira. He was scrupulously
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+neat in person, and
+wore a Quaker-like brown coat, brown cassimere breeches, white worsted
+stockings and a straw hat. He walked or 'rather trotted' with his
+stick Dapple, and took his 'ante-prandial' and other 'circumgyrations'
+with absolute punctuality. He loved pets; he had a series of attached
+cats; and cherished the memory of a 'beautiful pig' at Hendon, and of
+a donkey at Ford Abbey. He encouraged mice to play in his study&mdash;a
+taste which involved some trouble with his cats, and suggests problems
+as to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Kindness to
+animals was an essential point of his moral creed. 'I love
+everything,' he said, 'that has four legs.' He had a passion for
+flowers, and tried to introduce useful plants. He loved
+music&mdash;especially Handel&mdash;and had an organ in his house. He cared
+nothing for poetry: 'Prose,' he said,<a name="FNanchor_351_351" id="FNanchor_351_351"></a><a href="#Footnote_351_351" class="fnanchor">[351]</a> 'is when all the lines
+except the last go on to the margin. Poetry is when some of them fall
+short of it.' He was courteous and attentive to his guests, though
+occasionally irritable when his favourite crotchets were transgressed,
+or especially if his fixed hours of work were deranged.</p>
+
+<p>His regularity in literary work was absolute. He lived by a
+time-table, working in the morning and turning out from ten to fifteen
+folio pages daily. He read the newspapers regularly, but few books,
+and cared nothing for criticisms on his own writings. His only
+substantial meal was a dinner at six or half-past, to which he
+occasionally admitted a few friends as a high privilege. He liked to
+discuss the topics of which his mind was full, and made notes
+beforehand of particular points to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+be introduced in conversation. He
+was invariably inaccessible to visitors, even famous ones, likely to
+distract his thoughts. 'Tell Mr. Bentham that Mr. Richard Lovell
+Edgeworth desires to see him.' 'Tell Mr. Richard Lovell Edgeworth that
+Mr. Bentham does not desire to see him' was the reply. When Mme. de
+Sta&euml;l came to England, she said to Dumont: 'Tell Bentham I shall see
+nobody till I have seen him.' 'I am sorry for it,' said Bentham, 'for
+then she will never see anybody.' And he summed up his opinion of the
+famous author of <i>Corinne</i> by calling her 'a trumpery magpie.'<a name="FNanchor_352_352" id="FNanchor_352_352"></a><a href="#Footnote_352_352" class="fnanchor">[352]</a>
+There is a simplicity and vivacity about some of the sayings reported
+by Bowring, which prove that Bentham could talk well, and increase our
+regret for the absence of a more efficient Boswell. At ten Bentham had
+his tea, at eleven his nightcap, and by twelve all his guests were
+ignominiously expelled. He was left to sleep on a hard bed. His sleep
+was light, and much disturbed by dreams.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham was certainly amiable. The 'surest way to gain men,' he said,
+'is to appear to love them, and the surest way to appear to love them
+is to love them in reality.' The least pleasing part of his character,
+however, is the apparent levity of his attachments. He was, as we have
+seen, partly alienated from Dumont, though some friendly
+communications are recorded in later years, and Dumont spoke warmly of
+Bentham only a few days before his death in 1829.<a name="FNanchor_353_353" id="FNanchor_353_353"></a><a href="#Footnote_353_353" class="fnanchor">[353]</a> He not only
+cooled towards James Mill, but, if Bowring is to be trusted, spoke of
+him with great harshness.<a name="FNanchor_354_354" id="FNanchor_354_354"></a><a href="#Footnote_354_354" class="fnanchor">[354]</a> Bowring was not a judicious reporter,
+indeed, and capable of taking hasty phrases too seriously. What
+Bentham's remarks upon these and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+other friends suggest is not malice
+or resentment, but the flippant utterance of a man whose feelings are
+wanting in depth rather than kindliness. It is noticeable that, after
+his early visit at Bowood, no woman seems to have counted for anything
+in Bentham's life. He was not only never in love, but it looks as if
+he never even talked to any woman except his cook or housemaid.</p>
+
+<p>The one conclusion that I need draw concerns a question not, I think,
+hard to be solved. It would be easy to make a paradox by calling
+Bentham at once the most practical and most unpractical of men. This
+is to point out the one-sided nature of Bentham's development.
+Bentham's habits remind us in some ways of Kant; and the thought may
+be suggested that he would have been more in his element as a German
+professor of philosophies. In such a position he might have devoted
+himself to the delight of classifying and co-ordinating theories, and
+have found sufficient enjoyment in purely intellectual activity. After
+a fashion that was the actual result. How far, indeed, Bentham could
+have achieved much in the sphere of pure philosophy, and what kind of
+philosophy he would have turned out, must be left to conjecture. The
+circumstances of his time and country, and possibly his own
+temperament generally, turned his thoughts to problems of legislation
+and politics, that is to say, of direct practical interest. He was
+therefore always dealing with concrete facts, and a great part of his
+writings may be considered as raw material for acts of parliament.
+Bentham remained, however, unpractical, in the sense that he had not
+that knowledge which we ascribe either to the poet or to the man of
+the world. He had neither the passion nor the sympathetic imagination.
+The springs
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+of active conduct which Byron knew from experience were
+to Bentham nothing more than names in a careful classification. Any
+shrewd attorney or Bow Street runner would have been a better judge of
+the management of convicts; and here were dozens of party politicians,
+such as Rigby and Barr&eacute;, who could have explained to him beforehand
+those mysteries in the working of the political machinery, which it
+took him half a lifetime to discover. In this sense Bentham was
+unpractical in the highest degree, for at eighty he had not found out
+of what men are really made. And yet by his extraordinary intellectual
+activity and the concentration of all his faculties upon certain
+problems, he succeeded in preserving an example, and though not a
+unique yet an almost unsurpassable example, of the power which belongs
+to the man of one idea.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_325_325" id="Footnote_325_325"></a><a href="#FNanchor_325_325"><span class="label">[325]</span></a> See correspondence upon his codification plans in
+Russia, America, and Geneva in <i>Works</i>, iv. 451-594.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_326_326" id="Footnote_326_326"></a><a href="#FNanchor_326_326"><span class="label">[326]</span></a> Borrow's <i>Bible in Spain</i>, ch. xxx.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_327_327" id="Footnote_327_327"></a><a href="#FNanchor_327_327"><span class="label">[327]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, viii. 555-600.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_328_328" id="Footnote_328_328"></a><a href="#FNanchor_328_328"><span class="label">[328]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 534. See Blaqui&egrave;re's enthusiastic letter to
+Bentham.&mdash;<i>Works</i>, x. 475.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_329_329" id="Footnote_329_329"></a><a href="#FNanchor_329_329"><span class="label">[329]</span></a> See, however, Bentham's reference to this
+story.&mdash;<i>Works</i>, xi. 66.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_330_330" id="Footnote_330_330"></a><a href="#FNanchor_330_330"><span class="label">[330]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 539.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_331_331" id="Footnote_331_331"></a><a href="#FNanchor_331_331"><span class="label">[331]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 522.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_332_332" id="Footnote_332_332"></a><a href="#FNanchor_332_332"><span class="label">[332]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 516.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_333_333" id="Footnote_333_333"></a><a href="#FNanchor_333_333"><span class="label">[333]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 591.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_334_334" id="Footnote_334_334"></a><a href="#FNanchor_334_334"><span class="label">[334]</span></a> A letter from Mill in the University College <small>MSS.</small>
+describes a misunderstanding about borrowed books, a fertile, but
+hardly adequate, cause of quarrel.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_335_335" id="Footnote_335_335"></a><a href="#FNanchor_335_335"><span class="label">[335]</span></a> Bowring's religious principles prevented him from
+admitting some of Bentham's works to the collective edition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_336_336" id="Footnote_336_336"></a><a href="#FNanchor_336_336"><span class="label">[336]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 471-72.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_337_337" id="Footnote_337_337"></a><a href="#FNanchor_337_337"><span class="label">[337]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 576.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_338_338" id="Footnote_338_338"></a><a href="#FNanchor_338_338"><span class="label">[338]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 588.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_339_339" id="Footnote_339_339"></a><a href="#FNanchor_339_339"><span class="label">[339]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, xi. 37. Papers preserved at University College
+show that during Peel's law reforms at this time Bentham frequently
+communicated with him.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_340_340" id="Footnote_340_340"></a><a href="#FNanchor_340_340"><span class="label">[340]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> xi. 50.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_341_341" id="Footnote_341_341"></a><a href="#FNanchor_341_341"><span class="label">[341]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> v. 549.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_342_342" id="Footnote_342_342"></a><a href="#FNanchor_342_342"><span class="label">[342]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> v. 609.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_343_343" id="Footnote_343_343"></a><a href="#FNanchor_343_343"><span class="label">[343]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 594.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_344_344" id="Footnote_344_344"></a><a href="#FNanchor_344_344"><span class="label">[344]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> xi. 26.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_345_345" id="Footnote_345_345"></a><a href="#FNanchor_345_345"><span class="label">[345]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> xi. 13, 28.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_346_346" id="Footnote_346_346"></a><a href="#FNanchor_346_346"><span class="label">[346]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 468.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_347_347" id="Footnote_347_347"></a><a href="#FNanchor_347_347"><span class="label">[347]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 551.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_348_348" id="Footnote_348_348"></a><a href="#FNanchor_348_348"><span class="label">[348]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> xi. 75.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_349_349" id="Footnote_349_349"></a><a href="#FNanchor_349_349"><span class="label">[349]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> xi. 33.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_350_350" id="Footnote_350_350"></a><a href="#FNanchor_350_350"><span class="label">[350]</span></a> Mill's <i>Dissertations</i>, i. 354 and 392 <i>n.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_351_351" id="Footnote_351_351"></a><a href="#FNanchor_351_351"><span class="label">[351]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 442.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_352_352" id="Footnote_352_352"></a><a href="#FNanchor_352_352"><span class="label">[352]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 467; xi. 79.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_353_353" id="Footnote_353_353"></a><a href="#FNanchor_353_353"><span class="label">[353]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> xi. 23-24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_354_354" id="Footnote_354_354"></a><a href="#FNanchor_354_354"><span class="label">[354]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 450.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 33%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>BENTHAM'S DOCTRINE</h3>
+
+<p class="scs">I. <a name="VI_I" id="VI_I"></a>FIRST PRINCIPLES</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+Bentham's position is in one respect unique. There have been many
+greater thinkers; but there has been hardly any one whose abstract
+theory has become in the same degree the platform of an active
+political party. To accept the philosophy was to be also pledged to
+practical applications of Utilitarianism. What, then, was the
+revelation made to the Benthamites, and to what did it owe its
+influence? The central doctrine is expressed in Bentham's famous
+formula: the test of right and wrong is the 'greatest happiness of the
+greatest number.' There was nothing new in this assertion. It only
+expresses the fact that Bentham accepted one of the two alternatives
+which have commended themselves to conflicting schools ever since
+ethical speculation was erected into a separate department of thought.
+Moreover, the side which Bentham took was, we may say, the winning
+side. The ordinary morality of the time was Utilitarian in substance.
+Hutcheson had invented the sacred phrase: and Hume had based his moral
+system upon 'utility.'<a name="FNanchor_355_355" id="FNanchor_355_355"></a><a href="#Footnote_355_355" class="fnanchor">[355]</a> Bentham
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> had learned much from Helv&eacute;tius
+the French freethinker, and had been anticipated by Paley the English
+divine. The writings in which Bentham deals explicitly with the
+general principles of Ethics would hardly entitle him to a higher
+position than that of a disciple of Hume without Hume's subtlety; or
+of Paley without Paley's singular gift of exposition. Why, then, did
+Bentham's message come upon his disciples with the force and freshness
+of a new revelation? Our answer must be in general terms that Bentham
+founded not a doctrine but a method: and that the doctrine which came
+to him simply as a general principle was in his hands a potent
+instrument applied with most fruitful results to questions of
+immediate practical interest.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the general principle of utility, therefore, we have to
+consider the 'organon' constructed by him to give effect to a general
+principle too vague to be applied in detail. The fullest account of
+this is contained in the <i>Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
+Legislation</i>. This work unfortunately is a fragment, but it gives his
+doctrine vigorously and decisively, without losing itself in the
+minute details which become wearisome in his later writings. Bentham
+intended it as an introduction to a penal code; and his investigation
+sent him back to more general problems. He found it necessary to
+settle the relations of the penal code to the whole body of law; and
+to settle these he had to consider the principles which underlie
+legislation in general. He had thus, he says, to 'create a new
+science,' and then to elaborate one department of the science. The
+'introduction' would contain prolegomena not only for the penal code
+but for the other departments of inquiry
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+which he intended to
+exhaust.<a name="FNanchor_356_356" id="FNanchor_356_356"></a><a href="#Footnote_356_356" class="fnanchor">[356]</a> He had to lay down primary truths which should be to
+this science what the axioms are to mathematical sciences.<a name="FNanchor_357_357" id="FNanchor_357_357"></a><a href="#Footnote_357_357" class="fnanchor">[357]</a> These
+truths therefore belong to the sphere of conduct in general, and
+include his ethical theory.</p>
+
+<p>'Nature has placed mankind' (that is his opening phrase) 'under the
+governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them
+alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what
+we shall do.' There is the unassailable basis. It had been laid down
+as unequivocally by Locke,<a name="FNanchor_358_358" id="FNanchor_358_358"></a><a href="#Footnote_358_358" class="fnanchor">[358]</a> and had been embodied in the brilliant
+couplets of Pope's <i>Essay on Man</i>.<a name="FNanchor_359_359" id="FNanchor_359_359"></a><a href="#Footnote_359_359" class="fnanchor">[359]</a> At the head of the curious
+table of universal knowledge, given in the <i>Chrestomathia</i>, we have
+Eud&aelig;monics as an all-comprehensive name of which every art is a
+branch.<a name="FNanchor_360_360" id="FNanchor_360_360"></a><a href="#Footnote_360_360" class="fnanchor">[360]</a> Eud&aelig;monics, as an art, corresponds to the science
+'ontology.' It covers the whole sphere of human thought. It means
+knowledge in general as related to conduct. Its first principle,
+again, requires no more proof than the primary axioms of arithmetic or
+geometry. Once understood, it is by the same act of the mind seen to
+be true. Some people, indeed, do not see it. Bentham rather ignores
+than answers some of their arguments. But his mode of treating
+opponents indicates his own position. 'Happiness,' it is often said,
+is too vague a word to be the keystone of an ethical system; it
+varies
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+from man to man: or it is 'subjective,' and therefore gives no
+absolute or independent ground for morality. A morality of
+'eud&aelig;monism' must be an 'empirical' morality, and we can never extort
+from it that 'categorical imperative,' without which we have instead
+of a true morality a simple system of 'expediency.' From Bentham's
+point of view the criticism must be retorted. He regards 'happiness'
+as precisely the least equivocal of words; and 'happiness' itself as
+therefore affording the one safe clue to all the intricate problems of
+human conduct. The authors of the <i>Federalist</i>, for example, had said
+that justice was the 'end of government.' 'Why not happiness?' asks
+Bentham. 'What happiness is every man knows, because what pleasure is,
+every man knows, and what pain is, every man knows. But what justice
+is&mdash;this is what on every occasion is the subject-matter of
+dispute.'<a name="FNanchor_361_361" id="FNanchor_361_361"></a><a href="#Footnote_361_361" class="fnanchor">[361]</a> That phrase gives his view in a nutshell. Justice is
+the means, not the end. That is just which produces a maximum of
+happiness. Omit all reference to Happiness, and Justice becomes a
+meaningless word prescribing equality, but not telling us equality of
+what. Happiness, on the other hand, has a substantial and independent
+meaning from which the meaning of justice can be deduced. It has
+therefore a logical priority: and to attempt to ignore this is the way
+to all the labyrinths of hopeless confusion by which legislation has
+been made a chaos. Bentham's position is indicated by his early
+conflict with Blackstone, not a very powerful representative of the
+opposite principle. Blackstone, in fact, had tried to base his defence
+of that eminently empirical product, the British Constitution,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> upon
+some show of a philosophical groundwork. He had used the vague
+conception of a 'social contract,' frequently invoked for the same
+purpose at the revolution of 1688, and to eke out his arguments
+applied the ancient commonplaces about monarchy, aristocracy, and
+democracy. He thus tried to invest the constitution with the sanctity
+derived from this mysterious 'contract,' while appealing also to
+tradition or the incarnate 'wisdom of our ancestors,' as shown by
+their judicious mixture of the three forms. Bentham had an easy task,
+though he performed it with remarkable vigour, in exposing the
+weakness of this heterogeneous aggregate. Look closely, and this
+fictitious contract can impose no new obligation: for the obligation
+itself rests upon Utility. Why not appeal to Utility at once? I am
+bound to obey, not because my great-grandfather may be regarded as
+having made a bargain, which he did not really make, with the
+great-grandfather of George <small>III.</small>; but simply because rebellion does
+more harm than good. The forms of government are abstractions, not
+names of realities, and their 'mixture' is a pure figment. King,
+Lords, and Commons are not really incarnations of power, wisdom, and
+goodness. Their combination forms a system the merits of which must in
+the last resort be judged by its working. 'It is the principle of
+utility, accurately apprehended and steadily applied, that affords the
+only clew to guide a man through these streights.'<a name="FNanchor_362_362" id="FNanchor_362_362"></a><a href="#Footnote_362_362" class="fnanchor">[362]</a> So much in
+fact Bentham might learn from Hume; and to defend upon any other
+ground the congeries of traditional arrangements which passed for the
+British Constitution was obviously absurd. It was in this warfare
+against the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+shifting and ambiguous doctrines of Blackstone that
+Bentham first showed the superiority of his own method: for, as
+between the two, Bentham's position is at least the most coherent and
+intelligible.</p>
+
+<p>Blackstone, however, represents little more than a bit of rhetoric
+embodying fragments of inconsistent theories. The <i>Morals and
+Legislation</i> opens by briefly and contemptuously setting aside more
+philosophical opponents of Utilitarianism. The 'ascetic' principle,
+for example, is the formal contradiction of the principle of Utility,
+for it professedly declares pleasure to be evil. Could it be
+consistently carried out it would turn earth into hell. But in fact it
+is at bottom an illegitimate corollary from the very principle which
+it ostensibly denies. It professes to condemn pleasure in general; it
+really means that certain pleasures can only be bought at an excessive
+cost of pain. Other theories are contrivances for avoiding the appeal
+'to any external standard'; and in substance, therefore, they make the
+opinion of the individual theorist an ultimate and sufficient reason.
+Adam Smith by his doctrine of 'sympathy' makes the sentiment of
+approval itself the ultimate standard. My feeling echoes yours, and
+reciprocally; each cannot derive authority from the other. Another man
+(Hutcheson) invents a thing made on purpose to tell him what is right
+and what is wrong and calls it a 'moral sense.' Beattie substitutes
+'common' for 'moral' sense, and his doctrine is attractive because
+every man supposes himself to possess common sense. Others, like
+Price, appeal to the Understanding, or, like Clarke, to the 'Fitness
+of Things,' or they invent such phrases as 'Law of Nature,' or 'Right
+Reason' or 'Natural Justice,' or what you
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+please. Each really means
+that whatever he says is infallibly true and self-evident. Wollaston
+discovers that the only wrong thing is telling a lie; or that when you
+kill your father, it is a way of saying that he is not your father,
+and the same method is applicable to any conduct which he happens to
+dislike. The 'fairest and openest of them all' is the man who says, 'I
+am of the number of the Elect'; God tells the Elect what is right:
+therefore if you want to know what is right, you have only to come to
+me.<a name="FNanchor_363_363" id="FNanchor_363_363"></a><a href="#Footnote_363_363" class="fnanchor">[363]</a> Bentham is writing here in his pithiest style. His criticism
+is of course of the rough and ready order; but I think that in a
+fashion he manages to hit the nail pretty well on the head.</p>
+
+<p>His main point, at any rate, is clear. He argues briefly that the
+alternative systems are illusory because they refer to no 'external
+standard.' His opponents, not he, really make morality arbitrary.
+This, whatever the ultimate truth, is in fact the essential core of
+all the Utilitarian doctrine descended from or related to Benthamism.
+Benthamism aims at converting morality into a science. Science,
+according to him, must rest upon facts. It must apply to real things,
+and to things which have definite relations and a common measure. Now,
+if anything be real, pains and pleasures are real. The expectation of
+pain or pleasure determines conduct; and, if so, it must be the sole
+determinant of conduct. The attempt to conceal or evade this truth is
+the fatal source of all equivocation and confusion. Try the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+experiment. Introduce a 'moral sense.' What is its relation to the
+desire for happiness? If the dictates of the moral sense be treated as
+ultimate, an absolutely arbitrary element is introduced; and we have
+one of the 'innate ideas' exploded by Locke, a belief summarily
+intruded into the system without definite relations to any other
+beliefs: a dogmatic assertion which refuses to be tested or to be
+correlated with other dogmas; a reduction therefore of the whole
+system to chaos. It is at best an instinctive belief which requires to
+be justified and corrected by reference to some other criterion. Or
+resolve morality into 'reason,' that is, into some purely logical
+truth, and it then remains in the air&mdash;a mere nonentity until
+experience has supplied some material upon which it can work. Deny the
+principle of utility, in short, as he says in a vigorous passage,<a name="FNanchor_364_364" id="FNanchor_364_364"></a><a href="#Footnote_364_364" class="fnanchor">[364]</a>
+and you are involved in a hopeless circle. Sooner or later you appeal
+to an arbitrary and despotic principle and find that you have
+substituted words for thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>The only escape from this circle is the frank admission that happiness
+is, in fact, the sole aim of man. There are, of course, different
+kinds of happiness as there are different kinds of physical forces.
+But the motives to action are, like the physical forces,
+commensurable. Two courses of conduct can always be compared in
+respect of the happiness produced, as two motions of a body can be
+compared in respect of the energy expended. If, then, we take the
+moral judgment to be simply a judgment of amounts of happiness, the
+whole theory can be systematised, and its various theorems ranged
+under a single axiom or consistent set of axioms. Pain and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> pleasure
+give the real value of actions; they are the currency with a definite
+standard into which every general rule may be translated. There is
+always a common measure applicable in every formula for the estimation
+of conduct. If you admit your Moral Sense, you profess to settle
+values by some standard which has no definite relation to the standard
+which in fact governs the normal transactions. But any such double
+standard, in which the two measures are absolutely incommensurable,
+leads straight to chaos. Or, if again you appeal to reason in the
+abstract, you are attempting to settle an account by pure arithmetic
+without reference to the units upon which your operation is performed.
+Two pounds and two pounds will make four pounds whatever a pound may
+be; but till I know what it is, the result is nugatory. Somewhere I
+must come upon a basis of fact, if my whole construction is to stand.</p>
+
+<p>This is the fundamental position implied in Bentham's doctrine. The
+moral judgment is simply one case of the judgment of happiness.
+Bentham is so much convinced of this that to him there appeared to be
+in reality no other theory. What passed for theories were mere
+combinations of words. Having said this, we know where to lay the
+foundations of the new science. It deals with a vast complicity of
+facts: it requires 'investigations as severe as mathematical ones, but
+beyond all comparison more intricate and extensive.'<a name="FNanchor_365_365" id="FNanchor_365_365"></a><a href="#Footnote_365_365" class="fnanchor">[365]</a> Still it
+deals with facts, and with facts which have a common measure, and can,
+therefore, be presented as a coherent system. To present this system,
+or so much of it as is required for purposes of legislation, is
+therefore
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+his next task. The partial execution is the chief substance
+of the <i>Introduction</i>. Right and wrong conduct, we may now take for
+granted, mean simply those classes of conduct which are conducive to
+or opposed to happiness; or, in the sacred formula, to act rightly
+means to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The
+legislator, like every one else, acts rightly in so far as he is
+guided by the principle (to use one of the phrases coined by Bentham)
+of 'maximising' happiness. He seeks to affect conduct; and conduct can
+be affected only by annexing pains or pleasures to given classes of
+actions. Hence we have a vitally important part of his doctrine&mdash;the
+theory of 'sanctions.' Pains and pleasures as annexed to action are
+called 'sanctions.' There are 'physical or natural,' 'political,
+'moral or popular,' and 'religious' sanctions. The 'physical'
+sanctions are such pleasures and pains as follow a given course of
+conduct independently of the interference of any other human or
+supernatural being; the 'political' those which are annexed by the
+action of the legislator; the 'moral or popular' those which are
+annexed by other individuals not acting in a corporate capacity; and
+the 'religious' those which are annexed by a 'superior invisible
+being,' or, as he says elsewhere,<a name="FNanchor_366_366" id="FNanchor_366_366"></a><a href="#Footnote_366_366" class="fnanchor">[366]</a> 'such as are capable of being
+expected at the hands of an invisible Ruler of the Universe.' The
+three last sanctions, he remarks, 'operate through the first.' The
+'magistrate' or 'men at large' can only operate, and God is supposed
+only to operate, 'through the powers of nature,' that is, by applying
+some of the pains and pleasures which may also be natural sanctions. A
+man is burnt: if by his own imprudence, that is a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
+'physical'
+sanction; if by the magistrate, it is a 'political' sanction; if by
+some neglect of his neighbours, due to their dislike of his 'moral
+character,' a 'moral' sanction; if by the immediate act of God or by
+distraction caused by dread of God's displeasure, it is a 'religious'
+sanction. Of these, as Bentham characteristically observes<a name="FNanchor_367_367" id="FNanchor_367_367"></a><a href="#Footnote_367_367" class="fnanchor">[367]</a> in a
+later writing the political is much stronger than the 'moral' or
+'religious.' Many men fear the loss of character or the 'wrath of
+Heaven,' but all men fear the scourge and the gallows.<a name="FNanchor_368_368" id="FNanchor_368_368"></a><a href="#Footnote_368_368" class="fnanchor">[368]</a> He admits,
+however, that the religious sanction and the additional sanction of
+'benevolence' have the advantage of not requiring that the offender
+should be found out.<a name="FNanchor_369_369" id="FNanchor_369_369"></a><a href="#Footnote_369_369" class="fnanchor">[369]</a> But in any case, the 'natural' and religious
+sanctions are beyond the legislator's power. His problem, therefore,
+is simply this: what sanctions ought he to annex to conduct, or
+remembering that 'ought' means simply 'conducive to happiness,' what
+political sanctions will increase happiness?</p>
+
+<p>To answer this fully will be to give a complete system of legislation;
+but in order to answer it we require a whole logical and psychological
+apparatus. Bentham shows this apparatus at work, but does not expound
+its origin in any separate treatise. Enough information, however, is
+given as to his method in the curious collection of the fragments
+connected with the <i>Chrestomathia</i>. A logical method upon which he
+constantly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+insisted is that of 'bipartition,'<a name="FNanchor_370_370" id="FNanchor_370_370"></a><a href="#Footnote_370_370" class="fnanchor">[370]</a> called also the
+'dichotomous' or 'bifurcate' method, and exemplified by the so-called
+'Porphyrian Tree.' The principle is, of course, simple. Take any
+genus: divide it into two classes, one of which has and the other has
+not a certain mark. The two classes must be mutually exclusive and
+together exhaustive. Repeat the operation upon each of the classes and
+continue the process as long as desired.<a name="FNanchor_371_371" id="FNanchor_371_371"></a><a href="#Footnote_371_371" class="fnanchor">[371]</a> At every step you thus
+have a complete enumeration of all the species, varieties, and so on,
+each of which excludes all the others. No mere logic, indeed, can
+secure the accuracy and still less the utility of the procedure. The
+differences may be in themselves ambiguous or irrelevant. If I
+classify plants as 'trees' and 'not trees,' the logical form is
+satisfied: but I have still to ask whether 'tree' conveys a
+determinate meaning, and whether the distinction corresponds to a
+difference of any importance. A perfect classification, however, could
+always be stated in this form. Each species, that is, can be marked by
+the presence or absence of a given difference, whether we are dealing
+with classes of plants or actions: and Bentham aims at that
+consummation though he admits that centuries may be required for the
+construction of an accurate classification in ethical
+speculations.<a name="FNanchor_372_372" id="FNanchor_372_372"></a><a href="#Footnote_372_372" class="fnanchor">[372]</a> He exaggerates the efficiency of his method, and
+overlooks the tendency of tacit assumptions to smuggle themselves into
+what affects to be a mere enumeration of classes. But in any case, no
+one could labour more industriously to get every object of his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+thought arranged and labelled and put into the right pigeon-hole of
+his mental museum. To codify<a name="FNanchor_373_373" id="FNanchor_373_373"></a><a href="#Footnote_373_373" class="fnanchor">[373]</a> is to classify, and Bentham might be
+defined as a codifying animal.</p>
+
+<p>Things thus present themselves to Bentham's mind as already prepared
+to fit into pigeon-holes. This is a characteristic point, and it
+appears in what we must call his metaphysical system. 'Metaphysics,'
+indeed, according to him, is simply 'a sprig,' and that a small one,
+of the 'branch termed Logic.'<a name="FNanchor_374_374" id="FNanchor_374_374"></a><a href="#Footnote_374_374" class="fnanchor">[374]</a> It is merely the explanation of
+certain general terms such as 'existence,' 'necessity,' and so
+forth.<a name="FNanchor_375_375" id="FNanchor_375_375"></a><a href="#Footnote_375_375" class="fnanchor">[375]</a> Under this would apparently fall the explanation of
+'reality' which leads to a doctrine upon which he often insists, and
+which is most implicitly given in the fragment called <i>Ontology</i>. He
+there distinguishes 'real' from 'fictitious entities,' a distinction
+which, as he tells us,<a name="FNanchor_376_376" id="FNanchor_376_376"></a><a href="#Footnote_376_376" class="fnanchor">[376]</a> he first learned from d'Alembert's phrase
+<i>&Ecirc;tres fictifs</i> and which he applies in his <i>Morals and Legislation</i>.
+'Real entities,' according to him,<a name="FNanchor_377_377" id="FNanchor_377_377"></a><a href="#Footnote_377_377" class="fnanchor">[377]</a> are 'individual perceptions,'
+'impressions,' and 'ideas.' In this, of course, he is following Hume,
+though he applies the Johnsonian argument to Berkeley's
+immaterialism.<a name="FNanchor_378_378" id="FNanchor_378_378"></a><a href="#Footnote_378_378" class="fnanchor">[378]</a> A 'fictitious entity' is a name which does note
+'raise up in the mind any correspondent images.'<a name="FNanchor_379_379" id="FNanchor_379_379"></a><a href="#Footnote_379_379" class="fnanchor">[379]</a> Such names owe
+their existence to the necessities of language. Without employing such
+fictions, however, 'the language of man could not have risen above the
+language of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+brutes';<a name="FNanchor_380_380" id="FNanchor_380_380"></a><a href="#Footnote_380_380" class="fnanchor">[380]</a> and he emphatically distinguishes them from
+'unreal' or 'fabulous entities.' A 'fictitious entity' is not a
+'nonentity.'<a name="FNanchor_381_381" id="FNanchor_381_381"></a><a href="#Footnote_381_381" class="fnanchor">[381]</a> He includes among such entities all Aristotle's
+'predicaments' except the first: 'substance.'<a name="FNanchor_382_382" id="FNanchor_382_382"></a><a href="#Footnote_382_382" class="fnanchor">[382]</a> Quantity, quality,
+relation, time, place are all 'physical fictitious entities.' This is
+apparently equivalent to saying that the only 'physical entities' are
+concrete things&mdash;sticks, stones, bodies, and so forth&mdash;the 'reality'
+of which he takes for granted in the ordinary common sense meaning. It
+is also perfectly true that things are really related, have quantity
+and quality, and are in time and space. But we cannot really conceive
+the quality or relation apart from the concrete things so qualified
+and related. We are forced by language to use substantives which in
+their nature have only the sense of adjectives. He does not suppose
+that a body is not really square or round; but he thinks it a fiction
+to speak of squareness or roundness or space in general as something
+existing apart from matter and, in some sense, alongside of matter.</p>
+
+<p>This doctrine, which brings us within sight of metaphysical problems
+beyond our immediate purpose, becomes important to his moral
+speculation. His special example of a 'fictitious entity' in politics
+is 'obligation.'<a name="FNanchor_383_383" id="FNanchor_383_383"></a><a href="#Footnote_383_383" class="fnanchor">[383]</a> Obligations, rights, and similar words are
+'fictitious entities.' Obligation in particular implies a metaphor.
+The statement that a man is 'obliged' to perform an act means simply
+that he will suffer pain if he does not perform it. The use of the
+word obligation, as a noun substantive, introduces the 'fictitious
+entity' which represents nothing
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
+really separable from the pain or
+pleasure. Here, therefore, we have the ground of the doctrine already
+noticed. 'Pains and pleasures' are real.<a name="FNanchor_384_384" id="FNanchor_384_384"></a><a href="#Footnote_384_384" class="fnanchor">[384]</a> 'Their existence,' he
+says,<a name="FNanchor_385_385" id="FNanchor_385_385"></a><a href="#Footnote_385_385" class="fnanchor">[385]</a> 'is matter of universal and constant experience.' But other
+various names referring to these: emotion, inclination, vice, virtue,
+etc., are only 'psychological entities.' 'Take away pleasures and
+pains, not only happiness but justice and duty and obligation and
+virtue&mdash;all of which have been so elaborately held up to view as
+independent of them&mdash;are so many empty sounds.'<a name="FNanchor_386_386" id="FNanchor_386_386"></a><a href="#Footnote_386_386" class="fnanchor">[386]</a> The ultimate
+facts, then, are pains and pleasures. They are the substantives of
+which these other words are properly the adjectives. A pain or a
+pleasure may exist by itself, that is without being virtuous or
+vicious: but virtue and vice can only exist in so far as pain and
+pleasure exists.</p>
+
+<p>This analysis of 'obligation' is a characteristic doctrine of the
+Utilitarian school. We are under an 'obligation' so far as we are
+affected by a 'sanction.' It appeared to Bentham so obvious as to need
+no demonstration, only an exposition of the emptiness of any verbal
+contradiction. Such metaphysical basis as he needed is simply the
+attempt to express the corresponding conception of reality which, in
+his opinion, only requires to be expressed to carry conviction.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_355_355" id="Footnote_355_355"></a><a href="#FNanchor_355_355"><span class="label">[355]</span></a> See note under Bentham's life, <i>ante</i>, p. 178.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_356_356" id="Footnote_356_356"></a><a href="#FNanchor_356_356"><span class="label">[356]</span></a> Preface to <i>Morals and Legislation</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_357_357" id="Footnote_357_357"></a><a href="#FNanchor_357_357"><span class="label">[357]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, i. ('Morals and Legislation'), ii. <i>n.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_358_358" id="Footnote_358_358"></a><a href="#FNanchor_358_358"><span class="label">[358]</span></a> <i>Essay</i>, bk. ii. ch. xxi. &sect; 39-&sect; 44. The will, says
+Locke, is determined by the 'uneasiness of desire.' What moves desire?
+Happiness, and that alone. Happiness is pleasure, and misery pain.
+What produces pleasure we call good; and what produces pain we call
+evil. Locke, however, was not a consistent Utilitarian.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_359_359" id="Footnote_359_359"></a><a href="#FNanchor_359_359"><span class="label">[359]</span></a> Epistle iv., opening lines.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_360_360" id="Footnote_360_360"></a><a href="#FNanchor_360_360"><span class="label">[360]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, vii. 82.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_361_361" id="Footnote_361_361"></a><a href="#FNanchor_361_361"><span class="label">[361]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Constitutional Code'), ix. 123.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_362_362" id="Footnote_362_362"></a><a href="#FNanchor_362_362"><span class="label">[362]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Fragment'), i. 287.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_363_363" id="Footnote_363_363"></a><a href="#FNanchor_363_363"><span class="label">[363]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 8-10. Mill
+quotes this passage in his essay on Bentham in the first volume of his
+<i>Dissertations</i>. This essay, excellent in itself must be specially
+noticed as an exposition by an authoritative disciple.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_364_364" id="Footnote_364_364"></a><a href="#FNanchor_364_364"><span class="label">[364]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_365_365" id="Footnote_365_365"></a><a href="#FNanchor_365_365"><span class="label">[365]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i. v.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_366_366" id="Footnote_366_366"></a><a href="#FNanchor_366_366"><span class="label">[366]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Evidence'), vi. 261.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_367_367" id="Footnote_367_367"></a><a href="#FNanchor_367_367"><span class="label">[367]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Evidence'), vii. 116.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_368_368" id="Footnote_368_368"></a><a href="#FNanchor_368_368"><span class="label">[368]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 14, etc.;
+<i>Ibid.</i> vi. 260. In <i>Ibid.</i> ('Evidence') vii. 116, 'humanity,' and in
+'Logical Arrangements,' <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 290, 'sympathy' appears as a fifth
+sanction. Another modification is suggested in <i>Ibid.</i> i. 14 <i>n.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_369_369" id="Footnote_369_369"></a><a href="#FNanchor_369_369"><span class="label">[369]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 67.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_370_370" id="Footnote_370_370"></a><a href="#FNanchor_370_370"><span class="label">[370]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 96 <i>n.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_371_371" id="Footnote_371_371"></a><a href="#FNanchor_371_371"><span class="label">[371]</span></a> See especially <i>Ibid.</i> viii. 104, etc.; 253, etc.; 289,
+etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_372_372" id="Footnote_372_372"></a><a href="#FNanchor_372_372"><span class="label">[372]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> viii. 106.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_373_373" id="Footnote_373_373"></a><a href="#FNanchor_373_373"><span class="label">[373]</span></a> 'Codify' was one of Bentham's successful neologisms.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_374_374" id="Footnote_374_374"></a><a href="#FNanchor_374_374"><span class="label">[374]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Logic'), viii. 220.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_375_375" id="Footnote_375_375"></a><a href="#FNanchor_375_375"><span class="label">[375]</span></a> Here Bentham coincides with Horne Tooke, to whose
+'discoveries' he refers in the <i>Chrestomathia</i> (<i>Works</i>, viii. 120,
+185, 188).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_376_376" id="Footnote_376_376"></a><a href="#FNanchor_376_376"><span class="label">[376]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, iii. 286; viii. 119.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_377_377" id="Footnote_377_377"></a><a href="#FNanchor_377_377"><span class="label">[377]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ('Ontology') viii. 196 <i>n.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_378_378" id="Footnote_378_378"></a><a href="#FNanchor_378_378"><span class="label">[378]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> viii, 197 <i>n.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_379_379" id="Footnote_379_379"></a><a href="#FNanchor_379_379"><span class="label">[379]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> viii. 263.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_380_380" id="Footnote_380_380"></a><a href="#FNanchor_380_380"><span class="label">[380]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Ontology'), viii. 119.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_381_381" id="Footnote_381_381"></a><a href="#FNanchor_381_381"><span class="label">[381]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> viii. 198.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_382_382" id="Footnote_382_382"></a><a href="#FNanchor_382_382"><span class="label">[382]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> viii. 199.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_383_383" id="Footnote_383_383"></a><a href="#FNanchor_383_383"><span class="label">[383]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> viii. 206, 247.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_384_384" id="Footnote_384_384"></a><a href="#FNanchor_384_384"><span class="label">[384]</span></a> Helv&eacute;tius adds to this that the only real pains and
+pleasures are the physical, but Bentham does not follow him here. See
+Helv&eacute;tius, <i>&OElig;uvres</i> (1781), ii. 121, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_385_385" id="Footnote_385_385"></a><a href="#FNanchor_385_385"><span class="label">[385]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, i. 211 ('Springs of Action').</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_386_386" id="Footnote_386_386"></a><a href="#FNanchor_386_386"><span class="label">[386]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 206.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">II. <a name="VI_II" id="VI_II"></a>SPRINGS OF ACTION</p>
+
+<p>Our path is now clear. Pains and pleasures give us what mathematicians
+call the 'independent variable.'
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
+Our units are (in Bentham's phrase)
+'lots' of pain or pleasure. We have to interpret all the facts in
+terms of pain or pleasure, and we shall have the materials for what
+has since been called a 'felicific calculus.' To construct this with a
+view to legislation is his immediate purpose. The theory will fall
+into two parts: the 'pathological,' or an account of all the pains and
+pleasures which are the primary data; and the 'dynamical,' or an
+account of the various modes of conduct determined by expectations of
+pain and pleasure. This gives the theory of 'springs of action,'
+considered in themselves, and of 'motives,' that is, of the springs as
+influencing conduct.<a name="FNanchor_387_387" id="FNanchor_387_387"></a><a href="#Footnote_387_387" class="fnanchor">[387]</a> The 'pathology' contains, in the first
+place, a discussion of the measure of pain and pleasure in general;
+secondly, a discussion of the various species of pain and pleasure;
+and thirdly, a discussion of the varying sensibilities of different
+individuals to pain and pleasure.<a name="FNanchor_388_388" id="FNanchor_388_388"></a><a href="#Footnote_388_388" class="fnanchor">[388]</a> Thus under the first head, we
+are told that the value of a pleasure, considered by itself, depends
+upon its intensity, duration, certainty, and propinquity; and,
+considered with regard to modes of obtaining it, upon its fecundity
+(or tendency to produce other pains and pleasures) and its purity (or
+freedom from admixture of other pains and pleasures). The pain or
+pleasure is thus regarded as an entity which is capable of being in
+some sense weighed and measured.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_389_389" id="FNanchor_389_389"></a><a href="#Footnote_389_389" class="fnanchor">[389]</a>
+The next step is to classify
+pains and pleasures, which though commensurable as psychological
+forces, have obviously very different qualities. Bentham gives the
+result of his classification without the analysis upon which it
+depends. He assures us that he has obtained an 'exhaustive' list of
+'simple pleasures.' It must be confessed that the list does not
+commend itself either as exhaustive or as composed of 'simple
+pleasures.' He does not explain the principle of his analysis because
+he says, it was of 'too metaphysical a cast,'<a name="FNanchor_390_390" id="FNanchor_390_390"></a><a href="#Footnote_390_390" class="fnanchor">[390]</a> but he thought it
+so important that he published it, edited with considerable
+modifications by James Mill, in 1817, as a <i>Table of the Springs of
+Action</i>.<a name="FNanchor_391_391" id="FNanchor_391_391"></a><a href="#Footnote_391_391" class="fnanchor">[391]</a></p>
+
+<p>J. S. Mill remarks that this table should be studied by any one who
+would understand Bentham's philosophy. Such a study would suggest some
+unfavourable conclusions. Bentham seems to have made out his table
+without the slightest reference to any previous psychologist.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+It is
+simply constructed to meet the requirements of his legislative
+theories. As psychology it would be clearly absurd, especially if
+taken as giving the elementary or 'simple' feelings. No one can
+suppose, for example, that the pleasures of 'wealth' or 'power' are
+'simple' pleasures. The classes therefore are not really distinct, and
+they are as far from being exhaustive. All that can be said for the
+list is that it gives a sufficiently long enumeration to call
+attention from his own point of view to most of the ordinary pleasures
+and pains; and contains as much psychology as he could really turn to
+account for his purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The omissions with which his greatest disciple charges him are
+certainly significant. We find, says Mill, no reference to
+'Conscience,' 'Principle,' 'Moral Rectitude,' or 'Moral Duty' among
+the 'springs of action,' unless among the synonyms of a 'love of
+reputation,' or in so far as 'Conscience' and 'Principle' are
+sometimes synonymous with the 'religious' motive or the motive
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> of
+'sympathy.' So the sense of 'honour,' the love of beauty, and of
+order, of power (except in the narrow sense of power over our fellows)
+and of action in general are all omitted. We may conjecture what reply
+Bentham would have made to this criticism. The omission of the love of
+beauty and &aelig;sthetic pleasures may surprise us when we remember that
+Bentham loved music, if he cared nothing for poetry. But he apparently
+regarded these as 'complex pleasures,'<a name="FNanchor_392_392" id="FNanchor_392_392"></a><a href="#Footnote_392_392" class="fnanchor">[392]</a> and therefore not
+admissible into his table, if it be understood as an analysis into the
+simple pleasures alone. The pleasures of action are deliberately
+omitted, for Bentham pointedly gives the 'pains' of labour as a class
+without corresponding pleasure; and this, though indicative, I think,
+of a very serious error, is characteristic rather of his method of
+analysis than of his real estimate of pleasure. Nobody could have
+found more pleasure than Bentham in intellectual labour, but he
+separated the pleasure from the labour. He therefore thought 'labour,'
+as such, a pure evil, and classified the pleasure as a pleasure of
+'curiosity.' But the main criticism is more remarkable. Mill certainly
+held himself to be a sound Utilitarian; and yet he seems to be
+condemning Bentham for consistent Utilitarianism. Bentham, by
+admitting the 'conscience' into his simple springs of action, would
+have fallen into the very circle from which he was struggling to
+emerge. If, in fact, the pleasures of conscience are simple pleasures,
+we have the objectionable 'moral sense' intruded as an ultimate factor
+of human
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+nature. To get rid of that 'fictitious entity' is precisely
+Bentham's aim. The moral judgment is to be precisely equivalent to the
+judgment: 'this or that kind of conduct increases or diminishes the
+sum of human pains or pleasures.' Once allow that among the pains and
+pleasures themselves is an ultimate conscience&mdash;a faculty not
+constructed out of independent pains and pleasures&mdash;and the system
+becomes a vicious circle. Conscience on any really Utilitarian scheme
+must be a derivative, not an ultimate, faculty. If, as Mill seems to
+say, the omission is a blunder, Bentham's Utilitarianism at least must
+be an erroneous system.</p>
+
+<p>We have now our list both of pains and pleasures and of the general
+modes of variation by which their value is to be measured. We must
+also allow for the varying sensibilities of different persons. Bentham
+accordingly gives a list of thirty-two 'circumstances influencing
+sensibility.'<a name="FNanchor_393_393" id="FNanchor_393_393"></a><a href="#Footnote_393_393" class="fnanchor">[393]</a> Human beings differ in constitution, character,
+education, sex, race, and so forth, and in their degrees of
+sensibility to all the various classes of pains and pleasures; the
+consideration of these varieties is of the highest utility for the
+purposes of the judge and the legislator.<a name="FNanchor_394_394" id="FNanchor_394_394"></a><a href="#Footnote_394_394" class="fnanchor">[394]</a> The 'sanctions' will
+operate differently in different cases. A blow will have different
+effects upon the sick and upon the healthy; the same fine imposed upon
+the rich and the poor will cause very different pains; and a law which
+is beneficent in Europe may be a scourge in America.</p>
+
+<p>We have thus our 'pathology' or theory of the passive sensibilities of
+man. We know what are the 'springs of action,' how they vary in
+general, and how they vary
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+from one man to another. We can therefore
+pass to the dynamics.<a name="FNanchor_395_395" id="FNanchor_395_395"></a><a href="#Footnote_395_395" class="fnanchor">[395]</a> We have described the machinery in rest,
+and can now consider it in motion. We proceed as before by first
+considering action in general: which leads to consideration of the
+'intention' and the 'motive' implied by any conscious action: and
+hence of the relation of these to the 'springs of action' as already
+described. The discussion is minute and elaborate; and Bentham
+improves as he comes nearer to the actual problems of legislation and
+further from the ostensible bases of psychology. The analysis of
+conduct, and of the sanctions by which conduct is modified, involves a
+view of morals and of the relations between the spheres of morality
+and legislation which is of critical importance for the whole
+Utilitarian creed. 'Moral laws' and a 'Positive law' both affect human
+action. How do they differ? Bentham's treatment of the problem shows,
+I think, a clearer appreciation of some difficulties than might be
+inferred from his later utterances. In any case, it brings into clear
+relief a moral doctrine which deeply affected his successors.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_387_387" id="Footnote_387_387"></a><a href="#FNanchor_387_387"><span class="label">[387]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, i. 205; and Dumont's <i>Trait&eacute;s</i> (1820), i. xxv,
+xxvi. The word 'springs of action' perhaps comes from the marginal
+note to the above-mentioned passage of Locke (bk. ii. chap. xxvi, &sect;
+41, 42).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_388_388" id="Footnote_388_388"></a><a href="#FNanchor_388_388"><span class="label">[388]</span></a> <i>Morals and Legislation</i>, chaps. iv., v., vi.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_389_389" id="Footnote_389_389"></a><a href="#FNanchor_389_389"><span class="label">[389]</span></a> See 'Codification Proposal' (<i>Works</i>, iv. 540), where
+Bentham takes money as representing pleasure, and shows how the
+present value may be calculated like that of a sum put out to
+interest. The same assumption is often made by Political Economists in
+regard to 'utilities.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_390_390" id="Footnote_390_390"></a><a href="#FNanchor_390_390"><span class="label">[390]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 17 <i>n.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_391_391" id="Footnote_391_391"></a><a href="#FNanchor_391_391"><span class="label">[391]</span></a> It is not worth while to consider this at length; but I
+give the following conjectural account of the list as it appears in
+the <i>Morals and Legislation</i> above. In classifying pain or pleasures,
+Bentham is, I think, following the clue suggested by his 'sanctions.'
+He is really classifying according to their causes or the way in which
+they are 'annexed.' Thus pleasures may or may not be dependent upon
+other persons, or if upon other persons, may be indirectly or directly
+caused by their pleasures or pains. Pleasures not caused by persons
+correspond to the 'physical sanction,' and are those (1) of the
+'senses,' (2) of wealth, <i>i.e.</i> caused by the possession of things,
+and (3) of 'skill,' <i>i.e.</i> caused by our ability to use things.
+Pleasures caused by persons indirectly correspond first to the
+'popular or moral sanction,' and are pleasures (4) of 'amity,' caused
+by the goodwill of individuals, and (5) of a 'good name,' caused by
+the goodwill of people in general; secondly, to 'political sanction,'
+namely (6) pleasures of 'power'; and thirdly, to the 'religious
+sanction,' or (7) pleasures of 'piety.' All these are 'self-regarding
+pleasures.' The pleasures caused directly by the pleasure of others
+are those (8) of 'benevolence,' and (9) of malevolence. We then have
+what is really a cross division by classes of 'derivative' pleasures;
+these being due to (10) memory, (11) imagination, (12) expectation,
+(13) association. To each class of pleasures corresponds a class of
+pains, except that there are no pains corresponding to the pleasures
+of wealth or power. We have, however, a general class of pains of
+'privation,' which might include pains of poverty or weakness: and to
+these are opposed (14) pleasures of 'relief,' <i>i.e.</i> of the privation
+of pains. In the <i>Table</i>, as separately published, Bentham modified
+this by dividing pleasures of sense into three classes, the last of
+which includes the two first; by substituting pleasures of 'curiosity'
+for pleasures of 'skill' by suppressing pleasures of relief and pains
+of privation; and by adding, as a class of 'pains' without
+corresponding pleasures, pains (1) of labour, (2) of 'death, and
+bodily pains in general.' These changes seem to have been introduced
+in the course of writing his <i>Introduction</i>, where they are partly
+assumed. Another class is added to include all classes of
+'self-regarding pleasures or pains.' He is trying to give a list of
+all 'synonyms' for various pains and pleasures, and has therefore to
+admit classes corresponding to general names which include other
+classes.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_392_392" id="Footnote_392_392"></a><a href="#FNanchor_392_392"><span class="label">[392]</span></a> <i>Works</i> i. 210, where he speaks of pleasures of the
+'ball-room,' the 'theatre,' and the 'fine arts' as derivable from the
+'simple and elementary' pleasures.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_393_393" id="Footnote_393_393"></a><a href="#FNanchor_393_393"><span class="label">[393]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 22 etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_394_394" id="Footnote_394_394"></a><a href="#FNanchor_394_394"><span class="label">[394]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 33.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_395_395" id="Footnote_395_395"></a><a href="#FNanchor_395_395"><span class="label">[395]</span></a> <i>Morals and Legislation</i>, ch. vii. to xi.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">III. <a name="VI_III" id="VI_III"></a>THE SANCTIONS</p>
+
+<p>Let us first take his definitions of the fundamental conceptions. All
+action of reasonable beings implies the expectation of consequences.
+The agent's 'intention' is defined by the consequences actually
+contemplated. The cause of action is the hope of the consequent
+pleasures or the dread of the consequent
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+pains. This anticipated
+pleasure or pain constitutes the 'internal motive' (a phrase used by
+Bentham to exclude the 'external motive' or event which causes the
+anticipation).<a name="FNanchor_396_396" id="FNanchor_396_396"></a><a href="#Footnote_396_396" class="fnanchor">[396]</a> The motive, or 'internal motive,' is the
+anticipation of pain to be avoided or pleasure to be gained. Actions
+are good or bad simply and solely as they are on the whole 'productive
+of a balance of pleasure or pain.' The problem of the legislator is
+how to regulate actions so as to incline the balance to the right
+side. His weapons are 'sanctions' which modify 'motives.' What
+motives, then, should be strengthened or checked? Here we must be
+guided by a principle which is, in fact, the logical result of the
+doctrines already laid down. We are bound to apply our 'felicific
+calculus' with absolute impartiality. We must therefore assign equal
+value to all motives. 'No motives,' he says,<a name="FNanchor_397_397" id="FNanchor_397_397"></a><a href="#Footnote_397_397" class="fnanchor">[397]</a> are 'constantly good
+or constantly bad.' Pleasure is itself a good; pain itself an evil:
+nay, they are 'the only good and the only evil.' This is true of every
+sort of pain and pleasure, even of the pains and pleasures of illwill.
+The pleasures of 'malevolence' are placed in his 'table' by the side
+of pleasures of 'benevolence.' Hence it 'follows immediately and
+incontestably, that there is no such thing as any sort of motive that
+is in itself a bad one.' The doctrine is no doubt a logical deduction
+from Bentham's assumptions, and he proceeds to illustrate its meaning.
+A 'motive' corresponds to one of his 'springs of action.' He shows how
+every one of the motives included in his table may lead either to good
+or to bad consequences. The desire of wealth may lead me to kill a
+man's enemy or to plough his field for him; the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+fear of God may
+prompt to fanaticism or to charity; illwill may lead to malicious
+conduct or may take the form of proper 'resentment,' as, for example,
+when I secure the punishment of my father's murderer. Though one act,
+he says, is approved and the other condemned, they spring from the
+same motive, namely, illwill.<a name="FNanchor_398_398" id="FNanchor_398_398"></a><a href="#Footnote_398_398" class="fnanchor">[398]</a> He admits, however, that some
+motives are more likely than others to lead to 'useful' conduct; and
+thus arranges them in a certain 'order of pre-eminence.'<a name="FNanchor_399_399" id="FNanchor_399_399"></a><a href="#Footnote_399_399" class="fnanchor">[399]</a> It is
+obvious that 'goodwill,' 'love of reputation,' and the 'desire of
+amity' are more likely than others to promote general happiness. 'The
+dictates of utility,' as he observes, are simply the 'dictates of the
+most extensive and enlightened (that is, <i>well advised</i>) benevolence.'
+It would, therefore, seem more appropriate to call the 'motive' good;
+though no one doubts that when directed by an erroneous judgment it
+may incidentally be mischievous.</p>
+
+<p>The doctrine that morality depends upon 'consequences' and not upon
+'motives' became a characteristic Utilitarian dogma, and I shall have
+to return to the question. Meanwhile, it was both a natural and, I
+think, in some senses, a correct view, when strictly confined to the
+province of legislation. For reasons too obvious to expand, the
+legislator must often be indifferent to the question of motives. He
+cannot know with certainty what are a man's motives. He must enforce
+the law whatever may be the motives for breaking it; and punish
+rebellion, for example, even if he attributes it to misguided
+philanthropy. He can, in any case, punish only such crimes as are
+found out; and must define crimes by
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
+palpable 'external' marks. He
+must punish by such coarse means as the gallows and the gaol: for his
+threats must appeal to the good and the bad alike. He depends,
+therefore, upon 'external' sanctions, sanctions, that is, which work
+mainly upon the fears of physical pain; and even if his punishments
+affect the wicked alone, they clearly cannot reach the wicked as
+wicked, nor in proportion to their wickedness. That is quite enough to
+show why in positive law motives are noticed indirectly or not at all.
+It shows also that the analogy between the positive and the moral law
+is treacherous. The exclusion of motive justifiable in law may take
+all meaning out of morality. The Utilitarians, as we shall see, were
+too much disposed to overlook the difference, and attempt to apply
+purely legal doctrine in the totally uncongenial sphere of ethical
+speculation. To accept the legal classification of actions by their
+external characteristics is, in fact, to beg the question in advance.
+Any outward criterion must group together actions springing from
+different 'motives' and therefore, as other moralists would say,
+ethically different.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, another meaning in this doctrine which is more to
+the purpose here. Bentham was aiming at a principle which, true or
+false, is implied in all ethical systems based upon experience instead
+of pure logic or <i>a priori</i> 'intuitions.' Such systems must accept
+human nature as a fact, and as the basis of a scientific theory. They
+do not aim at creating angels but at developing the existing
+constitution of mankind. So far as an action springs from one of the
+primitive or essential instincts of mankind, it simply proves the
+agent to be human, not to be vicious or virtuous, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+therefore is no
+ground for any moral judgment. If Bentham's analysis could be
+accepted, this would be true of his 'springs of action.' The natural
+appetites have not in themselves a moral quality: they are simply
+necessary and original data in the problem. The perplexity is
+introduced by Bentham's assumption that conduct can be analysed so
+that the 'motive' is a separate entity which can be regarded as the
+sole cause of a corresponding action. That involves an irrelevant
+abstraction. There is no such thing as a single 'motive.' One of his
+cases is a mother who lets her child die for love of 'ease.' We do not
+condemn her because she loves ease, which is a motive common to all
+men and therefore unmoral, not immoral. But neither do we condemn her
+merely for the bad consequences of a particular action. We condemn her
+because she loves ease better than she loves her child: that is,
+because her whole character is 'unnatural' or ill-balanced, not on
+account of a particular element taken by itself. Morality is concerned
+with concrete human beings, and not with 'motives' running about by
+themselves. Bentham's meaning, if we make the necessary correction,
+would thus be expressed by saying that we don't blame a man because he
+has the 'natural' passions, but because they are somehow wrongly
+proportioned or the man himself wrongly constituted. Passions which
+may make a man vicious may also be essential to the highest virtue.
+That is quite true; but the passion is not a separate agent, only one
+constituent of the character.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham admits this in his own fashion. If 'motives' cannot be
+properly called good or bad, is there, he asks, nothing good or bad in
+the man who on a given occasion
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+obeys a certain motive? 'Yes,
+certainly,' he replies, 'his disposition.'<a name="FNanchor_400_400" id="FNanchor_400_400"></a><a href="#Footnote_400_400" class="fnanchor">[400]</a> The disposition, he
+adds, is a 'fictitious entity, and designed for the convenience of
+discourse in order to express what there is supposed to be permanent
+in a man's frame of mind.' By 'fictitious,' as we have seen, he means
+not 'unreal' but simply not tangible, weighable, or measurable&mdash;like
+sticks and stones, or like pains and pleasures. 'Fictitious' as they
+may be, therefore, the fiction enables us to express real truths, and
+to state facts which are of the highest importance to the moralist and
+the legislator. Bentham discusses some cases of casuistry in order to
+show the relation between the tendency of an action and the intention
+and motives of the agent. Ravaillac murders a good king; Ravaillac's
+son enables his father to escape punishment, or conveys poison to his
+father to enable him to avoid torture by suicide.<a name="FNanchor_401_401" id="FNanchor_401_401"></a><a href="#Footnote_401_401" class="fnanchor">[401]</a> What is the
+inference as to the son's disposition in either case? The solution (as
+he substantially and, I think, rightly suggests) will have to be
+reached by considering whether the facts indicate that the son's
+disposition was mischievous or otherwise; whether it indicates
+political disloyalty or filial affection, and so forth, and in what
+proportions. The most interesting case perhaps is that of religious
+persecution, where the religious motive is taken to be good, and the
+action to which it leads is yet admitted to be mischievous. The
+problem is often puzzling, but we are virtually making an inference as
+to the goodness or badness of the 'disposition' implied by the given
+action under all the supposed circumstances. This gives what Bentham
+calls the 'meritoriousness'<a name="FNanchor_402_402" id="FNanchor_402_402"></a><a href="#Footnote_402_402" class="fnanchor">[402]</a> of the disposition. The 'intention'
+is
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+caused by the 'motive.' The 'disposition' is the 'sum of the
+intentions'; that is to say, it expresses the agent's sensibility to
+various classes of motives; and the merit therefore will be in
+proportion to the total goodness or badness of the disposition thus
+indicated. The question of merit leads to interesting moral problems.
+Bentham, however, observes that he is not here speaking from the point
+of view of the moralist but of the legislator. Still, as a legislator
+he has to consider what is the 'depravity' of disposition indicated by
+different kinds of conduct. This consideration is of great importance.
+The 'disposition' includes sensibility to what he calls 'tutelary
+motives'&mdash;motives, that is, which deter a man from such conduct as
+generally produces mischievous consequences. No motive can be
+invariably, though some, especially the motive of goodwill, and in a
+minor degree those of 'amity' and a 'love of reputation,' are
+generally, on the right side. The legislator has to reinforce these
+'tutelary motives' by 'artificial tutelary motives,' and mainly by
+appealing to the 'love of ease,' that is, by making mischievous
+conduct more difficult, and to 'self-preservation,' that is, by making
+it more dangerous.<a name="FNanchor_403_403" id="FNanchor_403_403"></a><a href="#Footnote_403_403" class="fnanchor">[403]</a> He has therefore to measure the force by which
+these motives will be opposed; or, in other words, the 'strength of
+the temptation.' Now the more depraved a man's disposition, the weaker
+the temptation which will seduce him to crime. Consequently if an act
+shows depravity, it will require a stronger counter-motive or a more
+severe punishment, as the disposition indicated is more mischievous.
+An act, for example, which implies deliberation proves a greater
+insensibility to these social
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+motives which, as Bentham remarks,<a name="FNanchor_404_404" id="FNanchor_404_404"></a><a href="#Footnote_404_404" class="fnanchor">[404]</a>
+determine the 'general tenor of a man's life,' however depraved he may
+be. The legislator is guided solely by 'utility,' or aims at
+maximising happiness without reference to its quality. Still, so far
+as action implies disposition, he has to consider the depravity as a
+source of mischief. The legislator who looks solely at the moral
+quality implied is wrong; and, if guided solely by his sympathies, has
+no measure for the amount of punishment to be inflicted. These
+considerations will enable us to see what is the proper measure of
+resentment.<a name="FNanchor_405_405" id="FNanchor_405_405"></a><a href="#Footnote_405_405" class="fnanchor">[405]</a></p>
+
+<p>The doctrine of the neutrality or 'unmorality' of motive is thus
+sufficiently clear. Bentham's whole aim is to urge that the criterion
+of morality is given by the consequences of actions. To say the
+conduct is good or bad is to say in other words that it produces a
+balance of pleasure or pain. To make the criterion independent, or
+escape the vicious circle, we must admit the pleasures and pains to be
+in themselves neutral; to have, that is, the same value, if equally
+strong, whatever their source. In our final balance-sheet we must set
+down pains of illwill and of goodwill, of sense and of intellect with
+absolute impartiality, and compare them simply in respect
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> of
+intensity. We must not admit a 'conscience' or 'moral sense' which
+would be autocratic; nor, indeed, allow moral to have any meaning as
+applied to the separate passions. But it is quite consistent with this
+to admit that some motives, goodwill in particular, generally tend to
+bring out the desirable result, that is, a balance of pleasure for the
+greatest number. The pains and pleasures are the ultimate facts, and
+the 'disposition' is a 'fictitious entity' or a name for the sum of
+sensibilities. It represents the fact that some men are more inclined
+than others to increase the total of good or bad.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_396_396" id="Footnote_396_396"></a><a href="#FNanchor_396_396"><span class="label">[396]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 46.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_397_397" id="Footnote_397_397"></a><a href="#FNanchor_397_397"><span class="label">[397]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 48.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_398_398" id="Footnote_398_398"></a><a href="#FNanchor_398_398"><span class="label">[398]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 56.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_399_399" id="Footnote_399_399"></a><a href="#FNanchor_399_399"><span class="label">[399]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 56.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_400_400" id="Footnote_400_400"></a><a href="#FNanchor_400_400"><span class="label">[400]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 60.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_401_401" id="Footnote_401_401"></a><a href="#FNanchor_401_401"><span class="label">[401]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 62.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_402_402" id="Footnote_402_402"></a><a href="#FNanchor_402_402"><span class="label">[402]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 65.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_403_403" id="Footnote_403_403"></a><a href="#FNanchor_403_403"><span class="label">[403]</span></a> These are the two classes of 'springs of action'
+omitted in the <i>Table</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_404_404" id="Footnote_404_404"></a><a href="#FNanchor_404_404"><span class="label">[404]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 68.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_405_405" id="Footnote_405_405"></a><a href="#FNanchor_405_405"><span class="label">[405]</span></a> Here Bentham lays down the rule that punishment should
+rise with the strength of the temptation, a theory which leads to some
+curious casuistical problems. He does not fully discuss, and I cannot
+here consider, them. I will only note that it may conceivably be
+necessary to increase the severity of punishment, instead of removing
+the temptation or strengthening the preventive action. If so, the law
+becomes immoral in the sense of punishing more severely as the crime
+has more moral excuse. This was often true of the old criminal law,
+which punished offences cruelly because it had no effective system of
+police. Bentham would of course have agreed that the principle in this
+case was a bad one.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">IV. <a name="VI_IV" id="VI_IV"></a>CRIMINAL LAW</p>
+
+<p>We have now, after a long analysis, reached the point at which the
+principles can be applied to penal law. The legislator has to
+discourage certain classes of conduct by annexing 'tutelary motives.'
+The classes to be suppressed are of course those which diminish
+happiness. Pursuing the same method, and applying results already
+reached, we must in the first place consider how the 'mischief of an
+act' is to be measured.<a name="FNanchor_406_406" id="FNanchor_406_406"></a><a href="#Footnote_406_406" class="fnanchor">[406]</a> Acts are mischievous as their
+'consequences' are mischievous; and the consequences may be 'primary'
+or 'secondary.' Robbery causes pain to the loser of the money. That is
+a primary evil. It alarms the holders of money; it suggests the
+facility of robbery to others; and it weakens the 'tutelary motive' of
+respect for property. These are secondary evils. The 'secondary' evil
+may be at times the most important. The non-payment of a tax may do
+no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+appreciable harm in a particular case. But its secondary effects
+in injuring the whole political fabric may be disastrous and fruitful
+beyond calculation. Bentham proceeds to show carefully how the
+'intentions' and 'motives' of the evildoer are of the greatest
+importance, especially in determining these secondary consequences,
+and must therefore be taken into account by the legislator. A homicide
+may cause the same primary evil, whether accidental or malignant; but
+accidental homicide may cause no alarm, whereas the intentional and
+malignant homicide may cause any quantity of alarm and shock to the
+general sense of security. In this way, therefore, the legislator has
+again indirectly to take into account the moral quality which is
+itself dependent upon utility.</p>
+
+<p>I must, however, pass lightly over a very clear and interesting
+discussion to reach a further point of primary importance to the
+Utilitarian theory, as to the distinction between the moral and legal
+spheres.<a name="FNanchor_407_407" id="FNanchor_407_407"></a><a href="#Footnote_407_407" class="fnanchor">[407]</a> Bentham has now 'made an analysis of evil.' He has, that
+is, classified the mischiefs produced by conduct, measured simply by
+their effect upon pleasures or pains, independently of any
+consideration as to virtue and vice. The next problem is: what conduct
+should be criminal?&mdash;a subject which is virtually discussed in two
+chapters (xv. and xix.) 'on cases unmeet for punishment' and on 'the
+limits between Private Ethics and the act of legislation.' We must, of
+course, follow the one clue to the labyrinth. We must count all the
+'lots' of pain and pleasure indifferently. It is clear, on the one
+hand, that the pains suffered by criminals are far less than the pains
+which would be
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
+suffered were no such sanctions applied. On the other
+hand, all punishment is an evil, because punishment means pain, and it
+is therefore only to be inflicted when it excludes greater pain. It
+must, therefore, not be inflicted when it is 'groundless,'
+'inefficacious,' 'unprofitable,' or 'needless.' 'Needless' includes
+all the cases in which the end may be attained 'as effectually at a
+cheaper rate.'<a name="FNanchor_408_408" id="FNanchor_408_408"></a><a href="#Footnote_408_408" class="fnanchor">[408]</a> This applies to all 'dissemination of pernicious
+principles'; for in this case reason and not force is the appropriate
+remedy. The sword inflicts more pain, and is less efficient than the
+pen. The argument raises the wider question, What are the true limits
+of legislative interference? Bentham, in his last chapter, endeavours
+to answer this problem. 'Private ethics,' he says, and 'legislation'
+aim at the same end, namely, happiness, and the 'acts with which they
+are conversant are <i>in great measure</i> the same.' Why, then, should
+they have different spheres? Simply because the acts 'are not
+<i>perfectly and throughout</i> the same.'<a name="FNanchor_409_409" id="FNanchor_409_409"></a><a href="#Footnote_409_409" class="fnanchor">[409]</a> How, then, are we to draw
+the line? By following the invariable clue of 'utility.' We simply
+have to apply an analysis to determine the cases in which punishment
+does more harm than good. He insists especially upon the cases in
+which punishment is 'unprofitable'; upon such offences as drunkenness
+and sexual immorality, where the law could only be enforced by a
+mischievous or impossible system of minute supervision, and such
+offences as ingratitude or rudeness, where the definition is so vague
+that the judge could not safely be entrusted with the power to
+punish.'<a name="FNanchor_410_410" id="FNanchor_410_410"></a><a href="#Footnote_410_410" class="fnanchor">[410]</a> He endeavours to give a rather more precise distinction
+by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+subdividing 'ethics in general' into three classes. Duty may be to
+oneself, that is 'prudence'; or to one's neighbour negatively, that is
+'probity'; or to one's neighbour positively, that is
+'benevolence.'<a name="FNanchor_411_411" id="FNanchor_411_411"></a><a href="#Footnote_411_411" class="fnanchor">[411]</a> Duties of the first class must be left chiefly to
+the individual, because he is the best judge of his own interest.
+Duties of the third class again are generally too vague to be enforced
+by the legislator, though a man ought perhaps to be punished for
+failing to help as well as for actually injuring. The second
+department of ethics, that of 'probity,' is the main field for
+legislative activity.<a name="FNanchor_412_412" id="FNanchor_412_412"></a><a href="#Footnote_412_412" class="fnanchor">[412]</a> As a general principle, 'private ethics'
+teach a man how to pursue his own happiness, and the art of
+legislation how to pursue the greatest happiness of the community. It
+must be noticed, for the point is one of importance, that Bentham's
+purely empirical method draws no definite line. It implies that no
+definite line can be drawn. It does not suggest that any kind of
+conduct whatever is outside the proper province of legislator except
+in so far as the legislative machinery may happen to be inadequate or
+inappropriate.</p>
+
+<p>Our analysis has now been carried so far that we can proceed to
+consider the principles by which we should be guided in punishing.
+What are the desirable properties of a 'lot of punishment'? This
+occupies two interesting chapters. Chapter xvi., 'on the proportion
+between punishments and offences,' gives twelve rules. The punishment,
+he urges, must outweigh the profit of the offence; it must be such as
+to make a man prefer a less offence to a greater&mdash;simple theft, for
+example, to violent robbery; it must be such that the punishment must
+be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+adaptable to the varying sensibility of the offender; it must be
+greater in 'value' as it falls short of certainty; and, when the
+offence indicates a habit, it must outweigh not only the profit of the
+particular offence, but of the undetected offences. In chapter xvii.
+Bentham considers the properties which fit a punishment to fulfil
+these conditions. Eleven properties are given. The punishment must be
+(1) 'variable,' that is, capable of adjustment to particular cases;
+and (2) equable, or inflicting equal pain by equal sentences. Thus the
+'proportion' between punishment and crimes of a given class can be
+secured. In order that the punishments of different classes of crime
+may be proportional, the punishments should (3) be commensurable. To
+make punishments efficacious they should be (4) 'characteristical' or
+impressive to the imagination; and that they may not be excessive they
+should be (5) exemplary or likely to impress others, and (6) frugal.
+To secure minor ends they should be (7) reformatory; (8) disabling,
+<i>i.e.</i> from future offences; and (9) compensatory to the sufferer.
+Finally, to avoid collateral disadvantages they should be (10)
+popular, and (11) remittable. A twelfth property, simplicity, was
+added in Dumont's redaction. Dumont calls attention here to the value
+of Bentham's method.<a name="FNanchor_413_413" id="FNanchor_413_413"></a><a href="#Footnote_413_413" class="fnanchor">[413]</a> Montesquieu and Beccaria had spoken in
+general terms of the desirable qualities of punishment. They had
+spoken of 'proportionality,' for example, but without that precise or
+definite meaning which appears in Bentham's Calculus. In fact,
+Bentham's statement, compared to the vaguer utterances of his
+predecessors, but still more when compared to the haphazard
+brutalities and inconsistencies of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+English criminal law, gives the
+best impression of the value of his method.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham's next step is an elaborate classification of offences, worked
+out by a further application of his bifurcatory method.<a name="FNanchor_414_414" id="FNanchor_414_414"></a><a href="#Footnote_414_414" class="fnanchor">[414]</a> This
+would form the groundwork of the projected code. I cannot, however,
+speak of this classification, or of many interesting remarks contained
+in the <i>Principles of Penal Law</i>, where some further details are
+considered. An analysis scarcely does justice to Bentham, for it has
+to omit his illustrations and his flashes of real vivacity. The mere
+dry logical framework is not appetising. I have gone so far in order
+to illustrate the characteristic of Bentham's teaching. It was not the
+bare appeal to utility, but the attempt to follow the clue of utility
+systematically and unflinchingly into every part of the subject. This
+one doctrine gives the touchstone by which every proposed measure is
+to be tested; and which will give to his system not such unity as
+arises from the development of an abstract logical principle, but such
+as is introduced into the physical sciences when we are able to range
+all the indefinitely complex phenomena which arise under some simple
+law of force. If Bentham's aim could have been achieved, 'utility'
+would have been in legislative theories what gravitation is in
+astronomical theories. All human conduct being ruled by pain and
+pleasure, we could compare all motives and actions, and trace out the
+consequences of any given law. I shall have hereafter to consider how
+this conception worked in different minds and was applied to different
+problems: what were the tenable results to which it led, and what
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
+were the errors caused by the implied oversight of some essential
+considerations.</p>
+
+<p>Certain weaknesses are almost too obvious to be specified. He claimed
+to be constructing a science, comparable to the physical sciences. The
+attempt was obviously chimerical if we are to take it seriously. The
+makeshift doctrine which he substitutes for psychology would be a
+sufficient proof of the incapacity for his task. He had probably not
+read such writers as Hartley or Condillac, who might have suggested
+some ostensibly systematic theory. If he had little psychology he had
+not even a conception of 'sociology.' The 'felicific calculus' is
+enough to show the inadequacy of his method. The purpose is to enable
+us to calculate the effects of a proposed law. You propose to send
+robbers to the gallows or the gaol. You must, says Bentham, reckon up
+all the evils prevented: the suffering to the robbed, and to those who
+expect to be robbed, on the one hand; and, on the other, the evils
+caused, the suffering to the robber, and to the tax-payer who keeps
+the constable; then strike your balance and make your law if the evils
+prevented exceed the evils caused. Some such calculation is demanded
+by plain common sense. It points to the line of inquiry desirable. But
+can it be adequate? To estimate the utility of a law we must take into
+account all its 'effects.' What are the 'effects' of a law against
+robbery? They are all that is implied in the security of property.
+They correspond to the difference between England in the eighteenth
+century and England in the time of Hengist and Horsa; between a
+country where the supremacy of law is established, and a country still
+under the rule of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+strong hand. Bentham's method may be applicable
+at a given moment, when the social structure is already consolidated
+and uniform. It would represent the practical arguments for
+establishing the police-force demanded by Colquhoun, and show the
+disadvantages of the old constables and watchmen. Bentham, that is,
+gives an admirable method for settling details of administrative and
+legislative machinery, and dealing with particular cases when once the
+main principles of law and order are established. Those principles,
+too, may depend upon 'utility,' but utility must be taken in a wider
+sense when we have to deal with the fundamental questions. We must
+consider the 'utility' of the whole organisation, not the fitness of
+separate details. Finally, if Bentham is weak in psychology and in
+sociology, he is clearly not satisfactory in ethics. Morality is,
+according to him, on the same plane with law. The difference is not in
+the sphere to which they apply, or in the end to which they are
+directed; but solely in the 'sanction.' The legislator uses threats of
+physical suffering; the moralist threats of 'popular' disapproval.
+Either 'sanction' may be most applicable to a given case; but the
+question is merely between different means to the same end under
+varying conditions. This implies the 'external' character of Bentham's
+morality, and explains his insistence upon the neutrality of motives.
+He takes the average man to be a compound of certain instincts, and
+merely seeks to regulate their action by supplying 'artificial
+tutelary motives.' The 'man' is given; the play of his instincts,
+separately neutral, makes his conduct more or less favourable to
+general happiness; and the moralist and the legislator have both to
+correct<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+his deviations by supplying appropriate 'sanctions.' Bentham,
+therefore, is inclined to ignore the intrinsic character of morality,
+or the dependence of a man's morality upon the essential structure of
+his nature. He thinks of the superficial play of forces, not of their
+intimate constitution. The man is not to be changed in either case;
+only his circumstances. Such defects no doubt diminish the value of
+Bentham's work. Yet, after all, in his own sphere they are trifles. He
+did very well without philosophy. However imperfect his system might
+be considered as a science or an ultimate explanation of society and
+human nature, it was very much to the point as an expression of
+downright common sense. Dumont's eulogy seems to be fully deserved,
+when we contrast Bentham's theory of punishment with the theories (if
+they deserve the name) of contemporary legislators. His method
+involved a thoroughgoing examination of the whole body of laws, and a
+resolution to apply a searching test to every law. If that test was
+not so unequivocal or ultimate as he fancied, it yet implied the
+constant application of such considerations as must always carry
+weight, and, perhaps, be always the dominant considerations, with the
+actual legislator or jurist. What is the use of you? is a question
+which may fairly be put to every institution and to every law; and it
+concerns legislators to find some answer, even though the meaning of
+the word 'use' is not so clear as we could wish.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_406_406" id="Footnote_406_406"></a><a href="#FNanchor_406_406"><span class="label">[406]</span></a> <i>Morals and Legislation</i>, ch. xii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_407_407" id="Footnote_407_407"></a><a href="#FNanchor_407_407"><span class="label">[407]</span></a> <i>Morals and Legislation</i>, ch. xiv. (a chapter inserted
+from Dumont's <i>Trait&eacute;s</i>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_408_408" id="Footnote_408_408"></a><a href="#FNanchor_408_408"><span class="label">[408]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i. p. 86.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_409_409" id="Footnote_409_409"></a><a href="#FNanchor_409_409"><span class="label">[409]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 144.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_410_410" id="Footnote_410_410"></a><a href="#FNanchor_410_410"><span class="label">[410]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 145.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_411_411" id="Footnote_411_411"></a><a href="#FNanchor_411_411"><span class="label">[411]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 143.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_412_412" id="Footnote_412_412"></a><a href="#FNanchor_412_412"><span class="label">[412]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 147-48.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_413_413" id="Footnote_413_413"></a><a href="#FNanchor_413_413"><span class="label">[413]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i 406 <i>n.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_414_414" id="Footnote_414_414"></a><a href="#FNanchor_414_414"><span class="label">[414]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 96 <i>n.</i></p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">V. <a name="VI_V" id="VI_V"></a>ENGLISH LAW</p>
+
+<p>The practical value of Bentham's method is perhaps best illustrated by
+his <i>Rationale of Evidence</i>. The composition of the papers ultimately
+put together by
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+J. S. Mill had occupied Bentham from 1802 to 1812.
+The changed style is significant. Nobody could write more pointedly,
+or with happier illustrations, than Bentham in his earlier years. He
+afterwards came to think that a didactic treatise should sacrifice
+every other virtue to fulness and precision. To make a sentence
+precise, every qualifying clause must be somehow forced into the
+original formula. Still more characteristic is his application of what
+he calls the 'substantive-preferring principle.'<a name="FNanchor_415_415" id="FNanchor_415_415"></a><a href="#Footnote_415_415" class="fnanchor">[415]</a> He would rather
+say, 'I give extension to an object,' than 'I extend an object.' Where
+a substantive is employed, the idea is 'stationed upon a rock'; if
+only a verb, the idea is 'like a leaf floating on a stream.' A verb,
+he said,<a name="FNanchor_416_416" id="FNanchor_416_416"></a><a href="#Footnote_416_416" class="fnanchor">[416]</a> 'slips through your fingers like an eel.' The principle
+corresponds to his 'metaphysics.' The universe of thought is made up
+of a number of separate 'entities' corresponding to nouns-substantive,
+and when these bundles are distinctly isolated by appropriate nouns,
+the process of arranging and codifying according to the simple
+relations indicated by the copula is greatly facilitated. The ideal
+language would resemble algebra, in which symbols, each representing a
+given numerical value, are connected by the smallest possible number
+of symbols of operation, +, -, =, and so forth. To set two such
+statements side by side, or to modify them by inserting different
+constants, is then a comparatively easy process, capable of being
+regulated by simple general rules. Bentham's style becomes tiresome,
+and was often improperly called obscure. It requires attention, but
+the meaning is never
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
+doubtful&mdash;and to the end we have frequent
+flashes of the old vivacity.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Rationale of Evidence</i>, as Mill remarks,<a name="FNanchor_417_417" id="FNanchor_417_417"></a><a href="#Footnote_417_417" class="fnanchor">[417]</a> is 'one of the
+richest in matter of all Bentham's productions.' It contains, too,
+many passages in Bentham's earlier style, judiciously preserved by his
+young editor; indeed, so many that I am tempted even to call the book
+amusing. In spite of the wearisome effort to say everything, and to
+force language into the mould presented by his theory, Bentham
+attracts us by his obvious sincerity. The arguments may be
+unsatisfactory, but they are genuine arguments. They represent
+conviction; they are given because they have convinced; and no reader
+can deny that they really tend to convince. We may complain that there
+are too many words, and that the sentences are cumbrous; but the
+substance is always to the point. The main purpose may be very briefly
+indicated. Bentham begins by general considerations upon evidence, in
+which he and his youthful editor indicate their general adherence to
+the doctrines of Hume.<a name="FNanchor_418_418" id="FNanchor_418_418"></a><a href="#Footnote_418_418" class="fnanchor">[418]</a> This leads to an application of the
+methods expounded in the 'Introduction,' in order to show how the
+various motives or 'springs of action' and the 'sanctions' based upon
+them may affect the trustworthiness of evidence. Any motive whatever
+may incidentally cause 'mendacity.' The second book, therefore,
+considers what securities may be taken for 'securing trustworthiness.'
+We have, for example, a discussion of the value of oaths (he thinks
+them valueless), of the advantages and disadvantages of reducing
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+evidence to writing, of interrogating witnesses, and of the publicity
+or privacy of evidence. Book iii. deals with the 'extraction of
+evidence.' We have to compare the relative advantages of oral and
+written evidence, the rules for cross-examining witnesses and for
+taking evidence as to their character. Book iv. deals with
+'pre-appointed evidence,' the cases, that is, in which events are
+recorded at the time of occurrence with a view to their subsequent use
+as evidence. We have under this head to consider the formalities which
+should be required in regard to contracts and wills; and the mode of
+recording judicial and other official decisions and registering
+births, deaths, and marriages. In Books v. and vi. we consider two
+kinds of evidence which is in one way or other of inferior cogency,
+namely, 'circumstantial evidence,' in which the evidence if accepted
+still leaves room for a process of more or less doubtful inference;
+and 'makeshift evidence,' such evidence as must sometimes be accepted
+for want of the best, of which the most conspicuous instance is
+'hearsay evidence.' Book vii. deals with the 'authentication' of
+evidence. Book viii. is a consideration of the 'technical' system,
+that namely which was accepted by English lawyers; and finally Book
+ix. deals with a special point, namely, the exclusion of evidence.
+Bentham announces at starting<a name="FNanchor_419_419" id="FNanchor_419_419"></a><a href="#Footnote_419_419" class="fnanchor">[419]</a> that he shall establish 'one
+theorem' and consider two problems. The problems are: 'what securities
+can be taken for the truth of evidence?' and 'what rules can be given
+for estimating the value of evidence?' The 'theorem' is that no
+evidence should be excluded with the professed
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+intention of obtaining
+a right decision; though some must be excluded to avoid expense,
+vexation, and delay. This, therefore, as his most distinct moral, is
+fully treated in the last book.</p>
+
+<p>Had Bentham confined himself to a pithy statement of his leading
+doctrines, and confirmed them by a few typical cases, he would have
+been more effective in a literary sense. His passion for
+'codification,' for tabulating and arranging facts in all their
+complexity, and for applying his doctrine at full length to every case
+that he can imagine, makes him terribly prolix. On the other hand,
+this process no doubt strengthened his own conviction and the
+conviction of his disciples as to the value of his process. Follow
+this clue of utility throughout the whole labyrinth, see what a clear
+answer it offers at every point, and you cannot doubt that you are in
+possession of the true compass for such a navigation. Indeed, it seems
+to be indisputable that Bentham's arguments are the really relevant
+and important arguments. How can we decide any of the points which
+come up for discussion? Should a witness be cross-examined? Should his
+evidence be recorded? Should a wife be allowed to give evidence
+against her husband? or the defendant to give evidence about his own
+case? These and innumerable other points can only be decided by
+reference to what Bentham understood by 'utility.' This or that
+arrangement is 'useful' because it enables us to get quickly and
+easily at the evidence, to take effective securities for its
+truthfulness, to estimate its relevance and importance, to leave the
+decision to the most qualified persons, and so forth. These points,
+again, can only be decided by a careful appeal to experience,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+and by
+endeavouring to understand the ordinary play of 'motives' and
+'sanctions.' What generally makes a man lie, and how is lying to be
+made unpleasant? By rigorously fixing our minds at every point on such
+issues, we find that many questions admit of very plain answers, and
+are surprised to discover what a mass of obscurity has been dispelled.
+It is, however, true that although the value of the method can hardly
+be denied unless we deny the value of all experience and common sense,
+we may dispute the degree in which it confirms the general principle.
+Every step seems to Bentham to reflect additional light upon his
+primary axiom. Yet it is possible to hold that witnesses should be
+encouraged to speak the truth, and that experience may help us to
+discover the best means to that end without, therefore, admitting the
+unique validity of the 'greatest happiness' principle. That principle,
+so far as true, may be itself a deduction from some higher principle;
+and no philosopher of any school would deny that 'utility' should be
+in some way consulted by the legislator.</p>
+
+<p>The book illustrates the next critical point in Bentham's system&mdash;the
+transition from law to politics. He was writing the book at the period
+when the failure of the Panopticon was calling his attention to the
+wickedness of George <small>III.</small> and Lord Eldon, and when the English demand
+for parliamentary reform was reviving and supplying him with a
+sympathetic audience. Now, in examining the theory of evidence upon
+the plan described, Bentham found himself at every stage in conflict
+with the existing system, or rather the existing chaos of
+unintelligible rules. English lawyers, he discovered, had worked out a
+system of rules for excluding evidence.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+Sometimes the cause was pure
+indolence. 'This man, were I to hear him,' says the English judge,
+'would come out with a parcel of lies. It would be a plague to hear
+him: I have heard enough already; shut the door in his face.'<a name="FNanchor_420_420" id="FNanchor_420_420"></a><a href="#Footnote_420_420" class="fnanchor">[420]</a>
+But, as Bentham shows with elaborate detail, a reason for suspecting
+evidence is not a reason for excluding it. A convicted perjurer gives
+evidence, and has a pecuniary interest in the result. That is
+excellent ground for caution; but the fact that the man makes a
+certain statement may still be a help to the ascertainment of truth.
+Why should that help be rejected? Bentham scarcely admits of any
+exception to the general rule of taking any evidence you can get&mdash;one
+exception being the rather curious one of confession to a Catholic
+priest; secrecy in such cases is on the whole, he thinks, useful. He
+exposes the confusion implied in an exclusion of evidence because it
+is not fully trustworthy, which is equivalent to working in the dark
+because a partial light may deceive. But this is only a part of a
+whole system of arbitrary, inconsistent, and technical rules worked
+out by the ingenuity of lawyers. Besides the direct injury they gave
+endless opportunity for skilful man&oelig;uvring to exclude or admit
+evidence by adopting different forms of procedure. Rules had been made
+by judges as they were wanted and precedents established of
+contradictory tendency and uncertain application. Bentham contrasts
+the simplicity of the rules deducible from 'utility' with the amazing
+complexity of the traditional code of technical rules. Under the
+'natural' system, that of utility, you have to deal with a quarrel
+between your servants or children. You
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
+send at once for the
+disputants, confront them, take any relevant evidence, and make up
+your mind as to the rights of the dispute. In certain cases this
+'natural' procedure has been retained, as, for example, in
+courts-martial, where rapid decision was necessary. Had the technical
+system prevailed, the country would have been ruined in six
+weeks.<a name="FNanchor_421_421" id="FNanchor_421_421"></a><a href="#Footnote_421_421" class="fnanchor">[421]</a> But the exposure of the technical system requires an
+elaborate display of intricate methods involving at every step
+vexation, delay, and injustice. Bentham reckons up nineteen separate
+devices employed by the courts. He describes the elaborate processes
+which had to be gone through before a hearing could be obtained; the
+distance of courts from the litigants; the bandying of cases from
+court to court; the chicaneries about giving notice; the frequent
+nullification of all that had been done on account of some technical
+flaw; the unintelligible jargon of Latin and Law-French which veiled
+the proceedings from the public; the elaborate mysteries of 'special
+pleading'; the conflict of jurisdictions, and the manufacture of new
+'pleas' and new technical rules; the 'entanglement of jurisdictions,'
+and especially the distinction between law and equity, which had made
+confusion doubly confounded. English law had become a mere jungle of
+unintelligible distinctions, contradictions, and cumbrous methods
+through which no man could find his way without the guidance of the
+initiated, and in which a long purse and unscrupulous trickery gave
+the advantage over the poor to the rich, and to the knave over the
+honest man. One fruitful source of all these evils was the
+'judge-made' law, which Bentham henceforth never ceased to denounce.
+His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+ideal was a distinct code which, when change was required, should
+be changed by an avowed and intelligible process. The chaos which had
+grown up was the natural result of the gradual development of a
+traditional body of law, in which new cases were met under cover of
+applying precedents from previous decisions, with the help of
+reference to the vague body of unwritten or 'common law,' and of legal
+fictions permitting some non-natural interpretation of the old
+formul&aelig;. It is the judges, he had already said in 1792,<a name="FNanchor_422_422" id="FNanchor_422_422"></a><a href="#Footnote_422_422" class="fnanchor">[422]</a> 'that
+make the common law. Do you know how they make it? Just as a man makes
+laws for his dog. When your dog does anything you want to break him
+of, you wait till he does it and then beat him. This is the way you
+make laws for your dog, and this is the way the judges make laws for
+you and me.' The 'tyranny of judge-made law' is 'the most
+all-comprehensive, most grinding, and most crying of all
+grievances,'<a name="FNanchor_423_423" id="FNanchor_423_423"></a><a href="#Footnote_423_423" class="fnanchor">[423]</a> and is scarcely less bad than 'priest-made
+religion.'<a name="FNanchor_424_424" id="FNanchor_424_424"></a><a href="#Footnote_424_424" class="fnanchor">[424]</a> Legal fictions, according to him, are simply lies. The
+permission to use them is a 'mendacity licence.' In 'Rome-bred law ...
+fiction' is a 'wart which here and there disfigures the face of
+justice. In English law fiction is a syphilis which runs into every
+vein and carries into every part of the system the principle of
+rottenness.'<a name="FNanchor_425_425" id="FNanchor_425_425"></a><a href="#Footnote_425_425" class="fnanchor">[425]</a></p>
+
+<p>The evils denounced by Bentham were monstrous. The completeness of the
+exposure was his great merit; and his reputation has suffered, as we
+are told on competent authority, by the very efficiency of his attack.
+The worst evils are so much things of the past, that we
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
+forget the
+extent of the evil and the merits of its assailant. Bentham's
+diagnosis of the evil explains his later attitude. He attributes all
+the abuses to consciously corrupt motives even where a sufficient
+explanation can be found in the human stupidity and honest incapacity
+to look outside of traditional ways of thought. He admits, indeed, the
+personal purity of English judges. No English judge had ever received
+a bribe within living memory.<a name="FNanchor_426_426" id="FNanchor_426_426"></a><a href="#Footnote_426_426" class="fnanchor">[426]</a> But this, he urges, is only because
+the judges find it more profitable as well as safer to carry out a
+radically corrupt system. A synonym for 'technical' is
+'fee-gathering.' Lawyers of all classes had a common interest in
+multiplying suits and complicating procedure: and thus a tacit
+partnership had grown up which he describes as 'Judge and Co.' He
+gives statistics showing that in the year 1797 five hundred and
+forty-three out of five hundred and fifty 'writs of error' were
+'shams,' or simply vexatious contrivances for delay, and brought a
+profit to the Chief Justice of over &pound;1400.<a name="FNanchor_427_427" id="FNanchor_427_427"></a><a href="#Footnote_427_427" class="fnanchor">[427]</a> Lord Eldon was always
+before him as the typical representative of obstruction and
+obscurantism. In his <i>Indications respecting Lord Eldon</i> (1825) he
+goes into details which it must have required some courage to publish.
+Under Eldon, he says, 'equity has become an instrument of fraud and
+extortion.'<a name="FNanchor_428_428" id="FNanchor_428_428"></a><a href="#Footnote_428_428" class="fnanchor">[428]</a> He details the proceedings by which Eldon obtained
+the sanction of parliament for a system of fee-taking, which he had
+admitted to be illegal, and which had been denounced by an eminent
+solicitor as leading to gross corruption. Bentham intimates that the
+Masters in Chancery were 'swindlers,'<a name="FNanchor_429_429" id="FNanchor_429_429"></a><a href="#Footnote_429_429" class="fnanchor">[429]</a> and that Eldon was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
+knowingly the protector and sharer of their profits. Romilly, who had
+called the Court of Chancery 'a disgrace to a civilised nation,' had
+said that Eldon was the cause of many of the abuses, and could have
+reformed most of the others. Erskine had declared that if there was a
+hell, the Court of Chancery was hell.<a name="FNanchor_430_430" id="FNanchor_430_430"></a><a href="#Footnote_430_430" class="fnanchor">[430]</a> Eldon, as Bentham himself
+thought, was worse than Jeffreys. Eldon's victims had died a lingering
+death, and the persecutor had made money out of their sufferings.
+Jeffreys was openly brutal; while Eldon covered his tyranny under the
+'most accomplished indifference.'<a name="FNanchor_431_431" id="FNanchor_431_431"></a><a href="#Footnote_431_431" class="fnanchor">[431]</a></p>
+
+<p>Yet Eldon was but the head of a band. Judges, barristers, and
+solicitors were alike. The most hopeless of reforms would be to raise
+a 'thorough-paced English lawyer' to the moral level of an average
+man.<a name="FNanchor_432_432" id="FNanchor_432_432"></a><a href="#Footnote_432_432" class="fnanchor">[432]</a> To attack legal abuses was to attack a class combined under
+its chiefs, capable of hoodwinking parliament and suppressing open
+criticism. The slave-traders whom Wilberforce attacked were
+comparatively a powerless excrescence. The legal profession was in the
+closest relations to the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the whole
+privileged and wealthy class. They were welded into a solid 'ring.'
+The king, and his ministers who distributed places and pensions; the
+borough-mongers who sold votes for power; the clergy who looked for
+bishoprics; the monied men who aspired to rank and power, were all
+parts of a league. It was easy enough to talk of law reform. Romilly
+had proposed and even carried a 'reformatiuncle' or two;<a name="FNanchor_433_433" id="FNanchor_433_433"></a><a href="#Footnote_433_433" class="fnanchor">[433]</a> but to
+achieve a serious success required not victory in a skirmish or two,
+not the exposure of some abuse too palpable to be openly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> defended
+even by an Eldon, but a prolonged war against an organised army
+fortified and entrenched in the very heart of the country.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_415_415" id="Footnote_415_415"></a><a href="#FNanchor_415_415"><span class="label">[415]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, iii. 267.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_416_416" id="Footnote_416_416"></a><a href="#FNanchor_416_416"><span class="label">[416]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> x. 569</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_417_417" id="Footnote_417_417"></a><a href="#FNanchor_417_417"><span class="label">[417]</span></a> <i>Autobiography</i>, p. 116.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_418_418" id="Footnote_418_418"></a><a href="#FNanchor_418_418"><span class="label">[418]</span></a> The subject is again treated in Book v. on
+'Circumstantial Evidence.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_419_419" id="Footnote_419_419"></a><a href="#FNanchor_419_419"><span class="label">[419]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, vi. 204.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_420_420" id="Footnote_420_420"></a><a href="#FNanchor_420_420"><span class="label">[420]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, vii. 391.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_421_421" id="Footnote_421_421"></a><a href="#FNanchor_421_421"><span class="label">[421]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, vii. 321-25. Court-martials are hardly a happy
+example now.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_422_422" id="Footnote_422_422"></a><a href="#FNanchor_422_422"><span class="label">[422]</span></a> 'Truth <i>v.</i> Ashhurst' (1792), <i>Works</i>, v. 235.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_423_423" id="Footnote_423_423"></a><a href="#FNanchor_423_423"><span class="label">[423]</span></a> <i>Works</i> ('Codification Petition'), v. 442.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_424_424" id="Footnote_424_424"></a><a href="#FNanchor_424_424"><span class="label">[424]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> vi. 11.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_425_425" id="Footnote_425_425"></a><a href="#FNanchor_425_425"><span class="label">[425]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> v. 92.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_426_426" id="Footnote_426_426"></a><a href="#FNanchor_426_426"><span class="label">[426]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, vii. 204, 331; ix. 143.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_427_427" id="Footnote_427_427"></a><a href="#FNanchor_427_427"><span class="label">[427]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> vii. 214.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_428_428" id="Footnote_428_428"></a><a href="#FNanchor_428_428"><span class="label">[428]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> v. 349.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_429_429" id="Footnote_429_429"></a><a href="#FNanchor_429_429"><span class="label">[429]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> v. 364.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_430_430" id="Footnote_430_430"></a><a href="#FNanchor_430_430"><span class="label">[430]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, v. 371.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_431_431" id="Footnote_431_431"></a><a href="#FNanchor_431_431"><span class="label">[431]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> v. 375.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_432_432" id="Footnote_432_432"></a><a href="#FNanchor_432_432"><span class="label">[432]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> vii. 188.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_433_433" id="Footnote_433_433"></a><a href="#FNanchor_433_433"><span class="label">[433]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> v. 370.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">VI. <a name="VI_VI" id="VI_VI"></a>RADICALISM</p>
+
+<p>Thus Bentham, as his eyes were opened, became a Radical. The political
+purpose became dominant, although we always see that the legal abuses
+are uppermost in his mind; and that what he really seeks is a fulcrum
+for the machinery which is to overthrow Lord Eldon. Some of the
+pamphlets deal directly with the special instruments of corruption.
+The <i>Elements of the Art of Packing</i> shows how the crown managed to
+have a permanent body of special 'jurors' at its disposal. The 'grand
+and paramount use'<a name="FNanchor_434_434" id="FNanchor_434_434"></a><a href="#Footnote_434_434" class="fnanchor">[434]</a> of this system was to crush the liberty of the
+press. The obscure law of libel, worked by judges in the interest of
+the government, enabled them to punish any rash Radical for 'hurting
+the feelings' of the ruling classes, and to evade responsibility by
+help of a 'covertly pensioned' and servile jury. The pamphlet, though
+tiresomely minute and long-winded, contained too much pointed truth to
+be published at the time. The <i>Official Aptitude minimised</i> contains a
+series of attacks upon the system of patronage and pensions by which
+the machinery of government was practically worked. In the <i>Catechism</i>
+of reformers, written in 1809, Bentham began the direct application of
+his theories to the constitution; and the final and most elaborate
+exposition of these forms the <i>Constitutional Code</i>, which was the
+main work of his later years. This
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+book excited the warmest
+admiration of Bentham's disciples.<a name="FNanchor_435_435" id="FNanchor_435_435"></a><a href="#Footnote_435_435" class="fnanchor">[435]</a> J. S. Mill speaks of its
+'extraordinary power ... of at once seizing comprehensive principles
+and scheming out minute details,' and of its 'surpassing intellectual
+vigour.' Nor, indeed, will any one be disposed to deny that it is a
+singular proof of intellectual activity, when we remember that it was
+begun when the author was over seventy, and that he was still working
+at eighty-four.<a name="FNanchor_436_436" id="FNanchor_436_436"></a><a href="#Footnote_436_436" class="fnanchor">[436]</a> In this book Bentham's peculiarities of style
+reach their highest development, and it cannot be recommended as light
+reading. Had Bentham been a mystical philosopher, he would, we may
+conjecture, have achieved a masterpiece of unintelligibility which all
+his followers would have extolled as containing the very essence of
+his teaching. His method condemned him to be always intelligible,
+however crabbed and elaborate. Perhaps, however, the point which
+strikes one most is the amazing simple-mindedness of the whole
+proceeding. Bentham's light-hearted indifference to the distinction
+between paper constitutions and operative rules of conduct becomes
+almost pathetic.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham was clearly the victim of a common delusion. If a system will
+work, the minutest details can be exhibited. Therefore, it is
+inferred, an exhibition of minute detail proves that it will work.
+Unfortunately, the philosophers of Laputa would have had no more
+difficulty in filling up details than the legislators of England or
+the United States. When Bentham had settled in his 'Radical
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> Reform
+Bill'<a name="FNanchor_437_437" id="FNanchor_437_437"></a><a href="#Footnote_437_437" class="fnanchor">[437]</a> that the 'voting-box' was to be a double cube of cast-iron,
+with a slit in the lid, into which cards two inches by one, white on
+one side and black on the other, could be inserted, he must have felt
+that he had got very near to actual application: he can picture the
+whole operation and nobody can say that the scheme is impracticable
+for want of working plans of the machinery. There will, doubtless, be
+no difficulty in settling the shape of the boxes, when we have once
+agreed to have the ballot. But a discussion of such remote details of
+Utopia is of incomparably less real interest than the discussion in
+the <i>Rationale of Evidence</i> of points, which, however minute, were
+occurring every day, and which were really in urgent need of the light
+of common sense.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham's general principles may be very simply stated. They are, in
+fact, such as were suggested by his view of legal grievances. Why,
+when he had demonstrated that certain measures would contribute to the
+'greatest happiness of the greatest number,' were they not at once
+adopted? Because the rulers did not desire the greatest happiness of
+the greatest number. This, in Bentham's language, is to say that they
+were governed by a 'sinister interest.' Their interest was that of
+their class, not that of the nation; they aimed at the greatest
+happiness of some, not at the greatest happiness of all. A
+generalisation of this remark gives us the first axioms of all
+government. There are two primary principles: the 'self-preference'
+principle, in virtue of which every man always desires his own
+greatest happiness'; and the 'greatest happiness' principle, in virtue
+of which 'the right and proper end' of government is the 'greatest
+happiness of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+the greatest number.'<a name="FNanchor_438_438" id="FNanchor_438_438"></a><a href="#Footnote_438_438" class="fnanchor">[438]</a> The 'actual end' of every
+government, again, is the greatest happiness of the governors. Hence
+the whole problem is to produce a coincidence of the two ends, by
+securing an identity of interest between governors and governed. To
+secure that we have only to identify the two classes or to put the
+government in the hands of all.<a name="FNanchor_439_439" id="FNanchor_439_439"></a><a href="#Footnote_439_439" class="fnanchor">[439]</a> In a monarchy, the ruler aims at
+the interest of one&mdash;himself; in a 'limited monarchy' the aim is at
+the happiness of the king and the small privileged class; in a
+democracy, the end is the right one&mdash;the greatest happiness of the
+greatest number. This is a short cut to all constitutional questions.
+Probably it has occurred in substance to most youthful members of
+debating societies. Bentham's confidence in his logic lifts him above
+any appeal to experience; and he occasionally reminds us of the proof
+given in <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> that the queen must live in the Tower of
+London. The 'monarch,' as he observes,<a name="FNanchor_440_440" id="FNanchor_440_440"></a><a href="#Footnote_440_440" class="fnanchor">[440]</a> 'is naturally the very
+worst&mdash;the most maleficent member of the whole community.' Wherever an
+aristocracy differs from the democracy, their judgment will be
+erroneous.<a name="FNanchor_441_441" id="FNanchor_441_441"></a><a href="#Footnote_441_441" class="fnanchor">[441]</a> The people will naturally choose 'morally apt agents,'
+and men who wish to be chosen will desire truly to become 'morally
+apt,' for they can only recommend themselves by showing their desire
+to serve the general interest.<a name="FNanchor_442_442" id="FNanchor_442_442"></a><a href="#Footnote_442_442" class="fnanchor">[442]</a> 'All experience testifies to this
+theory,' though the evidence is 'too bulky' to be given. Other
+proofs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
+however, may at once be rendered superfluous by appealing to
+'the uninterrupted and most notorious experience of the United
+States.'<a name="FNanchor_443_443" id="FNanchor_443_443"></a><a href="#Footnote_443_443" class="fnanchor">[443]</a> To that happy country he often appeals indeed<a name="FNanchor_444_444" id="FNanchor_444_444"></a><a href="#Footnote_444_444" class="fnanchor">[444]</a> as a
+model government. In it, there is no corruption, no useless
+expenditure, none of the evils illustrated by our 'matchless
+constitution.'</p>
+
+<p>The constitution deduced from these principles has at least the merit
+of simplicity. We are to have universal suffrage, annual parliaments,
+and vote by ballot. He inclines to give a vote to women.<a name="FNanchor_445_445" id="FNanchor_445_445"></a><a href="#Footnote_445_445" class="fnanchor">[445]</a> There is
+to be no king, no house of peers, no established church. Members of
+parliament are not to be re-eligible, till after an interval.
+Elaborate rules provide for their regular attendance and exclusive
+devotion to their masters' business. They are to be simply 'deputies,'
+not 'representatives.' They elect a prime minister who holds office
+for four years. Officials are to be appointed by a complex plan of
+competitive examination; and they are to be invited to send in tenders
+for doing the work at diminished salary. When once in office, every
+care is taken for their continual inspection by the public and the
+verification of their accounts. They are never for an instant to
+forget that they are servants, not the masters, of the public.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham, of course, is especially minute and careful in regard to the
+judicial organisation&mdash;a subject upon which he wrote much, and much to
+the purpose. The functions and fees of advocates are to be narrowly
+restricted, and advocates to be provided gratuitously for the poor.
+They are not to become judges: to make a barrister a judge is as
+sensible as it would be to select
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+a procuress for mistress of a
+girls' school.<a name="FNanchor_446_446" id="FNanchor_446_446"></a><a href="#Footnote_446_446" class="fnanchor">[446]</a> Judges should be everywhere accessible: always on
+duty, too busy to have time for corruption, and always under public
+supervision. One characteristic device is his quasi-jury. The English
+system of requiring unanimity was equivalent to enforcing perjury by
+torture. Its utility as a means of resisting tyranny would disappear
+when tyranny had become impossible. But public opinion might be
+usefully represented by a 'quasi-jury' of three or five, who should
+not pronounce a verdict, but watch the judge, interrogate, if
+necessary, and in case of need demand a rehearing. Judges, of course,
+were no longer to make law, but to propose amendments in the
+'Pannomion' or universal code, when new cases arose.</p>
+
+<p>His leading principle may be described in one word as
+'responsibility,' or expressed in his leading rule, 'Minimise
+Confidence.'<a name="FNanchor_447_447" id="FNanchor_447_447"></a><a href="#Footnote_447_447" class="fnanchor">[447]</a> 'All government is in itself one vast evil.'<a name="FNanchor_448_448" id="FNanchor_448_448"></a><a href="#Footnote_448_448" class="fnanchor">[448]</a> It
+consists in applying evil to exclude worse evil. Even 'to reward is to
+punish,'<a name="FNanchor_449_449" id="FNanchor_449_449"></a><a href="#Footnote_449_449" class="fnanchor">[449]</a> when reward is given by government. The less government,
+then, the better; but as governors are a necessary evil, they must be
+limited by every possible device to the sole legitimate aim, and
+watched at every turn by the all-seeing eye of public opinion. Every
+one must admit that this is an application of a sound principle, and
+that one condition of good government is the diffusion of universal
+responsibility. It must be admitted, too, that Bentham's theory
+represents a vigorous embodiment and unflinching application of
+doctrines which since his time have spread and gained more general
+authority.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
+Mill says that granting one assumption, the Constitutional
+Code is 'admirable.'<a name="FNanchor_450_450" id="FNanchor_450_450"></a><a href="#Footnote_450_450" class="fnanchor">[450]</a> That assumption is that it is for the good
+of mankind to be under the absolute authority of a majority. In other
+words, it would justify what Mill calls the 'despotism of public
+opinion.' To protest against that despotism was one of the main
+purposes of Mill's political writings. How was it that the disciple
+came to be in such direct opposition to his master? That question
+cannot be answered till we have considered Mill's own position. But I
+have now followed Bentham far enough to consider the more general
+characteristics of his doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>I have tried, in the first place, to show what was the course of
+Bentham's own development; how his observation of certain legal abuses
+led him to attempt the foundation of a science of jurisprudence; how
+the difficulty of obtaining a hearing for his arguments led him to
+discover the power of 'Judge and Co.'; how he found out that behind
+'Judge and Co.' were George <small>III.</small> and the base Sidmouth, and the whole
+band of obstructors entrenched within the 'matchless constitution';
+and how thus his attack upon the abuses of the penal law led him to
+attack the whole political framework of the country. I have also tried
+to show how Bentham's development coincided with that of the English
+reformers generally. They too began with attacking specific abuses.
+They were for 'reform, not revolution.' The constitution satisfied
+them in the main: they boasted of the palladia of their liberties,
+'trial by jury' and the 'Habeas Corpus' Act, and held Frenchmen to be
+frog-eating slaves in danger of <i>lettres de cachet</i> and the Bastille.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>
+English public opinion in spite of many trammels had a potent
+influence. Their first impulse, therefore, was simply to get rid of
+the trammels&mdash;the abuses which had grown up from want of a thorough
+application of the ancient principles in their original purity. The
+English Whig, even of the more radical persuasion, was profoundly
+convinced that the foundations were sound, however unsatisfactory
+might be the superstructure. Thus, both Bentham and the reformers
+generally started&mdash;not from abstract principles, but from the assault
+upon particular abuses. This is the characteristic of the whole
+English movement, and gives the meaning of their claim to be
+'practical.' The Utilitarians were the reformers on the old lines; and
+their philosophy meant simply a desire to systematise the ordinary
+common sense arguments. The philosophy congenial to this vein is the
+philosophy which appeals to experience. Locke had exploded 'innate
+ideas.' They denounced 'intuitions,' or beliefs which might override
+experience as 'innate ideas' in a new dress; and the attempt to carry
+out this view systematically became the distinctive mark of the whole
+school. Bentham accepted, though he did little to elaborate, this
+doctrine. That task remained for his disciples. But the tendency is
+shown by his view of a rival version of Radicalism.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham, as we have seen, regarded the American Declaration of
+Independence as so much 'jargon.' He was entirely opposed to the
+theory of the 'rights of man,' and therefore to the 'ideas of 1789.'
+From that theory the revolutionary party professed to deduce their
+demands for universal suffrage, the levelling of all privileges, and
+the absolute supremacy of the people. Yet
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>
+Bentham, repudiating the
+premises, came to accept the conclusion. His Constitutional Code
+scarcely differs from the ideal of the Jacobins', except in pushing
+the logic further. The machinery by which he proposed to secure that
+the so-called rulers should become really the servants of the people
+was more thoroughgoing and minutely worked out than that of any
+democratic constitution that has ever been adopted. How was it that
+two antagonist theories led to identical results; and that the 'rights
+of man,' absurd in philosophy, represented the ideal state of things
+in practice?</p>
+
+<p>The general answer may be that political theories are not really based
+upon philosophy. The actual method is to take your politics for
+granted on the one side and your philosophy for granted on the other,
+and then to prove their necessary connection. But it is, at any rate,
+important to see what was the nature of the philosophical assumptions
+implicitly taken for granted by Bentham.</p>
+
+<p>The 'rights of man' doctrine confounds a primary logical canon with a
+statement of fact. Every political theory must be based upon facts as
+well as upon logic. Any reasonable theory about politics must no doubt
+give a reason for inequality and a reason, too, for equality. The
+maxim that all men were, or ought to be, 'equal' asserts correctly
+that there must not be arbitrary differences. Every inequality should
+have its justification in a reasonable system. But when this
+undeniable logical canon is taken to prove that men actually are
+equal, there is an obvious begging of the question. In point of fact,
+the theorists immediately proceeded to disfranchise half the race on
+account of sex, and a third of the remainder on account of infancy.
+They could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
+only amend the argument by saying that all men were equal
+in so far as they possessed certain attributes. But those attributes
+could only be determined by experience, or, as Bentham would have put
+it, by an appeal to 'utility.' It is illogical, said the anti-slavery
+advocate, to treat men differently on account of the colour of their
+skins. No doubt it is illogical if, in fact, the difference of colour
+does not imply a difference of the powers which fit a man for the
+enjoyment of certain rights. We may at least grant that the burden of
+proof should be upon those who would disfranchise all red-haired men.
+But this is because experience shows that the difference of colour
+does not mark a relevant difference. We cannot say, <i>a priori</i>,
+whether the difference between a negro and a white man may not be so
+great as to imply incapacity for enjoyment of equal rights. The black
+skin might&mdash;for anything a mere logician can say&mdash;indicate the mind of
+a chimpanzee. The case against slavery does not rest on the bare fact
+that negroes and whites both belong to the class 'man,' but on the
+fact that the negro has powers and sensibilities which fit him to hold
+property, to form marriages, to learn his letters, and so forth. But
+that fact is undeniably to be proved, not from the bare logic, but
+from observation of the particular case.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham saw with perfect clearness that sound political theory
+requires a basis of solid fact. The main purpose of his whole system
+was to carry out that doctrine thoroughly. His view is given
+vigorously in the 'Anarchical Fallacies'&mdash;a minute examination of the
+French Declaration of Rights in 1791. His argument is of merciless
+length, and occasionally so minute as to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+sound like quibbling. The
+pith, however, is clear enough. 'All men are born and remain free and
+equal in respect of rights' are the first words of the Declaration.
+Nobody is 'born free,' retorts Bentham. Everybody is born, and long
+remains, a helpless child. All men born free! Absurd and miserable
+nonsense! Why, you are complaining in the same breath that nearly
+everybody is a slave.<a name="FNanchor_451_451" id="FNanchor_451_451"></a><a href="#Footnote_451_451" class="fnanchor">[451]</a> To meet this objection, the words might be
+amended by substituting 'ought to be' for 'is.' This, however, on
+Bentham's showing, at once introduces the conception of utility, and
+therefore leads to empirical considerations. The proposition, when
+laid down as a logical necessity, claims to be absolute. Therefore it
+implies that all authority is bad; the authority, for example, of
+parent over child, or of husband over wife; and moreover, that all
+laws to the contrary are <i>ipso facto</i> void. That is why it is
+'anarchical.' It supposes a 'natural right,' not only as suggesting
+reasons for proposed alterations of the legal right, but as actually
+annihilating the right and therefore destroying all government.
+'<i>Natural rights</i>,' says Bentham,<a name="FNanchor_452_452" id="FNanchor_452_452"></a><a href="#Footnote_452_452" class="fnanchor">[452]</a> is simple nonsense; natural and
+imprescriptible rights 'rhetorical nonsense&mdash;nonsense upon stilts.'
+For 'natural right' substitute utility, and you have, of course, a
+reasonable principle, because an appeal to experience. But lay down
+'liberty' as an absolute right and you annihilate law, for every law
+supposes coercion. One man gets liberty simply by restricting the
+liberty of others.<a name="FNanchor_453_453" id="FNanchor_453_453"></a><a href="#Footnote_453_453" class="fnanchor">[453]</a> What Bentham substantially says, therefore, is
+that on this version absolute rights of individuals could mean nothing
+but anarchy; or that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>
+no law can be defended except by a reference to
+facts, and therefore to 'utility.'</p>
+
+<p>One answer might be that the demand is not for absolute liberty, but
+for as much liberty as is compatible with equal liberty for all. The
+fourth article of the Declaration says: 'Liberty consists in being
+able to do that which is not hurtful to another, and therefore the
+exercise of the natural rights of each man has no other bounds than
+those which ensure to the other members of the society the enjoyment
+of the same rights.' This formula corresponds to a theory held by Mr.
+Herbert Spencer; and, as he observes,<a name="FNanchor_454_454" id="FNanchor_454_454"></a><a href="#Footnote_454_454" class="fnanchor">[454]</a> held on different grounds
+by Kant. Bentham's view, indicated by his criticism of this article in
+the 'Anarchical Fallacies,' is therefore worth a moment's notice. The
+formula does not demand the absolute freedom which would condemn all
+coercion and all government; but it still seems to suggest that
+liberty, not utility, is the ultimate end. Bentham's formula,
+therefore, diverges. All government, he holds, is an evil, because
+coercion implies pain. We must therefore minimise, though we cannot
+annihilate, government; but we must keep to utility as the sole test.
+Government should, of course, give to the individual all such rights
+as are 'useful'; but it does not follow, without a reference to
+utility, that men should not be restrained even in 'self-regarding'
+conduct. Some men, women, and children require to be protected against
+the consequences of their own 'weakness, ignorance, or
+imprudence.'<a name="FNanchor_455_455" id="FNanchor_455_455"></a><a href="#Footnote_455_455" class="fnanchor">[455]</a> Bentham adheres, that is, to the strictly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> empirical
+ground. The absolute doctrine requires to be qualified by a reference
+to actual circumstances: and, among those circumstances, as Bentham
+intimates, we must include the capacity of the persons concerned to
+govern themselves. Carried out as an absolute principle, it would
+imply the independence of infants; and must therefore require some
+reference to 'utility.'</p>
+
+<p>Bentham, then, objects to the Jacobin theory as too absolute and too
+'individualist.' The doctrine begs the question; it takes for granted
+what can only be proved by experience; and therefore lays down as
+absolute theories which are only true under certain conditions or with
+reference to the special circumstances to which they are applied. That
+is inconsistent with Bentham's thoroughgoing empiricism. But he had
+antagonists to meet upon the other side: and, in meeting them, he was
+led to a doctrine which has been generally condemned for the very same
+faults&mdash;as absolute and individualist. We have only to ask in what
+sense Bentham appealed to 'experience' to see how he actually reached
+his conclusions. The adherents of the old tradition appealed to
+experience in their own way. The English people, they said, is the
+freest, richest, happiest in the world; it has grown up under the
+British Constitution: therefore the British Constitution is the best
+in the world, as Burke tells you, and the British common law, as
+Blackstone tells you, is the 'perfection of wisdom.' Bentham's reply
+was virtually that although he, like Burke, appealed to experience, he
+appealed to experience scientifically organised, whereas Burke
+appealed to mere blind tradition. Bentham is to be the founder of a
+new science, founded like chemistry on experiment,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+and his methods
+are to be as superior to those of Burke as those of modern chemists to
+those of the alchemists who also invoked experience. The true plan was
+not to throw experience aside because it was alleged by the ignorant
+and the prejudiced, but to interrogate experience systematically, and
+so to become the Bacon or the Newton of legislation, instead of
+wandering off into the <i>a priori</i> constructions of a Descartes or a
+Leibniz.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham thus professes to use an 'inductive' instead of the deductive
+method of the Jacobins; but reaches the same practical conclusions
+from the other end. The process is instructive. He objected to the
+existing inequalities, not as inequalities simply, but as mischievous
+inequalities. He, as well as the Jacobins, would admit that inequality
+required justification; and he agreed with them that, in this case,
+there was no justification. The existing privileges did not promote
+the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.' The attack upon the
+'Anarchical Fallacies' must be taken with the <i>Book of Fallacies</i>, and
+the <i>Book of Fallacies</i> is a sustained and vigorous, though a
+curiously cumbrous, assault upon the Conservative arguments. Its pith
+may be found in Sydney Smith's <i>Noodle's Oration</i>; but it is itself
+well worth reading by any one who can recognise really admirable
+dialectical power, and forgive a little crabbedness of style in
+consideration of genuine intellectual vigour. I only notice Bentham's
+assault upon the 'wisdom of our ancestors.' After pointing out how
+much better we are entitled to judge now that we have got rid of so
+many superstitions, and have learned to read and write, he replies to
+the question, 'Would you have us speak and act as if we never had any
+ancestors?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+'By no means,' he replies; 'though their opinions were of
+little value, their practice is worth attending to; but chiefly
+because it shows the bad consequences of their opinions.' 'From
+foolish opinion comes foolish conduct; from foolish conduct the
+severest disaster; and from the severest disaster the most useful
+warning. It is from the folly, not from the wisdom, of our ancestors
+that we have so much to learn.'<a name="FNanchor_456_456" id="FNanchor_456_456"></a><a href="#Footnote_456_456" class="fnanchor">[456]</a> Bentham has become an 'ancestor,'
+and may teach us by his errors. Pointed and vigorous as is his
+exposure of many of the sophistries by which Conservatives defended
+gross abuses and twisted the existence of any institution into an
+argument for its value, we get some measure from this of Bentham's
+view of history. In attacking an abuse, he says, we have a right to
+inquire into the utility of any and every arrangement. The purpose of
+a court of justice is to decide litigation; it has to ascertain facts
+and apply rules: does it then ascertain facts by the methods most
+conducive to the discovery of truth? Are the rules needlessly complex,
+ambiguous, calculated to give a chance to knaves, or to the longest
+purse? If so, undoubtedly they are mischievous. Bentham had done
+inestimable service in stripping away all the disguises and technical
+phrases which had evaded the plain issue, and therefore made of the
+laws an unintelligible labyrinth. He proceeded to treat in the same
+way of government generally. Does it work efficiently for its
+professed ends? Is it worked in the interests of the nation, or of a
+special class, whose interests conflict with those of the nation? He
+treated, that is, of government as a man of business might investigate
+a commercial undertaking.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> If he found that clerks were lazy,
+ignorant, making money for themselves, or bullying and cheating the
+customers, he would condemn the management. Bentham found the
+'matchless constitution' precisely in this state. He condemned
+political institutions worked for the benefit of a class, and leading,
+especially in legal matters, to endless abuses and chicanery. The
+abuses everywhere imply 'inequality' in some sense; for they arise
+from monopoly. The man who holds a sinecure, or enjoys a privilege,
+uses it for his own private interest. The 'matter of corruption,' as
+Bentham called it, was provided by the privilege and the sinecure. The
+Jacobin might denounce privileges simply as privileges, and Bentham
+denounce them because they were used by the privileged class for
+corrupt purposes. So far, Bentham and the Jacobins were quite at one.
+It mattered little to the result which argument they preferred to use,
+and without doubt they had a very strong case, and did in fact express
+a demand for justice and for a redress of palpable evils. The
+difference seems to be that in one case the appeal is made in the name
+of justice and equality; in the other case, in the name of benevolence
+and utility.</p>
+
+<p>The important point here, however, is to understand Bentham's implicit
+assumptions. J. S. Mill, in criticising his master, points out very
+forcibly the defects arising from Bentham's attitude to history. He
+simply continued, as Mill thinks, the hostility with which the
+critical or destructive school of the eighteenth century regarded
+their ancestors. To the revolutionary party history was a record of
+crimes and follies and of little else. The question will meet us
+again; and here it is
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
+enough to ask what is the reason of his tacit
+implication of Bentham's position. Bentham's whole aim, as I have
+tried to show, was to be described as the construction of a science of
+legislation. The science, again, was to be purely empirical. It was to
+rest throughout upon the observation of facts. That aim&mdash;an admirable
+aim&mdash;runs through his whole work and that of his successors. I have
+noticed, indeed, how easily Bentham took for granted that his
+makeshift classification of common motives amounted to a scientific
+psychology. A similar assumption that a rough sketch of a science is
+the same thing as its definite constitution is characteristic of the
+Utilitarians in general. A scientific spirit is most desirable; but
+the Utilitarians took a very short cut to scientific certainty. Though
+appealing to experience, they reach formul&aelig; as absolute as any
+'intuitionist' could desire. What is the logical process implied? To
+constitute an empirical science is to show that the difference between
+different phenomena is due simply to 'circumstances.' The explanation
+of the facts becomes sufficient when the 'law' can be stated, as that
+of a unit of constant properties placed in varying positions. This
+corresponds to the procedure in the physical sciences, where the
+ultimate aim is to represent all laws as corresponding to the changes
+of position of uniform atoms. In social and political changes the goal
+is the same. J. S. Mill states in the end of his <i>Autobiography</i><a name="FNanchor_457_457" id="FNanchor_457_457"></a><a href="#Footnote_457_457" class="fnanchor">[457]</a>
+that one main purpose of his writing was to show that 'differences
+between individuals, races, or sexes' are due to 'differences in
+circumstances.' In fact, this is an
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
+aim so characteristic from the
+beginning of the whole school, that it may be put down almost as a
+primary postulate. It was not, indeed, definitely formulated; but to
+'explain' a social theorem was taken to be the same thing as to show
+how differences of character or conduct could be explained by
+'circumstance'&mdash;meaning by 'circumstance' something not given in the
+agent himself. We have, however, no more right as good empiricists to
+assert than to deny that all difference comes from 'circumstance.' If
+we take 'man' as a constant quantity in our speculations, it requires
+at least a great many precautions before we can assume that our
+abstract entity corresponds to a real concrete unit. Otherwise we have
+a short cut to a doctrine of 'equality.' The theory of 'the rights of
+man' lays down the formula, and assumes that the facts will
+correspond. The Utilitarian assumes the equality of fact, and of
+course brings out an equally absolute formula. 'Equality,' in some
+sense, is introduced by a side wind, though not explicitly laid down
+as an axiom.<a name="FNanchor_458_458" id="FNanchor_458_458"></a><a href="#Footnote_458_458" class="fnanchor">[458]</a> This underlying tendency may partly explain the
+coincidence of results&mdash;though it would require a good many
+qualifications in detail; but here I need only take Bentham's more or
+less unconscious application.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham's tacit assumption, in fact, is that there is an average
+'man.' Different specimens of the race, indeed, may vary widely
+according to age, sex, and so forth; but, for purposes of legislation,
+he may serve as a unit. We can assume that he has on the average
+certain qualities from which his actions in the mass can
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> be
+determined with sufficient accuracy, and we are tempted to assume that
+they are mainly the qualities obvious to an inhabitant of Queen's
+Square Place about the year 1800. Mill defends Bentham against the
+charge that he assumed his codes to be good for all men everywhere. To
+that, says Mill,<a name="FNanchor_459_459" id="FNanchor_459_459"></a><a href="#Footnote_459_459" class="fnanchor">[459]</a> the essay upon the 'Influence of Time and Place
+in Matters of Legislation' is a complete answer. Yet Mill<a name="FNanchor_460_460" id="FNanchor_460_460"></a><a href="#Footnote_460_460" class="fnanchor">[460]</a> admits
+in the same breath that Bentham omitted all reference to 'national
+character.' In fact, as we have seen, Bentham was ready to legislate
+for Hindoostan as well as for his own parish; and to make codes not
+only for England, Spain, and Russia, but for Morocco. The Essay
+mentioned really explains the point. Bentham not only admitted but
+asserted as energetically as became an empiricist, that we must allow
+for 'circumstances'; and circumstances include not only climate and so
+forth, but the varying beliefs and customs of the people under
+consideration. The real assumption is that all such circumstances are
+superficial, and can be controlled and altered indefinitely by the
+'legislator.' The Moor, the Hindoo, and the Englishman are all
+radically identical; and the differences which must be taken into
+account for the moment can be removed by judicious means. Without
+pausing to illustrate this from the Essay, I may remark that for many
+purposes such an assumption is justifiable and guides ordinary common
+sense. If we ask what would be the best constitution for a commercial
+company, or the best platform for a political party, we can form a
+fair guess by arguing from the average of Bentham and his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+contemporaries&mdash;especially if we are shrewd attornies or political
+wirepullers. Only we are not therefore in a position to talk about the
+'science of human nature' or to deal with problems of 'sociology.'
+This, however, gives Bentham's 'individualism' in a sense of the
+phrase already explained. He starts from the 'ready-made man,' and
+deduces all institutions or legal arrangements from his properties. I
+have tried to show how naturally this view fell in with the ordinary
+political conceptions of the time. It shows, again, why Bentham
+disregards history. When we have such a science, empirical or <i>a
+priori</i>, history is at most of secondary importance. We can deduce all
+our maxims of conduct from the man himself as he is before us. History
+only shows how terribly he blundered in the pre-scientific period. The
+blunders may give us a hint here and there. Man was essentially the
+same in the first and the eighteenth century, and the differences are
+due to the clumsy devices which he made by rule of thumb. We do not
+want to refer to them now, except as illustrations of errors. We may
+remark how difficult it was to count before the present notation was
+invented; but when it has once been invented, we may learn to use it
+without troubling our heads about our ancestors' clumsy contrivances
+for doing without it. This leads to the real shortcoming. There is a
+point at which the historical view becomes important&mdash;the point,
+namely, where it is essential to remember that man is not a ready-made
+article, but the product of a long and still continuing 'evolution.'
+Bentham's attack (in the <i>Fragment</i>) upon the 'social contract' is
+significant. He was, no doubt, perfectly right in saying that an
+imaginary contract could
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+add no force to the ultimate grounds for the
+social union. Nobody would now accept the fiction in that stage. And
+yet the 'social contract' may be taken to recognise a fact; namely,
+that the underlying instincts upon which society alternately rests
+correspond to an order of reasons from those which determine more
+superficial relations. Society is undoubtedly useful, and its utility
+may be regarded as its ground. But the utility of society means much
+more than the utility of a railway company or a club, which postulates
+as existing a whole series of already established institutions. To
+Bentham an 'utility' appeared to be a kind of permanent and ultimate
+entity which is the same at all periods&mdash;it corresponds to a
+psychological currency of constant value. To show, therefore, that the
+social contract recognises 'utility' is to show that the whole
+organism is constructed just as any particular part is constructed.
+Man comes first and 'society' afterwards. I have already noticed how
+this applies to his statements about the utility of a law; how his
+argument assumes an already constituted society, and seems to overlook
+the difference between the organic law upon which all order
+essentially depends, and some particular modification or corollary
+which may be superinduced. We now have to notice the political version
+of the same method. The 'law,' according to Bentham, is a rule
+enforced by a 'sanction.' The imposer of the rule in the phrase which
+Hobbes had made famous is the 'sovereign.' Hobbes was a favourite
+author, indeed, of the later Utilitarians, though Bentham does not
+appear to have studied him. The relation is one of natural affinity.
+When in the <i>Constitutional Code</i> Bentham transfers the 'sovereignty'
+from the king to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+the 'people,'<a name="FNanchor_461_461" id="FNanchor_461_461"></a><a href="#Footnote_461_461" class="fnanchor">[461]</a> he shows the exact difference
+between his doctrine and that of the <i>Leviathan</i>. Both thinkers are
+absolutists in principle, though Hobbes gives to a monarch the power
+which Bentham gives to a democracy. The attributes remain though their
+subject is altered. The 'sovereign,' in fact, is the keystone of the
+whole Utilitarian system. He represents the ultimate source of all
+authority, and supplies the motive for all obedience. As Hobbes put
+it, he is a kind of mortal God.</p>
+
+<p>Mill's criticism of Bentham suggests the consequences. There are, he
+says,<a name="FNanchor_462_462" id="FNanchor_462_462"></a><a href="#Footnote_462_462" class="fnanchor">[462]</a> three great questions: What government is for the good of
+the people? How are they to be induced to obey it? How is it to be
+made responsible? The third question, he says, is the only one
+seriously considered by Bentham; and Bentham's answer, we have seen,
+leads to that 'tyranny of the majority' which was Mill's great
+stumbling-block. Why, then, does Bentham omit the other questions? or
+rather, how would he answer them? for he certainly assumes an answer.
+People, in the first place, are 'induced to obey' by the sanctions.
+They don't rob that they may not go to prison. That is a sufficient
+answer at a given moment. It assumes, indeed, that the law will be
+obeyed. The policeman, the gaoler, and the judge will do what the
+sovereign&mdash;whether despot or legislature&mdash;orders them to do. The
+jurist may naturally take this for granted. He does not go 'behind the
+law.' That is the law which the sovereign has declared to be the law.
+In that sense, the sovereign is omnipotent. He can, as a fact,
+threaten evildoers with the gallows; and the jurist simply takes the
+fact for granted, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+assumes that the coercion is an ultimate fact.
+No doubt it is ultimate for the individual subject. The immediate
+restraint is the policeman, and we need not ask upon what does the
+policeman depend. If, however, we persist in asking, we come to the
+historical problems which Bentham simply omits. The law itself, in
+fact, ultimately rests upon 'custom,'&mdash;upon the whole system of
+instincts, beliefs, and passions which induce people to obey
+government, and are, so to speak, the substance out of which loyalty
+and respect for the law is framed. These, again, are the product of an
+indefinitely long elaboration, which Bentham takes for granted. He
+assumes as perfectly natural and obvious that a number of men should
+meet, as the Americans or Frenchmen met, and create a constitution.
+That the possibility of such a proceeding involves centuries of
+previous training does not occur to him. It is assumed that the
+constitution can be made out of hand, and this assumption is of the
+highest importance, not only historically, but for immediate practice.
+Mill assumes too easily that Bentham has secured responsibility.
+Bentham assumes that an institution will work as it is intended to
+work&mdash;perhaps the commonest error of constitution-mongers. If the
+people use the instruments which he provides, they have a legal method
+for enforcing obedience. To infer that they will do so is to infer
+that all the organic instincts will operate precisely as he intends;
+that each individual, for example, will form an independent opinion
+upon legislative questions, vote for men who will apply his opinions,
+and see that his representatives perform his bidding honestly. That
+they should do so is essential to his scheme; but that they will do so
+is what he takes
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
+for granted. He assumes, that is, that there is no
+need for inquiring into the social instincts which lie beneath all
+political action. You can make your machine and assume the moving
+force. That is the natural result of considering political and
+legislative problems without taking into account the whole character
+of the human materials employed in the construction. Bentham's
+sovereign is thus absolute. He rules by coercion, as a foreign power
+may rule by the sword in a conquered province. Thus, force is the
+essence of government, and it is needless to go further. To secure the
+right application of the force, we have simply to distribute it among
+the subjects. Government still means coercion, and ultimately nothing
+else; but then, as the subjects are simply moved by their own
+interests, that is, by utility, they will apply the power to secure
+those interests. Therefore, all that is wanted is this distribution,
+and Mill's first problem, What government is for the good of the
+people? is summarily answered. The question, how obedience is to be
+secured, is evaded by confining the answer to the 'sanctions,' and
+taking for granted that the process of distributing power is perfectly
+simple, or that a new order can be introduced as easily as parliament
+can pass an act for establishing a new police in London. The 'social
+contract' is abolished; but it is taken for granted that the whole
+power of the sovereign can be distributed, and rules made for its
+application by the common sense of the various persons interested.
+Finally, the one bond outside of the individual is the sovereign. He
+represents all that holds society together; his 'sanctions,' as I have
+said, are taken to be on the same plane with the 'moral
+sanctions'&mdash;not dependent
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+upon them, but other modes of applying
+similar motives. As the sovereign, again, is in a sense omnipotent,
+and yet can be manufactured, so to speak, by voluntary arrangements
+among the individual members of society, there is no limit to the
+influence which he may exercise. I note, indeed, that I am speaking
+rather of the tendencies of the theory than of definitely formulated
+conclusions. Most of the Utilitarians were exceedingly shrewd,
+practical people, whose regard for hard facts imposed limits upon
+their speculations. They should have been the last people to believe
+too implicitly in the magical efficacy of political contrivances, for
+they were fully aware that many men are knaves and most men fools.
+They probably put little faith in Bentham's Utopia, except as a remote
+ideal, and an ideal of unimaginative minds. The Utopia was constructed
+on 'individualist' principles, because common sense naturally approves
+individualism. The whole social and political order is clearly the sum
+of the individuals, who combine to form an aggregate; and theories
+about social bonds take one to the mystical and sentimental. The
+absolute tendency is common to Bentham and the Jacobins. Whether the
+individual be taken as a unit of constant properties, or as the
+subject of absolute rights, we reach equally absolute conclusions.
+When all the social and political regulations are regarded as
+indefinitely modifiable, the ultimate laws come to depend upon the
+absolute framework of unalterable fact. This, again, is often the
+right point of view for immediate questions in which we may take for
+granted that the average individual is in fact constant; and, as I
+have said in regard to Bentham's legislative process, leads to very
+relevant and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>
+important, though not ultimate, questions. But there are
+certain other results which require to be noticed. 'Individualism,'
+like other words that have become watchwords of controversy, has
+various shades of meaning, and requires a little more definition.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_434_434" id="Footnote_434_434"></a><a href="#FNanchor_434_434"><span class="label">[434]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, v. 97, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_435_435" id="Footnote_435_435"></a><a href="#FNanchor_435_435"><span class="label">[435]</span></a> See preface to <i>Constitutional Code</i> in vol. ix.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_436_436" id="Footnote_436_436"></a><a href="#FNanchor_436_436"><span class="label">[436]</span></a> Bentham's nephew, George, who died when approaching his
+eighty-fourth birthday, devoted the last twenty-five years of his life
+with equal assiduity to his <i>Genera Plantarum</i>. See a curious anecdote
+of his persistence in the <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_437_437" id="Footnote_437_437"></a><a href="#FNanchor_437_437"><span class="label">[437]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, iii. 573.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_438_438" id="Footnote_438_438"></a><a href="#FNanchor_438_438"><span class="label">[438]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, ix. 5, 8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_439_439" id="Footnote_439_439"></a><a href="#FNanchor_439_439"><span class="label">[439]</span></a> The theory, as Mill reminds us, had been very pointedly
+anticipated by Helv&eacute;tius. Bentham's practical experience, however, had
+forced it upon his attention.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_440_440" id="Footnote_440_440"></a><a href="#FNanchor_440_440"><span class="label">[440]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, ix. 141. The general principle, however, is
+confirmed by the case of George <small>III.</small></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_441_441" id="Footnote_441_441"></a><a href="#FNanchor_441_441"><span class="label">[441]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ix. 45.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_442_442" id="Footnote_442_442"></a><a href="#FNanchor_442_442"><span class="label">[442]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ix. 98.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_443_443" id="Footnote_443_443"></a><a href="#FNanchor_443_443"><span class="label">[443]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, ix. 98.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_444_444" id="Footnote_444_444"></a><a href="#FNanchor_444_444"><span class="label">[444]</span></a> e.g. <i>Ibid.</i> ix. 38, 50, 63, 99, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_445_445" id="Footnote_445_445"></a><a href="#FNanchor_445_445"><span class="label">[445]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ('Plan of Parliamentary Reform,') iii. 463.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_446_446" id="Footnote_446_446"></a><a href="#FNanchor_446_446"><span class="label">[446]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, ix. 594.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_447_447" id="Footnote_447_447"></a><a href="#FNanchor_447_447"><span class="label">[447]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ix. 62.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_448_448" id="Footnote_448_448"></a><a href="#FNanchor_448_448"><span class="label">[448]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ix. 24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_449_449" id="Footnote_449_449"></a><a href="#FNanchor_449_449"><span class="label">[449]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ix. 48.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_450_450" id="Footnote_450_450"></a><a href="#FNanchor_450_450"><span class="label">[450]</span></a> <i>Dissertations</i>, i. 377.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_451_451" id="Footnote_451_451"></a><a href="#FNanchor_451_451"><span class="label">[451]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, ii. 497.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_452_452" id="Footnote_452_452"></a><a href="#FNanchor_452_452"><span class="label">[452]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 501.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_453_453" id="Footnote_453_453"></a><a href="#FNanchor_453_453"><span class="label">[453]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ii. 503.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_454_454" id="Footnote_454_454"></a><a href="#FNanchor_454_454"><span class="label">[454]</span></a> <i>Justice</i>, p. 264; so Price, in his <i>Observations on
+Liberty</i>, lays it down that government is never to entrench upon
+private liberty, 'except so far as private liberty entrenches on the
+liberty of others.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_455_455" id="Footnote_455_455"></a><a href="#FNanchor_455_455"><span class="label">[455]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, ii. 506.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_456_456" id="Footnote_456_456"></a><a href="#FNanchor_456_456"><span class="label">[456]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, ii. 401.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_457_457" id="Footnote_457_457"></a><a href="#FNanchor_457_457"><span class="label">[457]</span></a> <i>Autobiography</i>, p. 274.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_458_458" id="Footnote_458_458"></a><a href="#FNanchor_458_458"><span class="label">[458]</span></a> Hobbes, in the <i>Leviathan</i> (chap. xiii.), has in the
+same way to argue for the <i>de facto</i> equality of men.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_459_459" id="Footnote_459_459"></a><a href="#FNanchor_459_459"><span class="label">[459]</span></a> <i>Dissertations</i>, i. 375.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_460_460" id="Footnote_460_460"></a><a href="#FNanchor_460_460"><span class="label">[460]</span></a> I remark by anticipation that this expression implies a
+reference to Mill's <i>Ethology</i>, of which I shall have to speak.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_461_461" id="Footnote_461_461"></a><a href="#FNanchor_461_461"><span class="label">[461]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, ix. 96, 113.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_462_462" id="Footnote_462_462"></a><a href="#FNanchor_462_462"><span class="label">[462]</span></a> <i>Dissertations</i>, i. 376.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="scs">VII. <a name="VI_VII" id="VI_VII"></a>INDIVIDUALISM</p>
+
+<p>'Individualism' in the first place is generally mentioned in a
+different connection. The 'ready-made' man of whom I have spoken
+becomes the 'economic man.' Bentham himself contributed little to
+economic theory. His most important writing was the <i>Defence of
+Usury</i>, and in this, as we have seen, he was simply adding a corollary
+to the <i>Wealth of Nations</i>. The <i>Wealth of Nations</i> itself represented
+the spirit of business; the revolt of men who were building up a vast
+industrial system against the fetters imposed by traditional
+legislation and by rulers who regarded industry in general, as Telford
+is said to have regarded rivers. Rivers were meant to supply canals,
+and trade to supply tax-gatherers. With this revolt, of course,
+Bentham was in full sympathy, but here I shall only speak of one
+doctrine of great interest, which occurs both in his political
+treatises and his few economical remarks. Bentham objected, as we have
+seen, to the abstract theory of equality; yet it was to the mode of
+deduction rather than to the doctrine itself which he objected. He
+gave, in fact, his own defence; and it is one worth notice.<a name="FNanchor_463_463" id="FNanchor_463_463"></a><a href="#Footnote_463_463" class="fnanchor">[463]</a> The
+principle of equality is derivative, not ultimate. Equality is good
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+because equality increases the sum of happiness. Thus, as he
+says,<a name="FNanchor_464_464" id="FNanchor_464_464"></a><a href="#Footnote_464_464" class="fnanchor">[464]</a> if two men have &pound;1000, and you transfer &pound;500 from one to
+the other, you increase the recipient's wealth by one-third, and
+diminish the loser's wealth by one-half. You therefore add less
+pleasure than you subtract. The principle is given less
+mathematically<a name="FNanchor_465_465" id="FNanchor_465_465"></a><a href="#Footnote_465_465" class="fnanchor">[465]</a> by the more significant argument that 'felicity'
+depends not simply on the 'matter of felicity' or the stimulus, but
+also on the sensibility to felicity which is necessarily limited.
+Therefore by adding wealth&mdash;taking, for example, from a thousand
+labourers to give to one king&mdash;you are supersaturating a sensibility
+already glutted by taking away from others a great amount of real
+happiness. With this argument, which has of late years become
+conspicuous in economics, he connects another of primary importance.
+The first condition of happiness, he says, is not 'equality' but
+'security.' Now you can only equalise at the expense of security. If I
+am to have my property taken away whenever it is greater than my
+neighbour's, I can have no security.<a name="FNanchor_466_466" id="FNanchor_466_466"></a><a href="#Footnote_466_466" class="fnanchor">[466]</a> Hence, if the two principles
+conflict, equality should give way. Security is the primary, which
+must override the secondary, aim. Must the two principles, then,
+always conflict? No; but 'time is the only mediator.'<a name="FNanchor_467_467" id="FNanchor_467_467"></a><a href="#Footnote_467_467" class="fnanchor">[467]</a> The law may
+help to accumulate inequalities; but in a prosperous state there is a
+'continual progress towards equality.' The law has to stand aside; not
+to maintain monopolies; not to restrain trade; not to permit entails;
+and then property will diffuse itself by a natural process, already
+exemplified in the growth of Europe. The 'pyramids'
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> heaped up in
+feudal times have been lowered, and their '<i>d&eacute;bris</i> spread abroad'
+among the industrious. Here again we see how Bentham virtually
+diverges from the <i>a priori</i> school. Their absolute tendencies would
+introduce 'equality' by force; he would leave it to the spontaneous
+progress of security. Hence Bentham is in the main an adherent of what
+he calls<a name="FNanchor_468_468" id="FNanchor_468_468"></a><a href="#Footnote_468_468" class="fnanchor">[468]</a> the '<i>laissez-nous faire</i>' principle. He advocates it
+most explicitly in the so-called <i>Manual of Political Economy</i>&mdash;a
+short essay first printed in 1798.<a name="FNanchor_469_469" id="FNanchor_469_469"></a><a href="#Footnote_469_469" class="fnanchor">[469]</a> The tract, however, such as it
+is, is less upon political economy proper than upon economic
+legislation; and its chief conclusion is that almost all legislation
+is improper. His main principle is 'Be quiet' (the equivalent of the
+French phrase, which surely should have been excluded from so English
+a theory). Security and freedom are all that industry requires; and
+industry should say to government only what Diogenes said to
+Alexander, 'Stand out of my sunshine.'<a name="FNanchor_470_470" id="FNanchor_470_470"></a><a href="#Footnote_470_470" class="fnanchor">[470]</a></p>
+
+<p>Once more, however, Bentham will not lay down the 'let alone'
+principle absolutely. His adherence to the empirical method is too
+decided. The doctrine 'be quiet,' though generally true, rests upon
+utility, and may, therefore, always be qualified by proving that in a
+particular case the balance of utility is the other way. In fact, some
+of Bentham's favourite projects would be condemned by an absolute
+adherent of the doctrine. The Panopticon, for example, though a 'mill
+to grind rogues honest' could be applied to others than rogues, and
+Bentham hoped to make his machinery equally effective in the case of
+pauperism. A system of national education is also included in his
+ideal constitution. It is, in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> fact, important to remember that the
+'individualism' of Benthamism does not necessarily coincide with an
+absolute restriction of government interference. The general tendency
+was in that direction; and in purely economical questions, scarcely
+any exception was admitted to the rule. Men are the best judges, it
+was said, of their own interest; and the interference of rulers in a
+commercial transaction is the interference of people inferior in
+knowledge of the facts, and whose interests are 'sinister' or
+inconsistent with those of the persons really concerned. Utility,
+therefore, will, as a rule, forbid the action of government: but, as
+utility is always the ultimate principle, and there may be cases in
+which it does not coincide with the 'let alone' principle, we must
+always admit the possibility that in special cases government can
+interfere usefully, and, in that case, approve the interference.</p>
+
+<p>Hence we have the ethical application of these theories. The
+individualist position naturally tends to take the form of egoism. The
+moral sentiments, whatever they may be, are clearly an intrinsic part
+of the organic social instincts. They are intimately involved in the
+whole process of social evolution. But this view corresponds precisely
+to the conditions which Bentham overlooks. The individual is already
+there. The moral and the legal sanctions are 'external'; something
+imposed by the action of others; corresponding to 'coercion,' whether
+by physical force or the dread of public opinion; and, in any case, an
+accretion or addition, not a profound modification of his whole
+nature. The Utilitarian 'man' therefore inclines to consider other
+people as merely parts of the necessary machinery. Their feelings
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> are
+relevant only as influencing their outward conduct. If a man gives me
+a certain 'lot' of pain or pleasure, it does not matter what may be
+his motives. The 'motive' for all conduct corresponds in all cases to
+the pain or pleasure accruing to the agent. It is true that his
+happiness will be more or less affected by his relations to others.
+But as conduct is ruled by a calculation of the balance of pains or
+pleasures dependent upon any course of action, it simplifies matters
+materially, if each man regards his neighbour's feelings simply as
+instrumental, not intrinsically interesting. And thus the coincidence
+between that conduct which maximises my happiness and that conduct
+which maximises happiness in general, must be regarded as more or less
+accidental or liable in special cases to disappear. If I am made
+happier by action which makes others miserable, the rule of utility
+will lead to my preference of myself.</p>
+
+<p>Here we have the question whether the Utilitarian system be
+essentially a selfish system. Bentham, with his vague psychology, does
+not lay down the doctrine absolutely. After giving this list of
+self-regarding 'springs of action,' he proceeds to add the pleasures
+and pains of 'sympathy' and 'antipathy' which, he says, are not
+self-regarding. Moreover, as we have seen, he has some difficulty in
+denying that 'benevolence' is a necessarily moral motive: it is only
+capable of prompting to bad conduct in so far as it is insufficiently
+enlightened; and it is clear that a moralist who makes the 'greatest
+happiness of the greatest number' his universal test, has some reason
+for admitting as an elementary pleasure the desire for the greatest
+happiness. This comes out curiously in the <i>Constitutional Code</i>. He
+there lays down the 'self-preference principle'&mdash;the principle,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
+namely, that 'every human being' is determined in every action by his
+judgment of what will produce the greatest happiness to himself,
+'whatsoever be the effect ... in relation to the happiness of other
+similar beings, any or all of them taken together.'<a name="FNanchor_471_471" id="FNanchor_471_471"></a><a href="#Footnote_471_471" class="fnanchor">[471]</a> Afterwards,
+however, he observes that it is 'the constant and arduous task of
+every moralist' and of every legislator who deserves the name to
+'increase the influence of sympathy at the expense of that of
+self-regard and of sympathy for the greater number at the expense of
+sympathy for the lesser number.'<a name="FNanchor_472_472" id="FNanchor_472_472"></a><a href="#Footnote_472_472" class="fnanchor">[472]</a> He tries to reconcile these
+views by the remark 'that even sympathy has its root in self-regard,'
+and he argues, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has done more fully, that if
+Adam cared only for Eve and Eve only for Adam&mdash;neither caring at all
+for himself or herself&mdash;both would perish in less than a year.
+Self-regard, that is, is essential, and sympathy supposes its
+existence. Hence Bentham puts himself through a catechism.<a name="FNanchor_473_473" id="FNanchor_473_473"></a><a href="#Footnote_473_473" class="fnanchor">[473]</a> What
+is the 'best' government? That which causes the greatest happiness of
+the given community. What community? 'Any community, which is as much
+as to say, every community.' But <i>why</i> do you desire this happiness?
+Because the establishment of that happiness would contribute to <i>my</i>
+greatest happiness. And <i>how</i> do you prove that you desire this
+result? By my labours to obtain it, replies Bentham. This oddly omits
+the more obvious question, how can you be sure that your happiness
+will be promoted by the greatest happiness of all? What if the two
+criteria differ? I desire the general happiness, he might have
+replied, because my benevolence is an original or elementary instinct
+which can override my
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>
+self-love; or I desire it, he would perhaps
+have said, because I know as a fact that the happiness of others will
+incidentally contribute to my own. The first answer would fall in with
+some of his statements; but the second is, as I think must be
+admitted, more in harmony with his system. Perhaps, indeed, the most
+characteristic thing is Bentham's failure to discuss explicitly the
+question whether human action is or is not necessarily 'selfish.' He
+tells us in regard to the 'springs of action' that all human action is
+always 'interested,' but explains that the word properly includes
+actions in which the motive is not 'self-regarding.'<a name="FNanchor_474_474" id="FNanchor_474_474"></a><a href="#Footnote_474_474" class="fnanchor">[474]</a> It merely
+means, in fact, that all conduct has motives. The statement, which I
+have quoted about the 'self-preference' principle may only mean a
+doctrine which is perfectly compatible with a belief in
+'altruism'&mdash;the doctrine, namely, that as a fact most people are
+chiefly interested by their own affairs. The legislator, he tells us,
+should try to increase sympathy, but the less he takes sympathy for
+the 'basis of his arrangements'&mdash;that is, the less call he makes upon
+purely unselfish motives&mdash;the greater will be his success.<a name="FNanchor_475_475" id="FNanchor_475_475"></a><a href="#Footnote_475_475" class="fnanchor">[475]</a> This
+is a shrewd and, I should say, a very sound remark, but it
+implies&mdash;not that all motives are selfish in the last analysis,
+but&mdash;that the legislation should not assume too exalted a level of
+ordinary morality. The utterances in the very unsatisfactory
+<i>Deontology</i> are of little value, and seem to imply a moral sentiment
+corresponding to a petty form of commonplace prudence.<a name="FNanchor_476_476" id="FNanchor_476_476"></a><a href="#Footnote_476_476" class="fnanchor">[476]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
+Leaving this point, however, the problem necessarily presented itself
+to Bentham in a form in which selfishness is the predominating force,
+and any recognition of independent benevolence rather an incumbrance
+than a help. If we take the 'self-preference principle' absolutely,
+the question becomes how a multitude of individuals, each separately
+pursuing his own happiness, can so arrange matters that their joint
+action may secure the happiness of all. Clearly a man, however
+selfish, has an interest generally in putting down theft and murder.
+He is already provided with a number of interests to which security,
+at least, and therefore a regular administration of justice, is
+essential. His shop could not be carried on without the police; and he
+may agree to pay the expenses, even if others reap the benefit in
+greater proportion. A theory of legislation, therefore, which supposes
+ready formed all the instincts which make a decent commercial society
+possible can do without much reference to sympathy or altruism.
+Bentham's man is not the colourless unit of <i>a priori</i> writing, nor
+the noble savage of Rousseau, but the respectable citizen with a
+policeman round the corner. Such a man may well hold that honesty is
+the best policy; he has enough sympathy to be kind to his old mother,
+and help a friend in distress; but the need of romantic and elevated
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>
+conduct rarely occurs to him; and the heroic, if he meets it, appears
+to him as an exception, not far removed from the silly. He does not
+reflect&mdash;especially if he cares nothing for history&mdash;how even the
+society in which he is a contented unit has been built up, and how
+much loyalty and heroism has been needed for the work; nor even, to do
+him justice, what unsuspected capacities may lurk in his own
+commonplace character. The really characteristic point is, however,
+that Bentham does not clearly face the problem. He is content to take
+for granted as an ultimate fact that the self-interest principle in
+the long run coincides with the greatest 'happiness' principle, and
+leaves the problem to his successors. There we shall meet it again.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, Bentham's view of religion requires a word. The short reply,
+however, would be sufficient, that he did not believe in any theology,
+and was in the main indifferent to the whole question till it
+encountered him in political matters. His first interest apparently
+was roused by the educational questions which I have noticed, and the
+proposal to teach the catechism. Bentham, remembering the early
+bullying at Oxford, examines the catechism; and argues in his usual
+style that to enforce it is to compel children to tell lies. But this
+leads him to assail the church generally; and he regards the church
+simply as a part of the huge corrupt machinery which elsewhere had
+created Judge and Co. He states many facts about non-residence and
+bloated bishoprics which had a very serious importance; and he then
+asks how the work might be done more cheaply. As a clergyman's only
+duty is to read weekly services and preach sermons, he suggests
+(whether seriously may
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
+be doubted) that this might be done as well by
+teaching a parish boy to read properly, and provide him with the
+prayer-book and the homilies.<a name="FNanchor_477_477" id="FNanchor_477_477"></a><a href="#Footnote_477_477" class="fnanchor">[477]</a> A great deal of expense would be
+saved. This, again, seems to have led him to attack St. Paul, whom he
+took to be responsible for dogmatic theology, and therefore for the
+catechism; and he cross-examines the apostle, and confronts his
+various accounts of the conversion with a keenness worthy of a
+professional lawyer. In one of the <small>MSS.</small> at University College the same
+method is applied to the gospels. Bentham was clearly not capable of
+anticipating Renan. From these studies he was led to the far more
+interesting book, published under the name of <i>Philip Beauchamp</i>.
+Bentham supplied the argument in part; but to me it seems clear that
+it owes so much to the editor, Grote, that it may more fitly be
+discussed hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>The limitations and defects of Bentham's doctrine have been made
+abundantly evident by later criticism. They were due partly to his
+personal character, and partly to the intellectual and special
+atmosphere in which he was brought up. But it is more important to
+recognise the immense real value of his doctrine. Briefly, I should
+say, that there is hardly an argument in Bentham's voluminous writings
+which is not to the purpose so far as it goes. Given his point of
+view, he is invariably cogent and relevant. And, moreover, that is a
+point of view which has to be taken. No ethical or political doctrine
+can, as I hold, be satisfactory which does not find a place for
+Bentham, though he was far, indeed, from giving a complete theory of
+his subject. And the main reason of this is that which I have already
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>
+indicated. Bentham's whole life was spent in the attempt to create a
+science of legislation. Even where he is most tiresome, there is a
+certain interest in his unflagging working out of every argument, and
+its application to all conceivable cases. It is all genuine reasoning;
+and throughout it is dominated by a respect for good solid facts. His
+hatred of 'vague generalities'<a name="FNanchor_478_478" id="FNanchor_478_478"></a><a href="#Footnote_478_478" class="fnanchor">[478]</a> means that he will be content with
+no formula which cannot be interpreted in terms of definite facts. The
+resolution to insist upon this should really be characteristic of
+every writer upon similar subjects, and no one ever surpassed Bentham
+in attention to it. Classify and re-classify, to make sure that at
+every point your classes correspond to realities. In the effort to
+carry out these principles, Bentham at least brought innumerable
+questions to a sound test, and exploded many pestilent fallacies. If
+he did not succeed further, if whole spheres of thought remained
+outside of his vision, it was because in his day there was not only no
+science of 'sociology' or psychology&mdash;there are no such sciences
+now&mdash;but no adequate perception of the vast variety of investigation
+which would be necessary to lay a basis for them. But the effort to
+frame a science is itself valuable, indeed of surpassing value, so far
+as it is combined with a genuine respect for facts. It is common
+enough to attempt to create a science by inventing technical
+terminology. Bentham tried the far wider and far more fruitful method
+of a minute investigation of particular facts. His work, therefore,
+will stand, however different some of the results may appear when
+fitted into a different framework. And, therefore, however crudely and
+im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>perfectly,
+Bentham did, as I believe, help to turn speculation into
+a true and profitable channel. Of that, more will appear hereafter;
+but, if any one doubts Bentham's services, I will only suggest to him
+to compare Bentham with any of his British contemporaries, and to ask
+where he can find anything at all comparable to his resolute attempt
+to bring light and order into a chaotic infusion of compromise and
+prejudice.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><strong>NOTES:</strong>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_463_463" id="Footnote_463_463"></a><a href="#FNanchor_463_463"><span class="label">[463]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, 'Civil Code' (from Dumont), i. 302, 305;
+<i>Ibid.</i> ('Principles of Constitutional Code') ii. 271; <i>Ibid.</i>
+('Constitutional Code') ix. 15-18.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_464_464" id="Footnote_464_464"></a><a href="#FNanchor_464_464"><span class="label">[464]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, i. 306 <i>n.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_465_465" id="Footnote_465_465"></a><a href="#FNanchor_465_465"><span class="label">[465]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ix. 15.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_466_466" id="Footnote_466_466"></a><a href="#FNanchor_466_466"><span class="label">[466]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ('Principles of Penal Code') i. 311.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_467_467" id="Footnote_467_467"></a><a href="#FNanchor_467_467"><span class="label">[467]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> i. 312.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_468_468" id="Footnote_468_468"></a><a href="#FNanchor_468_468"><span class="label">[468]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, x. 440.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_469_469" id="Footnote_469_469"></a><a href="#FNanchor_469_469"><span class="label">[469]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> iii. 33, etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_470_470" id="Footnote_470_470"></a><a href="#FNanchor_470_470"><span class="label">[470]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> iii. 35.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_471_471" id="Footnote_471_471"></a><a href="#FNanchor_471_471"><span class="label">[471]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, ix. 5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_472_472" id="Footnote_472_472"></a><a href="#FNanchor_472_472"><span class="label">[472]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ix. 192.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_473_473" id="Footnote_473_473"></a><a href="#FNanchor_473_473"><span class="label">[473]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ix. 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_474_474" id="Footnote_474_474"></a><a href="#FNanchor_474_474"><span class="label">[474]</span></a> <i>Works</i>, i. 212.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_475_475" id="Footnote_475_475"></a><a href="#FNanchor_475_475"><span class="label">[475]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> ix. 192.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_476_476" id="Footnote_476_476"></a><a href="#FNanchor_476_476"><span class="label">[476]</span></a> See, <i>e.g.</i>, i. 83, where sympathy seems to be taken as
+an ultimate pleasure; and ii. 133, where he says 'dream not that men
+will move their little finger to serve you unless their advantage in
+so doing be obvious to them.' See also the apologue of 'Walter Wise,'
+who becomes Lord Mayor, and 'Timothy Thoughtless,' who ends at Botany
+Bay (i. 118), giving the lowest kind of prudential morality. The
+manuscript of the <i>Deontology</i>, now in University College, London,
+seems to prove that Bentham was substantially the author, though the
+Mills seem to have suspected Bowring of adulterating the true
+doctrine. He appears to have been an honest if not very intelligent
+editor; though the rewriting, necessary in all Bentham's works, was
+damaging in this case; and he is probably responsible for some
+rhetorical amplification, especially in the later part.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_477_477" id="Footnote_477_477"></a><a href="#FNanchor_477_477"><span class="label">[477]</span></a> <i>Church of Englandism</i> (Catechism examined), p. 207.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_478_478" id="Footnote_478_478"></a><a href="#FNanchor_478_478"><span class="label">[478]</span></a> See this phrase expounded in <i>Works</i> ('Book of
+Fallacies'), ii. 440, etc.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><br />END OF VOL. I</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 33%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="NOTE_ON_BENTHAMS_WRITINGS" id="NOTE_ON_BENTHAMS_WRITINGS"></a>NOTE ON BENTHAM'S WRITINGS</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>
+The following account of Bentham's writings may be of some use. The
+arrangement is intended to show what were the topics which attracted
+his attention at successive periods.</p>
+
+<p>The collected <i>Works</i>, edited by Bowring, appeared from 1838 to 1843
+in eleven volumes, the last two containing the life and an elaborate
+index. The first nine volumes consist partly of the works already
+published; partly of works published for the first time from Bentham's
+<small>MSS.</small>; and partly of versions of Dumont's redactions of Bentham.
+Dumont's publications were (1) <i>Trait&eacute;s de Legislation civile et
+p&eacute;nale</i> (1802; second edition, revised, 1820): [vol. i. contains
+<i>Principes g&eacute;n&eacute;raux de Legislation</i> and <i>Principes du Code civil</i>;
+vol. ii. <i>Principes du Code p&eacute;nal</i>; and vol. iii. <i>M&eacute;moire sur le
+Panoptique</i>, <i>De la Promulgation des Lois</i>, <i>De l'Influence du Temps
+et des Lieux</i>, and <i>Vue g&eacute;n&eacute;rale d'un Corps complet des Lois</i>]; (2)
+<i>Th&eacute;orie des Peines et des R&eacute;compenses</i>, 1811, 1818, 1825; (3)
+<i>Tactiques des Assembl&eacute;es d&eacute;liberantes et Trait&eacute; des Sophismes
+politiques</i>, 1816; (4) <i>Trait&eacute; des Preuves judiciaires</i>, 1823; and (5)
+<i>De l'Organisation judiciaire et de la Codification</i>, 1823.</p>
+
+<p>In the following I give references to the place of each work in
+Bowring's edition.</p>
+
+<p>Bentham's first book was the <i>Fragment on Government</i>, 1776 (i.
+221-295). An interesting 'historical preface,' intended for a second
+edition (i. 240-259), was first printed in 1828. The <i>Fragment</i>,
+edited by Mr. F. C. Montague, was republished in 1891.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation</i> was
+published in 1789, in one vol. 4to (i. 1-154). It had been
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>
+printed in
+1780. A second edition, in two vols. 8vo, appeared in 1823. It was
+intended as an introduction to the plan of a penal code. Bentham says
+in his preface that his scheme would be completed by a series of works
+applying his principles to (1) civil law; (2) penal law; (3)
+procedure; (4) reward; (5) constitutional law; (6) political tactics;
+(7) international law; (8) finance; and (9) political economy, and by
+a tenth treatise giving a plan of a body of law 'considered in respect
+of its form,' that is, upon 'nomography.' He wrote more or less in the
+course of his life upon all these topics. Dumont's <i>Trait&eacute;s</i> of 1802
+were based partly upon the <i>Introduction</i> and partly upon Bentham's
+<small>MSS.</small> corresponding to unfinished parts of this general scheme.</p>
+
+<p>The two first sections of this scheme are represented in the <i>Works</i>
+by <i>Principles of the Civil Code</i> (i. 297-364) and <i>Principles of
+Penal Law</i> (i. 365-580). The <i>Principles of the Civil Code</i> is
+translated from Dumont's <i>Trait&eacute;s</i>, where it follows a condensed
+statement of 'general principles' taken from the opening chapters of
+the <i>Introduction</i>. An appendix 'on the levelling system' is added in
+the <i>Works</i> from Bentham's <small>MSS.</small> The <i>Principles of Penal Law</i> consists
+of three parts: the first and third (on 'political remedies for the
+evil of offences' and on 'indirect means of preventing crimes') are
+translated from parts 2 and 4 of Dumont's <i>Principes du Code p&eacute;nal</i>
+(parts 1 and 3 of Dumont being adaptations from the <i>Introduction to
+Morals and Legislation</i>). The second part of the <i>Penal Law</i>, or <i>The
+Rationale of Punishment</i> is from Dumont's <i>Th&eacute;orie des Peines et des
+R&eacute;compenses</i>. Dumont took it from a <small>MS.</small> written by Bentham in 1775.
+(See Bentham's <i>Works</i>, i. 388.) An appendix on 'Death Punishment,'
+addressed by Bentham to the French people in 1830, is added to Part
+II. in the <i>Works</i> (i. 525-532). No. 4 of Bentham's general scheme
+corresponds to the <i>Rationale of Reward</i>, founded upon two <small>MSS.</small>, one
+in French and one in English, used by Dumont in the <i>Th&eacute;orie des
+Peines et des R&eacute;compenses</i>. The English version in the <i>Works</i>,
+chiefly translated from Dumont and compared with the original
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>
+manuscript, was first published in 1825 (ii. 189-266). Richard Smith
+'of the Stamps and Taxes' was the editor of this and of an edition of
+the <i>Rationale of Punishment</i> in 1831, and of various minor treatises.
+(Bentham's <i>Works</i>, x. 548 <i>n.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Table of the Springs of Action</i> (i. 195-220), written at an early
+period, was printed in 1815, and published, with modifications, in
+1817. The <i>Vue g&eacute;n&eacute;rale</i> included in the <i>Trait&eacute;s</i> of 1802 was
+intended by Bentham as a sketch for his own guidance, and is
+translated as <i>View of a Complete Code of Laws</i> in the <i>Works</i> (iii.
+154-210). The two essays in the 1802 <i>Trait&eacute;s</i> on 'the promulgation of
+laws' and the 'influence of time and place in matters of legislation'
+are translated in <i>Works</i> (i. 157-194). A fragment on <i>International
+Law</i>&mdash;a phrase invented by Bentham&mdash;written between 1786 and 1789,
+first appeared in the <i>Works</i> (ii. 535-571), with <i>Junctiana
+proposal</i>&mdash;a plan for a canal between the Atlantic and the
+Pacific&mdash;written in 1822, as an appendix.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the above, all written before 1789 in pursuance of his scheme,
+Bentham had published in 1778 his <i>View of the Hard Labour Bill</i> (iv.
+1-36); and in 1787 his <i>Defence of Usury</i> (iii. 1-29). A third edition
+of the last (with the 'protest against law taxes') was published in
+1816.</p>
+
+<p>During the following period (1789-1802) Bentham wrote various books,
+more or less suggested by the French revolution. The <i>Essay on
+Political Tactics</i> (ii. 299-373), (corresponding to No. 6 of the
+scheme), was sent to Morellet in 1789, but first published by Dumont
+in 1816. With it Dumont also published the substance of the
+<i>Anarchical Fallacies</i> (ii. 489-534), written about 1791. A <i>Draught
+of a Code for the Organisation of the Judicial Establishment of
+France</i>, dated March 1790, is reprinted in <i>Works</i> iv. 285-406. <i>Truth
+v. Ashhurst</i>, written in 1792 (v. 231-237), was first published in
+1823. A <i>Manual of Political Economy</i>, written by 1793 (see <i>Works</i>,
+iii. 73 <i>n.</i>), corresponds to No. 9 of his scheme. A chapter appeared
+in the <i>Biblioth&egrave;que Britannique</i> in 1798. It was partly used in
+Dumont's <i>Th&eacute;orie des R&eacute;compenses</i>, and first published in English in
+<i>Works</i> (iii.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> 31-84).
+<i>Emancipate your Colonies</i> (iv. 407-481) was
+privately printed in 1793, and first published for sale in 1830. A
+<i>Protest against Law Taxes</i>, printed in 1793, was published in 1795
+together with <i>Supply without Burthen, or Escheat vice Taxation</i>,
+written in 1794. To them is appended a short paper called <i>Tax with
+Monopoly</i> (ii. 573-600). <i>A Plan for saving all Trouble and Expense in
+the Transfer of Stock</i>, written and partly printed in 1800, was first
+published in <i>Works</i> (iii. 105-153).</p>
+
+<p>During this period Bentham was also occupied with the Panopticon, and
+some writings refer to it. <i>The Panopticon, or the Inspection House</i>
+(iv. 37-172), written in 1787, was published in 1791. <i>The Panopticon
+versus New South Wales</i> (iv. 173-248) appeared in 1802; and <i>A Plea
+for the Constitution</i> (on transportation to New South Wales) (iv.
+249-284), in 1803. Closely connected with these are <i>Poor-laws and
+Pauper Management</i> (viii. 358-461), reprinted from Arthur Young's
+<i>Annals</i> of September 1797 and following months; and <i>Observations on
+the Poor Bill</i> (viii. 440-459), written in February 1797, privately
+printed in 1838, and first published in the <i>Works</i>.</p>
+
+<p>About 1802 Bentham returned to jurisprudence. James Mill prepared from
+the papers then written an <i>Introductory View of the Rationale of
+Evidence</i>, finished and partly printed in 1812 (see <i>Works</i>, x. 468
+<i>n.</i> and Bain's <i>James Mill</i>, 105, 120). Dumont's <i>Trait&eacute; des Preuves
+judiciaires</i> (1823) was a redaction of the original papers, and an
+English translation of this appeared in 1825. The parts referring to
+English Law were omitted. The <i>Rationale of Evidence</i> (5 vols. 8vo,
+1827), edited by J. S. Mill, represents a different and fuller
+redaction of the same papers. It is reprinted in vols. vi. and vii. of
+the <i>Works</i> with the <i>Introductory View</i> (now first published)
+prefixed. To the same period belongs <i>Scotch Reform</i>, with a <i>Summary
+View of a Plan for a Judicatory</i>, 1808 (second edition 1811, v. 1-60).</p>
+
+<p>After 1808 Bentham's attention was especially drawn to political
+questions. His <i>Catechism of Parliamentary Reform</i> (iii. 433-557),
+written in 1809, was first published with a long 'introduction' in the
+<i>Pamphleteer</i> for January 1817. Bentham's
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> <i>Radical Reform Bill, with
+explanations</i> (iii. 558-597) followed in December 1819. <i>Radicalism
+not dangerous</i> (iii. 598-622), written at the same time, first
+appeared in the <i>Works</i> (iii. 398-622). <i>Elements of the Art of
+Packing as applied to Special Juries, especially in Cases of Libel
+Law</i> (v. 61-186), written in 1809, was published in 1821. <i>Swear not
+at all</i> (v. 188-229) (referring chiefly to Oxford tests), written in
+1813, was published in 1817. <i>The King against Edmonds</i> and <i>The King
+against Wolseley</i> (v. 239-261) were published in 1820. <i>Official
+Aptitude minimized; Official Expense limited</i> (v. 263-286), is a
+series of papers, first collected in 1831. It contains a <i>Defence of
+Economy against Burke</i>, and a <i>Defence of Economy against George
+Rose</i>, both written in 1810, and published in the <i>Pamphleteer</i> in
+1817, with <i>Observations</i> on a speech by Peel in 1825, and
+<i>Indications respecting Lord Eldon</i>. The two last appeared in 1825.
+Connected with these political writings is the <i>Book of Fallacies</i>
+(ii. 375-488), edited by Bingham in 1824, from the 'most unfinished of
+all Bentham's writings.' Allusions seem to show that the original <small>MSS.</small>
+were written from 1810 to 1819. It was partly published by Dumont with
+the <i>Tactique, etc.</i></p>
+
+<p>Bentham, during this period (1808-1820), was also led into various
+outlying questions. <i>The Pannomial Fragments</i>, <i>Nomography</i>, and
+<i>Appendix on Logical Arrangements employed by Jeremy Bentham</i> (iii.
+211-295) were first published in the <i>Works</i> from <small>MSS.</small> written from
+1813 to 1831. With the <i>Chrestomathia</i> (viii. 1-192), first published
+in 1816, are connected fragments upon 'Ontology,' 'Language,' and
+'Universal Grammar' (viii. 193-358), first published in <i>Works</i> from
+fragments of <small>MSS.</small> of 1813 and later. George Bentham's <i>Outline of a
+New System of Logic</i> was partly founded upon his uncle's papers.
+Bentham at the Ford Abbey time (1814-1818) was also writing his
+<i>Church of Englandism and its Catechism examined</i>, 1818. The <i>Analysis
+of the Influence of Natural Religion upon the Temporal Happiness of
+Mankind</i>, by Philip Beauchamp, edited by George Grote, appeared in
+1822; and <i>Not Paul but Jesus</i>, by Gamaliel
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> Smith, in 1823. Francis
+Place helped in preparing this at Ford Abbey in 1817 (Mr. Wallas's
+<i>Life of Place</i>, p. 83). <i>Mother Church of England relieved by
+Bleeding</i> (1823) and the <i>Book of Church Reform</i> (1831) are extracted
+from <i>Church of Englandism</i>. Bowring did not admit these works to his
+collection.</p>
+
+<p>In his later years (1820-1832) Bentham began to be specially occupied
+with codification. <i>Papers upon Codification and Public Instruction</i>
+(iv. 451-534) consist chiefly of letters, written from 1811 to 1815,
+offering himself for employment in codification in America and Russia,
+and first published in 1817. In 1821 appeared <i>Three Tracts relating
+to Spanish and Portuguese Affairs, with a Continual Eye to English
+ones</i>; and in 1822 <i>Three Letters to Count Toreno on the proposed
+Penal Code</i> (in Spain) (viii. 460-554). A short tract on <i>Liberty of
+the Press</i> was addressed to the Spanish people in 1821 (ii. 275-299).
+<i>Codification Proposals</i> (iv. 535-594) appeared in 1823, offering to
+prepare an 'all-comprehensive code of law' for 'any nation professing
+liberal opinions.' <i>Securities against Misrule addressed to a
+Mahommedan State, and prepared with a special Reference to Tripoli</i>,
+written in 1822-23, was first published in the <i>Works</i> (viii.
+551-600). A tract on the <i>Leading Principles of a Constitutional Code</i>
+(ii. 267-274) appeared in the <i>Pamphleteer</i> in 1823. The first volume
+of the <i>Constitutional Code</i>, printed in 1827, was published with the
+first chapter of the second volume in 1830. The whole book, edited by
+R. Doane from papers written between 1818 and 1832, was published in
+1841, and forms volume ix. of the <i>Works</i>. Doane also edited
+<i>Principles of Judicial Procedure</i> (ii. 1-188) from papers written
+chiefly from 1820 to 1827, though part had been written in 1802.
+Several thousand pages upon this subject&mdash;the third part of the
+original scheme&mdash;were left by Bentham at his death.</p>
+
+<p>During his last years Bentham also wrote a <i>Commentary on Mr.
+Humphrey's Real Property Code</i>, published in the <i>Westminster Review</i>
+for October 1826 (v. 387-416); <i>Justice and Codification Petitions</i>
+(v. 437-548), printed in 1829; <i>Jeremy Bentham to his Fellow-Citizens
+in France on Houses of Peers and Senates</i>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> (iv. 419-450), dated 15th
+October 1830; <i>Equity Dispatch Court Proposals</i> (iii. 297-432), first
+published in <i>Works</i> and written from 1829 to 1831; <i>Outline of a Plan
+of a General Register of Real Property</i> (v. 417-435), published in the
+Report of the Real Property Commission in 1832; and <i>Lord Brougham
+Displayed</i> (v. 549-612), 1832.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Deontology</i> or <i>Science of Morality</i> was published by Bowring in
+two vols. 8vo in 1834, but omitted from the <i>Works</i>, as the original
+edition was not exhausted. The <small>MS.</small> preserved at University College,
+London, shows that a substantial beginning had been made in 1814; most
+of the remainder about 1820. The second volume, made, as Bowring says,
+from a number of scraps, is probably more 'Bowringised' than the
+first.</p>
+
+<p>Dumont's <i>Trait&eacute;s</i> were translated into Spanish in 1821, and the
+<i>Works</i> in 1841-43. There are also Russian and Italian translations.
+In 1830 a translation from Dumont, edited by F. E. Beneke, as
+<i>Grunds&auml;tze der Civil- und Criminal-Gesetzgebung</i>, etc., was published
+at Berlin. Beneke observes that Bentham had hitherto received little
+attention in Germany, though well known in other countries. He reports
+a saying attributed to Mme. de Sta&euml;l that the age was that of Bentham,
+not of Byron or Buonaparte. The neglect of Bentham in Germany was due,
+as Beneke says, to the prevalence of the Kantian philosophy. Bentham,
+however, had been favourably noticed in the <i>Hermes</i> for 1822, and his
+merits since acknowledged by Mittermaier and Warnk&ouml;nig in the
+<i>Zeitschrift f&uuml;r Rechtswissenschaft</i>. Beneke (1798-1854) was opposed
+to the Hegelian tendencies of his time, and much influenced by
+Herbart. See Ueberweg's <i>History of Philosophy</i> (English translation,
+1874, ii. 281, etc.) and the account of Bentham in Robert von Mohl's
+<i>Staatswissenschaften</i>, etc. (1853), iii. 595-635.</p>
+
+<p>A great mass of Bentham <small>MSS.</small> belongs to University College, London.
+They are contained in 148 boxes, which were examined and catalogued by
+Mr. T. Whittaker in 1892. A
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
+few of these contain correspondence, part
+of which was printed by Bowring. Others are the manuscripts of
+published works. Some are upon the same subjects as the published
+works, and others refer to topics not included in his publications.
+Besides the <i>Deontology</i> manuscripts and a fragment upon 'Political
+Deontology,' there is a discussion of the means of suppressing duels,
+an argument against the legal punishment of certain offences against
+decency, and a criticism of the gospel narrative similar to <i>Not
+Paul</i>, etc. I have not thought it necessary to examine these fragments
+after reading Mr. Whittaker's report. Bentham's principles are
+sufficiently stated in his published works; and the papers which have
+been reposing in the cellars of University College can have had no
+influence upon the world. There is another large collection of <small>MSS.</small> in
+the British Museum from the papers of Bentham and his brother, Sir
+Samuel. Ten folio volumes contain correspondence, much of it referring
+only to Sir Samuel. A long correspondence upon the acquisition of the
+'Panopticon' land is included. Another volume contains many of
+Bentham's school and college exercises. There are also the manuscripts
+of the <i>Nomography</i>, <i>Logical Arrangements</i>, etc. This collection was
+used by Bowring and by Lady Bentham in the life of her husband.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><br />Printed by T. and A. <span class="smcap">Constable</span>, Printers to Her Majesty at the
+Edinburgh University Press</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The English Utilitarians, Volume I., by 
+Leslie Stephen
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH UTILITARIANS, VOLUME I ***
+
+***** This file should be named 27597-h.htm or 27597-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/7/5/9/27597/
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto, Paul Dring, Henry Craig and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/27597-h/images/i001a.jpg b/27597-h/images/i001a.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2d2b3c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-h/images/i001a.jpg
diff --git a/27597-page-images/f0003.png b/27597-page-images/f0003.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..00933e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/f0003.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/f0005.png b/27597-page-images/f0005.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..516968e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/f0005.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/f0007.png b/27597-page-images/f0007.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8abb4fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/f0007.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/f0008.png b/27597-page-images/f0008.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7365a77
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/f0008.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0001.png b/27597-page-images/p0001.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ce436
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0001.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0002.png b/27597-page-images/p0002.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f09625
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0002.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0003.png b/27597-page-images/p0003.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cac03c7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0003.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0004.png b/27597-page-images/p0004.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0cff33b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0004.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0005.png b/27597-page-images/p0005.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5e8591
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0005.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0006.png b/27597-page-images/p0006.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53c0be1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0006.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0007.png b/27597-page-images/p0007.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73b9fbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0007.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0008.png b/27597-page-images/p0008.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64b73cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0008.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0009.png b/27597-page-images/p0009.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1444ebd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0009.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0010.png b/27597-page-images/p0010.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..886cb2b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0010.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0011.png b/27597-page-images/p0011.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..683d26c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0011.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0012.png b/27597-page-images/p0012.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..11782dc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0012.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0013.png b/27597-page-images/p0013.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5492b50
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0013.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0014.png b/27597-page-images/p0014.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d952b11
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0014.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0015.png b/27597-page-images/p0015.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..024f100
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0015.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0016.png b/27597-page-images/p0016.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e631b99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0016.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0017.png b/27597-page-images/p0017.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1721711
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0017.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0018.png b/27597-page-images/p0018.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a0d1cfe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0018.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0019.png b/27597-page-images/p0019.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3fc88c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0019.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0020.png b/27597-page-images/p0020.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e80dbcf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0020.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0021.png b/27597-page-images/p0021.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dd2cc2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0021.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0022.png b/27597-page-images/p0022.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3949e94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0022.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0023.png b/27597-page-images/p0023.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e8f328
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0023.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0024.png b/27597-page-images/p0024.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5e0116
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0024.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0025.png b/27597-page-images/p0025.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a0dc3d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0025.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0026.png b/27597-page-images/p0026.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c8de3fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0026.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0027.png b/27597-page-images/p0027.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a89b062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0027.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0028.png b/27597-page-images/p0028.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef5c273
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0028.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0029.png b/27597-page-images/p0029.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b705962
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0029.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0030.png b/27597-page-images/p0030.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f93c294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0030.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0031.png b/27597-page-images/p0031.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d34221
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0031.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0032.png b/27597-page-images/p0032.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aed0818
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0032.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0033.png b/27597-page-images/p0033.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0585070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0033.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0034.png b/27597-page-images/p0034.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78f1fe9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0034.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0035.png b/27597-page-images/p0035.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f8fd9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0035.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0036.png b/27597-page-images/p0036.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e99cc45
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0036.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0037.png b/27597-page-images/p0037.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8798cc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0037.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0038.png b/27597-page-images/p0038.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a0de74
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0038.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0039.png b/27597-page-images/p0039.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1614b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0039.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0040.png b/27597-page-images/p0040.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c4e6e02
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0040.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0041.png b/27597-page-images/p0041.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cd5efd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0041.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0042.png b/27597-page-images/p0042.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9650721
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0042.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0043.png b/27597-page-images/p0043.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1959218
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0043.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0044.png b/27597-page-images/p0044.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d8447c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0044.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0045.png b/27597-page-images/p0045.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2329b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0045.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0046.png b/27597-page-images/p0046.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..13d3c4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0046.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0047.png b/27597-page-images/p0047.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0e41917
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0047.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0048.png b/27597-page-images/p0048.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1773ec9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0048.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0049.png b/27597-page-images/p0049.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1bc2ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0049.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0050.png b/27597-page-images/p0050.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0e6d648
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0050.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0051.png b/27597-page-images/p0051.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb0b0cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0051.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0052.png b/27597-page-images/p0052.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..656c722
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0052.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0053.png b/27597-page-images/p0053.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b25d4a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0053.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0054.png b/27597-page-images/p0054.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..40f44da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0054.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0055.png b/27597-page-images/p0055.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..398f021
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0055.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0056.png b/27597-page-images/p0056.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a2fe81
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0056.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0057.png b/27597-page-images/p0057.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..811fdb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0057.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0058.png b/27597-page-images/p0058.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dbcca49
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0058.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0059.png b/27597-page-images/p0059.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0253b40
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0059.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0060.png b/27597-page-images/p0060.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..568b75c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0060.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0061.png b/27597-page-images/p0061.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..42adbff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0061.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0062.png b/27597-page-images/p0062.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f1ad13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0062.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0063.png b/27597-page-images/p0063.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e5e8e76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0063.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0064.png b/27597-page-images/p0064.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9cd496
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0064.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0065.png b/27597-page-images/p0065.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bcf82db
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0065.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0066.png b/27597-page-images/p0066.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ba0daad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0066.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0067.png b/27597-page-images/p0067.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c908d41
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0067.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0068.png b/27597-page-images/p0068.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c7ce5d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0068.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0069.png b/27597-page-images/p0069.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99848ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0069.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0070.png b/27597-page-images/p0070.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e34eef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0070.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0071.png b/27597-page-images/p0071.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..737e4be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0071.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0072.png b/27597-page-images/p0072.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..491396a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0072.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0073.png b/27597-page-images/p0073.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10b85de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0073.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0074.png b/27597-page-images/p0074.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fef1dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0074.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0075.png b/27597-page-images/p0075.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..853be8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0075.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0076.png b/27597-page-images/p0076.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3eba27d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0076.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0077.png b/27597-page-images/p0077.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..22e846b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0077.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0078.png b/27597-page-images/p0078.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c51aa70
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0078.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0079.png b/27597-page-images/p0079.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..068ccdc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0079.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0080.png b/27597-page-images/p0080.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c30d7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0080.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0081.png b/27597-page-images/p0081.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abf1007
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0081.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0082.png b/27597-page-images/p0082.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14d8c67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0082.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0083.png b/27597-page-images/p0083.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97f21cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0083.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0084.png b/27597-page-images/p0084.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..856243a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0084.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0085.png b/27597-page-images/p0085.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd75f41
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0085.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0086.png b/27597-page-images/p0086.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e6dae54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0086.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0087.png b/27597-page-images/p0087.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a2dec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0087.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0088.png b/27597-page-images/p0088.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8710093
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0088.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0089.png b/27597-page-images/p0089.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3cc4fbf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0089.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0090.png b/27597-page-images/p0090.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6892bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0090.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0091.png b/27597-page-images/p0091.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..860e7a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0091.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0092.png b/27597-page-images/p0092.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f778c79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0092.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0093.png b/27597-page-images/p0093.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..69b1aa1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0093.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0094.png b/27597-page-images/p0094.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..832a100
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0094.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0095.png b/27597-page-images/p0095.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..601ec0c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0095.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0096.png b/27597-page-images/p0096.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74495aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0096.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0097.png b/27597-page-images/p0097.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cec7747
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0097.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0098.png b/27597-page-images/p0098.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b174ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0098.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0099.png b/27597-page-images/p0099.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9f607a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0099.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0100.png b/27597-page-images/p0100.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9910e44
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0100.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0101.png b/27597-page-images/p0101.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..13d8016
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0101.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0102.png b/27597-page-images/p0102.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56275d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0102.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0103.png b/27597-page-images/p0103.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..470a596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0103.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0104.png b/27597-page-images/p0104.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0370828
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0104.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0105.png b/27597-page-images/p0105.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..00e8a97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0105.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0106.png b/27597-page-images/p0106.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..121d185
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0106.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0107.png b/27597-page-images/p0107.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..06e7800
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0107.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0108.png b/27597-page-images/p0108.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..db75517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0108.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0109.png b/27597-page-images/p0109.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1a57ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0109.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0110.png b/27597-page-images/p0110.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f94bb1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0110.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0111.png b/27597-page-images/p0111.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9067f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0111.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0112.png b/27597-page-images/p0112.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25ee188
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0112.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0113.png b/27597-page-images/p0113.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cee8c4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0113.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0114.png b/27597-page-images/p0114.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ecc042
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0114.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0115.png b/27597-page-images/p0115.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3030e2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0115.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0116.png b/27597-page-images/p0116.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6daebc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0116.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0117.png b/27597-page-images/p0117.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..246046b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0117.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0118.png b/27597-page-images/p0118.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d70fe0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0118.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0119.png b/27597-page-images/p0119.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7702fc0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0119.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0120.png b/27597-page-images/p0120.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e179b37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0120.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0121.png b/27597-page-images/p0121.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a82716f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0121.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0122.png b/27597-page-images/p0122.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7dec775
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0122.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0123.png b/27597-page-images/p0123.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fde3242
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0123.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0124.png b/27597-page-images/p0124.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ae88620
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0124.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0125.png b/27597-page-images/p0125.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0839156
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0125.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0126.png b/27597-page-images/p0126.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..911ad0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0126.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0127.png b/27597-page-images/p0127.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0426a46
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0127.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0128.png b/27597-page-images/p0128.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cdb54e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0128.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0129.png b/27597-page-images/p0129.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81a3c99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0129.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0130.png b/27597-page-images/p0130.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f66fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0130.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0131.png b/27597-page-images/p0131.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b717e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0131.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0132.png b/27597-page-images/p0132.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ac381
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0132.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0133.png b/27597-page-images/p0133.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2862701
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0133.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0134.png b/27597-page-images/p0134.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5dac07f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0134.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0135.png b/27597-page-images/p0135.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a70de3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0135.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0136.png b/27597-page-images/p0136.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..029a235
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0136.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0137.png b/27597-page-images/p0137.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ead1ba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0137.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0138.png b/27597-page-images/p0138.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b7b5470
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0138.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0139.png b/27597-page-images/p0139.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64f364f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0139.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0140.png b/27597-page-images/p0140.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..540f2cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0140.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0141.png b/27597-page-images/p0141.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1718ead
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0141.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0142.png b/27597-page-images/p0142.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d35c92
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0142.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0143.png b/27597-page-images/p0143.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59bd759
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0143.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0144.png b/27597-page-images/p0144.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71e708e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0144.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0145.png b/27597-page-images/p0145.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..529648b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0145.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0146.png b/27597-page-images/p0146.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53b3533
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0146.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0147.png b/27597-page-images/p0147.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..035772a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0147.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0148.png b/27597-page-images/p0148.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a2daeeb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0148.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0149.png b/27597-page-images/p0149.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5b31d09
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0149.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0150.png b/27597-page-images/p0150.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..912f0cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0150.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0151.png b/27597-page-images/p0151.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b8a38e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0151.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0152.png b/27597-page-images/p0152.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cde0ca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0152.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0153.png b/27597-page-images/p0153.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67dbe1b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0153.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0154.png b/27597-page-images/p0154.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cdf042
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0154.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0155.png b/27597-page-images/p0155.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..207d8e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0155.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0156.png b/27597-page-images/p0156.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c1b41d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0156.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0157.png b/27597-page-images/p0157.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47f7a95
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0157.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0158.png b/27597-page-images/p0158.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d134bb1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0158.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0159.png b/27597-page-images/p0159.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be2a866
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0159.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0160.png b/27597-page-images/p0160.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..450bc17
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0160.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0161.png b/27597-page-images/p0161.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e571365
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0161.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0162.png b/27597-page-images/p0162.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..00e64b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0162.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0163.png b/27597-page-images/p0163.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c884978
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0163.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0164.png b/27597-page-images/p0164.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d8101
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0164.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0165.png b/27597-page-images/p0165.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..baa9e4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0165.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0166.png b/27597-page-images/p0166.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f742e59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0166.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0167.png b/27597-page-images/p0167.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c236e3e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0167.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0168.png b/27597-page-images/p0168.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e65a2ba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0168.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0169.png b/27597-page-images/p0169.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9e75cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0169.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0170.png b/27597-page-images/p0170.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bdaaf7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0170.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0171.png b/27597-page-images/p0171.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37a2ab2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0171.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0172.png b/27597-page-images/p0172.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7728328
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0172.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0173.png b/27597-page-images/p0173.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9b2976b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0173.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0174.png b/27597-page-images/p0174.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c30844e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0174.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0175.png b/27597-page-images/p0175.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e843ac1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0175.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0176.png b/27597-page-images/p0176.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a8afcee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0176.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0177.png b/27597-page-images/p0177.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..175c284
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0177.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0178.png b/27597-page-images/p0178.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1700843
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0178.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0179.png b/27597-page-images/p0179.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c9438d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0179.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0180.png b/27597-page-images/p0180.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ef6ba6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0180.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0181.png b/27597-page-images/p0181.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c0e989
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0181.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0182.png b/27597-page-images/p0182.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea31469
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0182.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0183.png b/27597-page-images/p0183.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c35f228
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0183.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0184.png b/27597-page-images/p0184.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b6c21c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0184.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0185.png b/27597-page-images/p0185.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..94266ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0185.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0186.png b/27597-page-images/p0186.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45ce285
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0186.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0187.png b/27597-page-images/p0187.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34ded62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0187.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0188.png b/27597-page-images/p0188.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c7a3e38
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0188.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0189.png b/27597-page-images/p0189.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb259b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0189.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0190.png b/27597-page-images/p0190.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..652273f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0190.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0191.png b/27597-page-images/p0191.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e699faa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0191.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0192.png b/27597-page-images/p0192.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3afbc8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0192.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0193.png b/27597-page-images/p0193.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b25930
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0193.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0194.png b/27597-page-images/p0194.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2eade
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0194.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0195.png b/27597-page-images/p0195.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a0e424
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0195.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0196.png b/27597-page-images/p0196.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dab762c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0196.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0197.png b/27597-page-images/p0197.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..72c714a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0197.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0198.png b/27597-page-images/p0198.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7015793
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0198.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0199.png b/27597-page-images/p0199.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3155c2f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0199.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0200.png b/27597-page-images/p0200.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8ef6c45
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0200.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0201.png b/27597-page-images/p0201.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff36a4b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0201.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0202.png b/27597-page-images/p0202.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6648704
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0202.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0203.png b/27597-page-images/p0203.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eac43e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0203.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0204.png b/27597-page-images/p0204.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..875f9c6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0204.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0205.png b/27597-page-images/p0205.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..149954a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0205.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0206.png b/27597-page-images/p0206.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fde7b18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0206.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0207.png b/27597-page-images/p0207.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a973b92
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0207.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0208.png b/27597-page-images/p0208.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfdfa00
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0208.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0209.png b/27597-page-images/p0209.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abcde67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0209.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0210.png b/27597-page-images/p0210.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f5b912
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0210.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0211.png b/27597-page-images/p0211.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a0fb05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0211.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0212.png b/27597-page-images/p0212.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1220657
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0212.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0213.png b/27597-page-images/p0213.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..efc4668
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0213.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0214.png b/27597-page-images/p0214.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..03865ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0214.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0215.png b/27597-page-images/p0215.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..06a2393
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0215.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0216.png b/27597-page-images/p0216.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ed8f15a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0216.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0217.png b/27597-page-images/p0217.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9295ac5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0217.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0218.png b/27597-page-images/p0218.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..68f1cf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0218.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0219.png b/27597-page-images/p0219.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..300fe4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0219.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0220.png b/27597-page-images/p0220.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81b958c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0220.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0221.png b/27597-page-images/p0221.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..65eb300
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0221.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0222.png b/27597-page-images/p0222.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f5654e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0222.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0223.png b/27597-page-images/p0223.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb6140
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0223.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0224.png b/27597-page-images/p0224.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e7c945
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0224.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0225.png b/27597-page-images/p0225.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a128af4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0225.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0226.png b/27597-page-images/p0226.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..98e0a61
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0226.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0227.png b/27597-page-images/p0227.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1007058
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0227.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0228.png b/27597-page-images/p0228.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51b5232
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0228.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0229.png b/27597-page-images/p0229.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..840dfe4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0229.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0230.png b/27597-page-images/p0230.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1bdddc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0230.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0231.png b/27597-page-images/p0231.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d1d633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0231.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0232.png b/27597-page-images/p0232.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..40f725c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0232.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0233.png b/27597-page-images/p0233.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bfc170f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0233.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0234.png b/27597-page-images/p0234.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..386289b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0234.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0235.png b/27597-page-images/p0235.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e2fd63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0235.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0236.png b/27597-page-images/p0236.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f044cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0236.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0237.png b/27597-page-images/p0237.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a8fee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0237.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0238.png b/27597-page-images/p0238.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c047fe6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0238.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0239.png b/27597-page-images/p0239.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..633958e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0239.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0240.png b/27597-page-images/p0240.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5693959
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0240.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0241.png b/27597-page-images/p0241.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2ccdc63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0241.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0242.png b/27597-page-images/p0242.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cf00f08
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0242.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0243.png b/27597-page-images/p0243.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d12259
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0243.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0244.png b/27597-page-images/p0244.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4781ea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0244.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0245.png b/27597-page-images/p0245.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bbf88e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0245.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0246.png b/27597-page-images/p0246.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fe58b1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0246.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0247.png b/27597-page-images/p0247.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51f2cd6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0247.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0248.png b/27597-page-images/p0248.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e70754a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0248.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0249.png b/27597-page-images/p0249.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c289b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0249.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0250.png b/27597-page-images/p0250.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ac17a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0250.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0251.png b/27597-page-images/p0251.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7753a78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0251.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0252.png b/27597-page-images/p0252.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e3db5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0252.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0253.png b/27597-page-images/p0253.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca0e983
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0253.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0254.png b/27597-page-images/p0254.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47fe4ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0254.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0255.png b/27597-page-images/p0255.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5be4a86
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0255.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0256.png b/27597-page-images/p0256.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd63036
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0256.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0257.png b/27597-page-images/p0257.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4119287
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0257.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0258.png b/27597-page-images/p0258.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4ec5c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0258.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0259.png b/27597-page-images/p0259.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af63472
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0259.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0260.png b/27597-page-images/p0260.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1fea71a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0260.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0261.png b/27597-page-images/p0261.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46e2238
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0261.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0262.png b/27597-page-images/p0262.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddaf5f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0262.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0263.png b/27597-page-images/p0263.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..db956ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0263.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0264.png b/27597-page-images/p0264.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..326027f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0264.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0265.png b/27597-page-images/p0265.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b729575
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0265.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0266.png b/27597-page-images/p0266.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..947cba3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0266.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0267.png b/27597-page-images/p0267.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6d4cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0267.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0268.png b/27597-page-images/p0268.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc2d7a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0268.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0269.png b/27597-page-images/p0269.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a47626
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0269.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0270.png b/27597-page-images/p0270.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c783adb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0270.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0271.png b/27597-page-images/p0271.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..80e097a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0271.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0272.png b/27597-page-images/p0272.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67aac15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0272.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0273.png b/27597-page-images/p0273.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e454118
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0273.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0274.png b/27597-page-images/p0274.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28c0364
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0274.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0275.png b/27597-page-images/p0275.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ecbcb3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0275.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0276.png b/27597-page-images/p0276.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05e7116
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0276.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0277.png b/27597-page-images/p0277.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..18e7ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0277.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0278.png b/27597-page-images/p0278.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f306da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0278.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0279.png b/27597-page-images/p0279.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..390e4c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0279.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0280.png b/27597-page-images/p0280.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f842b80
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0280.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0281.png b/27597-page-images/p0281.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b87d896
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0281.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0282.png b/27597-page-images/p0282.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6233f52
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0282.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0283.png b/27597-page-images/p0283.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6360b8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0283.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0284.png b/27597-page-images/p0284.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7365096
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0284.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0285.png b/27597-page-images/p0285.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b115c57
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0285.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0286.png b/27597-page-images/p0286.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8a6c419
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0286.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0287.png b/27597-page-images/p0287.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0eeae24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0287.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0288.png b/27597-page-images/p0288.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b7e580
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0288.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0289.png b/27597-page-images/p0289.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc9c871
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0289.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0290.png b/27597-page-images/p0290.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ccdde43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0290.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0291.png b/27597-page-images/p0291.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616dceb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0291.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0292.png b/27597-page-images/p0292.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7fe18f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0292.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0293.png b/27597-page-images/p0293.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a092e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0293.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0294.png b/27597-page-images/p0294.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3639db2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0294.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0295.png b/27597-page-images/p0295.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..444eb0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0295.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0296.png b/27597-page-images/p0296.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28cd999
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0296.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0297.png b/27597-page-images/p0297.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5237220
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0297.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0298.png b/27597-page-images/p0298.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..31cd9b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0298.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0299.png b/27597-page-images/p0299.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..06f1367
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0299.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0300.png b/27597-page-images/p0300.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c19c43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0300.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0301.png b/27597-page-images/p0301.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67286ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0301.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0302.png b/27597-page-images/p0302.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7a1938
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0302.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0303.png b/27597-page-images/p0303.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9811e7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0303.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0304.png b/27597-page-images/p0304.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f61dcff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0304.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0305.png b/27597-page-images/p0305.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a025539
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0305.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0306.png b/27597-page-images/p0306.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87dfe06
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0306.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0307.png b/27597-page-images/p0307.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e0775b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0307.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0308.png b/27597-page-images/p0308.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3117800
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0308.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0309.png b/27597-page-images/p0309.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28a10da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0309.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0310.png b/27597-page-images/p0310.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab3dcda
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0310.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0311.png b/27597-page-images/p0311.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52f38b9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0311.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0312.png b/27597-page-images/p0312.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..470c677
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0312.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0313.png b/27597-page-images/p0313.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71e1015
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0313.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0314.png b/27597-page-images/p0314.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2a204f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0314.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0315.png b/27597-page-images/p0315.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..586855d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0315.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0316.png b/27597-page-images/p0316.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a2c60ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0316.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0317.png b/27597-page-images/p0317.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1ab931b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0317.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0318.png b/27597-page-images/p0318.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4c5aa15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0318.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0319.png b/27597-page-images/p0319.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..995440e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0319.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0320.png b/27597-page-images/p0320.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c39839
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0320.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0321.png b/27597-page-images/p0321.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48755c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0321.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0322.png b/27597-page-images/p0322.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b7ebac7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0322.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0323.png b/27597-page-images/p0323.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd0ee05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0323.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0324.png b/27597-page-images/p0324.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..908d1a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0324.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0325.png b/27597-page-images/p0325.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27e18e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0325.png
diff --git a/27597-page-images/p0326.png b/27597-page-images/p0326.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8458712
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597-page-images/p0326.png
diff --git a/27597.txt b/27597.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1668db8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9889 @@
+Project Gutenberg's The English Utilitarians, Volume I., by Leslie Stephen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The English Utilitarians, Volume I.
+
+Author: Leslie Stephen
+
+Release Date: December 23, 2008 [EBook #27597]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH UTILITARIANS, VOLUME I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto, Paul Dring, Henry Craig and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ENGLISH UTILITARIANS
+
+_By_
+
+LESLIE STEPHEN
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+LONDON
+
+_DUCKWORTH and CO._
+
+3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
+
+1900
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This book is a sequel to my _History of English Thought in the
+Eighteenth Century_. The title which I then ventured to use was more
+comprehensive than the work itself deserved: I felt my inability to
+write a continuation which should at all correspond to a similar title
+for the nineteenth century. I thought, however, that by writing an
+account of the compact and energetic school of English Utilitarians I
+could throw some light both upon them and their contemporaries. I had
+the advantage for this purpose of having been myself a disciple of the
+school during its last period. Many accidents have delayed my completion
+of the task; and delayed also its publication after it was written. Two
+books have been published since that time, which partly cover the same
+ground; and I must be content with referring my readers to them for
+further information. They are _The English Radicals_, by Mr. C. B.
+Roylance Kent; and _English Political Philosophy from Hobbes to Maine_,
+by Professor Graham.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                     PAGE
+  INTRODUCTORY                          1
+
+
+  CHAPTER I
+
+  POLITICAL CONDITIONS
+
+    I. The British Constitution        12
+
+   II. The Ruling Class                18
+
+  III. Legislation and Administration  22
+
+   IV. The Army and Navy               30
+
+    V. The Church                      35
+
+   VI. The Universities                43
+
+  VII. Theory                          51
+
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  THE INDUSTRIAL SPIRIT
+
+    I. The Manufacturers               57
+
+   II. The Agriculturists              69
+
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  SOCIAL PROBLEMS
+
+    I. Pauperism                       87
+
+   II. The Police                      99
+
+  III. Education                      108
+
+   IV. The Slave-Trade                113
+
+    V. The French Revolution          121
+
+   VI. Individualism                  130
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  PHILOSOPHY
+
+    I. John Horne Tooke               137
+
+   II. Dugald Stewart                 142
+
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  BENTHAM'S LIFE
+
+    I. Early Life                     169
+
+   II. First Writings                 175
+
+  III. The Panopticon                 193
+
+   IV. Utilitarian Propaganda         206
+
+    V. Codification                   222
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  BENTHAM'S DOCTRINE
+
+    I. First Principles               235
+
+   II. Springs of Action              249
+
+  III. The Sanctions                  255
+
+   IV. Criminal Law                   263
+
+    V. English Law                    271
+
+   VI. Radicalism                     282
+
+  VII. Individualism                  307
+
+
+  NOTE ON BENTHAM'S WRITINGS          319
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+
+The English Utilitarians of whom I am about to give some account were a
+group of men who for three generations had a conspicuous influence upon
+English thought and political action. Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and
+John Stuart Mill were successively their leaders; and I shall speak of
+each in turn. It may be well to premise a brief indication of the method
+which I have adopted. I have devoted a much greater proportion of my
+work to biography and to consideration of political and social
+conditions than would be appropriate to the history of a philosophy. The
+reasons for such a course are very obvious in this case, inasmuch as the
+Utilitarian doctrines were worked out with a constant reference to
+practical applications. I think, indeed, that such a reference is often
+equally present, though not equally conspicuous, in other philosophical
+schools. But in any case I wish to show how I conceive the relation of
+my scheme to the scheme more generally adopted by historians of abstract
+speculation.
+
+I am primarily concerned with the history of a school or sect, not with
+the history of the arguments by which it justifies itself in the court
+of pure reason. I must therefore consider the creed as it was actually
+embodied in the dominant beliefs of the adherents of the school, not as
+it was expounded in lecture-rooms or treatises on first principles. I
+deal not with philosophers meditating upon Being and not-Being, but with
+men actively engaged in framing political platforms and carrying on
+popular agitations. The great majority even of intelligent partisans are
+either indifferent to the philosophic creed of their leaders or take it
+for granted. Its postulates are more or less implied in the doctrines
+which guide them in practice, but are not explicitly stated or
+deliberately reasoned out. Not the less the doctrines of a sect,
+political or religious, may be dependent upon theories which for the
+greater number remain latent or are recognised only in their concrete
+application. Contemporary members of any society, however widely they
+differ as to results, are employed upon the same problems and, to some
+extent, use the same methods and make the same assumptions in attempting
+solutions. There is a certain unity even in the general thought of any
+given period. Contradictory views imply some common ground. But within
+this wider unity we find a variety of sects, each of which may be
+considered as more or less representing a particular method of treating
+the general problem: and therefore principles which, whether clearly
+recognised or not, are virtually implied in their party creed and give a
+certain unity to their teaching.
+
+One obvious principle of unity, or tacit bond of sympathy which holds a
+sect together depends upon the intellectual idiosyncrasy of the
+individuals. Coleridge was aiming at an important truth when he said
+that every man was born an Aristotelian or a Platonist.[1] Nominalists
+and realists, intuitionists and empiricists, idealists and materialists,
+represent different forms of a fundamental antithesis which appears to
+run through all philosophy. Each thinker is apt to take the postulates
+congenial to his own mind as the plain dictates of reason. Controversies
+between such opposites appear to be hopeless. They have been aptly
+compared by Dr. Venn to the erection of a snow-bank to dam a river. The
+snow melts and swells the torrent which it was intended to arrest. Each
+side reads admitted truths into its own dialect, and infers that its own
+dialect affords the only valid expression. To regard such antitheses as
+final and insoluble would be to admit complete scepticism. What is true
+for one man would not therefore be true--or at least its truth would not
+be demonstrable--to another. We must trust that reconciliation is
+achievable by showing that the difference is really less vital and
+corresponds to a difference of methods or of the spheres within which
+each mode of thought may be valid. To obtain the point of view from
+which such a conciliation is possible should be, I hold, one main end of
+modern philosophising.
+
+The effect of this profound intellectual difference is complicated by
+other obvious influences. There is, in the first place, the difference
+of intellectual horizon. Each man has a world of his own and sees a
+different set of facts. Whether his horizon is that which is visible
+from his parish steeple or from St. Peter's at Rome, it is still
+strictly limited: and the outside universe, known vaguely and
+indirectly, does not affect him like the facts actually present to his
+perception. The most candid thinkers will come to different conclusions
+when they are really provided with different sets of fact. In political
+and social problems every man's opinions are moulded by his social
+station. The artisan's view of the capitalist, and the capitalist's view
+of the artisan, are both imperfect, because each has a first-hand
+knowledge of his own class alone: and, however anxious to be fair, each
+will take a very different view of the working of political
+institutions. An apparent concord often covers the widest divergence
+under the veil of a common formula, because each man has his private
+mode of interpreting general phrases in terms of concrete fact.
+
+This, of course, implies the further difference arising from the
+passions which, however illogically, go so far to determine opinions.
+Here we have the most general source of difficulty in considering the
+actual history of a creed. We cannot limit ourselves to the purely
+logical factor. All thought has to start from postulates. Men have to
+act before they think: before, at any rate, reasoning becomes distinct
+from imagining or guessing. To explain in early periods is to fancy and
+to take a fancy for a perception. The world of the primitive man is
+constructed not only from vague conjectures and hasty analogies but from
+his hopes and fears, and bears the impress of his emotional nature. When
+progress takes place some of his beliefs are confirmed, some disappear,
+and others are transformed: and the whole history of thought is a
+history of this gradual process of verification. We begin, it is said,
+by assuming: we proceed by verifying, and we only end by demonstrating.
+The process is comparatively simple in that part of knowledge which
+ultimately corresponds to the physical sciences. There must be a certain
+harmony between beliefs and realities in regard to knowledge of ordinary
+matters of fact, if only because such harmony is essential to the life
+of the race. Even an ape must distinguish poisonous from wholesome food.
+Beliefs as to physical facts require to be made articulate and distinct;
+but we have only to recognise as logical principles the laws of nature
+which we have unconsciously obeyed and illustrated--to formulate
+dynamics long after we have applied the science in throwing stones or
+using bows and arrows. But what corresponds to this in the case of the
+moral and religious beliefs? What is the process of verification? Men
+practically are satisfied with their creed so long as they are satisfied
+with the corresponding social order. The test of truth so suggested is
+obviously inadequate: for all great religions, however contradictory to
+each other, have been able to satisfy it for long periods. Particular
+doctrines might be tested by experiment. The efficacy of witchcraft
+might be investigated like the efficacy of vaccination. But faith can
+always make as many miracles as it wants: and errors which originate in
+the fancy cannot be at once extirpated by the reason. Their form may be
+changed but not their substance. To remove them requires not disproof of
+this or that fact, but an intellectual discipline which is rare even
+among the educated classes. A religious creed survives, as poetry or art
+survives,--not so long as it contains apparently true statements of fact
+but--so long as it is congenial to the whole social state. A philosophy
+indeed is a poetry stated in terms of logic. Considering the natural
+conservatism of mankind, the difficulty is to account for progress, not
+for the persistence of error. When the existing order ceases to be
+satisfactory; when conquest or commerce has welded nations together and
+brought conflicting creeds into cohesion; when industrial development
+has modified the old class relations; or when the governing classes have
+ceased to discharge their functions, new principles are demanded and new
+prophets arise. The philosopher may then become the mouthpiece of the
+new order, and innocently take himself to be its originator. His
+doctrines were fruitless so long as the soil was not prepared for the
+seed. A premature discovery if not stamped out by fire and sword is
+stifled by indifference. If Francis Bacon succeeded where Roger Bacon
+failed, the difference was due to the social conditions, not to the men.
+The cause of the great religious as well as of the great political
+revolutions must be sought mainly in the social history. New creeds
+spread when they satisfy the instincts or the passions roused to
+activity by other causes. The system has to be so far true as to be
+credible at the time; but its vitality depends upon its congeniality as
+a whole to the aspirations of the mass of mankind.
+
+The purely intellectual movement no doubt represents the decisive
+factor. The love of truth in the abstract is probably the weakest of
+human passions; but truth when attained ultimately gives the fulcrum for
+a reconstruction of the world. When a solid core of ascertained and
+verifiable truth has once been formed and applied to practical results
+it becomes the fixed pivot upon which all beliefs must ultimately turn.
+The influence, however, is often obscure and still indirect. The more
+cultivated recognise the necessity of bringing their whole doctrine into
+conformity with the definitely organised and established system; and, at
+the present day, even the uneducated begin to have an inkling of
+possible results. Yet the desire for logical consistency is not one
+which presses forcibly upon the less cultivated intellects. They do not
+feel the necessity of unifying knowledge or bringing their various
+opinions into consistency and into harmony with facts. There are easy
+methods of avoiding any troublesome conflict of belief. The philosopher
+is ready to show them the way. He, like other people, has to start from
+postulates, and to see how they will work. When he meets with a
+difficulty it is perfectly legitimate that he should try how far the old
+formula can be applied to cover the new applications. He may be led to a
+process of 'rationalising' or 'spiritualising' which is dangerous to
+intellectual honesty. The vagueness of the general conceptions with
+which he is concerned facilitates the adaptation; and his words slide
+into new meanings by imperceptible gradations. His error is in taking a
+legitimate tentative process for a conclusive test; and inferring that
+opinions are confirmed because a non-natural interpretation can be
+forced upon them. This, however, is only the vicious application of the
+normal process through which new ideas are diffused or slowly infiltrate
+the old systems till the necessity of a thoroughgoing reconstruction
+forces itself upon our attention. Nor can it be denied that an opposite
+fallacy is equally possible, especially in times of revolutionary
+passion. The apparent irreconcilability of some new doctrine with the
+old may lead to the summary rejection of the implicit truth, together
+with the error involved in its imperfect recognition. Hence arises the
+necessity for faking into account not only a man's intellectual
+idiosyncrasies and the special intellectual horizon, but all the
+prepossessions due to his personal character, his social environment,
+and his consequent sympathies and antipathies. The philosopher has his
+passions like other men. He does not really live in the thin air of
+abstract speculation. On the contrary, he starts generally, and surely
+is right in starting, with keen interest in the great religious,
+ethical, and social problems of the time. He wishes--honestly and
+eagerly--to try them by the severest tests, and to hold fast only what
+is clearly valid. The desire to apply his principles in fact justifies
+his pursuit, and redeems him from the charge that he is delighting in
+barren intellectual subtleties. But to an outsider his procedure may
+appear in a different light. His real problem comes to be: how the
+conclusions which are agreeable to his emotions can be connected with
+the postulates which are congenial to his intellect? He may be
+absolutely honest and quite unconscious that his conclusions were
+prearranged by his sympathies. No philosophic creed of any importance
+has ever been constructed, we may well believe, without such sincerity
+and without such plausibility as results from its correspondence to at
+least some aspects of the truth. But the result is sufficiently shown by
+the perplexed controversies which arise. Men agree in their conclusions,
+though starting from opposite premises; or from the same premises reach
+the most diverging conclusions. The same code of practical morality, it
+is often said, is accepted by thinkers who deny each other's first
+principles; dogmatism often appears to its opponents to be thoroughgoing
+scepticism in disguise, and men establish victoriously results which
+turn out in the end to be really a stronghold for their antagonists.
+
+Hence there is a distinction between such a history of a sect as I
+contemplate and a history of scientific inquiry or of pure philosophy. A
+history of mathematical or physical science would differ from a direct
+exposition of the science, but only in so far as it would state truths
+in the order of discovery, not in the order most convenient for
+displaying them as a system. It would show what were the processes by
+which they were originally found out, and how they have been afterwards
+annexed or absorbed in some wider generalisation. These facts might be
+stated without any reference to the history of the discoverers or of the
+society to which they belonged. They would indeed suggest very
+interesting topics to the general historian or 'sociologist.' He might
+be led to inquire under what conditions men came to inquire
+scientifically at all; why they ceased for centuries to care for
+science; why they took up special departments of investigation; and what
+was the effect of scientific discoveries upon social relations in
+general. But the two inquiries would be distinct for obvious reasons. If
+men study mathematics they can only come to one conclusion. They will
+find out the same propositions of geometry if they only think clearly
+enough and long enough, as certainly as Columbus would discover America
+if he only sailed far enough. America was there, and so in a sense are
+the propositions. We may therefore in this case entirely separate the
+two questions: what leads men to think? and what conclusions will they
+reach? The reasons which guided the first discoverers are just as valid
+now, though they can be more systematically stated. But in the 'moral
+sciences' this distinction is not equally possible. The intellectual and
+the social evolution are closely and intricately connected, and each
+reacts upon the other. In the last resort no doubt a definitive system
+of belief once elaborated would repose upon universally valid truths
+and determine, instead of being determined by, the corresponding social
+order. But in the concrete evolution which, we may hope, is
+approximating towards this result, the creeds current among mankind have
+been determined by the social conditions as well as helped to determine
+them. To give an account of that process it is necessary to specify the
+various circumstances which may lead to the survival of error, and to
+the partial views of truth taken by men of different idiosyncrasies
+working upon different data and moved by different passions and
+prepossessions. A history written upon these terms would show primarily
+what, as a fact, were the dominant beliefs during a given period, and
+state which survived, which disappeared, and which were transformed or
+engrafted upon other systems of thought. This would of course raise the
+question of the truth or falsehood of the doctrines as well as of their
+vitality: for the truth is at least one essential condition of permanent
+vitality. The difference would be that the problem would be approached
+from a different side. We should ask first what beliefs have flourished,
+and afterwards ask why they flourished, and how far their vitality was
+due to their partial or complete truth. To write such a history would
+perhaps require an impartiality which few people possess and which I do
+not venture to claim. I have my own opinions for which other people may
+account by prejudice, assumption, or downright incapacity. I am quite
+aware that I shall be implicitly criticising myself in criticising
+others. All that I can profess is that by taking the questions in this
+order, I shall hope to fix attention upon one set of considerations
+which are apt, as I fancy, to be unduly neglected. The result of
+reading some histories is to raise the question: how people on the other
+side came to be such unmitigated fools? Why were they imposed upon by
+such obvious fallacies? That may be answered by considering more fully
+the conditions under which the opinions were actually adopted, and one
+result may be to show that those opinions had a considerable element of
+truth, and were held by men who were the very opposite of fools. At any
+rate I shall do what I can to write an account of this phase of thought,
+so as to bring out what were its real tenets; to what intellectual type
+they were naturally congenial; what were the limitations of view which
+affected the Utilitarians' conception of the problems to be solved; and
+what were the passions and prepossessions due to the contemporary state
+of society and to their own class position, which to some degree
+unconsciously dictated their conclusions. So far as I can do this
+satisfactorily, I hope that I may throw some light upon the intrinsic
+value of the creed, and the place which it should occupy in a definitive
+system.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[1] _Table-Talk_, 3 July 1830.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+POLITICAL CONDITIONS
+
+
+I. THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION
+
+The English Utilitarians represent one outcome of the speculations
+current in England during the later part of the eighteenth century. For
+the reasons just assigned I shall begin by briefly recalling some of the
+social conditions which set the problems for the coming generation and
+determined the mode of answering them. I must put the main facts in
+evidence, though they are even painfully familiar. The most obvious
+starting-point is given by the political situation. The supremacy of
+parliament had been definitively established by the revolution of 1688,
+and had been followed by the elaboration of the system of party
+government. The centre of gravity of the political world lay in the
+House of Commons. No minister could hold power unless he could command a
+majority in this house. Jealousy of the royal power, however, was still
+a ruling passion. The party line between Whig and Tory turned ostensibly
+upon this issue. The essential Whig doctrine is indicated by Dunning's
+famous resolution (6 April 1780) that 'the power of the crown had
+increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished.' The resolution
+was in one sense an anachronism. As in many other cases, politicians
+seem to be elaborately slaying the slain and guarding against the
+attacks of extinct monsters. There was scarcely more probability under
+George III. than there is under Victoria that the king would try to
+raise taxes without consent of parliament. George III., however, desired
+to be more than a contrivance for fixing the great seal to official
+documents. He had good reason for thinking that the weakness of the
+executive was an evil. The king could gain power not by attacking the
+authority of parliament but by gaining influence within its walls. He
+might form a party of 'king's friends' able to hold the balance between
+the connections formed by the great families and so break up the system
+of party government. Burke's great speech (11 Feb. 1780) upon
+introducing his plan 'for the better security of the independence of
+parliament and the economical reformation of the civil and other
+establishments' explains the secret and reveals the state of things
+which for the next half century was to supply one main theme for the
+eloquence of reformers. The king had at his disposal a vast amount of
+patronage. There were relics of ancient institutions: the principality
+of Wales, the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, and the earldom of
+Chester; each with its revenue and establishment of superfluous
+officials. The royal household was a complex 'body corporate' founded in
+the old days of 'purveyance.' There was the mysterious 'Board of Green
+Cloth' formed by the great officers and supposed to have judicial as
+well as administrative functions. Cumbrous mediaeval machinery thus
+remained which had been formed in the time when the distinction between
+a public trust and private property was not definitely drawn or which
+had been allowed to remain for the sake of patronage, when its functions
+had been transferred to officials of more modern type. Reform was
+foiled, as Burke put it, because the turnspit in the king's kitchen was
+a member of parliament. Such sinecures and the pensions on the civil
+list or the Irish establishment provided the funds by which the king
+could build up a personal influence, which was yet occult,
+irresponsible, and corrupt. The measure passed by Burke in 1782[2] made
+a beginning in the removal of such abuses.
+
+Meanwhile the Whigs were conveniently blind to another side of the
+question. If the king could buy, it was because there were plenty of
+people both able and willing to sell. Bubb Dodington, a typical example
+of the old system, had five or six seats at his disposal: subject only
+to the necessity of throwing a few pounds to the 'venal wretches' who
+went through the form of voting, and by dealing in what he calls this
+'merchantable ware' he managed by lifelong efforts to wriggle into a
+peerage. The Dodingtons, that is, sold because they bought. The 'venal
+wretches' were the lucky franchise-holders in rotten boroughs. The
+'Friends of the People'[3] in 1793 made the often-repeated statement
+that 154 individuals returned 307 members, that is, a majority of the
+house. In Cornwall, again, 21 boroughs with 453 electors controlled by
+about 15 individuals returned 42 members,[4] or, with the two county
+members, only one member less than Scotland; and the Scottish members
+were elected by close corporations in boroughs and by the great
+families in counties. No wonder if the House of Commons seemed at times
+to be little more than an exchange for the traffic between the
+proprietors of votes and the proprietors of offices and pensions.
+
+The demand for the reforms advocated by Burke and Dunning was due to the
+catastrophe of the American War. The scandal caused by the famous
+coalition of 1783 showed that a diminution of the royal influence might
+only make room for selfish bargains among the proprietors of
+parliamentary influence. The demand for reform was taken up by Pitt. His
+plan was significant. He proposed to disfranchise a few rotten boroughs;
+but to soften this measure he afterwards suggested that a million should
+be set aside to buy such boroughs as should voluntarily apply for
+disfranchisement. The seats obtained were to be mainly added to county
+representation; but the franchise was to be extended so as to add about
+99,000 voters in boroughs, and additional seats were to be given to
+London and Westminster and to Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and
+Sheffield. The Yorkshire reformers, who led the movement, were satisfied
+with this modest scheme. The borough proprietors were obviously too
+strong to be directly attacked, though they might be induced to sell
+some of their power.
+
+Here was a mass of anomalies, sufficient to supply topics of
+denunciation for two generations of reformers, and, in time, to excite
+fears of violent revolution. Without undertaking the easy task of
+denouncing exploded systems, we may ask what state of mind they implied.
+Our ancestors were perfectly convinced that their political system was
+of almost unrivalled excellence: they held that they were freemen
+entitled to look down upon foreigners as the slaves of despots. Nor can
+we say that their satisfaction was without solid grounds. The boasting
+about English freedom implied some misunderstanding. But it was at least
+the boast of a vigorous race. Not only were there individuals capable of
+patriotism and public spirit, but the body politic was capable of
+continuous energy. During the eighteenth century the British empire
+spread round the world. Under Chatham it had been finally decided that
+the English race should be the dominant element in the new world; if the
+political connection had been severed by the bungling of his successors,
+the unbroken spirit of the nation had still been shown in the struggle
+against France, Spain, and the revolted colonies; and whatever may be
+thought of the motives which produced the great revolutionary wars, no
+one can deny the qualities of indomitable self-reliance and high courage
+to the men who led the country through the twenty years of struggle
+against France, and for a time against France with the continent at its
+feet. If moralists or political theorists find much to condemn in the
+ends to which British policy was directed, they must admit that the
+qualities displayed were not such as can belong to a simply corrupt and
+mean-spirited government.
+
+One obvious remark is that, on the whole, the system was a very good
+one--as systems go. It allowed free play to the effective political
+forces. Down to the revolutionary period, the nation as a whole was
+contented with its institutions. The political machinery provided a
+sufficient channel for the really efficient force of public opinion.
+There was as yet no large class which at once had political aspirations
+and was unable to gain a hearing. England was still in the main an
+agricultural country: and the agricultural labourer was fairly
+prosperous till the end of the century, while his ignorance and
+isolation made him indifferent to politics. There might be a bad squire
+or parson, as there might be a bad season; but squire and parson were as
+much parts of the natural order of things as the weather. The farmer or
+yeoman was not much less stolid; and his politics meant at most a choice
+between allegiance to one or other of the county families. If in the
+towns which were rapidly developing there was growing up a discontented
+population, its discontent was not yet directed into political channels.
+An extended franchise meant a larger expenditure on beer, not the
+readier acceptance of popular aspirations. To possess a vote was to have
+a claim to an occasional bonus rather than a right to influence
+legislation. Practically, therefore, parliament might be taken to
+represent what might be called 'public opinion,' for anything that
+deserved to be called public opinion was limited to the opinions of the
+gentry and the more intelligent part of the middle classes. There was no
+want of complaints of corruption, proposals to exclude placemen from
+parliament and the like; and in the days of Wilkes, Chatham, and Junius,
+when the first symptoms of democratic activity began to affect the
+political movement, the discontent made itself audible and alarming. But
+a main characteristic of the English reformers was the constant appeal
+to precedent, even in their most excited moods. They do not mention the
+rights of man; they invoke the 'revolution principles' of 1688; they
+insist upon the 'Bill of Rights' or Magna Charta. When keenly roused
+they recall the fate of Charles I.; and their favourite toast is the
+cause for which Hampden died on the field and Sidney on the scaffold.
+They believe in the jury as the 'palladium of our liberties'; and are
+convinced that the British Constitution represents an unsurpassable
+though unfortunately an ideal order of things, which must have existed
+at some indefinite period. Chatham in one of his most famous speeches,
+appeals, for example, to the 'iron barons' who resisted King John, and
+contrasts them with the silken courtiers which now compete for place and
+pensions. The political reformers of the time, like religious reformers
+in most times, conceive of themselves only as demanding the restoration
+of the system to its original purity, not as demanding its abrogation.
+In other words, they propose to remedy abuses but do not as yet even
+contemplate a really revolutionary change. Wilkes was not a 'Wilkite,'
+nor was any of his party, if Wilkite meant anything like Jacobin.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[2] 22 George III. c. 82.
+
+[3] _Parl. Hist._ xxx. 787.
+
+[4] _State Trials_, xxiv. 382.
+
+
+II. THE RULING CLASS
+
+Thus, however anomalous the constitution of parliament, there was no
+thought of any far-reaching revolution. The great mass of the population
+was too ignorant, too scattered and too poor to have any real political
+opinions. So long as certain prejudices were not aroused, it was content
+to leave the management of the state to the dominant class, which alone
+was intelligent enough to take an interest in public affairs and strong
+enough to make its interest felt. This class consisted in the first
+place of the great landed interest. When Lord North opposed Pitt's
+reform in 1785 he said[5] that the Constitution was 'the work of
+infinite wisdom ... the most beautiful fabric that had ever existed
+since the beginning of time.' He added that 'the bulk and weight' of the
+house ought to be in 'the hands of the country-gentlemen, the best and
+most respectable objects of the confidence of the people,' The speech,
+though intended to please an audience of country-gentlemen, represented
+a genuine belief.[6] The country-gentlemen formed the class to which not
+only the constitutional laws but the prevailing sentiment of the country
+gave the lead in politics as in the whole social system. Even reformers
+proposed to improve the House of Commons chiefly by increasing the
+number of county-members, and a county-member was almost necessarily a
+country-gentleman of an exalted kind. Although the country-gentleman was
+very far from having all things his own way, his ideals and prejudices
+were in a great degree the mould to which the other politically
+important class conformed. There was indeed a growing jealousy between
+the landholders and the 'monied-men.' Bolingbroke had expressed this
+distrust at an earlier part of the century. But the true representative
+of the period was his successful rival, Walpole, a thorough
+country-gentleman who had learned to understand the mysteries of finance
+and acquired the confidence of the city. The great merchants of London
+and the rising manufacturers in the country were rapidly growing in
+wealth and influence. The monied-men represented the most active,
+energetic, and growing part of the body politic. Their interests
+determined the direction of the national policy. The great wars of the
+century were undertaken in the interests of British trade. The extension
+of the empire in India was carried on through a great commercial
+company. The growth of commerce supported the sea-power which was the
+main factor in the development of the empire. The new industrial
+organisation which was arising was in later years to represent a class
+distinctly opposed to the old aristocratic order. At present it was in a
+comparatively subordinate position. The squire was interested in the
+land and the church; the merchant thought more of commerce and was apt
+to be a dissenter. But the merchant, in spite of some little jealousies,
+admitted the claims of the country-gentleman to be his social superior
+and political leader. His highest ambition was to be himself admitted to
+the class or to secure the admission of his family. As he became rich he
+bought a solid mansion at Clapham or Wimbledon, and, if he made a
+fortune, might become lord of manors in the country. He could not as yet
+aspire to become himself a peer, but he might be the ancestor of peers.
+The son of Josiah Child, the great merchant of the seventeenth century,
+became Earl Tylney, and built at Wanstead one of the noblest mansions in
+England. His contemporary Sir Francis Child, Lord Mayor, and a founder
+of the Bank of England, built Osterley House, and was ancestor of the
+earls of Jersey and Westmoreland. The daughter of Sir John Barnard, the
+typical merchant of Walpole's time, married the second Lord Palmerston.
+Beckford, the famous Lord Mayor of Chatham's day, was father of the
+author of _Vathek_, who married an earl's daughter and became the father
+of a duchess. The Barings, descendants of a German pastor, settled in
+England early in the century and became country-gentlemen, baronets,
+and peers. Cobbett, who saw them rise, reviled the stockjobbers who were
+buying out the old families. But the process had begun long before his
+days, and meant that the heads of the new industrial system were being
+absorbed into the class of territorial magnates. That class represented
+the framework upon which both political and social power was moulded.
+
+This implies an essential characteristic of the time. A familiar topic
+of the admirers of the British Constitution was the absence of the sharp
+lines of demarcation between classes and of the exclusive aristocratic
+privileges which, in France, provoked the revolution. In England the
+ruling class was not a 'survival': it had not retained privileges
+without discharging corresponding functions. The essence of
+'self-government,' says its most learned commentator,[7] is the organic
+connection 'between State and society.' On the Continent, that is,
+powers were intrusted to a centralised administrative and judicial
+hierarchy, which in England were left to the class independently strong
+by its social position. The landholder was powerful as a product of the
+whole system of industrial and agricultural development; and he was
+bound in return to perform arduous and complicated duties. How far he
+performed them well is another question. At least, he did whatever was
+done in the way of governing, and therefore did not sink into a mere
+excrescence or superfluity. I must try to point out certain results
+which had a material effect upon English opinion in general and, in
+particular, upon the Utilitarians.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[5] _Parl. Hist._ xxv. 472.
+
+[6] The country-gentlemen, said Wilberforce in 1800, are the 'very
+nerves and ligatures of the body politic.'--_Correspondence_, i. 219.
+
+[7] Gneist's _Self-Government_ (3rd edition, 1871), p. 879.
+
+
+III. LEGISLATION AND ADMINISTRATION
+
+The country-gentlemen formed the bulk of the law-making body, and the
+laws gave the first point of assault of the Utilitarian movement. One
+explanation is suggested by a phrase attributed to Sir Josiah Child.[8]
+The laws, he said, were a heap of nonsense, compiled by a few ignorant
+country-gentlemen, who hardly knew how to make good laws for the
+government of their own families, much less for the regulation of
+companies and foreign commerce. He meant that the parliamentary
+legislation of the century was the work of amateurs, not of specialists;
+of an assembly of men more interested in immediate questions of policy
+or personal intrigue than in general principles, and not of such a
+centralised body as would set a value upon symmetry and scientific
+precision. The country-gentleman had strong prejudices and enough common
+sense to recognise his own ignorance. The product of a traditional
+order, he clung to traditions, and regarded the old maxims as sacred
+because no obvious reason could be assigned for them. He was suspicious
+of abstract theories, and it did not even occur to him that any such
+process as codification or radical alteration of the laws was
+conceivable. For the law itself he had the profound veneration which is
+expressed by Blackstone. It represented the 'wisdom of our ancestors';
+the system of first principles, on which the whole order of things
+reposed, and which must be regarded as an embodiment of right reason.
+The common law was a tradition, not made by express legislation, but
+somehow existing apart from any definite embodiment, and revealed to
+certain learned hierophants. Any changes, required by the growth of new
+social conditions, had to be made under pretence of applying the old
+rules supposed to be already in existence. Thus grew up the system of
+'judge-made law,' which was to become a special object of the
+denunciations of Bentham. Child had noticed the incompetence of the
+country-gentlemen to understand the regulation of commercial affairs.
+The gap was being filled up, without express legislation, by judicial
+interpretations of Mansfield and his fellows. This, indeed, marks a
+characteristic of the whole system. 'Our constitution,' says Professor
+Dicey,[9] 'is a judge-made constitution, and it bears on its face all
+the features, good and bad, of judge-made law.' The law of landed
+property, meanwhile, was of vital and immediate interest to the
+country-gentleman. But, feeling his own incompetence, he had called in
+the aid of the expert. The law had been developed in mediaeval times, and
+bore in all its details the marks of the long series of struggles
+between king and nobles and parliaments. One result had been the
+elaborate series of legal fictions worked out in the conflict between
+private interests and public policy, by which lawyers had been able to
+adapt the rules fitted for an ancient state of society to another in
+which the very fundamental conceptions were altered. A mysterious system
+had thus grown up, which deterred any but the most resolute students. Of
+Fearne's essay upon 'Contingent remainders'(published in 1772) it was
+said that no work 'in any branch of science could afford a more
+beautiful instance of analysis.' Fearne had shown the acuteness of 'a
+Newton or a Pascal.' Other critics dispute this proposition; but in any
+case the law was so perplexing that it could only be fully understood by
+one who united antiquarian knowledge to the subtlety of a great
+logician. The 'vast and intricate machine,' as Blackstone calls it, 'of
+a voluminous family settlement' required for its explanation the
+dialectical skill of an accomplished schoolman. The poor
+country-gentleman could not understand the terms on which he held his
+own estate without calling in an expert equal to such a task. The man
+who has acquired skill so essential to his employer's interests is not
+likely to undervalue it or to be over anxious to simplify the labyrinth
+in which he shone as a competent guide.
+
+The lawyers who played so important a part by their familiarity with the
+mysteries of commercial law and landed property, naturally enjoyed the
+respect of their clients, and were rewarded by adoption into the class.
+The English barrister aspired to success by himself taking part in
+politics and legislation. The only path to the highest positions really
+open to a man of ability, not connected by blood with the great
+families, was the path which led to the woolsack or to the judge's
+bench. A great merchant might be the father or father-in-law of peers; a
+successful soldier or sailor might himself become a peer, but generally
+he began life as a member of the ruling classes, and his promotion was
+affected by parliamentary influence. But a successful lawyer might fight
+his way from a humble position to the House of Lords. Thurlow, son of a
+country-gentleman; Dunning, son of a country attorney; Ellenborough, son
+of a bishop and descendant of a long line of North-country 'statesmen';
+Kenyon, son of a farmer; Eldon, son of a Newcastle coal merchant,
+represent the average career of a successful barrister. Some of them
+rose to be men of political importance, and Thurlow and Eldon had the
+advantage of keeping George III's conscience--an unruly faculty which
+had an unfortunately strong influence upon affairs. The leaders of the
+legal profession, therefore, and those who hoped to be leaders, shared
+the prejudices, took a part in the struggles, and were rewarded by the
+honours of the dominant class.
+
+The criminal law became a main topic of reformers. There, as elsewhere,
+we have a striking example of traditional modes of thought surviving
+with singular persistence. The rough classification of crimes into
+felony and misdemeanour, and the strange technical rules about 'benefit
+of clergy' dating back to the struggles of Henry II. and Becket,
+remained like ultimate categories of thought. When the growth of social
+conditions led to new temptations or the appearance of a new criminal
+class, and particular varieties of crime became conspicuous, the only
+remedy was to declare that some offence should be 'felony without
+benefit of clergy,' and therefore punishable by death. By unsystematic
+and spasmodic legislation the criminal law became so savage as to shock
+every man of common humanity. It was tempered by the growth of technical
+rules, which gave many chances of escape to the criminal; and by
+practical revolt against its excesses, which led to the remission of the
+great majority of capital sentences.[10] The legislators were clumsy,
+not intentionally cruel; and the laws, though sanguinary in reality,
+were more sanguinary in theory than in practice. Nothing, on the other
+hand, is more conspicuous than the spirit of fair play to the criminal,
+which struck foreign observers.[11] It was deeply rooted in the whole
+system. The English judge was not an official agent of an inquisitorial
+system, but an impartial arbitrator between the prisoner and the
+prosecutor. In political cases especially a marked change was brought
+about by the revolution of 1688. If our ancestors talked some nonsense
+about trial by jury, the system certainly insured that the persons
+accused of libel or sedition should have a fair trial, and very often
+something more. Judges of the Jeffreys type had become inconceivable,
+though impartiality might disappear in cases where the prejudices of
+juries were actively aroused. Englishmen might fairly boast of their
+immunity from the arbitrary methods of continental rulers; and their
+unhesitating confidence in the fairness of the system became so
+ingrained as to be taken as a matter of course, and scarcely received
+due credit from later critics of the system.
+
+The country-gentleman, again, was not only the legislator but a most
+important figure in the judicial and administrative system. As justice
+of the peace, he was the representative of law and order to his country
+neighbours. The preface of 1785 to the fifteenth edition of Burn's
+_Justice of the Peace_, published originally in 1755, mentions that in
+the interval between these dates, some three hundred statutes had been
+passed affecting the duties of justices, while half as many had been
+repealed or modified. The justice was of course, as a rule, a
+superficial lawyer, and had to be prompted by his clerk, the two
+representing on a small scale the general relation between the lawyers
+and the ruling class. Burn tells the justice for his comfort that the
+judges will take a lenient view of any errors into which his ignorance
+may have led him. The discharge of such duties by an independent
+gentleman was thought to be so desirable and so creditable to him that
+his want of efficiency must be regarded with consideration. Nor, though
+the justices have been a favourite butt for satirists, does it appear
+that the system worked badly. When it became necessary to appoint paid
+magistrates in London, and the pay, according to the prevalent system,
+was provided by fees, the new officials became known as 'trading
+justices,' and their salaries, as Fielding tells us, were some of the
+'dirtiest money upon earth.' The justices might perhaps be hard upon a
+poacher (as, indeed, the game laws became one of the great scandals of
+the system), or liable to be misled by a shrewd attorney; but they were
+on the whole regarded as the natural and creditable representatives of
+legal authority in the country.
+
+The justices, again, discharged functions which would elsewhere belong
+to an administrative hierarchy, Gneist observes that the power of the
+justices of the peace represents the centre of gravity of the whole
+administrative system.[12] Their duties had become so multifarious and
+perplexed that Burn could only arrange them under alphabetical heads.
+Gneist works out a systematic account, filling many pages of elaborate
+detail, and showing how large a part they played in the whole social
+structure. An intense jealousy of central power was one correlative
+characteristic. Blackstone remarks in his more liberal humour that the
+number of new offices held at pleasure had greatly extended the
+influence of the crown. This refers to the custom-house officers, excise
+officers, stamp distributors and postmasters. But if the tax-gatherer
+represented the state, he represented also part of the patronage at the
+disposal of politicians. A voter was often in search of the place of a
+'tidewaiter'; and, as we know, the greatest poet of the day could only
+be rewarded by making him an exciseman. Any extension of a system which
+multiplied public offices was regarded with suspicion. Walpole, the
+strongest minister of the century, had been forced to an ignominious
+retreat when he proposed to extend the excise. The cry arose that he
+meant to enslave the country and extend the influence of the crown over
+all the corporations in England. The country-gentleman had little reason
+to fear that government would diminish his importance by tampering with
+his functions. The justices of the peace were called upon to take a
+great and increasing share in the administration of the poor-law. They
+were concerned in all manner of financial details; they regulated such
+police as existed; they looked after the old laws by which the trades
+were still restricted; and, in theory at least, could fix the rate of
+wages. Parliament did not override, but only gave the necessary sanction
+to their activity. If we looked through the journals of the House of
+Commons during the American War, for example, we should get the
+impression that the whole business of the legislature was to arrange
+administrative details. If a waste was to be enclosed, a canal or a
+highroad to be constructed, there was no public department to be
+consulted. The gentry of the neighbourhood joined to obtain a private
+act of parliament which gave the necessary powers to the persons
+interested. No general enclosure act could be passed, though often
+suggested. It would imply a central commission, which would only, as was
+suggested, give rise to jobbery and take power out of the natural hands.
+Parliament was omnipotent; it could regulate the affairs of the empire
+or of a parish; alter the most essential laws or act as a court of
+justice; settle the crown or arrange for a divorce or for the alteration
+of a private estate. But it objected to delegate authority even to a
+subordinate body, which might tend to become independent. Thus, if it
+was the central power and source of all legal authority, it might also
+be regarded as a kind of federal league, representing the wills of a
+number of partially independent persons. The gentry could meet there and
+obtain the sanction of their allies for any measure required in their
+own little sphere of influence. But they had an instinctive aversion to
+the formation of any organised body representing the state. The
+neighbourhood which wanted a road got powers to make it, and would
+concur in giving powers to others. But if the state were to be intrusted
+to make roads, ministers would have more places to give, and roads
+might be made which they did not want. The English roads had long been
+infamous, but neither was money wasted, as in France, on roads where
+there was no traffic.[13] Thus we have the combination of an absolute
+centralisation of legislative power with an utter absence of
+administrative centralisation. The units meeting in parliament formed a
+supreme assembly; but they did not sink their own individuality. They
+only met to distribute the various functions among themselves.
+
+The English parish with its squire, its parson, its lawyer and its
+labouring population was a miniature of the British Constitution in
+general. The squire's eldest son could succeed to his position; a second
+son might become a general or an admiral; a third would take the family
+living; a fourth, perhaps, seek his fortune at the bar. This implies a
+conception of other political conditions which curiously illustrate some
+contemporary conceptions.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[8] See _Dictionary of National Biography_.
+
+[9] _The Law of the Constitution_, p. 209.
+
+[10] See Sir J. F. Stephen's _History of the Criminal Law_ (1883), i.
+470. He quotes Blackstone's famous statement that there were 160
+felonies without benefit of clergy, and shows that this gives a very
+uncertain measure of the severity of the law. A single act making
+larceny in general punishable by death would be more severe than fifty
+separate acts, making fifty different varieties of larceny punishable by
+death. He adds, however, that the scheme of punishment was 'severe to
+the highest degree, and destitute of every sort of principle or system.'
+The number of executions in the early part of this century varied
+apparently from a fifth to a ninth of the capital sentences passed. See
+Table in Porter's _Progress of the Nation_ (1851), p. 635.
+
+[11] See the references to Cottu's report of 1822 in Stephen's
+_History_, i. 429, 439, 451. Cottu's book was translated by Blanco
+White.
+
+[12] Gneist's _Self-Government_ (1871), p. 194. It is characteristic
+that J. S. Mill, in his _Representative Government_, remarks that the
+'Quarter Sessions' are formed in the 'most anomalous' way; that they
+represent the old feudal principle, and are at variance with the
+fundamental principles of representative government (_Rep. Gov._ (1867),
+p. 113). The mainspring of the old system had become a simple anomaly to
+the new radicalism.
+
+[13] See Arthur Young, _passim_. There was, however, an improvement even
+in the first half of the century. See Cunningham's _Growth of English
+Industry, etc. (Modern Times)_, p. 378.
+
+
+IV. THE ARMY AND NAVY
+
+We are often amused by the persistency of the cry against a 'standing
+army' in England. It did not fairly die out until the revolutionary
+wars. Blackstone regards it as a singularly fortunate circumstance 'that
+any branch of the legislature might annually put an end to the legal
+existence of the army by refusing to concur in the continuance' of the
+mutiny act. A standing army was obviously necessary; but by making
+believe very hard, we could shut our eyes to the facts, and pretend
+that it was a merely temporary arrangement.[14] The doctrine had once
+had a very intelligible meaning. If James II. had possessed a
+disciplined army of the continental pattern, with Marlborough at its
+head, Marlborough would hardly have been converted by the prince of
+Orange. But loyal as the gentry had been at the restoration, they had
+taken very good care that the Stuarts should not have in their hand such
+a weapon as had been possessed by Cromwell. When the Puritan army was
+disbanded, they had proceeded to regulate the militia. The officers were
+appointed by the lords-lieutenants of counties, and had to possess a
+property qualification; the men raised by ballot in their own districts;
+and their numbers and length of training regulated by Act of Parliament.
+The old 'train-bands' were suppressed, except in the city of London, and
+thus the recognised military force of the country was a body essentially
+dependent upon the country gentry. The militia was regarded with favour
+as the 'old constitutional force' which could not be used to threaten
+our liberties. It was remodelled during the Seven Years' War and
+embodied during that and all our later wars. It was, however,
+ineffective by its very nature. An aristocracy which chose to carry on
+wars must have a professional army in fact, however careful it might be
+to pretend that it was a provision for a passing necessity. The pretence
+had serious consequences. Since the army was not to have interests
+separate from the people, there was no reason for building barracks. The
+men might be billeted on publicans, or placed under canvas, while they
+were wanted. When the great war came upon us, large sums had to be spent
+to make up for the previous neglect. Fox, on 22nd February 1793,
+protested during a lively debate upon this subject that sound
+constitutional principles condemned barracks, because to mix the army
+with the people was the 'best security against the danger of a standing
+army.'[15]
+
+In fact a large part of the army was a mere temporary force. In 1762,
+towards the end of the Seven Years' War, we had about 100,000 men in
+pay; and after the peace, the force was reduced to under 20,000. Similar
+changes took place in every war. The ruling class took advantage of the
+position. An army might be hired from Germany for the occasion. New
+regiments were generally raised by some great man who gave commissions
+to his own relations and dependants. When the Pretender was in Scotland,
+for example, fifteen regiments were raised by patriotic nobles, who gave
+the commissions, and stipulated that although they were to be employed
+only in suppressing the rising, the officers should have permanent
+rank.[16] So, as was shown in Mrs. Clarke's case, a patent for raising a
+regiment might be a source of profit to the undertaker, who again might
+get it by bribing the mistress of a royal duke. The officers had,
+according to the generally prevalent system, a modified property in
+their commissions; and the system of sale was not abolished till our own
+days. We may therefore say that the ruling class, on the one hand,
+objected to a standing army, and, on the other, since such an army was
+a necessity, farmed it from the country and were admitted to have a
+certain degree of private property in the concern. The prejudice against
+any permanent establishment made it necessary to fill the ranks on
+occasion by all manner of questionable expedients. Bounties were offered
+to attract the vagrants who hung loose upon society. Smugglers,
+poachers, and the like were allowed to choose between military service
+and transportation. The general effect was to provide an army of
+blackguards commanded by gentlemen. The army no doubt had its merits as
+well as its defects. The continental armies which it met were collected
+by equally demoralising methods until the French revolution led to a
+systematic conscription. The bad side is suggested by Napier's famous
+phrase, the 'cold shade of our aristocracy'; while Napier gives facts
+enough to prove both the brutality too often shown by the private
+soldier and the dogged courage which is taken to be characteristic even
+of the English blackguard. By others,--by such men as the duke of
+Wellington and Lord Palmerston, for example, types of the true
+aristocrat--the system was defended[17] as bringing men of good family
+into the army and so providing it, as the duke thought, with the best
+set of officers in Europe. No doubt they and the royal dukes who
+commanded them were apt to be grossly ignorant of their business; but it
+may be admitted by a historian that they often showed the qualities of
+which Wellington was himself a type. The English officer was a gentleman
+before he was a soldier, and considered the military virtues to be a
+part of his natural endowment. But it was undoubtedly a part of his
+traditional code of honour to do his duty manfully and to do it rather
+as a manifestation of his own spirit than from any desire for rewards or
+decorations. The same quality is represented more strikingly by the
+navy. The English admiral represents the most attractive and stirring
+type of heroism in our history. Nelson and the 'band of brothers' who
+served with him, the simple and high-minded sailors who summed up the
+whole duty of man in doing their best to crush the enemies of their
+country, are among the finest examples of single-souled devotion to the
+calls of patriotism. The navy, indeed, had its ugly side no less than
+the army. There was corruption at Greenwich[18] and in the dockyards,
+and parliamentary intrigue was a road to professional success. Voltaire
+notes the queer contrast between the English boast of personal liberty
+and the practice of filling up the crews by pressgangs. The discipline
+was often barbarous, and the wrongs of the common sailor found
+sufficient expression in the mutiny at the Nore. A grievance, however,
+which pressed upon a single class was maintained from the necessity of
+the case and the inertness of the administrative system. The navy did
+not excite the same jealousy as the army; and the officers were more
+professionally skilful than their brethren. The national qualities come
+out, often in their highest form, in the race of great seamen upon whom
+the security of the island power essentially depended.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[14] See _Military Forces of the Crown_, by Charles M. Clode (1869), for
+a full account of the facts.
+
+[15] _Parl. Hist._ xxx. 490. Clode states (i. 222) that L9,000,000 was
+spent upon barracks by 1804, and, it seems, without proper authority.
+
+[16] Debate in _Parl. Hist._ xiii. 1382, etc., and see Walpole's
+_Correspondence_, i. 400, for some characteristic comments.
+
+[17] Clode, ii. 86.
+
+[18] See the famous case in 1778 in which Erskine made his first
+appearance, in _State Trials_, xxi. Lord St. Vincent's struggle against
+the corruption of his time is described by Prof. Laughton in the
+_Dictionary of National Biography_, (_s.v._ Sir John Jervis). In 1801
+half a million a year was stolen, besides all the waste due to
+corruption and general muddling.
+
+
+V. THE CHURCH
+
+I turn, however, to the profession which was more directly connected
+with the intellectual development of the country. The nature of the
+church establishment gives the most obvious illustration of the
+connection between the intellectual position on the one hand and the
+social and political order on the other, though I do not presume to
+decide how far either should be regarded as effect and the other as
+cause.
+
+What is the church of England? Some people apparently believe that it is
+a body possessing and transmitting certain supernatural powers. This
+view was in abeyance for the time for excellent reasons, and, true or
+false, is no answer to the constitutional question. It does not enable
+us to define what was the actual body with which lawyers and politicians
+have to deal. The best answer to such questions in ordinary case would
+be given by describing the organisation of the body concerned. We could
+then say what is the authority which speaks in its name; and what is the
+legislature which makes its laws, alters its arrangements, and defines
+the terms of membership. The supreme legislature of the church of
+England might appear to be parliament. It is the Act of Uniformity which
+defines the profession of belief exacted from the clergy; and no
+alteration could be made in regard to the rights and duties of the
+clergy except by parliamentary authority. The church might therefore be
+regarded as simply the religious department of the state. Since 1688,
+however, the theory and the practice of toleration had introduced
+difficulties. Nonconformity was not by itself punishable though it
+exposed a man to certain disqualifications. The state, therefore,
+recognised that many of its members might legally belong to other
+churches, although it had, as Warburton argued, formed an 'alliance'
+with the dominant church. The spirit of toleration was spreading
+throughout the century. The old penal laws, due to the struggles of the
+seventeenth century, were becoming obsolete in practice and were
+gradually being repealed. The Gordon riots of 1780 showed that a
+fanatical spirit might still be aroused in a mob which wanted an excuse
+for plunder; but the laws were not explicitly defended by reasonable
+persons and were being gradually removed by legislation towards the end
+of the century. Although, therefore, parliament was kept free from
+papists, it could hardly regard church and state as identical, or
+consider itself as entitled to act as the representative body of the
+church. No other body, indeed, could change the laws of the church; but
+parliament recognised its own incompetence to deal with them. Towards
+the end of the century, various attempts were made to relax the terms of
+subscription. It was proposed, for example, to substitute a profession
+of belief in the Bible for a subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles.
+But the House of Commons sensibly refused to expose itself by venturing
+upon any theological innovations. A body more ludicrously incompetent
+could hardly have been invented.
+
+Hence we must say that the church had either no supreme body which could
+speak in its name and modify its creed, its ritual, its discipline, or
+the details of its organisation; or else, that the only body which had
+in theory a right to interfere was doomed, by sufficient considerations,
+to absolute inaction. The church, from a secular point of view, was not
+so much a department of the state as an aggregate of offices, the
+functions of which were prescribed by unalterable tradition. It
+consisted of a number of bishops, deans and chapters, rectors, vicars,
+curates, and so forth, many of whom had certain proprietary rights in
+their position, and who were bound by law to discharge certain
+functions. But the church, considered as a whole, could hardly be called
+an organism at all, or, if an organism, it was an organism with its
+central organ in a permanent state of paralysis. The church, again, in
+this state was essentially dependent upon the ruling classes. A glance
+at the position of the clergy shows their professional position. At
+their head were the bishops, some of them enjoying princely revenues,
+while others were so poor as to require that their incomes should be
+eked out by deaneries or livings held _in commendam_. The great sees,
+such as Canterbury, Durham, Ely, and Winchester, were valued at between,
+L20,000 and L30,000 a year; while the smaller, Llandaff, Bangor,
+Bristol, and Gloucester, were worth less than L2000. The bishops had
+patronage which enabled them to provide for relatives or for deserving
+clergymen. The average incomes of the parochial clergy, meanwhile, were
+small. In 1809 they were calculated to be worth L255, while nearly four
+thousand livings were worth under L150; and there were four or five
+thousand curates with very small pay. The profession, therefore, offered
+a great many blanks with a few enormous prizes. How were those prizes
+generally obtained? When the reformers published the _Black Book_ in
+1820, they gave a list of the bishops holding sees in the last year of
+George III.; and, as most of these gentlemen were on their promotion at
+the end of the previous century. I give the list in a note.[19]
+
+There were twenty-seven bishoprics including Sodor and Man. Of these
+eleven were held by members of noble families; fourteen were held by men
+who had been tutors in, or in other ways personally connected with the
+royal family or the families of ministers and great men; and of the
+remaining two, one rested his claim upon political writing in defence of
+Pitt, while the other seems to have had the support of a great city
+company. The system of translation enabled the government to keep a hand
+upon the bishops. Their elevation to the more valuable places or leave
+to hold subsidiary preferments depended upon their votes in the House of
+Lords. So far, then, as secular motives operated, the tendency of the
+system was clear. If Providence had assigned to you a duke for a father
+or an uncle, preferment would fall to you as of right. A man of rank who
+takes orders should be rewarded for his condescension. If that
+qualification be not secured, you should aim at being tutor in a great
+family, accompany a lad on the grand tour, or write some pamphlet on a
+great man's behalf. Paley gained credit for independence at Cambridge,
+and spoke with contempt of the practice of 'rooting,' the cant phrase
+for patronage hunting. The text which he facetiously suggested for a
+sermon when Pitt visited Cambridge, 'There is a young man here who has
+six loaves and two fishes, but what are they among so many?' hit off the
+spirit in which a minister was regarded at the universities. The memoirs
+of Bishop Watson illustrate the same sentiment. He lived in his pleasant
+country house at Windermere, never visiting his diocese, and according
+to De Quincey, talking Socinianism at his table. He felt himself to be a
+deeply injured man, because ministers had never found an opportunity
+for translating him to a richer diocese, although he had written
+against Paine and Gibbon. If they would not reward their friends, he
+argued, why should he take up their cause by defending Christianity?
+
+The bishops were eminently respectable. They did not lead immoral lives,
+and if they gave a large share of preferment to their families, that at
+least was a domestic virtue. Some of them, Bishop Barrington of Durham,
+for example, took a lead in philanthropic movements; and, if considered
+simply as prosperous country-gentlemen, little fault could be found with
+them. While, however, every commonplace motive pointed so directly
+towards a career of subserviency to the ruling class among the laity, it
+could not be expected that they should take a lofty view of their
+profession. The Anglican clergy were not like the Irish priesthood, in
+close sympathy with the peasantry, or like the Scottish ministers, the
+organs of strong convictions spreading through the great mass of the
+middle and lower classes. A man of energy, who took his faith seriously,
+was, like the Evangelical clergy, out of the road to preferment, or,
+like Wesley, might find no room within the church at all. His colleagues
+called him an 'enthusiast,' and disliked him as a busybody if not a
+fanatic. They were by birth and adoption themselves members of the
+ruling class; many of them were the younger sons of squires, and held
+their livings in virtue of their birth. Advowsons are the last offices
+to retain a proprietary character. The church of that day owed such a
+representative as Horne Tooke to the system which enabled his father to
+provide for him by buying a living. From the highest to the lowest ranks
+of clergy, the church was as Matthew Arnold could still call it, an
+'appendage of the barbarians.' The clergy, that is, as a whole, were an
+integral but a subsidiary part of the aristocracy or the great landed
+interest. Their admirers urged that the system planted a cultivated
+gentleman in every parish in the country. Their opponents replied, like
+John Sterling, that he was a 'black dragoon with horse meat and man's
+meat'--part of the garrison distributed through the country to support
+the cause of property and order. In any case the instinctive
+prepossessions, the tastes and favourite pursuits of the profession were
+essentially those of the class with which it was so intimately
+connected. Arthur Young,[20] speaking of the French clergy, observes
+that at least they are not poachers and foxhunters, who divide their
+time between hunting, drinking, and preaching. You do not in France find
+such advertisements as he had heard of in England, 'Wanted a curacy in a
+good sporting country, where the duty is light and the neighbourhood
+convivial.' The proper exercise for a country clergyman, he rather
+quaintly observes, is agriculture. The ideal parson, that is, should be
+a squire in canonical dress. The clergy of the eighteenth century
+probably varied between the extremes represented by Trulliber and the
+Vicar of Wakefield. Many of them were excellent people, with a mild
+taste for literature, contributing to the _Gentleman's Magazine_,
+investigating the antiquities of their county, occasionally confuting a
+deist, exerting a sound judgment in cultivating their glebes or
+improving the breed of cattle, and respected both by squire and farmers.
+The 'Squarson,' in Sydney Smith's facetious phrase, was the ideal
+clergyman. The purely sacerdotal qualities, good or bad, were at a
+minimum. Crabbe, himself a type of the class, has left admirable
+portraits of his fellows. Profound veneration for his noble patrons and
+hearty dislike for intrusive dissenters were combined in his own case
+with a pure domestic life, a keen insight into the uglier realities of
+country life and a good sound working morality. Miss Austen, who said
+that she could have been Crabbe's wife, has given more delicate pictures
+of the clergyman as he appeared at the tea-tables of the time. He varies
+according to her from the squire's excellent younger brother, who is
+simply a squire in a white neck-cloth, to the silly but still
+respectable sycophant, who firmly believes his lady patroness to be a
+kind of local deity. Many of the real memoirs of the day give pleasant
+examples of the quiet and amiable lives of the less ambitious clergy.
+There is the charming Gilbert White (1720-1793) placidly studying the
+ways of tortoises, and unconsciously composing a book which breathes an
+undying charm from its atmosphere of peaceful repose; William Gilpin
+(1724-1804) founding and endowing parish schools, teaching the
+catechism, and describing his vacation tours in narratives which helped
+to spread a love of natural scenery; and Thomas Gisborne (1758-1846),
+squire and clergyman, a famous preacher among the evangelicals and a
+poet after the fashion of Cowper, who loved his native Needwood Forest
+as White loved Selborne and Gilpin loved the woods of Boldre; and Cowper
+himself (1731-1800) who, though not a clergyman, lived in a clerical
+atmosphere, and whose gentle and playful enjoyment of quiet country life
+relieves the painfully deep pathos of his disordered imagination; and
+the excellent W. L. Bowles (1762-1850), whose sonnets first woke
+Coleridge's imagination, who spent eighty-eight years in an amiable and
+blameless life, and was country-gentleman, magistrate, antiquary,
+clergyman, and poet.[21] Such names are enough to recall a type which
+has not quite vanished, and which has gathered a new charm in more
+stirring and fretful times. These most excellent people, however, were
+not likely to be prominent in movements destined to break up the placid
+environment of their lives nor, in truth, to be sources of any great
+intellectual stir.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[19] The list, checked from other sources of information, is as
+follows:--Manners Sutton, archbishop of Canterbury, was grandson of the
+third duke of Rutland; Edward Vernon, archbishop of York, was son of the
+first Lord Vernon and cousin of the third Lord Harcourt, whose estates
+he inherited; Shute Barrington, bishop of Durham, was son of the first
+and brother of the second Viscount Barrington; Brownlow North, bishop of
+Winchester, was uncle to the earl of Guildford; James Cornwallis, bishop
+of Lichfield, was uncle to the second marquis, whose peerage he
+inherited; George Pelham, bishop of Exeter, was brother of the earl of
+Chichester; Henry Bathurst, bishop of Norwich, was nephew of the first
+earl; George Henry Law, bishop of Chester, was brother of the first Lord
+Ellenborough; Edward Legge, bishop of Oxford, was son of the second earl
+of Dartmouth; Henry Ryder, bishop of Gloucester, was brother to the earl
+of Harrowby; George Murray, bishop of Sodor and Man, was nephew-in-law
+to the duke of Athol and brother-in-law to the earl of Kinnoul. Of the
+fourteen tutors, etc., mentioned above, William Howley, bishop of
+London, had been tutor to the prince of Orange at Oxford; George
+Pretyman Tomline, bishop of Lincoln, had been Pitt's tutor at Cambridge;
+Richard Beadon, bishop of Bath and Wells, had been tutor to the duke of
+Gloucester at Cambridge; Folliott Cornewall, bishop of Worcester, had
+been made chaplain to the House of Commons by the influence of his
+cousin, the Speaker; John Buckner, bishop of Chichester, had been tutor
+to the duke of Richmond; Henry William Majendie, bishop of Bangor, was
+the son of Queen Charlotte's English master, and had been tutor to
+William IV.; George Isaac Huntingford, bishop of Hereford, had been
+tutor to Addington, prime minister; Thomas Burgess, bishop of St.
+David's, was a personal friend of Addington; John Fisher, bishop of
+Salisbury, had been tutor to the duke of Kent; John Luxmoore, bishop of
+St. Asaph, had been tutor to the duke of Buccleugh; Samuel Goodenough,
+bishop of Carlisle, had been tutor to the sons of the third duke of
+Portland and was connected with Addington; William Lort Mansel, bishop
+of Bristol, had been tutor to Perceval at Cambridge, and owed to
+Perceval the mastership of Trinity; Walter King, bishop of Rochester,
+had been secretary to the duke of Portland; and Bowyer Edward Sparke,
+bishop of Ely, had been tutor to the duke of Rutland. The two remaining
+bishops were Herbert Marsh, bishop of Peterborough, who had established
+a claim by defending Pitt's financial measures in an important pamphlet;
+and William Van Mildert, bishop of Llandaff, who had been chaplain to
+the Grocers' Company and became known as a preacher in London.
+
+[20] _Travels in France_ (1892), p. 327.
+
+[21] See _A Country Clergyman of the Eighteenth Century_ (Thomas
+Twining), 1882, for a pleasant picture of the class.
+
+
+VI. THE UNIVERSITIES
+
+The effect of these conditions is perhaps best marked in the state of
+the universities. Universities have at different periods been great
+centres of intellectual life. The English universities of the eighteenth
+century are generally noted only as embodiments of sloth and prejudice.
+The judgments of Wesley and Gibbon and Adam Smith and Bentham coincide
+in regard to Oxford; and Johnson's love of his university is an
+equivocal testimony to its intellectual merits. We generally think of it
+as of a sleepy hollow, in which portly fellows of colleges, like the
+convivial Warton, imbibed port wine and sneered at Methodists, though
+few indeed rivalled Warton's services to literature. The universities in
+fact had become, as they long continued to be, high schools chiefly for
+the use of the clergy, and if they still aimed at some wider
+intellectual training, were sinking to be institutions where the pupils
+of the public schools might, if they pleased, put a little extra polish
+upon their classical and mathematical knowledge. The colleges preserved
+their mediaeval constitution; and no serious changes of their statutes
+were made until the middle of the present century. The clergy had an
+almost exclusive part in the management, and dissenters were excluded
+even from entering Oxford as students.[22] But the clergyman did not as
+a rule devote himself to a life of study. He could not marry as a
+fellow, but he made no vows of celibacy. The college, therefore, was
+merely a stepping-stone on the way to the usual course of preferment. A
+fellow looked forwards to settling in a college living, or if he had the
+luck to act as tutor to a nobleman, he might soar to a deanery or a
+bishopric. The fellows who stayed in their colleges were probably those
+who had least ambition, or who had a taste for an easy bachelor's life.
+The universities, therefore, did not form bodies of learned men
+interested in intellectual pursuits; but at most, helped such men in
+their start upon a more prosperous career. The studies flagged in
+sympathy. Gray's letters sufficiently reveal the dulness which was felt
+by a man of cultivation confined within the narrow society of college
+dons of the day. The scholastic philosophy which had once found
+enthusiastic cultivators in the great universities had more or less held
+its own through the seventeenth century, though repudiated by all the
+rising thinkers. Since the days of Locke and Berkeley, it had fallen
+utterly out of credit. The bright common sense of the polished society
+of the day looked upon the old doctrine with a contempt, which, if not
+justified by familiarity, was an implicit judgment of the tree by its
+fruits. Nobody could suppose the divines of the day to be the
+depositaries of an esoteric wisdom which the vulgar were not worthy to
+criticise. They were themselves chiefly anxious to prove that their
+sacred mysteries were really not at all mysterious, but merely one way
+of expressing plain common sense. At Oxford, indeed, the lads were still
+crammed with Aldrich, and learned the technical terms of a philosophy
+which had ceased to have any real life in it. At Cambridge, ardent young
+radicals spoke with contempt of this 'horrid jargon--fit only to be
+chattered by monkies in a wilderness.'[23] Even at Cambridge, they still
+had disputations on the old form, but they argued theses from Locke's
+essay, and thought that their mathematical studies were a check upon
+metaphysical 'jargon.' It is indeed characteristic of the respect for
+tradition that at Cambridge even mathematics long suffered from a
+mistaken patriotism which resented any improvement upon the methods of
+Newton. There were some signs of reviving activity. The fellowships were
+being distributed with less regard to private interest. The mathematical
+tripos founded at Cambridge in the middle of the century became the
+prototype of all competitive examinations; and half a century later
+Oxford followed the precedent by the Examination Statute of 1800. A
+certain number of professorships of such modern studies as anatomy,
+history, botany, and geology were founded during the eighteenth century,
+and show a certain sense of a need of broader views. The lectures upon
+which Blackstone founded his commentaries were the product of the
+foundation of the Vinerian professorship in 1751; and the most recent of
+the Cambridge colleges, Downing College, shows by its constitution that
+a professoriate was now considered to be desirable. Cambridge in the
+last years of the century might have had a body of very eminent
+professors. Watson, second wrangler of 1759, had delivered lectures upon
+chemistry, of which it was said by Davy that hardly any conceivable
+change in the science could make them obsolete.[24] Paley, senior
+wrangler in 1763, was an almost unrivalled master of lucid exposition,
+and one of his works is still a textbook at Cambridge. Isaac Milner,
+senior wrangler in 1774, afterwards held the professorships of
+mathematics and natural philosophy, and was famous as a sort of
+ecclesiastical Dr. Johnson. Gilbert Wakefield, second wrangler in 1776,
+published an edition of Lucretius, and was a man of great ability and
+energy. Herbert Marsh, second wrangler in 1779, was divinity professor
+from 1807, and was the first English writer to introduce some knowledge
+of the early stages of German criticism. Porson, the greatest Greek
+scholar of his time, became professor in 1790; Malthus, ninth wrangler
+in 1788, who was to make a permanent mark upon political economy, became
+fellow of Jesus College in 1793. Waring, senior wrangler in 1757, Vince,
+senior wrangler in 1775, and Wollaston, senior wrangler in 1783, were
+also professors and mathematicians of reputation. Towards the end of the
+century ten professors were lecturing.[25] A large number were not
+lecturing, though Milner was good enough to be 'accessible to
+students.' Paley and Watson had been led off into the path of
+ecclesiastical preferment. Marsh too became a bishop in 1816. There was
+no place for such talents as those of Malthus, who ultimately became
+professor at Haileybury. Wakefield had the misfortune of not being able
+to cover his heterodoxy with the conventional formula. Porson suffered
+from the same cause, and from less respectable weaknesses; but it seems
+that the university had no demand for services of the great scholar, and
+he did nothing for his L40 a year. Milner was occupied in managing the
+university in the interests of Pitt and Protestantism, and in waging war
+against Jacobins and intruders. There was no lack of ability; but there
+was no inducement to any intellectual activity for its own sake; and
+there were abundant temptations for any man of energy to diverge to the
+career which offered more intelligible rewards.
+
+The universities in fact supplied the demand which was actually
+operative. They provided the average clergyman with a degree; they
+expected the son of the country-gentleman or successful lawyer to
+acquire the traditional culture of his class, and to spend three or four
+years pleasantly, or even, if he chose, industriously. But there was no
+such thing as a learned society, interested in the cultivation of
+knowledge for its own sake, and applauding the devotion of life to its
+extension or discussion. The men of the time who contributed to the
+progress of science owed little or nothing to the universities, and were
+rather volunteers from without, impelled by their own idiosyncrasies.
+Among the scientific leaders, for example, Joseph Black (1728-1799) was
+a Scottish professor; Priestley (1733-1804) a dissenting minister;
+Cavendish (1731-1810) an aristocratic recluse, who, though he studied at
+Cambridge, never graduated; Watt (1736-1819) a practical mechanician;
+and Dalton (1766-1844) a Quaker schoolmaster. John Hunter (1728-1793)
+was one of the energetic Scots who forced their way to fame without help
+from English universities. The cultivation of the natural sciences was
+only beginning to take root; and the soil, which it found congenial, was
+not that of the great learned institutions, which held to their old
+traditional studies.
+
+I may, then, sum up the result in a few words. The church had once
+claimed to be an entirely independent body, possessing a supernatural
+authority, with an organisation sanctioned by supernatural powers, and
+entitled to lay down the doctrines which gave the final theory of life.
+Theology was the queen of the sciences and theologians the interpreters
+of the first principles of all knowledge and conduct. The church of
+England, on the other hand, at our period had entirely ceased to be
+independent: it was bound hand and foot by acts of parliament: there was
+no ecclesiastical organ capable of speaking in its name, altering its
+laws or defining its tenets: it was an aggregate of offices the
+appointment to which was in the hands either of the political ministers
+or of the lay members of the ruling class. It was in reality simply a
+part of the ruling class told off to perform divine services: to
+maintain order and respectability and the traditional morality. It had
+no distinctive philosophy or theology, for the articles of belief
+represented simply a compromise; an attempt to retain as much of the old
+as was practicable and yet to admit as much of the new as was made
+desirable by political considerations. It was the boast of its more
+liberal members that they were not tied down to any definite dogmatic
+system; but could have a free hand so long as they did not wantonly come
+into conflict with some of the legal formulae laid down in a previous
+generation. The actual teaching showed the effects of the system. It had
+been easy to introduce a considerable leaven of the rationalism which
+suited the lay mind; to explain away the mysterious doctrines upon which
+an independent church had insisted as manifestations of its spiritual
+privileges, but which were regarded with indifference or contempt by the
+educated laity now become independent. The priest had been disarmed and
+had to suit his teaching to the taste of his patrons and congregations.
+The divines of the eighteenth century had, as they boasted, confuted the
+deists; but it was mainly by showing that they could be deists in all
+but the name. The dissenters, less hampered by legal formulae, had
+drifted towards Unitarianism. The position of such divines as Paley,
+Watson, and Hey was not so much that the Unitarians were wrong, as that
+the mysterious doctrines were mere sets of words, over which it was
+superfluous to quarrel. The doctrine was essentially traditional; for it
+was impossible to represent the doctrines of the church of England as
+deductions from any abstract philosophy. But the traditions were not
+regarded as having any mysterious authority. Abstract philosophy might
+lead to deism or infidelity. Paley and his like rejected such philosophy
+in the spirit of Locke or even Hume. But it was always possible to treat
+a tradition like any other statement of fact. It could be proved by
+appropriate evidence. The truth of Christianity was therefore merely a
+question of facts like the truth of any other passages of history. It
+was easy enough to make out a case for the Christian miracles, and then
+the mysteries, after it had been sufficiently explained that they really
+meant next to nothing, could be rested upon the authority of the
+miracles. In other words, the accepted doctrines, like the whole
+constitution of the church, could be so modified as to suit the
+prejudices and modes of thought of the laity. The church, it may be
+said, was thoroughly secularised. The priest was no longer a wielder of
+threats and an interpreter of oracles, but an entirely respectable
+gentleman, who fully sympathised with the prejudices of his patron and
+practically admitted that he had very little to reveal, beyond
+explaining that his dogmas were perfectly harmless and eminently
+convenient. He preached, however, a sound common sense morality, and was
+not divided from his neighbours by setting up the claims characteristic
+of a sacerdotal caste. Whether he has become on the whole better or
+worse by subsequent changes is a question not to be asked here; but
+perhaps not quite so easily answered as is sometimes supposed.
+
+The condition of the English church and universities may be contrasted
+with that of their Scottish rivals. The Scottish church and universities
+had no great prizes to offer and no elaborate hierarchy. But the church
+was a national institution in a sense different from the English. The
+General Assembly was a powerful body, not overshadowed by a great
+political rival. To rise to be a minister was the great ambition of poor
+sons of farmers and tradesmen. They had to study at the universities in
+the intervals, perhaps, of agricultural labour; and if the learning was
+slight and the scholarship below the English standard, the young
+aspirant had at least to learn to preach and to acquire such philosophy
+as would enable him to argue upon grace and freewill with some
+hard-headed Davie Deans. It was doubtless owing in part to these
+conditions that the Scottish universities produced many distinguished
+teachers throughout the century. Professors had to teach something which
+might at least pass for philosophy, though they were more or less
+restrained by the necessity of respecting orthodox prejudices. At the
+end of the century, the only schools of philosophy in the island were to
+be found in Scotland, where Reid (1710-1796) and Adam Smith (1723-1790)
+had found intelligent disciples, and where Dugald Stewart, of whom I
+shall speak presently, had become the recognised philosophical
+authority.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[22] At Cambridge subscription was abolished for undergraduates in 1775;
+and bachelors of arts had only to declare themselves '_bona-fide_
+members of the church of England.'
+
+[23] Gilbert Wakefield's _Memoirs_, ii. 149.
+
+[24] De Quincey, _Works_ (1863), ii. 106.
+
+[25] Wordsworth's _University Life, etc._ (1874), 83-87.
+
+
+VII. THEORY
+
+What theory corresponds to this practical order? It implies, in the
+first place, a constant reference to tradition. The system has grown up
+without any reference to abstract principles or symmetrical plan. The
+legal order supposes a traditional common law, as the ecclesiastical
+order a traditional creed, and the organisation is explicable only by
+historical causes. The system represents a series of compromises, not
+the elaboration of a theory. If the squire undertook by way of
+supererogation to justify his position he appealed to tradition and
+experience. He invoked the 'wisdom of our ancestors,' the system of
+'checks and balances' which made our Constitution an unrivalled mixture
+of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy deserving the 'dread and envy
+of the world.' The prescription for compounding that mixture could
+obviously be learned by nothing but experiment. Traditional means
+empirical. By instinct, rather than conscious reasoning, Englishmen had
+felt their way to establishing the 'palladia of our liberties': trial by
+jury, the 'Habeas Corpus' Act, and the substitution of a militia for a
+standing army. The institutions were cherished because they had been
+developed by long struggles and were often cherished when their real
+justification had disappeared. The Constitution had not been 'made' but
+had 'grown'; or, in other words, the one rule had been the rule of
+thumb. That is an excellent rule in its way, and very superior to an
+abstract rule which neglects or overrides experience. The 'logic of
+facts,' moreover, may be trusted to produce a certain harmony: and
+general principles, though not consciously invoked, tacitly govern the
+development of institutions worked out under uniform conditions. The
+simple reluctance to pay money without getting money's worth might
+generate the important principle that representation should go with
+taxation, without embodying any theory of a 'social contract' such as
+was offered by an afterthought to give a philosophical sanction.
+Englishmen, it is said, had bought their liberties step by step, because
+at each step they were in a position to bargain with their rulers. What
+they had bought they were determined to keep and considered to be their
+inalienable property. One result is conspicuous. In England the ruling
+classes did not so much consider their privileges to be something
+granted by the state, as the power of the state to be something derived
+from their concessions. Though the lord-lieutenant and the justices of
+the peace were nominated by the crown, their authority came in fact as
+an almost spontaneous consequence of their birthright or their acquired
+position in the country. They shone by their own light and were really
+the ultimate sources of authority. Seats in parliament, preferments in
+the church, commissions in the army belonged to them like their estates;
+and they seemed to be qualified by nature, rather than by appointment,
+to act in judicial and administrative capacities. The system of
+'self-government' embodies this view. The functions of government were
+assigned to men already powerful by their social position. The absence
+of the centralised hierarchy of officials gave to Englishmen the sense
+of personal liberty which compelled the admiration of Voltaire and his
+countrymen in the eighteenth century. In England were no _lettres de
+cachet_, and no Bastille. A man could say what he thought and act
+without fear of arbitrary rule. There was no such system as that which,
+in France, puts the agents of the central power above the ordinary law
+of the land. This implies what has been called the 'rule of the law' in
+England. 'With us every official from the prime minister down to a
+constable or a collector of taxes' (as Professor Dicey explains the
+principle) 'is under the same responsibility for every act done without
+legal justification as any other citizen.'[26] The early centralisation
+of the English monarchy had made the law supreme, and instead of
+generating a new structure had combined and regulated the existing
+social forces. The sovereign power was thus farmed to the aristocracy
+instead of forming an organ of its own. Instead of resigning power they
+were forced to exercise it on condition of thorough responsibility to
+the central judiciary. Their privileges were not destroyed but were
+combined with the discharge of corresponding duties. Whatever their
+shortcomings, they were preserved from the decay which is the inevitable
+consequence of a divorce of duties from privileges.
+
+Another aspect of the case is equally clear. If the privilege is
+associated with a duty, the duty may also be regarded as a privilege.
+The doctrine seems to mark a natural stage in the evolution of the
+conception of duty to the state. The power which is left to a member of
+the ruling class is also part of his dignity. Thus we have an
+amalgamation between the conceptions of private property and public
+trust. 'In so far as the ideal of feudalism is perfectly realised,' it
+has been said,[27] 'all that we can call public law is merged in private
+law; jurisdiction is property; office is property; the kingship itself
+is property.' This feudal ideal was still preserved with many of the
+institutions descended from feudalism. The king's right to his throne
+was regarded as of the same kind as the right to a private estate. His
+rights as king were also his rights as the owner of the land.[28]
+Subordinate landowners had similar rights, and as the royal power
+diminished greater powers fell to the aggregate of constitutional
+kinglets who governed the country. Each of them was from one point of
+view an official, but each also regarded his office as part of his
+property. The country belonged to him and his class rather than he to
+the country. We occasionally find the quaint theory which deduced
+political rights from property in land. The freeholders were the owners
+of the soil and might give notice to quit to the rest of the
+population.[29] They had therefore a natural right to carry on
+government in their own interests. The ruling classes, however, were not
+marked off from others by any deep line of demarcation; they could sell
+their own share in the government to anybody who was rich enough to buy
+it, and there was a constant influx of new blood. Moreover, they did in
+fact improve their estate with very great energy, and discharged
+roughly, but in many ways efficiently, the duties which were also part
+of their property. The nobleman or even the squire was more than an
+individual; as head of a family he was a life tenant of estates which he
+desired to transmit to his descendants. He was a 'corporation sole' and
+had some of the spirit of a corporation. A college or a hospital is
+founded to discharge a particular function; its members continue perhaps
+to recognise their duty; but they resent any interference from outside
+as sacrilege or confiscation. It is for them alone to judge how they can
+best carry out, and whether they are actually carrying out, the aims of
+the corporate life. In the same way the great noble took his part in
+legislation, church preferment, the command of the army, and so forth,
+and fully admitted that he was bound in honour to play his part
+effectively; but he was equally convinced that he was subject to nothing
+outside of his sense of honour. His duties were also his rights. The
+naif expression of this doctrine by a great borough proprietor, 'May I
+not do what I like with my own?' was to become proverbial.[30]
+
+This, finally, suggests that a doctrine of 'individualism' is implied
+throughout. The individual rights are the antecedent and the rights of
+the state a consequent or corollary. Every man has certain sacred rights
+accruing to him in virtue of 'prescription' or tradition, through his
+inherited position in the social organism. The 'rule of law' secures
+that he shall exercise them without infringing the privileges of his
+neighbour. He may moreover be compelled by the law to discharge them on
+due occasion. But, as there is no supreme body which can sufficiently
+superintend, stimulate, promote, or dismiss, the active impulse must
+come chiefly from his own sense of the fitness of things. The efficiency
+therefore depends upon his being in such a position that his duty may
+coincide with his personal interest. The political machinery can only
+work efficiently on the assumption of a spontaneous activity of the
+ruling classes, prompted by public spirit or a sense of personal
+dignity. Meanwhile, 'individualism' in a different sense was represented
+by the forces which made for progress rather than order, and to them I
+must now turn.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[26] Professor Dicey's _Lectures on the Law of the Constitution_ (1885),
+p. 178. Professor Dicey gives an admirable exposition of the 'rule of
+law.'
+
+[27] Pollock and Maitland's _History of English Law_, i. 208.
+
+[28] A characteristic consequence is that Hale and Blackstone make no
+distinction between public and private law. Austin (_Jurisprudence_
+(1869), 773-76) applauds them for this peculiarity, which he regards as
+a proof of originality, though it would rather seem to be an acceptance
+of the traditional view. Austin, however, retorts the charge of
+_Verwirrung_ upon German critics.
+
+[29] This is the theory of Defoe in his _Original Power of the People of
+England_ (Works by Hazlitt, vol iii. See especially p. 57).
+
+[30] The fourth duke of Newcastle in the House of Lords, 3 Dec. 1830.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE INDUSTRIAL SPIRIT
+
+
+I. THE MANUFACTURERS
+
+The history of England during the eighteenth century shows a curious
+contrast between the political stagnancy and the great industrial
+activity. The great constitutional questions seemed to be settled; and
+the statesmen, occupied mainly in sharing power and place, took a very
+shortsighted view (not for the first time in history) of the great
+problems that were beginning to present themselves. The British empire
+in the East was not won by a towering ambition so much as forced upon a
+reluctant commercial company by the necessities of its position. The
+English race became dominant in America; but the political connection
+was broken off mainly because English statesmen could only regard it
+from the shopkeeping point of view. When a new world began to arise at
+the Antipodes, our rulers saw an opportunity not for planting new
+offshoots of European civilisation, but for ridding themselves of the
+social rubbish no longer accepted in America. With purblind energy, and
+eyes doggedly fixed upon the ground at their feet, the race had somehow
+pressed forwards to illustrate the old doctrine that a man never goes so
+far as when he does not know whither he is going. While thinking of
+earning an honest penny by extending the trade, our 'monied-men' were
+laying the foundation of vast structures to be developed by their
+descendants.
+
+Politicians, again, had little to do with the great 'industrial
+revolution' which marked the last half of the century. The main facts
+are now a familiar topic of economic historians; nor need I speak of
+them in detail. Though agriculture was still the main industry, and the
+landowners almost monopolised political power, an ever growing
+proportion of the people was being collected in towns; the artisans were
+congregating in large factories; and the great cloud of coal-smoke,
+which has never dwindled, was already beginning to darken our skies. The
+change corresponds to the difference between a fully developed organism
+possessed of a central brain, with an elaborate nervous system, and some
+lower form in which the vital processes are still carried on by a number
+of separate ganglia. The concentration of the population in the great
+industrial centres implied the improvement of the means of commerce; new
+organisation of industry provided with a corresponding apparatus of
+machinery; and the systematic exploitation of the stored-up forces of
+nature. Each set of changes was at once cause and effect, and each was
+carried on separately, although in relation to the other. Brindley,
+Arkwright, and Watt may be taken as typical representatives of the three
+operations. Canals, spinning-jennies, and steam-engines were changing
+the whole social order.
+
+The development of means of communication had been slow till the last
+half of the century. The roads had been little changed since they had
+been first laid down as part of the great network which bound the Roman
+empire together. Turnpike acts, sanctioning the construction of new
+roads, became numerous. Palmer's application of the stage-coaches to the
+carriage of the mails marked an epoch in 1784; and De Quincey's prose
+poem, 'The Mail-coach,' shows how the unprecedented speed of Palmer's
+coaches, then spreading the news of the first battles in the Peninsula,
+had caused them to tyrannise over the opium-eater's dreams. They were
+discharging at once a political and an industrial function. Meanwhile
+the Bridgewater canal, constructed between 1759 and 1761, was the first
+link in a great network which, by the time of the French revolution,
+connected the seaports and the great centres of industry. The great
+inventions of machinery were simultaneously enabling manufacturers to
+take advantage of the new means of communication. The cotton manufacture
+sprang up soon after 1780 with enormous rapidity. Aided by the
+application of steam (first applied to a cotton mill in 1785) it passed
+the woollen trade, the traditional favourite of legislators, and became
+the most important branch of British trade. The iron trade had made a
+corresponding start. While the steam-engine, on which Watt had made the
+first great improvement in 1765, was transforming the manufacturing
+system, and preparing the advent of the steamship and railroad, Great
+Britain had become the leading manufacturing and commercial country in
+the world. The agricultural interest was losing its pre-eminence; and
+huge towns with vast aggregations of artisan population were beginning
+to spring up with unprecedented rapidity. The change was an
+illustration upon a gigantic scale of the doctrines expounded in the
+_Wealth of Nations_. Division of labour was being applied to things more
+important than pin-making, involving a redistribution of functions not
+as between men covered by the same roof, but between whole classes of
+society; between the makers of new means of communication and the
+manufacturers of every kind of material. The whole industrial community
+might be regarded as one great organism. Yet the organisation was formed
+by a multitude of independent agencies without any concerted plan. It
+was thus a vast illustration of the doctrine that each man by pursuing
+his own interests promoted the interests of the whole, and that
+government interference was simply a hindrance. The progress of
+improvement, says Adam Smith, depends upon 'the uniform, constant, and
+uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition,' which often
+succeeds in spite of the errors of government, as nature often overcomes
+the blunders of doctors. It is, as he infers, 'the highest impertinence
+and presumption for kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the
+economy of private people' by sumptuary laws and taxes upon imports.[31]
+To the English manufacturer or engineer government appeared as a
+necessary evil. It allowed the engineer to make roads and canals, after
+a troublesome and expensive process of application. It granted patents
+to the manufacturer, but the patents were a source of perpetual worry
+and litigation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer might look with
+complacency upon the development of a new branch of trade; but it was
+because he was lying in wait to come down upon it with a new tax or
+system of duties.
+
+The men who were the chief instruments of the process were 'self-made';
+they were the typical examples of Mr. Smiles's virtue of self-help; they
+owed nothing to government or to the universities which passed for the
+organs of national culture. The leading engineers began as ordinary
+mechanics. John Metcalf (1717-1810), otherwise 'blind Jack of
+Knaresborough,' was a son of poor parents. He had lost his sight by
+smallpox at the age of six, and, in spite of his misfortune, became a
+daring rider, wrestler, soldier, and carrier, and made many roads in the
+north of England, executing surveys and constructing the works himself.
+James Brindley (1716-1772), son of a midland collier, barely able to
+read or write, working out plans by processes which he could not
+explain, and lying in bed till they took shape in his brain, a rough
+mechanic, labouring for trifling weekly wages, created the canals which
+mainly enabled Manchester and Liverpool to make an unprecedented leap in
+prosperity. The two great engineers, Thomas Telford (1757-1834), famous
+for the Caledonian canal and the Menai bridge; and John Rennie
+(1761-1821), drainer of Lincolnshire fens, and builder of Waterloo
+bridge and the Plymouth breakwater, rose from the ranks. Telford
+inherited and displayed in a different direction the energies of Eskdale
+borderers, whose achievements in the days of cattle-stealing were to be
+made famous by Scott: Rennie was the son of an East Lothian farmer. Both
+of them learned their trade by actual employment as mechanics. The
+inventors of machinery belonged mainly to the lower middle classes. Kay
+was a small manufacturer; Hargreaves a hand-loom weaver; Crompton the
+son of a small farmer; and Arkwright a country barber. Watt, son of a
+Greenock carpenter, came from the sturdy Scottish stock, ultimately of
+covenanting ancestry, from which so many eminent men have sprung.
+
+The new social class, in which such men were the leaders, held
+corresponding principles. They owed whatever success they won to their
+own right hands. They were sturdy workers, with eyes fixed upon success
+in life, and success generally of course measured by a money criterion.
+Many of them showed intellectual tastes, and took an honourable view of
+their social functions. Watt showed his ability in scientific inquiries
+outside of the purely industrial application; Josiah Wedgwood, in whose
+early days the Staffordshire potters had led a kind of gipsy life,
+settling down here and there to carry on their trade, had not only
+founded a great industry, but was a man of artistic taste, a patron of
+art, and a lover of science. Telford, the Eskdale shepherd, was a man of
+literary taste, and was especially friendly with the typical man of
+letters, Southey. Others, of course, were of a lower type. Arkwright
+combined the talents of an inventor with those of a man of business. He
+was a man, says Baines (the historian of the cotton trade), who was sure
+to come out of an enterprise with profit, whatever the result to his
+partners. He made a great fortune, and founded a county family. Others
+rose in the same direction. The Peels, for example, represented a line
+of yeomen. One Peel founded a cotton business; his son became a baronet
+and an influential member of parliament; and his grandson went to
+Oxford, and became the great leader of the Conservative party, although
+like Walpole, he owed his power to a kind of knowledge in which his
+adopted class were generally deficient.
+
+The class which owed its growing importance to the achievements of such
+men was naturally imbued with their spirit. Its growth meant the
+development of a class which under the old order had been strictly
+subordinate to the ruling class, and naturally regarded it with a
+mingled feeling of respect and jealousy. The British merchant felt his
+superiority in business to the average country-gentleman; he got no
+direct share of the pensions and sinecures which so profoundly affected
+the working of the political machinery, and yet his highest ambition was
+to rise to be himself a member of the class, and to found a family which
+might flourish in the upper atmosphere. The industrial classes were
+inclined to favour political progress within limits. They were
+dissenters because the church was essentially part of the aristocracy;
+and they were readiest to denounce the abuses from which they did not
+profit. The agitators who supported Wilkes, solid aldermen and rich
+merchants, represented the view which was popular in London and other
+great cities. They were the backbone of the Whig party when it began to
+demand a serious reform. Their radicalism, however, was not thoroughly
+democratic. Many of them aspired to become members of the ruling class,
+and a shopkeeper does not quarrel too thoroughly with his customers. The
+politics of individuals were of course determined by accidents. Some of
+them might retain the sympathy of the class from which they sprang, and
+others might adopt an even extreme version of the opinions of the class
+to which they desired to rise. But, in any case, the divergence of
+interest between the capitalists and the labourers was already making
+itself felt. The self-made man, it is said, is generally the hardest
+master. He approves of the stringent system of competition, of which he
+is himself a product. It clearly enables the best man to win, for is he
+not himself the best man? The class which was the great seat of movement
+had naturally to meet all the prejudices which are roused by change. The
+farmers near London, as Adam Smith tells us,[32] petitioned against an
+extension of turnpike roads, which would enable more distant farmers to
+compete in their market. But the farmers were not the only prejudiced
+persons. All the great inventors of machinery, Kay and Arkwright and
+Watt, had constantly to struggle against the old workmen who were
+displaced by their inventions. Although, therefore, the class might be
+Whiggish, it did not share the strongest revolutionary passions. The
+genuine revolutionists were rather the men who destroyed the
+manufacturer's machines, and were learning to regard him as a natural
+enemy. The manufacturer had his own reasons for supporting government.
+Our foreign policy during the century was in the long run chiefly
+determined by the interests of our trade, however much the trade might
+at times be hampered by ill-conceived regulations. It is remarkable that
+Adam Smith[33] argues that, although the capitalist is acuter that the
+country-gentleman, his acuteness is chiefly displayed by knowing his own
+interests better. Those interests, he thinks, do not coincide so much as
+the interests of the country-gentleman with the general interests of the
+country. Consequently the country-gentleman, though less intelligent,
+is more likely to favour a national and liberal policy. The merchant, in
+fact, was not a free-trader because he had read Adam Smith or
+consciously adopted Smith's principles, but because or in so far as
+particular restrictions interfered with him. Arthur Young complains
+bitterly of the manufacturers who supported the prohibition to export
+English wool, and so protected their own class at the expense of
+agriculturists. Wedgwood, though a good liberal and a supporter of
+Pitt's French treaty in 1786, joined in protesting against the proposal
+for free-trade with Ireland. The Irish, he thought, might rival his
+potteries. Thus, though as a matter of fact the growing class of
+manufacturers and merchants were inclined in the main to liberal
+principles, it was less from adhesion to any general doctrine than from
+the fact that the existing restrictions and prejudices generally
+conflicted with their plain interests.
+
+Another characteristic is remarkable. Though the growth of manufactures
+and commerce meant the growth of great towns, it did not mean the growth
+of municipal institutions. On the contrary, as I shall presently have to
+notice, the municipalities were sinking to their lowest ebb.
+Manufactures, in the first instance, spread along the streams into
+country districts: and to the great manufacturer, working for his own
+hand, his neighbours were competitors as much as allies. The great
+towns, however, which were growing up, showed the general tendencies of
+the class. They were centres not only of manufacturing but of
+intellectual progress. The population of Birmingham, containing the
+famous Soho works of Boulton and Watt, had increased between 1740 and
+1780 from 24,000 to 74,000 inhabitants. Watt's partner Boulton started
+the 'Lunar Society' at Birmingham.[34] Its most prominent member was
+Erasmus Darwin, famous then for poetry which is chiefly remembered by
+the parody in the _Anti-Jacobin_; and now more famous as the advocate of
+a theory of evolution eclipsed by the teaching of his more famous
+grandson, and, in any case, a man of remarkable intellectual power.
+Among those who joined in the proceedings was Edgeworth, who in 1768 was
+speculating upon moving carriages by steam, and Thomas Day, whose
+_Sandford and Merton_ helped to spread in England the educational
+theories of Rousseau. Priestley, who settled at Birmingham in 1780,
+became a member, and was helped in his investigations by Watt's counsels
+and Wedgwood's pecuniary help. Among occasional visitors were Smeaton,
+Sir Joseph Banks, Solander, and Herschel of scientific celebrity; while
+the literary magnate, Dr. Parr, who lived between Warwick and
+Birmingham, occasionally joined the circle. Wedgwood, though too far off
+to be a member, was intimate with Darwin and associated in various
+enterprises with Boulton. Wedgwood's congenial partner, Thomas Bentley
+(1731-1780), had been in business at Manchester and at Liverpool. He had
+taken part in founding the Warrington 'Academy,' the dissenting seminary
+(afterwards moved to Manchester) of which Priestley was tutor
+(1761-1767), and had lectured upon art at the academy founded at
+Liverpool in 1773. Another member of the academy was William Roscoe
+(1753-1831), whose literary taste was shown by his lives of Lorenzo de
+Medici and Leo X., and who distinguished himself by opposing the
+slave-trade, then the infamy of his native town. Allied with him in this
+movement were William Rathbone and James Currie (1756-1805) the
+biographer of Burns, a friend of Darwin and an intelligent physician. At
+Manchester Thomas Perceval (1740-1804) founded the 'Literary and
+Philosophical Society' in 1780. He was a pupil of the Warrington
+Academy, which he afterwards joined on removing to Manchester, and he
+formed the scheme afterwards realised by Owens College. He was an early
+advocate of sanitary measures and factory legislation, and a man of
+scientific reputation. Other members of the society were: John Ferriar
+(1761-1815), best known by his _Illustrations of Sterne_, but also a man
+of literary and scientific reputation; the great chemist, John Dalton
+(1766-1844), who contributed many papers to its transactions; and, for a
+short time, the Socialist Robert Owen, then a rising manufacturer. At
+Norwich, then important as a manufacturing centre, was a similar circle.
+William Taylor, an eminent Unitarian divine, who died at the Warrington
+Academy in 1761, had lived at Norwich. One of his daughters married
+David Martineau and became the mother of Harriet Martineau, who has
+described the Norwich of her early years. John Taylor, grandson of
+William, was father of Mrs. Austin, wife of the jurist. He was a man of
+literary tastes, and his wife was known as the Madame Roland of Norwich.
+Mrs. Opie (1765-1853) was daughter of James Alderson, a physician of
+Norwich, and passed most of her life there. William Taylor (1761-1836),
+another Norwich manufacturer, was among the earliest English students of
+German literature. Norwich had afterwards the unique distinction of
+being the home of a provincial school of artists. John Crome
+(1788-1821), son of a poor weaver, and John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) were
+its leaders; they formed a kind of provincial academy, and exhibited
+pictures which have been more appreciated since their death. At Bristol,
+towards the end of the century, were similar indications of intellectual
+activity. Coleridge and Southey found there a society ready to listen to
+their early lectures, and both admired Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808), a
+physician, a chemist, a student of German, an imitator of Darwin in
+poetry, and an assailant of Pitt in pamphlets. He had married one of
+Edgeworth's daughters. With the help and advice of Wedgwood and Watt, he
+founded the 'Pneumatic Institute' at Clifton in 1798, and obtained the
+help of Humphry Davy, who there made some of his first discoveries. Davy
+was soon transported to the Royal Institution, founded at the suggestion
+of Count Rumford in 1799, which represented the growth of a popular
+interest in the scientific discoveries.
+
+The general tone of these little societies represents, of course, the
+tendency of the upper stratum of the industrial classes. In their own
+eyes they naturally represented the progressive element of society. They
+were Whigs--for 'radicalism' was not yet invented--but Whigs of the left
+wing; accepting the aristocratic precedency, but looking askance at the
+aristocratic prejudices. They were rationalists, too, in principle, but
+again within limits: openly avowing the doctrines which in the
+Established church had still to be sheltered by ostensible conformity to
+the traditional dogmas. Many of them professed the Unitarianism to which
+the old dissenting bodies inclined. 'Unitarianism,' said shrewd old
+Erasmus Darwin, 'is a feather-bed for a dying Christian.' But at present
+such men as Priestley and Price were only so far on the road to a
+thorough rationalism as to denounce the corruptions of Christianity, as
+they denounced abuses in politics, without anticipating a revolutionary
+change in church and state. Priestley, for example, combined
+'materialism' and 'determinism' with Christianity and a belief in
+miracles, and controverted Horsley upon one side and Paine on the other.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[31] _Wealth of Nations_, bk. ii. ch. iii.
+
+[32] _Wealth of Nations_, bk. i. ch. xi. Sec. 1.
+
+[33] _Ibid._ bk. i. ch. xi. conclusion.
+
+[34] Smiles's _Watt and Boulton_, p. 292.
+
+
+II. THE AGRICULTURISTS
+
+The general spirit represented by such movements was by no means
+confined to the commercial or manufacturing classes; and its most
+characteristic embodiment is to be found in the writings of a leading
+agriculturist.
+
+Arthur Young,[35] born in 1741, was the son of a clergyman, who had also
+a small ancestral property at Bradfield, near Bury St. Edmunds.
+Accidents led to his becoming a farmer at an early age. He showed more
+zeal than discretion, and after trying three thousand experiments on his
+farm, he was glad to pay L100 to another tenant to take his farm off his
+hands. This experience as a practical agriculturist, far from
+discouraging him, qualified him in his own opinion to speak with
+authority, and he became a devoted missionary of the gospel of
+agricultural improvement. The enthusiasm with which he admired more
+successful labourers in the cause, and the indignation with which he
+regards the sluggish and retrograde, are charming. His kindliness, his
+keen interest in the prosperity of all men, rich or poor, his ardent
+belief in progress, combined with his quickness of observation, give a
+charm to the writings which embody his experience. Tours in England and
+a temporary land-agency in Ireland supplied him with materials for books
+which made him known both in England and on the Continent. In 1779 he
+returned to Bradfield, where he soon afterwards came into possession of
+his paternal estate, which became his permanent home. In 1784 he tried
+to extend his propaganda by bringing out the _Annals of Agriculture_--a
+monthly publication, of which forty-five half-yearly volumes appeared.
+He had many able contributors and himself wrote many interesting
+articles, but the pecuniary results were mainly negative. In 1791 his
+circulation was only 350 copies.[36] Meanwhile his acquaintance with the
+duc de Liancourt led to tours in France from 1788 to 1790. His _Travels
+in France_, first published in 1792, has become a classic. In 1793 Young
+was made secretary to the Board of Agriculture, of which I shall speak
+presently. He became known in London society as well as in agricultural
+circles. He was a handsome and attractive man, a charming companion, and
+widely recognised as an agricultural authority. The empress of Russia
+sent him a snuff-box; 'Farmer George' presented a merino ram; he was
+elected member of learned societies; he visited Burke at Beaconsfield,
+Pitt at Holmwood, and was a friend of Wilberforce and of Jeremy Bentham.
+
+Young had many domestic troubles. His marriage was not congenial; the
+loss of a tenderly loved daughter in 1797 permanently saddened him; he
+became blind, and in his later years sought comfort in religious
+meditation and in preaching to his poorer neighbours. He died 20th April
+1820. He left behind him a gigantic history of agriculture, filling ten
+folio volumes of manuscript, which, though reduced to six by an
+enthusiastic disciple after his death, have never found their way to
+publication.
+
+The _Travels in France_, Young's best book, owes one merit to the advice
+of a judicious friend, who remarked that the previous tours had suffered
+from the absence of the personal details which interest the common
+reader. The insertion of these makes Young's account of his French tours
+one of the most charming as well as most instructive books of the kind.
+It gives the vivid impression made upon a keen and kindly observer in
+all their freshness. He sensibly retained the expressions of opinion
+made at the time. 'I may remark at present,' he says,[37] 'that although
+I was totally mistaken in my prediction, yet, on a revision, I think I
+was right in it.' It was right, he means, upon the data then known to
+him, and he leaves the unfulfilled prediction as it was. The book is
+frequently cited in justification of the revolution, and it may be
+fairly urged that his authority is of the more weight, because he does
+not start from any sympathy with revolutionary principles. Young was in
+Paris when the oath was taken at the tennis-court; and makes his
+reflections upon the beauty of the British Constitution, and the folly
+of visionary reforms, in a spirit which might have satisfied Burke. He
+was therefore not altogether inconsistent when, after the outrages, he
+condemned the revolution, however much the facts which he describes may
+tend to explain the inevitableness of the catastrophe. At any rate, his
+views are worth notice by the indications which they give of the mental
+attitude of a typical English observer.
+
+Young in his vivacious way struck out some of the phrases which became
+proverbial with later economists. 'Give a man the secure possession of a
+bleak rock and he will turn it into a garden. Give him a nine years'
+lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert.'[38] 'The magic
+of PROPERTY turns sand to gold.'[39] He is delighted with the comfort of
+the small proprietors near Pau, which reminds him of English districts
+still inhabited by small yeomen.[40] Passing to a less fortunate region,
+he explains that the prince de Soubise has a vast property there. The
+property of a grand 'seigneur' is sure to be a desert.[41] The signs
+which indicate such properties are 'wastes, _landes_, deserts, fern,
+ling.' The neighbourhood of the great residences is well peopled--'with
+deer, wild boars, and wolves,' 'Oh,' he exclaims, 'if I was the
+legislator of France for a day, I would make such great lords skip
+again!' 'Why,' he asked, 'were the people miserable in lower Savoy?'
+'_Because_', was the reply, '_there are seigneurs everywhere_'.[42]
+Misery in Brittany was due 'to the execrable maxims of despotism or the
+equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility.'[43] There was
+nothing, he said, in the province but 'privileges and poverty,'[44]
+privileges of the nobles and poverty of the peasants.
+
+Young was profoundly convinced, moreover, that, as he says more than
+once[45] 'everything in this world depends on government.' He is
+astonished at the stupidity and ignorance of the provincial population,
+and ascribes it to the lethargy produced by despotism.[46] He contrasts
+it with 'the energetic and rapid circulation of wealth, animation, and
+intelligence of England,' where 'blacksmiths and carpenters' would
+discuss every political event. And yet he heartily admires some of the
+results of a centralised monarchy. He compares the miserable roads in
+Catalonia on the Spanish side of the frontier with the magnificent
+causeways and bridges on the French side. The difference is due to the
+'one all-powerful cause that instigates mankind ... government.'[47] He
+admires the noble public works, the canal of Languedoc, the harbours at
+Cherbourg and Havre, and the _ecole veterinaire_ where agriculture is
+taught upon scientific principles. He is struck by the curious contrast
+between France and England. In France the splendid roads are used by few
+travellers, and the inns are filthy pothouses; in England there are
+detestable roads, but a comparatively enormous traffic. When he wished
+to make the great nobles 'skip' he does not generally mean confiscation.
+He sees indeed one place where in 1790 the poor had seized a piece of
+waste land, declaring that the poor were the nation, and that the waste
+belonged to the nation. He declares[48] that he considers their action
+'wise, rational, and philosophical,' and wishes that there were a law to
+make such conduct legal in England. But his more general desire is that
+the landowners should be compelled to do their duty. He complains that
+the nobles live in 'wretched holes' in the country in order to save the
+means of expenditure upon theatres, entertainments, and gambling in the
+towns.[49] 'Banishment alone will force the French nobility to do what
+the English do for pleasure--to reside upon and adorn their
+estates.'[50] He explains to a French friend that English agriculture
+has flourished 'in spite of the teeth of our ministers'; we have had
+many Colberts, but not one Sully[51]; and we should have done much
+better, he thinks, had agriculture received the same attention as
+commerce. This is the reverse of Adam Smith's remark upon the superior
+liberality of the English country-gentleman, who did not, like the
+manufacturers, invoke protection and interference. In truth, Young
+desired both advantages, the vigour of a centralised government and the
+energy of an independent aristocracy. His absence of any general theory
+enables him to do justice in detail at the cost of consistency in
+general theory. In France, as he saw, the nobility had become in the
+main an encumbrance, a mere dead weight upon the energies of the
+agriculturist. But he did not infer that large properties in land were
+bad in themselves; for in England he saw that the landowners were the
+really energetic and improving class. He naturally looked at the problem
+from the point of view of an intelligent land-agent. He is full of
+benevolent wishes for the labourer, and sympathises with the attempt to
+stimulate their industry and improve their dwellings, and denounces
+oppression whether in France or Ireland with the heartiest goodwill. But
+it is characteristic of the position that such a man--an enthusiastic
+advocate of industrial progress--was a hearty admirer of the English
+landowner. He sets out upon his first tour, announcing that he does not
+write for farmers, of whom not one in five thousand reads anything, but
+for the country-gentlemen, who are the great improvers. Tull, who
+introduced turnips; Weston, who introduced clover; Lord Townshend and
+Allen, who introduced 'marling' in Norfolk, were all country-gentlemen,
+and it is from them that he expects improvement. He travels everywhere,
+delighting in their new houses and parks, their picture galleries, and
+their gardens laid out by Kent or 'Capability Brown'; he admires
+scenery, climbs Skiddaw, and is rapturous over views of the Alps and
+Pyrenees; but he is thrown into a rage by the sight of wastes, wherever
+improvement is possible. What delights him is an estate with a fine
+country-house of Palladian architecture ('Gothic' is with him still a
+term of abuse),[52] with grounds well laid out and a good home-farm,
+where experiments are being tried, and surrounded by an estate in which
+the farm-buildings show the effects of the landlord's good example and
+judicious treatment of his tenantry. There was no want of such examples.
+He admires the marquis of Rockingham, at once the most honourable of
+statesmen and most judicious of improvers. He sings the praises of the
+duke of Portland, the earl of Darlington, and the duke of
+Northumberland. An incautious announcement of the death of the duke of
+Grafton, remembered chiefly as one of the victims of Junius, but known
+to Young for his careful experiments in sheep-breeding, produced a burst
+of tears, which, as he believed, cost him his eyesight. His friend, the
+fifth duke of Bedford (died 1802), was one of the greatest improvers for
+the South, and was succeeded by another friend, the famous Coke of
+Holkham, afterwards earl of Leicester, who is said to have spent half a
+million upon the improvement of his property. Young appeals to the class
+in which such men were leaders, and urges them, not against their
+wishes, we may suppose, and, no doubt, with much good sense, to take to
+their task in the true spirit of business. Nothing, he declares, is more
+out of place than the boast of some great landowners that they never
+raise their rents.[53] High rents produce industry. The man who doubles
+his rents benefits the country more than he benefits himself. Even in
+Ireland,[54] a rise of rents is one great cause of improvement, though
+the rent should not be excessive, and the system of middlemen is
+altogether detestable. One odd suggestion is characteristic.[55] He
+hears that wages are higher in London than elsewhere. Now, he says, in a
+trading country low wages are essential. He wonders, therefore, that the
+legislature does not limit the growth of London.
+
+This, we may guess, is one of the petulant utterances of early years
+which he would have disavowed or qualified upon maturer reflection. But
+Young is essentially an apostle of the 'glorious spirit of
+improvement,'[56] which has converted Norfolk sheep-walks into arable
+fields, and was spreading throughout the country and even into Ireland.
+His hero is the energetic landowner, who makes two blades of grass grow
+where one grew before; who introduces new breeds of cattle and new
+courses of husbandry. He is so far in sympathy with the _Wealth of
+Nations_, although he says of that book that, while he knows of 'no
+abler work,' he knows of none 'fuller of poisonous errors.'[57] Young,
+that is, sympathised with the doctrine of the physiocrats that
+agriculture was the one source of real wealth, and took Smith to be too
+much on the side of commerce. Young, however, was as enthusiastic a
+free-trader as Smith. He naturally denounces the selfishness of the
+manufacturers who, in 1788, objected to the free export of English
+wool,[58] but he also assails monopoly in general. The whole system, he
+says (on occasion of Pitt's French treaty), is rotten to the core. The
+'vital spring and animating soul of commerce is LIBERTY.'[59] Though he
+talks of the balance of trade, he argues in the spirit of Smith or
+Cobden that we are benefited by the wealth of our customers. If we have
+to import more silk, we shall export more cloth. Young, indeed, was
+everything but a believer in any dogmatic or consistent system of
+Political Economy, or, as he still calls it, Political Arithmetic. His
+opinions were not of the kind which can be bound to any rigid formulae.
+After investigating the restrictions of rent and wages in different
+districts, he quietly accepts the conclusion that the difference is due
+to accident.[60] He has as yet no fear of Malthus before his eyes. He
+is roused to indignation by the pessimist theory then common, that
+population was decaying.[61] Everywhere he sees signs of progress;
+buildings, plantations, woods, and canals. Employment, he says, creates
+population, stimulates industry, and attracts labour from backward
+districts. The increase of numbers is an unqualified benefit. He has no
+dread of excess. In Ireland, he observes, no one is fool enough to deny
+that population is increasing, though people deny it in England, 'even
+in the most productive period of her industry and wealth.'[62] One cause
+of this blessing is the absence or the poor-law. The English poor-law is
+detestable to him for a reason which contrasts significantly with the
+later opinion. The laws were made 'in the very spirit of depopulation';
+they are 'monuments of barbarity and mischief'; for they give to every
+parish an interest in keeping down the population. This tendency was in
+the eyes of the later economist a redeeming feature in the old system;
+though it had been then so modified as to stimulate what they took to be
+the curse, as Young held it to be the blessing, of a rapid increase of
+population.
+
+With such views Young was a keen advocate of the process of enclosure
+which was going on with increasing rapidity. He found a colleague, who
+may be briefly noticed as a remarkable representative of the same
+movement. Sir John Sinclair (1754-1835)[63] was heir to an estate of
+sixty thousand acres in Caithness which produced only L2300 a year,
+subject to many encumbrances. The region was still in a primitive
+state. There were no roads: agriculture was of the crudest kind; part of
+the rent was still paid in feudal services; the natives were too
+ignorant or lazy to fish, and there were no harbours. Trees were scarce
+enough to justify Johnson, and a list of all the trees in the country
+included currant-bushes.[64] Sinclair was a pupil of the poet Logan:
+studied under Blair at Edinburgh and Millar at Glasgow; became known to
+Adam Smith, and, after a short time at Oxford, was called to the English
+bar. Sinclair was a man of enormous energy, though not of vivacious
+intellect. He belonged to the prosaic breed, which created the 'dismal
+science,' and seems to have been regarded as a stupendous bore. Bores,
+however, represent a social force not to be despised, and Sinclair was
+no exception.
+
+His father died when he was sixteen. When twenty years old he collected
+his tenants, and in one night made a road across a hill which had been
+pronounced impracticable. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Gaelic
+traditions; defended the authenticity of Ossian; supported Highland
+games, and brought Italian travellers to listen to the music of the
+bagpipes. When he presented himself to his tenants in the Highland
+costume, on the withdrawal of its prohibition, they expected him to lead
+them in a foray upon the lowlands in the name of Charles Edward. He
+afterwards raised a regiment of 'fencibles' which served in Ireland in
+1798, and, when disbanded, sent a large contingent to the Egyptian
+expedition. But he rendered more peaceful services to his country. He
+formed new farms; he enclosed several thousand acres; as head of the
+'British Wool Society,' he introduced the Cheviots or 'long sheep' to
+the North--an improvement which is said to have doubled the rents of
+many estates; he introduced agricultural shows; he persuaded government
+in 1801 to devote the proceeds of the confiscated estates of Jacobites
+to the improvement of Scottish communications; he helped to introduce
+fisheries and even manufactures; and was a main agent in the change
+which made Caithness one of the most rapidly improving parts of the
+country. His son assures us that he took every means to obviate the
+incidental evils which have been the pretexts of denunciators of similar
+improvements. Sinclair gained a certain reputation by a _History of the
+Revenue_ (1785-90), and, like Malthus, travelled on the Continent to
+improve his knowledge. His first book finished, he began the great
+statistical work by which he is best remembered. He is said to have
+introduced into English the name of 'statistics,' for the researches of
+which all economical writers were beginning to feel the necessity. He
+certainly did much to introduce the reality. Sinclair circulated a
+number of queries (upon 'natural history,' 'population,' 'productions,'
+and 'miscellaneous' informations) to every parish minister in Scotland.
+He surmounted various jealousies naturally excited, and the ultimate
+result was the _Statistical Account of Scotland_, which appeared in
+twenty-one volumes between 1791 and 1799.[65] It gives an account of
+every parish in Scotland, and was of great value as supplying a basis
+for all social investigations. Sinclair bore the expense, and gave the
+profits to the 'Sons of the Clergy.' In 1793 Sinclair, who had been in
+parliament since 1780, made himself useful to Pitt in connection with
+the issue of exchequer bills to meet the commercial crisis. He begged in
+return for the foundation of a Board of Agriculture. He became the
+president and Arthur Young the secretary;[66] and the board represented
+their common aspirations. It was a rather anomalous body, something
+between a government office and such an institution as the Royal
+Society; and was supported by an annual grant of L3000. The first aim of
+the board was to produce a statistical account of England on the plan of
+the Scottish account. The English clergy, however, were suspicious; they
+thought, it seems, that the collection of statistics meant an attack
+upon tithes; and Young's frequent denunciation of tithes as discouraging
+agricultural improvement suggests some excuse for the belief. The plan
+had to be dropped; a less thoroughgoing description of the counties was
+substituted; and a good many 'Views' of the agriculture of different
+counties were published in 1794 and succeeding years. The board did its
+best to be active with narrow means. It circulated information,
+distributed medals, and brought agricultural improvers together. It
+encouraged the publication of Erasmus Darwin's _Phytologia_ (1799), and
+procured a series of lectures from Humphry Davy, afterwards published as
+_Elements of Agricultural Chemistry_ (1813). Sinclair also claims to
+have encouraged Macadam (1756-1836), the road-maker, and Meikle, the
+inventor of the thrashing-machine. One great aim of the board was to
+promote enclosures. Young observes in the introductory paper to the
+_Annals_ that within forty years nine hundred bills had been passed
+affecting about a million acres. This included wastes, but the greater
+part was already cultivated under the 'constraint and imperfection of
+the open field system,' a relic of the 'barbarity of our ancestors.'
+Enclosures involved procuring acts of parliament--a consequent
+expenditure, as Young estimates, of some L2000 in each case;[67] and as
+they were generally obtained by the great landowners, there was a
+frequent neglect of the rights of the poor and of the smaller holders.
+The remedy proposed was a general enclosure act; and such an act passed
+the House of Commons in 1798, but was thrown out by the Lords. An act
+was not obtained till after the Reform Bill. Sinclair, however, obtained
+some modification of the procedure; which, it is said, facilitated the
+passage of private bills. They became more numerous in later years,
+though other causes obviously co-operated. Meanwhile, it is
+characteristic that Sinclair and Young regarded wastes as a backwoodsman
+regarded a forest. The incidental injury to poor commoners was not
+unnoticed, and became one of the topics of Cobbett's eloquence. But to
+the ardent agriculturist the existence of a bit of waste land was a
+simple proof of barbarism. Sinclair's favourite toast, we are told, was
+'May commons become uncommon'--his one attempt at a joke. He prayed that
+Epping Forest and Finchley Common might pass under the yoke as well as
+our foreign enemies. Young is driven out of all patience by the sight of
+'fern, ling, and other trumpery' usurping the place of possible arable
+fields.[68] He groans in spirit upon Salisbury Plain, which might be
+made to produce all the corn we import.[69] Enfield Chase, he declares,
+is a 'real nuisance to the public.'[70] We may be glad that the zeal for
+enclosure was not successful in all its aims; but this view of
+philanthropic and energetic improvers is characteristic.
+
+It is said[71] that Young and Sinclair ruined the Board of Agriculture
+by making it a kind of political debating club. It died in 1822.
+Sinclair obtained an appointment in Scotland, and continued to labour
+unremittingly. He carried on a correspondence with all manner of people,
+including Washington, Eldon, Catholic bishops in Ireland, financiers and
+agriculturists on the Continent, and the most active economists in
+England. He suggested a subject for a poem to Scott.[72] He wrote
+pamphlets about cash-payments, Catholic Emancipation, and the Reform
+Bill, always disagreeing with all parties. He projected four codes which
+were to summarise all human knowledge upon health, agriculture,
+political economy, and religion. _The Code of Health_ (4 vols., 1807)
+went through six editions; _The Code of Agriculture_ appeared in 1829;
+but the world has not been enriched by the others. He died at Edinburgh
+on the 21st September 1835.
+
+I have dwelt so far upon Young because he is the best representative of
+that 'glorious spirit of improvement' which was transforming the whole
+social structure. Young's view of the French revolution indicates one
+marked characteristic of that spirit. He denounces the French seigneur
+because he is lethargic. He admires the English nobleman because he is
+energetic. The French noble may even deserve confiscation; but he has
+not the slightest intention of applying the same remedy in England,
+where squires and noblemen are the very source of all improvement. He
+holds that government is everything, and admires the great works of the
+French despotism: and yet he is a thorough admirer of the liberties
+enjoyed under the British Constitution, the essential nature of which
+makes similar works impossible. I need not ask whether Young's logic
+could be justified; though it would obviously require for justification
+a thoroughly 'empirical' view, or, in other words, the admission that
+different circumstances may require totally different institutions. The
+view, however, which was congenial to the prevalent spirit of
+improvement must be noted.
+
+It might be stated as a paradox that, whereas in France the most
+palpable evils arose from the excessive power of the central government,
+and in England the most palpable evils arose from the feebleness of the
+central government, the French reformers demanded more government and
+the English reformers demanded less government. 'Everything for the
+people, nothing by the people,' was, as Mr. Morley remarks,[73] the
+maxim of the French economists. The solution seems to be easy. In
+France, reformers such as Turgot and the economists were in favour of an
+enlightened despotism, because the state meant a centralised power which
+might be turned against the aristocracy. Once 'enlightened' it would
+suppress the exclusive privileges of a class which, doing nothing in
+return, had become a mere burthen or dead weight encumbering all social
+development. But in England the privileged class was identical with the
+governing class. The political liberty of which Englishmen were
+rightfully proud, the 'rule of law' which made every official
+responsible to the ordinary course of justice, and the actual discharge
+of their duties by the governing order, saved it from being the objects
+of a jealous class hatred. While in France government was staggering
+under an ever-accumulating resentment against the aristocracy, the
+contemporary position in England was, on the whole, one of political
+apathy. The country, though it had lost its colonies, was making
+unprecedented progress in wealth; commerce, manufactures, and
+agriculture were being developed by the energy of individuals; and Pitt
+was beginning to apply Adam Smith's principles to finance. The cry for
+parliamentary reform died out: neither Whigs nor Tories really cared for
+it; and the 'glorious spirit of improvement' showed itself in an energy
+which had little political application. The nobility was not an incubus
+suppressing individual energy and confronted by the state, but was
+itself the state; and its individual members were often leaders in
+industrial improvement. Discontent, therefore, took in the main a
+different form. Some government was, of course, necessary, and the
+existing system was too much in harmony, even in its defects, with the
+social order to provoke any distinct revolutionary sentiment. Englishmen
+were not only satisfied with their main institutions, but regarded them
+with exaggerated complacency. But, though there was no organic disorder,
+there were plenty of abuses to be remedied. The ruling class, it seemed,
+did its duties in the main, but took unconscionable perquisites in
+return. If it 'farmed' them, it was right that it should have a
+beneficial interest in the concern; but that interest might be
+excessive. In many directions abuses were growing up which required
+remedy, though not a subversion of the system under which they had been
+generated. It was not desired--unless by a very few theorists--to make
+any sweeping redistribution of power; but it was eminently desirable to
+find some means of better regulating many evil practices. The attack
+upon such practices might ultimately suggest--as, in fact, it did
+suggest--the necessity of far more thoroughgoing reforms. For the
+present, however, the characteristic mark of English reformers was this
+limitation of their schemes, and a mark which is especially evident in
+Bentham and his followers. I will speak, therefore, of the many
+questions which were arising, partly for these reasons and partly
+because the Utilitarian theory was in great part moulded by the
+particular problems which they had to argue.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[35] Young's _Travels in France_ was republished in 1892, with a preface
+and short life by Miss Betham Edwards. She has since (1898) published
+his autobiography. See also the autobiographical sketch in the _Annals
+of Agriculture_, xv. 152-97. Young's _Farmer's Letters_ first appeared
+in 1767; his _Tours_ in the Southern, Northern, and Eastern Counties in
+1768, 1770, and 1771; his _Tour in Ireland_ in 1780; and his _Travels in
+France_ in 1792. A useful bibliography, containing a list of his many
+publications, is appended to the edition of the _Tour in Ireland_ edited
+by Mr. A. W. Hutton in 1892.
+
+[36] _Annals_, xv. 166.
+
+[37] _Travels in France_ (1892), p. 184 _n._
+
+[38] _Travels in France_, p. 54.
+
+[39] _Ibid._ p. 109.
+
+[40] _Ibid._ p. 61.
+
+[41] _Ibid._ p. 70.
+
+[42] _Ibid._ p. 279.
+
+[43] _Travels in France_, p. 125.
+
+[44] _Ibid._ p. 131.
+
+[45] _Ibid._ pp. 198, 298.
+
+[46] _Ibid._ pp. 55, 193, 199, 237.
+
+[47] _Ibid._ p. 43.
+
+[48] _Travels in France_, pp. 291-92.
+
+[49] _Ibid._ p. 132.
+
+[50] _Ibid._ p. 66.
+
+[51] _Ibid._ p. 131.
+
+[52] e.g. _Southern Tour_, p. 103; _Northern Tour_, p. 180 (York
+Cathedral).
+
+[53] _Northern Tour_, iv. 344, 377.
+
+[54] _Irish Tour_, ii. 114.
+
+[55] _Southern Tour_, p. 326.
+
+[56] _Southern Tour_, p. 22.
+
+[57] _Annals_, i. 380.
+
+[58] _Ibid._ vol, x.
+
+[59] _Ibid._ iv. 17.
+
+[60] _Southern Tour_, p. 262; _Northern Tour_, ii. 412.
+
+[61] _Northern Tour_, iv. 410, etc.
+
+[62] _Irish Tour_, ii. 118-19.
+
+[63] _Memoirs of Sir John Sinclair_, by his son. 2 vols., 1837.
+
+[64] _Memoirs_, i. 338.
+
+[65] _A New Statistical Account_, replacing this, appeared in
+twenty-four volumes from 1834 to 1844.
+
+[66] He was president for the first five years, and again, from 1806
+till 1813. For an account of this, see Sir Ernest Clarke's _History of
+the Board of Agriculture_, 1898.
+
+[67] _Northern Tour_, i. 222-32.
+
+[68] _Northern Tour_, ii. 186.
+
+[69] _Southern Tour_, p. 20.
+
+[70] _Northern Tour_, iii. 365.
+
+[71] Arthur Young had a low opinion of Sinclair, whom he took to be a
+pushing and consequential busybody, more anxious to make a noise than to
+be useful. See Young's _Autobiography_ (1898), pp. 243, 315, 437. Sir
+Ernest Clarke points out the injury done by Sinclair's hasty and
+blundering extravagance; but also shows that the board did great service
+in stimulating agricultural improvement.
+
+[72] Scott's _Letters_, i. 202.
+
+[73] Essay on 'Turgot.' See, in Daire's Collection of the _Economistes_,
+the arguments of Quesnay (p. 81), Dupont de Nemours (p. 360), and
+Mercier de la Riviere in favour of a legal (as distinguished from an
+'arbitrary') despotism.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SOCIAL PROBLEMS
+
+
+I. PAUPERISM
+
+Perhaps the gravest of all the problems which were to occupy the coming
+generation was the problem of pauperism. The view taken by the
+Utilitarians was highly characteristic and important. I will try to
+indicate the general position of intelligent observers at the end of the
+century by referring to the remarkable book of Sir Frederick Morton
+Eden. Its purport is explained by the title: 'The State of the Poor; or,
+an History of the Labouring Classes of England from the Norman Conquest
+to the present period; in which are particularly considered their
+domestic economy, with respect to diet, dress, fuel, and habitation; and
+the various plans which have from time to time been proposed and adopted
+for the relief of the poor' (3 vols. 4to, 1797). Eden[74] (1766-1809)
+was a man of good family and nephew of the first Lord Auckland, who
+negotiated Pitt's commercial treaty. He graduated as B.A. from Christ
+Church, Oxford, in 1787; married in 1792, and at his death (14th Nov.
+1809) was chairman of the Globe Insurance Company. He wrote various
+pamphlets upon economical topics; contributed letters signed
+'Philanglus' to Cobbett's _Porcupine_, the anti-jacobin paper of the
+day; and is described by Bentham[75] as a 'declared disciple' and a
+'highly valued friend.' He may be reckoned, therefore, as a Utilitarian,
+though politically he was a Conservative. He seems to have been a man of
+literary tastes as well as a man of business, and his book is a clear
+and able statement of the points at issue.
+
+Eden's attention had been drawn to the subject by the distress which
+followed the outbreak of the revolutionary war. He employed an agent who
+travelled through the country for a year with a set of queries drawn up
+after the model of those prepared by Sinclair for his _Statistical
+Account of Scotland_. He thus anticipated the remarkable investigation
+made in our own time by Mr. Charles Booth. Eden made personal inquiries
+and studied the literature of the subject. He had a precursor in Richard
+Burn (1709-1785), whose _History of the Poor-laws_ appeared in 1764, and
+a competitor in John Ruggles, whose _History of the Poor_ first appeared
+in Arthur Young's _Annals_, and was published as a book in 1793 (second
+edition, 1797). Eden's work eclipsed Ruggles's. It has a permanent value
+as a collection of facts; and was a sign of the growing sense of the
+importance of accurate statistical research. The historian of the social
+condition of the people should be grateful to one who broke ground at a
+time when the difficulty of obtaining a sound base for social inquiries
+began to make itself generally felt. The value of the book for
+historical purposes lies beyond my sphere. His first volume, I may say,
+gives a history of legislation from the earliest period; and contains
+also a valuable account of the voluminous literature which had grown up
+during the two preceding centuries. The other two summarise the reports
+which he had received. I will only say enough to indicate certain
+critical points. Eden's book unfortunately was to mark, not a solution
+of the difficulty but, the emergence of a series of problems which were
+to increase in complexity and ominous significance through the next
+generation.
+
+The general history of the poor-law is sufficiently familiar.[76] The
+mediaeval statutes take us to a period at which the labourer was still
+regarded as a serf; and a man who had left his village was treated like
+a fugitive slave. A long series of statutes regulated the treatment of
+the 'vagabond.' The vagabond, however, had become differentiated from
+the pauper. The decay of the ancient order of society and its
+corresponding institutions had led to a new set of problems; and the
+famous statute of Elizabeth (1601) had laid down the main lines of the
+system which is still in operation.
+
+When the labourer was regarded as in a servile condition, he might be
+supported from the motives which lead an owner to support his slaves, or
+by the charitable energies organised by ecclesiastical institutions. He
+had now ceased to be a serf, and the institutions which helped the poor
+man or maintained the beggar were wrecked. The Elizabethan statute gave
+him, therefore, a legal claim to be supported, and, on the other hand,
+directed that he should be made to work for his living. The assumption
+is still that every man is a member of a little social circle. He
+belongs to his parish, and it is his fellow-parishioners who are bound
+to support him. So long as this corresponded to facts, the system could
+work satisfactorily. With the spread of commerce, and the growth of a
+less settled population, difficulties necessarily arose. The pauper and
+the vagabond represent a kind of social extravasation; the 'masterless
+man' who has strayed from his legitimate place or has become a
+superfluity in his own circle. The vagabond could be flogged, sent to
+prison, or if necessary hanged, but it was more difficult to settle what
+to do with a man who was not a criminal, but simply a product in excess
+of demand. All manner of solutions had been suggested by philanthropists
+and partly adopted by the legislature. One point which especially
+concerns us is the awkwardness or absence of an appropriate
+administrative machinery.
+
+The parish, the unit on which the pauper had claims, meant the persons
+upon whom the poor-rate was assessed. These were mainly farmers and
+small tradesmen who formed the rather vague body called the vestry.
+'Overseers' were appointed by the ratepayers themselves; they were not
+paid, and the disagreeable office was taken in turn for short periods.
+The most obvious motive with the average ratepayer was of course to keep
+down the rates and to get the burthen of the poor as much as possible
+out of his own parish. Each parish had at least an interest in economy.
+But the economical interest also produced flagrant evils.
+
+In the first place, there was the war between parishes. The law of
+settlement--which was to decide to what parish a pauper
+belonged--originated in an act of 1662. Eden observes that the short
+clause in this short act had brought more profit to the lawyers than
+'any other point in the English jurisprudence.'[77] It is said that the
+expense of such a litigation before the act of 1834 averaged from
+L300,000 to L350,000 a year.[78] Each parish naturally endeavoured to
+shift the burthen upon its neighbours; and was protected by laws which
+enabled it to resist the immigration of labourers or actually to expel
+them when likely to become chargeable. This law is denounced by Adam
+Smith[79] as a 'violation of natural liberty and justice.' It was often
+harder, he declared, for a poor man to cross the artificial boundaries
+of his parish than to cross a mountain ridge or an arm of the sea. There
+was, he declared, hardly a poor man in England over forty who had not
+been at some time 'cruelly oppressed' by the working of this law. Eden
+thinks that Smith had exaggerated the evil: but a law which operated by
+preventing a free circulation of labour, and made it hard for a poor man
+to seek the best price for his only saleable commodity, was, so far,
+opposed to the fundamental principles common to Smith and Eden. The law,
+too, might be used oppressively by the niggardly and narrow-minded. The
+overseer, as Burn complained,[80] was often a petty tyrant: his aim was
+to depopulate his parish; to prevent the poor from obtaining a
+settlement; to make the workhouse a terror by placing it under the
+management of a bully; and by all kinds of chicanery to keep down the
+rates at whatever cost to the comfort and morality of the poor. This
+explains the view taken by Arthur Young, and generally accepted at the
+period, that the poor-law meant depopulation. Workhouses had been
+started in the seventeenth century[81] with the amiable intention of
+providing the industrious poor with work. Children might be trained to
+industry and the pauper might be made self-supporting. Workhouses were
+expected that is, to provide not only work but wages. Defoe, in his
+_Giving Alms no Charity_, pointed out the obvious objections to the
+workhouse considered as an institution capable of competing with the
+ordinary industries. Workhouses, in fact, soon ceased to be profitable.
+Their value, however, in supplying a test for destitution was
+recognised; and by an act of 1722, parishes were allowed to set up
+workhouses, separately or in combination, and to strike off the lists of
+the poor those who refused to enter them. This was the germ of the later
+'workhouse test.'[82] When grievances arose, the invariable plan, as
+Nicholls observes,[83] was to increase the power of the justices. Their
+discretion was regarded 'as a certain cure for every shortcoming of the
+law and every evil arising out of it.' The great report of 1834 traces
+this tendency[84] to a clause in an act passed in the reign of William
+III., which was intended to allow the justices to check the extravagance
+of parish officers. They were empowered to strike off persons improperly
+relieved. This incidental regulation, widened by subsequent
+interpretations, allowed the magistrates to order relief, and thereby
+introduced an incredible amount of demoralisation.
+
+The course was natural enough, and indeed apparently inevitable. The
+justices of the peace represented the only authority which could be
+called in to regulate abuses arising from the incapacity and narrow
+local interests of the multitudinous vestries. The schemes of
+improvement generally involved some plan for a larger area. If a hundred
+or a county were taken for the unit, the devices which depopulated a
+parish would no longer be applicable.[85] The only scheme actually
+carried was embodied in 'Gilbert's act' (1782), obtained by Thomas
+Gilbert (1720-1798), an agent of the duke of Bridgewater, and an active
+advocate of poor-law reform in the House of Commons. This scheme was
+intended as a temporary expedient during the distress caused by the
+American War; and a larger and more permanent scheme which it was to
+introduce failed to become law. It enabled parishes to combine if they
+chose to provide common workhouses, and to appoint 'guardians.' The
+justices, as usual, received more powers in order to suppress the harsh
+dealing of the old parochial authorities. The guardians, it was assumed,
+could always find 'work,' and they were to relieve the able-bodied
+without applying the workhouse test. The act, readily adopted, thus
+became a landmark in the growth of laxity.[86]
+
+At the end of the century a rapid development of pauperism had taken
+place. The expense, as Eden had to complain, had doubled in twenty
+years. This took place simultaneously with the great development of
+manufactures. It is not perhaps surprising, though it may be melancholy,
+that increase of wealth shall be accompanied by increase of pauperism.
+Where there are many rich men, there will be a better field for thieves
+and beggars. A life of dependence becomes easier though it need not
+necessarily be adopted. Whatever may have been the relation of the two
+phenomena, the social revolution made the old social arrangements more
+inadequate. Great aggregations of workmen were formed in towns, which
+were still only villages in a legal sense. Fluctuations of trade, due to
+war or speculation, brought distress to the improvident; and the old
+assumption that every man had a proper place in a small circle, where
+his neighbours knew all about him, was further than ever from being
+verified. One painful result was already beginning to show itself.
+Neglected children in great towns had already excited compassion. Thomas
+Coram (1668?-1751) had been shocked by the sight of dying children
+exposed in the streets of London, and succeeded in establishing the
+Foundling Hospital (founded in 1742). In 1762, Jonas Hanway (1712-1786)
+obtained a law for boarding out children born within the bills of
+mortality. The demand for children's labour, produced by the factories,
+seemed naturally enough to offer a better chance for extending such
+charities. Unfortunately among the people who took advantage of it were
+parish officials, eager to get children off their hands, and
+manufacturers concerned only to make money out of childish labour.
+Hence arose the shameful system for which remedies (as I shall have to
+notice) had to be sought in a later generation.
+
+Meanwhile the outbreak of the revolutionary war had made the question
+urgent. When Manchester trade suffered, as Eden tells us in his reports,
+many workmen enlisted in the army, and left their children to be
+supported by the parish. Bad seasons followed in 1794 and 1795, and
+there was great distress in the agricultural districts. The governing
+classes became alarmed. In December 1795 Whitbread introduced a bill
+providing that the justices of the peace should fix a minimum rate of
+wages. Upon a motion for the second reading, Pitt made the famous speech
+(12th December) including the often-quoted statement that when a man had
+a family, relief should be 'a matter of right and honour, instead of a
+ground of opprobrium and contempt.'[87] Pitt had in the same speech
+shown his reading of Adam Smith by dwelling upon the general objections
+to state interference with wages, and had argued that more was to be
+gained by removing the restrictions upon the free movement of labour. He
+undertook to produce a comprehensive measure; and an elaborate bill of
+130 clauses was prepared in 1796.[88] The rates were to be used to
+supplement inadequate wages; 'schools of industry' were to be formed for
+the support of superabundant children; loans might be made to the poor
+for the purchase of a cow;[89] and the possession of property was not to
+disqualify for the receiving relief. In short, the bill seems to have
+been a model of misapplied benevolence. The details were keenly
+criticised by Bentham, and the bill never came to the birth. Other
+topics were pressing enough at this time to account for the failure of a
+measure so vast in its scope. Meanwhile something had to be done. On 6th
+May 1795 the Berkshire magistrates had passed certain resolutions called
+from their place of meeting, the 'Speenhamland Act of Parliament.' They
+provided that the rate of wages of a labourer should be increased in
+proportion to the price of corn and to the number of his family--a rule
+which, as Eden observes, tended to discourage economy of food in times
+of scarcity. They also sanctioned the disastrous principle of paying
+part of the wages out of rates. An act passed in 1796 repealed the old
+restrictions upon out-door relief; and thus, during the hard times that
+were to follow, the poor-laws were adapted to produce the state of
+things in which, as Cobbett says (in 1821) 'every labourer who has
+children is now regularly and constantly a pauper.'[90] The result
+represents a curious compromise. The landowners, whether from
+benevolence or fear of revolution, desired to meet the terrible distress
+of the times. Unfortunately their spasmodic interference was guided by
+no fixed principles, and acted upon a class of institutions not
+organised upon any definite system. The general effect seems to have
+been that the ratepayers, no longer allowed to 'depopulate,' sought to
+turn the compulsory stream of charity partly into their own pockets. If
+they were forced to support paupers, they could contrive to save the
+payment of wages. They could use the labour of the rate-supported
+pauper instead of employing independent workmen. The evils thus produced
+led before long to most important discussions.[91] The ordinary view of
+the poor-law was inverted. The prominent evil was the reckless increase
+of a degraded population instead of the restriction of population.
+Eden's own view is sufficiently indicative of the light in which the
+facts showed themselves to intelligent economists. As a disciple of Adam
+Smith, he accepts the rather vague doctrine of his master about the
+'balance' between labour and capital. If labour exceeds capital, he
+says, the labourer must starve 'in spite of all political
+regulations.'[92] He therefore looks with disfavour upon the whole
+poor-law system. It is too deeply rooted to be abolished, but he thinks
+that the amount to be raised should not be permitted to exceed the sum
+levied on an average of previous years. The only certain result of
+Pitt's measure would be a vast expenditure upon a doubtful experiment:
+and one main purpose of his publication was to point out the objections
+to the plan. He desires what seemed at that time to be almost hopeless,
+a national system of education; but his main doctrine is the wisdom of
+reliance upon individual effort. The truth of the maxim '_pas trop
+gouverner_,' he says,[93] has never been better illustrated than by the
+contrast between friendly societies and the poor-laws. Friendly
+societies had been known, though they were still on a humble scale, from
+the beginning of the century, and had tended to diminish pauperism in
+spite of the poor-laws. Eden gives many accounts of them. They seem to
+have suggested a scheme proposed by the worthy Francis Maseres[94]
+(1731-1824) in 1772 for the establishment of life annuities. A bill to
+give effect to this scheme passed the House of Commons in 1773 with the
+support of Burke and Savile, but was thrown out in the House of Lords.
+In 1786 John Acland (died 1796), a Devonshire clergyman and justice of
+the peace, proposed a scheme for uniting the whole nation into a kind of
+friendly society for the support of the poor when out of work and in old
+age. It was criticised by John Howlett (1731-1804), a clergyman who
+wrote much upon the poor-laws. He attributes the growth of pauperism to
+the rise of prices, and calculates that out of an increased expenditure
+of L700,000, L219,000 had been raised by the rich, and the remainder
+'squeezed out of the flesh, blood, and bones of the poor,' An act for
+establishing Acland's crude scheme failed next year in parliament.[95]
+The merit of the societies, according to Eden, was their tendency to
+stimulate self-help; and how to preserve that merit, while making them
+compulsory, was a difficult problem. I have said enough to mark a
+critical and characteristic change of opinion. One source of evil
+pointed out by contemporaries had been the absence of any central power
+which could regulate and systematise the action of the petty local
+bodies. The very possibility of such organisation, however, seems to
+have been simply inconceivable. When the local bodies became lavish
+instead of over-frugal, the one remedy suggested was to abolish the
+system altogether.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[74] See _Dictionary of National Biography_.
+
+[75] _Works_, i. 255.
+
+[76] See Sir G. Nicholls's _History of the Poor-law_, 1854. A new
+edition, with life by H. G. Willink, appeared in 1898.
+
+[77] _History_, i. 175.
+
+[78] M'Culloch's note to _Wealth of Nations_, p. 65. M'Culloch in his
+appendix makes some sensible remarks upon the absence of any properly
+constituted parochial 'tribunal.'
+
+[79] _Wealth of Nations_, bk. i. ch. x.
+
+[80] See passage quoted in Eden's _History_, i. 347.
+
+[81] Thomas Firmin (1632-1677), a philanthropist, whose Socinianism did
+not exclude him from the friendship of such liberal bishops as Tillotson
+and Fowler, started a workhouse in 1676.
+
+[82] Nicholls (1898), ii. 14.
+
+[83] _Ibid._ (1898), ii. 123.
+
+[84] _Report_, p. 67.
+
+[85] William Hay, for example, carried resolutions in the House of
+Commons in 1735, but failed to carry a bill which had this object. See
+Eden's _History_, i. 396. Cooper in 1763 proposed to make the hundred
+the unit.--Nicholls's _History_, i. 58. Fielding proposes a similar
+change in London. Dean Tucker speaks of the evil of the limited area in
+his _Manifold Causes of the Increase of the Poor_ (1760).
+
+[86] Nicholls, ii. 88.
+
+[87] _Parl. Hist._ xxxii. 710.
+
+[88] A full abstract is given in Edens _History_, iii. ccclxiii. etc.
+
+[89] Bentham observes (_Works_, viii. 448) that the cow will require the
+three acres to keep it.
+
+[90] Cobbett's _Political Works_, vi. 64
+
+[91] I need only note here that the first edition of Malthus's _Essay_
+appeared in 1798, the year after Eden's publication.
+
+[92] Eden's _History_, i. 583.
+
+[93] _Ibid._ i. 587.
+
+[94] Maseres, an excellent Whig, a good mathematician, and a respected
+lawyer, is perhaps best known at present from his portrait in Charles
+Lamb's _Old Benchers_.
+
+[95] It maybe noticed as an anticipation of modern schemes that in 1792
+Paine proposed a system of 'old age pensions,' for which the necessary
+funds were to be easily obtained when universal peace had abolished all
+military charges. See _State Trials_, xxv. 175.
+
+
+II. THE POLICE
+
+The system of 'self-government' showed its weak side in this direction.
+It meant that an important function was intrusted to small bodies, quite
+incompetent of acting upon general principles, and perfectly capable of
+petty jobbing, when unrestrained by any effective supervision. In
+another direction the same tendency was even more strikingly
+illustrated. Municipal institutions were almost at their lowest point of
+decay. Manchester and Birmingham were two of the largest and most
+rapidly growing towns. By the end of the century Manchester had a
+population of 90,000 and Birmingham of 70,000. Both were ruled, as far
+as they were ruled, by the remnants of old manorial institutions.
+Aikin[96] observes that 'Manchester (in 1795) remains an open town;
+destitute (probably to its advantage) of a corporation, and
+unrepresented in parliament.' It was governed by a 'boroughreeve' and
+two constables elected annually at the court-leet. William Hutton, the
+quaint historian of Birmingham, tells us in 1783 that the town was still
+legally a village, with a high and low bailiff, a 'high and low taster,'
+two 'affeerers,' and two 'leather-sealers,' In 1752 it had been provided
+with a 'court of requests' for the recovery of small debts, and in 1769
+with a body of commissioners to provide for lighting the town. This was
+the system by which, with some modifications, Birmingham was governed
+till after the Reform Bill.[97] Hutton boasts[98] that no town was
+better governed or had fewer officers. 'A town without a charter,' he
+says, 'is a town without a shackle.' Perhaps he changed his opinions
+when his warehouses were burnt in 1791, and the town was at the mercy of
+the mob till a regiment of 'light horse' could be called in. Aikin and
+Hutton, however, reflect the general opinion at a time when the town
+corporations had become close and corrupt bodies, and were chiefly
+'shackles' upon the energy of active members of the community. I must
+leave the explanation of this decay to historians. I will only observe
+that what would need explanation would seem to be rather the absence
+than the presence of corruption. The English borough was not stimulated
+by any pressure from a central government; nor was it a semi-independent
+body in which every citizen had the strongest motives for combining to
+support its independence against neighbouring towns or invading nobles.
+The lower classes were ignorant, and probably would be rather hostile
+than favourable to any such modest interference with dirt and disorder
+as would commend themselves to the officials. Naturally, power was left
+to the little cliques of prosperous tradesmen, who formed close
+corporations, and spent the revenues upon feasts or squandered them by
+corrupt practices. Here, as in the poor-law, the insufficiency of the
+administrative body suggests to contemporaries, not its reform, but its
+superfluity.
+
+The most striking account of some of the natural results is in
+Colquhoun's[99] _Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis_. Patrick
+Colquhoun (1745-1820), an energetic Scot, was born at Dumbarton in 1745,
+had been in business at Glasgow, where he was provost in 1782 and 1783,
+and in 1789 settled in London. In 1792 he obtained through Dundas an
+appointment to one of the new police magistracies created by an act of
+that year. He took an active part in many schemes of social reform; and
+his book gives an account of the investigations by which his schemes
+were suggested and justified. It must be said, however, parenthetically,
+that his statistics scarcely challenge implicit confidence. Like
+Sinclair and Eden, he saw the importance of obtaining facts and figures,
+but his statements are suspiciously precise and elaborate.[100] The
+broad facts are clear enough.
+
+London was, he says, three miles broad and twenty-five in circumference.
+The population in 1801 was 641,000. It was the largest town, and
+apparently the most chaotic collection of dwellings in the civilised
+world. There were, as Colquhoun asserts[101] in an often-quoted passage,
+20,000 people in it, who got up every morning without knowing how they
+would get through the day. There were 5000 public-houses, and 50,000
+women supported, wholly or partly, by prostitution. The revenues raised
+by crime amounted, as he calculates, to an annual sum of, L2,000,000.
+There were whole classes of professional thieves, more or less organised
+in gangs, which acted in support of each other. There were gangs on the
+river, who boarded ships at night, or lay in wait round the warehouses.
+The government dockyards were systematically plundered, and the same
+article often sold four times over to the officials. The absence of
+patrols gave ample chance to the highwaymen then peculiar to England.
+Their careers, commemorated in the _Newgate Calendar_, had a certain
+flavour of Robin Hood romance, and their ranks were recruited from
+dissipated apprentices and tradesmen in difficulty. The fields round
+London were so constantly plundered that the rent was materially
+lowered. Half the hackney coachmen, he says,[102] were in league with
+thieves. The number of receiving houses for stolen goods had increased
+in twenty years from 300 to 3000.[103] Coining was a flourishing trade,
+and according to Colquhoun employed several thousand persons.[104]
+Gambling had taken a fresh start about 1777 and 1778[105]; and the
+keepers of tables had always money enough at command to make convictions
+almost impossible. French refugees at the revolution had introduced
+_rouge et noir_; and Colquhoun estimates the sums yearly lost in
+gambling-houses at over L7,000,000. The gamblers might perhaps appeal
+not only to the practices of their betters in the days of Fox, but to
+the public lotteries. Colquhoun had various correspondents, who do not
+venture to propose the abolition of a system which sanctioned the
+practice, but who hope to diminish the facility for supplementary
+betting on the results of the official drawing.
+
+The war had tended to increase the number of loose and desperate
+marauders who swarmed in the vast labyrinth of London streets. When we
+consider the nature of the police by which these evils were to be
+checked, and the criminal law which they administered, the wonder is
+less that there were sometimes desperate riots (as in 1780) than that
+London should have been ever able to resist a mob. Colquhoun, though a
+patriotic Briton, has to admit that the French despots had at last
+created an efficient police. The emperor, Joseph II., he says, inquired
+for an Austrian criminal supposed to have escaped to Paris. You will
+find him, replied the head of the French police, at No. 93 of such a
+street in Vienna on the second-floor room looking upon such a church;
+and there he was. In England a criminal could hide himself in a herd of
+his like, occasionally disturbed by the inroad of a 'Bow Street runner,'
+the emissary of the 'trading justices,' formerly represented by the two
+Fieldings. An act of 1792 created seven new offices, to one of which
+Colquhoun had been appointed. They had one hundred and eighty-nine paid
+officers under them. There were also about one thousand constables.
+These were small tradesmen or artisans upon whom the duty was imposed
+without remuneration for a year by their parish, that is, by one of
+seventy independent bodies. A 'Tyburn ticket,' given in reward for
+obtaining the conviction of a criminal exempted a man from the discharge
+of such offices, and could be bought for from L15 to L25. There were
+also two thousand watchmen receiving from 8-1/2d. up to 2s. a night.
+These were the true successors of Dogberry; often infirm or aged persons
+appointed to keep them out of the workhouse. The management of this
+distracted force thus depended upon a miscellaneous set of bodies; the
+paid magistrates, the officials of the city, the justices of the peace
+for Middlesex, and the seventy independent parishes.
+
+The law was as defective as the administration. Colquhoun represents the
+philanthropic impulse of the day, and notices[106] that in 1787 Joseph
+II. had abolished capital punishment. His chief authority for more
+merciful methods is Beccaria; and it is worth remarking, for reasons
+which will appear hereafter, that he does not in this connection refer
+to Bentham, although he speaks enthusiastically[107] of Bentham's model
+prison, the Panopticon. Colquhoun shows how strangely the severity of
+the law was combined with its extreme capaciousness. He quotes
+Bacon[108] for the statement that the law was a 'heterogeneous mass
+concocted too often on the spur of the moment,' and gives sufficient
+proofs of its truth. He desires, for example, a law to punish receivers
+of stolen goods, and says that there were excellent laws in existence.
+Unfortunately one law applied exclusively to the case of pewter-pots,
+and another exclusively to the precious metals; neither could be used as
+against receivers of horses or bank notes.[109] So a man indicted under
+an act against stealing from ships on navigable rivers escaped, because
+the barge from which he stole happened to be aground. Gangs could afford
+to corrupt witnesses or to pay knavish lawyers skilled in applying these
+vagaries of legislation. Juries also disliked convicting when the
+penalty for coining sixpence was the same as the penalty for killing a
+mother. It followed, as he shows by statistics, that half the persons
+committed for trial escaped by petty chicanery or corruption, or the
+reluctance of juries to convict for capital offences. Only about
+one-fifth of the capital sentences were executed; and many were pardoned
+on condition of enlisting to improve the morals of the army. The
+criminals, who were neither hanged nor allowed to escape, were sent to
+prisons, which were schools of vice. After the independence of the
+American colonies, the system of transportation to Australia had begun
+(in 1787); but the expense was enormous, and prisoners were huddled
+together in the hulks at Woolwich and Portsmouth, which had been used as
+a temporary expedient. Thence they were constantly discharged, to return
+to their old practices. A man, says Colquhoun,[110] would deserve a
+statue who should carry out a plan for helping discharged prisoners. To
+meet these evils, Colquhoun proposes various remedies, such as a
+metropolitan police, a public prosecutor, or even a codification or
+revision of the Criminal Code, which he sees is likely to be delayed. He
+also suggested, in a pamphlet of 1799, a kind of charity organisation
+society to prevent the waste of funds. Many other pamphlets of similar
+tendencies show his active zeal in promoting various reforms. Colquhoun
+was in close correspondence with Bentham from the year 1798,[111] and
+Bentham helped him by drawing the Thames Police Act, passed in 1800, to
+give effect to some of the suggestions in the _Treatise_.[112]
+
+Another set of abuses has a special connection with Bentham's activity.
+Bentham had been led in 1778 to attend to the prison question by reading
+Howard's book on _Prisons_; and he refers to the 'venerable friend who
+had lived an apostle and died a martyr.'[113] The career of John Howard
+(1726-1790) is familiar. The son of a London tradesman, he had inherited
+an estate in Bedfordshire. There he erected model cottages and village
+schools; and, on becoming sheriff of the county in 1773, was led to
+attend to abuses in the prisons. Two acts of parliament were passed in
+1774 to remedy some of the evils exposed, and he pursued the inquiry at
+home and abroad. His results are given in his _State of the Prisons in
+England and Wales_ (1779, fourth edition, 1792), and his _Account of the
+Principal Lazarettos in Europe_ (1789). The prisoners, he says, had
+little food, sometimes a penny loaf a day, and sometimes nothing; no
+water, no fresh air, no sewers, and no bedding. The stench was
+appalling, and gaol fever killed more than died on the gallows. Debtors
+and felons, men, women and children, were huddled together; often with
+lunatics, who were shown by the gaolers for money. 'Garnish' was
+extorted; the gaolers kept drinking-taps; gambling flourished: and
+prisoners were often cruelly ironed, and kept for long periods before
+trial. At Hull the assizes had only been held once in seven years, and
+afterwards once in three. It is a comfort to find that the whole number
+of prisoners in England and Wales amounted, in 1780, to about 4400, 2078
+of whom were debtors, 798 felons, and 917 petty offenders. An act passed
+in 1779 provided for the erection of two penitentiaries. Howard was to
+be a supervisor. The failure to carry out this act led, as we shall see,
+to one of Bentham's most characteristic undertakings. One peculiarity
+must be noted. Howard found prisons on the continent where the
+treatment was bad and torture still occasionally practised; but he
+nowhere found things so bad as in England. In Holland the prisons were
+so neat and clean as to make it difficult to believe that they were
+prisons: and they were used as models for the legislation of 1779. One
+cause of this unenviable distinction of English prisons had been
+indicated by an earlier investigation. General Oglethorpe (1696-1785)
+had been started in his philanthropic career by obtaining a committee of
+the House of Commons in 1729 to inquire into the state of the gaols. The
+foundation of the colony of Georgia as an outlet for the population was
+one result of the inquiry. It led, in the first place, however, to a
+trial of persons accused of atrocious cruelties at the Fleet
+prison.[114] The trial was abortive. It appeared in the course of the
+proceedings that the Fleet prison was a 'freehold,' A patent for
+rebuilding it had been granted to Sir Jeremy Whichcot under Charles II.,
+and had been sold to one Higgins, who resold it to other persons for
+L5000. The proprietors made their investment pay by cruel ill-treatment
+of the prisoners, oppressing the poor and letting off parts of the
+prison to dealers in drink. This was the general plan in the prisons
+examined by Howard, and helps to account for the gross abuses. It is one
+more application of the general system. As the patron was owner of a
+living, and the officer of his commission, the keeper of a prison was
+owner of his establishment. The paralysis of administration which
+prevailed throughout the country made it natural to farm out paupers to
+the master of a workhouse, and prisoners to the proprietor of a gaol.
+The state of prisoners may be inferred not only from Howard's authentic
+record but from the fictions of Fielding, Smollett and Goldsmith; and
+the last echoes of the same complaints may be found in _Pickwick_ and
+_Little Dorrit_. The Marshalsea described in the last was also a
+proprietary concern. We shall hereafter see how Bentham proposed to
+treat the evils revealed by Oglethorpe and Howard.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[96] Aikin's _Country Round Manchester_.
+
+[97] Bunce's _History of the Corporation of Birmingham_ (1878).
+
+[98] _History of Birmingham_ (2nd edition), p. 327.
+
+[99] The first edition, 1795, the sixth, from which I quote, in 1800. In
+Benthams _Works_, x. 330, it is said that in 1798, 7500 copies of this
+book had been sold.
+
+[100] In 1814 Colquhoun published an elaborate account of the _Resources
+of the British Empire_, showing similar qualities.
+
+[101] _Police_, p. 310.
+
+[102] _Police_, p. 105.
+
+[103] _Ibid._ p. 13.
+
+[104] _Ibid._ p. 211.
+
+[105] _Ibid._ p. 136.
+
+[106] _Police_, p. 60.
+
+[107] _Ibid._ p. 481.
+
+[108] _Ibid._ p. 7.
+
+[109] _Ibid._ p. 298.
+
+[110] _Police_, p. 99.
+
+[111] Bentham's _Works_, x. 329 _seq._
+
+[112] _Ibid._ v. 335.
+
+[113] Bentham's _Works_, iv. 3, 121.
+
+[114] Cobbett's _State Trials_, xvii. 297-626.
+
+
+III. EDUCATION
+
+Another topic treated by Colquhoun marks the initial stage of
+controversies which were soon to grow warm. Colquhoun boasts of the
+number of charities for which London was already conspicuous. A growing
+facility for forming associations of all kinds, political, religious,
+scientific, and charitable, is an obvious characteristic of modern
+progress. Where in earlier times a college or a hospital had to be
+endowed by a founder and invested by charter with corporate personality,
+it is now necessary only to call a meeting, form a committee, and appeal
+for subscriptions. Societies of various kinds had sprung up during the
+century. Artists, men of science, agriculturists, and men of literary
+tastes, had founded innumerable academies and 'philosophical
+institutes.' The great London hospitals, dependent upon voluntary
+subscriptions, had been founded during the first half of the century.
+Colquhoun counts the annual revenue of various charitable institutions
+at L445,000, besides which the endowments produced L150,000, and the
+poor-rates L255,000.[115] Among these a considerable number were
+intended to promote education. Here, as in some other cases, it seems
+that people at the end of the century were often taking up an impulse
+given a century before. So the Society for promoting Christian
+Knowledge, founded in 1699, and the Society for the Propagation of the
+Gospel, founded in 1701, were supplemented by the Church Missionary
+Society and the Religious Tract Society, both founded in 1799. The
+societies for the reformation of manners, prevalent at the end of the
+seventeenth century, were taken as a model by Wilberforce and his
+friends at the end of the eighteenth.[116] In the same way, the first
+attempts at providing a general education for the poor had been made by
+Archbishop Tenison, who founded a parochial school about 1680 in order
+'to check the growth of popery.' Charity schools became common during
+the early part of the eighteenth century and received various
+endowments. They were attacked as tending to teach the poor too much--a
+very needless alarm--and also by free thinkers, such as Mandeville, as
+intended outworks of the established church. This last objection was a
+foretaste of the bitter religious controversies which were to accompany
+the growth of an educational system. Colquhoun says that there were 62
+endowed schools in London, from Christ's Hospital downwards, educating
+about 5000 children; 237 parish schools with about 9000 children, and
+3730 'private schools.' The teaching was, of course, very imperfect, and
+in a report of a committee of the House of Commons in 1818, it is
+calculated that about half the children in a large district were
+entirely uneducated. There was, of course, nothing in England deserving
+the name of a system in educational more than in any other matters. The
+grammar schools throughout the country provided more or less for the
+classes which could not aspire to the public schools and universities.
+About a third of the boys at Christ's Hospital were, as Coleridge tells
+us, sons of clergymen.[117] The children of the poor were either not
+educated, or picked up their letters at some charity school or such a
+country dame's school as is described by Shenstone. A curious proof,
+however, of rising interest in the question is given by the Sunday
+Schools movement at the end of the century. Robert Raikes (1735-1811), a
+printer in Gloucester and proprietor of a newspaper, joined with a
+clergyman to set up a school in 1780 at a total cost of 1s. 6d. a week.
+Within three or four years the plan was taken up everywhere, and the
+worthy Raikes, whose newspaper had spread the news, found himself
+revered as a great pioneer of philanthropy. Wesley took up the scheme
+warmly; bishops condescended to approve; the king and queen were
+interested, and within three or four years the number of learners was
+reckoned at two or three hundred thousand. A Sunday School Association
+was formed in 1785 with well known men of business at its head. Queen
+Charlotte's friend, Mrs. Trimmer (1741-1810), took up the work near
+London, and Hannah More (1745-1833) in Somersetshire. Hannah More gives
+a strange account of the utter absence of any civilising agencies in the
+district around Cheddar where she and her sisters laboured. She was
+accused of 'methodism' and a leaning to Jacobinism, although her views
+were of the most moderate kind. She wished the poor to be able to read
+their Bibles and to be qualified for domestic duties, but not to write
+or to be enabled to read Tom Paine or be encouraged to rise above their
+position. The literary light of the Whigs, Dr. Parr (1747-1825), showed
+his liberality by arguing that the poor ought to be taught, but admitted
+that the enterprise had its limits. The 'Deity Himself had fixed a great
+gulph between them and the poor.' A scanty instruction given on Sundays
+alone was not calculated to facilitate the passage of that gulf. By the
+end of the century, however, signs of a more systematic movement were
+showing themselves. Bell and Lancaster, of whom I shall have to speak,
+were rival claimants for the honour of initiating a new departure in
+education. The controversy which afterwards raged between the supporters
+of the two systems marked a complete revolution of opinion. Meanwhile,
+although the need of schools was beginning to be felt, the appliances
+for education in England were a striking instance of the general
+inefficiency in every department which needed combined action. In
+Scotland the system of parish schools was one obvious cause of the
+success of so many of the Scotsmen which excited the jealousy of
+southern competitors. Even in Ireland there appears to have been a more
+efficient set of schools. And yet, one remark must be suggested. There
+is probably no period in English history at which a greater number of
+poor men have risen to distinction. The greatest beyond comparison of
+self-taught poets was Burns (1759-1796). The political writer who was at
+the time producing the most marked effect was Thomas Paine (1737-1809),
+son of a small tradesman. His successor in influence was William Cobbett
+(1762-1835), son of an agricultural labourer, and one of the pithiest of
+all English writers. William Gifford (1756-1826), son of a small
+tradesman in Devonshire, was already known as a satirist and was to lead
+Conservatives as editor of the _The Quarterly Review_. John Dalton
+(1766-1842), son of a poor weaver, was one of the most distinguished men
+of science. Porson (1759-1808), the greatest Greek scholar of his time,
+was son of a Norfolk parish clerk, though sagacious patrons had sent him
+to Eton in his fifteenth year. The Oxford professor of Arabic, Joseph
+White (1746-1814), was son of a poor weaver in the country and a man of
+reputation for learning, although now remembered only for a rather
+disreputable literary squabble. Robert Owen and Joseph Lancaster, both
+sprung from the ranks, were leaders in social movements. I have already
+spoken of such men as Watt, Telford, and Rennie; and smaller names might
+be added in literature, science, and art. The individualist virtue of
+'self-help' was not confined to successful money-making or to the
+wealthier classes. One cause of the literary excellence of Burns, Paine,
+and Cobbett may be that, when literature was less centralised, a writer
+was less tempted to desert his natural dialect. I mention the fact,
+however, merely to suggest that, whatever were then the difficulties of
+getting such schooling as is now common, an energetic lad even in the
+most neglected regions might force his way to the front.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[115] _Police_, p. 340.
+
+[116] Wilberforce started on this plan a 'society for enforcing the
+king's proclamation' in 1786, which was supplemented by the society for
+'the Suppression of Vice' in 1802. I don't suppose that vice was much
+suppressed. Sydney Smith ridiculed its performances in the _Edinburgh_
+for 1809. The article is in his works. A more interesting society was
+that for 'bettering the condition of the poor,' started by Sir Thomas
+Bernard and Wilberforce in 1796.
+
+[117] _Biographia Literaria_ (1847), ii. 327.
+
+
+IV. THE SLAVE-TRADE
+
+I have thus noticed the most conspicuous of the contemporary problems
+which, as we shall see, provided the main tasks of Bentham and his
+followers. One other topic must be mentioned as in more ways than one
+characteristic of the spirit of the time. The parliamentary attack upon
+the slave-trade began just before the outbreak of the revolution. It is
+generally described as an almost sudden awakening of the national
+conscience. That it appealed to that faculty is undeniable, and,
+moreover, it is at least a remarkable instance of legislative action
+upon purely moral grounds. It is true that in this case the conscience
+was the less impeded because it was roused chiefly by the sins of men's
+neighbours. The slave-trading class was a comparative excrescence. Their
+trade could be attacked without such widespread interference with the
+social order as was implied, for example, in remedying the grievances of
+paupers or of children in factories. The conflict with morality, again,
+was so plain as to need no demonstration. It seems to be a questionable
+logic which assumes the merit of a reformer to be in proportion to the
+flagrancy of the evil assailed. The more obvious the case, surely the
+less the virtue needed in the assailant. However this may be, no one can
+deny the moral excellence of such men as Wilberforce and Clarkson, nor
+the real change in the moral standard implied by the success of their
+agitation. But another question remains, which is indicated by a later
+controversy. The followers of Wilberforce and of Clarkson were jealous
+of each other. Each party tried to claim the chief merit for its hero.
+Each was, I think, unjust to the other. The underlying motive was the
+desire to obtain credit for the 'Evangelicals' or their rivals as the
+originators of a great movement. Without touching the personal details
+it is necessary to say something of the general sentiments implied. In
+his history of the agitation,[118] Clarkson gives a quaint chart,
+showing how the impulse spread from various centres till it converged
+upon a single area, and his facts are significant.
+
+That a great change had taken place is undeniable. Protestant England
+had bargained with Catholic Spain in the middle of the century for the
+right of supplying slaves to America, while at the peace of 1814 English
+statesmen were endeavouring to secure a combination of all civilised
+powers against the trade. Smollett, in 1748, makes the fortune of his
+hero, Roderick Random, by placing him as mate of a slave-ship under the
+ideal sailor, Bowling. About the same time John Newton (1725-1807),
+afterwards the venerated teacher of Cowper and the Evangelicals, was in
+command of a slaver, and enjoying 'sweeter and more frequent hours of
+divine communion' than he had elsewhere known. He had no scruples,
+though he had the grace to pray 'to be fixed in a more humane calling.'
+In later years he gave the benefit of his experience to the
+abolitionists.[119] A new sentiment, however, was already showing
+itself. Clarkson collects various instances. Southern's Oroonoco,
+founded on a story by Mrs. Behn, and Steele's story of Inkle and Yarico
+in an early _Spectator_, Pope's poor Indian in the _Essay on Man_, and
+allusions by Thomson, Shenstone, and Savage, show that poets and
+novelists could occasionally turn the theme to account. Hutcheson, the
+moralist, incidentally condemns slavery; and divines such as Bishops
+Hayter and Warburton took the same view in sermons before the Society
+for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. Johnson, 'last of the
+Tories' though he was, had a righteous hatred for the system.[120] He
+toasted the next insurrection of negroes in the West Indies, and asked
+why we always heard the 'loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of
+negroes'? Thomas Day (1748-1789), as an ardent follower of Rousseau,
+wrote the _Dying Negro_ in 1773, and, in the same spirit, denounced the
+inconsistencies of slave-holding champions of American liberty.
+
+Such isolated utterances showed a spreading sentiment. The honour of the
+first victory in the practical application must be given to Granville
+Sharp[121] (1735-1813), one of the most charming and, in the best sense,
+'Quixotic' of men. In 1772 his exertions had led to the famous decision
+by Lord Mansfield in the case of the negro Somerset.[122] Sharp in 1787
+became chairman of the committee formed to attack the slave-trade by
+collecting the evidence of which Wilberforce made use in parliament. The
+committee was chiefly composed of Quakers; as indeed, Quakers are pretty
+sure to be found in every philanthropic movement of the period. I must
+leave the explanation to the historian of religious movements; but the
+fact is characteristic. The Quakers had taken the lead in America. The
+Quaker was both practical and a mystic. His principles put him outside
+of the ordinary political interests, and of the military world. He
+directed his activities to helping the poor, the prisoner, and the
+oppressed. Among the Quakers of the eighteenth century were John Woolman
+(1720-1772), a writer beloved by the congenial Charles Lamb and Antoine
+Benezet (1713-1784), born in France, and son of a French refugee who
+settled in Philadelphia. When Clarkson wrote the prize essay upon the
+slave-trade (1785), which started his career, it was from Benezet's
+writings that he obtained his information. By their influence the
+Pennsylvanian Quakers were gradually led to pronounce against
+slavery[123]; and the first anti-slavery society was founded in
+Philadelphia in 1775, the year in which the skirmish at Lexington began
+the war of independence. That suggests another influence. The
+Rationalists of the eighteenth century were never tired of praising the
+Quakers. The Quakers were, by their essential principles, in favour of
+absolute toleration, and their attitude towards dogma was not
+dissimilar. 'Rationalisation' and 'Spiritualisation' are in some
+directions similar. The general spread of philanthropic sentiment,
+which found its formula in the _Rights of Man_, fell in with the Quaker
+hatred of war and slavery. Voltaire heartily admires Barclay, the Quaker
+apologist. It is, therefore, not surprising to find the names of the
+deists, Franklin and Paine, associated with Quakers in this movement.
+Franklin was an early president of the new association, and Paine wrote
+an article to support the early agitation.[124] Paine himself was a
+Quaker by birth, who had dropped his early creed while retaining a
+respect for its adherents. When the agitation began it was in fact
+generally approved by all except the slave-traders. Sound Whig divines,
+Watson and Paley and Parr; Unitarians such as Priestley and Gilbert
+Wakefield and William Smith; and the great methodist, John Wesley, were
+united on this point. Fox and Burke and Pitt rivalled each other in
+condemning the system. The actual delay was caused partly by the
+strength of the commercial interests in parliament, and partly by the
+growth of the anti-Jacobin sentiment.
+
+The attempt to monopolise the credit of the movement by any particular
+sect is absurd. Wilberforce and his friends might fairly claim the glory
+of having been worthy representatives of a new spirit of philanthropy;
+but most certainly they did not create or originate it. The general
+growth of that spirit throughout the century must be explained, so far
+as 'explanation' is possible, by wider causes. It was, as I must venture
+to assume, a product of complex social changes which were bringing
+classes and nations into closer contact, binding them together by new
+ties, and breaking up the old institutions which had been formed under
+obsolete conditions. The true moving forces were the same whether these
+representatives announced the new gospel of the 'rights of man'; or
+appealed to the traditional rights of Englishmen; or rallied supporters
+of the old order so far as it still provided the most efficient
+machinery for the purpose. The revival of religion under Wesley and the
+Evangelicals meant the direction of the stream into one channel. The
+paralytic condition of the Church of England disqualified it for
+appropriating the new energy. The men who directed the movements were
+mainly stimulated by moral indignation at the gross abuses, and the
+indolence of the established priesthood naturally gave them an
+anti-sacerdotal turn. They simply accepted the old Protestant tradition.
+They took no interest in the intellectual questions involved.
+Rationalism, according to them, meant simply an attack upon the
+traditional sanctions of morality; and it scarcely occurred to them to
+ask for any philosophical foundation of their creed. Wilberforce's book,
+_A Practical View_, attained an immense popularity, and is
+characteristic of the position. Wilberforce turns over the infidel to be
+confuted by Paley, whom he takes to be a conclusive reasoner. For
+himself he is content to show what needed little proof, that the
+so-called Christians of the day could act as if they had never heard of
+the New Testament. The Evangelical movement had in short no distinct
+relation to speculative movements. It took the old tradition for
+granted, and it need not here be further considered.
+
+One other remark is suggested by the agitation against the slave-trade.
+It set a precedent for agitation of a kind afterwards familiar. The
+committee appealed to the country, and got up petitions. Sound Tories
+complained of them in the early slave-trade debates, as attempts to
+dictate to parliament by democratic methods. Political agitators had
+formed associations, and found a convenient instrument in the 'county
+meetings,' which seems to have possessed a kind of indefinite legal
+character.[125] Such associations of course depend for the great part of
+their influence upon the press. The circulation of literature was one
+great object. Paine's _Rights of Man_ was distributed by the
+revolutionary party, and Hannah More wrote popular tracts to persuade
+the poor that they had no grievances. It is said that two millions of
+her little tracts, 'Village Politics by Will Chip,' the 'Shepherd of
+Salisbury Plain,' and so forth were circulated. The demand, indeed,
+showed rather the eagerness of the rich to get them read than the
+eagerness of the poor to read them. They failed to destroy Paine's
+influence, but they were successful enough to lead to the foundation of
+the Religious Tract Society. The attempt to influence the poor by cheap
+literature shows that these opinions were beginning to demand
+consideration. Cobbett and many others were soon to use the new weapon.
+Meanwhile the newspapers circulated among the higher ranks were passing
+through a new phase, which must be noted. The great newspapers were
+gaining power. The _Morning Chronicle_ was started by Woodfall in 1769,
+the _Morning Post_ and _Morning Herald_ by Dudley Bate in 1772 and 1780,
+and the _Times_ by Walter in 1788. The modern editor was to appear
+during the war. Stoddart and Barnes of the _Times_, Perry and Black of
+the _Morning Chronicle_, were to become important politically. The
+revolutionary period marks the transition from the old-fashioned
+newspaper, carried on by a publisher and an author, to the modern
+newspaper, which represents a kind of separate organism, elaborately
+'differentiated' and worked by a whole army of co-operating editors,
+correspondents, reporters, and contributors. Finally, one remark may be
+made. The literary class in England was not generally opposed to the
+governing classes. The tone of Johnson's whole circle was conservative.
+In fact, since Harley's time, government had felt the need of support in
+the press, and politicians on both sides had their regular organs. The
+opposition might at any time become the government; and their supporters
+in the press, poor men who were only too dependent, had no motive for
+going beyond the doctrines of their principals. They might be bought by
+opponents, or they might be faithful to a patron. They did not form a
+band of outcasts, whose hand would be against every one. The libel law
+was severe enough, but there had been no licensing system since the
+early days of William and Mary. A man could publish what he chose at his
+own peril. When the current of popular feeling was anti-revolutionary,
+government might obtain a conviction, but even in the worst times there
+was a chance that juries might be restive. Editors had at times to go to
+prison, but even then the paper was not suppressed. Cobbett, for
+example, continued to publish his _Registrar_ during an imprisonment of
+two years (1810-12). Editors had very serious anxieties, but they could
+express with freedom any opinion which had the support of a party.
+English liberty was so far a reality that a very free discussion of the
+political problems of the day was permitted and practised. The English
+author, therefore, as such, had not the bitterness of a French man of
+letters, unless, indeed, he had the misfortune to be an uncompromising
+revolutionist.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[118] _History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the
+Abolition of the Slave-trade by the British Parliament_ (1808). Second
+enlarged edition 1839. The chart was one cause of the offence taken by
+Wilberforce's sons.
+
+[119] Cf. Sir J. Stephen's _Ecclesiastical Biography_ (The Evangelical
+Succession).
+
+[120] See passages collected in Birkbeck Hill's _Boswell_, ii. 478-80,
+and cf. iii. 200-204. Boswell was attracted by Clarkson, but finally
+made up his mind that the abolition of the slave-trade would 'shut the
+gates of mercy on mankind.'
+
+[121] See the account of G. Sharp in Sir J. Stephen's _Ecclesiastical
+Biography_ (Clapham Sect).
+
+[122] Cobbett's _State Trials_, xx. 1-82.
+
+[123] The Society determined in 1760 'to disown' any Friend concerned in
+the slave-trade.
+
+[124] Mr. Conway, in his _Life of Paine_, attributes, I think, a little
+more to his hero than is consistent with due regard to his predecessors;
+but, in any case, he took an early part in the movement.
+
+[125] See upon this subject Mr. Jephson's interesting book on _The
+Platform_.
+
+
+V. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
+
+The English society which I have endeavoured to characterise was now to
+be thrown into the vortex of the revolutionary wars. The surpassing
+dramatic interest of the French Revolution has tended to obscure our
+perception of the continuity of even English history. It has been easy
+to ascribe to the contagion of French example political movements which
+were already beginning in England and which were modified rather than
+materially altered by our share in the great European convulsion. The
+impression made upon Englishmen by the French Revolution is, however, in
+the highest degree characteristic. The most vehement sympathies and
+antipathies were aroused, and showed at least what principles were
+congenial to the various English parties. To praise or blame the
+revolution, as if it could be called simply good or bad, is for the
+historian as absurd as to praise or blame an earthquake. It was simply
+inevitable under the conditions. We may, of course, take it as an
+essential stage in a social evolution, which if described as progress is
+therefore to be blessed, or if as degeneration may provoke lamentation.
+We may, if we please, ask whether superior statesmanship might have
+attained the good results without the violent catastrophes, or whether a
+wise and good man who could appreciate the real position would have
+approved or condemned the actual policy. But to answer such problems
+with any confidence would imply a claim to a quasi-omniscience.
+Partisans at the time, however, answered them without hesitation, and
+saw in the Revolution the dawn of a new era of reason and justice, or
+the outburst of the fires of hell. Their view is at any rate indicative
+of their own position. The extreme opinions need no exposition. They are
+represented by the controversy between Burke and Paine. The general
+doctrine of the 'Rights of Men'--that all men are by nature free and
+equal--covered at least the doctrine that the inequality and despotism
+of the existing order was hateful, and people with a taste for abstract
+principles accepted this short cut to political wisdom. The 'minor'
+premise being obviously true, they took the major for granted. To Burke,
+who idealised the traditional element in the British Constitution, and
+so attached an excessive importance to historical continuity, the new
+doctrine seemed to imply the breaking up of the very foundations of
+order and the pulverisation of society. Burke and Paine both assumed too
+easily that the dogmas which they defended expressed the real and
+ultimate beliefs, and that the belief was the cause, not the
+consequence, of the political condition. Without touching upon the logic
+of either position, I may notice how the problem presented itself to the
+average English politician whose position implied acceptance of
+traditional compromises and who yet prided himself on possessing the
+liberties which were now being claimed by Frenchmen. The Whig could
+heartily sympathise with the French Revolution so long as it appeared to
+be an attempt to assimilate British principles. When Fox hailed the
+fall of the Bastille as the greatest and best event that had ever
+happened, he was expressing a generous enthusiasm shared by all the
+ardent and enlightened youth of the time. The French, it seemed, were
+abolishing an arbitrary despotism and adopting the principles of Magna
+Charta and the 'Habeas Corpus' Act. Difficulties, however, already
+suggested themselves to the true Whig. Would the French, as Young asked
+just after the same event, 'copy the constitution of England, freed from
+its faults, or attempt, from theory, to frame something absolutely
+speculative'?[126] On that issue depended the future of the country. It
+was soon decided in the sense opposed to Young's wishes. The reign of
+terror alienated the average Whig. But though the argument from
+atrocities is the popular one, the opposition was really more
+fundamental. Burke put the case, savagely and coarsely enough, in his
+'Letter to a noble Lord.' How would the duke of Bedford like to be
+treated as the revolutionists were treating the nobility in France? The
+duke might be a sincere lover of political liberty, but he certainly
+would not be prepared to approve the confiscation of his estates. The
+aristocratic Whigs, dependent for their whole property and for every
+privilege which they prized upon ancient tradition and prescription,
+could not really be in favour of sweeping away the whole complex social
+structure, levelling Windsor Castle as Burke put it in his famous
+metaphor, and making a 'Bedford level' of the whole country. The Whigs
+had to disavow any approval of the Jacobins; Mackintosh, who had given
+his answer to Burke's diatribes, met Burke himself on friendly terms
+(9th July 1797), and in 1800 took an opportunity of public recantation.
+He only expressed the natural awakening of the genuine Whig to the
+aspects of the case which he had hitherto ignored. The effect upon the
+middle-class Whigs is, however, more to my purpose. It may be
+illustrated by the history of John Horne Tooke[127] (1736-1812), who at
+this time represented what may be called the home-bred British
+radicalism. He was the son of a London tradesman, who had distinguished
+himself by establishing, and afterwards declining to enforce, certain
+legal rights against Frederick Prince of Wales. The prince recognised
+the tradesman's generosity by making his antagonist purveyor to his
+household. A debt of some thousand pounds was thus run up before the
+prince's death which was never discharged. Possibly the son's hostility
+to the royal family was edged by this circumstance. John Horne, forced
+to take orders in order to hold a living, soon showed himself to have
+been intended by nature for the law. He took up the cause of Wilkes in
+the early part of the reign; defended him energetically in later years;
+and in 1769 helped to start the 'Society for supporting the Bill of
+Rights.' He then attacked Wilkes, who, as he maintained, misapplied for
+his own private use the funds subscribed for public purposes to this
+society; and set up a rival 'Constitutional Society.' In 1775, as
+spokesman of this body, he denounced the 'king's troops' for 'inhumanly
+murdering' their fellow-subjects at Lexington for the sole crime of
+'preferring death to slavery.' He was imprisoned for the libel, and thus
+became a martyr to the cause. When the country associations were formed
+in 1780 to protest against the abuses revealed by the war, Horne became
+a member of the 'Society for Constitutional Information,' of which Major
+Cartwright--afterwards the revered, but rather tiresome, patriarch of
+the Radicals--was called the 'father.' Horne Tooke (as he was now
+named), by these and other exhibitions of boundless pugnacity, became a
+leader among the middle-class Whigs, who found their main support among
+London citizens, such as Beckford, Troutbeck and Oliver; supported them
+in his later days; and after the American war, preferred Pitt, as an
+advocate of parliamentary reform, to Fox, the favourite of the
+aristocratic Whigs. He denounced the Fox coalition ministry, and in
+later years opposed Fox at Westminster. The 'Society for Constitutional
+Information' was still extant in the revolutionary period, and Tooke, a
+bluff, jovial companion, who had by this time got rid of his clerical
+character, often took the chair at the taverns where they met to talk
+sound politics over their port. The revolution infused new spirit into
+politics. In March 1791[128] Tooke's society passed a vote of thanks to
+Paine for the first part of his _Rights of Man_. Next year Thomas Hardy,
+a radical shoemaker, started a 'Corresponding Society.' Others sprang up
+throughout the country, especially in the manufacturing towns.[129]
+These societies took Paine for their oracle, and circulated his writings
+as their manifesto. They communicated occasionally with Horne Tooke's
+society, which more or less sympathised with them. The Whigs of the
+upper sphere started the 'Friends of the People' in April 1792, in order
+to direct the discontent into safer channels. Grey, Sheridan and Erskine
+were members; Fox sympathised but declined to join; Mackintosh was
+secretary; and Sir Philip Francis drew up the opening address, citing
+the authority of Pitt and Blackstone, and declaring that the society
+wished 'not to change but to restore.'[130] It remonstrated cautiously
+with the other societies, and only excited their distrust. Grey, as its
+representative, made a motion for parliamentary reform which was
+rejected (May 1793) by two hundred and eighty-two to forty-one. Later
+motions in May 1797 and April 1800 showed that, for the present,
+parliamentary reform was out of the question. Meanwhile the English
+Jacobins got up a 'convention' which met at Edinburgh at the end of
+1793. The very name was alarming: the leaders were tried and
+transported; the cruelty of the sentences and the severity of the
+judges, especially Braxfield, shocked such men as Parr and Jeffrey, and
+unsuccessful appeals for mercy were made in parliament. The Habeas
+Corpus Act was suspended in 1794: Horne Tooke and Hardy were both
+arrested and tried for high treason in November. An English jury
+fortunately showed itself less subservient than the Scottish; the judge
+was scrupulously fair: and both Hardy and Horne Tooke were acquitted.
+The societies, however, though they were encouraged for a time, were
+attacked by severe measures passed by Pitt in 1795. The 'Friends of the
+People' ceased to exist The seizure of the committee of the
+Corresponding Societies in 1798 put an end to their activity. A report
+presented to parliament in 1799[131] declares that the societies had
+gone to dangerous lengths: they had communicated with the French
+revolutionists and with the 'United Irishmen' (founded 1791); and
+societies of 'United Englishmen' and 'United Scotsmen' had had some
+concern in the mutinies of the fleet in 1797 and in the Irish rebellion
+of 1798. Place says, probably with truth, that the danger was much
+exaggerated: but in any case, an act for the suppression of the
+Corresponding Societies was passed in 1799, and put an end to the
+movement.
+
+This summary is significant of the state of opinion. The genuine
+old-fashioned Whig dreaded revolution, and guarded himself carefully
+against any appearance of complicity. Jacobinism, on the other hand, was
+always an exotic. Such men as the leading Nonconformists Priestley and
+Price were familiar with the speculative movement on the continent, and
+sympathised with the enlightenment. Young men of genius, like Wordsworth
+and Coleridge, imbibed the same doctrines more or less thoroughly, and
+took Godwin for their English representative. The same creed was
+accepted by the artisans in the growing towns, from whom the
+Corresponding Societies drew their recruits. But the revolutionary
+sentiment was not so widely spread as its adherents hoped or its enemies
+feared. The Birmingham mob of 1791 acted, with a certain unconscious
+humour, on the side of church and king. They had perhaps an instinctive
+perception that it was an advantage to plunder on the side of the
+constable. In fact, however, the general feeling in all classes was
+anti-Jacobin. Place, an excellent witness, himself a member of the
+Corresponding Societies, declares that the repressive measures were
+generally popular even among the workmen.[132] They were certainly not
+penetrated with revolutionary fervour. Had it been otherwise, the
+repressive measures, severe as they were, would have stimulated rather
+than suppressed the societies, and, instead of silencing the
+revolutionists, have provoked a rising.
+
+At the early period the Jacobin and the home-bred Radical might combine
+against government. A manifesto of the Corresponding Societies begins by
+declaring that 'all men are by nature free and equal and independent of
+each other,' and argues also that these are the 'original principles of
+English government.'[133] Magna Charta is an early expression of the
+Declaration of Rights, and thus pure reason confirms British tradition.
+The adoption of a common platform, however, covered a profound
+difference of sentiment. Horne Tooke represents the old type of
+reformer. He was fully resolved not to be carried away by the enthusiasm
+of his allies. 'My companions in a stage,' he said to Cartwright, 'may
+be going to Windsor: I will go with them to Hounslow. But there I will
+get out: no further will I go, by God!'[134] When Sheridan supported a
+vote of sympathy for the French revolutionists, Tooke insisted upon
+adding a rider declaring the content of Englishmen with their own
+constitution.[135] He offended some of his allies by asserting that the
+'main timbers' of the constitution were sound though the dry-rot had
+got into the superstructure. He maintained, according to Godwin,[136]
+that the best of all governments had been that of England under George
+I. Though Cartwright said at the trial that Horne Tooke was taken to
+'have no religion whatever,' he was, according to Stephens, 'a great
+stickler for the church of England': and stood up for the House of Lords
+as well as the church on grounds of utility.[137] He always ridiculed
+Paine and the doctrine of abstract rights,[138] and told Cartwright that
+though all men had an equal right to a share of property, they had not a
+right to an equal share. Horne Tooke's Radicalism (I use the word by
+anticipation) was that of the sturdy tradesman. He opposed the
+government because he hated war, taxation and sinecures. He argued
+against universal suffrage with equal pertinacity. A comfortable old
+gentleman, with a good cellar of Madeira, and proud of his wall-fruit in
+a well-tilled garden, had no desire to see George III. at the
+guillotine, and still less to see a mob supreme in Lombard Street or
+banknotes superseded by assignats. He might be jealous of the great
+nobles, but he dreaded mob-rule. He could denounce abuses, but he could
+not desire anarchy. He is said to have retorted upon some one who had
+boasted that English courts of justice were open to all classes: 'So is
+the London tavern--to all who can pay.'[139] That is in the spirit of
+Bentham; and yet Bentham complains that Horne Tooke's disciple, Burdett,
+believed in the common law, and revered the authority of Coke.[140] In
+brief, the creed of Horne Tooke meant 'liberty' founded upon tradition.
+I shall presently notice the consistency of this with what may be called
+his philosophy. Meanwhile it was only natural that radicals of this
+variety should retire from active politics, having sufficiently burnt
+their fingers by flirtation with the more thoroughgoing party. How they
+came to life again will appear hereafter. Horne Tooke himself took
+warning from his narrow escape. He stayed quietly in his house at
+Wimbledon.[141] There he divided his time between his books and his
+garden, and received his friends to Sunday dinners. Bentham, Mackintosh,
+Coleridge, and Godwin were among his visitors. Coleridge calls him a
+'keen iron man,' and reports that he made a butt of Godwin as he had
+done of Paine.[142] Porson and Boswell encountered him in drinking
+matches and were both left under the table.[143] The house was thus a
+small centre of intellectual life, though the symposia were not
+altogether such as became philosophers. Horne Tooke was a keen and
+shrewd disputant, well able to impress weaker natures. His neighbour,
+Sir Francis Burdett, became his political disciple, and in later years
+was accepted as the radical leader. Tooke died at Wimbledon 18th March
+1812.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[126] _France_, p. 206 (20th July 1789).
+
+[127] See the _Life of Horne Tooke_, by Alexander Stephens (2 vols. 8vo,
+1813). John Horne added the name Tooke in 1782.
+
+[128] _Parl. Hist._ xxxi. 751.
+
+[129] The history of these societies may be found in the trials reported
+in the twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth volumes of
+Cobbett's _State Trials_, and in the reports of the secret committees in
+the thirty-first and thirty-fourth volumes of the _Parl. History_. There
+are materials in Place's papers in the British Museum which have been
+used in E. Smith's _English Jacobins_.
+
+[130] _Parl. Hist._ xxix. 1300-1341.
+
+[131] _Parl. Hist._ xxxiv. 574-655.
+
+[132] Mr. Wallas's _Life of Place_, p. 25 _n._
+
+[133] _State Trials_, xxiv. 575.
+
+[134] _Ibid._ xxv. 330.
+
+[135] _Ibid._ xxv. 390.
+
+[136] Paul's _Godwin_, i. 147.
+
+[137] Stephens, ii. 48, 477.
+
+[138] _Ibid._ ii. 34-41, 323, 478-481.
+
+[139] _Ibid._ ii. 483.
+
+[140] Bentham's _Works_, x. 404.
+
+[141] He was member for Old Sarum 1801-2; but his career ended by a
+declaratory act disqualifying for a seat men who had received holy
+orders.
+
+[142] Bentham's _Works_, x. 404; _Life of Mackintosh_, i. 52; Paul's
+_Godwin_, i. 71; Coleridge's _Table-Talk_, 8th May 1830 and 16th August
+1833.
+
+[143] Stephens, ii. 316, 334, 438.
+
+
+VI. INDIVIDUALISM
+
+The general tendencies which I have so far tried to indicate will have
+to be frequently noticed in the course of the following pages. One
+point may be emphasised before proceeding: a main characteristic of the
+whole social and political order is what is now called its
+'individualism.' That phrase is generally supposed to convey some
+censure. It may connote, however, some of the most essential virtues
+that a race can possess. Energy, self-reliance, and independence, a
+strong conviction that a man's fate should depend upon his own character
+and conduct, are qualities without which no nation can be great. They
+are the conditions of its vital power. They were manifested in a high
+degree by the Englishmen of the eighteenth century. How far they were
+due to the inherited qualities of the race, to the political or social
+history, or to external circumstances, I need not ask. They were the
+qualities which had especially impressed foreign observers. The fierce,
+proud, intractable Briton was elbowing his way to a high place in the
+world, and showing a vigour not always amiable, but destined to bring
+him successfully through tremendous struggles. In the earlier part of
+the century, Voltaire and French philosophers admired English freedom of
+thought and free speech, even when it led to eccentricity and brutality
+of manners, and to barbarism in matters of taste. Englishmen, conscious
+and proud of their 'liberty,' were the models of all who desired liberty
+for themselves. Liberty, as they understood it, involved, among other
+things, an assault upon the old restrictive system, which at every turn
+hampered the rising industrial energy. This is the sense in which
+'Individualism,' or the gospel according to Adam Smith--_laissez faire_,
+and so forth--has been specially denounced in recent times. Without
+asking at present how far such attacks are justifiable, I must be
+content to assume that the old restrictive system was in its actual form
+mischievous, guided by entirely false theories, and the great barrier to
+the development of industry. The same spirit appeared in purely
+political questions. 'Liberty,' as is often remarked, may be interpreted
+in two ways; not necessarily consistent with each other. It means
+sometimes simply the diminution of the sphere of law and the power of
+legislators, or, again, the transference to subjects of the power of
+legislating, and, therefore, not less control, but control by self-made
+laws alone. The Englishman, who was in presence of no centralised
+administrative power, who regarded the Government rather as receiving
+power from individuals than as delegating the power of a central body,
+took liberty mainly in the sense of restricting law. Government in
+general was a nuisance, though a necessity; and properly employed only
+in mediating between conflicting interests, and restraining the violence
+of individuals forced into contact by outward circumstances. When he
+demanded that a greater share of influence should be given to the
+people, he always took for granted that their power would be used to
+diminish the activity of the sovereign power; that there would be less
+government and therefore less jobbery, less interference with free
+speech and free action, and smaller perquisites to be bestowed in return
+for the necessary services. The people would use their authority to tie
+the hands of the rulers, and limit them strictly to their proper and
+narrow functions.
+
+The absence, again, of the idea of a state in any other sense implies
+another tendency. The 'idea' was not required. Englishmen were concerned
+rather with details than with first principles. Satisfied, in a general
+way, with their constitution, they did not want to be bothered with
+theories. Abstract and absolute doctrines of right, when imported from
+France, fell flat upon the average Englishman. He was eager enough to
+discuss the utility of this or that part of the machinery, but without
+inquiring into first principles of mechanism. The argument from
+'utility' deals with concrete facts, and presupposes an acceptance of
+some common criterion of the useful. The constant discussion of
+political matters in parliament and the press implied a tacit acceptance
+on all hands of constitutional methods. Practical men, asking whether
+this or that policy shall be adopted in view of actual events, no more
+want to go back to right reason and 'laws of nature' than a surveyor to
+investigate the nature of geometrical demonstration. Very important
+questions were raised as to the rights of the press, for example, or the
+system of representation. But everybody agreed that the representative
+system and freedom of speech were good things; and argued the immediate
+questions of fact. The order, only established by experience and
+tradition, was accepted, subject to criticism of detail, and men turned
+impatiently from abstract argument, and left the inquiry into 'social
+contracts' to philosophers, that is, to silly people in libraries.
+Politics were properly a matter of business, to be discussed in a
+business-like spirit. In this sense, 'individualism' is congenial to
+'empiricism,' because it starts from facts and particular interests, and
+resents the intrusion of first principles.
+
+The characteristic individualism, again, suggests one other remark.
+Individual energy and sense of responsibility are good--as even extreme
+socialists may admit--if they do not exclude a sense of duties to
+others. It may be a question how far the stimulation of individual
+enterprise and the vigorous spirit of industrial competition really led
+to a disregard of the interests of the weaker. But it would be a
+complete misunderstanding of the time if we inferred that it meant a
+decline of humane feeling. Undoubtedly great evils had grown up, and
+some continued to grow which were tolerated by the indifference, or even
+stimulated by the selfish aims, of the dominant classes. But, in the
+first place, many of the most active prophets of the individualist
+spirit were acting, and acting sincerely, in the name of humanity. They
+were attacking a system which they held, and to a great extent, I
+believe, held rightly, to be especially injurious to the weakest
+classes. Possibly they expected too much from the simple removal of
+restrictions; but certainly they denounced the restrictions as unjust to
+all, not simply as hindrances to the wealth of the rich. Adam Smith's
+position is intelligible: it was, he thought, a proof of a providential
+order that each man, by helping himself, unintentionally helped his
+neighbours. The moral sense based upon sympathy was therefore not
+opposed to, but justified, the economic principles that each man should
+first attend to his own interest. The unintentional co-operation would
+thus become conscious and compatible with the established order. And, in
+the next place, so far from there being a want of humane feeling, the
+most marked characteristic of the eighteenth century was precisely the
+growth of humanity. In the next generation, the eighteenth century came
+to be denounced as cold, heartless, faithless, and so forth. The
+established mode of writing history is partly responsible for this
+perversion. Men speak as though some great man, who first called
+attention to an evil, was a supernatural being who had suddenly dropped
+into the world from another sphere. His condemnation of evil is
+therefore taken to be a proof that the time must be evil. Any century is
+bad if we assume all the good men to be exceptions. But the great man is
+really also the product of his time. He is the mouthpiece of its
+prevailing sentiments, and only the first to see clearly what many are
+beginning to perceive obscurely. The emergence of the prophet is a proof
+of the growing demand of his hearers for sound teaching. Because he is
+in advance of men generally, he sees existing abuses more clearly, and
+we take his evidence against his contemporaries as conclusive. But the
+fact that they listened shows how widely the same sensibility to evil
+was already diffused. In fact, as I think, the humane spirit of the
+eighteenth century, due to the vast variety of causes which we call
+social progress or evolution--not to the teaching of any individual--was
+permeating the whole civilised world, and showed itself in the
+philosophic movement as well as in the teaching of the religious
+leaders, who took the philosophers to be their enemies. I have briefly
+noticed the various philanthropic movements which were characteristic of
+the period. Some of them may indicate the growth of new evils; others,
+that evils which had once been regarded with indifference were now
+attracting attention and exciting indignation. But even the growth of
+new evils does not show general indifference so much as the incapacity
+of the existing system to deal with new conditions. It may, I think, be
+safely said that a growing philanthropy was characteristic of the whole
+period, and in particular animated the Utilitarian movement, as I shall
+have to show in detail. Modern writers have often spoken of the Wesleyan
+propaganda and the contemporary 'evangelical revival' as the most
+important movements of the time. They are apt to speak, in conformity
+with the view just described, as though Wesley or some of his
+contemporaries had originated or created the better spirit. Without
+asking what was good or bad in some aspects of these movements, I fully
+believe that Wesley was essentially a moral reformer, and that he
+deserves corresponding respect. But instead of holding that his
+contemporaries were bad people, awakened by a stimulus from without, I
+hold that the movement, so far as really indicating moral improvement,
+must be set down to the credit of the century itself. It was one
+manifestation of a general progress, of which Bentham was another
+outcome. Though Bentham might have thought Wesley a fanatic or perhaps a
+hypocrite, and Wesley would certainly have considered that Bentham's
+heart was much in need of a change, they were really allies as much as
+antagonists, and both mark a great and beneficial change.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PHILOSOPHY
+
+
+I. JOHN HORNE TOOKE
+
+I have so far dwelt upon the social and political environment of the
+early Utilitarian movement; and have tried also to point out some of the
+speculative tendencies fostered by the position. If it be asked what
+philosophical doctrines were explicitly taught, the answer must be a
+very short one. English philosophy barely existed. Parr was supposed to
+know something about metaphysics--apparently because he could write good
+Latin. But the inference was hasty. Of one book, however, which had a
+real influence, I must say something, for though it contained little
+definite philosophy, it showed what kind of philosophy was congenial to
+the common sense of the time.
+
+The sturdy radical, Horne Tooke, had been led to the study of philology
+by a characteristic incident. The legal question had arisen whether the
+words, '_She, knowing that Crooke had been indicted for forgery_,' did
+so and so, contained an averment that Crooke had been indicted. Tooke
+argued in a letter to Dunning[144] that they did; because they were
+equivalent to the phrase, 'Crooke had been indicted for forgery: she,
+_knowing that_,' did so and so. This raises the question: What is the
+meaning of 'that'? Tooke took up the study, thinking, as he says, that
+it would throw light upon some philosophical questions. He learned some
+Anglo-Saxon and Gothic to test his theory and, of course, confirmed
+it.[145] The book shows ingenuity, shrewdness, and industry, and Tooke
+deserves credit for seeing the necessity of applying a really historical
+method to his problem, though his results were necessarily crude in the
+pre-scientific stage of philology.
+
+The book is mainly a long string of etymologies, which readers of
+different tastes have found intolerably dull or an amusing collection of
+curiosities. Tooke held, and surely with reason, that an investigation
+of language, the great instrument of thought, may help to throw light
+upon the process of thinking. He professes to be a disciple of Locke in
+philosophy as in politics. Locke, he said,[146] made a lucky mistake in
+calling his book an essay upon human understanding; for he thus
+attracted many who would have been repelled had he called it what it
+really was, 'a treatise upon words and language.' According to Tooke, in
+fact,[147] what we call 'operations of mind' are only 'operations of
+language.' The mind contemplates nothing but 'impressions,' that is,
+'sensations or feelings,' which Locke called 'ideas,' Locke mistook
+composition of terms for composition of ideas. To compound ideas is
+impossible. We can only use one term as a sign of many ideas. Locke,
+again, supposed that affirming and denying were operations of the mind,
+whereas they are only artifices of language.[148]
+
+The mind, then, can only contemplate, separately or together, aggregates
+of 'ideas,' ultimate atoms, incapable of being parted or dissolved.
+There are, therefore, only two classes of words, nouns and verbs; all
+others, prepositions, conjunctions, and so forth, being abbreviations, a
+kind of mental shorthand to save the trouble of enumerating the separate
+items. Tooke, in short, is a thoroughgoing nominalist. The realities,
+according to him, are sticks, stones, and material objects, or the
+'ideas' which 'represent' them. They can be stuck together or taken
+apart, but all the words which express relations, categories, and the
+like, are in themselves meaningless. The special objects of his scorn
+are 'Hermes' Harris, and Monboddo, who had tried to defend Aristotle
+against Locke. Monboddo had asserted that 'every kind of relation' is a
+pure 'idea of the intellect' not to be apprehended by sense.[149] If so,
+according to Tooke, it would be a nonentity.
+
+This doctrine gives a short cut to the abolition of metaphysics. The
+word 'metaphysics,' says Tooke,[150] is nonsense. All metaphysical
+controversies are 'founded on the grossest ignorance of words and the
+nature of speech.' The greatest part of his second volume is concerned
+with etymologies intended to prove that an 'abstract idea' is a mere
+word. Abstract words, he says,[151] are generally 'participles without
+a substantive and therefore in construction used as substantives.' From
+a misunderstanding of this has arisen 'metaphysical jargon' and 'false
+morality.' In illustration he gives a singular list of words, including
+'fate, chance, heaven, hell, providence, prudence, innocence, substance,
+fiend, angel, apostle, spirit, true, false, desert, merit, faith, etc.,
+all of which are mere participles poetically embodied and substantiated
+by those who use them.' A couple of specific applications, often quoted
+by later writers, will sufficiently indicate his drift.
+
+Such words, he remarks,[152] as 'right' and 'just' mean simply that
+which is ordered or commanded. The chapter is headed 'rights of man,'
+and Tooke's interlocutor naturally observes that this is a singular
+result for a democrat. Man, it would seem, has no rights except the
+rights created by the law. Tooke admits the inference to be correct, but
+replies that the democrat in disobeying human law may be obeying the law
+of God, and is obeying the law of God when he obeys the law of nature.
+The interlocutor does not inquire what Tooke could mean by the 'law of
+nature.' We can guess what Tooke would have said to Paine in the
+Wimbledon garden. In fact, however, Tooke is here, as elsewhere,
+following Hobbes, though, it seems, unconsciously. Another famous
+etymology is that of 'truth' from 'troweth.'[153] Truth is what each man
+thinks. There is no such thing, therefore, as 'eternal, immutable,
+everlasting truth, unless mankind, _such as they are at present_, be
+eternal, immutable, everlasting.' Two persons may contradict each other
+and yet each may be speaking what is true for him. Truth may be a vice
+as well as a virtue; for on many occasions it is wrong to speak the
+truth.
+
+These phrases may possibly be interpreted in a sense less paradoxical
+than the obvious one. Tooke's philosophy, if so it is to be called, was
+never fully expounded. He burned his papers before his death, and we do
+not know what he would have said about 'verbs,' which must have led, one
+would suppose, to some further treatment of relations, nor upon the
+subject, which as Stephens tells us, was most fully treated in his
+continuation, the value of human testimony.
+
+If Tooke was not a philosopher he was a man of remarkably shrewd cynical
+common sense, who thought philosophy idle foppery. His book made a great
+success. Stephens tells us[154] that it brought him L4000 or L5000.
+Hazlitt in 1810 published a grammar professing to incorporate for the
+first time Horne Tooke's 'discoveries.' The book was admired by
+Mackintosh,[155] who, of course, did not accept the principles, and had
+a warm disciple in Charles Richardson (1775-1865), who wrote in its
+defence against Dugald Stewart and accepted its authority in his
+elaborate dictionary of the English language.[156] But its chief
+interest for us is that it was a great authority with James Mill. Mill
+accepts the etymologies, and there is much in common between the two
+writers, though Mill had learned his main doctrines elsewhere,
+especially from Hobbes. What the agreement really shows is how the
+intellectual idiosyncrasy which is congenial to 'nominalism' in
+philosophy was also congenial to Tooke's matter of fact radicalism and
+to the Utilitarian position of Bentham and his followers.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[144] Published originally in 1778; reprinted in edition of EPEA
+PTEROENTA or _Diversions of Purley_, by Richard Taylor (1829), to which
+I refer. The first part of the _Diversions of Purley_ appeared in 1786;
+and the second part (with a new edition of the first) in 1798.
+
+[145] _Diversions of Purley_ (1829), i. 12, 131.
+
+[146] _Ibid._ ii. 362. Locke's work, says Prof. Max Mueller in his
+_Science of Thought_, p. 295, 'is, as Lange in his _History of
+Materialism_ rightly perceived, a critique of language which, together
+with Kant's _Critique of the Pure Reason_, forms the starting-point of
+modern philosophy.' _See_ Lange's _Materialism_, (1873), i. 271.
+
+[147] _Ibid._ i. 49.
+
+[148] _Diversions of Purley_, i. 36, 42.
+
+[149] _Ibid._ i. 373.
+
+[150] _Ibid._ i. 374.
+
+[151] _Diversions of Purley_, ii. 18. Cf. Mill's statement in
+_Analysis_, i. 304, that 'abstract terms are concrete terms with the
+connotation dropped.'
+
+[152] _Ibid._ ii. 9, etc.
+
+[153] _Ibid._ ii. 399.
+
+[154] Stephens, ii. 497.
+
+[155] _Life of Mackintosh_, ii. 235-37.
+
+[156] Begun for the _Encyclopaedia Metropolitana_ in 1818; and published
+in 1835-37. Dugald Stewart's chief criticism is in his Essays (_Works_,
+v. 149-188). John Fearn published his _Anti-Tooke_ in 1820.
+
+
+II. DUGALD STEWART
+
+If English philosophy was a blank, there was still a leader of high
+reputation in Scotland. Dugald Stewart (1753-1828) had a considerable
+influence upon the Utilitarians. He represented, on the one hand, the
+doctrines which they thought themselves specially bound to attack, and
+it may perhaps be held that in some ways he betrayed to them the key of
+the position. Stewart[157] was son of a professor of mathematics at
+Edinburgh. He studied at Glasgow (1771-72) where he became Reid's
+favourite pupil and devoted friend. In 1772 he became the assistant, and
+in 1775 the colleague, of his father, and he appears to have had a
+considerable knowledge of mathematics. In 1785 he succeeded Adam
+Ferguson as professor of moral philosophy and lectured continuously
+until 1810. He then gave up his active duties to Thomas Brown, devoting
+himself to the completion and publication of the substance of his
+lectures. Upon Brown's death in 1820, he resigned a post to which he was
+no longer equal. A paralytic stroke in 1822 weakened him, though he was
+still able to write. He died in 1828.
+
+If Stewart now makes no great mark in histories of philosophy, his
+personal influence was conspicuous. Cockburn describes him as of
+delicate appearance, with a massive head, bushy eyebrows, gray
+intelligent eyes, flexible mouth and expressive countenance. His voice
+was sweet and his ear exquisite. Cockburn never heard a better reader,
+and his manners, though rather formal, were graceful and dignified.
+James Mill, after hearing Pitt and Fox, declared that Stewart was their
+superior in eloquence. At Edinburgh, then at the height of its
+intellectual activity, he held his own among the ablest men and
+attracted the loyalty of the younger. Students came not only from
+Scotland but from England, the United States, France and Germany.[158]
+Scott won the professor's approval by an essay on the 'Customs of the
+Northern Nations.' Jeffrey, Horner, Cockburn and Mackintosh were among
+his disciples. His lectures upon Political Economy were attended by
+Sydney Smith, Jeffrey and Brougham, and one of his last hearers was Lord
+Palmerston. Parr looked up to him as a great philosopher, and
+contributed to his works an essay upon the etymology of the word
+'sublime,' too vast to be printed whole. Stewart was an upholder of Whig
+principles, when the Scottish government was in the hands of the
+staunchest Tories. The irreverent young Edinburgh Reviewers treated him
+with respect, and to some extent applied his theory to politics.
+Stewart was the philosophical heir of Reid; and, one may say, was a Whig
+both in philosophy and in politics. He was a rationalist, but within the
+limits fixed by respectability; and he dreaded the revolution in
+politics, and believed in the surpassing merits of the British
+Constitution as interpreted by the respectable Whigs.
+
+Stewart represents the 'common sense' doctrine. That name, as he
+observes, lends itself to an equivocation. Common sense is generally
+used as nearly synonymous with 'mother wit,' the average opinion of
+fairly intelligent men; and he would prefer to speak of the 'fundamental
+laws of belief.'[159] There can, however, be no doubt that the doctrine
+derived much of its strength from the apparent confirmation of the
+'average opinion' by the 'fundamental laws.' On one side, said Reid, are
+all the vulgar; on the other all the philosophers. 'In this division, to
+my great humiliation, I find myself classed with the vulgar.'[160] Reid,
+in fact, had opposed the theories of Hume and Berkeley because they led
+to a paradoxical scepticism. If it be, as Reid held, a legitimate
+inference from Berkeley that a man may as well run his head against a
+post, there can be no doubt that it is shocking to common sense in every
+acceptation of the word. The reasons, however, which Reid and Stewart
+alleged for not performing that feat took a special form, which I am
+compelled to notice briefly because they set up the mark for the whole
+intellectual artillery of the Utilitarians. Reid, in fact, invented what
+J. S. Mill called 'intuitions.' To confute intuitionists and get rid of
+intuitions was one main purpose of all Mill's speculations. What, then,
+is an 'intuition'? To explain that fully it would be necessary to write
+once more that history of the philosophical movement from Descartes to
+Hume, which has been summarised and elucidated by so many writers that
+it should be as plain as the road from St. Paul's to Temple Bar. I am
+forced to glance at the position taken by Reid and Stewart because it
+has a most important bearing upon the whole Utilitarian scheme. Reid's
+main service to philosophy was, in his own opinion,[161] that he refuted
+the 'ideal system' of Descartes and his followers. That system, he says,
+carried in its womb the monster, scepticism, which came to the birth in
+1739,[162] the date of Hume's early _Treatise_. To confute Hume,
+therefore, which was Reid's primary object, it was necessary to go back
+to Descartes, and to show where he deviated from the right track. In
+other words, we must trace the genealogy of 'ideas.' Descartes, as Reid
+admitted, had rendered immense services to philosophy. He had exploded
+the scholastic system, which had become a mere mass of logomachies and
+an incubus upon scientific progress. He had again been the first to
+'draw a distinct line between the material and the intellectual
+world'[163]; and Reid apparently assumes that he had drawn it correctly.
+One characteristic of the Cartesian school is obvious. Descartes, a
+great mathematician at the period when mathematical investigations were
+showing their enormous power, invented a mathematical universe.
+Mathematics presented the true type of scientific reasoning and
+determined his canons of inquiry. The 'essence' of matter, he said, was
+space. The objective world, as we have learned to call it, is simply
+space solidified or incarnate geometry. Its properties therefore could
+be given as a system of deductions from first principles, and it forms a
+coherent and self-subsistent whole. Meanwhile the essence of the soul is
+thought. Thought and matter are absolutely opposed. They are contraries,
+having nothing in common. Reality, however, seems to belong to the world
+of space. The brain, too, belongs to that world, and motions in the
+brain must be determined as a part of the material mechanism. In some
+way or other 'ideas' correspond to these motions; though to define the
+way tried all the ingenuity of Descartes' successors. In any case an
+idea is 'subjective': it is a thought, not a thing. It is a shifting,
+ephemeral entity not to be fixed or grasped. Yet, somehow or other, it
+exists, and it 'represents' realities; though the divine power has to be
+called in to guarantee the accuracy of the representation. The objective
+world, again, does not reveal itself to us as simply made up of 'primary
+qualities'; we know of it only as somehow endowed with 'secondary' or
+sense-given qualities: as visible, tangible, audible, and so forth.
+These qualities are plainly 'subjective'; they vary from man to man, and
+from moment to moment: they cannot be measured or fixed; and must be
+regarded as a product in some inexplicable way of the action of matter
+upon mind; unreal or, at any rate, not independent entities.
+
+In Locke's philosophy, the 'ideas,' legitimate or illegitimate
+descendants of the Cartesian theories, play a most prominent part.
+Locke's admirable common sense made him the leader who embodied a
+growing tendency. The empirical sciences were growing; and Locke, a
+student of medicine, could note the fallacies which arise from
+neglecting observation and experiment, and attempting to penetrate to
+the absolute essences and entities. Newton's great success was due to
+neglecting impossible problems about the nature of force in
+itself--'action at a distance' and so forth--and attention to the sphere
+of visible phenomena. The excessive pretensions of the framers of
+metaphysical systems had led to hopeless puzzles and merely verbal
+solutions. Locke, therefore, insisted upon the necessity of ascertaining
+the necessary limits of human knowledge. All our knowledge of material
+facts is obviously dependent in some way upon our sensations--however
+fleeting or unreal they may be. Therefore, the material sciences must
+depend upon sense-given data or upon observation and experiment. Hume
+gives the ultimate purpose, already implied in Locke's essay, when he
+describes his first treatise (on the title page) as an 'attempt to
+introduce the experimental mode of reasoning into moral subjects.' Now,
+as Reid thinks, the effect of this was to construct our whole knowledge
+out of the representative ideas. The empirical factor is so emphasised
+that we lose all grasp of the real world. Locke, indeed, though he
+insists upon the derivation of our whole knowledge from 'ideas,' leaves
+reality to the 'primary qualities' without clearly expounding their
+relation to the secondary. But Berkeley, alarmed by the tendency of the
+Cartesian doctrines to materialism and mechanical necessity, reduces the
+'primary' to the level of the 'secondary,' and proceeds to abolish the
+whole world of matter. We are thus left with nothing but 'ideas,' and
+the ideas are naturally 'subjective' and therefore in some sense
+unreal. Finally Hume gets rid of the soul as well as the outside world;
+and then, by his theory of 'causation,' shows that the ideas themselves
+are independent atoms, cohering but not rationally connected, and
+capable of being arbitrarily joined or separated in any way whatever.
+Thus the ideas have ousted the facts. We cannot get beyond ideas, and
+yet ideas are still purely subjective. The 'real' is separated from the
+phenomenal, and truth divorced from fact. The sense-given world is the
+whole world, and yet is a world of mere accidental conjunctions and
+separation. That is Hume's scepticism, and yet according to Reid is the
+legitimate development of Descartes' 'ideal system.' Reid, I take it,
+was right in seeing that there was a great dilemma. What was required to
+escape from it? According to Kant, nothing less than a revision of
+Descartes' mode of demarcation between object and subject. The 'primary
+qualities' do not correspond in this way to an objective world radically
+opposed to the subjective. Space is not a form of things, but a form
+imposed upon the data of experience by the mind itself. This, as Kant
+says, supposes a revolution in philosophy comparable to the revolution
+made by Copernicus in astronomy. We have completely to invert our whole
+system of conceiving the world. Whatever the value of Kant's doctrine,
+of which I need here say nothing, it was undoubtedly more prolific than
+Reid's. Reid's was far less thoroughgoing. He does not draw a new line
+between object and subject, but simply endeavours to show that the
+dilemma was due to certain assumptions about the nature of 'ideas.'
+
+The real had been altogether separated from the phenomenal, or truth
+divorced from fact. You can only have demonstrations by getting into a
+region beyond the sensible world; while within that world--that is, the
+region of ordinary knowledge and conduct--you are doomed to hopeless
+uncertainty. An escape, therefore, must be sought by some thorough
+revision of the assumed relation, but not by falling back upon the
+exploded philosophy of the schools. Reid and his successors were quite
+as much alive as Locke to the danger of falling into mere scholastic
+logomachy. They, too, will in some sense base all knowledge upon
+experience. Reid constantly appeals to the authority of Bacon, whom he
+regards as the true founder of inductive science. The great success of
+Bacon's method in the physical sciences, encouraged the hope, already
+expressed by Newton, that a similar result might be achieved in 'moral
+philosophy.'[164] Hume had done something to clear the way, but Reid
+was, as Stewart thinks, the first to perceive clearly and justly the
+'analogy between these two different branches of human knowledge.' The
+mind and matter are two co-ordinate things, whose properties are to be
+investigated by similar methods. Philosophy thus means essentially
+psychology. The two inquiries are two 'branches' of inductive science,
+and the problem is to discover by a perfectly impartial examination what
+are the 'fundamental laws of mind' revealed by an accurate analysis of
+the various processes of thought. The main result of Reid's
+investigations is given most pointedly in his early _Inquiry_, and was
+fully accepted by Stewart. Briefly it comes to this. No one can doubt
+that we believe, as a fact, in an external world. We believe that there
+are sun and moon, stones, sticks, and human bodies. This belief is
+accepted by the sceptic as well as by the dogmatist, although the
+sceptic reduces it to a mere blind custom or 'association of ideas.' Now
+Reid argues that the belief, whatever its nature, is not and cannot be
+derived from the sensations. We do not construct the visible and
+tangible world, for example, simply out of impressions made upon the
+senses of sight and touch. To prove this, he examines what are the
+actual data provided by these senses, and shows, or tries to show, that
+we cannot from them alone construct the world of space and geometry.
+Hence, if we consider experience impartially and without preconception,
+we find that it tells us something which is not given by the senses. The
+senses are not the material of our perceptions, but simply give the
+occasions upon which our belief is called into activity. The sensation
+is no more like the reality in which we believe than the pain of a wound
+is like the edge of the knife. Perception tells us directly and
+immediately, without the intervention of ideas, that there is, as we all
+believe, a real external world.
+
+Reid was a vigorous reasoner, and credit has been given to him by some
+disciples of Kant's doctrine of time and space. Schopenhauer[165] says
+that Reid's 'excellent work' gives a complete 'negative proof of the
+Kantian truths'; that is to say, that Reid proves satisfactorily that we
+cannot construct the world out of the sense-given data alone. But,
+whereas Kant regards the senses as supplying the materials moulded by
+the perceiving mind, Reid regards them as mere stimuli exciting certain
+inevitable beliefs. As a result of Reid's method, then, we have
+'intuitions.' Reid's essential contention is that a fair examination of
+experience will reveal certain fundamental beliefs, which cannot be
+explained as mere manifestations of the sensations, and which, by the
+very fact that they are inexplicable, must be accepted as an
+'inspiration.'[166] Reid professes to discover these beliefs by
+accurately describing facts. He finds them there as a chemist finds an
+element. The 'intuition' is made by substituting for 'ideas' a
+mysterious and inexplicable connection between the mind and matter.[167]
+The chasm exists still, but it is somehow bridged by a quasi-miracle.
+Admitting, therefore, that Reid shows a gap to exist in the theory, his
+result remains 'negative.' The philosopher will say that it is not
+enough to assert a principle dogmatically without showing its place in a
+reasoned system of thought. The psychologist, on the other hand, who
+takes Reid's own ground, may regard the statement only as a useful
+challenge to further inquiry. The analysis hitherto given may be
+insufficient, but where Reid has failed, other inquirers may be more
+successful. As soon, in fact, as we apply the psychological method, and
+regard the 'philosophy of mind' as an 'inductive science,' it is
+perilous, if not absolutely inconsistent, to discover 'intuitions' which
+will take us beyond experience. The line of defence against empiricism
+can only be provisional and temporary. In his main results, indeed, Reid
+had the advantage of being on the side of 'common sense.' Everybody was
+already convinced that there were sticks and stones, and everybody is
+prepared to hear that their belief is approved by philosophy. But a
+difficulty arises when a similar method is applied to a doctrine
+sincerely disputed. To the statement, 'this is a necessary belief,' it
+is a sufficient answer to reply, 'I don't believe it,' In that case, an
+intuition merely amounts to a dogmatic assumption that I am infallible,
+and must be supported by showing its connection with beliefs really
+universal and admittedly necessary.
+
+Dugald Stewart followed Reid upon this main question, and with less
+force and originality represents the same point of view. He accepts
+Reid's view of the two co-ordinate departments of knowledge; the science
+of which mind, and the science of which body, is the object. Philosophy
+is not a 'theory of knowledge' or of the universe; but, as it was then
+called, 'a philosophy of the human mind.' 'Philosophy' is founded upon
+inductive psychology; and it only becomes philosophy in a wider sense in
+so far as we discover that as a fact we have certain fundamental
+beliefs, which are thus given by experience, though they take us in a
+sense beyond experience. Jeffrey, reviewing Stewart's life of Reid, in
+the _Edinburgh Review_ of 1804, makes a significant inference from this.
+Bacon's method, he said, had succeeded in the physical sciences, because
+there we could apply experiment. But experiment is impossible in the
+science of mind; and therefore philosophy will never be anything but a
+plaything or a useful variety of gymnastic. Stewart replied at some
+length in his _Essays_,[168] fully accepting the general conception, but
+arguing that the experimental method was applicable to the science of
+mind. Jeffrey observes that it was now admitted that the 'profoundest
+reasonings' had brought us back to the view of the vulgar, and this,
+too, is admitted by Stewart so far as the cardinal doctrine of 'the
+common sense' philosophy, the theory of perception, is admitted.
+
+From this, again, it follows that the 'notions we annex to the words
+Matter and Mind are merely relative.'[169] We know that mind exists as
+we know that matter exists; or, if anything, we know the existence of
+mind more certainly because more directly. The mind is suggested by 'the
+subjects of our consciousness'; the body by the objects 'of our
+perception.' But, on the other hand, we are totally 'ignorant of the
+essence of either.'[170] We can discover the laws either of mental or
+moral phenomena; but a law, as he explains, means in strictness nothing
+but a 'general fact.'[171] It is idle, therefore, to explain the nature
+of the union between the two unknowable substances; we can only discover
+that they are united and observe the laws according to which one set of
+phenomena corresponds to the other. From a misunderstanding of this
+arise all the fallacies of scholastic ontology, 'the most idle and
+absurd speculation that ever employed the human faculties.'[172] The
+destruction of that pseudo-science was the great glory of Bacon and
+Locke; and Reid has now discovered the method by which we may advance to
+the establishment of a truly inductive 'philosophy of mind.'
+
+It is not surprising that Stewart approximates in various directions to
+the doctrines of the empirical school. He leans towards them whenever he
+does not see the results to which he is tending. Thus, for example, he
+is a thoroughgoing nominalist;[173] and on this point he deserts the
+teaching of Reid. He defends against Reid the attack made by Berkeley
+and Hume upon 'abstract ideas.' Rosmini,[174] in an elaborate criticism,
+complains that Stewart did not perceive the inevitable tendency of
+nominalism to materialism.[175] Stewart, in fact, accepts a good deal of
+Horne Tooke's doctrine,[176] though calling Tooke an 'ingenious
+grammarian, not a very profound philosopher,' but holds, as we shall
+see, that the materialistic tendency can be avoided. As becomes a
+nominalist, he attacks the syllogism upon grounds more fully brought out
+by J. S. Mill. Upon another essential point, he agrees with the pure
+empiricists. He accepts Hume's view of causation in all questions of
+physical science. In natural philosophy, he declares causation means
+only conjunction. The senses can never give us the 'efficient' cause of
+any phenomenon. In other words, we can never see a 'necessary
+connection' between any two events. He collects passages from earlier
+writers to show how Hume had been anticipated; and holds that Bacon's
+inadequate view of this truth was a main defect in his theories.[177]
+Hence we have a characteristic conclusion. He says, when discussing the
+proofs of the existence of God,[178] that we have an 'irresistible
+conviction of the _necessity_ of a cause' for every change. Hume,
+however, has shown that this can never be a logical necessity. It must
+then, argues Stewart, be either a 'prejudice' or an 'intuitive
+judgment.' Since it is shown by 'universal consent' not to be a
+prejudice, it must be an intuitive judgment. Thus Hume's facts are
+accepted; but his inference denied. The actual causal nexus is
+inscrutable. The conviction that there must be a connection between
+events attributed by Hume to 'custom' is attributed by Stewart to
+intuitive belief. Stewart infers that Hume's doctrine is really
+favourable to theology. It implies that God gives us the conviction, and
+perhaps, as Malebranche held, that God is 'the constantly operating
+efficient Cause in the material world.'[179] Stewart's successor, Thomas
+Brown, took up this argument on occasion of the once famous 'Leslie
+controversy'; and Brown's teaching was endorsed by James Mill and by
+John Stuart Mill.
+
+According to J. S. Mill, James Mill and Stewart represented opposite
+poles of philosophic thought. I shall have to consider this dictum
+hereafter. On the points already noticed Stewart must be regarded as an
+ally rather than an opponent of the Locke and Hume tradition. Like them
+he appeals unhesitatingly to experience, and cannot find words strong
+enough to express his contempt for 'ontological' and scholastic methods.
+His 'intuitions' are so far very harmless things, which fall in with
+common sense, and enable him to hold without further trouble the beliefs
+which, as a matter of fact, are held by everybody. They are an excuse
+for not seeking any ultimate explanation in reason. He is, indeed,
+opposed to the school which claimed to be the legitimate successor to
+Locke, but which evaded Hume's scepticism by diverging towards
+materialism. The great representative of this doctrine in England had
+been Hartley, and in Stewart's day Hartley's lead had been followed by
+Priestley, who attacked Reid from a materialist point of view, by
+Priestley's successor, Thomas Belsham, and by Erasmus Darwin. We find
+Stewart, in language which reminds us of later controversy, denouncing
+the 'Darwinian School'[180] for theories about instinct incompatible
+with the doctrine of final causes. It might appear that a philosopher
+who has re-established the objective existence of space in opposition to
+Berkeley, was in danger of that materialism which had been Berkeley's
+bugbear. But Stewart escapes the danger by his assertion that our
+knowledge of matter is 'relative' or confined to phenomena. Materialism
+is for him a variety of ontology, involving the assumption that we know
+the essence of matter. To speak with Hartley of 'vibrations,' animal
+spirits, and so forth, is to be led astray by a false analogy. We can
+discover the laws of correspondence of mind and body, but not the
+ultimate nature of either.[181] Thus he regards the 'physiological
+metaphysics of the present day' as an 'idle waste of labour and
+ingenuity on questions to which the human mind is altogether
+incompetent.'[182] The principles found by inductive observation are as
+independent of these speculations as Newton's theory of gravitation of
+an ultimate mechanical cause of gravitation.
+
+Hartley's followers, however, could drop the 'vibration' theory; and
+their doctrine then became one of 'association of ideas.' To this famous
+theory, which became the sheet-anchor of the empirical school, Stewart
+is not altogether opposed. We find him speaking of 'indissoluble
+association' in language which reminds us of the Mills.[183] Hume had
+spoken of association as comparable to gravitation--the sole principle
+by which our 'ideas' and 'impressions' are combined into a whole; a
+theory, of course, corresponding to his doctrine of 'belief' as a mere
+custom of associating. Stewart uses the principle rather as Locke had
+done, as explaining fallacies due to 'casual associations.' It supposes,
+as he says, the previous existence of certain principles, and cannot be
+an ultimate explanation. The only question can be at what point we have
+reached an 'original principle,' and are therefore bound to stop our
+analysis.[184] Over this question he glides rather too lightly, as is
+his custom; but from his point of view the belief, for example, in an
+external world, cannot be explained by association, inasmuch as it
+reveals itself as an ultimate datum.
+
+In regard to the physical sciences, then, Stewart's position
+approximates very closely to the purely 'empirical' view. When we come
+to a different application of his principles, we find him taking a
+curiously balanced position between different schools. 'Common sense'
+naturally wishes to adapt itself to generally accepted beliefs; and with
+so flexible a doctrine as that of 'intuitions' it is not difficult to
+discover methods of proving the ordinary dogmas. Stewart's theology is
+characteristic of this tendency. He describes the so-called _a priori_
+proof, as formulated by Clarke. But without denying its force, he does
+not like to lay stress upon it. He dreads 'ontology' too much. He
+therefore considers that the argument at once most satisfactory to the
+philosopher and most convincing to ordinary men is the argument from
+design. The belief in God is not 'intuitive,' but follows immediately
+from two first principles: the principle that whatever exists has a
+cause, and the principle that a 'combination of means implies a
+designer.'[185] The belief in a cause arises on our perception of change
+as our belief in the external world arises upon our sensations. The
+belief in design must be a 'first principle' because it includes a
+belief in 'necessity' which cannot arise from mere observation of
+'contingent truths.'[186] Hence Stewart accepts the theory of final
+causes as stated by Paley. Though Paley's ethics offended him, he has
+nothing but praise for the work upon _Natural Theology_.[187] Thus,
+although 'common sense' does not enable us to lay down the central
+doctrine of theology as a primary truth, it does enable us to interpret
+experience in theological terms. In other words, his theology is of the
+purely empirical kind, which was, as we shall see, the general
+characteristic of the time.
+
+In Stewart's discussion of ethical problems the same doctrine of 'final
+causes' assumes a special importance. Stewart, as elsewhere, tries to
+hold an intermediate position; to maintain the independence of morality
+without committing himself to the 'ontological' or purely logical view;
+and to show that virtue conduces to happiness without allowing that its
+dictates are to be deduced from its tendency to produce happiness. His
+doctrine is to a great extent derived from the teaching of Hutcheson and
+Bishop Butler. He really approximates most closely to Hutcheson, who
+takes a similar view of Utilitarianism, but he professes the warmest
+admiration of Butler. He explicitly accepts Butler's doctrine of the
+'supremacy of the conscience'--a doctrine which as he says, the bishop,
+'has placed in the strongest and happiest light.'[188] He endeavours,
+again, to approximate to the 'intellectual school,' of which Richard
+Price (1723-1791) was the chief English representative at the time. Like
+Kant, Price deduces the moral law from principles of pure reason. The
+truth of the moral law, 'Thou shalt do to others as you wish that they
+should do to you,' is as evident as the truth of the law in geometry,
+'things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.'
+Stewart so far approves that he wishes to give to the moral law what is
+now called all possible 'objectivity,' while the 'moral sense' of
+Hutcheson apparently introduced a 'subjective' element. He holds,
+however, that our moral perceptions 'involve a feeling of the heart,' as
+well as a 'judgment of the understanding,'[189] and ascribes the same
+view to Butler. But then, by using the word 'reason' so as to include
+the whole nature of a rational being, we may ascribe to it the 'origin
+of those simple ideas which are not excited in the mind by the operation
+of the senses, but which arise in consequence of the operation of the
+intellectual powers among the various objects.'[190] Hutcheson, he says,
+made his 'moral sense' unsatisfactory by taking his illustrations from
+the 'secondary' instead of the 'primary qualities,'[191] and thus with
+the help of intuitive first principles, Stewart succeeds in believing
+that it would be as hard for a man to believe that he ought to sacrifice
+another man's happiness to his own as to believe that three angles of a
+triangle are equal to one right angle.[192] It is true that a feeling
+and a judgment are both involved; but the 'intellectual judgment' is the
+groundwork of the feeling, not the feeling of the judgment.[193] In
+spite, however, of this attempt to assimilate his principles to those of
+the intellectual school, the substance of Stewart's ethics is
+essentially psychological. It rests, in fact, upon his view that
+philosophy depends upon inductive psychology, and, therefore,
+essentially upon experience subject to the cropping up of convenient
+'intuitions.'
+
+This appears from the nature of his argument against the Utilitarians.
+In his time, this doctrine was associated with the names of Hartley,
+Tucker, Godwin, and especially Paley. He scarcely refers to
+Bentham.[194] Paley is the recognised anvil for the opposite school. Now
+he agrees, as I have said, with Paley's view of natural theology and
+entirely accepts therefore the theory of 'final causes.' The same theory
+becomes prominent in his ethical teaching. We may perhaps say that
+Stewart's view is in substance an inverted Utilitarianism. It may be
+best illustrated by an argument familiar in another application. Paley
+and his opponents might agree that the various instincts of an animal
+are so constituted that in point of fact they contribute to his
+preservation and his happiness. But from one point of view this appears
+to be simply to say that the conditions of existence necessitate a
+certain harmony, and that the harmony is therefore to be a consequence
+of his self-preservation. From the opposite point of view, which Stewart
+accepts, it appears that the self-preservation is the consequence of a
+pre-established harmony, which has been divinely appointed in order that
+he may live. Stewart, in short, is a 'teleologist' of the Paley variety.
+Psychology proves the existence of design in the moral world, as anatomy
+or physiology proves it in the physical.
+
+Stewart therefore fully agrees that virtue generally produces happiness.
+If it be true (a doctrine, he thinks, beyond our competence to decide)
+that 'the sole principle of action in the Deity' is benevolence, it may
+be that he has commanded us to be virtuous because he sees virtue to be
+useful. In this case utility may be the final cause of morality; and the
+fact that virtue has this tendency gives the plausibility to utilitarian
+systems.[195] But the key to the difficulty is the distinction between
+'final' and 'efficient' causes; for the efficient cause of morality is
+not the desire for happiness, but a primitive and simple instinct,
+namely, the moral faculty.
+
+Thus he rejects Paley's notorious doctrine that virtue differs from
+prudence only in regarding the consequences in another world instead of
+consequences in this.[196] Reward and punishment 'presuppose the notions
+of right and wrong' and cannot be the source of those notions. The
+favourite doctrine of association, by which the Utilitarians explained
+unselfishness, is only admissible as accounting for modifications, such
+as are due to education and example, but 'presupposes the existence of
+certain principles which are common to all mankind.' The evidence of
+such principles is established by a long and discursive psychological
+discussion. It is enough to say that he admits two rational principles,
+'self-love' and the 'moral faculty,' the coincidence of which is learned
+only by experience. The moral faculty reveals simple 'ideas' of right
+and wrong, which are incapable of any further analysis. But besides
+these, there is a hierarchy of other instincts or desires, which he
+calls 'implanted' because 'for aught we know' they may be of 'arbitrary
+appointment.'[197] Resentment, for example, is an implanted instinct, of
+which the 'final cause' is to defend us against 'sudden violence.'[198]
+Stewart's analysis is easygoing and suggests more problems than it
+solves. The general position, however, is clear enough, and not, I
+think, without much real force as against the Paley form of
+utilitarianism.
+
+The acceptance of the doctrine of 'final causes' was the inevitable
+course for a philosopher who wishes to retain the old creeds and yet to
+appeal unequivocally to experience. It suits the amiable optimism for
+which Stewart is noticeable. To prove the existence of a perfect deity
+from the evidence afforded by the world, you must of course take a
+favourable view of the observable order. Stewart shows the same tendency
+in his Political Economy, where he is Adam Smith's disciple, and fully
+shares Smith's beliefs that the harmony between the interests of the
+individual and the interests of the society is an evidence of design in
+the Creator of mankind. In this respect Stewart differs notably from
+Butler, to whose reasonings he otherwise owed a good deal. With Butler
+the conscience implies a dread of divine wrath and justifies the
+conception of a world alienated from its maker. Stewart's 'moral
+faculty' simply recognises or reveals the moral law; but carries no
+suggestion of supernatural penalties. The doctrines by which Butler
+attracted some readers and revolted others throw no shadow over his
+writings. He is a placid enlightened professor, whose real good feeling
+and frequent shrewdness should not be overlooked in consequence of the
+rather desultory and often superficial mode of reasoning. This, however,
+suggests a final remark upon Stewart's position.
+
+In the preface[199] to his _Active and Moral Powers_ (1828) Stewart
+apologises for the large space given to the treatment of Natural
+Religion. The lectures, he says, which form the substance of the book,
+were given at a time when 'enlightened zeal for liberty' was associated
+with the 'reckless boldness of the uncompromising freethinker.' He
+wished, therefore, to show that a man could be a liberal without being
+an atheist. This gives the position characteristic of Stewart and his
+friends. The group of eminent men who made Edinburgh a philosophical
+centre was thoroughly in sympathy with the rationalist movement of the
+eighteenth century. The old dogmatic system of belief could be held very
+lightly even by the more educated clergy. Hume's position is
+significant. He could lay down the most unqualified scepticism in his
+writings; but he always regarded his theories as intended for the
+enlightened; he had no wish to disturb popular beliefs in theology, and
+was a strong Tory in politics. His friends were quite ready to take him
+upon that footing. The politeness with which 'Mr. Hume's' speculations
+are noticed by men like Stewart and Reid is in characteristic contrast
+to the reception generally accorded to more popular sceptics. They were
+intellectual curiosities not meant for immediate application. The real
+opinion of such men as Adam Smith and Stewart was probably a rather
+vague and optimistic theism. In the professor's chair they could talk to
+lads intended for the ministry without insulting such old Scottish
+prejudice (there was a good deal of it) as survived: and could cover
+rationalising opinions under language which perhaps might have a
+different meaning for their hearers. The position was necessarily one of
+tacit compromise. Stewart considers himself to be an inductive
+philosopher appealing frankly to experience and reason; and was in
+practice a man of thoroughly liberal and generous feelings. He was
+heartily in favour of progress as he understood it. Only he will not
+sacrifice common sense; that is to say, the beliefs which are in fact
+prevalent and congenial to existing institutions. Common sense, of
+course, condemns extremes: and if logic seems to be pushing a man
+towards scepticism in philosophy or revolution in practice, he can
+always protest by the convenient device of intuitions.
+
+I have gone so far in order to illustrate the nature of the system which
+the Utilitarians took to be the antithesis of their own. It may be
+finally remarked that at present both sides were equally ignorant of
+contemporary developments of German thought. When Stewart became aware
+that there was such a thing as Kant's philosophy, he tried to read it in
+a Latin version. Parr, I may observe, apparently did not know of this
+version, and gave up the task of reading German. Stewart's example was
+not encouraging. He had abandoned the 'undertaking in despair' partly
+from the scholastic barbarism of the style, partly 'my utter inability
+to comprehend the author's meaning.' He recognises similarity between
+Kant and Reid, but thinks Reid's simple statement of the fact that space
+cannot be derived from the senses more philosophical than Kant's
+'superstructure of technical mystery.'[200]
+
+I have dwelt upon the side in which Stewart's philosophy approximates to
+the empirical school, because the Utilitarians were apt to misconceive
+the position. They took Stewart to be the adequate representative of all
+who accepted one branch of an inevitable dilemma. The acceptance of
+'intuitions,' that is, was the only alternative to thoroughgoing
+acceptance of 'experience.' They supposed, too, that persons vaguely
+described as 'Kant and the Germans' taught simply a modification of the
+'intuitionist' view. I have noticed how emphatically Stewart claimed to
+rely upon experience and to base his philosophy upon inductive
+psychology, and was so far admitting the first principles and the
+general methods of his opponents. The Scottish philosophy, however,
+naturally presented itself as an antagonistic force to the Utilitarians.
+The 'intuitions' represented the ultimate ground taken, especially in
+religious and ethical questions, by men who wished to be at once liberal
+philosophers and yet to avoid revolutionary extremes. 'Intuitions' had
+in any case a negative value, as protests against the sufficiency of the
+empirical analysis. It might be quite true, for example, that Hume's
+analysis of certain primary mental phenomena--of our belief in the
+external world or of the relation of cause and effect--was radically
+insufficient. He had not given an adequate explanation of the facts. The
+recognition of the insufficiency of his reasoning was highly important
+if only as a stimulus to inquiry. It was a warning to his and to
+Hartley's followers that they had not thoroughly unravelled the
+perplexity but only cut the knot. But when the insufficiency of the
+explanation was interpreted as a demonstration that all explanation was
+impossible, and the 'intuition' an ultimate 'self-evident' truth, it
+became a refusal to inquire just where inquiry was wanted; a positive
+command to stop analysis at an arbitrary point; and a round assertion
+that the adversary could not help believing precisely the doctrine which
+he altogether declined to believe. Naturally the empiricists refused to
+bow to an authority which was simply saying, 'Don't inquire further,'
+without any ground for the prohibition except the '_ipse dixitism_'
+which declared that inquiry must be fruitless. Stewart, in fact, really
+illustrated the equivocation between the two meanings of 'common sense.'
+If by that name he understood, as he professed to understand, ultimate
+'laws of thought,' his position was justifiable as soon as he could
+specify the laws and prove that they were ultimate. But so far as he
+virtually took for granted that the average beliefs of intelligent
+people were such laws, and on that ground refused to examine the
+evidence of their validity, he was inconsistent, and his position only
+invited assault. As a fact, I believe that his 'intuitions' covered many
+most disputable propositions; and that the more clearly they were
+stated, the more they failed to justify his interpretations. He was not
+really answering the most vital and critical questions, but implicitly
+reserving them, and putting an arbitrary stop to investigations
+desirable on his own principles.
+
+The Scottish philosophy was, however, accepted in England, and made a
+considerable impression in France, as affording a tenable barrier
+against scepticism. It was, as I have said, in philosophy what
+Whiggism was in politics. Like political Whiggism it included a large
+element of enlightened and liberal rationalism; but like Whiggism it
+covered an aversion to thoroughgoing logic. The English politician was
+suspicious of abstract principles, but could cover his acceptance of
+tradition and rule of thumb by general phrases about liberty and
+toleration. The Whig in philosophy equally accepted the traditional
+creed, sufficiently purified from cruder elements, and sheltered his
+doctrine by speaking of 'intuitions and laws of thought.' In both
+positions there was really, I take it, a great deal of sound practical
+wisdom; but they also implied a marked reluctance to push inquiry too
+far, and a tacit agreement to be content with what the Utilitarians
+denounced as 'vague generalities'--phrases, that is, which might be
+used either to conceal an underlying scepticism, or really to stop
+short in the path which led to scepticism. In philosophy as in
+politics, the Utilitarians boasted of being thoroughgoing Radicals,
+and hated compromises which to them appeared to be simply obstructive.
+I need not elaborate a point which will meet us again. If I were
+writing a history of thought in general I should have to notice other
+writers, though there were none of much distinction, who followed the
+teaching of Stewart or of his opponents of the Hartley and Darwin
+school. It would be necessary also to insist upon the growing interest
+in the physical sciences, which were beginning not only to make
+enormous advances, but to attract popular attention. For my purpose,
+however, it is I think sufficient to mention these writers, each of
+whom had a very special relation to the Utilitarians. I turn,
+therefore, to Bentham.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[157] Nine volumes of Dugald Stewart's works, edited by Sir W. Hamilton,
+appeared from 1854 to 1856; a tenth, including a life of Stewart by J.
+Veitch, appeared in 1858, and an eleventh, with an index to the whole,
+in 1860. The chief books are the _Elements of the Philosophy of the
+Human Mind_ (in vols. ii., iii. and iv., originally in 1792, 1814,
+1827); _Philosophical Essays_ (in vol. v., originally 1810); _Philosophy
+of the Active and Moral Powers of Man_ (vols. vi. and vii., originally
+in 1828); _Dissertation on the Progress of Philosophy_ (in vol. i.;
+originally in _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, in 1815 and 1821). The lectures
+on Political Economy first appeared in the _Works_, vols. viii. and ix.
+
+[158] _Works_, vi. ('Preface').
+
+[159] _Works_ (Life of Reid), x. 304-8.
+
+[160] Reid's _Works_ (Hamilton), p. 302.
+
+[161] Reid's _Works_ (Hamilton), p. 88.
+
+[162] _Ibid._ 206.
+
+[163] _Ibid._ 267.
+
+[164] Stewart's remarks on his life of Reid: Reid's _Works_, p. 12, etc.
+
+[165] _The World as Will and Idea_ (Haldane & Kemp), ii. 186. Reid's
+'_Inquiry_,' he adds, is ten times better worth reading than all the
+philosophy together which has been written since Kant.
+
+[166] 'We are inspired with the sensation, as we are inspired with the
+corresponding perception, by means unknown.'--Reid's _Works_, 188.
+'This,' says Stewart, 'is a plain statement of fact.'--Stewart's
+_Works_, ii. 111-12.
+
+[167] See Rosmini's _Origin of Ideas_ (English translation), i. p. 91,
+where, though sympathising with Reid's aim, he admits a 'great blunder.'
+
+[168] Stewart's _Works_, v. 24-53. Hamilton says in a note (p. 41) that
+Jeffrey candidly confessed Stewart's reply to be satisfactory.
+
+[169] _Ibid._ ii. 46.
+
+[170] _Ibid._ ii. 45-67.
+
+[171] _Ibid._ ii. 159.
+
+[172] _Ibid._ v. 21.
+
+[173] Stewart's _Works_, ii. 165-93; iii. 81-97. Schopenhauer (_The
+World as Will and Idea_, ii. 240) admires Reid's teaching upon this
+point, and recommends us not 'to waste an hour over the scribblings of
+this shallow writer' (Stewart).
+
+[174] Rosmini's _Origin of Ideas_ (English translation), i. 96-176.
+
+[175] _Ibid._ i. 147 _n._
+
+[176] Stewart's _Works_, iv. 29, 35, 38, and v. 149-88.
+
+[177] _Ibid._ ii. 97, etc., and iii. 235, 389, 417.
+
+[178] _Works_, vii. 13-34.
+
+[179] _Ibid._ vii. 26, etc.
+
+[180] _Works_, iv. 265.
+
+[181] _Ibid._ ii. 52.
+
+[182] _Ibid._ v. 10.
+
+[183] _Works_, ii. 155.
+
+[184] _Ibid._ ii. 337.
+
+[185] _Works_, vi. 46; vii. 11.
+
+[186] _Ibid._ vii. 46.
+
+[187] _Ibid._ i. 357.
+
+[188] _Works_, vi. 320.
+
+[189] _Ibid._ vi. 279.
+
+[190] _Ibid._ vi. 297.
+
+[191] _Works_, vi. 295. Cf. v. 83.
+
+[192] _Ibid._ vi. 298-99.
+
+[193] _Ibid._ v. 84.
+
+[194] In _Works_, vi. 205-6, he quotes Dumont's _Bentham_; but his
+general silence is the more significant, as in the lectures on Political
+Economy he makes frequent and approving reference to Bentham's tract
+upon usury.
+
+[195] _Works_, vii. 236-38.
+
+[196] _Ibid._ vi. 221.
+
+[197] _Works_, vi. 213.
+
+[198] _Ibid._ vi. 199.
+
+[199] _Works_, vi. 111.
+
+[200] _Works_, v. 117 18. I have given some details as to Stewart's
+suffering under an English proselyte of Kant in my _Studies of a
+Biographer_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BENTHAM'S LIFE
+
+
+I. EARLY LIFE
+
+Jeremy Bentham,[201] the patriarch of the English Utilitarians, sprang
+from the class imbued most thoroughly with the typical English
+prejudices. His first recorded ancestor, Brian Bentham, was a
+pawnbroker, who lost money by the stop of the Exchequer in 1672, but was
+neither ruined, nor, it would seem, alienated by the king's dishonesty.
+He left some thousands to his son, Jeremiah, an attorney and a strong
+Jacobite. A second Jeremiah, born 2nd December 1712, carried on his
+father's business, and though his clients were not numerous, increased
+his fortune by judicious investments in houses and lands. Although
+brought up in Jacobite principles, he transferred his attachment to the
+Hanoverian dynasty when a relation of his wife married a valet of George
+II. The wife, Alicia Grove, was daughter of a tradesman who had made a
+small competence at Andover. Jeremiah Bentham had fallen in love with
+her at first sight, and wisely gave up for her sake a match with a
+fortune of L10,000. The couple were fondly attached to each other and to
+their children. The marriage took place towards the end of 1744, and the
+eldest son, Jeremy, was born in Red Lion Street, Houndsditch, 4th
+February 1747-48 (o.s.) The only other child who grew up was Samuel,
+afterwards Sir Samuel Bentham, born 11th January 1757. When eighty years
+old, Jeremy gave anecdotes of his infancy to his biographer, Bowring,
+who says that their accuracy was confirmed by contemporary documents,
+and proved his memory to be as wonderful as his precocity. Although the
+child was physically puny, his intellectual development was amazing.
+Before he was two he burst into tears at the sight of his mother's
+chagrin upon his refusal of some offered dainty. Before he was
+'breeched,' an event which happened when he was three and a quarter, he
+ran home from a dull walk, ordered a footman to bring lights and place a
+folio _Rapin_ upon the table, and was found plunged in historical
+studies when his parents returned to the house. In his fourth year he
+was imbibing the Latin grammar, and at the age of five years nine months
+and nineteen days, as his father notes, he wrote a scrap of Latin,
+carefully pasted among the parental memoranda. The child was not always
+immured in London. His parents spent their Sundays with the grandfather
+Bentham at Barking, and made occasional excursions to the house of Mrs.
+Bentham's mother at Browning Hill, near Reading. Bentham remembered the
+last as a 'paradise,' and a love of flowers and gardens became one of
+his permanent passions.
+
+Jeremy cherished the memory of his mother's tenderness. The father,
+though less sympathetic, was proud of his son's precocity, and
+apparently injudicious in stimulating the unformed intellect. The boy
+was almost a dwarf in size. When sixteen he grew ahead,[202] and was so
+feeble that he could scarcely drag himself upstairs. Attempts to teach
+him dancing failed from the extreme weakness of his knees.[203] He
+showed a taste for music, and could scrape a minuet on the fiddle at six
+years of age. He read all such books as came in his way. His parents
+objected to light literature, and he was crammed with such solid works
+as _Rapin_, Burnet's _Theory of the Earth_, and Cave's _Lives of the
+Apostles_. Various accidents, however, furnished him with better food
+for the imagination. He wept for hours over _Clarissa Harlowe_, studied
+_Gulliver's Travels_ as an authentic document, and dipped into a variety
+of such books as then drifted into middle-class libraries. A French
+teacher introduced him to some remarkable books. He read _Telemaque_,
+which deeply impressed him, and, as he thought, implanted in his mind
+the seeds of later moralising. He attacked unsuccessfully some of
+Voltaire's historical works, and even read _Candide_, with what emotions
+we are not told. The servants meanwhile filled his fancy with ghosts and
+hobgoblins. To the end of his days he was still haunted by the imaginary
+horrors in the dark,[204] and he says[205] that they had been among the
+torments of his life. He had few companions of his own age, and though
+he was 'not unhappy' and was never subjected to corporal punishment, he
+felt more awe than affection for his father. His mother, to whom he was
+strongly attached, died on 6th January 1759.
+
+Bentham was thus a strangely precocious, and a morbidly sensitive child,
+when it was decided in 1755 to send him to Westminster. The headmaster,
+Dr. Markham, was a friend of his father's. Westminster, he says,
+represented 'hell' for him when Browning Hill stood for paradise. The
+instruction 'was wretched,' The fagging system was a 'horrid despotism.'
+The games were too much for his strength. His industry, however, enabled
+him to escape the birch, no small achievement in those days,[206] and he
+became distinguished in the studies such as they were. He learned the
+catechism by heart, and was good at Greek and Latin verses, which he
+manufactured for his companions as well as himself. He had also the
+rarer accomplishment, acquired from his early tutor, of writing more
+easily in French than English. Some of his writings were originally
+composed in French. He was, according to Bowring, elected to one of the
+King's scholarships when between nine and ten, but as 'ill-usage was
+apprehended' the appointment was declined.[207] He was at a
+boarding-house, and the life of the boys on the foundation was probably
+rougher. In June 1760 his father took him to Oxford, and entered him as
+a commoner at Queen's College. He came into residence in the following
+October, when only twelve years old. Oxford was not more congenial than
+Westminster. He had to sign the Thirty-nine Articles in spite of
+scruples suppressed by authority. The impression made upon him by this
+childish compliance never left him to the end of his life.[208] His
+experience resembled that of Adam Smith and Gibbon. Laziness and vice
+were prevalent. A gentleman commoner of Queen's was president of a
+'hellfire club,' and brutal horseplay was still practised upon the
+weaker lads. Bentham, still a schoolboy in age, continued his schoolboy
+course. He wrote Latin verses, and one of his experiments, an ode upon
+the death of George II., was sent to Johnson, who called it 'a very
+pretty performance for a young man.' He also had to go through the form
+of disputation in the schools. Queen's College had some reputation at
+this time for teaching logic.[209] Bentham was set to read Watt's
+_Logic_ (1725), Sanderson's _Compendium artis Logicae_ (1615), and
+Rowning's _Compendious System of Natural Philosophy_ (1735-42). Some
+traces of these studies remained in his mind.
+
+In 1763 Bentham took his B.A. degree, and returned to his home. It is
+significant that when robbed of all his money at Oxford he did not
+confide in his father. He was paying by a morbid reserve for the
+attempts made to force him into premature activity. He accepted the
+career imposed by his father's wishes, and in November 1763 began to eat
+his dinners in Lincoln's Inn. He returned, however, to Oxford in
+December to hear Blackstone's lectures. These lectures were then a
+novelty at an English university. The Vinerian professorship had been
+founded in 1758 in consequence of the success of a course voluntarily
+given by Blackstone; and his lectures contained the substance of the
+famous Commentaries, first published 1765-1769. They had a great effect
+upon Bentham. He says that he 'immediately detected Blackstone's fallacy
+respecting natural rights,' thought other doctrines illogical, and was
+so much occupied by these reflections as to be unable to take notes.
+Bentham's dissatisfaction with Blackstone had not yet made him an
+opponent of the constituted order. He was present at some of the
+proceedings against Wilkes, and was perfectly bewitched by Lord
+Mansfield's '_Grim-gibber_,' that is, taken in by his pompous
+verbiage.[210]
+
+In 1765 his father married Mrs. Abbot, the mother of Charles Abbot,
+afterwards Lord Colchester. Bentham's dislike of his step-mother
+increased the distance between him and his father. He took his M.A.
+degree in 1766 and in 1767 finally left Oxford for London to begin, as
+his father fondly hoped, a flight towards the woolsack. The lad's
+diffidence and extreme youth had indeed prevented him from forming the
+usual connections which his father anticipated as the result of a
+college life. His career as a barrister was short and grievously
+disappointing to the parental hopes. His father, like the Elder Fairford
+in _Redgauntlet_, had 'a cause or two at nurse' for the son. The son's
+first thought was to 'put them to death,' A brief was given to him in a
+suit, upon which L50 depended. He advised that the suit should be
+dropped and the money saved. Other experiences only increased his
+repugnance to his profession.[211] A singularly strong impression had
+been made upon him by the _Memoirs_ of Teresa Constantia Phipps, in
+which there is an account of vexatious legal proceedings as to the
+heroine's marriage. He appears to have first read this book
+in 1759. Then, he says, the 'Demon of Chicane appeared to me
+in all his hideousness. I vowed war against him. My vow has been
+accomplished!'[212] Bentham thus went to the bar as a 'bear to the
+stake.' He diverged in more than one direction. He studied chemistry
+under Fordyce (1736-1802), and hankered after physical science. He was
+long afterwards (1788) member of a club to which Sir Joseph Banks, John
+Hunter, R. L. Edgeworth, and other men of scientific reputation
+belonged.[213] But he had drifted into a course of speculation, which,
+though more germane to legal studies, was equally fatal to professional
+success. The father despaired, and he was considered to be a 'lost
+child.'
+
+NOTES:
+
+[201] The main authority for Bentham's Life is Bowring's account in the
+two last volumes of the _Works_. Bain's _Life of James Mill_ gives some
+useful facts as to the later period. There is comparatively little
+mention of Bentham in contemporary memoirs. Little is said of him in
+Romilly's _Life_. Parr's _Works_, i. and viii., contains some letters.
+See also R. Dale Owen's _Threading my Way_ pp. 175-78. A little book
+called _Utilitarianism Unmasked_, by the Rev. J. F. Colls, D.D. (1844),
+gives some reminiscences by Colls, who had been Bentham's amanuensis for
+fourteen years. Colls, who took orders, disliked Bentham's religious
+levity, and denounces his vanity, but admits his early kindness.
+Voluminous collections of the papers used by Bowring are at University
+College, and at the British Museum.
+
+[202] _Works_, x. 33.
+
+[203] _Ibid._ x. 31.
+
+[204] _Ibid._ ix. 84.
+
+[205] _Ibid._ x. 18.
+
+[206] Southey was expelled from Westminster in 1792 for attacking the
+birch in a schoolboy paper.
+
+[207] _Works_, x. 38. Bowring's confused statement, I take it, means
+this. Bentham, in any case, was not on the foundation. See Welsh's
+_Alumni West_.
+
+[208] _Works_, x. 37.
+
+[209] _Ibid._ viii. 113, 217.
+
+[210] _Works_, x. 45.
+
+[211] _Ibid._ x. 51, 78, 83.
+
+[212] _Works_, x. 35, 77. References are given to this book in _Works_,
+vii. 219-20 ('Rationale of Evidence'). Several editions appeared from
+1725 to 1761. See _Works_, vi. 465, for a recollection of similar
+experiences.
+
+[213] _Ibid._ viii. 148 _n._; x. 183.
+
+
+II. FIRST WRITINGS
+
+Though lost to the bar, he had really found himself. He had taken the
+line prescribed by his idiosyncrasy. His father's injudicious forcing
+had increased his shyness at the bar, and he was like an owl in
+daylight. But no one, as we shall see, was less diffident in
+speculation. Self-confidence in a philosopher is often the private
+credit which he opens with his imagination to compensate for his
+incapacity in the rough struggles of active life. Bentham shrank from
+the world in which he was easily browbeaten to the study in which he
+could reign supreme. He had not the strong passions which prompt
+commonplace ambition, and cared little for the prizes for which most men
+will sacrifice their lives. Nor, on the other hand, can he be credited
+with that ardent philanthropy or vehement indignation which prompts to
+an internecine struggle with actual wrongdoers. He had not the ardour
+which led Howard to devote a life to destroy abuses, or that which
+turned Swift's blood to gall in the struggle against triumphant
+corruption. He was thoroughly amiable, but of kindly rather than
+energetic affections. He, therefore, desired reform, but so far from
+regarding the ruling classes with rancour, took their part against the
+democrats. 'I was a great reformist,' he says, 'but never suspected that
+the "people in power" were against reform. I supposed they only wanted
+to know what was good in order to embrace it.'[214] The most real of
+pleasures for him lay in speculating upon the general principles by
+which the 'people in power' should be guided. To construct a general
+chart for legislation, to hunt down sophistries, to explode mere noisy
+rhetoric, to classify and arrange and re-classify until his whole
+intellectual wealth was neatly arranged in proper pigeon-holes, was a
+delight for its own sake. He wished well to mankind; he detested abuses,
+but he hated neither the corrupted nor the corruptors; and it might
+almost seem that he rather valued the benevolent end, because it gave
+employment to his faculties, than valued the employment because it led
+to the end. This is implied in his remark made at the end of his life.
+He was, he said, as selfish as a man could be; but 'somehow or other'
+selfishness had in him taken the form of benevolence.[215] He was at any
+rate in the position of a man with the agreeable conviction that he has
+only to prove the wisdom of a given course in order to secure its
+adoption. Like many mechanical inventors, he took for granted that a
+process which was shown to be useful would therefore be at once adopted,
+and failed to anticipate the determined opposition of the great mass of
+'vested interests' already in possession.
+
+At this period he made the discovery, or what he held to be the
+discovery, which governed his whole future career. He laid down the
+principle which was to give the clue to all his investigations; and, as
+he thought, required only to be announced to secure universal
+acceptance. When Bentham revolted against the intellectual food provided
+at school and college, he naturally took up the philosophy which at that
+period represented the really living stream of thought. To be a man of
+enlightenment in those days was to belong to the school of Locke. Locke
+represented reason, free thought, and the abandonment of prejudice.
+Besides Locke, he mentions Hume, Montesquieu, Helvetius, Beccaria, and
+Barrington. Helvetius especially did much to suggest to him his leading
+principle, and upon country trips which he took with his father and
+step-mother, he used to lag behind studying Helvetius' _De
+l'Esprit_.[216] Locke, he says in an early note (1773-1774), should give
+the principles, Helvetius the matter, of a complete digest of the law.
+He mentions with especial interest the third volume of Hume's _Treatise
+on Human Nature_ for its ethical views: 'he felt as if scales fell from
+his eyes' when he read it.[217] Daines Barrington's _Observations on the
+Statutes_ (1766) interested him by miscellaneous suggestions. The book,
+he says,[218] was a 'great treasure.' 'It is everything, _a propos_ of
+everything; I wrote volumes upon this volume.' Beccaria's treatise upon
+crimes and punishments had appeared in 1764, and had excited the
+applause of Europe. The world was clearly ready for a fundamental
+reconstruction of legislative theories. Under the influence of such
+studies Bentham formulated his famous principle--a principle which to
+some seemed a barren truism, to others a mere epigram, and to some a
+dangerous falsehood. Bentham accepted it not only as true, but as
+expressing a truth of extraordinary fecundity, capable of guiding him
+through the whole labyrinth of political and legislative speculation.
+His 'fundamental axiom' is that 'the greatest happiness of the greatest
+number is the measure of right and wrong.'[219] Bentham himself[220]
+attributes the authorship of the phrase to Beccaria or Priestley. The
+general order of thought to which this theory belongs was of course not
+the property of any special writer or any particular period. Here I need
+only observe that this embodiment of the general doctrine of utility or
+morality had been struck out by Hutcheson in the attempt (as his title
+says) 'to introduce a mathematical calculation on subjects of morality.'
+This defines the exact reason which made it acceptable to Bentham. For
+the vague reference to utility which appears in Hume and other writers
+of his school, he substituted a formula, the terms of which suggest the
+possibility of an accurate quantitative comparison of different sums of
+happiness. In Bentham's mind the difference between this and the more
+general formula was like the difference between the statement that the
+planets gravitate towards the sun, and the more precise statement that
+the law of gravitation varies inversely as the square of the distance.
+Bentham hoped for no less an achievement than to become the Newton of
+the moral world.
+
+Bentham, after leaving Oxford, took chambers in Lincoln's Inn. His
+father on his second marriage had settled some property upon him, which
+brought in some L90 a year. He had to live like a gentleman upon this,
+and to give four guineas a year to the laundress, four to his barber,
+and two to his shoeblack. In spite of Jeremy's deviation from the path
+of preferment, the two were on friendly terms, and when the hopes of the
+son's professional success grew faint, the father showed sympathy with
+his literary undertakings. Jeremy visited Paris in 1770, but made few
+acquaintances, though he was already regarded as a 'philosopher.' In
+1778 he was in correspondence with d'Alembert, the abbe Morellet, and
+other philanthropic philosophers, but it does not appear at what time
+this connection began.[221] He translated Voltaire's _Taureau
+Blanc_[222]--a story which used to 'convulse him with laughter.' A
+reference to it will show that Bentham by this time took the Voltairean
+view of the Old Testament. Bentham, however, was still on the side of
+the Tories. His first publication was a defence of Lord Mansfield in
+1770 against attacks arising out of the prosecution of Woodfall for
+publishing Junius's letter to the king. This defence, contained in two
+letters, signed Irenaeus, was published in the _Gazetteer_. Bentham's
+next performance was remarkable in the same sense. Among the few friends
+who drifted to his chambers was John Lind (1737-1781), who had been a
+clergyman, and after acting as tutor to a prince in Poland, had returned
+to London and become a writer for the press. He had business relations
+with the elder Bentham, and the younger Bentham was to some extent his
+collaborator in a pamphlet[223] which defended the conduct of ministers
+to the American colonies. Bentham observes that he was prejudiced
+against the Americans by the badness of their arguments, and thought
+from the first, as he continued to think, that the Declaration of
+Independence was a hodge-podge of confusion and absurdity, in which the
+thing to be proved is all along taken for granted.[224] Two other
+friendships were formed by Bentham about this time: one with James
+Trail, an unsuccessful barrister, who owed a seat in Parliament and
+some minor offices to Lord Hertford, and is said by Romilly to have been
+a man of great talent; and one with George Wilson, afterwards a leader
+of the Norfolk circuit, who had become known to him through a common
+interest in Dr. Fordyce's lectures upon chemistry. Wilson became a bosom
+friend, and was one of Bentham's first disciples, though they were
+ultimately alienated.[225]
+
+At this time, Bentham says, that his was 'truly a miserable life.'[226]
+Yet he was getting to work upon his grand project. He tells his father
+on 1st October 1776 that he is writing his _Critical Elements of
+Jurisprudence_, the book of which a part was afterwards published as the
+_Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation_.[227] In the
+same year he published his first important work, the _Fragment on
+Government_. The year was in many ways memorable. The Declaration of
+Independence marked the opening of a new political era. Adam Smith's
+_Wealth of Nations_ and Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_ formed landmarks in
+speculation and in history; and Bentham's volume, though it made no such
+impression, announced a serious attempt to apply scientific methods to
+problems of legislation. The preface contained the first declaration of
+his famous formula which was applied to the confutation of Blackstone.
+Bentham was apparently roused to this effort by recollections of the
+Oxford lectures. The _Commentaries_ contained a certain quantity of
+philosophical rhetoric; and as Blackstone was much greater in a literary
+than in a philosophical sense, the result was naturally unsatisfactory
+from a scientific point of view. He had vaguely appealed to the sound
+Whig doctrine of social compact, and while disavowing any strict
+historical basis had not inquired too curiously what was left of his
+supposed foundation. Bentham pounced upon the unfortunate bit of
+verbiage; insisted upon asking for a meaning when there was nothing but
+a rhetorical flourish, and tore the whole flimsy fabric to rags and
+tatters. A more bitter attack upon Blackstone, chiefly, as Bowring says,
+upon his defence of the Jewish law, was suppressed for fear of the law
+of libel.[228] The _Fragment_ was published anonymously, but Bentham had
+confided the secret to his father by way of suggesting some slight
+set-off against his apparent unwillingness to emerge from obscurity. The
+book was at first attributed to Lord Mansfield, Lord Camden, and to
+Dunning. It was pirated in Dublin; and most of the five hundred copies
+printed appear to have been sold, though without profit to the author.
+The father's indiscretion let out the secret; and the sale, when the
+book was known to be written by a nobody, fell off at once, or so
+Bentham believed. The anonymous writer, however, was denounced and
+accused of being the author of much ribaldry, and among other
+accusations was said to be not only the translator but the writer of the
+_White Bull_.[229]
+
+Bentham had fancied that all manner of 'torches from the highest
+regions' would come to light themselves at his 'farthing candle.' None
+of them came, and he was left for some years in obscurity, though still
+labouring at the great work which was one day to enlighten the world.
+At last, however, partial recognition came to him in a shape which
+greatly influenced his career. Lord Shelburne, afterwards marquis of
+Lansdowne, had been impressed by the _Fragment_, and in 1781 sought out
+Bentham at his chambers. Shelburne's career was to culminate in the
+following year with his brief tenure of the premiership (3rd July 1782
+to 24th February 1783). Rightly or wrongly his contemporaries felt the
+distrust indicated by his nickname 'Malagrida,' which appears to have
+been partly suggested by a habit of overstrained compliment. He incurred
+the dislike not unfrequently excited by men who claim superiority of
+intellect without possessing the force of character which gives a
+corresponding weight in political affairs. Although his education had
+been bad, he had something of that cosmopolitan training which enabled
+many members of the aristocracy to look beyond the narrow middle-class
+prejudices and share in some degree the wider philosophical movements of
+the day. He had enjoyed the friendship of Franklin, and had been the
+patron of Priestley, who made some of his chemical discoveries at
+Bowood, and to whom he allowed an annuity. He belonged to that section
+of the Whigs which had most sympathy with the revolutionary movement.
+His chief political lieutenants were Dunning and Barre, who at the time
+sat for his borough Calne. He now rapidly formed an intimacy with
+Bentham, who went to stay at Bowood in the autumn of 1781. Bentham now
+and then in later years made some rather disparaging remarks upon
+Shelburne, whom he apparently considered to be rather an amateur than a
+serious philosopher, and who in the House of Lords talked 'vague
+generalities'--the sacred phrase by which the Utilitarians denounced all
+preaching but their own--in a way to impose upon the thoughtless. He
+respected Shelburne, however, as one who trusted the people, and was
+distrusted by the Whig aristocracy. He felt, too, a real affection and
+gratitude for the patron to whom he owed so much. Shelburne had done him
+a great service.[230] 'He raised me from the bottomless pit of
+humiliation. He made me feel I was something.' The elder Bentham was
+impressed by his son's acquaintance with a man in so eminent a position,
+and hoped that it might lead by a different path to the success which
+had been missed at the bar. At Bowood Bentham stayed over a month upon
+his first visit, and was treated in the manner appropriate to a
+philosopher. The men showed him friendliness, dashed with occasional
+contempt, and the ladies petted him. He met Lord Camden and Dunning and
+young William Pitt, and some minor adherents of the great man. Pitt was
+'very good-natured and a little raw.' I was monstrously 'frightened at
+him,' but, when I came to talk with him, he seemed 'frightened at
+me.'[231] Bentham, however, did not see what ideas they were likely to
+have in common. In fact there was the usual gulf between the speculative
+thinker and the practical man. 'All the statesmen,' so thought the
+philosopher, 'were wanting in the great elements of statesmanship': they
+were always talking about 'what was' and seldom or never about 'what
+ought to be.'[232] Occasionally, it would seem, they descended lower,
+and made a little fun of the shy and over-sensitive intruder.[233] The
+ladies, however, made it up to him. Shelburne made him read his 'dry
+metaphysics' to them,[234] and they received it with feminine docility.
+Lord Shelburne had lately (1779) married his second wife, Louisa,
+daughter of the first earl of Upper Ossory. Her sister, Lady Mary
+Fitz-Patrick, married in 1766 to Stephen Fox, afterwards Lord Holland,
+was the mother of the Lord Holland of later days and of Miss Caroline
+Fox, who survived till 1845, and was at this time a pleasant girl of
+thirteen or fourteen. Lady Shelburne had also two half-sisters,
+daughters of her mother's second marriage to Richard Vernon. Lady
+Shelburne took a fancy to Bentham, and gave him the 'prodigious
+privilege' of admission to her dressing-room. Though haughty in manner,
+she was mild in reality, and after a time she and her sister indulged in
+'innocent gambols.' In her last illness, Bentham was one of the only two
+men whom she would see, and upon her death in 1789, he was the only male
+friend to whom her husband turned for consolation. Miss Fox seems to
+have been the only woman who inspired Bentham with a sentiment
+approaching to passion. He wrote occasional letters to the ladies in the
+tone of elephantine pleasantry natural to one who was all his life both
+a philosopher and a child.[235] He made an offer of marriage to Miss Fox
+in 1805, when he was nearer sixty than fifty, and when they had not met
+for sixteen years. The immediate occasion was presumably the death of
+Lord Lansdowne. She replied in a friendly letter, regretting the pain
+which her refusal would inflict. In 1827 Bentham, then in his eightieth
+year, wrote once more, speaking of the flower she had given him 'in the
+green lane,' and asking for a kind answer. He was 'indescribably hurt
+and disappointed' by a cold and distant reply. The tears would come into
+the old man's eyes as he dealt upon the cherished memories of
+Bowood.[236] It is pleasant to know that Bentham was once in love;
+though his love seems to have been chiefly for a memory associated with
+what he called the happiest time of his life.
+
+Shelburne had a project for a marriage between Bentham and the widow of
+Lord Ashburton (Dunning), who died in 1783.[237] He also made some
+overtures of patronage. 'He asked me,' says Bentham,[238] 'what he could
+do for me? I told him, nothing,' and this conduct--so different from
+that of others, 'endeared me to him.' Bentham declined one offer in
+1788; but in 1790 he suddenly took it into his head that Lansdowne had
+promised him a seat in parliament; and immediately set forth his claims
+in a vast argumentative letter of sixty-one pages.[239] Lansdowne
+replied conclusively that he had not made the supposed promise, and had
+had every reason to suppose that Bentham preferred retirement to
+politics. Bentham accepted the statement frankly, though a short
+coolness apparently followed. The claim, in fact, only represented one
+of those passing moods to which Bentham was always giving way at odd
+moments.
+
+Bentham's intimacy at Bowood led to more important results. In 1788 he
+met Romilly and Dumont at Lord Lansdowne's table.[240] He had already
+met Romilly in 1784 through Wilson, but after this the intimacy became
+close. Romilly had fallen in love with the _Fragment_, and in later
+life he became Bentham's adviser in practical matters, and the chief if
+not the sole expounder of Bentham's theories in parliament.[241] The
+alliance with Dumont was of even greater importance. Dumont, born at
+Geneva in 1759, had become a Protestant minister; he was afterwards
+tutor to Shelburne's son, and in 1788 visited Paris with Romilly and
+made acquaintance with Mirabeau. Romilly showed Dumont some of Bentham's
+papers written in French. Dumont offered to rewrite and to superintend
+their publication. He afterwards received other papers from Bentham
+himself, with whom he became personally acquainted after his return from
+Paris.[242] Dumont became Bentham's most devoted disciple, and laboured
+unweariedly upon the translation and condensation of his master's
+treatise. One result is odd enough. Dumont, it is said, provided
+materials for some of Mirabeau's 'most splendid' speeches; and some of
+these materials came from Bentham.[243] One would like to see how
+Bentham's prose was transmuted into an oratory by Mirabeau. In any case,
+Dumont's services to Bentham were invaluable. It is painful to add that
+according to Bowring the two became so much alienated in the end, that
+in 1827 Bentham refused to see Dumont, and declared that his chief
+interpreter did 'not understand a word of his meaning.' Bowring
+attributes this separation to a remark made by Dumont about the
+shabbiness of Bentham's dinners as compared with those at Lansdowne
+House--a comparison which he calls 'offensive, uncalled-for, and
+groundless.'[244] Bentham apparently argued that a man who did not like
+his dinners could not appreciate his theories: a fallacy excusable only
+by the pettishness of old age. Bowring, however, had a natural dulness
+which distorted many anecdotes transmitted through him; and we may hope
+that in this case there was some exaggeration.
+
+Bentham's emergence was, meanwhile, very slow. The great men whom he met
+at Lord Lansdowne's were not specially impressed by the shy philosopher.
+Wedderburn, so he heard, pronounced the fatal word 'dangerous' in regard
+to the _Fragment_.[245] How, thought Bentham, can utility be dangerous?
+Is this not self-contradictory? Later reflection explained the puzzle.
+What is useful to the governed need not be therefore useful to the
+governors. Mansfield, who was known to Lind, said that in some parts the
+author of the _Fragment_ was awake and in others was asleep. In what
+parts? Bentham wondered. Awake, he afterwards considered, in the parts
+where Blackstone, the object of Mansfield's personal 'heart-burning,'
+was attacked; asleep where Mansfield's own despotism was threatened.
+Camden was contemptuous; Dunning only 'scowled' at him; and Barre, after
+taking in his book, gave it back with the mysterious information that he
+had 'got into a scrape.'[246] The great book, therefore, though printed
+in 1781,[247] 'stuck for eight years,'[248] and the writer continued his
+obscure existence in Lincoln's Inn.[249] An opinion which he gave in
+some question as to the evidence in Warren Hastings's trial made, he
+says, an impression in his favour. Before publication was achieved,
+however, a curious episode altered Bentham's whole outlook. His brother
+Samuel (1757-1831), whose education he had partly superintended,[250]
+had been apprenticed to a shipwright at Woolwich, and in 1780 had gone
+to Russia in search of employment. Three years later he was sent by
+Prince Potemkin to superintend a great industrial establishment at
+Kritchev on a tributary of the Dnieper. There he was to be
+'Jack-of-all-trades--building ships, like Harlequin, of odds and ends--a
+rope-maker, a sail-maker, a distiller, brewer, malster, tanner,
+glass-man, glass-grinder, potter, hemp-spinner, smith, and
+coppersmith.'[251] He was, that is, to transplant a fragment of
+ready-made Western civilisation into Russia. Bentham resolved to pay a
+visit to his brother, to whom he was strongly attached. He left England
+in August 1785, and stayed some time at Constantinople, where he met
+Maria James (1770-1836), the wife successively of W. Reveley and of John
+Gisborne, and the friend of Shelley. Thence he travelled by land to
+Kritchev, and settled with his brother at the neighbouring estate of
+Zadobras. Bentham here passed a secluded life, interested in his
+brother's occupations and mechanical inventions, and at the same time
+keeping up his own intellectual labours. The most remarkable result was
+the _Defence of Usury_, written in the beginning of 1787. Bentham
+appends to it a respectful letter to Adam Smith, who had supported the
+laws against usury inconsistently with his own general principles. The
+disciple was simply carrying out those principles to the logical
+application from which the master had shrunk. The manuscript was sent to
+Wilson, who wished to suppress it.[252] The elder Bentham obtained it,
+and sent it to the press. The book met Bentham as he was returning. It
+was highly praised by Thomas Reid,[253] and by the _Monthly Review_; it
+was translated into various languages, and became one of the sacred
+books of the Economists. Wilson is described as 'cold and cautious,' and
+he suppressed another pamphlet upon prison discipline.[254] In a letter
+to Bentham, dated 26th February 1787, however, Wilson disavows any
+responsibility for the delay in the publication of the great book. 'The
+cause,' he says, 'lies in your constitution. With one-tenth part of your
+genius, and a common degree of steadiness, both Sam and you would long
+since have risen to great eminence. But your history, since I have known
+you, has been to be always running from a good scheme to a better. In
+the meantime life passes away and nothing is completed.' He entreated
+Bentham to return, and his entreaties were seconded by Trail, who
+pointed out various schemes of reform, especially of the poor-laws, in
+which Bentham might be useful. Wilson had mentioned already another
+inducement to publication. 'There is,' he says, on 24th September 1786,
+'a Mr. Paley, a parson and archdeacon of Carlisle, who has written a
+book called _Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy_, in quarto,
+and it has gone through two editions with prodigious applause.' He fears
+that Bentham will be charged with stealing from Paley, and exhorts him
+to come home and 'establish a great literary reputation in your own
+language, and in this country which you despise.'[255] Bentham at last
+started homewards. He travelled through Poland, Germany, and Holland,
+and reached London at the beginning of February 1788. He settled at a
+little farmhouse at Hendon, bought a 'superb harpsichord,' resumed his
+occupations, and saw a small circle of friends. Wilson urged him to
+publish his _Introduction_ without waiting to complete the vast scheme
+to which it was to be a prologue. Copies of the printed book were
+already abroad, and there was a danger of plagiarism. Thus urged,
+Bentham at last yielded, and the _Introduction to the Principles of
+Morals and Legislation_ appeared in 1789. The preface apologised for
+imperfections due to the plan of his work. The book, he explained, laid
+down the principles of all his future labours, and was to stand to him
+in the relation of a treatise upon pure mathematics to a treatise upon
+the applied sciences. He indicated ten separate departments of
+legislation, each of which would require a treatise in order to the
+complete execution of his scheme.
+
+The book gives the essence of Bentham's theories, and is the one large
+treatise published by himself. The other works were only brought to
+birth by the help of disciples. Dumont, in the discourse prefixed to the
+_Traites_, explains the reason. Bentham, he says, would suspend a whole
+work and begin a new one because a single proposition struck him as
+doubtful. A problem of finance would send him to a study of Political
+Economy in general. A question of procedure would make him pause until
+he had investigated the whole subject of judicial organisation. While at
+work, he felt only the pleasure of composition. When his materials
+required form and finish, he felt only the fatigue. Disgust succeeded to
+charm; and he could scarcely be induced to interrupt his labours upon
+fresh matter in order to give to his interpreter the explanations
+necessary for the elucidation of his previous writings. He was without
+the literary vanity or the desire for completion which may prompt to
+premature publication, but may at least prevent the absolute waste of
+what has been already achieved. His method of writing was
+characteristic. He began by forming a complete logical scheme for the
+treatment of any subject, dividing and subdividing so as to secure an
+exhaustive classification of the whole matter of discussion. Then taking
+up any subdivision, he wrote his remarks upon sheets, which were put
+aside after being marked with references indicating their place in the
+final treatise. He never turned to these again. In time he would exhaust
+the whole subject, and it would then be the duty of his disciples simply
+to put together the bricks according to the indications placed upon each
+in order to construct the whole edifice.[256] As, however, the plan
+would frequently undergo a change, and as each fragment had been written
+without reference to the others, the task of ultimate combination and
+adaptation of the ultimate atoms was often very perplexing. Bentham, as
+we shall see, formed disciples ardent enough to put together these
+scattered documents as the disciples of Mahomet put together the Koran.
+Bentham's revelation was possibly less influential than Mahomet's; but
+the logical framework was far more coherent.
+
+Bentham's mind was for the present distracted. He had naturally returned
+full of information about Russia. The English ministry were involved in
+various negotiations with Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, the purpose of
+which was to thwart the designs of Russia in the East. Bentham wrote
+three letters to the _Public Advertiser_, signed Anti-Machiavel,[257]
+protesting against the warlike policy. Bentham himself believed that the
+effect was decisive, and that the 'war was given up' in consequence of
+his arguments. Historians[258] scarcely sanction this belief, which is
+only worth notice because it led to another belief, oddly characteristic
+of Bentham. A letter signed 'Partizan' in the _Public Advertiser_
+replied to his first two letters. Who was 'Partizan'? Lord Lansdowne
+amused himself by informing Bentham that he was no less a personage than
+George III. Bentham, with even more than his usual simplicity, accepted
+this hoax as a serious statement. He derived no little comfort from the
+thought; for to the antipathy thus engendered in the 'best of kings' he
+attributed the subsequent failure of his Panopticon scheme.[259]
+
+NOTES:
+
+[214] _Works_, x. 66.
+
+[215] _Ibid._ xi. 95.
+
+[216] _Works_, x. 54.
+
+[217] _Ibid._ i. 268 _n._
+
+[218] _Works_, x. 121.
+
+[219] _Ibid._ i. 227.
+
+[220] _Ibid._ x. 79, 142. See also _Deontology_, i. 298-302, where
+Bentham speaks of discovering the phrase in Priestley's _Essay on
+Government_ in 1768. Priestley says (p. 17) that 'the good and happiness
+of the members, that is of the majority of the members, of any state is
+the great standard by which everything relating to that state must be
+finally determined.' So Le Mercier de la Riviere says, in 1767, that the
+ultimate end of society is _assurer le plus grand bonheur possible a la
+plus grande population possible_ (Daire's _Economistes_, p. 470).
+Hutcheson's _Enquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil_, 1725, see iii. Sec.
+8, says 'that action is best which secures the greatest happiness of the
+greatest number.' Beccaria, in the preface to his essay, speaks of _la
+massima felicita divisa nel maggior numero_. J. S. Mill says that he
+found the word 'Utilitarian' in Galt's _Annals of the Parish_, and gave
+the name to the society founded by him in 1822-1823 (_Autobiography_, p.
+79). The word had been used by Bentham himself in 1781, and he suggested
+it to Dumont in 1802 as the proper name of the party, instead of
+'Benthamite' (_Works_, x. 92, 390). He afterwards thought it a bad name,
+because it gave a 'vague idea' (_Works_, x. 582), and substituted
+'greatest happiness principle' for 'principle of utility' (_Works_, i.
+'Morals and Legislation').
+
+[221] A letter in the Additional MSS. 33, 537, shows that Bentham sent
+his 'Fragment' and his 'Hard Labour' pamphlet to d'Alembert in 1778,
+apparently introducing himself for the first time. Cf. _Works_, x.
+87-88, 193-94.
+
+[222] The translation of 1774. See Lowndes' _Manual_ under Voltaire,
+_Works_, x. 83 _n._
+
+[223] _Review of the Acts of the Thirteenth Parliament, etc._ (1775).
+
+[224] _Works_, x. 57, 63.
+
+[225] _Works_, x. 133-35.
+
+[226] _Ibid._ x. 84.
+
+[227] _Ibid._ x. 77.
+
+[228] _Works_, x. 82.
+
+[229] _Works_, x. 77-82. Blackstone took no notice of the work, except
+by some allusions in the preface to his next edition. Bentham criticised
+Blackstone respectfully in the pamphlet upon the Hard Labour Bill
+(1778). Blackstone sent a courteous but 'frigidly cautious' reply to the
+author.--_Works_, i. 255.
+
+[230] _Works_, x. 115-17, 186
+
+[231] _Ibid._ x. 100.
+
+[232] _Ibid._ x. 122.
+
+[233] _Ibid._ x. 118; i. 253.
+
+[234] _Works_, x. 97; i. 252.
+
+[235] _Ibid._ x. 219, 265.
+
+[236] _Works_, x. 118, 419, 558.
+
+[237] _Ibid._ i. 253.
+
+[238] _Ibid._ x. 116, 182.
+
+[239] _Ibid._ x. 228-42.
+
+[240] _Ibid._ x. 186.
+
+[241] _Works_, v. 370.
+
+[242] _Souvenirs sur Mirabeau_ (preface).
+
+[243] _Works_, x. 185.
+
+[244] _Works_, x. 185. Colls (p. 41) tells the same story.
+
+[245] _Works_ ('Fragment, etc.'), i. 245, and _Ibid._ ii. 463 _n._
+
+[246] _Ibid._ i. 246, 250, 251.
+
+[247] _Ibid._ i. 252.
+
+[248] _Ibid._ x. 185.
+
+[249] Bentham says (_Works_, i. 240) that he was a member of a club of
+which Johnson was the despot. The only club possible seems to be the
+Essex Street Club, of which Daines Barrington was a member. If so, it
+was in 1783, though Bentham seems to imply an earlier date.
+
+[250] _Works_, x. 77.
+
+[251] _Ibid._ x. 147.
+
+[252] _Works_, x. 176.
+
+[253] Reid's _Works_ (Hamilton), p. 73.
+
+[254] _Works_, x. 171.
+
+[255] _Works_, x. 163-64. Cf. _Ibid._ x. 195, where Wilson is often
+'tempted to think'--erroneously, of course--that Paley must have known
+something of Bentham's work. Paley's chief source was Abraham Tucker.
+
+[256] See J. H. Burton in _Works_, i. 11.
+
+[257] Given in _Works_, x. 201-12.
+
+[258] See Lecky's _Eighteenth Century_, x. 210-97, for an account of
+these transactions.
+
+[259] Bowring tells this gravely, and declares that George III. also
+wrote letters to the _Gazette de Leyde_. George III. certainly
+contributed some letters to Arthur Young's _Annals of Agriculture_, and
+is one of the suggested authors of Junius.
+
+
+III. THE PANOPTICON
+
+The crash of the French revolution was now to change the whole course of
+European politics, and to bring philosophical jurists face to face with
+a long series of profoundly important problems. Bentham's attitude
+during the early stages of the revolution and the first war period is
+significant, and may help to elucidate some characteristics of the
+Utilitarian movement. Revolutions are the work of passion: the product
+of a social and political condition in which the masses are permeated
+with discontent, because the social organs have ceased to discharge
+their functions. They are not ascribable to the purely intellectual
+movement alone, though it is no doubt an essential factor. The
+revolution came in any case because the social order was out of joint,
+not simply because Voltaire or Rousseau or Diderot had preached
+destructive doctrines. The doctrines of the 'rights of man' are obvious
+enough to have presented themselves to many minds at many periods. The
+doctrines became destructive because the old traditions were shaken, and
+the traditions were shaken because the state of things to which they
+corresponded had become intolerable. The French revolution meant (among
+other things) that in the mind of the French peasant there had
+accumulated a vast deposit of bitter enmity against the noble who had
+become a mere parasite upon the labouring population, retaining, as
+Arthur Young said, privileges for himself, and leaving poverty to the
+lower classes. The peasant had not read Rousseau; he had read nothing.
+But when his discontent began to affect the educated classes, men who
+had read Rousseau found in his works the dialect most fitted to express
+the growing indignation. Rousseau's genius had devised the appropriate
+formula; for Rousseau's sensibility had made him prescient of the rising
+storm. What might be a mere commonplace for speculative students
+suddenly became the warcry in a social upheaval. In England, as I have
+tried to show, there was no such popular sentiment behind the political
+theories: and reformers were content with measures which required no
+appeal to absolute rights and general principles. Bentham was no
+Rousseau; and the last of men to raise a warcry. Passion and
+sentimentalism were to him a nuisance. His theories were neither
+suggested nor modified by the revolution. He looked on with curious
+calmness, as though the revolutionary disturbances were rather a
+transitory interruption to the progress of reform than indicative of a
+general convulsion. His own position was isolated. He had no strong
+reforming party behind him. The Whigs, his main friends, were powerless,
+discredited, and themselves really afraid to support any vigorous
+policy. They had in the main to content themselves with criticising the
+warlike policy which, for the time, represented the main current of
+national sentiment. Bentham shared many of their sympathies. He hated
+the abstract 'rights of man' theory as heartily as Burke. It was to him
+a 'hodge-podge' of fallacies. On the other hand, he was absolutely
+indifferent to the apotheosis of the British Constitution constructed by
+Burke's imagination. He cared nothing for history in general, or
+regarded it, from a Voltairean point of view, as a record of the follies
+and crimes of mankind. He wished to deal with political, and especially
+with legal, questions in a scientific spirit--but 'scientific' would
+mean not pure mathematics but pure empiricism. He was quite as far from
+Paine's abstract methods as from Burke's romantic methods. Both of
+them, according to him, were sophists: though one might prefer logical
+and the other sentimental sophistries. Dumont, when he published (1802)
+his versions of Bentham, insisted upon this point. Nothing, he says, was
+more opposed to the trenchant dogmatism of the abstract theorists about
+'rights of man' and 'equality' than Bentham's thoroughly scientific
+procedure (_Discours Preliminaire_). Bentham's intellectual position in
+this respect will require further consideration hereafter. All his
+prejudices and sympathies were those of the middle class from which he
+sprang. He was no democrat: he had no particular objection to the
+nobility, though he preferred Shelburne to the king's friends or to the
+Whig aristocracy. The reforms which he advocated were such as might be
+adopted by any enlightened legislator, not only by Shelburne but even by
+Blackstone. He had only, he thought, to convert a few members of
+parliament to gain the acceptance for a rational criminal code. It had
+hardly even occurred to him that there was anything wrong in the general
+political order, though he was beginning to find out that it was not so
+modifiable as he could have wished by the new ideas which he propounded.
+
+Bentham's activity during the first revolutionary war corresponded to
+this position. The revolution, whatever else it might do, obviously gave
+a chance to amateur legislators. There was any amount of work to be done
+in the way of codifying and reforming legislative systems. The deviser
+of Utopias had such an opening as had never occurred in the world's
+history. Lord Lansdowne, on the 3rd January 1789, expresses his pleasure
+at hearing that Bentham intends to 'take up the cause of the people in
+France.'[260] Bentham, as we have seen, was already known to some of the
+French leaders, and he was now taking time by the forelock. He sent to
+the abbe Morellet a part of his treatise on Political Tactics, hoping to
+have it finished by the time of the meeting of the States General.[261]
+This treatise, civilly accepted by Morellet, and approved with some
+qualifications by Bentham's counsellors, Romilly, Wilson, and Trail, was
+an elaborate account of the organisation and procedure of a legislative
+assembly, founded chiefly on the practice of the House of Commons. It
+was published in 1816 by Dumont in company with _Anarchic Fallacies_, a
+vigorous exposure of the _Declaration of Rights_, which Bentham had
+judiciously kept on his shelf. Had the French known of it, he remarks
+afterwards, they would have been little disposed to welcome him.[262] An
+elaborate scheme for the organisation of the French judiciary was
+suggested by a report to the National Assembly, and published in March
+1790. In 1791, Bentham offered to go to France himself in order to
+establish a prison on his new scheme (to be mentioned directly), and
+become 'gratuitously the gaoler thereof.'[263] The Assembly acknowledged
+his 'ardent love of humanity,' and ordered an extract from his scheme to
+be printed for their instruction. The tactics actually adopted by the
+French revolutionists for managing assemblies and their methods of
+executing justice form a queer commentary on the philosopher who, like
+Voltaire's Mamres in the _White Bull_, continued to 'meditate
+profoundly' in placid disregard of facts. He was in fact proposing that
+the lava boiling up in a volcanic eruption should arrange itself
+entirely according to his architectural designs. But his proposal to
+become a gaoler during the revolution reaches the pathetic by its
+amiable innocence. On 26th August 1792, Bentham was one of the men upon
+whom the expiring Assembly, anxious to show its desire of universal
+fraternity, conferred the title of citizen. With Bentham were joined
+Priestley, Paine, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Washington, and others. The
+September massacres followed. On 18th October the honour was
+communicated to Bentham. He replied in a polite letter, pointing out
+that he was a royalist in London for the same reason which would make
+him a republican in France. He ended by a calm argument against the
+proscription of refugees.[264] The Convention, if it read the letter,
+and had any sense of humour, must have been amused. The war and the
+Reign of Terror followed. Bentham turned the occasion to account by
+writing a pamphlet (not then published) exhorting the French to
+'emancipate their colonies.' Colonies were an aimless burthen, and to
+get rid of them would do more than conquest to relieve their finances.
+British fleets and the insurrection of St. Domingo were emancipating by
+very different methods.
+
+Bentham was, of course, disgusted by the divergence of his clients from
+the lines chalked out by proper respect for law and order. On 31st
+October 1793 he writes to a friend, expressing his wish that Jacobinism
+could be extirpated; no price could be too heavy to pay for such a
+result: but he doubts whether war or peace would be the best means to
+the end, and protests against the policy of appropriating useless and
+expensive colonies instead of 'driving at the heart of the
+monster.'[265] Never was an adviser more at cross-purposes with the
+advised. It would be impossible to draw a more striking portrait of the
+abstract reasoner, whose calculations as to human motives omit all
+reference to passion, and who fancied that all prejudice can be
+dispelled by a few bits of logic.
+
+Meanwhile a variety of suggestions more or less important and connected
+with passing events were seething in his fertile brain. He wrote one of
+his most stinging pamphlets, '_Truth versus Ashhurst_' in December 1792,
+directed against a judge who, in the panic suggested by the September
+massacres, had eulogised the English laws. Bentham's aversion to Jacobin
+measures by no means softened his antipathy to English superstitions;
+and his attack was so sharp that Romilly advised and obtained its
+suppression for the time. Projects as to war-taxes suggested a couple of
+interesting pamphlets written in 1793, and published in 1795. In
+connection with this, schemes suggested themselves to him for improved
+systems of patents, for limited liability companies and other
+plans.[266] His great work still occupied him at intervals. In 1793 he
+offers to Dundas to employ himself in drafting Statutes, and remarks
+incidentally that he could legislate for Hindostan, should legislation
+be wanted there, as easily as for his own parish.[267] In 1794, Dumont
+is begging him to 'conquer his repugnance' to bestowing a few hints upon
+his interpreter.[268] In 1796, Bentham writes long letters suggesting
+that he should be sent to France with Wilberforce, in order to
+re-establish friendly relations.[269] In 1798 he is corresponding at
+great length with Patrick Colquhoun upon plans for improving the
+Metropolitan police.[270] In 1801 he says[271] that for two years and a
+half 'he has thought of scarce anything else' than a plan for
+interest-bearing notes, which he carefully elaborated and discussed with
+Nicholas Vansittart and Dr. Beeke. In September 1800, however, he had
+found time to occupy himself with a proposed _frigidarium_ or ice-house
+for the preservation of fish, fruits, and vegetables; and invited Dr.
+Roget, a nephew of Romilly, to come to his house and carry out the
+necessary experiments.[272] In January 1802 he writes to Dumont[273]
+proposing to send him a trifling specimen of the Panopticon, a set of
+hollow fire-irons invented by his brother, which may attract the
+attention of Buonaparte and Talleyrand. He proceeds to expound the
+merits of Samuel's invention for making wheels by machinery. Dumont
+replies, that fire-irons are 'superfluities'--(fire-arms might have been
+more to Buonaparte's taste)--and that the Panopticon itself was coldly
+received.
+
+This Panopticon was to be Bentham's masterpiece. It occupied his chief
+attention from his return to England until the peace of Amiens. His
+brother had returned from Russia in 1791. Their father died 28th March
+1792, dividing his property equally between his sons. Jeremy's share
+consisted of the estate at Queen's Square Place, Westminster, and of
+landed property producing L500 or L600 a year. The father, spite of the
+distance between them, had treated his son with substantial kindness,
+and had learned to take a pride in achievements very unlike those which
+he had at first desired.[274] Bentham's position, however, was improved
+by the father's death. The Westminster estate included the house in
+which he lived for the rest of his life. There was a garden in which he
+took great delight, though London smoke gradually destroyed the plants:
+and in the garden was the small house where Milton had once lived.[275]
+Here, with the co-operation of his brother and his increased income, he
+had all the means necessary for launching his grand scheme.
+
+The Panopticon, as defined by its inventor to Brissot, was a 'mill for
+grinding rogues honest, and idle men industrious.'[276] It was suggested
+by a plan designed by his brother in Russia for a large house to be
+occupied by workmen, and to be so arranged that they could be under
+constant inspection. Bentham was working on the old lines of
+philanthropic reform. He had long been interested in the schemes of
+prison reform, to which Howard's labours had given the impetus.
+Blackstone, with the help of William Eden, afterwards Lord Auckland, had
+prepared the 'Hard Labour Bill,' which Bentham had carefully criticised
+in 1778. The measure was passed in 1779, and provided for the management
+of convicts, who were becoming troublesome, as transportation to America
+had ceased to be possible. Howard, whose relation to Bentham I have
+already noticed, was appointed as one of the commissioners to carry out
+the provisions of the Act. The commissioners disagreed; Howard resigned;
+and though at last an architect (William Blackburn) was appointed who
+possessed Howard's confidence, and who constructed various prisons in
+the country, the scheme was allowed to drop. Bentham now hoped to solve
+the problem with his Panopticon. He printed an account of it in 1791. He
+wrote to his old antagonist, George III., describing it, together with
+another invention of Samuel's for enabling armies to cross rivers, which
+might be more to his Majesty's taste.[277] In March 1792 he made a
+proposal to the government offering to undertake the charge of a
+thousand convicts upon the Panopticon system.[278] After delays
+suspicious in the eyes of Bentham, but hardly surprising at such a
+period, an act of parliament was obtained in 1794 to adopt his schemes.
+Bentham had already been making preparations. He says[279] (14th
+September 1794) that he has already spent L6000, and is spending at the
+rate of L2000 a year, while his income was under L600 a year. He
+obtained, however, L2000 from the government. He had made models and
+architectural plans, in which he was helped by Reveley, already known to
+him at Constantinople. This sum, it appears, was required in order to
+keep together the men whom he employed. The nature of their employment
+is remarkable.[280] Samuel, a man of singular mechanical skill, which
+was of great use to the navy during the war, had devised machinery for
+work in wood and metal. Bentham had joined his brother, and they were
+looking out for a steam-engine. It had now occurred to them to employ
+convicts instead of steam, and thus to combine philanthropy with
+business. Difficulties of the usual kind arose as to the procurement of
+a suitable site. The site secured under the provisions of the 'Hard
+Labour Bill' was for some reason rejected; and Bentham was almost in
+despair. It was not until 1799 that he at last acquired for L12,000 an
+estate at Millbank, which seemed to be suitable. Meanwhile Bentham had
+found another application for his principle. The growth of pauperism was
+alarming statesmen. Whitbread proposed in February 1796 to fix a minimum
+rate of wages. The wisest thing that government could do, he said, was
+to 'offer a liberal premium for the encouragement of large families.'
+Pitt proceeded to prepare the abortive Poor-law Bill,[281] upon which
+Bentham (in February 1797) sent in some very shrewd criticisms. They
+were not published, but are said to have 'powerfully contributed to the
+abandonment of the measure.'[282] They show Bentham's power of incisive
+criticism, though they scarcely deal with the general principle. In the
+following autumn Bentham contributed to Arthur Young's _Annals of
+Agriculture_ upon the same topic. It had struck him that an application
+of his Panopticon would give the required panacea. He worked out details
+with his usual zeal, and the scheme attracted notice among the
+philanthropists of the time. It was to be a 'succedaneum' to Pitt's
+proposal. Meanwhile the finance committee, appointed in 1797, heard
+evidence from Bentham's friend, Patrick Colquhoun, upon the Panopticon,
+and a report recommending it was proposed by R. Pole Carew, a friend of
+Samuel Bentham. Although this report was suppressed, the scheme
+apparently received an impetus. The Millbank estate was bought in
+consequence of these proceedings, and a sum of only L1000 was wanted to
+buy out the tenant of one piece of land. Bentham was constantly in
+attendance at a public office, expecting a final warrant for the money.
+It never came, and, as Bentham believed, the delay was due to the malice
+of George III. Had any other king been on the throne, Panopticon in both
+'the prisoner branch and the pauper branch' would have been set at
+work.[283] Such are the consequences of newspaper controversies with
+monarchs! After this, in any case, the poor Panopticon, as the old
+lawyers said, 'languishing did live,' and at last 'languishing did die.'
+Poor Bentham seems to have struggled vainly for a time. He appealed to
+Pitt's friend, Wilberforce; he appealed to his step-brother Abbot; he
+wrote to members of parliament, but all was in vain.
+
+Romilly induced him in 1802 to suppress a statement of his grievances
+which could only have rendered ministers implacable.[284] But he found
+out what would hardly have been a discovery to most people, that
+officials can be dilatory and evasive; and certain discoveries about the
+treatment of convicts in New South Wales convinced him that they could
+even defy the laws and the Constitution when they were beyond
+inspection. He published (1803) a _Plea for the Constitution_, showing
+the enormities committed in the colony, 'in breach of Magna Charta, the
+Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act, and the Bill of Rights.'
+Romilly in vain told him that the attorney-general could not recommend
+the author of such an effusion to be keeper of a Panopticon.[285] The
+actual end did not come till 1811. A committee then reported against the
+scheme. They noticed one essential and very characteristic weakness. The
+whole system turned upon the profit to be made from the criminals'
+labour by Bentham and his brother. The committee observed that, however
+unimpeachable might be the characters of the founders, the scheme might
+lead to abuses in the hands of their successors. The adoption of this
+principle of 'farming' had in fact led to gross abuses both in gaols and
+in workhouses; but it was, as I have said, in harmony with the whole
+'individualist' theory. The committee recommended a different plan; and
+the result was the foundation of Millbank penitentiary, opened in
+1816.[286] Bentham ultimately received L23,000 by way of compensation in
+1813.[287] The objections of the committee would now be a commonplace,
+but Bentham saw in them another proof of the desire to increase
+government patronage. He was well out of the plan. There were probably
+few men in England less capable of managing a thousand convicts, in
+spite of his theories about 'springs of action.' If anything else had
+been required to ensure failure, it would have been association with a
+sanguine inventor of brilliant abilities.
+
+Bentham's agitation had not been altogether fruitless. His plan had been
+partly adopted at Edinburgh by one of the Adams,[288] and his work
+formed an important stage in the development of the penal system.
+
+Bentham, though he could not see that his failure was a blessing in
+disguise, had learned one lesson worth learning. He was ill-treated,
+according to impartial observers. 'Never,' says Wilberforce,[289] 'was
+any one worse used. I have seen the tears run down the cheeks of that
+strong-minded man through vexation at the pressing importunity of his
+creditors, and the indolence of official underlings when day after day
+he was begging at the Treasury for what was indeed a mere matter of
+right.' Wilberforce adds that Bentham was 'quite soured,' and attributes
+his later opinions to this cause. When the _Quarterly Review_ long
+afterwards taunted him as a disappointed man, Bentham declared himself
+to be in 'a state of perpetual and unruffled gaiety,' and the
+'mainspring' of the gaiety of his own circle.[290] No one, indeed, could
+be less 'soured' so far as his habitual temper was concerned. But
+Wilberforce's remark contained a serious truth. Bentham had made a
+discovery. He had vowed war in his youth against the 'demon of chicane.'
+He had now learned that the name of the demon was 'Legion.' To cast him
+out, it would be necessary to cast out the demon of officialism; and we
+shall see what this bit of knowledge presently implied.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[260] _Works_, x. 195.
+
+[261] _Ibid._ x. 198-99.
+
+[262] _Ibid._ x. 317.
+
+[263] _Ibid._ x. 270.
+
+[264] _Works_, x. 282.
+
+[265] _Works_, x. 296.
+
+[266] _Ibid._ x. 304.
+
+[267] _Ibid._ x. 292.
+
+[268] _Ibid._ x. 300.
+
+[269] _Works_, x. 315.
+
+[270] _Ibid._ x. 329.
+
+[271] _Ibid._ x. 366.
+
+[272] _Ibid._ x. 346.
+
+[273] _Ibid._ x. 381.
+
+[274] See his letter to Lansdowne, sending a portrait to
+Jeremy.--_Works_, x. 224.
+
+[275] _Works_, xi. 81.
+
+[276] _Ibid._ x. 226.
+
+[277] _Works_, x. 260. It is doubtful whether the letter was sent.
+
+[278] The Panopticon story is confusedly told in Bowring's life. The
+_Panopticon Correspondence_, in the eleventh volume, gives fragments
+from a 'history of the war between Jeremy Bentham and George III.,'
+written by Bentham in 1830-31, and selections from a voluminous
+correspondence.
+
+[279] _Works_, x. 301.
+
+[280] _Ibid._ xi. 167.
+
+[281] The plan, according to Bentham (_Works_, xi. 102), was suggested
+by Ruggles, author of the work upon the poor-laws, first printed in
+Young's _Annals_.
+
+[282] _Works_, viii. 440.
+
+[283] _Works_, xi. 102-3.
+
+[284] _Ibid._ x. 400.
+
+[285] _Works_, xi. 144.
+
+[286] For its later history see _Memorials of Millbank_, by Arthur
+Griffiths. 2 vols., 1875.
+
+[287] _Works_, xi. 106.
+
+[288] _Ibid._ x. 294.
+
+[289] Wilberforce's _Life_, ii. 71.
+
+[290] _Works_, x. 541.
+
+
+IV. THE UTILITARIAN PROPAGANDA
+
+Bentham in 1802 had reached the respectable age of fifty-four. He had
+published his first work twenty-six years, and his most elaborate
+treatise thirteen years, previously. He had been brought into contact
+with many of the eminent politicians and philanthropists of the day.
+Lansdowne had been a friendly patron: his advice had been treated with
+respect by Pitt, Dundas, and even by Blackstone; he was on friendly
+terms with Colquhoun, Sir F. Eden, Arthur Young, Wilberforce, and others
+interested in philanthropic movements, and his name at least was known
+to some French politicians. But his reputation was still obscure; and
+his connections did not develop into intimacies. He lived as a recluse
+and avoided society. His introduction to great people at Bowood had
+apparently rather increased than softened his shyness. The little circle
+of intimates, Romilly and Wilson and his own brother, must have
+satisfied his needs for social intercourse. It required an elaborate
+negotiation to bring about a meeting between him and Dr. Parr, the great
+Whig prophet, although they had been previously acquainted, and Parr
+was, as Romilly said by way of introduction, a profound admirer and
+universal panegyrist.[291] He refused to be introduced by Parr to Fox,
+because he had 'nothing particular to say' to the statesman, and
+considered that to be 'always a sufficient reason for declining
+acquaintance.'[292]
+
+But, at last, Bentham's fame was to take a start. Bentham, I said, had
+long before found himself. Dumont had now found Bentham. After long and
+tedious labours and multiplied communications between the master and the
+disciple, Dumont in the spring of 1802 brought out his _Traites de
+Legislation de M. Jeremie Bentham_. The book was partly a translation
+from Bentham's published and unpublished works,[293] and partly a
+statement of the pith of the new doctrine in Dumont's own language. It
+had the great merit of putting Bentham's meaning vigorously and
+compactly, and free from many of the digressions, minute discussions of
+minor points and arguments requiring a special knowledge of English law,
+which had impeded the popularity of Bentham's previous works.
+
+The Jacobin controversies were passing into the background: and Bentham
+began to attain a hearing as a reformer upon different lines. In 1803
+Dumont visited St. Petersburg, and sent home glowing reports of
+Bentham's rising fame. As many copies of the _Traites_ had been sold
+there as in London. Codes were wanted; laws were being digested; and
+Bentham's work would supply the principles and the classification. A
+magnificent translation was ordered, and Russian officials wrote glowing
+letters in which Bentham was placed in a line with Bacon, Newton, and
+Adam Smith--each the founder of a new science.[294] At home the new book
+was one of the objects of what Dumont calls the 'scandalous irreverence'
+of the _Edinburgh Review_.[295] This refers to a review of the _Traites_
+in the _Edinburgh Review_ of April 1804. Although patronising in tone,
+and ridiculing some of Bentham's doctrines as commonplace and condemning
+others as criminal, it paid some high compliments to his ability. The
+irreverence meant at least that Bentham had become one of the persons
+worth talking about, and that he was henceforth to influence the rising
+generation. In January 1807 the _Edinburgh_ itself (probably Jeffrey)
+suggested that Bentham should be employed in a proposed reform of the
+Scottish judicial system. His old friend, Lansdowne, died on 7th May
+1805, and in one of his last letters expresses a hope that Bentham's
+principles are at last beginning to spread.[296] The hope was
+fulfilled.
+
+During the eighteenth century Benthamism had gone through its period of
+incubation. It was now to become an active agency, to gather proselytes,
+and to have a marked influence not only upon legislative but upon
+political movements. The immediate effect upon Bentham of the decline of
+the Panopticon, and his consequent emancipation from immediately
+practical work, was apparently his return to his more legitimate
+employment of speculative labour. He sent to Dumont at St.
+Petersburg[297] part of the treatise upon Political Economy, which had
+been naturally suggested by his later work: and he applied himself to
+the Scottish judiciary question, to which many of his speculations had a
+close application. He published a work upon this subject in 1808. To the
+period between 1802 and 1812 belongs also the book, or rather the
+collection of papers, afterwards transformed into the book, upon
+Evidence, which is one of his most valuable performances.
+
+A letter, dated 1st November 1810, gives a characteristic account of his
+position. He refers to hopes of the acceptance of some of his principles
+in South America. In Spain Spaniards are prepared to receive his laws
+'as oracles.' 'Now at length, when I am just ready to drop into the
+grave' (he had still twenty years of energetic work before him), 'my
+fame has spread itself all over the civilised world.' Dumont's
+publication of 1802 is considered to have superseded all previous
+writings on legislation. In Germany and France codes have been prepared
+by authorised lawyers, who have 'sought to do themselves credit by
+references to that work.'[298] It has been translated into Russian. Even
+in England he is often mentioned in books and in parliament. 'Meantime I
+am here scribbling on in my hermitage, never seeing anybody but for some
+special reason, always bearing relation to the service of mankind.'[299]
+Making all due allowance for the deceptive views of the outer world
+which haunt every 'hermitage,' it remains true that Bentham's fame was
+emerging from obscurity.
+
+The end of this period, moreover, was bringing him into closer contact
+with English political life. Bentham, as we have seen, rejected the
+whole Jacobin doctrine of abstract rights. So long as English politics
+meant either the acceptance of a theory which, for whatever reason,
+gathered round it no solid body of support, or, on the other hand, the
+acceptance of an obstructive and purely conservative principle, to which
+all reform was radically opposed, Bentham was necessarily in an isolated
+position. He had 'nothing particular to say' to Fox. He was neither a
+Tory nor a Jacobin, and cared little for the paralysed Whigs. He allied
+himself therefore, so far as he was allied with any one, with the
+philanthropic agitators who stood, like him, outside the lines of party.
+The improvement of prisons was not a party question. A marked
+change--not always, I think, sufficiently emphasised by historians--had
+followed the second war. The party-divisions began to take the form
+which was to become more marked as time went on. The old issues between
+Jacobin and Anti-Jacobin no longer existed. Napoleon had become the heir
+of the revolution. The great struggle was beginning in which England
+commanded the ocean, while the Continent was at the feet of the empire.
+For a time the question was whether England, too, should be invaded.
+After Trafalgar invasion became hopeless. The Napoleonic victories
+threatened to exclude English trade from the Continent: while England
+retorted by declaring that the Continent should trade with nobody else.
+Upon one side the war was now appealing to higher feelings. It was no
+longer a crusade against theories, but a struggle for national existence
+and for the existence of other nations threatened by a gigantic
+despotism. Men like Wordsworth and Coleridge, who could not be
+Anti-Jacobins, had been first shocked by the Jacobin treatment of
+Switzerland, and now threw themselves enthusiastically into the cause
+which meant the rescue of Spain and Germany from foreign oppression. The
+generous feeling which had resented the attempt to forbid Frenchmen to
+break their own bonds, now resented the attempts of Frenchmen to impose
+bonds upon others. The patriotism which prompted to a crusade had seemed
+unworthy, but the patriotism which was now allied with the patriotism of
+Spain and Germany involved no sacrifice of other sentiment. Many men had
+sympathised with the early revolution, not so much from any strong
+sentiment of evils at home as from a belief that the French movement was
+but a fuller development of the very principles which were partially
+embodied in the British Constitution. They had no longer to choose
+between sympathising with the enemies of England and sympathising with
+the suppressors of the old English liberties.
+
+But, on the other hand, an opposite change took place. The
+disappearance of the Jacobin movement allowed the Radicalism of home
+growth to display itself more fully. English Whigs of all shades had
+opposed the war with certain misgivings. They had been nervously anxious
+not to identify themselves with the sentiments of the Jacobins. They
+desired peace with the French, but had to protest that it was not for
+love of French principles. That difficulty was removed. There was no
+longer a vision--such as Gillray had embodied in his caricatures--of a
+guillotine in St. James's Street: or of a Committee of Public Safety
+formed by Fox, Paine, and Horne Tooke. Meanwhile Whig prophecies of the
+failure of the war were not disproved by its results. Though the English
+navy had been victorious, English interference on the Continent had been
+futile. Millions of money had been wasted: and millions were flowing
+freely. Even now we stand astonished at the reckless profusion of the
+financiers of the time. And what was there to show for it? The French
+empire, so far from being destroyed, had been consolidated. If we
+escaped for the time, could we permanently resist the whole power of
+Europe? When the Peninsular War began we had been fighting, except for
+the short truce of Amiens, for sixteen years; and there seemed no reason
+to believe that the expedition to Portugal in 1808 would succeed better
+than previous efforts. The Walcheren expedition of 1809 was a fresh
+proof of our capacity for blundering. Pauperism was still increasing
+rapidly, and forebodings of a war with America beginning to trouble men
+interested in commerce. The English Opposition had ample texts for
+discourses; and a demand for change began to spring up which was no
+longer a reflection of foreign sympathies. An article in the _Edinburgh_
+of January 1808, which professed to demonstrate the hopelessness of the
+Peninsular War, roused the wrath of the Tories. The _Quarterly Review_
+was started by Canning and Scott, and the _Edinburgh_, in return, took a
+more decidedly Whig colour. The Radicals now showed themselves behind
+the Whigs. Cobbett, who had been the most vigorous of John Bull
+Anti-Jacobins, was driven by his hatred of the tax-gatherer and the
+misery of the agricultural labourers into the opposite camp, and his
+_Register_ became the most effective organ of Radicalism. Demands for
+reform began again to make themselves heard in parliament. Sir Francis
+Burdett, who had sat at the feet of Horne Tooke, and whose return with
+Cochrane for Westminster in 1807 was the first parliamentary triumph of
+the reformers, proposed a motion on 15th June 1809, which was, of
+course, rejected, but which was the first of a series, and marked the
+revival of a serious agitation not to cease till the triumph of 1832.
+
+Meanwhile Bentham, meditating profoundly upon the Panopticon, had at
+last found out that he had begun at the wrong end. His reasoning had
+been thrown away upon the huge dead weight of official indifference, or
+worse than indifference. Why did they not accept the means for producing
+the greatest happiness of the greatest number? Because statesmen did not
+desire the end. And why not? To answer that question, and to show how a
+government could be constructed which should desire it, became a main
+occupation of Bentham's life. Henceforward, therefore, instead of merely
+treating of penal codes and other special reforms, his attention is
+directed to the previous question of political organisation; while at
+times he diverges to illustrate incidentally the abuses of what he
+ironically calls the 'matchless constitution.' Bentham's principal
+occupation, in a word, was to provide political philosophy for radical
+reformers.[300]
+
+Bentham remained as much a recluse as ever. He seldom left Queen's
+Square Place except for certain summer outings. In 1807 he took a house
+at Barrow Green, near Oxted, in Surrey, lying in a picturesque hollow at
+the foot of the chalk hills.[301] It was an old-fashioned house,
+standing in what had been a park, with a lake and a comfortable kitchen
+garden. Bentham pottered about in the grounds and under the old
+chestnut-trees, codifying, gardening, and talking to occasional
+disciples. He returned thither in following years; but in 1814, probably
+in consequence of his compensation for the Panopticon, took a larger
+place, Ford Abbey, near Chard in Somersetshire. It was a superb
+residence,[302] with chapel, cloisters, and corridors, a hall eighty
+feet long by thirty high, and a great dining parlour. Parts of the
+building dated from the twelfth century or the time of the Commonwealth,
+or had undergone alterations attributed to Inigo Jones. No Squire
+Western could have cared less for antiquarian associations, but Bentham
+made a very fair monk. The place, for which he paid L315 a year, was
+congenial. He rode his favourite hobby of gardening, and took his
+regular 'ante-jentacular' and 'post-prandial' walks, and played
+battledore and shuttlecock in the intervals of codification. He liked it
+so well that he would have taken it for life, but for the loss of L8000
+or L10,000 in a Devonshire marble-quarry.[303] In 1818 he gave it up,
+and thenceforward rarely quitted Queen's Square Place. His life was
+varied by few incidents, although his influence upon public affairs was
+for the first time becoming important. The busier journalists and
+platform orators did not trouble themselves much about philosophy. But
+they were in communication with men of a higher stamp, Romilly, James
+Mill, and others, who formed Bentham's innermost council. Thus the
+movements in the outside world set up an agitation in Bentham's study;
+and the recluse was prompted to set himself to work upon elaborating his
+own theories in various directions, in order to supply the necessary
+substratum of philosophical doctrine. If he had not the power of gaining
+the public ear, his oracles were transmitted through the disciples who
+also converted some of his raw materials into coherent books.
+
+The most important of Bentham's disciples for many years was James Mill,
+and I shall have to say what more is necessary in regard to the active
+agitation when I speak of Mill himself. For the present, it is enough to
+say that Mill first became Bentham's proselyte about 1808. Mill stayed
+with Bentham at Barrow Green and at Ford Abbey. Though some differences
+caused superficial disturbances of their harmony, no prophet could have
+had a more zealous, uncompromising, and vigorous disciple. Mill's force
+of character qualified him to become the leader of the school; but his
+doctrine was always essentially the doctrine of Bentham, and for the
+present he was content to be the transmitter of his master's message to
+mankind. He was at this period a contributor to the _Edinburgh Review_;
+and in October 1809 he inserted some praises of Bentham in a review of a
+book upon legislation by S. Scipion Bexon. The article was cruelly
+mangled by Jeffrey, according to his custom, and Jeffrey's most powerful
+vassal, Brougham, thought that the praises which remained were
+excessive.[304]
+
+Obviously the orthodox Whigs were not prepared to swear allegiance to
+Bentham. He was drawing into closer connection with the Radicals. In
+1809 Cobbett was denouncing the duke of York in consequence of the Mrs.
+Clarke scandal. Bentham wrote to him, but anonymously and cautiously, to
+obtain documents in regard to a previous libel case,[305] and proceeded
+to write a pamphlet on the _Elements of the Art of Packing (as applied
+to Special Juries)_, so sharp that his faithful adviser, Romilly,
+procured its suppression for the time.[306] Copies, however, were
+printed and privately given to a few who could be trusted. Bentham next
+wrote (1809) a 'Catechism of Parliamentary Reform,' which he
+communicated to Cobbett (16th November 1810), with a request for its
+publication in the _Register_.[307] Cobbett was at this time in prison
+for his attack upon flogging militia men; and, though still more hostile
+to government, was bound to be more cautious in his line of assault. The
+plan was not published, whether because too daring or too dull; but it
+was apparently printed. Bentham's opinion of Cobbett was anything but
+flattering. Cobbett, he thought in 1812, was a 'vile rascal,' and was
+afterwards pronounced to be 'filled with the _odium humani generis_--his
+malevolence and lying beyond everything.'[308] Cobbett's radicalism, in
+fact, was of the type most hostile to the Utilitarians. John Hunt, in
+the _Examiner_, was 'trumpeting' Bentham and Romilly in 1812, and was
+praised accordingly.[309] Bentham formed an alliance with another
+leading Radical. He had made acquaintance by 1811 with Sir F. Burdett,
+to whom he then appealed for help in an attack upon the delays of
+Chancery.[310] Burdett, indeed, appeared to him to be far inferior to
+Romilly and Brougham, but he thought that so powerful a 'hero of the
+mob' ought to be turned to account in the good cause.[311] Burdett seems
+to have courted the old philosopher; and a few years later a closer
+alliance was brought about. The peace of 1815 was succeeded by a period
+of distress, the more acutely felt from the disappointment of natural
+hopes of prosperity; and a period of agitation, met by harsh repression,
+followed. Applications were made, to Bentham for permission to use his
+'Catechism,' which was ultimately published (1818) in a cheap form by
+Wooler, well known as the editor of the democratic _Black Dwarf_.[312]
+Burdett applied for a plan of parliamentary reform. Henry Bickersteth
+(1783-1851), afterwards Lord Langdale and Master of the Rolls, at this
+time a rising barrister of high character, wrote an appeal to Bentham
+and Burdett to combine in setting forth a scheme which, with such
+authority, must command general acceptance. The result was a series of
+resolutions moved by Burdett in the House of Commons on 2nd June
+1818,[313] demanding universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and vote by
+ballot. Bentham had thus accepted the conclusions reached in a different
+way by the believers in that 'hodge-podge' of absurdities, the
+declaration of the rights of man. Curiously enough, his assault upon
+that document appeared in Dumont's French version in the year 1816, at
+the very time when he was accepting its practical conclusions.
+
+The schemes in which Mill was interested at this time drew Bentham's
+attention in other directions. In 1813 the Quaker, William Allen, who
+had been a close ally of Mill, induced Bentham to invest money in the
+New Lanark establishment. Owen, whose benevolent schemes had been
+hampered by his partners, bought them out, the new capital being partly
+provided by Allen, Bentham, and others. Bentham afterwards spoke
+contemptuously of Owen, who, as he said, 'began in vapour and ended in
+smoke,'[314] and whose disciples came in after years into sharp conflict
+with the Utilitarians. Bentham, however, took pleasure, it seems, in
+Owen's benevolent schemes for infant education, and made money by his
+investment, for once combining business with philanthropy
+successfully.[315] Probably he regarded New Lanark as a kind of
+Panopticon. Owen had not as yet become a prophet of Socialism.
+
+Another set of controversies in which Mill and his friends took an
+active part, started Bentham in a whole series of speculations. A plan
+(which I shall have to mention in connection with Mill), was devised in
+1815 for a 'Chrestomathic school,' which was to give a sound education
+of proper Utilitarian tendencies to the upper and middle classes.
+Brougham, Mackintosh, Ricardo, William Allen, and Place were all
+interested in this undertaking.[316] Bentham offered a site at Queen's
+Square Place, and though the scheme never came to the birth, it set him
+actively at work. He wrote a series of papers during his first year at
+Ford Abbey[317] upon the theory of education, published in 1816 as
+_Chrestomathia_; and to this was apparently due a further excursion
+beyond the limits of jurisprudence. Educational controversy in that
+ignorant day was complicated by religious animosity; the National
+Society and the 'British and Foreign' Society were fighting under the
+banners of Bell and Lancaster, and the war roused excessive bitterness.
+Bentham finding the church in his way, had little difficulty in
+discovering that the whole ecclesiastical system was part of the general
+complex of abuse against which he was warring. He fell foul of the
+Catechism; he exposed the abuses of non-residence and episcopal wealth;
+he discovered that the Thirty-nine Articles contained gross fallacies;
+he went on to make an onslaught upon the Apostle St Paul, whose evidence
+as to his conversion was exposed to a severe cross-examination; and,
+finally, he wrote, or supplied the materials for, a remarkable _Analysis
+of Natural Religion_, which was ultimately published by Grote under the
+pseudonym 'Philip Beauchamp,' in 1822. This procedure from the
+particular case of the Catechism in schools up to the general problem of
+the utility of religion in general, is curiously characteristic of
+Bentham.
+
+Bentham's mind was attracted to various other schemes by the disciples
+who came to sit at his feet, and professed, with more or less sincerity,
+to regard him as a Solon. Foreigners had been resorting to him from all
+parts of the world, and gave him hopes of new fields for codifying. As
+early as 1808 he had been visited at Barrow Green by the strange
+adventurer, politician, lawyer, and filibuster, Aaron Burr, famous for
+the duel in which he killed Alexander Hamilton, and now framing wild
+schemes for an empire in Mexico. Unscrupulous, restlessly active and
+cynical, he was a singular contrast to the placid philosopher, upon whom
+his confidences seem to have made an impression of not unpleasing
+horror. Burr's conversation suggested to Bentham a singular scheme for
+emigrating to Mexico. He applied seriously for introductions to Lord
+Holland, who had passed some time in Spain, and to Holland's friend,
+Jovellanos (1749-1812), a member of the Spanish Junta, who had written
+treatises upon legislation (1785), of which Bentham approved.[318] The
+dream of Mexico was succeeded by a dream of Venezuela. General Miranda
+spent some years in England, and had become well known to James Mill. He
+was now about to start upon an unfortunate expedition to Venezuela, his
+native country. He took with him a draft of a law for the freedom of the
+press, which Bentham drew up, and he proposed that when his new state
+was founded, Bentham should be its legislator.[319] Miranda was betrayed
+to the Spanish government in 1812, and died (1816) in the hands of the
+Inquisition. Bolivar, who was also in London in 1810 and took some
+notice of Joseph Lancaster, applied in flattering terms to Bentham. Long
+afterwards, when dictator of Columbia, he forbade the use of Bentham's
+works in the schools, to which, however, the privilege of reading him
+was restored, and, let us hope, duly valued, in 1835.[320] Santander,
+another South American hero, was also a disciple, and encouraged the
+study of Bentham. Bentham says in 1830 that forty thousand copies of
+Dumont's _Traites_ had been sold in Paris for the South American
+trade.[321] What share Bentham may have had in modifying South American
+ideas is unknown to me. In the United States he had many disciples of a
+more creditable kind than Burr. He appealed in 1811 to Madison, then
+President, for permission to construct a 'Pannomion' or complete body of
+law, for the use of the United States; and urged his claims both upon
+Madison and the Governor of Pennsylvania in 1817, when peace had been
+restored. He had many conversations upon this project with John Quincy
+Adams, who was then American minister in England.[322] This, of course,
+came to nothing, but an eminent American disciple, Edward Livingston
+(1764-1836), between 1820 and 1830 prepared codes for the State of
+Louisiana, and warmly acknowledged his obligations to Bentham.[323] In
+1830 Bentham also acknowledges a notice of his labours, probably
+resulting from this, which had been made in one of General Jackson's
+presidential messages.[324] In his later years the United States became
+his ideal, and he never tired of comparing its cheap and honest
+enactment with the corruption and extravagance at home.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[291] _Works_, x. 403.
+
+[292] _Ibid._ x. 62.
+
+[293] Bentham had himself written some of his papers in French.
+
+[294] _Works_, x. 407, 410, 413, 419.
+
+[295] _Ibid._ x. 415.
+
+[296] Lord E. Fitzmaurice's _Life of Shelburne_.
+
+[297] _Works_, x. 413.
+
+[298] This statement, I believe, refers to a complimentary reference to
+Bentham in the preface to the French Code.
+
+[299] _Works_, x. 458.
+
+[300] Bentham says that he reached these conclusions some time before
+1809: _Works_, iii. 435. Cf. _Ibid._ v. 278.
+
+[301] _Works_, x. 425.
+
+[302] See description in Bain's _James Mill_, 129-36.
+
+[303] _Works_, x. 479, 573.
+
+[304] _Works_, x. 452-54.; Bain's _James Mill_, 104.
+
+[305] The case of the 'King _v._ Cobbett,' (1804), which led to the
+proceedings against Mr. Justice Johnson in 1805.--Cobbett's _State
+Trials_, xxix.
+
+[306] _Works_, x. 448-49.
+
+[307] _Ibid._ x. 458.
+
+[308] _Works_, x. 471, 570.
+
+[309] _Ibid._ x. 471.
+
+[310] _Ibid._ x. 461.
+
+[311] _Ibid._ x. 471.
+
+[312] _Ibid._ x. 490.
+
+[313] Printed in _Works_, x. 495-97.
+
+[314] _Ibid._ x. 570.
+
+[315] _Ibid._ x. 476.
+
+[316] _Works_, x. 485.
+
+[317] Bain's _James Mill_, 136. _Church of Englandism_ and _Not Paul but
+Jesus_ were also written at Ford Abbey.
+
+[318] _Works_, x. 433, 448.
+
+[319] _Ibid._ x. 457-58; Bain's _James Mill_, 79.
+
+[320] _Works_, 553-54, 565.
+
+[321] _Ibid._ xi. 53.
+
+[322] See _Memoirs of J. Q. Adams_ (1874), iii. 511, 520, 532, 535-39,
+540, 544, 560, 562-63. and Bentham's letter to Adams in _Works_, x. 554.
+
+[323] _Works_, xi. 23.
+
+[324] _Ibid._ xi. 40.
+
+
+V. CODIFICATION
+
+The unsettled conditions which followed the peace in various European
+countries found Bentham other employment. In 1809 Dumont did some
+codifying for the Emperor of Russia, and in 1817 was engaged to do the
+same service for Geneva. He was employed for some years, and is said to
+have introduced a Benthamite Penal Code and Panopticon, and an
+application of the Tactics.[325] In 1820 and 1821 Bentham was consulted
+by the Constitutional party in Spain and Portugal, and wrote elaborate
+tracts for their enlightenment. He made an impression upon at least one
+Spaniard. Borrow, when travelling in Spain some ten years after
+Bentham's death, was welcomed by an Alcalde on Cape Finisterre, who had
+upon his shelves all the works of the 'grand Baintham,' and compared him
+to Solon, Plato, and even Lope de Vega.[326] The last comparison
+appeared to Borrow to be overstrained. Bentham even endeavoured in
+1822-23 to administer some sound advice to the government of Tripoli,
+but his suggestions for 'remedies against misrule' seem never to have
+been communicated.[327] In 1823 and 1824 he was a member of the Greek
+Committee; he corresponded with Mavrocordato and other leaders; and he
+begged Parr to turn some of his admonitions into 'Parrian' Greek for the
+benefit of the moderns.[328] Blaquiere and Stanhope, two ardent members
+of the committee, were disciples; and Stanhope carried with him to
+Greece Bentham's _Table of the Springs of Action_, with which he tried
+to indoctrinate Byron. The poet, however, thought with some plausibility
+that he was a better judge of human passions than the philosopher.
+Parry, the engineer, who joined Byron at the same time, gives a queer
+account of the old philosopher trotting about London in the service of
+the Greeks.[329] The coarse and thoughtless might laugh, and perhaps
+some neither coarse nor thoughtless might smile. But Bowring tells us
+that these were days of boundless happiness for Bentham.[330] Tributes
+of admiration were pouring in from all sides, and the true Gospel was
+spreading across the Atlantic and along the shores of the Mediterranean.
+
+At home the Utilitarian party was consolidating itself; and the struggle
+which resulted in the Reform Bill was slowly beginning. The veteran
+Cartwright, Bentham's senior by eight years, tried in 1821 to persuade
+him to come out as one of a committee of 'Guardians of Constitutional
+Reform,' elected at a public meeting.[331] Bentham wisely refused to be
+drawn from his privacy. He left it to his friends to agitate, while he
+returned to labour in his study. The demand for legislation which had
+sprung up in so many parts of the world encouraged Bentham to undertake
+the last of his great labours. The Portuguese Cortes voted in December
+1821 that he should be invited to prepare an 'all-comprehensive code';
+and in 1822 he put out a curious 'Codification proposal,' offering to do
+the work for any nation in need of a legislator, and appending
+testimonials to his competence for the work. He set to work upon a
+'Constitutional Code,' which occupied him at intervals during the
+remainder of his life, and embodied the final outcome of his
+speculations. He diverged from this main purpose to write various
+pamphlets upon topics of immediate interest; and was keenly interested
+in the various activities of his disciples. The Utilitarians now thought
+themselves entitled to enter the field of politics as a distinct body.
+An organ to defend their cause was desirable, and Bentham supplied the
+funds for the _Westminster Review_, of which the first number appeared
+in April 1824.
+
+The editorship fell chiefly into the hands of Bowring (1792-1872).
+Bowring had travelled much upon the Continent for a commercial house,
+and his knowledge of Spanish politics had brought him into connection
+with Bentham, to whom Blaquiere recommended him in 1820.[332] A strong
+attachment sprang up between the two. Bentham confided all his thoughts
+and feelings to the young man, and Bowring looked up to his teacher with
+affectionate reverence. In 1828 Bentham says that Bowring is 'the most
+intimate friend he has.'[333] Bowring complains of calumnies, by which
+he was assailed, though they failed to alienate Bentham. What they may
+have been matters little; but it is clear that a certain jealousy arose
+between this last disciple and his older rivals. James Mill's stern and
+rigid character had evidently produced some irritation at intervals; and
+to him it would naturally appear that Bowring was the object of a senile
+favouritism. In any case it is to be regretted that Bentham thus became
+partly alienated from his older friends[334]. Mill was too proud to
+complain; and never wavered in his allegiance to the master's
+principles. But one result, and to us the most important, was that the
+new attachment led to the composition of one of the worst biographies in
+the language, out of materials which might have served for a
+masterpiece. Bowring was a great linguist, and an energetic man of
+business. He wrote hymns, and one of them, 'In the cross of Christ I
+glory,' is said to have 'universal fame.' A Benthamite capable of so
+singular an eccentricity judiciously agreed to avoid discussions upon
+religious topics with his master. To Bowring we also owe the
+_Deontology_, which professes to represent Bentham's dictation. The
+Mills repudiated this version, certainly a very poor one, of their
+teacher's morality, and held that it represented less Bentham than such
+an impression of Bentham as could be stamped upon a muddle-headed
+disciple.[335]
+
+The last years of his life brought Bentham into closer connection with
+more remarkable men. The Radicals had despised the Whigs as trimmers and
+half-hearted reformers, and James Mill expressed this feeling very
+frankly in the first numbers of the _Westminster Review_. Reform,
+however, was now becoming respectable, and the Whigs were gaining the
+courage to take it up seriously. Foremost among the Edinburgh Reviewers
+was the great Henry Brougham, whose fame was at this time almost as
+great as his ambition could desire, and who considered himself to be the
+natural leader of all reform. He had shown eagerness to distinguish
+himself in lines fully approved by Bentham. His admirers regarded him
+as a giant; and his opponents, if they saw in him a dash of the
+charlatan, could not deny his amazing energy and his capacity as an
+orator. The insatiable vanity which afterwards ruined his career already
+made it doubtful whether he fought for the cause or the glory. But he
+was at least an instrument worth having. He was a kind of half-disciple.
+If in 1809 he had checked Mill's praise of Bentham, he was soon
+afterwards in frequent communication with the master. In July 1812
+Bentham announces that Brougham is at last to be admitted to a dinner,
+for which he had been 'intriguing any time this six months,' and expects
+that his proselyte will soon be the first man in the House of Commons,
+and eclipse even Romilly.[336] In later years they had frequent
+communications; and when in 1827 Brougham was known to be preparing an
+utterance upon law reform, Bentham's hopes rose high. He offered to his
+disciple 'some nice little sweet pap of my own making,' sound teaching
+that is, upon evidence, judicial establishments and codification.
+Brougham thanks his 'dear grandpapa,' and Bentham offers further
+supplies to his 'dear, sweet little poppet.'[337] But when the orator
+had spoken Bentham declares (9th February 1828) that the mountain has
+been delivered of a mouse. Brougham was 'not the man to set up' simple
+and rational principles. He was the sham adversary but the real
+accomplice of Peel, pulling up lies by the root to plant others equally
+noxious.[338] In 1830 Bentham had even to hold up 'Master Peel' as a
+'model good boy' to the self-styled reformer. Brougham needs a dose of
+jalap instead of pap, for he cannot even spell the 'greatest happiness
+principle' properly.[339] Bentham went so far as to write what he fondly
+took to be an epigram upon Brougham:
+
+    'So foolish and so wise, so great, so small,
+     Everything now, to-morrow nought at all.'[340]
+
+In September 1831 Brougham as Chancellor announced a scheme for certain
+changes in the constitution of the courts. The proposal called forth
+Bentham's last pamphlet, _Lord Brougham displayed_.[341] Bentham laments
+that his disciple has 'stretched out the right hand of fellowship to
+jobbers of all sorts.'[342] In vain had Brougham in his speech called
+Bentham 'one of the great sages of the law.' Bentham acknowledges his
+amiability and his genius; but laments over the untrustworthy character
+of a man who could only adopt principles so far as they were subservient
+to his own vanity.
+
+Another light of the _Edinburgh Review_, who at this time took Brougham
+at his own valuation, did an incidental service to Bentham. Upon the
+publication of the _Book of Fallacies_ in 1825, Sydney Smith reviewed or
+rather condensed it in the _Edinburgh Review_, and gave the pith of the
+whole in his famous _Noodle's Oration_. The noodle utters all the
+commonplaces by which the stupid conservatives, with Eldon at their
+head, met the demands of reformers. Nothing could be wittier than
+Smith's brilliant summary. Whigs and Radicals for the time agreed in
+ridiculing blind prejudice. The day was to come when the Whigs at least
+would see that some principles might be worse than prejudice. All the
+fools, said Lord Melbourne, 'were against Catholic Emancipation, and
+the worst of it is, the fools were in the right.' Sydney Smith was glad
+to be Bentham's mouthpiece for the moment: though, when Benthamism was
+applied to church reform, Smith began to perceive that Noodle was not so
+silly as he seemed.
+
+One other ally of Bentham deserves notice. O'Connell had in 1828, in
+speaking of legal abuses, called himself 'an humble disciple of the
+immortal Bentham.'[343] Bentham wrote to acknowledge the compliment. He
+invited O'Connell to become an inmate of his hermitage at Queen's Square
+Place, and O'Connell responded warmly to the letters of his 'revered
+master.' Bentham's aversion to Catholicism was as strong as his
+objection to Catholic disqualifications, and he took some trouble to
+smooth down the difficulties which threatened an alliance between ardent
+believers and thoroughgoing sceptics. O'Connell had attacked some who
+were politically upon his side. 'Dan, dear child,' says Bentham, 'whom
+in imagination I am at this moment pressing to my fond bosom, put off,
+if it be possible, your intolerance.'[344] Their friendship, however,
+did not suffer from this discord, and their correspondence is in the
+same tone till the end. In one of Bentham's letters he speaks of a
+contemporary correspondence with another great man, whom he does not
+appear to have met personally. He was writing long letters, entreating
+the duke of Wellington to eclipse Cromwell by successfully attacking the
+lawyers. The duke wrote 'immediate answers in his own hand,' and took
+good-humouredly a remonstrance from Bentham upon the duel with Lord
+Winchilsea in 1829.[345] Bentham was ready to the end to seek allies in
+any quarter. When Lord Sidmouth took office in 1812, Bentham had an
+interview with him, and had some hopes of being employed to prepare a
+penal code.[346] Although experience had convinced him of the futility
+of expectations from the Sidmouths and Eldons, he was always on the look
+out for sympathy; and the venerable old man was naturally treated with
+respect by people who had little enough of real interest in his
+doctrines.
+
+During the last ten years of his life, Bentham was cheered by symptoms
+of the triumph of his creed. The approach of the millennium seemed to be
+indicated by the gathering of the various forces which carried Roman
+Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill. Bentham still received
+testimonies of his fame abroad. In 1825 he visited Paris to consult some
+physicians. He was received with the respect which the French can always
+pay to intellectual eminence.[347] All the lawyers in a court of justice
+rose to receive him, and he was placed at the president's right hand. On
+the revolution of 1830, he addressed some good advice to the country of
+which he had been made a citizen nearly forty years before. In 1832,
+Talleyrand, to whom he had talked about the Panopticon in 1792, dined
+with him alone in his hermitage.[348] When Bowring observed to the
+prince that Bentham's works had been plundered, the polite diplomatist
+replied, _et pille de tout le monde, il est toujours riche_. Bentham was
+by this time failing. At eighty-two he was still, as he put it,
+'codifying like any dragon.'[349] On 18th May 1832 he did his last bit
+of his lifelong labour, upon the 'Constitutional Code.' The great
+reform agitation was reaching the land of promise, but Bentham was to
+die in the wilderness. He sank without a struggle on 6th June 1832, his
+head resting on Bowring's bosom. He left the characteristic direction
+that his body should be dissected for the benefit of science. An
+incision was formally made; and the old gentleman, in his clothes as he
+lived, his face covered by a wax mask, is still to be seen at University
+College in Gower Street.
+
+Bentham, as we are told, had a strong personal resemblance to Benjamin
+Franklin. Sagacity, benevolence, and playfulness were expressed in both
+physiognomies. Bentham, however, differed from the man whose intellect
+presents many points of likeness, in that he was not a man of the
+market-place or the office. Bentham was in many respects a child through
+life:[350] a child in simplicity, good humour, and vivacity; his health
+was unbroken; he knew no great sorrow; and after emerging from the
+discouragement of his youth, he was placidly contemplating a continuous
+growth of fame and influence. He is said to have expressed the wish that
+he could awake once in a century to contemplate the prospect of a world
+gradually adopting his principles and so making steady progress in
+happiness and wisdom.
+
+No man could lead a simpler life. His chief luxuries at table were
+fruit, bread, and tea. He had a 'sacred teapot' called Dick, with
+associations of its own, and carefully regulated its functions. He
+refrained from wine during the greatest part of his life, and was never
+guilty of a single act of intemperance. In later life he took a daily
+half-glass of Madeira. He was scrupulously neat in person, and wore a
+Quaker-like brown coat, brown cassimere breeches, white worsted
+stockings and a straw hat. He walked or 'rather trotted' with his stick
+Dapple, and took his 'ante-prandial' and other 'circumgyrations' with
+absolute punctuality. He loved pets; he had a series of attached cats;
+and cherished the memory of a 'beautiful pig' at Hendon, and of a donkey
+at Ford Abbey. He encouraged mice to play in his study--a taste which
+involved some trouble with his cats, and suggests problems as to the
+greatest happiness of the greatest number. Kindness to animals was an
+essential point of his moral creed. 'I love everything,' he said, 'that
+has four legs.' He had a passion for flowers, and tried to introduce
+useful plants. He loved music--especially Handel--and had an organ in
+his house. He cared nothing for poetry: 'Prose,' he said,[351] 'is when
+all the lines except the last go on to the margin. Poetry is when some
+of them fall short of it.' He was courteous and attentive to his guests,
+though occasionally irritable when his favourite crotchets were
+transgressed, or especially if his fixed hours of work were deranged.
+
+His regularity in literary work was absolute. He lived by a time-table,
+working in the morning and turning out from ten to fifteen folio pages
+daily. He read the newspapers regularly, but few books, and cared
+nothing for criticisms on his own writings. His only substantial meal
+was a dinner at six or half-past, to which he occasionally admitted a
+few friends as a high privilege. He liked to discuss the topics of which
+his mind was full, and made notes beforehand of particular points to be
+introduced in conversation. He was invariably inaccessible to visitors,
+even famous ones, likely to distract his thoughts. 'Tell Mr. Bentham
+that Mr. Richard Lovell Edgeworth desires to see him.' 'Tell Mr. Richard
+Lovell Edgeworth that Mr. Bentham does not desire to see him' was the
+reply. When Mme. de Stael came to England, she said to Dumont: 'Tell
+Bentham I shall see nobody till I have seen him.' 'I am sorry for it,'
+said Bentham, 'for then she will never see anybody.' And he summed up
+his opinion of the famous author of _Corinne_ by calling her 'a trumpery
+magpie.'[352] There is a simplicity and vivacity about some of the
+sayings reported by Bowring, which prove that Bentham could talk well,
+and increase our regret for the absence of a more efficient Boswell. At
+ten Bentham had his tea, at eleven his nightcap, and by twelve all his
+guests were ignominiously expelled. He was left to sleep on a hard bed.
+His sleep was light, and much disturbed by dreams.
+
+Bentham was certainly amiable. The 'surest way to gain men,' he said,
+'is to appear to love them, and the surest way to appear to love them is
+to love them in reality.' The least pleasing part of his character,
+however, is the apparent levity of his attachments. He was, as we have
+seen, partly alienated from Dumont, though some friendly communications
+are recorded in later years, and Dumont spoke warmly of Bentham only a
+few days before his death in 1829.[353] He not only cooled towards James
+Mill, but, if Bowring is to be trusted, spoke of him with great
+harshness.[354] Bowring was not a judicious reporter, indeed, and
+capable of taking hasty phrases too seriously. What Bentham's remarks
+upon these and other friends suggest is not malice or resentment, but
+the flippant utterance of a man whose feelings are wanting in depth
+rather than kindliness. It is noticeable that, after his early visit at
+Bowood, no woman seems to have counted for anything in Bentham's life.
+He was not only never in love, but it looks as if he never even talked
+to any woman except his cook or housemaid.
+
+The one conclusion that I need draw concerns a question not, I think,
+hard to be solved. It would be easy to make a paradox by calling Bentham
+at once the most practical and most unpractical of men. This is to point
+out the one-sided nature of Bentham's development. Bentham's habits
+remind us in some ways of Kant; and the thought may be suggested that he
+would have been more in his element as a German professor of
+philosophies. In such a position he might have devoted himself to the
+delight of classifying and co-ordinating theories, and have found
+sufficient enjoyment in purely intellectual activity. After a fashion
+that was the actual result. How far, indeed, Bentham could have achieved
+much in the sphere of pure philosophy, and what kind of philosophy he
+would have turned out, must be left to conjecture. The circumstances of
+his time and country, and possibly his own temperament generally, turned
+his thoughts to problems of legislation and politics, that is to say, of
+direct practical interest. He was therefore always dealing with concrete
+facts, and a great part of his writings may be considered as raw
+material for acts of parliament. Bentham remained, however, unpractical,
+in the sense that he had not that knowledge which we ascribe either to
+the poet or to the man of the world. He had neither the passion nor the
+sympathetic imagination. The springs of active conduct which Byron knew
+from experience were to Bentham nothing more than names in a careful
+classification. Any shrewd attorney or Bow Street runner would have been
+a better judge of the management of convicts; and here were dozens of
+party politicians, such as Rigby and Barre, who could have explained to
+him beforehand those mysteries in the working of the political
+machinery, which it took him half a lifetime to discover. In this sense
+Bentham was unpractical in the highest degree, for at eighty he had not
+found out of what men are really made. And yet by his extraordinary
+intellectual activity and the concentration of all his faculties upon
+certain problems, he succeeded in preserving an example, and though not
+a unique yet an almost unsurpassable example, of the power which belongs
+to the man of one idea.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[325] See correspondence upon his codification plans in Russia, America,
+and Geneva in _Works_, iv. 451-594.
+
+[326] Borrow's _Bible in Spain_, ch. xxx.
+
+[327] _Works_, viii. 555-600.
+
+[328] _Ibid._ x. 534. See Blaquiere's enthusiastic letter to
+Bentham.--_Works_, x. 475.
+
+[329] See, however, Bentham's reference to this story.--_Works_, xi. 66.
+
+[330] _Works_, x. 539.
+
+[331] _Ibid._ x. 522.
+
+[332] _Works_, x. 516.
+
+[333] _Ibid._ x. 591.
+
+[334] A letter from Mill in the University College MSS. describes a
+misunderstanding about borrowed books, a fertile, but hardly adequate,
+cause of quarrel.
+
+[335] Bowring's religious principles prevented him from admitting some
+of Bentham's works to the collective edition.
+
+[336] _Works_, x. 471-72.
+
+[337] _Ibid._ x. 576.
+
+[338] _Ibid._ x. 588.
+
+[339] _Works_, xi. 37. Papers preserved at University College show that
+during Peel's law reforms at this time Bentham frequently communicated
+with him.
+
+[340] _Ibid._ xi. 50.
+
+[341] _Ibid._ v. 549.
+
+[342] _Ibid._ v. 609.
+
+[343] _Works_, x. 594.
+
+[344] _Ibid._ xi. 26.
+
+[345] _Ibid._ xi. 13, 28.
+
+[346] _Works_, x. 468.
+
+[347] _Ibid._ x. 551.
+
+[348] _Ibid._ xi. 75.
+
+[349] _Ibid._ xi. 33.
+
+[350] Mill's _Dissertations_, i. 354 and 392 _n._
+
+[351] _Works_, x. 442.
+
+[352] _Works_, x. 467; xi. 79.
+
+[353] _Ibid._ xi. 23-24.
+
+[354] _Ibid._ x. 450.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+BENTHAM'S DOCTRINE
+
+
+I. FIRST PRINCIPLES
+
+Bentham's position is in one respect unique. There have been many
+greater thinkers; but there has been hardly any one whose abstract
+theory has become in the same degree the platform of an active political
+party. To accept the philosophy was to be also pledged to practical
+applications of Utilitarianism. What, then, was the revelation made to
+the Benthamites, and to what did it owe its influence? The central
+doctrine is expressed in Bentham's famous formula: the test of right and
+wrong is the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.' There was
+nothing new in this assertion. It only expresses the fact that Bentham
+accepted one of the two alternatives which have commended themselves to
+conflicting schools ever since ethical speculation was erected into a
+separate department of thought. Moreover, the side which Bentham took
+was, we may say, the winning side. The ordinary morality of the time was
+Utilitarian in substance. Hutcheson had invented the sacred phrase: and
+Hume had based his moral system upon 'utility.'[355] Bentham had
+learned much from Helvetius the French freethinker, and had been
+anticipated by Paley the English divine. The writings in which Bentham
+deals explicitly with the general principles of Ethics would hardly
+entitle him to a higher position than that of a disciple of Hume without
+Hume's subtlety; or of Paley without Paley's singular gift of
+exposition. Why, then, did Bentham's message come upon his disciples
+with the force and freshness of a new revelation? Our answer must be in
+general terms that Bentham founded not a doctrine but a method: and that
+the doctrine which came to him simply as a general principle was in his
+hands a potent instrument applied with most fruitful results to
+questions of immediate practical interest.
+
+Beyond the general principle of utility, therefore, we have to consider
+the 'organon' constructed by him to give effect to a general principle
+too vague to be applied in detail. The fullest account of this is
+contained in the _Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
+Legislation_. This work unfortunately is a fragment, but it gives his
+doctrine vigorously and decisively, without losing itself in the minute
+details which become wearisome in his later writings. Bentham intended
+it as an introduction to a penal code; and his investigation sent him
+back to more general problems. He found it necessary to settle the
+relations of the penal code to the whole body of law; and to settle
+these he had to consider the principles which underlie legislation in
+general. He had thus, he says, to 'create a new science,' and then to
+elaborate one department of the science. The 'introduction' would
+contain prolegomena not only for the penal code but for the other
+departments of inquiry which he intended to exhaust.[356] He had to lay
+down primary truths which should be to this science what the axioms are
+to mathematical sciences.[357] These truths therefore belong to the
+sphere of conduct in general, and include his ethical theory.
+
+'Nature has placed mankind' (that is his opening phrase) 'under the
+governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them
+alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we
+shall do.' There is the unassailable basis. It had been laid down as
+unequivocally by Locke,[358] and had been embodied in the brilliant
+couplets of Pope's _Essay on Man_.[359] At the head of the curious table
+of universal knowledge, given in the _Chrestomathia_, we have Eudaemonics
+as an all-comprehensive name of which every art is a branch.[360]
+Eudaemonics, as an art, corresponds to the science 'ontology.' It covers
+the whole sphere of human thought. It means knowledge in general as
+related to conduct. Its first principle, again, requires no more proof
+than the primary axioms of arithmetic or geometry. Once understood, it
+is by the same act of the mind seen to be true. Some people, indeed, do
+not see it. Bentham rather ignores than answers some of their arguments.
+But his mode of treating opponents indicates his own position.
+'Happiness,' it is often said, is too vague a word to be the keystone of
+an ethical system; it varies from man to man: or it is 'subjective,'
+and therefore gives no absolute or independent ground for morality. A
+morality of 'eudaemonism' must be an 'empirical' morality, and we can
+never extort from it that 'categorical imperative,' without which we
+have instead of a true morality a simple system of 'expediency.' From
+Bentham's point of view the criticism must be retorted. He regards
+'happiness' as precisely the least equivocal of words; and 'happiness'
+itself as therefore affording the one safe clue to all the intricate
+problems of human conduct. The authors of the _Federalist_, for example,
+had said that justice was the 'end of government.' 'Why not happiness?'
+asks Bentham. 'What happiness is every man knows, because what pleasure
+is, every man knows, and what pain is, every man knows. But what justice
+is--this is what on every occasion is the subject-matter of
+dispute.'[361] That phrase gives his view in a nutshell. Justice is the
+means, not the end. That is just which produces a maximum of happiness.
+Omit all reference to Happiness, and Justice becomes a meaningless word
+prescribing equality, but not telling us equality of what. Happiness, on
+the other hand, has a substantial and independent meaning from which the
+meaning of justice can be deduced. It has therefore a logical priority:
+and to attempt to ignore this is the way to all the labyrinths of
+hopeless confusion by which legislation has been made a chaos. Bentham's
+position is indicated by his early conflict with Blackstone, not a very
+powerful representative of the opposite principle. Blackstone, in fact,
+had tried to base his defence of that eminently empirical product, the
+British Constitution, upon some show of a philosophical groundwork. He
+had used the vague conception of a 'social contract,' frequently invoked
+for the same purpose at the revolution of 1688, and to eke out his
+arguments applied the ancient commonplaces about monarchy, aristocracy,
+and democracy. He thus tried to invest the constitution with the
+sanctity derived from this mysterious 'contract,' while appealing also
+to tradition or the incarnate 'wisdom of our ancestors,' as shown by
+their judicious mixture of the three forms. Bentham had an easy task,
+though he performed it with remarkable vigour, in exposing the weakness
+of this heterogeneous aggregate. Look closely, and this fictitious
+contract can impose no new obligation: for the obligation itself rests
+upon Utility. Why not appeal to Utility at once? I am bound to obey, not
+because my great-grandfather may be regarded as having made a bargain,
+which he did not really make, with the great-grandfather of George III.;
+but simply because rebellion does more harm than good. The forms of
+government are abstractions, not names of realities, and their 'mixture'
+is a pure figment. King, Lords, and Commons are not really incarnations
+of power, wisdom, and goodness. Their combination forms a system the
+merits of which must in the last resort be judged by its working. 'It is
+the principle of utility, accurately apprehended and steadily applied,
+that affords the only clew to guide a man through these streights.'[362]
+So much in fact Bentham might learn from Hume; and to defend upon any
+other ground the congeries of traditional arrangements which passed for
+the British Constitution was obviously absurd. It was in this warfare
+against the shifting and ambiguous doctrines of Blackstone that Bentham
+first showed the superiority of his own method: for, as between the two,
+Bentham's position is at least the most coherent and intelligible.
+
+Blackstone, however, represents little more than a bit of rhetoric
+embodying fragments of inconsistent theories. The _Morals and
+Legislation_ opens by briefly and contemptuously setting aside more
+philosophical opponents of Utilitarianism. The 'ascetic' principle, for
+example, is the formal contradiction of the principle of Utility, for it
+professedly declares pleasure to be evil. Could it be consistently
+carried out it would turn earth into hell. But in fact it is at bottom
+an illegitimate corollary from the very principle which it ostensibly
+denies. It professes to condemn pleasure in general; it really means
+that certain pleasures can only be bought at an excessive cost of pain.
+Other theories are contrivances for avoiding the appeal 'to any external
+standard'; and in substance, therefore, they make the opinion of the
+individual theorist an ultimate and sufficient reason. Adam Smith by his
+doctrine of 'sympathy' makes the sentiment of approval itself the
+ultimate standard. My feeling echoes yours, and reciprocally; each
+cannot derive authority from the other. Another man (Hutcheson) invents
+a thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and what is wrong and
+calls it a 'moral sense.' Beattie substitutes 'common' for 'moral'
+sense, and his doctrine is attractive because every man supposes himself
+to possess common sense. Others, like Price, appeal to the
+Understanding, or, like Clarke, to the 'Fitness of Things,' or they
+invent such phrases as 'Law of Nature,' or 'Right Reason' or 'Natural
+Justice,' or what you please. Each really means that whatever he says
+is infallibly true and self-evident. Wollaston discovers that the only
+wrong thing is telling a lie; or that when you kill your father, it is a
+way of saying that he is not your father, and the same method is
+applicable to any conduct which he happens to dislike. The 'fairest and
+openest of them all' is the man who says, 'I am of the number of the
+Elect'; God tells the Elect what is right: therefore if you want to know
+what is right, you have only to come to me.[363] Bentham is writing here
+in his pithiest style. His criticism is of course of the rough and ready
+order; but I think that in a fashion he manages to hit the nail pretty
+well on the head.
+
+His main point, at any rate, is clear. He argues briefly that the
+alternative systems are illusory because they refer to no 'external
+standard.' His opponents, not he, really make morality arbitrary. This,
+whatever the ultimate truth, is in fact the essential core of all the
+Utilitarian doctrine descended from or related to Benthamism. Benthamism
+aims at converting morality into a science. Science, according to him,
+must rest upon facts. It must apply to real things, and to things which
+have definite relations and a common measure. Now, if anything be real,
+pains and pleasures are real. The expectation of pain or pleasure
+determines conduct; and, if so, it must be the sole determinant of
+conduct. The attempt to conceal or evade this truth is the fatal source
+of all equivocation and confusion. Try the experiment. Introduce a
+'moral sense.' What is its relation to the desire for happiness? If the
+dictates of the moral sense be treated as ultimate, an absolutely
+arbitrary element is introduced; and we have one of the 'innate ideas'
+exploded by Locke, a belief summarily intruded into the system without
+definite relations to any other beliefs: a dogmatic assertion which
+refuses to be tested or to be correlated with other dogmas; a reduction
+therefore of the whole system to chaos. It is at best an instinctive
+belief which requires to be justified and corrected by reference to some
+other criterion. Or resolve morality into 'reason,' that is, into some
+purely logical truth, and it then remains in the air--a mere nonentity
+until experience has supplied some material upon which it can work. Deny
+the principle of utility, in short, as he says in a vigorous
+passage,[364] and you are involved in a hopeless circle. Sooner or later
+you appeal to an arbitrary and despotic principle and find that you have
+substituted words for thoughts.
+
+The only escape from this circle is the frank admission that happiness
+is, in fact, the sole aim of man. There are, of course, different kinds
+of happiness as there are different kinds of physical forces. But the
+motives to action are, like the physical forces, commensurable. Two
+courses of conduct can always be compared in respect of the happiness
+produced, as two motions of a body can be compared in respect of the
+energy expended. If, then, we take the moral judgment to be simply a
+judgment of amounts of happiness, the whole theory can be systematised,
+and its various theorems ranged under a single axiom or consistent set
+of axioms. Pain and pleasure give the real value of actions; they are
+the currency with a definite standard into which every general rule may
+be translated. There is always a common measure applicable in every
+formula for the estimation of conduct. If you admit your Moral Sense,
+you profess to settle values by some standard which has no definite
+relation to the standard which in fact governs the normal transactions.
+But any such double standard, in which the two measures are absolutely
+incommensurable, leads straight to chaos. Or, if again you appeal to
+reason in the abstract, you are attempting to settle an account by pure
+arithmetic without reference to the units upon which your operation is
+performed. Two pounds and two pounds will make four pounds whatever a
+pound may be; but till I know what it is, the result is nugatory.
+Somewhere I must come upon a basis of fact, if my whole construction is
+to stand.
+
+This is the fundamental position implied in Bentham's doctrine. The
+moral judgment is simply one case of the judgment of happiness. Bentham
+is so much convinced of this that to him there appeared to be in reality
+no other theory. What passed for theories were mere combinations of
+words. Having said this, we know where to lay the foundations of the new
+science. It deals with a vast complicity of facts: it requires
+'investigations as severe as mathematical ones, but beyond all
+comparison more intricate and extensive.'[365] Still it deals with
+facts, and with facts which have a common measure, and can, therefore,
+be presented as a coherent system. To present this system, or so much of
+it as is required for purposes of legislation, is therefore his next
+task. The partial execution is the chief substance of the
+_Introduction_. Right and wrong conduct, we may now take for granted,
+mean simply those classes of conduct which are conducive to or opposed
+to happiness; or, in the sacred formula, to act rightly means to promote
+the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The legislator, like
+every one else, acts rightly in so far as he is guided by the principle
+(to use one of the phrases coined by Bentham) of 'maximising' happiness.
+He seeks to affect conduct; and conduct can be affected only by annexing
+pains or pleasures to given classes of actions. Hence we have a vitally
+important part of his doctrine--the theory of 'sanctions.' Pains and
+pleasures as annexed to action are called 'sanctions.' There are
+'physical or natural,' 'political, 'moral or popular,' and 'religious'
+sanctions. The 'physical' sanctions are such pleasures and pains as
+follow a given course of conduct independently of the interference of
+any other human or supernatural being; the 'political' those which are
+annexed by the action of the legislator; the 'moral or popular' those
+which are annexed by other individuals not acting in a corporate
+capacity; and the 'religious' those which are annexed by a 'superior
+invisible being,' or, as he says elsewhere,[366] 'such as are capable of
+being expected at the hands of an invisible Ruler of the Universe.' The
+three last sanctions, he remarks, 'operate through the first.' The
+'magistrate' or 'men at large' can only operate, and God is supposed
+only to operate, 'through the powers of nature,' that is, by applying
+some of the pains and pleasures which may also be natural sanctions. A
+man is burnt: if by his own imprudence, that is a 'physical' sanction;
+if by the magistrate, it is a 'political' sanction; if by some neglect
+of his neighbours, due to their dislike of his 'moral character,' a
+'moral' sanction; if by the immediate act of God or by distraction
+caused by dread of God's displeasure, it is a 'religious' sanction. Of
+these, as Bentham characteristically observes[367] in a later writing
+the political is much stronger than the 'moral' or 'religious.' Many men
+fear the loss of character or the 'wrath of Heaven,' but all men fear
+the scourge and the gallows.[368] He admits, however, that the religious
+sanction and the additional sanction of 'benevolence' have the advantage
+of not requiring that the offender should be found out.[369] But in any
+case, the 'natural' and religious sanctions are beyond the legislator's
+power. His problem, therefore, is simply this: what sanctions ought he
+to annex to conduct, or remembering that 'ought' means simply 'conducive
+to happiness,' what political sanctions will increase happiness?
+
+To answer this fully will be to give a complete system of legislation;
+but in order to answer it we require a whole logical and psychological
+apparatus. Bentham shows this apparatus at work, but does not expound
+its origin in any separate treatise. Enough information, however, is
+given as to his method in the curious collection of the fragments
+connected with the _Chrestomathia_. A logical method upon which he
+constantly insisted is that of 'bipartition,'[370] called also the
+'dichotomous' or 'bifurcate' method, and exemplified by the so-called
+'Porphyrian Tree.' The principle is, of course, simple. Take any genus:
+divide it into two classes, one of which has and the other has not a
+certain mark. The two classes must be mutually exclusive and together
+exhaustive. Repeat the operation upon each of the classes and continue
+the process as long as desired.[371] At every step you thus have a
+complete enumeration of all the species, varieties, and so on, each of
+which excludes all the others. No mere logic, indeed, can secure the
+accuracy and still less the utility of the procedure. The differences
+may be in themselves ambiguous or irrelevant. If I classify plants as
+'trees' and 'not trees,' the logical form is satisfied: but I have still
+to ask whether 'tree' conveys a determinate meaning, and whether the
+distinction corresponds to a difference of any importance. A perfect
+classification, however, could always be stated in this form. Each
+species, that is, can be marked by the presence or absence of a given
+difference, whether we are dealing with classes of plants or actions:
+and Bentham aims at that consummation though he admits that centuries
+may be required for the construction of an accurate classification in
+ethical speculations.[372] He exaggerates the efficiency of his method,
+and overlooks the tendency of tacit assumptions to smuggle themselves
+into what affects to be a mere enumeration of classes. But in any case,
+no one could labour more industriously to get every object of his
+thought arranged and labelled and put into the right pigeon-hole of his
+mental museum. To codify[373] is to classify, and Bentham might be
+defined as a codifying animal.
+
+Things thus present themselves to Bentham's mind as already prepared to
+fit into pigeon-holes. This is a characteristic point, and it appears in
+what we must call his metaphysical system. 'Metaphysics,' indeed,
+according to him, is simply 'a sprig,' and that a small one, of the
+'branch termed Logic.'[374] It is merely the explanation of certain
+general terms such as 'existence,' 'necessity,' and so forth.[375] Under
+this would apparently fall the explanation of 'reality' which leads to a
+doctrine upon which he often insists, and which is most implicitly given
+in the fragment called _Ontology_. He there distinguishes 'real' from
+'fictitious entities,' a distinction which, as he tells us,[376] he
+first learned from d'Alembert's phrase _Etres fictifs_ and which he
+applies in his _Morals and Legislation_. 'Real entities,' according to
+him,[377] are 'individual perceptions,' 'impressions,' and 'ideas.' In
+this, of course, he is following Hume, though he applies the Johnsonian
+argument to Berkeley's immaterialism.[378] A 'fictitious entity' is a
+name which does note 'raise up in the mind any correspondent
+images.'[379] Such names owe their existence to the necessities of
+language. Without employing such fictions, however, 'the language of man
+could not have risen above the language of brutes';[380] and he
+emphatically distinguishes them from 'unreal' or 'fabulous entities.' A
+'fictitious entity' is not a 'nonentity.'[381] He includes among such
+entities all Aristotle's 'predicaments' except the first:
+'substance.'[382] Quantity, quality, relation, time, place are all
+'physical fictitious entities.' This is apparently equivalent to saying
+that the only 'physical entities' are concrete things--sticks, stones,
+bodies, and so forth--the 'reality' of which he takes for granted in the
+ordinary common sense meaning. It is also perfectly true that things are
+really related, have quantity and quality, and are in time and space.
+But we cannot really conceive the quality or relation apart from the
+concrete things so qualified and related. We are forced by language to
+use substantives which in their nature have only the sense of
+adjectives. He does not suppose that a body is not really square or
+round; but he thinks it a fiction to speak of squareness or roundness or
+space in general as something existing apart from matter and, in some
+sense, alongside of matter.
+
+This doctrine, which brings us within sight of metaphysical problems
+beyond our immediate purpose, becomes important to his moral
+speculation. His special example of a 'fictitious entity' in politics is
+'obligation.'[383] Obligations, rights, and similar words are
+'fictitious entities.' Obligation in particular implies a metaphor. The
+statement that a man is 'obliged' to perform an act means simply that he
+will suffer pain if he does not perform it. The use of the word
+obligation, as a noun substantive, introduces the 'fictitious entity'
+which represents nothing really separable from the pain or pleasure.
+Here, therefore, we have the ground of the doctrine already noticed.
+'Pains and pleasures' are real.[384] 'Their existence,' he says,[385]
+'is matter of universal and constant experience.' But other various
+names referring to these: emotion, inclination, vice, virtue, etc., are
+only 'psychological entities.' 'Take away pleasures and pains, not only
+happiness but justice and duty and obligation and virtue--all of which
+have been so elaborately held up to view as independent of them--are so
+many empty sounds.'[386] The ultimate facts, then, are pains and
+pleasures. They are the substantives of which these other words are
+properly the adjectives. A pain or a pleasure may exist by itself, that
+is without being virtuous or vicious: but virtue and vice can only exist
+in so far as pain and pleasure exists.
+
+This analysis of 'obligation' is a characteristic doctrine of the
+Utilitarian school. We are under an 'obligation' so far as we are
+affected by a 'sanction.' It appeared to Bentham so obvious as to need
+no demonstration, only an exposition of the emptiness of any verbal
+contradiction. Such metaphysical basis as he needed is simply the
+attempt to express the corresponding conception of reality which, in his
+opinion, only requires to be expressed to carry conviction.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[355] See note under Bentham's life, _ante_, p. 178.
+
+[356] Preface to _Morals and Legislation_.
+
+[357] _Works_, i. ('Morals and Legislation'), ii. _n._
+
+[358] _Essay_, bk. ii. ch. xxi. Sec. 39-Sec. 44. The will, says Locke, is
+determined by the 'uneasiness of desire.' What moves desire? Happiness,
+and that alone. Happiness is pleasure, and misery pain. What produces
+pleasure we call good; and what produces pain we call evil. Locke,
+however, was not a consistent Utilitarian.
+
+[359] Epistle iv., opening lines.
+
+[360] _Works_, vii. 82.
+
+[361] _Works_ ('Constitutional Code'), ix. 123.
+
+[362] _Works_ ('Fragment'), i. 287.
+
+[363] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 8-10. Mill quotes this
+passage in his essay on Bentham in the first volume of his
+_Dissertations_. This essay, excellent in itself must be specially
+noticed as an exposition by an authoritative disciple.
+
+[364] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 13.
+
+[365] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. v.
+
+[366] _Works_ ('Evidence'), vi. 261.
+
+[367] _Works_ ('Evidence'), vii. 116.
+
+[368] _Ibid._ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 14, etc.; _Ibid._ vi. 260.
+In _Ibid._ ('Evidence') vii. 116, 'humanity,' and in 'Logical
+Arrangements,' _Ibid._ ii. 290, 'sympathy' appears as a fifth sanction.
+Another modification is suggested in _Ibid._ i. 14 _n._
+
+[369] _Ibid._ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 67.
+
+[370] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 96 _n._
+
+[371] See especially _Ibid._ viii. 104, etc.; 253, etc.; 289, etc.
+
+[372] _Ibid._ viii. 106.
+
+[373] 'Codify' was one of Bentham's successful neologisms.
+
+[374] _Works_ ('Logic'), viii. 220.
+
+[375] Here Bentham coincides with Horne Tooke, to whose 'discoveries' he
+refers in the _Chrestomathia_ (_Works_, viii. 120, 185, 188).
+
+[376] _Works_, iii. 286; viii. 119.
+
+[377] _Ibid._ ('Ontology') viii. 196 _n._
+
+[378] _Ibid._ viii, 197 _n._
+
+[379] _Ibid._ viii. 263.
+
+[380] _Works_ ('Ontology'), viii. 119.
+
+[381] _Ibid._ viii. 198.
+
+[382] _Ibid._ viii. 199.
+
+[383] _Ibid._ viii. 206, 247.
+
+[384] Helvetius adds to this that the only real pains and pleasures are
+the physical, but Bentham does not follow him here. See Helvetius,
+_OEuvres_ (1781), ii. 121, etc.
+
+[385] _Works_, i. 211 ('Springs of Action').
+
+[386] _Ibid._ i. 206.
+
+
+II. SPRINGS OF ACTION
+
+Our path is now clear. Pains and pleasures give us what mathematicians
+call the 'independent variable.' Our units are (in Bentham's phrase)
+'lots' of pain or pleasure. We have to interpret all the facts in terms
+of pain or pleasure, and we shall have the materials for what has since
+been called a 'felicific calculus.' To construct this with a view to
+legislation is his immediate purpose. The theory will fall into two
+parts: the 'pathological,' or an account of all the pains and pleasures
+which are the primary data; and the 'dynamical,' or an account of the
+various modes of conduct determined by expectations of pain and
+pleasure. This gives the theory of 'springs of action,' considered in
+themselves, and of 'motives,' that is, of the springs as influencing
+conduct.[387] The 'pathology' contains, in the first place, a discussion
+of the measure of pain and pleasure in general; secondly, a discussion
+of the various species of pain and pleasure; and thirdly, a discussion
+of the varying sensibilities of different individuals to pain and
+pleasure.[388] Thus under the first head, we are told that the value of
+a pleasure, considered by itself, depends upon its intensity, duration,
+certainty, and propinquity; and, considered with regard to modes of
+obtaining it, upon its fecundity (or tendency to produce other pains and
+pleasures) and its purity (or freedom from admixture of other pains and
+pleasures). The pain or pleasure is thus regarded as an entity which is
+capable of being in some sense weighed and measured.[389] The next step
+is to classify pains and pleasures, which though commensurable as
+psychological forces, have obviously very different qualities. Bentham
+gives the result of his classification without the analysis upon which
+it depends. He assures us that he has obtained an 'exhaustive' list of
+'simple pleasures.' It must be confessed that the list does not commend
+itself either as exhaustive or as composed of 'simple pleasures.' He
+does not explain the principle of his analysis because he says, it was
+of 'too metaphysical a cast,'[390] but he thought it so important that
+he published it, edited with considerable modifications by James Mill,
+in 1817, as a _Table of the Springs of Action_.[391]
+
+J. S. Mill remarks that this table should be studied by any one who
+would understand Bentham's philosophy. Such a study would suggest some
+unfavourable conclusions. Bentham seems to have made out his table
+without the slightest reference to any previous psychologist. It is
+simply constructed to meet the requirements of his legislative theories.
+As psychology it would be clearly absurd, especially if taken as giving
+the elementary or 'simple' feelings. No one can suppose, for example,
+that the pleasures of 'wealth' or 'power' are 'simple' pleasures. The
+classes therefore are not really distinct, and they are as far from
+being exhaustive. All that can be said for the list is that it gives a
+sufficiently long enumeration to call attention from his own point of
+view to most of the ordinary pleasures and pains; and contains as much
+psychology as he could really turn to account for his purpose.
+
+The omissions with which his greatest disciple charges him are certainly
+significant. We find, says Mill, no reference to 'Conscience,'
+'Principle,' 'Moral Rectitude,' or 'Moral Duty' among the 'springs of
+action,' unless among the synonyms of a 'love of reputation,' or in so
+far as 'Conscience' and 'Principle' are sometimes synonymous with the
+'religious' motive or the motive of 'sympathy.' So the sense of
+'honour,' the love of beauty, and of order, of power (except in the
+narrow sense of power over our fellows) and of action in general are all
+omitted. We may conjecture what reply Bentham would have made to this
+criticism. The omission of the love of beauty and aesthetic pleasures may
+surprise us when we remember that Bentham loved music, if he cared
+nothing for poetry. But he apparently regarded these as 'complex
+pleasures,'[392] and therefore not admissible into his table, if it be
+understood as an analysis into the simple pleasures alone. The pleasures
+of action are deliberately omitted, for Bentham pointedly gives the
+'pains' of labour as a class without corresponding pleasure; and this,
+though indicative, I think, of a very serious error, is characteristic
+rather of his method of analysis than of his real estimate of pleasure.
+Nobody could have found more pleasure than Bentham in intellectual
+labour, but he separated the pleasure from the labour. He therefore
+thought 'labour,' as such, a pure evil, and classified the pleasure as a
+pleasure of 'curiosity.' But the main criticism is more remarkable. Mill
+certainly held himself to be a sound Utilitarian; and yet he seems to be
+condemning Bentham for consistent Utilitarianism. Bentham, by admitting
+the 'conscience' into his simple springs of action, would have fallen
+into the very circle from which he was struggling to emerge. If, in
+fact, the pleasures of conscience are simple pleasures, we have the
+objectionable 'moral sense' intruded as an ultimate factor of human
+nature. To get rid of that 'fictitious entity' is precisely Bentham's
+aim. The moral judgment is to be precisely equivalent to the judgment:
+'this or that kind of conduct increases or diminishes the sum of human
+pains or pleasures.' Once allow that among the pains and pleasures
+themselves is an ultimate conscience--a faculty not constructed out of
+independent pains and pleasures--and the system becomes a vicious
+circle. Conscience on any really Utilitarian scheme must be a
+derivative, not an ultimate, faculty. If, as Mill seems to say, the
+omission is a blunder, Bentham's Utilitarianism at least must be an
+erroneous system.
+
+We have now our list both of pains and pleasures and of the general
+modes of variation by which their value is to be measured. We must also
+allow for the varying sensibilities of different persons. Bentham
+accordingly gives a list of thirty-two 'circumstances influencing
+sensibility.'[393] Human beings differ in constitution, character,
+education, sex, race, and so forth, and in their degrees of sensibility
+to all the various classes of pains and pleasures; the consideration of
+these varieties is of the highest utility for the purposes of the judge
+and the legislator.[394] The 'sanctions' will operate differently in
+different cases. A blow will have different effects upon the sick and
+upon the healthy; the same fine imposed upon the rich and the poor will
+cause very different pains; and a law which is beneficent in Europe may
+be a scourge in America.
+
+We have thus our 'pathology' or theory of the passive sensibilities of
+man. We know what are the 'springs of action,' how they vary in general,
+and how they vary from one man to another. We can therefore pass to the
+dynamics.[395] We have described the machinery in rest, and can now
+consider it in motion. We proceed as before by first considering action
+in general: which leads to consideration of the 'intention' and the
+'motive' implied by any conscious action: and hence of the relation of
+these to the 'springs of action' as already described. The discussion is
+minute and elaborate; and Bentham improves as he comes nearer to the
+actual problems of legislation and further from the ostensible bases of
+psychology. The analysis of conduct, and of the sanctions by which
+conduct is modified, involves a view of morals and of the relations
+between the spheres of morality and legislation which is of critical
+importance for the whole Utilitarian creed. 'Moral laws' and a 'Positive
+law' both affect human action. How do they differ? Bentham's treatment
+of the problem shows, I think, a clearer appreciation of some
+difficulties than might be inferred from his later utterances. In any
+case, it brings into clear relief a moral doctrine which deeply affected
+his successors.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[387] _Works_, i. 205; and Dumont's _Traites_ (1820), i. xxv, xxvi. The
+word 'springs of action' perhaps comes from the marginal note to the
+above-mentioned passage of Locke (bk. ii. chap. xxvi, Sec. 41, 42).
+
+[388] _Morals and Legislation_, chaps. iv., v., vi.
+
+[389] See 'Codification Proposal' (_Works_, iv. 540), where Bentham
+takes money as representing pleasure, and shows how the present value
+may be calculated like that of a sum put out to interest. The same
+assumption is often made by Political Economists in regard to
+'utilities.'
+
+[390] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 17 _n._
+
+[391] It is not worth while to consider this at length; but I give the
+following conjectural account of the list as it appears in the _Morals
+and Legislation_ above. In classifying pain or pleasures, Bentham is, I
+think, following the clue suggested by his 'sanctions.' He is really
+classifying according to their causes or the way in which they are
+'annexed.' Thus pleasures may or may not be dependent upon other
+persons, or if upon other persons, may be indirectly or directly caused
+by their pleasures or pains. Pleasures not caused by persons correspond
+to the 'physical sanction,' and are those (1) of the 'senses,' (2) of
+wealth, _i.e._ caused by the possession of things, and (3) of 'skill,'
+_i.e._ caused by our ability to use things. Pleasures caused by persons
+indirectly correspond first to the 'popular or moral sanction,' and are
+pleasures (4) of 'amity,' caused by the goodwill of individuals, and (5)
+of a 'good name,' caused by the goodwill of people in general; secondly,
+to 'political sanction,' namely (6) pleasures of 'power'; and thirdly,
+to the 'religious sanction,' or (7) pleasures of 'piety.' All these are
+'self-regarding pleasures.' The pleasures caused directly by the
+pleasure of others are those (8) of 'benevolence,' and (9) of
+malevolence. We then have what is really a cross division by classes of
+'derivative' pleasures; these being due to (10) memory, (11)
+imagination, (12) expectation, (13) association. To each class of
+pleasures corresponds a class of pains, except that there are no pains
+corresponding to the pleasures of wealth or power. We have, however, a
+general class of pains of 'privation,' which might include pains of
+poverty or weakness: and to these are opposed (14) pleasures of
+'relief,' _i.e._ of the privation of pains. In the _Table_, as
+separately published, Bentham modified this by dividing pleasures of
+sense into three classes, the last of which includes the two first; by
+substituting pleasures of 'curiosity' for pleasures of 'skill' by
+suppressing pleasures of relief and pains of privation; and by adding,
+as a class of 'pains' without corresponding pleasures, pains (1) of
+labour, (2) of 'death, and bodily pains in general.' These changes seem
+to have been introduced in the course of writing his _Introduction_,
+where they are partly assumed. Another class is added to include all
+classes of 'self-regarding pleasures or pains.' He is trying to give a
+list of all 'synonyms' for various pains and pleasures, and has
+therefore to admit classes corresponding to general names which include
+other classes.
+
+[392] _Works_ i. 210, where he speaks of pleasures of the 'ball-room,'
+the 'theatre,' and the 'fine arts' as derivable from the 'simple and
+elementary' pleasures.
+
+[393] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 22 etc.
+
+[394] _Ibid._ i. 33.
+
+[395] _Morals and Legislation_, ch. vii. to xi.
+
+
+III. THE SANCTIONS
+
+Let us first take his definitions of the fundamental conceptions. All
+action of reasonable beings implies the expectation of consequences. The
+agent's 'intention' is defined by the consequences actually
+contemplated. The cause of action is the hope of the consequent
+pleasures or the dread of the consequent pains. This anticipated
+pleasure or pain constitutes the 'internal motive' (a phrase used by
+Bentham to exclude the 'external motive' or event which causes the
+anticipation).[396] The motive, or 'internal motive,' is the
+anticipation of pain to be avoided or pleasure to be gained. Actions are
+good or bad simply and solely as they are on the whole 'productive of a
+balance of pleasure or pain.' The problem of the legislator is how to
+regulate actions so as to incline the balance to the right side. His
+weapons are 'sanctions' which modify 'motives.' What motives, then,
+should be strengthened or checked? Here we must be guided by a principle
+which is, in fact, the logical result of the doctrines already laid
+down. We are bound to apply our 'felicific calculus' with absolute
+impartiality. We must therefore assign equal value to all motives. 'No
+motives,' he says,[397] are 'constantly good or constantly bad.'
+Pleasure is itself a good; pain itself an evil: nay, they are 'the only
+good and the only evil.' This is true of every sort of pain and
+pleasure, even of the pains and pleasures of illwill. The pleasures of
+'malevolence' are placed in his 'table' by the side of pleasures of
+'benevolence.' Hence it 'follows immediately and incontestably, that
+there is no such thing as any sort of motive that is in itself a bad
+one.' The doctrine is no doubt a logical deduction from Bentham's
+assumptions, and he proceeds to illustrate its meaning. A 'motive'
+corresponds to one of his 'springs of action.' He shows how every one of
+the motives included in his table may lead either to good or to bad
+consequences. The desire of wealth may lead me to kill a man's enemy or
+to plough his field for him; the fear of God may prompt to fanaticism
+or to charity; illwill may lead to malicious conduct or may take the
+form of proper 'resentment,' as, for example, when I secure the
+punishment of my father's murderer. Though one act, he says, is approved
+and the other condemned, they spring from the same motive, namely,
+illwill.[398] He admits, however, that some motives are more likely than
+others to lead to 'useful' conduct; and thus arranges them in a certain
+'order of pre-eminence.'[399] It is obvious that 'goodwill,' 'love of
+reputation,' and the 'desire of amity' are more likely than others to
+promote general happiness. 'The dictates of utility,' as he observes,
+are simply the 'dictates of the most extensive and enlightened (that is,
+_well advised_) benevolence.' It would, therefore, seem more appropriate
+to call the 'motive' good; though no one doubts that when directed by an
+erroneous judgment it may incidentally be mischievous.
+
+The doctrine that morality depends upon 'consequences' and not upon
+'motives' became a characteristic Utilitarian dogma, and I shall have to
+return to the question. Meanwhile, it was both a natural and, I think,
+in some senses, a correct view, when strictly confined to the province
+of legislation. For reasons too obvious to expand, the legislator must
+often be indifferent to the question of motives. He cannot know with
+certainty what are a man's motives. He must enforce the law whatever may
+be the motives for breaking it; and punish rebellion, for example, even
+if he attributes it to misguided philanthropy. He can, in any case,
+punish only such crimes as are found out; and must define crimes by
+palpable 'external' marks. He must punish by such coarse means as the
+gallows and the gaol: for his threats must appeal to the good and the
+bad alike. He depends, therefore, upon 'external' sanctions, sanctions,
+that is, which work mainly upon the fears of physical pain; and even if
+his punishments affect the wicked alone, they clearly cannot reach the
+wicked as wicked, nor in proportion to their wickedness. That is quite
+enough to show why in positive law motives are noticed indirectly or not
+at all. It shows also that the analogy between the positive and the
+moral law is treacherous. The exclusion of motive justifiable in law may
+take all meaning out of morality. The Utilitarians, as we shall see,
+were too much disposed to overlook the difference, and attempt to apply
+purely legal doctrine in the totally uncongenial sphere of ethical
+speculation. To accept the legal classification of actions by their
+external characteristics is, in fact, to beg the question in advance.
+Any outward criterion must group together actions springing from
+different 'motives' and therefore, as other moralists would say,
+ethically different.
+
+There is, however, another meaning in this doctrine which is more to the
+purpose here. Bentham was aiming at a principle which, true or false, is
+implied in all ethical systems based upon experience instead of pure
+logic or _a priori_ 'intuitions.' Such systems must accept human nature
+as a fact, and as the basis of a scientific theory. They do not aim at
+creating angels but at developing the existing constitution of mankind.
+So far as an action springs from one of the primitive or essential
+instincts of mankind, it simply proves the agent to be human, not to be
+vicious or virtuous, and therefore is no ground for any moral judgment.
+If Bentham's analysis could be accepted, this would be true of his
+'springs of action.' The natural appetites have not in themselves a
+moral quality: they are simply necessary and original data in the
+problem. The perplexity is introduced by Bentham's assumption that
+conduct can be analysed so that the 'motive' is a separate entity which
+can be regarded as the sole cause of a corresponding action. That
+involves an irrelevant abstraction. There is no such thing as a single
+'motive.' One of his cases is a mother who lets her child die for love
+of 'ease.' We do not condemn her because she loves ease, which is a
+motive common to all men and therefore unmoral, not immoral. But neither
+do we condemn her merely for the bad consequences of a particular
+action. We condemn her because she loves ease better than she loves her
+child: that is, because her whole character is 'unnatural' or
+ill-balanced, not on account of a particular element taken by itself.
+Morality is concerned with concrete human beings, and not with 'motives'
+running about by themselves. Bentham's meaning, if we make the necessary
+correction, would thus be expressed by saying that we don't blame a man
+because he has the 'natural' passions, but because they are somehow
+wrongly proportioned or the man himself wrongly constituted. Passions
+which may make a man vicious may also be essential to the highest
+virtue. That is quite true; but the passion is not a separate agent,
+only one constituent of the character.
+
+Bentham admits this in his own fashion. If 'motives' cannot be properly
+called good or bad, is there, he asks, nothing good or bad in the man
+who on a given occasion obeys a certain motive? 'Yes, certainly,' he
+replies, 'his disposition.'[400] The disposition, he adds, is a
+'fictitious entity, and designed for the convenience of discourse in
+order to express what there is supposed to be permanent in a man's frame
+of mind.' By 'fictitious,' as we have seen, he means not 'unreal' but
+simply not tangible, weighable, or measurable--like sticks and stones,
+or like pains and pleasures. 'Fictitious' as they may be, therefore, the
+fiction enables us to express real truths, and to state facts which are
+of the highest importance to the moralist and the legislator. Bentham
+discusses some cases of casuistry in order to show the relation between
+the tendency of an action and the intention and motives of the agent.
+Ravaillac murders a good king; Ravaillac's son enables his father to
+escape punishment, or conveys poison to his father to enable him to
+avoid torture by suicide.[401] What is the inference as to the son's
+disposition in either case? The solution (as he substantially and, I
+think, rightly suggests) will have to be reached by considering whether
+the facts indicate that the son's disposition was mischievous or
+otherwise; whether it indicates political disloyalty or filial
+affection, and so forth, and in what proportions. The most interesting
+case perhaps is that of religious persecution, where the religious
+motive is taken to be good, and the action to which it leads is yet
+admitted to be mischievous. The problem is often puzzling, but we are
+virtually making an inference as to the goodness or badness of the
+'disposition' implied by the given action under all the supposed
+circumstances. This gives what Bentham calls the 'meritoriousness'[402]
+of the disposition. The 'intention' is caused by the 'motive.' The
+'disposition' is the 'sum of the intentions'; that is to say, it
+expresses the agent's sensibility to various classes of motives; and the
+merit therefore will be in proportion to the total goodness or badness
+of the disposition thus indicated. The question of merit leads to
+interesting moral problems. Bentham, however, observes that he is not
+here speaking from the point of view of the moralist but of the
+legislator. Still, as a legislator he has to consider what is the
+'depravity' of disposition indicated by different kinds of conduct. This
+consideration is of great importance. The 'disposition' includes
+sensibility to what he calls 'tutelary motives'--motives, that is, which
+deter a man from such conduct as generally produces mischievous
+consequences. No motive can be invariably, though some, especially the
+motive of goodwill, and in a minor degree those of 'amity' and a 'love
+of reputation,' are generally, on the right side. The legislator has to
+reinforce these 'tutelary motives' by 'artificial tutelary motives,' and
+mainly by appealing to the 'love of ease,' that is, by making
+mischievous conduct more difficult, and to 'self-preservation,' that is,
+by making it more dangerous.[403] He has therefore to measure the force
+by which these motives will be opposed; or, in other words, the
+'strength of the temptation.' Now the more depraved a man's disposition,
+the weaker the temptation which will seduce him to crime. Consequently
+if an act shows depravity, it will require a stronger counter-motive or
+a more severe punishment, as the disposition indicated is more
+mischievous. An act, for example, which implies deliberation proves a
+greater insensibility to these social motives which, as Bentham
+remarks,[404] determine the 'general tenor of a man's life,' however
+depraved he may be. The legislator is guided solely by 'utility,' or
+aims at maximising happiness without reference to its quality. Still, so
+far as action implies disposition, he has to consider the depravity as a
+source of mischief. The legislator who looks solely at the moral quality
+implied is wrong; and, if guided solely by his sympathies, has no
+measure for the amount of punishment to be inflicted. These
+considerations will enable us to see what is the proper measure of
+resentment.[405]
+
+The doctrine of the neutrality or 'unmorality' of motive is thus
+sufficiently clear. Bentham's whole aim is to urge that the criterion of
+morality is given by the consequences of actions. To say the conduct is
+good or bad is to say in other words that it produces a balance of
+pleasure or pain. To make the criterion independent, or escape the
+vicious circle, we must admit the pleasures and pains to be in
+themselves neutral; to have, that is, the same value, if equally strong,
+whatever their source. In our final balance-sheet we must set down pains
+of illwill and of goodwill, of sense and of intellect with absolute
+impartiality, and compare them simply in respect of intensity. We must
+not admit a 'conscience' or 'moral sense' which would be autocratic;
+nor, indeed, allow moral to have any meaning as applied to the separate
+passions. But it is quite consistent with this to admit that some
+motives, goodwill in particular, generally tend to bring out the
+desirable result, that is, a balance of pleasure for the greatest
+number. The pains and pleasures are the ultimate facts, and the
+'disposition' is a 'fictitious entity' or a name for the sum of
+sensibilities. It represents the fact that some men are more inclined
+than others to increase the total of good or bad.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[396] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 46.
+
+[397] _Ibid._ i. 48.
+
+[398] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 56.
+
+[399] _Ibid._ i. 56.
+
+[400] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 60.
+
+[401] _Ibid._ i. 62.
+
+[402] _Ibid._ i. 65.
+
+[403] These are the two classes of 'springs of action' omitted in the
+_Table_.
+
+[404] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 68.
+
+[405] Here Bentham lays down the rule that punishment should rise with
+the strength of the temptation, a theory which leads to some curious
+casuistical problems. He does not fully discuss, and I cannot here
+consider, them. I will only note that it may conceivably be necessary to
+increase the severity of punishment, instead of removing the temptation
+or strengthening the preventive action. If so, the law becomes immoral
+in the sense of punishing more severely as the crime has more moral
+excuse. This was often true of the old criminal law, which punished
+offences cruelly because it had no effective system of police. Bentham
+would of course have agreed that the principle in this case was a bad
+one.
+
+
+IV. CRIMINAL LAW
+
+We have now, after a long analysis, reached the point at which the
+principles can be applied to penal law. The legislator has to discourage
+certain classes of conduct by annexing 'tutelary motives.' The classes
+to be suppressed are of course those which diminish happiness. Pursuing
+the same method, and applying results already reached, we must in the
+first place consider how the 'mischief of an act' is to be
+measured.[406] Acts are mischievous as their 'consequences' are
+mischievous; and the consequences may be 'primary' or 'secondary.'
+Robbery causes pain to the loser of the money. That is a primary evil.
+It alarms the holders of money; it suggests the facility of robbery to
+others; and it weakens the 'tutelary motive' of respect for property.
+These are secondary evils. The 'secondary' evil may be at times the most
+important. The non-payment of a tax may do no appreciable harm in a
+particular case. But its secondary effects in injuring the whole
+political fabric may be disastrous and fruitful beyond calculation.
+Bentham proceeds to show carefully how the 'intentions' and 'motives' of
+the evildoer are of the greatest importance, especially in determining
+these secondary consequences, and must therefore be taken into account
+by the legislator. A homicide may cause the same primary evil, whether
+accidental or malignant; but accidental homicide may cause no alarm,
+whereas the intentional and malignant homicide may cause any quantity of
+alarm and shock to the general sense of security. In this way,
+therefore, the legislator has again indirectly to take into account the
+moral quality which is itself dependent upon utility.
+
+I must, however, pass lightly over a very clear and interesting
+discussion to reach a further point of primary importance to the
+Utilitarian theory, as to the distinction between the moral and legal
+spheres.[407] Bentham has now 'made an analysis of evil.' He has, that
+is, classified the mischiefs produced by conduct, measured simply by
+their effect upon pleasures or pains, independently of any consideration
+as to virtue and vice. The next problem is: what conduct should be
+criminal?--a subject which is virtually discussed in two chapters (xv.
+and xix.) 'on cases unmeet for punishment' and on 'the limits between
+Private Ethics and the act of legislation.' We must, of course, follow
+the one clue to the labyrinth. We must count all the 'lots' of pain and
+pleasure indifferently. It is clear, on the one hand, that the pains
+suffered by criminals are far less than the pains which would be
+suffered were no such sanctions applied. On the other hand, all
+punishment is an evil, because punishment means pain, and it is
+therefore only to be inflicted when it excludes greater pain. It must,
+therefore, not be inflicted when it is 'groundless,' 'inefficacious,'
+'unprofitable,' or 'needless.' 'Needless' includes all the cases in
+which the end may be attained 'as effectually at a cheaper rate.'[408]
+This applies to all 'dissemination of pernicious principles'; for in
+this case reason and not force is the appropriate remedy. The sword
+inflicts more pain, and is less efficient than the pen. The argument
+raises the wider question, What are the true limits of legislative
+interference? Bentham, in his last chapter, endeavours to answer this
+problem. 'Private ethics,' he says, and 'legislation' aim at the same
+end, namely, happiness, and the 'acts with which they are conversant are
+_in great measure_ the same.' Why, then, should they have different
+spheres? Simply because the acts 'are not _perfectly and throughout_ the
+same.'[409] How, then, are we to draw the line? By following the
+invariable clue of 'utility.' We simply have to apply an analysis to
+determine the cases in which punishment does more harm than good. He
+insists especially upon the cases in which punishment is 'unprofitable';
+upon such offences as drunkenness and sexual immorality, where the law
+could only be enforced by a mischievous or impossible system of minute
+supervision, and such offences as ingratitude or rudeness, where the
+definition is so vague that the judge could not safely be entrusted with
+the power to punish.'[410] He endeavours to give a rather more precise
+distinction by subdividing 'ethics in general' into three classes. Duty
+may be to oneself, that is 'prudence'; or to one's neighbour negatively,
+that is 'probity'; or to one's neighbour positively, that is
+'benevolence.'[411] Duties of the first class must be left chiefly to
+the individual, because he is the best judge of his own interest. Duties
+of the third class again are generally too vague to be enforced by the
+legislator, though a man ought perhaps to be punished for failing to
+help as well as for actually injuring. The second department of ethics,
+that of 'probity,' is the main field for legislative activity.[412] As a
+general principle, 'private ethics' teach a man how to pursue his own
+happiness, and the art of legislation how to pursue the greatest
+happiness of the community. It must be noticed, for the point is one of
+importance, that Bentham's purely empirical method draws no definite
+line. It implies that no definite line can be drawn. It does not suggest
+that any kind of conduct whatever is outside the proper province of
+legislator except in so far as the legislative machinery may happen to
+be inadequate or inappropriate.
+
+Our analysis has now been carried so far that we can proceed to consider
+the principles by which we should be guided in punishing. What are the
+desirable properties of a 'lot of punishment'? This occupies two
+interesting chapters. Chapter xvi., 'on the proportion between
+punishments and offences,' gives twelve rules. The punishment, he urges,
+must outweigh the profit of the offence; it must be such as to make a
+man prefer a less offence to a greater--simple theft, for example, to
+violent robbery; it must be such that the punishment must be adaptable
+to the varying sensibility of the offender; it must be greater in
+'value' as it falls short of certainty; and, when the offence indicates
+a habit, it must outweigh not only the profit of the particular offence,
+but of the undetected offences. In chapter xvii. Bentham considers the
+properties which fit a punishment to fulfil these conditions. Eleven
+properties are given. The punishment must be (1) 'variable,' that is,
+capable of adjustment to particular cases; and (2) equable, or
+inflicting equal pain by equal sentences. Thus the 'proportion' between
+punishment and crimes of a given class can be secured. In order that the
+punishments of different classes of crime may be proportional, the
+punishments should (3) be commensurable. To make punishments efficacious
+they should be (4) 'characteristical' or impressive to the imagination;
+and that they may not be excessive they should be (5) exemplary or
+likely to impress others, and (6) frugal. To secure minor ends they
+should be (7) reformatory; (8) disabling, _i.e._ from future offences;
+and (9) compensatory to the sufferer. Finally, to avoid collateral
+disadvantages they should be (10) popular, and (11) remittable. A
+twelfth property, simplicity, was added in Dumont's redaction. Dumont
+calls attention here to the value of Bentham's method.[413] Montesquieu
+and Beccaria had spoken in general terms of the desirable qualities of
+punishment. They had spoken of 'proportionality,' for example, but
+without that precise or definite meaning which appears in Bentham's
+Calculus. In fact, Bentham's statement, compared to the vaguer
+utterances of his predecessors, but still more when compared to the
+haphazard brutalities and inconsistencies of English criminal law,
+gives the best impression of the value of his method.
+
+Bentham's next step is an elaborate classification of offences, worked
+out by a further application of his bifurcatory method.[414] This would
+form the groundwork of the projected code. I cannot, however, speak of
+this classification, or of many interesting remarks contained in the
+_Principles of Penal Law_, where some further details are considered. An
+analysis scarcely does justice to Bentham, for it has to omit his
+illustrations and his flashes of real vivacity. The mere dry logical
+framework is not appetising. I have gone so far in order to illustrate
+the characteristic of Bentham's teaching. It was not the bare appeal to
+utility, but the attempt to follow the clue of utility systematically
+and unflinchingly into every part of the subject. This one doctrine
+gives the touchstone by which every proposed measure is to be tested;
+and which will give to his system not such unity as arises from the
+development of an abstract logical principle, but such as is introduced
+into the physical sciences when we are able to range all the
+indefinitely complex phenomena which arise under some simple law of
+force. If Bentham's aim could have been achieved, 'utility' would have
+been in legislative theories what gravitation is in astronomical
+theories. All human conduct being ruled by pain and pleasure, we could
+compare all motives and actions, and trace out the consequences of any
+given law. I shall have hereafter to consider how this conception worked
+in different minds and was applied to different problems: what were the
+tenable results to which it led, and what were the errors caused by the
+implied oversight of some essential considerations.
+
+Certain weaknesses are almost too obvious to be specified. He claimed to
+be constructing a science, comparable to the physical sciences. The
+attempt was obviously chimerical if we are to take it seriously. The
+makeshift doctrine which he substitutes for psychology would be a
+sufficient proof of the incapacity for his task. He had probably not
+read such writers as Hartley or Condillac, who might have suggested some
+ostensibly systematic theory. If he had little psychology he had not
+even a conception of 'sociology.' The 'felicific calculus' is enough to
+show the inadequacy of his method. The purpose is to enable us to
+calculate the effects of a proposed law. You propose to send robbers to
+the gallows or the gaol. You must, says Bentham, reckon up all the evils
+prevented: the suffering to the robbed, and to those who expect to be
+robbed, on the one hand; and, on the other, the evils caused, the
+suffering to the robber, and to the tax-payer who keeps the constable;
+then strike your balance and make your law if the evils prevented exceed
+the evils caused. Some such calculation is demanded by plain common
+sense. It points to the line of inquiry desirable. But can it be
+adequate? To estimate the utility of a law we must take into account all
+its 'effects.' What are the 'effects' of a law against robbery? They are
+all that is implied in the security of property. They correspond to the
+difference between England in the eighteenth century and England in the
+time of Hengist and Horsa; between a country where the supremacy of law
+is established, and a country still under the rule of the strong hand.
+Bentham's method may be applicable at a given moment, when the social
+structure is already consolidated and uniform. It would represent the
+practical arguments for establishing the police-force demanded by
+Colquhoun, and show the disadvantages of the old constables and
+watchmen. Bentham, that is, gives an admirable method for settling
+details of administrative and legislative machinery, and dealing with
+particular cases when once the main principles of law and order are
+established. Those principles, too, may depend upon 'utility,' but
+utility must be taken in a wider sense when we have to deal with the
+fundamental questions. We must consider the 'utility' of the whole
+organisation, not the fitness of separate details. Finally, if Bentham
+is weak in psychology and in sociology, he is clearly not satisfactory
+in ethics. Morality is, according to him, on the same plane with law.
+The difference is not in the sphere to which they apply, or in the end
+to which they are directed; but solely in the 'sanction.' The legislator
+uses threats of physical suffering; the moralist threats of 'popular'
+disapproval. Either 'sanction' may be most applicable to a given case;
+but the question is merely between different means to the same end under
+varying conditions. This implies the 'external' character of Bentham's
+morality, and explains his insistence upon the neutrality of motives. He
+takes the average man to be a compound of certain instincts, and merely
+seeks to regulate their action by supplying 'artificial tutelary
+motives.' The 'man' is given; the play of his instincts, separately
+neutral, makes his conduct more or less favourable to general happiness;
+and the moralist and the legislator have both to correct his deviations
+by supplying appropriate 'sanctions.' Bentham, therefore, is inclined to
+ignore the intrinsic character of morality, or the dependence of a man's
+morality upon the essential structure of his nature. He thinks of the
+superficial play of forces, not of their intimate constitution. The man
+is not to be changed in either case; only his circumstances. Such
+defects no doubt diminish the value of Bentham's work. Yet, after all,
+in his own sphere they are trifles. He did very well without philosophy.
+However imperfect his system might be considered as a science or an
+ultimate explanation of society and human nature, it was very much to
+the point as an expression of downright common sense. Dumont's eulogy
+seems to be fully deserved, when we contrast Bentham's theory of
+punishment with the theories (if they deserve the name) of contemporary
+legislators. His method involved a thoroughgoing examination of the
+whole body of laws, and a resolution to apply a searching test to every
+law. If that test was not so unequivocal or ultimate as he fancied, it
+yet implied the constant application of such considerations as must
+always carry weight, and, perhaps, be always the dominant
+considerations, with the actual legislator or jurist. What is the use of
+you? is a question which may fairly be put to every institution and to
+every law; and it concerns legislators to find some answer, even though
+the meaning of the word 'use' is not so clear as we could wish.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[406] _Morals and Legislation_, ch. xii.
+
+[407] _Morals and Legislation_, ch. xiv. (a chapter inserted from
+Dumont's _Traites_).
+
+[408] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. p. 86.
+
+[409] _Ibid._ i. 144.
+
+[410] _Ibid._ i. 145.
+
+[411] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 143.
+
+[412] _Ibid._ i. 147-48.
+
+[413] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i 406 _n._
+
+[414] _Works_ ('Morals and Legislation'), i. 96 _n._
+
+
+V. ENGLISH LAW
+
+The practical value of Bentham's method is perhaps best illustrated by
+his _Rationale of Evidence_. The composition of the papers ultimately
+put together by J. S. Mill had occupied Bentham from 1802 to 1812. The
+changed style is significant. Nobody could write more pointedly, or with
+happier illustrations, than Bentham in his earlier years. He afterwards
+came to think that a didactic treatise should sacrifice every other
+virtue to fulness and precision. To make a sentence precise, every
+qualifying clause must be somehow forced into the original formula.
+Still more characteristic is his application of what he calls the
+'substantive-preferring principle.'[415] He would rather say, 'I give
+extension to an object,' than 'I extend an object.' Where a substantive
+is employed, the idea is 'stationed upon a rock'; if only a verb, the
+idea is 'like a leaf floating on a stream.' A verb, he said,[416] 'slips
+through your fingers like an eel.' The principle corresponds to his
+'metaphysics.' The universe of thought is made up of a number of
+separate 'entities' corresponding to nouns-substantive, and when these
+bundles are distinctly isolated by appropriate nouns, the process of
+arranging and codifying according to the simple relations indicated by
+the copula is greatly facilitated. The ideal language would resemble
+algebra, in which symbols, each representing a given numerical value,
+are connected by the smallest possible number of symbols of operation,
++, -, =, and so forth. To set two such statements side by side, or to
+modify them by inserting different constants, is then a comparatively
+easy process, capable of being regulated by simple general rules.
+Bentham's style becomes tiresome, and was often improperly called
+obscure. It requires attention, but the meaning is never doubtful--and
+to the end we have frequent flashes of the old vivacity.
+
+The _Rationale of Evidence_, as Mill remarks,[417] is 'one of the
+richest in matter of all Bentham's productions.' It contains, too, many
+passages in Bentham's earlier style, judiciously preserved by his young
+editor; indeed, so many that I am tempted even to call the book amusing.
+In spite of the wearisome effort to say everything, and to force
+language into the mould presented by his theory, Bentham attracts us by
+his obvious sincerity. The arguments may be unsatisfactory, but they are
+genuine arguments. They represent conviction; they are given because
+they have convinced; and no reader can deny that they really tend to
+convince. We may complain that there are too many words, and that the
+sentences are cumbrous; but the substance is always to the point. The
+main purpose may be very briefly indicated. Bentham begins by general
+considerations upon evidence, in which he and his youthful editor
+indicate their general adherence to the doctrines of Hume.[418] This
+leads to an application of the methods expounded in the 'Introduction,'
+in order to show how the various motives or 'springs of action' and the
+'sanctions' based upon them may affect the trustworthiness of evidence.
+Any motive whatever may incidentally cause 'mendacity.' The second book,
+therefore, considers what securities may be taken for 'securing
+trustworthiness.' We have, for example, a discussion of the value of
+oaths (he thinks them valueless), of the advantages and disadvantages of
+reducing evidence to writing, of interrogating witnesses, and of the
+publicity or privacy of evidence. Book iii. deals with the 'extraction
+of evidence.' We have to compare the relative advantages of oral and
+written evidence, the rules for cross-examining witnesses and for taking
+evidence as to their character. Book iv. deals with 'pre-appointed
+evidence,' the cases, that is, in which events are recorded at the time
+of occurrence with a view to their subsequent use as evidence. We have
+under this head to consider the formalities which should be required in
+regard to contracts and wills; and the mode of recording judicial and
+other official decisions and registering births, deaths, and marriages.
+In Books v. and vi. we consider two kinds of evidence which is in one
+way or other of inferior cogency, namely, 'circumstantial evidence,' in
+which the evidence if accepted still leaves room for a process of more
+or less doubtful inference; and 'makeshift evidence,' such evidence as
+must sometimes be accepted for want of the best, of which the most
+conspicuous instance is 'hearsay evidence.' Book vii. deals with the
+'authentication' of evidence. Book viii. is a consideration of the
+'technical' system, that namely which was accepted by English lawyers;
+and finally Book ix. deals with a special point, namely, the exclusion
+of evidence. Bentham announces at starting[419] that he shall establish
+'one theorem' and consider two problems. The problems are: 'what
+securities can be taken for the truth of evidence?' and 'what rules can
+be given for estimating the value of evidence?' The 'theorem' is that no
+evidence should be excluded with the professed intention of obtaining a
+right decision; though some must be excluded to avoid expense, vexation,
+and delay. This, therefore, as his most distinct moral, is fully treated
+in the last book.
+
+Had Bentham confined himself to a pithy statement of his leading
+doctrines, and confirmed them by a few typical cases, he would have been
+more effective in a literary sense. His passion for 'codification,' for
+tabulating and arranging facts in all their complexity, and for applying
+his doctrine at full length to every case that he can imagine, makes him
+terribly prolix. On the other hand, this process no doubt strengthened
+his own conviction and the conviction of his disciples as to the value
+of his process. Follow this clue of utility throughout the whole
+labyrinth, see what a clear answer it offers at every point, and you
+cannot doubt that you are in possession of the true compass for such a
+navigation. Indeed, it seems to be indisputable that Bentham's arguments
+are the really relevant and important arguments. How can we decide any
+of the points which come up for discussion? Should a witness be
+cross-examined? Should his evidence be recorded? Should a wife be
+allowed to give evidence against her husband? or the defendant to give
+evidence about his own case? These and innumerable other points can only
+be decided by reference to what Bentham understood by 'utility.' This or
+that arrangement is 'useful' because it enables us to get quickly and
+easily at the evidence, to take effective securities for its
+truthfulness, to estimate its relevance and importance, to leave the
+decision to the most qualified persons, and so forth. These points,
+again, can only be decided by a careful appeal to experience, and by
+endeavouring to understand the ordinary play of 'motives' and
+'sanctions.' What generally makes a man lie, and how is lying to be made
+unpleasant? By rigorously fixing our minds at every point on such
+issues, we find that many questions admit of very plain answers, and are
+surprised to discover what a mass of obscurity has been dispelled. It
+is, however, true that although the value of the method can hardly be
+denied unless we deny the value of all experience and common sense, we
+may dispute the degree in which it confirms the general principle. Every
+step seems to Bentham to reflect additional light upon his primary
+axiom. Yet it is possible to hold that witnesses should be encouraged to
+speak the truth, and that experience may help us to discover the best
+means to that end without, therefore, admitting the unique validity of
+the 'greatest happiness' principle. That principle, so far as true, may
+be itself a deduction from some higher principle; and no philosopher of
+any school would deny that 'utility' should be in some way consulted by
+the legislator.
+
+The book illustrates the next critical point in Bentham's system--the
+transition from law to politics. He was writing the book at the period
+when the failure of the Panopticon was calling his attention to the
+wickedness of George III. and Lord Eldon, and when the English demand
+for parliamentary reform was reviving and supplying him with a
+sympathetic audience. Now, in examining the theory of evidence upon the
+plan described, Bentham found himself at every stage in conflict with
+the existing system, or rather the existing chaos of unintelligible
+rules. English lawyers, he discovered, had worked out a system of rules
+for excluding evidence. Sometimes the cause was pure indolence. 'This
+man, were I to hear him,' says the English judge, 'would come out with a
+parcel of lies. It would be a plague to hear him: I have heard enough
+already; shut the door in his face.'[420] But, as Bentham shows with
+elaborate detail, a reason for suspecting evidence is not a reason for
+excluding it. A convicted perjurer gives evidence, and has a pecuniary
+interest in the result. That is excellent ground for caution; but the
+fact that the man makes a certain statement may still be a help to the
+ascertainment of truth. Why should that help be rejected? Bentham
+scarcely admits of any exception to the general rule of taking any
+evidence you can get--one exception being the rather curious one of
+confession to a Catholic priest; secrecy in such cases is on the whole,
+he thinks, useful. He exposes the confusion implied in an exclusion of
+evidence because it is not fully trustworthy, which is equivalent to
+working in the dark because a partial light may deceive. But this is
+only a part of a whole system of arbitrary, inconsistent, and technical
+rules worked out by the ingenuity of lawyers. Besides the direct injury
+they gave endless opportunity for skilful manoeuvring to exclude or
+admit evidence by adopting different forms of procedure. Rules had been
+made by judges as they were wanted and precedents established of
+contradictory tendency and uncertain application. Bentham contrasts the
+simplicity of the rules deducible from 'utility' with the amazing
+complexity of the traditional code of technical rules. Under the
+'natural' system, that of utility, you have to deal with a quarrel
+between your servants or children. You send at once for the disputants,
+confront them, take any relevant evidence, and make up your mind as to
+the rights of the dispute. In certain cases this 'natural' procedure has
+been retained, as, for example, in courts-martial, where rapid decision
+was necessary. Had the technical system prevailed, the country would
+have been ruined in six weeks.[421] But the exposure of the technical
+system requires an elaborate display of intricate methods involving at
+every step vexation, delay, and injustice. Bentham reckons up nineteen
+separate devices employed by the courts. He describes the elaborate
+processes which had to be gone through before a hearing could be
+obtained; the distance of courts from the litigants; the bandying of
+cases from court to court; the chicaneries about giving notice; the
+frequent nullification of all that had been done on account of some
+technical flaw; the unintelligible jargon of Latin and Law-French which
+veiled the proceedings from the public; the elaborate mysteries of
+'special pleading'; the conflict of jurisdictions, and the manufacture
+of new 'pleas' and new technical rules; the 'entanglement of
+jurisdictions,' and especially the distinction between law and equity,
+which had made confusion doubly confounded. English law had become a
+mere jungle of unintelligible distinctions, contradictions, and cumbrous
+methods through which no man could find his way without the guidance of
+the initiated, and in which a long purse and unscrupulous trickery gave
+the advantage over the poor to the rich, and to the knave over the
+honest man. One fruitful source of all these evils was the 'judge-made'
+law, which Bentham henceforth never ceased to denounce. His ideal was a
+distinct code which, when change was required, should be changed by an
+avowed and intelligible process. The chaos which had grown up was the
+natural result of the gradual development of a traditional body of law,
+in which new cases were met under cover of applying precedents from
+previous decisions, with the help of reference to the vague body of
+unwritten or 'common law,' and of legal fictions permitting some
+non-natural interpretation of the old formulae. It is the judges, he had
+already said in 1792,[422] 'that make the common law. Do you know how
+they make it? Just as a man makes laws for his dog. When your dog does
+anything you want to break him of, you wait till he does it and then
+beat him. This is the way you make laws for your dog, and this is the
+way the judges make laws for you and me.' The 'tyranny of judge-made
+law' is 'the most all-comprehensive, most grinding, and most crying of
+all grievances,'[423] and is scarcely less bad than 'priest-made
+religion.'[424] Legal fictions, according to him, are simply lies. The
+permission to use them is a 'mendacity licence.' In 'Rome-bred law ...
+fiction' is a 'wart which here and there disfigures the face of justice.
+In English law fiction is a syphilis which runs into every vein and
+carries into every part of the system the principle of rottenness.'[425]
+
+The evils denounced by Bentham were monstrous. The completeness of the
+exposure was his great merit; and his reputation has suffered, as we are
+told on competent authority, by the very efficiency of his attack. The
+worst evils are so much things of the past, that we forget the extent
+of the evil and the merits of its assailant. Bentham's diagnosis of the
+evil explains his later attitude. He attributes all the abuses to
+consciously corrupt motives even where a sufficient explanation can be
+found in the human stupidity and honest incapacity to look outside of
+traditional ways of thought. He admits, indeed, the personal purity of
+English judges. No English judge had ever received a bribe within living
+memory.[426] But this, he urges, is only because the judges find it more
+profitable as well as safer to carry out a radically corrupt system. A
+synonym for 'technical' is 'fee-gathering.' Lawyers of all classes had a
+common interest in multiplying suits and complicating procedure: and
+thus a tacit partnership had grown up which he describes as 'Judge and
+Co.' He gives statistics showing that in the year 1797 five hundred and
+forty-three out of five hundred and fifty 'writs of error' were 'shams,'
+or simply vexatious contrivances for delay, and brought a profit to the
+Chief Justice of over L1400.[427] Lord Eldon was always before him as
+the typical representative of obstruction and obscurantism. In his
+_Indications respecting Lord Eldon_ (1825) he goes into details which it
+must have required some courage to publish. Under Eldon, he says,
+'equity has become an instrument of fraud and extortion.'[428] He
+details the proceedings by which Eldon obtained the sanction of
+parliament for a system of fee-taking, which he had admitted to be
+illegal, and which had been denounced by an eminent solicitor as leading
+to gross corruption. Bentham intimates that the Masters in Chancery were
+'swindlers,'[429] and that Eldon was knowingly the protector and sharer
+of their profits. Romilly, who had called the Court of Chancery 'a
+disgrace to a civilised nation,' had said that Eldon was the cause of
+many of the abuses, and could have reformed most of the others. Erskine
+had declared that if there was a hell, the Court of Chancery was
+hell.[430] Eldon, as Bentham himself thought, was worse than Jeffreys.
+Eldon's victims had died a lingering death, and the persecutor had made
+money out of their sufferings. Jeffreys was openly brutal; while Eldon
+covered his tyranny under the 'most accomplished indifference.'[431]
+
+Yet Eldon was but the head of a band. Judges, barristers, and solicitors
+were alike. The most hopeless of reforms would be to raise a
+'thorough-paced English lawyer' to the moral level of an average
+man.[432] To attack legal abuses was to attack a class combined under
+its chiefs, capable of hoodwinking parliament and suppressing open
+criticism. The slave-traders whom Wilberforce attacked were
+comparatively a powerless excrescence. The legal profession was in the
+closest relations to the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the whole
+privileged and wealthy class. They were welded into a solid 'ring.' The
+king, and his ministers who distributed places and pensions; the
+borough-mongers who sold votes for power; the clergy who looked for
+bishoprics; the monied men who aspired to rank and power, were all parts
+of a league. It was easy enough to talk of law reform. Romilly had
+proposed and even carried a 'reformatiuncle' or two;[433] but to achieve
+a serious success required not victory in a skirmish or two, not the
+exposure of some abuse too palpable to be openly defended even by an
+Eldon, but a prolonged war against an organised army fortified and
+entrenched in the very heart of the country.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[415] _Works_, iii. 267.
+
+[416] _Ibid._ x. 569
+
+[417] _Autobiography_, p. 116.
+
+[418] The subject is again treated in Book v. on 'Circumstantial
+Evidence.'
+
+[419] _Works_, vi. 204.
+
+[420] _Works_, vii. 391.
+
+[421] _Works_, vii. 321-25. Court-martials are hardly a happy example
+now.
+
+[422] 'Truth _v._ Ashhurst' (1792), _Works_, v. 235.
+
+[423] _Works_ ('Codification Petition'), v. 442.
+
+[424] _Ibid._ vi. 11.
+
+[425] _Ibid._ v. 92.
+
+[426] _Works_, vii. 204, 331; ix. 143.
+
+[427] _Ibid._ vii. 214.
+
+[428] _Ibid._ v. 349.
+
+[429] _Ibid._ v. 364.
+
+[430] _Works_, v. 371.
+
+[431] _Ibid._ v. 375.
+
+[432] _Ibid._ vii. 188.
+
+[433] _Ibid._ v. 370.
+
+
+VI. RADICALISM
+
+Thus Bentham, as his eyes were opened, became a Radical. The political
+purpose became dominant, although we always see that the legal abuses
+are uppermost in his mind; and that what he really seeks is a fulcrum
+for the machinery which is to overthrow Lord Eldon. Some of the
+pamphlets deal directly with the special instruments of corruption. The
+_Elements of the Art of Packing_ shows how the crown managed to have a
+permanent body of special 'jurors' at its disposal. The 'grand and
+paramount use'[434] of this system was to crush the liberty of the
+press. The obscure law of libel, worked by judges in the interest of the
+government, enabled them to punish any rash Radical for 'hurting the
+feelings' of the ruling classes, and to evade responsibility by help of
+a 'covertly pensioned' and servile jury. The pamphlet, though tiresomely
+minute and long-winded, contained too much pointed truth to be published
+at the time. The _Official Aptitude minimised_ contains a series of
+attacks upon the system of patronage and pensions by which the machinery
+of government was practically worked. In the _Catechism_ of reformers,
+written in 1809, Bentham began the direct application of his theories to
+the constitution; and the final and most elaborate exposition of these
+forms the _Constitutional Code_, which was the main work of his later
+years. This book excited the warmest admiration of Bentham's
+disciples.[435] J. S. Mill speaks of its 'extraordinary power ... of at
+once seizing comprehensive principles and scheming out minute details,'
+and of its 'surpassing intellectual vigour.' Nor, indeed, will any one
+be disposed to deny that it is a singular proof of intellectual
+activity, when we remember that it was begun when the author was over
+seventy, and that he was still working at eighty-four.[436] In this book
+Bentham's peculiarities of style reach their highest development, and it
+cannot be recommended as light reading. Had Bentham been a mystical
+philosopher, he would, we may conjecture, have achieved a masterpiece of
+unintelligibility which all his followers would have extolled as
+containing the very essence of his teaching. His method condemned him to
+be always intelligible, however crabbed and elaborate. Perhaps, however,
+the point which strikes one most is the amazing simple-mindedness of the
+whole proceeding. Bentham's light-hearted indifference to the
+distinction between paper constitutions and operative rules of conduct
+becomes almost pathetic.
+
+Bentham was clearly the victim of a common delusion. If a system will
+work, the minutest details can be exhibited. Therefore, it is inferred,
+an exhibition of minute detail proves that it will work. Unfortunately,
+the philosophers of Laputa would have had no more difficulty in filling
+up details than the legislators of England or the United States. When
+Bentham had settled in his 'Radical Reform Bill'[437] that the
+'voting-box' was to be a double cube of cast-iron, with a slit in the
+lid, into which cards two inches by one, white on one side and black on
+the other, could be inserted, he must have felt that he had got very
+near to actual application: he can picture the whole operation and
+nobody can say that the scheme is impracticable for want of working
+plans of the machinery. There will, doubtless, be no difficulty in
+settling the shape of the boxes, when we have once agreed to have the
+ballot. But a discussion of such remote details of Utopia is of
+incomparably less real interest than the discussion in the _Rationale of
+Evidence_ of points, which, however minute, were occurring every day,
+and which were really in urgent need of the light of common sense.
+
+Bentham's general principles may be very simply stated. They are, in
+fact, such as were suggested by his view of legal grievances. Why, when
+he had demonstrated that certain measures would contribute to the
+'greatest happiness of the greatest number,' were they not at once
+adopted? Because the rulers did not desire the greatest happiness of the
+greatest number. This, in Bentham's language, is to say that they were
+governed by a 'sinister interest.' Their interest was that of their
+class, not that of the nation; they aimed at the greatest happiness of
+some, not at the greatest happiness of all. A generalisation of this
+remark gives us the first axioms of all government. There are two
+primary principles: the 'self-preference' principle, in virtue of which
+every man always desires his own greatest happiness'; and the 'greatest
+happiness' principle, in virtue of which 'the right and proper end' of
+government is the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number.'[438] The
+'actual end' of every government, again, is the greatest happiness of
+the governors. Hence the whole problem is to produce a coincidence of
+the two ends, by securing an identity of interest between governors and
+governed. To secure that we have only to identify the two classes or to
+put the government in the hands of all.[439] In a monarchy, the ruler
+aims at the interest of one--himself; in a 'limited monarchy' the aim is
+at the happiness of the king and the small privileged class; in a
+democracy, the end is the right one--the greatest happiness of the
+greatest number. This is a short cut to all constitutional questions.
+Probably it has occurred in substance to most youthful members of
+debating societies. Bentham's confidence in his logic lifts him above
+any appeal to experience; and he occasionally reminds us of the proof
+given in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ that the queen must live in the Tower of
+London. The 'monarch,' as he observes,[440] 'is naturally the very
+worst--the most maleficent member of the whole community.' Wherever an
+aristocracy differs from the democracy, their judgment will be
+erroneous.[441] The people will naturally choose 'morally apt agents,'
+and men who wish to be chosen will desire truly to become 'morally apt,'
+for they can only recommend themselves by showing their desire to serve
+the general interest.[442] 'All experience testifies to this theory,'
+though the evidence is 'too bulky' to be given. Other proofs, however,
+may at once be rendered superfluous by appealing to 'the uninterrupted
+and most notorious experience of the United States.'[443] To that happy
+country he often appeals indeed[444] as a model government. In it, there
+is no corruption, no useless expenditure, none of the evils illustrated
+by our 'matchless constitution.'
+
+The constitution deduced from these principles has at least the merit of
+simplicity. We are to have universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and
+vote by ballot. He inclines to give a vote to women.[445] There is to be
+no king, no house of peers, no established church. Members of parliament
+are not to be re-eligible, till after an interval. Elaborate rules
+provide for their regular attendance and exclusive devotion to their
+masters' business. They are to be simply 'deputies,' not
+'representatives.' They elect a prime minister who holds office for four
+years. Officials are to be appointed by a complex plan of competitive
+examination; and they are to be invited to send in tenders for doing the
+work at diminished salary. When once in office, every care is taken for
+their continual inspection by the public and the verification of their
+accounts. They are never for an instant to forget that they are
+servants, not the masters, of the public.
+
+Bentham, of course, is especially minute and careful in regard to the
+judicial organisation--a subject upon which he wrote much, and much to
+the purpose. The functions and fees of advocates are to be narrowly
+restricted, and advocates to be provided gratuitously for the poor. They
+are not to become judges: to make a barrister a judge is as sensible as
+it would be to select a procuress for mistress of a girls' school.[446]
+Judges should be everywhere accessible: always on duty, too busy to have
+time for corruption, and always under public supervision. One
+characteristic device is his quasi-jury. The English system of requiring
+unanimity was equivalent to enforcing perjury by torture. Its utility as
+a means of resisting tyranny would disappear when tyranny had become
+impossible. But public opinion might be usefully represented by a
+'quasi-jury' of three or five, who should not pronounce a verdict, but
+watch the judge, interrogate, if necessary, and in case of need demand a
+rehearing. Judges, of course, were no longer to make law, but to propose
+amendments in the 'Pannomion' or universal code, when new cases arose.
+
+His leading principle may be described in one word as 'responsibility,'
+or expressed in his leading rule, 'Minimise Confidence.'[447] 'All
+government is in itself one vast evil.'[448] It consists in applying
+evil to exclude worse evil. Even 'to reward is to punish,'[449] when
+reward is given by government. The less government, then, the better;
+but as governors are a necessary evil, they must be limited by every
+possible device to the sole legitimate aim, and watched at every turn by
+the all-seeing eye of public opinion. Every one must admit that this is
+an application of a sound principle, and that one condition of good
+government is the diffusion of universal responsibility. It must be
+admitted, too, that Bentham's theory represents a vigorous embodiment
+and unflinching application of doctrines which since his time have
+spread and gained more general authority. Mill says that granting one
+assumption, the Constitutional Code is 'admirable.'[450] That assumption
+is that it is for the good of mankind to be under the absolute authority
+of a majority. In other words, it would justify what Mill calls the
+'despotism of public opinion.' To protest against that despotism was one
+of the main purposes of Mill's political writings. How was it that the
+disciple came to be in such direct opposition to his master? That
+question cannot be answered till we have considered Mill's own position.
+But I have now followed Bentham far enough to consider the more general
+characteristics of his doctrine.
+
+I have tried, in the first place, to show what was the course of
+Bentham's own development; how his observation of certain legal abuses
+led him to attempt the foundation of a science of jurisprudence; how the
+difficulty of obtaining a hearing for his arguments led him to discover
+the power of 'Judge and Co.'; how he found out that behind 'Judge and
+Co.' were George III. and the base Sidmouth, and the whole band of
+obstructors entrenched within the 'matchless constitution'; and how thus
+his attack upon the abuses of the penal law led him to attack the whole
+political framework of the country. I have also tried to show how
+Bentham's development coincided with that of the English reformers
+generally. They too began with attacking specific abuses. They were for
+'reform, not revolution.' The constitution satisfied them in the main:
+they boasted of the palladia of their liberties, 'trial by jury' and the
+'Habeas Corpus' Act, and held Frenchmen to be frog-eating slaves in
+danger of _lettres de cachet_ and the Bastille. English public opinion
+in spite of many trammels had a potent influence. Their first impulse,
+therefore, was simply to get rid of the trammels--the abuses which had
+grown up from want of a thorough application of the ancient principles
+in their original purity. The English Whig, even of the more radical
+persuasion, was profoundly convinced that the foundations were sound,
+however unsatisfactory might be the superstructure. Thus, both Bentham
+and the reformers generally started--not from abstract principles, but
+from the assault upon particular abuses. This is the characteristic of
+the whole English movement, and gives the meaning of their claim to be
+'practical.' The Utilitarians were the reformers on the old lines; and
+their philosophy meant simply a desire to systematise the ordinary
+common sense arguments. The philosophy congenial to this vein is the
+philosophy which appeals to experience. Locke had exploded 'innate
+ideas.' They denounced 'intuitions,' or beliefs which might override
+experience as 'innate ideas' in a new dress; and the attempt to carry
+out this view systematically became the distinctive mark of the whole
+school. Bentham accepted, though he did little to elaborate, this
+doctrine. That task remained for his disciples. But the tendency is
+shown by his view of a rival version of Radicalism.
+
+Bentham, as we have seen, regarded the American Declaration of
+Independence as so much 'jargon.' He was entirely opposed to the theory
+of the 'rights of man,' and therefore to the 'ideas of 1789.' From that
+theory the revolutionary party professed to deduce their demands for
+universal suffrage, the levelling of all privileges, and the absolute
+supremacy of the people. Yet Bentham, repudiating the premises, came to
+accept the conclusion. His Constitutional Code scarcely differs from the
+ideal of the Jacobins', except in pushing the logic further. The
+machinery by which he proposed to secure that the so-called rulers
+should become really the servants of the people was more thoroughgoing
+and minutely worked out than that of any democratic constitution that
+has ever been adopted. How was it that two antagonist theories led to
+identical results; and that the 'rights of man,' absurd in philosophy,
+represented the ideal state of things in practice?
+
+The general answer may be that political theories are not really based
+upon philosophy. The actual method is to take your politics for granted
+on the one side and your philosophy for granted on the other, and then
+to prove their necessary connection. But it is, at any rate, important
+to see what was the nature of the philosophical assumptions implicitly
+taken for granted by Bentham.
+
+The 'rights of man' doctrine confounds a primary logical canon with a
+statement of fact. Every political theory must be based upon facts as
+well as upon logic. Any reasonable theory about politics must no doubt
+give a reason for inequality and a reason, too, for equality. The maxim
+that all men were, or ought to be, 'equal' asserts correctly that there
+must not be arbitrary differences. Every inequality should have its
+justification in a reasonable system. But when this undeniable logical
+canon is taken to prove that men actually are equal, there is an obvious
+begging of the question. In point of fact, the theorists immediately
+proceeded to disfranchise half the race on account of sex, and a third
+of the remainder on account of infancy. They could only amend the
+argument by saying that all men were equal in so far as they possessed
+certain attributes. But those attributes could only be determined by
+experience, or, as Bentham would have put it, by an appeal to 'utility.'
+It is illogical, said the anti-slavery advocate, to treat men
+differently on account of the colour of their skins. No doubt it is
+illogical if, in fact, the difference of colour does not imply a
+difference of the powers which fit a man for the enjoyment of certain
+rights. We may at least grant that the burden of proof should be upon
+those who would disfranchise all red-haired men. But this is because
+experience shows that the difference of colour does not mark a relevant
+difference. We cannot say, _a priori_, whether the difference between a
+negro and a white man may not be so great as to imply incapacity for
+enjoyment of equal rights. The black skin might--for anything a mere
+logician can say--indicate the mind of a chimpanzee. The case against
+slavery does not rest on the bare fact that negroes and whites both
+belong to the class 'man,' but on the fact that the negro has powers and
+sensibilities which fit him to hold property, to form marriages, to
+learn his letters, and so forth. But that fact is undeniably to be
+proved, not from the bare logic, but from observation of the particular
+case.
+
+Bentham saw with perfect clearness that sound political theory requires
+a basis of solid fact. The main purpose of his whole system was to carry
+out that doctrine thoroughly. His view is given vigorously in the
+'Anarchical Fallacies'--a minute examination of the French Declaration
+of Rights in 1791. His argument is of merciless length, and occasionally
+so minute as to sound like quibbling. The pith, however, is clear
+enough. 'All men are born and remain free and equal in respect of
+rights' are the first words of the Declaration. Nobody is 'born free,'
+retorts Bentham. Everybody is born, and long remains, a helpless child.
+All men born free! Absurd and miserable nonsense! Why, you are
+complaining in the same breath that nearly everybody is a slave.[451] To
+meet this objection, the words might be amended by substituting 'ought
+to be' for 'is.' This, however, on Bentham's showing, at once introduces
+the conception of utility, and therefore leads to empirical
+considerations. The proposition, when laid down as a logical necessity,
+claims to be absolute. Therefore it implies that all authority is bad;
+the authority, for example, of parent over child, or of husband over
+wife; and moreover, that all laws to the contrary are _ipso facto_ void.
+That is why it is 'anarchical.' It supposes a 'natural right,' not only
+as suggesting reasons for proposed alterations of the legal right, but
+as actually annihilating the right and therefore destroying all
+government. '_Natural rights_,' says Bentham,[452] is simple nonsense;
+natural and imprescriptible rights 'rhetorical nonsense--nonsense upon
+stilts.' For 'natural right' substitute utility, and you have, of
+course, a reasonable principle, because an appeal to experience. But lay
+down 'liberty' as an absolute right and you annihilate law, for every
+law supposes coercion. One man gets liberty simply by restricting the
+liberty of others.[453] What Bentham substantially says, therefore, is
+that on this version absolute rights of individuals could mean nothing
+but anarchy; or that no law can be defended except by a reference to
+facts, and therefore to 'utility.'
+
+One answer might be that the demand is not for absolute liberty, but for
+as much liberty as is compatible with equal liberty for all. The fourth
+article of the Declaration says: 'Liberty consists in being able to do
+that which is not hurtful to another, and therefore the exercise of the
+natural rights of each man has no other bounds than those which ensure
+to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.'
+This formula corresponds to a theory held by Mr. Herbert Spencer; and,
+as he observes,[454] held on different grounds by Kant. Bentham's view,
+indicated by his criticism of this article in the 'Anarchical
+Fallacies,' is therefore worth a moment's notice. The formula does not
+demand the absolute freedom which would condemn all coercion and all
+government; but it still seems to suggest that liberty, not utility, is
+the ultimate end. Bentham's formula, therefore, diverges. All
+government, he holds, is an evil, because coercion implies pain. We must
+therefore minimise, though we cannot annihilate, government; but we must
+keep to utility as the sole test. Government should, of course, give to
+the individual all such rights as are 'useful'; but it does not follow,
+without a reference to utility, that men should not be restrained even
+in 'self-regarding' conduct. Some men, women, and children require to be
+protected against the consequences of their own 'weakness, ignorance, or
+imprudence.'[455] Bentham adheres, that is, to the strictly empirical
+ground. The absolute doctrine requires to be qualified by a reference to
+actual circumstances: and, among those circumstances, as Bentham
+intimates, we must include the capacity of the persons concerned to
+govern themselves. Carried out as an absolute principle, it would imply
+the independence of infants; and must therefore require some reference
+to 'utility.'
+
+Bentham, then, objects to the Jacobin theory as too absolute and too
+'individualist.' The doctrine begs the question; it takes for granted
+what can only be proved by experience; and therefore lays down as
+absolute theories which are only true under certain conditions or with
+reference to the special circumstances to which they are applied. That
+is inconsistent with Bentham's thoroughgoing empiricism. But he had
+antagonists to meet upon the other side: and, in meeting them, he was
+led to a doctrine which has been generally condemned for the very same
+faults--as absolute and individualist. We have only to ask in what sense
+Bentham appealed to 'experience' to see how he actually reached his
+conclusions. The adherents of the old tradition appealed to experience
+in their own way. The English people, they said, is the freest, richest,
+happiest in the world; it has grown up under the British Constitution:
+therefore the British Constitution is the best in the world, as Burke
+tells you, and the British common law, as Blackstone tells you, is the
+'perfection of wisdom.' Bentham's reply was virtually that although he,
+like Burke, appealed to experience, he appealed to experience
+scientifically organised, whereas Burke appealed to mere blind
+tradition. Bentham is to be the founder of a new science, founded like
+chemistry on experiment, and his methods are to be as superior to those
+of Burke as those of modern chemists to those of the alchemists who also
+invoked experience. The true plan was not to throw experience aside
+because it was alleged by the ignorant and the prejudiced, but to
+interrogate experience systematically, and so to become the Bacon or the
+Newton of legislation, instead of wandering off into the _a priori_
+constructions of a Descartes or a Leibniz.
+
+Bentham thus professes to use an 'inductive' instead of the deductive
+method of the Jacobins; but reaches the same practical conclusions from
+the other end. The process is instructive. He objected to the existing
+inequalities, not as inequalities simply, but as mischievous
+inequalities. He, as well as the Jacobins, would admit that inequality
+required justification; and he agreed with them that, in this case,
+there was no justification. The existing privileges did not promote the
+'greatest happiness of the greatest number.' The attack upon the
+'Anarchical Fallacies' must be taken with the _Book of Fallacies_, and
+the _Book of Fallacies_ is a sustained and vigorous, though a curiously
+cumbrous, assault upon the Conservative arguments. Its pith may be found
+in Sydney Smith's _Noodle's Oration_; but it is itself well worth
+reading by any one who can recognise really admirable dialectical power,
+and forgive a little crabbedness of style in consideration of genuine
+intellectual vigour. I only notice Bentham's assault upon the 'wisdom of
+our ancestors.' After pointing out how much better we are entitled to
+judge now that we have got rid of so many superstitions, and have
+learned to read and write, he replies to the question, 'Would you have
+us speak and act as if we never had any ancestors?' 'By no means,' he
+replies; 'though their opinions were of little value, their practice is
+worth attending to; but chiefly because it shows the bad consequences of
+their opinions.' 'From foolish opinion comes foolish conduct; from
+foolish conduct the severest disaster; and from the severest disaster
+the most useful warning. It is from the folly, not from the wisdom, of
+our ancestors that we have so much to learn.'[456] Bentham has become an
+'ancestor,' and may teach us by his errors. Pointed and vigorous as is
+his exposure of many of the sophistries by which Conservatives defended
+gross abuses and twisted the existence of any institution into an
+argument for its value, we get some measure from this of Bentham's view
+of history. In attacking an abuse, he says, we have a right to inquire
+into the utility of any and every arrangement. The purpose of a court of
+justice is to decide litigation; it has to ascertain facts and apply
+rules: does it then ascertain facts by the methods most conducive to the
+discovery of truth? Are the rules needlessly complex, ambiguous,
+calculated to give a chance to knaves, or to the longest purse? If so,
+undoubtedly they are mischievous. Bentham had done inestimable service
+in stripping away all the disguises and technical phrases which had
+evaded the plain issue, and therefore made of the laws an unintelligible
+labyrinth. He proceeded to treat in the same way of government
+generally. Does it work efficiently for its professed ends? Is it worked
+in the interests of the nation, or of a special class, whose interests
+conflict with those of the nation? He treated, that is, of government as
+a man of business might investigate a commercial undertaking. If he
+found that clerks were lazy, ignorant, making money for themselves, or
+bullying and cheating the customers, he would condemn the management.
+Bentham found the 'matchless constitution' precisely in this state. He
+condemned political institutions worked for the benefit of a class, and
+leading, especially in legal matters, to endless abuses and chicanery.
+The abuses everywhere imply 'inequality' in some sense; for they arise
+from monopoly. The man who holds a sinecure, or enjoys a privilege, uses
+it for his own private interest. The 'matter of corruption,' as Bentham
+called it, was provided by the privilege and the sinecure. The Jacobin
+might denounce privileges simply as privileges, and Bentham denounce
+them because they were used by the privileged class for corrupt
+purposes. So far, Bentham and the Jacobins were quite at one. It
+mattered little to the result which argument they preferred to use, and
+without doubt they had a very strong case, and did in fact express a
+demand for justice and for a redress of palpable evils. The difference
+seems to be that in one case the appeal is made in the name of justice
+and equality; in the other case, in the name of benevolence and utility.
+
+The important point here, however, is to understand Bentham's implicit
+assumptions. J. S. Mill, in criticising his master, points out very
+forcibly the defects arising from Bentham's attitude to history. He
+simply continued, as Mill thinks, the hostility with which the critical
+or destructive school of the eighteenth century regarded their
+ancestors. To the revolutionary party history was a record of crimes and
+follies and of little else. The question will meet us again; and here it
+is enough to ask what is the reason of his tacit implication of
+Bentham's position. Bentham's whole aim, as I have tried to show, was to
+be described as the construction of a science of legislation. The
+science, again, was to be purely empirical. It was to rest throughout
+upon the observation of facts. That aim--an admirable aim--runs through
+his whole work and that of his successors. I have noticed, indeed, how
+easily Bentham took for granted that his makeshift classification of
+common motives amounted to a scientific psychology. A similar assumption
+that a rough sketch of a science is the same thing as its definite
+constitution is characteristic of the Utilitarians in general. A
+scientific spirit is most desirable; but the Utilitarians took a very
+short cut to scientific certainty. Though appealing to experience, they
+reach formulae as absolute as any 'intuitionist' could desire. What is
+the logical process implied? To constitute an empirical science is to
+show that the difference between different phenomena is due simply to
+'circumstances.' The explanation of the facts becomes sufficient when
+the 'law' can be stated, as that of a unit of constant properties placed
+in varying positions. This corresponds to the procedure in the physical
+sciences, where the ultimate aim is to represent all laws as
+corresponding to the changes of position of uniform atoms. In social and
+political changes the goal is the same. J. S. Mill states in the end of
+his _Autobiography_[457] that one main purpose of his writing was to
+show that 'differences between individuals, races, or sexes' are due to
+'differences in circumstances.' In fact, this is an aim so
+characteristic from the beginning of the whole school, that it may be
+put down almost as a primary postulate. It was not, indeed, definitely
+formulated; but to 'explain' a social theorem was taken to be the same
+thing as to show how differences of character or conduct could be
+explained by 'circumstance'--meaning by 'circumstance' something not
+given in the agent himself. We have, however, no more right as good
+empiricists to assert than to deny that all difference comes from
+'circumstance.' If we take 'man' as a constant quantity in our
+speculations, it requires at least a great many precautions before we
+can assume that our abstract entity corresponds to a real concrete unit.
+Otherwise we have a short cut to a doctrine of 'equality.' The theory of
+'the rights of man' lays down the formula, and assumes that the facts
+will correspond. The Utilitarian assumes the equality of fact, and of
+course brings out an equally absolute formula. 'Equality,' in some
+sense, is introduced by a side wind, though not explicitly laid down as
+an axiom.[458] This underlying tendency may partly explain the
+coincidence of results--though it would require a good many
+qualifications in detail; but here I need only take Bentham's more or
+less unconscious application.
+
+Bentham's tacit assumption, in fact, is that there is an average 'man.'
+Different specimens of the race, indeed, may vary widely according to
+age, sex, and so forth; but, for purposes of legislation, he may serve
+as a unit. We can assume that he has on the average certain qualities
+from which his actions in the mass can be determined with sufficient
+accuracy, and we are tempted to assume that they are mainly the
+qualities obvious to an inhabitant of Queen's Square Place about the
+year 1800. Mill defends Bentham against the charge that he assumed his
+codes to be good for all men everywhere. To that, says Mill,[459] the
+essay upon the 'Influence of Time and Place in Matters of Legislation'
+is a complete answer. Yet Mill[460] admits in the same breath that
+Bentham omitted all reference to 'national character.' In fact, as we
+have seen, Bentham was ready to legislate for Hindoostan as well as for
+his own parish; and to make codes not only for England, Spain, and
+Russia, but for Morocco. The Essay mentioned really explains the point.
+Bentham not only admitted but asserted as energetically as became an
+empiricist, that we must allow for 'circumstances'; and circumstances
+include not only climate and so forth, but the varying beliefs and
+customs of the people under consideration. The real assumption is that
+all such circumstances are superficial, and can be controlled and
+altered indefinitely by the 'legislator.' The Moor, the Hindoo, and the
+Englishman are all radically identical; and the differences which must
+be taken into account for the moment can be removed by judicious means.
+Without pausing to illustrate this from the Essay, I may remark that for
+many purposes such an assumption is justifiable and guides ordinary
+common sense. If we ask what would be the best constitution for a
+commercial company, or the best platform for a political party, we can
+form a fair guess by arguing from the average of Bentham and his
+contemporaries--especially if we are shrewd attornies or political
+wirepullers. Only we are not therefore in a position to talk about the
+'science of human nature' or to deal with problems of 'sociology.' This,
+however, gives Bentham's 'individualism' in a sense of the phrase
+already explained. He starts from the 'ready-made man,' and deduces all
+institutions or legal arrangements from his properties. I have tried to
+show how naturally this view fell in with the ordinary political
+conceptions of the time. It shows, again, why Bentham disregards
+history. When we have such a science, empirical or _a priori_, history
+is at most of secondary importance. We can deduce all our maxims of
+conduct from the man himself as he is before us. History only shows how
+terribly he blundered in the pre-scientific period. The blunders may
+give us a hint here and there. Man was essentially the same in the first
+and the eighteenth century, and the differences are due to the clumsy
+devices which he made by rule of thumb. We do not want to refer to them
+now, except as illustrations of errors. We may remark how difficult it
+was to count before the present notation was invented; but when it has
+once been invented, we may learn to use it without troubling our heads
+about our ancestors' clumsy contrivances for doing without it. This
+leads to the real shortcoming. There is a point at which the historical
+view becomes important--the point, namely, where it is essential to
+remember that man is not a ready-made article, but the product of a long
+and still continuing 'evolution.' Bentham's attack (in the _Fragment_)
+upon the 'social contract' is significant. He was, no doubt, perfectly
+right in saying that an imaginary contract could add no force to the
+ultimate grounds for the social union. Nobody would now accept the
+fiction in that stage. And yet the 'social contract' may be taken to
+recognise a fact; namely, that the underlying instincts upon which
+society alternately rests correspond to an order of reasons from those
+which determine more superficial relations. Society is undoubtedly
+useful, and its utility may be regarded as its ground. But the utility
+of society means much more than the utility of a railway company or a
+club, which postulates as existing a whole series of already established
+institutions. To Bentham an 'utility' appeared to be a kind of permanent
+and ultimate entity which is the same at all periods--it corresponds to
+a psychological currency of constant value. To show, therefore, that the
+social contract recognises 'utility' is to show that the whole organism
+is constructed just as any particular part is constructed. Man comes
+first and 'society' afterwards. I have already noticed how this applies
+to his statements about the utility of a law; how his argument assumes
+an already constituted society, and seems to overlook the difference
+between the organic law upon which all order essentially depends, and
+some particular modification or corollary which may be superinduced. We
+now have to notice the political version of the same method. The 'law,'
+according to Bentham, is a rule enforced by a 'sanction.' The imposer of
+the rule in the phrase which Hobbes had made famous is the 'sovereign.'
+Hobbes was a favourite author, indeed, of the later Utilitarians, though
+Bentham does not appear to have studied him. The relation is one of
+natural affinity. When in the _Constitutional Code_ Bentham transfers
+the 'sovereignty' from the king to the 'people,'[461] he shows the
+exact difference between his doctrine and that of the _Leviathan_. Both
+thinkers are absolutists in principle, though Hobbes gives to a monarch
+the power which Bentham gives to a democracy. The attributes remain
+though their subject is altered. The 'sovereign,' in fact, is the
+keystone of the whole Utilitarian system. He represents the ultimate
+source of all authority, and supplies the motive for all obedience. As
+Hobbes put it, he is a kind of mortal God.
+
+Mill's criticism of Bentham suggests the consequences. There are, he
+says,[462] three great questions: What government is for the good of the
+people? How are they to be induced to obey it? How is it to be made
+responsible? The third question, he says, is the only one seriously
+considered by Bentham; and Bentham's answer, we have seen, leads to that
+'tyranny of the majority' which was Mill's great stumbling-block. Why,
+then, does Bentham omit the other questions? or rather, how would he
+answer them? for he certainly assumes an answer. People, in the first
+place, are 'induced to obey' by the sanctions. They don't rob that they
+may not go to prison. That is a sufficient answer at a given moment. It
+assumes, indeed, that the law will be obeyed. The policeman, the gaoler,
+and the judge will do what the sovereign--whether despot or
+legislature--orders them to do. The jurist may naturally take this for
+granted. He does not go 'behind the law.' That is the law which the
+sovereign has declared to be the law. In that sense, the sovereign is
+omnipotent. He can, as a fact, threaten evildoers with the gallows; and
+the jurist simply takes the fact for granted, and assumes that the
+coercion is an ultimate fact. No doubt it is ultimate for the individual
+subject. The immediate restraint is the policeman, and we need not ask
+upon what does the policeman depend. If, however, we persist in asking,
+we come to the historical problems which Bentham simply omits. The law
+itself, in fact, ultimately rests upon 'custom,'--upon the whole system
+of instincts, beliefs, and passions which induce people to obey
+government, and are, so to speak, the substance out of which loyalty and
+respect for the law is framed. These, again, are the product of an
+indefinitely long elaboration, which Bentham takes for granted. He
+assumes as perfectly natural and obvious that a number of men should
+meet, as the Americans or Frenchmen met, and create a constitution. That
+the possibility of such a proceeding involves centuries of previous
+training does not occur to him. It is assumed that the constitution can
+be made out of hand, and this assumption is of the highest importance,
+not only historically, but for immediate practice. Mill assumes too
+easily that Bentham has secured responsibility. Bentham assumes that an
+institution will work as it is intended to work--perhaps the commonest
+error of constitution-mongers. If the people use the instruments which
+he provides, they have a legal method for enforcing obedience. To infer
+that they will do so is to infer that all the organic instincts will
+operate precisely as he intends; that each individual, for example, will
+form an independent opinion upon legislative questions, vote for men who
+will apply his opinions, and see that his representatives perform his
+bidding honestly. That they should do so is essential to his scheme; but
+that they will do so is what he takes for granted. He assumes, that is,
+that there is no need for inquiring into the social instincts which lie
+beneath all political action. You can make your machine and assume the
+moving force. That is the natural result of considering political and
+legislative problems without taking into account the whole character of
+the human materials employed in the construction. Bentham's sovereign is
+thus absolute. He rules by coercion, as a foreign power may rule by the
+sword in a conquered province. Thus, force is the essence of government,
+and it is needless to go further. To secure the right application of the
+force, we have simply to distribute it among the subjects. Government
+still means coercion, and ultimately nothing else; but then, as the
+subjects are simply moved by their own interests, that is, by utility,
+they will apply the power to secure those interests. Therefore, all that
+is wanted is this distribution, and Mill's first problem, What
+government is for the good of the people? is summarily answered. The
+question, how obedience is to be secured, is evaded by confining the
+answer to the 'sanctions,' and taking for granted that the process of
+distributing power is perfectly simple, or that a new order can be
+introduced as easily as parliament can pass an act for establishing a
+new police in London. The 'social contract' is abolished; but it is
+taken for granted that the whole power of the sovereign can be
+distributed, and rules made for its application by the common sense of
+the various persons interested. Finally, the one bond outside of the
+individual is the sovereign. He represents all that holds society
+together; his 'sanctions,' as I have said, are taken to be on the same
+plane with the 'moral sanctions'--not dependent upon them, but other
+modes of applying similar motives. As the sovereign, again, is in a
+sense omnipotent, and yet can be manufactured, so to speak, by voluntary
+arrangements among the individual members of society, there is no limit
+to the influence which he may exercise. I note, indeed, that I am
+speaking rather of the tendencies of the theory than of definitely
+formulated conclusions. Most of the Utilitarians were exceedingly
+shrewd, practical people, whose regard for hard facts imposed limits
+upon their speculations. They should have been the last people to
+believe too implicitly in the magical efficacy of political
+contrivances, for they were fully aware that many men are knaves and
+most men fools. They probably put little faith in Bentham's Utopia,
+except as a remote ideal, and an ideal of unimaginative minds. The
+Utopia was constructed on 'individualist' principles, because common
+sense naturally approves individualism. The whole social and political
+order is clearly the sum of the individuals, who combine to form an
+aggregate; and theories about social bonds take one to the mystical and
+sentimental. The absolute tendency is common to Bentham and the
+Jacobins. Whether the individual be taken as a unit of constant
+properties, or as the subject of absolute rights, we reach equally
+absolute conclusions. When all the social and political regulations are
+regarded as indefinitely modifiable, the ultimate laws come to depend
+upon the absolute framework of unalterable fact. This, again, is often
+the right point of view for immediate questions in which we may take for
+granted that the average individual is in fact constant; and, as I have
+said in regard to Bentham's legislative process, leads to very relevant
+and important, though not ultimate, questions. But there are certain
+other results which require to be noticed. 'Individualism,' like other
+words that have become watchwords of controversy, has various shades of
+meaning, and requires a little more definition.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[434] _Works_, v. 97, etc.
+
+[435] See preface to _Constitutional Code_ in vol. ix.
+
+[436] Bentham's nephew, George, who died when approaching his
+eighty-fourth birthday, devoted the last twenty-five years of his life
+with equal assiduity to his _Genera Plantarum_. See a curious anecdote
+of his persistence in the _Dictionary of National Biography_.
+
+[437] _Works_, iii. 573.
+
+[438] _Works_, ix. 5, 8.
+
+[439] The theory, as Mill reminds us, had been very pointedly
+anticipated by Helvetius. Bentham's practical experience, however, had
+forced it upon his attention.
+
+[440] _Works_, ix. 141. The general principle, however, is confirmed by
+the case of George III.
+
+[441] _Ibid._ ix. 45.
+
+[442] _Ibid._ ix. 98.
+
+[443] _Works_, ix. 98.
+
+[444] e.g. _Ibid._ ix. 38, 50, 63, 99, etc.
+
+[445] _Ibid._ ('Plan of Parliamentary Reform,') iii. 463.
+
+[446] _Works_, ix. 594.
+
+[447] _Ibid._ ix. 62.
+
+[448] _Ibid._ ix. 24.
+
+[449] _Ibid._ ix. 48.
+
+[450] _Dissertations_, i. 377.
+
+[451] _Works_, ii. 497.
+
+[452] _Ibid._ ii. 501.
+
+[453] _Ibid._ ii. 503.
+
+[454] _Justice_, p. 264; so Price, in his _Observations on Liberty_,
+lays it down that government is never to entrench upon private liberty,
+'except so far as private liberty entrenches on the liberty of others.'
+
+[455] _Works_, ii. 506.
+
+[456] _Works_, ii. 401.
+
+[457] _Autobiography_, p. 274.
+
+[458] Hobbes, in the _Leviathan_ (chap. xiii.), has in the same way to
+argue for the _de facto_ equality of men.
+
+[459] _Dissertations_, i. 375.
+
+[460] I remark by anticipation that this expression implies a reference
+to Mill's _Ethology_, of which I shall have to speak.
+
+[461] _Works_, ix. 96, 113.
+
+[462] _Dissertations_, i. 376.
+
+
+VII. INDIVIDUALISM
+
+'Individualism' in the first place is generally mentioned in a different
+connection. The 'ready-made' man of whom I have spoken becomes the
+'economic man.' Bentham himself contributed little to economic theory.
+His most important writing was the _Defence of Usury_, and in this, as
+we have seen, he was simply adding a corollary to the _Wealth of
+Nations_. The _Wealth of Nations_ itself represented the spirit of
+business; the revolt of men who were building up a vast industrial
+system against the fetters imposed by traditional legislation and by
+rulers who regarded industry in general, as Telford is said to have
+regarded rivers. Rivers were meant to supply canals, and trade to supply
+tax-gatherers. With this revolt, of course, Bentham was in full
+sympathy, but here I shall only speak of one doctrine of great interest,
+which occurs both in his political treatises and his few economical
+remarks. Bentham objected, as we have seen, to the abstract theory of
+equality; yet it was to the mode of deduction rather than to the
+doctrine itself which he objected. He gave, in fact, his own defence;
+and it is one worth notice.[463] The principle of equality is
+derivative, not ultimate. Equality is good because equality increases
+the sum of happiness. Thus, as he says,[464] if two men have L1000, and
+you transfer L500 from one to the other, you increase the recipient's
+wealth by one-third, and diminish the loser's wealth by one-half. You
+therefore add less pleasure than you subtract. The principle is given
+less mathematically[465] by the more significant argument that
+'felicity' depends not simply on the 'matter of felicity' or the
+stimulus, but also on the sensibility to felicity which is necessarily
+limited. Therefore by adding wealth--taking, for example, from a
+thousand labourers to give to one king--you are supersaturating a
+sensibility already glutted by taking away from others a great amount of
+real happiness. With this argument, which has of late years become
+conspicuous in economics, he connects another of primary importance. The
+first condition of happiness, he says, is not 'equality' but 'security.'
+Now you can only equalise at the expense of security. If I am to have my
+property taken away whenever it is greater than my neighbour's, I can
+have no security.[466] Hence, if the two principles conflict, equality
+should give way. Security is the primary, which must override the
+secondary, aim. Must the two principles, then, always conflict? No; but
+'time is the only mediator.'[467] The law may help to accumulate
+inequalities; but in a prosperous state there is a 'continual progress
+towards equality.' The law has to stand aside; not to maintain
+monopolies; not to restrain trade; not to permit entails; and then
+property will diffuse itself by a natural process, already exemplified
+in the growth of Europe. The 'pyramids' heaped up in feudal times have
+been lowered, and their '_debris_ spread abroad' among the industrious.
+Here again we see how Bentham virtually diverges from the _a priori_
+school. Their absolute tendencies would introduce 'equality' by force;
+he would leave it to the spontaneous progress of security. Hence Bentham
+is in the main an adherent of what he calls[468] the '_laissez-nous
+faire_' principle. He advocates it most explicitly in the so-called
+_Manual of Political Economy_--a short essay first printed in 1798.[469]
+The tract, however, such as it is, is less upon political economy proper
+than upon economic legislation; and its chief conclusion is that almost
+all legislation is improper. His main principle is 'Be quiet' (the
+equivalent of the French phrase, which surely should have been excluded
+from so English a theory). Security and freedom are all that industry
+requires; and industry should say to government only what Diogenes said
+to Alexander, 'Stand out of my sunshine.'[470]
+
+Once more, however, Bentham will not lay down the 'let alone' principle
+absolutely. His adherence to the empirical method is too decided. The
+doctrine 'be quiet,' though generally true, rests upon utility, and may,
+therefore, always be qualified by proving that in a particular case the
+balance of utility is the other way. In fact, some of Bentham's
+favourite projects would be condemned by an absolute adherent of the
+doctrine. The Panopticon, for example, though a 'mill to grind rogues
+honest' could be applied to others than rogues, and Bentham hoped to
+make his machinery equally effective in the case of pauperism. A system
+of national education is also included in his ideal constitution. It is,
+in fact, important to remember that the 'individualism' of Benthamism
+does not necessarily coincide with an absolute restriction of government
+interference. The general tendency was in that direction; and in purely
+economical questions, scarcely any exception was admitted to the rule.
+Men are the best judges, it was said, of their own interest; and the
+interference of rulers in a commercial transaction is the interference
+of people inferior in knowledge of the facts, and whose interests are
+'sinister' or inconsistent with those of the persons really concerned.
+Utility, therefore, will, as a rule, forbid the action of government:
+but, as utility is always the ultimate principle, and there may be cases
+in which it does not coincide with the 'let alone' principle, we must
+always admit the possibility that in special cases government can
+interfere usefully, and, in that case, approve the interference.
+
+Hence we have the ethical application of these theories. The
+individualist position naturally tends to take the form of egoism. The
+moral sentiments, whatever they may be, are clearly an intrinsic part of
+the organic social instincts. They are intimately involved in the whole
+process of social evolution. But this view corresponds precisely to the
+conditions which Bentham overlooks. The individual is already there. The
+moral and the legal sanctions are 'external'; something imposed by the
+action of others; corresponding to 'coercion,' whether by physical force
+or the dread of public opinion; and, in any case, an accretion or
+addition, not a profound modification of his whole nature. The
+Utilitarian 'man' therefore inclines to consider other people as merely
+parts of the necessary machinery. Their feelings are relevant only as
+influencing their outward conduct. If a man gives me a certain 'lot' of
+pain or pleasure, it does not matter what may be his motives. The
+'motive' for all conduct corresponds in all cases to the pain or
+pleasure accruing to the agent. It is true that his happiness will be
+more or less affected by his relations to others. But as conduct is
+ruled by a calculation of the balance of pains or pleasures dependent
+upon any course of action, it simplifies matters materially, if each man
+regards his neighbour's feelings simply as instrumental, not
+intrinsically interesting. And thus the coincidence between that conduct
+which maximises my happiness and that conduct which maximises happiness
+in general, must be regarded as more or less accidental or liable in
+special cases to disappear. If I am made happier by action which makes
+others miserable, the rule of utility will lead to my preference of
+myself.
+
+Here we have the question whether the Utilitarian system be essentially
+a selfish system. Bentham, with his vague psychology, does not lay down
+the doctrine absolutely. After giving this list of self-regarding
+'springs of action,' he proceeds to add the pleasures and pains of
+'sympathy' and 'antipathy' which, he says, are not self-regarding.
+Moreover, as we have seen, he has some difficulty in denying that
+'benevolence' is a necessarily moral motive: it is only capable of
+prompting to bad conduct in so far as it is insufficiently enlightened;
+and it is clear that a moralist who makes the 'greatest happiness of the
+greatest number' his universal test, has some reason for admitting as an
+elementary pleasure the desire for the greatest happiness. This comes
+out curiously in the _Constitutional Code_. He there lays down the
+'self-preference principle'--the principle, namely, that 'every human
+being' is determined in every action by his judgment of what will
+produce the greatest happiness to himself, 'whatsoever be the effect ...
+in relation to the happiness of other similar beings, any or all of them
+taken together.'[471] Afterwards, however, he observes that it is 'the
+constant and arduous task of every moralist' and of every legislator who
+deserves the name to 'increase the influence of sympathy at the expense
+of that of self-regard and of sympathy for the greater number at the
+expense of sympathy for the lesser number.'[472] He tries to reconcile
+these views by the remark 'that even sympathy has its root in
+self-regard,' and he argues, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has done more fully,
+that if Adam cared only for Eve and Eve only for Adam--neither caring at
+all for himself or herself--both would perish in less than a year.
+Self-regard, that is, is essential, and sympathy supposes its existence.
+Hence Bentham puts himself through a catechism.[473] What is the 'best'
+government? That which causes the greatest happiness of the given
+community. What community? 'Any community, which is as much as to say,
+every community.' But _why_ do you desire this happiness? Because the
+establishment of that happiness would contribute to _my_ greatest
+happiness. And _how_ do you prove that you desire this result? By my
+labours to obtain it, replies Bentham. This oddly omits the more obvious
+question, how can you be sure that your happiness will be promoted by
+the greatest happiness of all? What if the two criteria differ? I desire
+the general happiness, he might have replied, because my benevolence is
+an original or elementary instinct which can override my self-love; or
+I desire it, he would perhaps have said, because I know as a fact that
+the happiness of others will incidentally contribute to my own. The
+first answer would fall in with some of his statements; but the second
+is, as I think must be admitted, more in harmony with his system.
+Perhaps, indeed, the most characteristic thing is Bentham's failure to
+discuss explicitly the question whether human action is or is not
+necessarily 'selfish.' He tells us in regard to the 'springs of action'
+that all human action is always 'interested,' but explains that
+the word properly includes actions in which the motive is not
+'self-regarding.'[474] It merely means, in fact, that all conduct has
+motives. The statement, which I have quoted about the 'self-preference'
+principle may only mean a doctrine which is perfectly compatible with a
+belief in 'altruism'--the doctrine, namely, that as a fact most people
+are chiefly interested by their own affairs. The legislator, he tells
+us, should try to increase sympathy, but the less he takes sympathy for
+the 'basis of his arrangements'--that is, the less call he makes upon
+purely unselfish motives--the greater will be his success.[475] This is
+a shrewd and, I should say, a very sound remark, but it implies--not
+that all motives are selfish in the last analysis, but--that the
+legislation should not assume too exalted a level of ordinary morality.
+The utterances in the very unsatisfactory _Deontology_ are of little
+value, and seem to imply a moral sentiment corresponding to a petty form
+of commonplace prudence.[476]
+
+Leaving this point, however, the problem necessarily presented itself
+to Bentham in a form in which selfishness is the predominating force,
+and any recognition of independent benevolence rather an incumbrance
+than a help. If we take the 'self-preference principle' absolutely, the
+question becomes how a multitude of individuals, each separately
+pursuing his own happiness, can so arrange matters that their joint
+action may secure the happiness of all. Clearly a man, however selfish,
+has an interest generally in putting down theft and murder. He is
+already provided with a number of interests to which security, at least,
+and therefore a regular administration of justice, is essential. His
+shop could not be carried on without the police; and he may agree to pay
+the expenses, even if others reap the benefit in greater proportion. A
+theory of legislation, therefore, which supposes ready formed all the
+instincts which make a decent commercial society possible can do without
+much reference to sympathy or altruism. Bentham's man is not the
+colourless unit of _a priori_ writing, nor the noble savage of Rousseau,
+but the respectable citizen with a policeman round the corner. Such a
+man may well hold that honesty is the best policy; he has enough
+sympathy to be kind to his old mother, and help a friend in distress;
+but the need of romantic and elevated conduct rarely occurs to him; and
+the heroic, if he meets it, appears to him as an exception, not far
+removed from the silly. He does not reflect--especially if he cares
+nothing for history--how even the society in which he is a contented
+unit has been built up, and how much loyalty and heroism has been needed
+for the work; nor even, to do him justice, what unsuspected capacities
+may lurk in his own commonplace character. The really characteristic
+point is, however, that Bentham does not clearly face the problem. He is
+content to take for granted as an ultimate fact that the self-interest
+principle in the long run coincides with the greatest 'happiness'
+principle, and leaves the problem to his successors. There we shall meet
+it again.
+
+Finally, Bentham's view of religion requires a word. The short reply,
+however, would be sufficient, that he did not believe in any theology,
+and was in the main indifferent to the whole question till it
+encountered him in political matters. His first interest apparently was
+roused by the educational questions which I have noticed, and the
+proposal to teach the catechism. Bentham, remembering the early bullying
+at Oxford, examines the catechism; and argues in his usual style that to
+enforce it is to compel children to tell lies. But this leads him to
+assail the church generally; and he regards the church simply as a part
+of the huge corrupt machinery which elsewhere had created Judge and Co.
+He states many facts about non-residence and bloated bishoprics which
+had a very serious importance; and he then asks how the work might be
+done more cheaply. As a clergyman's only duty is to read weekly services
+and preach sermons, he suggests (whether seriously may be doubted) that
+this might be done as well by teaching a parish boy to read properly,
+and provide him with the prayer-book and the homilies.[477] A great deal
+of expense would be saved. This, again, seems to have led him to attack
+St. Paul, whom he took to be responsible for dogmatic theology, and
+therefore for the catechism; and he cross-examines the apostle, and
+confronts his various accounts of the conversion with a keenness worthy
+of a professional lawyer. In one of the MSS. at University College the
+same method is applied to the gospels. Bentham was clearly not capable
+of anticipating Renan. From these studies he was led to the far more
+interesting book, published under the name of _Philip Beauchamp_.
+Bentham supplied the argument in part; but to me it seems clear that it
+owes so much to the editor, Grote, that it may more fitly be discussed
+hereafter.
+
+The limitations and defects of Bentham's doctrine have been made
+abundantly evident by later criticism. They were due partly to his
+personal character, and partly to the intellectual and special
+atmosphere in which he was brought up. But it is more important to
+recognise the immense real value of his doctrine. Briefly, I should say,
+that there is hardly an argument in Bentham's voluminous writings which
+is not to the purpose so far as it goes. Given his point of view, he is
+invariably cogent and relevant. And, moreover, that is a point of view
+which has to be taken. No ethical or political doctrine can, as I hold,
+be satisfactory which does not find a place for Bentham, though he was
+far, indeed, from giving a complete theory of his subject. And the main
+reason of this is that which I have already indicated. Bentham's whole
+life was spent in the attempt to create a science of legislation. Even
+where he is most tiresome, there is a certain interest in his unflagging
+working out of every argument, and its application to all conceivable
+cases. It is all genuine reasoning; and throughout it is dominated by a
+respect for good solid facts. His hatred of 'vague generalities'[478]
+means that he will be content with no formula which cannot be
+interpreted in terms of definite facts. The resolution to insist upon
+this should really be characteristic of every writer upon similar
+subjects, and no one ever surpassed Bentham in attention to it. Classify
+and re-classify, to make sure that at every point your classes
+correspond to realities. In the effort to carry out these principles,
+Bentham at least brought innumerable questions to a sound test, and
+exploded many pestilent fallacies. If he did not succeed further, if
+whole spheres of thought remained outside of his vision, it was because
+in his day there was not only no science of 'sociology' or
+psychology--there are no such sciences now--but no adequate perception
+of the vast variety of investigation which would be necessary to lay a
+basis for them. But the effort to frame a science is itself valuable,
+indeed of surpassing value, so far as it is combined with a genuine
+respect for facts. It is common enough to attempt to create a science by
+inventing technical terminology. Bentham tried the far wider and far
+more fruitful method of a minute investigation of particular facts. His
+work, therefore, will stand, however different some of the results may
+appear when fitted into a different framework. And, therefore, however
+crudely and imperfectly, Bentham did, as I believe, help to turn
+speculation into a true and profitable channel. Of that, more will
+appear hereafter; but, if any one doubts Bentham's services, I will only
+suggest to him to compare Bentham with any of his British
+contemporaries, and to ask where he can find anything at all comparable
+to his resolute attempt to bring light and order into a chaotic infusion
+of compromise and prejudice.
+
+NOTES:
+
+[463] _Works_, 'Civil Code' (from Dumont), i. 302, 305; _Ibid._
+('Principles of Constitutional Code') ii. 271; _Ibid._ ('Constitutional
+Code') ix. 15-18.
+
+[464] _Works_, i. 306 _n._
+
+[465] _Ibid._ ix. 15.
+
+[466] _Ibid._ ('Principles of Penal Code') i. 311.
+
+[467] _Ibid._ i. 312.
+
+[468] _Works_, x. 440.
+
+[469] _Ibid._ iii. 33, etc.
+
+[470] _Ibid._ iii. 35.
+
+[471] _Works_, ix. 5.
+
+[472] _Ibid._ ix. 192.
+
+[473] _Ibid._ ix. 7.
+
+[474] _Works_, i. 212.
+
+[475] _Ibid._ ix. 192.
+
+[476] See, _e.g._, i. 83, where sympathy seems to be taken as an
+ultimate pleasure; and ii. 133, where he says 'dream not that men will
+move their little finger to serve you unless their advantage in so doing
+be obvious to them.' See also the apologue of 'Walter Wise,' who becomes
+Lord Mayor, and 'Timothy Thoughtless,' who ends at Botany Bay (i. 118),
+giving the lowest kind of prudential morality. The manuscript of the
+_Deontology_, now in University College, London, seems to prove that
+Bentham was substantially the author, though the Mills seem to have
+suspected Bowring of adulterating the true doctrine. He appears to have
+been an honest if not very intelligent editor; though the rewriting,
+necessary in all Bentham's works, was damaging in this case; and he is
+probably responsible for some rhetorical amplification, especially in
+the later part.
+
+[477] _Church of Englandism_ (Catechism examined), p. 207.
+
+[478] See this phrase expounded in _Works_ ('Book of Fallacies'), ii.
+440, etc.
+
+END OF VOL. I
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON BENTHAM'S WRITINGS
+
+
+The following account of Bentham's writings may be of some use. The
+arrangement is intended to show what were the topics which attracted his
+attention at successive periods.
+
+The collected _Works_, edited by Bowring, appeared from 1838 to 1843 in
+eleven volumes, the last two containing the life and an elaborate index.
+The first nine volumes consist partly of the works already published;
+partly of works published for the first time from Bentham's MSS.; and
+partly of versions of Dumont's redactions of Bentham. Dumont's
+publications were (1) _Traites de Legislation civile et penale_ (1802;
+second edition, revised, 1820): [vol. i. contains _Principes generaux de
+Legislation_ and _Principes du Code civil_; vol. ii. _Principes du Code
+penal_; and vol. iii. _Memoire sur le Panoptique_, _De la Promulgation
+des Lois_, _De l'Influence du Temps et des Lieux_, and _Vue generale
+d'un Corps complet des Lois_]; (2) _Theorie des Peines et des
+Recompenses_, 1811, 1818, 1825; (3) _Tactiques des Assemblees
+deliberantes et Traite des Sophismes politiques_, 1816; (4) _Traite des
+Preuves judiciaires_, 1823; and (5) _De l'Organisation judiciaire et de
+la Codification_, 1823.
+
+In the following I give references to the place of each work in
+Bowring's edition.
+
+Bentham's first book was the _Fragment on Government_, 1776 (i.
+221-295). An interesting 'historical preface,' intended for a second
+edition (i. 240-259), was first printed in 1828. The _Fragment_, edited
+by Mr. F. C. Montague, was republished in 1891.
+
+The _Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation_ was
+published in 1789, in one vol. 4to (i. 1-154). It had been printed in
+1780. A second edition, in two vols. 8vo, appeared in 1823. It was
+intended as an introduction to the plan of a penal code. Bentham says in
+his preface that his scheme would be completed by a series of works
+applying his principles to (1) civil law; (2) penal law; (3) procedure;
+(4) reward; (5) constitutional law; (6) political tactics; (7)
+international law; (8) finance; and (9) political economy, and by a
+tenth treatise giving a plan of a body of law 'considered in respect of
+its form,' that is, upon 'nomography.' He wrote more or less in the
+course of his life upon all these topics. Dumont's _Traites_ of 1802
+were based partly upon the _Introduction_ and partly upon Bentham's MSS.
+corresponding to unfinished parts of this general scheme.
+
+The two first sections of this scheme are represented in the _Works_ by
+_Principles of the Civil Code_ (i. 297-364) and _Principles of Penal
+Law_ (i. 365-580). The _Principles of the Civil Code_ is translated from
+Dumont's _Traites_, where it follows a condensed statement of 'general
+principles' taken from the opening chapters of the _Introduction_. An
+appendix 'on the levelling system' is added in the _Works_ from
+Bentham's MSS. The _Principles of Penal Law_ consists of three parts:
+the first and third (on 'political remedies for the evil of offences'
+and on 'indirect means of preventing crimes') are translated from parts
+2 and 4 of Dumont's _Principes du Code penal_ (parts 1 and 3 of Dumont
+being adaptations from the _Introduction to Morals and Legislation_).
+The second part of the _Penal Law_, or _The Rationale of Punishment_ is
+from Dumont's _Theorie des Peines et des Recompenses_. Dumont took it
+from a MS. written by Bentham in 1775. (See Bentham's _Works_, i. 388.)
+An appendix on 'Death Punishment,' addressed by Bentham to the French
+people in 1830, is added to Part II. in the _Works_ (i. 525-532). No. 4
+of Bentham's general scheme corresponds to the _Rationale of Reward_,
+founded upon two MSS., one in French and one in English, used by Dumont
+in the _Theorie des Peines et des Recompenses_. The English version in
+the _Works_, chiefly translated from Dumont and compared with the
+original manuscript, was first published in 1825 (ii. 189-266). Richard
+Smith 'of the Stamps and Taxes' was the editor of this and of an edition
+of the _Rationale of Punishment_ in 1831, and of various minor
+treatises. (Bentham's _Works_, x. 548 _n._)
+
+The _Table of the Springs of Action_ (i. 195-220), written at an early
+period, was printed in 1815, and published, with modifications, in 1817.
+The _Vue generale_ included in the _Traites_ of 1802 was intended by
+Bentham as a sketch for his own guidance, and is translated as _View of
+a Complete Code of Laws_ in the _Works_ (iii. 154-210). The two essays
+in the 1802 _Traites_ on 'the promulgation of laws' and the 'influence
+of time and place in matters of legislation' are translated in _Works_
+(i. 157-194). A fragment on _International Law_--a phrase invented by
+Bentham--written between 1786 and 1789, first appeared in the _Works_
+(ii. 535-571), with _Junctiana proposal_--a plan for a canal between the
+Atlantic and the Pacific--written in 1822, as an appendix.
+
+Besides the above, all written before 1789 in pursuance of his scheme,
+Bentham had published in 1778 his _View of the Hard Labour Bill_ (iv.
+1-36); and in 1787 his _Defence of Usury_ (iii. 1-29). A third edition
+of the last (with the 'protest against law taxes') was published in
+1816.
+
+During the following period (1789-1802) Bentham wrote various books,
+more or less suggested by the French revolution. The _Essay on Political
+Tactics_ (ii. 299-373), (corresponding to No. 6 of the scheme), was sent
+to Morellet in 1789, but first published by Dumont in 1816. With it
+Dumont also published the substance of the _Anarchical Fallacies_ (ii.
+489-534), written about 1791. A _Draught of a Code for the Organisation
+of the Judicial Establishment of France_, dated March 1790, is reprinted
+in _Works_ iv. 285-406. _Truth v. Ashhurst_, written in 1792 (v.
+231-237), was first published in 1823. A _Manual of Political Economy_,
+written by 1793 (see _Works_, iii. 73 _n._), corresponds to No. 9 of his
+scheme. A chapter appeared in the _Bibliotheque Britannique_ in 1798. It
+was partly used in Dumont's _Theorie des Recompenses_, and first
+published in English in _Works_ (iii. 31-84). _Emancipate your
+Colonies_ (iv. 407-481) was privately printed in 1793, and first
+published for sale in 1830. A _Protest against Law Taxes_, printed in
+1793, was published in 1795 together with _Supply without Burthen, or
+Escheat vice Taxation_, written in 1794. To them is appended a short
+paper called _Tax with Monopoly_ (ii. 573-600). _A Plan for saving all
+Trouble and Expense in the Transfer of Stock_, written and partly
+printed in 1800, was first published in _Works_ (iii. 105-153).
+
+During this period Bentham was also occupied with the Panopticon, and
+some writings refer to it. _The Panopticon, or the Inspection House_
+(iv. 37-172), written in 1787, was published in 1791. _The Panopticon
+versus New South Wales_ (iv. 173-248) appeared in 1802; and _A Plea for
+the Constitution_ (on transportation to New South Wales) (iv. 249-284),
+in 1803. Closely connected with these are _Poor-laws and Pauper
+Management_ (viii. 358-461), reprinted from Arthur Young's _Annals_ of
+September 1797 and following months; and _Observations on the Poor Bill_
+(viii. 440-459), written in February 1797, privately printed in 1838,
+and first published in the _Works_.
+
+About 1802 Bentham returned to jurisprudence. James Mill prepared from
+the papers then written an _Introductory View of the Rationale of
+Evidence_, finished and partly printed in 1812 (see _Works_, x. 468 _n._
+and Bain's _James Mill_, 105, 120). Dumont's _Traite des Preuves
+judiciaires_ (1823) was a redaction of the original papers, and an
+English translation of this appeared in 1825. The parts referring to
+English Law were omitted. The _Rationale of Evidence_ (5 vols. 8vo,
+1827), edited by J. S. Mill, represents a different and fuller redaction
+of the same papers. It is reprinted in vols. vi. and vii. of the _Works_
+with the _Introductory View_ (now first published) prefixed. To the same
+period belongs _Scotch Reform_, with a _Summary View of a Plan for a
+Judicatory_, 1808 (second edition 1811, v. 1-60).
+
+After 1808 Bentham's attention was especially drawn to political
+questions. His _Catechism of Parliamentary Reform_ (iii. 433-557),
+written in 1809, was first published with a long 'introduction' in the
+_Pamphleteer_ for January 1817. Bentham's _Radical Reform Bill, with
+explanations_ (iii. 558-597) followed in December 1819. _Radicalism not
+dangerous_ (iii. 598-622), written at the same time, first appeared in
+the _Works_ (iii. 398-622). _Elements of the Art of Packing as applied
+to Special Juries, especially in Cases of Libel Law_ (v. 61-186),
+written in 1809, was published in 1821. _Swear not at all_ (v. 188-229)
+(referring chiefly to Oxford tests), written in 1813, was published in
+1817. _The King against Edmonds_ and _The King against Wolseley_ (v.
+239-261) were published in 1820. _Official Aptitude minimized; Official
+Expense limited_ (v. 263-286), is a series of papers, first collected in
+1831. It contains a _Defence of Economy against Burke_, and a _Defence
+of Economy against George Rose_, both written in 1810, and published in
+the _Pamphleteer_ in 1817, with _Observations_ on a speech by Peel in
+1825, and _Indications respecting Lord Eldon_. The two last appeared in
+1825. Connected with these political writings is the _Book of Fallacies_
+(ii. 375-488), edited by Bingham in 1824, from the 'most unfinished of
+all Bentham's writings.' Allusions seem to show that the original MSS.
+were written from 1810 to 1819. It was partly published by Dumont with
+the _Tactique, etc._
+
+Bentham, during this period (1808-1820), was also led into various
+outlying questions. _The Pannomial Fragments_, _Nomography_, and
+_Appendix on Logical Arrangements employed by Jeremy Bentham_ (iii.
+211-295) were first published in the _Works_ from MSS. written from 1813
+to 1831. With the _Chrestomathia_ (viii. 1-192), first published in
+1816, are connected fragments upon 'Ontology,' 'Language,' and
+'Universal Grammar' (viii. 193-358), first published in _Works_ from
+fragments of MSS. of 1813 and later. George Bentham's _Outline of a New
+System of Logic_ was partly founded upon his uncle's papers. Bentham at
+the Ford Abbey time (1814-1818) was also writing his _Church of
+Englandism and its Catechism examined_, 1818. The _Analysis of the
+Influence of Natural Religion upon the Temporal Happiness of Mankind_,
+by Philip Beauchamp, edited by George Grote, appeared in 1822; and _Not
+Paul but Jesus_, by Gamaliel Smith, in 1823. Francis Place helped in
+preparing this at Ford Abbey in 1817 (Mr. Wallas's _Life of Place_, p.
+83). _Mother Church of England relieved by Bleeding_ (1823) and the
+_Book of Church Reform_ (1831) are extracted from _Church of
+Englandism_. Bowring did not admit these works to his collection.
+
+In his later years (1820-1832) Bentham began to be specially occupied
+with codification. _Papers upon Codification and Public Instruction_
+(iv. 451-534) consist chiefly of letters, written from 1811 to 1815,
+offering himself for employment in codification in America and Russia,
+and first published in 1817. In 1821 appeared _Three Tracts relating to
+Spanish and Portuguese Affairs, with a Continual Eye to English ones_;
+and in 1822 _Three Letters to Count Toreno on the proposed Penal Code_
+(in Spain) (viii. 460-554). A short tract on _Liberty of the Press_ was
+addressed to the Spanish people in 1821 (ii. 275-299). _Codification
+Proposals_ (iv. 535-594) appeared in 1823, offering to prepare an
+'all-comprehensive code of law' for 'any nation professing liberal
+opinions.' _Securities against Misrule addressed to a Mahommedan State,
+and prepared with a special Reference to Tripoli_, written in 1822-23,
+was first published in the _Works_ (viii. 551-600). A tract on the
+_Leading Principles of a Constitutional Code_ (ii. 267-274) appeared in
+the _Pamphleteer_ in 1823. The first volume of the _Constitutional
+Code_, printed in 1827, was published with the first chapter of the
+second volume in 1830. The whole book, edited by R. Doane from papers
+written between 1818 and 1832, was published in 1841, and forms volume
+ix. of the _Works_. Doane also edited _Principles of Judicial Procedure_
+(ii. 1-188) from papers written chiefly from 1820 to 1827, though part
+had been written in 1802. Several thousand pages upon this subject--the
+third part of the original scheme--were left by Bentham at his death.
+
+During his last years Bentham also wrote a _Commentary on Mr. Humphrey's
+Real Property Code_, published in the _Westminster Review_ for October
+1826 (v. 387-416); _Justice and Codification Petitions_ (v. 437-548),
+printed in 1829; _Jeremy Bentham to his Fellow-Citizens in France on
+Houses of Peers and Senates_ (iv. 419-450), dated 15th October 1830;
+_Equity Dispatch Court Proposals_ (iii. 297-432), first published in
+_Works_ and written from 1829 to 1831; _Outline of a Plan of a General
+Register of Real Property_ (v. 417-435), published in the Report of the
+Real Property Commission in 1832; and _Lord Brougham Displayed_ (v.
+549-612), 1832.
+
+The _Deontology_ or _Science of Morality_ was published by Bowring in
+two vols. 8vo in 1834, but omitted from the _Works_, as the original
+edition was not exhausted. The MS. preserved at University College,
+London, shows that a substantial beginning had been made in 1814; most
+of the remainder about 1820. The second volume, made, as Bowring says,
+from a number of scraps, is probably more 'Bowringised' than the first.
+
+Dumont's _Traites_ were translated into Spanish in 1821, and the _Works_
+in 1841-43. There are also Russian and Italian translations. In 1830 a
+translation from Dumont, edited by F. E. Beneke, as _Grundsaetze der
+Civil- und Criminal-Gesetzgebung_, etc., was published at Berlin. Beneke
+observes that Bentham had hitherto received little attention in Germany,
+though well known in other countries. He reports a saying attributed to
+Mme. de Stael that the age was that of Bentham, not of Byron or
+Buonaparte. The neglect of Bentham in Germany was due, as Beneke says,
+to the prevalence of the Kantian philosophy. Bentham, however, had been
+favourably noticed in the _Hermes_ for 1822, and his merits since
+acknowledged by Mittermaier and Warnkoenig in the _Zeitschrift fuer
+Rechtswissenschaft_. Beneke (1798-1854) was opposed to the Hegelian
+tendencies of his time, and much influenced by Herbart. See Ueberweg's
+_History of Philosophy_ (English translation, 1874, ii. 281, etc.) and
+the account of Bentham in Robert von Mohl's _Staatswissenschaften_, etc.
+(1853), iii. 595-635.
+
+A great mass of Bentham MSS. belongs to University College, London. They
+are contained in 148 boxes, which were examined and catalogued by Mr. T.
+Whittaker in 1892. A few of these contain correspondence, part of which
+was printed by Bowring. Others are the manuscripts of published works.
+Some are upon the same subjects as the published works, and others refer
+to topics not included in his publications. Besides the _Deontology_
+manuscripts and a fragment upon 'Political Deontology,' there is a
+discussion of the means of suppressing duels, an argument against the
+legal punishment of certain offences against decency, and a criticism of
+the gospel narrative similar to _Not Paul_, etc. I have not thought it
+necessary to examine these fragments after reading Mr. Whittaker's
+report. Bentham's principles are sufficiently stated in his published
+works; and the papers which have been reposing in the cellars of
+University College can have had no influence upon the world. There is
+another large collection of MSS. in the British Museum from the papers
+of Bentham and his brother, Sir Samuel. Ten folio volumes contain
+correspondence, much of it referring only to Sir Samuel. A long
+correspondence upon the acquisition of the 'Panopticon' land is
+included. Another volume contains many of Bentham's school and college
+exercises. There are also the manuscripts of the _Nomography_, _Logical
+Arrangements_, etc. This collection was used by Bowring and by Lady
+Bentham in the life of her husband.
+
+Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty at the Edinburgh
+University Press
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The English Utilitarians, Volume I., by
+Leslie Stephen
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH UTILITARIANS, VOLUME I ***
+
+***** This file should be named 27597.txt or 27597.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/7/5/9/27597/
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto, Paul Dring, Henry Craig and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/27597.zip b/27597.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b66d34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/27597.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1ba43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #27597 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27597)