Jeremy Bentham,[201] the patriarch of the English Utilitarians, sprang from the cla.s.s imbued most thoroughly with the typical English prejudices. His first recorded ancestor, Brian Bentham, was a p.a.w.nbroker, 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 doc.u.ments, 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 sc.r.a.p 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 pa.s.sions.
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 sc.r.a.pe 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 doc.u.ment, and dipped into a variety of such books as then drifted into middle-cla.s.s 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 "h.e.l.l" for him when Browning Hill stood for paradise. The instruction "was wretched," The f.a.gging 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 "h.e.l.lfire 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 const.i.tuted 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 pa.s.sions 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.sify and arrange and re-cla.s.sify 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 antic.i.p.ate the determined opposition of the great ma.s.s 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 t.i.tle 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 subst.i.tuted a formula, the terms of which suggest the possibility of an accurate quant.i.tative 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 s...o...b..ack. 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 quant.i.ty 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 n.o.body, 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-cla.s.s 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 grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sion. 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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sing 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 trans.m.u.ted 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, p.r.o.nounced 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 sc.r.a.pe."[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, gla.s.s-man, gla.s.s-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 Sh.e.l.ley. Thence he travelled by land to Kritchev, and settled with his brother at the neighbouring estate of Zadobras. Bentham here pa.s.sed 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 ma.n.u.script 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 const.i.tution. 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 pa.s.ses 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 cla.s.sification 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 doc.u.ments 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.