The Education of Jeremy Bentham 9780231893510

Table of contents :
PREFACE
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I. THE PERFECT PUPIL 1748-1759
CHAPTER II. QUEEN'S COLLEGE 1760-1763
CHAPTER III. LAW AND SCIENCE 1763-1772
CHAPTER IV. LAW, CHEMISTRY, AND EDUCATION 1772-1774
CHAPTER VI. A MAN OF THE WORLD 1776-1778
CHAPTER VII. A BETTER FOOTING 1779-1781
CHAPTER VIII. THE AGE OF CATHERINE 1785-1788
CHAPTER I X MORALS AND LEGISLATION THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 1788-1791
NOTES
INDEX

Citation preview

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

THE EDUCATION OF JEREMY BENTHAM

JEREMY

BENTHAM

THE EDUCATION OF JEREMY BENTHAM BY CHARLES WARREN EVERETT I N S T R U C T O R IN E N G L I S H , C O L U M B I A

NEW YORK COLUMBIA

^SäES^

UNIVERSITY

M.CM-XXXI

UNIVERSITY

PRESS

Copyright 1931 COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

PRESS

Published December, 1931

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THE TORCH PRESS, CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA

TO HANNAH MOORE

%

PREFACE This book is the result of a study of the Bentham manuscripts in London, made under the auspices of the Social Science Research Council of America. I was first led to examine the manuscripts by a comment in Professeur £lie Halevy's L a Formation du Radicalism Philosophique, to the effect that there was still a great deal of unused material on Bentham's life to be found there. M y first examination of the manuscripts showed me that there was indeed much material of significance to be found in them, but the University College papers were so extensive and so badly catalogued that it was apparent that more time would be needed to go through them than I had at my disposal. I was fortunate enough to be able to enlist the warm interest of Professor John J . Coss of Columbia in the project, and through him to bring the matter to the attention of Professor Wesley Mitchell at Columbia and Professor Graham W a l l a s at the University of London. A s a result, I was granted a generous fellowship f o r two years by the Social Science Research Council of America, and was thus enabled to go through and catalog the University College M S S , (about 75,000 pages), and to examine the British Museum M S S in detail.

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PREFACE

The manuscripts proved interesting in many respects. Besides containing correspondence throwing a good deal of light on Bentham's life, they also included a number of works of Bentham which f o r various reasons he had never published. Of these the most important was a virtually complete work attacking Blackstone, entitled A Comment on the Commentaries, of which the Fragment on Government was a fragment. On the advice of Professor W . S. Holdsworth. this was published in 1928 by the Clarendon Press, with an historical introduction by the present writer. Another work, entitled Anti-Senatica, a plea f o r the abolition of the U . S. Senate, sent by Bentham to President Jackson, was published in 1926 by the Smith College Studies in History. On the translation of Professeur Halevy's Radicalism Philosophique into English, at the request of Professeur Halevy a complete bibliography of Bentham's works was made by the writer, as an appendix to the translation. In England, I owe thanks to the officials of the British Museum, and to the staff of the library of University College, London, for many special privileges granted me. The portrait of Bentham is used by permission of the National Portrait Gallery. M y obligations to the generous help of Professor Graham Wallas have been acknowledged elsewhere, but I wish once more to offer my gratitude for his genial assistance and advice during my two years' residence in London. M y debt to Professeur Halevy's book, which I share with the general public, has since been enlarged by his advice and counsel.

PREFACE

I wish to thank Professor A. H. Thorndike for his encouragement and advice from the first conception of the book to its final form; Professor Ernest Hunter W r i g h t for criticism dealing with psychological problems and interpretation; and Professor Emery Neff for consistent interest in the work and discussion of controversial points. Professor George Parks of Washington University and M r . Henry Ladd of Columbia have helped me greatly in criticising the manuscript. Materials unknown to previous biographers of Bentham, except Professeur Halevy, are marked with an asterisk in the text. C. W . E. Columbia University October i, 1931

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION

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xiii

I. T H E PERFECT PUPIL

I

II.

QUEEN'S COLLEGE

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III.

L A W AND S C I E N C E

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IY.

L A W , CHEMISTRY, AND EDUCATION

V. VI. VII. VIII. IX.

FOOLISH SENSIBILITIES

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71

A M A N OR T H E W O R L D A B E T T E R FOOTING

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93

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M O R A L S AND LEGISLATION .

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T H E A G E OF C A T H E R I N E

NOTES

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INDEX

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199 . 2 1 1

INTRODUCTION Jeremy Bentham, the "philosopher of legislation," was born in 1748 and died in 1832. For more than sixty years he contended for reforms in law and political organization, almost without success in his own country. Three days after his death the first victory was won with the passage of the Reform Bill in 1832. Forces which he had helped to set in motion, and a school which he had formed were to change the modern world almost as much socially as the steam engine was to change it physically. Abroad, Bentham had become an international figure before his death. Dumont's French translations of his manuscripts were read by Mohammedans, Greeks and Russians, by Bolivar in Venezuela and Livingston in Louisiana. They were retranslated into Spanish, Polish, Italian, Hungarian, Portuguese, Russian, and German. But the true-born Englishman was not, in general, disposed to take too seriously the opinions of foreigners, and Bentham's fame abroad seemed freakish or amusing to his countrymen when they encountered it. There is, moreover, a striking contrast between the general respect for Bentham's powers to be found in any present day account of him, and the good-humoured or contemptuous amusement of his contemporaries in his own country. Even Sir Henry Maine was willing

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to bear witness at the end of the 19th century: " I do not know of a single law reform effected since Bentham's day which cannot be traced to his influence." Professor Coleman Phillipson, the legal historian, sums up Bentham's contribution to modern life in a passage which may be taken as representative of the historical consensus of opinion. H e comments: Bentham's achievements are well nigh inestimable. Every department of our public life, our political institutions, every portion of our civil and criminal jurisprudence, every part of our legal procedure have been profoundly affected by his work. Indeed his influence is still alive, and may be readily perceived in an act or regulation here, in a project there. Foreign states too are more or less substantially indebted to his services and luminous guidance. O u r improvements in the administration of justice, extending over a period of some fifty years, are to a very great extent direct applications of the principles enumerated and repeatedly expounded by him in his writings, which constituted a veritable treasure-house for legal reformers, as well as a rich mine for statesmen and publicists. T h e value of these works, produced by their author for eminently practical purposes and not by way of providing themes for eternal academic disputation, may appear to be less nowadays, seeing that a multitude of reforms therein advocated have already been effected. Nevertheless, an enormous quantity still remains, which, were it but known, would provide parliamentarians and social reformers with much food for reflection; it would offer fruitful ideas in the shaping of our domestic legislative policy, and in establishment and carrying out of schemes of amelioration. ( Three Criminal Law Reformers, p. 229.)

A s has been said, Bentham's fame in his own country was a plant of slow growth. Since we live in a world

INTRODUCTION

xv

which Bentham helped to make, we are more likely to approve of his reforms than would be his contemporaries, on the whole fairly comfortable in the world as they knew it. T h e present generation, brought up in the shadow of the laboratory, admires Bentham f o r ordering that the body which had served him f o r eighty-four years should be dissected in a medical school, because a superstitious public opinion had made it almost impossible to secure materials for the study of anatomy. Y e t thirty years after Bentham's death, Matthew Arnold's jeer at the Marylebone vestryman, "possibly on a pious pilgrimage secretly to beg a bone of his great, dissected M a s t e r " must have seemed amusing, at least to Arnold. T h a t foreigners should hold Bentham in veneration seemed strange enough to some of his contemporaries. " H i s name is little known in England," wrote Hazlitt in 1825, "better in Europe, best of all in the plains of Chili and the mines of Mexico. H e has offered constitutions f o r the N e w World, and legislated for future times. . . M r . Hobhouse is a greater man at the hustings, L o r d Rolle at Plymouth Dock; but M r . Bentham would carry it hollow, on the score of popularity, at Paris or Pegu." Borrow, carrying the light of protestantism to darkest Spain, recounts the story of an alcalde whose admiration of Jeremy Bentham was almost too much f o r Borrow's gravity. Under arrest as a Carlist spy, Borrow was taken before the alcalde of Corcuvion, who promptly released him with apologies: Alcalde. T r u l y it was very ridiculous that they should have arrested you as a Carlist.

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Myself. Not only as a Carlist, but as Don Carlos himself. Alcalde. O h ! most ridiculous; mistake a countryman of the grand Baintham for such a Goth! Myself. Excuse me, sir, you speak of the grand somebody. Alcalde. T h e grand Baintham. He who has invented laws for all the world. I hope shortly to see them adopted in this unhappy country of ours. Myself. O h ! you mean Jeremy Bentham. Yes! a very remarkable man in his way. Alcalde. In his way! in all ways. T h e most universal genius which the world ever produced — a Solon, a Plato, and a Lope de Vega. Myself. I have never read his writings. I have no doubt that he was a Solon; and, as you say, a Plato. I should scarcely have thought, however, that he could be ranked as a poet with Lope de Vega. Alcalde. How surprising! I see, indeed, that you know nothing of his writings, though an Englishman. Now, here am I, a simple alcalde of Galicia, yet I possess all the writings of Baintham on that shelf, and I study them day and night. Myself. You doubtless, Sir, possess the English language. Alcalde. I do. I mean, that part of it which is contained in the writings of Baintham. . . . But it is late; I must find you a lodging for the night. I know one close by which will just suit you. Let us repair thither this moment. Stay, I think I see a book in your hand. Myself. T h e New Testament. Alcalde. W h a t book is that? Myself. A portion of the sacred writings, the Bible. Alcalde. W h y do you carry such a book with you? Myself. One of my principal motives in visiting Finisterra was to carry this book to that wild place. Alcalde. Ha, ha! how very singular. Yes, I remember, I have heard that the English highly prize this eccentric book. How

INTRODUCTION

zyii

very singular that the countryman of the grand Baintham should set any value upon that old monkish book! (Bible in Spain, II,

40.) A m o n g the countrymen of "the grand Baintham" there was, it is true, a Benthamite group, and this group was influential out of all proportion to its numbers. In 1808 Bentham had made the acquaintance of a brilliant young Scots journalist, James Mill, who had assisted in forming the school of which the reformer had dreamed in his youth. T h r o u g h Mill, Bentham met Francis Place, a practical politician who f r o m the position of tailor and T r a d e Union Secretary had become a most effective propagandist and election manager. M i l l and Place converted Bentham to a belief in universal suffrage as a necessary means to achieving the greatest happiness of the greatest number. In 1824 Bentham founded the Westminster Review, which numbered among its contributors James Mill, John Stuart Mill, John Austin, George Grote, Bowring, Roebuck, Fonblanque, Brigham, Graham, and Eyton T o o k e . In Parliament, Bentham's reforms were advocated by Romilly and Burdett, and even Brougham said that he had sat at the feet of Gamaliel. Since most of the Radical group were young men, the Benthamic influence could be expected to continue long after Bentham's death. T h e volumes which poured steadily from his pen were to be used by his disciples as source books f o r legislation. Edwin Chadwick, the father of modern sanitation, took from the incomplete Constitutional Code the details of the N e w Poor L a w of 1834, and of the A c t establishing a proper census

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INTRODUCTION

of vital statistics in 1836. From the same work Parkes and Place drafted the Municipal R e f o r m Act of 1 8 3 5 . The division and organization of the work of governmental departments, the extension of the franchise, the reform of the land laws, the parcels post, a national system of education, the modern police force, the establishment of a permanent civil service based on competitive examinations — all these were, f o r the most part, the carrying out of plans carefully worked out by Bentham. F o r this group of reformers Bentham was "the M a s t e r , " the "Newton of legislation." " T h e father of English innovation, both in doctrine and in institutions, is Bentham:" said J . S. Mill in 1 8 3 9 , "he is the great subversive, or, in the language of Continental philosophers, the great critical, thinker of his age and country. . . . H e introduced into morals and politics those habits of thought and modes of investigation, which are essential to the idea of science. . . . It was not his opinions, in short, but his method, that constituted the novelty and value of what he did. . . . H e found the practice of the law an Augean stable: he turned the river into it which is mining and sweeping away mound after mound of its rubbish." But his disciples were f a r from being blind worshippers of the Master. They had no diffidence in applying to his doctrines the same tests they had learned from him to apply so effectively to others. And even while they advocated his principles, they smiled at his peculiarities. It was these peculiarities which provoked the general tone of amusement when Bentham's name was men-

INTRODUCTION

x iX

tioned to an Englishman — affectionate amusement if one was a disciple; contemptuous if an enemy. By the time the ageing reformer had found his school, he was an eccentric. Forty years of the hardest kind of work had met with rejection, postponement, and disappointment. A "projector," and a disappointed projector, at that, he had become warped and twisted by years of failure. H i s disposition remained generally sunny and benevolent, it is true, but the eccentricity of mind and personality was unmistakable. H e was "the hermit of Queen Square Place," of whom strange things were reported. H e spent his waking hours in dashing off pages upon pages on every conceivable subject, all written in an almost undecipherable hand, and these "Sibylline leaves," rumor said, comprised codes of laws to govern any nation in need of a constitution, when they had been gathered up by handsome youthful secretaries and formed into books. H e coined words of a startling nature. H e took his "antejentacular and postprandial circumgyrations" in his garden at a pace between a trot and a run, wearing a sombrero-like straw hat and assisted by his stick Dapple. Within doors, he "vibrated" from one strangely furnished room to another. Each of the three living rooms contained a piano, and the dining room an organ. T h e house was heated by a contrivance of copper pipes with steam passing through them. T h e r e was even one of these coils under the seat of the master's chair. His food was fruit and vegetables; his drink water. His opinions alone would have brought him the

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INTRODUCTION

dislike of respectable people; his quaint manners and phraseology enabled them to conceal the dislike under good-humoured contempt. For Bentham's disciples, his peculiarities and eccentricity led to a graver danger, that of assuming that the repetitiousness, vanity, and pettiness of old age were representative of his whole life. Not one of his English school had known him before the age of sixty. John Stuart Mill was probably the ablest man in the group, and Mill was to give currency to an erroneous idea prevalent up to the present time. One of Bentham's disqualifications as a philosopher was, he observed, "the incompleteness of his own mind as a representative of universal human nature. In many of the most natural and strongest feelings of human nature he had no sympathy; from many of its graver experiences he was altogether cut off; and the faculty by which one mind understands a mind different from itself, and throws itself into the feelings of that other mind, was denied him by his deficiency of imagination." Bentham's knowledge of human nature is too narrowly limited, he goes on to say. It is wholly empirical, and the empiricism of one who has had little experience. He had neither internal experience nor external : the quiet, even tenor of his life, and the healthiness of his mind, conspired to exclude him from both. He never knew prosperity and adversity, passion nor satiety: he never had even the experiences which sickness gives; he lived from childhood to the age of eighty-five in boyish health. He knew no dejection, no heaviness of heart. He never felt life a sore and weary burthen. He was a boy to the last. Self-consciousness, that

INTRODUCTION

xzi

demon of the men of genius of our time, from W o r d s w o r t h to Byron, from Goethe to Chateaubriand, and to which this age owes so much both of its cheerful and its mournful wisdom, never was awakened in him. H o w much of human nature slumbered in him he knew not, neither can w e know. H e had never been made alive to the unseen influences which were acting on himself, nor, consequently, on his fellow-creatures. O t h e r ages and other nations were a blank to him for purposes of instruction. H e measured them but by one standard, — their knowledge of facts, and their capability to take correct views of utility, and merge all other objects in it. His own lot was cast in a generation of the leanest and barrenest men whom England had yet produced; and he was an old man when a better race came in with the present century. H e saw accordingly, in man, little but what the vulgarest eye can see; recognized no diversities of character but such as he who runs may read. Knowing so little of human feelings, he knew still less of the influences by which those feelings are formed: all the more subtle workings both of the mind upon itself, and of external things upon the mind, escaped him; and no one, probably, who, in a highly instructed age, ever attempted to give a rule to all human conduct, set out with a more limited conception either of the agencies by which human conduct is, or of those by which it should be, influenced. (Dissertations and Discussions, I, 37980.)

It is the purpose of the present work to show that such assertions as these of M i l l are profoundly mistaken; that if Bentham's empiricism was inadequate in the field of ethics, at least it was the empiricism of a man who had felt deeply, travelled far, read widely, and enjoyed the friendship of able men of all classes. Furthermore, Bentham was a lawyer, and an able one. In his Comment on the Commentaries he shows a

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INTRODUCTION

knowledge of the history of legal doctrines which time and again enables him to put Blackstone in the wrong on plain matters of fact. H i s primary interest was in the r e f o r m of the legal system, rather than in speculative ethics. H e believed that enough of man's pleasures and pains could be measured to enable a legislator to judge whether a certain act tended to produce a balance of pain or pleasure, and that it was better f o r the legislator to act on the Greatest Happiness principle than to be governed by his own likes and dislikes. H e knew, and admitted, that there were human feelings difficult and even impossible to measure accurately. But his final conviction was that here was an instrument of measurement that was sufficiently accurate to deal with crime and punishment. In his own words, " T h o s e who are not satisfied with the accuracy of this instrument must find out some other that shall be more accurate, or bid adieu to politics and morals.' 1

CHAPTER

I

THE PERFECT PUPIL 1748-1759 " F i l s ne, apres nomme Jeremy; a quatre heures et demi, mon fils se nait." 1 So Jeremiah Bentham, clerk of the Scrivener's Company and prosperous attorney, noted in his journal the arrival on February 15, 1748, of his son and heir. Jeremy's great-grandfather, Brian Bentham, had been a wealthy pawnbroker in the city of London; his grandfather, Jeremiah Bentham, had been a lawyer "neither worse nor better than the average rate of attorneys." Jeremiah Bentham, the father, had followed also the calling of attorney, had been a success, and had increased his patrimony by judicious loans and dealings in real estate. Jeremy thus inherited a name of some weight in the city, and one associated with prosperity and success in business. Perhaps the slight change from the Old Testament Jeremiah to the N e w Testament Jeremy heralded in the mind of the father a hint of a new and of course more magnificent dispensation in the person of his son. In general, Jeremiah Bentham was of a cautious, cool, and calculating temper, very anxious to get on in the world, both financially and socially, not noticeably to be distinguished f r o m many other worthy citizens who were sharing in the commercial expansion of

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Britain. T h o u g h brought up as a devout Jacobite, he had lately shifted his allegiance from Stuart to Guelph and was as loyal a subject as could be found in Houndsditch, then a very respectable neighborhood. Y e t the very existence of Jeremy Bentham was the outcome of a piece of romantic folly, or at least so Jeremiah Bentham would have characterized it in another. H i s family had had under arrangement f o r him a marriage of a sort not easily brought about. T h e r e was ten thousand pounds to be gained by the arrangement, as well as a young woman who might be expected to make a dutiful wife, since she was a sufficiently dutiful and obedient daughter to agree to whatever disposal the superior wisdom of her parents made of her. Disregarding the thoughtfulness and foresight of his family, Jeremiah had fallen in love with Alicia Grove, a charming but penniless young woman whom he had met at a country party at Buckholt Acres. H e had come home, unable to talk of anything but the grace, loveliness, and intelligence of his beloved, and had vowed to marry her — had even taken out a license in September, 1744. T h o u g h his mother had long refused to hear of the match, he had managed by a diplomatic handling of the situation to win her over to a grudging consent. By August, 1745, he had been able to report to Alicia, somewhat breathlessly and perhaps not holding too strictly to the truth: Aldgate 24 A u g 1745 I made my mother your obliging present of your Duty, who received it with all the gratitude and regard due to the charming and deserving Object of her Son's happy Choice, of which

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3

she has conceived the highest Opinion — you may well imagine what pleasure she took in the Account I gave her of my happiness in you — as nothing can be more engaging than the Tenderness and affectionate regard so remarkable in your carriage and behaviour to your own Parents and Relations, that alone would be sufficient to prepossess her in your favour, and I may both venture to assure you, and answer for her that no relation you have can love and value you more than she will do when she comes to know you, so well satisfied am I that you will never be wanting in whatever may render you deserving of it — in short, if I am capable of forming any judgment at all, no Three Persons could ever come together so perfectly — suitable and agreeable in our several capacities and Relations as ourselves, among whom there is all the reason in the world to expect the most lasting and uninterrupted Harmony Love and Friendship — O that the time were come for its Commencement from whence it may date its Continuance which I am satisfied will know no other period than Life itself.* 2 T w o y e a r s l a t e r they w e r e m a r r i e d , and h o w e v e r bitterly B e n t h a m ' s m o t h e r resented the f a i l u r e of her plans, certainly J e r e m i a h B e n t h a m himself never reg r e t t e d his r o m a n t i c folly. Alicia w a s charming, gentle, and b e a u t i f u l ; she w a s d e v o t e d to her husband a n d he to her. In answer to a letter f r o m him s o m e time a f t e r their m a r r i a g e she w r o t e : Mon cher ami. Are you not ashamed to own that you fell asleep in such a pretty Ladys Company — shou'd it be known in the beau monde I shou'd blush for you, and then the excuse you alledge is still worse — what bestow yr Gallantry and good humour on yr Wife, fie upon it, what an unfashionable thing you are. Pray take a View of Mariage a la Mode before you come down again. I am my dearest yr most affectionate Wife and obliged humble servant A. Bentham.* 3

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In fact, the romantic folly had turned out well. Secure in his worldly possessions, adored by a charming wife, who had presented him with a son and heir, Jeremiah Bentham was well content in the state to which it had pleased God to call him. Jeremy was duly baptized in the newly completed church of St. Botolph Aldgate, not far from the Bentham house in Church Lane, and the father began to arrange for his future education. Education was a simple thing to Jeremiah Bentham. He was in no doubt either as to the ends to be attained by education, nor the means to be employed to attain the ends. The end desired was either money or some equivalent form of power: the training must be both technical and social. The technical training which offered the most possibilities was law, for law was involved in almost every human relationship, and was so arranged that its practitioner could profit if the machinery of society ran well, and could profit still more if it ran ill. Jeremy should be a lawyer. But Jeremiah Bentham, who knew his way about in the world, knew that the study of law was not enough. Even more important was social training. The social training of young Jeremy must be one which would render him agreeable to his betters, and which would tend to bring him into their society. Jeremiah was quite sure that for one man who attains distinction through mastery of his craft or profession, there are three who cling to the skirts of the great and by them are lifted into power. Jeremy should therefore have masters in dancing, French, drawing, and music, and should enter one of

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the g r e a t public schools and a f a s h i o n a b l e college at the University. T h i s educational policy must h a v e taken shape

at

once in J e r e m i a h ' s m i n d ; f o r t h e e d u c a t i o n b e g a n in the n u r s e r y . T h e m o t h e r , o f c o u r s e , h a d l i t t l e p a r t in the s y s t e m ,

though

her w a r m

affection a l w a y s

sur-

r o u n d e d b o t h f a t h e r a n d son. From Andover,

August,

1749,

she w r o t e

to

her

"beloved absent o n e s " : I try to divest myself of all uneasy cares, and think of nothing at home but the joys I left behind — my sweet little boy, and his still dearer papa; though there are little anxious fears about death and fever, and too great a hurry and perhaps vexations in business, which may perhaps overpower the spirits, and I not present to bear my part, and soothe those cares; which, I flatter myself, would be in my power, were it only from my desire of doing it. Shall you see the dear little creature again ? I dreamed he had been like to have been choked with a plumstone. Surely nurse will not trust him with damsons. Good preserve him from all evil accidents! * T h e little boy's precocity w a s r e m a r k a b l e enough to p l e a s e e v e n his a m b i t i o u s f a t h e r . H e k n e w h i s l e t t e r s b e f o r e he w a s a b l e t o s p e a k . T h e w h o l e f a m i l y

was

p r o u d o f h i m a n d t o l d s t o r i e s o f his f e a t s in his presence. I n his o l d a g e he r e c o u n t e d t o his f r i e n d B o w ring,5 W h a t I am about to tell you I have often heard from my grandfather: it occurred before I was breeched, and I was breeched at three years and a quarter old — One day, after dinner, I was taken to walk with my father and mother, and some of their acquaintance. T h e y were talking, as usual, about

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. . . matters of complete indifference to me — about M r . Thompson, M r . Jackson, Miss Smith, and old M r . Clark. . . . Unperceived, I escaped from the company, took to my heels, and scampered home. . . . When they came in they found me seated at table — a reading desk upon the table, and a huge folio on the reading desk — a lighted candle on each side, (for it had become dark), and myself absorbed in my studies. T h e book was Rapin's History of England.*

What the footman thought of the orders of the boy in petticoats to mount the desk, upon the table, to place the folio upon the desk, and to provide candles without delay, is not upon record. Jeremiah Bentham had brushed up his own Latin and Greek in order to act as teacher, and Jeremy learned the Latin Grammar and the Greek alphabet on his father's knee. T o the end of his life, Jeremiah Bentham kept scraps of Latin written by Jeremy at the age of five. Good work was rewarded by praise and fine clothes. A typical entry in the father's diary is: " 1 0 December, 1 7 5 3 . Paid M r . Robert Hartley for double allepine f o r J e r r y ' s coat and breeches, to his pink waistcoat o 12 3 . " 7 Jeremy excelled in music as in letters. With his miniature violin the undersized boy had learned to scrape Foote's Minuet at the age of five, and had gone on to Corelli and Handel in a way to delight his teachers. When he was seven, his mother could write casually but proudly to his father: " A f t e r dinner and J e r r y had given our friends a specimen of his Proficiency in Musick by playing a Sonata or two out of a collection which M r . Evans had by him of Handel's — we proceeded to Mrs. Morell's." 8

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H e was sent to Westminster School at the age of seven, and he was to spend there every winter from his seventh to his twelfth year. In his later life he always spoke with dislike of Westminster and perhaps with reason. A t least, his dislike was shared by the poet Cowper, who missed being his schoolfellow only by five years. Cowper's conclusion, that " G r e a t schools suit best the sturdy and the rough" may account for the fact that for two frail and sensitive children such a school as Westminster was far from ideal. T h e general looseness in discipline Cowper has described in the

Tirocinium;

or, a Review of Schools:

Would you your son should be a sot or dunce, Lascivious, headstrong, or all these at once, T h a t in good time, the stripling's finished taste For loose expense and fashionable waste Should prove your ruin, and his own at last, Train him in public with a mob of boys, Childish in mischief only and in noise, Else of a mannish growth, and five in ten In infidelity and lewdness, men. There shall he learn, ere sixteen winters old, T h a t authors are most useful, pawned or sold, T h a t pedantry is all that schools impart, But taverns teach the knowledge of the heart; There waiter Dick with Bacchanalian lays Shall win his heart and have his drunken praise, His counsellor and bosom friend shall prove, And some street-pacing harlot his first love. Whether or not this is a picture of Cowper's own life at Westminster between 1 7 4 1 and 1 7 5 0 , at least it

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is certain that the poet was able to express with almost painful exactness the reasons why certain boys were sent to school there, among them Jeremy Bentham: B u t families of less illustrious fame, W h o s e chief distinction is their spotless name, W h o s e heirs, their honours none, their income small, M u s t shine by true desert, or not at all, W h a t dream they of, that with so little care T h e y risk their hopes, their dearest treasure there ? T h e y dream of little Charles or William graced W i t h wig prolix, down-flowing to his waist, T h e y see the attentive crowds his talents draw, T h e y hear him speak — the oracle of law. Events improbable and strange as these, W h i c h only a parental eye foresees, A public school shall bring to pass with ease.

H o w are these improbable events to be brought to pass, asks the poet, and his answer may stand as the central principle of the view of education held by Jeremiah Bentham. T h e exalted prize demands an upward look, N o t to be found by poring on a book. Small skill in Latin, and still less in Greek, Is more than adequate to all I seek; Let erudition grace him or not grace, I give the bauble but the second place; H i s wealth, fame, honours, all that I intend, Subsist and centre in one point, a friend. A friend, whate'er he studies or neglects, Shall give him consequence, heal all defects;

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His intercourse with peers and sons of peers, — There dawns the splendour of his future years, In that bright quarter his propitious skies Shall blush betimes, and there his glory rise. Your lordship and your grace, what school can teach A rhetoric equal to those parts of speech?

Boys who were older or of nobler birth gave Jeremy their exercises to do for them, and helped themselves to his rare presents of money from home. In doing their work he did gain a fair mastery of Latin composition, a mastery in his opinion not likely to be secured otherwise at Westminster. The business of the portly master, Dr. Markham, was "rather in courting the great than in attending to the school. Any excuse served him for deserting his post. He had a great deal of pomp, especially when he lifted his hand, waved it, and repeated Latin verses. If the boys performed their tasks well, it was well! if ill, it was not the less well." * The subordinate masters, though more generous with the rod, seemed to him to have little to give. One of them, a tapster's son, and hence known as "Tappy" Lloyd, was wholly occupied in teaching prosody, in Bentham's opinion "a miserable invention for consuming time." Another master's chief concern was to see that the young gentlemen got by heart Archbishop Williams's Comments on the Catechism. As a student Jeremy was lodged in the house of Mrs. Morell. The room he occupied was crowded with three beds, one of which he shared with a bedfellow. One of his roommates, a boy by the name of Cotton, he always remembered for being able to tell interesting stories of

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his own invention, in which the heroes and heroines were models of beneficence and kindness. Jeremy admired young Cotton greatly and was fired to solemn resolutions that, if he ever possessed the means, he too would be generous to the poor and oppressed. There were other bright spots in Westminster life. Once a season his grandmother Bentham paid a visit of ceremony in her carriage, wearing her sable muff and tippet in honour of the occasion. Sometimes his father would take him to the inns and coffee houses he was in the habit of visiting. The Rainbow Coffee house was frequented by the quality of the Scrivener's Company, and there Jeremy enjoyed the costly hock and turtle paid for by the Company, and never tired of hearing M r . Wilcock sing Four-and-Twenty Fiddlers all in a Row. The White Conduit House was also a delightful place with boxes arranged in a circle, in which he shared his father's tea and hot rolls, and was sometimes treated to a syllabub fresh from the cow. But Jeremy had been sent to Westminster to make the acquaintance of the great, and at length an event occurred which the father hailed as the beginning of good fortune. 10 One day, as the Duchess of Leeds was crossing the playground on a visit to her two sons, she saw the small form of Bentham, and having heard of his precocity, she called him to her. "Little Bentham" said the great lady, "you know who I a m i " Precocious as he was, the eight year old child failed to recognize what should have been apparent, and answered with a polite bow, "No, madam, no! I have not that honour." The Duchess was amused at the stately

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courtesy of the tiny figure and invited him to dinner, where he was made much of. T h e Duke introduced him to a physician, to whom he said, " T h i s is Bentham — a litttle philosopher." " A h ! " said the doctor gravely, looking him over carefully, "a philosopher I Can you screw your head off and o n ? " "No, s i r l " answered Bentham. "Oh then," the doctor dismissed the matter, "you are no philosopher." But this rebuff was made up to him after dinner, when M r . Trimmer, a poor dependent of the family, whose gold lace was the narrowest of any at the table, put a guinea into J e r e m y ' s hand. All these were bright spots in Westminster life, but in general Westminster was to him a scene of dreariness and brutality, in which a small boy was fortunate if he could escape the liberal floggings visited upon the dullards and shirkers. H e found his own home at least more tolerable than W e s t m i n s t e r : in his cosmogony Aldgate was the e a r t h ; Westminster, hell; and the country, heaven. H i s father was genuinely fond of him, and proud of his precocity, saw to it that no time was wasted. Visits home were free from bullying, but they meant school in more concentrated form. French, dancing, and military drill were necessary as aids to the graces of a gentleman, and tutors were provided for each. L a Combe, the French master, made friends with the boy, and opened to him a new world of imagination so exciting that the difficulties of g r a m m a r melted away before it. It was a point of principle in the Bentham

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household that no book for children should contain any of the poison of amusement, yet the first French book put into Jeremy's hands by La Combe was a collection of fairy tales. "Le Petit Poucet," "Cinderella," the "Belle au Bois Dormante," and the " C h a t Botte" filled the lonely little boy with delight, and he remembered to the end of his life his joy over the administration of poetic justice when Nonchalant, the wicked, would-be seducer, having popped himself into the barrel full of razors and serpents which he had prepared for his intended victim, was himself rolled down the mountain in her place. La Combe also gave him Fenelon's Telemaque to read, and to Telemachus Jeremy felt all his life that he owed much. Telemachus combines in his own person too many excellencies to be pleasing to modern tastes, but to Jeremy he seemed a model of perfect virtue, and he asked himself with all the seriousness of his seven years, why should he not be a Telemachus whatever his walk in life might be. 11 La Combe might have done a great deal with the boy had not Jeremiah's desire to drive a hard bargain led to the tutor's resignation in less than a year. Untaught, Jeremy had learned to draw with some facility, and his father employed a drawing master, again at a bargain, with little result. T h e drawing master found himself unable to answer the questions of an inquiring mind of eight as to why things should be done in the prescribed fashion. Since the tutor could explain neither the laws of perspective nor of optics, Bentham urged his father not to compel him to break

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the commandment which prohibits the making "the likeness of anything in the heavens above or the earth beneath." T h e drawing master was let go, and the time devoted to drawing given over to music. T h e earliest appearance of the inquiring mind might have seemed dangerous had Jeremiah Bentham understood to what it would eventually lead, but if he was alarmed, he must have been reassured by the ideal which his wizened little pupil had made for himself from Telemachus. T h e whole course of training might have been suited to a Pantagruel, but Jeremy Bentham w a s fortunate to come through it alive. H e was so weak at this time that he could scarcely drag himself upstairs, and even the miniature gun used in his military drill was too heavy for him to handle without distress. H i s father, to whom weakness and embarassment were unknown, knew that the cure for weakness was vigorous exercise, and for shyness, being pushed forward in society, even though J e r e m y obviously suffered under both these treatments. J e r e m y loved and respected his father, but it was not long before, in his mind, the mud and cold and dreariness of a London winter seemed but a fitting background for tutors, family discipline, and school. London meant order and restriction. Browning Hill, a country place near Redding where his grandmother Grove lived, meant freedom, beautiful country prospects, elm trees to climb, and Richardson to read. Barking, in Essex, the country place of his grandmother Bentham, was an earthly paradise. H e r e his friend the gardener gravely discussed with him the course of the

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weather, or philosophized in gardener fashion as together they trained the honeysuckles on their standards or laid out the tulip beds. J e r e m y thought the gardener treated the beautiful flowers very roughly, but the noble pear tree covering the whole house was a witness to his professional skill. " W h a t would the King say to t h i s ? " the old man would ask as he opened up some topic of local politics, and the boy, his head full of Rapin's kings and queens, would be much interested in hearing him explain what a proper king would say. H e r e w a s company far superior to the house servants, either at Barking or London, for their greatest amusement lay in telling the sensitive child stories of imps and goblins and ghosts until he was horribly a f r a i d of every dark corner and closet. R a w h e a d was the occupant of one closet; Bloody Bones of another; and Palethorp was the name given to a specter whose features were sketched in chalk at places best calculated to frighten Jeremy. Sometimes a footman would drape a sheet about him, walk up and down a dark entry way, and moan out gibberish in a manner that would keep the boy from that part of the house for weeks. H e gained little if he tried to escape from such terrors as these by recourse to books. Both father and mother were firm in the belief that books for children must contain none of the poison of amusement. T h e r e were, it is true, books at his home which were instructive or supposedly instructive, and over those he was allowed to pore after getting a certain number of church collects by heart. "Lockman's History of England w a s furnished with a quantity of cuts: there was

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the blessed martyr, Charles, with his head on the accursed block; there were the holy bishops burning as fuel at Smithfield;" 12 with many others of like diverting nature. "Cave's Lives of the Apostles was in a thin quarto, also with cuts, in which each of the apostles was represented as playing with that particular instrument of torture by which he was predestined to be consigned to martyrdom." 13 Burnett's Theory of the Earth informed him of the likelihood of his being burned to death in the catastrophic destruction of the world. Stow's Chronicle was chiefly notable as containing the description of a variety of monstrous births, some of them rivalling those of the street ballads. Rapin's History of England was, in comparison, a mild and quiet work, but it was written by a professional soldier, who consequently had a proper sense of proportion in history, with enough throat cuttings and plunderings to satisfy the most bloodthirsty of infants. Jeremy followed the progress of the conquests of Edward the Third with a mixture of fascinated horror and eager sympathy. Province after province of France yielded to Edward only after a desperate defense by their inhabitants, and the slaughtered Frenchmen were piled high on the field of battle. Edward made use of two weapons, he noticed — the sword, a glittering weapon which spread death and destruction in a most pleasing fashion, and negotiation, a tiresome instrument, but one which seemed to accomplish even more for Edward than the sword. Jeremy's spirits drooped at the sight of the word negotiation, and only when the sword began its work again did they revive. Besides such instructive books as these, Jeremy had

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access to his grandmother Bentham's library, composed mostly of books of devotion. One of them was the book of sacred poetry by Bishop Ken. On the first page were two lines from the first hymn: Awake, my soul! and with the sun T h y daily course of duty run;

and with them a vignette of the sun beginning his daily course and making himself a pattern for small boys who ought to be working at their lessons as soon as he appeared. To the end of his life, Jeremy could recall the sort of melancholy the sight of this uplifting and inspiring verse used to bring on. Dodsley's Preceptor, another of his grandmother's books, contained the Vision of Phedora and the Hermit of T e n e r i f f e , products of the pen of Dr. Johnson. Jeremy knew very well who the poor ideal traveller was, toiling up the hill, with Reason and Religion for his guides, and an abyss at each side, ready at the first false step to receive his lacerated corpse. He could look, with Dr. Johnson, deep into the abyss, and see the thousands, including many small boys, who would never reach the summit. Paradise Lost did little to lighten the gloom. The pandaemonium, with all its flames, looked like something between false and true, but probably true, and paradise had long since passed away through the sin of our first father, Adam. Paradise Regained was merely dull. 14 Jeremiah Bentham himself was neither ascetic nor, in any but the most conventional sense, religious. It was probably uncalculated and ironic that through the diversions of literature Jeremy's home came to be asso-

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ciated, in the mind of the frail and sensitive child, with the somber tones of a gloomy religious and moral atmosphere. Such reading could do little enough to temper the dreariness of a London winter, and it was with impatience that J e r e m y waited, each year, for the summer migration to Browning H i l l in Buckinghamshire. There everything and everybody had a charm for him; even the old rusty sword in the granary, which he used to brandish against the rats, had been used for the defense of Oxford against the Parliamentary forces by one of his ancestors, who had doubtless spilled blood with it as freely as had E d w a r d in France. London noises, street cries, clatter of carriages, gave way to peaceful barnyard sounds and the bells of Boghurst church. No set of chimes in London was half so pleasant to the boy as "the sound of those three bells; one a little cracked, another much cracked, and the third so cracked as to be almost mute." Then there were books of a new sort, some of them almost dangerously tainted with amusement or interest. A certain lofty elm had, high in its branches, a crotch that was almost an armchair. W i t h a book in his shirt, Jeremy would mount to this post, where, secure from observation, he could read or watch things going on beneath him, with neither tutors, schoolmasters, nor parents to please. H e was even clothed with a little brief authority himself when the laborers were working in his neighborhood, and would descend from his perch at the proper time, gather up wheat for them to thrash, and then mount again to his l e a f y throne. T h e books he read were of many sorts. H e r e for the

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first time he met novels, and read them with an emotional sympathy which no history had called forth. When he got hold of a novel, he identified himself with the personages, and thought more of their affairs than of any of his own. In Gil Bias he took an intense interest, and was happy or unhappy as fortune favored or frowned upon the characters. Gullivers Travels were even better than Harris' Voyages. Magellan and Sir Francis Drake had sailed strange seas, but had, after all, seen no giants or flying islands. Besides, Gulliver spoke with an obvious truth and sincerity not always to be found in travellers. Richardson had written most of Pamela in the summer house at Browning Hill, and that fact added to the interest in his novels, if anything could be said to add to Jeremy's emotions on reading them. He read them all. Clarissa, particularly, he read and reread, and wept for her at every reading. Pamela was moving enough, but Clarissa was more real and touching than any other character. He read, too, Atalantis, a collection of novels, and another novel in four volumes, called the Invisible Spy — a delightful book, the heroine of which had, by the favour of an old magician, acquired the secret of making herself invisible. There was heavier food for the mind, too, if a mind of ten years, however precocious, could be said to need heavier food. But urged on by the title of "the little philosopher," he plunged boldly in. Locke's Essay on the Understanding was there, and Locke he had heard spoken of in the highest terms; and since it was there he read it as a kind of duty, but with no great

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enthusiasm. Mandeville's Fable of the Bees was better, though somewhat upsetting after church collects and Dr. Johnson. His great-uncle Woodward had been a publisher of deistical books and tracts, and the house at Browning Hill contained various remnants of his stock, as well as earlier theological works. Among these were Clarke On the Trinity and Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation, and to the small boy who still took the conventional theology and cosmology of the period seriously these mildly deistical works were really shocking. 16 Tindal, in particular, with his lists of the curses, cruelties, assassinations, famines, wars, and pestilences sent upon the earth by Jehovah in anger, struck upon Jeremy's mind with great force, and believing that the author had misquoted, he compared the passages cited with the King James version. H e was still more shocked and puzzled to find the quotations accurate. Another surprise came when he found that books of history could disagree. H e read Burnet's History of his own Times and Clarendon's History of the Rebellion and was not a little puzzled to account for their differences in narrating the same events. 14 Perhaps no small part of his later disregard for the historical method began in his realization at this time that history is largely the reflection of personal prejudices. Out of all his childish reading there came only two influences which he was to feel later had materially affected his thinking. The earliest of these was that of Telemachus. The second important event in his reading came when chance threw into his hands, at the age of eleven, the autobiography of Teresa Constantia

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Philips. This was a sentimentalization (by a popular author) of the adventures of a rather celebrated courtezan, but its effect on the boy was no less notable than that of Telemachus. Teresa had married, after due penitence for her previous career, a Dutch merchant. His relatives and friends succeeded in making him regret his act, and by the aid of his legal counsel, the merchant suborned witnesses to swear to a prior marriage of Teresa's. The legal battle was a lengthy one, and in following its course, Jeremy saw for the first time "the Daemon of Chicane in all his hideousness" and vowed war against him.17 No very clear pattern can be seen in such reading or in such a childhood, except perhaps a tendency to divide life into its opposites: town and country, hell and heaven, pain and pleasure. The virtues of Telemachus and of little Cotton's heroes, the appearance of the Daemon of Chicane and poor Teresa, throw only an incidental light on Jeremy Bentham. Probably the fact that Jeremy took life seriously accounts for much. He had been told that he had a conscience and he had believed what was told him. H e had been told that certain things were wrong, and when he did those things his conscience hurt him. As a boy he seemed unaware of the verbal quibbles which will salve an experienced conscience, and he sometimes suffered severely. W h a t in an older person would have been priggishness, in a child was only a pathetic desire to be approved of. Physically he was too weak to win the admiration of his fellows, and to compensate for this weakness he tried to be industrious and honest and

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noble and dutiful, finding that such a course brought praise from his elders. The educational problem was probably rendered more difficult because Jeremy was an only child, and the birth of his brother Samuel in 1 7 5 7 , when he was nine, was destined to set right a good part of Jeremy's life, though not till many years later. A s f a r as Jeremiah Bentham was concerned, everything was going well. A f t e r Samuel's birth, he bought a large house at Crutched Friars, more suitable for a family than was Houndsditch. T h e family fortune was increasing, Jeremy was producing Latin verse in quantities at Westminster, and young Samuel was beginning to show ability almost as early as Jeremy had done. Yes, Jeremiah Bentham had little quarrel with fortune. H e had a fair measure of wealth, a respectable social position, a loving wife, and a son of whose intelligence he was justly proud. True, his son was weak in body, and afflicted by a timidity or shyness which must be discarded if he was to raise the name of Bentham to the eminence of the L o r d Chancellorship of England. If the régime prescribed f o r him by his father was harsh, it was but the expression of the paternal fear of failure. Suddenly disaster fell. T h e shadow of mortality cast its gloom over prosperity and satisfaction. Sitting alone in his darkened study, Jeremiah Bentham noted with metriculous accuracy in his journal: " 1 7 5 9 , January 6. This day died my most dearly beloved wife, and one of the best of women, Alicia Bentham, with whom I had lived in a constant and uninterrupted state of

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nuptial happiness thirteen years, three months, and three days, except the grief and affliction which her last illness occasioned to me." 18 T h e world lost its savour for Jeremiah Bentham. For weeks he seemed to care so little for life that his family and friends feared that he himself would die. Jeremy wandered through the silent and deserted house, feeling but only half understanding the gloom. H e was just turned twelve, and was ready for Oxford, if a frail and undersized boy of twelve could be said to be ready for anything. H e was a competent maker of Latin verses and a "little philosopher." At any rate, he was almost the only thing Jeremiah Bentham had left on which he could rest his hopes.

CHAPTER I I QUEEN'S

COLLEGE

1760-1763 A f t e r the death of A l i c i a B e n t h a m ,

grandmother

B e n t h a m took charge of the household at F r i a r s , including the care of J e r e m y ' s

Crutched

four-year-old

brother Samuel. In 1 7 6 0 J e r e m y w a s considered to h a v e reaped the full benefit of W e s t m i n s t e r , and no time w a s lost in a r r a n g i n g f o r his entrance to the university, so that on J u n e 2 8 his f a t h e r w a s able to record in his j o u r n a l : Aujourd'hui a midi, set out with my friend, M r . William Brown, and my son Jeremy, from London for Oxford. L a y at Orkney's Arms, by Maiden head bridge. G o t to Oxford at dinner, apres midi. Entered my son at Queen's College; and he subscribed the statutes of the University in the apartment of D r . Browne, the Provost of Queen's, he being the present vicechancellor; and by his recommendation, I placed my son under the care of M r . Jacob Jefferson, as his tutor — paying M r . Jefferson for caution-money, £ 8 ; entrance to Butler, &c. 1 0 s.; matriculation, 1 7 s. 6 d . ; table fees, 1 0 s. T h e age of my dear son, upon his being admitted of the University this day, is twelve years, three months, and thirteen days. 1 T h e l i b r a r y which J e r e m y took with him when he went again to settle at the U n i v e r s i t y in October w a s in itself a commentary on his education past and to

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come. O f the sixty volumes, only twelve were in E n g lish, and the twelve included Buchanan's Psalms, the Rational Catechism, The English Common Prayer Book, M i l t o n ' s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, P o t t e r ' s Greek Antiquities, E u c l i d ' s Elements, and H a r d y ' s Elements of Arithmetic. But there w e r e six volumes of Cicero, and at least one volume each of O v i d , H o r a c e , Terence, V i r g i l , Juvenal, Sallust, Pliny, Anacreon, Lucian, Demosthenes, and H o m e r . H i s training had been the conventional one f o r a gentleman, and might even lead to classical scholarship. W e s t m i n ster had at least prepared him f o r the O x f o r d o f 1760, since the chief requirements o f the university were skill in L a t i n composition, and an o u t w a r d show of religious conformity. O f the two, Jeremy was to find it more difficult to satisfy the religious requirement than the scholastic, not because he w a s inclined to free-thinking, but because he w a s sincerely and deeply religious. O n account o f his youth he w a s excused f r o m taking the oaths. H e w a s not to escape so lightly, h o w e v e r , f r o m subscribing to the Thirty-nine Articles. H e had been properly brought up in matters of religion, and should h a v e taken the A r t i c l e s on trust, as he had taken so many o f the beliefs of his elders, but perhaps some memories o f C l a r k e On the Trinity, read in the long summers at B r o w n i n g H i l l , came in to confuse and perplex him. P r o b a b l y most of the students w h o matriculated at O x f o r d hardly troubled themselves even with reading the Articles. Bentham not only read t h e m ; he read also the statement at their head f r a m e d by C h a r l e s I, which

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declares that the articles mean precisely what they say and are to be taken "in a literal and grammatical sense." Jeremy understood that he was placing upon record a solemn declaration, after due reflection, that every one of the propositions included was in his opinion true. Before making so solemn a declaration, he felt it his duty to examine them to see whether they really did seem to be true. In some o f them the boy of twelve could find no meaning at all; in certain others, the meaning was plain enough "in a literal and grammatical sense" but seemed to him just as plainly irreconcilable either to scripture or to reason. H e discussed the matter with other students and found some who were likewise confused. By inquiry, doubtless what seemed impertinent inquiry coming from one so young and undersized, Jeremy found that it was the duty of one of the fellows of the college to remove such scruples as his, and to make clear the meaning of the word. T o this fellow the little group went, surprised at their own temerity, and met the short answer that it was not for uninformed youths such as they were to presume to set up their private judgments against a public one formed by some of the holiest as well as best and wisest men that ever lived. Overawed by the best and wisest, Jeremy signed, but he did not forget. As to Jeremy's relations with his tutor, there is some uncertainty. Sixty years later he complained to Bowring that his father had placed him under the inferior teaching of that "gloomy Protestant monk" Jefferson, to save money, since Jefferson's fee was six guineas and

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M r . F o t h e r g i l l ' s w a s eight. A s J e r e m i a h

Bentham's

j o u r n a l shows, Jefferson w a s p a i d e i g h t p o u n d s . P e r h a p s the r e m a r k m a d e at the same time t h a t J e f f e r s o n n e v e r inquired as to w h a t he could d o , b u t set h i m to w o r k on C i c e r o ' s Orations,

all o f w h i c h he k n e w b y

h e a r t , and on the G r e e k T e s t a m e n t , w i t h w h i c h he w a s also f a m i l i a r , — also o w e s s o m e t h i n g to the mists o f sixty y e a r s . A t any rate, the s m a l l b o y ' s l e t t e r s h o m e f r o m O x f o r d seem to indicate t h a t he h a d e n o u g h to d o to k e e p him busy. C e r t a i n it is, that Jefferson w a s n o t u n m i n d f u l o f J e r e m y ' s spiritual needs, f o r he saw to it t h a t he r e a d G r o t i u s , not, o f course, f o r the g r e a t j u r i s t ' s t r e a t m e n t o f i n t e r n a t i o n a l l a w , but f o r his g r e a t l y a d m i r e d P r o t e s t a n t t r a c t de Veritate

Religionis

Christianae.

A t the

p r o p e r seasons he also put into the b o y ' s h a n d s the P i o u s R o b e r t N e l s o n ' s Companion and Fasts

of the Church

of

for

the

Festivals

England.

J e r e m y w a s a m o s t conscientious student, so much so t h a t in his w h o l e time at W e s t m i n s t e r , in an a g e n o t o r i o u s f o r its floggings, he h a d n e v e r f e l t the touch o f the birch, and he t o o k the new e d u c a t i o n a l system, b o t h scholastic and spiritual, w i t h g r e a t seriousness. A t r e g u l a r i n t e r v a l s he w r o t e d u t i f u l l e t t e r s t o his f a t h e r d e s c r i b i n g his p r o g r e s s . " D e a r p a p a , " he w r o t e , W e have lectures twice a day from M r . Jefferson, at n o'clock in the morning and 9 at night, except on Tuesdays and Fridays (when w e have publick lectures by the Greek lecturer, M r . Hodgkin) and holydays. M r . Jefferson does not intend beginning with me in Logick yet awhile: O n Saturday we all received the Sacrament: upon which account we were lectured

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in Greek Testament 3 days before, and as many after that day. T o prepare myself for that awful duty, I read Nelson on the Sacrament which M r . Jefferson lent me, and intended to fast that morning; but it would not do, for I began to grow sick for want of victuals; and so was forced to eat a bit of breakfast with M r . Cooper, with whom I have lived this ten days 2 (November 6, 1 7 6 0 . ) *

Little as Jeremy suspected it, his very sincerity in m a t t e r s of religion was placing him on a p a t h whose end was heresy. O x f o r d was the training school of divinity, at once the guardian and the source of theology. F r o m the students within her walls were to be peopled the rectories of England, were to come the pious deans and godly bishops of the established religion. Yet Bentham was surprised, at the age of twelve, to find that in his classmates there was o f t e n little trace of Christian morality. Some were, in spite of their subscription to the Articles, professed atheists. One prospective parson, Goodyear St. John, was fond of showing his strength by holding the little philosopher at arm's length, head downward, till he nearly lost his senses, thus demonstrating the ascendancy of theology over philosophy. Another used to drink "till his eyes turned purple," in Jeremy's phrase. Drunkenness and profligacy Jeremy saw to be common enough in candidates f o r holy orders. A few genuinely pious students, distressed at the state of affairs, had taken to holding private religious meetings, as the Wesleys h a d done thirty years before. Like the Wesleys, these students were called Methodists, and were t r e a t e d with contumely by the more enlightened. Bentham was

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drawn to them by his natural tastes much more than he w a s to the diversions of the H e l l F i r e Club, and he may have been saved from becoming a M e t h o d i s t himself only by the timely action of the college authorities. T h e excesses of the praying and hymn-singing enthusiasts were suppressed by the prompt bringing to trial of five of the leaders on charge of heresy, and by their immediate expulsion on conviction. T h e university once more achieved decorum, but the small boy had been so affected that he viewed the action with horror to the end of his life. In a scholastic way, Bentham was more fortunate, possibly because there w a s no moral issue involved in the composition of Latin poetry. In N o v e m b e r ,

1760,

O x f o r d was plunged into official mourning by the death of George I I . Sixty years later, Bentham recounted to B o w r i n g his loyal tribute on the occasion. Thirteen years had not been numbered by me when the second of the Guelphs was gathered to his fathers. W a s t e of time had commenced by me at Queen's College, O x f o r d . T e a r s were demanded by the occasion, and tears were actually paid accordingly. Meantime, according to custom, at that source and choice seat of learning, loyalty, and piety, a fasciculus of poetry — appropriate poetry — was called for, at the hands of the ingenious youths, or such of them whose pens were rich enough to be guided by private tutors. M y quill, with the others, went to w o r k ; though alas! without learned or reverend hand to guide it. In process of time, by dint of hard labor, out of Ainsworth's Dictionary and the Gradus ad Parnassum, were manufactured stanzas of Latin Alcaics, 3 beginning Eheu Georgi! certifying and proclaiming the experienced attributes of the dead god and the surely expected ditto of the living one, with grief in proper

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form at the beginning, and consolation, in no less proper form at the end.

A copy was sent to D r . Johnson, who made some corrections and this comment: " W h e n these objections are removed, the copy will, I believe, be received; f o r it is a very pretty performance of a young man." * Bentham's own comment to Bowring w a s : " I t was a mediocre performance, on a trumpery subject, written by a miserable child. I t was, perhaps, as good as those which were accepted." T h e feeling of dislike of O x f o r d so noticeable in the account given of the ode never made its appearance in Bentham's letters home during his residence there. 5 Regularly and dutifully J e r e m y wrote his father the usual letters of a schoolboy. H e tells of the lectures, of the acquaintanceships made, of his troubles with paperhangers, of his need f o r new shirts — with no note of protest that one can hear. M r . Jefferson has lectured them on Theophrastus' Characters and on Grotius. M r . Jefferson has suggested a translation of the Tusculaneati Disputations of Cicero, which M a s t e r Bentham has accordingly made, and sends in the hope it will meet with his father's approval, being sufficiently proud of the work to have it transcribed by a clerkly hand. A t home there were developments that interested him greatly. Brother Samuel was showing a precocity that promised great things. J e r e m y wrote ( N o v e m b e r 6, 1 7 6 0 ) : " P r a y give my duty to Grandmamma and love to brother Sammy with a kiss, who I hope still goes on to improve in polite literature, as he used to

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d o . " Brother Sammy, aged four, having replied to this proffer of affection with his own hand, the young collegian found it necessary to call attention to his own maturity by requesting, " P r a y tell Sam not to direct to me M a s t e r when he writes to your dutiful and affectionate son." 9 Samuel himself soon attained a certain maturity of his own, f o r J e r e m y wrote ( J u n e 1 2 , 1 7 6 1 ) , " I t was with great pleasure that I received your letter, as it gave me such a surprising account of dear Sammy's improvement, which is so great that it quite astonished me when I read your account of him, as he could not spell above 1 0 or 1 5 words at most when I went away f r o m home, and those monosyllables. I long to see him in his breeches, which I daresay become him extremely well." 7 Certainly as yet Jeremiah Bentham had no complaint to make of either of his sons. It would not have occurred to him that there was anything monstrous or even unusual in giving them an early start on their respective careers. Jeremy's letters gave no hint that he suffered under competition f r o m his elders; they were cheerful and even occasionally vainglorious when he had shown up well in disputation. " W e are just gone through the L o g i c Compend and have been twice in the h a l l , " he wrote (June 1 2 , 1 7 6 1 ) , "but we go in three times to see the manner of it b e f o r e we begin to dispute, which will be next Wednesday. I have reason to hope I shall be an overmatch f o r those of my class in that w a y . " 8 When the time came, the small boy satisfied himself very well both at declamation and disputation. " D e a r Papa — " he wrote (June 3 0 , 1761),

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31

I have sent you a declamation I spoke last Saturday, with the approbation of all my acquaintances, who liked the thing itself very well, but still better my manner of speaking it. Even a bachelor of my acquaintance went so far as to say that he never heard but one speak a declamation better all the time he has been in College; which, indeed, is not much to say, as, perhaps, you imagine, for sure nobody can speak worse than we do here; for, in short, 'tis like repeating just so many lines out of a Propria quae Maribus. I have disputed, too, in the H a l l once, and am going in again tomorrow. T h e r e also I came off with honour, having fairly beat off, not only my proper antagonist, but the moderator himself; for he was forced to supply my antagonist with arguments, the invalidity of which I clearly demonstrated. I should have disputed much oftener, but for the holidays or eves, that happen on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; and, besides, we went three times into the H a l l before we disputed ourselves, that we might see the method. Indeed, I am very sorry it did not come to my turn to dispute every disputation d a y ; for, for my own part, I desire no better sport.*

Then, at the end of the letter, the orator and logician suddenly became the thirteen-year-old small boy. I wish you would let me come home very soon, for my clothes are dropping off my back; and if I don't go home very soon, to get new ones, I must not go down stairs, they are so b a d ; for as soon as one hole is mended, another breaks out again; and, as almost all the commoners either are gone for the vacation, or will go in a day or two's time, very little business will be going forward. Pray, give me an answer very soon, that I may know whether I am to wear clothes or go in rags. Pray, give my duty to grand-mama, and love to dear Sammy, and represent the w o f u l condition of one who is, nevertheless, your dutiful and affectionate son, J . Bentham.* 9

Jeremy was not only very young for college, he was

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undersized even for his age, and was hardly able to share in the outdoor sports of his fellows. T o please his father, he did as well as he could, for in Jeremiah Bentham's opinion the sports indulged in by the world of fashion were important as a means of forming social connections. Jeremy played at tennis once or twice, and accepted invitations to shoot when they came his way. When the partridges whirred past, he always fired with the rest, but since the flash of the powder startled him, he closed his eyes when he fired and his partridge was probably in less danger than his companions. He cared little for fishing, as generally practised at Oxford. Usually the youths hired a poacher with a net to go with them. When he had caught enough, the fishing was over, and the party adjourned to an inn, where the fish were dressed and served. The difficulty Jeremy had in learning to dance shows how poorly he was equipped physically for active sports. "I never can make this figure of eight," he told his father, "which the dancing master will have me learn. If the other dancers will stand still — if they will consent to be statues for a little while — I will make the figure of eight around or about them; but, as they are always moving, I know not where to find them." 10 Even in his studies, he was beginning to show a taste for a kind of knowledge which would be of little use in his legal or social career, and would consequently have been disapproved of by Jeremiah Bentham. This interest in science he knew better than to talk much about with his father. "There was" he told Bowring long after, "a little party that moved round Dr. Smith,

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who knew something of chemistry, and read lectures on chemistry to a small class. I would have given one of my ears to have attended him: but that was out of the question." 11 T h i s scientific curiosity led him, moreover, on the occasion of the transit of Venus, to push himself forward in a manner quite unusual for him. H e wrote to his father (June 12, 1 7 6 1 ) : I cannot help letting you know that by a piece of I hope not unwarrantable boldness I got a sight of M a d a m Venus in her transit, through the College Telescope. Y o u must know the College had not long ago a present of a Telescope, but that whatever belongs to the College far from being free for the use of all the individuals, belongs only to the fellows. Instead therefore of letting the undergraduates have the use of the T e l e scope, the fellows have it entirely to themselves, so that we had no hope of seeing this remarkable phenomenon, which it was allmost impossible we should ever have an opportunity of seeing again in our lives, as it will not happen again this 160 years and more [actually June 3, 1769, and December 9, 1874, after the transit of June 6, 1 7 6 1 ] but I and t w o others of my acquaintance thinking it unreasonable that w e should not see it as well as the rest of the College, it being about J after 6 stole up to the common room and marched up to the leads where the fellows had brought the Telescope for the convenience of observing the Phenomenon. T h e r e w e found only D r . Dixon and a Master of Arts of his hall. B y good luck as the fellows were gone to prayers, w h o very obligingly offered to shew it to us. . . . W h e n w e looked through the Telescope, Venus looked to be considerably broader than a Crownpicce. . . .* 1 2

T h i s interest in science was in part merely a continuation of the sort of curiosity which in his childhood had proved troublesome to the drawing master and to

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his tutor in music. A s his work at O x f o r d went on, this curiosity was to become better methodized, and was to make its mark on all of Bentham's speculations in legislation and ethics. O x f o r d was f a r f r o m being hostile to the study of natural philosophy, and there was even a f a i r amount of laboratory experiment, though of course the main emphasis was literary and ethical. N o r did Jeremiah Bentham have any particular objection to scientific study, as long as it was not allowed to interfere with the business of preparing f o r a legal career. On M a r c h 10, 1 7 6 2 , J e r e m y first broached the possibility of studying physics with D r . Bliss. H e wrote, I have finished Homer's Iliad, and also the E t h i c Compendium; I think of looking over the Odyssey as I intend to be examined in it, good part of which I read at School. M r . Jefferson began N a t u r a l Philosophy with us yesterday, but whether w e shall improve much or not I can't tell, as he has no apparatus — but today D r . Bliss's lectures will begin, and I hope I may attend his next course, which will be next Y e a r . 1 3

Apparently his father made no objection to the proposal, f o r the next year J e r e m y took the course, and was disappointed by the unsatisfactory results of the experiments: W e have gone through the science of Mechanics with

Mr.

Bliss, having finished on S a t u r d a y ; and yesterday w e begun upon Opticks: there are two more remaining Hydrostatics, and Pneumatics. M r . Bliss seems to be a very good sort of a man, but I doubt is not very well qualified for his Office, in the practical W a y

I mean, for he is oblig'd to make excuses for

almost any Experiment, they not succeeding according to ex-

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pectation: in the Speculative part, I believe he is by no means deficient. 14

T h e importance of Bentham's interest in natural philosophy can hardly be stressed too much. Almost the whole of his life was to be devoted to an a t t e m p t to apply the scientific method to the field of law. As yet, he had no true conception of what the scientific method was, nor had he planned what his career was to be. But fifteen years later, when he announced his determination to become the " N e w t o n of legislation" the full effects of his interest in science became clear. H e was then working on his most important book, the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, and found it necessary in applying his principle of " t h e greatest happiness of the greatest number" to make of the idea of happiness something more than a vague generality. H e must have something by which he could measure happiness, at least f o r legal purposes, and he described his instrument f o r measuring pain and pleasure in terms t h a t leave no doubt as to w h a t effect his scientific training had produced. If I having a crown in my pocket, and not being athirst hesitate whether I should buy a bottle of claret with it for my own drinking, or lay it out in providing for a family I see about to perish for want of any assistance, so much the worse for me at the long run: but it is plain that, so long as I continue hesitating, the two pleasures of sensuality in the one case, of sympathy in the other, were exactly worth to me five shillings, to me they were exactly equal. I beg a truce here of our man of sentiment and feeling while from necessity, and it is only from necessity, I speak and prompt

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mankind to speak a mercenary language. T h e Thermometer is the instrument for measuring the heat of the weather; the Barometer the instrument for measuring the pressure of the Air. Those who are not satisfied with the accuracy of those instruments must find out others that shall be more accurate, or bid adieu to Natural Philosophy. Money is the instrument of measuring the quantity of pain or pleasure. Those who are not satisfied with the accuracy of this instrument must find out some other that shall be more accurate, or bid adieu to politics and morals. Let no man therefore be either surprized or scandalized if he find me in the course of this work valuing everything in money. 'Tis in this way only can we get aliquot parts to measure by. If we must not say of a pain or a pleasure that it is worth so much money, it is in vain, in point of quantity, to say anything at all about it, there is neither proportion nor disproportion between Punishments and Crimes.* 15 B e n t h a m w a s clear-sighted e n o u g h t o see t h a t the difference b e t w e e n the science o f the G r e e k s and t h a t of the m o d e r n s lay in the recognition o f the i m p o r t a n c e of exact m e a s u r e m e n t . W h i l e science r e m a i n e d speculative, it w a s f r u i t l e s s ; as s o o n as it became quantitative, it t r a n s f o r m e d the w o r l d . I t w a s fifteen years, it is true, b e f o r e the implications of the scientific m e t h o d became clear t o him, but it s e e m s h i g h l y probable t h a t the scientific interests of the b o y o f fifteen l e d by a logical p a t h t o the declaration o f the m a n o f t h i r t y : T h e present work as well as any other work of mine that has been or will be published on the subject of legislation or any other branch of moral science is an attempt to extend the experimental method of reasoning from the physical branch to the moral. W h a t Bacon was to the physical world, Helvetius was to the moral. T h e moral world has therefore had its Bacon, but its Newton is yet to come.16

CHAPTER I I I LAW A N D SCIENCE 1763-1772 In 1 7 6 3 , being then sixteen years of age, Bentham took his Bachelor's degree, and in N o v e m b e r of the same year began to eat dinners in Lincoln's Inn and to attend the C o u r t of King's Bench, where his father had secured f o r him a student's seat. H i s career seemed to have begun under fair auspices. In December he returned to O x f o r d to hear Blackstone's lectures. M a n y years later he recounted the experience to B o w r i n g : I attended with two collegiates of my acquaintance. T h e y both took notes: which I attempted to do, but could not continue it, as my thoughts were occupied in reflecting on what I heard. I immediately detected his fallacy respecting natural rights; I thought his notions very frivolous and illogical about the gravitating downwards of haereditas; and his reasons altogether futile, why it must descend and could not ascend — an idea, indeed, borrowed from Lord Coke. Blackstone was a formal, precise and affected lecturer — just what you would expect from the character of his writings: cold, reserved, and wary — exhibiting a frigid pride. But his lectures were popular, though the subject did not then excite a wide-spreading interest, and his attendants were not more than from thirty to fifty.1 B y F e b r u a r y of the next year Bentham had returned to London. H e was particularly interested in attending

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the trial of Wilkes in the Court of King's Bench, for Wilkes' accusation, in No. 45 of the North Briton, that the King's Speech had lied about the Treaty of Hubertsberg, had made a great sensation. Bentham's political sympathies were thorough T o r y at the time. "Wilkes was an object of perfect abhorrence to me," he said, "and I abhorred him for his opposition to the king. T h e North Briton excited a prodigious sensation; forty-five was written on all the walls; forty-five had obscured every other member of the numeration table." 2 T h e summer of 1764 Bentham spent in travelling with his father. Their first trip was through the north and west of England. Bentham remembered particularly that they passed close to where Priestley lived. "Warrington," he said, "was then classical ground. Priestley lived there. What would I not have given to have found courage to visit him? H e had already written several philosophical works; and in the tail of one of his pamphlets I had seen that admirable phrase 'greatest happiness of greatest number' which had such an influence on the succeeding part of my life." 3 Accompanied by a party of friends, Bentham and his father then passed over to France. There they visited the usual sights, including the tomb of James the Second. They saw Versailles, where Bentham was charmed by the beauty of the dauphiness, and ended by a visit to the chateau of the Prince of Conde at Chantilly. H e told Bowring fifty years later: I did envy the Prince his beautiful palace. I exclaimed, " W h a t a bliss to be a P r i n c e ! " I was not much wiser than the plough-

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39

boy, who said his bliss would be to swing all day upon a gate, eating beef and carrots; or than a Justice of Peace, who told me that his summum bonum was to grab for eels in the mud.4

T h o u g h he was favourably impressed with the vivacity, courtesy, and general spirit of the French people, he had little respect f o r their agriculture or industry, f o r in comparison with England, the standard of living was low and agriculture decidedly in a backward state. T h a t there w a s any connection between this backwardness and the magnificence of the palaces never occurred to him. In E n g l a n d the aristocracy was constantly receiving new blood and ability. E v e n the great Pitt, later L o r d Chatham, had come f r o m the middle class, and every day there were instances of alliances between the old families and mercantile upstarts. Sometimes the upstart himself was not to be borne, but usually his children took the places to which they were entitled by the one parent's blood and the other's wealth. M o s t of J e r e miah Bentham's friends were, like himself, making this slow and toilsome ascent, and J e r e m y , who was not thick-skinned and had little talent f o r pushing, was perhaps a bit severe in his judgment of them. A f t e r all, in spite of their social shortcomings, they were helping to make E n g l a n d rich, while the elegant and relatively fixed aristocracy of France were sowing the Revolution. Robert Mackreth, a friend of Jeremiah Bentham's, was an interesting example of the social climber, and shortly a f t e r returning f r o m France, J e r e m y made him a long visit at his great country estate, known as Y e w hurst. M a c k r e t h had begun as a waiter in W h i t e ' s —

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a coffee-house and gambling-club favoured by the world of fashion — had finally become proprietor, and, having made a fortune, had retired to his country estate, with ambitions "to be considered a gentleman and admitted among the quality." H e spent money freely, laying out splendid gardens, waters, and fishponds at Yewhurst, and he dispensed magnificent hospitality to all comers. "I was in Elysium there," Bentham related; "I occupied a sumptuous bedroom, fitted up in the highest style of taste and elegance. . . . One reason of his great attention to me was the wish of being instructed by me. Among other contrivances, he arranged to lose money at cards, so that it might get into my pockets." But Bentham had to leave in disgrace, through no fault of his own. I had a w e a k n e s s . . . . I could not always restrain my laughter, even when there was no motive for laughter. It was as much a disease as is the diabetes. H e had asked two stupid fellows [so young O x f o r d could characterize country gentlemen] to dine with him. T h e r e was a great entertainment and the usual profusion. I saw a dish that was unknown to me, and asked him what it was? Chouxfleurs a la — something, I forget what, he said, but without any impropriety in the pronunciation. A fit of laughing came over me. I asked him to repeat it. Another fit more violent came on. H e supposed I meant to insult him. I had not the presence of mind to say that it was an infirmity, and that my thoughts were altogether passive. I had given great offence. Everybody looked blank, and when I left the house there was an obvious change of feeling toward me. . . . T h e fact was, I had destroyed his purpose of ingratiating himself with the two booby country gentlemen, who supposed I had detected him in some gross vulgarism. . . . Mackreth afterward got into

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41

parliament for O x f o r d ; but there were so many behind whose chairs he had officiated at dinner, that it would not do. s

In 1 7 6 6 Bentham took his Master's degree at Oxford. The Bachelors having no particular costume — " I strutted," he said, "like a crow in a gutter." Immediately after taking the degree, he set out for a walk in the west of England with an old acquaintance of the family, Chamberlain Clarke. In spite of his physical weakness, Bentham went on long walks on every possible occasion, and was a close observer of nature. The architectural remains of the past interested him no less. H e made rubbings of old brasses, noted fine examples of stained glass, and was an early admirer of the Norman and Gothic periods. On this trip, Bentham had a new costume rather too fine for walking, but the fine colours were the order of the day, and fine colours it had. The coat was pea green and the breeches were of green silk. The fashionable cut of the breeches also interfered with walking — they were "bitterly tight" — but despite all such annoyances, Bentham enjoyed the trip greatly. From Monmouth he wrote to his father in detail: O u r journey has been very delightful and our feet and forces have held out hitherto extremely w e l l : I mean our bodily forces, as for those of the pocket hiatus valde deflebilis — W e not leave O x f o r d till Saturday afternoon. . . .

could

I met with a

very cordial and polite reception from the fellows with w h o m w e dined in the hall and received my Exhibition from

Mr.

Jefferson tho not till after several deductions which left me but 1 5 s. 1 d. A t \ after 4 w e left F r i a r Bacon's study in our w a y to Farringdon in Berkshire: the distance is full 1 8 miles.

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W e got there at £ after 9 myself indeed very much fatigued: for till within 2 or 3 miles we had walked at the rate of 4 miles an hour. W e made shift however to leave the place at 1 1 the next morning after taking a peep at the town and outside of the Church where tho we spent some time in looking at the monuments w e found nothing worth observation. Between 4 and 5 we got to Fairford through Lechlade which is 1 0 miles and spent the rest of the day in viewing the painted Glass for which the place is famous: by the way we regaled ourselves with 1 0 puffs and part of a vial of brandy which the D r . had made up in packets and M r s . Bentham, dead to all remonstrances, had with the utmost kindness crammed into my pocket. . . . From Fairford w e continued our journey on the Monday to Cirencester which is between 8 and 9 miles stopping on our way at a farmer's . . . . and saw that evening the fine old Church at Cirencester from whence we copied some ancient inscriptions. Tuesday we spent in admiring L d . Bathhurst's woods. T h e usual way of visiting them is on horseback, but that we were above. On Wednesday we travelled on to Gloucester breakfasting by the way with a Clergyman we had scraped an acquaintance with, and dining at a pretty snug Alehouse on the summit of Burlip hill, from whence we had the most enchanting prospect my eyes ever beheld. T o Gloucester we got about 6 o'clock and there met M r . Clark's beloved bags, which we had been obliged to send on thither with a few shirts: but as for the trunk we were forced to send that to Bristol and God knows when we shall see it again. There I enjoyed clean Linnen for the first time since the Friday before. On Thursday, after dressing ourselves and spending a long time in taking a particular view of the Cathedral, we set out for Ross — not till 3 in the afternoon in a broiling Sun, dined at a Village about 6 miles in the way, and got to Ross about 1 0 at night. For the 3 or 4 last miles w e had a beautiful moon, and the Country the most romantic I had ever seen. From Ross one has a nearer view of

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the black mountains which w e saw from Clive hill when w e went with M r . Reid to his living. W e got here in good time in the Evening after a most delicious w a l k which even exceeded that from Gloucester to Ross, as w e had the River W y e to enhance the beauty of the prospect. T h e distance from Gloucester to Ross is 17 miles and that from Ross hither 10 miles, as for the rest that we did and the Castle that w e saw, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the journey of Rich. Clarke and Jere. Bentham ? * 8

But however delightful these vacations were, they had little to do with the main business of getting started on a career. It would be some time before Jeremy could be called to the bar, but his father was eager for him to be thoroughly prepared f o r practice when the time came. Jeremiah Bentham was preparing for his own second marriage, to a M r s . Abbott. T h o u g h Jeremy expressed a warm regard for M r s . Abbott, his father thought it better that he should be established in quarters of his own. H e made arrangements accordingly in liberal fashion and wrote to his son: Since my return, I have been greatly engaged in preparing for the approaching change of my condition, but not so engag'd in that as to be unmindful of my dear Jerry, for whom I have been anxious to provide, as far as my ability will extend, a decent and comfortable situation of L i f e and to Intrust him with the means to that end independent of every consequence that may possibly happen to myself and for that purpose I have already made and executed a Deed of G i f t whereby I have convey'd to your uncle Grove in trust for you in regard you yourself are under age, my estate at Eastwood, and such part of the estate at Barking as is let to the Malster — both what it it laid to be wat written in 1792, but not published until 1823 on account of Hominy's certainty that publication would bring prosecution. Its tone certainly would not have pleased the government "We will deny justice," says King John, "we will sell justice to no man." This was the wicked King John. How does the good King George? He denies it to ninety-nine men out of a hundred, and sells it to the hundredth. . . . Now God bless our good King George, preserve and purify the Parliament, keep us from French Republicans and Levellers, save what is worth saving, mend what wants mending, and deliver us out of the clutches of the harpies of the L a w ! " Works, Vol. V, pp. 233-37. It is perhaps worth noting Bentham's letter to Mirabeau written in 1789. "I am proud, as becomes me, of your intentions in my favour. I look out with impatience for the period of their accomplishment. Meantime, in addition to the honour of calling the Comte de Mirabeau my translator and Reviewer, permit me that of stiling myself his correspondent." MSS Univ. Coll. Portfolio No. 9, folio 8. 18. For example, Bentham made no attack on the Church of England until 1817, and as the title of his book indicates, the attack was then made in the interests of education: Church of Englandism and its catechism examined: preceded by strictures on the exclusionary system, as pursued in the National Society's schools. Yet we have seen the Voltarian and anti-religious bent in his beliefs as early as 1775. See also his letter to Samuel, May 6, 1777. " I have been told there have been two attacks upon Dr. Adam Smith by the godly, for testifying that David Hume died in peace. There was a little grinning prig Oxford Parson t'other day at Q.S.P. of whom Madame asked whether he had seen the answer to the Humaean impiety: meaning one of those." Add. MSS B.M. 33,538, p. 109. Cited by Halevy, I, 357.

INDEX Abbott, Mrs., about to become Jeremiah Bentham's second wife, 43 ; consulted about Jeremy's chambers, 4 4 ; friendly toward Jeremy's plans for marriage, 7 8 ; invites Swediauer to dinner, 118; widow of Dr. John Abbott, 201 Anacreon, 24 Anderson, 175 Anglo-Saxon, Bentham's study of, 45 Aristotle, on usury, 173, 174 Atalantii, 18 Bacon, 49 Barbeyrac, m Barking, in Essex, 13 Barre, Isaac, 130, 138, 147, 149 Barrington, Observations on the Statutes, 47, 48 Beattie, Dr., 187 Beccaria, Dei Delitti, 46, 47, 48, i n , 1 1 7 , i

of

28, 38, 46, 58,

199, 201

Cowper, view

Tirocinium;

of Schools,

or,

a

Re-

7-9

C r i c h o f f , B e n t h a m ' s stay at, 163-75

B r i s s o t , 51 Bristol,

m Commentaries,

80, 81, 91, 92, 93, 101, 203

B e r l i n , B e n t h a m ' s v i s i t to, 180 Blackstone,

45. 4*. «7» C o k e , Sir E d w a r d , Comment on the

Critical

Earl

of,

also B i s h o p

of

dence,

Elements 100,

of

Jurispru-

101

D e r r y , 134, 135 Browning

Hill,

in

Buckingham,

D'Alembert, Dancing,

>3, «7. 81 B u c h a n a n , Psalms,

24

111,

D a r t r y , Lord,

138

B u c h a r e s t , B e n t h a m ' s v i s i t to, 161

D e b r a w , Dr.,

163

B u c k m a s t e r , the tailor, 94, 156

Defence

Burlamaqui,

92,

ill of my ovm

' 9 , 135 B u r n e t t , Theory

of the Earth,

times,

175,

D e s c a r t e s , 102

L o r d , 97, 98, 139,

Catherine

1 7 1 , 172,

Demosthenes, 24

15

Dicey, Professor, Disraeli,

C a v e , Lives

Usury,

D e L o l m e , J. L., 152, 192

B u r n e t , History

1+5. ' 4 6 ,

of

194

B u r k e , 122

Camden,

117

32

147.

Great,

D o d s l e y , Preceptor, Dumont,

of the Apostles, the

140,

149 115,

15 117,

120, 150-54, 165, 208

197

122

lishes

fitiennc,

16 edits and

Bentham's

works

pubforty

y e a r s a f t e r they are w r i t t e n , 57, 1 0 1 ; makes Bentham's acquaint-

C h a t h a m , 1st E a r l of, 120, 123, 126

a n c e at L o r d S h e l b u r n e ' s ,

C h a t h a m , 2d E a r l of, 142, 143

R o m i l l y sends B e n t h a m ' s

Code

Chemistry,

to, 1 8 3 ; publishes Traites,

194;

33, 46

182;

INDEX secretary to Mirabeau, 196; Bowring and, 199 Dunkly, Mary (Polly), 7j, 77-81, «9. 9* Dunning, John, later Lord Ashburton, 97, 98, 139, 140, 145-47, 149. IJ3, 184, i»S. '93 Eden, William, 112, 206 Elrasley the bookseller, 97, 105, in Euclid, 24, 67 Fenelon, Tilimaque, 12 Florence, Bentham's visit to, 157 Fordyce, Doctor, 58, 93 Fox, Caroline, 144, 145, 147, 149, 156 Fragment on Government, 92, 93, 96, 97, 121, 124, 145, 182 Franklin, 116-20, 123, 129, 134, 205 Frederick the Great, 117, 126, 150 George II, 28 George III, 120, 123, 210 Gil Bias, 18 Gloucester, walking trip in vicinity of, 42, 43 Goldsmith, Oliver, 58, 301 Greek Testament, 26, 27 Grotius, de Veritate Religionis Christianae, 26, 29, 1 1 1 Gullivers Travels, 18 Hale, Chief Justice, m Halevy, Professeur £lie, 197, 200, 205, 207, 208, 209, 210 Handel, 6 Hardy, Elements of Arithmetic, 24

213

Harris, Hermes, 68 Harris, Voyages, 18 Hartley, On Man, 46, 47 Helvetius, De FEsprit, 46-51, 108, 110, 116, 117, 162, 189, 191 Henderson, 157-159, 163 Homer, 24, 34 Horace, 24 Howard, John, State of the Prisons, 194, 205, 206 Hume, 46, 47, 187, 193, 210 Humphries, English merchant at Constantinople, 159 Ingenhaus, physician at Vienna, 116, 118, 123, 206 Introduction to a Code, 121 Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 35, 127, 151, 165, 166, 169, 185, 191, 193 Invisible Spy, The, 18 Irenius, Bentham's pen name in the Gazeteer, 46, 201 Jacobite, Jeremiah Bentham, 2 Jefferson, Jacob, Bentham's tutor at Oxford, 23, 25, 26, 29 Johnson, Doctor, 16, 29, 58, 97, 156, 202 Johnstone, Governor, envoy to colonists, 98 Joliet Penitentiary, modeled on Panopticon plan, 178 Juggernaut, Bible called "Jugg book," 108 Juvenal, 24 Ken, Bishop, 16 Klaproth, the chemist, 180

214

INDEX

L a Combe, French tutor, n , 1 2 L a Fayette, 134 Leeds, Duchess of, 1 0 Lind, John, a congenial acquaintance for Bentham, 94 Perdita, and the Prince of Wales, 131 Philips, Teresa Constantia, 20 Physics, 34, 46 Pitt, William, 137, 142, 147, 169 Pliny, 24 Poland, Bentham's visit to, 162 Potemkin, Prince, 154, '55, 162, 163 Potter, Greek Antiquities, 24 Price, Dr., 120, 187 Priestley, 38, 46, 47, so, 58, 65, 102, 120, 123, 129, 207 Principles of Civil and Penal La