From bentham to benthamism

The Historical Journal

Volumn 28, Issue 1, 1985, Pages 199-224

  Lieberman, David ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84972218462     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X00002284     Document Type: Review

References (75)

1. Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford, 1959), p. 7.
2. Leslie Stephen, The English Utilitarians (3 vols. London, 1900), 1, 169; J. S. Mill, Bentham in Essays on ethics, religion and society, Collected works (Toronto, 1969), x, 79; John Neal, Principles of legislation from the Mss. of Jeremy Bentham (Boston, 1830), preface p. 14; John Bowring, Memoirs of Bentham, in The works of Bentham (11 vols. Edinburgh, 1838–1843), x, 439 (Works of Bentham hereafter cited as Bowring).
3. See A. V. Dicey, Lectures on the relation between law and public opinion in England during the nineteenth-century (London, 1905); O. MacDonagh, ‘The nineteenth-century revolution in government’, Historical Journal, 1 (1958), 52–67; D. Roberts, ‘Jeremy Bentham and the Victorian administrative state’, Victorian Studies, 11 (1959), 193–210; for a further survey and bibliography of the debate see A. J. Taylor, Laissez-faire and state intervention in nineteenth-century Britain (London, 1972).
4. William Thomas, The philosophic radicals (Oxford, 1979), pp. 10–11. (Thomas's book is discussed below, pp. 221–2.)
5. The projected contents of the new Collected works of Jeremy Bentham are set out in the general preface to Bentham, An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation, eds. J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart (London, 1970). Reports on the progress of the edition and notices of other current work in the field are supplied in The Bentham Newsletter (London, 1978-), published by the Bentham Committee.
6. See J. H. Burns, ‘The Bentham project’, J. D. Baird (ed.), Editing texts of the Romantic period (Toronto, 1972), pp. 73–87 and ‘Dreams and destinations: Jeremy Bentham in 1828’, The Bentham Newsletter, 1 (1978), 21–30 (to which my remarks here are much indebted); Elie Halévy, The growth of philosophic radicalism (1st edn, 3 vols. Paris, 1901–4; trans. Mary Morris, London, 1972 edn).
7. Bentham memoirs, Bowring, x, 27; Burns, ‘Dreams and destinations’, p. 25.
8. See Burns, ‘Bentham project’, pp. 77–78 and ‘Dreams and destinations’, pp. 21–2; The correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 4, ed. A. Taylor Milne (London, 1981), p. 244.
9. Bentham memoirs, Bowring, x, 566.
10. Sarah Austin in 1861, cited in Janet Ross, Three generations of Englishwomen (2 vols. London, 1888), II, 113; Francis Place in 1840, cited in Graham Wallas, The life of Francis Place (London, 1951 edn), p. 84 n.
11. (William Empson), ‘Jeremy Bentham’, Edinburgh Review, 1988 (1843), 516.
12. Graham Wallas, ‘Jeremy Bentham’, in his Men and ideas (London, 1940), p. 19.
13. H. L. A. Hart's articles are collected in his Essays on Bentham (Oxford, 1982). For J. H. Burns, in addition to the essays cited above (n. 6), see: Jeremy Bentham and University College (London, 1962); ‘Bentham and the French Revolution’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, ser. 5, xvi (1966), 95–114; The fabric of felicity: the legislator and the human condition (London, 1967); ‘Bentham on sovereignty: an exploration’, Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, xxrv (1973), 135–50; ‘Bentham's critique of political fallacies’, B. C. Parekh (ed.), Jeremy Bentham: ten critical essays (London, 1974), pp. 154–167.
14. Bentham manuscripts, University College London, Box xxvii, fo. 140 (hereafter cited as U.C. xxvii. 140).
15. Douglas G. Long, Bentham on liberty (Toronto, 1977), pp. xi-xiv, 65–83.
16. Frederick Pollock, An introduction to the history of the science of politics (London, 1890), P. 96.
17. A. V. Dicey, ‘Blackstonc's Commentaries’, Cambridge Law Journal, 4 (1932), 290–291.
18. (Francis Jeffrey), ‘Bentham, Principles de législation, par Dumont’, Edinburgh Review, 4 (1804), 17.
19. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the laws of England (4 vols. London, 1826 edn), 111, 265–6.
20. Bentham, Of laws in general, ed. H. L. A. Hart (London, 1970), pp. 233, 246.
21. Bentham, Morals and legislation, p. 305.
22. Charles W. Everett, The education of Jeremy Bentham (New York, 1931), p. 196.
23. Shirley Robin Letwin, The pursuit of certainty (Cambridge, 1965), p. 187. Bentham's Rationale of judicial evidence, edited by J. S. Mill, appeared in 1827. The first ten chapters of the Constitutional code were completed by Bentham in 1830 and the remaining parts posthumously edited by Richard Doane for the Bowring edition (Page figures taken from Bowring, vi, vn, ix.) 25 Bentham memoirs, Bowring, xi, 33.
24. The correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 3, ed. Ian R. Christie (London, 1971), p. 618.
25. The correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 2 ed. Timothy L. S. Sprigge (London, 1968), p. 188.
26. Bentham, The rationale of reward (London, 1825), p. 190. (The work was originally edited by Dumont as Théorie des… recompenses (Paris, 1811), based on material composed in the mid-1780s.)
27. Bentham correspondence, 3, 545.
28. Bentham, Panopticon: or, the inspection-house (1st edn 1791); Bowring, 4, 40.
29. For a discussion of this material see Burns, “Bentham and French Revolution”, and M. H. James, ‘Bentham's political writings, 1788-95’, The Bentham Newsletter, 4 (1980), 22–24.
30. See Burns, “Bentham and French Revolution”, pp. 110–14.
31. Bentham memoirs, Bowring, x, 250. For a full narrative of the panoptican venture see L. J. Hume, ‘Bentham's panopticon: an administrative history’, Historical Studies (University of Melbourne), xv (1973), 703–21 and xvi (1974), 36–54.
32. So termed by Graham Wallas, ‘Bentham’, p. 27.
33. For the elderly Bentham's account see Bowring, xi, 96–107; for the correctives see Hume, ‘Panopticon’, pp. 39–40, 50–4; J. R. Dinwiddy, ‘Bentham's transition to political radicalism’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 36 (1975), 683–700; and James Steintrager, Bentham (London, 1977), pp. 44–61.
34. Stephen, English Utilitarians, 1, 205.
35. Bentham, Morals and legislation, pp. 5–7.
36. Bentham memoirs, Bowring, 5, 324.
37. See Memoirs of the life of Sir Samuel Romilly (3 vols. London, 1840), 11, 75–76, and Bentham, Theory of legislation, ed. C. K. Ogden (London, 1931), pp- xliv-l.
38. Neal, Legislation, p. 64.
39. See Halevy, Philosophic radicalism, pp. 153–4; Bentham's economic writings, ed. Werner Stark (3 vols. London, 1952–4), 111, 47–48.
40. J. R. Poynter, Society and pauperism: English ideas on poor relief, 1795–1834 (London, 1963), pp. 139–40.
41. Bentham, Tracts on poor laws and pauper management (1st edn 1797), Bowring, viii, 367.
42. Mary P. Mack, Jeremy Bentham: an odyssey of ideas, 1748-1792 (London, 1962), p. 213.
43. Bentham, Pauper management, Bowring, 8 391.
44. Bentham's classic denunciation of natural rights theory is his Anarchical fallacies (composed 1755–6), Bowring, II, 489–534. For less polemical statements, see Of laws in general, pp. 54–8; Principles of the civil code, Bowring, 1, 302–303.
45. Bentham, Panopticon, Bowring, 4, 64.
46. Bentham, Pauper management, Bowring, 8, 398.
47. Bentham, Civil code, Bowring, 1, 322 and 301 ff. Even in the pauper proposal, Bentham still maintained that, ‘ The Gases in which it is not better for a man to suffer by his own will, than to be saved against his will, are neither many nor easy to determine’: Bowring, viii 417. For a different case also presenting the panopticon as unrepresentative of Bentham's usual legislative planning, see Nancy L. Rosenblum, Bentham's theory of the modern state (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), pp. 9–20.
48. Bentham MSS, U.C. cliva, 84, cited in Himmelfarb, ‘Bentham's Utopia: The National Charity Company’, Journal of British Studies, 5 (1970), 94.
49. George Onesiphorus Paul, cited in Michael Ignatieff, A just measure of pain: the penitentiary in the industrial revolution (London, 1978), p. 120; and see pp. 114–42, for a suggestive discussion of the disruptive impact of 1790s radicalism on the proponents of social reform in England.
50. Bentham, Pauper management, Bowring, viii, 370 n, 420–1. For similar instances of Bentham providing a conservative gloss on his contemporary reform proposals, see Supply without burthen (1st edn 1975) and ‘Circulating annuities’ (composed 1800), Bentham's economic writings, 1, 318–22, 328–37 and II, 293–300.
51. Bentham MSS, U.C. ctiiia, 123, cited in Himmelfarb, ‘Bentham's Utopia’, p. 107; and U.C. cliiia, 132, cited by Bahmueller, p. 183.
52. Bentham, Plan of parliamentary reform (1st printed 1817, republished 1818), Bowring, III, 438–40, 445–5; Radicalism not dangerous (composed 1819–20), Bowring, III, 609.
53. There are also major editorial problems regarding the existing version of the Constitutional code in the Bowring edition; see Frederick Rosen, ‘The Constitutional code: the new version’, The Bentham Newsletter, n, (1979), 40–43.
54. Stephen, English Utilitarians, 1, 283.
55. Wallas, ‘Bentham as political inventor’, Men and ideas, p. 45.
56. See Bentham, Leading principles of a constitutional code (1st edn 1823), Bowring, ii 271–2 and ‘Pannomial fragments’, Bowring, in, 211.
57. For a valuable account of these aspects of Bentham's democratic constitutionalism, see Frederick Rosen, ‘Bentham on democratic theory’, The Bentham Newsletter, in (1979), 50–8, and his Jeremy Bentham and representative democracy (Oxford, 1983).
58. See, as examples, Bentham's Church-of-Englandism and its catechism examined (London, 1817-18); Book offallacies (ist English edn 1824), Bowring, 11, 375—487; Plan of parliamentary reform; official aptitude maximized expense minimized (1st edn 1830), Bowring, 5, 263–386.
59. Bentham memoirs, Bowring, 10, 539, 540, 542.
60. Bentham, Codification proposal addressed by Jeremy Bentham to all nations professing liberal opinions (1st edn 1822), Bowring, 4, 535–594. Bentham's 1822 decision to concentrate on the Constitutional code followed the hope that it would be adopted by the liberal governments of Spain and Portugal, a hope he successively transferred to the independence movement in Greece and the Latin American republics.
61. Neal, Legislation, p. 24.
62. For other recent accounts of Bentham's Spanish American contacts and influence see Theodora L. McKennan, ‘Jeremy Bentham and the Colombian liberators’, The Americas, 34 (1976), 460–75; Pedro Schwartz, ‘Bentham's influence in Spain, Portugal and Latin America’, The Bentham Newsletter, 1 (1978), 34–5; Alamira de Avila-Martel, ‘The influence of Bentham on the teaching of penal law in Chile’ and Theodora L. McKennan, ‘Benthamism in Santander's Colombia’, The Bentham Newsletter, 5 (1981), 22–28, 29–43.
63. Bentham memoirs, Bowring, 10, 433, 439–44, 457.
64. See Avila-Martel, ‘Bentham in Chile’, pp. 23–5, McKennan, ‘Colombian liberators’, pp. 468–9, 473 and ‘Benthamism in Colombia’, pp. 32–33.
65. Bentham memoirs, Bowring, 10, 515.
66. For the relationship between ‘Rid yourselves of Ultramaria’ and the Constitutional code, see Burns, ‘Bentham project’, p. 75, and Hume, Bentham and bureaucracy, pp. 191–2. Bentham's other contemporary tracts for Iberia include On the liberty of the press and public instruction (Bowring, II, 275–97), Three tracts relative to Spanish and Portuguese affairs, and Letters to Count Toreno (Bowring, vIII, 463–86, 487–554).
67. See above n. 3. The political and ideological context of Dicey's history of Benthamism is illuminated by Stefan Collini in his Liberalism and sociology (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 13–42.
68. See particularly Norman Gash, Politics in the age of Peel (2nd edn, Hassocks, 1977) and John Cannon, Parliamentary reform (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 242–263.
69. For an alternative account of the radicals which shows greater regard for their doctrines and resulting practice see Joseph Hamburger, Intellectuals in politics: John Stuart Mill and the philosophic radicals (New Haven, 1965).
70. Wallas, Place, p. 84 n.
71. Bcntham memoirs, Bowring, xi, 40; see also 10, 578–581 (Bentham to Ludwig of Bavaria) and XI, 9-12 (to Wellington).
72. Bentham, ‘A commentary on Mr Humphrey's real property code’ (1st edn 1826), Bowring, v, 389; and see Douglas G. Long, ‘Bentham on property’, T. Flanagan and A. Parel (eds.), Theories of property: Aristotle to the present (Waterloo, Ont., 1979), pp. 230–231.
73. Radicalism not dangerous, Bowring, m, 599–600, 613, 622.
74. Bentham memoirs, Bowring, 10, 543.
75. Fragment on government, p. 421; Bentham memoirs, Bowring, 10, 582–583.