 | CHAPTER V BENTHAM'S LIFE The English Utilitarians (Vol.1) |  |
Notes
The main authority for Bentham's Life is Bowring's account in the two last volumes of the Works. Bain's Life of James Mill gives some useful facts as to the later period. There is comparatively little mention of Bentham in contemporary memoirs. Little is said of him in Romilly's Life. Parr's Works, i and viii, contains some letters. See also R. Dale Owen's Threading my Way, pp. 175-78. A little book called Utilitarianism Unmasked, by the Rev. J.F. Collis, D.D. (1844), gives some reminiscences by Colls, who had been Bentham's amanuensis for fourteen years. Colls, who took orders, disliked Bentham's religious levity, and denounces his vanity, but admits his early kindness. Voluminous collections of the papers used by Bowring are University College, and at the British Museum.
Works, x, 38. Bowring's confused statement, I take it, means this, Bentham, in any case, was not on the foundation. See Welsh's Alumni West.
Works, v, 35, 77. References are given to this book in Works, vii, 219-20 ('Rationale of Evidence). Several editions appeared from 1725 to 1762. See Works, vi, 465, for a recollection of similar experiences.
Ibid., x, 79, 142. See also Deontology, i, 298-302, where Bentham speaks of discovering the phrase in Priestley's Essay on Government in 1768. Priestley say (p. 17) that 'the good and happiness of the members, that is of the majority of the members, of any state is the great standard by which everything relating to that state must be finally determined." So Le Mercier de la Rivière says, in 1767, that the ultimate end of society is assurer la plus grand bonheur possible à la plus grande population possible (Daire's Economistes, p. 470). Hutcheson's Enquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, 1725, see iii, section 8 'that action is best which secures the greatest happiness of the greatest number.' Beccaria, in the preface to his essay, speaks of la massima felicità divsa nel maggior numero. J.S. Mill says that he found the wor 'Utilitarian' in Galt's Annals of the Parish, and gave the name to the society founded by him in 1822-1823 (Autobiography, p. 79). The word had been used by Bentham himself in 1781, and he suggested it to Dumont in 1802 as the proper name of the party, instead of 'Benhamite' (Works, x, 92, 390). He afterwards thought it a bad name, because it gave a 'vague idea' (Works, x, 582), and substituted 'greatest happiness principle' for 'principle of utility' (Works, i: 'Morals and Legislation).
A letter in the Additional MSS. 33, 537, shows that Bentham sent his 'Fragment' and his 'Hard Labour' pamphlet to d'Alembert in 1778, apparently introducing himself for the first time.' Cf. Works, x, 87-88, 193-94.
Works, x, 77-82. Blackstone took no notice of the work, except by some allusions in the preface to his next edition. Bentham criticised Blackstone respectively in the pamphlet upon the Hard Labour Bill (1778). Blackstone sent a courteous but 'frigidly cautious' reply to the author. -- Works, i, 255.
Bentham says (Works, i, 240) that he was a member of a club of which Johnson was the despot. The only club possible seems to be the Essex Street Club, of which Daines Barrington was a member. If so, it was in 1783, though Bentham seems to imply an earlier date.
Works, x, 163-64. Cf. Ibid., x, 195, where Wilson is often 'tempted to think' -- erroneously, of course -- that Paley must have known something of Bentham's work. Paley's chief source was Abraham Tucker.
Bowring tells this gravely, and declares that George III, also wrote letters to the Gazette de Leyde. George III certainly contribued some letters to Arthur Young's Annals of Agriculture, and is one of the suggested authors of Junius.
The Panopticon story is confusedly told in Bowring's Life. The Panopticon Correspondence, in the eleventh volume, give fragments from a 'history of the war between Jeremy Bentham and George III,' written by Bentham in 1830-31, and selections from a voluminous correspondence.
The plan, according to Bentham (Works, xi, 102), was suggested by Ruggles, author of the work upon the poor-laws, first printed in Young's Annals.
This statement, I believe, refers to a complimentary reference to Bentham in the preface to the French Code.
Bentham says that he reached these conclusions some time before 1809; Works, iii, 435. Cf. Ibid., v, 278.
The case of the 'King v. Cobbett', (1804), which led to the proceedings against Mr Justice Johnson in 1805. -- Cobbett's State Trials, xxix.
Bain's James Mill, 156. Church of Englandism and Not Paul but Jesus were also written at Ford Abbey.
See Memoirs of J.Q. Adams (1874), iii, 511, 520, 532, 535-39, 540, 544, 560, 562-63; and Bentham's letter to Adams in Works, x, 554.
See correspondence upon his codification plans in Russia, America and Geneva in Works, iv, 451-594.
A letter from Mill in the University College MSS. describes a misunderstanding about borrowed books, a fertile, but hardly adequate cause of quarrel.
Bowring's religious principles prevented him from admitting some of Bentham's works to the collective edition.
| CHAPTER V BENTHAM'S LIFE The English Utilitarians (Vol.1) | |