BENTHAM, JEREMY 2) , English philosopher and jurist, was born on Feb. 15, 1748, in Red Lion street, Hounds ditch, London, the son of an attorney. His father afterwards retired to a country house near Reading, where young Jeremy spent many happy days. At the age of three the child is said to have read eagerly such works as Rapin's History and to have begun the study of Latin. While at Westminster school he ob tained a reputation for Greek and Latin verse writing, and he was only 13 when he matriculated at Queen's college, Oxford, where his most important acquisition seems to have been a thorough acquaintance with Sanderson's Logic. He took his de gree in 1763, and in the same year entered Lincoln's Inn, and took his seat as a student in the Queen's Bench, where he listened with rapture to the judgments of Lord Mansfield. He managed also to hear Blackstone's lectures at Oxford, but says that he immediately detected the fallacies which underlay the rounded periods of the future judge. He spent his time in making chemical experiments and in speculating upon legal abuses rather than in reading Coke upon Littleton and the Reports. On being called to the bar he "found a cause or two at nurse for him, which he did his best to put to death," to the bitter disappointment of his father, who had confidently looked forward to seeing him upon the Woolsack.
The first fruits of Bentham's studies, the Fragment on Govern ment, appeared in 1776. The subtitle, "an examination of what is delivered on the subject of government in the Introduction to William Blackstone's Commentaries," indicates the nature of the work. Bentham found the "grand and fundamental" fault of the Commentaries to be Blackstone's "antipathy to reform." This book, written in a clear and concise style very different from that of Bentham's later works, may be said to mark the beginning of philosophic radicalism. This attack upon Black stone's praises of the English Constitution was variously attributed to Lord Mansfield, Lord Camden and Lord Ashburton. Lord Shelburne (afterwards first marquess of Lansdowne) read the book, and called upon its author in 1781 in his chambers at Lincoln's Inn. Henceforth Bentham was a frequent guest at Bowood, where he met Miss Caroline Fox (daughter of the second Lord Holland), to whom he afterwards made a proposal of marriage. At this period Bentham's mind was much occupied with his Rationale of Punishments and Rewards, which was pub-. lished in French by Etienne Dumont in 1811, but only appeared in English in 1825. In 1785 Bentham started, by way of Italy and Constantinople, on a visit to his brother, Samuel Bentham, a naval engineer, holding the rank of colonel in the Russian service ; and it was in Russia that he wrote his Defence of Usury (pr. 1787). This, his first essay in economic science, cast in the form of a series of letters from Russia, shows him as a disciple of Adam Smith, but one who insisted on the extreme logical application of Smith's principles. He argued that every man was the best judge of his own interest, that it was desirable from the public point of view that he should seek it without hindrance, and that there was no reason for limiting the application of this doctrine in the matter of lending money at interest. His later works on political economy followed the laissez-faire principle, though with modifications. In the Manual of Political Economy, first partially printed by Dumont in the Bibliotheque britannique (Geneva 1798) he gives a list of the agenda and non-agenda for the State, the former being a very short and the latter an ex tended list. The book is a re-statement of Adam Smith's point of view from the philosophical and political standpoint.
Disappointed after his return to England in 1788 in the hope which he had entertained of making a career in political life, he settled down to discovering the principles of legislation. The great work, upon which he had been engaged for many years, the Introduction to Principles of Morals and Legislation, was published in 1789. In this book he defines the principle of utility, as "that property in any object whereby it tends to produce pleasure, good or happiness, or to prevent the happening of mis chief, pain, evil or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered." Mankind, he said, was governed by two sovereign motives—pain and pleasure, and the principle of utility rec ognized this subjection. The object of all legislation must be the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" (the phrase appears to have originated with Beccaria) and Bentham's insistence on this is not successfully reconciled with his individualist principle of utility ; he did in fact advocate certain economic measures on succession and taxation which were in conflict with individualism. On the legal side he deduced from the principle of utility that since all punishment is itself evil it ought only to be admitted "so far as it promises to exclude some greater evil." The fame of the Principles spread widely and rapidly. Bentham was made a French citizen in 1792; and his advice was respect fully received in most of the States of Europe and America, with many of the leading men of which he maintained an active cor respondence ; one of the most curious of these exchanges is with Mehemet Ali. In 1817 he became a bencher of Lincoln's Inn. His ambition was to be allowed to prepare a code of laws for his own or some foreign country. The codification of law was one of his chief preoccupations, but he seems to have underestimated its difficulties and to have overlooked the necessity of diversity of institutions adapted to the tradition and civilization of different countries. In his conception of the treatment of criminals Ben tham was far in advance of his age, and must be reckoned among the pioneers of prison reform. It is true that the particular scheme he worked out was bizarre, and spoiled by the elaborate detail which Bentham loved. Under his scheme he believed "morals would be reformed, health preserved, industry invigorated, in struction diffused. .. ." During nearly a quarter of a century he was engaged in negotiations with the Government for the erection of a "Panopticon," for the central inspection of convicts : these were eventually abandoned, and Bentham received in 1813, in pur suance of an act of parliament, £23,000 by way of compensation. In 1797-98 he studied the poor law question, and put forward suggestions which were not dissimilar from those actually adopted in 1834. It was at a later period of his life that he propounded schemes for cutting canals through the isthmus of Suez and the isthmus of Panama.
In 1823 he established the Westminster Review, to spread the principles of philosophic radicalism. Bentham had been brought up a Tory, but he had changed his political ideas and had come to believe that his ideal of general happiness could only be accom plished under democratic institutions. As far back as 1809 he had written a tract, A Catechism of Parliamentary Reform, which advocated annual elections, equal electoral districts, a wide suffrage and the secret ballot, but it was not published till 1817. He drafted a series of resolutions on reform based on this tract which were moved in the House of Commons in 1818. Bentham died in Queen's Square place on June 6, 1832, in his 85th year. In accordance with his directions, his body was dissected in the presence of his friends, and the skeleton is still preserved in University college, London. At the time of his death he was working on his Constitutional Code, the first volume of which had appeared in 1827.
Bentham's life was a happy one for its kind. He gathered around him a group of congenial friends and pupils, such as the Mills, the Austins and Bowring, with whom he could discuss the problems upon which he was engaged, and by whom several of his books were practically rewritten from the mass of rough though orderly memoranda which the master had himself pre pared. Thus, for instance, the Rationale of Judicial Evidence was written out by J. S. Mill, and the Book of Fallacies by Bing ham. The services which Etienne Dumont rendered in recasting as well as translating the works of Bentham were still more im portant. It is often difficult to distinguish what part of the work is Bentham's and what is due to his assistants.
A graphic account is given by the American minister, Richard Rush (in Residence at the Court of London), of an evening spent at his London house in the summer of the year 1818. "If Mr. Bentham's character is peculiar," he says, "so is his place of residence. It was a kind of blind alley, the end of which widened into a small, neat courtyard. There by itself stands Mr. Ben tham's house. Shrubbery graced its area and flowers its window sills. It was like an oasis in the desert. Its name is the Hermitage. Mr. Bentham received me with the simplicity of a philosopher. I should have taken him for seventy or upwards. . . . The com pany was small but choice—Mr. Brougham, Sir Samuel Romilly, Mr. Mill, author of a well-known work on India, M. Dumont, the learned Genevan, once the associate of Mirabeau, were all who sat down to table." Whether or not he can be said to have founded a school, many of Bentham's doctrines have become so far part of the common thought of the time that there is hardly an educated man who does not accept as too clear for argument some truths which were invisible till Bentham pointed them out. His sensitively honourable nature was shocked by the enormous abuses which confronted him on commencing the study of the law. He re belled at hearing the system under which they flourished described as the perfection of human reason. But he was no merely de structive critic. He was determined to find a solid foundation for both morality and law, and to raise upon it an edifice, no stone of which should be laid except in accordance with the de ductions of the severest logic. Most of Bentham's conclusions result from the application of a rigorous common sense to the facts of society. J. S. Mill said of his work: "There is hardly anything in Bentham's philosophy which is not true. The bad part of his writings is his resolute denial of all that he does not see; of all truths but those which he recognizes." As a jurist he inquires of all institutions whether their utility justifies their existence. If not, he is prepared to suggest a new form of institution by which the needful service may be rendered. English institutions had never before been so comprehensively and dispassionately surveyed. His writings have been and remain a storehouse of instruction for statesmen, an armoury for legal reformers. "Pilie par tout le monde," as Talleyrand said of him, "il est toujours riche." To trace the results of his teaching in England alone would be to write a history of the legislation of half a century. Upon the whole administrative machinery of gov ernment, upon criminal law and upon procedure, both criminal and civil, his influence has been most salutary; and the great legal revolution which in 1873 purported to accomplish the fusion of law and equity is not obscurely traceable to the same source. Those of Bentham's suggestions which have hitherto been carried out have affected the matter or contents of the law. The hopes which have been from time to time entertained, that his suggestions for the improvement of its form and expression were about to receive the attention which they deserved, have hitherto been disappointed.