JIM 
 
 210 
 L7
 
 FIRST SERIES. NO. 37 NOVEMBER, 1920 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF IOWA 
 STUDIES 
 
 STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 VOLUME VII NUMBER 3 
 
 The Influence of Jeremy Bentham 
 on English Democratic Development 
 
 BY 
 
 HILDA G. LUNDIN, PH. D. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY, IOWA CITY 
 
 monthly throughout the year^ Entered at the post office at Iowa City. Iowa, aa 
 second class matter. Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided 
 for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917. authorized on July 8, 1918.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF, IOWA STUDIES 
 IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 A. M. SCHLESINGER, Editor 
 C. M. CASE, Advisory Editor J. VAN DER ZEE, Advisory Editor 
 
 VOLUME VII NUMBER 3 
 
 The Influence of Jeremy Bentham 
 on English Democratic Developmen 
 
 BY 
 
 HILDA G. LUNDIN, PH. D. 
 II 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY, IOWA CITY
 
 EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 I JEREMY BENTHAM : A BRIEF SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND 
 
 WORKS 7 
 
 II BENTHAM 'a FIGHT FOR POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 19 
 
 III BENTHAM 'a FIGHT FOR POLITICAL DEMOCRACY (CON- 
 
 CLUDED) 26 
 
 IV LEGAL AND JUDICIAL REFORM 36 
 
 V SOME INFLUENCES OF BENTHAM IN ENGLAND'S SOCIAL 
 
 DEVELOPMENT 44 
 
 VI BENTHAM 's FRIENDS AND ENGLISH REFORM 62 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 83 
 
 (3)
 
 EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 
 
 In this monograph Dr. Lundin has undertaken to trace Jeremy 
 Bentham's influence on the political, legal, and social develop- 
 ment of England. Only very incidentally is she concerned with 
 the remoter reaches of his influence in other lands although she 
 makes it clear that his active and fertile mind received constant 
 inspiration from his study of the great experiment in popular 
 government that was being carried on in America. Indeed many 
 of the ideals of political democracy for which Bentham strove 
 were already incorporated in the form of statutes and constitu- 
 tions in the United States. Therefore it is not surprising that his 
 doctrines were chiefly influential in America in the field of 
 juristic science. 
 
 Judge John F. Dillon has pointed out that important changes 
 in modes of judicial procedure and conceptions of legal education 
 in America had their inception in the writings of this "teacher 
 of teachers." To men imbued with Bentham's ideas must also 
 be ascribed the extent to which codes of civil and criminal proce- 
 dure have been adopted throughout this country. The influence 
 of his doctrines on the distinguished American jurist Edward 
 Livingston is significant in this connection. Pecuniary difficulties 
 caused Livingston to leave his ancestral home in New York in 
 1804 and take up his residence in New Orleans, then recently 
 acquired from France as a part of Louisiana Territory. The 
 legal system of the territory was based upon Roman, French and 
 Spanish law; and annexation by the United States necessitated 
 the introduction of trial by jury and other features of the 
 English common law. Livingston was appointed by the legisla- 
 ture to draw up a provisional code of judicial procedure based 
 mainly on the existing law of the territory; and this code was 
 adopted by the legislature in 1805. Sixteen years later he was 
 
 (5)
 
 chosen by the legislature to draft a new code of criminal law and 
 procedure for the state. In the execution of this task he prepared 
 a comprehensive Code of Crimes and Punishments, of Procedure, 
 of Evidence, and of Reform and Prison Discipline. Each code 
 was accompanied with an elaborate prefatory report; and 
 although the fruits of his labors were not enacted by the 
 Louisiana legislature, they were published widespread through- 
 out America and Europe. Chancellor Kent declared that Liv- 
 ingston had "done more in giving precision, specification, 
 accuracy, and moderation to the system of crimes and punish- 
 ment than any other legislator of the age . . . ' 
 
 In an interesting correspondence with Bentham in 1829, Liv- 
 ingston acknowledged that he had received his first impulse to 
 the preparation of a comprehensive system of penal legislation 
 from Bentham 's works, which had appeared in the French 
 edition of Dumont in 1802. ' ' The perusal of your works, ' ' wrote 
 Livingston to Bentham, "first gave method to my ideas, and 
 taught me to consider legislation as a science governed by certain 
 principles, applicable to all its different branches, instead of an 
 occasional exercise of its powers, called forth only on particular 
 occasions without relation to or connection with each other." 
 Livingston's labors earned for him Sir Henry Maine's encomium 
 of "the first legal genius of modern times." 
 
 Dr. Lundin's monograph was originally prepared under the 
 direction of Professor Harry Grant Plum of the Department of 
 History and has been revised for publication in the present series. 
 
 ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGEB.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 JEREMY BENTHAM : A BRIEF SKETCH OF HIS LIFE 
 
 AND WORKS 
 
 Jeremy Bentham lived during the last half of the eighteenth 
 century and the first third of the nineteenth century, a period 
 during which the ideas generated by the French Revolution were 
 causing governmental reaction in England. Bentham was born 
 February 15, 1748 in a well-to-do, middle-class home located on 
 Red Lion street, Houndsditch, London. His mother, Alicia Grove 
 Bentham, the daughter of an Andover tradesman, was a gentle, 
 refined lady. His father, Jeremiah Bentham, was a scrivener 
 and clerk to the Worshipful Company of Scriveners. As a child, 
 Jeremy was of delicate health, naturally serious and studious. 
 Very early, brilliant mental power, aptitude for learning, and 
 original thinking were manifested. Anecdotes of his babyhood 
 and childhood, illustrative of unusual precocity, are numerous 
 and interesting. 1 Latin and Greek he learned upon his father's 
 knee, beginning their study at the age of three years. 2 When he 
 was but six or seven years old a Frenchman, La Combe, came to 
 live in the home as his private tutor. 3 The child easily and quick- 
 ly learned the French language, and soon read, with keen delight, 
 Fenelon's Telemachus in the original. He was so deeply im- 
 pressed by this book that it influenced all his later life. Referring 
 to its reading from the plane of mature years he stated that the 
 awakening of his moral life was to be credited to it and he also 
 claimed that the first dawning in his mind of the principles of 
 utility might be traced to it. 4 Reading was always a pleasure 
 for the boy, but prior to La Combe 's coming his parents objected 
 to the reading of books that afforded amusement. Parental dis- 
 approval being overcome, Jeremy read many books that indicate 
 for one so young a remarkable range of interest and intellectual 
 
 iBowring, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, X. p. 7; Atkinson, Jeremy Bentham. 
 pp 9ff. 
 
 2 Montague, Bentham's Fragment on Government, p. 1. 
 8 Bowring;. op. cit., X, p. 9. 
 4 Ibid., X, p. 10. 
 
 (7)
 
 8 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 development. Among them were Burnet's Theory of the Earth, 
 Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, Cave's Lives of the Apostles, 
 Stow's Chronicles, Plutarch's Lives, Richardson's Clarissa 
 Harlow, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and Voltaire's Life of 
 Charles XII and Candide* Due to his vivid imagination, Jeremy 
 usually visualized himself as the hero of the book, lived among 
 the characters portrayed, and longed to aid the unfortunate ones. 
 
 In the year 1755, when he was but a little past seven years of 
 age, Jeremy Bentham entered Westminster School. Physically 
 he was not able to engage in the usual sports. Sensitive in the 
 extreme he could not brook the rude actions of the other boys. 
 The teachers being deficient in ability, idle, and indifferent were 
 not inspiring. On account of these conditions the school was 
 always remembered by Bentham as a wretched place for instruc- 
 tion in few useful things. 6 Studious and tractable, he performed 
 the tasks assigned to him in such manner as never to suffer 
 punishment from his teachers. He made rapid progress, having 
 been well-grounded in the languages before entering Westminster 
 School, and was prepared at the youthful age of twelve to enroll 
 in Oxford University. 
 
 Upon matriculation day at Oxford a real and grievous trouble 
 presented itself to Bentham in the requirement that the Thirty- 
 nine Articles be signed. Young as he was he refused to sign 
 the document with whose contents he was not fully acquainted. 
 After he had carefully examined the Articles he said : " In some 
 of them no meaning at all could I find; in others, no meaning 
 but one which, in my eyes, was but too plainly irreconcilable 
 either to reason or to scripture. Communicating my distress to 
 some of my fellow collegiates, I found them sharers in it. Upon 
 inquiry it was found that among the fellows of the college there 
 was one, to whose office it belonged, among other things, to remove 
 all such scruples. We repaired to him with fear and trembling. 
 His answer was cold; and the substance of it was that it was 
 not for uninformed youths, such as we, to presume to set up our 
 private judgments against a public one formed by some of the 
 holiest as well as best and wisest men that ever lived. I signed : 
 but by the view I found myself forced to take of the whole busi- 
 
 5 Ibid., X, p. 22 ; Montague, op. cit., p. 2 ; Stephen, The English Utilitarians, 1, p. 
 171 ; Atkinson, op. cit., p. 12 ; Biographical Dictionary, IV, p. 269. 
 Bowring, op. cit., X. pp. SOff.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 9 
 
 ness, such an impression was made, as will never depart from 
 me but with life." 7 Writing many years after of this Bentham 
 stated that the only lesson a young man learns from such a 
 requirement is a lesson of perjury. 8 
 
 Bentham 's tutor at Oxford was a cross, gloomy man named 
 Jefferson. He required his pupil to read Tully's Orations which 
 he had memorized before entering the University. Other studies, 
 as geography, logic, and philosophy, were presented in such a 
 manner as to be of little value, for, generally speaking, the tutors 
 and the professors at Oxford were incapable and inert, passing 
 their mornings in dull meaningless routine and their evenings in 
 card-playing. The profligacy of some of the teachers and the 
 moroseness and insipidity of others were wholly at variance with 
 the ideas of Bentham. 9 Being undersized Bentham was fre- 
 quently teased by his more robust mates and was constantly 
 annoyed by their unkind treatment. He took little part in the 
 fishing and the hunting diversions offered during University 
 days, for they were not pleasures to him. Furthermore, due to 
 his father's ideas, the boy's clothing was so different from that 
 of the other students that he was made to feel extremely uncom- 
 fortable. 10 Completing the prescribed course, Bentham received 
 Ms degree in 1763. 
 
 The elder Bentham had destined Jeremy for the profession of 
 law as the foundation upon which he was to rise to advanced 
 position in his country. The ambitious parent had concluded 
 that the son who surpassed schoolmates and classmates in educa- 
 tional attainments would be capable of serving, worthily and 
 honorably, his country in a public career. 11 The youth knew his 
 father's plans for him and was not opposed to the work mapped 
 out. Therefore, soon after graduating he began to live at 
 Lincoln's Inn. However, as he studied and observed, he began 
 to display a tendency toward untrammeled thinking that he was 
 powerless to check had he desired to do so. 
 
 In order to understand Bentham 's intellectual development 
 while at Lincoln's Inn Field's, mention must be made of the 
 
 7 Ibid., X, p. 87. 
 
 8 Ibid., II. p. 210. 
 
 a Ibid., X, pp. 37ff. 
 
 10 Ibid., X. pp. 38ff. 
 
 11 Stephen. The English Utilitarians, I, p. 174.
 
 10 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 influence made upon his mind by the writings of Helvetius, 
 Hume, and Priestly. 12 These three men belonged to the eigh- 
 teenth century but in their writings they advanced ideas in 
 morals and philosophy peculiar to themselves and in advance of 
 their time. They displayed a new understanding of existing 
 social conditions and sought to comprehend the desires and the 
 aspirations of mankind. They urged the consideration of one 
 individual for another upon the basis of utility. 
 
 Helvetius (1715-1771), a Frenchman, versatile and keen, wrote 
 both poetry and prose. In a poem entitled La Bonheur he 
 developed the idea that the only way to obtain true happiness is 
 to make the interest of one the interest of all. 18 Helvetius ex- 
 plained further that self-interest is the sole means of judgment, 
 action, and affection because it is founded on the love of pleasure 
 and the fear of pain; that self-sacrifice is endured because the 
 sensation of pleasure resulting is greater than the pain accom- 
 panying sacrifice. David Hume (1711-1776) emphasized the 
 need of studying human nature as such, as the only means of 
 determining the principles which regulate understanding, excite 
 sentiments, and cause blame or praise of conduct. 14 Priestley 
 (1733-1804), a dissenting preacher, published in 1768 an Essay 
 on Government in which he stated "the good and happiness of 
 the members, that is the majority of the members, of any state, 
 is the great standard by which everything relating to that state 
 must finally be determined." Two years after its publication 
 the essay fell into the hands of Bentham, who upon completing 
 the reading exclaimed " Eureka" with as much vim as the 
 mathematician of old. The reading of this essay caused Bentham 
 to say: "Priestley was the first (unless it was Beccaria) who 
 taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth ; that the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals 
 and legislation. ' ' 16 Thus at the early age of twenty-two Bentham 
 fixed upon the phrase, "the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 
 12 Edinburgh Review, LXXVIII, pp. 469-474. 
 
 iSThilly, Tke History of Philosophy, p. 832. This thought was not new with Hel- 
 vetius for Joseph Butler (1692-1752) had set forth the claim that it is as natural 
 for an individual to seek the good of his neighbor as his own happiness ; and Francis 
 Hutcheson (1694-1747) is credited with originating the phrase "the greatest hap- 
 piness of the greatest number." 
 
 14 Ibid., pp. 846ff. 
 
 16 Bowring, op. eit., X, p. 142.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 11 
 
 number, ' ' as the fundamental principle of his reasoning. 
 
 The young man living at Lincoln's Inn perceived that the 
 ethics of the legal profession were of a low standard. Entirely 
 incompatible with his own sense of justice were the practices of 
 the professional lawyers there observed. He could not suffer 
 himself to be a lawyer of such ilk as England then had. This 
 was clearly shown by his advising the first litigants who came 
 to him to settle their differences and so avoid costs. 17 Preventing 
 court proceedings was not calculated to build up the career that 
 the father had planned for the son. 
 
 As a result of listening to Blackstone's lectures Bentham 
 wrote The Fragment on Government and published it anonym- 
 ously in 1776. In order to lessen his father's disappointment in 
 him, Jeremy told him what he had been writing, exacting at 
 the same time a pledge of secrecy. Upon publication its author- 
 ship became the subject of much discussion, Mansfield, Dunning 
 and Camden being named as the writer; the book sold read- 
 ily. Hearing that the names of such celebrities were being con- 
 nected with the essay, the elder Bentham broke his promise, and 
 revealed the name of the author. Then because the writer was 
 no one of prominence the sale of the book stopped. However, as 
 a benefit to the young writer, it brought to his Lincoln's Inn 
 garret a visitor from England's peerage, Lord Shelburne, 18 
 From the initial meeting of these two men in 1781 a friendship 
 of vital worth to both was formed. Soon Shelburne extended 
 to the obscure writer an invitation to make a long visit at his 
 home Bowood. Acceptance of the invitation proved to be Ben- 
 tham 's introduction to a delightful and notable company. Prior 
 to this visit The Fragment's author had met with all kinds of 
 disappointments and rebukes; but the geniality and kindness of 
 Lord Shelburne raised him from humiliation and encouraged 
 him to go forward with the schemes for mankind's advancement 
 upon which he had already begun to think. 19 Guests met at 
 Bowood during his first visit (1781) were Lord Camden, the 
 Younger Pitt, and Dunning. At a later visit (1788) he met 
 Romilly and Dumont, both of whom became his warm friends. 
 
 17 /6td., X, p. 61. 
 
 18 Ibid., 1 .p. 248. 
 i9/6d., X, p. 116. 
 Atkinson, op. cit., p. 46.
 
 12 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 It is as the author of many manuscripts, as the compiler of 
 really great works upon legislation, as a constant agitator for 
 reforms in various lines that Bentham busied himself throughout 
 his long lifetime. During a visit to Russia made from 1785 to 
 1788 he wrote an essay entitled Defence of Usury, which, ' ' a gem 
 of the finest water, ' ' has been considered the best treatise on the 
 subject. 20 At this time, too, a scheme for prison reform began to 
 receive Bentham 's attention and upon his return to England he 
 devoted time, means, and unwonted energy to carrying it out. 
 
 The year 1789 is noteworthy because of the publication of The 
 Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. The 
 manuscript of this work was printed as early as 1780, but Ben- 
 tham intended to withhold it from the public until the larger 
 work he had in mind should be completed. His friend Wilson 
 influenced him to have it published because of the issuing of 
 Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy. Wilson 
 said Paley's book contained such close similarity to Bentham 's 
 ideas that it seemed as if the author might have read Bentham 's 
 manuscript. Wilson was fearful lest later publication by Bent- 
 ham should give rise to the charge of borrowing ideas from 
 Paley. 21 
 
 Bentham lived from 1788 to 1792 at an obscure farm place near 
 Hendon, four miles beyond Highgate. 22 In this retired place he 
 lived a sort of hermit life, seeing nobody, reading nothing, and 
 writing books that nobody read. 23 Upon his father's death in 
 1792 Jeremy Bentham inherited the home in Queen's Square 
 Place, Westminster, and he established himself there permanent- 
 ly. Henceforth he continued his activities in behalf of reform in 
 a pleasing environment. 
 
 Dumont, scholarly and capable, succeeded in obtaining Ben- 
 tham 's permission to edit his works, and in 1802, he brought out 
 in the French language three volumes which indicate the great- 
 ness of Bentham 's field of interest at that time. Atkinson says : 
 "Many a salutary modification of our system of jurisprudence 
 may be traced to ideas enshrined and developed in these 
 
 20 Bowring, op. cit.. X, pp. 176ff. 
 Atkinson, op. cit., p. 83. 
 
 21 Bowring, op. cit.. X, pp. 163ff. 
 
 22 Ibid., X, p. 248, p. 823. 
 
 23 Atkinson, op. cit.. p. 112.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 13 
 
 volumes." 24 The editor, Dumont, said that the plans developed 
 in Traites de Legislation are applicable to a monarchy or a re- 
 public ; that the rulers are urged to ' ' Study the remedy for the 
 ills that afflict your people. 25 
 
 Chrestomathia is the title Bentham gave to two volumes begun 
 in 1816. The name made up of two Greek words signifies "con- 
 ducive to useful learning." These two volumes, presenting 
 Bentham 's scheme for education, developed a system quite differ- 
 ent from that employed in the English schools. In natural, 
 pleasing surroundings, through the direction of competent teach- 
 ers, Chrestomathia aimed at a broad, useful development of 
 mental ability that would fit the adult for an enlarged field of 
 activity. It was a complete system of coordinated subjects and 
 plans. "The actual curriculum proposed for the higher Lan- 
 casterian schools was largely borrowed from it." 26 
 
 The Constitutional Code, which is the most complete, the most 
 comprehensive, the most mature of all Bentham 's works, was 
 prepared during the years from 1820 to 1832. Its aim was to set 
 forth a rational constitution and a rational system of legislation 
 harmonious with the doctrine of the "greatest happiness of the 
 greatest number." The English reformers were deeply im- 
 pressed by it for they recognized the labor and the skill requisite 
 to produce it, and also understood that there was real worth in 
 the code. 
 
 An extract from the Westminster Review under date of 1830 
 conveys in well- worded terms the place conceded to the in- 
 defatigable writer. "A few years ago Jeremy Bentham was in 
 Paris. Never did a noble countenance, or a more venerable head, 
 present to the eye the material type of loftier virtues or a purer 
 soul ; nor was so prodigious a reputation ever more justly merited. 
 Bentham should not only be regarded as one of the profoundest 
 lawyers that ever lived, but as one of those philosophers, who 
 have done most towards the enlightening of the human race and 
 for the advancement of liberty in his own times. ' '" 
 
 Bentham did not especially concern himself with politics dur- 
 ing the first half of his life for he was not a party man. 28 The 
 
 24 Ibid., p. 188. 
 
 25 Ibid., p. 138. 
 
 26 Ibid., p. 173, note. 
 
 27 Westminister Review, XIV, (1837), p. 354. 
 
 28 Atkinson, of. tit., p. 28.
 
 14 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 friendship of Lord Shelburne led him to give attention to pol- 
 itics and in 1790 he had a strong desire to become a member of 
 Parliament. This arose from a misunderstanding on his part, 
 for Bentham claimed, without warrant, that Shelburne had 
 caused him to expect one of the Shelburns amily places. 29 At 
 the age of twenty-six Bentham refers to himself as being one 
 whose love for his country should be witness for him against 
 misruling men. 80 At the age of fifty-four he had personal 
 acquaintance with many eminent politicians and philanthropists. 
 
 A development of democratic views is first evidenced in his 
 Draught of a Code for the Organization of a Judicial Establish- 
 ment, published in 1790. The influence of the French Revolution 
 upon him is made plain by Macaulay who wrote of Bentham as 
 an ' ' illustrious conservative reformer. ' ' 8l In the years prior to 
 1809 Bentham reached the conclusion that there was great need 
 for reform in Parliament and at the age of sixty he began to 
 give active support to such reform. 82 At this time he was widely 
 known. Governmental authorities in Russia, Spain, France, 
 Germany and America advocated the employment of Benthamic 
 doctrines. 38 "Even in England he is often mentioned in books 
 and in Parliament. " 34 " Meantime I am here scribbling on in my 
 hermitage, never seeing anybody but for some special reason, 
 always bearing relation to the service of mankind. ' ' 3S 
 
 Growing into a closer contact with English politics, Bentham 
 may be classified not as a Tory, nor a Jacobin, nor a paralyzed 
 Whig, but as a philanthropic agitator. 38 Hence he became a 
 radical reformer and propagandist. By 1818 his influence in 
 public affairs became important through the efforts of Romilly, 
 Mill, Wilson, and others who carried to the outer world the 
 philosophizing of Bentham 's study. Through an extensive cor- 
 respondence his influence reached European and American coun- 
 tries from which in return came letters of gratitude and 
 admiration. 87 As the movement for reform progressed, the 
 
 29 Bowring, op. cit., X. p. 229. 
 
 30 Ibid., X, p. 72. 
 SlAtkinson, op. cit., p. 104. 
 
 82 Bowring, op. cit.. Ill, p .435. 
 
 33 Stephen, op. cit., I, pp. 209flf. 
 
 34 Ibid., I, p. 210. 
 
 35 Bowring, op. cit., X, p. 458. 
 
 36 Stephen, op. cit., I, p. 210. 
 
 37 Bowring, op. cit., X, 539.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 15 
 
 "utilitarians" organized and entered the field of politics as a 
 distinct body. Needing an organ for the dissemination of their 
 ideas, the Westminster Review was started and Bentham financed 
 it. 88 
 
 Bentham, who is to be credited with great ability, with sensitive 
 understanding of human nature, with remarkable knowledge of 
 the wrongs in existing legislation, and far reaching schemes for 
 constructive reform, was not without his limitations. Comment- 
 ing on these limitations Sidgwick mentions "his exaggerated 
 reliance on his own method, his ignorant contempt for the past, 
 and his intolerant misinterpretation of all that opposed him in 
 the present" as salient defects. 39 Again, Bentham regarded 
 nations and men as being mechanical. The former were to him 
 simply aggregates of men, the latter machines capable of being 
 regulated much as a watch is regulated. Had he understood that 
 nations are not aggregates of men but complex organisms in 
 which each member receives as he gives of himself to the whole, 
 he would have enlarged his achievement. 40 Because romance 
 entered but slightly into his life, and because much of his time 
 was spent strenuously writing in comparative retirement, he 
 lacked now and then in suavity of statement. This is evidenced 
 by the replies he sent to Madame de Stael and Mr. Edgeworth 
 when they expressed a wish to meet him. 41 
 
 In 1820 a young man by the name of John Bowring was intro- 
 duced to Bentham. The two men, aged respectively twenty-eight 
 and seventy-two, became the warmest of friends. Bowring spent 
 much time in the next twelve years in the elder man 's companion- 
 ship, and by reason of this intimacy became especially well 
 qualified to write of Bentham and his work. After Bentham 's 
 death Bowring undertook the task of editing the correspondence 
 and manuscripts bequeathed to him. As a result c : iiis work, 
 eleven volumes, in which are contained a biography Bentham 
 and many of his writings, appeared in 1843. 42 . A number of 
 manuscripts, packed away in more than eighty neatly labeled 
 
 38 Stephen, op. cit., I, pp. 223ff. 
 
 39 Sidgwick, Miscellaneous Essays and Addre-sses, p. 137. 
 
 40 Montague, op. cit., pp. 45ff. 
 
 41 Bowring, op. cit., XI, p. 79. 
 
 42 The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the direction of hia executor, 
 John Bowring.
 
 16 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 boxes, and a number of portfolios are still stored at University 
 College. 
 
 Lessening mental and physical vigor experienced in the 
 summer of 1831 caused Bentham to remark that they were the 
 precursors of his passing from life. Gradually slackening his 
 writing as the months moved on, enjoying the association of 
 close friends in Queen's Square Place, keeping in touch with 
 current events till the last, he calmly, consciously, met the end 
 June 6, 1832, in the strength of his own philosophy, saying to his 
 loved friend when he thought the last hour was near: "I now 
 feel that I am dying: our care must be to minimize pain. Do 
 not let any of the servants come into the room, and keep away 
 the youths; it will be distressing to them and they can be of no 
 service. Yet I must not be alone : you will remain with me and 
 you only ; and then we shall have reduced pain to the least possi- 
 ble amount. ' ' 43 
 
 With a view to the advancement of science, Bentham directed 
 that his body should be dissected. "The skeleton, covered with 
 the clothes he commonly wore, and supporting a waxen effigy of 
 his head, is carefully preserved in the Anatomical Museum of 
 University College, London. Across one knee rests his favorite 
 stick 'Dapple' and at the foot of the figure lies the skull with 
 the white hairs of the old man still clinging to its surface. ' ' 44 
 
 Early in life Bentham arrived at the definite philosophy which 
 governed all his efforts. It was developed out of his actual 
 personal contact with others, combined with his reading and his 
 reasoning. This philosophy was his doctrine of utility; and 
 from the survey of his life which may be gained from his written 
 works, it was a strong philosophy, whole-heartedly directed 
 towards the betterment of man. 
 
 Bentham claimed that the only right ground of action is utility 
 which he defined as "that property in any object, whereby it 
 tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness 
 (all this in the present case comes to the same thing) to prevent 
 the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party 
 whose interest is considered : if that party be the community in 
 general, then the happiness of the community: if a particular 
 
 43 Bow ring, op. eit~, XI, p. 
 
 44 Atkinson, op. eit., p. 2C 
 
 95. 
 
 208.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 17 
 
 individual, then the happiness of the individual." 45 As a 
 principle applicable to the dealings of man with man, utility 
 "approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according 
 to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish 
 the happiness of the party whose interest is in question ; or, what 
 is the same thing in other words, to promote or oppose that hap- 
 piness. I say of every action whatsoever; and therefore not 
 only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure 
 of government." 46 
 
 Bentham, a pioneer of the Utilitarians, enlarged upon the 
 doctrine of utility set forth by Beccaria, Hume, Helvetius, and 
 Priestley. He was followed by the Mills and many others who 
 have had a significant influence in the development of Utilitarian- 
 
 45 A study of the writings of Bentham and of the relations of Bentham to his 
 friends, reveals his championship of the doctrine of happiness. He placed very 
 strong emphasis upon "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," upon the 
 surplus of pleasure over pain, but critics have had a tendency to overlook the real 
 truth in Bentham's teaching. Burton distinctly states that misunderstanding of 
 Bentham's opinions was due to "the inability of men to see sources of pleasure to 
 others in things which were not sources of pleasure to themselves." 
 
 Bentham's whole life was undeniably "a rejection of the more gross and tangible 
 object* of human enjoyment : a recourse to elements of pleasure and satisfaction, for 
 which vulgar and truly selfish minds have no appreciation. Seclusion, temperance, 
 and hard labour were preferred, as the outward and visible signs of enjoyment, to 
 popularity, indulgence, or luxurious ease ; and the inward source of satisfaction was 
 the consciousness of doing permanent good to the human race." (Burton, Intro- 
 duction, pp. 23-24.) "Hedonism," as such, "affords no room for the play of those 
 finer sentiments about the good and the just, the beauty of righteousness, the no- 
 bility of duty." (Rogers, Philosophy, p. 00.) It is freely granted that Bentham in 
 the exposition of his principles did emphasize the measurement of pleasures and 
 pains, but his fundamental wish through it all was justice. In the light of the 
 present day when there is a reaction against hedonism it is a keen delight to read 
 the statements of Bentham himself and find in them a larger idea, a broader view 
 than his critics have credited to him. In his own words, "an action may be con- 
 sidered and spoken of as useful, as conducive to general utility, in proportion to the 
 value of any pleasures which it is its tendency to produce, or of any pains which 
 it is its tendency to avert," we note more than simply the quantitative standard gen- 
 erally ascribed to Bentham. Always promulgating reform in legal, judicial, and social 
 lines so that human welfare should be enhanced, the sentence quoted is one which 
 presents Bentham's deeper thought relative to the summum bonum. 
 
 In his discussions and explanations Bentham aimed to present and develop plans 
 whereby legislators might enact legislation that would be of real benefit, not merely 
 because of the happiness as such that it would produce, but because of the enlarge- 
 ment of human welfare, the upbuilding of humanity for humanity's good, that 
 would result. "When legislators shall study the human heart ; when they shall show 
 their attention to the different degrees and different kinds of sensibility, by limita- 
 tions and modifications ; these condescensions on the part of power will charm like 
 paternal endearments." (Bowring, op. cit., I, p. 85.) 
 
 45 Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, p. 1. 
 
 46 Ibid., p. 1.
 
 18 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 ism. "The term Utilitarianism, designative of a philosophical 
 theory in ethics and politics is a very modern one ; but the thing 
 that it represents is very old. It represents interest in the welfare 
 of mankind, wedded to practical efforts to ameliorate the condi- 
 tions of human life on rational principles and to raise the masses 
 through effective state legislation." 47 The Utilitarian is stirred 
 by intellectual, educational, political, ethical, and social ideals 
 that tend to the "greatest happiness of the greatest number." 
 Individual well-being is not isolated for each is linked with all 
 with whom he comes in contact, and the welfare of each, being 
 made up of all the elements that in their sum total form an 
 individual's happiness, is utility. 48 
 
 Bentham's philosophy was, and is, a working creed, possessing 
 working power. Directing all the labors of his life to its 
 propagation he may be ranked as a leader in measures promulgat- 
 ed for the nation's or the individual's well-being. His friends 
 and contemporaries knew that he was in advance of his time, 
 that governmental powers would not yield to measures adverse 
 to existing conditions. However, reforms which have materially 
 aided England during the past century prove that fulness of 
 thought and the passage of time were needed to develop the en- 
 lightenment favorable to change. 
 
 *7 Davidson, Political Thought in England, pp. 7ff. 
 48 Ibid., pp. lOff.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 BENTHAM'S FIGHT FOE POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 
 
 The English people of the eighteenth century as the inheritors 
 of the English government did not question the existence of 
 error in their constitution or its administration. But they 
 revered their sovereign, respected the intangible, unwritten law 
 of their land, and did not contemplate altering their government. 
 The two classes of people, landed gentry and tradesmen, held 
 respectively the positions of the governing and the governed. 
 Apparently this was good and proper and neither class anticipat- 
 ed change. However, the governed, by a process of evolution, 
 were making advances through the growing importance of indus- 
 try and trade and their increasing influence in public affairs. 
 This progress was facilitated by their psychological fitness and 
 through the aid of reformers. 
 
 Eighteenth century in England is characterized by the number 
 of men who thought incisively upon the conditions in govern- 
 ment, labor and society. They understood, as the mass of the 
 people did not, how surely the latter were approaching a position 
 of governmental power. They rightly reasoned that reforms 
 should be made that would be beneficial to all England. Fore- 
 most among these men was Jeremy Bentham. Influenced by the 
 philosophy of Locke which taught the employment of reason, 
 freedom of thought, and the abandonment of prejudice, and also 
 by the teachings of Beccaria, Helvetius, Hume, and Priestley, 
 Bentham formulated the principle which became his test for all 
 conditions of life. 1 This principle, utility, Bentham defined 
 thus : " It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that 
 is the measure of right and wrong." 1 He was convinced that 
 utility was ' ' capable of guiding him through the whole labyrinth 
 of political and legislative speculation. ' ' 3 
 
 When Bentham listened to the lectures upon the English 
 
 1 Stephen, The English Utilitarians, I, p. 177. 
 
 2 Bowring Works of Jeremy Bentham, I, p. 227. 
 
 3 Stephen, op. cit., I, p. 178. 
 
 (19)
 
 20 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 Constitution given by Blackstone he was impressed by two 
 things, their polished phrasing and their fallacies. 4 Although 
 but a youth at the time he comprehended with keen penetration 
 that England's constitution did not merit the perfection accord- 
 ed to it by the great jurist. In his essay The Fragment on Gov- 
 ernment he minutely analyzed statements made by Blackstone 
 and pointed out errors no one had ever dared to mention. In 
 successive chapters under the titles, "Formation of the Govern- 
 ment," "Forms of Government," "British Constitution." 
 "Right of the Supreme Power to Make Laws," and "Duty of 
 the Supreme Power to Make Laws." 5 He tore Blackstone 's 
 "whole flimsy fabric to rags and tatters." 6 "He broadly avows 
 his universal test his fundamental principle of utility. He 
 shows no mercy to the well-rounded periods of Blackstone, ex- 
 posing with the most ruthless logic their ostentatious wrapping 
 up of no meaning in sounding language. The first object of the 
 treatise is to show that analogous to discovery and improvement 
 in the natural world is reformation in the moral world. With an 
 energy unsurpassed in the works of his maturest genius, he 
 vindicates adherence to stern simple truth on all occasions, laying 
 down the principle, as applicable to the defender of abuses, that 
 'every false and sophistical reason that he contributes to circu- 
 late, he is himself chargeable with.' He makes wild work with 
 the figures of speech employed to plaster up the chinks and 
 crannies of 'Matchless Constitution.' He tosses about and dis- 
 perses 'checks and balances,' 'blending of aristocracy, demo- 
 cracy, and monarchy, into a whole, combining all their advant- 
 ages, and free from their defects,' and the like. He paints the 
 social structure of Britain as it existed, and in a measure still 
 exists, not in the dainty phrases of legal fiction. The work is 
 critical: it shows the hollowness of what had hitherto been 
 taught." 7 
 
 Having made a careful study of the English constitution 
 Bentham pointed out the lack of agreement between the theory 
 and the functioning of the constitution. Then he quoted para- 
 graphs from Blackstone and discussed them in order to expose 
 
 4 Bowring. op. cit., X, p. 45, 141, I, p. 286. 
 
 6 Montague, The Fragment on Government, p. 180. 
 e Stephen, op. cit., I p. 182. 
 
 7 Bowring, op. cit., I, p. IX.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 21 
 
 discrepancies. Illustrative of this is the passage : ' ' For as with 
 us the executive power of the laws is lodged in a single person, 
 they have all the advantages of strength and dispatch that are 
 to be found in the most absolute monarchy; and as the legisla- 
 ture of the kingdom is entrusted to three distinct powers entirely 
 independent of each other; first, the king; secondly, the Lords 
 Spiritual and Temporal, which is an aristocratical assembly of 
 persons selected for their piety, their birth, their wisdom, or their 
 valour, or their property; and thirdly, the House of Commons, 
 freely chosen by the people from among themselves, which 
 makes it a kind of democracy. ' ' 8 That government in which the 
 people freely choose members of its legislative body from among 
 themselves is representative. England's government was com- 
 monly called representative; 9 it was considered such by other 
 nations. 10 But Bentham insisted that it was not representative 
 because of the agencies of government, King, Ministry, and 
 Parliament, only a small portion was elected directly by a 
 restricted electorate. The corruption which enabled members of 
 the House of Lords to purchase the election of many members of 
 the House of Commons, and the control exercised by the ministry 
 over the king, placed the actual governing power in the hands 
 of so limited a number of persons that it made England's gov- 
 ernment really an oligarchy. Bentham showed that the ideals 
 advanced by Blackstone and the actual conditions of the times 
 were strikingly different; therefore, he emphasized the need of 
 constitutional reform as the basis of legislative and administra- 
 tive reform. 
 
 The Fragment was "a serious attempt to apply scientific 
 methods to problems of legislation," 11 but the English nation 
 had not yet reached the stage for employing these methods. 
 Bentham 's attitude toward the English constitution was further 
 defined by him forty years after he published the essay: "I 
 prefer the English Constitution, such as it is, to non-government, 
 and to every other but the United States government. But I do 
 not prefer it, such as it is, teeming with abuses and other imper- 
 
 6 Montague, op. cit., pp. 182ff. 
 
 9 Hazen, Europe Since 1815, p. 409. 
 
 10 Ibid., p. 409. 
 
 H Stephen, op. cit., I. p. 182.
 
 22 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 factions to what it would be if cleared in the whole, or part, of 
 all or any of these same imperfections." 12 
 
 Believing that sovereign power belonged to the people, 1 
 Bentham maintained that the people of England should have the 
 privilege of exercising this power through a representative gov- 
 ernment. 14 Bentham emphasized the idea that all the people of 
 the nation should participate in governmental matters. England 's 
 master stroke of 1295 had consisted in the fact that that event 
 definitely made the nation's legislative body representative. The 
 passing of the next five centuries had been marked by an in- 
 crease of corruption on the part of officials as they gained in 
 governing power and by the passage of restrictive acts; and 
 thus the legislative body had ceased to be representative. During 
 these same centuries the people had grown gradually into a 
 larger measure of the instincts and interests which should ultim- 
 ately determine their place in the governing class. However, 
 when the philosopher, Bentham, presented his scheme in their 
 behalf, they were not quite prepared for it, and those in author- 
 ity were opposed to it. 
 
 England of eighteen hundred, so different socially and 
 economically from England of thirteen hundred, had need of re- 
 form in its constitutional administration, particularly in its 
 Parliament. The Parliament at Westminster "was in no con- 
 ceivable sense representative of the English people. It represent- 
 ed the territorial aristocracy, and, to a certain extent, but only 
 a very limited extent, the wealthiest of the trading and manufac- 
 turing classes. No Roman Catholic, Dissenter, or Jew could be 
 a member of Parliament; when all other disqualifications were 
 absent there was a property qualification which prevented any 
 poor man from obtaining a seat in the House of Commons." 15 
 "Furthermore, a systematic view of a modern State in all its 
 complexity with scientific laws and regulations was utterly 
 strange to English thought." 16 It was Bentham 's mission to 
 teach ' ' the nation that scientific investigations are indispensable 
 
 Bentham greatly admired the Constitution of the Anglo- 
 
 12 Bowring. op. cit., XI. p. 62. 
 
 13/buL, IX, pp. 96ff. 
 
 1* Ibid., IX. pp. 28. 87. 88. 75. 108, 104. 
 
 15 McCarthy, England in the XlXth Century, p. 14. 
 
 16 Redlich and Hint, Local Government in England, I p. 91.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 23 
 
 American United States. In its national plan of executive, leg- 
 islative, and judicial departments and its similar individual state 
 if laws are to be made adequate to the needs of a modern indus- 
 trial state." 17 
 
 organizations he saw a democratic representative plan with 
 national and local coordination. The people of the United 
 States through well-ordered electoral methods participated in 
 the making of their laws and in the administration of them. 
 Clearly the English nation could, through proper adjustments in 
 electoral arrangements and the extension of franchise rights, be 
 just as democratic as the United States. He elaborated his ideas 
 in the Constitutional Code, in which may be found the germs of 
 many reforms enacted into English legislation during the past 
 eighty years. 18 Bentham was confident that the work he was 
 trying to accomplish would in time be brought about, notwith- 
 standing the repeated disappointments with which he met. "He 
 is said to have expressed the wish that he could awake once in a 
 century to contemplate the prospect of a world gradually adopt- 
 ing his principles and so making steady progress in happiness 
 and wisdom." 19 
 
 Among other things Bentham presented four proposals whose 
 adoption he deemed essential to constitutional betterment: (1) 
 the coordination of central and local government; 20 (2) the 
 reorganization of Parliament as a representative democratic body 
 and the organization of local governing bodies on the same 
 principle; 21 (3) the political sub-divisions of a territory should 
 be planned in harmony with the principle of utility, in order to 
 satisfy actual needs, and not planned according to accident or 
 tradition; 22 (4) economy and efficiency should enter into the 
 the nation's civil service, and ability and knowledge in the 
 respective fields should be the test for obtaining position. 23 
 Constitutional Code, arranged a central and a local plan of gov- 
 
 England had, long before Bentham 's day, putgrown the 
 chaotic system of government under which it was living. Wish- 
 
 17 Ibid., I, p. 91. 
 
 18 Maine, History of Early Institutions, p. 397. 
 
 19 Stephen, op. cit., I, p. 230. 
 
 20 Bowring, op. cit., IX, p. 640. 
 
 21 Ibid., Ill, p. 663 
 
 22 Ibid., Ill, pp. 579ff. 
 
 23 Ibid., IX, pp. 266ff.
 
 24 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 ing to remedy the inefficient administration, Bentham, in his 
 ernment that paralleled each other in administrative and legisla- 
 tive functions. He presented a graduated scheme of division of 
 territory into districts, subdistricts, and bis-subdistricts for the 
 election of legislative officials. 24 However, his contemporaries 
 were so accustomed to the traditional hundred, wapentake liberty, 
 manorial court, parish, township, union, county and municipality 
 with all the peculiarities attendant upon them, that they were 
 not disposed to adopt his modified form so marked by simplicity. 
 The organization of Parliament, or the central government, and 
 of local government upon the same principles, although plainly 
 a method that would facilitate and improve administration and 
 legislation, was a suggestion too far in advance of the times to 
 meet with support. The time was ripe through growth in indus- 
 trial lines for fixing upon a plan of districting that would 
 eliminate the cumbrous method in use, but the progress of the 
 day was not yet to be recognized in governmental administra- 
 tion. To require ability and knowledge as qualifications of 
 officials would be at such variance with what was customary in 
 the way of office filling that it could not be accepted. 
 
 Bentham consistently promulgated the idea that detailed and 
 complete administration in both central and local government 
 was absolutely essential to the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number. He outlined a careful, practical scheme for the distri- 
 bution and the classification of duties and officials. He strongly 
 denounced anything in governmental work that evidenced wrong 
 and injustice. 
 
 Although he met with discouragements and rebuffs, the efforts 
 put forth by him and by his friends in Parliament finally result- 
 ed in legislation that secured constitutional reform based upon 
 the ideas he had advocated. The governing and the governed, 
 unequal in eighteen hundred, were elements that became poised 
 long before the year nineteen hundred in a democratic balance. 
 The electorate of England increased so as to be made up of prac- 
 tically all male citizens. The redistricting of territory upon 
 Benthamic plans, the removal of restrictions, the responsibility 
 of the members of the House of Commons to the people, the 
 responsibility of the ministry to the House of Commons, are 
 
 *i Ibid., IX. p. 147.
 
 several conditions which evidence that sovereignty in England 
 today rests with the supreme constitutive. The interest of the 
 people in governmental activities is co-equal with their interest 
 in industrial, social and economic lines; and the efforts of the 
 legislative department are directed towards democratic ideals. 
 Bentham's writings and teachings aided in making Blackstone's 
 statement, "freely chosen by the people from among themselves," 
 become a reality. The aristocratic tendency and the oligarchic 
 power of the government have lessened and waned as England's 
 people have progressed into a democracy.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 BENTHAM'S FIGHT FOR POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 
 (Concluded) 
 
 The progress of England in democratic ideas and democratic 
 legislation since the dawning of the nineteenth century is a 
 development of prime historical significance. Prior to eighteen 
 hundred England was a country closely held in the thraldom of 
 tradition. Her people were supporters of existing conditions 
 because of the reverence and the respect accorded to those hold- 
 ing the reins of government, and because the interests and the 
 instincts of the uninstructed had not yet attained maturity. The 
 leaven of enlightenment, due to the writings of eighteenth cen- 
 tury philosophers, began to have an influence, but this influence 
 could not be very great until someone daring enough to break 
 away from established custom should come forward, expose the 
 wrongs of the past centuries, and present constructive proposals 
 for betterment. At a time when freedom of thought had led to 
 much suffering in France, and had resulted in setting up an in- 
 dependent government in America, England's government with- 
 stood progressive change. Her ruling authorities could not 
 graciously accept modifications in the administration of their 
 duties that would take from them traditional and coveted power. 
 For the landed gentry, the heritage from the past was parlia- 
 mentary position; for the legally learned the accorded right 
 was machination in their own behalf; for the great majority of 
 the population, it was obedience to what existed. Jeremy Bent- 
 ham resolutely assumed the task of changing the gentry's heri- 
 tage, correcting the legal wrongs, and securing larger political 
 rights for the great majority. As the result of his labors it is 
 now claimed that today "his doctrines have become so far part 
 of the common thought of the time that there is hardly an edu- 
 cated man who does not accept as too clear for argument truths 
 which were invisible till Bentham pointed them out. ' n 
 
 Unquestionably it may be said that Bentham was the great 
 
 1 Encyclopedia Brittanica, III, p. 748. 
 
 (26)
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 27 
 
 critical thinker of his age and country. 2 He possessed a mind 
 which enabled him to build, from minutest detail to finished 
 scheme, plans conducive to improvement in government and 
 legal administration. Being one of the first to introduce pre- 
 cision of thought into moral and political philosophy, Bentham 
 had of necessity to meet the attacks of those who were biased by 
 tradition, but his optimistic nature aided him in warding off 
 objections and encouraged him to continue along a line of great 
 resistance. Because of unswerving application to the promulga- 
 tion of his carefully analyzed schemes he is today classed with 
 Adam Smith as having brought about happiness and prosperity 
 for mankind during the past century and a quarter. 3 Chatterton 
 says that it is to England's lasting credit that she produced in 
 Jeremy Bentham the greatest practical law reformer of any 
 age or country. 4 Unhesitatingly he disclosed ''the fanatic and 
 illogical maxims on which technical systems were founded, he 
 derided their absurdities and exposed the flagrant evils which 
 in practice they produced. ' ' 5 
 
 Bentham reasoned that the problem of the legislator as a law- 
 maker was to further the enactment of laws which would secure 
 for everyone in the nation the greatest happiness. Those in 
 legislative position should, in considering a measure, weigh it 
 both with reference to present and future results. England's 
 fault had been to enact laws for immediate use as occasion de- 
 manded without considering their continued usefulness or 
 worth. Hence arose the growing inadequacy of accumulating 
 laws. Bentham presented a new principle for law-makers in urg- 
 ing that they formulate laws after having thoroughly reasoned 
 out the intention and the motive governing them. In the words 
 of Bentham a good motive gives birth to a good intention, a bad 
 motive to a bad intention, and "an invention is good or bad ac- 
 cording to the material consequences" resulting. 6 
 
 It was also his claim that the legislators should put aside their 
 personal, selfish interests and work for the genuine positive 
 good of the many. This claim was in direct contrast to the 
 
 2 Mill, Dissertations and Discussions, I, pp. 355ff. 
 
 3 Chatterton, Britain's Record, pp. 232ft. 
 
 4 Ibid., p. 260. 
 
 5 Atkinson, Jeremy Bentham, p. 138. 
 
 6 Davidson, Political Thought in England, pp. 57ff.
 
 28 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 statement made by the Bishop of Rochester in 1795, the sub- 
 stance of which was that ' ' he did not know what the great mass 
 of the people had to do with the laws except to obey them. ' ' 7 On 
 the legislators of a country rests a great responsibility which 
 has frequently been lightly assumed. The statement of Hel- 
 vetius, "The hidden source of a people's vices is always in its 
 legislation ; it is there that we must search if we would discover 
 and extirpate their roots" 8 is very bold; yet its truth cannot be 
 denied. 
 
 Bentham's training and experience caused him to see serious 
 defects in the laws of England and their administration. Hop- 
 ing to bring about improvement by striking at the roots of exist- 
 ing evils he labored earnestly to influence legislators to exert 
 their power in Parliament to that end. Lansdowne, Pitt, Rom- 
 illy, Mill, Brougham, Burdett, Wilberforce, and other leading 
 members of Parliament were among the friends and associates 
 of Bentham who were well aware of the need of reform in legis- 
 lation and in the administration of justice. Their discussions 
 upon public topics led to the introduction of bills in Parliament 
 that were rejected. The reason for their rejection is found in 
 Bentham's own words: "Though Lord Lansdowne has neither 
 the wish nor the power to do much good, yet the other lords are 
 as much below him as he is below what he ought to be. He 
 said to me, the lords were a wall against improvement." 9 How- 
 ever, each bill brought forth was effective in setting more and 
 more men to thinking and in time the thinking yielded a large 
 and goodly fruitage. Since 1832 England has legislated into ex- 
 istence many reforms and Sir Henry Maine said every one of 
 them could be traced to the teachings of Jeremy Bentham. 10 
 
 Bentham treated administration and legislation as sciences 
 demanding a foundation as technical and complete as mathe- 
 matics or natural philosophy, and a superstructure so wholly in 
 accord with the foundation that uniting the two, foundation and 
 superstructure, would yield an harmonious system that could 
 be subjected to rigid analysis yet stand. 11 His Constitutional 
 
 7 Rose, J. Holland, William Pitt and the Great War, p. 286. 
 
 8 Sidgwick, Miscellaneous Essays, p. 152. 
 
 9 Bowring, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, X, p. 122. 
 
 10 Maine, History of Early Institutions, p. 397. 
 
 11 Burton, John Hill, Introduction to the Study of the Works of Jeremy Ben- 
 tham, p. 5.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 29 
 
 Code, which is the crowning work of his writings, was written 
 after he had lived a full, rich lifetime devoted to a single in- 
 terest, viz., the betterment of humanity. The Constitutional Code 
 is characterized by completeness of fabric and accuracy of pro- 
 portion and forms a homogeneous whole which reveals the au- 
 thor's grasp of his subject. The structure and interrelated har- 
 mony of the Constitutional Code are such that one who was per- 
 sonally associated with its author said: "In no language does 
 any other such monument of the legislatorial labor of one mind 
 exist." 12 
 
 Many opinions advanced by Bentham were so at variance with 
 the accepted regulations of his day that they were naturally 
 set aside or coldly received. 13 But he did not lose faith in what 
 he had determined upon for he well knew that men cannot 
 change quickly institutions that had centuries of time for sup- 
 port. America 's Aaron Burr, friend and correspondent of Bent- 
 ham, said that a century of time would have to pass before the 
 philosopher would be understood, but that then he would be 
 adored. 14 As the result of persistent efforts, the opinions Bentham 
 presented gradually gained ground, and they have become so 
 welded into the nation's constitutional law that men do not now 
 stop to consider that the ideas were ever other than their own. 
 
 As Bentham worked he kept always in mind his principle of 
 utility and every item of his Constitutional Code will bear test- 
 ing by it. ' ' He did not say that the world had hitherto been ig- 
 norant of usch a principle ; * * * He found indeed that it was 
 at the root of all systems of religion and morality ; that all codes 
 of law were more or less founded upon it; and that it was, in 
 all places and at ail times, an unseen and unacknowledged guide 
 to human action. But he was the first to bring forth this guide, 
 to prove to the world that it should be followed implicitly, and 
 to show hitherto, from not keeping their guide in view, men had 
 often wandered from the right path. ' The good of the commun- 
 ity,' 'the interests of the public,' 'the welfare of mankind,' all 
 expressions to be found in the mouths of those who talk of the 
 proper ends of action, were so many acknowledgments of the 
 Greatest happiness Principle, and vague attempts to embody 
 
 12 Ibid., p. 12. 
 
 13 Ibid., p. 8. 
 
 14 Parton, Life of Aaron Burr, II, p. 171.
 
 30 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 it." 18 Details from start to finish are fully worked out in the 
 Constitutional Code and it is because Bentham gave the details 
 of the operation of his principle that the principle itself has 
 been accepted. 16 
 
 Declaring that all departments of England's government were 
 so administered as to enhance the power of the official incum- 
 bents and that they had "at all times had an interest and a de- 
 sire operating in direct opposition to those of their subjects," 17 
 Bentham claimed first importance for a constitutional code be- 
 cause all other codes would depend upon it. 18 Among the first 
 principles introductory to his code was: "The actual end of 
 government is, in every political community, the greatest hap- 
 piness of those, whether one or many, by whom the powers of 
 government are exercised." 19 This principle was said to be ex- 
 emplified in the Anglo-American United States because it has a 
 constitution based upon the principle of utility. 20 Contrasted 
 with this was the fact that "The English monarchy has no con- 
 stitution for it has no all-comprehensive constitutional code.' 21 
 Because fortune or providence is the element that determines 
 who shall be the ruler in a monarchy and human judgment is 
 the element that determines the ruler of a representative democ- 
 racy Bentham claimed superiority of the latter over the form- 
 er. 22 The constitutional branch of the law in an absolute mon- 
 archy aims at the greatest happiness of one individual and the 
 constitutional branch of the representative democracy aims at 
 the happiness of the greatest number. 23 
 
 By his presentation and analysis of the various departments 
 in representative government, Bentham developed a complete 
 and comprehensive administrative scheme. The relation of civil, 
 penal, and military law, the law of procedure, and financial af- 
 fairs to the constitutional law of a representative democracy was 
 pointed out in such a way as to show that all are linked together, 
 and their harmonious cooperation results in the well-being 
 
 15 Burton, John Hill, op. cit., pp. 19ff. 
 
 16 Ibid., p. 20. 
 
 17 Bowring, op. cit., IX, p. 2. 
 
 18 Ibid., IX. p. 3. 
 
 19 Ibid., IX, p. 6. 
 
 20 Ibid., IX, p. 9. 
 
 21 Ibid., IX, p .9. 
 2'.' Ibid., IX., p. 10. 
 23 Ibid., IX, p. 10.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 31 
 
 of the nation at large. Bentham set forth the evils in the sys- 
 tems of absolute and limited monarchies and then presented the 
 corresponding advantages of a democracy. By means of this 
 analysis he developed the superiority of a representative democ- 
 racy over a monarchy, justly claiming that where many bear 
 responsibility, many have direct interest, and the maximum of 
 happiness results. 
 
 He explained the many conditions in England conducive to 
 corruption, and attributed the extensive yielding to corruption on 
 the part of governmental officials to the fact that the ones in 
 hereditary positions had power to offer tempting opportunities 
 to sub-officials. ' ' The members of the official establishment have, 
 in their quality of corruptors, or would-be corruptors, their ac- 
 complices, and in the natural course of things, their confeder- 
 ates."- 4 Again he wrote: "In England, in virtue of the pre- 
 established harmony, so long as the Constitution stands, cor- 
 ruption with its etceteras is predestined to go on in a state of 
 perpetual advance: never to be stationary, much less retro- 
 grade." 25 In contradistinction to this he said: "Although the 
 complete exclusion of corruption is too much to hope for, what 
 is not too much to hope for is the bringing it about to a degree 
 less than it exists at present even in the United States." 28 He 
 held that the administration of government by elective officials 
 dependent upon the supreme constitutive secures the desired 
 ends of government. The officials in the scheme developed in 
 Bentham 's Constitutional Code were the legislature, the prime 
 minister, the ministers, the judiciary, the sublegislatures, and 
 local officials. The Code analyzed and explained the duties and 
 the compensation for each official and showed that, through co- 
 operation with the supreme constitutive, the best in government 
 for the nation could be secured. 
 
 Comparing the two forms of government the author of the 
 Constitutional Code said: " Pure monarchy is the rock which, 
 having been placed and poised by accident the push of a finger 
 has sufficed to move: broad at bottom, pointed at top, a repre- 
 sentative democracy is a pyramid." 27 His attitude toward the 
 
 24 Ibid., IX, p. 67. 
 
 25 Ibid., IX, p. 73. 
 
 26 Ibid., IX, p. 76. 
 
 27 Ibid., IX, p. 133.
 
 32 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 hereditary monarch was definitely one of opposition for he 
 could not bring himself to believe that such a ruler had the in- 
 terests of the people at heart. This is evidenced, for example, 
 in his statement : " In a monarchy, be the conduct of the ruler 
 ever so mischievous, the difficulty of dislocating him is pro- 
 digious, and scarcely ever can any change be effected without 
 either a homicide, or a war which is an aggregate of homicides 
 by hundreds and thousands ; whereas in a representative democ- 
 racy, the rulers may be, and continually are, all of them to- 
 gether, though it be merely in the way of precaution, and with- 
 out evil actually experienced at their hands, dislocated with as 
 much facility as a servant is by his master, in domestic life. 28 
 Bentham being contemporaneous with George III saw in him 
 living evidence of what he considered gross abuse of the people 's 
 rights in the daring assumption of power on the part of that 
 ruler. Undoubtedly the conduct of George III and the progress 
 of the democratic United States of America were the two ex- 
 tremes that caused Bentham to say that the republican form of 
 government was the only form that would work out successfully 
 upon his principle of utility as a foundation. With the passing 
 of the years the powers of England's monarch have been less- 
 ened to such an extent and so much is he controlled by ' ' the will 
 of the governed" that practically the only respect in which 
 Bentham 's view has fallen short of realization is that the king- 
 ship is still hereditary. 
 
 England's approach to democracy has rested also upon the 
 make-up of Parliament. Bentham desired to have its member- 
 ship composed of elective officials, placed in their positions by the 
 universal manhood suffrage exercised in an unrestricted intelli- 
 gent manner. Hence, he advocated manhood suffrage and the 
 enployment of the secret ballot. He emphasized the unfairness 
 that marked the returns of members to Parliament and the utter 
 lack of a voice in government matters on the part of the millions 
 most vitally affected by legislation. Little by little his scheme 
 for wider franchise gained supporters among leading statesmen 
 and publicists such as Brougham, Dunham, Peel, Romilly, Hunt, 
 Hobhouse, O'Connell, Place, Cobbett and Burdett. Practically 
 forty years of discussion and the defeat of several bills resulted 
 
 . IX. p. 103.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 33 
 
 in the Reform Bill of 1832. This bill by the disfranchisement 
 of "rotten boroughs," the increased representation of the large 
 manufacturing centres, and the modification of the franchise so 
 that more householders became voters, shows marked results of 
 Bentham's influence. 
 
 Through the last thirty years of his life Bentham knew that 
 his doctrines were spreading, that men 's minds were broadening, 
 that the masses were awakening to a true sense of their rights as 
 voters and to an understanding of England's need of a fairly- 
 elected, representative legislature. The Reform Bill of 1832 
 acted as an opening wedge to further parliamentary reform 
 which may be attributed to Bentham because the ideas promul- 
 gated by him were developed through the efforts of his disciples. 
 His personal friends, Romilly, Brougham and James Mill, were 
 among the members of Parliament who were very influential in 
 bringing about these measures for improvement. In 1835 the 
 Municipal Corporations Act dealing with the municipal govern- 
 ment of the boroughs, built wholly upon Bentham's principles, 
 was passed and thus the boroughs obtained a democratic basis 
 which was not formerly theirs. 
 
 The rights of the people were continually and consistently 
 fostered by able leaders in the decade immediately following 
 Bentham's death. Foremost among these leaders were Richard 
 Cobden and John Bright through whose zealous efforts the people 
 were educated in political matters at great mass meetings, while 
 the members of the House of Commons listened spellbound to 
 orations of Bright which sounded throughout the doctrines of 
 Bentham. The spirit of democracy, aroused by the writings of 
 the philosopher of Queen's Square Place, yielded results from 
 time to time that aided greatly in bringing into actual use the 
 scientific legislation upon a democratic basis which is today 
 England's proud possession. 
 
 The additional gains of the people with reference to the fran- 
 chise are seen in the passage of bills which marked important 
 advances in democracy. The Act of 1867 outstepped the Bill of 
 1832 in a most natural manner. More householders, more rent- 
 ers, more workingmen were given the right to vote, and thus 
 more of the humble individuals were given opportunity to stand 
 by the side of aristocratic individuals and "count for one." 
 The Act of 1884, since it excluded from the franchise only three
 
 34 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 classes of people domestic servants, those who had no fixed 
 abode, and bachelors living with their parents moved forward 
 practically to manhood suffrage. It was very close to a verifica- 
 tion of Bentham 's statement : ' ' The governed cannot all of them 
 be exercising the immediate powers of government, but at stated 
 times they may all of them exercise the function of declaring 
 who the individuals shall be by whom those same immediate 
 powers shall be exercised. ' ' 29 
 
 During the ministry of Lord Salisbury in 1888 an act was 
 passed by Parliament which secured for London and the rural 
 counties municipal administration such as Bentham advocated. 
 This act with the measure of 1835, makes it possible to say that 
 England and Wales were placed distinctly upon a democratic 
 basis for the election of municipal officials. The substance of 
 the foregoing measure is purely Benthamic and reveals again 
 the influence of the philosopher of Queen's Square Place. 
 
 With reference to woman's suffrage Bentham took a decided 
 stand. In harmony with his principle, he claimed that there was 
 no reason why a person of one sex should have less happiness 
 than a person of the other sex and that the happiness of a person 
 of the female sex constituted as large a part of universal happi- 
 ness as the happiness of a person of the male sex. 30 He emphat- 
 ically stated that woman was as capable of mastering the tech- 
 nique of the franchise as man. He proved that woman in theory 
 was as capable of holding governmental position as man, clinch- 
 ing his argument by saying: "In no two male reigns was 
 England as prosperous as in the two female reigns of Elizabeth 
 and Anne. ' ' 31 Because the thought of woman 's voting was very 
 radical and because his contemporaries did not look up the his- 
 tory of it, derision very naturally greeted Bentham 's advocacy 
 of woman's suffrage. When John Stuart Mill in 1867 moved 
 an amendment to Disraeli's bill in which he suggested that the 
 word "persons" be substituted for "men," the amendment pro- 
 voked great amusement and was defeated by a vote of one hun- 
 dred and ninety-six to seventy-three. However, the year 1868 
 was marked by the formation of a "National Society for Wo- 
 men's Suffrage" and the next year saw the first franchise 
 
 20 Ibid., IX, p. 95. 
 aoibid., IX, p. 108. 
 31 Ibid., IX, p. 108.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 35 
 
 privilege granted to woman. Since 1869 successive acts of legis- 
 lation have very materially extended the citizenship privileges 
 and political rights of woman. 
 
 In the exercise of the limited franchise of his time, Bentham 
 saw so much that was grossly wrong in the practice of bribery 
 and intimindation that he wrote freely upon these evils and 
 pointed out the injustice of a system that permitted them. To 
 obviate these wrongs he presented the plan of the secret ballot. 
 Resolutions presented in Parliament June 2, 1818, by Sir Fran- 
 cis Burdett, drafted by Bentham, had included universal man- 
 hood suffrage and the ballot. Tories and Whigs both opposed 
 the resolutions and they were lost, but the impetus given to the 
 matter gradually increased until 1872 when the passage of the 
 Ballot Act provided for the ballot and the voting booth. 
 
 The English Constitution of today, contrasted with the con- 
 stitution of Bentham 's day, reveals a significant transformation. 
 This change is seen and not seen, for as Bagehot says, "the an- 
 cient and ever altering constitution is like an old man who still 
 wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth ; 
 what you see of him is still the same; what you do not see is 
 wholly altered." 32 As early as 1776 Bentham had determined 
 that Blackstone 's phrase, ' ' The House of Commons freely chosen 
 by the people from among themselves," 33 should become true. 
 The House of Commons today elected by a wide electorate is 
 "a corporate entity in which the supreme sovereignty is veste- 
 ed. ' ' 3 * It is the factor which determines the membership of the 
 English ministry, a department invisible in Bentham 's day but 
 today "the great driving wheel that moves the entire constitu- 
 tional machinery. ' ' 35 It is because legislation, effective and scien- 
 tific, and based upon utility, has become a reality that the 
 English people are now exercising political rights which are the 
 fundamentals of a genuine democracy. "The mediaeval mon- 
 archy has been finally transformed into the hereditary republic, 
 in which, under the ancient and still useful forms of the throne 
 and the regalia the English people is king. ' ' 3<J 
 
 32 Taylor, The Origin and Grouth of the English Constitution, III, p. 592. 
 
 33 Montague, Bentham'a A Fragment of Government, p. 183. 
 
 34 Taylor, op. cit., I, p. 593. 
 
 35 /oirf., I, p. 593. 
 
 36 Ibid., I, p. 594.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 LEGAL AND JUDICIAL REFORM 
 
 Jeremiah Bentham desired above all things that his son Jer- 
 emy should become a renowned lawyer, win honor in the field 
 of jurisprudence, and eventually attain the woolsack. The son 
 mastered the lawyer's profession, but as has already been point- 
 ed out, he saw in it, as it was practised, much of which he could 
 not approve. At a time when, on the one hand, many could not 
 think and do for themselves, and on the other hand, the ones in 
 governmental authority were thinking and doing mainly for 
 their own interests, Jeremy Bentham was considering the prob- 
 lems of humanity for humanity's sake. Among other things he 
 wished to expose the wrongs that professional men kept con- 
 cealed in the winding processes of the law, processes that were 
 beyond the understanding of the ignorant masses. 1 The un- 
 fairness of long trials and the intricacy of legal procedure, 
 characteristic of court action in England for many years, Ben- 
 tham desired to see removed. This caused him to determine 
 upon a very different career from the one planned for him by 
 his father. 
 
 For the nineteen-twentieths of England 's people who were un- 
 tutored, uneducated, held down by the tradition, Bentham be- 
 came the champion who unflinchingly exposed evils, suggested 
 remedies, and presented plans for reform. In the face of times 
 and conditions that for years were at variance with his ideas, 
 he labored untiringly to secure the removal of wrongs that had 
 long been endured, for he had early in his philosophical think- 
 ing reached the conclusion that there should be more justice 
 for the masses in England. According to Bentham 's philosophy 
 there would be more justice if the institutions of men were 
 built upon the principle of utility, which simply means that 
 which is conducive to happiness, or "the greatest happiness of 
 the greatest number. ' ' 2 
 
 England's mass of laws "reared with incredible labour, 
 
 1 Westminster Review, XIV (1887), pp. 362-354. 
 
 2 Mere. History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, IV, pp. 142ff. 
 
 (36)
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 37 
 
 through a long succession of ages" 3 was characterized chiefly by 
 confusion due to haphazard construction and enactment. 4 Having 
 been made without a plan, the laws utterly lacked system ; having 
 been enacted piece-meal, frequently to fit cases for immediate 
 use, statutes became incorporated into the body of the law and 
 remaind there. Knowledge of the law was the possession of the 
 legally learned, so the people did not know the law nor its inter- 
 pretation. Consequently many unwittingly broke the law and 
 suffered penalties that were cruelly unjust. 
 
 From his own analysis of the law Bentham could say: "The 
 substantive part of it, whether as written in books or expounded 
 by judges, a chaos, fathomless and boundless; the huge and 
 monstrous mass being made up of fiction, tautology, technicality, 
 circuity, irregularity, and inconsistency : the administrative part 
 of it, a system of exquisitely contrived chicanery ; a system made 
 up of abuses ; a system which constantly places the interest of the 
 judicial minister in opposition to his duty, and in the very pro- 
 portion in which it serves his ends, it defeats the ends of justice ; 
 a system of self-authorized and unpunishable depredation; a 
 system which encourages mendacity, both by reward and punish- 
 ment; a system which puts fresh arms into the hands of the 
 injurer, to annoy and distress the injured; in a word, a system 
 which maximizes delay, sale, and denial of justice." 5 Bentham 
 attacked the ' ' fabric reared by the most exalted intellects, ' ' 6 and 
 labored to direct the thoughts and the efforts of influential men 
 to the accomplishment of legal reform. 
 
 The history of English legal administration contains many 
 cases characterized by great injustices of charge, procedure, and 
 penalty. As an illustration may be cited the case of Mr. Price, 
 a clergyman for many years in a parish church. In behalf of the 
 striking weavers of Kidderminster he had written some articles 
 that were simply explanatory of the situation. He was arrested 
 for libel and tried. The details of the case clearly show that he 
 was not guilty of the charge brought against him. At the con- 
 clusion of the trial, however, he was declared guilty, his posses- 
 sions were sold, his family scattered, and he was condemned to a 
 
 3 Bowring, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, XI. p. 84. 
 
 4 Ibid., I, p. 162. 
 
 5 Ibid., IX, p. 85. 
 
 6 Ibid., XI, p. 84.
 
 38 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 year's term of imprisonment. The expense to the prosecutors 
 was from seventeen hundred to two thousand pounds. 7 Bentham 
 felt that such wrong should be rendered impossible, that the 
 people should have a clear understanding of the law, and that 
 legal adepts should no longer have opportunity of obtaining un- 
 fair fees. He exposed the many devices employed by the courts, 
 described the long winding processes that ensued before a hear- 
 ing was granted, showed the difficulty litigants experienced in 
 getting to distant courts, elaborated the method of bandying 
 cases from court to court, and explained the injustice of using 
 unintelligible Latin and Law-French. 
 
 Clearly one of England's great needs was a code of laws that 
 could be understood and known in minutest detail. Such a code, 
 Bentham claimed, would need to meet four conditions, namely, 
 completeness, the fewest possible number of rules qualified by 
 generality, the expression of rules in logical order, and the em- 
 ployment of uniform terminology. 9 Confident that he could 
 draft a code that would embody the comprehensiveness mention- 
 ed, Bentham set to work. 10 "With powers of mind fitted for an 
 undertaking thus stupendous, such as in no age or country had 
 ever been equalled, or even so much as approached; with an 
 ardour and energy such as in no cause, bad or good, had ever 
 been surpassed, he betook himself to the accomplishment of this 
 work." 11 The more he was criticized the harder he worked. 
 ' ' Long and earnestly did he labour without any apparent effect ; 
 but at last some impression was made; the scales fell from the 
 eyes of men of powerful intellects in commanding stations. ' ' 12 It 
 was finally admitted that the law of England needed to be re- 
 constructed. 
 
 Bentham divided legislation into two great parts internal 
 law which concerned the ordinances pertaining to the individual 
 community, and international law which concerned the relations 
 between different communities. Being chiefly interested in in- 
 ternal law he constructed a code for it called Pannomion. He 
 arranged this code so as to embrace four minor codes, Constitu- 
 
 7 Bowring, op. ctt., XI, pp. 48ff. 
 
 8 Ibid., V, pp. 8ff. 
 
 8 Montague, A Fragment on Government, p. 49. 
 
 10 Bow ring, op. eit., XI, p. 85. 
 
 11 Ibid., XI, p. 85. 
 
 12 /bid., XI p. 86.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 39 
 
 tional, Civil, Penal, and Administrative. The end he had in 
 view was " Conduciveness to the maximum of the aggregate of 
 happiness." 13 
 
 With reference to the result of Bentham's codifying, Montague 
 says that it did not consist of a complete system but of many 
 large fragments that give an adequate idea of what the system 
 would have been if finished, and that while he did not replace nor 
 reconstruct English law as a whole, he furnished many valuable 
 hints which have been adopted into English law. 14 What Bent- 
 ham did towards legal reform proved to be a good foundation 
 upon which others could successfully build. 15 "When we re- 
 collect how much that Bentham condemned has since been 
 abrogated, and how much that Bentham proposed has since been 
 adopted, and when we consider how generally in either instance, 
 the results have justified his counsels, we must allow that for 
 industry, for acuteness, and for an enlarged love of his kind he 
 takes one of the highest places among those who have discussed 
 the theory of legal reform. ' ' 16 
 
 Bentham declared the need of a national code of laws. ' ' The 
 universal code ought to be promulgated to all. The particular 
 codes ought to be set before the classes to which they respectively 
 refer." 17 An understanding of the law should, according to Ben- 
 tham, be gained in school. The universal code should be made the 
 chief book. ' ' The most important parts of it might be committed 
 to memory, and repeated as a catechism ; that for example, which 
 contains the definition of offenses and the reasons for their being 
 ranged into classes." 18 Through this it would be possible for 
 young people to know by the age of sixteen, without undue 
 effort, the laws of the land better than the gray-headed lawyers 
 of Bentham's day knew them. 19 Those who planned to follow 
 certain employments should be required to make a copy of the 
 laws pertaining to that employment as an aid to a mastery of 
 the subject. 20 The laws should also be presented as a part of 
 
 is Ibid., XI, p. 86. 
 
 14 Montague, op. cit., p. 43. 
 
 15 Bowring, op. cit., XI, p. 86. 
 
 16 Montague, op. cit., pp. 57ff, 
 
 17 Bowring, op. cit., I, p. 158. 
 IB Ibid., I, p. 158. 
 
 19 Ibid., I. p. 158. 
 
 20 Ibid., I, p. 158.
 
 40 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 divine services, being read through several times a year. Laws 
 prescribing regulations relative to public places, markets, 
 theatres, highways, should be posted in those places. That people 
 of various nationalities might know the laws, they should be 
 translated into their respective languages. 21 
 
 In order to make a study of the laws interesting Bentham 
 said that the reasons for their existence should be given. 22 The 
 why and the wherefore ever add much to the comprehension of 
 difficult subjects. "Without reasons, all laws may be condemned 
 or defended with equal blindness. " " The more clearly the laws 
 are understood, the more easily will they be retained. The 
 reasons annexed will serve as a kind of technical memory : they 
 will serve as a species of cement, by which to unite all those 
 regulations which would otherwise appear as fragments and 
 dispersed ruins. ' ' Also, laws that are founded upon reason make 
 themselves a part of the mind, become woven into the logic of the 
 people, influence generally the moral nature and eventually 
 govern public opinion. Naturally obedience to the just laws, 
 known and understood, would follow and it would be an 
 obedience scarcely distinguishable from liberty. 
 
 When Bentham lived at Lincoln's Inn he had come into close 
 contact with the working of England's judicial system. Its 
 wrongs were as evident to him as the wrongs in England 's system 
 of laws. As the legal wrongs were largely due to the influence 
 of mystery and tradition, so, too, were the judicial wrongs. 
 Magna Charta's statement, " Justice shall be denied to no man, 
 justice shall be sold to no man," 23 was not being carried out in 
 practice. "Denied it is," said Bentham, "to nine-tenths of the 
 people; to the remaining tenth it is sold at an unconscionable 
 price a sale by the state as pernicious, in point of political 
 effect, as one for the benefit of a king or a judge." 2 * "That in- 
 strument of power which calls itself a Court of Justice has in 
 every community without exception, had for the object of its 
 institution, not justice, but its opposite, injustice: injustice in 
 the shape of depredation and oppression." 25 
 
 21 Ibid., I, p. 158. 
 
 22 Ibid., I, p. 161. 
 
 23 Magna Charta, paragraph 40. 
 
 24 Atkinson, Jeremy Bentham, p. 130 
 26 Ibid., IX, p. 455.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 41 
 
 The judicial system, a product of the centuries that had pass- 
 ed, regarded the king as the source of justice ; it had a multiplied 
 number of functionaries whose duties seemed to be to obtain the 
 continuance of respect for their labors, and also to remain 
 ignorant of conditions that might reveal the enormity of wrong 
 in the department that was clothed in ermine. When a matter 
 of controversy arose the only thing to do was to confide its 
 untangling to those who professionally represented right and 
 justice. The endless continuance of the case, due to the varied 
 processes through which it must go, was not questioned but 
 simply accepted as necessary. Neither did a litigant think that 
 the expense attendant upon a suit should be regarded as other 
 than necessary, for the respect which he had been reared to 
 attribute to all who had become administrators of justice held 
 his thoughts in abeyance. The system tended to develop corrup- 
 tion within itself. 
 
 These wrongs and the corruption were fully evident to Bent- 
 ham and he did not hesitate to reveal them to the people. So 
 plain to him was it that utility was needed for all concerned that 
 it was not difficult for him to present the existing ills, to explain 
 the needed reforms, and to offer a scheme for judicial justice. 
 This scheme he presented fully in his Principles of Judicial 
 Procedure, and Rationale of Evidence. Referring to the latter 
 work in 1829 Edward Livingston, who had been Congressman 
 from New York State and state representative of Louisiana, 
 wrote Bentham as follows: "Hereafter no one can, in Criminal 
 Jurisprudence, propose any favorable change that you have not 
 recommended, or make any wise improvement, that your superior 
 sagacity has not suggested."- 6 
 
 Some of the existing ills which Bentham especially emphasized 
 were, in his own words: (1) "Imposition of law taxes; putting 
 out of the protection of the law all those who are unable to pay 
 the tax. (2) Imposition of law fees, payable to the functionaries 
 of justice : functionaries employed in giving such security as is 
 given against injury from internal adversaries; and who might 
 be sufficiently paid by a minute part of the expense employed in 
 the payment of those engaged in giving security against injury 
 from foreign adversaries. (3) Audience refused to the parties 
 
 id.. XI, p 23.
 
 42 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 in the suit : the defendant not compelled to meet the pursuer in 
 the presence of the judge : nor the pursuer admitted in person 
 to state to the judge his demand, and the foundation on which it 
 
 rests." 27 
 
 As remedies he proposed the removal of law taxes, and law 
 fees; speedy trial; presence at the trial of plaintiff, defendant 
 and witnesses. Bentham began at the very foundation itself of 
 judicature and arranged a system for its development that would 
 be provocative of improvement. Among other things he held 
 that judges should be definitely trained through education, prac- 
 tice, and experience for the administering of justice; 28 that 
 accessibility to the court of justice should be possible any hour 
 of the day or night for Justice should sleep only when Injustice 
 sleeps ; that provisions for fair cost of justice should be made. 29 
 
 Bentham 's plan of judicial improvement was not accepted 
 when he presented it, by those most vitally concerned. However, 
 in harmony with his opinions law taxes have been abolished, law 
 fees have been reduced, and the administration of justice has 
 been placed upon such a basis that England is proud of her 
 judicial system. England's writers admit the evils that used 
 to exist and they set forth in lengthy discussions the wise adjust- 
 ments that have occurred in the past century. 30 
 
 As John Stuart Mill once remarked: "The changes which 
 have been made and the greater changes which will be made, in 
 our institutions, are not the work of philosophers, but of the in- 
 terests and the instincts of large portions of society recently 
 grown into strength. But Bentham gave voice to those interests 
 and instincts; until he spoke out, those who found our institu- 
 tions unsuited to them did not dare to say so, did not dare con- 
 sciously to think so ; they had never heard the excellence of those 
 institutions questioned by cultivated men, by men of acknowledg- 
 ed intellect ; and it is not in the nature of uninstructed minds to 
 resist the united authority of the instructed. Bentham broke 
 the spell. It was not Bentham by his own writings ; it was Bent- 
 ham through the minds and the pens which those writings fed 
 
 27 Ibid., IX, p. 455. 
 
 28 Ibid., II, p. 22. 
 
 29 Ibid., IX, p. 515. 
 
 30 Ibid., IX, pp. 522ff.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 43 
 
 through the men in more direct contact with the world into whom 
 his spirit passed. ' ' 31 
 
 31 Mill. John Stuart. Dissertations and Discussicns, I, p. 832.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 SOME INFLUENCES OF BENTHAM IN ENGLAND'S 
 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 Social conditions in England at the approach of the nineteenth 
 century showed crying need of improvement. The distinct line 
 drawn between the titled and mercantile classes, the discrimina- 
 tion that existed between the governing and the governed, were 
 not conducive to developing equality of individuals or general 
 welfare and happiness. Until privilege, opportunity, and posi- 
 tion, in and out of the governments should become possible for all 
 without requirement of noble birth and hereditary wealth, that 
 equality which is the basic feature of democracy could not exist. 
 Feeling that under existing conditions property was the first 
 essential for political position, and considering money the initial 
 step towards the possession of property, the laboring classes 
 strove for money and for land. The attainment of the goal was 
 placed in the future and the workers energetically applied them- 
 selves to various activities, letting matters of government for the 
 time being rest with the gentry. England 's great mass of work- 
 ing people being unenlightened did not comprehend wherein they 
 were at fault, did not understand that by their application to 
 financial gains, meagre as these were, they were pushing forward 
 in a sordid way that which would but increase the evils already 
 existing in their country's social conditions. 
 
 From his knowledge of human nature, of the thinking man's 
 desires and ambitions, and of the government's usurpation of 
 authority, Bentham saw the utter impossibility, under the cir- 
 cumstances, of the laboring man's attainment of the equality 
 which was his right. He apprehended the need of the cooperation 
 of classes, of harmony of interests, of the breaking down of age- 
 long barriers. Bentham 's view was that the welfare of a country 
 is naturally grounded upon the condition of its inhabitants, and 
 its upward development in various channels is proportionate to 
 the elimination of social injustices. As he analyzed matters, the 
 social wrongs of his day could be overcome by the employment of 
 
 (44)
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 45 
 
 his principle of utility inasmuch as it was based upon intellectual, 
 educational, practical, ethical, and social ideals, ideals that tend- 
 ed to the "greatest happiness of the greatest number." From 
 the development and application of these ideals would come the 
 welfare of each and all. 
 
 Again, he held that the betterment of individuals was an out- 
 growth of experience, which is the source of knowledge and the 
 determinant of the worth of moral ideas. Moral ideas have a 
 rank, or position, which, according to Bentham, is governed by 
 the feeling of pleasure or pain, and he attempted to show that 
 pleasure or pain depends upon seven circumstances or conditions, 
 viz., intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, propinquity 
 or remoteness, fecundity, purity, and extent. 1 Lawmakers con- 
 sidering a matter of legislation scientifically should determine 
 actually the sum total of pleasures and pains in it, balance the 
 pleasures against the pains, and so arrive at the value. This 
 method may be shortened for a given community because, owing 
 to the process of evolution, the community may be organized 
 under customs, laws, rules, and institutions that are the result 
 of many and varied experiences. 2 
 
 Working upon that which was already in existence, Benthaia 
 aimed to show that the employment of utility as a means towards 
 betterment through effective legislation was intensely practical; 
 that utility could be so embodied in state and national legislation 
 that it would touch directly the living activities of men in a way 
 to advance society to higher levels. 
 
 As an aid to employing the pleasure-pain standard of measure- 
 ment in acts of legislation, Bentham classified fourteen simple 
 pleasures, namely, sense, wealth, skill, amity, good name, power, 
 piety, benevolence, malevolence, memory, imagination, expecta- 
 tion, association, relief; and twelve simple pains, namely, priva- 
 tion, senses, awkwardness, enmity, ill name, piety, benevolence, 
 malevolence, memory, expectation, imagination, association. 3 Thus 
 from the analysis of the fundamental elements in an individual 's 
 life, Bentham sought to construct a foundation for legislation, 
 aiming to reach results for the people by having legislators so 
 
 1 Bowring, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, I, p. 16. 
 
 2 Davidson, Political Thought in England, p. 53. 
 8 Bowringr, (.p. cit., I, p. 17.
 
 46 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 responsive to his scheme that legislation would be enacted with 
 a view to betterment in all departments of social life. 4 
 
 In considering the problem of England's poor, one very soon 
 sees why Bentham had so great an interest in the amelioration of 
 social conditions. The legislation enacted for the poor of the 
 realm since its inception had not secured the best results either 
 for the unfortunate poor or for the national purse. In 1536 
 Parliament had passed an act by means of which parishes were 
 required to provide for the needs of their own mendicants. A 
 poor rate, as the term came to be understood in the nineteenth 
 century, was not then thought of and the money needed was 
 obtained by voluntary contributions; "the 'collector' appeared 
 in a form no more formidable than that of the parish priest, who, 
 from his pulpit, exhorted his congregation to give according to 
 their means, and not to forget the poor-box as they passed out. ' ' 5 
 The year 1551 marked the first step in the system of poor relief 
 which slowly developed through the succeeding centuries. 
 ' ' Collectors were appointed whose duty it was to make record of 
 the name, residence, and occupation of all who apparently were 
 able to give, as well as of those whose helpless distress entitled 
 them to relief. In the words of the ancient enactment, the said 
 
 4 It is interesting to note in Ward's Applied Sociology the manner in which he em- 
 ploys two words coined by Bentham minimization and maximization in describing 
 the "new ethics." "The new ethics has for its aim the minimization of pain and the 
 maximization of pleasure." Proceeding in his discussion, Ward develops, in a man- 
 ner quite Benthamic, the idea that the "new ethics" 'is dynamic and "recognizes that 
 the aummum bonum is the social weal, and aims, as light is vouchsafed, to labor for 
 that end." Basing a part of Chapter III upon the "Claims of Feeling" Ward 
 reaches a summary that harmonizes well with the pleasure-pain theory of Bentham. 
 "In a pain economy, by the terms of the definition, the pains exceed the pleasures. 
 If we give the pains the minus and the pleasures the plus sign, the algebraic sum is 
 minus. If a man in his business finds that the debts regularly exceed the credits, he 
 concludes that he is conducting his business at a loss. Existence may be looked upon 
 as a business. If its debits exceed its credits, it is being conducted at a loss. * 
 Without a surplus of agreeable over disagreeable feeling existence is worthless or 
 worse than worthless. With such a surplus it has a value exactly proportional to the 
 amount of that surplus. The purpose of applied sociology is to point out the way 
 of first getting rid of this long-standing deficit, and then of accumulating the max- 
 imum possible surplus." 
 
 Ward emphasizes the need of scientific legislation and optimistically states that 
 attractive legislation can be and will be achieved. Bentham developed clearly the 
 idea of scientific legislation and the later writer in his discussion of it declares : 
 "Nothing, however, worthy of the name of scientific legislation, i. e., legislative in- 
 vention in the interests of the people, is possible except in a democracy in which 
 all the people are intelligent, so that the representatives of the people are persons of 
 considerable mental development." 
 
 5 Greenwood, Seven Curses of London, p. 425.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 47 
 
 collectors were to "gently ask every man and woman, that they 
 of their charity will give weekly to the relief of the poor." To 
 give, however, remained optional no more severe pressure was 
 brought to bear against a "grudger" than that the minister or 
 churchwardens were sent to him to exhort him to charity ; but so 
 many "curmudgeons" remained inexorable that the voluntary 
 system continued in force no longer than twelve years. Then the 
 statute regulating poor relief was remodelled ; and it was declar- 
 ed good law that any person able to contribute, and declining to 
 do so, might be summoned before a justice, who would tax him 
 according to his discretion, and commit him to gool if he still 
 remained obdurate." 6 
 
 During these years the professional beggars, taking advantage 
 of the poor fund, increased in number and Parliament attempted 
 to cope with them by passing a law in 1572 stating that ' ' all per- 
 sons whole and mighty in body, able to labour, not having land 
 or master, nor using any lawful merchandise, craft, or mystery, 
 and all common labourers, able in body, loitering and refusing 
 to work for such reasonable wage as is commonly given, should, 
 for the first offense be grievously whipped, and burned through 
 the gristle of the right ear with a hot iron of the compass of an 
 inch about." 7 
 
 Among the later enactments were the statutes of Elizabeth for 
 the years 1598 and 1601, under the provisions of which the 
 English system of poor relief continued for practically three 
 hundred years. In the former act appeared the statement: 
 *' taxation of every inhabitant, parson, vicar, and other, and of 
 every occupier of lands, houses, tithes, mines, etc., such sums of 
 money as they shall require for providing a sufficient stock of 
 flax, hemp, wool, and other ware or stuff to set the poor on work, 
 and also competent sums for relief of lame, blind, old, and im- 
 potent persons. ' ' 8 From the latter act three great principles are 
 derived: " (1) that every parish was to be primarily responsible 
 for the maintenance of its own poor, and not for the poor of other 
 parishes; persons who could not or would not work were to 
 remain in the parish in which they were born, or in which they 
 had lived for the last three years; (2) that the means for the 
 
 6 Ibid., p. 215. 
 
 7 Ibid., pp. 215-216. 
 
 8 Ibid., p. 216.
 
 maintenance of the poor was to be provided by a parochial tax r 
 to be imposed upon the landed property of the parish by parish 
 officers as a general and uniform burden; (3) the administration 
 of the system was to be vested in church-wardens, and in two, 
 three, or four substantial householders to be appointed annually 
 by justices of the peace as 'overseers' of the poor." 9 Naturally 
 there were many among the so-called pauper class who infringed 
 upon the aims of the laws, and many among the overseers who 
 abused charges entrusted to them. 
 
 Approaching the close of the seventeenth century there was 
 the Act of 1691 "passed to lessen 'the many inconveniences' 
 which, said the preamble, 'do daily arise by reason of the un- 
 limited powers of the overseers, who do frequently upon frivolous 
 pretences, but chiefly for their own private ends, give relief to 
 what persons and number they see fit,' " 10 Gradually the ad- 
 ministration of the poor relief was transferred more and more 
 from the officers of the parish to the justices ' ' until in the latter 
 half of the eighteenth century the Justices were practically 
 supreme. 11 
 
 This greatly affected the social life of England. ' ' One of the 
 most mischievous practices was that which was established by 
 the justices for the county of Berks in 1795, when in order to- 
 meet the wants of the labouring population caused by the high 
 price of provisions an allowance in proportion to the number 
 of his family was made out of the parish fund to every labourer 
 who applied for relief. This allowance fluctuated with the price 
 of the gallon loaf of second flour, and the scale was so adjusted 
 as to return to each family the sum which in a given number of 
 loaves would cost beyond the price, in years of ordinary abund- 
 ance. This plan was conceived in a spirit of benevolence, but 
 the readiness with which it was adopted in all parts of England 
 clearly shows the want of sound views on the subject. Under the 
 allowance system the labourer received a part of his means of 
 subsistence in the form of a parish gift, and as the fund out of 
 which it was provided was raised from the contributions of those 
 who did not employ labourers as well as of those who did, their 
 employers, being able in part to burden others with the payment 
 
 8 Taylor, Origin and Growth of the English Constitution, II, pp. 189-190. 
 
 10 Redlich and Hirst, Local Government in England, I, p. 101. 
 
 11 Ibid., I, p. 101.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 49 
 
 for their labour had a direct interest in perpetuating the system. 
 Those who employed labourers looked upon the parish contribu- 
 tion as part of the fund out of which they were to be paid, and 
 accordingly lowered their rate of wages. The labourers also 
 looked on the fund as a source of wage. The consequence was, 
 that the labourer looked to the parish, and as a matter of right, 
 without any regard to his real wants ; and he received the wages 
 of his labour as only one and a secondary source of the means 
 of subsistence." 12 
 
 The statesmen of England were not unaware of the insuffi- 
 ciency of the Poor Laws and of their administration; but so 
 long as additional means of giving to those who took adavantage 
 of the funds were provided, the government realized that the 
 discontent of its subjects was prevented from developing into 
 despair and revolution. 13 Pitt's Poor Law Bill of 1796, which 
 aimed at still further allowances for the poor and which has 
 been stigmatized as "a monstrosity of misguided sentiment and 
 economic fallacy," 14 called forth Bentham's Observations on the 
 Poor Bill Introduced by the Right Honourable William Pitt in 
 February, 1797. The Observation is a critical analysis of the 
 various clauses of the bill. A citation from the Cow-Money 
 Clause indicates the keenness of Bentham's analytical mind: 
 ' ' Hitherto the danger of profusion has confined itself to income; 
 it now threatens capital. In the preceding clauses the allowances 
 authorized, how much soever too ample, continued to be, as they 
 are under the existing system, in the first instance occasional 
 only, at the worst gradual, accommodated as to their rate of efflux 
 to the influx of the fund from which alone they could be derived. 
 Here capital is given under the very name of capital, and as a 
 substitute to income. The pension during pleasure is instantly 
 converted into a pension for years or during life, and that pen- 
 sion at the same instant bought out by a gross sum, leaving the 
 demand for a fresh pension to recur at any time, to be again 
 bought off, and so toties quoties. The spigot was there opened, 
 here the bunghole. 
 
 "It would be something in the way of security, though surely 
 
 12 Greenwood, op. cit., pp. 217-218. 
 
 1 3 Redlich and Hirst, op. cit., I, p. 1 
 
 14 Ibid., I p. 88.
 
 50 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 not much, if the cow were safely lodged in the cow-house of the 
 indigent to whom the possession of her is to be an inexhaustible 
 spring of affluence. But even this security, slender as it is, is not 
 provided. The capital is to be advanced, not in the shape of the 
 cow, but in the shape of hard money, with which the object of 
 this extraordinary bounty is left perfectly at liberty to lay in a 
 fund either in milk or gin according to his taste. 
 
 "The cow dies or is stolen, or (what is much more likely) is 
 supposed to be stolen, being clandestinely sold to an obliging 
 purchaser at a distance. What is to be done? 'Want of relief 
 warranted the first cow ; the same cause will necessitate a second 
 limit who can the succeeding series of cows : The disappearance 
 of the first cow (it may be said) will excite suspicion; the dis- 
 appearance of a second cow will strengthen suspicion; true, but 
 upon a mere suspicion without proof will a family be left to 
 starve?" 15 
 
 Bentham corresponded with some of the most influential mem- 
 bers of Parliament relative to Pitt's bill. He insisted that was a 
 specimen of empiric, not scientific legislation, and had its 
 measures been put into operation for any length of time, the 
 results would have been more disastrous ' ' to the ultimate welfare 
 of the labouring classes, than the most disastrous revolution of 
 modern times." 16 Undoubtedly the Observations materially 
 aided in defeating the bill of 1796. 
 
 England's effort in the beginning of the eighteenth century to 
 institute the workhouse as a help in solving her pauper problem 
 cannot be regarded as successful. The results of different 
 measures that culminated in Gilbert's Act of 1782 had evidenced 
 the failure of Parliament to meet the exigencies of the times. The 
 legislation, by systematic methods and upon a national scale, 
 had fostered pauperism. The industrial revolution which 
 developed during the Napoleonic Wars destroyed the old con- 
 servatism of England and so modified the economic conditions 
 that the errors in the workings of Poor Laws were accentuated. 
 "The war had left an enormous national debt, a depreciated 
 paper currency, a heavy income tax, a poor law causing more 
 misery than it relieved, and a system of agriculture depending 
 on a price of food which only the most rigid protection could keep 
 
 15Bowring, op. cit., VIII, p. 447. 
 16 Ibid., VIII, p. 440.
 
 up in times of peace. ' nz ' ' The poor law as it existed in full vigor 
 at the close of the war, went further than any other human 
 device for diminishing the funds for the maintenance of labour, 
 and at the same time increasing the number of labourers." 18 
 "But the law was not good and the administration was much 
 worse, for it was in the hands of the Justices of the Peace, drawn 
 from the landed gentry, and embodying that spirit of autocratic 
 dilettantism which marked the internal government of England 
 f rom 1800 to 1830. " 19 
 
 Statesmen of England, characterized as radical, among whom 
 were Romilly and Brougham, were earnest in their labors, in and 
 out of Parliament, to make necessary and helpful changes in the 
 legislation. The chief result of their activities was the appoint- 
 ment of a commission to investigate conditions in the country. 
 The influence of Bentham as he conversed with his friends in 
 his home, or as he worked upon his manuscripts, went forth 
 into the hall of Parliament. Chadwick, a disciple and friend of 
 Bentham, became a member of the Poor Law Commission in 1833 
 and he worked with unceasing energy to obtain the material 
 necessary for the Commission Report. The Bill of 1834, the 
 fruition of the Commission's work, treated the subject of poor 
 relief as a whole and is regarded as a reform more extensive and 
 systematic than any attempted since the Act of 1601. 20 
 
 An analysis of the bill of 1834 reveals the principles of Bent- 
 ham relative to pauperism and its treatment as set forth in his 
 Constitutional Code. At the very outset of their work, the Com- 
 missioners employed the scientific method suggested by Bentham ; 
 e. g., working as a central authority they divided the territory 
 for investigation into districts, assigned an assistant commission- 
 er to each district, and required a detailed report from each 
 assistant. From the phraseology of the statute one readily picks 
 out as illustrations of points developed in Bentham 's Codes (1) 
 a central authority of administration; (2) the poor law district 
 superseding the parish; (3) the determination of boundaries con- 
 forming with geographical convenience rather than with histori- 
 
 17 Wallas. Life of Francis Place, p. 158. 
 isMartineau, Thirty Years' Peace, I, p. 116. 
 19 Redlich and Hirst, op. cit., I, p. 102. 
 10 Ibid., I, p. 108.
 
 52 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 cal custom; (4) the payment of officers appointed by the Board 
 of Guardians. 
 
 A comparison of costs for the relief of the poor before and 
 after 1834 indicates one phase of the Commissioners' achieve- 
 ment. ' ' The average annual expenditure on the relief of the poor 
 in the five years preceding the Act of 1834 was 6,754,000 pounds, 
 and in the five years succeeding the Act, 3,567,000 pounds. ' ' 21 Re- 
 ferring to another phase, Wallas says : ' ' The two Local Govern- 
 ment Bills (the New Poor Law of 1834 and the Municipal Reform 
 Bill of 1835) were the result not of the official Whig tradition as 
 represented in the Cabinet, but of ' philosophic radicalism ' acting 
 through Royal Commissioners. Edwin Chadwick, Secretary of 
 the Poor Law Commission (1832-34), and Place's friend, Joseph 
 Parkes, Secretary to the Municipal Corporation Commission 
 (1833-35) were both personal disciples of Jeremy Bentham, and 
 the Bills themselves were the embodiment of principles which the 
 Benthamites had discussed for twenty years." 22 
 
 Many years before 1834 Bentham had said : ' ' We think of the 
 poor in the way of charity, for to deal out charity gratifies not 
 only benevolence, but pride. We think much of them in the way 
 of charity, but we think little of them in the way of justice. Jus- 
 tice, however, ranks before charity; and they would need less 
 charity, if they had more justice." 23 The bill of 1834 lived 
 through the opposition that met its promulgation ; and additional 
 legislation since that year has further employed the element of 
 justice which Bentham emphasized as essential to ameliorating 
 social conditions in England. 
 
 Bentham also discussed the English system of imprisonment 
 for debt. In this system as it was employed he saw much that was 
 wrong and he explained different matters relative to it in minute 
 detail showing how reform methods might be introduced. ' ' Im- 
 prisonment for debt has not the sanction of antiquity," 24 for 
 there was a time when it did not exist in England. Its evolution, 
 dates from the Statute of Marlbridge, 52 Henry III, c.23, and 
 proceeds until "little by little the principle of the right of one 
 man to seize the body of another in an execution for debt became 
 
 21 Ibid., I, p. 110. 
 
 22 Wallas. Life of Francis Place, p. 330. 
 
 23 Bowring, op. cit., II, p. 579. 
 
 24 Parry. The Law and the Poor. p. 40.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 53 
 
 recognized by statutes and by custom until the wrongs it caused 
 reached such a scandalous pitch in the eighteenth century that 
 some reform of it became inevitable. ' ' 2S With the passing years 
 harshness and cruelty in the treatment of unfortunates in 
 debtors' prisons increased. There are many accounts and 
 descriptions in the prison annals of events that happened. ' ' The 
 tragedies of imprisonment for debt occurred but they took place 
 behind closed doors and the world only heard of them by slow 
 degrees. At length, however, the constant reptition of the 
 miseries of the poor debtors who languished in prison, wasting 
 their lives and eating out their hearts in despair, began slowly 
 to convince the man in the street that there really was something 
 wrong with the world and that the cup of human misery of some 
 of their fellow creatures was slopping over into the saucer of 
 despair. ' ' 26 
 
 Towards the close of the eighteenth century, debtors formed a 
 large part of the population of England. Frequently the families 
 of convicted persons went to live in the jail. Jails were mainly 
 private institutions and their managers stooped to all ways of 
 earning money at the expense of the inmates. ' ' The use of fetters 
 was universal, although even then deemed illegal ; all alike, tried 
 and untried, male and female, young and old, were laden with 
 chains so that the gaoler might secure another perquisite, the 
 bribe he demanded for easement of irons. Prisons were dark 
 because their managers objected to pay the window tax; water 
 was costly, and therefore scantily supplied; sanitation, as we 
 understand it, did not exist in those days anywhere, least of all 
 in the gaols. Pauper prisoners, by far the largest proportion, 
 were nearly starved, for there was no regular allowance of food ; 
 their beds of old littered straw reeked with filthy exhalations; 
 if they were ill the doctors feared to approach them; chaplains 
 held aloof and the dying were left to the ministrations of an 
 occasional self-devoted layman." 27 Bankruptcy, insolvency, in- 
 debtedness, sent many to these jails and many who were innocent 
 of crime upon their entrance, emerged from custody possessed 
 of knowledge that was far from beneficial. 28 
 
 25 ibid., p. 41. 
 
 26 Ibid., p. 43. 
 
 27 Traill, Social England, V. Sec. II. p. 657. 
 
 28 Bowring, op. cit., I. p. 429.
 
 54 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 Bentham urged careful investigation of the details of cases 
 that involved the problem of debt in any of its forms, and the 
 employment of punishment commensurate with the offense. He 
 distinguished between natural pleas of humanity favoring the 
 debtor and justice due the creditor. "Humanity in her soft 
 colours, decks the breastplate of the debtor's champion: Justice, 
 in her grave and sombre tints, that of the champion of the in- 
 jured creditors. In the eye of the man of humanity, all virtue 
 is on the debtor's side on the creditor's, nothing but vice. . . . 
 If the blameless debtor, in whose instance all punishment is un- 
 due, be consigned to a course of suffering more severe, because 
 more protracted, than any which the worst of criminals would 
 have been consigned to under the name of punishment, it is be- 
 cause it would be requisite to learn, whether he were blameless 
 or blameable, that trouble which the judges have one and all been 
 
 resolved not to take Seeing him where he is, 'Let him 
 
 out ! ' says the man of sentiment ; for thus far does the force of 
 his optics penetrate. Yes : true enough, if there he be, and have 
 nothing wherewith to pay, nor have done anything for which 
 it is fit he should be punished, the sooner he is let out the better. 
 But do you know if he have wherewith to pay ? do you know if 
 he have done that for which he ought to suffer ? and above all, 
 do you know how and why he came there ? by whose power, and 
 to, not to say for, whose benefit? These are of the number of 
 those questions which would be invidious, and are therefore never 
 asked." 29 
 
 Lord Brougham was one of the radicals who voiced in Parlia- 
 ment the ideas of Bentham upon this subject. He presented in 
 detail to the House of Lords the evils in the English system of im- 
 prisonment for debt. "He laid down the principle that debt 
 should never be treated as a crime and still less as a crime to be 
 punished at the sole will and pleasure of the creditor, and elo- 
 quently called upon the peers to wipe out this foul stain from our 
 civil code." 30 Due to the fact that the matter of imprisonment 
 for debt was constantly agitated, changes were made as a result 
 of the work of commissioners. In 1835, a comprehensive bill for 
 the abolition of imprisonment of debtors was introduced into 
 
 
 29 Ibid., VI. pp. ISOff. 
 
 80 Parry, op. eit., p. 48.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 55 
 
 Parliament. The Westminster Review, commenting on this bill, 
 said: "If the Ministerial Bill for the abolition of the Law of 
 Imprisonment pass into a Law, its effects will not be second in 
 importance to the Reform Act itself. ' ' 31 
 
 Parliament discussed the abolition of arrest on mesne process 
 in 1837 and it was legislated out in 1839. Bentham had strongly 
 condemned the mesne process 32 and Atkinson says its ultimate 
 abolition may be credited to him. 33 "Mesne process, translated 
 into English, means middle process, and the idea was to lock a 
 defendant up in the middle of a trial and keep him there in case 
 it turned out at the end of the proceedings that he owed the 
 money. It was as popular with the sharks of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury as the present imprisonment is with money-lenders and 
 tally-men of to-day. Any person who would make an affidavit 
 that another owed him twenty pounds or more could lock him 
 up pending the trial and, unless the victim could find the money 
 and pay it into Court, he remained in the sponging house until 
 the trial came on. 34 
 
 Soon after the abolition of the mesne process, a commission 
 was appointed to investigate the entire matter of imprisonment 
 for debt. Finishing the work it recommended abolition. A bill 
 introduced in 1844 set forth the need of distinguishing between 
 blameless debtors and defrauders. Finally the Debtors Act of 
 1869 became a law, and it has met in a large measure the demands 
 that had so long been urged. There are defects in the applica- 
 tion of clauses in this act and there are still opponents of the 
 abolition of imprisonment for debt, but the change from indis- 
 criminate imprisonment under former regulations to the enact- 
 ments now in force is in the right direction. 35 Bentham 's chal- 
 lenge, "People of England! when will you open your eyes 
 how long will ye be the dupes of sophistry, hypocrisy, and mas- 
 querade ? ' ' 36 , has borne fruit in the reform of a system which has 
 such a dark and distressing history. 
 
 ' ' Crime has been well defined as a failure to abide by or live 
 up to a standard deemed essential by society. Criminals are 
 
 31 Westminster Review, Vol. XX, p. 354. 
 
 32 Bowring, op. cit.. Vol. VI, p. 179. 
 
 33 Atkinson, op. cit., p. 232. 
 
 34 Parry, op. cit., p. 45. 
 
 35 Ibid., pp. 49ff. 
 
 36 Bowring, op. cit., VI, p. 178.
 
 56 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 such by accident or inclination, and under a perfect system of 
 government they would be saved from the one and cured of the 
 other." 37 Crime, an evil to society, a menace to development, has 
 from earliest times been combated by the infliction of physical 
 pain as a corrective. Bentham analyzed this subject, and by 
 estimating, according to his scheme, the balance struck in the 
 pleasure-pain theory he showed how punishment might be em- 
 ployed so as to result in benefit to mankind. Granted that there 
 is pleasure to the agent in committing a crime, the punishment 
 as a corrective result to society must outweigh that pleasure in 
 order to offset the pain that the crime inflicted upon society. 
 
 Bentham wrote exhaustively upon the subject of crime, enter- 
 ing into its various phases and its punishments. 38 He understood 
 from his study of the subject, and from his knowledge of English 
 legal proceedings dealing with crime, that in existing conditions 
 there was much averse to his guiding principle, utility. In the 
 discussion of criminology he stated five objects that should be 
 derived from punishments inflicted: (1) prevention of similar 
 offenses, (2) reformation, (3) incapacitation, (4) compensation 
 or satisfaction to the person injured, (5) economy. 39 Since it 
 falls to the province of legislators to fix the penalties for wrong- 
 doing, they should keep in mind the need of certainty and im- 
 partiality in punishment. "The more completely the scale of 
 punishments is rendered certain, the more completely all the 
 members of the community are enabled to know what to expect. 
 It is the fear of punishment, in so far as it is known, which pre- 
 vents the commission of crime. An uncertain punishment will 
 therefore be uncertain in its effects." 40 
 
 Bentham 's exposition of the subject of crime and capital pun- 
 ishment, strongly supported by historical fact, indicates that the 
 general welfare of man was far from realization. The large 
 pauper class who were driven by poverty to stealing ; the difficul- 
 ty attending the obtaining of bare necessities in the way of food, 
 which increased the number of poachers ; the difficulties of travel, 
 which swelled the number of highway robbers; the dark, un- 
 
 37 Traill. op. cit., VI, Sec. II. p. 853. 
 
 38 Bowring, op. cit., I, pp. Sl-168. 
 
 39 Ibid., I, pp. 491ff. 
 
 40 Ibid., I. p. 516.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 57 
 
 lighted streets of urban centers, which aided in the commission 
 of crimes; all these conditions had multiplied the number of 
 offenses for which the death penalty was inflicted. "Barbarous 
 as were the provisions of our criminal code at this period, it is, 
 perhaps, worth while to note that they had become largely in- 
 operative. Judges and jurors alike rebelled against a too rigor- 
 ous enforcement of the law; as is ever the case, any attempt to 
 xact a penalty grossly disproportioned to the offense served 
 only to shock the general sense and to excite a spirit of com- 
 passion with the accused. Between 1803 and 1810 great numbers 
 of prisoners were found not guilty and discharged ; and, though 
 no less than 1872 persons were sentenced to death for petty thefts 
 and divers small offenses against property, one only of those 
 sentences was, in fact, executed." 41 
 
 From 1808 to 1816 Romilly introduced in Parliament a num- 
 ber of bills dealing with the mitigation of the death penalty. His 
 bill of 1808 abolished capital punishment for the offense of steal- 
 ing from a person privately to the value of five shillings. His 
 measures of 1811 were rejected and Lord Ellenborough's critic- 
 ism, bewailing the fact that the desire existed which favored the 
 changing of laws of long standing, shows how hard it was to 
 yield in a matter backed by the authority of tradition. 42 Romilly 's 
 bill of 1816 proposed abolishing the death penalty for shoplifting 
 to the value of five shillings. Statistics cited by him showed that 
 in 1785 twenty persons were executed the same morning in 
 London for this offense, and that then (1816) a child not ten 
 years of age was incarcerated in Newgate awaiting the carrying 
 out of the fearful penalty for the same offense. Romilly 's bill 
 failed to pass because the members of Parliament argued that 
 to lessen the penalty would increase the number of criminals. 
 
 The preface to the Newgate Calendar of 1824 set forth the 
 conditions existing as seen by contemporaries : ' ' The penal laws 
 of the British Empire are, by foreign writers, charged with being 
 too sanguinary in the cases of lesser offenses. They hold that the 
 punishment of death ought to be inflicted only for crimes of the 
 highest magnitude ; and philanthropists of our own nation have 
 accorded with their opinion. Such persons as have had no oppor- 
 
 *1 Atkinson, Jeremy Bentham, p. 145. 
 42 Martineau, op. cit., I, p. 101.
 
 58 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 tunity of inquiring into the subject will hardly credit the asser- 
 tion that there are above one hundred and sixty offenses punish- 
 ed by death." 43 Bentham was among the philanthropists men- 
 tioned. He was one of the first and one of the chief agitators 
 against the idea that laws "scarcely ever carried into execution 
 would operate through the influence of what they called ' a vague 
 terror.' As if any terror, as a preventive or a motive to good,, 
 was ever vague. The system was entirely kept in existence by 
 the incompetence and idleness of the law-makers and the law 
 administrators." 44 Bentham claimed "that the certainty of a 
 comparatively slight penalty would prove a far more efficient 
 check than the possibility of a most extravagant punishment."** 
 Plus on peur augmenter la certitude de la peine, plus on peut en 
 diminuer la grandeur* 6 
 
 Constant agitation usually yields results. Consequently dur- 
 ing the ministries of Peel and Russell, successive measures were 
 passed that reduced, from time to time, the number of offenses 
 for which capital punishment might be inflicted. The slight 
 changes for which Romilly asked in the first quarter of the 
 nineteenth century, the improvements presented in the writings 
 of Bentham through the first third of the century, were more 
 than attained by 1868 when public executions were prohibited 
 by law. 47 English lawmakers in enacting legislation which has 
 so greatly improved the criminal law may not have deliberately 
 weighed matters according to Bentham 's pleasure-pain theory, 
 but in the radical change developed within a generation after his 
 death his influence can clearly be traced. 
 
 A parallel development to reform in the law of crime is Bent- 
 ham's work in connection with prison reform. While visiting- 
 his brother in Russia in 1786 or 1787, he was much impressed 
 with his brother's scheme for a large workshop. With this as a 
 basis he wrote a series of letters which embodied his ideas upon 
 the Panopticon. 48 This word, derived from two Greek words 
 meaning "everything" and "place of sight," is the name which. 
 
 *3 Parry, op. cit., p. 189. 
 
 44 Martineau, op. cit., I, p. 103. 
 
 45 Atkinson, op. cit., p. 145. 
 
 46 Bowring, op. cit., II, p. 887. 
 
 47 Cross, A History of England, p. 908. 
 
 48 Bowring. op. cit., IV, pp. 37-66.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 59 
 
 Bentham gave to the prison building which would meet 
 England's needs much better than Newgate or any of the many 
 houses that served as places of detention. 
 
 Numerous accounts have portrayed the evils of the English 
 prison system, its utter lack of care and of attention to the in- 
 mates of prisons, and its very general influence in spreading 
 crime. 49 Bentham studied the problem fully, investigating the 
 discipline and management which Howard had revealed. He 
 devised the plan of a prison building circular in form, with cells 
 so arranged that they could be seen from the center of the build- 
 ing. 50 The inmates, separated from each other, employed, given 
 an opportunity to learn useful trades, and provided with means 
 of becoming educated, were to be considered as worthy of help. 
 Charts, descriptions, explanations, made the author's system 
 clear. When he presented his plan to the government authori- 
 ties, his offer to erect a building and undertake its management 
 was accepted and Bentham went so far as to purchase a site and 
 begin the work of construction. "The design of building a 
 Panopticon prison lingered from 1791 to 1813, when by the erec- 
 tion of another prison, without any of the advantages, and more 
 than ten times the expense, it was finally extinguished." 51 It 
 seems that Bentham had incurred the displeasure of George III 
 
 49 Ashton, Dawn of the XIX Century in England, pp. 453-459 ; Ashton, Eighteenth 
 Century Waifs, pp. 227ff ; Roscoe, The English Scene in the XVIII Century, p. 275. 
 
 50 Investigation of the general condition of American prisons made under the di- 
 rection of the American Prison Association reveals, as late as the present decade, 
 startling facts. 'Little children are kept in rooms with polluted and diseased adults ; 
 a thoughtless lad is thrust by the hand of our country's law in the school of vice and 
 crime, taught by trained scoundrels ; a poor insane victim of brain disorder howls 
 all night in company with ruffians ; an honest fellow, unable to pay a fine for a 
 spre is locked in with burglars and thieves." Survey, Vol. 34, p. 84. 
 
 Compare with plan presented for cell house at Joliet, Illinois. "Mr. Zimmerman 
 proposes to build circular-shaped cell houses, about 120 feet in diameter, placing the 
 cells against the cell house wall, thus assuring direct light and air. Now comes the 
 novelty. Instead of having an open front of steel bars, heavy glass will be fitted in 
 the open space between these bars so as to make a completely closed room out of the 
 cell. A full view, however, of this room is possible from a central point. This cen- 
 tral point is a steel shaft in the center of the cell house, enclosing a circular stair- 
 way. The stairway will be as high as the highest tier of cells, and from a position 
 half-way up the circular stairway, which is completely sheathed with steel, the guard 
 within the "conning tower" has a full view of each and every cell, at the mere turn 
 of his head." Survey, Vol. 27, p. 1576. 
 
 The new State Prison of Illinois at Joliet consists of eight cell houses grouped 
 around a central dining room. The plans of these buildings reveal many point* that 
 tally with Bentham's Panopticon scheme. (See Scientific American, Vol. 116, p. 65, 
 Jan. 13, 1917.) 
 
 SiBowring, op. eft., IV, p. 171.
 
 60 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 by his "Plan for the Judicial Establishment in France" and the 
 king withdrew his support. The long years of thought and 
 anxiety, the efforts made to win the approval of influential states- 
 men all ended in keen disappointment and loss. Parliament 
 finally allowed 23,000, by no means a full monetary restoration 
 for the funds Bentham had advanced in the enterprise. 
 
 Wilberforce said of Bentham in 1811: "Never was anyone 
 worse used than Bentham; I have seen the tears run down the 
 cheeks of that strong-minded man through vexation at the press- 
 ing importunity of creditors and the insolence of official under- 
 lings, when, day after day, he was begging at the Treasury, for 
 what was, indeed, a mere matter of right. How indignant did 
 I often feel when I saw him thus treated by men infinitely his 
 inferiors." 52 In 1830-31 Bentham wrote the History of the War 
 between Jeremy Bentham and George the Third. By one of the 
 Belligerents, a book containing an account of the Panopticon 
 scheme. 53 
 
 In 1835 a commission was appointed to investigate prison con- 
 ditions. Commenting upon its work, the Westminster Review 
 said: "There are probably many questionable points, especially 
 such as relate to the condition of the most unfortunate classes; 
 and of this sort, the treatment of the poor creatures who are 
 driven by poverty to crime, deserves the most anxious consid- 
 eration. If indeed worthier motives did not supervene, there is 
 yet the palpable one of the costly worthlessness of the present 
 system whereby the comparatively innocent is destined, by con- 
 tact with hardened vice, to be doomed to lasting crime. In the 
 Report there are several excellent plans on the Panopticon system 
 of Bentham." 54 
 
 During the succeeding years of the nineteenth century the law- 
 makers of England have given much consideration to prison 
 reform. They have made possible the reformation of wrong- 
 doers, and have looked to the education of young unfortunates as 
 a means of lessening criminal tendencies. "But uniformity in 
 prison discipline has been a potent factor, and has told upon the 
 contingent floating in and out of prison. The convicted offender 
 
 C2 Wilberforce, Life of Wilberforce, II, p. 71. 
 
 53 Bowring, op. cit.. XI, p. 96. 
 
 54 Westminster Review, Vol. 23, p. 427.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 61 
 
 is certain that wherever he may find himself he will be under pre- 
 cisely the same rules, will eat the same scanty fare, do much 
 the same labour. There is no distinction now between localities ; 
 the punishment is alike for all. No administrative reform in 
 recent years has been more beneficial than the concentration of 
 prison management under the central authority of the State. This 
 was effected by the Prisons Act of 1877, when full powers were 
 vested in a Board of Prison Commissioners. Great economy was 
 the immediate result, for prisons were at once cut down in num- 
 ber from 114 to 56 with a corresponding saving on staff, * * * 
 The prisons of England can challenge the most searching inves- 
 tigation, and all who have compared them with the best in foreign 
 countries must admit that ours are inferior to none. ' ' 55 
 
 It has been well said that, although Bentham himself was not 
 permitted to carry out the work to which he gave so large a part 
 of his time, yet he must ' ' be regarded as one of the great reform- 
 ers of prisons and an eminent successor to Howard." 56 In his 
 many letters and tracts on the subject and in his Principles of 
 Penal Law will be found the germs of most modern reforms in 
 regard to the treatment of criminals." 57 
 
 55 Trail!, op. eft., VI, Sec. II, pp. 853ff. 
 
 56 Dictionary of National Biography, IV, p. 271. 
 
 57 Among these reforms may be mentioned the following: 
 
 1835, employment of the principle establishing separate cells for criminals ; 
 1837, Act of Parliament by which the number of crimes for which capital punish- 
 ment could be inflicted was reduced to six ; 
 
 1847, Act of Parliament creating the Poor Law Board ; 
 
 1868, prohibition of public executions ; 
 
 1869, abolition of imprisonment for debt ; 
 
 1871, Act of Parliament creating the Local Government Board ; 
 
 1877, the Prisons Act ; 
 
 1898, Criminal Evidence Act ; 
 
 1903, Poor Prisoners Defence Act; and 
 
 1907, Court of Criminal Appeal Act.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 BENTHAM'S FRIENDS AND ENGLISH EEFORM 
 
 "The history of any definite 'school' of philosophic or political 
 opinion will generally show that its foundation was made possi- 
 ble by personal friendship. So few men devote themselves to 
 continuous thought that if several think on the same lines for 
 many years it is almost always because they have encouraged 
 each other to proceed. And varieties of opinion and tempera- 
 ment are so infinite, that those who accept a new party name, 
 and thereby make themselves responsible for each other's utter- 
 ances, are generally bound by personal loyalty as well as by 
 intellectual agreement. 
 
 "The 'Benthamite' or, as it became later, the 'Utilitarian' 
 school * * * was no exception to this rule. Bentham's writings 
 from the year 1776, when he published the Fragment on Govern- 
 ment, would in any case have had their effect. But the enormous 
 influence, which, towards the end of his life, he exerted upon 
 liberal thought in England, was very largely due to the care 
 which he then took to secure that a few able men should always 
 enjoy the most complete intimacy with himself and each other." 1 
 
 Jeremy Bentham numbered among his friends statesmen of 
 many countries. As the years passed he entertained in his home 
 those whom he esteemed. His hospitality was delightful, his 
 companionship helpful, and his influence inspiring. He was a 
 keen judge of human nature, and he singled out for his most 
 favored friends men who promulgated his teachings. It was 
 decidedly for humanity's good that the Hermit of Queen's 
 Square Place received frequently into his home his disciples, 
 and, by conversing with them there, became the indirect initiator 
 of bills that have made for social and political progress. 
 
 In his boyhood and young manhood Bentham did not have 
 close friends. The publication of his Fragment on Government 
 paved the way for the formation of a warm friendship with the 
 
 1 Wallas, Life of Francis Place, p. 65. 
 
 (62)
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 63 
 
 Earl of Shelburne. However, Shelburne did not meet the author 
 until 1781 after Blackstone had passed away. His first visit to 
 Bowood proved to be Bentham's introduction to influential 
 friends. Lord Shelburne as a careful, attentive, and considerate 
 host made this visit very pleasant. 2 As one who understood 
 Bentham's worthy, although shy, manliness, he graciously, yet 
 tactfully, extended other invitations to him. 3 An extract from 
 one of Shelburne 's letters, written in June, 1788, shows how 
 well the former prime minister understood the obscure tenant of 
 Lincoln 's Inn : ' ' I solemnly assure you, that it has been not only 
 on my mind, but upon my heart, to find out this parson's house 
 at Hendon, and to pay my court to you, not to thank you for 
 your magnificent present of not only a most magnificent, but 
 very useful map in the present situation, because I know your 
 nature makes you above accepting acknowledgments; but to tell 
 you how much we wish to see you at Bowood. I am so tired of 
 the whole human race, that we propose to bury ourselves for some 
 time ; but as happily all desires return after a certain abstinence, 
 you will find me very happy to make peace with my fellow crea- 
 tures through you, and to begin my return to society in London, 
 by profiting of yours for some time in the country. ' '* The close 
 intimacy of these two friends is manifested by the fact that when 
 Shelburne was bereaved of Lady Shelburne in 1789 Bentham was 
 the only male friend to whom he turned for consolation. 5 
 
 From Bentham's own pen a description of Lord Shelburne can 
 he obtained: "His manner was very imposing, very dignified, 
 and he talked with vague generalities in the House of Lords in a 
 very emphatic way, as if something grand were at bottom, when 
 in fact there was nothing at all." 6 "Yet there was about him 
 a good deal of sympathy, of intelligent sympathy; a curious 
 mixture too of what was natural and what was factitious. He had 
 a sort of systematic plan for gaining people. " T " Lord Lansdowne 
 had a way of talking in fits and starts. His mind seemed always 
 in a state of agitation with the passion of ambition and the desire 
 
 - Bowring, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, X, pp. 88-114. 
 
 3 Ibid., X, p. 195, 279, 306. 
 
 4 Ibid., X, p. 183 
 
 5 Ibid., X, p. 88. 
 
 6 Ibid., X, p. 116. 
 
 7 Ibid., X, p. 117.
 
 64 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 of splendour. He was never much at ease, for he always outran 
 the constable, and involved himself monstrously in debt. " 8 " Lord 
 Shelburne had a wildness about him, and conceived groundless 
 suspicions about nothing at all. " 9 "He caught hold of the most 
 imperfect scrap of an idea, and filled it up in his own mind 
 sometimes correctly sometimes erroneously." "He was a 
 favorite of the kind, who promised to make him a duke." 10 
 
 Bentham was strongly attached to Lord Shelburne and was 
 always grateful for the aid that he had received from the states- 
 man. Crediting Shelburne with having made him think that 
 he could do something, Bentham more and more after 1781 gave 
 attention to the development and the spread of his ideas. Study- 
 ing, thinking, writing, traveling, in the truest sense a citizen of 
 the world, Bentham 's influence increased. After he settled at 
 Queen 's Square Place, those whom he entertained as guests were, 
 through a period of more than forty years, the personal carriers 
 of his doctrines to the outside world and into the halls of Par- 
 liament. In considering the members of Parliament who were 
 Bentham 's friends, knowledge is gained as to how his principles 
 and theories were disseminated. 
 
 Samuel Romilly (1757-1818), the distinguished advocate, was 
 introduced to Bentham by George Wilson. This acquaintance, 
 formed before Bentham made his visit to Russia, later ripened 
 into warmest friendship. It was their mutual respect for animals 
 that was the bond of union between the two men a sentiment 
 of tenderness that naturally meant more when applied to the dis- 
 cussions of public issues. 11 Lord Brougham said that Romilly 
 ' ' looked up to Mr. Bentham with the almost filial reverence of a 
 pupil for hs tutor." 12 Bentham 's characterization of Romilly 
 is: "He was a man of great modesty, of few words, of no 
 conversation." 13 "Few persons have ever attained celebrity of 
 name and exalted station in any country, or in any age, with 
 such unsullied purity of character, as this equally eminent and 
 excellent person. His virtue was stern and inflexible, adjusted, 
 indeed, rather to the rigorous standard of ancient morality than 
 
 8 Ibid., X, p. 186. 
 
 9 Ibid., X, p. 117. 
 
 10 Ibid., X. p. 116. 
 
 11 Ibid., X, p. 186. 
 
 12 Hansard, Parliamentary Debate*, 38. p. 1164. 
 
 13 Bowring, op. cit., X, p. 186.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCEATIC DEVELOPMENT 65 
 
 to the less ambitious and less elevated maxims of the modern 
 code. * * * He was, in truth, a person of the most natural and 
 simple manners, and one in whom the kindliest charities and 
 warmest feelings of human nature were blended in the largest 
 measure with that firmness of purpose and unrelaxed sincerity 
 of principle, in almost all other men found to be little compatible 
 with the attributes of a gentle nature and the feelings of a tender 
 heart. An extraordinary reach of thought; great powers of 
 attention and of close reasoning ; a memory quick and retentive ; 
 a fancy eminently brilliant, but kept in perfect discipline by his 
 judgment and his taste, which was nice, cultivated, and severe, 
 without any of the squeamishness so fatal to vigor; these were 
 the qualities which, under the guidance of the most persevering 
 industry, and with the stimulus of a lofty ambition, rendered 
 him unquestionably the first advocate, and the most profound 
 lawyer of the age he flourished in." 14 
 
 This very able man, Romilly, ''mighty brisk and alert," 15 was 
 often at Queen's Square Place. He was "among the few who 
 could ever induce Bentham to quit his Hermitage and mingle 
 with the world. They met so frequently, that though multitudes 
 of communications passed between them, they consisted prin- 
 cipally of short notes, making appointments at each other's 
 houses, or arrangements, almost always terminating in personal 
 interviews. Romilly 's attachment to Bentham was most affec- 
 tionate, his reverence for his opinions and character so great, 
 and their mutual intercourse was to each a source of varied and 
 virtuous enjoyment. ' ' 16 Having visited Bentham at Ford Abbey, 
 Romilly described the surprise he experienced upon finding his 
 friend so elegantly housed. "The grandeur and stateliness of 
 the buildings, form as strange a contrast to his philosophy, as the 
 number and spaciousness of the apartments, the hall, the chapel, 
 the corridors, and the cloisters, do to the modesty and scantiness 
 of his domestic establishment. We found him passing his time, 
 as he has always been passing it since I have known him, which 
 is now more than thirty years, closely applying himself, for six 
 or eight hours a day, in writing upon laws and legislation, and 
 
 14 Brougham, Works, Vol. II, pp. 363-364. 
 
 15 Bowring, op. cit., X, p. 457. 
 
 16 Ibid., X, p. 604.
 
 66 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 in composing his Civil and Criminal Codes: and spending the 
 remaining hours of every day in reading, or taking exercise by 
 way of fitting himself for his labours, or, to use his own strangely 
 invented phraseology, 'taking his ante-jentacular and post- 
 prandial walks,' to prepare himself for his task of codification. 
 There is something burlesque enough in this language; but it is 
 impossible to know Bentham, and to have witnessed his benevol- 
 ence, his disinterestedness, and the zeal with which he has devoted 
 his whole life to the service of his fellow-creatures, without ad- 
 miring and revering him." 17 
 
 These two men, Romilly and Bentham, masters of the legal pro- 
 fession, earnestly worked together in efforts to secure legal re- 
 form. Bentham freely placed his "Manuscript writings, rough 
 fragments, printed proofs," at Romilly 's service. "Having 
 given to the matter," wrote Bentham, "that softening which his 
 temper suggested and policy required, illustrating and enriching 
 it with such facts as his experience had brought within his 
 observation, Romilly made it up into one of those pamphlets 
 which bear and do so much honor to his name. ' ' 18 
 
 Francis Place (1771-1854) may be numbered among the close 
 friends of Bentham. James Mill introduced the two men in 
 1812, 19 and in August of 1817 Place became a disciple of the 
 philosopher. From a two months' visit at Ford Abbey in that 
 year the friendship strengthened so that after 1819 the elder man 
 relied more and more upon the companionship of the younger. 
 Place writes of Bentham as ' ' my old, very dear friend, ' ' and the 
 two men living within two minutes' walk of each other visits 
 back and forth occurred often, as Place writes "each of our 
 houses was as frequently entered by either as his own. ' ' 20 Bent- 
 ham 's diary from 1821 to 1825 makes mention of many books 
 loaned to Place. Place "became intimate with the great man; 
 helped him in business affairs ; and was one of the disciples em- 
 ployed to prepare his books for publication. ' ' 21 Writing to Du- 
 mont in 1817 Romilly said of Place: "He is self-educated, has 
 learnt a great deal, has a very strong natural understanding, 
 and possesses great influence in Westminster, such influence as 
 
 17 Ibid., pp. 478-479 note. 
 
 18 Atkinson, Jeremy Bentham, p. 153. 
 
 19 Wallas, op. cit., p. 72. 
 
 20 Ibid., pp. 75, 79, 80. 
 
 21 Stephen, English Utilitarians, II, p. 17.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 67 
 
 almost to determine the elections for members of Parliament. I 
 need hardly say that he is a great admirer and disciple of Bent- 
 ham." 22 
 
 Place, of humble birth, earnest, energetic, characterized as 
 "the radical tailor of Charing Cross," was of those who ac- 
 complished much for the welfare of others. "Few men have 
 done more of hte world's work with so little external sign, * * * 
 He was essentially a public man, but his work usually lay be- 
 hind the curtain. * * * He loved quiet power for the purpose 
 of promoting good ends." 23 A study of the life of Francis 
 Place reveals the large influence he had in promulgating meas- 
 ures for improvement. Not in the halls of Parliament but 
 amidst the workingmen with whom he associated were his argu- 
 ments heard. In Bentham's estimation, Place, as early as 1816, 
 "from extensive knowledge of the country and its parties, the 
 conditions and wants of the people, and from his own probity 
 and mental energy" was the most capable of any living man to 
 be Secretary of State for the Home Department. 24 
 
 The friendship of Bentham and Brougham (1778-1868) was 
 characterized by warmth and by criticism of each for the benefit 
 of the other. Understanding and esteeming one another as they 
 did for many years it is interesting to consider some of the 
 phases in their intimacy. Under date of July 9, 1812, Bentham 
 wrote of Brougham just after he had dined at Queen's Square 
 Place : ' ' He is already one of the first men in the House of Com- 
 mons, and seems in a fair way of being very soon universally 
 acknowledged to be the very first, even beyond my old and inti- 
 mate friend, Sir Samuel Romilly: many, indeed, say he is so 
 now." 25 At this time Brougham had been instrumental in hav- 
 ing the Orders in Council revoked with the thought that peace 
 and trade might be restored with America, and England was 
 consequently filled "with joy, gladness, and returning plenty." 
 Letters that have been kept for the year 1827 have as salutations 
 on Bentham's part "My Dearest Best Boy," "Dear Sweet 
 Granpapa" and the contents, friendly in the extreme, bring out 
 
 22 Wallas, op. cit., p. 77. 
 
 23 Ibid., p. 1. 
 
 24 Ibid., p. 80. 
 
 25 Bowringr, op. cit., X, p. 471.
 
 68 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 Little Poppet," "My Dear Boy;" on Brougham's part "Dear 
 the giving and receiving of advice. Replying to Bentham's offer 
 of more advice Brougham said : ' ' Many thanks for the pap, I am 
 already fat on it. I did not acknowledge it, being busy eating it ; 
 and saying nothing at meals is the way with us little ones when 
 hungry. ' ' 26 
 
 The matters of especially great moment to these men were 
 legal reform and education. That Brougham disappointed his 
 friend and adviser in the former is shown by the statement under 
 date of February 9, 1828: "Mr. Brougham's mountain is de- 
 livered, and behold! a mouse. The wisdom of the reformer 
 could not overcome the craft of the lawyer. Mr. Brougham, af- 
 ter all, is not the man to set up a simple, natural, and rational 
 administration of justice against the entanglements and techni- 
 calities of our English law proceedings." 27 In the field of ed- 
 ucation, Brougham's work is commendable. His publication of 
 Observations on the Education of the People in 1825 urging the 
 necessity of increasing the knowledge of the poorer classes 
 echoed ideas promulgated by Bentham in earlier years. In 1826 
 he organized "The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Know- 
 ledge." The attention he gave to better scientific education of 
 the upper classes materially aided in the establishment of Uni- 
 versity of London in 1828. 28 
 
 Following his election to Parliament in 1830, Brougham 
 strongly advocated electoral reform, urging the extension of the 
 franchise to all housholders, leaseholders, and copyholders, and 
 the reduction of representation of each "rotten borough" by 
 one member. 29 His speech on the bill which became the Keform 
 Bill of 1832, classed as his masterpiece, was full of sarcasm 
 against the Tory lords and was in marked contrast to his attitude 
 in 1818. 
 
 Bentham in 1828 speaking of Brougham said that although he 
 was insincere it was always worth while "to bestow a day on 
 him." 30 In March of 1830, displeased because Brougham had 
 failed to measure up to the desired standard, Bentham address- 
 
 2IbieL, pp. 675-576. 
 
 27 Ibid., p. 588. 
 
 28 Oliphant, The Victorian Age of English Literature, I, p. 20. 
 
 29 Dictionary of National Biography, V, p. 453. 
 80 Bowring, op. cit., X, p. 671.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 69 
 
 ed a letter to him under the caption of "To Master Henry 
 Brougham." Following a long introduction in the query, "When 
 will you have learnt your primer? When will you be able to 
 spell 'greatest-happiness principle; non-disappointment princi- 
 ple; ends of justice main end, giving execution and effect to 
 the substantive branch of the law ; * * * ? " 31 
 
 The correspondence of Bentham and Burdett (1770-1844) 
 reveals cordial and helpful friendship. Through it one gains 
 first-hand knowledge of the manner in which the influence of the 
 Hermit Philosopher found its way into Parliament. Selecting 
 letters written at intervals between 1811 and 1830, one notes the 
 forms of Bentham 's salutations: e. g., May, 1811, "Dear Sir;" 
 October, 1819, "Much Esteemed Disciple;" June, 1825, "My 
 Dear Burdett;" also of Burdett's, February, 1818, "My Dear 
 Sir;" June 1825, "My Ever Revered, Beloved, and on this 
 Side Idolatry, Worshipped Master, Jeremy Bentham." 32 These 
 salutations, with statements made by others who were contempor- 
 aries, show that the two men were, without question, congenial 
 and delightful companions. 33 The substance of the letters varies 
 from dinner invitations to serious discussions upon parliament- 
 ary reform. 3 * With reference to the latter topic the friendship 
 of the two men was indeed significant, for as a result of the 
 letters bearing upon that discussion, resolutions which Bentham 
 drafted were presented by Burdett in Parliament. In the early 
 part of 1818 Burdett writing to Bentham requested him to draw 
 up a bill for parliamentary reform. 35 Replying to this letter 
 very soon Bentham expressed frankly his ideas relative to re- 
 form and the necessity of carefully surveying the task before 
 undertaking it. 
 
 February 25, 1818, Henry Bickersteth, distinguished friend of 
 both Bentham and Burdett, made plain the state of affairs : "In 
 the contemplation of any improvement in politics or legislation, 
 it is obvious that the possession of an instrument of ameliora- 
 tion, sufficiently powerful and enlightened, is a condition with- 
 out which no hope of success can be entertained; and, in the 
 
 31 Ibid., XI, pp. 36-37. 
 
 32 Ibid., X, pp. 460, 508, 550, 493, 551. 
 
 33 Ibid., X, p. 493. 
 
 3* Ibid., XI, p. 50, 491-497. 
 36 Ibid., X, p. 491.
 
 70 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 present circumstances of England, it is equally clear, that suf- 
 ficient power, united with sufficient knowledge and rectitude of 
 intention can only be found in a radically reformed Parliament, 
 after some further time has been allowed for public instruction. 
 If Parliament were reformed today, we should have power and 
 upright intention; but unless we had also a more general and 
 familiar knowledge of the principles of legislation than now 
 exists, it might justly be apprehended, that, in many cases, mere 
 ignorance of what was right to be done, would produce the same 
 effects which we now suffer under the influence of vice. It ap- 
 pears therefore, that two things are to be considered parlia- 
 mentary reform, without which no general good can be done ; and 
 public instruction, which is necessary, first, as a means of ob- 
 taining reform, and secondly, as a means of reaping the great- 
 est possible benefit from reform when obtained. Upon the last, 
 it is not necessary to say more on the present occasion. 
 
 "Reform can be peaceably obtained only by the pressure of 
 public opinion, acting with continually increasing uniformity 
 and weight in favor of the cause. * * * 
 
 ''Now England possesses two distinguished friends of reform, 
 who, by their joint labours, are able to give the most advantag- 
 eous promulgation to the best possible plan. The characters of 
 Mr. Bentham and Sir Francis Burdett are too well known 
 to each other to make it necessary or proper to say anything on 
 that subject. Of the great work to be done, the one is, more 
 than any other person, capable of performing that part which 
 is least congenial to the habits of the other; and their united 
 exertions could not fail to be eminently beneficial. Conceive 
 a plan of reform drawn up by Mr. Bentham the best possible, 
 because framed by the person best qualified; and promulgated 
 and supported by Sir Francis Burdett the most advantageous- 
 ly, because by the person whose every word becomes universally 
 notorious, and excites universal interest and attention; and the 
 following are among the advantages to be derived from it: 
 
 1. A light held up for the guidance of all friends of reform, 
 
 2. An effectual moral shield against all enemies. 3. General 
 confidence that the plan was the best that circumstances would 
 permit. 4. A suppression of minor differences of opinion, in 
 favor of a plan so sanctioned, and consequent approaches to
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 71 
 
 uniformity. 5. Petitions for the adoption of a particular plan, 
 which could not be reasonably controverted. 
 
 "Whatever may be proposed, the parliamentary debatese af- 
 ford the most extensive means of publication ; and it seems prob- 
 able that the best mode of stating a plan of reform would be to 
 propose a few short and simple resolutions, asserting the princi- 
 pal abuses complained of, and setting forth the more general 
 regulations, constituting the intended remedy with an indica- 
 tion that a bill, or a complete system of resolutions or proposi- 
 tions, preliminary to the enactment of a law for the establish- 
 ment of the entire remedy, was prepared and ready to be pro- 
 posed on the adoption of the first resolutions. From the pro- 
 posal follows a debate, every word of which might be recorded 
 and published, with critical and explanatory notes, and an ap- 
 pendix, containing the bill, or system of propositions, compre- 
 hending the details of the plan. If the names of Bentham and 
 Burdett went together in this proceeding, we should not only 
 have a universal notoriety, but all the reflection and sagacity, 
 as well as all the active zeal in the kingdom, would be called into 
 immediate action on this subject ; and it would be surprising in- 
 deed, if every succeeding year did not produce an increasing 
 weight of petitions. The most profound philosophy cannot unite 
 in vain with the greatest popularity of the time." 36 
 
 Upon the same day Burdett wrote to Bentham assuring him 
 that he would do all that he could to support in the House any 
 resolutions Bentham might draft : "I shall not only be happy, 
 but proud to use every exertion in my power, to tax all my 
 faculties to the utmost, in order to carry into effect your wishes 
 upon this great and important subject. My tongue shall speak 
 as you do prompt mine ear; and I will venture to promise, 
 knowing so well whom I promise, that I will refuse attempting 
 no one thing that you shall say ought to be done. My first re- 
 ward will be the hope of doing everlasting good to my country ; 
 my next, and only inferior to it, that of having my name linked 
 in immortality with that of Jeremy Bentham ; and though, to be 
 sure, it is but a tomtit mounted on an eagle's wing, the thought 
 delights me." 37 Following further correspondence between 
 Bentham and Burdett, a sentence from one of the latter 's letters 
 
 36 Ibid., X, pp. 492-493. 
 
 37 Ibid., X, p. 494.
 
 72 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 dated March 10, 1818, is: "Please to transmit the resolutions to 
 me." 38 
 
 Burdett presented in the House of Commons on June 2, 1818, 
 the resolutions drafted by Bentham. He added historical mater- 
 ial to some of the twenty-six paragraphs that introduced the six 
 resolutions and he re-arranged the order of the resolutions. 39 
 
 The six resolutions drafted by Bentham were : 
 
 ' ' I. That it is expedient and necessary to admit to a participa- 
 tion in the election suffrage, all such persons as, being of the 
 male sex, of mature age, and of sound mind, shall, during a 
 determinate time antecedent to the day of election, have been 
 resident either as householders or inmates, within the district or 
 place in which they are called upon to vote. 
 
 II. That for securing the freedom of election, the mode of 
 voting ought to be by ballot. 
 
 III. That for more effectually securing the unity of will and 
 opinion, as between the people and their representatives, a fresh 
 election of the members of this House ought to take place, once 
 in every year at least; saving to the Crown its prerogrative of 
 dissolving Parliaments at any time, and thereupon, after the 
 necessary interval, summoning a fresh Parliament. 
 
 IV. That the territory of Great Britain and Ireland taken 
 together ought to be divided into 658 election districts, as nearly 
 equal to each other in population as consistently with local con- 
 venience they may be ; and that each such election ought to re- 
 turn one representative, and no more. 
 
 V. That for the prevention of unnecessary delay, vexation, 
 and expense, as well as of fraud, violence, disorder, and void 
 elections, the election in each district ought to be begun and end- 
 ed on the same day; 40 and that for this purpose, not only the 
 proof of title, but also every operation requiring more time than 
 is necessary for the delivery of the vote, ought to be accomplish- 
 ed on some day, or days, antecedent to the day of election, and 
 that the title to a vote should be the same for every elector, and 
 so simple as not to be subject to dispute. 
 
 VI. That for the more effectually securing the attainment of 
 the above objects, the election districts ought to be subdivided 
 
 38 Ibid., X, p. 495. 
 
 39 Ibid., IV, p. 568. 
 
 40 Compare the Great Reform Act of February fl, 1918.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 73 
 
 into sub-districts, for the reception of votees, in such number 
 #nd situations as local convenience may require." 41 
 
 The debate in Parliament on the Bentham-Burdett bill was 
 long and interesting, being participated in by Lord Cochrane, 
 Lord Brougham, Mr. Parnell, Mr. Canning, Mr. Lamb and Mr. 
 Smith. 42 The arguments for and against the resolutions mani- 
 fested the views of the radical reformer, the moderate reformer, 
 the Whig, and the Tory. From Brougham 's speech extracts that 
 attract attention are: "As for universal suffrage, of the doc- 
 trine which severed the elective franchise altogether from 
 property, he begged leave to observe that he never had at any 
 time held it as less than the utter destruction of the Constitu- 
 tion; he need not add that he had never given it the slightest 
 countenance or support." And "the empiric who pretended at 
 once to eradicate every evil in the system, and the flatterer who 
 affected to believe that no change at all was wanting, were equal- 
 ly dangerous guides in state affairs, and that the one was as in- 
 capable of effecting a salutary reform as the other." 43 Refer- 
 ring to Mr. Bentham as an advocate of universal manhood suf- 
 frage Lord Brougham said: "He had the greatest respect for 
 that gentleman. There existed not a more honest or ingenuous 
 mind than he possessed. He knew no man who had passed a 
 more honorable and useful life. Removed from the turmoil of 
 active life, voluntarily abandoning both the emoluments and the 
 power which it held out to dazzle ambitious and worldly minds ; 
 he had passed his days in the investigation of the most important 
 truths, and had reached a truly venerable, although he hoped not 
 an extreme age. To him he meant not to impute either inade- 
 quate information, or insufficient industry, or defective sagacity. 
 But he hoped he would not be deemed disrespectful towards Mr. 
 Bentham if he said that his plan of parliamentary reform show- 
 ed that he had dealt more with books than with men." 44 
 
 In his reply, Burdett said that Brougham's speech was char- 
 acterized by eloquence "but was certainly very far from being 
 convincing." It "was a sort of salmagundi of sarcasm, pane- 
 gyric, and verbosity, of exaggeration and misinterpretation, in 
 
 41 Bowring, op. cit., X, p. 497. 
 
 42 Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, XXXVIII, pp. 1150-1186. 
 
 43 Ibid.. XXXVIII, pp. 1168-1169. 
 
 44 Ibid., XXXVIII, p. 1164.
 
 74 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 which the words were more abundant than the ideas, the irony- 
 more conspicuous than the argument." Burdett systematically 
 answered the points of various opponents and stated : ' ' All the 
 wholesome provisions which had been made for the protection of 
 the people, had been violated, set at nought, and buried in the 
 corruption of the House of Commons, neglecting the voice, and 
 not regarding the interests of the people. ' ' He pointed out par- 
 ticularly that Brougham, claiming to be friendly to reform r 
 ' ' had, at the same time, attempted to render ridiculous the ablest 
 advocate which reform had ever found the illustrious and un- 
 rivalled Bentham. It was in vain, however, for the honorable 
 and learned gentleman to attempt, by stale jokes and misapplied 
 sarcasm, to undervalue the efforts of a mind the most comprehen- 
 sive, informed, accurate, acute and philosophical, that had per- 
 haps in any time or in any country been applied to the subject of 
 legislation and which, fortunately for mankind, had been brought 
 to bear upon reform, the most important of all political subjects. 
 The abilities of Bentham, the honorable and learned gentleman 
 could not dispute his disinterestedness he could not deny his 
 benevolence he could not but admire his unremitted labours, he 
 would do well to respect and not to attempt to disparage. The 
 conviction of such a mind, after mature investigation, over- 
 coming preconceived prejudice, could not be represented as the 
 result of wild and visionary speculation; and the zealous and 
 honest adherents of the cause of reform might be well contented 
 to rest the question on the foundation, broad and deep, upon 
 which Bentham had placed it. The honorable and learned gentle- 
 man, therefore, unless he found himself competent at least to 
 attempt to answer the reasons of Bentham, ought, for his own 
 sake, to be more cautious how he endeavored to misrepresent 
 those reasons, or to effect, by misstatement, what he was unable 
 to accomplish by argument. ' ' 45 
 
 Although these resolutions did not pass into law in 1818, one 
 does not find it difficult to understand that the debate and dis- 
 cusion lent large influence to the passage of the Bill of 1832. Lord 
 Cochrane's statement, opening the debate, was really prophetic. 
 "He would not, he could not anticipate the success of that mo- 
 tion; but he would say, as had been before said by the great 
 
 45 Ibid., XXXVIII, pp. 1180, 1182-1183.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCEATIC DEVELOPMENT 75 
 
 Chatham, the father of Mr. Pitt, that if the House did not re- 
 form itself from within, it would be reformed with a vengeance 
 from without. The people would take the subject up, and a 
 reform would take place which would make many members re- 
 gret their apathy in refusing that reform which might be render- 
 ed efficient and permanent." 46 
 
 October 24, 1831, Bentham wrote a message to Lady Hannah 
 Elice, in which he said : ' ' The way to be comfortable is to make 
 others comfortable. The way to make others comfortable is to 
 appear to love them. The way to appear to love them is to 
 love them in reality. ' ' 47 Writing this at a time so near the close 
 of his life he expressed the dominating factor of his philosophy. 
 Invitations to dine at Queen's Square Place were extended to 
 special friends and were duly appreciated by the recipients. 
 February 4, 1832, Burdett wrote, in accepting an invitation, 
 ' ' Hassan, the camel-driver, was not more delighted when, travel- 
 ling o'er the desert, he received on his parched lips a drop of 
 water from heaven, than I am at receiving your kind, and al- 
 low me to call it, affectionate invitation; for I value your good 
 opinion and esteem beyond that of the million far. I know no- 
 thing of the honours you suppose are waiting me, and I assure 
 you, in perfect sincerity of heart, I care nothing; but of this 
 and other more interesting matters when we meet, which, God 
 willing, shall be Sunday, for I put aside every consideration to 
 have that pleasure. ' ' 48 
 
 Always laboring under the handicap of shyness Bentham did 
 not go often as a guest to the homes of others, but he surrounded 
 himself "with persons whose sympathies were like his own, and 
 whose sympathies he might direct to their appropriate objects 
 in the active pursuits of life. * * * While he availed himself of 
 every means in his power of forming and cherishing a friendship 
 with whoever in any country indicated remarkable benevolence ; 
 while Howard was his intimate friend a friend delighted alike 
 to find and to acknowledge in him a superior and beneficent 
 genius ; while Romilly was not only the advocate of his opinions 
 in the Senate, but the affectionate and beloved disciple in pri- 
 vate; while for the youth LaFayette, his junior contemporary, 
 
 46 Ibid., XXXVIII, p. 1150. 
 
 47 Bowring, op. cit., XI, p. 71. 
 
 48 Ibid., XI, p. 74.
 
 76 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 he conceived an affection which in the old age of both was beauti- 
 ful for the freshness and ardour with which it continued to glow ; 
 while there was no name in any country known and dear to 
 Liberty and Humanity which was not known and dear to him, 
 and no person bearing such a name that ever visited England 
 who was not found at his social board, he would hold intercourse 
 with none of any rank or fame whose distinction was unconnect- 
 ed with the promotion of human improvement, and much less 
 whose distinction arose from the zeal and success with which 
 they laboured to keep back improvement. That the current of 
 his own benevolence might experience no interruption or dis- 
 turbance, he uniformly avoided engaging in any personal con- 
 troversy; he contended against principles and measures, not 
 men; and for the like reason he abstained from reading the at- 
 tacks made upon himself, so that the ridicule and scoffing, the 
 invective and malignity, with which he was sometimes assailed, 
 proved as harmless to him as to his cause. By the society he 
 shunned, as well as by that which he sought, he endeavored to 
 render his social intercourse subservient to the cultivation, to 
 the perpetual growth and activity, of his benevolent sympa- 
 thies." 49 
 
 It may not be amiss to note the opinion of a Spanish admirer 
 of Bentham, an alcalde of Galicia. Conversing one day with 
 George Borrow who spent the years from 1835 to 1840 in Spain, 
 the alcalde spoke of Bentham as the "grand Baintham, " "the 
 most universal genius which the world ever produced ; a Solon, 
 a Plato, and a Lope de Vega." Borrow said he had not thought 
 Bentham could be ranked as a poet. The alcalde's reply was 
 significant: "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. ' ' 50 
 
 An invitation that Bentham wrote to Talleyrand in Febru- 
 ary, 1832, reads in part : ' ' Prince ! Do you want an appetite ? 
 The means of finding one for Friday next, is to come to this re- 
 treat, and take a Hermit 's dinner on Thursday. I say on Thurs- 
 day ; for thus, Bowring, whose house looks upon my garden, may 
 
 49 Ibid., XI, p. 92. 
 50 Borrow, The Bible in Spain, p. 289.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 77 
 
 enjoy your society for a few moments ; that is to say, after din- 
 ner; for during dinner we must be tete-a-tete, which will be the 
 only way of making ourselves known to each other; I give my 
 mornings to nobody. I have so much to do, and so short a time 
 to live, that I cannot abridge my working hours." 51 These two 
 men had not met for forty years and the keen delight of the 
 French diplomatist was manifested in one sentence of his reply : 
 "To dine with Bentham; that is a pleasure which tempts me 
 to break an engagement I have been under for several days." 
 Bowring states that Talleyrand regarded Bentham as "preemin- 
 ently a genius more entitled to the name than any man he had 
 ever known," and "that all modern writers, Bentham was the 
 one from whom most had been stolen and stolen without ac- 
 knowledgment. " Also, "et, pille de tout le monde, il est toujours 
 riche.' )5 ~ 
 
 Etienne Dumont (1759-1829), the leading disciple of Bentham 
 and the great expositor of Benthamic philosophy, was a Swiss 
 philosopher, scholarly, widely travelled, of superior talents, lib- 
 eral sentiments, and fine character. He became tutor to Lord 
 Lansdowne's son Henry in 1785. Esteemed by the Whigs he 
 soon became a close friend of Romilly. He met Bentham at Bo- 
 wood in 1788 and, after returning to England from France in 
 1791, became intimate with Bentham. Romilly showed Dumont 
 some of Bentham 's manuscripts and Dumont comprehending 
 the great worth of them offered to edit the writings. Of this 
 Bentham says "the plan was that Dumont should take my half- 
 finished manuscripts as he found them half English, half 
 English-French, and make what he could of them in Genevan- 
 French, without giving me any further trouble about the mat- 
 ter. Instead the lazy rogue comes to me with everything that 
 he writes, and teases me to fill up every gap he has observed. 53 
 Leslie Stephen says that Dumont, becoming Bentham 's most de- 
 voted disciple labored without ceasing upon his master's works. 54 
 Abridging, elucidating, correcting, simplifying, he was engaged 
 for years with Bentham 's ever-increasing writings. 
 
 The results of Dumont 's effort received a currency that great- 
 
 si Bowring, op. cit., XI, p. 75. 
 51! Ibid., XI, p. 75. 
 
 53 Ibid., X, p. 313. 
 
 54 Stephen, op. cit., I, p. 187.
 
 78 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 ly aided in spreading the influence of Bentham's writings. From 
 time to time the following appeared: 1802, Traite de Legisla- 
 tion Civile et Penale; 1811, Theorie des Peines et des Recom- 
 penses; 1816, Tactique des Assemblies Legislatives; 1823, 
 Preuves Judiciaire; 1828, Organization Judiciaire et Codifica- 
 tion. As a commentary upon this work of master and disciple 
 is Macaulay 's statement : ' ' The literature of France has been to 
 ours what Aaron was to Moses, the expositor of great truths 
 which would else have perished for want of a voice to utter 
 them with distinctness. The relation which existed between Mr. 
 Bentham and Dumont is an exact illustration of the intellectual 
 relations in which the two countries stand to each other. The 
 great discoveries in physics, in metaphysics, in political science 
 are ours. But scarcely any foreign nation except France has re- 
 ceived them from us by direct communication. Isolated by our 
 situation, isolated by our manners, we found truth, but we did 
 not impart it. France has been the interpreter between England 
 and mankind." 55 
 
 James Mill (1773-1836), by Leslie Stephen called Bentham's 
 lieutenant, 56 was of humble birth, his father being a shoemaker, 
 his mother, a farmer's daughter. Educated in the parish school 
 of Logic-Perth, the Montrose Academy, and the Edinburgh 
 University, he was licensed to preach in the Church of Scotland 
 in 1798. He did not follow the work of a divine but gave his 
 attention to historical, political, and philosophical lines of work. 
 Davidson classed Mill as the most strenuous, the ablest, and 
 most uncompromising disciple of Bentham. 57 These two phil- 
 osophers became acquainted in 1808 and their acquaintance 
 ripened into warm and lasting friendship. Mill was often a din- 
 ner guest at Queen's Square Place walking over from Penton- 
 ville, but, because the elder man wished to have him nearer, in 
 1810 Mill moved into one of Bentham's houses. A little later 
 Mill lived for a time at Stoke Newington but in 1814 moved into 
 another one of his friend's houses very near to Queen's Square 
 Place. Then the two lived in most congenial intimacy for a 
 number of years. For months at a time in successive years, Mill 
 and his family were Bentham's guests at Barrow Green and 
 
 65 Macaulay, Works, (Edinburgh edition) VI, p. 8. 
 
 56 Stephen, op. cit., I, p. 7. 
 
 57 Davidson, Political Thought in England, p. 114.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 79 
 
 Ford Abbey. 58 Out of these conditions "the intercourse between 
 the two men gave rise to a close friendship, and produced on the 
 mind of the older philosopher an impress comparable in ex- 
 tent and endurance, with that received more than a quarter of 
 a century earlier amidst the scenees of the first visit to Bo- 
 wood." 59 
 
 According to Bowring the traits of Mill's mind were "not 
 amiable, but most sagacious impatient of contradiction or of 
 check, but penetrating and philosophical. No man ever reason- 
 ed with stronger logical powers no man had ever a more accur- 
 ate perception of truth, or a more condensed form of expression. 
 No man was ever more efficient as a controversialist, or more 
 felicitous in the exposure of a fallacy or a flaw." 60 Perhaps it 
 was because Mill lacked the gentleness and the sensitive tender- 
 ness of Bentham that the two men understood each other better. 
 "He argues against oppression less because he loves the oppress- 
 ed many than because he hates the oppressing few. He fights for 
 the people not that he cares for the suffering people, but that 
 he cannot tolerate the suffering-creating rulers." 61 Their warm 
 friendship did not prevent Bentham from freely criticising 
 Mill. 62 
 
 Mill, the psychologist, the philosopher, the educator, "brought 
 a vigorous intellect to grasp and to develop the doctrines of his 
 master. To a great extent he popularized them. He has been 
 reproached with having habitually neglected to acknowledge the 
 source from whence he derived his inspirations, and to have given 
 to the world as his own the valuable matter which he drew from 
 his great instructor. But the accusation has been exaggerated 
 for, though the Utilitarian Philosophy is the ground work for 
 all the writings of Mill these writings are full of original views, 
 and occupy many portions of the field of thought which had not 
 so specially engaged the attention of Bentham." 63 
 
 Mention has been made of Bentham 's attitude relative to 
 education for all classes of mankind. Mill's attitude upon this 
 subject was clearly evidenced in his article entitled "Educa- 
 
 r>s Bowring, op. cit., X, pp. 482, 483. 
 
 59 Atkinson, op. cit., p. 154. 
 
 co Bowring, op. cit., X, p. 482. 
 
 62 Ibid., X, p. 450. 
 
 <33 Ibid., X, p. 449.
 
 80 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 tion," in which he defined education as "the best employment 
 of all the means which can be made use of, by man, for render- 
 ing the human mind to the greatest possible degree the cause of 
 human happiness. Everything, therefore, which operates, from 
 the first germ of existence to the final extinction of life, in such 
 a manner as to affect those qualities of the mind on which hap- 
 piness in any degree depends, comes within the scope of the 
 present inquiry." 64 In this essay, Mill clearly showed from the 
 standpoint of utility what a large factor in man's well-being,, 
 education is. Mill taught in a forceful manner the ideas of 
 Bentham relative to education in his emphasis of the happiness 
 element, not as a selfish motive, but as the means of general wel- 
 fare. 
 
 Mill was an enthusiastic supporter of law reform and his 
 writings indicate careful and exhaustive thinking upon it. His 
 Jurisprudence develops the following subjects: Rights, Pun- 
 ishments for Wrongs, Constitution of Tribunals, Mode of Pro- 
 cedure in the Tribunals. ' ' The treatment is fresh and vigorous, 
 but does not, to any large extent, advance beyond Bentham." 65 
 
 It is interesting to note here that Bentham had set forth in 
 his essay on ' ' Universal and Perpetual Peace ' ' the plan of an in- 
 ternational tribunal for England and France. 66 Stating that 
 complicated conventions had reached solution in the American 
 Confederation, the German Diet and the Swiss League, he ask- 
 ed: "Why should not the European fraternity subsist as well 
 as the German Diet or the Swiss League?" Mill made an ad- 
 ditional contribution to the idea of international jurisprudence 
 by pointing out that nations are bound by the international 
 laws as men are bound by the code of honor. The voice of the 
 true utilitarian was heard in Mill 's advocacy of an international 
 tribunal. "Given a properly constituted tribunal, duly repre- 
 sentative of the nations, dealing impartially with the cases 
 brought before it for decision, and given the decisions and pro- 
 ceedings of the tribunal made publicly known and promulgated 
 throughout all the countries of the civilized world, then the gen- 
 eral utility of such a body would very readily be seen and its 
 power felt. It would soon be discovered that many kinds of 
 
 64 Davidson, op. cit., p. 128. 
 
 fi5 Ibid., p. 147. 
 
 66 Bowring, op. cit., II, p. 562.
 
 BENTHAM AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 81 
 
 international disputes would be more satisfactorily determined 
 by an appeal to the tribunal than by the hot-headed arbitration 
 of the sword. ' ' 67 
 
 The summum bonum of Bentham's teachings was seen in Mill's 
 world- wide view as mentioned by Davidson : "Mill had a vision 
 of the world at amity, each subordinating its own interests to the 
 interests of the whole, and, therefore, each content to mind its 
 own concerns without unduly interfering with the concerns of 
 its neighbors, or wishing to lay hold of its neighbor's territory. 
 The principle of utilitarianism was supreme with him, and he 
 necessarily deprecated anything national that would be of a sel- 
 fish or individualistic character, anything that would be incom- 
 patible with the interests of the nations in general, or, at least, of 
 the civilized nations, which presumably, in the long run, means 
 that of the uncivilized nations too." 68 
 
 Lansdowne, Romilly, Place, Brougham, Burdett, Dumont, 
 Mill, a group of seven men, some directly influential in Parlia- 
 ment, some very influential outside of Parliament, all influential 
 in behalf of the welfare of mankind, employed the theories of 
 Jeremy Bentham in their plans of reform. Lansdowne, credited 
 with causing Bentham to develop his ideas ; Place, classed as one 
 who spread among his co-workers specified ideas of reform and 
 known because of his friendship with Bentham; Romilly, Bur- 
 dett, Brougham and Mill, listed as decided up-builders of re- 
 form strongly in accord with Bentham's views, accomplished 
 much definite good as the historical records of the past century 
 manifest; and Dumont, selected as the editor of some of Ben- 
 tham's voluminous works, was responsible for the wide dissem- 
 ination of those excellent writings. These men formed a worthy 
 septette of disciples of Bentham. 
 
 It is not possible to say, with exactness, just what Bentham's 
 influence, direct and indirect, has been in bringing about many 
 changes that have resulted in man's betterment; it is not pos- 
 sible to estimate with precision just what his influence, direct and 
 indirect, has been in aiding reform in legislative, judicial, and 
 social matters; it is not possible to assess the merit that is due 
 to him through the employment of his theories in the various 
 places where they can be traced. However, the thinking mind 
 
 67 Davidson, op. eit., p. 152. 
 
 68 Ibid., p. 454.
 
 82 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 easily comprehends that English democratic legislation, as it 
 has moved forward during the past century, is largely stamped 
 with his impress. 69 In very large measure the statement made 
 by Governor Plumer of New Hampshire in a letter written to 
 Bentham October 2, 1817, has come true: "Persevere, my dear 
 Sir, in the great and important work in which you are so dis- 
 interestedly engaged. The world, if not now, at some future 
 period, will profit by your labours and though immediate suc- 
 cess may not follow, you yourself will enjoy the noble con- 
 sciousness of having faithfully served the best interests of so- 
 ciety and a rational prospect that sound principles will even- 
 tually prevail." 70 
 
 69 Burton : Introduction to the Study of the Works of Jeremy Bentham, p. 3, foot- 
 note. Among: the various reforms suggested by Bentham, the following are in- 
 stances in which his views have been partially, or wholly adopted by the legislature : 
 reform in the representative system ; municipal reform in the abolition of ex- 
 clusive privileges ; mitigation of the criminal code ; the abolition of transportation, 
 and the adoption of a system of prison discipline adapted to reformation, example, 
 and economy ; removal of defects in the jury system ; abolition of arrest in mesne 
 process ; substitution of an effectual means of appropriating and realizing a debtor's 
 property for the practice of imprisonment ; abolition of usury laws ; abolition of 
 oaths ; abolition of law taxes and fees in courts of justice ; removal of the exclusion- 
 ary rules in evidence ; repeal of the test and corporation acts ; repeal of the Cath- 
 olic disabilities acts, and other laws creating religious inequalities ; abolition or re- 
 duction of the taxes on knowledge ; a uniform system of Poor Laws under central 
 administration, with machinery for the eradication of mendicancy and idleness ; a 
 system of training pauper children, calculated to raise them from dependent to pro- 
 ductive members of society ; saving banks and friendly societies on a uniform and 
 secure system ; postage cheap, and without a view to revenue ; post-office money or- 
 ders ; a complete and uniform register of births, marriages, and deaths ; a register 
 of merchant seamen, and a code of laws for their protection ; population returns, 
 periodical, and on a uniform system, with the names, professions, etc. of individuals ; 
 the circulation of parliamentary papers as a means of diffusing the information 
 contained in them ; protection to inventions without the cumbrous machinery of the 
 patent laws ; free trade ; national educational system ; secret ballot ; universal suf- 
 frage sanitary regulations ; practical uniformity of electoral districts, voting period 
 limited to a single day ; and finally the promulgation of a league of nations for 
 universal peace. 
 
 70 Bowring, op. cit., IV, p. 677.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I. PRIMARY SOURCES: 
 
 Bowring, Sir John, The Works of Jeremy Bentham. 11 Vol- 
 umes. Edinburgh, 1843. 
 
 Brougham, Lord Henry, Works. London, 1856-62. 
 
 Burton, John Hill, Introduction to the Study of the Works of 
 
 Jeremy Bentham. Edinburgh, 1843. 
 
 Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, First Series, Volume 
 XXXVIII, 41 Volumes, London, 1804. 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., Complete Works. 12 Volumes. New York, 
 1908. 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., Complete Works, University Edition. 10 Vol- 
 umes. New York, 1899. 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. New and 
 revised edition. Philadelphia, 1850. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, Dissertations and Discussions. 5 Volumes. 
 New York, 1882. 
 
 Montague, F. C., A Fragment on Government. Oxford, 1891. 
 
 II. SECONDARY SOURCES : 
 
 Ashton, John, The Dawn of the Nineteenth Century in England. 
 
 London, 1895. 
 
 Ashton, John, Eighteenth Century Waifs. London, 1887. 
 Atkinson, Charles Milner, Jeremy Bentham, His Life and Work. 
 
 London, 1905. 
 
 Borrow, George, The Bible in Spain. London, 1908. 
 Chatterton, Edward Keble, Britain's Record, What She has done 
 
 for the World. London, 1911. 
 Davidson, William L., Political Thought in England. New York, 
 
 1916. 
 
 Edinburgh Review, Volumes 29, 78. London, 1817 and 1843. 
 Greenwood, James, Seven Curses of London. London. No date. 
 Maine, Sir Henry James Summer, Lectures on the Early History 
 
 of Institutions. New York, 1888; London, 1893. 
 Martineau, Harriet, Thirty Years' Peace. 4 Volumes. London, 
 
 1877-78, 1907-1911. 
 Merriam, Charles Edward, History of the Theory of Sovereignty 
 
 Since Rousseau. New York, 1900. 
 Merz, John Theodore, The History of European Thought in the 
 
 Nineteenth Century. 4 Volumes. Edinburgh, 1893-1903. 
 Murray, George Gilbert Amie, Faith, War, and Policy. Boston, 
 
 1917. 
 Oliphant, Mrs. Margaret, Literary History of England in the 
 
 End of the 18th, and Beginning of the 19th, Century. 33 
 
 Volumes. London, 1897. 
 
 Oliphant, Mrs. Margaret, The Victorian Age of English Liter- 
 ature. 2 Volumes. New York, (c 1892). 
 Parry, Edward Abbott, The Law and the Poor. London, 1914. 
 Parton, James, The Life and Times of Aaron Burr. 2 Volumes. 
 
 New Edition. Boston, 1898. 
 
 (83)
 
 34 IOWA STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 
 
 -e/o 
 
 / -i Redlich and Hirst, Local Government in England. 2 Volumes. 
 
 London; New York, 1903. 
 Roscoe, Edward, The English Scene in the XVIII Century. New 
 
 York, 1912. 
 Rose, J. Holland, William Pitt and the Great War. London, 
 
 1911. 
 Sidgwick, Henry, Miscellaneous Essays and Addresses. London, 
 
 1904. 
 Stephen, Leslie, The English Utilitarians. 3 Volumes. New 
 
 York; London, 1900. 
 
 Taylor, Hannis, The Origin and Growth of the English Constitu- 
 tion. 2 Volumes. Boston, 1898. 
 
 Thilly, Frank, The History of Philosophy. New York, 1914. 
 Traill, Henry Duff, Social England. 6 Volumes. New York, 
 
 1896. 
 Wallas, Graham, The Life of Francis Place. London; New 
 
 York, 1898. 
 
 Ward, Lester F., Applied Sociology. Boston; New York, 1906. 
 Westminster Review, Volumes 2, 11, 14, 21, 23. London. 
 Wilberforce, Robert Isaac and Samuel, The Life of William Wil- 
 
 berforce. 5 Volumes. London, 1838. 
 Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Leslie Stephen. New 
 
 York; London, 1889.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW. 
 
 Series 9482 
 
 Obtainable from the University 
 Librarian Price $1.00
 
 A 001 028 270 5 
 
 f