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SECTION IV.: POLITICAL FALLACIES THE SUBJECT OF THIS WORK. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 2 [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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SECTION IV.

POLITICAL FALLACIES THE SUBJECT OF THIS WORK.

The present work confines itself to the examination and exposure of only one class of fallacies, which class is determined by the nature of the occasion in which they are employed.

The occasion here in question is that of the formation of a decision procuring the adoption or rejection of some measure of government: including under the notion of a measure of government, a measure of legislation as well as of administration—two operations so intimately connected, that the drawing of a boundary line between them will in some instances be matter of no small difficulty, but for the distinguishing of which on the present occasion, and for the purpose of the present work, there will not be any need.

Under the name of a Treatise on Political Fallacies, this work will possess the character, and, in so far as the character answers the design of it, have the effect of a treatise on the art of government;—having for its practical object and tendency, in the first place, the facilitating the introduction of such features of good government as remain to be introduced; in the next place giving them perpetuation—perpetuation, not by means of legislative clauses aiming directly at that object (an aim of which the inutility and mischievousness will come to be fully laid open to view in the course of this work,) but by means of that instrument, viz. reason, by which alone the endeavour can be productive of any useful effect.

Employed in this endeavour, there are two ways in which this instrument may be applied: one, the more direct, by showing, on the occasion of each proposed measure, in what way, by what probable consequences it tends to promote the accomplishment of the end or object which it professes to have particularly in view: the other, the less direct, by pointing out the irrelevancy, and thus anticipating and destroying the persuasive force, of such deceptious arguments as have been in use, or appear likely to be employed in the endeavour to oppose it, and to dissuade men from concurring in the establishment of it.

Of these two different but harmonizing modes of applying this same instrument to its several purposes, the more direct is that of which a sample has, ever since the year 1802, been before the public, in that collection of unfinished papers on legislation, published at Paris in the French language, and which had the advantage of passing through the hands of Mr. Dumont, but for whose labours it would scarcely, in the author’s lifetime at least, have seen the light. To exhibit the less direct, but in its application the more extensive mode, is the business of the present work.

To give existence to good arguments was the object in that instance: to provide for the exposure of bad ones is the object in the present instance—to provide for the exposure of their real nature, and thence for the destruction of their pernicious force.

Sophistry is a hydra, of which, if all the necks could be exposed, the force would be destroyed. In this work they have been diligently looked out for, and in the course of it the principal and most active of them have been brought to view.