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Subject Area: Economics
Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law
Topic: Property

CHAPTER I.: THE QUIETIST, OR “NO COMPLAINT”—( ad quietem ) - 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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CHAPTER I.

THE QUIETIST, OR “NO COMPLAINT”—(ad quietem)

Exposition.—A new law or measure being proposed in the character of a remedy for some incontestable abuse or evil, an objection is frequently started, to the following effect:—“The measure is unnecessary; nobody complains of disorder in that shape in which it is the aim of your measure to propose a remedy to it: even when no cause of complaint has been found to exist, especially under governments which admit of complaints, men have in general not been slow to complain; much less where any just cause of complaint has existed.” The argument amounts to this:—Nobody complains, therefore nobody suffers. It amounts to a veto on all measures of precaution or prevention, and goes to establish a maxim in legislation, directly opposed to the most ordinary prudence of common life;—it enjoins us to build no parapets to a bridge till the number of accidents has raised an universal clamour.

Exposure.—The argument would have more plausibility than it has, if there were any chance of complaints being attended to—if the silence of those who suffer did not arise from despair, occasioned by seeing the fruitlessness of former complaints. The expense and vexation of collecting and addressing complaints to parliament being great and certain, complaint will not commonly be made without adequate expectation of relief. But how can any such expectation be entertained by any one who is in the slightest degree acquainted with the present constitution of parliament? Members who are independent of and irresponsible to the people, can have very few and very slight motives for attending to complaints, the redress of which would affect their own sinister interests. Again, how many complaints are repressed by the fear of attacking powerful individuals, and incurring resentments which may prove fatal to the complainant!

The most galling and the most oppressive of all grievances is that complicated mass of evil which is composed of the uncertainty, delay, expense, and vexation in the administration of justice: of this, all but a comparatively minute proportion is clearly factitious* —factitious, as being the work, originally and in its foundation, of the man of law; latterly, and in respect of a part of its superstructure, of the man of finance. In extent, it is such, that of the whole population there exists not an individual who is not every moment of his life exposed to suffer under it: and few advanced in life, who, in some shape or other, have not actually been sufferers from it. By the price that has been put upon justice, or what goes by the name of justice, a vast majority of the people, to some such amount as 9-10ths or 19-20ths, are bereft altogether of the ability of putting in for a chance for it; and to those to whom, instead of being utterly denied this sort of chance, is sold, it is sold at such a price, as, to the poorest of such as have it still in their power to pay, the price is utter ruin—and even to the richest, matter of serious and sensible inconvenience.

In comparison of this one scourge, all other political scourges put together are feathers: and in so far as it has the operations of the man of finance for its cause, if, instead of onetenth upon income, a property tax amounted to nine-tenths, still an addition to the property tax would, in comparison of the affliction produced by the sum assessed on law-proceedings, be a relief: for the income-tax falls upon none but the comparatively prosperous, and increases in proportion to the prosperity—in proportion to the ability to sustain it; whereas the tax upon law-proceedings falls exclusively upon those whom it finds labouring under affliction—under that sort of affliction which, so long as it lasts, operates as a perpetual blister on the mind.

Here, then, is matter of complaint for every British subject that breathes—here, injustice, oppression, and distress are all extreme: complaint there is none. Why? Because, by unity of sinister interest, and consequent confederacy between lawyer and financier, relief is rendered hopeless.

[* ]See Scotch Reform, in Vol. V.