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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow SECTION VII.: MEANS, &C. CONTINUED.—IV. SPEECHES AUTHENTICALLY AND PROMPTLY PUBLISHED. - The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 3

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SECTION VII.: MEANS, &C. CONTINUED.—IV. SPEECHES AUTHENTICALLY AND PROMPTLY PUBLISHED. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 3 [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. 3.

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

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SECTION VII.

MEANS, &C. CONTINUED.—IV. SPEECHES AUTHENTICALLY AND PROMPTLY PUBLISHED.

Question 20. To which of the above ends does the correct, complete, authentic, and constant taking down, and regular publication, of all speeches made in the House, promise to be conducive?

Answer. To all three.

Question 21. In what way does it promise to be conducive to probity?

Answer 1. By impressing upon each man’s mind the assurance, that by the public in general, and by his own constituents in particular, he will, thenceforward, and then for the first time, be judged of, and in the only way in which, in his situation, a man can be rightly and justly judged of, according to his works: held up, according to his deserts, to esteem or disesteem, for everything which he has said, and not, as happens but too often at present, for saying that which he had not said.

2. In so far as concerns veracity and sincerity, by operating as a check upon those misrepresentations, which, for the purpose of the moment, are so apt to be hazarded, under favour of the at present indispensable rule, which precludes reference to anterior debates: misrepresentations respecting the speaker’s own opinion; misrepresentation respecting facts at large; misrepresentations respecting the speeches of other members; misrepresentations, sometimes resulting from carelessness and temerity, sometimes accompanied with insincerity, or in other words, with wilful falsehood.

Question 22. In what way does it promise to be conducive to intellectual aptitude?

Answer. In the several ways following, viz.

1. By furnishing to each member, on the occasion of each motion, a correct and complete view, of whatsoever evidences and arguments have, on the occasion of the same motion,—or any other past motion so connected with it as to afford either evidences or arguments justly applicable to it,—been brought forward: thereby, so far as they go, furnishing him with better and safer grounds on which to found his opinion, his speeches, if any, and his vote, than can be furnished by any other means.

2. By impressing upon each man’s mind that assurance of being judged of according to his words, which has just been brought to view, in the character of a security for appropriate probity. For, the more correct the judgment which he is assured will be passed upon that part of his works, the stronger the motive which he has for making whatsoever exertions shall appear to him to be necessary, to save him from the dishonour of being found wanting in point of appropriate intellectual aptitude.

3. By furnishing the only completely efficient means for detecting and pointing out the existence, and successfully counteracting the influence, as well of the misrepresentations above mentioned, as of those rhetorical fallacies and devices, the efficiency of which depends partly on the irremediable uncertainty—in which, in the case of word-of-mouth discourse, the identity of the words in which they are conveyed, remains involved—partly on the want of the time requisite for searching out and bringing to light the errors and false judgments which they serve to propagate and inculcate.*

4. By keeping out of the house such persons as, on the ground of experience, shall, either in their own judgment, or that of their constitutional judges, have been found unable to abide this test.

[* ]On the subject of these fallacies, some loose papers were, at the writing of the above paragraph, lying on the author’s shelves. Not long ago,—to serve as a sort of appendix to some others, in which somewhat greater progress had been made, on the subject of the Tactics of Political Assemblies,. they were, by the author’s friend, Mr. Dumont, put into that French dress, in which, by the same able hand, so many other uncompleted works of the author’s have been made to appear so much to their advantage. Copies of this work are in London, probably some of them in the hands of the foreign booksellers: but, owing to some accident, none have yet been seen by the author of these pages:—1. Fallacies of the Ins; 2. Fallacies of the Outs; 3. Eitherside fallacies:—in the original, these were the general heads. One general character belongs to almost all of them; and that is irrelevancy, irrelevancy with relation to the particular subject, be it what it may, to which they are applied. It were truly curious to observe, in how large a proportion these are the materials of which parliamentary and other political speeches—not to speak of other political works—are composed. (See the Book of Fallacies in this Collection.)