The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• A View of the Hard-labour Bill; Being an Abstract of a Pamphlet, Intituled, “draught of a Bill, to Punish By Imprisonment and Hard Labour, Certain Offenders; and to Establish Proper Places For Their Reception:” Interspersed With Observations Relative T
• Panopticon; Or, the Inspection-house: Containing the Idea of a New Principle of Construction Applicable to Any Sort of Establishment, In Which Persons of Any Description Are to Be Kept Under Inspection; and In Particular to Penitentiary-houses,
• Preface.
• Letter I.: Idea of the Inspection Principle.
• Letter II.: Plan For a Penitentiary Inspection-house.
• Letter III.: Extent For a Single Building.
• Letter IV.: The Principle Extended to Uncovered Areas.
• Letter V.: Essential Points of the Plan.
• Letter VI.: Advantages of the Plan.
• Letter VII.: Penitentiary-houses—safe Custody.
• Letter VIII.: Uses—penitentiary-houses—reformation.
• Letter IX.: Penitentiary-houses—economy—contract—plan.
• Letter X.: Choice of Trades Should Be Free.
• Letter XI.: Multiplication of Trades Is Not Necessary.
• Letter XII.: Contractor’s Checks.
• Letter XIII.: Means of Extracting Labour.
• Letter XIV.: Provision For Liberated Persons.
• Letter XV.: Prospect of Saving From This Plan.
• Letter XVI.: Houses of Correction.
• Letter XVII.: Prisons For Safe Custody Merely.
• Letter XVIII.: Manufactories.
• Letter XIX.: Mad-houses.
• Letter XX.: Hospitals.
• Letter XXI.: Schools.
• Postscript, Part I. Containing Further Particulars and Alterations Relative to the Plan of Construction Originally Proposed; Principally Adapted to the Purpose of a Panopticon Penitentiary-house. *
• Section I.: Principal Particulars. Principal Particulars Either Settled Or Altered, Since the First Hasty Design, As Described In Letter II. And Imperfectly Represented In Plate I. See Plate II. †
• Section II.: General View of the Whole Edifice. In a General View of the Whole Building, According to Its Present Form, Three Very Different, Though Connected Masses, May Be Distinguished.
• Section III.: Annular Well. Annular Well, Instead of Stories of Intermediate Annular Area.
• Section IV.: Protracted Partitions Omitted. Protracted Partitions Omitted; Or Rather, Taken Into the Cells.
• Section V.: Cells, Double Instead of Single.
• Section VI.: Dead-part.
• Section VII.: Chapel. Chapel Introduced. *
• Section VIII.: Inspection-galleries and Lodge.
• Section IX.: Of the Communications In General.
• Section X.: Communications. Prisoners’ Staircases.
• Section XI.: Communications—inspectors Staircases.
• Section XII.: Staircase For Chapel Visitors, and For the Officers’ Apartments.
• Section XIII.: Cell-galleries.
• Section XIV.: Doors.
• Section XV.: Diametrical Passage.
• Section XVI.: Communications—exit Into the Yards.
• Section XVII.: Exterior Annular Well. ‡
• Section XVIII.: Windows Reaching Low, and Glazed; Instead of High Up, and Open.
• Section XIX.: Materials. Arched Work—much Iron—plaster Floors.
• Section XX.: Outlets, Including Airing-yards.
• Section XXI.: Approach and Fences.
• Section XXII.: Means of Supplying Water.
• Section XXIII.: Of the Mode of Warming the Building.
• Section XXIV.: Of the Economy Observed In the Construction.
• Postscript—part II. Principles and Plan of Management.
• Section I.: Leading Positions.
• Section II.: Management—in What Hands, and On What Terms.
• Section III.: Of Separation As Between the Sexes.
• Section IV.: Of Separation Into Companies and Classes.
• Section V.: Employment.
• Section VI.: Diet.
• Section VII.: Clothing.
• Section VIII.: Bedding.
• Section IX.: Health and Cleanliness.
• Section X.: Of Airing and Exercise.
• Section XI.: Schooling and Sunday Employment.
• Section XII.: Of Ventilation, Shading, and Cooling.
• Section XIII.: Distribution of Time.
• Section XIV.: Of Punishments.
• Section XV.: Mode of Guarding On the Outside.
• Section XVI.: Provision For Liberated Prisoners.
• The Following Note Respecting This Work Was Given By Bentham to Dr. Bowring, 24 Th January 1821.
• Panopticon Versus New South Wales: Or, the Panopticon Penitentiary System, and the Penal Colonization System, Compared.
• A Plea For the Constitution: Shewing the Enormities Committed, to the Oppression of British Subjects, Innocent As Well As Guilty;
• Preface.
• Section I.: Subject Matter—object—plan.
• Section II.: Power of Legislation—its Necessity In New South Wales.
• Section III: Legislation—how Far Lawful In New South Wales.
• Section IV.: American, &c. Legislation No Precedent For New South Wales.
• Section V.: Even In America, the Crown Had No Right to Legislate Without Parliament.
• Section VI.: Nullity of Legislation In New South Wales, For Want of an Assembly to Consent.
• Section VII.: Nullity of Governor’s Ordinances. For Want of a Court to Try Offences Against Them.
• Section VIII.: King’s Law-servants Not Infallible.
• Section IX.: Nullity of New South Wales Legislation, Proved By the Granada Case.
• Section X.: Governor’s Illegal Ordinances Exemplified.
• Section XI.: Governor’s Illegal Ordinances Exemplified.
• Section XII.: Expirees Forcibly Detained.
• Section XIII.: Expirees, During Detention, Kept In a State of Bondage.
• Section XIV.: Statutes Transgressed By the Legislation and Government of New South Wales.
• Draught of a Code For the Organization of the Judicial Establishment In France: With Critical Observations On the Draught Proposed By the National Assembly Committee, In the Form of a Perpetual Commentary.
• Bentham’s Draught For the Organization of Judicial Establishments, Compared With That of the National Assembly, With a Commentary On the Same.
• Emancipate Your Colonies! Addressed to the National Convention of France, Anno 1793.
• Jeremy Bentham to His Fellow-citizens of France, On Houses of Peers and Senates.
• Papers Relative to Codification and Public Instruction: Including Correspondence With the Russian Emperor, and Divers Constituted Authorities In the American United States.
• Part I.—: On Codification.
• No. I.: To the President of the United States of America.
• No. II.: James Madison, Then President of the Congress of the American United States, to Jeremy Bentham, London.
• No. III.: Albert Gallatin, Minister Plenipotentiary From the American United States to the Court of London, to Simon Snyder, Governor of Pennsylvania, Introducing a Letter From Jeremy Bentham to the Said Governor.
• No. IV.: Jeremy Bentham, London, to Simon Snyder, Governor of Pennsylvania.
• No. V.: Simon Snyder, Governor of Pennsylvania, to David Meade Randolph, Esq. Williamsburgh, Virginia, On the Subject of the Above Letter of Jeremy Bentham.
• No. VI.: Extract From a Printed Paper, Signed Simon Snyder, Dated Harrisburg, December 5 Th 1816, James Peacock, Printer, Intituled “ Governor’s Message to the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, ” Containing Seve
• No. VII.: Circular. — to the Governor of the State of
• No. VIII.: Jeremy Bentham, an Englishman, to the Citizens of the Several American United States.
• No. IX.: Jeremy Bentham to James Madison, Late President of the American United States.
• No. X.: Jeremy Bentham to the Emperor of All the Russias.
• No. XI.: Alexander I. Emperor of All the Russias, to Jeremy Bentham, London—written With His Imperial Majesty’s Own Hand, In Answer to the Above, [no. X.]
• No. XII.: Jeremy Bentham to the Emperor of All the Russias.
• No. XIII.: Prince Adam Czartoriski, of Poland, to Jeremy Bentham, London. *
• No. XIV.: Jeremy Bentham, London, to Prince Adam Czartoriski of Poland.
• Part II.: Public Instruction.
• No. I.: ( Circular. )— Letter From His Excellency Wilson Cary Nicholas, Governor of Virginia, On the Subject of Public Instruction.—addressed (the Copy of Which This Is a Transcript) to His Excellency John Quincy Adams, Minister Plenipotentiary From the U
• No. II.: ( Circular. )— to the Governor of the State of
• No. III.
• No. IV. Notice Concerning Chrestomathia, By the Paris Lancasterian Instruction Society. Report of the British and Foreign School Society to the General Meeting, Dec. 12, 1816.—EXTRACT.
• Codification Proposal, Addressed By Jeremy Bentham to All Nations Professing Liberal Opinions; Or Idea of a Proposed All-comprehensive Body of Law, With an Accompaniment of Reasons, Applying All Along to the Several Proposed Arrangements:
• Advertisement.
• Part I.—ARGUMENTS.: Positions, With Reasons For Proofs.
• Section 1.: In Every Political State, the Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires, That It Be Provided With an All-comprehensive Body of Law. All-comprehensiveness, Practicable, and Indispensable.
• Section 2.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires, That Such Body of Law Be Throughout Accompanied By Its Rationale: an Indication of the Reasons On Which the Several Arrangements Contained In It Are Grounded. Rationale, Though Unex
• Section 3.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires, That Those Reasons Be Such, Throughout, As Shall Show the Conduciveness of the Several Arrangements to the All-comprehensive and Only Defensible End Thus Expressed. Rationale, Indicat
• Section 4.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires, That, of This Rationale, the Several Parts Be Placed In the Most Immediate Contact With the Several Arrangements to Which They Respectively Apply. Rationale, Interwoven, Not Detached.
• Section 5.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires, That For the Function Exercised By the Drawing of the Original Draught of Such a Code, the Competitors He As Many As, Without Reward At the Public Expense, Can Be Obtained: and So, For T
• Section 6.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires—that, For the Drawing of Any Such Draught, No Reward At the Public Expense Be Given. At Additional Expense, Reward None.
• Section 7.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires—that Every Draught, So Given In, Be, From Beginning to End, If Possible, the Work of a Single Hand. Hands Not More Than One.
• Section 8.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires—that Such Original Draught, Being the Work of a Single Hand, Be Known to Be So. Hand, Known to Be But One.
• Section 9.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires, That the Work, Being the Work of a Single Hand, and Known to Be So, It Be Known Whose the Hand Is. Hand, Known Whose It Is.
• Section 10.: The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number Requires, That, For the Drawing of the Original Draught, All Foreigners Be Admitted Into the Competition: and That, In So Far As Applicable, Unless It Be In All Particulars Taken Together Decid
• Section 11.: On the Part of an Individual, Proposing Himself As Draughtsman For the Original Draught of a Code of Laws, Willingness Or Unwillingness to Interweave In His Draught a Rationale As Above, Is the Most Conclusive Preliminary Test, and That
• Section 12.: On the Part of a Ruler, Willingness Or Unwillingness to See Established an All-comprehensive Code, With Its Rationale As Above, and to Receive Original Draughts From All Hands, Are Among the Most Conclusive Tests of Appropriate Aptitude,
• Part II.—TESTIMONIALS.
• I. England
• II. Geneva
• III.: Spain.
• IV.: Portugal.
• V.: Italy.
• VI.: France.
• VII.: Anglo-american United States.
• VIII.: Greece.
• IX.: South America.

SECTION VI.

DIET.

On the important head of diet, the principles already established leave little here to add.

1. Quantity—unlimited;* that is, as much as each man chooses to eat.

2. Price—the cheapest.†

3. Savour—the least palatable of any in common use.‡

4. Mixture—none.

5. Change—none, unless for cheapness.

6. Drink—water.

7. Liberty to any man to purchase more palatable diet out of his share of earnings.∥

8. Fermented liquors excepted, which, even small beer, ought never to be allowed on any terms.§

Thus speak our three rules. Look round among the systems in practice: we shall find them all three transgressed, and what is more, the opposite excesses united in one and the same transgression. Many different dietaries have been adopted, prescribed, or recommended. These opposite defects may be observed more or less in all of them. In all of them, the food is limited in quantity: in all of them, it is more or less too good in quality. At Wymondham, three different sorts of things in turn, but of the only one of which the quantity is specified, viz. bread, a deplorably scanty measure. Thus far, however, right, as, except one meal in the week, animal food forms no part of it.*

Twopenny worth of bread only for a whole day! and this under the hardest as well as the easiest work! Twopenny worth of bread? Many a man will eat as much with his meat at a single meal. The allowance settled, too, not by quantity but by value! If thus scanty when at the largest rate, what must it be when one third of it is struck off? Under a regimen like this, a prison must be a scene of perpetual famine. I read it in the dietary: Howard read it in men’s countenances. “Several young men,” says he, (his visit was in 1788† ) “seemed as if they could not go out so fit for labour as they come in.” Nobody, it is said, dies there. I believe it—they do not stay there long enough: but there are slow poisons as well as quick ones. Nobody, it is added, is sick there. I deny it: everybody is sick there, and always. Is not a perpetual gnawing in the stomach a disease? Work little or much, behave well or ill, this is to be their fate. Were I to put a man to such a regimen, which as a necessary means to a fit end I should not scruple, I should speak honestly, and call it torture—I should use it instead of a thumb-screw: it is applying the rack to the inside of the stomach, instead of the outside of a limb. Men that have once been there, do not come there a second time. I dare say they don’t; nor would they, were their allowance thrice as great as it is. It is said, the profits of the work are more than double the expense of this maintenance. I dare say they are. Why?—because the maintenance is less than half what is sufficient.‡

The good Howard, who with me protests against this dietary, has given us one of his own: and in this, as in so many other instances, has shown how little self was in his thoughts. Good things, a variety of them, and butcher’s meat amongst the rest.∥ Butcher’s meat twice, or rather four times aweek, to felons whose diet is to be their punishment! Butcher’s meat for the lowest vulgar, as if for fear a cheaper diet should not agree with them! He himself all this while never suffering a morsel to enter within his lips. Yet what man ever enjoyed a more uninterrupted flow of health and spirits?

This inconsistency, in a word, runs through all the dietaries I have ever met with. Nobody has ever had the courage to be either cruel enough to feed felons as so many honest men would be glad to be fed, or extravagant enough to give them as much of the poorest food as they require. The simplest course, one would think, was doomed to be always the last thought of.

I look at the hulk dietaries; and in these, animal food abounds more than in any other. This is not difficult to be accounted for. The prisons are ships—the guards seamen: it must be seaman’s provender. What was the custom at sea, would of course be kept in view, not what was the custom elsewhere, where men are kept cheaper; much less, what are the demands of nature. Neighbour’s fare could not well be denied; especially when such a price was paid for it. Howard, too, had been there, and grumbled: and there were those who had the fear of Howard before their eyes. The powers above were doubtless told, that all this good living was well paid for in work: men who work hard must be well fed; and when men are well fed, those who feed them must be well paid for it. What has not been said, I suppose, to the powers above, is however most true, that what is paid for thus working men and feeding them, over and above what need be paid, is more than even the pretended value of their work.

Turn now to the penitentiary act. Another visit to the kitchen, and as much got by it as before. By § 35, every offender is to be “sustained with bread and any coarse meat or other inferior food, and water or small beer.”

For humanity, for health, for comfort, what does this do? Nothing. In what respect can the prisoners be the better for this article? In none. What says it? That the food shall be sufficient? No. That it shall be wholesome? No; not so much even as that. What then?—that bread shall form a part of it. They are to have—what? bread and something besides. What is that something to be? is it to be meat, at all events? No: but either meat, so as it be coarse, or any thing else whatever, so as it be of an inferior kind. Inferior to what? That the statute has not told us, and it would have been rather difficult for it to have told us.

For economy, what does it? Nothing.—Does it set up any sort of barrier against unthriftiness or waste? May not meat, though coarse, be unthrifty food, if furnished in an unnecessary quantity, or laid in upon unthrifty terms? Might not their caterer cram them with Polignac rolls, for anything there is in the act to hinder him?

It does worse than nothing. One thing it does determine: bread they must have—bread for ever, and at all events. Why always and at all events bread? Is it that bread is always the cheapest of all food? By no means. Whether it be so at any time, it is not necessary to inquire: it is sufficient that it is not always. Bread is a manufacture. Does not the earth afford substances that will serve for food—that are actually made to serve for food, with less expense of manufacture? Is bread anywhere a necessary article? Is it so much as universal amongst ourselves? Are there are not hundreds of thousands, nay millions, of honest men in the three kingdoms, to whom the very taste of it is unknown? Is not Ireland fed with potatoes? Is not Scotland fed with oatmeal? Is that inferior grain so much as manufactured into bread? Are Irishmen a puny race? Is the arm of the Highlander found weak in war?—What a lesson to hold out to so large a portion of the people!—that the food they are content with, the best their country can afford them, is not good enough for felons!*

For what purpose, then, can this regulation serve?—for what could it have been meant to serve? For guidance?—for instruction? Did it need the united power and wisdom of King, Lords, and Commons, to inform us that there are things which may be eaten with bread, and that meat is one of them? Almost equally useless is that part which prescribes the drink, though not equally pernicious. They are to have—what? Either water or small beer. If the being confined to water is an undue hardship, what does this clause to save them from it? If it is not an undue hardship, why expose the public to be put to the expense so much as of small beer? In what respect is the regulation of the smallest use to them? Though they were to have beer given to them, is there anything in the act to prevent its being sour or musty?

For what use, then, this regulation about diet, when profusion is left without bounds, and when the prisoners may be starved or poisoned for anything that it does to save them? Ask of what disservice: the answer is plain, and not to be contradicted. It prevents them from being fed so cheaply as otherwise, without any prejudice to health, they might be. In this important article good economy and this act cannot exist together.

Ask my contractor, and after a year or two’s trial he will tell you distinctly how many thousands the nation would have had to pay for this excursion into the kitchen. The world, you will find, might be sailed round and round for a small part of the expense.

Vain would it be to say, “So long as you give them bread, though it be but a morsel, you may compose the bulk of their food of whatever is cheaper, without violating the letter of the law.” Certainly: but could you without violating the spirit? without departing from what it was evident the authors had in view? Is not the article of bread put foremost? Is it not evident that, according to the notion and intention of those who drew this clause, bread was to compose the principal part of the men’s food? But suppose the clause not obligatory—what would it then be? Nugatory. Here, as before—mischief, or nothing—such is the alternative.

Turn them over to a contractor, and observe how different the result. No need to rack invention to prevent his spending too much upon their food. Leave it to him, and one thing you may be sure of, that in this way, as in all others, as little will be spent upon them as possible.

The only thing to fear in this case is, lest he should not bestow as much upon them as he ought. But against this you have your remedy. Do what the penitentiary act has not done: require that the food shall be wholesome, and that there shall be enough of it. This is something. It is such ground as not only popular censure, but a legal indictment, may be built upon. Is it not yet enough? Say that, punishment apart, he shall feed them to the extent of their desires. Will he still fail you? Hardly. Even upon the plan of the present penitentiary act, some eyes, upon the Panopticon plan all eyes, are on him. The latitude thus given him, with regard to the choice of the food, which of course will be of the cheapest sort, is even of service to his integrity, and to the comfort of the prisoners in this respect, by the jealousy it excites. Whatever he does in this way is his own doing—the result of a motive, of which the force is known to every one, and regarded with a suspicion which is as universal as it is reasonable. It is his own doing, and seen by everybody to be so. No pretence of public good—no letter of any law to afford shelter to inhumanity or avarice.

[* ]Rule of lenity, see Section 1.

[† ]Rule of economy.

[‡ ]Rule of severity.

[∥ ]Rule of economy.—Few cases, I believe, there are, if any, in which it will not be found advantageous, even in point of economy, to allow a man, in the way of reward, a proportion of his earnings. But reward must assume the shape of a present gratification, and that too of the sensual class, or, in the eyes of perhaps the major part of such a company, it can scarcely be expected to have any value; and if it take a sensual shape, it cannot take-a more unexceptionable one.

[§ ]Rule of severity.—How many thousands of the honest and industrious poor are incapable, unless at the expense of food and nourishment, of giving themselves this unnecessary indulgence!

The mischief done to health by the use or abuse of fermented liquors is beyond comparison greater than that effected by all other causes put together. The use is in fact none at all, where habit is out of the question. It would be next to impossible to tolerate a moderate enjoyment without admitting excess. The same beverage that produces no sensible effect on one man will overcome another. Even small beer ought not to be excluded from the general proscription; for there can be no commonly practicable test for distinguishing small from strong; and I have known constitutions to which even ordinary small beer has afforded the means of intoxication.

[* ]Wymondham Dietary—Two Meals.

Breakfast.—A penny loaf every day.

Dinner.—Ditto two days, potatoes two days, boiled pease two days, ox-cheek soup one day.

[† ]September 12.—On Lazarettos, p. 152.

[‡ ]God forbid what is here said should be the means of throwing anything like odium on the labours of the respectable magistrate to whom the public is indebted for this regimen and the account we have of it. Of the purity of his intentions, malice itself could not suggest a doubt: of his having conscience on his side, he has given the most unquestionable proof that man can give; for it is he himself who publishes his plan, and calls upon the world to judge of it. Seeing that economy was the point at which the penitentiary system stuck, it was his zeal for the system that carried him these lengths to serve it. Is this serving it as it ought to be served? that is the question. It is an honest difference between us, and I hope not an irreconcileable one. But while my opinions on this head remain as they are, I cannot help regretting, for the sake of the prisoners, that some contracting Jew had not had the management of the prison. The most rapacious of the tribe would not have dared to go such lengths on the side of parsimony, as this gentleman has gone from the purest motives: if he had, instead of proclaiming it and calling for imitation, he would have been as anxious to conceal it as if he had stolen what he saved.

[∥ ]Howard’s Dietary.—Good wheaten bread, 1½ lb. daily; viz. ½ lb. at breakfast, and 1 lb. at dinner.

Breakfast.—Every day ¼ of a pint of wheaten or barley meal, oatmeal, or rice made into soup.

Dinner.—Sunday and Thursday, 1 lb. of beef, mutton, or pork, without bone.—Monday and Friday, A pint of pease boiled in the broth of the preceding day.—Tuesday, Half a pint of wheat or wheat flour made into pudding or soup.—Wednesday, 2 lb. of potatoes, turnips, carrots, or other vegetables that are in season.—Saturday, ¼ lb. of cheese, or the vegetables as on Wednesday.—On Lazarettos, p. 238.

[* ]Not only bread is to be given at all events in ordinary, but even where an inferior diet is prescribed to be given for punishment’s sake, still it is to consist of bread. Guilt upon guilt, and the most guilty among the guilty are never to be sunk so low in this school of rigid discipline, as to be no higher than upon a par with liberty and innocence.

Even lenity itself, were that the only consideration, would afford an objection against the fixing upon bread as a necessary article. Bread being a sort of food which is commonly eaten with meat, and with which meat is commonly eaten, the giving it without its usual accompaniment would naturally make the privation the more sensible.