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• 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 I.

SUBJECT MATTER—OBJECT—PLAN.

On the ground of natural justice, as well as expediency, a view, nor that a slight or hasty one, has already been given of the penal colony.*

The object of the present essay is of another order: the business of it is to examine the same establishment on the ground of positive law: and, in so doing, to state for the consideration of such of my fellow-subjects, if such there be, by whom the constitution under which we drew our breath may be regarded as worth preserving, the injury it has received from the system of misgovernment, by which this nursery of martial law was originally planted, and ever since, during a period of more than fourteen years past, has been conducted and upheld.

On the ground of policy, the measure had from the first presented itself to me as more than questionable: years many and many, before the particular inducements, by which I was led to a closer investigation, had so unfortunately occurred to me. On the ground of legality, it was not till very lately that so much as a suspicion had come across me.

In a survey taken of the system pursued by the government of the colony when founded, the laws passed for the foundation of it would not remain long unnoticed. Astonishment flashed from the first glance. Compared with the immensity of the superstructure, the scantiness of the basis exhibited a Colossus mounted upon a straw. Such is the impression, such the discovery, if so it may be termed by anticipation, that gave birth to the scrutiny, of which the following pages are the result.

Legislative power is, and all along has been necessary, for the maintenance of government in the colony of New South Wales. Lawful power of legislation exists not—has not at any time existed—in that colony. Actual power of legislation has at all times been—still continues to be—exercised there. The power thus illegally assumed, was employed, as it had been assumed, for oppressive as well as anti-constitutional purposes. Britons, to whom their country, with the whole world besides, was open by law, have been kept in confinement in that land of exile. Britons, free by law as Britons can be, have been kept in that land of exile in a state of bondage. Such are the propositions which have presented themselves, and which, as such, it will be the main business of the ensuing pages to establish.

Other propositions, though distinct in the expression, and more impressive on the imagination, are not distinct in substance, being virtually included in the foregoing ones. Of what passes there for justice, a great, perhaps the greater part, is so much lawless violence: magistrates are malefactors: delinquency, which, in the conduct of the most obnoxious of the governed, is but an occasional incident—is at all times, on the part of the governing class, and especially on the part of the head of that class, the order of the day. To a part, probably the greater part, of the mandates issued, resistance is a matter of right: homicide, in the endeavour to subdue it, would be—has actually, if the case has occurred, been—as the law stands at present—murder. Not a governor, not a magistrate who has ever acted there, that has not exposed himself—that to this hour does not stand exposed—to prosecutions upon prosecutions, to actions upon actions, from which not even the Crown can save him, and of which ruin may be the consequence.

Connected with these propositions of dry law, are others in which considerations of a moral nature are combined with legal ones. Among the numerous, or rather innumerable manifestations of lawless power, are indeed some—and probably (let candour add) even by far the greater number, which import no moral blame: which, legality apart, import rather praise than blame, so far as praise is due to necessary prudence; and which, in a word, want nothing but legality to be laudable ones: measures, I mean, taken for the maintenance of authority and necessary subordination; measures calculated for the prevention of mischief in all its various shapes. To this division will be found to belong, more particularly, if not exclusively, the acts of the possessors of power upon the spot: measures recommended at least to them, if not absolutely forced upon them, by their providence, by their experience: measures finding, perhaps in every instance, an excuse—in most, if not all instances, a justification (I mean always in a moral point of view) in the mischiefs and dangers of all kinds, with which so unexampled a state of society is encompassed.

To acts of another description no such justification, no justification at all, scarce anything that can be termed so much as an excuse, in foro morali, any more than in foro legali, will perhaps, if the following view of the matter be correct, be found applicable. Such are the acts by which the punishment has been continued in fact, after the term, during which the law had authorized the infliction of it, has been at an end. Of all such oppressions, the guilt will be found to belong indisputably, and I hope exclusively, to men in power here at home: indisputably, because the exercise of such oppressions was of the essence of the system: necessary to the production of the effect, on which alone so much as a pretence to the praise of utility could ever have been grounded: exclusively, because the views promoted by such oppressions were the views of the contrivers and arch-upholders of the system, and of them alone, not of those local agents to whom the execution of it was committed; and because it was not natural, that, among professional men, whose profession is naturally understood to exempt them from the investigation of legal niceties, so much as a suspicion should have arisen, that in a system put into their hands by their official superiors, and those composing the supreme executive authority of the state, anything should be wanting to render it conformable either to the spirit or the letter of the law; especially after the application, which on that very occasion had been made to the legislature itself for powers, and powers obtained in consequence.

Once more, it is not in the injury to individuals that we are to look for the main object of the present pages: nor yet in the so much more extensive mischief accruing to the whole body of the community, from the repugnancy of the system to every one of the ends of penal justice. These are the topics already handled at least, if not exhausted, elsewhere.* The grievance, by which alone the present representation was called forth, is of a still higher order. It consists of the wound inflicted on the whole body of the people, in what used to be felt to be the tenderest part—a wound in the vitals of that constitution, which, to our forefathers at least, was an object of such fond attachment, a subject of such unremitting jealousy. Over British subjects, the agents of the crown have exercised legislative power without authority from parliament: they have legislated, not in this or that case only, but in all cases: they have exercised an authority as completely autocratical as was ever exercised in Russia: they have maintained a tyranny—not the once-famed argumentative tyranny of forty days, but a too real tyranny of fourteen years:—they have exercised it, not only over this or that degraded class alone, whose ignominy may seem to have separated their lot from the common lot of their fellow-subjects, but over multitudes as free from blemish as themselves: they have exercised it for the purpose of exercising the most glaring of oppressions: for the purpose of inflicting punishment without cause upon those on whom the whole fund of just and legal punishment had already been exhausted.

The conclusions to which the investigation tends being thus announced, the proof will constitute the principal matter of the ensuing pages.

[* ]Letters to Lord Pelham, &c.

[* ]Letters to Lord Pelham, &c.