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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 XIII.

EXPIREES, DURING DETENTION, KEPT IN A STATE OF BONDAGE.

No. 17, I. 74. July 1787.—Freedom from bondage, refused along with liberty of departure, on the same ground, viz. the want of evidence of the commencement of the term of servitude. See above, Nos. 1 & 2.

No. 18, I. 169. July 1791.—Expirees, who wished not to become settlers in New South Wales, ordered to work there for twelve or eighteen months certain. See No. 4.

No. 19, I. 208. April 1792.—Expirees “become numerous.” To fourteen of them the choice of the place where they were to labour (where these freemen were to be forced to labour) is stated as an “indulgence.”

No. 20, I. 474. 4th October 1796.—No expiree was now allowed “to remove himself without permission from the public work. But, notwithstanding this had been declared in public orders, many withdrew themselves . . . . on the day of their servitude ceasing.” For this “they were punished, and ordered again to labour.”

No. 21, II. p. 22. February 1797.—“Several convicts who had served their respective terms of transportation, having applied to be discharged from the victualling books of the colony, and allowed to provide for themselves, it was determined that, once during a given time, certificates of their having so served their several sentences should be granted to them, together with the permission they solicited.”—Once during a given time: i. e. once a-year, once a-quarter, or once a-month, &c., if the sense that presents itself to me is what was meant. This being the case, the time when each man was restored to liberty, was the time—not when his right to it commenced—not when law and justice required that he should be restored to it—but a time which recommended itself to the imagination, by some such idea as that of order and regularity:—at any rate, by some idea or other, which in the order of importance occupied in certain conceptions a higher rank than that of law and justice. What would be the feelings of the good people in England, if, by the influence of any such love of order on the mind of a secretary of state or sheriff, prisoners were in future to be discharged from prisons here, not as at present, when their respective terms are up, but in gangs together, say every quarter-day? so that a man, for example, whose sentence was for a month, should, for the sake of good order, be kept in jail three months longer, all but a day or two, if his month happened to end a day or two after quarter-day?

No. 22, Ib. II. p. 23. March 1797.—“It appeared by the books, in which were entered the certificates granted to the convicts who had again become free people, that there were at this time not less than 600 men off the store, and working for themselves in the colony: forming a vast deduction of labouring people from the public strength, and adding a great many chances against the safety of private and public property, as well as present security.”

Legality (let it never be out of mind) is the object of inquiry here, not abstract expediency. So far as security and economy were concerned, legality and expediency seem to have been in a state of perpetual repugnance. Legality required that each man should be liberated from bondage the instant the time comprised in his sentence was at an end: expediency (had legality been out of the question) would perhaps have required that, in a society so constituted, he never should be discharged at any time.* But, as to the contrivance for making the discharges in the lump, at fixed periods, it is not quite so apparent how expediency was served by it, as it is that law was violated by it. What a system! under which, in one way or other, it was impossible not to do wrong! in which mischief, in a variety of shapes—frequently, perhaps, utter destruction—would have been the consequence of anything like an exact conformity to the rules of law!

In a situation like this, the conduct of the local powers may on each occasion be, upon the whole, blameable or unblameable, as it may happen: but the system itself, under which they are obliged to act, what can it be, otherwise than blameable—blameable in the extreme—upon all occasions?

In all these transactions—in all this time—is it in the nature of the case, that the system of illegal detention, such as it is, should have been carried on in the penal colony, otherwise than in consequence of, and in general in conformity to, instructions received from home?

Much argument does not seem necessary to prove, that the difference between punishment of this sort for a limited term, and punishment of the same sort for life, was no secret to those by whom it was obliterated in practice. But by a particular fact a sort of impression will often be made, beyond any that can be made by general inference.

In September 1794, in a single page, an account is given of no fewer than sixteen convicts existing at one time (one, in from a hundred to two hundred or some such matter,) in whom symptoms of reformation had been supposed to be discovered.* The supposed penitents here in question were nonexpirees: to different individuals amongst them, different and very carefully measured degrees of indulgence were extended. To one of them (William Leach) whose “term” under “his sentence of transportation” had been for seven years, of which term a part only had elapsed, “permission,” it is stated, was given “to quit this country” (New South Wales;) but clogged with the condition of his not returning to England, so long as his “term” remained “unexpired.”

Here, then, the punishment, we see, was analysed, and its constituent elements separated: the confinement to New South Wales, together with the species of bondage incident to it, was remitted: the exile was left, and for the whole time, in full force.

The written instruments, serving as evidences of the indulgences thus granted, are termed, on the occasion, “warrants of emancipation:” and to these warrants the “seal of the territory” (it is stated) was affixed. What was done on this occasion being done by so many formal, and of course (if anything like a register be kept there) registered acts, it seems difficult to suppose but that it must have been upon Instructions from government here—Instructions in some degree correspondent in point of formality—that they were grounded. If, under any such nice distinctions and guarded limitations, power was thus given for permitting individuals to quit the colony before the expiration of their respective sentences—given, therefore, in contemplation of the precise tenor of each law—is it supposable, that without Instructions equally deliberate, this large and continually-increasing proportion of the population (the expirees) should have been detained as they were detained, though against law, after the expiration of their respective terms?

Were the Court of Common Pleas to give judgment “in an appeal of death,” they would be “guilty of felony,”—says Hawkins, B. I. ch. 28, § 5, p. 169, 8vo., with a legion of marginal authorities for his support.—Guilty? why guilty? Then comes of course a technical reason:† but the rational one, which it shades, is evident enough; because, without what is called mala fides—without criminal consciousness—consciousness of the want of right to do what they take upon them to do—an error of that description could never, by persons of that description, be committed.‡

[* ]See Letters I. and II. to Lord Pelham. “And, (on the occasion just mentioned (No. 21,) of the expirees “who having withdrawn themselves from the public work immediately upon the expiration of their terms of legal servitude, were punished and ordered again to labour”)—“they seized,” says the historian immediately after, “the first opportunity of running away.” “We were well convinced,” it is added, “that by these people and those who harboured them” [viz. the expiree settlers in general] “every theft was committed.” I. p. 474.

[* ]It is almost the first discovery of the kind mentioned, and I believe quite the last: unless it be that in the instances of the few permissions of departure granted to expirees, the recognition of such a change may, as far as those instances go, be supposed to be included.

[† ]“Because, these courts having no more jurisdiction over these crimes than private persons, their proceedings thereon are merely void, and without any foundation.”

[‡ ]Exile, confinement, and bondage—inflictions perfectly distinct—are the ingredients of which (as already noted) the complex punishment styled transportation is composed. It has been so at all times, and under both systems: though under the new system the two last-mentioned ingredients possess a degree of inflexibility, strongly contrasted with their laxity under the old. When the transportation was to America, the bondage might be bought off or begged off, in the whole or in any less proportion, by agreement with the assignee of the property in the convict’s service:—the bondage, which was the principal infliction of the two; and with it all the accessory accompaniments. Under the new system, neither the one nor the other is remissible, but by the act of the agent of the crown, nor therefore (regularly at least) but upon public grounds. Under the new system, again, over and above the extraordinary degree of tension thus given to these two secondary branches of the punishment, the primary branch, the exile, has received a still more decided enhancement, by the addition made to the duration of it. For, supposing the confinement in the penal colony to be continued, as it always has been, to the legal end of each penal term (with or without the bondage, according to the fluctuating decision of the local despot,) it follows, that under the new system, by the mere change of local situation—I mean by the substitution of the superlatively distant, and comparatively inaccessible, territory of New South Wales, to the so much nearer and more accessible coasts of British America—an addition has thus been made to the exile—an addition which can never have been so little as four months, and may have amounted to years: and in future instances may at all times amount to any number of years.

In the case of those whose offences were prior, in point of time, to the year 1787, (the date of the act for the foundation of this colony,) this addition, though by that act rendered conformable to law, yet, not having anything like necessity for its justification, could not by any act be rendered conformable to natural justice.

Even in all subsequent instances, though the injustice was at an end, an addition of no small magnitude has been made, in this obscure and indirect mode, to the severities of the penal system. The severer the additional inflictions thus irregularly introduced, though in a manner not absolutely repugnant to law, the stricter, one should have thought, should have been the caution observed, to avoid adding, to the imputation of legal severity, the reproach of wanton and oppressive illegality and injustice. That the eyes of men in power were really more or less open to the distinctions thus confounded by their practice, is evidenced by the discriminations reported in the text.