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• Scotch Reform; Considered With Reference to the Plan Proposed In the Late Parliament, For the Regulation of the Courts and the Administration of Justice In Scotland: With Illustrations From English Non-reform: In the Course of Which, Divers Imperfectio
• Advertisement.
• Letters to Lord Grenville, On the Proposed Reform In the Administration of Civil Justice In Scotland.
• Letter I.
• Letter II.: Proposed Division of the Court of Session.
• Letter III.: Proposed System of Pleading.
• Letter IV.: Proposed Trial By Jury.
• Letter V.: On the Bill Called Lord Eldon’s.
• Summary View of the Plan of a Judicatory, Under the Name of the Court of Lords’ Delegates, Proposed For the Exercise of Those Judicial Functions, the Adequate Discharge of Which By the Whole House Has, For These Six Or Seven Years, Been Rendered Confe
• The Elements of the Art of Packing, As Applied to Special Juries, Particularly In Cases of Libel Law.
• Advertisement to the First Edition.
• Part I.
• Chapter I.: Occasion of This Work.
• Chapter II.: Juries—their Use As a Check to Judges.
• Chapter III.: The Check How Done Away By Influence.
• Chapter IV.: Special Juries, a Special Engine of Corruption.
• Chapter V.: Jury Unanimity Increases the Corruption.
• Chapter VI.: Purposes to Which Influence On Juries May Be Made Subservient.
• Chapter VII.: Chief Purpose, Crushing the Liberty of the Press.
• Chapter VIII.: The Exchequer Packing Office Suffices.
• Chapter IX.: Instruments For Crushing the Liberty of the Press.
• Chapter X.: Want of Adequate Obsequiousness Morally Impossible.
• Chapter XI.: Such Juries Worse Than None.
• Part II.: State of the Packing System, Anno 1808.
• Chapter I.: Introduction—two Reforming Shrievalties.
• Chapter II.: The Sheriff to the Lord Chief Baron—notices.
• Chapter III.: Lord Chief Baron to Sheriff Sir Richard Phillips—avowries and Defences.
• Chapter IV.: Observations On the Lord Chief Baron’s Defences.
• Chapter V.: Special Jury Corruption—devices By Which It Was Protected.
• Chapter VI.: Learned Advice From the Temple.
• Chapter VII.: Advice From Lincoln’s-inn.
• Chapter VIII.: Maxims Concerning Reform, Deduced From the Above Letter.
• Chapter IX.: Transactions At the Remembrancer’s.
• Part III.: State of the Packing System, Anno 1809.
• Chapter I.: Commons’ Debate, 24 Th April 1809. Packing and Cutting.
• Chapter II.: Double-fee Abuse, Plain and Embroidered.
• Part IV.—: Remedies Proposed. *
• Chapter I.: Humble Proposal For Restoring the Constitution In Regard to Juries.
• Chapter II.: State of Jury Package In Scotland.
• Chapter III.: Humble Proposal For Restoring the Authority of Parliament.
• “swear Not At All:” Containing an Exposure of the Needlessness and Mischievousness, As Well As Anti-christianity of the Ceremony of an Oath: a View of the Parliamentary Recognition of Its Needlessness, Implied In the Practice of Both Houses; a
• Advertisement.
• Editor’s Note
• Swear Not At All. Mat. V. 34.
• Section 1.: Oath. Incongruity of the Assumption, On Which Its Supposed Beneficial Efficiency Is Grounded.
• Section 2.: Mischievousness of This Instrument Considered In a General Point of View.
• Section 3.: Its Inefficiency In the Character of a Security Against Deceptious Incorrectness and Incompleteness In Evidence.
• Section 4.: Recognition of Its Inutility By Lords and Commons.
• Section 5.: Mischiefs —1. Contributing to the Mendacity-licence Granted By Judges.
• Section 6.: Mischief 2— Weakening In Various Ways the Efficiency of the Laws.
• Section 7.: Mischief 3— Bewildering and Enslaving the Consciences of Jurymen.
• Section 8.: Mischief 4— Giving Aid and Force to the Enterprises of Malefactors.
• Section 9.: Mischief 5— Furnishing Pretence For Misrule By Abuse of Prerogative.
• Section 10.: Misrule, How to Perpetuate—coronation Oaths Amended.
• Section 11.: Mischief 6— Corrupting the National Morals and Understanding—oxford University Oaths.
• Section 12.: Mischief 6 Continued. —ii. Cambridge Oaths.
• Section 13.: Practice of Receiving Judicial Oaths, Its Repugnancy to the Precepts of Jesus.
• Section 14.: Succedanea—true Securities Substitutible to This False One.
• Section 15.: Cause and Origin of the Practice In Regard to Oaths.
• Appendix.
• Truth Versus Ashhurst; Or, Law As It Is, Contrasted With What It Is Said to Be.
• The King Against Edmonds and Others: Set Down For Trial, At Warwick, On the 29 Th of March 1820.
• The King Against Sir Charles Wolseley, Baronet, and Joseph Harrison, Schoolmaster, Set Down For Trial, At Chester, On the 4 Th of April 1820.
• Official Aptitude Maximized; Expense Minimized: As Shown In the Several Papers Comprised In This Volume.
• Paper I.—
• Paper II.—: Introductory View, &c.
• Paper III.—: Extract From the Proposed Constitutional Code; Entitled, Official Aptitude Maximized—expense Minimized. By Jeremy Bentham, Esq. Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn.
• Paper IV.—: Supplement to the Above Extract.
• Paper V.—: Defence of Economy Against the Right Honourable Edmund Burke.
• Paper VI.—: Defence of Economy Against the Right Honourable George Rose.
• Paper VII.: Observations On Mr. Secretary Peel’s House of Commons Speech, 21 St March 1825, Introducing His Police Magistrates’ Salary Raising Bill, ( Date of Order For Printing, 24 Th March 1825.)
• Paper VIII.: Indications Respecting Lord Eldon, Including History of the Pending Judges’-salary-raising Measure.
• Paper IX.—: On the Militia.
• Paper X.: On Public Account Keeping.
• Paper XI.: Constitutional Code—table of Contents As Shown By Titles of Chapter and Sections.
• Commentary On Mr. Humphreys’ Real Property Code, By Jeremy Bentham. From the Westminster Review, No. XII., For October 1826.
• *∗* the Following Note Was Prefixed to the Article By the Editor of the Westminster Review: —
• Commentary On Humphreys’ Real Property Code.
• I.: Deed of Sale.
• II.: Deed of Mortgage. 1
• III.: Marriage Settlement Deed.
• Outline of a Plan of a General Register of Real Property: Contained In a Communication to the Commissioners Appointed Under Letters Patent, of Date the 6 Th June 1828, to Inquire Into the Law of England Respecting Real Property, and First Printed I
• Justice and Codification Petitions: Being Forms Proposed For Signature By All Persons Whose Desire It Is to See Justice No Longer Sold, Delayed, Or Denied: and to Obtain a Possibility of That Knowledge of the Law, In Proportion to the Want of Which T
• Justice and Codification Petitions.
• Advertisement.
• Preliminary Explanations Necessary to Be First Read.
• Petition For Justice.
• Abridged Petition For Justice.
• More Abridged Petition For Justice.
• Supplement, Which May Be Added Or Not to Any One of the Three Or Any Other Proposed Petition.
• Petition For Codification.
• Lord Brougham Displayed: Including I. Boa Constrictor, Alias Helluo Curiarum; II. Observations On the Bankruptcy Court Bill, Now Ripened Into an Act; III. Extracts From Proposed Constitutional Code.

Section 3.

Its inefficiency in the character of a security against deceptious incorrectness and incompleteness in evidence.

Of the utter inefficiency of this instrument, when employed by itself, and without either punishment or shame for its support, the demonstration, for such surely it might be made, would, for the completion of it, require more room than can here be spared.

For everything but demonstration, the bare term custom-house oath, added to the perjurious unanimity secured, in the case of jurymen, as above, by impending torture, might of themselves perhaps suffice.

It is not without that extreme reluctance, of which the causes may without much difficulty be imagined, that the necessity is here yielded to of adding university oaths:—English university-statute-enforcing oaths.

When the question has been concerning a Mahometan, a Hindoo, a Chinese,—or even a Christian, if a Catholic,—great doubts have been entertained, by pious and learned Church-of-England men—lawyers—and non-lawyers—concerning the degree of binding force, which, in any such heterodox bosom, ought to be ascribed to the ceremony of an oath.

But, in the case of one of the two English Universities,—thence in the case of about one half of the English Church-of-England clergy,—the right reverend prelates not excluded,—if conduct be any proof of opinion, no room can be found for doubt. Ask what regard?—answer, Not a particle. Ask what binding force?—answer, None whatever.

In the University of Oxford, on the admission of every member, an oath is administered to him, by which, without exception, “all the statutes, privileges, and customs of the university,” and, for aught appears, present and future, cognoscible and uncognoscible are promised by him to be observed.*

Of this treasure of antique wisdom,—part polished, part recast, part originally cast—nobody knows in what proportions—by the hand of Laud,† —so much as is contained in about 261 closely printed Latin pages, and which makes but a part, nor that a determinate one, of the whole body,‡ is at the same time put into the young man’s hand:—what else there may be of it remaining locked up in the archives, invisible to every eye but those of the members of the governing aristocracy—the heads of houses.

Amongst the provisions in these statutes are to be found articles in no small abundance, which, to every member without exception, are objects of continual, notorious, and open violation. Every member violates them himself, every member sees them continually violated by every other.

Of the ordinances thus violated, a great part, not to say the greater, are (it may perhaps be said) manifestly and completely useless: and accordingly the violation of them not mischievous. Are they so indeed? For the purpose, then, of the argument at least, be it so: but the inefficiency of the ceremony, which is the only point here in question, is not the less incontestable.

Talk of custom-house oaths, when such are the university oaths! Talk of merchants, when of such is the bench of bishops! In a custom-house, men pure from perjury must surely be to be found: so at least let us hope, were it only for the credit of those, who, in the case of universal perjury, would be the universal suborners. In a custom-house many, in the University of Oxford—pure from perjury no man—for ages has been,—or, where the swallowing the about-to-be-continually-violated oath continues to be, amongst other breaches of sincerity, the price exacted for admission, will ever be,—to be found.

In that chief nursery of Church-of-England piety, on the part of the rulers at least, never was perjury more completely unsusceptible of any such excuse as might be supposed to be afforded by inadvertence: on the part of the same reverend persons, in whose power it has always been, either to keep the oath or to abolish it, never was subornation of perjury more determinate. Not to speak of indirect, though not the less intelligible, charges,—from one of themselves,∥ for some thirty or forty years past, in another book, which, written by another member not only of the same university but of the same sacred function, has gone through many more editions than the statute-book itself,* —the charge has been urged in terms so pointed, as to take from this repetition of it, all merit on the ground of originality, and therefore surely to save it from all reproach, not only of calumny, but of unnecessary asperity.

From the perjury thus rendered habitual and universal, ingenuity, as will be seen further on, was at an early period employed, in the endeavour to remove the name. But by this very endeavour, as will also be seen, the charge, instead of being removed, has been but the more directly pointed, as well as the more firmly fixed.

“What?” it may here be said—“whatever inferences may be found deducible from this state of things, is this then to be one, viz. that to the testimony delivered, upon any occasion, under the sanction of an oath, by any of the reverend, right reverend, and other distinguished persons, at whose instance the sort of perjury above exhibited has been constant and universal, no more regard would be due than to that of an equal number of persons convicted of perjury, viz. of mendacious testimony delivered in a court of justice?”

My answer is—By no means. Not more revolting would any such inference be upon the first mention of it, than upon examination it would be seen to be unfounded, as well as irrelevant, with relation to the present purpose. What is not here contended for is—that in the instances of those by whom this useless promissory oath has thus been violated, testimony, whether delivered with or without oath, has a less chance for being pure from mendacity than in the instance of those, by whom no such oath having been taken, no such oath has been violated. What is here contended for, is—that, in those same instances, if after an assertory, if after a testimonial oath taken, testimony is pure from mendacity, such purity has for its cause—not the force of this instrument, but the force of those instruments, one or more or all of them, which have already been brought to view, in the general character of the tutelary or improbity-restraining, and in the particular character of the mendacity-restraining sanctions. What in these same instances is denied is—not the existence of veracity in the character of an effect, but the efficiency, the relative efficiency, of the instrument here in question, in the character of a cause productive of, or contributing to the production of, that effect. Fear of eventual punishment in most cases—fear of eventual shame in all cases—fear of punishment at the hand of the Almighty—these are the springs of action that have been brought to view in the character of improbity-restraining forces in general, and mendacity-restraining forces in particular. In the present case, so it is, that of these three forces, the two first at least have notoriously no application. In this case, the oath is taken by everybody, everybody violates the oath so taken, nobody is ever punished for violating it, nobody is ever put to shame by the violation of it. And such, then, is the ground of the inference,—viz. that, to whatsoever object directed, whether to the prevention of transgression in any other shape, or to the prevention of transgression in the particular shape of mendacity, the instrument in question, the ceremony of an oath, is inefficient and useless.

In every case, whatsoever be the force in which the legislator puts his trust, it concerns him surely to know it for what it is: and if so indeed it were, that, by religion, such force as that sanction is in possession of is actually employed in the endeavour to deter men from transgression in the shape in question—from transgression in the shape of perjury,—it has now been seen what that force really amounts to: and then would come the question, whether, supposing that sanction really to receive support from the enormously expensive machinery which is seen to be employed in the support of it, or under the notion of giving support to it, whether the value of the support be equal to the value of the expense.

A less grating supposition will surely be, that, in the endeavour to keep men’s lips pure from transgression, at least in this particular shape, the force of religious hopes and fears does not employ itself: but, upon this supposition, the ceremony, its inutility considered, will be parted with without reluctance: always remembered, that, even by the articles of the Church of England, the use made of it is stated—not as necessary, but simply as allowable.

[* ]Page 261. “The oath at the matriculation of a scholar. Tu fidem dabis ad observandum omnia statuta, privilegia, et consuetudines hujus Universitatis Oxon. Ita Deus te adjuvet, tactis Sacro-Sanctis Christi Evangeliis.”

[† ]Laud’s Diary, as referred to in his Life in the Biographia Britannica:—Dr. Newton, Principal of Hertford college, in page 19 of his “University Education,” London, 1726, hereinafter mentioned.

[‡ ]“Parecbolæ sive Excerpta e Corpore Statutorum Universitatis Oxoniensis . . . . In usum Juventutis Academicæ,” says the title-page. “Oxonii e Typographeo Clarendoniano, 1794. This is the date of that which has recently been put into my hand, as the last edition extant. Of my own copy, which, at my own matriculation, was put into my hands in 1759, the date is 1756. Number of pages in the edition of 1756, 254: in that of 1794, 261.

[∥ ]Here follows what is said by the Rev. R. Newton, D.D., at that time Principal, in a tract, intituled, “Hints and Statutes for the Government of Hertford College, in the University of Oxford.” London, 1747, pp. 162, p. 98. “And for a student or scholar to take an oath at his entrance that he will observe the statutes, there can be no occasion, if the imposing an oath upon him for that purpose were innocent . . . . Young men will often break them without adverting that they do so. To them, an oath to observe the statutes will be a snare.” In conversation, in conduct, and in print, from some year earlier than 1725, to some year later than 1747, did this truly conscientious divine continue to give vent to the uneasiness occasioned by the load, which, ever since the year 1634, has by Archbishop Laud, in his quality of chancellor and legislator of this university, been laid upon all such consciences as it has found in that tabernacle, in which, wherever it has not by priestcraft or lawyercraft been extirpated, that organ of the mind will still be to be found.

[* ]Here follows what is said in a book, intituled, “Liberal Education, by Vicesimus Knox, M.A. late Fellow of St. John’s College, Oxford, in two vols. 10th edition, 1789:” to which is added, “A Letter to . . . . Lord North,” then chancellor.

In Vol I. p. 120, “The following,” says he, “are miscellaneous passages from Dr. Newton and Mr. Amhurst: . . . . “To give a just account of the state of the University of Oxford, I must begin where every fresh man begins, with admission and matriculation; for so it happens, that the first thing a young man has to do there, is to prostitute his conscience, and enter himself into perjury at the same time that he enters himself into the university.” Whereupon, in the same quotation, follow instances in abundance, out of others that in much greater abundance might have been adduced.

Mr. Knox, for many years master of Tunbridge school, is the person by whom, on this occasion, I consider the statement as made: who the other person was, whose words he here employs, is an article of information which to the present purpose is scarcely worth obtaining:—Amhurst, as above, is mentioned as his name: no mention of the page, or so much as of the title of the work. Whatsoever it may have given to that of the honest author, to the conscience of the right honourable minister and chancellor, to whom it was addressed, it does not appear to have given any more disturbance, than it has to that of any past or present, or seems in danger of giving to that of any future successor, not to speak of their respective Vices.