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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 7.

Mischief 3—Bewildering and enslaving the Consciences of Jurymen.

Under the head of punishment, in the case of a witness, but principally in the case of a party, who by the admission or extraction of his testimony is in that respect considered and treated on the footing of a witness, it has been seen in what way, by an artful use made of the ceremony of an oath, means were found for producing or repressing mendacity at pleasure.

Thus far, and in these instances, the purpose admitted at least, if it did not absolutely require, that the ceremony should be regarded as binding—should be the object of real and efficient, as well as universal, awe and reverence.

In the instance of another and infinitely narrower class of persons, the like purpose required that it should—this selfsame ceremony should—be considered and treated on the footing of an empty form:—that it should stand divested of all influence.

This was the class of jurymen:—the assemblage of twelve unlearned individuals, in whose name, in certain cases, what in English-bred law is done in the way of judicature, is entered as done.

So to order matters, that to one and the same individual, with no other difference than that of the individual occasion, and the station occupied by him on that occasion, one and the same ceremony should be an object of awe and of contempt, might, upon the naked mention of it, seem a problem too difficult for human ingenuity so much as to attempt the solution of. The solution of it will be seen, however, to have been not only attempted but accomplished: always remembered, that in whatever case any real and practical effect has been produced, produced—in appearance by the ceremony,—in that case shame or punishment, or both, may be seen at the back of it: and, on the other hand, that where its influence will be seen to amount to nothing, so it is, that, in this case, the ceremony has found no such extraneous force to give support to it.

The problem all along was to this effect—so to order matters that mendacity should be unrestrictedly practised or punished,—according as the unrestrained practice or the punishment of it should be most subservient to the private interest of the judge and his fellow-labourers; and, to this end, that, in relation to this vital part of morality, in such confusion should men’s conceptions on this subject be kept involved, as to take for the standard of right and wrong, the practice of the judge, as determined by the sinister interest of the judge:—and that accordingly, whensoever mendacity were punished by him it should be considered as immoral,—whenever left by him unpunished, indifferent,—whenever encouraged or compelled by him, either indifferent or meritorious.

To render the confusion the thicker and more irremediable, a conception—and persuasion—that was to be rendered universally prevalent, was,—that the practice of immorality in this shape was, throughout the whole course of judicial procedure, necessary to the purposes of justice: in pursuance of which principle, matters have accordingly been so ordered, that in the instance of that class of judicial officers, (viz. jurymen, whose part in the administration of justice is the object of the warmest share of popular favour and attachment,) mendacity should have been rendered an unavoidably incident accompaniment of everything that was done under the sacred name of justice.

At a period, which seems even to have preceded the use made of the ceremony in the character of a security for veracity in the mouth of a witness or a party,—at this early period, a barbarian theology had led the rulers of nations to place their trust in this same ceremony, in the instance of public functionaries in general, in the character of a security for official probity at large: and in particular, in the case of functionaries of the judicial order, including as well those of the professionally learned and permanent class, as those their unlearned, their occasional, and ever-changing assessors.

In the cases as yet mentioned, the expedient, by which the power of licensing falsehood was acquired, consisted in keeping out of the reach of the ceremony, the statements to which it was desired that the licence should extend itself. If over the ceremony itself the power of the man of law could find means to extend itself, insomuch that, at his pleasure, it should be considered as binding or not binding, the punishment of the religious, as well as that of the moral, sanction being, at his pleasure, felt, or not felt, as attaching in case of violation,—he would, to the extent of such power, possess himself of a species of empire, not inferior to any which even the priest had been able to create for himself.

Fortunately for this enterprise, in the very operation by which alone this branch of authority was exercised, unthinking barbarism had suffered to be involved a cluster of declarations* which, they being in every case that with respect to the propriety of the decision left any difference of opinion, necessarily untrue,—necessitated, in an equal degree of frequency, the profanation of the ceremony.

Of the only course, by which profanation would be avoidable, torture, terminating in death, having, under cover of the same barbaric darkness, been rendered the inevitable result,—and reliance upon a man’s own opinion,—upon the suffrage of his own conscience,—being thus rendered morally impossible;—what, in the situation of juryman, could a simple man do, to save himself from the wrath to come? Conscience, which in such cases catches at every straw, found for the burthen a proffered support in the stronger and well disciplined conscience of the judge.—With this burthen, whatever it was, the learned conscience, as often as suited with convenience, was found ready, as of course, to charge itself:—and thus it was, that, by rendering the sacred ceremony an object of universal and necessary contempt, the man of law acquired, over the decision of juries, a sort and degree of mastery, such as, under any mode of suffrage that would have admitted of an escape from perjury, would never have been attainable.

So many oaths, so many nets, in which conscience was perpetually liable to be entangled: but, on so easy a condition as that of a man’s pronouncing a short word or two, and thinking nothing about the matter, a learned conscience was always at hand to cut the cords.

The violation of the ceremony, and of the obligation supposed or pretended to have been created by it, having thus been rendered habitual and universal, its impotence in the character of a check upon the judge,—its unfitness for anything but a cloak to him,—followed of course.

The ceremony being considered as the only security against mendacity, and a licence for the practice of that vice being considered as being effectually, though indirectly, included in every arrangement by which the application of the ceremony was forborne; the habitual profanation of the ceremony having, at the same time, been rendered indispensably necessary to the exercise of the powers of judicature,—in a word, to what was called the administration of justice—no particular instance of the like profanation could, on any consistent ground of reason, find, in the breasts of the violators, any sentiment of repugnance.

But the looser the obligation sat upon them, the more ready, at the call of the living oracle, under any the slightest impulse of sinister interest, in whatever shape,—power, reputation,† or even momentary ease,—would each man be to shake it off.

On condition of earning it by these means, a virtual power of pardon has accordingly, in cases to no inconsiderable extent, been in effect imparted to juries:—and lest, in the shape of power alone, the encouragement, held out to misdecision in this shape, should not be of itself sufficient, reputation, in the shape of the praise of humanity, has been occasionally added.‡

Plowing in confusion and perplexity, to prepare the soil for the planting of obsequiousness,—such is the husbandry, which with so brilliant a success has been practised in the field of religion;—such is the husbandry, which with no less indisputable, though less observed success, has been practised in the field of law and judicature.

[* ]Cluster of declarations,] consisting of the several virtual declarations made by the several jurymen in and by their respective consents given to the verdict.

The habitual mendacity necessarily involved in the pretended unanimity so uselessly and wantonly necessitated, seems too manifest to require or even admit of proof.

[† ]Hence it is, that, in matters of libel for example, where, there not being any real law, there cannot be any real transgression, and where, there not being any real transgression, conviction never has had, nor, till real law shall have created delinquency, and defined transgression, ever can have, any sufficient warrant,—to so happy a state of ductility has the conscience of the jurybox been moulded, that, unless by some rare and never-to-be-looked-for casualty, prosecution and conviction—would (were it not for the intervening costs, by which trial is rendered an additional punishment) be in effect and virtue undistinguishable.

[‡ ]Example:—Encouragement given to juries to counteract the declared intention of the legislature, and dispense with the capital part of the appointed punishment, by attributing upon their oaths, to any number of guineas stolen, a value under that of two guineas. In the case of goods, this under-valuation is continual: and, even in case of guineas—a case which admits of no possibility of unintentionality in the misstatement—examples of this mode of valuation have not been wanting.