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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 8.

Mischief 4—Giving aid and force to the Enterprises of Malefactors.

The application made of the ceremony of an oath, to the purpose of securing observance of mischievous engagements of all kinds, has in all places and all times been too notorious to stand in need of exemplification. In the preceding instances, the hands in which, in the character of an instrument of evil, it has been brought to view, are the hands of government:—hands at any rate in which this or that portion of the powers of government has been lodged. In the present instance, the hands in which in that same character it remains to be brought to view, are such as, on one account or other—in a word, on any account—come under the denomination of criminal ones: the purposes to which it is applied by them being for example of the nature of rebellion, sedition, or mischief, or depredation, perpetrated or attempted, in the two last mentioned cases, on an extensive scale.

When, of the complicated mass of mischief of which this ceremony is productive, the branch here in question is brought to view, an answer is ready:—applied to such purposes, the oath is null and void. Null and void? Yes: but of this nullity, this invalidity, what is the meaning? This, and this only, viz. that in the mind of any one of a few and still fewer writing men, by none of whom would any such engagement be ever taken, it would not, if taken, be considered as being of the number of those by which he ought to hold himself bound:—in a word, that it ought not to be considered as binding. It ought not? True—but is it not? To the question, what are the actual effects of a thing, a suggestion concerning what ought to be its effects, is—not an answer, but a subterfuge.

“Employ not the abuse as an argument against the use,” says a wide extending fallacy, by which much confusion, much deception, much mischief, has been produced. By the use of a thing, are meant its good effects; by the abuse, its bad effects. What! in taking account of the effects of a thing, are you to omit all the bad ones?—in taking account of profit and loss, are you to omit all the items on one side?

Meantime, the plain truth is—that not only a natural but a preponderant tendency to serve the purpose of abuse is of the essence of the principle. The principle is—that, independently of any demand, which, on the ground of the principle of utility, an act presents for punishment,—be the act what it may—good, bad, or indifferent,—fire, stolen as it were from heaven, may in this way he obtained, and employed to punish it. This, or nothing, is what is assumed and contained in the notion of the binding force of an oath.

Not but that, even supposing the nullity of the ceremony universally understood, criminal engagements—engagements for any such criminal purposes as above—might be, and, under the stimulus of the same inducements, might with reason be expected to be, entered into, as in time past. True: but, of the actually binding force, with which those engagements have been wont to be attended, so much, whatsoever it might be, as depended upon, and would have been brought into action by the ceremony, would, by the abolition or universally acknowledged insignificance of the ceremony, be cut off—be kept from applying itself to the ceremony. That hitherto, on the occasion of any such mischief-brewing confederacy, the ceremony has in general been considered as possessed of, and about to operate with, such binding force, is matter of experience, since, on occasions such as those in question it has, in point of fact, been called in and employed.

Of all the drugs that are in use to be employed in the way of medicine, there is not perhaps one, which might not in the way of poison be made to operate with a murderous effect. From hence does any sufficient reason result for the prohibition of the use of any of those drugs? No:—but of any known drug, suppose it ascertained to be no less apt to be employed with effect to the purpose of destroying life than to that of restoring health,—while, with reference to every beneficial purpose to which it is supposed applicable, others, known to be applicable with equal effect, without being equally applicable to its deleterious purposes, are with equal facility obtainable,—so manifest is the conclusion, that it need scarce be mentioned.

A bad effect, or none at all,—such is the only alternative: if it could be proved to be innoxious, it would only be by being proved to be inoperative.