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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 10.

Misrule, how to perpetuate—Coronation Oaths amended.

In the character in which this instrument has so often been employed, viz. that of an instrument of perpetuation, applied to human ordinances, let but the use of it be admitted,—the instrument employed accordingly, and employed with the effect intended,—what shall it be said is the result? The result is—that, in every shape in which it can happen to the rulers of nations to have, or to suppose themselves to have, in any shape an interest in misrule, in misrule in any shape, perpetuity is secured to it.

As to the mode of operation, nothing can be surer. To this or that word, of those which are in continual use, and which, without the aid of the instrument, are actually and habitually employed to this same purpose,—to any word of this sort—nor is there any scarcity of them—apply the instrument, the problem is accomplished—the thing is done.

Take, for instance, the word innovation. On whatsoever occasion they are for the first time respectively carried into effect or proposed, the best measures and the worst have this in common, that they are new. So long as any law or established practice in government exists, to which the appellation of an abuse can with propriety be applied, the removal of such abuse—in one word, reform, viz. in relation to such abuse—must ever be among the measures to which, if to any, the epithet of good belongs with indisputable propriety—with a degree of propriety still more out of the reach of dispute than that of any measure, the object of which confines itself to melioration or improvement—to the introducing in any shape a new and positive good, of the number of those without the aid of which the business of society has hitherto been conducted.

Under its own name, consistently with the established forms of decency, nor consequently with any satisfactory expectation of success, abuse cannot, in any shape, be by any person defended; as little can reform, at least in so far as it is understood to go no further than the removal of acknowledged abuse, be opposed. But innovation—whatsoever may have been the import attached to the word—not only may find, but continually does find, opponents—numerous and most strenuous opponents. Innovation is a term applicable to anything whatsoever that is new: by it is denoted the introduction of anything that is new: and, as everything whatsoever, and therefore, amongst other things, reform, in whatever shape, and to whatever subject and in whatever shape applied, is, on its first being brought on the carpet, new; therefore, so it is that whoever can succeed in getting condemnation passed on innovation, succeeds thereby in getting condemnation passed on reform: condemnation for everlasting, on reform to whatsoever abuse applied: in getting—if not perpetuation—actual perpetuation—at any rate, judgment of perpetuation, passed in favour of abuse, in whatsoever shape it may then be, or may thereafter come to be, in existence.*

Add and say—or may thereafter come to be: for, erroneous, howsoever at first sight plausible, would be the supposition, that by the exclusion of new measures of government—by the exclusion of new laws—abuses would, as well as new reforms, be excluded. Reform cannot be effected without regulation—reform cannot be effected but by regulation. Abuse needs no regulation for the introduction of it. Not that it is, in its own nature, less capable of being introduced by regulation than reform is: but, forasmuch as things, which cannot be introduced but by regulation, cannot be introduced without being exposed to public observation, while things, that are capable of being introduced without regulation, are thereby, generally and comparatively speaking, capable of being introduced without being exposed to observation,—and since, for example, among the most frequently exemplified, as well as most pernicious shapes, in which abuse is apt to introduce itself, is that which consists in the habit of profitable and unpunished transgression in despite of regulation,—and, forasmuch as the evading of such regulations, by which sinister interest, in any shape, is opposed, is among the naturally constant objects of every individual, whose situation exposes him to the action of such sinister interest,—hence it is, that of any act of public authority, by which exclusion were put upon new measures in the lump, and without any particularized exception or distinction, the effect, in so far as it had any, would be to shut the door for ever against reform in every shape:—leaving it, to abuse in every shape, wide open,—with full liberty to receive increase—in every shape, and to any amount, and at all times.

The above observations premised, here then follows the recipe, for the explanation of which they have been premised:—a recipe or direction, for employing with precision and effect, on the occasion of the vast and complex ceremony termed a coronation, the simple ceremony of an oath, in the character of an instrument for the perpetuation of abuse.

Clause the third in the Coronation Oath: Stat. 1 W. & M. c. 16, § 3:—“Archbishop or Bishop.—Will you, to the utmost of your power, maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion established by law? And will you preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm, and to the churches committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them, or any of them?”

Amendment, proposed:—To the above words, substitute or add the following, viz. And will you, to the utmost of your power, resist all innovations in religion and government, or in church and state? “King. All this I promise to do . . . . So help me God.”

What is fortunate is—that in the above clause the anti-reformist possesses not only a most convenient receptacle already fitted up, but a precedent of the most sacred texture:—a precedent which, having its manifest origin in this very purpose, has already done whatsoever could then be done, towards the accomplishment of it.

A more ingenious or successful operation of ecclesiastical policy never was performed. Taking advantage of the fears of popish tyranny, excited, in every provident as well as in every protestant bosom, by the incidents of the day, here was an instrument made and provided for the nipping of reform in the bud, in whatsoever quarter in the field of established religion it should ever presume to show itself: an engine serving with equal effect for defending Protestantism against Catholicism, and Church-of-Englandism from reform and improvement, in every imaginable shape: preserving to the right reverend and reverend persons therein mentioned the full benefit, not only of all such profitable abuses, if any, as they had already found means to introduce and establish, but of all such others, as by themselves or others, means should thereafter, and hereafter, be found for introducing and establishing, for or to their benefit, to the end of time.

Applied to government in its largest sense, established religion included,—among the characters of an instrument of perpetuation upon this model, is—that of being in a peculiar and extensive degree adapted to the purpose of giving perpetuity, or, if that be impossible, the utmost possible length of undue continuance, to bad systems in contradistinction to good ones: and the worse the system, the greater is the need it has of this sort of instrument—the greater the service it is capable of receiving from it.

Applied in particular to religion established by law, it is in a like degree well adapted to the purpose of giving and securing the utmost possible degree of credence—or, if not of credence, of silent submission and acquiescence—to whatsoever is false in matters of religion, in contradistinction to whatsoever is true.

In the mouth of a Mollah or a Bramin, the first clause of it, ending with the word God, would with as much force and propriety, and without need of amendment, serve for the perpetuation of the religion of Mahomet or Bramah, as for any that calls or ever called itself the religion of Jesus—“Will you, to the utmost of your power, maintain the laws of God?”

Applied to the tenets of any religion, or of any of the various editions of any religion, it includes in it, moreover, a certificate of the erroneousness and falsity of such tenets. Not that, by this or any other human contrivance, a religion that is true can itself be rendered false: not that, by this or any other contrivance, a set of facts, that have actually had place, can be made not to have had place. What it is not, is therefore a proof of the falsity of any religion to which it is applied: but what it is, is—a proof, nor needs there a more conclusive one—of a want of belief in affirmance of such religion, in the breast of those who concur in the application of it.

What!—if these notions, or pretended notions of yours concerning your religion, be conformable to truth,—if it be the pleasure of the Almighty that the alleged facts on which it rests shall obtain credence,—is it not in the power of the Almighty, without your assistance, to obtain credence for it? You, whoever you are, is it that in yourself you have a power which has been denied to God? But for such assistance as it may please you to give, is the Almighty impotent?

With equal force and efficacy is it adapted (this same first clause) to the purpose of insuring submission to the most absurd conceptions, and to the most pernicious ordinances: to the most pernicious ordinances, and in their support, in case of need, to the most atrocious persecution and tyranny.

This or that ordinance which, by any portion of the king’s subjects, is not regarded as of the number of the laws of God, suppose for example that by the king it is regarded, or pretended to be regarded, in that light? In the course of any exertion, made by him, in the endeavour to cause these refractory subjects to regard it in that same light, or at any rate to act and speak as if they did, suppose him to experience resistance: resistance, the effect of which—in whatsoever shape, more or less gentle or vigorous, it may happen to it to present itself—shall be to render it, in his judgment, impracticable to produce the effect he aims at. The clause continuing to be understood as it cannot but be understood, what is the practical consequence? That, so long as the effect remains unproduced—no measure is there, be it ever so coercive, that he does not remain still under the obligation of bringing up to the charge. But the stores of his power are not, nor therefore is the virtue of his obligation, exhausted, till all the expedients that ever have been, all that ever can be, employed, by tyranny in all its shapes, by force and fraud combined, have been exhausted:—till, in his legislative character, he has refused his concurrence to all laws tending to the alleviation of the established yoke;—till in his executive or administrative character, including the virtual initiative part, which, by the hands of his servants, he bears in legislation, he has exhausted all the stores of corruptive influence in the endeavour to overpower and subdue all resistance, and given to the yoke every necessary and practicable increase of pressure.

To considerations of this nature, a peculiar degree of importance is given, by the circumstances of the time:* when from such numerous, and in particular from such high-stationed mouths, the cry is so loud, for one knows not what succedaneous manifestations of hostility, under some such name as pledges or securities, or guards:—as if there were any real danger but from such guards.

What!—more oaths?—more subscriptions?—more pretendedly perpetual laws?—and this for the security of the majority against the minority, of the wise against the foolish, of the strong against the weak?—Yes: when you have stocked both Houses with gunpowder, for security against fire.

What you may thus perpetuate, is the remembrance of your own folly: what you can not and will not perpetuate, should men be weak enough to receive them, are—any such perpetually foolish laws.

[* ]It has moreover the effect of conveying, in company with the idea of the principal object, as above, the collateral idea of the judgment of disapprobation, as passed upon such object by the person by whom it is employed. This being the case, in diminution of the mischief, suppose it observed, that, on that consideration, it may be supposed to be meant to confine itself in its application, to the case in which the particular measure in question is of the number of those which, by that person, are or would be disapproved of. But no assertion to this effect being directly and explicitly conveyed, no such obligation, as that of considering it as thus limited, is imposed upon him; and therefore, instead of being the worse, it is but so much the better, adapted to the sinister purpose here in view.

[* ]Written March 1812.