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CHAPTER XXI.: SIXTEENTH DEVICE—CREATION OF NEEDLESS AND USELESS OFFICES. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 7 (Rationale of Judicial Evidence Part 2) [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 7.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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CHAPTER XXI.

SIXTEENTH DEVICE—CREATION OF NEEDLESS AND USELESS OFFICES.

Made offices are partly the effects, partly the causes, of made business. Create useless work, you create the necessity of useless hands for the performance of it.

But it may happen, that, in the first instance, a determination may be taken to add at any rate to the number of hands: that done, there can be no difficulty in adding to the quantity of business for those hands. Take any given instrument, let it be signed by one person and one person only,—here you have but one office: put another person to sign it at another time, and under another official name, receiving of course a fee for this his trouble, here you have two offices; put a third person, three offices, and so on. Before, increase of business produced increase of offices: now, increase of offices produces increase of fees. In the latter case, is there, or is there not, any addition made to the quantity of business? Answer, Yes, or no; whichever is most convenient: Yes, because so much more is done: No, because what more is done is done to no use, and so does not properly deserve the name of business: it is John doing nothing, and Thomas helping him.

If half the hands employed in heaping together that execerable mass of moral and intellectual filth, called in technical language a record,—if half the hands thus employed in the practice of vice, under and for the benefit of the titled guardians of the public morals, were but employed as they so easily might be,—what service might not be rendered to the ends of justice! Misdecision, vexation, expense, and delay,—entries, the object of which would be to contribute, in a determinate assignable way, to the prevention of those several mischiefs: such are the entries, the only entries, that ought to be made, to guard against misdecision. The evidence entered at length, in the few cases that could pay for it by their importance; in the others, the names of the witnesses, with the species of evidence delivered by each, under its several distinguishable modifications, denominated for the purpose. To guard against delay, and thereby against vexation and expense, the length on each occasion, with the causes of it: and whether approved by both parties, or granted at the suit of one, maugre the opposition of the other.

Of the offices thus manufactured, does the profit go directly or indirectly into the pocket of the judge? the use to judicature is already stated. But it may go elsewhere, and still not be lost to judicature. If, settling to a mass worth stooping for, it finds its way into the hands of some person of high account,—high enough to possess a voice and interest in the legislative body,—it goes there to form a corrupt interest: it constitutes, ipso facto, a mass of the matter of corruption, employed in affording perpetual protection to abuse. The great man, be he who he may, becomes a member of the partnership, and, though a dormant, not the less a useful one. Add to this union his honour the minister, and here you have corrupt on doubly corrupted.