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The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 10.

Author: Jeremy Bentham
Editor: John Bowring

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

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CHAPTER III.

1763—1770. Æt. 15—25.

Enters as Student in Court of King’s Bench.—Lincoln’s Inn.—Blackstone’s Lectures.—Wilkes’ Trial: Lord Mansfield.—A Tour in the North of England.—Visits France.—Mrs Cibber.—Sir Joshua Reynolds.—Father’s Marriage with Mrs Abbott.—Master’s Degree.—Anecdotes of the Mackreth Family.—Propensity to involuntary Laughter.—Leaves Oxford.—Bias of his Mind.—Reminiscences of Places and Persons: Sir John Hawkins: Hawkesworth: Sir W. Jones: White: Lowndes: Chamberlain Clarke.—Authentication of a Portrait of Milton.—Pierre Vrillon.—Excursions.—Account of Lind and Nathaniel Forster, with Notices of Camden, Rosslyn, Franklin, Parr, and Prince Czartoriski.—Wilkes and George III.—Duelling.—Residence in Paris.—John Forster.—Wortley Montague.

In 1763, Bentham took his place as a student in the Court of King’s Bench, Westminster Hall; and his father gave Mr Perkins, the crier of the court, seven shillings and sixpence to secure a particular seat during the term. This seat was immediately below the officers, under the judges. There were four such seats. There was, in those days, room for two students on each side of the judge on the bench; but Lord Kenyon put an end to the usage. The crier was generally fee’d in order to obtain the seat. Bentham began to eat his commons in Lincoln’s Inn in November, 1763; but returned to Oxford the beginning of the following December. He then attended Blackstone’s lectures; and the impressions made upon him he thus describes:—

“I attended with two collegiates of my acquaintance. One was Samuel Parker Coke, a descendant of Lord Coke, a gentleman commoner, who afterwards sat in Parliament: the other was Dr Downes. They both took notes; which I attempted to do, but could not continue it, as my thoughts were occupied in reflecting on what I heard. I immediately detected his fallacy respecting natural rights; I thought his notions very frivolous and illogical about the gravitating downwards of hæreditas; and his reasons altogether futile, why it must descend and could not ascend—an idea, indeed, borrowed from Lord Coke. Blackstone was a formal, precise, and affected lecturer—just what you would expect from the character of his writings: cold, reserved, and wary—exhibiting a frigid pride. But his lectures were popular, though the subject did not then excite a wide-spreading interest, and his attendants were not more than from thirty to fifty. Blackstone was succeeded by Dr Beavor, who read lectures on Roman law, which were laughed at, and failed in drawing such audiences as Blackstone drew.

“February 21.—Aujourd’hui, fils Jeremy attended Wilkes’ trial, in Court of King’s Bench,” is in his father’s memorandum book. The trial was for publishing the North Briton. After his outlawry, when Wilkes came into court to surrender, Sir Fletcher Norton, who had been doing all he could to ruin him, advanced towards him, and shook him most cordially by the hand. Bentham heard the outlawry reversed; and has often mentioned that he was perfectly bewitched by Lord Mansfield’s grimgibber. He leaned back in his chair, and made the speech which won for him, at the time, so much applause and admiration. It is in Burrow’s Reports, from a copy which Lord Mansfield furnished. His manners were full of grace. He was a short, squat man, with a most eloquent physiognomy, and fascinating voice. Bentham kept, as a great treasure, a picture of him, given by Martin, his protegé, and frequently went to Caen Wood, as a lover to the shrine of his mistress, in the hope that chance might throw him in his way, and that he might get the honour of a word or a look from him. Bentham began a eulogistic poem to him, of which the first stanza was:—

“Hail, noble Mansfield! chief among the just, The bad man’s terror, and the good man’s trust!”

But there he stuck; the muse abandoned him, and he could not accomplish a second satisfactory rhyme. Bentham heard much about him, however, from his friend, Lind, who was sometimes invited to dinner by the noble judge. His conversation was always better than the cheer, according to Lind’s account of both.

In the year 1764, Bentham accompanied his father to the north of England. I will give some of his recollections, in his own words:—

“I did not like Althorp—it was a gloomy place. The trees hung down on the ground, heavily and sadly. We stayed some days at Matlock wells, at one of the lodging-houses. Everything was cheap there. We paid a shilling for a handsome dinner. The scenery is beautifully picturesque. There were then no fine buildings at Matlock. The rooms had for their ornaments festoons of moss; and the pictures of the surrounding landscapes hung on the walls. The rocks were grand and novel, and the streams ran down them delightfully. I remember no interesting events. If there were any, their memory has evaporated, and left no trace behind. But I got ennuyé at Buxton, where the party lingered about the baths; and I got a horse and went in quest of adventures, but found none. We went to Stockport, Liverpool, Chester, Macclesfield, and the Wiches, where the salt is made. Warrington was then classic ground. Priestley lived there. What would I not have given to have found courage to visit him? He had already written several philosophical works; and in the tail of one of his pamphlets I had seen that admirable phrase, ‘greatest happiness of greatest number,’ which had such an influence on the succeeding part (which some erroneously call the afterpart) of my life. Chester is a curious place; built of red stone; and you go upon a platform between the shops, where there is a sort of veranda, which resembles the shops at Bucharest. Great numbers of people were always walking there. At Ross, we were introduced to Dr Roberts, a naturalist, who received us hospitably, quoted Tacitus to us, and recommended us to a Mr Jordan, who had large copper works. Him we found not; but we found two young ladies, who gave us dinner, and escorted us to the Abbey; a pleasant trip to a pretty ruin. At Monmouth (within a mile) is a place called Hadnock Hall, where Lord Admiral Griffin resided, who is mentioned in the history of the East India Company, as he commanded a squadron on the coast of Coromandel. Here he lived in retirement; but welcomed us kindly. His eldest son was a barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, with legs as large as an ordinary man’s body; his second son, an attorney; his third, a parson, with whom I had done sundry exercises at Queen’s College. On the estate, was a perfect castle—noble, lofty, and picturesque. Though built in King John’s time, it was little dilapidated. We crossed the Severn and got to Bristol, where we had many friends. I was pleased to be in the birthplace of Coulston, whose picture, with four verses from Claudian at its foot, I had been taught to venerate in my childhood. One of our acquaintances at Bristol was Mrs Vernon. We called her the Lady Unaccountable: she told such stories, made such reflections, pointed such sarcasms, that we were highly amused. Two of her daughters had made stolen matches. She saw them; but her husband would not. We went through Bath to Browning Hill.

“I was at this time about sixteen; but still a dwarf—a perfect dwarf. I had no calfs to my legs; and one Mr Harris, a Quaker, offended me not a little by asking me whither my calves were gone a-grazing. But, after this period, I shot up.

“We also visited Sir John Hawkins, and Mrs Southgate, of whose husband Constantia Philips had been a paramour. He is mentioned by her in her Memoirs under the name of Tartuffe. He was a Roman Catholic, and affected great devotion.”

In this year (1764) Bentham accompanied his father and a party of friends to France. He was delighted with a visit they paid to the chateau of the Prince of Condé at Chantilly. The carp in the fish-ponds were so tame, that they took the sticks of the visiters into their mouths.

“I did envy the Prince,” said Bentham, “his beautiful palace. I exclaimed, What a bliss to be a Prince! I was not much wiser than the ploughboy, who said his bliss would be to swing all day upon a gate, eating beef and carrots; or than a Justice of the Peace, who told me that his summum bonum was to grab for eels in the mud; and whom I once found tearing up ‘Sanderson’s Logic’ to ram into his fowlingpiece.”

At Paris, they went the accustomed round of sight-seeing. The question of daily debate was where they should dine. “Anywhere,” was the old gentleman’s constant answer to the inquiry; but he had always some objection to the “where” suggested. He took his son to see the tomb of James the Second at the Carmelite Convent; but although born and bred a Jacobite, most of his monarchical prejudices had oozed out before Bentham’s birth.

France, as a country, left an unfavourable impression on young Bentham. The imitations of England appeared wretched; its gardens stiff and formal. But of the French, as a nation, he was always fond: their vivacity, courtesy, and aptitude for enjoyment, responded to all the tendencies of his own character. At Versailles, the beauty of the dauphiness charmed him. Most of the favourable impressions he received were from the people; but the backwardness of their agriculture, and of their domestic civilisation, seemed strangely contrasted with the advances even then made by England.

He wished to bring from Paris, as a present to his aunt, the stamp by which the pots of butter were impressed, representing on one side the king of England, and on the other the king of France; but the cost (fifteen livres) was too great, and he was forced to content himself with presenting a bottle of oil of jessamine. On many occasions, Bentham’s poverty interfered with his engagements and his studies. He was passionately fond of chemistry, and indeed of all experimental philosophy; but was denied the means of obtaining the necessary apparatus for pursuing his investigations. On one occasion, he bargained with a chemist to have the sweepings of his shop in phials, &c., for half-a-crown. Had he met with more encouragement, his mind would probably have been principally or wholly directed to the physical sciences. They have happily found other successful explorers; and it can be no subject of regret, that less attractive but more important questions soon absorbed the whole attention of Bentham.

In his father’s memoranda, I find:—“1765, Dec. 31.—Lent Jerry sixpence to pay for his losses at cards;” and I read this note to him. “Most true,” said he; “and that sixpence which I owed my father has never been paid: the statute of limitation saves me in part, my being his executor wholly.”

At this time of Bentham’s life, he got some counsels from a friend, (whose name I shall conceal, because he was the practical exemplification of the sagacity of his doctrines,) to this effect:—

“If you mean to rise, catch hold of the skirts of those who are above you, and care nothing for those beneath you.”

His friend caught hold of the skirts of an archbishop, and got to be a judge. Bentham listened coldly to the advice; was coldly regarded, ever after, by the aspirant; and died, not a judge, but a philosopher.

One or two memoranda of Bentham, of the year 1765, are worth preserving.

“I went to see Mrs Cibber at Covent Garden: she was beautiful at sixty. Another woman, beautiful at sixty, was Mrs Yates, whom I saw in Ophelia.”

“I remember going to Twickenham church with my father and Mr Reynolds, afterwards Sir Joshua. His conversation left no impression on me: his countenance was not pleasing. There was great talk about painting, and about his painting; but I knew nothing about painting, and cared nothing about him. His Una I remember sitting in a queer posture, and without a chair.”

“Fine colours were the order of the day. I had a pea-green coat and green silk breeches, which were first exhibited on a walk, with Chamberlain Clarke, from Oxford to Farrington. The breeches were bitterly tight; and I was frightfully tired.”

“When Lind came to my father, it wasin his flowered dress, with purple and gold, and I know not what; for he had a prodigious quantity of fine clothes, cut velvet embroidery, silver, gold, and all sorts of trappings.”

“Fortescue’s treatise on the difference between absolute and limited monarchy was, at this time, put into my hands by my father. Its recommendation was, that it eulogized our institutions. Fortescue was one of the many whose families owe their large fortunes to the law—fortunes accumulated by the denial of justice; for its costliness is denial to all who cannot pay.”

In this year, Bentham’s father married Mrs Abbott. She was the widow of Dr John Abbott, and the mother of Charles Abbott, who was afterwards Speaker of the House of Commons, and became Lord Colchester. The marriage caused Bentham much vexation; and he always spoke of his step-mother with dislike. In his father’s memoranda, I find:—“Dr Samuel Smith, the head master of Westminster School, married us on the 14th October; and he very kindly refused to accept a compliment of five guineas, which I offered him on the occasion.”

In 1766, Bentham took his Master’s degree at Oxford. His father gave him £20 on the occasion. He said he felt no small degree of pride to be so distinguished. The Bachelors having no particular costume—“I strutted,” he said, “like a crow in a gutter.” When the election for Members of Parliament took place, a curious question was mooted as to whether Bentham’s vote could be received, he being under age; but the man for whom he voted having beaten his opponent by a large majority, there was no scrutiny.

Among the new acquaintances Bentham had at this period, were the Mackreths, of whom he gave me this account:—“The name brings back both interesting and painful recollections. You have heard me mention the Plowden family, and a place called Yewhurst—a parish within itself, which took its name from an avenue of lofty yew trees. The proprietor, as you heard, was a roué, who took orders in the latter period of his life, that he might have the tithes in addition to the property. He paid a petty curate. He had a beautiful daughter, who married Mr Wheeler, who became, in process of time, one of the council of Bengal. Yewhurst was sold, about this time (1766), to a Mr Mackreth, with whom, I believe, my father had some acquaintance, as he was also acquainted with a Mr Harding, who kept a small coffee-house near Temple Bar, where he had amassed some fortune, and left business. My father, who had known the coffee-house keeper, was, of course, intimate with the retired gentleman, who lived in James’ Street. Mackreth had been a publican too, having kept the great house called White’s, near Arthur’s. He had been a waiter there, and found favour in the sight of Arthur’s daughter, whom he married. He must have been above forty, though he did not appear more than twenty-six or twenty-seven. He died, not long ago, at the age of ninety-four. I had met him, a few days before his death, looking like a man of sixty, with no signs of decrepitude. Mrs Mackreth was a woman whose face was beautiful, but her body deformed: elegant in manners, as if her father had been a duke. And her husband was a clever, well-informed man. He bought Yewhurst, and came to live there, as it had a very good house. He introduced many improvements, such as picturesque gardens, fish-ponds, &c. In the year of my father’s marriage, I went from Browning Hill to visit the Mackreths, who received me most kindly. There were present a Mr Robins, who had been or was a great confectioner, with whom Mr Arthur had probably dealt; and a Mr Chauvel, whom they called Colonel Chauvel, but who had been in trade. Mackreth kept his town as well as his country house, and was proud of the hospitality he displayed at Yewhurst, where he had his billiard-table, bowling-green, and other amusements; and he gathered about him many interesting characters: so I was in Elysium there; and he kept me in Elysium from day to day. My visit lingered far longer than I had thought; and I sent and got changes of linen at Browning Hill, and wandered about to all the attractions of the neighbourhood. Among others, I remember Freemantle Park, where there was a well 400 feet deep. I was happy as a king; occupied a sumptuous bedroom, fitted up in the highest style of taste and elegance. Mackreth’s great ambition was to be considered a gentleman, and to be admitted among the quality: but he often was disappointed; for those who knew he had been a waiter at Arthur’s, could not bear the thought of recognising his equality. He did not neglect his own interest, and made much money by buying and selling estates. He was full of prejudices; and I remember his answering an eulogium of mine upon Hume by saying—‘But he is a Scotsman.’ I found, afterwards, that one reason of his great attention to me, was the wish of being instructed by me. Among other contrivances, he arranged to lose money at cards, so that it might get into my pocket. The scene was one of prosperity and felicity. But I had a weakness, of which you have heard me speak: I could not always restrain my laughter, even when there was no motive for laughter. It was as much a disease as the diabetes. He had asked two stupid fellows to dine with him. There was a great entertainment, and the usual profusion. I saw a dish that was unknown to me, and asked him what it was? Chouxfleurs à la—something, I forget what, he said, but without any impropriety in the pronunciation. A fit of laughing came over me. I asked him to repeat it. Another fit more violent came on. He supposed I meant to insult him. I had not the presence of mind to say that it was an infirmity, and that my thoughts were altogether passive. I had given great offence. Everybody looked blank; and when I left the house there was an obvious change of feeling towards me. Once, afterwards, I dined there with my uncle. His mind was too poor to find interesting matter for anybody; and, in truth, nobody was present but uninteresting people. After dinner, a bed was offered to everbody but to me. The fact was, I had destroyed his purpose of ingratiating himself with the two booby country gentlemen, who supposed I had detected in him some gross vulgarism. I had another calamity there; going out in their carriage, the glass was so transparent that I perceived no glass at all. I spat; and covered with false shame, wiped it away with my handkerchief. This was my final condemnation. I never got another invitation. He used to take me to parties in the neighbourhood; but it was all over now. I not only lost the wonted pleasures, but I was haunted with dread lest my father should question me respecting Mr and Mrs Mackreth. Happily he never asked any questions about it. Mackreth afterwards got into parliament for Oxford; but there were so many behind whose chairs he had officiated at dinner, that it would not do. He was excluded from their company. He became a knight, too, for some office he held in Westminster. Fourteen years afterwards, I had to sell the little property at Browning Hill; and I wrote to him that I was not insensible of the civilities with which he had honoured my earlier youth. I asked for an interview to offer the estate to him. He received me, not rudely, but with coldness and indifference. He said he was going to dine with some country gentlemen, in a tone which conveyed to me his wish that I should observe he had country gentlemen to invite him notwithstanding my misdoings. It was Mr Limbey he was about to visit, a country gentleman who passed his life like an oyster, doing nothing, hearing nothing, reading nothing. I never saw Mackreth afterwards. My laugh had rankled in his mind. His ardent ambition could not forget it. I lost much enjoyment and much instruction in losing his friendship; for he was well acquainted with the world, and his conversation would have been eminently useful to me. Even now I cannot forgive my own weakness. You may well imagine the value of those histories with which he was acquainted. His situation was one of comfort and luxury: mine of solitude, abandonment, penury, and wretchedness.

“Twice I remember the perils to which this propensity to involuntary laughter exposed me. I was at George’s Coffee-house, sitting by the fire; and Mr Little Hales was opposite me. A fit came on. He thought he was the object, and he used words importing a challenge. This made matters worse than before; and I laughed myself into a state of corporeal suffering. At Oxford, a passage of ‘Chrononhotonthologes’ set me laughing till a quantity of a liquid I was drinking was forced on the lungs. I fell down on my knees in agony. The study of anatomy enabled me to vanquish an infirmity which had caused me so much misery.”

Bentham left Oxford, in 1767, little benefited, as he thought, by the instructions he had received in that university. The primary object of his father, in sending him there, had failed; for he had not used the opportunities, which a college life afforded, of making his way among the great, and forming acquaintances to which he might look for distinction and preferment in coming days. His father had imagined that he would have been launched from Oxford into splendid reputation at the bar. Little, indeed, did the views of the son respond to the ambition of his sire. What Bentham saw of the arts of rising in the world did not much encourage him to become a practitioner in them. At the present hour, the patronage of the great is not the sole instrument of honourable distinction; but, at that time, the two sections of the aristocracy held, at their exclusive disposal, every avenue to place and power; and the man of humble birth, who determined to be a follower of neither, was necessarily excluded from the influential walks of life. The science of government was the science of corruption; and prostrate servility was generally the first step in the career of elevation.

Connected with this period of Bentham’s history, I shall introduce some of his conversations, in which the names of many persons known to fame will figure, and which enable me to give a more autobiographical character to my narration.

“When first I became acquainted with Hogarth, which was when first I became acquainted with life, I did not know he had illustrated Hudibras. I should have been glad to have had ‘The Rake’s Progress:’ but my father made over all the Barking pictures and all the family relics to a Mrs Nurse. I should have been rejoiced to have had them: the pretium affectionis which they had in my eyes, gave them no such value in other eyes.

“It is a great mortification to me, that so many houses to which I was attached in my childhood, have ceased to exist. For the house in Cratched Friars my father paid. There was the large garden, in which were a few fig-trees whose fruit never attempted to ripen; and a sick mulberry-tree, which indeed did produce fruit, but it was worth but little. When I came from Oxford to visit my friends the Browns, in Cursitor Street, great was my delight to see the garden there. One of Brown’s daughters married a man called Mansell, who afterwards became Sheriff of Northampton. The other daughter died. I liked to go to Sir John Hawkins’: he used to talk to me of his quarrels, and he was always quarrelling. He had a fierce dispute with Doctor Hawkesworth, who wrote the ‘Adventurer,’ and managed the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ which he called his Dragon. He had a woman in his house with red hair; and this circumstance, of which Hawkins availed himself, gave him much advantage in the controversy. Hawkins was always tormenting me with his disputatious correspondence; always wondering how there could be so much depravity in human nature; yet he was himself a good-for-nothing fellow, haughty and ignorant, picking up little anecdotes and little bits of knowledge. He was a man of sapient look. ‘All is not gold that glistens.’ Another sapient-looking man was White, the Solicitor to the Treasury, a trumpery creature: he was remarkably staid. I saw him walking arm-in-arm with Lord Eldon, happily suited. There was Lowndes, too, ill-tempered to the last degree. He was Pitt’s doer for the Treasury acts, and was made Chairman of the Board of Taxes. When Morton Pitt invited Minister Pitt and others to meet me, Lowndes was there. He was insolent and stupid beyond all conception. I had occasion to see how miserably all public business is conducted. Lady Hawkins told me, that on one occasion she had made twenty-seven cups of tea for Dr Johnson.”

“While at the university, I wrote some verses on the taking of the Havannah; they were given to Dr Johnson, who made, what I thought, some unfounded criticisms on them. The verses, with the criticism, I gave to Miss V—, who wanted to possess Dr Johnson’s antograph.”

“I never saw Sir William Jones but once. He was an industrious man with no sort of genius, who made a great rout about small matters, and went spinning cobwebs out of his own brain, and winding them round common law.”

Chamberlain Clarke was an old and intimate acquaintance of the Bentham family. He married the daughter of one of the trustees of Sir John Cass’s Charity, with a fortune of £12,000.

Bentham sketched Clarke’s character thus:—

“He ridiculed Panopticon; he had admiration for all that is ancient; dislike for all that is modern: he had a theory that law should descend from generation to generation, because law is weighty, and ought, therefore, naturally to descend: he put me on the wrong scent in my studies; prevented my getting forward by always driving me back, back. He set me to read indifferent accounts of law as it was; he so filled my mind with notions of the merit of looking backwards, that I took to Anglo-Saxon inquiries, studied their language, and set myself to learning laws that had passed away.

“I remember joining him to deplore the loss of Lord Mansfield’s MSS. by the mob; I should now think such a loss a gain.

“Clarke was an amiable and inoffensive man. When, about 1792, an act passed for making paid police magistrates—a bill drawn up by the late Lord Colchester, then Mr Abbot—Clarke applied for, and obtained one of the appointments. He had been formerly clerk to Sir John Hawkins.”

The first brief Bentham ever got, was from Mr Clarke; it was a suit in equity, on which £50 depended; and the counsel he gave was, that the suit had better be put an end to, and the money that would be wasted in the contest saved.

“He used to show me a book he had, which belonged to John Locke. The writing was a common hand; stiff and stately, like that of King William’s days.”

There was a sort of rivalry between Chamberlain Clarke, who had bought Cowley’s house, and Mr Bentham, senior, who had bought Milton’s: it was this circumstance that induced him to wish to obtain Milton’s picture. In his Diary is this memorandum:—

“1776, January 26.—Called at Mr Joseph Bolton’s, who told me that Mr Hall had directed him to send me the picture of John Milton,* by way of present.”

Memorandum on the back of the picture:—

“The original of this picture is in the hands of the Right Honourable Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the House of Commons,* and was procured for him by me, from the executors of Milton’s widow, soon after her death, which happened in Cheshire about 1728. He gave twenty guineas for it. This copy was done by Mr Philip Gresha, for me.

“12th January, 1737-8.

“William Cowper.

“Cl. dom. dom.”

In another page of the same Diary is the following mem.:—

“The following is a copy of an inscription, under the handwriting of Arthur Onslow, Esq., late Speaker of the House of Commons, at the back of a picture of Milton, at Ember Court, Surrey:—

“ ‘This original picture of Milton I bought in the year 1729 or 30, and paid twenty guineas for it, of Mr Cumberbatch, a gentleman of very good consideration in Chester, who was a relation and executor of the will of Milton’s last wife, who died a little while before that time. He told me it hung up in her chamber till her death, and that she used to say her husband gave it her, to show her what he was in his youth, being drawn when he was about twenty-one years of age.

“ ‘Ar. Onslow.’

“ ‘Mr Hawkins Browne, (author of the poem De Animi Immortalitate,) told me (8th October, 1753) that he knew this Mrs Milton; visited her often, and well remembered this picture hanging in her chamber, and which, she said, was of her husband.

“ ‘A. O.’

“Compare this picture with that of Milton in his old age, or with the print of it by White. Mem. The above picture, upon a view of it, (at the Right Hon. George Onslow’s, lately made Lord Cranley,) on the 2d June, 1776, by me Jeremiah Bentham, appeared to me to be twenty-two inches long, by eighteen inches wide, within the frame.”

Jeremiah Bentham collected in his memoranda books many particulars of the poet. Some of these appear worth preserving. They were extracted probably from the periodicals of his day, as for example:

“Mr Jonathan Hartop, now living at the village of Aldborough, near Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, has attained the amazing age of 137 years, having been born in 1653. His father and mother both died of the plague at their house in the Minories, 1666, and he perfectly remembered the great fire of London. He is short in stature, has been married eight times, and has now alive 7 children, 26 grandchildren, 74 great-grandchildren, and 40 great-great-grandchildren. He can read without spectacles, and plays at cribbage with perfect recollection. Last Christmas day, he walked nine miles to dine with one of his great-grandchildren. He remembers Charles the Second perfectly well, and once travelled to London with the facetious Killigrew. He eats but little, and drinks nothing but milk. He enjoys an uninterrupted flow of spirits. The third wife of this very extraordinary old man, was an illegitimate daughter of Oliver Cromwell, who gave with her a portion of five hundred pounds. He has in his possession a fine portrait of the usurper by Cooper, for which the late Mr Hollis offered him three hundred pounds.

“Mr Hartop lent the great Milton fifty pounds soon after the Restoration, which the bard returned to him with honour, although not without much difficulty, as his circumstances were very low. Mr Hartop would have declined receiving it again, but the pride of the poet was equal to his genius, and he sent the money with an angry letter, which is extant among the curious possessions of this venerable man.”

The following is a copy of a letter from Mr George Vertue to Mr Charles Christian:—

“Mr Christian,—

Pray inform my Lord Harley that I have, on Thursday last, seen the daughter of Milton the poet. I carried with me two or three different prints of Milton’s picture, which she immediately knew as like her father; and told me her mother-in-law, living in Cheshire, had two portraits of him—one when he was a school-boy, and the other when he was about twenty. She knows of no other picture of him, because she was several years in Ireland both before and after his death. She was the youngest of Milton’s daughters by his first wife, and was taught to read to her father several languages.

“Mr Addison was desirous of seeing her once, and desired she would bring with her testimonials of being Milton’s daughter; but as soon as she came into the room, he told her she needed none, her face having much of the likeness of the picture he had seen of him.

“For my part, I find the features of her face very much like the prints; I showed her the painting I have to engrave, which she believes not to be her father’s picture, it being of a brown complexion, and black hair and curled locks. On the contrary, he was of a fair complexion, a little red in the cheeks, and light-brown lank hair.

(Signed) “George Vertue.”

“At this period, 1768-70,” continued Bentham, “I used to visit a foreign merchant of the name of Pierre Vrillon, who lived in St Martin’s Lane, Canon Street, and managed to have a pretty garden at the top of his house. His dress was always very mean; his garments coarse; and he wore coarse woollen stockings at a time when everybody contrived to spend as much as they could upon dress. His talk of foreign countries, of which I knew nothing, and of which he knew much, was fascinating to me. He used to go sponging from house to house, by way of saving what he could; but once, when his brother, with whom he lived, was absent, he took the opportunity of giving us a handsome dinner. There I first saw, to my amazement, cucumbers stuffed with meat,—vegetables whose bellies were full of animal food; it was a contrast to all I had seen before—a sort of a reversal of natural order. On that day, I made the acquaintance of Mr Peter Nouailles, a refugee of French extraction. He had a handsome house in town, which I visited. What a charming wife he had, and what a sweet daughter of thirteen, who played exquisitely on the harpsichord! Mr Nouailles had invented a cheap covering for houses; a mixture of tar and sand. I do not know whether it ever occurred to him to introduce water between it and the roof, as an additional security.

“Vrillon told me it was the constant practice in Italy to preserve ripe fruit in wax. Why should not experiments be made for a purpose so useful? Would fruits so preserved be allowed to be imported here? or would there be, as usual, some absurdity, that if they were entered as fruit, they would be called wax; if wax, they would be called fruit. There is a strange prejudice against myrtle wax; why should it not be used? It would look well to have two green candles and two white. Why not use it for the Virgin Mary and the Saints, who are very fond of candles?

“I made an equestrian tour with my uncle and aunt, in 1768. He always kept two horses, one for himself, and one for his man; but our cavalcade was four: he on horseback, she on horseback, your humble servant on horseback, and our humble servant on horseback. We went to see a Mr Osborne, who had a good estate called Turville Court. (General Dumouriez died there.) He had retired from business, and lived in a handsome house at the top of a hill, with the ground prettily tumbled about in its neighbourhood. He had a wife and an only son; had been an adjutant in the militia, which brought him into contact with the colonel, Lord Le Despenser, one of Wilkes’ set—anti-religious. His lordship had been annoyed with a church which stood in the way of his prospect; so he threw it down and built another on the summit of the hill, and sadly scandalized divers old ladies thereby. His lordship, who had been Postmaster-general, got Osborne’s son a place in the Post-office; but he misconducted himself and fell into indigence. Among my uncle’s acquaintances, were the stewards to Lord Fitzwilliam and Lord Spencer; we visited the stewards, and heard much of the losses and injury which Lord S. had sustained from election riots. His fortune was considerably damaged, and he was obliged to maintain the rioters in prison. But the steward had acquired, from nothing, enough to buy a handsome estate. In the neigbourhood of Stratford-on-Avon, we spent two or three days at a house in the midst of islands divided by little streams. At Leicester, we went to see a tesselated pavement with stones of the size of dice. At Althorp we were the guests of the steward, and dined with the upper servants. In the steward’s room were various documents and parchments, among which was the account of the prosecution of a woman for selling her small beer too small.

“The year 1769 was to me a most interesting year. I was, I remember, reading Montesquieu, when the Archbishop of York called on me, to solicit my vote for Jenkinson and Hay. Prodigiously courteous was his grace; though I was only half dressed, and was busy, too, on chemistry, evaporating urine in order to obtain phosphorus. The ignorant mother of Chamberlain Clarke laughed at me, but laughed in vain. I was beginning to get gleams of practical philosophy. Montesquieu, Barrington, Beccaria, and Helvetius, but most of all Helvetius, set me on the principle of utility. When I had sketched a few vague notions on the subject, I looked delighted at my work. I remember asking myself—Would I take £500 for that sheet of paper? Poor as I was, I answered myself—No! that I would not.”

With Chamberlain Clarke, Bentham undertook a pedestrian expedition in 1770. He wore leather breeches, and was sadly pinched. They “went first to Oxford; afterwards to Farringdon, the seat of Mr Pye, who had been the M.P. for Berkshire. He afterwards broke down, became Poet Laureat, and one of the magistrates of Queen Square. He wrote travels in the aristocratical style; was intimate with Mitford: but his acquaintance was not worth making. He was a poet, præterea nihil. He asked leave for his daughter to walk in my garden; I told him my time was too much occupied to show her any attention. We walked up Birdlip Hill—on whose top was a little public-house—whence you look down on an avenue, at the end of which, and at a distance of six or seven miles, the city of Gloucester opens upon the view.

“At Oxford, David Coke introduced me to all the courts, and to Judge Blackstone in his robes. I told him Clarke was an attorney; he was astonished, and said, his appearance was far superior to that of a grimgibber. The attorneys of those days were little thought of.

“A talkative lady at Oxford wanted me to marry her daughter; and, on one occasion, I was obliged to escape out of the window. Her husband (Dr Bentham) was a little, insignificant, industrious man, who had got some reputation for his spontaneous divinity lectures, but was at the same time sorely quizzed; yet he was an excellent tutor, of quiet and gentle demeanour; and he threw out from the press, every now and then, a bit of Greek criticism, of which I got a copy—λογοι επιταφιοι—it was always commonplace, as he was commonplace; and I was never fond of commonplaces.

“In this journey with Chamberlain Clarke, we went to Pursfield, belonging to Valentine Morris, who actually ruined himself by his liberal entertainment of visiters. It was a beautiful place; everybody went there; got letters from friends, or friends’ friends; so he thought he could do no other than exhibit hospitality: he gave them free dinners, and ran himself out.

“One day, when we were hungry, we found we were on the estate of a Mr Clutterbuck; we made up a theory that he must be a relation of a Mr Clutterbuck we knew; and our theory obtained for us some cheese and ale from a John Bull peasant who lived on the property.”

In the visits which Bentham paid to the country with his father and stepmother, and which were frequent at this period, he usually walked behind them, alone, reading; and his favourite book was “Helvetius de l’Esprit.”

One of Bentham’s most intimate acquaintances was Lind. He was known in political circles as the correspondent of the King of Poland. “I wrote the design,” he said, “to Lind’s book on the Colonies; he would have set his signature blindfold to anything I had written. Lind, in consequence of his book, got an order to draw up a declaration against the revolted colonies. There were two such declarations. Gibbon drew up the other. Lind had various sorts of style. He got £1000 for writing the addresses of Lord Pigot. For his Manifesto, he got £50 a-year for each of his sisters. The Manifesto was not well done. Lind was of North’s (Bishop of Winchester’s) gambling parties; he wanted to get into parliament, and to be chairman of ways and means. I remember his speaking of a relation, one Dr Lind, who was an author, and who valued himself most highly on being an author: he had written a book on the diseases peculiar to hot climates. Lind was an industrious author; his manners were easy, gentlemanly, and fashionable. Lind had two sisters at Rochford, where I had a little estate, which I let to a butcher of the name of Boosey; and Boosey was a Dissenter. We went one day and dined with him. After dinner, he took us to his meeting. I went with him a short way up the gallery; and the minister was making his prayer, and saying, as it appeared to me, ‘O Lord! that alterest all events.’ ‘O,’ said I, ‘that is ultra-omnipotence;’ and I broke out into a most violent but irresistible burst of laughter. I was near the door, and I made my escape without disturbing the congregation. It was a paroxysm; but it disturbed me greatly. At that time, Boosey was overseer of the poor; who lived in clover. He told me there had been a meeting among them, because he gave them sheep’s heads, which they called offal. Not long after, dining with Adam, (the father of all the Adams who had got places,) there was a sheep’s head (Scotticè) with the hair singed. I thought it a strange coincidence that the poor of a parish should rise in rebellion against a dish which was the favourite dish at the table of an aristocrat.”

The following letter, addressed to me by Bentham, towards the close of his life, gives a graphic account of Lind and others, with whom Bentham came in contact in early life. It was written for the purpose of supplying information to Mr Barker, who was then preparing materials for his Parriana, in the second volume of which it is printed at length:—

“Queen’s Square Place,Westminster,
30th January, 1827.

“To John Bowring, Esq.

“My Dear Sir,—

Your friend, Mr Barker’s commands, have been noted by me, and what follows is the fruit of my obedience.

“John Lind and [Nathaniel] Forster: yes, both of them, were friends of my youth, though Forster’s christian name is not now remembered by me,—Lind a most intimate one.

“As to Lind, the origin of my acquaintance with him was this:—His father was by parentage, if not by birth, a Scotchman; he was a clergyman, and had a living in Colchester; he was a spendthrift. By I know not what accident, my father became acquainted with him. By my father’s advice, a female relation of his bought an annuity of the reverend divine, and, in process of time, his property and income found its way into the hands of a set of creditors, of whom that same relation of my father’s was one. Lind, the son, was a commoner, at Baliol College, Oxford. When he had taken his B.A. degree, he took orders. Soon after, a Mr Murray (I forget of what family, but I believe of some one of the noble families of that name) set out on his embassy for Constantinople. Lind, by what means I either never knew or have forgotten, became known to him, and went with him in the capacity of chaplain. I was at that time living in chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, where, a little before his departure, I received a short visit from him. His father’s income being at that time in my father’s hands, as trustee for his creditors, my father advanced to the son the sum of £30, to contribute to his equipment. We heard no more from him, or of him, for I forget how many years. Mr Barker knows, I suppose, which is more than I do, (for I question whether I have now a copy of the work,) in what year those same letters he mentions on the partition of Poland came out. In that same year, (1773,) as will appear in the title-page of the book, he returned to England with the title of Privy-councillor to his Polish Majesty, governor of an institution founded by the virtuous and unhappy monarch for the education of four hundred cadets, and the office, or rather the private trust, of governor to his nephew, Prince Stanislaus Poniatowski, in whose suite he came. On his arrival, after paying his devoirs and debt to my father, he called upon me at Lincoln’s Inn, and we soon became intimate. The reverend divine, with the black garb and clerical wig, was now transformed into the man of fashion, with his velvet satinlined coat, embroidered waistcoat, ruffles of rich lace, and hair dressed à la mode. When he quitted Constantinople, it was not without a set of powerful and useful recommendations to different places, through which he had to pass in his return by land to England.

“About this time, a Prince Czartoriski, uncle to the king, became desirous of having some Englishman, of good character, to read English to him. The recommendations Lind brought with him procured him a welcome reception from the prince. The regular part of his employment consisted in the reading, as it came, of the St James’s Chronicle. In those days, that newspaper found its way, and, for aught I know, it may still, into various and distant parts of Europe. In the year 1788, I found a copy at Bucharest,* to which place it came at the joint expense of a Greek, whose name I do not remember, and Mr Weber, a German, whose occupation there consisted, in part or in the whole, in teaching English. In the Greek, I found, to my equal surprise and satisfaction, an intelligent young man, who spoke French perfectly, and read Helvetius. In the imperial agent of that place, I had the still greater satisfaction of finding a very intelligent man, who had a very good English library, and, amongst other books, ‘Smith’s Wealth of Nations.’ But this is a digression and old man’s tattle. I correct myself, and return to Lind. Upon his arrival in London, in the character just mentioned, his book passed with rapidity through the press, and brought his reputation immediately into full bloom. He was well received by the then minister, Lord North. The King of Poland, in the course of a visit of a year or more he had paid to England, before his election to the throne, had become acquainted with Lord Mansfield, then in all his glory, and Chief Justice of the King’s Bench. Lind brought letters with him from the king to Lord Mansfield, and was well received by the noble and learned lord. He had not been long in London when, for the purpose of being near me, he took lodgings, I do not remember exactly where; and, not long after, took and furnished a house in Red Lion Street (or East Street may, for aught I know, be the name of it) near Lamb’s, Conduit Street, where he continued till his death. Much about this time, he entered at Lincoln’s Inn, for the purpose of being called to the bar, which calling he received in due season. All this while, he was living in the high world, and in particular in ministerial circles. More than once, when I have been at his house, I have seen him come in with his purse sometimes replenished, too often drained, at the card-parties of Mrs North, lady of the then Bishop of Winchester, brother to the minister. At the breaking out of the American war, he was employed in penning a sort of manifesto, published in justification of it. Not long before or after, another paper, written on I forget what different occasion, for the same purpose, bespoken by the same official customer, was penned by historian Gibbon. A notion has found its way to Mr Barker that Lind had written and published a treatise on grammar. I think I can direct him to the origin of this notion. No such treatise did my ex-reverend friend ever publish or write. He had neither relish nor literary assets for any such literary enterprise. His views had a busier and higher direction. But he thought he had made one grammatical discovery, and he was ambitious to distinguish himself by it, and plant reformation in the language. Where anybody else would say himself, he took upon himself to say hisself. This innovation found its way into his diplomatic paper: it attracted notice, but gave to it an air of singularity, of pedantry, of affectation, which certainly did not contribute to the success of it. I threw what cold water I could upon an ambition so unworthy of him, but did not succeed in quenching it.

“The reception given to his Polish Letters encouraged him to take a new and adventurous course in the world of politics. The result was, a work which bore for its title, “A Review of the Acts of the Thirteenth Parliament,” &c., but it went no further than the acts passed on the occasion of the contest with America, and closed with the act called the Quebec Act, by which a constitution, in the true Tory style, and under the auspices, if not by the pen, of Lord Mansfield, was given to Canada. In that work I had some small share. I have preserved a copy, and shall say more of it by and by. He wrote with rapidity and carelessness, without looking at it: he would have signed with eagerness anything that I wrote: his style was rather loose and negligent—it was not equal to what it was at the writing of the Polish Letters: though naturally cheerful, he was not quite in such good spirits at this time as in that: in respect of pecuniary circumstances, he was not quite so much at his ease. I touched it up a little in several places; but before it was brought to the length of the Quebec Act, I lost sight of it. He was in haste to get it out, and circumstances, either on his part or on mine, or on both, admitted not of its passing at that time through my hands. Though writing on the government side, in support of that war which, from its want of success, has now become so universally disapproved, his mind was by no means destitute of the spirit of independence. On the occasion in question, without dictation or instruction, he wrote as he thought, which was as I thought. For by the badness of the arguments used on behalf of the Americans, on that side of the water as well as on this, my judgment, unwarped by connexion or hope, (for connexion I had none—hope proportionable,) was ranked on the government side. The whole of the case was founded on the assumption of natural rights, claimed without the slightest evidence for their existence, and supported by vague and declamatory generalities. If government be only the representative of rights, for which there is no standard, and about which there will be an infinite variety of opinions, the right to which the mother country laid claim would seem to stand on an older and a firmer foundation than the rights pretended by the colonies.

“A compliment I remember Lind reported to me as paid him by Lord Mansfield, was much more favourable to him than I had expected. It was to some such effect as this: where you have justified, you have justified convincingly; where you have censured, you have censured freely. The act was indeed widely open to censure: the censure, to judge now from the impression I remember it made on me, had more of strength and freedom than of correctness or discernment in it. Considering the quarter from whence the above judgment came, my surprise at finding it so favourable was not inconsiderable. But by the timid and crafty lawyer, the revenge, if any such was taken, was concealed by prudence: certain it is that, during the remainder of their joint lives, Lind being all the time at the bar, a letter of intercession which the King of Poland wrote to Lord Mansfield, for the purpose of obtaining for the Anglo-Polish privy-counsellor the benefit of the noble and learned lord’s patronage, was not productive of any effect. ‘His majesty knows very little of me,’ said the Chief Justice to the Barrister, ‘if he thinks that anything that he or any body else could say to me, could add anything to my desire to give to the public the benefit of your services.’ His labours, however, though the reward came from another quarter, did not go unrewarded. On his return to England, he found his two maiden sisters, Mary and Lætitia, both a little younger than himself, keeping at Colchester a boarding-school for young ladies. It was not without some difficulty that they contrived to keep up in that situation a respectable appearance. I do not remember exactly what time it was, but it was during Lord North’s administration, and a considerable number of years after the publication of that work of his, that a pension of £50 a-year for life was granted to each of these two sisters. You will have been expecting to hear something of the young Telemachus, to whom, on the occasion of his visit to this island, my ex-reverend friend came officiating in the character of Mentor: how it happened, I do not exactly remember, but so it was, that notwithstanding my intimacy with the Mentor, I never saw the Telemachus. The case must have been, that Mentor must have been a considerable time in England before he deigned to visit my humble roof, if a garret in Lincoln’s Inn may be so termed. The giddiness produced by the exalted vortex in which on his arrival he found himself whirled, kept out of his remembrance, I believe for some months, the little debt he owed to my father: and till matters were thus settled with the father, it was not natural he should feel disposed to pay a visit to the son, who at that time was all but unknown to him. The stay of the prince must, I think, have been but short. By whatsoever cause this shortness was produced, no dissatisfaction towards the Mentor in the breast either of the prince or of his royal uncle, could have had any part in it. A letter I remember seeing from the king to him, shortly after the return of the prince to Warsaw, concluded with these words—‘Et dans tout ce que je vois en lui, je reconnois votre ouvrage.’

“In addition to the two situations above-mentioned, one of which, by his departure from Warsaw, the other by the departure of the prince from England, were become sinecures, one which I have not yet mentioned was far indeed from being so. From the day of his arrival in London to I believe the day of his death, which took place before that of the virtuous and unhappy king, scarce a post-day arrived in which he did not write a letter to the king; in short, he was in fact the minister, and more than the plenipotentiary, of the king, to this court, in trust and effect, though not in name. In name he would have been, but it was a maxim with George the Third—and being so natural a one, I know not that in his instance it was a new one—not to receive as a diplomatic agent for doing business with him, and in this way on a footing savouring of equality, any subject of his own: the same maxim prevented, I remember, another old friend of mine from being received in form as agent from the free city of Hamburgh. As an expedient for producing the substance without the form, a Pole of the name of Burkarti was sent by the king, with the concurrence of the Senate, if that was necessary, in the character of resident to reside in this court, in which character he continued to reside for a considerable number of years, and I believe as long as he lived. I knew something of him. I used every now and then to see him. I remember dining with him on a summer’s day, at a comfortable and pleasant apartment he had in a spacious mansion, occupied as a boarding-school by Johnson’s friend, Elphinston, who published a book in such English as you see employed in French grammars, for the purpose of teaching Frenchmen how to pronounce English, written for the purpose of demonstrating, that it is an Englishman’s bounden duty to write English exactly as he speaks it. But Elphinston was not Burkarti, nor in intellect would he have gained much by being so; not that he was at all the worse for this, but the better. It was for the express purpose of officiating in the character of a cipher that he was sent to this country and retained in it. In everything but bulk, in which he reminded one of a fat ox, he was a puppet, and Lind it was that moved the wires. Every now and then I used to see a letter from the king to his faithful, intelligent, and zealous agent. Once, I remember, at my friend’s desire, in consequence of a sudden and imperative call to other occupations, I held the pen in his stead: the function was a flattering one to my young ambition. A pun I remember letting off gives some indication as to the time. The cabinet squabbles, produced by the collision of two such hard and rough characters as Minister Pitt and Chancellor Thurlow, were matter of notoriety, and formed part and parcel of the history of the day. The account I gave of them was expressed by three words—“Le chancelier chancele,” and the truth of the intelligence was not long after demonstrated by the event. At the above-mentioned residence, economical as was necessarily the style of it, Lind was occasionally visited by foreign ministers and other persons of distinction. The only ones that I now recollect were the late Baron Masares, the public-spirited constitutionalist, and one of the most honest lawyers England ever saw; and Lord Chancellor Rosslyn, at that time Solicitor-general, both at the same time on the same evening. The deep bass voice and cold gravity of the crown lawyer, still dwell on my ear and memory. Some little conversation with him fell to my share. Not to any such honour as that of being present at his table: according to what I used to hear from those who had, my loss was not very considerable. The deportment of the master of the house used to be, according to those reports, more suitable to a funeral than a dinner: ice waited not for the desert: it encompassed every course: favour me with a little salt, said somebody on one of these occasions to his neighbour; or, as Mr Godwin would have informed us, might have said: as for the Attic, it will enter, let us hope, with the bottles.

“This preëminent lawyer happened to furnish, within my observation, two exhibitions as strongly contrasted, perhaps, as ever were furnished by the same person in so short a space of time. The first time I saw him he was in black, with the sword stuck by his side, holding up the train of the then chancellor; but this is not one of the two I mean. Not long after this, attending in the Court of King’s Bench as a student, I saw him with a silk gown on his back making a motion with far more hesitation and distress than I ever witnessed on the part of the youngest and most obscure tyro. This was the first time of my seeing him in the character of a lawyer: the last time was at the council-board. It must, I think, have been by Lind’s means that I enjoyed a privilege in which I had so few to share with me. I speak only from present inference; for I do not recollect that he himself was there. At that board, Franklin stood as the silent and necessarily defenceless butt of his eloquent invectives. No hesitation then: self and language were, in equal perfection, subjects of command. Fortunate was I beyond all probability in being present at so memorable a scene. Members of the board, nearer a dozen, I believe, than a score, sitting on the opposite sides of a long table. At the upper end, the Duke of Portland as president. Auditors, I question whether there were more than a dozen besides myself. Of the president’s chair, the back parallel to and not far distant from the fire: the chimney-piece projecting a foot or two from that side of the apartment formed a recess on each side. Alone in the recess, on the left hand of the president, stood Benjamin Franklin, in such position as not to be visible from the situation of the president, remaining the whole time like a rock in the same posture, his head resting on his left hand; and in that attitude abiding the pelting of the pitiless storm. If necessary, at the call of a subpœna, I could give some tolerable account of the materials, colour, and buttons of that coat which, I am ashamed to think, retarded, for such a length of time, not much less, I fear, than a week,—if not the cessation of hostilities, at any rate the conclusion of peace between so many mighty contending powers and their subject millions. Before the incident ever found its way into the public prints, I had it from a noble friend, who was present at the last exhibition of the important vestment as I was at the first. To return to Wedderburn. I was not more astonished at the brilliancy of his lightning, than astounded by the thunder that accompanied it. As he stood, the cushion lay on the council-table before him: his station was between the seats of two of the members on the side of the right hand of the Lord President. So narrow were the dimensions of this important justice-chamber; they were those of a private drawing-room. I would not, for double the greatest fee the orator could on that occasion have received, been in the place of that cushion: the ear was stunned at every blow: he had been reading, perhaps, in that book in which the prince of Roman orators and rhetoric professors instructs his pupils how to make impression. To the instrument recommended, I think by Cicero, the floor being hard, and the cushion soft, he substituted the hand. Our late friend [Dr Parr]—considering whom I am now addressing, [Mr Barker,] I run no small risk in venturing the observation—seemed to have studied in the same school. Lest for making the desired impression psychological power should not suffice, he rather too often helped it out with physical, and the table groaned under the assault. The striking contrast between the early and the later exhibitions of the accomplished orator may afford an encouraging lesson to young men. I remember a similar, though not an equal, contrast in Lord Kenyon. I remember a similar and equal contrast in the fortification-loving Duke of Richmond, from whom, when occupying the place now occupied by Wellington, at the house from which I write, I had once the honour of a visit, which, according to a custom scarce ever infringed in my whole life, I left unreturned.

“When Lord Pigot’s conduct, in his capacity of Governor of Madras, became the subject of inquiry and accusation, as is shown in the history of the day, Lind, in his capacity of barrister, was applied to, to defend him; and accordingly did so in a quarto volume, for which he received, if I misrecollect not, the sum of £1000. This, I think, was the sum received by Lord Thurlow, when counsel, for the part he took, I do not exactly recollect which, in the great Douglas cause. This being a matter of a comparatively private nature, and for which such a rapidity was requisite as could not admit of any time for revision by a friend, I took no part in it, unless it were in the way of incidental conversation. His marriage took place at St Andrew’s, Holborn: name of the officiating clergyman, I believe, Eton; present, his eldest sister May, and your humble servant, who, in the character of father for the occasion, gave the bride away. This, you will see, is tolerably good evidence, that there be nothing about me to render me, either in law incompetent, or in probability incredible. As to the time, the Register will show it: not so much as the year is at present in my remembrance. I question whether, since the time of my first seeing the lady, a twelve-month had elapsed. Genealogical importance the ceremony had none; of political, it was not altogether destitute: no sooner had the event taken place, than the bridegroom sent advice of it to his royal master: the answer was, the grant of a life annuity of five hundred ducats, (the half of his,) in the event of her surviving him; and this annuity, as I had occasion to know, for I had some trouble with it, was paid for a number of years. The injured king’s finances being in a state less and less flourishing, I had every now and then to turn secretary in her name. Sometimes, I believe, it was to him that the letter was addressed: sometimes to his above-mentioned nephew, who, if I do not forget, had a few debentures in our Irish tontines, in which case it must have been in the first class, bearing date the year 1773. When the king died, the arrear was considerable. Letters, one or more, from the king to her on the occasion of the news of her husband’s death, I recollect seeing: they, or one of them, were written in English, in a style which could scarcely have been distinguished from an Englishman’s. In one of them, speaking of the pension, ‘I have fixed a pension upon you,’ was the expression, instead of settled a pension upon you, or granted a pension to you. During the marriage, she had a sufficient stock of acquaintance of visiters of her own sex to render her situation comfortable: some of them even belonging to persons of distinction. After his death, she took lodgings in Pall Mall: they followed her there, and the assortment was rather augmented than diminished. At length, resources failing, she quitted that situation, and retired to a creditable boarding-house. But in the meantime she had received an assured, though smaller, provision from an annuity left her by a reverend divine, name forgotten, whom I never saw; my communication with her having suffered frequent interruptions by my own travels and other incidents. On her death, her small pecuniary remains fell, I forget how, into the hands of a gentleman of the name of Combe, whom till then I had never seen. He was, I believe, a man of some fashion. I think I remember hearing him called by the name,—a nick-name, of Count Combe. If so the circumstance is singular enough; for some years before, another man whom I knew, used, I am certain, to be distinguished by that nick-name,—a man who published a sort of romance, entitled the ‘Devil upon Two Sticks, in London,’ in imitation of the well-known French novel of that name. In her husband’s lifetime, and during her widowhood, a portrait of the above-mentioned prince had constantly hung over the drawing-room chimney-piece: some persons saw in it a resemblance to my brother, men of the same age. Mr Combe pressed it upon me, and it has since figured over one of my own chimney-pieces. Amongst her relics of better times, was a portrait of the King of Poland on the lid of a gold snuff-box, given by him to her husband. At that time, Prince Adam Czartoriski, a near relation of the king, son, I believe, or grandson of the Prince Czartoriski herein above-mentioned, happened to be in England. He was universally regarded as being about to have the management of the affairs of the newly truncated kingdom of Poland under the Emperor Alexander. He called upon me for the purpose of requesting my assistance in the business of codification for that country. I took the opportunity of getting the snuff-box, showing it him, and asking him whether he knew of anybody who would be disposed to give for it anything more than the value of the gold. After keeping it a few days, he returned it to me, saying, that there was nothing very particular either in the likeness or in the workmanship, and that resemblances, in different forms, of the unfortunate king were by no means scarce. I returned it to Mr Combe, and what became either of the snuff-box, or the gentleman, I have never since heard.

“Now as to Mr Forster. The first time of my seeing him was in the year 1762, or thereabouts. I had at that time been living and keeping terms at Queen’s College, Oxford, of which college, while yet at Westminster School, I was entered, I believe, as early as the summer of 1759. I was removed thither early, I think it was in the year 1760; for paternal authority compelled me to hammer out and send in, as a candidate for admission into the customary academical collection of half lamentational, half congratulational, rhythmical commonplaces, the subject of which was the loss of one king and the acquisition of another, a copy in sapphics, the first stanza of which figures in a whole-length portrait of me, in my academical dress, which, by an odd series of accidents, has fallen into your possession. The chambers I then occupied (for I changed my local situation in the college not long afterwards) were upon the two-pair-of-stairs’ floor, on the further corner of the inner quadrangle, on the right hand as you enter into it from the outer door. I was dressing to go down to dinner in the hall, at half an hour after twelve,—in those days the hour in that and most of the other colleges, though in some it was as early as eleven; when I heard a rap at my door,—went to it, opened it, and, to my no small confusion, (for my dress was scarcely adjusted, and my discarded shirt lay sprawling upon the floor,) when in came a grave and important-looking personage, in a Master-of-Arts gown, ushering in a smart and sprightly lady. The lady, who had never as yet seen my father, became afterwards his second wife. She was the widow of a Rev. Mr Abbot, who, having been a Fellow of Baliol College, Oxford, had, in the spiritual routine of preferment, migrated from a fellowship in that college, to a college living at Colchester. She was then his window.

“The above was the first time of my seeing Mr Forster. The second time was in the company and at the house of Mr Lind. We visited and were visited. Forster was at that time rector of a Baliol-college living, at Colchester. He had another and very different occupation—that of manufacturer of an Index to several volumes of the House-of-Commons’ Journals, for which service his remuneration, if I do not misrecollect, amounted to £3000. His acquaintance with Lind was produced by an obvious cause—residence in the same society in the season of youth; his intimacy by conformity of opinion on the most important subjects. Forster was a man of a strong will, strong intellect, bold temperament, and excellent moral character, in every walk of private life; happy in wife and children, and, by his own behaviour towards them, well deserving so to be. At this time, the topic of subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles being upon the carpet in parliament and elsewhere, he had written and published a pamphlet in support of that institution. This advocate for orthodoxy was at the same time a much too open professor of Atheism. This was the only failing I ever saw in him. It could not but have operated as a bar to that advancement which, otherwise, his talents might have ensured. I had not many times seen him at Mr Lind’s, when, in compliance with an invitation from him, I visited Colchester, and passed a week or two at his house. Of what passed at that visit, nothing determinate dwells on my recollection, except the circumstance, that this was the first time of my ever seeing Dr Parr. His situation at that time was that of master or usher to a school in that town. Mr Forster took me with him one day to pay him a short visit, place not recollected, except that no boys were visible at it. It served as the foundation of the acquaintance which afterwards took place between us; and this is all that I remember about it, except it be that one day we were conversing upon terms of intimacy and freedom, he brought it to my inemory saying that, at that time, he little expected to find in me the sort of person he now beheld in me; for that, in my dress, there was something which bespoke a young man who would have been glad to be a fop, had he been able. I do not think I ever saw him at Lind’s. I must have seen him, I think, more than once at Romilly’s, and thence afterwards at my own house. He was anxious to introduce me to the late Mr Fox, but, as I did not hear that Mr Fox had anything in particular to say to me, and I knew I had nothing in particular to say to Mr Fox, this state of things was with me, in that instance, as at all times it has been in every other, a sufficient reason for declining it. It was in the summer of, I think, the year 1804, that, in pursuance of a kind invitation from him, I went upon a little excursion, and passed a very agreeable week or thereabouts at his parsonage. Mr Koe, at present an eminent barrister at the Chancery Bar, then living with me as an amanuensis, accompanied me. We there found the Doctor, his first wife, and a very agreeable and intelligent young lady, his daughter, then unmarried; the other was not there, having for some time been married to Mr Wynne.

“During my stay at Hatton, we made several little excursions; one was to Guy’s Cliff, the mansion of Mr Greathead, who, at that time, was among the personages placed at Verdun in a state of detention by Buonaparte; another was, I believe, to Warwick: of the castle, circumstances limited our view to what was visible from the road.

“As to Lind, that work of his which brought him into favour with Lord North and Lord Mansfield, has been already mentioned. When I began this letter, I had not received it back from a friend, to whom I had lent it. It bears date 1775. His design had originally embraced the whole of the acts of the parliament of that year, and eventually those of succeeding years. But the interest produced by those acts which laid the foundation of the American war absorbed all other interests. The plan of the argument he had from me. Upon his mentioning the American part of his design, his plan not being as yet formed, I told him I had written two or three pages on the subject, which, such as they were, he was welcome to do what he pleased with,—they were my own private thoughts, without any view to publication. When he had made some little advance, my surprise was not small at finding that this page or two of scattered thoughts had been set in front of his work, and constituted the plan on which he was operating. They form pages 15 and 16 in the printed book.* Different parts of it fell incidentally under my revisal, and received additions and alterations, of which all memory has long been lost. One thing there is, and no more, of which I have something like a specific recollection, which is the section that commences at page 128, and has for title, “Abstract of the Charters of Connecticut and Rhode Island.” This I remember had more or less of mine in it: for aught I know, the whole; but neither time nor eyes allow of my attempting to draw a line anywhere.

“He would gladly have let me write on as long as I chose: he had a sort of epicurean nonchalance about him, the result of so many years he had been living in the grand monds. My opinions were at that time opposite to the American side. The turn they took was the result of the bad arguments by which I observed that side supported, no use being made of the only good one, viz. the impossibility of good government at such a distance, and the advantage of separation to the interest and happiness of both parties. The Declaration of Rights presented itself to my conception from the first, as what it has always continued to be, a hodge-podge of confusion and absurdity, in which the thing to be proved is all along taken for granted. Some hints to this effect were, I believe, given towards the close, in a note of my introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.* I know not whether it was at that time, or some years after, that I made a dissection of it. The paper, I believe, was translated by M. Dumont, and made use of by him, in his edition of my work on Political Tactics, in the second volume, at the end of the list of Fallacies.† I speak of that paper now with the less reserve, the author of it (Jefferson) who took it for the main foundation of his glory, being now no more: a man whom, on other accounts, I hold in very high estimation, were it only on account of his having, by his patience and forbearance under a long continuance of the most galling attacks, established upon a sure basis the liberty of the press. Absurdity, if I do not misrecollect, went so far on that side as to pretend that, in point of fact, they had all along been in a state of independence of the British Parliament, the contrary of which was proved so plainly by such a number of acts of parliament, which were produced.

“English lawyers who, being in the opposition, took, as a matter of course, their side,—took, if possible, a more palpably absurd course. Lord Camden, who saw that it would never do to pretend, in the teeth of the acts themselves, that parliament had never taken upon itself to exercise the power of legislation over the colonies, took a distinction between legislation and taxation. Legislation, he said, is one thing, taxation another: to legislate is to command: to tax is not to command; it is only to give money. For proof, he brought forward the words give and grant, which he had picked up in some act or acts of parliament, and, for aught I know at this moment, (for it is not worth looking for,) in all taxing acts, as if giving and granting other people’s money by sovereign authority, sword in hand, were not taxing them. And even, supposing these words employed in all acts in which the money was given in large sums by general words, thereupon, after and in consequence of them, came out acts in volumes for prescribing the mode of collection, and imposing penalties on nonpayment, and so forth: acts, in none of which most assuredly were any such words as give and grant to be found. Little did I think at that time that I was destined to write, within fifteen or sixteen years thereafter, an address to the French Commonwealth, for the express purpose of engaging them, by arguments that applied to all mother countries, to emancipate their colonies.

“Biographers are not disinclined to receive and insert digressions: no, nor digression upon digression to any number of removes, any more than at the age of garrulity old men to furnish them. At this moment I am dictating, while disrobing for bed. In 1814, Mr Mill and I, (Mill, the historian of British India,) passed through Oxford in our way to Bath. I showed him the chambers in which I had been resident for two or three years, after descending to them from the above-mentioned and abovesituated. These second ones were on the ground-floor, on the right hand of the staircase, next on the left hand, as you go from the outer quadrangle to the staircase that leads to the former ones. Three motives concurred in producing this transition: a sum of two guineas, my aversion to solitude, and my fear of ghosts. This migration, in consideration of the two guineas that accompanied it, I kept from my father with as much solicitude as some persons would have felt for the concealment of a crime. Though a very affectionate father, he was, by a variety of infirmities, a very troublesome one. My fear of ghosts had been implanted in my mind from earliest infancy, by the too customary cultivators of that most noxious weed, domestic servants.

“Amongst Lind’s acquaintances was Governor Johnstone. Johnstone, he told me, was to such a degree delighted with the Fragment on Government, that he used to go about with it in his pocket, boring people with it. This was not long before his departure for the revolted colonies, as one of the three commissioners for sparing the lives of between two and three millions of human beings on condition of universal penitence. Hearing of this, and having an ardent desire for seeing a little of the world, and more particularly of the political world, it seemed to me a good opportunity for taking my chance of doing so in the capacity of that commissioner’s secretary. Lind, at my desire, mentioned this to Johnstone. The answer was, much regret at not having heard of it sooner, he being engaged to Ferguson,* the Scotch professor, anthor of Roman history, and some book on morals; I forget the title of it. The examples of Greece and Rome had not been lost upon Ferguson. During the voyage, he was urgent with the commissioners, as I learnt afterwards from good government authority, to put to death man, woman, and child, as many as they could catch, as an inducement to the rest to take the benefit of the proffered grace.

“Jeremy Bentham.”

2d February, 1827.

Inserendum in Memoirs of Lind and Forster:—

“As Lord Mansfield had sentenced Peter Ance to a year’s hard labour, for an anti-christian publication, and his patronage of Bishop Warburton, who had the reputation of being an atheist, was well known, I had a curiosity to know the state of the Chief-Justice’s opinions on that subject. I accordingly desired Lind to inform me. The answer was, unbelief. I put the same question to David Martin; his answer was the same. David Martin was a man who was admitted to familiarity, being the painter who painted the portrait from whence the first of the engravings of his lordship was taken, and who had been sent by him to engage an engraver for that purpose to Paris, where engravers’ work, by a capital artist, scarcely cost the employer a fourth part of what it did in England. The engraver he had engaged failing him before the work was half done, he completed it himself. Martin and I lived together in Paris about six weeks. Our acquaintance commenced in the packet-boat between Dover and Calais.”

I resume the thread of Bentham’s conversations:—

“Lind’s style did not satisfy me. There was a want of accuracy. I used to correct for him, and he assented to all my corrections. Nothing that anybody else wrote ever satisfied me; nothing that I ever wrote at first satisfied me: but I never made an alteration without having a reason for it.

“Burkarti, who was here as the nominal representative of Poland, had no head, or an ox’s head; so that Lind did all the business. There was a momentary hope of inducing the British Government to interfere against the partition of Poland; but George III. had a great contempt for the people, and enjoyed the triumph of despotism.

“He was despotic from the beginning, yet the opposition to him in the early part of his reign originated solely from the disappointment of displaced men—thence the North Briton. When Wilkes accused the king’s speech of having lies in it, it made a great sensation. Wilkes was an object of perfect abhorrence to me, and I abhorred him for his opposition to the king. The North Briton excited a prodigious sensation; forty-five was written on all the walls; forty-five had obscured every other member of the numeration table. For years it was the principal topic of conversation. Then came the prosecution; then Lord Sandwich turning against him. Gross things respecting women were picked out to find matter for impeachment. Lord Sandwich got the name of Jerry Twitcher, from the ‘Beggar’s Opera,’ for his impeacher. Then Wilkes was outlawed, and when he appeared in court, Lord Mansfield, the grave and the wise, said he could not consider him in court, because he was not in custody. No! the lawyer could not believe that to be a fact which he himself saw with his own eyes.

“John Wilkes was the bête noire of the king. The situation, not to speak of the power of mind, of Henry the Second, was that of George the Third; that which Thomas-à-Becket was to Henry the Second, John Wilkes, bating the difference between the saint and the sinner, was to George the Third. ‘Target Martin’ obtained his illustrious title by his willingness to be shot at for the love of his sovereign. So valorous was his loyalty, that he was willing to act in the tragedy in which George the Third should be the Old Man of the Mountain; and he (Martin) the missionary who might have the honour of sacrificing the redoubtable John Wilkes.

“Of those days, not to speak of the present, the moral sense existed in that form which sanctioned the destruction of the life of man—not only without the depression, but even with the exaltation of the reputation of the destroyer. Destroy with premeditation the life of a single man—the name of an assassin and the infamy attached to that name, over and above the corporal punishment, awaits you. Destroy two lives, one of them being your own, and consent obtained for the performance of the operation on the other, that consent being obtained by fear of ignominy, you are either acquitted, or, if found guilty, you acquire, in the shape of the perpetual reputation of courage, an indemnity for a temporary loss of liberty in one of the many senses in which that fascinating appellative is employed. A target was set up: pistols were procured, a regular course was taken of that species of gymnastic exercise, the material of which is composed of the implements just mentioned: when proficiency was regarded as complete, an invitation in appropriate form was transmitted from the intended sacrificer to the intended victim to join in the experiment desired to be made of the degree at which the proficiency had arrived: what followed I do not at this moment recollect.

“In idleness-time, I engaged myself in classifying duels and duellists. Duelling may be checked without any alteration of the system of procedure—it can only be put down by the introduction of a natural system of procedure.

“Duelling should be prevented by legislation. The challenge is the inchoate offence—the battle the completed one. Duelling does a vast deal more mischief than people are aware of. It is the instrument of secret tyranny to a prodigious amount.

“When death ensues, compensation should at all events be made to the relatives of the deceased. The law of England shuts out this redress, so that the wrong-doer may inflict any portion of injury upon the victim of the wrong. If there be no family to be compensated the fine should go to a fund for the use of helpless litigants. In this country there is a strange tenderness in fining—and the fines are sometimes so small as to leave a positive premium for offence. In costs, judges care nothing about pecuniary inflictions—but pecuniary inflictions, as an appropriate instrument of punishment, are little thought of.

“But to return to John Wilkes.

“I never saw him but once. I was a determined aristocrat in his time—a prodigious admirer of Lord Mansfield, and of the king. There was a horrible outcry against Wilkes for turning the king’s ministers out of office; and I said, Why should the king not discharge his servants at will, like any other person? When there was a clamour against Scotchmen, I asked why Scotchmen were worse than other people? I remember being much struck with the locution, which was new to the English language, being imitated from the French, “Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton.’ It was a great saving of words.

“I was, however, a great reformist; but never suspected that the people in power were against reform. I supposed they only wanted to know what was good in order to embrace it.”

Bentham visited Paris in 1770. He had scarcely an acquaintance there. Dr Fordyce introduced him to some chemist in France who was nobody, and who paid little attention to the recommendation. He found there Martin the painter,—who was getting the portrait of Lord Mansfield, already alluded to, executed,—to whom he lent about 1000 francs to assist him in his difficulties. Martin introduced him to a man called Rose, who had been secretary to the Pretender, who had given him a pension on which he lived in tolerable comfort, and was enabled to entertain his friends.

Bentham had even then a sort of reputation; and a Mr Godefroy gave him several books, because he had heard that he was a “philosopher,” a title which greeted him then for the first time. There was then an old man, with a long beard, who went about Paris, under the name of “Le bon Dieu,” making a trade of his blasphemy. Martin painted him, and offered to paint Bentham, who refused the attention proffered, as he could not afford to pay the import duty into England. Bentham’s dining-place was a guinguette, where, for a shilling, there was an abundant and varied supply of food. It was in the Rue Tournon. After dinner, the party walked in the gardens of the Luxembourg. The guinguette has shared the ordinary fate of mortality. Bentham went to look for his old haunt when he revisited Paris a few years before his death: not a trace remained of it.

“Of travelled men, I afterwards made acquaintance with Mr Forster, who had been chaplain to the ambassador at Petersburg. He was a sort of atheist parson, and conversed on all subjects with great levity. Russian manners suited the indolence of his nature. It was an incident in my life, to talk with a man who had lived in diplomatic circles, and had travelled so far. He introduced me to many Russians, among whom were two brothers (Tateschevs,) whose fondness for each other was perfectly infantine, and whose disputes about the merits of Montesquieu were very amusing. The discussions turned upon fundamental principles, which were fundamental nonsense: it was a perpetual trifling about words to which they could give no definite, and each attached a different, meaning; such as, ‘honour,’ ‘virtue,’ ‘fear’: ‘honour’ being a love of reputation, or of as much power as a man could get; and ‘virtue’ being admiration of a republican government.”

A memorandum, dated November 24th, 177-, is as follows:—

“Fils Jeremy dinoit chex nous; après diner, we opened the portmanteau belonging to the late Mr John Forster, deceased, in which there was nothing more than a clergyman’s gown in a cloth, some old printed books, of little or no value, some MS. sermons, and a bundle in a brown paper, sealed, upon which was a piece of white paper, endorsed with his own hand as follows:—

“ ‘Reflections on the rise and fall of the ancient Republics, and 2 other manuscripts, all composed by me, but printed in the name of Edward Wortley Montague, Esq.

“ ‘Jno. Forster.’

“And, after the above examination, I locked up the portmanteau again with the contents thereof as before.”

[* ] There is a Note of Jeremish Bentham:—“This portrait of Milton appears to have been made some time before he became blind; and Mr Parsons told me he had it from the executor of J. Richardson, who, in 1734, published a Life of Milton.”

[* ] This is the portrait engraved by Houbraken, for the Collection of Heads published with Birch’s Lives.

[* ] This must be a mistake, as Bentham returned from his tour in 1787.

[* ] “Lind on the Colonies,” pp. 15, 16, (written by Mr Bentham):—

“I. As to the Point of Right.

“1. As to the crown alone, what is the power with which the constitution invests that branch of the legislature over countries conquered, or otherwise acquired?

“2. As to the whole body of the legislature, whether its operations can be restrained by any acts of the afore-named branch of it?

“3. Again, as to the whole body of the legislature, whether on the particular point of taxation there be any other principle in the constitution to restrain its operations?

“II. As to the Point of Fact.

“1. What were the privileges originally granted by the crown to the colonies?

“2. What power preceding parliaments exercised over them?

“When these questions are fairly discussed, and not before, we may venture to give our opinions.

“III. On the Merits of the Preceedings of the last Parliament.

“1. Whether they were consistent with the spirit of the constitution?

“2. Whether they were consistent with the dictates of sound policy?

“To enter on the two last subjects of inquiry before the other points are fully settled, would at least be preposterous. It would be to begin where we ought to end.

“If the power vested in the crown over conquered or acquired countries, be circumscribed within certain bounds, by certain acknowledged rules, all acts done in the exercise of that power, must be measured by those rules, on their conformity to which their validity will depend.

“If the acts done in the exercise of that power do not bind or restrain parliament, it is in vain to cite those acts. On this supposition, charters are useless parchments, because ineffective.

“If there be any principle in our constitution by which the Americans can claim an exemption from parliamentary taxation, then, too, charters will be found but useless parchments, because unnecessary.

“If there be no such principle, then allowing to charters their utmost force, the colonists can plead no exemption from thence, till they have shown it to be there either specified, or of necessity implied.

“If different interpretations be put on the same grants by the contending parties, we must then appeal to usage to decide between them.

“If the proceedings of the last parliament be questioned, we must exactly know the situation in which the preceding parliament had left it.”

[* ] See Works, vol. i. p. 154.

[† ] The work used by Dumont was the Examination of the French Declaration of Rights, published in vol. ii. p. 490, of the works.

[* ] Ferguson wrote “Institutes of Moral Philosophy,” and “The Principles of Moral and Political Science.”

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CHAPTER III.: 1763—1770. Æt. 15—25. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 10 (Memoirs Part I and Correspondence) [1843]

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