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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law

Bentham to Joseph Townsend. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 10 (Memoirs Part I and Correspondence) [1843]

Edition used:

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

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

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Bentham to Joseph Townsend.

“Dear Sir,—

Here am I still: how much longer I shall be here I do not, as yet, precisely know; nor by what track, nor by what conveyance I shall migrate elsewhere. I am waiting for letters from Petersburg; that is to say, I am in the state and condition of your friend Horace’s countryman, who kept waiting for the river to run itself dry. Thanks to my sins, I have to do with one of the most indolent men of one of the most indolent nations upon the face of God Almighty’s earth. I write him letter after letter about business purely his own. He, I am told, expresses much satisfaction; and how do you think he testifies it? You would suppose, by answering them. No such thing: he orders them to be translated out of my dog-French into Russian, for what purpose, or for whose use, I cannot pretend to guess: not for his own, most certainly; as he makes, at least, as much use of the French as of the Russ. However, he talks of writing soon, and there the matter rests.

“As for you, I will almost venture to prophesy you will not quit Tin island in a hurry. The gnomes of Cornwall have encompassed you with silver chains. I see the would-be Gulliver struggling to get loose, in case a swarm of little Plutuses keep fast hold of him by the heart-strings.

“As to Sir Edward Bayntun, I am much obliged to him for his good intentions: they are, like Prince Potemkin’s, of lasting stuff, not to be put an end to by performance. I should rather have said, for his declarations; which assuredly is full as much as I had any title to expect.

“To come back to milk-maids. You gave me, as your decided opinion, that no such animals would be to be met with born in two counties at once. After great consideration and some inquiry, I am inclined to think you are in the right; indeed, I never could hear of more than one sort of being that is to be found in more than one place at a time, in any period of its existence. I think, therefore, I have done something in finding in the person, a niece of my all-capable Scotchman, an intelligent, well-bred, young gentlewoman, of about twenty-five, who, to the theoretical merit of having imbibed sound chemical principles from her uncle, adds the practical requisite of having been born and bred in a Cheshire dairy. You will say that is doing the business but by halves: true; but it would be more than half done if I could get her regenerated in Wiltshire. Now, how to bring about this good work? Of myself, you know I can do nothing. To the art of regeneration I make no more pretensions than to its simple prototype. But you, my venerable friend, are alike an adept in both: the last your pastime is, the first your trade. Now, then, how shall I contrive to pay you? for every one must live by his trade, and yours is none of those which men are wont to live the worst by. Don’t be wicked, now, and think that I mean to propose to you to pay yourself by intermixing, upon this occasion, your pastime with your trade: that would be curtailing you of a syllable, without making you a jot the richer; besides, that my commission does not extend quite so far: and, sacred as the precedent is, it is possible she might have her scruples about acting the part of Ruth, though you were to be her Boaz. I mean to pay you more liberally in your own coin. Pewsey, I am told, or the near neighbourhood of it, is a second Canaan: don’t be angry, I speak of its produce, not of its inhabitants. The ditches, instead of mud, are filled with milk; and the footpaths, instead of gravel, are cased with cheese. You cannot but know plenty of your ouailles, or of their commères, who, out of christian charity, aided by the moderate application of a more substantial motive, would undertake this pious work. The process need not take up above a week; and any recompense you thought adequate—two or three guineas suppose—would be cheerfully bestowed. But what, you will say, has become of the Livites here, all this while? Have a little patience. I have a piece of malachites (ay, heavenly powers, what a piece!) fit to make a breastplate for the angel Gabriel. Who can say that it may not have served heretofore to that use? Stones, you tell us, have fallen from heaven before now; and why may not this be one of them? Sure anything half so beautiful could never have been dug out of the earth. This jewel, my fair cheesemaker, who, I understand, is a fossilist to boot, shall bring down in her lap, and deposit, with pious gratitude, in the sanctum sanctorum of Pewsey. To this shall be added about fifty or sixty specimens of Siberian ores, sent over by my brother, in days of yore, as an earnest of better things to come. True it is, these were put up in a bundle, with your direction to them, before I had thought of Pewsey in any other light than that of a place in which I had spent some pleasant hours, and might, possibly—at I know not what distant period—spend more. But the handling of so much wealth hath made me mercenary; and I have vowed a vow—a tremendous, irrevocable vow—that your eyes shall never behold a single grain of them, unless wafted to Pewsey by that enviable conveyance.

“When you see Lord Lansdowne, you will hear of a great pie which was cut up at his house, and in which, alas! alas! I full well know my reverend friend would have rejoiced to have had a finger. I cried out with a loud voice, Where is he? They answered me, and said, Three hundred miles off, even in Cornwall, too busy and too wise to leave mountains for a horse-load of chip band-boxes. What could I do? There is an hour for pies as for other things. The hour of this pie was come: it had been kept till it would keep no longer. But what hath kept, keeps still, and will have kept when pies and custards are grown stale, (how does my little custard-ophagus?) is the sincere regard and esteem with which I am, dear Sir, your obliged friend and humble servant,

“Jeremy Bentham.

“If at this distance you can assist me, I beg leave to propose the best mode of doing it,—that, in your answer to me, you should enclose a letter, addressed to the discreet matron whom you harbour with you, that I may forward it to her. The lady’s name is Miss Kirkland. At any rate, I beg your immediate answer, that other measures may be taken if this should fail.”

To this Mr Townsend replies:—