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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law

Bentham to Lord Lansdowne. - 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 Lord Lansdowne.

“My dear, dear Lord,—

Since you will neither be subdued nor terrified, will you be embraced? Those same seeds you were speaking of have taken such root, the ground is overrun with them; and there would be no getting them out were a man to tug and tug his heart out. So parliament may go to the devil, and I will take your Birmingham halfpence, and make a low bow, and put them gravely into my pocket, though they are worse than I threw away before: there can be no condition necessary for that, so you need not be at the expense of making any.—Quere, How much pains would it cost a man to say Yes or No; and how much time to discover his past engagements expressed or implied? What I understand by this is, that, notwithstanding ebullitions, you would not be sorry to see me; and what I am sure of is, that I should be overjoyed to see you again, not forgetting your appurtenances, if you and they would let me.

“Offer?—why no, to be sure it was not—why didn’t I tell you I only called it so for shortness? More shame for you that you never made me any. My model was a Scotchman I know, whom I set up in the world, and who, while he was pocketing what I had got for him by hard labour, was threatening to bring an action against me for not having made him the offers that somebody had made to somebody else.

“Now, could I, after having been counsel for J. B., and made nothing of it, be counsel for Lord L., and show how much blacker than one’s hat was the behaviour of the wretch you had to deal with? and then, in the character of my Lord Judge,—how easy it was to the parties to see the matter in the different lights, and yet be both of them good sort of men in their way; but this would take sixty-one pages more, and sixty-one to that, and you seem to think the first sixty-one enough, and I am sure I do; and as they would be of no use to anybody, I think they may as well sleep on in the pericranium where they lie.

“My father,—believe me when I assure you upon my honour, I have never had the smallest communication with him on the subject, directly or indirectly, any more than with the Pope of Rome; and have,—for that very reason, that I might not, and no other, avoided seeing him, until now that I could talk with him about it without betraying anything.

“It was using me very ill, that it was, to get upon stilts as you did, and resolve not to be angry with me, after all the pains I had taken to make you so. You have been angry, let me tell you, with people as little worth it before now: and your being so niggardly of it in my instance, may be added to the account of your injustice. I see you go upon the old christian principle of heaping coals of fire upon people’s heads, which is the highest refinement upon vengeance. I see, moreover, that, according to your system of cosmogony, the difference is but accidental between the race of kings and that of the first Baron of Lixmore: that ex-lawyers come like other men from Adam, and ex-ministers from somebody who started up out of the ground before him, in some more elevated part of the country.

“To lower these pretensions, it would be serving you right, if I were to tell you that I was not half so angry as I appeared to be; that, therefore, according to the countryman’s rule, you have not so much the advantage over me as you may think you have: that the real object of what anger I really felt, was rather the situation in which I found myself than you or anybody; but that, as none but a madman would go to quarrel with a non-entity called a situation, it was necessary for me to look out for somebody who, somehow or other, was connected with it.

“You a philosopher by trade? Alack-a-day! Well, I’ll set up against you, and learn to desire nothing, aim at nothing, and care for nothing any more. Then we shall see which makes the best hand of it,—a broken minister, or a man who has served a treble apprenticeship to it in colleges, chambers, and cottages. One island, after all, is enough for one man, unless he is a great genius like Lord Buckingham. So I’ll go to Ireland, and govern like an angel, and double the value of your acres every year; and then you will come over, by and by, with some attorney in your hand, or some conveyancer, or somebody that knows everybody, and has no singularities, and is exactly like every other creature breathing, and down go I and my projects under the table.

“Being a sort of mongrel philosopher, for my part, something betwixt the epicurean and cynic, you must allow me to snarl at you a little, now and then, while I kiss the beautiful hands you set to stroke me,—if ever I am to kiss them; in regard to which, fresh difficulties seem to have arisen, I can’t tell how, God help me!—for, somehow or other, I have got into another scrape which is to me darkness unfathomable, though you, I suppose, know all about it.

“When will your door be open to me? provided always that no fair hands have been barred against me. This thought makes me droop again—I cannot keep it. I had just mustered up spirits enough to write this, and must now go to moping again, and so good-by to you.”

But, whatever momentary coolness may have been excited, soon passed away. In a letter of 17th Oct. 1790, Lord Lansdowne thus expresses himself:—

“Well or unwell, I could not let the post go without assuring you that no one knows better the difference between honest open passion which bursts, no matter how, and gives fair warning,—and concealed malice, which seeks to avenge a wounded vanity it dares not own, and to gratify a cowardly spirit of envy and ingratitude. I know the qualities which belong to both, and I have knowledge enough of mankind to worship one in its moment of violence,—among other reasons, on account of its affinity to my own temper, while, if I was to die for it, I could never forget or forgive the other. I leave it to you to make the application. If you make it rightly, you will make it unnecessary for me to keep the ladies waiting dinner longer, in order to assure you how affectionately and unalterably I must be always yours,

“L.”

In Bentham’s papers are several sketches of addresses to electors; from one or two I extract passages which seem worth preserving:—

“I am sensible how I should commit myself by correspondence had I anything to commit. Nothing can be more vulgar than, in a character not anonymous, thus to address the people. What great man condescends to address the people on the business of the people? What great man degrades himself from his dignity by addressing them in his own name? Periodical seasons of condescension there are, indeed, in which a great man does vouchsafe to defile himself with this sort of correspondence. But it is on business of far other importance than the business of the people—it is on the great man’s own great and particular business.

“But for me, I am steeped in vulgarity; it is in me an incurable disease. I am a low man. I feel as a low man: low men are the men for whom I think—they are—they ever have been—they ever will be—the chief objects of my care.

“I have other means of influence. I have had the honour of making acquaintance with a gentleman who had a considerable interest with the first cousin of the favourite mistress of the valet-de-chambre of a gentleman high in the confidence of a great man—a very great man indeed—who has a pocket large enough to hold several boroughs in one of its corners.

“Shall I tell you why I turned away? Nay!—but I did abandon all expectations from the great—I gave up my ambitious views of mixing with the great—I relapsed into what Nature designed me for—a low man—and one of the people.”

“I cannot promise to adopt and combat for the support of a casual majority among you, without knowing what your opinions are. I cannot engage to give silent votes, or to argue in favour of what are not my opinions, and import into the senate the disingenuity of the bar.

“This only I will say, and I say it truly, that, to find myself in contradiction to the sentiments of a clear and permanent majority among you, would ever be matter to me of the most poignant concern, and the most mortifying disgrace.”

Bentham writes to his brother, Dec. 6th, 1790:—

“ ‘The Defence of Usury’ has met with a translator in France. I am known by the name of Usury B. in Ireland. The bookseller is plaguing me about reprinting it, being continually asked for it. I have been printing in Nos. without publishing, a work on the Judicial Establishment for the French National Assembly, to whom I have sent 100 copies. I find it is beginning to have a certain reputation; but they have made scarce any use of it. It is much admired by the few who have read it here,—young women of the number: and it contributes, with other things, to the slow increase of my school. Charles is put in for a contested borough by Lord Carmarthen, now Duke of Leeds, and is likely to succeed. I quarrelled with Lord L. for not having brought me in. He made apologies; promised to spare no pains to effect it another time, but would not give me a promise to turn out for that purpose any of his present crew, who, he has agreed with me, over and over again, are poor creatures; so I laughed at him, called his promises Birmingham halfpence, and so we made it up again—he styling me all this while to everybody in conversation and on paper, the first of men, diverting himself not the less with my singularities, as you may well suppose. Poor Inspection House is taken up by the Government of Ireland; they have ordered it to be printed, and given me what money I have a mind for, to waste upon it with architects. Lord L. thinks he has persuaded them I am necessary to them, and that they must bring me into parliament there; and he is strenuous with me to go over there upon those terms,—saying, what may perhaps be true, that everything is to be done there and nothing here.”

Dr Price writes to Bentham, from Hackney, on the 4th January, 1791:—