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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law

James Trail to Bentham. - 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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James Trail to Bentham.

“Lincoln’s Inn.

“Dear Bentham,—

I have a thousand apologies to make for not having sooner thanked you for the perusal of your paper on Escheat. I have been scarcely an hour at home, except for sleep, since I received it. I ran it over very hastily, and having no prospect of more leisure for some time, I sent it to Wilson with all the cautions and injunctions you prescribed.

“The plan appears much more reasonable on your development of it, than I had conceived it possible to have made it. I feel still startled at the proposal to vest in a public officer all property of which the state will, by your plan, be entitled to any share; and I doubt if the example of an executor or administrator will reconcile people’s feelings, or even their reason, to this part of the scheme. However, I am very glad you have written it, and sent it to Long, as it must impress every person that reads it, with a very favourable opinion of the faculties of the author. You labour, and with much ingenuity, but I doubt if with complete success, to prove that this mode of raising supplies will appear less burthensome or oppressive than a slight tax on collateral succession. After it has been established some time, that may really happen; but although you may convince a minister that it will happen, he cannot venture, on his own conviction, to make the experiment. You must convince the public, also, which, I fear, is impossible. The reluctance with which tithes, compared to rent, are paid, is a very strong illustration of your point. If the Church could occasionally be put into the actual possession of the tenth part of every field or farm, as the landlord occasionally is of the whole, the property in the Church would neither be disputed nor repined at.”

D’Ivernois, in sending to Bentham his volume on the French Revolution, expresses a wish that it should be known in Holland, and adds—“I have thought it necessary to put my name to the work. I had been silent, for it was natural for me to wish to withdraw both from the literary and political scene; but as many readers have asked whether it is not my object capriciously to blacken the French Revolution, I feel that I am bound to take upon myself the responsibility of an historian.”

Lord St Helens was at this period our ambassador at the Hague, and Bentham thus addresses him:—