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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law

Bentham to the Duke de Liancourt. (Boston, U. S.) - 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 the Duke de Liancourt. (Boston, U. S.)

“Queen Square Place,Westminster,
Sunday,Oct. 11, 1795.

“My dear Duke,—

I have deferred the acknowledgment of your kind remembrance of me so long ago after the receipt of it, that I begin to be apprehensive lest this letter should not reach the place you indicated to me time enough to find you there. The termination of my negotiations with our treasury, relative to the Penitentiary business, is an epoch of such importance to the remainder of my life, and will make so great a change in my position with relation to all sorts of objects, that I am got into the habit of deferring to that period all sorts of undertakings, permanent and transient, considerable and inconsiderable. Meantime, the intelligence of an opportunity for Boston that will not last beyond Wednesday next, is a warning to me not to postpone any longer the discharge of one of the most agreeable, as well as honourable of my debts.

“Your present has been of real use to me in the way of encouragement and self-satisfaction, and will be of use to me in the way of argument on more occasions than one. The injunction in which you are so earnest has prevented me, and, while it remains unrepealed, must continue to prevent me from giving the public the benefit of the work in any other shape. Statements, relative to matters of fact, depend for their reception upon their apparent title to credit, and their apparent title to credit depends upon a name.

“Your letter did not reach my hands till after the Metcalf family had left London for the summer; and as they have not yet returned, I have not yet had the opportunity of communicating my treasures to the lady in question with the privacy you seem to require; for I am not sufficiently acquainted with the female branches of the family to know whether a letter directed by the post to one would reach her hands without the cognizance of the rest. The great probability is, that all this caution about a matter so well calculated for the public eye, is most perfectly superfluous, and that I am cheating more persons than one of a pleasure which it was not intended to deny them; but seeing explanations barred by the Atlantic, I chose to adhere to the safest side, and to let my mandant, though a Frenchman, see he had got a Spaniard for his mandataire.

“I don’t know whether you saw the Draught of my proposed Contract with Government, in which I inserted a clause for insuring, at my own risk, the lives of the prisoners,—a clause which, with great difficulty, I got allowed. In my book, you may have observed the recommendation, which, in my Contract I have got converted into an obligation, to debar them altogether from the taste of all fermented liquors. Judge how pleasant it was to find by your Report, that when prisoners are cut off from that source of corruption, they live quietly and never die.

“As to my book on Penal Legislation, it is no more than upon a par, in point of forwardness, with half-a-dozen others in the same workshop; and I am inclined to think one on Civil Legislation will get the start of it, or at least accompany it. Whatever turns out at any time, the three copies you do me the honour to bespeak, shall be always at your service. Name me the two friends you allude to, and their copies shall be sent them from hence in the event of your departure. All the productions of that same workshop have been cruelly retarded by the dilatoriness, and (I won’t say how many other pretty qualities besides) of our higher powers: two-thirds at least of the time that has elapsed since I had the honour of seeing you, has been consumed, in fighting them, or dangling after them in antechambers and passages. To save time on one hand, while so much was wasting on the other, the plan was, that Dumont should take my half-finished manuscripts as he found them—half English, half English-French, and make what he could of them in Genevan-French, without giving me any further trouble about the matter. Instead of that, the lazy rogue comes to me with everything that he writes, and teazes me to fill up every gap he has observed.

“My contract, though every tittle has been agreed on, is not even yet signed: consequently, my brother’s inventions (I mean those of the peaceable kind) have remained hitherto unemployed. In his military capacity, he is preparing some dishes for the entertainment of your countrymen, and my fellow-citizens, the Pandemonians. Talleyrand may perhaps be amongst them again by this time. I hope Beaumetz is of the party, if he wishes it; but I rather wish than hope they may find themselves as well off in their redintegration as you are, I hope, in your banishment. While I write, the news is arrived of the Sections and the Convention being employed in cannonading each other—the result not known, though the Sections appear to have the worst. Quiet seems now as far off as ever. I can see no issue to such a dispute. You may remember how the English sang froid was kept for year after year in a flame, upon the electors of one of the counties conceiving they had one single representative forced upon them to the prejudice of Wilkes, whom, after they had got him, and tried him, they turned their backs upon.

“Apropos of my brother’s inventions, do you know of anybody where you are, or where you have been, who would like to be taught how to stock all North America with all sorts of woodwork, without exception, (shipping not excepted,) besides a number of other et ceteras, by machinery, on the terms of allowing the inventor a share of the profits as they arise?—Wheels, for example. Small ones by way of models, were executed, I believe, when you were here last; now, we have full-sized ones, round, to a degree of perfection in point of rotundity, never before exemplified. If the preliminary steps that have been taken by the Admiralty terminate as is intended, he will soon have the direction of the whole system of naval works put into his hands, with the title of Inspector-general of the Navy. A plan which the Navy Board had devised, and proceeded a good way in the execution of, for the enlargement of the dockyard works at Portsmouth, has just been stopped by the Admiralty Board, and a very different one of his contrivance ordered to be substituted in the room of it. My paper is just out, to say nothing of your patience. By my gratitude for past communications, and attention to past commands, judge of the value I should set upon any future ones; and believe me, with the most cordial respect, yours ever.

“The Irish Administration has applied to me once more to set up Panopticon there.”