Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Bentham to Lord Lansdowne. - The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 10 (Memoirs Part I and Correspondence)

Return to Title Page for The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 10 (Memoirs Part I and Correspondence)

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

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.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Bentham to Lord Lansdowne.

“Queen’s Square Place,Westminster,
9th February, 1796.

“My good Lord,—

Permit me thus humbly to solicit your lordship’s assistance, if haply the matter should be found to lie within the sphere of feasibility, in a business of cardinal importance. It would, I dare believe, have been recognised as such by your lordship’s late venerable friend, now a saint in Heaven, the Cardinal de Bernis—Cardinal Frampton, (if I may avail myself of a privilege annexed to my quondam profession, and according to one of the rules established in virtue of that privilege, speak of a thing as done, which ought to have been done,) I mean always the pious and learned luminary of our own Church, by whose grave and judicious estimates of men preferable, and things edible—I have in days of yore been edified at your lordship’s table. Dr Frampton, in a word—who, were this a world for merit and reward to meet in, would have been Cardimal—would, I am sure, have confirmed my humble opinion of the importance of this subject by the sanction of his superior name, nor would his sympathetic feelings have disdained to descend so far from his high dignity as to lend his support to the humble request which, without farther preface, and having too just a sense of the value of a time which constitutes so valuable a portion of the national property, to seek to encroach upon it by long-winded digressions, I will venture to express.

“That bread is dear—that I have none of it to eat, nor have had for a course of years, are unhappy truths, none of which can be any secret to your lordship. In the meantime, as is the custom with people in distress, I endeavour to support my drooping spirits by the brightest prospect I can figure to myself of better times. I had once, may it please your lordship, a French cook, who quitted me with reluctance, and whom her importunities have prevailed on me to say, I would take her back again, should that Providence which supplied the late Dr Squintum, of reverend memory, with leg of mutton and turnips, vouchsafe, at some future period, to grant me anything to cook; in the meantime, I should be glad to send her out anywhere, where she could pick up a few crumbs of science, as a man who finds himself unable to maintain his horse in the stable the whole year round, is glad during a certain part of the year to pack off the beast to a salt-marsh, or a straw-yard. Your lordship’s kitchen has ever been regarded by the best judges as one of the richest pastures in the kingdom for the sort of cattle I am speaking of: and could I be so fortunate as to obtain from your lordship’s kindness, and from the patronage of your lordship’s chief cook, free ingress, egress, and regress for the same, for, in, to, and upon the said pasture, during the day, (for it is not necessary that she should be levant or couchant thereupon,) my present distresses might, by a happy metamorphosis, become the fruitful sources of future advantage. She is not altogether destitute of that measure of science attainable by the superiority of her sex, (a remark which I insert for the purpose of preventing this letter from straying into female hands,) and, upon great occasions, such as that of Comacho’s wedding, or any other wedding, might not be altogether unworthy of supporting the train of one of your lordship’s junior kitchen-maids.

“Should your lordship happen to possess interest enough, through any channel, however indirect, such as the one I have made bold to allude to, I will not permit myself to doubt of its being exerted in my favour, and with prevailing efficacy. In the utmost severity of my distresses, I have, through the kindness of neighbours, been preserved from absolute want in regard to all the necessaries of life, my baker and butcher having humanely joined with a compassionate barrow-woman, at the end of the lane, in supplying me, every Lord’s-day, with a shoulder of mutton, supported upon a trivet, and forming a dripping canopy, distilling fatnees over a mess of potatoes sufficiently ample to furnish satisfaction to the cravings of nature during the remainder of the week. Should some prosperous and scarce promisable turn in the wheel of fortune transform, at any time, the shoulder into a leg, and set the deep-rusted spit to retrace its once accustomed revolutions, what an addition would it be to my happiness, on some anspicious day, to present your lordship with the emanation of culinary science reflected from your lordship’s kitchen, and offer an apposite, however inferior, tribute of gratitude on the board, as well as from the bosom, of one who has the honour to be, with everlasting respect, my lord, your lordship’s most obedient and most humble servant,

“The distressed Occupier of
Queen Square Place.

“P.S. Not a doit this Christmas from a noble lady. She has offered me a potde vin, Anglicè, a pot of beer, per favour of the Rev. Mr Debarry, but an unliquidated one, to let her off; and her project seems to be to starve me into compliance. But solvable tenants (solvent or no) are not let off for their beaux yeux, how beaux soever, when their turn is served, especially by impoverished heirs who could not make so much as legal interest, were it even regularly paid, for the money sunk by improvident ancestors.

“General Buckley, the landlord paramount, never lets me rest unless he has his pound of flesh the moment it is due; nor would my utmost distress now prevail upon him to wait as I have been made to wait, by noble ladies pleading their beaux yeux. I learn the baked shoulders must soon cease, unless some kind friend should whisper into one of the ears contiguous to the beaux yeux, not that necessity has no law, (for that would be worse than nothing,) but that necessity has law, and that John Doe has a long coach in waiting, into which he is ready, at a moment’s warning, to hand any lady of his said mother’s recommending to him, in one of his tours through Middlesex.”

Dumont says, in a letter of 23d April, 1796:—

“I must appeal from the air of England to the climate of Switzerland, in a lawsuit which, for the last four or five months, I have been carrying on with my malady. One of my sources of enjoyments will be your MSS., of which I shall make extracts for publication in the Bibliotheque Britannique, which is now managed by two very superior editors.

“If I lose the said lawsuit, you shall not be the worse for it. I have made all the necessary arrangements for the fit disposal of your works.”

The following letter to Wilberforce, develops a project which Bentham had formed of endeavouring to use his influence in France, for the benevolent purpose of reëstablishing friendly relations with that country. Other than in Wilberforce’s reply, I find no reference to the topic in any succeeding correspondence.* A copy of the letter to Wilberforce was sent to Lord St Helens, whose answer follows it:—

[* ] It is casually alluded to in the Life of Wilberforce, vol. ii. p. 170.