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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law

Bentham to Nicholas Vansittart. - 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 Nicholas Vansittart.

“Queen Square Place,
Westminster, 24th April, 1801.

“Sir,—

I was not more flattered than surprised by the attention you have in so very short a space of time found means to bestow upon my plan, amidst occupations so urgent as yours must be: and in the account of ‘confidence,’ I must acknowledge myself richly overpaid by receiving so much from an office from which so little was to be expected: I mean by the communication made of the first runnings of your mind in black and white, which, as far as time can be afforded for it, is, according to my experience, a much more effectual mode than vivâ voce conversation for the discovery of truth, though, unquestionably, on occasion, both modes may have their use.

“In looking over your extempore list of objections, it was no small satisfaction of find them grounded, as far as appeared to me, on a momentary misconception in regard to the prospect of the plan itself, and so far (whatever further objections may come to be suggested by a closer scrutiny) not indicative of any ultimate difference between us. Misconceptions of this kind, I, in whose brain the plan originated, have too frequently caught myself falling into, not to regard them as more or less inevitable on the part of anybody else.

“Not to overload this letter, I dismiss my answers to a separate paper, in which form you may either throw them aside definitively, or postpone them for future consideration; and, in the meantime, hand them over to any third person—for example, Dr Beeke.

“I will not attempt to nail your attention any closer to a subject which has no necessary claim to it, and may never pay for it; but, in case the Doctor should amuse himself with it, I should hope to find, that any objections he may think worth communicating, had been minuted down opposite the particular articles to which they respectively applied; and that, if, in any note, or any explanatory chapter, he found an answer which appeared to him insufficient, he had expressly referred to it as such, rather than pass it by without reference—not forgetting, that out of seventeen chapters you have yet but three, with the commencement of the fourth.

“For the statesman, it was necessary to present the plan under all its possible extensions and modifications, for the purpose of enabling him to take a view of whatever effects might follow, or be derivable from it. But to suppose that, in any such complicated form, it is proposed to be presented to the uninformed minds of the experimental set of expected customers, is a supposition on which the most express negative is put at the very outset of the Introduction, besides other places.—I am, &c.

“P.S.—The day before yesterday, while the House was already sitting, I took the liberty of sending in to you a short paper on the subject of the Bank Forgery Bill, under the impression that you were to sit upon the Bill that very day as Chairman. It was written in extreme haste, (without any copy kept of it,) and without any better evidence of the contents of the Bill, than what was to be collected from two newspapers.

“All paper money being, equally in proportion to the amount of it, the current money of the country, should not every one of the self-erected mints in which it is allowed to be coined, be possessed of the best security that can be given to it against forgery, and in that respect the same security?

“The idea had occurred to me of extending to all emitting banks the sort of appropriate paper proposed by me for the Bank of England, to be devised and prescribed by Government: with the collateral view of deriving from the appropriation an assistance to the Revenue. With or without design, the stamp prescribed, with a direct view to revenue, has had the collateral effect of affording something towards the species of security above proposed; to wit, by the complication to which it has subjected the process of forgery. But is the degree of security thus afforded anything to compare to what might be afforded on the same principle?”

Again:—

“Dear Sir,—

I have to thank you for the favour of your obliging letter of yesterday.

“If it would in any degree facilitate a decision on the subject, to place it in the clearer point of view, or lessen the labour of taking a survey of it, I could, and very readily would, give an abridged sketch of the argument contained in the long paper, leaving out what I look upon, and from the first did, in this as in all other cases, look upon as a surplusage, viz., everything that savours of personality. By confining one’s self to a bare indication of the topics, it might be brought perhaps into the compass of a single sheet, written on one side. But as there might be a great deal of it lost labour, proving what was already clear and settled, if it were agreeable to you to send it me back with short marginal notes, just to say, relative to each point, whether you agreed with me—whether you definitively and positively disagreed with me; or whether the question appeared at the moment remaining in doubt, and requiring further elucidation. In short, where the shoe pinched, and where it did not pinch.

“If, in a subject so involved in obscurity, and, consequently exposed to error, you will repose so much confidence in me, as to trust me with the first runnings of your thoughts, at the hazard of their appearing erroneous to your own maturer consideration, you may depend on my not making any ill use of your confidence; or, if you lay your injunction on me to that effect, so far as trusting your memoranda to any other eye. The idea may strike you as a presumptuous one. Of all the persons whose opinions on the subject have passed under my review, I know not of one to whom errors may not in any view of the matter be imputed; and there is scarce any erroneous opinion, which, when the erroneousness of it comes to be pointed out, and placed in a clear light, may not appear absurd to a degree of ridicule. In my own instance, this has happened to me many and many times. Yes—many times have I caught myself in harbouring ideas—in making suppositions, which, when compared with one another, turned out to be repugnant to one another, and incompatible. At this moment, I have before me a point on which Mr Pitt, Mr Fox, and Mr Boyd, present themselves in my view, as concurring in one error, such as, when once pointed out, appears so palpable, that a man would wonder how anybody could have fallen into it.

“On every new point, what errors remain to be discovered, the event only can show; but with very moderate and inferior faculties, there will be nothing wonderful, if a man, who for these two and a half years has thought of scarce anything else, should not have hit upon some truths which have escaped the notice of those who have not had leisure to bestow upon this subject, amidst the crowd of so many other more pressing ones, more than here and there a momentary glance.”

The letter from Vansittart, alluded to in Bentham’s of 24th April, follows, with the detailed answers to the objections implied in it.