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Subject Area: Law

Bentham to Arthur Young. - 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 Arthur Young.

Dear Sir,

Many thanks for your kind remembrance of me. No—you had not answered it, I was thinking of writing to you a second time, in consideration of accidents such as happened.

“I see Bygge’s extract* in the last number of the Annals, but not North. I beg your pardon; I was misinformed. I see it in No. 210.

“I was sorry not to find the note we talked of, in explanation of the difference between large farms in that country and in this. You may have observed, or not observed, in my Principles of Management, as given in my Poor papers in the Annals, the advantages of the large scale principle, as applied to buildings, and vessels, and other implements in manufactories. I should like to see an application of it to agricultural establishments, to which nobody is so competent as yourself.

General enclosure. Has anybody ever worked this argument in favour of it? By the common law, where an estate falls from one hand into a few, as where it descends from a man to a family of daughters, his co-heiresses each one has a right to have it divided, by reason of the inconveniences and loss of value that result from joint and promiscuous land ownership. In the case of land common to a whole parish, how much stronger the reason for division.

“Lawyer craft and lawyers’ prejudices have been found by you among the great obstacles to improvement in your own, (have not they?) as well as in so many other lines. Here is an argumentum ad hominem for you to fight them with.

“You got me into a scrape about the population paper: what I wished was, to have talked with you on the subject; but I made you promise it should not, till then, if at all, find its way into the Annals. This promise escaped you, and you printed the paper, taking only the precaution to put initials, instead of the name at length. Another time we must take precautions to prevent misconceptions and slips of memory. I do not know that any ill consequence has actually happened. I will tell you what I was apprehensive of when we meet. When do you think of visiting town again?—Yours most truly,” &c.

[* ] Extracts from Bygge’s Travels in the French Republic. Annals, xxxvii. p. 129.

[† ] This is the main feature of the modern Scottish agriculture.