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Subject Area: Law

Bentham to Sir F. M. Eden. - 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 Sir F. M. Eden.

“Q. S. P.,September 4, 1802.

“Dear Sir,—

Capping, like yawning, is contagious. To an author, laudari a laudato viro, is among the most flattering of rewards. The Mons. Dumont you speak of, is our Stephen Dumont, Esq., of the Pells Office; like our Sir Francis D’Ivernois, a quondam citizen of Geneva,—he was a collaborator of Mirabeau’s, an artificer of many of his glories, but one of the furthest men breathing from being a sharer in any of his stains. A man who counts so many friends among his acquaintances, or is so perfectly without an enemy, I had almost said, exists not anywhere. He is not only known to everybody at Paris, but a good deal known here; but though as alien to anything of party as your humble servant, so it has happened, chiefly among oppositionists. He has already a controversy upon his hands, I find, about I don’t know what point, with the Abbé Morellet, (whom I reckon among my masters,) and another with Préfet Garnier, the new editor of Adam Smith. The man who is putting in puffs about it in the Moniteur is Tribune Gallois, who made the pacific oration on the peace: he was secretary under Talleyrand, when Talleyrand was minister there. Talleyrand wanted to have the thousand and one volumes all printed at once, and offered to bear the expense,—but this Dumont, I think very wisely, declined. He likewise wanted, before publication, to have it put into the hands of I know not who, who make a sort of a practice, if not a trade, of puffing. This was also declined,—but Gallois being a man in much estimation then, and a man who had taken a fancy to me in England, was not to be refused.

“What do you think of Spain taking off 300 copies? Thrice as many, I believe, as it was thought worth while to send to England. This was the number which, according to the calculation of the French bookseller, would find customers before the Inquisition would have time to fasten upon them.

“Portalis, hearing of some printed, but unpublished papers of mine, took a world of pains, in round-about ways, it being in war time, to get a copy of them for the purpose of his Code—that has been once thrown out, and is now to be regenerated, and sent me a copy of it before it was made public. Dumont fancied he saw traces of my ideas in the arrangement of that Code—I, for my part, could see none. Portalis is no more able than a pig to made a Code with reasons to it. What mortal alive could be, who should take a Code to make by a particular day, as a tailor would a pair of breeches? Everything I have said about reasons being a libel upon his new Code, whatever it be—what I expect is—to see the book published ere long at Paris, notwithstanding the pains that Talleyrand, and I don’t know what ministers besides, have taken to trumpet it.

“It adds a good lump to my stock of happiness to find that you look upon this motley English-French work as a manufactory of that article. It is certainly what I mean it for, though I scarce expected to see any finished goods come out from it in my lifetime. One thing, however, you have fallen somewhat short in—saying nothing about regeneration. A letter I received t’other day from a person of whom I know nothing but that he is a Genevan, tells me of his being ‘rendu,’ not only heureux,’ but ‘regénéré par la lecture de mes ouvrages.’ If he is, as I take him to be, a Protestant Calvinist clergyman, he must have been once regenerated already—if, then, he is regenerated by me, he must have been re-regenerated; and if so, what sort of a state must he be in now? However, if he is but happy, as he says he is, it is not worth while scrutinizing minutely into mode and figure.

“As to translation, Romilly, in a tête-à-tête between us t’other day, was talking to me about his undertaking it. The proposition was an odd one enough, from a man broken down with business, and wearing the marks of his labours but too conspicuously in his face. To do him justice—I mean in point of sanity—it must have been rather in the way of velléité than volition; and at the earliest, he could not have looked for any earlier period than the next long vacation for the commencement of it. As to my procuring an English dress for it, it might have lain Frenchified, as long as it lay naked, which was from a dozen years to twice as many, before I should have thought of taking any measures for such a procuration. How fortunate its lot, could this mass of law, by any astutia be construed to come under title Poor! Let us see. What act of charity more refined, than for one author, rich in reputation, to take in hand a poor brother of the trade, poor in everything—poor, more particularly, in that essential article—first of all necessaries to an author—to take him by the hand, and clothe his nakedness? Shall it be said that charity, in this her most delicate shape, is a virtue peculiar to France? That charity, after beginning among strangers, cannot so much as end at home? Poor as I am, I have my pride—though thus a mendicant, I am no vagrant—and this, as it is my first act of mendicancy, and that extorted from me by the mere temptingness of the opportunity, will be the last. You should have, in the first place, a release of all prior claims, signed and sealed by Romilly. In the next place, all the odds and ends, the disjecta membra poetæ that Dumont had to work upon, and which he has returned to me; and as the ends would not be of your own ‘gathering,’ you might go to work boldly without apprehension of the statute. Your censorial care would give the translation whatever ‘corrections’ the original scraps might not suffice for giving to it.

“To your kind inquiries about Panopticon, all I can say is, I have a letter before me from Lord Pelham to a friend of mine, [Sir C. Bunbury] dated 17th August, 1802, which says ‘at all events I will apply my mind to the subject, and endeavour to get something settled before the meeting of Parliament,’—not that Panopticon is much the nearer to its being set upon its legs. Your friend, Mr Vansittart, if experience be any ground of judgment, has now taken it in charge to prevent its being ever settled at that period or any other. In an answer to a letter of mine, written this time twelvemonth, viz. September 7, 1801, in which I say in humble strains: ‘If, from any cause, it should have happened that you have not yet turned the matter in your thoughts, you will, at any rate, I flatter myself, have the goodness to say something to me by which my expectations, in regard to time, may, in some measure, be directed.’ In answer to this letter, in another dated 10th September, 1801, he says to me,—‘I have not yet had an opportunity of consulting Lord Pelham, on whose decision the business must principally turn.’ Mr Vansittart knowing perfectly well, not only from the act but from my reference to it, that whatever is to be done, must be done, not by Lord Pelham, but the Treasury. ‘I will find out (says his Lordship in that same letter) what steps have been taken by the Treasury, before I send for his (Mr Bentham’s) papers,’ which, at his Lordship’s desire, had been in his Lordship’s hands for six weeks—so that nothing had been done at all. Judge from this, what is likely to be the fruit of his Lordship’s expedition of discovery.

“The best part of my case is, that I have got them—a good parcel of mere ins and outs together—in a sort of a trap, called Premunire; Romilly—their oracle as well as mine—has not the smallest doubt of it. If, therefore, which is not absolutely impossible, you should ever see poor Panopticon rescued from the damnation to which it is doomed, be sure that it is not to any merits of its own, but to the saving grace of Premunire, that it stands indebted for the change.

“Many thanks for your obliging memorandum for my brother. I take in the Moniteur—Dumont and his works are well known to him; Marquis Ducrest, before the Revolution, Chancellor and factotum to the Duke of Orleans; a man of real ingenuity in that line, as well as in other branches of mechanics; ergo, he will be, as he has been, either neglected or ill-used.”