Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Bentham to David Collins. * - 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 David Collins. * - 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 David Collins.*

“Q. S. P., 5th April, 1803.

“My dear Sir,—

I accept, as an eligible succedaneum, the kind token of your remembrance. I have never been fond of leave-taking. Between persons wholly indifferent, it is, to me at least, a burthensome operation; and in the present instance it would have been a painful one. A few years hence, however, (I hope, at least, they will be but few,) I shall not be to be put off so easily: I mean when you return to us in all the glory of triumphant colonization, laden with the spoils of the insulated continent—kangaroo and wombat skins. I wish heartily, for the benefit of our amusements, that Fourcrey and you, Frenchman as he is—and some say none of the honestest neither—may become intimate:—we may by that means be indebted to you for a new metal or two, or a new earth, to which I hope you will give your name, and become immortalized by a double title—in the annals of science as well as politics. In that I can wish you better fortune than fell to the share of poor Lord Sydney. He gave his name to what was taken for a new earth, but proved to be an old compound, and vanished into smoke. You will, at least, (I hope,) treat us with another ‘paradox,’ to match with the Ornithorhynchus: if fit for the pot or the spit, so much the better: beggars must not be choosers; but if wishes had the property of contributing to success, I would wish for some agreeable, as well as curious compound, in that way—something between fish, flesh, fowl, and good red-herring; or for a tid-bit—I speak for your own benefit, not for ours—as handmaids do not promise to be very plenty with you, what say you to a Mermaid? Such things have been found—here and there one—or there is no truth in history: and if she should be well proportioned and well conditioned from the tail upwards, a use might be found for her (I should think) on the spot; but that point I beg leave to refer to your superior judgment. As to her tail, it would be as good as kangaroo’s, with the help of a little lobster or oyster sauce; and her own fair hands might serve it upon table. Since I had the pleasure of seeing you, (I think it is,) that a systematic book on Chemistry has made its appearance, by a British writer, a Dr Thomson, lecturer in Edinburgh, 4 vols. in 8vo. I, who see nothing nor anybody, have not seen it yet; but I hear everybody speaking well of it. What I have seen of his, is a very good paper on combustion in Nicholson and Tilloch. Constantinople made Baron du Tott, (whose fair daughter I had the honour of saluting t’other day at Liancourt, in her character of wife to the eldest son of the ci-devant Duc,)—Constantinople, with the help of the Encyclopedia, converted that soldier into an engraver and cannon-founder. Why should not Van Diemen’s Land, or the next to it, convert Colonel Collins into a Chemist, a Mineralogist, a Botanist?

“Apropos of Botany, there is a certain promise—the more obliging as it was spontaneous and repeated—which I treasure up with the greatest care. I have quite committed myself upon the strength of it: having gone so far as to carve out of it sub-promises. One new frost country plant is worth a dozen tropical ones. I shall be saddled with actions if you fail me. Remember, therefore, that you and I are lawyers: and that with us lawyers the breach of a pact, though it be a naked one, is no joke.

“Apropos of law again, I send you, as the last token of my remembrance—a squib in my way—which will show you the gunpowder you are treading upon. If you feel bold enough to continue in your command after looking at it, you will at least feel it prudent to insure your life in some good office. The poor Attorney-general has been sadly ‘shocked’ (I find) by the title; but having at that time got no farther as yet than the preface, he confessed to a friend of mine, that what is there said of him—fact, law, and everything—is true. Your candour, with which I am so well acquainted, will acquit me of incendiarism: you will remember that it is to you I present the squib, not to any of your crew.

“As to prisons, your time for thinking seriously of them is not yet come: if it had been, you would not, in alluding to the Panopticon construction, have taken circularity for the characteristic principle of it. Position not form: centrality of the keeper’s lodge, with a commanding view of every part of the space into which a prisoner can introduce himself (by the help of peep-holes, blinds, or any other contrivance which will enable the keepers to see upon occasion without being seen,) such is the real characteristic principle. As for the circular form, the execution of it even here is attended with difficulties, which in general operate so as to increase the expense. In your situation—with your limited resources—I should expect to find these difficulties insurmountable. Logs, I should suppose, would be your materials, at least in the first instance: logs you are sure of: bricks depend (under Providence) upon lime-stone, lime-kilns, brick-kilns, and brick-makers. Logs grow in strait lines, or thereabouts: not in circular portions of the circumference of your circles. Your circle, if of logs, would, at any rate, be a polygon, if it were not a square. But why should it not be a square? If you have an open yard, as I suppose you will, the boundary wall may be composed of the four sides of another square, concentric with, and therefore including, the two others. The walls of the building, exterior as well as interior, being made as transparent (with windows) as possible; the yard will be inspected through the prisoners’ apartments from the lodge. The more perfect the application made of the characteristic principle, the less the quantity of strength that will be necessary (both of eyes and hands) in the lodge. Dixi: God send you (and not your prisoners) a good deliverance!

“P.S.—What I acknowledge to be—not a promise on your part—but a mere petition on mine—is the privilege of being numbered with the select, who are to receive the earliest communication of your res gestæ. Not having so much as the pretence of a promise to anchor upon, I am here all humility; but, in proportion to my humility, importunate. Your history cannot go into any hands (female always excepted) that would take a warmer interest in it. This, I trust, you see no difficulty to recognise through the fiercest of the war I am waging against you, in your capacity of colonizer and governor. W. and I are like the lion and Signor Nicolina, who slew him in the Spectator, smoking our pipes together very socially behind the scenes. Better for your humble servant would it be if your noble and Right Honourable &c. principals, were as placable, or rather as unprovokable: but they have not wit for it. Adieu, my paper is out, and your patience.

“J. B.

“P.S.—Seeds are seeds: and from Van Diemen’s Land, &c., all will have their value, separate or in a pudding: with or without names.”

CHAPTER XV.

1803—7. Æt. 54—59.

Intercourse and Correspondence with Dr Parr.—Horne Tooke.—Dumont in Russia, and the Progress of Bentham’s Opinions there.—Mr Mulford.—Pole Carew.—George III. and Bishop Hurd.—Death of Lord Lansdowne.—Proffer of Marriage by Bentham.—Romilly in Scotland.—William Hutton.—Reform of the Scottish Courts.—Residence at Barrow Green.

Bentham’s habits were always to keep himself aloof from society. He did not form a part of the ordinary current. He frequently denied himself to visiters who conceived themselves entitled to a welcome. The two letters which follow are curious,—the first exhibiting a management of Bentham to get Dr Parr to his house,—the second, a plot of Romilly to get Bentham to his table to meet Dr Parr.

[* ] David Collins, Judge-Advocate of New South Wales. The letter was accompanied by a copy of the “Plea for the Constitution,” (Works, vol. iv. p. 249 et seq.,) in which, and the author’s other works on Transportation, Collins’ account of New South Wales is amply quoted.