Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Bentham to Dumont. - 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 Dumont. - 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 Dumont.

My dear Dumont,

As to the papers being inserted in the Russian edition of Dumont, you are certainly in the right. It would be quite a hors d’œuvre. But I thought your wish was to make them a present of something which might form a separate work, though a small one. If what appeared to you parodoxes, are either erroneous or insufficiently supported, that is a sufficient reason for not sending them. As to further elucidations, you will agree with me that it would be ‘Diamoniacal’ policy to quit a work almost finished for another little more than begun.

“I had been working at, and thought to have finished, a concise view of the influence of money in the increase of wealth, as a specimen of the ‘Prœcognita,’ preparatory to the practical part—the Agenda and Non Agenda.* But, just now, I have got returned from Trail my Thornton and your Wheatley; and I see few ideas in my papers that are not to be found somewhere or other in their books. What I could hope to do would be little more than substituting method to chaos, and keeping clear of contradictions, which are to be found in both, but more particularly in Wheatley, who, immediately after recognising (from Thornton) the mischiefs of a too contracted circulation, and adding, (and truly,) I believe from himself, that they would be worse than those of a too enlarged circulation, comes plump to the conclusion that all country paper ought to be prohibited by an operation nearly, if not altogether instantaneous. The moral is—that I should go quietly back to Evidence, of which already I have left scarce the smallest corner altogether unexplored, after discovering a multitude of odd corners in it which no lawyer ever noticed. Were I to die immediately, the loss would not be great to Evidence: if half a year ago, quitte amour propre, the case would have been different.

“Keeping what I have written on the subject of the influence of money on the production of wealth, I send you the chapter on Method, which was what you had proposed to, and for insertion without the leading features. You will find some little additions to it, which you will do with, collectively and severally, as you please. Many thanks to Lord Henry [Petty] for his ‘Report:’ I was much edified and interested by it. Sierra Leone has always been an exception to my anathema against Colonies.”

[* ] See the Manual of Political Economy in the Works, vol. iii. p. 33.