Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Bentham to Sir Jas. Mackintosh, (1808.) - 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 Sir Jas. Mackintosh, (1808.) - 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 Sir Jas. Mackintosh, (1808.)

“Dear Sir,—

The conclusion of this letter will present you with the name of a correspondent whom you had no apprehension of being troubled with.

“In consideration of the intercourse I was known to have had with Dr Parr, your apologetical letter of 26th December, 1806, to Mr [Granville] Sharp, was put into my hands.† It called forth all my sympathy. Alas! while the propitiatory incense was lighting up, the idol [Fox] was no more. Peace be to his ashes!—My expectations of him were never sanguine. He was a consummate party leader: greedy of power, like my old friend Lord Lansdowne,—but, unlike him, destitute of any fixed intellectual principles, such as would have been necessary to enable him to make, to any considerable extent, a beneficial use of it. He opposed the Grenville Act; he opposed the Irish Union: Pitt, or anybody else in power, might have made him oppose anything by adopting it. I knew not where to find him,—and if I understand right, no more did anybody else.—He magnified Jurisprudential Law in preference to Statute; (this is a private anecdote that fell within my own knowledge;) an imaginary rule of action in preference to a real one,—the profligacy of a hireling lawyer, without the excuse;—the power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law. Like that of the lawyer, his wish was to see all waters troubled:—why? as feeling himself, in so superior a degree, a master of the art of fishing in them.

“Since your leaving England, three opportunities of being made known to him presented themselves to me: two by relatives of his when he was in the zenith of his power, were often expressed, or implied;—I closed with neither. Had he had anything to say to me, I would have heard it, with the respect due to his character:—having, on my part, nothing to say to him, I should have considered the time spent in his company, as so much time thrown away.* Dr Parr, in his kindness, under the notion, I suppose, of doing me a service, took pains to throw me in his way, or draw down upon me the light of his countenance. He seemed disappointed at observing me as indifferent to his living idols as Shadrach and Meshech were to the golden one of Nebuchadnezzar. Had I seen any opening for entertaining any such expectations from him in respect of the cleansing the Augean Stable, as I should from you, if you were in his place, I would have cried, Lord! Lord! till he had been tired of hearing me.

“When I saw you enlisted in the defence of a castle of straw, which I had turned my back upon as fit for nothing but the fire, I beheld with regret what appeared to me a waste of talents so unprofitably employed.

“When I heard of your being occupied in teaching the anatomy and physiology of two chimeras, the same sensation was again repeated. A crowd of admiring auditors of all ranks,—and what was it they wished for or expected? Each of them, some addition to the stock of sophisms which each of them had been able to mount by his own genius, or pick up by his own industry, in readiness to be employed in the service of right or wrong, whichever happened to be the first to present the retaining fee.

“ ‘There he is,’ said George Wilson to me, one day, pointing out to me the Lecturer; (pulchrum est digito monstraria.)

“To Wilson I said nothing;—to myself I said—‘There or anywhere he may be—what is he to me? What he does—if anything, is mischief? What if he be Jupiter? So much the worse:—νεφεληγεϱέτα Ζεὺς; the cloud-compelling Jupiter, heaping clouds on clouds. When I pray, it is with Ajax, for clear daylight: smoke I abhor, and not the less for its being illuminated with flashes.’

“Wilson gave it once as his opinion, that I ought to be acquainted with the lecturer: I did not contradict him, but my opinion was not the same. Thus stood matters, as between the man with a name, and the man without a name, when two connected reports happened to reach the ears of anonymous at the same time: viz., that Cicero had got a provision which, for the first time in his life, would enable him to do real service to mankind, and that he had always manifested dispositions to apply his talents to that use. Then, for the first time, began the hermit of Queen Square Place to think of the man of eloquence with pleasure. You remember what ensued.”

[† ] The letter is dated—Bombay, 9th Dec. 1806,—and is as follows:—

“If Dr Parr prevails, I will never return to Great Britain. I have too much respect for myself, and too much love and reverence for my country, ever to endure life in England on sufferance, or as the subject of suspicion to those who ought to esteem me. I cannot indeed remain in this odious place; but the asylum of America will continue open, and perhaps the Emperor of Russia might be led, from our former intercourse, (if I may so call it,) to place me in a situation where I might be of some use, which I have been constantly, but in vain, trying to be here.

“Farewell, my dear Sharp,—Whether I die on the banks of the Volga or the Mississippi, my gloomy moments will be cheered with the recollection that I have been honoured with so much kindness from one of the purest, as well as [most] reasonable and elegant of human minds. I should not venture upon such language if it were not obvious that I am in no mood for compliments.”

[* ] See above, p. 62.