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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law

Colonel Burr. - 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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Colonel Burr.

“I was brought acquainted,” said Bentham, “with Colonel Aaron Burr thus: He had given a general order to a bookseller to forward whatever works I should publish. I was then very little known. This was good evidence of analogy between his ideas and mine. He came here expecting this government to assist his endeavours in Mexico; but the government had just then made up their quarrel with Spain. We met: he was pregnant with interesting facts. He gave me hundreds of particulars respecting Washington. In those days, I used to go to Oxstead, where there is a handsome gentleman’s house called Barrow Green, which was occupied by Koe’s eldest brother. Burr went there with me; and once when I went to Barrow Green, I lent him my house in Queen Square Place. He meant really to make himself Emperor of Mexico. He told me, I should be the legislator, and he would send a ship of war for me. He gave me an account of his duel with Hamilton. He was sure of being able to kill him: so I thought it little better than a murder. He seemed to be a man of prodigious intrepidity; and if his project had failed in Mexico, he meant to set up for a monarch in the United States. He said, the Mexicans would all follow, like a flock of sheep.”

Dumont thus speaks of Colonel Burr:—