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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law

James Mill to Bentham. - 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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James Mill to Bentham.

“As to ‘Elements,’ for the outcoming of which I appear to be far more impatient than you, I have been to give the man a lesson in reading Benthamic copy, and he is far less frightened than he formerly was, or pretended to be;—and I expect that his experience will soon prepare some other bold-hearted man to take your stuff in hand. I have told Baldwin, that it must be, through thick or through thin, published in six weeks. My motive for naming this time, was, that then it will be ready, time enough for the Edinburgh Review, No. after the next,—and I do not want it out much sooner, that no law boa may lick it over, and cover it with his slime, that it may glide the easier into his serpent’s maw, and afterwards offer the excrement to Jeffrey, to the frustration and exclusion of an offering of my own.

“What is to be, will be; what is not to be, will not be:—I hope I have here provided myself ground enough to stand upon. You see I have not turned my eye to the pastoral office so long for nothing: had it been ever turned, like your own, to the equally reverend and pious office, the dispensation of law, the field of generalities would hardly have been more familiar to it.”

Of the difficulties Dumont had in his translations, he thus speaks:—