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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law

Bentham to Major Cartwright. - 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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Bentham to Major Cartwright.

My dear Friend,

Your letter of this day’s date, replete with kindness as it is, in proposals as well as sentiments, cannot from me receive any other requital than that of a confession, in form, of my utter, and completely self-conscious incompetence. If, for the ‘out-door Guardianship of the Constitution,’ ‘seven’ be the desirable number of your ‘wise men,’ I had, at our last conference, the honour to bring to your view the mode of numeration, by which, according to my arithmetic, it may be made up.—Yours ever.”

But the Major was not willing to allow Bentham to withdraw from the field of active usefulness, to which he had been invited; and in answer to another very urgent letter, Bentham replies:—

My dear Friend,

I am a nonentity. A nonentity is nothing, and can do nothing. Why will you persist in regarding me as an existing being? The kingdom of Reform is yours: I am not worthy to set a foot in it. Govern it in your own way. The kingdom,—I should have said the empire: as in Japan, two emperors,—the temporal and the spiritual. Father Hayes, the spiritual. I need not say who the temporal is.—Your affectionate and obedient servant,

Jeremy Bentham, Half blind.”