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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law

John Bowring 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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John Bowring to Bentham.

“I have seriously thought of it—and I mean to attack you—to attack you in your very tower of strength. I mean to justify the ‘non-reëligibility clause.’ I have been weighing reasons for days: I have been weighing them in your balance, and I fancy I see my way clear through them.

“You are curious to see the something which is to be said. Now, what greater security can you have for the subject many, than to make the permanent interests of the ruling few those of the subject many; and how is this to be done? By making every man, through the greater part of his life, and in the great mass of his interests, one of the many, you will induce him to take care of their interests, because they will be his interests while he is one of the few. He who knows (for instance) that he is to be 39 years of life one of the governed, and only one year one of the governors, has the motives of 39 years, which will weigh in favour of the many, and the motives of only one year to weigh in favour of the few.

“Again, is the possession of political power that which best fits us for its exercise? I should think not. I never knew the man who was not injured or spoiled by it. I never knew the man who did not think his reasons better for being authoritative. I never knew the man whose reasoning did not become more authoritative when it acquired factitious influence. Is your experience with mine?

“You will say—they won’t reëlect the man who is injured or spoiled—but, I imagine, the contrary is the experience of almost everybody: is it not better to elect one, the freshness of whose public virtue the mildew of political power has not yet invaded?

“I remember to have heard the most intelligent American I ever met with say, that, in the U.S., even with that minor portion of political power they confer, there had been no instance of a man being undeteriorated by it: that Jefferson withstood its influence longer than any other man; but after five-years’ possession of power, he was changed, and felt it, and owned it. My friend added, that one year sitting in the legislature, unfitted ninety-nine out of a hundred for legislation: and he had been, and is in habits of intercourse with almost everybody of public or extensive reputation. I have now special opportunities of marking the corrosive influence of power on my old friends of the Cortes: and I say—give me what I have here—Universal Suffrage—and I would not have one of them reëlected—No—not Toreno? Heaven forbid! Nor Puigblanch?—no—Nor Quiroga?—worse than either.

“There is not a man among them what he was in 1819. There is not a man among them who is not looking forward to a reëlection two years hence—and he will be linked meantime to the ruling few by some thread, or some chain.

“Now, suppose a majority of the present deputies reëlected: they would be worse next session than they have been this. Their blunderings would lead to other blunderings, and our friend Toreno’s ‘principle of stability’ (that’s the secret; and did you see that he made no account of any of your objections, but that one, in which he saw—self-concernment?) would be the stability of sinister interest—of interests of the privileged few, as against the unprotected many.

“But how (you say) is the honest Deputy to be rewarded—the dishonest punished? Matter of reward enough—and of punishment too, the people have in their power. A sheet of paper, like this, with a thousand—ten thousand, approving names to it; would not that be a reward? A letter, such a one as was written at Lisbon on the 24th of April, would not that be an encouragement?—and reprobation does not want its varieties.

“Now, is the knowledge of the Tactique of public assemblies of higher importance than the security of moral aptitude? What do our men learn at St Stephen’s? The sound of their cat-call! Nothing more, that I see. Need a man be a member of the House of Commons, to be a wise and honest legislator? I know a place—not the House of Commons, but not far from it, which would be a better school; and were I a priest, or an inquisitor, I would extort from you the confession, that had you passed your life among those whose trade is law-making, you would not have understood the art and mystery so well as you do.

“Yet more: I look over the lists here, and if there are any, better than the rest, they are those who sit for the first time. Is it not too, something to send every year back among the many—those who know the wicked tricks of the few—to spread through society some hundreds of individuals, capable of scattering the wisdom or the virtue they have learnt among the few? Should not every one of them be a most desirable check on the one hand, and a most desirable encouragement on the other—for the man who should follow him, and for all the rest?”

I had the satisfaction, by these and other arguments, of convincing Bentham. He agreed, that the non-reeligibility clause was wisely devised; but to give to deliberative assemblies the advantages of continual and acquired experience, he proposed, that a Continuation Committee should be left at the end of a Session, to carry on the work of Legislation into the Session that followed it.