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Subject Area: Law

Bentham to W. E. Lawrence. - 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 W. E. Lawrence.

“11th November, 1823.

“I have just been ruining myself by two pieces of extravagance: an organ that is to cost £230—is half as large, or twice as large again as the other—goes up to the ceiling, and down to the floor of my workshop, giving birth to an abyss, in which my music stool is lodged; looking like an elephant, or a rhinoceros, and projecting in such sort, that, between that and the book carrocio, there is no getting the dinner-tray on the little table without a battle. Then there is warming apparatus by steam, including bath, in my bedroom; besides my workshop and the room below it—it extends its arms to the library, yea, and to the study; cost upwards of £280, besides carpenter’s, plumber’s, and bricklayer’s work, which, for aught I can be assured of as yet, may cost £100 more: so that I am driving, full gallop, down hill to the workhouse. The pretext for the warming by steam, inconvenience from the burnt air in the former mode: pretext for the organ, impossibility of keeping myself awake after dinner by any other means—consequence, premature sleep, to the prejudice of proper ditto.

“Vertot wrote the Revolutions of Rome, Portugal, and Sweden: now come the Revolutions of the Westminster Review. Agreement signed. Longman, as he said, had laid out five or six hundred pounds in the advertisement of it; when, lo! he made a sudden stand, and said he would go no further. Longman has half the Edinburgh, Constable having the other half. On the sudden, as if by revelation, he saw that the Westminster would injure the Edinburgh; and, moreover, that being Radical, it would injure the character of his house. It was, however, no more Radical than from the first he knew it to be. Be this as it may, no further would he go, though contracts, as he knew, were made for contributors for the two first, and the articles for the first already written. After some days of distress, not far from despair, Providence wafted it into the hands of Baldwin; and, all things considered, it is hoped that its chance of success, will, upon the whole, not be lessened by the change. Earlier, however, than the 19th January, out it cannot come. Baldwin says, that an irregular day such as this, with a little variation in the day, is better than the first of the month; because on that day comes a glut of periodicals, and each one is drowned in the glut produced by the rest. True it is, the Edinburgh and Quarterly are supposed to have suffered by the irregularity; but ‘est modus in rebus.’ ”

The Quarterly review of “Panopticon” made one of the grounds of its attack upon the system, that Bentham was “a disappointed man.”

Upon this he remarks:—

“Mr B. ‘a disappointed man!’—Well, and if he was, would that make the actual penitentiary plan the better,—or the plan it supplanted the worse?

“ ‘A disappointed man!’—Well does the ground of the assumption, in point of truth, accord with the morality of the mind that would frame and utter it.

“From the asserted disappointment, the intention is, that unhappiness should be inferred. Ah! well it would be for the reviewer, whoever he may be, were it in the nature of such a man to be what the object of his sarcasm is known to be: himself in a state of perpetual and unruffled gaiety,—himself the mainspring of the gaiety which pervades the whole of the little select circle in which he moves.

“You look out for a man whom those, whose creatures you are, or wish to be, have injured. The injury, you hope, has rendered him unhappy: and whether he be so or no, in the hope of rendering him still more so, knowing, or not knowing to the contrary, you held him up to the world as being so. Looking round, you spy, as you fancy, an injured man: and, under such a government as yours, such men are not rare. Seeing him, as you think, injured, to make the injury sink the deeper, you hold him up to view as an object of merited contempt,—you hold him up to contempt for the suffering you hope he has undergone. Yes, hope, Quarterly Reviewer! In his mind, to speak in the vulgar language, your patrons have established a raw: and to this raw, imaginary as it is, you fancy yourselves applying a lash.

“Such is the morality engendered by the system of corruption: such is the morality taught by the pages of the Quarterly Review.”

Many representations were made to Bentham, on the subject of his Indications respecting Lord Eldon,* by his professional friends, entreating him to suppress them,—assuring him, that prosecution and conviction were inevitable. The Chronicle (June 18, 1824) called it “the most daring production that has ever appeared.” Every argument that timidity and sagacity could suggest, was, however, employed in vain.

In answer to a very flattering letter from his old friend, Admiral Mordvinoff, who writes, that he was habitually accustomed to cite his authority, and to justify his proceedings by it, as President of the Russian State Council for Civil and Ecclesiastical Affairs, Bentham says:—

[* ] Works, vol. v. p. 348.