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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law

O’Connell to Bentham. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 11 (Memoirs of Bentham Part II and Analytical Index) [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. 11.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

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O’Connell to Bentham.

Benefactor of the Human Race,

I avowed myself on the hustings this day to be a ‘Benthamite,’ and explained the leading principles of your disciples—the ‘greatest happiness principle’—our sect will prosper.

“I begin my parliamentary career by tendering you my constant, zealous, and active services in the promotion of that principle. You have now one Member of Parliament your own. Stay with us, my venerable friend, remain with us in person and in intellect for a few years longer at the least, and you will see the fee-system and the cobwebs of fiction destroyed—mere cobwebs, which catch the little flies, and allow the wasps to break through.

“I do most potently believe that the hour for successfully introducing a rational plan of procedure, and ‘a Code,’ is fast approaching. I have sent my Bentham’s Library to my country-house, where I shall be able to spend six weeks of the ‘long vacation.’ There will be this advantage from the adjournment of justice till November,—that my zeal for Codification will be accompanied by more of knowledge, before I have the pleasure of seeing you again.

“Accept the assurance of my most unfeigned respect and admiration. My homage is the more sincere, for being capable of springing from one cause only, namely,—my conviction of your paramount utility to mankind; an utility which could never have existed, if, to the most clear intellect in the world, you had not added the perpetual and cheerful energy of continued perseverance.

“I intend to get up a shorter Codification Petition,—indeed, several petitions for ‘Codification,’—that is, for the draft of a Code.

“I think the Honourable House, as there is to be no expense but that of printing, will yield to my reasoning, or if not, to my repetition—not to say my teazing, and advertise, on your plan, for a Code.

“I write in haste to announce to you the return of ‘your member.’ You see you have the same property as a boroughmonger. I have the honour to be, with veneration, and let me add, affection, your faithful disciple.”