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• The Works of Jeremy Bentham
• Memoirs and Correspondence.
• Chapter XXIII.: 1828—29. Æt. 80—81.
• Bentham to La Fayette. (extract.)
• Bentham to J. B. Say. (extract.)
• La Fayette to Bentham.
• Colonel Young to Bentham.
• Bentham to the Duke of Wellington.
• Bentham to Daniel O’connell.
• Bentham to the Duke of Wellington.
• General Miller to Bentham.
• José Del Valle ( the President of Guatemala ) to Bentham. (translation.)
• Bentham to José Del Valle.
• O’connell to Bentham.
• Bentham to O’connell. (extracts.)
• O’connell to Bentham. (extracts.)
• Edward Livingston to Bentham.
• (translation.)
• (translation.)
• O’ Connell to Bentham.
• Bentham ( Under the Name of Phil-o’connell ) to O’connell.
• Bentham to O’connell.
• O’connell to Bentham.
• Bentham to O’connell.
• Chapter XXIV.: 1829—30. Æt. 81—2.
• Bentham to O’connell.
• Bentham to Admiral Mordvinoff.
• Bentham to Brougham.
• Bentham to Jabez Henry.
• O’connell to C. S. Cullen.
• Bentham to Edward Livingston. * (extracts.)
• Bentham to Brougham.
• Bentham to O’connell.
• Bentham to John Smith, M. P.
• Bentham to President Jackson.
• J. B. to U. S. President, Jackson.
• Bentham to M. Humann (of Brussels.) (extracts.)
• Rev. Humphrey Price to Bentham.
• Bentham to Mr Price.
• Mr Price to Bentham.
• Bentham to Mr Price.
• Mr Price to Bentham.
• Chapter XXV.: 1830—31. Æt. 82—3.
• Del Valle to Bentham. (translation.)
• Bentham to Burdett.
• Sir James Graham to Bentham.
• Edward Livingston to Bentham.
• (translation.)
• General Santander to Bentham. (translated Extract.)
• (translation.)
• The Following Is Titled—“ Note By Jeremy Bentham On One of the Letters of Brissot De Warville to Him, Anno 1784, Or Thereabouts”: —
• Bentham to the Duc De Broglie.
• Bentham to the French People.
• Bentham to La Fayette.
• Bentham to Brougham.
• Brougham to Bentham.
• Bentham to O’connell.
• O’connell to Bentham.
• Bentham to O’connell.
• Pacificus Against the Conquest of Ireland.
• Bentham to W. Tait.
• “1831— June 21— Dicenda to Bowring.
• Bentham to Archibald Prentice.
• José Del Valle to Bentham.
• Chapter XXVI.: 1831. Æt. 83.
• From Bentham’s Memorandum-book, 1831.
• Sir Francis Burdett to Bentham.
• Bentham to Talleyrand. (translation.)
• (translation.)
• J. Be. to J. Bo.
• Appendix. Selections From Bentham’s Narrative Regarding the Panopticon Penitentiary Project, and From the Correspondence On the Subject.
• Bentham to Earl Spencer. (extracts.)
• Bentham to Henry Dundas.
• Bentham to William Wilberforce.
• “18 Th August, 1796.
• Reasons In Favour of the Spot Near Woolwich, As a Site For the Penitentiary House.
• Reasons Alleged Contra With Answers.
• Wilberforce to Bentham.
• Romilly to Bentham.
• Bentham to George Rose.
• George Rose to Bentham.
• Bentham to William Wilberforce.
• Bentham to Lord St Helens.
• Bentham to Sir Charles Bunbury.
• Bentham to William Wilberforce.
• Bentham to Sir William Pulteney.
• Bentham to Sir Charles Bunbury.
• Bentham to Romilly.
• Sir Charles Bunbury to Bentham.
• Bentham to Dumont.
• I.: As to New South Wales.
• Bentham to Charles Abbot.
• Bentham to Charles Abbot.
• Bentham to Dumont.
• The Rev. Brownlow Ford ( Ordinary of Newgate ) to Bentham.
• Romilly to Bentham.
• Joseph Jekyll to Bentham.
• Bentham to Jekyll.
• Bentham to Sir Charles Bunbury.
• Bentham to William Wilberforce.
• William Wilberforce to Bentham.
• William Wilberforce to Bentham.
• Romilly to Bentham.
• [corrected Copy, Received 10th June, 1811.] Dated
• “ Objections to the Making Experiment of Mr Bentham’s Panopticon Plan Obviated—viz., Partly By Answers, Partly By Fresh Offers.
• Bentham to Romilly.
• “ Proposal For a New and Less Expensive Mode For Employing and Reforming Convicts.
• “ Examination of Jeremy Bentham, Esquire.

From Bentham’s Memorandum-Book, 1831.

“The last of the royal race of the Stuarts—Lady Dundonald, who died about 1816, and was about a century old, did four services to the community; for any one of which she well merited the praise of being, in an eminent degree, the benefactress of her country:—

“She brought over the art of curing herrings from Holland.

“She introduced a superior breed of sheep.

“She was the great promoter of improvements in the silk manufactory of Paisley.

“She planted the first Hydrangea in Great Britain.”

“A child in arms—an Ourang Outang. Put a crown upon its head—put a sceptre in its paw. Blackstone’s god it would be—all his attributes it would have: the good people of England would bow down and worship it, and tax themselves a million a-year to feed it.”

“Arithmetical, algebraical, and musical notation are a portion of the quasi-universal written language; while the correspondent spoken exists in all its varieties. An analogous case is that of the Chinese character, common to China, Japan, Cochin-China,” &c.

“Unapt words in use:—

“1.Integrity—vice integrality.

“2.Calculate—ambiguous, as between likely to produce the effect and designed to do so.

“3.Either—vice each.

“4.Based—vice grounded: grounded having conjugates, based not.

“5.Touching (from the French touchant)—vice affecting.”

“A member of the aristocracy looks upon himself as the richer by every pleasure he deprives the democracy of.”

“Vague generality is the lurking-place of error and fallacy.”

“Nomography.—Proposed addition to the number of auxiliary verbs.

“By this denomination may be designated certain verbs, which, by being prefixed to the nouns-substantive which are employed in the names of the corresponding operations, perform, and, as will be seen, with considerable advantage, the service, or say functions of, and become synonymous to, the several verbs, which, by a single word, are each of them expressive of the same idea.

“These are:—

“1. To make, with its synonymes, perform, &c.

“2. To give, with its synonymes, transmit, &c.

“3. To receive, with its synonymes.”

I have already mentioned Bentham’s practice of employing an auxiliary verb with a noun, where a verb active is ordinarily used. He said, he found such collocations of words most convenient for analysis or synthesis. He could thus take his sentences in pieces, and put them together.

“You don’t know the idea again, unless you see it clothed in the same words. The verb-substantive, as it is commonly called, call it rather the universally applicable verb, for it serves to predicate existence of whatever subject-matter it is applied to.

“With the help of the appropriate substantive, it might supersede the use of all other verbs; and the simplicity of inflection, and facility of being learnt, might then be maximized—say Eugnosia.”

“1831—February 16.—The day after arrival at the age of 83.

“J. B.’s frame of mind.

“J. B. the most ambitious of the ambitious. His empire—the empire he aspires to—extending to, and comprehending, the whole human race, in all places,—in all habitable places of the earth, at all future time.

“J. B. the most philanthropic of the philanthropic: philanthropy the end and instrument of his ambition.

“Limits it has no other than those of the earth.

“Thus Philip of Macedon:

• Και γαϱ γη ϰαι ποντος ὑπο σϰηπτϱοισι Φιλιτπου
• Δεδμανται: λοιτα ἡ πϱος Ολυμπον ὁδος.

“Logic.—Abstraction is one thing,—association another; relation comprehends both: the one the converse of the other; relation is the most abstract of all abstractions.

“Each thing is,—the whole of it, what it is,—but we may consider the whole of it together, or any one or more parts of it at a time, as we please—thus we make,—thus we have abstracted,—abstract ideas.

“Abstraction is—1. Posological: 2. Logical. Logical is the most abstract.

“In posological, abstraction can begin with real entities—Abstraction, Association, Induction.

“Induction, posological, logical. To association we are indebted for the use of writing,—for written,—for visible signs.

“Data are the fruit of induction. When we come to data, we come to real use.”

“Egypt probably the country in which morphoscopic posology took its rise. Mensuration of land produced the demand for it, and the application of it to practice by the medium of trigonometry.

“Exemplified by Euclid’s data is the practical use: by their relation to accessible and measured boundaries, the dimensions, either of inaccessible, or not-without-difficulty-accessible, were thus ascertained, and by means of them the quantity of space contained within them; and thus the quantity and situation of portions of lands in the occupation or proprietorship of different individuals ascertained, when more or less of each was covered by the Nile.

“Proceeding by analysis, you take in hand a relatively large thing of any kind: you take it as you find it, and break it into parts.

“Proceeding in the way of synthesis, you take relatively small things of any kind, in any number: you put them together, and so make them into a whole.

“Proceeding—operating in the way of analysis, you do as you do by a cucumber, when you cut it into slips to be eaten, when it has been peppered, salted, and vinegared.

“Proceeding in the way of synthesis, you do by them as you do by a number of gooseberries, when you make them into a pie; or of grains of millet, when you make them into a pudding.”

“Wherever there is a word, there is a thing: so says the common notion—the result of the association of ideas.

“Wherever there is a word, there is a thing: hence the almost universal practice of confounding fictitious entities with real ones—corresponding names of fictitious entities with real ones. Hence, common law, mind, soul, virtue, vice.”

“Identity of nomenclature is certificate of identity of nature: diversity of diversity:—how absurd, how inconsistent to make the certificate a false one!”

“Not but that where ambiguity is out of the question, a new appellation having a new idea tacked to it, may be a beauty—and commonly is so;—the new idea is autant de gagné.”

“The connexion between genus and species, in links or grades, in indefinite number, one under another—call it logical concatenation.”

“Civil Code.—Power of aggregation: power of disaggregation. These are, in an indirect form, branches of the power of legislation. When the exercise given to legislative power does not apply directly to individuals, individually considered, exercise given to the power of aggregation is necessary to bring the mandate and the obligation home to individuals.”

“Under matchless constitution, the end aimed at is maximization of depredation and oppression:—oppression for the pleasure of it, and depredation for the profit of it.

“For the compassing these ends, the means which are employed, and which, so long as matchless constitution continues, matchless constitution will continue to employ, are these: Denial of justice to all but the ruling and influential few, and by the non-lawyers among these few, consent to purchase what is called justice of the lawyer tribe, that the profit upon the sale may give them a community of interest in the maintenance of the system of depredation and oppression.”

“A fixed penalty is a license in disguise.”

“A government in which the few exercise dominion over the many, does it not stand condemned by that very circumstance?”

“When interest closes the eyes, the whole force of reason cannot open them.”

“England, is it not a nation in which laws are established without any ratio-cinative articles: without reason assigned; without reason assignable; without reference to reason; without any regard to reason; in the very teeth of reason? Is not this a headless nation?”

“A many-headed Incubus is the aristocracy of England.”

“Article in Quarterly Review, for February 1830, on Law Reform. The whole of this article is in the coldest and most apathetic style, as if the subject bore no relation to human feelings: the worst and the best actions spoken of with equal indifference.”

“Make public functionaries uneasy. High-pressure engine, nothing is to be done without it. Nothing to be done by the people for their own security, but by applying to their rulers the force of the engine.”

The very last memorandum which I find made by Bentham is this:—

“I have two minds: one of which is perpetually occupied in looking at, and examining the other,—thus studying human nature, partly with a view to my own happiness,—partly with a view to that of the human species.”

The following reminiscences occur in a postscript of a business letter by Bentham to his bankers, of date 12th January, 1832:—

“Within a trifle, more or less, forty years have elapsed since I had the pleasure of being one at a convivial party with your good family on the Martin side, I believe the whole of it, in company with Dr Price, Kippis, and, I think, Priestley, at your father’s, then residing in Downing Street. I condole with you on your announced loss of that gentleman, who was, I believe, the eldest member of it. One of the members, Stone, was a school-fellow and familiar friend of mine at Westminster. I remember passing some time in his company when he was with his mother at Tunbridge Wells, about seventy-three years ago. Being some years older than myself, he can hardly be at this side of the grave at this time. Afterwards, I remember him coming in one day after dinner at our school-fellow’s, Sir W. Fitzherbert, elder brother of Lord St Helens, on his, Mr Stone’s, return from Paris, where he had been secretary to the Duke of Dorset, then our ambassador at that court. What is curious, we did not at that time recognise one another. He sat down to the piano-table, and played Malbrook*s’en va a la guerre, the beautiful little song tune which was just then come out at Paris.

“In the topsy-turvy state of the second page of this letter, you will see an effect of the weakness of my eyes; but though several of my senses and faculties are nearly gone, and several of them altogether so, my friends still keep amusing themselves with the assurance they are pleased to flatter me with, that the old philosopher will continue to cumber the ground as long as Newton did with his ninety years, or even, say some of them, Fontenelle with his 100 years.”

[* ] See this incident in Chapter viii.