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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law

Romilly 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.

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Romilly to Bentham.

Dear Bentham,

If my criticism has no other merit, it will have that of frankness. I don’t like your preface. If I were to decide between that and none, should vote for omitting it altogether. There is too much levity in it, especially as it forms a striking contrast with the proposed title. A man who is about to read of the Constitution, not violated only, but conquered,—of enormities committed, and all our most sacred laws broken,—would not expect to be so much amused at the outset as he will find himself when he has read only a few paragraphs of the preface. In truth, it appears to me that the title is too vague, and the preface much too comic. I don’t like your passing from the attempted conquest of America to the attempted conquest of the Constitution in 1767, which, by the by, was long anterior in time to the conquest of America, though not to Lord Chatham’s speech which you allude to, and which related to a different kind of conquest,—a conquest from the French. I don’t like it, in the first place, because, though the forty days’ tyranny was a transaction very properly brought to the recollection of those to whom you are about to show that the Constitution has been since violated in more important points without any attention being paid to it, yet that forty days’ tyranny is not to be compared in any point of view with the American war: and in the next place, I don’t like it, because the word conquest is applied in its literal sense to America, but is a metaphor when used, either of the transactions of 1767 or the proceedings at Botany Bay. The truth is, that notwithstanding what has been done at Botany Bay, the British Constitution is not conquered, but still remains as it did. It has been disregarded—violated, if you please,—but because ministers have done what is alleged, and nobody but yourself yet knows anything of the matter, I think you would hardly maintain seriously, with the Parliament sitting with its accustomed forms, and your favourite juries deciding causes every day, that the Constitution is conquered.”

Again,

Dear Bentham,

I had a short conversation to-day with the Attorney-general. Nothing in the preface has given him offence; and on the contrary, he seems to think that you have spoken very civilly of him. But he has been shocked very much by the title—the title and the preface are all he has read. I wish I could recollect his words—they were, as nearly as I can remember them, to this effect: ‘If I were disposed to interest myself to have the Panopticon established, and to have him placed at the head of it—and I should really be glad to do it, if I saw a proper opportunity—how could I recommend to a secretary of state, to place in such a situation, a person who had written such things of him or his predecessors?’—Ever and most sincerely yours,” &c.