JEREMY BENTHAM.

THOUGH known chiefly as a legal reformer and advocate of utility, the father of Utilitarianism and philosophical Radicalism was no less decidedly a Father of Freethought. Not only did his philosophy disengage morals from theology, he deliberately set himself to subvert the foundations of so-called natural and revealed religion, and in his influence on his disciples may be said to have carried over the results of eighteenth century thought and criticism into the present century.

Jeremy Bentham was born of a prosperous family in Red Lion Street, Houndsditch, London, on February 15th, 1748. His father and grandfather were both lawyers. One of his ancestors was Thomas Bentham, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry (1513-1578), but Jeremy never traced beyond his great grandfather, who was a pawnbroker. A grand uncle named Woodward was publisher of Tindal's Christianity as Old as Creation. His family were Tory, and his education conservative. Like J. S. Mill he was astonishingly precocious. When three years old he read such works as Rapin's History. His earliest recollections were, as he expressed it, of being 66 starved" for want of books. Fiction and poetry were prohibited. He tells too how one of his tribulations was learning Church collects-"they used to give me the colic; but my father insisted on my getting them by heart." At Westminster he acquired a reputation for Greek and Latin verse.

Bentham matriculated at Oxford 26 June, 1760, becoming a gowned collegian under the age of twelve and a half years. On account of his age he was not at first required to take the oath-a ceremony for which, even then, he felt repugnance. But he was called on to subscribe the Thirty Nine Articles, and the necessity led to an examination, with the result that they were found to be neither in accordance with reason nor with scripture. One of the Fellows of the College to whom his scruples were submitted, reproved his presumption in showing his hesitation. He signed, but the impression made was painful and lasting. He learnt little at Oxford, and gives his testimony:

"Mendacity and insincerity—in these I found the effects, the sure and only sure effects, of an English university education." In 1764 he proceeded B.A., and in 1766 took his master's degree.

At the age of twenty he read Helvetius's De l'Esprit, and was convinced that legislation was the most important pursuit. He was intended for the bar, and entered at Lincoln's Inn 6th Nov., 1769. But the great law reformer was not cut out for a practising barrister. In his very first case he recommended the parties to agree and save their law costs, and the discovery that clients were charged for three attendances when only one was given, was a blow which toppled over his reverence for the law, and led to many of his attacks on its abuses. As a student he listened to the lectures of the famous Sir William Blackstone, who did not enhance his respect for legal authorities.

The first work Bentham printed was a translation of Le Taureau Blanc (“The White Bull") by Voltaire. To this he supplied a long and very heretical Preface, showing that he was already a disbeliever in revelation. The translation was excellent, but he had not the courage to send a copy to the great Freethinker. This was in 1774. In 1776 he issued, also anonymously, an important Fragment on Government. This work is funnily catalogued in Leslie Stephen's Dictionary of National Biography as "A Fragment on Gout." This attack on Blackstone's praises of the English Constitution made some stir, and was variously attributed to Lord Mansfield, Lord Camden, and Mr. Dunning. It contained the germ of much of his subsequent work. It set up the greatest happiness principle as the test in ethics and legislation, showed the hollowness of the wisdom of our ancestors, and is a fitting prelude to Paine's Rights of Man. From this time he was engaged on his greatest work, which was not published until 1789, when it appeared as an Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.

Bentham' works on legislation had the good fortune of being edited and translated into French by M. Dumont, who made them more popular on the Continent than in England. In 1792 Bentham-a stout Republican-was made a citizen of France with Priestley and Paine. With true practical mind he criticised their Declaration of the Rights of Man, and drew up for the Assembly a scheme for the management of their debates.

Bentham largely concerned himself with the rational and reformatory treatment of criminals, and proposed a Panopticon or building in which this should especially be carried on. He always held that it was the king alone who hindered the acceptance of his proposals, and as late as 1831 he published a

History of the War between Jeremy Bentham and George III. by one of the Belligerents.

In 1814 Bentham removed to Ford Abbey, Devonshire, where he was accompanied by James Mill and his family. Here Mill wrote his History of British India, and here Bentham and he devised several important anti-theological works. John Stuart Mill in his Autobiography mentions this sojourn as an important circumstance in his education. In the same year Bentham advanced money to Robert Owen to enable him to carry on his experiment at New Lanark. Three years later appeared a pamphlet Swear Not at All, in which he exposed the immorality of oaths as used in the two Church of England universities. This was one of his many decisive blows at the abuses of his day. In 1817 also appeared his Plan of Parliamentary Reform, in which he advocated universal suffrage and

the ballot.

The work here reprinted formed part of his general design to show the mischief of religion and its establishments. It was written at Ford Abbey and was printed in 1817. It then appeared as "by an Oxford Graduate," but with no publisher's name. The work, it appears from a MS. note by Place, was submitted to Sir Samuel Romilly, who gave his opinion that Bentham would certainly be prosecuted and convicted for blasphemy and sedition.* Francis Place, however, gave his opinion to the contrary, provided Jeremy Bentham's name, and the price 208. were printed on the title-page. James Mill, it appears, agreed with Place. For a while the work was distributed privately, but in 1818 Effingham Wilson's name appeared as publisher and Bentham as author. Wilson was to require the money to be paid first and then send the book in his own way to the address of the purchaser. The result justified Place's view. The edition was sold and no one was prosecuted. An extract appeared in 1826 entitled "Mother Church Relieved by Bleeding." A new edition was issued in 1824, and The Book of Church Reform in 1831 contained its essential parts. The Catechism as here issued was reprinted by Thomas Scott (of Ramsgate) in 1868.

In 1822 appeared a small but important volume_entitled Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind by Philip Beauchamp. This work had been compiled by George Grote, afterwards the historian of Greece, from MSS. of Jeremy Bentham's, which the venerable sage desired his young disciple to put into readable form. Prof. Alex. Bain, who first revealed the secret of authorship after Grote's death says: "The MS. was handed to Mr. Place, who

*Bentham says "he agreed with it in every tittle."