W Darby pinct Jeremy Bentham. Themeon, Sa Published for the Proprietors or the European Magazine, by Lupton Relfe, Cornhill May 11823. E THE EUROPEAN MAGAZINE, AND LONDON REVIEW. APRIL 1823. MEMOIR OF JEREMY BENTHAM, Esq. With a Protrait painted from Life expressly for this work, AMIDST the passions and preju dices and sinister interests, which agitate and divide society, public opinion seldom gives to a contemporary his portion of just desert; and he has far less chance of honest appreciation if he have grappled with existing abuses, and come in opposing contact with those who hold the power, and wealth, and influence of society at their disposal. The advocate for change has a thousand difficulties to contend with; for though novelty may attract for a moment, it is with infinite difficulty that the habits of thought and feeling, which have obtained possession of a community, can be permanently changed or even at all shaken. The advantages of the controversy are wholly on the side of the attacked; in addition to which the metaphors and decorations which dazzle and delude a majority of mankind, and which may be found in abundance for every possible purpose, belong more especially to error; good is one, evil is infinite. Truth and happiness as the result of truth are built upon a few simple principles of action. Error gives the imagination full play, adorns its assumptions with a thousand sophistries, and wears attractions which are disdained by the stern and sober majesty of its rival. Mr. Bentham, who has brought a larger portion of intellectual strength, combined with observation and appropriate knowledge, to bear upon the great questions of human felicity than almost any man who ever lived, is a singular exemplification of injustice done by his own age and nation to an individual, whose influence on coming time and on general society may already be pronounced to be extensive in its operation, and permanent in its effect. Not but that on the honest and strong-minded, upon those whose principles will be rescued from the rubbish that surrounds them, the stamp of his genius may be traced. But Mr. Bentham, whose writings compared with their all-importance are known but to a few, is assuredly the name that will distinguish to after time the epoch in which we live, by a great majority of suffrages gathered in from the four quarters of the globe. This may seem a bold assertion to those who dwell in the narrow circle of habitual prejudice, or whose sympathies are bounded, and their means of knowledge confined, by the small tract that surrounds them; but it is from observation extending over a large part of the civilized world, that we are enabled thus to prophecy of futurity. Mr. Bentham's whole life has been an exemplification of the application of the noble principles of his creed. A life devoted to the production of the greatest possible sum of happiness on the greatest possible scale. In other words, Mr. Bentham has grappled with extensive masses of evil in order to sup " plant them by all imaginable good. sures. It is not our intention on the present occasion to go into the history, objects and effects of the numerous works of which Mr. Bentham is the author. They involve considerations so important, they refer to such a variety of subjects, all how ever closely bearing upon human felicity, that it would be quite impossible to satisfy ourselves or our readers by such a superficial sketch as we could here introduce. What ever may be thought of the style, vigorous and guarded always, though sometimes involved and rather obscure, these works contain a greater mass of original thought, of masterly reasoning, of active benevolent sympathy, and of useful knowledge than is to be found in the writings of any individual of the past or the present time. The first of Mr. Bentham's productions (published in 1776) viz. the "Fragment of Government" was attributed to the most illustrious men of that day, and might have honoured the most illustrious among them. Dr. Johnson gave it to Mr. Dunning, and there was great sagacity in the suspicion. In the "Fragment" may be found the germ of that great principle-the principle of utility, whose development has been applied by its great master to such varied and such important ends. In Spain a foolish controversy has been carried on as to Mr. Bentham's right to be considered the founder of the Utilitarian School. He has never claimed the invention. of the simple and almost obvious axiom, that all exertions should be devoted to the production of the greatest sum of good, (which is the principle of utility, but in other words) but, who like Mr. Bentham has applied it to a system of morals and legislation, descending from a constitutional code down to the management of a prison or workhouse? Mr. Bentham found what is called legislation" a huge and unshapen mass of good and evil; good and evil so blended, that, while in search of the former, it was impossible not to stumble upon the latter; nor could an unmixed result of good be by any means obtained, however patiently or earnestly sought. Of legislation, once a blind and fortuitous alchemy, he has made an intelligible and practical science; he has reared it upon a solid and simple foundation, and made the two great instruments of pain and pleasure subservient to the production of the greatest possible sum of good. This in truth is the highest object of human ambition, and to succeed in this must deserve the highest portion of human praise. Of Mr. Bentham's history the following facts are known to us, of which the greater part have been heard from his own lips. Mr. Jeremy Bentham was born February 15, old stile, 1747-8, at his father's town-house in Red Lion A list of them will be found attached to the new edition of the Fragment on Government, just published. + The name of Jeremy was derived from one of Mr. Bentham's ancestors, Sir Jeremy Snow, one of the Bankers whose name is recorded as having been robbed by Charles II. by his shutting the Exchequer, as the phrase was. street, Houndsditch. The last on the left hand side (it is still stand ing) going from Hounsditch. The country-house was at Barking, in: Essex. About twenty years ago, or› more, it was pulled down. His father was at that time in practice as an attorney, as his grandfather had been before him, and had occupied the same two houses. The former was clerk and solicitor to the Company of Scriveners; and, in his quality of solitor to the trustees, laid the foundation of the institution called Sir John Cussy's Charity. At the recommendation of a friend of his father, Mr. Samuel Cox, then a barrister of eminence in the Court of Chancery, Mr. Bentham was entered in the second form at Westminster School: boarding at a Mrs. Morell's. Between the ages of six and seven, in the course of six months, he had learnt French from a Frenchman, whom his father kept in his house for that purpose, a M. La Combe, of Avignon. It was in the course of the instruction thus received that he formed that acquaintance with Telemachus, of the fruits of which mention is made in one of his letters to the late Extraordinary Cortes of Portugal, some or all of which have made their appearance in the English newspapers. Not many years before (1765 or 6,) his father entered upon the house in which his son still lives; it had then for its occupant the celebrated courtezan, Theresa Constantia Phillips, whose highly interesting Memoirs, entitled an " Apology for the conduct of Mrs. T. C. Phillips," are extant in 3 vols. with the date of 1761, but without any intimation of the existence of any former edition. It was, however, a year or two before this period that Mr. Bentham, being with his father upon a visit to a friend near Bury, in Suffolk, met with a printed copy of this same work, purporting to have for its authoress the lady herself; and the house being then within the verge of the Court, and as such an asylum against creditors, was sold for her benefit through a wicket in the door: by herself the materials of her history were of course furnished; but in a Life of Paul Whitehead, the quondam Poet Laureat, in the 8vo. Biographia Britannica, the penmanship ofit is ascribed to him; be that as it may, it contributed in no small degree to the turn taken by Mr. Bentham's pursuits; for as he has often been heard to say by various friends, it is by the exemplifications, that form no inconsiderable part of that history, that he was led to that examination of the abuses of the law, the result of which is so conspicuous in all his writings. In 1768, being then Master of Arts, Mr. Bentham went to Oxford to give his vote at the general election of that year. On account of his not being of age a query was put to his vote, but the majority being decisive, the question as to the legality never came to be discussed. He visited Paris in the year 1785, (for the third time) in the course of a long excursion which did not terminate till early in 1788. He had been twice at Paris before; his ultimate destination was to Crechoff in Russia, near which town, on an estate of the Prime Minister, Prince Potemkin, his brother, now Sir Samuel Bentham, was quartered in the capacity of Lieut. Colonel Commandant of an independent Battallion of 1000 men, which in the military service of that empire was his first step. Traversing France, by way of Montpellier and Marseiftes to Antibes, he went from thence in a passage boat to Nice, and afterwards in a vessel to Genoa where he joined a ship bound to Smyrna, with the master of which he formed an egagement antecedently to his leaving England: from Genoa, after he had stayed there about a fortnight or three weeks, the ship sailed for Leghorn, where it was datained for another fortnight or three weeks; in the expectation of this latter demurrage, Mr. Bentham had provided himself with letters for Florence; and, the stay of the vessel at Leghorn allowing of sufficient time, partook for some days of the hospitality of the late Sir Horace Man, who for so long a course of years had been Envoy there from this Court. From Leghorn, through the Fane of Messina, the vessel took her course to Smyrna. In her passage she was driven by a storm into the narrow port afforded by the capital of the Isle of Miteline, where she passed' the night; and at the beautiful and unfortunate Isle of Scio, she made a voluntary stay of a few hours. After a stay of about three weeks at Smyrna, Mr. Bentham embarked on board a Turkish vessel for Constantinople; and in that Capital passed five or six weeks. From Constantinople, Mr. Bentham made his way to Crechoff across Bulgaria to Ruszig on the Danube, and from thence by way of Buckarest in Walachia, and Yassy in Moldavia, through a part of Poland to Olvispol on the Dneister, through Teheringow, to Creehole, where he arrived in the middle of February 1786. At that place he stayed at his brothers till November 1787, when his brother, who was on an excursion to Cherson, being unex pectedly detained for the defence of the country against the then apprehended invasion of the Capitan Pacha, nothing more was left to Mr. Bentham than to make his way back to England as he could; which he did accordingly through Poland, Germany, and the United Provinces, arriving at Harwich from Helvoet sluys in February 1788. It was during Mr. Bentham's stay at Crechoff that he wrote his letters on the Usury Laws. Not long before the commencement of this excursion he had become acquainted with the afterwards famous Brissot, then styling himself sometimes Brissot de Wanville, sometimes simply M. de Wanville. Bris sot was at that time an Avocat sans cause; the ostensible and perhaps the real cause of his quitting the bar was an alledged weakness in his lungs. He came to London with many more projects than connections. One of his projects, the accomplishment of which was at tempted without success, was the making the French public acquainted with the state of the English East India Company: another was what he called the setting up a Lyceum. He was recommended to Mr. Bentham as a man well acquainted with French literature in general, and in particular with the literature of the law." What can possess Mr. Bentham to suffer such an insignificant Frenchman as this to come about him?" said one of his friends one Bentham. "he knows something of French laws day to another. The answer was, and communicated information about them to Mr. Bentham." In the course of this acquaintance the Lyceum opened: in the plan of it was included a conversazioné and a print ed correspondence. The conver sazione scené apartment. Company present, Mons. - M. de Warville's and Mad. de Warville, and Mr. pondence was between M. de WarThe printed corresville and himself; if it had lasted to the second number it did not reach the third. The number of inconsiderable: one was a sort of books published by Brissot was not Bibliotheque of Criminals: another, on Truth in general, composed of guessed at from the title. Brissot the sort of materials which may be interested, enthusiastic friend of the was a most honest, honorable, dispeople. He died poor as he had lived. for the second of the French asWhen the election came semblies, Brissot, without the know ledge or privity of Mr. Bentham who had not heard any thing of him for years, was active in his endeavours to procure the election of Mr. Bentham to a seat in that assembly. M. Dumont was at Paris at the time; apprehensive for the life of his friend, in the event situation, he applied himself to stop of his finding himself in such a the exertions of Brissot and succeeded. The last time of Mr. Bentham's joined company with his ever la being in Paris was in 1802, when he mented disciple, Sir Samuel Romilly. His stay was about three weeks. Just at that time came out at Paris three of the seven volumes of his -M: Dumont's edition of the first works that have been published in French. In the choice for the members of the French Institute for that time, for every seat in the Institute existing members, or some other three members were chosen by the learned body; and among the three the choice was determined by some member or members of the government; it is believed, upon recollection, by the First Consul, that is, by Buonaparte. At a meeting of the Parisian Society for the Encourage ment of Arts it had been said, as |