In 1812, the first debater of the day was
left out of parliament through the loss of the prince's favour, and
his political career was closed.
left out of parliament through the loss of the prince's favour, and
his political career was closed.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v11
This
programme, in Godwin's eyes, was rendered practicable by his
views on human nature. Men's actions were due to a process of
reasoning, founded on their opinions, which, in turn, were formed
by a process of reasoning.
'When’a murderer ultimately works up his mind to the perpetration, he
is then most strongly impressed with the superior recommendations of the
conduct he pursues. '
Free-will, he denied : thus, if a man's reason were really convinced,
no doubt remained as to his actions. The reformer, in con-
sequence, was not to be a revolutionary; since, by means of
revolution, he would only introduce measures to which he had been
unable to convert his fellow-countrymen. The real way to change
the world for the better was a continuance of peaceful argument,
wherein truth, naturally having stronger reasons in its favour than
error, would prevail. Incessant discussion would gradually alter
the general opinions of men. Then, the changes he desired would
be made. The obvious counter-argument, that, by his own theory,
error had won in the contest with truth up to his time and that the
actual course of human politics had been a mistake, did not occur
to him ; and the attractiveness of his optimistic outlook combined
with the rigidity of his deductive logic, much incidental shrewd-
ness and a singular force of conviction to gain him a numerous
following. His style, too, deserved some success. He was always
clear and forcible; his sentences convey his exact meaning with-
out effort, and display a kind of composed oratorical effect.
curious contrast to Mary Wollstonecraft, who advocated what
might be described as a practical, if novel, scheme of education
with the enthusiasm of a revolutionary, her husband outlined the
complete wreck of existing institutions, with a Utopia of the
simple life to follow, in a calm philosophising manner, which
In
## p. 46 (#68) ##############################################
46
[CH.
Political Writers and Speakers
ignored even the lukewarm emotions felt by himself. The passion
he lacked was to be supplied, later, by his son-in-law, Shelley.
Godwin's Political Justice escaped suppression owing to the
small number of readers whom a costly book', even one which
passed through several editions, could reach. He gained a larger
audience for his novels, which were intended to lead to the same
convictions. The only one of these which still finds readers is The
Adventures of Caleb Williams, or, Things as They Are, published
in 1794. Here, Godwin is concerned with two aspects of the
same thesis ; first, the oppression which a poor man could suffer
under the existing institutions, and, secondly, the perversion of
character in a member of the ruling class through his acceptance
of the ideals of chivalry. With these ingredients, the tale, as a
whole, is most bizarre. Its personages act in a very unlikely way.
Falkland, the virtuous villain, who, because of a chivalric regard
for his reputation, has allowed two innocent men to be executed
for a murder he bimself committed, shows a persistent ingenuity in
a
harassing his attached dependent, Williams, who has guessed his
secret, into accusing him; a brigand band, led by a philanthropic
outlaw, establishes its headquarters close to a county town; Williams
surpasses the average hero in prodigies of resource and endurance ;
Falkland, in the end, confesses his guilt in consequence of the
energy with which his victim expresses the remorse he feels at
making the true accusation. Yet, with all this, the story is put
together with great skill. In spite of its artificial rhetoric and
their own inherent improbability, there is a human quality in the
characters, and Williams's helplessness in his attempt to escape
from his persecutor gives us the impression, not so much of the
forced situations of a novel, as of unavoidable necessity. In fact,
Godwin's talent as a novelist lay in his remarkable powers of
invention, which were heightened by his matter of fact way of
relating improbabilities. He was partly aware of it, perhaps,
.
and his other important novel, St Leon, attempted the same
feat with impossibilities. But, in spite of a temporary vogue,
it is now only remembered for its portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft,
and the retractation of his theoretic abolition of the charities of
private life. '
a
From Godwin, who, in his worst days, kept round him a tattered
cloak of magnanimity, it is an abrupt change to his fellow-
revolutionary, the coarse-grained, shrewd Thomas Paine. Yet,
1 Its price was three guineas.
## p. 47 (#69) ##############################################
1
II]
Thomas Paine
47
the latter had virtues which were missing in his contemporary.
His public spirit led him to disregard all profit from political
works which had a large sale; he was not a beggar, and the
rewards he was forced to ask from the American governments
were the barest payments on account of admitted services to the
United States. In fact, he was a born pamphleteer, never happy
unless he was divulging his opinions for the welfare of the human
race as he conceived it. Dogmatic and narrow-minded, he was
not a man to be troubled by doubts : the meaning of history, the
best form of government, right and wrong, falsehood and truth, all
seemed quite plain to him, and he had no more hesitation than
Godwin in making a working model of the universe, as he did of the
iron bridge by him invented. It was not till he was well advanced
in middle life that he obtained an opportunity of showing his great
talents. He was the son of a poor Norfolk quaker, and spent all
.
his earlier years in the struggle to make a decent livelihood.
In turn, a staymaker, a seaman, a school-usher, a tobacconist and
an exciseman, he moved from place to place, until he was finally
dismissed from the excise in 1774, and, in the same year, emigrated
to Philadelphia. There, he almost immediately edited The Pennsyl-
vania Magazine and proved at once his literary talent and the
advanced character of his opinions by attacking slavery and
advocating American independence. In 1776, he became famous
by his pamphlet, Common Sense, which he, at. least, looked on as
the principal instrument in consolidating American opinion in
favour of war. Having gained the public ear, he continued the
work of encouraging resistance to English rule by two series of
effective pamphlets, called The Crisis, and was soon recognised
as the leading writer of his new country, while, with charac-
teristic versatility, he also served as a soldier, as secretary to the
congress's foreign committee and as clerk to the Pennsylvania
assembly. Peace brought him moderate rewards and a retire-
ment which he could not endure. He returned to England to
prosecute his mechanical inventions, the fruit of his leisure hours,
and soon became involved anew in politics. The French revolution
proved a fresh turning-point in his career. In 1791–2, he took
up the cudgels against Burke in the two parts of The Rights
of Man. The ability, and, still more, the wide circulation, of
these tracts brought him in danger of arrest, and he fled to France,
where he became a member of Convention, and, after all but
falling a victim to the guillotine, was a founder of the new sect
of theophilanthropists. Then he dropped into obscurity and, in
## p. 48 (#70) ##############################################
48
[CH.
Political Writers and Speakers
1802, went once more to America, only to find that his Age of
Reason, published in 1794–5, had alienated from him almost all
his friends. A thick crop of slanders grew up round him, without,
apparently, any foundation save the fact that he was occasionally
drunk. Still, he kept a bold front to the world, and continued
to write pamphlets almost till his death in 1809.
Paine was a prince of pamphleteers and all his literary talent
seems confined to that end.
His general ideas were of the
simplest, not to say the shallowest ; but he grasped them firmly
and worked them out with a clear and ready logic. His immense
ignorance of history and literature was by no means ill com-
pensated by an intimate knowledge of actual affairs; and his
shrewdness made him a formidable critic even of Burke. His
style was always clear, and, a little rhetoric apart, unaffected.
Quite without charm as it was, his warmth and force and command
of appropriate words made it more than passable. Every now
and then, he falls into sheer vulgarity, which is most noticeable in
his theological writings; but, more usually, he can alternate a
mediocre eloquence with trenchant argumentative composition.
So far as copying the written word was concerned, Paine was quite
original; but, doubtless, he owed much to the debates and casual
conversations in which he took part. In The Rights of Man, he
appears as a narrow doctrinaire; he takes over the theory of the
social contract as the basis for his constructive views, and justifies
revolution, partly on the ground that no generation can bind its
successors, and partly by the argument that the social contract
must be embodied in a formal constitution : where such did not
exist, a mere tyranny prevailed, which had no basis in right. He
was thus, like Godwin, entirely opposed to Burke's doctrine of
prescription. To criticise the faults of the existing state of
things was easy and obvious; but Paine expounded, also, a radical
constructive policy, including parliamentary reform, old age
pensions and a progressive income-tax. With these and other
changes, he looked forward to a broadcloth millennium. The
Age of Reason showed all Paine's qualities and an unusual
abundance of his defects. His want of taste and the almost
complete absence in him of any sense of beauty or grandeur are
as conspicuous as his narrow self-complacency. But his reasoning,
however limited in scope, was shrewd enough. Generally speaking,
he combined a rough historical criticism of the Bible with the
argument that the Jewish and Christian conceptions of the Deity
were incompatible with the deism revealed to man by external
1
## p. 49 (#71) ##############################################
11]
William Cobbett
49
nature and by his own conscience. In this way, the truculent
pamphleteer seems to stand near one of the sources of modern
theology.
The heir to the pamphleteering eminence of Paine was a
man oddly like, and, again, oddly unlike, his predecessor. William
Cobbett, too, rose by his own efforts from the poorer classes. His
father was a small farmer and innkeeper in Hampshire, and he
educated himself with indomitable pluck while he was serving as
a soldier. Owing to his accomplishments, he rose to the rank
of sergeant-major and became a kind of clerk-factotum to his
regiment; but, in 1791, he suddenly obtained his discharge and
attempted to convict several of his former officers of peculation.
No facilities for proof were allowed him and he did not appear at
the court-martial. Instead, he went to France, and, after a short
residence there, occupied in acquiring the language, he emigrated,
like Paine, to Philadelphia. Still following Paine's precedent,
he had not been settled long in America before he took up the
pamphlet-writing trade. Under the apt pseudonym of Peter
Porcupine, he conducted a pro-British and anti-French campaign,
until he was ruined by libel cases and obliged to return to
England, in 1800. He was well received, as
, was natural, in
government circles, and soon started work as a tory freelance.
His first venture, The Porcupine, failed; but his second, Cobbett's
Political Register, a weekly newspaper with long leaders, which
he began in 1802, gained the public ear. At first tory, then inde-
pendent, at last strongly radical, he maintained, till his death, an
influence of which no persecution and no folly could deprive him.
He appealed to the farmer and small trader as no one else could.
The composition of his weekly Register was not his only occu-
pation. Besides other publishing ventures, including Parlia-
mentary Debates, later undertaken by Hansard, and State Trials,
he combined business and enthusiastic pleasure as a model farmer.
All went well until, in 1810, he received a sentence of two
years' imprisonment on account of an invective against military
flogging. He could keep up writing his Register ; but his farm
went to wrack, and he came out heavily in debt. Still, however,
his hold on the public increased, and, when, in 1816, he succeeded
in reducing the price to twopence, the circulation of his paper
rose to over 40,000 copies. A temporary retreat to America did
little to impair the extent of his audience, and, all through the
reign of George IV, he was a leader of political opinion. Books
from his pen, egotistic in character, on farming, on politics, on the
4
2 L, XI.
CH. II.
## p. 50 (#72) ##############################################
50
[CH.
Political Writers and Speakers
conduct of life by the young, appeared one after another, had
their temporary use and still provide specimens of his character
and his literary style. By 1830, his fortunes were reestablished ;
the Reform act opened the doors of parliament to him, and he sat
in the Commons till his death in 1835.
Personal ambition and public spirit had nearly equal shares
in the indomitable Cobbett. Enormously and incorrigibly vain,
pragmatic, busy, bustling, bold,' he loved to be, or to think
himself, the centre of the stage, to lay down the law on every-
thing, to direct, praise or censure everybody, to point out how
things ought to be done, and, best of all, to spar furiously with
those who held opposite opinions. General principles were be-
yond the limit of his faculties; hence, he completely veered
round in bis politics with hardly a suspicion of the fact.
His
explanations of the state of things that he saw round him were
hasty guesses, rapidly matured into unreasoning prejudices. It
was all due to the funded debt and paper money, aggravated by
progressive depopulation (in 1820 ! )! , tithes and the tardy adoption
of his improvements in farming. Yet, he was a shrewd and
accurate observer, and an expert and fair judge of the state
of agriculture and the condition of tillers of the soil. True,
he had much good sense and critical faculty to apply to other
political matters; but, regarding the land, he was always at his
best. Peasant-bred, with a passion for farming, and a most
genuine, if quite unpoetic, love of the open country and all that
it could offer eye or ear, he depicted, with Dutch honesty, the
rural England that he knew how to see, its fertility and beauty,
the misery that had descended on many of its inhabitants, the
decent prosperity remaining to others. And he was master of
a style in which to express his knowledge. It is not one of those
great styles which embalm their authors' memory; but it was
serviceable. He is vigorous, plain and absolutely unaffected. The
aptest words come to him with most perfect ease. His eloquence
springs from vivid insight into the heart of his theme, and from
a native fervour and energy that do not need art to blow them
into flame. Apart from his plebeian virulence, he shows a natural
good taste in writing. The flaccid elegance and pompous rotund
verbiage then in vogue are, by him, left on one side. If he cannot
frame a period, every sentence has its work to do, and every
i Cobbett's determination, in spite of the census returns, to consider the population
as decreasing, is a remarkable instance of the strength of his prejudices. It is true that
he acknowledged the growth of the great towns.
a
## p. 51 (#73) ##############################################
11]
Orators
51
sentence tells. What mars his farmer's Odyssey, Rural Rides, is,
perhaps, the excess of this very disregard for fine writing. They
are notes of what he saw, and notes must often be brief, formless
and disconnected. Imagination and the charm it gives are, indeed,
absent throughout; but his sympathetic realism has an attraction
of its own. He scans the look and manners of the labourers;
he calculates whether they have bacon to eat; he descants on the
capabilities of the soil; and he is able to impress upon his
readers the strength of his interest in these things and of his
enjoyment of field and woods and streams and the palatable
salmon that inhabit the latter. He seems to give an unconscious
demonstration how excellent a tongue English could be for a man,
who saw and felt keenly, to express the facts as he saw them, and
the emotions which possessed him.
The forms of political literature which have been described-
verse and prosè, solemn treatise, pamphlet or weekly essay--all
possess one advantage over oratory. We can judge of their
effectiveness from themselves, as well as from what we are told
about them. Something we may miss in atmosphere which the
contemporary reader enjoyed; but, in all things else, we are
under the same conditions as his. In oratory, however, the case
is different. We have to piece together scattered reminiscences
of those who heard the speaker, and to imagine, as well as we
can, the effective delivery, the charm of voice and gesture, and,
still more, the momentary appropriateness of argument, phrase
and manner which gave life and force to what is now dead or semi-
animate matter. It is hardly possible, in fact, to do justice, long
after, in cold blood, to debating points, for, unlike the hearers,
unlike the speaker himself, we are not strung up, waiting for the
retort to an argument or invective. The necessary medium of
interest and excitement is not to be conjured up. These con-
siderations, however, represent the least of the disadvantages
we are under in estimating English oratory at the close of the
eighteenth century. We do not even possess the great speeches
of that day in anything like completeness. The merest frag-
ments remain of the elder Pitt, perhaps the first among all English
orators. And we do not, apparently, find lengthy reports till about
the year 1800, while even these are, possibly, somewhat curtailed.
Of some of the greatest triumphs in debate of Fox, of the younger
Pitt and of Sheridan, we have only mangled remnants. One
doubtful merit alone seems left; in contradistinction to an orator's
4-2
## p. 52 (#74) ##############################################
52
[CH.
Political Writers and Speakers
published version of his speech, inevitably different from its spoken
form and addressed to a reading audience in another mood than
that of an excited assembly, they give us, at their best, what was
actually said, although in mere fragments, with the reasoning
maimed and the fire extinct.
After Burke, Charles James Fox was the senior of the group of
great orators in the mid reign of George III. He entered parlia-
ment in 1768 while still under age, but it was not till February
1775 that he first showed his powers in a speech in favour of
the Americans. Year by year, he grew in ability and debating
skill, and Lord Rockingham’s death in 1782 left him the undoubted
leader of the whigs. But he was now to share his preeminence
in oratory with a rival. William Pitt the younger entered the
commons in 1781, and his maiden speech at once raised him to the
front rank of speakers. Perhaps, English public speaking has
never again quite reached the level of those twenty-five years, when
Fox and Pitt carried on their magnificent contest. Whichever of
the two spoke last, said Wilberforce, seemed to have the best of
the argument. Burke, whose eloquence, in his speeches revised
for publication, and even in the verbatim report of what he said,
stands far higher as literature than theirs, could not compare with
them in effectiveness in actual speaking, or in the favour of the
House of Commons. It was admitted that their successors, Canning
and Grey, belonged to an inferior class of orators. The times were
peculiarly favourable. These men spoke on great affairs to a highly
critical, cultivated, but not pedantic, audience, which had been
accustomed to hear the very best debating and which demanded
both efficaciousness of reasoning, clearness of expression and
splendour of style. Thus, spurred on by sympathy and success,
the two masters of debate established a dual empire over the
house. Their powers of persuading those connoisseurs of oratory,
whom they addressed, appear, indeed, surprisingly small, when we
look at the division-lists; but, at least, they cast a triumphal robe
over the progress of events.
Like all great speakers, they were improvisers, and, in this
line, Fox was admitted to excel. He could come straight from
gambling at Brooks's, and enter with mastery into the debate.
He had an uncanny skill in traversing and reversing his opponents'
arguments, and in seizing on the weak point of a position. Then,
he would expose it to the House with a brilliantly witty illus-
tration. Admirable classic as he was, no one understood better
the genius of the English language. His thoughts poured out, for
## p. 53 (#75) ##############################################
II] Fox and the Younger Pitt 53
the most part, in short vigorous sentences, lucid and rhythmical to
a degree. Volubility, perhaps, was his fault, as was to be ex-
pected in an extemporary speaker, and there was little that was
architectural in his speeches. Without any rambling, they showed
but small subordination of parts; one point is made after another,
great and small together. Even his speech on the Westminster
scrutiny in 1784 has this defect, in spite of his cogent reasoning.
As a result, he often reads thin, not from spreading out his matter,
but from delaying over unimportant aspects of it. He was con-
vinced that he could refute anything, so he refuted everything.
But these blots were scarcely observable at the time. To a
marvellous extent, he possessed the ability to reason clearly at
the highest pressure of emotion.
He forgot himself and everything around him. He thought only of his
subject. His genius warmed and kindled as he went on. He darted fire into
his audience. Torrents of impetuous and irresistible eloquence swept along
their feelings and conviction 1.
On the whole, Pitt was more favoured in his delivery than
his competitor. Fox's clumsy figure, negligently dressed in
blue and buff, seemed unprepossessing ; only his shaggy eye-
brows added to the expression of his face; his voice would
rise to a bark in excitement. Pitt was always dignified and
composed :
In solemn dignity and sullen state,
This new Octavius rises to debate,
wrote George Ellis, carping, in The Rolliad. But his musical
voice, in spite of its monotony, enchanted the house, and his
manner carried authority with it. He was even more lucid than
Fox; the whole course of his argument lay clear even in an
unpremeditated speech. And he was far more selective in his
reasoning. Only the really decisive considerations were enforced
by him, and, in expounding a general policy, he was unequalled.
He was architectonic by nature; each speech is a symmetrical
building, proceeding from foundation to coping-stone. His
diction, the 'blaze of elocution' for which he was renowned, was
copious and graceful, but, also, prolix almost beyond endurance,
and too often leaves the impression that there is nothing in it,
and that Pitt himself either did not intend to say anything or was
concealing how little he had to say. The matter, indeed, is
generally commonplace, though there is a statesmanlike good
1 Sir James Mackintosh's journal, printed in Memoirs of the Life of the Rt Hon.
Sir James Mackintosh, ed. by his son, Mackintosh, R. J. , 1835, vol. I, pp. 322--5.
## p. 54 (#76) ##############################################
54
Political Writers and Speakers [CH.
sense about it which is unlike the perverse ingenuity of Fox,
adding argument to argument to obtain an unwise conclusion.
None the less, if Pitt's style be antiquated and, at times, stilted,
it can rise, as it does in his celebrated speech on the slave-trade
in 1792, to magnificent declamation. His perorations, growing
out of his preceding matter as they do, and containing definite
reasoning and not mere verbal finery, show him at his best. It
was in them that he displayed to the full his skill in the then
much prized art of Latin quotation. Every speaker, if he could,
quoted Latin verse to point his sayings; but Pitt excelled all in
his felicitous selection. Long-famous passages seemed hardly
quoted by him, it seemed rather that the orator's stately period
itself rose into poetry.
While Fox shone especially in the witty humour of an illustra-
tion, irresistibly quaint and full of a convincing sound sense, Pitt
employed a dry contumelious sarcasm, in which severe irony was
the distinguishing trait. Thus, he observed of a hopelessly muddled
speech that it was not, I presume, designed for a complete and
systematic view of the subject. Both orators, however, so far as
mere wit was concerned, were outdone by Richard Brinsley Sheri-
dan', who almost turned their dual supremacy into a triumvirate
of eloquence. But in spite of all his brilliancy, he was manifestly
outweighted; unlike Pitt and Fox, he had entered the period of
decline long before he quitted parliament. It is not easy, from
the mere reports of his speeches, to give a satisfactory account
of his comparative lack of weight and influence. He entered
parliament in the same year as Pitt, and his oratorical ability,
although, at first, it was somewhat clouded, soon obtained the
recognition it deserved ; one speech against Warren Hastings, in
February 1787, was declared by the auditors to be the best they had
ever heard. But, perhaps, he was too frankly an advocate, and he
was too clearly bound, by personal attachment, rather than by
interest, to the prince of Wales's chariot-wheels. Although his
special pleading by no means surpassed that of his contem-
poraries, it was more obvious, and his changes of opinion, due to
fresh developments of Napoleon's action, were not condoned as
were those of others.
In 1812, the first debater of the day was
left out of parliament through the loss of the prince's favour, and
his political career was closed.
Wit-brilliant, sustained and polished to the utmost—distin-
guished Sheridan from his competitors. Many of his impromptu
i Concerning Sheridan as a dramatist, see post, chap. XII.
## p. 55 (#77) ##############################################
11]
Sheridan
and Grattan
55
>
speeches, alone in contemporary literature, have the true Junian
ring, and, were they known by later publication or could they
have been prepared beforehand, doubtless we should have been
told that they were 'tormented with the file. ' As it is, we must
own that balanced antithesis and mischievous scoffing were native
to him and his readiest means of expression, even if the Letters
of Junius provided him with a favourite model. Nor did his
merits end with wit. In the mere physical part of oratory, his
animated gay expression and his trained musical voice exercised
an 'inconceivable attraction,' although it may be that the absence
of 'violence or excess,' which is also recorded, may have led to
an impression that he was not in earnest. In spite of this, his
gaiety could be very bitter ; and, so far as the words went, his
higher flights could be as impassioned as any. Yet, his merit was
his defect; he is not absorbed in his subject like Fox, or delivering
a ruler's oracles like Pitt; we feel, all along, that here is a celebrated
author, enjoying the use of his powers, impassioned on principles
of taste and arguing with the conscious pleasure of the case-
maker. He bears print better than the two greater men; but, in
the real test of an orator—the spoken word-he was, admittedly,
their inferior.
That weight and respect which Sheridan never gained was
amply enjoyed by his fellow-countryman, Henry Grattan. Perhaps,
as a statesman from his youth up, whose whole energies were en-
grossed in politics and government, he had an inevitable advantage
over the brilliant literary amateur. But the main causes lie deep,
in divergences of genius and temperament. Grattan had none of
Sheridan's exterior advantages ; his gestures were uncouth, his
enunciation difficult. He surmounted these impediments, how-
ever, almost at once, both on his entry into the Irish parliament,
in 1775, and on that into the parliament of the United Kingdom, in
1805. In the former case, he led the party which obtained Irish
legislative independence, and inaugurated a period called by his
name; in the latter, at the time of his death, he had become
venerated as the last survivor of the giants of debate among a
lesser generation. A certain magnanimity in Grattan corresponded
to the greatness of his public career. His fiercest invective, how-
ever severe in intent and effect, had an old-world courtliness. Of
persiflage he knew nothing; his wit, of which he had plenty, was
dignified and almost stern. "You can scarcely answer a prophet;
you can only disbelieve him,' he said grimly, in 1800, of the Irish
predictions of Pitt. He was always, beyond question, in earnest.
## p. 56 (#78) ##############################################
56
[CH, II
Political Writers and Speakers
The excellence of his speeches does not depend on any of the
pettier artistic canons of composition. Rhythmical sentences and
periods are both to seek. There is no architectural arrangement
of matter; he forges straight ahead, seizing on the crucial
points one by one. But he had a magnificent power of states-
manlike reasoning and of lucid exposition, and, if he had not
Fox's capability of making all argument seem to tend his way,
he
was quite able to make opposing reasons seem of little worth.
He could generalise, too, and state, in a pithy way, maxims of
practical philosophy. Pithiness and expressiveness, indeed, were
at the root of his oratory. His thoughts came out double-shotted
and white-hot; his words are the most forcible and convincing for
his meaning, rather than the most apt. It was conviction and force
at which he aimed, not beauty. Yet, every now and then, he
attains a literary charm, more lasting, because more deeply felt,
than the considered grace of Sheridan or Pitt.
## p. 57 (#79) ##############################################
1
CHAPTER III
BENTHAM AND THE EARLY UTILITARIANS
JEREMY BENTHAM is famous as the leader of a school of
thought and practice which is known sometimes as utilitarianism,
sometimes as philosophical radicalism. Before his day, the philo-
sophical school was not a characteristic feature of English
speculation. The greater writers influenced the course of ideas
without transmitting a definite body of doctrines to a definite
group of followers. Bacon proclaimed a philosophical revolution ;
but he sought in vain for assistants and collaborators, and the
details of his theory were commonly ignored. Hobbes formulated
a compact system, but he had no disciples. Locke struck out a
new way which many followed to conclusions often very different
from his own. Berkeley never lost courage, but he could not open
other eyes to his own vision, and the verdict of the day upon his
speculations seems to be not unfairly represented by Hume's state-
ment that his arguments admit of no answer and produce no
conviction. ' For his own sceptical results, Hume himself seemed to
desire applause rather than converts. The works of these writers
never led to a combination for the defence and elucidation of a
creed—to any philosophical school which can be compared with
peripateticism, stoicism, or Epicureanism in ancient Greece or
with the Cartesian, Kantian, or Hegelian schools in modern thought.
The nearest approach to such a phenomenon was of the nature of
a revival—the new Platonic movement of the seventeenth century,
associated with the names of Cudworth, Henry More and other
Cambridge scholars'. In this way, the utilitarian group presents
an appearance unknown before in English philosophy—a simple
set of doctrines held in common, with various fields assigned for
their application, and a band of zealous workers, labouring for the
same end, and united in reverence for their master.
Jeremy Bentham was born in 1748 and died in 1832, when his
fame was at its height and his party was on the eve of a great
1 See ante, vol. vin, chap. XI.
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Bentham and the Early Utilitarians [CH.
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3
triumph? He was a prodigy from his childhood; he read history
and French, Latin and Greek, when other boys of his years were
feeding their imaginations with fairy tales ; at the tender age of
thirteen, bis religious sensibilities were hurt and theological doubts
raised in his mind when he was required to sign the thirty-nine
articles on matriculating at Queen's college, Oxford ; he sub-
mitted, however, completed his course there and afterwards duly
entered upon the study of law in London. His father had marked
his abilities and expected them to raise him to the woolsack ; he
had several causes 'at nurse' for him before he was called to the
bar; and, when Jeremy neglected the practical for the theoretical
side of his profession, the father said in his grief that the boy
would never be anything more than the obscure son of an obscure
attorney. ' But he made life easy for his son financially, and
had some compensation for the disappointment of his ambition
in the reputation made by Jeremy's first book, A Fragment on
Government, which was published anonymously in 1776, and which
the public voice ascribed to one or another of several great men,
including Burke and Mansfield.
Bentham spent almost his whole life in London or its neigh-
bourhood; but, for over two years, 1785-88, he made an extended
tour in the east of Europe and paid a long visit to his younger
brother Samuel, who held an important industrial appointment
at Kritchev, in Russia. There, he wrote his Defence of Usury
(published 1787). There, also, from his brother's method of in-
specting his work-people, he derived the plan of his ‘panopticon
-a scheme for prison management, which was to dispense with
Botany bay. On this scheme, he laboured for five and twenty
years; the government played with it and finally rejected it,
giving him a large sum by way of compensation for the still larger
sums which he had expended on its advocacy ; but the failure of
this attempt to influence administration left its mark on his
attitude to the English system of government.
After his return from Russia, Bentham published, in 1789, the
work which, more than any other, gives him a place among philo-
sophers-An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation. It had been printed nine years earlier, and only the
urgency of his friends induced him to make it public. As an
author, Bentham was singularly careless about publication and
as to the form in which his writings appeared. He worked
assiduously, in accordance with a plan which he formed early in
1 He died on 6 June, the day before the royal assent was given to the Reform bill.
B
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59
life; he passed from point to point methodically ; each day he
produced a number of pages of manuscript, indicated their place
in his scheme and then put them aside and never looked at them
again. A doubtful proposition would lead him to turn to a new
line of enquiry, which might mean a new book. According to one
of the friends of his early years, he was 'always running from a
good scheme to a better. In the meantime life passes away and
nothing is completed. ' This method of working had its effect upon
his style. His early writings were clear and terse and pointed, though
without attempt at elegance. Afterwards, he seemed to care only to
avoid ambiguity, and came to imitate the formalism of a legal docu-
ment. He was overfond, also, of introducing new words into the
language ; and few of his inventions have had the success of the
term 'international,' which was used for the first time in the preface
to his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.
It was fortunate for Bentham's reputation that he soon came
to be surrounded by a group of devoted friends, who were con-
vinced of the value of his ideas and eager to help in making them
known. And he was content to leave in their hands the selection,
revision and publication of his more important manuscripts. His
first work had brought him to the notice of Lord Shelburne
(afterwards first marquis of Lansdowne), at whose house he
met a number of the statesmen and political thinkers of the
day. There, also, he met Étienne Dumont, who, afterwards, gave
literary form to the principles of legislation and administration
which Bentham elaborated. Dumont was a citizen of Geneva,
who had been minister of one of its churches ; driven from his
native town by political troubles, he settled, for some time, in
St Petersburg, and, in 1785, came to London as tutor to Lansdowne's
son; in 1788 and, again, in 1789, he visited Paris and was in close
relations, literary and political, with Mirabeau. On the earlier of
these visits, he was accompanied by Sir Samuel Romilly, with
whom he had become intimate and who was already known to
Bentham ; Romilly showed him some of Bentham's manuscripts,
written in French, and Dumont became an enthusiastic disciple
and one of the chief agents in spreading the master's ideas. With
Bentham’s manuscripts and published work before him, and with
opportunities for conversation with the author, he produced a
series of works which made the new jurisprudence and political
theory known in the world of letters. He translated, condensed
and even supplied omissions, giving his style to the whole; but he
did not seek to do more than put Bentham's writings into literary
1
1.
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60 Bentham and the Early Utilitarians (CH.
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རྩེད།
美国
form, and, in Bentham's collected Works, published after his
death, many of the most important treatises are retranslations
into English from Dumont's versions. The first of Dumont's
treatises appeared in 1802, the last in 1825. It is stated that,
by 1830, forty thousand copies of these treatises had been sold
in Paris for the South American trade alone.
Other helpers surrounded Bentham during his long life ; but
his acquaintance with James Mill, which began in 1808, led, for
the first time, to the association of a mastermind with his own in
pursuit of common objects. Mill was less of a jurist than Bentham,
but more of a philosopher, and better equipped for the defence of
their fundamental principles on psychological and general grounds.
He was also a man of affairs, familiar with practical business and
accustomed to deal with other men, and his influence counted for
much in making philosophical radicalism an effective political
force. Bentham was a recluse occupied with ideas and projects,
infinitely patient in elaborating them on paper, and convinced
that they would be carried into effect so soon as he had demon-
strated their value. The men who sought him out regarded him
as a sage, hung upon his lips and approved his doctrines ; and he
expected other men, especially political leaders, to be equally
rational. During the first half of his career, he was not a radicali
in politics ; but the failure of his scheme for a panopticon, which
he regarded as an administrative reform of the first importance,
and in the advocacy of which he had incurred lavish expenditure,
gave him a new—if, also, somewhat perverted—insight into the titel
motives of party politicians, and led to a distrust of the governing
classes. His mind was thus fitted to receive a powerful stimulus
from James Mill, a stern and unbending democrat, whose creed,
in Bentham's caustic phrase, resulted 'less from love to the many
than from hatred of the few. '
Up to this time, the utilitarian philosophy had not met with great
success as an instrument of political propagandism ; it had failed
adequately to influence the old political parties ; an organisation de
of its own was needed with a programme, an organ in the press the
and representatives in parliament. The new party came to be two
known as philosophical radicals. Their organ was The West- tri
minster Review, founded by Bentham in 1824; their programme
laid stress on the necessity for constitutional reform before legis-
lative and administrative improvements could be expected ; and a
number of eminent politicians became the spokesmen of the party
in parliament. It is not possible to assign to the philosophical
## p. 61 (#83) ##############################################
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A Fragment on Government
61
radicals their exact share in bringing about the changes which
gradually ensued; many other influences were working in the
same direction. Their power was not due to their numbers,
but to the great ability of many members of the group and to
the clear and definite policy which they advocated. Bentham
was the head of this party ; but, perhaps, it is not too much to
say that James Mill was its leading spirit. Mill, also, joined
with others in giving literary assistance to Bentham; he edited,
with modifications of his own, A Table of the Springs of Action
(1817); he prepared, from the author's manuscripts, an Intro-
ductory view of the Rationale of Evidence (printed, in part, in
1812, and published in the Works); and his brilliant son, John
Stuart Mill, then just out of his 'teens, edited The Rationale of
Evidence in five volumes' (1827). Another prominent assistant
was John Bowring, who was the first editor of The Westminster
Review, wrote from the author's dictation the Deontology (a
work whose accuracy, as an expression of Bentham's mind, was
impugned by the Mills) and became Bentham’s biographer and
editor of his collected Works.
Bentham's Fragment on Government is the first attempt to
apply the principle of utility in a systematic and methodical
manner to the theory of government; it takes the form of 'a
comment on the Commentaries'-a detailed criticism of the
doctrine on the same subject which had been set forth in Black-
stone's famous work. Sir William Blackstone was born in 1723;
he practised at the bar, lectured on the laws of England at
Oxford, and, in 1758, was appointed to the newly-founded Vinerian
professorship of law; in 1770, he was made a judge, first of the
'
court of king's bench, afterwards of the court of common pleas;
he died in 1780. He edited the Great charter and was the author
of a number of Law Tracts (collected and republished under
this title in 1762); but his fame depends upon his Commentaries
on the Laws of England, the first volume of which appeared in
1765 and the fourth and last in 1769. It is a work of many con-
spicuous merits. In it, the vast mass of details which makes up the
common and statute law is brought together and presented as an
organic structure; the meaning of each provision is emphasised,
and the relation of the parts illustrated ; so that the whole body
of law appears as a living thing animated by purpose and a
triumph of reason. The style of the book is clear, dignified and
eloquent. Bentham, who had heard Blackstone's lectures at
1 Reprinted in Works, vols. vi and VII. 2 See ante, vol. x, p. 499.
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62 Bentham and the Early Utilitarians
[CH.
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Oxford, says that he, 'first of all institutional writers, has taught
jurisprudence to speak the language of the scholar and the gentle-
man. ' These merits, however, were accompanied by defects, less
obvious to the general reader. The author was more prone to see
similarities than differences. His analytical power has been
praised; but it was inadequate to the conceptions with which he
had to deal. His treatment of natural law, in the second section 139
of the introduction, is a case in point; another instance is the
discussion of society and the original contract which Bentham
criticises. His emphasis on meaning and purpose adds interest to
his exposition, and shows insight into the truth that law is not a
haphazard collection of injunctions and prohibitions ; but this
conception also leads him astray; he does not distinguish clearly
enough historical causes from logical grounds; his exposition takes
on the character of an encomium ; and he is too apt to discover,
at every point of the English constitution, 'a direction which con-
stitutes the true line of the liberty and happiness of the community. '
In the preface to his Fragment, Bentham offers a criticism of
the Commentaries in general; but the body of his work is restricted
to an examination of a few pages, of the nature of a digression,
which set forth a theory of government. In these pages, Black-
stone gave a superficial summary of the nature and grounds of
authority, in which the leading conceptions of political theory
were used with more than customary vagueness.
Bentham finds
the doctrine worse than false ; for it is unmeaning. He wishes
'to do something to instruct, but more to undeceive, the timid
and admiring student, . . . to help him to emancipate his judg-
ment from the shackles of authority. He insists upon a precise
meaning for each statement and each term ; and, while he reduces
Blackstone's doctrine to ruins, he succeeds, at the same time, in
conveying at least the outline of a definite and intelligible theory
of government. There are two striking characteristics in the
book which are significant for all Bentham's work. One of these is
.
the constant appeal to fact and the war against fictions; the other
is the standard which he employs—the principle of utility. And
these two are connected in his mind : 'the footing on which this
principle rests every dispute, is that of matter of fact. ' Utility
is matter of fact, at least, of 'future fact—the probability of
certain future contingencies. ' Were debate about laws and
government reduced to terms of utility, men would either come
to an agreement or they would ‘see clearly and explicitly the point
on which the disagreement turned. ' 'All else,' says Bentham, 'is
## p. 63 (#85) ##############################################
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The Principle of Utility
63
but womanish scolding and childish altercation, which is sure to
irritate, and which never can persuade. '
In an interesting footnote, Bentham gives an account of the
way in which he arrived at this principle. Many causes, he tells
us, had combined to enlist his 'infant affections on the side of
despotism. ' When he proceeded to study law, he found an
'original contract' appealed to "for reconciling the accidental
necessity of resistance with the general duty of submission. ' But
his intellect revolted at the fiction.
*To prove fiction, indeed,' said I, 'there is need of fiction; but it is the
characteristic of truth to need no proof but truth. '. . . Thus continued I
unsatisfying, and unsatisfied, till I learnt to see that utility was the test and
measure of all virtue; of loyalty as much as any; and that the obligation to
minister to general happiness, was an obligation paramount to and inclusive
of every other. Having thus got the instruction I stood in need of, I sat
down to make my profit of it. I bid adieu to the original contract: and I
left it to those to amuse themselves with this rattle, who could think they
needed it.
It was from the third volume of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature
that the instruction came.
'I well remember,' he says, 'no sooner had I read that part of the work
which touches on this subject than I felt as if scales had fallen from my eyes.
I then, for the first time, learnt to call the cause of the people the cause of
Virtue. . . . That the foundations of all virtue are laid in utility, is there
demonstrated, after a few exceptions made, with the strongest evidence:
but I see not, any more than Helvetins saw, what need there was for the
exceptions.
Hume's metaphysics had little meaning for Bentham, but it
is interesting to note that his moral doctrine had this direct
influence upon the new theory of jurisprudence and politics.
Hume was content with showing that utility, or tendency to
pleasure, was a mark of all the virtues; he did not go on to assert
that things were good or evil according to the amounts of pleasure
or pain that they entailed. This quantitative utilitarianism is
adopted by Bentham from the start. In the preface to the Frag-
ment, the 'fundamental axiom,' whose consequences are to be
developed with method and precision, is stated in the words, 'it
is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the
measure of right and wrong. Half a century earlier, Hutcheson
had formulated this axiom' almost in the same words; but
Bentham does not seem to have been influenced directly by him.
Helvétius, whom he had studied closely, comes very near the same
doctrine', and Priestley had preceded Bentham in using a similar
1 La justice consiste . . . dans la pratique des actions utiles au plus grand nombre.
De l'Esprit (1758), Discours II, chap. 24.
:
9
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64 Bentham and the Early Utilitarians [CH.
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6
standard in political reasoning. Priestley is not mentioned in
this place, though the preface begins with a reference to his
scientific discoveries, and Bentham has elsewhere recorded his
youthful enthusiasm for his writings. He even says that he had
found the phrase 'greatest happiness of the greatest number' in
one of Priestley's pamphlets ; but, in this, his memory must have
deceived him, for the phrase does not seem to have been used by
Priestley. So far as Bentham was concerned, its origin (as he in
one place suggests) must be traced to Beccaria, the Italian jurist
whose work on the penal law proceeded on the same principles as
Bentham's and had a notable effect upon the latter. Beccaria's
book on Crimes and Punishments was translated into English in
1767, and, in this translation, the principle of utility is expressed
in the exact words in which, through Bentham's influence, it soon
became both an ethical formula and a party watchword. Bentham
himself used the word 'utilitarian' as early as 1781, and he asserted
that it was the only name for his creed? ; but, in later life, he
came to prefer the alternative phrase 'greatest happiness principle. '
'The word utility,' he said, in a note written in July 1822, 'does
not so clearly point to the ideas of pleasure and pain as the words
happiness and felicity do: nor does it lead us to the consideration
of the number of the interests affected. ' A few months after the
latter date, the term 'utilitarian’ was revived by John Stuart
Mill? , who seems to have been unaware that it had been previously
employed and afterwards discarded by Bentham ; he found the
word in Galt's Annals of the Parish, where it is used in describ-
ing some of the revolutionary parties of the early nineties of the
preceding century; and, with a boy's fondness for a name and a
banner,' he adopted it as a 'sectarian appellation. After this
time, 'utilitarian' and 'utilitarianism' came into common use to
designate a party and a creed,
The evidence goes to show that the greatest happiness prin-
ciple,' or principle of utility, was arrived at by Bentham, in the
first instance, as a criterion for legislation and administration and
not for individual conduct—as a political, rather than an ethical,
principle. His concern was with politics; the sections of Hume's
Treatise which chiefly influenced him were those on justice;
Beccaria wrote on the penal law; and it was expressly as a
political principle that Priestley made use of the happiness of
a
6
i Works, vol. x, pp. 92, 392.
2 Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. 1879, p. 1n.
3 Autobiography, pp. 79, 80; Utilitarianism, p. 9n.
## p. 65 (#87) ##############################################
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The Masters of Mankind
the members, that is the majority of the members, of any state,'
as his standard. The point is important, seeing that, from the
time of Locke, the action of every individual had been commonly
interpreted as determined by his own pleasure or pain. It is
difficult to reconcile this interpretation (which Bentham accepted)
with an ethical theory which makes the greatest happiness of all
the end for each. But the same difficulty does not arise when
the point of view is shifted from the individual to the state.
Indeed, the analogical argument will now be open: since each
is concerned with his own greatest happiness, the end for the
community may be taken to be the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. And, when the greatest happiness of the greatest
number' has been accepted in this way, it is easy—though it is
not logical—to adopt it as not merely a political, but, also, in the
strict sense, an ethical, principle.
It is to his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation that we must look for Bentham's fullest and clearest
account of the underlying principles, psychological and ethical, of
his enterprise. The interests of the individual do not always
agree with the interests of the community; and this divergence
sets the problem for penal law. Again, the rule of right is one
question, and the causes of action is another question ; and it is
important not to confuse the ethical with the psychological
problem. This distinction is made, and ignored, in the arresting
paragraph that opens the work :
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters,
pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do,
as well as to determine what we shall do.
programme, in Godwin's eyes, was rendered practicable by his
views on human nature. Men's actions were due to a process of
reasoning, founded on their opinions, which, in turn, were formed
by a process of reasoning.
'When’a murderer ultimately works up his mind to the perpetration, he
is then most strongly impressed with the superior recommendations of the
conduct he pursues. '
Free-will, he denied : thus, if a man's reason were really convinced,
no doubt remained as to his actions. The reformer, in con-
sequence, was not to be a revolutionary; since, by means of
revolution, he would only introduce measures to which he had been
unable to convert his fellow-countrymen. The real way to change
the world for the better was a continuance of peaceful argument,
wherein truth, naturally having stronger reasons in its favour than
error, would prevail. Incessant discussion would gradually alter
the general opinions of men. Then, the changes he desired would
be made. The obvious counter-argument, that, by his own theory,
error had won in the contest with truth up to his time and that the
actual course of human politics had been a mistake, did not occur
to him ; and the attractiveness of his optimistic outlook combined
with the rigidity of his deductive logic, much incidental shrewd-
ness and a singular force of conviction to gain him a numerous
following. His style, too, deserved some success. He was always
clear and forcible; his sentences convey his exact meaning with-
out effort, and display a kind of composed oratorical effect.
curious contrast to Mary Wollstonecraft, who advocated what
might be described as a practical, if novel, scheme of education
with the enthusiasm of a revolutionary, her husband outlined the
complete wreck of existing institutions, with a Utopia of the
simple life to follow, in a calm philosophising manner, which
In
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Political Writers and Speakers
ignored even the lukewarm emotions felt by himself. The passion
he lacked was to be supplied, later, by his son-in-law, Shelley.
Godwin's Political Justice escaped suppression owing to the
small number of readers whom a costly book', even one which
passed through several editions, could reach. He gained a larger
audience for his novels, which were intended to lead to the same
convictions. The only one of these which still finds readers is The
Adventures of Caleb Williams, or, Things as They Are, published
in 1794. Here, Godwin is concerned with two aspects of the
same thesis ; first, the oppression which a poor man could suffer
under the existing institutions, and, secondly, the perversion of
character in a member of the ruling class through his acceptance
of the ideals of chivalry. With these ingredients, the tale, as a
whole, is most bizarre. Its personages act in a very unlikely way.
Falkland, the virtuous villain, who, because of a chivalric regard
for his reputation, has allowed two innocent men to be executed
for a murder he bimself committed, shows a persistent ingenuity in
a
harassing his attached dependent, Williams, who has guessed his
secret, into accusing him; a brigand band, led by a philanthropic
outlaw, establishes its headquarters close to a county town; Williams
surpasses the average hero in prodigies of resource and endurance ;
Falkland, in the end, confesses his guilt in consequence of the
energy with which his victim expresses the remorse he feels at
making the true accusation. Yet, with all this, the story is put
together with great skill. In spite of its artificial rhetoric and
their own inherent improbability, there is a human quality in the
characters, and Williams's helplessness in his attempt to escape
from his persecutor gives us the impression, not so much of the
forced situations of a novel, as of unavoidable necessity. In fact,
Godwin's talent as a novelist lay in his remarkable powers of
invention, which were heightened by his matter of fact way of
relating improbabilities. He was partly aware of it, perhaps,
.
and his other important novel, St Leon, attempted the same
feat with impossibilities. But, in spite of a temporary vogue,
it is now only remembered for its portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft,
and the retractation of his theoretic abolition of the charities of
private life. '
a
From Godwin, who, in his worst days, kept round him a tattered
cloak of magnanimity, it is an abrupt change to his fellow-
revolutionary, the coarse-grained, shrewd Thomas Paine. Yet,
1 Its price was three guineas.
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Thomas Paine
47
the latter had virtues which were missing in his contemporary.
His public spirit led him to disregard all profit from political
works which had a large sale; he was not a beggar, and the
rewards he was forced to ask from the American governments
were the barest payments on account of admitted services to the
United States. In fact, he was a born pamphleteer, never happy
unless he was divulging his opinions for the welfare of the human
race as he conceived it. Dogmatic and narrow-minded, he was
not a man to be troubled by doubts : the meaning of history, the
best form of government, right and wrong, falsehood and truth, all
seemed quite plain to him, and he had no more hesitation than
Godwin in making a working model of the universe, as he did of the
iron bridge by him invented. It was not till he was well advanced
in middle life that he obtained an opportunity of showing his great
talents. He was the son of a poor Norfolk quaker, and spent all
.
his earlier years in the struggle to make a decent livelihood.
In turn, a staymaker, a seaman, a school-usher, a tobacconist and
an exciseman, he moved from place to place, until he was finally
dismissed from the excise in 1774, and, in the same year, emigrated
to Philadelphia. There, he almost immediately edited The Pennsyl-
vania Magazine and proved at once his literary talent and the
advanced character of his opinions by attacking slavery and
advocating American independence. In 1776, he became famous
by his pamphlet, Common Sense, which he, at. least, looked on as
the principal instrument in consolidating American opinion in
favour of war. Having gained the public ear, he continued the
work of encouraging resistance to English rule by two series of
effective pamphlets, called The Crisis, and was soon recognised
as the leading writer of his new country, while, with charac-
teristic versatility, he also served as a soldier, as secretary to the
congress's foreign committee and as clerk to the Pennsylvania
assembly. Peace brought him moderate rewards and a retire-
ment which he could not endure. He returned to England to
prosecute his mechanical inventions, the fruit of his leisure hours,
and soon became involved anew in politics. The French revolution
proved a fresh turning-point in his career. In 1791–2, he took
up the cudgels against Burke in the two parts of The Rights
of Man. The ability, and, still more, the wide circulation, of
these tracts brought him in danger of arrest, and he fled to France,
where he became a member of Convention, and, after all but
falling a victim to the guillotine, was a founder of the new sect
of theophilanthropists. Then he dropped into obscurity and, in
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48
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Political Writers and Speakers
1802, went once more to America, only to find that his Age of
Reason, published in 1794–5, had alienated from him almost all
his friends. A thick crop of slanders grew up round him, without,
apparently, any foundation save the fact that he was occasionally
drunk. Still, he kept a bold front to the world, and continued
to write pamphlets almost till his death in 1809.
Paine was a prince of pamphleteers and all his literary talent
seems confined to that end.
His general ideas were of the
simplest, not to say the shallowest ; but he grasped them firmly
and worked them out with a clear and ready logic. His immense
ignorance of history and literature was by no means ill com-
pensated by an intimate knowledge of actual affairs; and his
shrewdness made him a formidable critic even of Burke. His
style was always clear, and, a little rhetoric apart, unaffected.
Quite without charm as it was, his warmth and force and command
of appropriate words made it more than passable. Every now
and then, he falls into sheer vulgarity, which is most noticeable in
his theological writings; but, more usually, he can alternate a
mediocre eloquence with trenchant argumentative composition.
So far as copying the written word was concerned, Paine was quite
original; but, doubtless, he owed much to the debates and casual
conversations in which he took part. In The Rights of Man, he
appears as a narrow doctrinaire; he takes over the theory of the
social contract as the basis for his constructive views, and justifies
revolution, partly on the ground that no generation can bind its
successors, and partly by the argument that the social contract
must be embodied in a formal constitution : where such did not
exist, a mere tyranny prevailed, which had no basis in right. He
was thus, like Godwin, entirely opposed to Burke's doctrine of
prescription. To criticise the faults of the existing state of
things was easy and obvious; but Paine expounded, also, a radical
constructive policy, including parliamentary reform, old age
pensions and a progressive income-tax. With these and other
changes, he looked forward to a broadcloth millennium. The
Age of Reason showed all Paine's qualities and an unusual
abundance of his defects. His want of taste and the almost
complete absence in him of any sense of beauty or grandeur are
as conspicuous as his narrow self-complacency. But his reasoning,
however limited in scope, was shrewd enough. Generally speaking,
he combined a rough historical criticism of the Bible with the
argument that the Jewish and Christian conceptions of the Deity
were incompatible with the deism revealed to man by external
1
## p. 49 (#71) ##############################################
11]
William Cobbett
49
nature and by his own conscience. In this way, the truculent
pamphleteer seems to stand near one of the sources of modern
theology.
The heir to the pamphleteering eminence of Paine was a
man oddly like, and, again, oddly unlike, his predecessor. William
Cobbett, too, rose by his own efforts from the poorer classes. His
father was a small farmer and innkeeper in Hampshire, and he
educated himself with indomitable pluck while he was serving as
a soldier. Owing to his accomplishments, he rose to the rank
of sergeant-major and became a kind of clerk-factotum to his
regiment; but, in 1791, he suddenly obtained his discharge and
attempted to convict several of his former officers of peculation.
No facilities for proof were allowed him and he did not appear at
the court-martial. Instead, he went to France, and, after a short
residence there, occupied in acquiring the language, he emigrated,
like Paine, to Philadelphia. Still following Paine's precedent,
he had not been settled long in America before he took up the
pamphlet-writing trade. Under the apt pseudonym of Peter
Porcupine, he conducted a pro-British and anti-French campaign,
until he was ruined by libel cases and obliged to return to
England, in 1800. He was well received, as
, was natural, in
government circles, and soon started work as a tory freelance.
His first venture, The Porcupine, failed; but his second, Cobbett's
Political Register, a weekly newspaper with long leaders, which
he began in 1802, gained the public ear. At first tory, then inde-
pendent, at last strongly radical, he maintained, till his death, an
influence of which no persecution and no folly could deprive him.
He appealed to the farmer and small trader as no one else could.
The composition of his weekly Register was not his only occu-
pation. Besides other publishing ventures, including Parlia-
mentary Debates, later undertaken by Hansard, and State Trials,
he combined business and enthusiastic pleasure as a model farmer.
All went well until, in 1810, he received a sentence of two
years' imprisonment on account of an invective against military
flogging. He could keep up writing his Register ; but his farm
went to wrack, and he came out heavily in debt. Still, however,
his hold on the public increased, and, when, in 1816, he succeeded
in reducing the price to twopence, the circulation of his paper
rose to over 40,000 copies. A temporary retreat to America did
little to impair the extent of his audience, and, all through the
reign of George IV, he was a leader of political opinion. Books
from his pen, egotistic in character, on farming, on politics, on the
4
2 L, XI.
CH. II.
## p. 50 (#72) ##############################################
50
[CH.
Political Writers and Speakers
conduct of life by the young, appeared one after another, had
their temporary use and still provide specimens of his character
and his literary style. By 1830, his fortunes were reestablished ;
the Reform act opened the doors of parliament to him, and he sat
in the Commons till his death in 1835.
Personal ambition and public spirit had nearly equal shares
in the indomitable Cobbett. Enormously and incorrigibly vain,
pragmatic, busy, bustling, bold,' he loved to be, or to think
himself, the centre of the stage, to lay down the law on every-
thing, to direct, praise or censure everybody, to point out how
things ought to be done, and, best of all, to spar furiously with
those who held opposite opinions. General principles were be-
yond the limit of his faculties; hence, he completely veered
round in bis politics with hardly a suspicion of the fact.
His
explanations of the state of things that he saw round him were
hasty guesses, rapidly matured into unreasoning prejudices. It
was all due to the funded debt and paper money, aggravated by
progressive depopulation (in 1820 ! )! , tithes and the tardy adoption
of his improvements in farming. Yet, he was a shrewd and
accurate observer, and an expert and fair judge of the state
of agriculture and the condition of tillers of the soil. True,
he had much good sense and critical faculty to apply to other
political matters; but, regarding the land, he was always at his
best. Peasant-bred, with a passion for farming, and a most
genuine, if quite unpoetic, love of the open country and all that
it could offer eye or ear, he depicted, with Dutch honesty, the
rural England that he knew how to see, its fertility and beauty,
the misery that had descended on many of its inhabitants, the
decent prosperity remaining to others. And he was master of
a style in which to express his knowledge. It is not one of those
great styles which embalm their authors' memory; but it was
serviceable. He is vigorous, plain and absolutely unaffected. The
aptest words come to him with most perfect ease. His eloquence
springs from vivid insight into the heart of his theme, and from
a native fervour and energy that do not need art to blow them
into flame. Apart from his plebeian virulence, he shows a natural
good taste in writing. The flaccid elegance and pompous rotund
verbiage then in vogue are, by him, left on one side. If he cannot
frame a period, every sentence has its work to do, and every
i Cobbett's determination, in spite of the census returns, to consider the population
as decreasing, is a remarkable instance of the strength of his prejudices. It is true that
he acknowledged the growth of the great towns.
a
## p. 51 (#73) ##############################################
11]
Orators
51
sentence tells. What mars his farmer's Odyssey, Rural Rides, is,
perhaps, the excess of this very disregard for fine writing. They
are notes of what he saw, and notes must often be brief, formless
and disconnected. Imagination and the charm it gives are, indeed,
absent throughout; but his sympathetic realism has an attraction
of its own. He scans the look and manners of the labourers;
he calculates whether they have bacon to eat; he descants on the
capabilities of the soil; and he is able to impress upon his
readers the strength of his interest in these things and of his
enjoyment of field and woods and streams and the palatable
salmon that inhabit the latter. He seems to give an unconscious
demonstration how excellent a tongue English could be for a man,
who saw and felt keenly, to express the facts as he saw them, and
the emotions which possessed him.
The forms of political literature which have been described-
verse and prosè, solemn treatise, pamphlet or weekly essay--all
possess one advantage over oratory. We can judge of their
effectiveness from themselves, as well as from what we are told
about them. Something we may miss in atmosphere which the
contemporary reader enjoyed; but, in all things else, we are
under the same conditions as his. In oratory, however, the case
is different. We have to piece together scattered reminiscences
of those who heard the speaker, and to imagine, as well as we
can, the effective delivery, the charm of voice and gesture, and,
still more, the momentary appropriateness of argument, phrase
and manner which gave life and force to what is now dead or semi-
animate matter. It is hardly possible, in fact, to do justice, long
after, in cold blood, to debating points, for, unlike the hearers,
unlike the speaker himself, we are not strung up, waiting for the
retort to an argument or invective. The necessary medium of
interest and excitement is not to be conjured up. These con-
siderations, however, represent the least of the disadvantages
we are under in estimating English oratory at the close of the
eighteenth century. We do not even possess the great speeches
of that day in anything like completeness. The merest frag-
ments remain of the elder Pitt, perhaps the first among all English
orators. And we do not, apparently, find lengthy reports till about
the year 1800, while even these are, possibly, somewhat curtailed.
Of some of the greatest triumphs in debate of Fox, of the younger
Pitt and of Sheridan, we have only mangled remnants. One
doubtful merit alone seems left; in contradistinction to an orator's
4-2
## p. 52 (#74) ##############################################
52
[CH.
Political Writers and Speakers
published version of his speech, inevitably different from its spoken
form and addressed to a reading audience in another mood than
that of an excited assembly, they give us, at their best, what was
actually said, although in mere fragments, with the reasoning
maimed and the fire extinct.
After Burke, Charles James Fox was the senior of the group of
great orators in the mid reign of George III. He entered parlia-
ment in 1768 while still under age, but it was not till February
1775 that he first showed his powers in a speech in favour of
the Americans. Year by year, he grew in ability and debating
skill, and Lord Rockingham’s death in 1782 left him the undoubted
leader of the whigs. But he was now to share his preeminence
in oratory with a rival. William Pitt the younger entered the
commons in 1781, and his maiden speech at once raised him to the
front rank of speakers. Perhaps, English public speaking has
never again quite reached the level of those twenty-five years, when
Fox and Pitt carried on their magnificent contest. Whichever of
the two spoke last, said Wilberforce, seemed to have the best of
the argument. Burke, whose eloquence, in his speeches revised
for publication, and even in the verbatim report of what he said,
stands far higher as literature than theirs, could not compare with
them in effectiveness in actual speaking, or in the favour of the
House of Commons. It was admitted that their successors, Canning
and Grey, belonged to an inferior class of orators. The times were
peculiarly favourable. These men spoke on great affairs to a highly
critical, cultivated, but not pedantic, audience, which had been
accustomed to hear the very best debating and which demanded
both efficaciousness of reasoning, clearness of expression and
splendour of style. Thus, spurred on by sympathy and success,
the two masters of debate established a dual empire over the
house. Their powers of persuading those connoisseurs of oratory,
whom they addressed, appear, indeed, surprisingly small, when we
look at the division-lists; but, at least, they cast a triumphal robe
over the progress of events.
Like all great speakers, they were improvisers, and, in this
line, Fox was admitted to excel. He could come straight from
gambling at Brooks's, and enter with mastery into the debate.
He had an uncanny skill in traversing and reversing his opponents'
arguments, and in seizing on the weak point of a position. Then,
he would expose it to the House with a brilliantly witty illus-
tration. Admirable classic as he was, no one understood better
the genius of the English language. His thoughts poured out, for
## p. 53 (#75) ##############################################
II] Fox and the Younger Pitt 53
the most part, in short vigorous sentences, lucid and rhythmical to
a degree. Volubility, perhaps, was his fault, as was to be ex-
pected in an extemporary speaker, and there was little that was
architectural in his speeches. Without any rambling, they showed
but small subordination of parts; one point is made after another,
great and small together. Even his speech on the Westminster
scrutiny in 1784 has this defect, in spite of his cogent reasoning.
As a result, he often reads thin, not from spreading out his matter,
but from delaying over unimportant aspects of it. He was con-
vinced that he could refute anything, so he refuted everything.
But these blots were scarcely observable at the time. To a
marvellous extent, he possessed the ability to reason clearly at
the highest pressure of emotion.
He forgot himself and everything around him. He thought only of his
subject. His genius warmed and kindled as he went on. He darted fire into
his audience. Torrents of impetuous and irresistible eloquence swept along
their feelings and conviction 1.
On the whole, Pitt was more favoured in his delivery than
his competitor. Fox's clumsy figure, negligently dressed in
blue and buff, seemed unprepossessing ; only his shaggy eye-
brows added to the expression of his face; his voice would
rise to a bark in excitement. Pitt was always dignified and
composed :
In solemn dignity and sullen state,
This new Octavius rises to debate,
wrote George Ellis, carping, in The Rolliad. But his musical
voice, in spite of its monotony, enchanted the house, and his
manner carried authority with it. He was even more lucid than
Fox; the whole course of his argument lay clear even in an
unpremeditated speech. And he was far more selective in his
reasoning. Only the really decisive considerations were enforced
by him, and, in expounding a general policy, he was unequalled.
He was architectonic by nature; each speech is a symmetrical
building, proceeding from foundation to coping-stone. His
diction, the 'blaze of elocution' for which he was renowned, was
copious and graceful, but, also, prolix almost beyond endurance,
and too often leaves the impression that there is nothing in it,
and that Pitt himself either did not intend to say anything or was
concealing how little he had to say. The matter, indeed, is
generally commonplace, though there is a statesmanlike good
1 Sir James Mackintosh's journal, printed in Memoirs of the Life of the Rt Hon.
Sir James Mackintosh, ed. by his son, Mackintosh, R. J. , 1835, vol. I, pp. 322--5.
## p. 54 (#76) ##############################################
54
Political Writers and Speakers [CH.
sense about it which is unlike the perverse ingenuity of Fox,
adding argument to argument to obtain an unwise conclusion.
None the less, if Pitt's style be antiquated and, at times, stilted,
it can rise, as it does in his celebrated speech on the slave-trade
in 1792, to magnificent declamation. His perorations, growing
out of his preceding matter as they do, and containing definite
reasoning and not mere verbal finery, show him at his best. It
was in them that he displayed to the full his skill in the then
much prized art of Latin quotation. Every speaker, if he could,
quoted Latin verse to point his sayings; but Pitt excelled all in
his felicitous selection. Long-famous passages seemed hardly
quoted by him, it seemed rather that the orator's stately period
itself rose into poetry.
While Fox shone especially in the witty humour of an illustra-
tion, irresistibly quaint and full of a convincing sound sense, Pitt
employed a dry contumelious sarcasm, in which severe irony was
the distinguishing trait. Thus, he observed of a hopelessly muddled
speech that it was not, I presume, designed for a complete and
systematic view of the subject. Both orators, however, so far as
mere wit was concerned, were outdone by Richard Brinsley Sheri-
dan', who almost turned their dual supremacy into a triumvirate
of eloquence. But in spite of all his brilliancy, he was manifestly
outweighted; unlike Pitt and Fox, he had entered the period of
decline long before he quitted parliament. It is not easy, from
the mere reports of his speeches, to give a satisfactory account
of his comparative lack of weight and influence. He entered
parliament in the same year as Pitt, and his oratorical ability,
although, at first, it was somewhat clouded, soon obtained the
recognition it deserved ; one speech against Warren Hastings, in
February 1787, was declared by the auditors to be the best they had
ever heard. But, perhaps, he was too frankly an advocate, and he
was too clearly bound, by personal attachment, rather than by
interest, to the prince of Wales's chariot-wheels. Although his
special pleading by no means surpassed that of his contem-
poraries, it was more obvious, and his changes of opinion, due to
fresh developments of Napoleon's action, were not condoned as
were those of others.
In 1812, the first debater of the day was
left out of parliament through the loss of the prince's favour, and
his political career was closed.
Wit-brilliant, sustained and polished to the utmost—distin-
guished Sheridan from his competitors. Many of his impromptu
i Concerning Sheridan as a dramatist, see post, chap. XII.
## p. 55 (#77) ##############################################
11]
Sheridan
and Grattan
55
>
speeches, alone in contemporary literature, have the true Junian
ring, and, were they known by later publication or could they
have been prepared beforehand, doubtless we should have been
told that they were 'tormented with the file. ' As it is, we must
own that balanced antithesis and mischievous scoffing were native
to him and his readiest means of expression, even if the Letters
of Junius provided him with a favourite model. Nor did his
merits end with wit. In the mere physical part of oratory, his
animated gay expression and his trained musical voice exercised
an 'inconceivable attraction,' although it may be that the absence
of 'violence or excess,' which is also recorded, may have led to
an impression that he was not in earnest. In spite of this, his
gaiety could be very bitter ; and, so far as the words went, his
higher flights could be as impassioned as any. Yet, his merit was
his defect; he is not absorbed in his subject like Fox, or delivering
a ruler's oracles like Pitt; we feel, all along, that here is a celebrated
author, enjoying the use of his powers, impassioned on principles
of taste and arguing with the conscious pleasure of the case-
maker. He bears print better than the two greater men; but, in
the real test of an orator—the spoken word-he was, admittedly,
their inferior.
That weight and respect which Sheridan never gained was
amply enjoyed by his fellow-countryman, Henry Grattan. Perhaps,
as a statesman from his youth up, whose whole energies were en-
grossed in politics and government, he had an inevitable advantage
over the brilliant literary amateur. But the main causes lie deep,
in divergences of genius and temperament. Grattan had none of
Sheridan's exterior advantages ; his gestures were uncouth, his
enunciation difficult. He surmounted these impediments, how-
ever, almost at once, both on his entry into the Irish parliament,
in 1775, and on that into the parliament of the United Kingdom, in
1805. In the former case, he led the party which obtained Irish
legislative independence, and inaugurated a period called by his
name; in the latter, at the time of his death, he had become
venerated as the last survivor of the giants of debate among a
lesser generation. A certain magnanimity in Grattan corresponded
to the greatness of his public career. His fiercest invective, how-
ever severe in intent and effect, had an old-world courtliness. Of
persiflage he knew nothing; his wit, of which he had plenty, was
dignified and almost stern. "You can scarcely answer a prophet;
you can only disbelieve him,' he said grimly, in 1800, of the Irish
predictions of Pitt. He was always, beyond question, in earnest.
## p. 56 (#78) ##############################################
56
[CH, II
Political Writers and Speakers
The excellence of his speeches does not depend on any of the
pettier artistic canons of composition. Rhythmical sentences and
periods are both to seek. There is no architectural arrangement
of matter; he forges straight ahead, seizing on the crucial
points one by one. But he had a magnificent power of states-
manlike reasoning and of lucid exposition, and, if he had not
Fox's capability of making all argument seem to tend his way,
he
was quite able to make opposing reasons seem of little worth.
He could generalise, too, and state, in a pithy way, maxims of
practical philosophy. Pithiness and expressiveness, indeed, were
at the root of his oratory. His thoughts came out double-shotted
and white-hot; his words are the most forcible and convincing for
his meaning, rather than the most apt. It was conviction and force
at which he aimed, not beauty. Yet, every now and then, he
attains a literary charm, more lasting, because more deeply felt,
than the considered grace of Sheridan or Pitt.
## p. 57 (#79) ##############################################
1
CHAPTER III
BENTHAM AND THE EARLY UTILITARIANS
JEREMY BENTHAM is famous as the leader of a school of
thought and practice which is known sometimes as utilitarianism,
sometimes as philosophical radicalism. Before his day, the philo-
sophical school was not a characteristic feature of English
speculation. The greater writers influenced the course of ideas
without transmitting a definite body of doctrines to a definite
group of followers. Bacon proclaimed a philosophical revolution ;
but he sought in vain for assistants and collaborators, and the
details of his theory were commonly ignored. Hobbes formulated
a compact system, but he had no disciples. Locke struck out a
new way which many followed to conclusions often very different
from his own. Berkeley never lost courage, but he could not open
other eyes to his own vision, and the verdict of the day upon his
speculations seems to be not unfairly represented by Hume's state-
ment that his arguments admit of no answer and produce no
conviction. ' For his own sceptical results, Hume himself seemed to
desire applause rather than converts. The works of these writers
never led to a combination for the defence and elucidation of a
creed—to any philosophical school which can be compared with
peripateticism, stoicism, or Epicureanism in ancient Greece or
with the Cartesian, Kantian, or Hegelian schools in modern thought.
The nearest approach to such a phenomenon was of the nature of
a revival—the new Platonic movement of the seventeenth century,
associated with the names of Cudworth, Henry More and other
Cambridge scholars'. In this way, the utilitarian group presents
an appearance unknown before in English philosophy—a simple
set of doctrines held in common, with various fields assigned for
their application, and a band of zealous workers, labouring for the
same end, and united in reverence for their master.
Jeremy Bentham was born in 1748 and died in 1832, when his
fame was at its height and his party was on the eve of a great
1 See ante, vol. vin, chap. XI.
a
## p. 58 (#80) ##############################################
58
Bentham and the Early Utilitarians [CH.
112
3
triumph? He was a prodigy from his childhood; he read history
and French, Latin and Greek, when other boys of his years were
feeding their imaginations with fairy tales ; at the tender age of
thirteen, bis religious sensibilities were hurt and theological doubts
raised in his mind when he was required to sign the thirty-nine
articles on matriculating at Queen's college, Oxford ; he sub-
mitted, however, completed his course there and afterwards duly
entered upon the study of law in London. His father had marked
his abilities and expected them to raise him to the woolsack ; he
had several causes 'at nurse' for him before he was called to the
bar; and, when Jeremy neglected the practical for the theoretical
side of his profession, the father said in his grief that the boy
would never be anything more than the obscure son of an obscure
attorney. ' But he made life easy for his son financially, and
had some compensation for the disappointment of his ambition
in the reputation made by Jeremy's first book, A Fragment on
Government, which was published anonymously in 1776, and which
the public voice ascribed to one or another of several great men,
including Burke and Mansfield.
Bentham spent almost his whole life in London or its neigh-
bourhood; but, for over two years, 1785-88, he made an extended
tour in the east of Europe and paid a long visit to his younger
brother Samuel, who held an important industrial appointment
at Kritchev, in Russia. There, he wrote his Defence of Usury
(published 1787). There, also, from his brother's method of in-
specting his work-people, he derived the plan of his ‘panopticon
-a scheme for prison management, which was to dispense with
Botany bay. On this scheme, he laboured for five and twenty
years; the government played with it and finally rejected it,
giving him a large sum by way of compensation for the still larger
sums which he had expended on its advocacy ; but the failure of
this attempt to influence administration left its mark on his
attitude to the English system of government.
After his return from Russia, Bentham published, in 1789, the
work which, more than any other, gives him a place among philo-
sophers-An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation. It had been printed nine years earlier, and only the
urgency of his friends induced him to make it public. As an
author, Bentham was singularly careless about publication and
as to the form in which his writings appeared. He worked
assiduously, in accordance with a plan which he formed early in
1 He died on 6 June, the day before the royal assent was given to the Reform bill.
B
## p. 59 (#81) ##############################################
at
1
IN
.
1
1
111] The Friends of Bentham
59
life; he passed from point to point methodically ; each day he
produced a number of pages of manuscript, indicated their place
in his scheme and then put them aside and never looked at them
again. A doubtful proposition would lead him to turn to a new
line of enquiry, which might mean a new book. According to one
of the friends of his early years, he was 'always running from a
good scheme to a better. In the meantime life passes away and
nothing is completed. ' This method of working had its effect upon
his style. His early writings were clear and terse and pointed, though
without attempt at elegance. Afterwards, he seemed to care only to
avoid ambiguity, and came to imitate the formalism of a legal docu-
ment. He was overfond, also, of introducing new words into the
language ; and few of his inventions have had the success of the
term 'international,' which was used for the first time in the preface
to his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.
It was fortunate for Bentham's reputation that he soon came
to be surrounded by a group of devoted friends, who were con-
vinced of the value of his ideas and eager to help in making them
known. And he was content to leave in their hands the selection,
revision and publication of his more important manuscripts. His
first work had brought him to the notice of Lord Shelburne
(afterwards first marquis of Lansdowne), at whose house he
met a number of the statesmen and political thinkers of the
day. There, also, he met Étienne Dumont, who, afterwards, gave
literary form to the principles of legislation and administration
which Bentham elaborated. Dumont was a citizen of Geneva,
who had been minister of one of its churches ; driven from his
native town by political troubles, he settled, for some time, in
St Petersburg, and, in 1785, came to London as tutor to Lansdowne's
son; in 1788 and, again, in 1789, he visited Paris and was in close
relations, literary and political, with Mirabeau. On the earlier of
these visits, he was accompanied by Sir Samuel Romilly, with
whom he had become intimate and who was already known to
Bentham ; Romilly showed him some of Bentham's manuscripts,
written in French, and Dumont became an enthusiastic disciple
and one of the chief agents in spreading the master's ideas. With
Bentham’s manuscripts and published work before him, and with
opportunities for conversation with the author, he produced a
series of works which made the new jurisprudence and political
theory known in the world of letters. He translated, condensed
and even supplied omissions, giving his style to the whole; but he
did not seek to do more than put Bentham's writings into literary
1
1.
EP
.
## p. 60 (#82) ##############################################
60 Bentham and the Early Utilitarians (CH.
.
4
རྩེད།
美国
form, and, in Bentham's collected Works, published after his
death, many of the most important treatises are retranslations
into English from Dumont's versions. The first of Dumont's
treatises appeared in 1802, the last in 1825. It is stated that,
by 1830, forty thousand copies of these treatises had been sold
in Paris for the South American trade alone.
Other helpers surrounded Bentham during his long life ; but
his acquaintance with James Mill, which began in 1808, led, for
the first time, to the association of a mastermind with his own in
pursuit of common objects. Mill was less of a jurist than Bentham,
but more of a philosopher, and better equipped for the defence of
their fundamental principles on psychological and general grounds.
He was also a man of affairs, familiar with practical business and
accustomed to deal with other men, and his influence counted for
much in making philosophical radicalism an effective political
force. Bentham was a recluse occupied with ideas and projects,
infinitely patient in elaborating them on paper, and convinced
that they would be carried into effect so soon as he had demon-
strated their value. The men who sought him out regarded him
as a sage, hung upon his lips and approved his doctrines ; and he
expected other men, especially political leaders, to be equally
rational. During the first half of his career, he was not a radicali
in politics ; but the failure of his scheme for a panopticon, which
he regarded as an administrative reform of the first importance,
and in the advocacy of which he had incurred lavish expenditure,
gave him a new—if, also, somewhat perverted—insight into the titel
motives of party politicians, and led to a distrust of the governing
classes. His mind was thus fitted to receive a powerful stimulus
from James Mill, a stern and unbending democrat, whose creed,
in Bentham's caustic phrase, resulted 'less from love to the many
than from hatred of the few. '
Up to this time, the utilitarian philosophy had not met with great
success as an instrument of political propagandism ; it had failed
adequately to influence the old political parties ; an organisation de
of its own was needed with a programme, an organ in the press the
and representatives in parliament. The new party came to be two
known as philosophical radicals. Their organ was The West- tri
minster Review, founded by Bentham in 1824; their programme
laid stress on the necessity for constitutional reform before legis-
lative and administrative improvements could be expected ; and a
number of eminent politicians became the spokesmen of the party
in parliament. It is not possible to assign to the philosophical
## p. 61 (#83) ##############################################
III]
A Fragment on Government
61
radicals their exact share in bringing about the changes which
gradually ensued; many other influences were working in the
same direction. Their power was not due to their numbers,
but to the great ability of many members of the group and to
the clear and definite policy which they advocated. Bentham
was the head of this party ; but, perhaps, it is not too much to
say that James Mill was its leading spirit. Mill, also, joined
with others in giving literary assistance to Bentham; he edited,
with modifications of his own, A Table of the Springs of Action
(1817); he prepared, from the author's manuscripts, an Intro-
ductory view of the Rationale of Evidence (printed, in part, in
1812, and published in the Works); and his brilliant son, John
Stuart Mill, then just out of his 'teens, edited The Rationale of
Evidence in five volumes' (1827). Another prominent assistant
was John Bowring, who was the first editor of The Westminster
Review, wrote from the author's dictation the Deontology (a
work whose accuracy, as an expression of Bentham's mind, was
impugned by the Mills) and became Bentham’s biographer and
editor of his collected Works.
Bentham's Fragment on Government is the first attempt to
apply the principle of utility in a systematic and methodical
manner to the theory of government; it takes the form of 'a
comment on the Commentaries'-a detailed criticism of the
doctrine on the same subject which had been set forth in Black-
stone's famous work. Sir William Blackstone was born in 1723;
he practised at the bar, lectured on the laws of England at
Oxford, and, in 1758, was appointed to the newly-founded Vinerian
professorship of law; in 1770, he was made a judge, first of the
'
court of king's bench, afterwards of the court of common pleas;
he died in 1780. He edited the Great charter and was the author
of a number of Law Tracts (collected and republished under
this title in 1762); but his fame depends upon his Commentaries
on the Laws of England, the first volume of which appeared in
1765 and the fourth and last in 1769. It is a work of many con-
spicuous merits. In it, the vast mass of details which makes up the
common and statute law is brought together and presented as an
organic structure; the meaning of each provision is emphasised,
and the relation of the parts illustrated ; so that the whole body
of law appears as a living thing animated by purpose and a
triumph of reason. The style of the book is clear, dignified and
eloquent. Bentham, who had heard Blackstone's lectures at
1 Reprinted in Works, vols. vi and VII. 2 See ante, vol. x, p. 499.
## p. 62 (#84) ##############################################
62 Bentham and the Early Utilitarians
[CH.
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1
Oxford, says that he, 'first of all institutional writers, has taught
jurisprudence to speak the language of the scholar and the gentle-
man. ' These merits, however, were accompanied by defects, less
obvious to the general reader. The author was more prone to see
similarities than differences. His analytical power has been
praised; but it was inadequate to the conceptions with which he
had to deal. His treatment of natural law, in the second section 139
of the introduction, is a case in point; another instance is the
discussion of society and the original contract which Bentham
criticises. His emphasis on meaning and purpose adds interest to
his exposition, and shows insight into the truth that law is not a
haphazard collection of injunctions and prohibitions ; but this
conception also leads him astray; he does not distinguish clearly
enough historical causes from logical grounds; his exposition takes
on the character of an encomium ; and he is too apt to discover,
at every point of the English constitution, 'a direction which con-
stitutes the true line of the liberty and happiness of the community. '
In the preface to his Fragment, Bentham offers a criticism of
the Commentaries in general; but the body of his work is restricted
to an examination of a few pages, of the nature of a digression,
which set forth a theory of government. In these pages, Black-
stone gave a superficial summary of the nature and grounds of
authority, in which the leading conceptions of political theory
were used with more than customary vagueness.
Bentham finds
the doctrine worse than false ; for it is unmeaning. He wishes
'to do something to instruct, but more to undeceive, the timid
and admiring student, . . . to help him to emancipate his judg-
ment from the shackles of authority. He insists upon a precise
meaning for each statement and each term ; and, while he reduces
Blackstone's doctrine to ruins, he succeeds, at the same time, in
conveying at least the outline of a definite and intelligible theory
of government. There are two striking characteristics in the
book which are significant for all Bentham's work. One of these is
.
the constant appeal to fact and the war against fictions; the other
is the standard which he employs—the principle of utility. And
these two are connected in his mind : 'the footing on which this
principle rests every dispute, is that of matter of fact. ' Utility
is matter of fact, at least, of 'future fact—the probability of
certain future contingencies. ' Were debate about laws and
government reduced to terms of utility, men would either come
to an agreement or they would ‘see clearly and explicitly the point
on which the disagreement turned. ' 'All else,' says Bentham, 'is
## p. 63 (#85) ##############################################
1
111)
The Principle of Utility
63
but womanish scolding and childish altercation, which is sure to
irritate, and which never can persuade. '
In an interesting footnote, Bentham gives an account of the
way in which he arrived at this principle. Many causes, he tells
us, had combined to enlist his 'infant affections on the side of
despotism. ' When he proceeded to study law, he found an
'original contract' appealed to "for reconciling the accidental
necessity of resistance with the general duty of submission. ' But
his intellect revolted at the fiction.
*To prove fiction, indeed,' said I, 'there is need of fiction; but it is the
characteristic of truth to need no proof but truth. '. . . Thus continued I
unsatisfying, and unsatisfied, till I learnt to see that utility was the test and
measure of all virtue; of loyalty as much as any; and that the obligation to
minister to general happiness, was an obligation paramount to and inclusive
of every other. Having thus got the instruction I stood in need of, I sat
down to make my profit of it. I bid adieu to the original contract: and I
left it to those to amuse themselves with this rattle, who could think they
needed it.
It was from the third volume of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature
that the instruction came.
'I well remember,' he says, 'no sooner had I read that part of the work
which touches on this subject than I felt as if scales had fallen from my eyes.
I then, for the first time, learnt to call the cause of the people the cause of
Virtue. . . . That the foundations of all virtue are laid in utility, is there
demonstrated, after a few exceptions made, with the strongest evidence:
but I see not, any more than Helvetins saw, what need there was for the
exceptions.
Hume's metaphysics had little meaning for Bentham, but it
is interesting to note that his moral doctrine had this direct
influence upon the new theory of jurisprudence and politics.
Hume was content with showing that utility, or tendency to
pleasure, was a mark of all the virtues; he did not go on to assert
that things were good or evil according to the amounts of pleasure
or pain that they entailed. This quantitative utilitarianism is
adopted by Bentham from the start. In the preface to the Frag-
ment, the 'fundamental axiom,' whose consequences are to be
developed with method and precision, is stated in the words, 'it
is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the
measure of right and wrong. Half a century earlier, Hutcheson
had formulated this axiom' almost in the same words; but
Bentham does not seem to have been influenced directly by him.
Helvétius, whom he had studied closely, comes very near the same
doctrine', and Priestley had preceded Bentham in using a similar
1 La justice consiste . . . dans la pratique des actions utiles au plus grand nombre.
De l'Esprit (1758), Discours II, chap. 24.
:
9
## p. 64 (#86) ##############################################
64 Bentham and the Early Utilitarians [CH.
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23:
6
standard in political reasoning. Priestley is not mentioned in
this place, though the preface begins with a reference to his
scientific discoveries, and Bentham has elsewhere recorded his
youthful enthusiasm for his writings. He even says that he had
found the phrase 'greatest happiness of the greatest number' in
one of Priestley's pamphlets ; but, in this, his memory must have
deceived him, for the phrase does not seem to have been used by
Priestley. So far as Bentham was concerned, its origin (as he in
one place suggests) must be traced to Beccaria, the Italian jurist
whose work on the penal law proceeded on the same principles as
Bentham's and had a notable effect upon the latter. Beccaria's
book on Crimes and Punishments was translated into English in
1767, and, in this translation, the principle of utility is expressed
in the exact words in which, through Bentham's influence, it soon
became both an ethical formula and a party watchword. Bentham
himself used the word 'utilitarian' as early as 1781, and he asserted
that it was the only name for his creed? ; but, in later life, he
came to prefer the alternative phrase 'greatest happiness principle. '
'The word utility,' he said, in a note written in July 1822, 'does
not so clearly point to the ideas of pleasure and pain as the words
happiness and felicity do: nor does it lead us to the consideration
of the number of the interests affected. ' A few months after the
latter date, the term 'utilitarian’ was revived by John Stuart
Mill? , who seems to have been unaware that it had been previously
employed and afterwards discarded by Bentham ; he found the
word in Galt's Annals of the Parish, where it is used in describ-
ing some of the revolutionary parties of the early nineties of the
preceding century; and, with a boy's fondness for a name and a
banner,' he adopted it as a 'sectarian appellation. After this
time, 'utilitarian' and 'utilitarianism' came into common use to
designate a party and a creed,
The evidence goes to show that the greatest happiness prin-
ciple,' or principle of utility, was arrived at by Bentham, in the
first instance, as a criterion for legislation and administration and
not for individual conduct—as a political, rather than an ethical,
principle. His concern was with politics; the sections of Hume's
Treatise which chiefly influenced him were those on justice;
Beccaria wrote on the penal law; and it was expressly as a
political principle that Priestley made use of the happiness of
a
6
i Works, vol. x, pp. 92, 392.
2 Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. 1879, p. 1n.
3 Autobiography, pp. 79, 80; Utilitarianism, p. 9n.
## p. 65 (#87) ##############################################
65
111]
The Masters of Mankind
the members, that is the majority of the members, of any state,'
as his standard. The point is important, seeing that, from the
time of Locke, the action of every individual had been commonly
interpreted as determined by his own pleasure or pain. It is
difficult to reconcile this interpretation (which Bentham accepted)
with an ethical theory which makes the greatest happiness of all
the end for each. But the same difficulty does not arise when
the point of view is shifted from the individual to the state.
Indeed, the analogical argument will now be open: since each
is concerned with his own greatest happiness, the end for the
community may be taken to be the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. And, when the greatest happiness of the greatest
number' has been accepted in this way, it is easy—though it is
not logical—to adopt it as not merely a political, but, also, in the
strict sense, an ethical, principle.
It is to his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation that we must look for Bentham's fullest and clearest
account of the underlying principles, psychological and ethical, of
his enterprise. The interests of the individual do not always
agree with the interests of the community; and this divergence
sets the problem for penal law. Again, the rule of right is one
question, and the causes of action is another question ; and it is
important not to confuse the ethical with the psychological
problem. This distinction is made, and ignored, in the arresting
paragraph that opens the work :
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters,
pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do,
as well as to determine what we shall do.
