(Ideas in Context) Emmanuelle de Champs-Enlightenment and Utility - Bentham in French, Bentham in France-Cambridge University Press (2015)

ENL IGHTENMENT AND U T IL IT Y
Jeremy Bentham, the founder of classical utilitarianism, was a seminal

figure in the history of modern political thought. This lively monograph presents the numerous French connections of an emblematic
British thinker. Perhaps more than any other intellectual of his time,
Bentham engaged with contemporary events and people in France,
even writing in French in the 1780s. Placing Benthams thought in
the context of the French-language Enlightenment through to the
post-revolutionary era, Emmanuelle de Champs makes the case for a
historical study of Global Bentham. Examining previously unpublished sources, she traces the circulation of Benthams letters, friends,
manuscripts and books in the French-speaking world. This study in
transnational intellectual history reveals how utilitarianism, as a doctrine, was both the product of, and a contribution to, French-language
political thought at a key time in European history. The debates surrounding utilitarianism in France cast new light on the making of
modern liberalism.
e m m a n u e l l e d e c h a m p s is Professor of British history and civilisation at Universite de Cergy-Pontoise, France.
ideas in conte x t
Edited by
David Armitage, Richard Bourke,
Jennifer Pitts and John Robertson
The books in this series will discuss the emergence of intellectual traditions and of
related new disciplines. The procedures, aims and vocabularies that were generated
will be set in the context of the alternatives available within the contemporary
frameworks of ideas and institutions. Through detailed studies of the evolution of
such traditions, and their modification by different audiences, it is hoped that a
new picture will form of the development of ideas in their concrete contexts. By
this means, artificial distinctions between the history of philosophy, of the various
sciences, of society and politics, and of literature may be seen to dissolve.
The series is published with the support of the Exxon Foundation.
A list of books in the series will be found at the end of the volume.
EN LIGHT ENMENT AND

UTILITY
Bentham in French, Bentham in France
EMMANUELLE DE CHAMPS
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C Emmanuelle de Champs 2015
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Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Champs, Emmanuelle de.
Enlightenment and utility : Bentham in French, Bentham in France / Emmanuelle de Champs.
pages cm. (Ideas in context)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-107-09867-1 (hardback)
1. Bentham, Jeremy, 17481832 Influence. 2. France. 3. Enlightenment.
4. Utilitarianism. I. Title.
b1574.b34c435 2015
192 dc23
2014048685
isbn 978-1-107-09867-1 Hardback
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accurate or appropriate.
Contents
Acknowledgements
A note on translations
page vii
ix
1
Introduction
part i: an englishman in the republic of letters
19
Languages of Enlightenment
21
Satire and polemics
30
Defining utilitarianism: private connections and

correspondence
41
part ii: project for a complete body of laws

(projet) and the reform of jurisprudence in europe
55
4 The Genesis of Projet
57
Projet in Enlightenment legal thought
70
The politics of legal reform
79
part iii: reflections for the revolution in france
93
Frenchmen and Francophiles: Lord Lansdownes network
British expertise for French legislators
104
Utility, rights and revolution: missed encounters?
115
97
vi
Contents
part iv: 1802: bentham in paris
129
10 Dumonts editorship: from the Bibliothèque britannique to

Traites de legislation civile et penale
131
11
139
A mixed reception
12 Autumn 1802: Three weeks in Paris
155
part v: liberty, utility and rights (18151832)
161
13 For one disciple in this country, I have fifty at least in

France
165
14
Utilitarian arguments in French politics
175
15
A utilitarian moment? French liberals and utilitarianism
184
Epilogue: Bentham in the July Revolution
197
Conclusion
200
Bibliography
Index
205
225
Acknowledgements
This book was first presented as an habilitation thesis at University Paris

8 Vincennes a` Saint-Denis. I would like to thank Ann Thomson, who
directed the habilitation, for encouraging me to publish it, as well as the
external examiners, Professors Jean-Pierre Clero, Francoise DeconinckBrossard, Pierre Lurbe, Frederick Rosen and Richard Whatmore, who provided helpful comments at an early stage. Research for the book would not
have been possible without semestrial leaves granted by the Service Scientifique de lambassade de France a` Londres in 2008 and by Universite Paris
8 in 2011. Mariana Saad was especially helpful when putting together the
first of these applications. The members of the Bentham Project welcomed
me to Bentham House for a fruitful period of research.
Some sections were tested at a number of seminars at the Centre Bentham
(Ecole de droit de Sciences Po), at the Bentham Project (University College
London) as well as in conferences in Paris, London, Oxford, Florence,
Darmstadt, Granada, Zhengzhou and Cergy-Pontoise over the past three
years. I am grateful to audiences at these conferences for their comments
and feedback. An earlier version of Part II was published in Benthams
Theory of Law and Public Opinion, edited by Xiaobo Zhai and Michael
Quinn (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and parts of Part V appeared
in French in Cahiers dhistoire. Revue dhistoire critique (123, 2014).
I should also like to acknowledge the kind and competent assistance
of librarians and archivists in London (Special Collections, UCL; Westminster School; British Library), Paris (Archives de lInstitut de France;
Archives de Paris; Archives nationales; Bibliothèque nationale de France),
Beauvais (Archives departementales de lOise) and Geneva (Bibliothèque
de Genève). Dr Kate Fielden helped me access papers from the Bowood
Collection. I thank these institutions for permission to quote from the
manuscripts in their possession.
In addition to friendly and invariably illuminating discussions on all
aspects of Bentham studies, Professor Philip Schofield kindly passed on
vii
viii
Acknowledgements
as-yet unpublished material due to come out as part of the Collected Works
of Jeremy Bentham, published by Oxford University Press, and allowed me
to quote from it. Michael James carried out earlier work on Benthams
French manuscripts at the Bentham Project and left very useful guidelines
for exploring the material.
Two reviewers for Cambridge University Press offered helpful comments. While I thank them for their careful reading, I, of course, am solely
responsible for any errors or faults that remain in my work.
My greatest thanks go to Dr Michael Quinn for agreeing to revise the
English as the book was being written and sharing his intimate knowledge
of Benthams manuscripts. His work on the form had a direct impact on
the matter. The Centre Bentham supported and encouraged my research
over the years and funded additional proofreading by Catherine Atkinson.
The book owes much to the strong international community of Bentham
scholars. The introduction provides further clues to the intellectual debts
incurred in the preparation of it.
I am deeply grateful to my family, colleagues and friends for their support
and their confidence. Special thanks are due to Julien and to our children,
Agathe and Lucien.
Professor Emmanuelle de Champs, Paris
A note on translations
To improve readability, all quotes originally written in French have been

translated into English. I have tried to use the most recently published
English translations whenever possible, as referenced in the footnotes and
bibliography. For Traites de legislation civile et penale, I relied on the English
version produced by Charles Milner Atkinson as Benthams Theory of Legislation (Oxford University Press, 1914), revising it when necessary. Unless
otherwise indicated, all translations are mine.
The decision to provide a book solely in English made it impossible
to give the reader a flavour of Benthams use of the French language. All
the extracts from papers and correspondence written in French therefore
appear solely in translation. In those cases the note original in French
follows the reference in the footnote. The quote below is translated in
Chapter 8, page 104.
Le monde civilise est une republique. La salle dassemblee est la terre: les
imprimeries en sont les vestibules. Les demagogues sont les Philosophes. Le
Philosophe est tout homme qui a le courage de letre, et le droit de haranguer
nest plus un privilège.
J. Bentham, Pacification and Emancipation, c.1786 UC 25, f. 34.
ix
Introduction
But what I know well enough is my love for France; for the country
of Helvetiuses, Voltaires, and DAlemberts always excepting what I
owe to England.
Draft letter from J. Bentham to Frederick the Great of Prussia, 17801
The words liberty, justice, happiness of the greatest number, are wicked
and criminal. They instil in peoples minds the habits of debate and
mistrust.
Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma, 18392
Though he was born in London and lived there for most of his life, the
English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (17481832) was a Francophile. He
made five visits to France in his lifetime. In 1764, aged sixteen, he toured
the French capital with his father. He returned to Paris six years later on
his own. At the age of thirty-seven, he crossed the country swiftly on the
occasion of a trip to Russia to visit his brother Samuel. Seventeen years
later, in the autumn of 1802, he stayed for about three weeks in the capital.
His final visit took place in 1825 at the age of 77, seven years before his
death. The country, its people and its language played a significant part in
the formation of his thought and the dissemination of his ideas.
From the beginning of his career, Bentham appealed to the authority of
illustrious French Enlightenment thinkers, hailing Helvetius as the founder
of the utilitarian doctrine and professing his admiration for Voltaire and
DAlembert. The principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the foundation of Benthamite utilitarianism, was the product of an
on-going philosophical dialogue between France and Britain, illustrating
1
2
Bentham Manuscripts, University College London, box 169, f. 19, (original in French). [Hereafter,
UC, box, folio].
Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma, 2 vols., J. Sturrock, trans. (Harmondsworth, 2006), 136.
Introduction
the wealth and depth of cultural transfers between the two nations. Bentham briefly chose to write in French in the 1780s. As early as 1789, some
of his works were translated and read in francophone Europe. It was in
Paris again that Traites de legislation civile et penale were published in 1802,
bringing the author worldwide fame. Throughout his career, Bentham took
a deep interest in European affairs and in French internal politics, which
in turn contributed to the development of his thought.
This book places classical utilitarianism within the European context
of the late Enlightenment and the early nineteenth century, and thus
casts light on the nature of Benthamite utilitarianism at its inception. It
highlights the central impact of continental culture and language on the
formation of Benthams utilitarianism, and explains the specific issues at
stake in the formulation and reception of his ideas in France. Drawing
on the methodology of intellectual history, it reveals the historical and
textual context in which classical utilitarianism developed and spread. It
presents Bentham as a significant thinker in a generation that took an active
part in the last years of the Enlightenment and was influential in shaping
the values of nineteenth-century Europe. Throughout the nineteenth century, Russian and Latin American admirers continued to read and discuss
utilitarianism in French.
The book follows the leads provided by the direct personal contacts,
through travels or correspondence, between the English philosopher and
his French-speaking contemporaries. Though it focuses mostly on France,
it also makes it clear that the philosophers confident fluency at least
in writing in the vehicular language of the Enlightenment provided
him with an entry into a cosmopolitan world of ideas and with fruitful
personal contacts across the European continent. Although it follows on
from the interest in Bentham and France that led to an international
conference at Universite Paris-Ouest Nanterre in 2006, and the publication
of a collective volume a few years later, this book is different in its methods
and in its scope.3 The contributors to Bentham et la France have provided
extremely valuable case studies on which I have built to construct this
contextual presentation of Benthams involvement with France and the
French language. For the nation is taken here as both a linguistic and a
political signifier, that is, as constituting both a linguistic and a political
context.
3
E. de Champs and J.-P. Clero, eds., Bentham et la France. Fortune et infortunes de lutilitarisme
(Oxford, 2009). Sources and methods also differ from J. Zagar Bentham et la France (unpublished
Ph.D. thesis, Universite de Paris, 1958).
Introduction
The book attempts to avoid two pitfalls into which studies of Bentham
are often liable to fall. The first is presenting the philosophers ideas as
an isolated system, abstracted from the historical conditions in which they
were put to paper. In Benthams case, this approach is all the more tempting
in that there is undoubtedly a systematic and self-referring element in
his writings. The second pitfall is segmenting the study of his thought
chronologically. Often, the younger Bentham the writer of A Fragment
on Government and An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
in the 1770s and 1780s is studied independently from the older one
the English radical and the Liberal codifier for Greece, Spain, Portugal and
Latin America. By placing Benthams thought in a European context, this
book throws light on continuities rather than divisions.
Like other recent pieces of scholarship, the re-contextualisation of the
historical figure of Jeremy Bentham proposed here relies on the uncovering of a significant body of manuscripts, in this case the early French
manuscripts and unpublished correspondence. It is also indebted to the
careful editorial work conducted at the Bentham Project, University
College London, in the preparation of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. While making previously unknown material available, the editors
also provide thorough information on the writing and editorial history of
each text, which is indeed a prerequisite for any contextual study. In Utility
and Democracy: The Political Thought of Jeremy Bentham, Philip Schofield
has demonstrated how a thorough familiarity with both published and
unpublished sources makes a historical study of the development of Benthams utilitarianism not merely possible, but necessary.4
Covering Benthams formative years, Part I studies the Enlightenment

roots of his career as a philosopher. A precocious child, he was educated
first at Westminster School and, from the age of 12, at Queens College,
Oxford. In addition to the education he received in these institutions,
his father Jeremiah Bentham made a point of rendering him proficient in
French: this was indeed a requisite for the legal career he had in view for his
son. Bentham himself viewed his mastery of the language as a passport to
a cosmopolitan Republic of Letters. Uncovering little-known episodes of
Benthams youth, the chapters focus on the social and intellectual networks
of his London life in the 1770s. By translating Voltaire and Marmontel, he
hoped to make a reputation in British and French literary circles. Two of
4
P. Schofield, Utility and Democracy: The Political Thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford, 2006).
Introduction
his closest friends, the Englishman John Lind and the Austrian FrancoisXavier Schwediauer, had extensive continental connections. They were
both instrumental in developing the philosophers hopes of reaching out to
Eastern Europe. These social, literary and political pursuits accompanied
the development of Benthams philosophical system. Indeed, Benthams
discovery of the principle of utility, which he dated to 1768 or 1769, was
the direct product of his familiarity with French-language writers. The
idea of the greatest happiness of the greatest number provides a perfect
illustration of the philosophical dialogue between France and Britain
during the Enlightenment. The implications of Benthams recurring
invocations of Helvetius are developed: like Helvetius, Bentham hoped to
play an active role in the reforms of his time. His aborted correspondence
with DAlembert, fellow Encyclopediste Abbe Morellet and the marquis
de Chastellux, one of Helvetiuss closest disciples, also throws light not
only on his ambitions, but also on the subterranean network of references
that underlay the formulation of utilitarianism in his early writings.
In the late 1770s, Bentham gradually abandoned translation and pamphleteering to focus on his great work, a critique of the foundations of
contemporary jurisprudence. Directed at first towards English law, these
early plans took on a more European direction in the course of the 1780s, as
Benthams aspirations to find a place in the Republic of Letters developed.
In the early years of that decade, spurred on by his influential patron the
diplomat Lord Shelburne, he hoped to present his work to Catherine II
of Russia. A few years later, he used French to draft a complete plan for
legal reform. He wrote over five hundred folios in that language destined to
make up a Projet dun corps de loix complet (Project for a Complete body of
laws, hereafter Projet). As Part II shows, the change from English to French
was not only driven by practical considerations. It had a direct impact on
both the nature of the project pursued by the philosopher and its contents.
The Projet manuscripts also allow us to place Benthams early ambitions in
the context of the enlightened legal reforms undertaken on the Continent
in the second half of the eighteenth century. This makes it possible to
recognise his vast knowledge of Roman law and of contemporary reform
schemes and to assess the nature of his contribution to that movement.
As this section makes clear, Projet was but one aspect of Benthams wideranging plan for legal reform in the early years of his career, one that was
closely related to An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
(printed in 1780, but only published nine years later). Benthams codification projects resurfaced in the 1810s when he wrote to a number of rulers,
Introduction
from America to Russia (again), offering his services to codify local bodies of
law.
When he came back from Russia in 1788, Bentham became more familiar with Lord Lansdowne (as Lord Shelburne had become after 1785). At
Bowood, Lord Lansdownes country seat, and at his London house, Bentham mingled with a cosmopolitan and brilliant crowd including Etienne
Dumont, the Genevan who was to become his French translator. Benthams
encounter with Dumont at Lansdownes was extremely significant for it
coincided with the outbreak of the Revolution in France. Lansdownes
power and connections allowed Bentham to envisage that he could at last
exercise a genuine influence on legal and political institutions. Indeed,
Dumont himself was by then working in Paris with Mirabeau, then a
rising star in French politics. Part III presents the history of Benthams
hopes to be heard in Revolutionary France in the wake of his cosmopolitan aspirations of former decades. It traces the ways in which his writings
circulated there through Dumont and, importantly, other acquaintances
of Lord Lansdownes. The European perspective brings out the continuities in Benthams political thought and identifies his reforming position
with that of a specific milieu of cosmopolitan reformers who wished to
see a modernised France take its place in the concert of nations without
necessarily adopting republican institutions. It is principally though not
exclusively through these networks that Benthams ideas and writings
were circulated in Revolutionary France, before the Terror put an end to
hopes of achieving political security in Europe.
Not before 1802 were communications between the two nations possible
again. Benthams pre-revolutionary contacts were crucial in ensuring the
publication of two of his works in Paris in that year, Traites de legislation
civile et penale and Esquisse dun ouvrage en faveur des pauvres. This seminal
moment for the reception of Benthams ideas in France is studied in Part IV,
which shows why the intellectual and political climate of the Directory and
the Consulate was propitious for the reception of British utilitarian ideas.
Indeed, it coincided with the rise to power of the group of the Ideologues,
the French branch of the heirs of Helvetius in philosophy and in politics.
However, there was to be no true dialogue between French and British
utilitarians at that time, and the reception of Benthams writings in 1802
was ultimately disappointing. Part IV finds reasons for this seemingly paradoxical state of affairs in the complex and precarious situation prevailing
in French political life at that time.
During the Empire, most channels of communication between France
and Britain were again broken. After the Restoration of 1815, Anglophilia
Introduction
played a part in the interest taken by the French liberal opposition in

Benthams ideas. Part V thus deals with the reception of Benthams ideas
in France. In the last decade of his life, Bentham continued to read the
French press and was quickly informed of political events by his numerous
correspondents. He took a strong interest in the July Revolution of 1830, for
the last time sending pamphlets over the Channel in the hope of influencing
its course. The number of Continental visitors to Benthams house in
Queens Square Place in London also increased in the last decade of his life.
As Benthams personal fame reached a peak in French circles, utilitarian
ideas were regularly discussed among French liberals. Focusing on such
key figures as Germaine de Stael, Benjamin Constant, Francois-Rene de
Chateaubriand, Jean-Baptiste Say, Henri de Saint-Simon and Lafayette,
this section shows the place of utilitarianism within the debates that served
to shape French liberalism. It also explains why utilitarian philosophy
quickly lost ground in French politics. This early estrangement had longlasting consequences, for it resulted in the almost complete eviction of the
doctrine from the French political and philosophical tradition.
This book sketches the history of the writing, the circulation and the
reception of a key text. Benthams Project for a complete body of laws, studied
in Parts II, III and IV, is emblematic of the ways in which contents can
be cast into different shapes for different audiences in different contexts. It
was first drafted in the mid 1780s in French and intended for the European
and Russian courts, but eventually remained unpublished on the eve of
the French Revolution. After 1789, Bentham made no attempt to circulate
Projet, but he drew on it to supplement his proposals to the French revolutionaries in works such as Draught of a New Plan for the Organisation
of the Judicial Establishment in France and Political Tactics,5 which circulated in France, at least as extracts published by Dumont in newspapers
edited by Mirabeau. Handed over to Etienne Dumont in 1792, the Projet
manuscripts were the main source on which Traites de legislation civile et
penale, which came out in 1802, was based. The work remained the most
famous and most quoted of Benthams writings throughout the nineteenth
century, helped by its translation into English.6 The editorial history of
5
J. Bentham, Draught of a New Plan for the Organisation of the Judicial Establishment in France, in
The Works of Jeremy Bentham, John Bowring, ed., 11 vols. (Edinburgh, 1843), [hereafter Draught of
a New Plan, Bowring], vol. IV, 285406; Political Tactics, in Collected Works (hereafter CW ), M.
James, C. Pease-Watkin and C. Blamires, eds. (Oxford, 1999).
Traites de legislation civile et penale, E. Dumont, ed., presented by M. Bozzo-Rey, A. Brunon-Ernst,
E. de Champs (Paris, 2010). On the posterity of the work in Britain, see F. Rosen, You have set me
a strutting, my dear Dumont: la dette de Bentham a` legard de Dumont, in Bentham et la France,
8596.
Introduction
this work shows how Benthams own words and ideas were adapted to the
swiftly changing political culture of Europe between 1780 and 1820.
Tracing the history of the French Bentham forces us to reconsider national

divides in the history of ideas. In Capital, Karl Marx presented Bentham
somewhat paradoxically as a purely English phenomenon who had simply
reproduced in his dull way what Helvetius and other Frenchmen had said
with esprit in the eighteenth century.7 Such a contradiction can also be
found in Elie Halevys The Growth of Philosophical Radicalism, written at
the turn of the twentieth century. Though he traced Benthams debt to
French thinkers, he also made it clear that utilitarianism was the doctrine of
industrial Britain and was one of the keys to contemporary British political
and economic culture:
the subject of our study assumes a new amplitude, by reason of the importance of the Utilitarian doctrine in the history of the public mind in England.
For England, like France, had its century of liberalism: and to the century
of the French Revolution corresponded, on the other side of the Channel,
the century of the Industrial Revolution: to the juristic and spiritualistic
philosophy of the Rights of Man corresponded the Utilitarian philosophy
of the identity of interests.8
To this day utilitarianism, both classical and contemporary, is felt in France

to be alien to the countrys political and philosophic culture.9
Conversely, in Britain, Benthams affinity with French thinkers has often
served to exclude his brand of utilitarianism from the liberal tradition. In
1932, Michael Oakeshott defined him as the exact opposite of an English
empiricist: a French philosophe. In a violent piece of writing, he criticised
Benthams rationalism, his inability to grasp the subtleties of British philosophy and the sterility of his political approach.10 Oakeshotts article
was seminal in introducing a dichotomy that soon became commonplace:
contrasting Continental (that is to say French and German) rationalism with British liberalism. In a series of programmes broadcast in the
7
8
9
10
K. Marx, Capital, vol. I (London, 1996), 605. Marx conducted more work on Benthamite individualism in the 1880s, see The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx, L. Krader, ed. and trans. (Assen,
1972). I thank Professor Don Jackson for this reference.
E. Halevy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism (London, 1952), xviii.
See C. Audard, La tradition utilitariste: Bentham, Mill et Sidgwick, in A. Renaut, ed., Histoire
de la philosophie politique, vol. IV. Les critiques de la modernite politique (Paris, 1999), 53101.
The alienness of utilitarianism to French culture is further demonstrated in C. Welch, AntiBenthamism: utilitarianism and the French liberal tradition, in R. Geenens and H. Rosenblatt,
eds., French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day (Cambridge, 2012), 13465.
M. Oakeshott, The New Bentham, Scrutiny, 1 (1932), 11431.
Introduction
early 1950s, Isaiah Berlin reminded his BBC audience that Bentham was
a complete disciple of Helvetius.11 Alongside Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel,
Saint-Simon and de Maistre, Helvetius figured among the thinkers who
had, according to Berlin, betrayed the liberal tradition by substituting
happiness to freedom and by calling for a tyranny of reason. Highlighting
Benthams French intellectual ancestry was not the exclusive preserve of
liberals. On the one hand, Berlins arguments were later to be adopted
by conservative American scholars.12 On the other, building upon Marxs
comment, Harold Laski also wrote, in Political Thought in England, Locke
to Bentham, that with Bentham, [t]he French seed at last produced its
harvest. Bentham absorbed the purpose of Rousseau while rejecting his
method.13
Thanks to works that have firmly reasserted Benthams debt to Hume,
or the way he engaged with the common law tradition, the idea that
his Frenchness set him apart from his British contemporaries now appears
to be somewhat dated, and it is not the purpose of this book to revive
it.14 Oakeshott himself reviewed his earlier opinion and highlighted the
continuities between Hume and Bentham.15 However, as Berlins move
from eighteenth-century utilitarianism to twentieth-century totalitarianism reminds us, such categorizing in the history of ideas cannot be separated
from ideological interpretations of the legacy of the Enlightenment and the
French Revolution. This is one of the reasons why this book deals, through
Benthams writings, with the transition from Ancien-Regime Europe to
early liberal states. Alongside other doctrines such as Republicanism in
France and Whiggism in Britain, utilitarianism played an important part
in adapting the ideas of the Enlightenment to the demands of the nineteenth century.
This book firmly places Benthams thought, writings and aspirations
within a definition of the Enlightenment as a period in which Frenchspeaking philosophers and their ideas were influential. It considers Benthams position on the philosophers own terms, by closely following the
leads he provided in his correspondence, in his literary activities (in a
broad sense), and in his references in published and unpublished writings.
11
12
13
14
15
I. Berlin, Freedom and Its Betrayal. Six Enemies of Human Liberty (London, 2003), 20, 25.
G. Himmelfarb, The Haunted House of Jeremy Bentham, Victorian Minds (London, 1968), 3281.
H. Laski, Political Thought in England. Locke to Bentham (Oxford, 1955), 19.
G.J. Postema, Bentham and the Common Law Tradition (Oxford, 1986); D. Lieberman, The Province
of Legislation Determined: Legal Theory in Eighteenth-century Britain (Cambridge, 1989); F. Rosen,
Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill (London, 2003).
M. Oakeshott, Morality and Politics in Modern Europe: the Harvard Lectures (New Haven, CT and
London, 1993), 748.
Introduction
The picture that emerges is a complex one, or at least one that challenges
existing dichotomies between a French and a British Enlightenment, a
High and a Low Enlightenment, and a radical and a moderate Enlightenment. Such divisions have proved incapable of making sense either of
Benthams ideas or of his career. First, the distinction between a Conservative Enlightenment in England and a European Enlightenment, in
which French was the dominant language and the philosophes set the tone
for reform throughout Europe, fails to accommodate Bentham and his
followers, who can then only be thought of as exceptions to a general
rule. For instance Franco Venturi named Bentham, Price, Godwin and
Paine as the only, belated, representatives of the European Enlightenment
in England.16 As the description of Benthams career in London scientific
and literary circles in the 1770s and 1780s in Parts I and II demonstrates,
Venturis statement needs qualifying. If one believes, like John Pocock, that
Britains peculiar national institutions fostered specific forms of Enlightenment, mainly Protestant in origin and character, Benthams interest for
continental and atheistic writers is difficult to understand. Indeed, John
Pocock has consistently treated Bentham and his followers as exceptions,
on the ground that they were atheist, bureaucratic, possessed of an instrumental rationality that made them ready to codify Englands laws and
reconstruct its institutions.17
In 1981, reacting in part to Pococks views, Roy Porter remarked that
contemporary attempts to place the Enlightenment in national context
served to highlight the social conservatism of British thinkers by cutting
them off from their French-speaking contemporaries. Modern scholarship, he wrote, reads like a paternity-denying alibi, proving that Englands
kinship with the family of philosophes was no closer than a maiden aunts.18
Interestingly, he chose to mention Bentham as a counter-example. In his
last study, Enlightenment, Britain and the Creation of the Modern World,
published two years before his death, Porter illustrated the plurality of
Enlightenments in Britain by stressing the personal, cultural and political
links between British thinkers and their French contemporaries. Devoting
16
17
18
Only one country was absent from this array of Enlightened thinkers in the sixties and seventies,
and that was England . . . The fact remains that no parti des philosophes was formed in London,
and so could not claim to guide society. . . . One has to wait until the eighties and nineties to find
men such as Bentham, Price, Godwin and Paine. In England, the rhythm was different. F. Venturi,
Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1971), 132.
J.G.A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. I. The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 17371764
(Cambridge, 1999), 295, 294.
R. Porter, The Enlightenment in England, in R. Porter and M. Teich, eds., The Enlightenment in
National Context (Cambridge, 1981), 118, 3.
10
Introduction
a section of his book to Bentham, Porter was the first to integrate the results
of recent Bentham scholarship into a wider history of the Enlightenment
in Britain.19
Among Bentham scholars, James H. Burns had long stressed the relevance of Benthams ideas to the scholarly debate on the Enlightenment.
He explained how Benthams radicalism in religion and in politics related
to the Enlightenment of Hume and Adam Smith, of Voltaire, Helvetius
and DAlembert, stressing that his kind of radicalism was that of an
intellectual reforming elite on both sides of the Channel.20 His last articles were devoted to Bentham and Brissot, reminding his readers that the
two men had met in London in 1784 and corresponded again, though
briefly, in the early years of the Revolution. Burns showed how a comparative approach to their careers as legislators and reformers could cast
light on their specific positions within the European Republic of Letters.
This book owes much to Burnss illuminating approach and to his flawless
scholarship.21
Burnss cautious definition of Benthams radicalism also needs explaining, as the phrase Radical Enlightenment has been revived in Jonathan
Israels recently completed trilogy.22 Indeed, though the third volume,
entitled Democratic Enlightenment, covers the period 177089, there are
few mentions of the philosophers name. This is because Israel defines
eighteenth-century radicalism as a package of ideas held by the critics of
the established thinkers of the Enlightenment. Issuing from Spinoza in the
Netherlands, this package of ideas spread through underground channels
in France, Britain and America and played a central part in the democratic
revolutions of the 1780s and beyond:
19
20
21
22
R. Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London, 2000). Franco
Venturi also examined Benthams thought and his continental connections: The End of the Old
Regime in Europe, 17761789, vol. II (Princeton, NJ, 1984).
J.H. Burns, Jeremy Bentham: From Radical Enlightenment to Philosophical Radicalism, The
Bentham Newsletter (1984), 414. See also The Fabric of Felicity. The Legislator and the Human
Condition (London, 1968); and Happiness and Utility: Jeremy Benthams Equation, Utilitas, 17
(2005), 4661. For the distinction between High and Low Enlightenment, see R. Darnton, The
High Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literatures, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime
(Cambridge, MA, 1982).
J.H. Burns, Bentham, Brissot et la science du bonheur, in Bentham et la France, 319; Bentham,
Brissot and the Challenge of Revolution, History of European Ideas, 35 (2009), 21739.
J.I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment. Philosophy and the Making of Modernity (Oxford, 2001); Enlightenment Contested: philosophy, modernity, and the emancipation of man, 16701752 (Oxford, 2006);
Democratic Enlightenment (Oxford, 2011). See also F. Rosen, Jeremy Benthams Radicalism, in
G. Burgess and M. Festenstein, eds., English Radicalism, 15501850, (Cambridge, 2007), 217
40.
Introduction
11
By 1789, radical thought and its social and legal goals had indeed come to
form a powerful rival package logic equality, democracy, freedom of the
individual, freedom of thought and expression, and a comprehensive religious toleration that could be proclaimed as a clearly formulated package
of basic human rights. Only adherents of radical ideas embraced fundamental human rights as the veritable basis for social theory and political
constitutions and enthusiastically welcomed this aspect of the Revolution.23
In Britain, Israel believes Unitarian thinkers were most representative of

the radical tradition: Richard Price, Joseph Priestley and the Deist Thomas
Paine figure prominently in his narrative. However, this definition of radicalism fails to accommodate the specificity of Benthams position. On the
one hand, he is mentioned as a follower of Helvetius and among radicals
rejecting the national consensus and the loyalist chauvinism that buttressed
it, the list running Paine, Priestley, Price, Jebb, Bentham, Godwin and
Wollstonecraft. On the other, Benthams explicit rejection of all Rights
of Man doctrines and his professed admiration for Beccaria and Voltaire
bring him close to what Israel identifies as the Moderate Enlightenment,
a position entirely incompatible in his view with radicalism. As this book
shows, the extent of Benthams radicalism in politics and religion depended
strongly on the context in which particular ideas were formulated and the
audiences for which the arguments employing them were intended, but
his thought remained radical throughout.
As has been said, existing categorisations do not help us to make sense
of the specificity of Benthams Enlightenment. On the one hand, as James
Burns noted, he sought to be associated with such established figures as
DAlembert and Voltaire.24 On the other, he translated anonymously one
of Voltaires anticlerical tales and added a scatological preface of his own, an
enterprise more readily associated with Grub-Street literature. He admired
and promoted Helvetiuss materialism while refusing to publish the most
provocative of his own comments on sex and religion.25 It was through the
aristocratic patronage of Lord Lansdowne that he became involved in the
democratic movement of the French Revolution. He supported the French
revolutionaries of 1789, while consistently opposing natural rights doctrines and Declarations of Rights. Many of these apparent contradictions
can be understood if not resolved, by adopting a cross-Channel historical
23
25
24 See Note 20, above.

J. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 12.
P. Schofield, Jeremy Bentham on Taste, Sex and Religion, in X. Zhai and M. Quinn, eds.,
Benthams Theory of Law and Public Opinion (Cambridge, 2014), 90118; J.E. Crimmins, Secular
Utilitarianism. Social Science and the Critique of Religion in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford,
1990).
12
Introduction
perspective on his life and works: for Benthams position in fact mirrored
that of many of his moderate friends in France and in Britain.
Through his personal contacts, the themes he wrote on and his attention
to the diffusion of his works, Bentham provides a perfect illustration of
the cosmopolitan aspect of the European Enlightenment. In a recent book,
Britain, Ireland and Continental Europe in the Eighteenth Century, Stephen
Conway describes the circulation of persons, goods and ideas in Europe
before and during the French Revolution, presenting a case for our regarding eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland as integral parts of Europe, and
for our appreciating that this was the perspective of many contemporary
British and Irish people.26 Tellingly, he uses Benthams correspondence
which he also edited to show the diversity of a philosophers personal
contacts on the European continent. In this view, Benthams Francophilia
is taken as emblematic of the attitudes of many in the English-speaking
world. Such a reassessment of the Enlightenment as a global dynamic,
extending throughout Europe and the Atlantic world, is now well under
way.
The approach pursued in this book also relates to the vision of
eighteenth-century Europe as a space of communication and transfers.
As such, it builds on the methodology for the study of cultural transfers pioneered in France by Michel Espagne and Michael Werner, who
worked on the interactions between France and Germany. This perspective has proved fruitful for the study of Britain and France in the long
eighteenth century.27 For it is only in constructing the Enlightenment as
a complex and interrelated geographical and intellectual space that Benthams specific position within it can be understood. As this book makes
clear, the exchange of ideas did not take place only in the abstract world
of intellectual discussion, but in personal and material exchanges. Visits,
recommendations, books lent and borrowed provide clues to the understanding of the circulation of ideas. Due to the wealth of archival material
relating to Bentham, and to the editorial work conducted on the fourteen
26
27
S. Conway, Britain, Ireland, and Continental Europe in the Eighteenth Century. Similarities, Connections, Identities (Oxford, 2011), 2.
M. Werner and B. Zimmermann, Beyond Comparison: Histoire croisee and the challenge of
reflexivity, History and Theory, 45/1 (2006), 3050. For FrenchBritish transfers and more detailed
methodological presentations see C. Charle, J. Vincent and J. Winter, Anglo-French attitudes. Comparisons and transfers between English and French intellectuals since the eighteenth century (Manchester,
2007); A. Thomson, S. Burrows, E. Dziembowski and S. Audidière, eds., Cultural Transfers: France
and Britain in the long eighteenth century (Oxford, 2010). For a recent methodological synthesis see
P.Y. Saunier, Transnational History (Basingstoke, 2013).
Introduction
13
volumes of his active and passive correspondence, it is possible to recover

concrete traces, to reconstruct intellectual discussions.
By refusing to separate the production of works and the invention
of ideas from the context or contexts in which they were formulated
in this case, the French-reading world this study also contributes to
a long-running debate on the real Bentham. Throughout his life, the
philosopher actively sought an international readership for his works.
Indeed, he was fully aware of the circulation of his ideas and of the way
French and British contemporaries perceived them. In later life, he took
immense pride in the fact that his name and his writings were known
across Europe and well beyond, in Latin and North America. He occasionally sought to clarify misunderstandings which his European readers might
have about his current political ideas, but otherwise he did not oppose
the various versions and summaries of his works in circulation. Moreover, as he hoped to influence the course of politics and jurisprudence
in other countries, events abroad provided him with new subjects for
reflection.
Studying the context in which a work was written and then published
is particularly perilous in Benthams case. As this book makes abundantly
clear, his works have complex histories of writing, rewriting and editing.
In the case of the Projet manuscripts, the original material was cast into
different shapes and into different languages at different times. Among the
thousands of sheets he wrote over his lifetime, Bentham chose to publish
some anonymously, to sign others with his name or with pseudonyms or,
more frequently over the years, to entrust them to the care of editors such as
Etienne Dumont. Many more remained entirely unknown even to his close
friends. How remote was the figure that transpired in Benthams published
works from that known to his friends? How consistent were both with the
figure now recovered from the manuscripts? This problem has been stated
in canonical terms by David Lieberman:
The great labour of the past generation as centred on the publication of
the new edition of Benthams Collected Works has been to produce a more
accurate version of Benthams thought itself, freed from the corruptions
of Benthams nineteenth-century editors, popularisers and critics. Most of
the important recent treatments of Bentham thus have involved a kind of
interpretative rescue operation . . . For the intellectual historian, the result,
somewhat paradoxically, is an ever-widening gap between the historical
Bentham (meaning the figure known in the nineteenth century through
14
Introduction
the vehicles of Dumonts Traites de legislation civile et penale and John Stuart
Mills revisions) and the authenticity Bentham (meaning the figure now
recovered from the manuscripts and new editions).28
As Liebermans reference to Dumont implies, and as the pioneering studies

by Frederick Rosen have proved, the development of Benthamism as
a doctrine cannot be studied solely in a British context. In Bentham,
Byron and Greece, Rosen worked on Benthams personal involvement in
the crisis of Greek independence in the 1820s. He explained how the
use of the philosophers name and of his reputation as a liberal icon
during that decade contributed to spread Benthamism as an ideology.
As he persuasively argued, this move from ideas to ideology entailed a
significant rewriting of the doctrine, and the abandonment of many of
the most challenging aspects of Benthams constitutional thought.29 In a
recent book, Cyprian Blamires has cast light on a similar issue by studying
how Etienne Dumont created and marketed Benthamism as a doctrine
that differed from the philosophers original work.30 The French Revolution
and the Creation of Benthamism traces Dumonts intellectual background
and his involvement in French, British and Genevan politics, and thereby
throws precious light on his life and on his agenda in publishing five
multi-volume recensions of Benthams writings between 1802 and 1828.
Though my work benefited extensively from the studies conducted by
Rosen and Blamires and unavoidably covers some of the same ground, its
focus differs, as do its conclusions. One of the surprises of the circulation
and the reception of Benthams writings in France is that Dumont was
by no means the only channel through which they were known, at least
until the early 1830s. This does not mean that Dumonts work or that of
other propagandists of Benthamism should be minimised in any way,
but it makes clear that contemporaries on the continent had a much
less restricted understanding of Benthams position than might otherwise
have been expected. As this book shows, Bentham acted in many ways
28
29
30
D. Lieberman, Economy and Polity in Benthams Science of Legislation, in Economy, Polity

and Society, British Intellectual History, 17501950, S. Collini, R. Whatmore and B. Young, eds.
(Cambridge, 2000), 108.
F. Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece. Constitutionalism, Nationalism and Early Liberal Political
Thought (Oxford, 1992).
C. Blamires, The French Revolution and the Creation of Benthamism (Basingstoke, 2008). Long a
relatively unknown figure, Etienne Dumont is now receiving attention in his own right see R.
Whatmore, Etienne Dumont, the British Constitution and the French Revolution, The Historical
Journal, 50 (2007), 2347; Against War and Empire. Geneva, Britain and France in the Eighteenth
Century (New Haven, CT, 2012).
Introduction
15
as his own propagandist, never relying exclusively on his friends or selfproclaimed disciples. This active approach to the publication of his own
works and ideas was only partially successful and eventually ceased with
his death in 1832, leaving others to appropriate his legacy for subsequent
generations. The distinction between Bentham and Benthamism does
not prove very operative in his lifetime and has not been adopted here.
By casting light on the historical definition of utilitarianism in a French
context, this book also contributes to our understanding of the breaks
and continuities in French (and to a lesser extent British) politics after the
Revolution. Like his contemporaries Sieyès, Talleyrand and Lafayette, Bentham belonged to a generation born and bred under the Ancien Regime,
whose careers took off in 1789 and who remained influential until the early
1830s. In France, this continuity has long been obscured by the revolutionaries claim that new foundations for politics had been set. For that reason,
adopting Benthams lifetime as the chronological framework also adds to
our understanding of a moment in French history that is receiving more
and more scholarly attention. For only recently have historians on both
sides of the Channel paid sustained attention to the decade that followed
the Terror, during which so many of the institutions of modern France were
first established and during which political debates were markedly different
from later nineteenth-century liberalism.31 Likewise, the post-1814 Restoration has recently been described as a seminal turning point in political and
literary history and in the history of ideas, during which Liberal ideas were
truly adopted in France.32
Building on this research, this book also provides a fresh perspective on
the debates in Parisian circles from the Directory to the Restoration by
highlighting the philosophical and political consequences of the rise and
fall of Napoleon.
31
32
Recent works in English on post-revolutionary politics include M. Staum, Minervas Message.

Stabilizing the French Revolution (Montreal and Kingston, 1996); J. Livesey, Making Democracy
in the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2001); A. Jainchill, Reimagining Politics after the Terror: The Republican Origins of French Liberalism (Ithaca, NY and London, 2008). The specificity
of colonial thought in France and Britain in that period is highlighted in J. Pitts, A Turn to
Empire. The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, NJ, 2005). On the continuities in political personnel from the Ancien Regime to the Restoration, see D. Margairaz,
Francois de Neufchateau. Biographie intellectuelle (Paris, 2005); P. Serna, La Republique des girouettes (Paris, 2005). The thought of Abbe Sieyès also provides invaluable insight into the political and economic principles of that generation; see M. Sonenscher, Before the Deluge. Public
debt, inequality and the intellectual origins of the French Revolution (Princeton, NJ and Oxford,
2007).
B. Yvert, La Restauration. Les idees et les hommes (Paris, 2013).
16
Introduction
The ultimate failure of utilitarianism to be recognised within French

political ideas has in turn long served to minimise its historical role. However, as the last two parts of this book make clear, utilitarianism was known
and discussed in influential political circles and in the press. This fact
has often been obscured by those who wished to find the foundations
of French liberalism in an autochthonous tradition starting with Montesquieu. Though it is undoubtedly true that utilitarianism, be it of the
Helvetian or the Benthamite kind, gradually lost the small ground it had
gained, it is nevertheless important to understand its role in the formation
of liberal ideas in Europe. Despite the lack of significant contacts between
French Ideologues and English utilitarians, the reception of Benthamite
utilitarianism after 1802 was never distinct from the changing fortunes of
Helvetiuss ideas. Indeed, through Bentham, the legacy of Helvetius in
French politics was assessed and ultimately rejected.33 For that reason, the
debate over Benthams ideas in France casts light on the way in which
public figures in the 1820s hoped to come to terms with one of the legacies
of the former generation. As illustrated by the quote from Stendhals novel
The Charterhouse of Parma that appears at the opening of this book, the
vocabulary associated with Benthams utilitarianism was commonplace in
European political discourse. However, the fortunes of French and British
disciples of Bentham parted after 1832. With the Great Reform Act of 1832,
a small number of Philosophic radicals took their seats in Westminster.
On the other side of the Channel, Benthams admirers in Paris became
gradually more isolated after the July Revolution. Associated with the most
radical critics of the July monarchy, utilitarianism gradually lost weight
in French politics, though, to this day, it remains a powerful bugbear in
speeches and essays.
Bentham was one of the philosophers who took the cosmopolitan ideal
to its greatest lengths. In morals, the principle of the greatest happiness
of the greatest number provided a standard embracing all nations. In
jurisprudence, laying the foundations of a universal legal system, Bentham
also hoped to create the conditions for international law, a neologism
he created. Like Kant, he wished to bring about perpetual peace, but he
went much further in devising institutions that could translate this ideal
into practice and in engaging in a dialogue with his contemporaries from
33
C. Welch, Anti-Benthamism.
Introduction
17
all nations. In his lifetime, his unfailing interest in the world at large was
matched by a growing fame abroad. Far from appropriating Bentham for
France against Britain, this book highlights the importance of French and
French-language connections to the Global Bentham.34
34
For a recent contribution on that theme, see D. Armitage, Globalizing Jeremy Bentham, History
of Political Thought, 32 (2011), 6382.
part i
An Englishman in the Republic of Letters

Fils ne, après nomme Jeremy; a` quatre heures et demi, mon fils se nait.
It is in (broken) French that Jeremiah Bentham recorded the birth of his
first-born in his pocket-book in February 1748.1 For the upwardly mobile
London attorney, the mastery of French, like that of Latin and Greek, was
a central element in the genteel education required to prepare his son for a
successful legal career. For Jeremy, however, the language opened doors not
to a genteel position in the world of English law, but to the radical realm
of the French Enlightenment. Most traditional accounts of Benthams
career as a philosopher begin in 1776 with the anonymous publication of
A Fragment on Government. However, it was in the preceding decade that
his practice of the French language as a speaker, a translator and a writer
shaped his philosophy in a decisive manner. As the dominant language
of the Enlightenment, French enabled him to access philosophical and
social resources that had a life-changing impact on his thoughts and his
aspirations.
A traveller, translator, pamphleteer and epistolary correspondent, Bentham was physically and socially embedded within the intellectual networks
of a cosmopolitan Enlightenment in which French remained a vehicular
language. His own doctrine, utilitarianism, was shaped in an on-going conversation with his French counterparts. By recovering material traces of that
dialogue, this chapter casts light on the cosmopolitan roots of Benthamite
utilitarianism.
1
Son born, later named Jeremy; at half past four, my son was born. Bowring, vol. X, 5.
19
chapter 1
Reading and speaking: Bentham and the French language

Jeremiah Bentham hired a French master named La Combe when Jeremy
was aged six. The following year, he proudly remarked that his son could
converse in French.1 Visits to France followed, in 1764 with Jeremy alone,
and five years later with Jeremy, his second son Samuel and his two
stepsons.2 Jeremiah Bentham made sure that they would have the opportunity to practise French and see the sights. Very little information survives on
Jeremys first visit to Paris in 1764. He remembered the sights of Chantilly
and Versailles, where he saw Louis XVI from afar.3 Writing after Benthams
death, his disciple and biographer John Bowring summed up:
France, as a country, left an unfavourable impression on young Bentham.
The imitations of England appeared wretched; its gardens stiff and formal.
But of the French, as a nation, he was always fond: their vivacity, courtesy
and aptitude for enjoyment, responded to all the tendencies of his own
character. . . . Most of the favourable impressions he received were from the
people; but the backwardness of their agriculture, and of their domestic
civilisation, seemed strangely contrasted with the advances then made by
England.4
Bowrings statement is tinted with the prevailing notion of Frances agricultural and industrial backwardness and reveals little about the actual
1
2
Bowring, vol. X, 9.
The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. I, 17521776, T.L.S. Sprigge, ed., (CW) (London, 1968),
xxv; and Bowring, vol. X, 47. Jeremy and Samuel Bentham (born in 1757) were the only surviving
children of Jeremiah and Alicia Bentham. Alicia died in 1759, in 1766 Jeremiah married Sarah Abbott,
a widow with two sons.
Bentham reminisced in 1796: I myself beheld the unfortunate Lewis eating in public with his two
brothers at Versailles, on a Saint Lewiss Day, as usual when Saints and Lewiss reigned in France.
J. Bentham, Writings on the Poor Laws, vol. II, M. Quinn, ed., (CW) (Oxford, 2010), 240.
Bowring, vol. X, 47.
21
22
Part I An Englishman in the Republic of Letters
impressions the fourteen-year old Bentham might have gleaned.5 The general tone of these recollections is that of Benthams enduring memories
of his early readings in French, of the stores of amusement which the
language opened to [him].6
Telemachus remained one of Benthams most fondly remembered books.
Written by the moralist Fenelon for the education of the Duke of Burgundy
(Louis XIVs grandson) and published in 1699, it immediately became a best
seller in childrens educational literature. By following the adventures of
Ulysses son in search of his father across the Mediterranean, accompanied
by his tutor Mentor Minerva in disguise the reader was introduced
to morals, politics, economics, diplomacy and agriculture. As late as the
1820s, Bentham suggested it as set reading to young Tripolitan friends. He
reminisced:
When in the summer of 1754 I remember it as if it were but yesterday
. . . six years having but just passed over my head, Telemachus was the
delight, not only of my waking, but of my sleeping moments; I made a
sort of vow, however indistinct, that whenever human beings and human
feelings were concerned, the numeration table should be my guide.7
It seems surprising that Bentham should trace the principle of utility, or the
use of numeration tables to quantify and add up happiness, to the work of
Fenelon, a Catholic archbishop leaning to spiritualism. Moreover, his own
recollections of the passage in which he found ideas which seemed . . . to
border, at least, on the principle of utility are too vague and erroneous
to give any clear guidance in that matter.8 If part of Mentors teaching
was indeed to insist that a kings duty was to enhance public happiness,
by providing the best laws and the most useful maxims of government,
the path that led to it was that of virtue and self-effacement, not that of
utilitarian calculus.9
Benthams misreading was, however, typical of other eighteenth-century
opinions on the work. As the century progressed, the spiritual and moral
origins of Telemachus were pushed into the background and the more
5
6
7
8
9
F. Crouzet, Britain Ascendant. Comparative Studies in French and British Economic History (Cambridge, 1990).
The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. X, July 1820 to December 1821, S. Conway, ed., (CW)
(Oxford, 1994), 345.
The intention of the laws is that one man by his wisdom and moderation should promote the
happiness of such numbers, says Mentor. F.S. de la Mothe Fenelon, Telemachus, Son of Ulysses
(Cambridge, 1994), 60.
23
modern elements of Fenelons doctrine were regularly praised. Physiocrats,

for instance, highlighted its sound economic principles (favouring agriculture to ensure population growth, condemning luxury). Soon, through the
opinions of Montesquieu and Voltaire, Fenelons name became shorthand
for reforming ideas intended to attack the corruption of monarchy by good
laws, and to support the role of education in producing virtuous and frugal
citizens. In 1771, the Academie francaise offered a prize for the best eulogy
of Fenelon. In a speech, DAlembert praised the modernity of his political teaching: agriculture and toleration, together with the rejection of
absolutism, were the keys to the happiness of a nation.10 Benthams later
reference to Telemachus directly echoed the contemporary appropriation
of this work by French philosophers, however remote it might have been
from Fenelons original intentions. By referring to the book in the later
part of his life, he brought up a well-known reference that identified him
with a shared Enlightenment culture.
La Combe whom Bentham remembered as a free thinker also
introduced his pupil to books that would have been forbidden to him in
English, among which the works of Voltaire figured prominently.11 A list
of books the young Bentham took with him from Westminster School
to Queens College, Oxford, in the spring of 1760 is eloquent enough:
alongside Latin and Greek books, with Cicero the most prominent author
among the classics, one finds Voltaires Essay on Manners and Molières
plays.12 A few years later, as a young Oxford scholar, Bentham spent some
of his meagre allowance on the Memoires de Philippe de Commynes and the
Voyages au Levant by the botanist Tournefort.13
Benthams written French was not on a par with that of some of his
contemporaries, such as Edward Gibbon who had, unlike him, spent
some of his formative years in French-speaking Geneva.14 However, in his
youth he was confident enough to write directly in his second language. His
errors in grammar and punctuation (relating, for instance, to the gender
10
11
12
13
14
See A. Cherel, Fenelon au XVIIIe siècle en France (17151820). Son prestige, son influence (Geneva,
1970), esp. 40112 and 44565.
La Combe induced my father to give me the Lettres Juives [by Boyer dArgens] which filled my
mind with vain terrors. . . . He recommended some other works, of the propriety of reading which
my father doubted. La Combe was, as I afterwards discovered, a freethinker. Voltaires Life of Charles
XII, his General History, and his Candide were, in process of time, read by me. Bowring, vol. X, 11.
Bowring, vol. X, 36n. Bowring reproduced the list preserved in the Westminster School Archives,
1913/1/2 CC5. See Voltaire, Essai sur les murs et sur lesprit des nations, OCV 2127B (Oxford, 2009).
Correspondence (CW), vol. I, 85.
For examples of Gibbons French, see J.G.A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. I, passim.
24
of words and rules of agreement) were more than compensated by his

command of vocabulary and syntax. A good student of French, he also
proved an able tutor to his younger brother Samuel. For that purpose,
he corresponded with him in French from 1775, a habit they kept up
intermittently for a number of years. In these letters, Bentham addressed
directly the question of how, and to what purpose, French should be learnt.
The answer to the second question was obvious: Samuel needed French to
progress in his chosen profession, that of shipbuilding, but it would also
enable him, Bentham pointed out, to read Helvetius, who was to become
one of the formative influences on his own philosophy.15
Bentham insisted that French should be learnt by reading but also, and
perhaps more importantly, by speaking: speak, well or badly, it doesnt
matter: always speak, he advised Samuel.16 He was also sensitive, as these
remarks reveal, to the implicit value of discourse which is also characteristic of his approach to English terminology. In any language, what
mattered was the expression of wishes and opinions, together with a clear
understanding of the connotations of a given word or phrase.17 Learning a
language was an introduction to what he would later term the logic of the
will:
In my last I advised you to pay attention to the phrases used to express the
various volitions or sentiments one might have to express on the various
occasions of ordinary life. For instance, when one has occasion to beg
someone to do something in such or such a way. The phrases used on such
an occasion differ according to the higher or lower degree of superiority or
inferiority which one assumes for oneself (or which one wishes to be thought
to assume for oneself ) in relation to the person to whom one is speaking.18
Bentham related the length of sentences to the hierarchical position of the

utterer: the longer and more convoluted the sentence, the more the speaker
revealed the extent of his desire to avoid offence in addressing a superior.
Conversely, a superior could express his will in few words, a sure sign of
his power to constrain his interlocutor. Inferiority or superiority, Bentham
continued, were not necessarily, or at least not exclusively, determined by
social position. A beggar could address a king as an equal if he did so in the
15
16
17
18
Correspondence (CW), vol. I, 261. For Benthams debt towards Helvetius, see pp. 4245, below.
ibid., 269. Original in French.
In much later writings, Bentham distinguished between the eulogistic and dyslogistic (i.e. positive
and negative) connotations of common words. See J. Bentham, A Table of the Springs of Action, in
Deontology, together with A Table of the Springs of Action and Article on Utilitarianism, A. Goldworth,
ed. (CW) (Oxford, 1983), 1001.
Correspondence (CW), vol. I, 2745. Original in French.
25
name of something higher than the king himself: by appealing to morals

and to justice, or, in Benthams words, to the moral sanction. In that case,
the beggar would be able to threaten the king with loss of respect from his
subjects if he refused to give him alms. From grammar, Bentham moved to
metaphysico-morals, pointing to power-relations within language. This
was a distinctive mark of his utilitarian theory of language, with major
consequences for the development of his legal theory.19
It is worth noting that Bentham did not believe that languages functioned differently from one another. Despite their differences, all tongues
were united by the principles of Universal Grammar: the logical relations
underlying grammar were similar though the words and sounds in which
they were expressed were not. This made the process of expressing oneself in one language rather than another unproblematic as there were no
impassable barriers from the one to the other.20
Translating
By the time of the French Revolution, Bentham was reported to be able to
make himself understood in French, though he express[ed] himself with
difficulty for want of use.21 Indeed, in his youth, it was mostly in reading
and writing that he continued to use the language. In 1768, having taken
his degree at Oxford, he returned to London. He was called to the bar
in 1769 and soon abandoned the practice of the law for that of writing.
In the autumn of 1770, he returned to Paris on his own with no relations
and little money: his object [in travelling by water from Rouen to Paris]
was cheapness.22 Back in London, his command of French provided him
with the first opportunity of publishing his own work: his translation of
Voltaires The White Bull came out in 1774, with a long preface of his own.23
Unlike many better-connected British travellers, he does not seem to
have held any notable letters of recommendation, having, as Bowring
19
20
21
22
23
J. Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, J.H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart,
eds. (CW) (Oxford, 1996), 298300n. (Hereafter IPML).
For Benthams later work on language, see An Essay on Universal Grammar, in Chrestomathia,
M.J. Smith and W.H. Burston, eds., (CW) (Oxford, 1983), 394406; for a definition of translation,
see Logic, Bowring, vol. VIII, 244.
UC 169, f. 170. Probably a copy from a fragment of a letter from Lord Lansdowne to the duc de La
Rochefoucauld.
The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. III, January 1781 to October 1788, I.R. Christie, ed.,
(CW) (London, 1971), 3001.
The White Bull, an Oriental History. From an ancient Syriac manuscript communicated by Mr.
Voltaire, [J. Bentham, trans.], 2 vols. (London, 1774).
26
wrote, scarcely any acquaintance in Paris.24 The few names mentioned in

his letters show him brushing with the Parisian literary underworld rather
than being welcomed in the philosophers salons: his main connections
there were among British travellers (such as the Scottish painter David
Martin) and included few Frenchmen.25 Among them was Jean-Claude
Pingeron, a translator whom he had got to know through the London
publisher and bookseller Peter Elmsley.26 Bentham described him in these
words:
I have been with the person whom Elmsley recommended to me for a
Cicerone: I found him in a little nasty hole, half filled by a Bed stained with
the Blood of many a Bug, making an Index to a Treatise of Architecture he
is about publishing.27
After his return to London, Bentham supplemented the income provided

by his father by working on several translations from the French. Voltaires
tale was followed in 1777 by the first volume of Marmontels Les Incas.28
Mostly for social reasons, Benthams attitude towards translating as an
occupation was ambiguous. In recalling his contacts with professional
translators, he always emphasised the poverty they lived in. Though his
father only gave him a meagre allowance, Jeremy Bentham was not ready
to abandon his genteel status or his hopes of making a name for himself in
legal writing as opposed to paid translation work. In France as in England,
the status of translators varied greatly, from recognised talents admitted in
the best circles, such as the abbe Morellet, or Jean-Louis De Lolme, to
literati living in semi-poverty, like Pingeron and the German translator to
whom Bentham later thought of entrusting the production of a German
translation of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation,
24
25
26
27
28

Preface for the Second Edition, A Comment on the Commentaries and A Fragment on Government,
J.H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart, eds. (CW) (London, 1977), 5201 [hereafter, Fragment]. By 1770, David
Martin was already well established as a portrait painter. Lucy Dixon, Martin, David (17371797),
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford, 2004).
In addition to being a translator, Pingeron was a prolific writer and a polymath. See notice in J.
Sgard, ed., Dictionnaire des Journalistes: 16001789 (Oxford, 1999).
Correspondence (CW), vol. I, 141. Pingeron was probably at work on Francesco Milizias Vies des
architectes anciens et modernes qui se sont rendus celèbres chez les differentes nations. Traduites de
litalien & enrichies de notes historiques & critiques (Paris, 1771).
Contrary to what is stated in The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. II, 177780, T.L.S. Sprigge,
ed., (CW) (London, 1968), 16n., the volume translated by Bentham was published. Elmsleys name
appeared on the title page among other London publishers, but with no mention of the translators
name. See Marmontel, The Incas: or The Destruction of the Empire of Peru, 2 vols., (London, 1777).
Indeed, the style and contents of rare translators notes, such as on p. xvii, are very close to those of
A Fragment on Government published the year before.
27
who ended up in debtors prison.29 In his dealings with Elmsley, Bentham

learnt about current wages:
The highest price commonly given to Translators . . . is 2 guineas a sheet.
The only person in whose favour he [Elmsley] ever knew it exceeded was
Smolett [sic] and he had 3 Guineas. There is a Mrs. Griffiths who writes
plays and novels; some of the latter I believe not bad. They make her, poor
woman, translate for 25s. Some of the poor creatures they keep up in Garrots
[sic] they pay so low as 18s or even 15s.30
His Lincolns Inn friend, George Wilson, one of the main supporters
of his philosophical career in the 1770s and 1780s, believed that if the
translations were known to be his, it would be a great degradation to
[his] character . . . and injure [him] and [his] projects beyond measure.31
Bentham thus remained cautious about this aspect of his early work. His
desire to be recognised as an author rather than as a translator is revealed
in the payment he requested for the translation of Les Incas: three guineas
per sheet, the same as Smollett.
Commentaries on translation and the publishing industry are included
in his lengthy preface to The White Bull. Bentham remained ambiguous
as to his authorship of the translation. Though he made no secret of it
to his close friends, he publicly disowned it on some occasions, calling
it an obscure piece of Grub-Street literature which, hitherto, neither has
had, nor, if the author will excuse me saying so, deserves to have, any
regard.32 In the preface he poured sarcasm on the other two English
translations published almost simultaneously with his own, one by the
publisher Murray and the other, serialised, in the Sentimental Magazine.
As was generally recognised by contemporaries, Benthams version was far
superior.33 In his own preface, he highlighted a string of mistakes and
infelicities in his rivals works and used scatological images to describe
the Sentimental Magazine, portrayed as a worm feeding on rubbish before
29
30
32
33
See E. de Champs, An introduction to utilitarianism. Early French translations of Benthams Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, in A. Thomson, S. Burrows and E. Dziembowski,
eds., Cultural Transfers (Oxford, 2011), 26983.
31 ibid., 21.
Correspondence (CW), vol. II, 6.
Bowring, vol. X, 83. The letter is undated and the recipient remains unidentified.
The first of the translations before us [Benthams] neither servilely copies the phrase of the original,
nor, however free, too far deviates from the sense of it. The notes are pertinent and satirical, and,
as well as the Preface, show the translator to be a man after the authors own heart. The Second (Le
Taureau Blanc) [Murrays] is not of equal merit. The Critical Review, or, Annals of Literature, 38
(Oct 1774), 2904. The article then printed extracts from the two translations: Benthams and the
serialised translation as The White Ox in The Sentimental Magazine, or General assemblage of science,
taste and entertainment (MayDecember 1774).
28
digesting and expelling it so that it could be sold to the mob. In comparing

his own work favourably to that of his rivals, Bentham expressed his opinion
on what constituted a good translation:
Fidelity, said I to myself, the most rigorous fidelity, shall be its proprium
quarto modo; that venerable simplicity which distinguishes the original,
would be destroyed: that odour of sanctity would be debased by any attempt
to bedizen it with adventitious graces. Twould have been an act of sacrilege,
and nothing less, to have smothered it like the Sabine traitress, under the
load of overwhelming ornaments.34
But fidelity was understood, as it was by many eighteenth-century translators, not in the most literal sense. One needed to be faithful to the story
and to the style of the work, but also to adapt it so that its effects on the
reader would be similar whatever the language. In the case of Voltaires
philosophical tale, this implied and even necessitated departures from the
letter of the original. Benthams appropriation of Voltaires style led him
to change cultural references for his British readers. Thus, he substituted
the Archbishop of Canterbury to Voltaires controleur general (ll. 113);
added a mention of Priestleys recent work on the properties of air (ll. 66);
paraphrased Voltaires reference to someone who had read le philosophe
Egyptien nomme Locke as someone who had read Tristram Shandy and
Locke upon Understanding (ll. 136); and turned Voltaires vins exotiques
into Champagne and Burgundy (ll. 112).35
As we have seen, Bentham did not have a theory of translation, believing
as he did that languages worked approximately in the same way and shared
the same basic substructures. However, when he mentored Samuel on the
marks of authority and deference in the French language, he also paid
attention to the necessity of picking the right words in order to create the
intended effect on the audience. This was in line with contemporary theories of translation which insisted on imitation and elegance rather than
on literal rendering. The entry Translation in Diderot and DAlemberts
Encyclopedie, attributed to Nicolas Beauzee, contrasts the more literal exercise of version to that of translation:
It seems to me that a version is more literal, more attached to the original
languages own processes, and more dependent in its methods on the technique of analytical construction. Translation is more concerned with the
substance of thoughts, more scrupulous in presenting them in a suitable
34
The White Bull, vol. I, vlvi.
35
The White Bull, vol. II, 113, 66, 136, 112.
29
form in the new language, and more dependent in its style on the turns of
phrase and idiomatic expressions of this language.36
Benthams practice of translation may have been limited in quantity but

it played a major formative role. First, it allowed a reflection on the ways
in which ideas circulated from one country to another, from the autocratic
France of Louis XV to Britain, universally recognised as the home of
political liberty and religious toleration. His comments on Marmontels Les
Incas are significant in that respect. They reveal what he considered to be the
main role of translation: allowing the circulation of ideas among nations.
In his preface, Marmontel had insisted that the missionary Bartolome de
Las Casas was to be taken as an example of the true Christian spirit in
its genuine simplicity, to be contrasted with the violence and wickedness
of the other Spanish conquistadors. Bentham explained this precaution to
English readers:
All these cautions and protestations would be idle in this free and happy
country; where, keeping within the bounds of decency, a man may deliver
what sentiments he pleases upon the topic of religion. But unhappily they
are nothing less than superfluous where the Author wrote. His Belisarius,
which is so universally admired in this country, as in his own by all but
a few narrow-minded bigots, could not escape the censure of the present
Archbishop of Paris, that implacable foe to reason and good sense.37
Though bearing universally relevant values, a text had to be accommodated

to the specific political and cultural circumstances of different nations. As
an Englishman with a wide-ranging knowledge of contemporary writings,
Bentham was well placed to play such a role in transmitting enlightened
values in Europe. As we shall see in Part II, this specific position was
especially relevant in the field of political and legal reform.
From the start, Bentham used his command of the French language to
carve a place for himself in the European space of a cosmopolitan Republic
of Letters. These early translations served to develop his connections with
London publishers and to complement the livelihood provided by his
family. They also opened a door into a radical world of philosophy, satire
and polemics.
36
37
The Encyclopedia of Diderot & dAlembert, collaborative translation project, this article trans. M.-P.
Pieretti (Ann Arbor, 2006). On translation technique in the eighteenth century, see F. Oz-Salzberger,
The Enlightenment in Translation: Regional and European Aspects, European Review of History,
13 (2006), 385409.
Les Incas, vol. I, xxiixxiii.
chapter 2
Satire and polemics
Religious satire: the English Voltaire

In publishing a 144-page preface that might as well be read afterwards1
to The White Bull, Bentham used Voltaires text as a vehicle to take his
first steps in print. Translation allowed a thorough appropriation, not only
of the ideas contained in the original text, but also and perhaps more
importantly of the themes and the style. The mixture of religious satire
and scatological metaphors justifies Benthams description of the work as
an obscure piece of Grub-Street literature, but it also reveals his enduring
interest in, and his talent for, religious satire.
In The White Bull, one of the last philosophical tales published by
Voltaire in his lifetime, the philosopher wove his critique of the Bible as the
source of the Christian religion into a pseudo-biblical tale. Set in Egypt and
supposedly translated from the Syrian, it is a complex mythological story
in which several other tales are embedded. A young princess, Amasidia,
counselled by the wise Mambres (a thinly disguised portrayal of Voltaire
himself ), is in love with Prince Nebuchadnezzar, but her father, a rival
prince, has forbidden her to utter her lovers name. She meets a beautiful
White Bull led by an old woman and feels immediately attracted to the
animal, who is in fact her lover in disguise. Believing the bull and the
old woman to have bewitched his daughter, Amasidias father ordains that
the two be sacrificed. Mambres obtains from him the postponement of
the sacrifice until a successor is found to Apis, the bull-god of Memphis
who has just died, while sending a secret message to Memphis telling
the priests that a successor has just been found in the White Bull. The
White Bull is recognised as Apis successor, which saves its life and allows
The White Bull, vol. I, ix.
30
Satire and polemics
31
Nebuchadnezzar to finally recover his human form and be reunited with

Amasidia.2
Voltaires opinions on religion were well known to his readers, having
been developed in popular works such as the Philosophical Dictionary, as
well as in a number of pamphlets.3 A professed deist, he rejected the authority of the Bible as well as its sacred origin. For his demonstration, he drew on
methods of biblical analysis developed on both sides of the Channel from
the end of the sixteenth century. Several exegetists from France and Britain
had discussed the text of the Bible in a rational light and had highlighted its
contradictions, absurdities and impossibilities. This had in turn led to more
vindications of the Bibles authority. For instance, the French literal commentary on the Bible, published in the early eighteenth century by Father
Augustin Calmet, and the English series of Discourses on the Miracles of
Our Saviour, by Thomas Woolston published in 1728, attempted to defend
the Bible against these accusations by applying new methods of exegesis:
the apparent contradictions were due to erroneous interpretations, some
episodes were to be taken as allegorical, others as prophetic.4 Christian apologists of all denominations, deists and atheists, often used similar methods:
a close linear analysis of the Biblical text, a confrontation with the growing
body of historical knowledge on the Ancient world, a philological analysis
of the existing versions, and a rational approach to mysteries and miracles
in the light of recent scientific discoveries. Voltaires biblical erudition was
immense, ranging from Christian apologists to clandestine manuscripts.
The White Bull repeated many of Voltaires arguments against the divine
origin of the Bible and its authority as a sacred text. A number of characters
in the tale were drawn from the Bible and their adventures placed on the
same level as that of mythological stories: for instance the prophet Ezekiel
2
Voltaire, Le Taureau blanc, R. Pomeau, M. H. Cotoni and C. Mervaud, eds., in uvres de 1772, vol.
I, Les uvres Complètes de Voltaire, vol. LXXIV A (Oxford, 2006). In English, The White Bull, in
Candide and other stories, R. Pearson, trans. (Oxford, 2006).
See Voltaire, Philosophical dictionary, T. Besterman, trans. and ed. (Penguin Books, 2004). A summary
of Voltaires attitude towards the Scriptures may be found in Dictionnaire general de Voltaire, R.
Trousson and J. Vercruysse, eds. (Paris, 2003), under the entry Bible, by J.-L. Seban, 12732. For
detailed analyses, see M.-H. Cotoni, Lexegèse du Nouveau Testament dans la philosophie francaise au
dix-huitième siècle (Oxford, 1985); D. Levy, Voltaire et son exegèse du Pentateuque: critique et polemique
(Oxford, 1975). On The White Bull, see H.T. Mason, A Biblical Conte Philosophique: Voltaires
Taureau Blanc, in E.T. Dubois, ed., Eighteenth-century French Studies (1968), 5569.
A. Calmet, Dictionnaire historique, critique, chronologique, geographique et litteral de la Bible (Paris,
17201); T. Woolston, Discourses on the Miracles of Our Saviour, in view of the present controversy
between infidels and apostates (London, 1728). For Voltaires sources, see the editorial introduction
by B.E. Schwarzbach, La Bible enfin expliquee, in uvres Complètes de Voltaire, vol. LXXIX A
(Oxford, 2012).
32
was shown conversing with the fictitious Mambres. The precepts of the
Bible were ridiculed by being taken literally: it was forbidden to invite
the White Bull to rest in stables for the night, for [i]t is written in
Daniel [chap. iv] That he shall eat grass, that his body shall be wet with
the dew of Heaven, and that his dwelling shall be with wild Asses.5
The tale also allowed Voltaire to mock anachronisms in the text of the
Bible (as evidence against Revelation): the old woman was shown writing
upon Egyptian paper before it was in use.6 Voltaire had also frequently
pointed out, like other exegetists, that the subsistence of all the animals on
Noahs ark was impossible: how could eight humans feed representatives
of all known species?7 Voltaire also took up the familiar theme of the
dubious morality of the conduct of Biblical characters. In the tale, a snake
entertains Princess Amasidia with
the amours of the luckless Seechem and pretty Miss Dinah, then in her sixth
year the more manly love of Booz and Ruth the loves of Judah and his
daughter-in-law Thamar those of Loth with the two pretty oeconomists
his daughters, who did not care the seed of their father should be lost the
loves of Abraham and Jacob with their hand maids those of Reuben with
their mother-in-law those of David and Bathsheba and those of the wise
King of Solomon with his seven hundred wives and concubines.8
Beneath the irony, Voltaires message was unambiguous: the moral

teaching of the Bible justified fornication and crime. Mambres concluded
with a sceptical statement: Ive reached a ripe old age and have studied
all my life, but all I can see here is a host of contradictions which I
cannot reconcile.9 These allusions were fully transparent to contemporary
readers in France and in Britain. The Westminster Magazine commented in
November 1774, on Benthams English translation: Some of the mysteries
of the Christian Religion are here placed in a very ludicrous light, to
the disgrace of the author and his translators.10 Benthams translation of
Mambres concluding remark quoted above provides a good illustration
of the nature of his appropriation of the original text:
Here I am no chicken God knows, I have been poring over the CommonPrayer Book and Wakes Catechism all my life long, and yet, devil burn me,
if there ant a thousand odds and ends in all this, more than I could set
together if I was to be hanged.11
5
8
9
10
6 ibid., 91.
7 ibid., 99101.
The White Bull, vol. II, 86.
ibid., 1314. Bentham added the precise references to the text of the Old Testament in footnotes.
This sentence is missing from Benthams translation.
11 The White Bull, vol. II, 105.
Westminster Magazine (Nov. 1774), 592.
Satire and polemics
33
Besides adding to the text, applying, as in this instance, Voltaires general

statements against revealed religion to a direct critique of the Church
of England, Bentham also inserted a number of footnotes and most
importantly presented his own satire of Biblical exegesis in the long preface
opening the translation. This penchant for satire and sarcasm is a central
feature of Benthams style in its more critical and polemical vein. The first
section of the preface adapts Voltaires arguments to contemporary English
debates.12 In the French original, the text is allegedly a Syrian manuscript
found and presented by M. de Voltaire. Placing himself in the position
of an exegetist of that original manuscript, the translator ponders over
its authenticity.13 This reversal allows him to apply to Voltaires text the
methods of Biblical exegesis that the French philosophe himself mocks in
the tale. From the start, Bentham presents the Syrian manuscript as an
inspired work, drawing an explicit parallel with the Bible. How can we
assert the authenticity of an inspired work? Bentham asks. In the absence
of any known author a hydra, slippery as an eel, a chameleon14 the
only evidence to be found for its authenticity lies within the text itself, but
inspired works such as this one are often riddled with inconsistencies.
Bentham then explains that these absurdities must be made sense of
by applying new methods of exegesis: finding out which passages are
meant to be taken literally, which ones are prophecies by anticipation,
which ones are allegories and which ones must be discarded as later
interpolations.15
In the Preface and in the footnotes attributed to a select knot of German and Dutch commentators,16 Bentham adds to Voltaires argument by
quoting British divines in favour of each of these four modes of reconciling
the Bible with the word of God. These authorities were all well-known
defenders of the orthodoxy of the Church of England: Bishop Warburton
and his friend Richard Hurd, who had vindicated the authority of the
Scriptures and the validity of the prophecies contained in the Old Testament against attacks by deists and free-thinkers; the Bishop of London
Henry Compton; Dean Humphrey Prideaux, who had used his historical and philological learning to defend the Bible against accusations of
12
13
14
The White Bull, vol. I, ixlv. The second section of the Preface is a scatological tale mixing satire of
the periodical press with an exposition of Common Law proceedings, and the third criticises the
two contemporary translations of The White Bull.
Such reversals were frequent devices among radical critics of religion: see the implicit critique of
Christianity in C. Blount, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. On the Origins of Idolatry (London,
1680). For more on that topic, see R. Porter, Enlightenment, 11920.
15 ibid., xvxvi.
16 ibid., cxliii.
The White Bull, vol. I, xiii.
34
inconsistency, and Thomas Stackhouse, a member of the lower clergy who

had written a History of the Holy Bible, from the beginning of the World
to the establishment of Christianity.17 Bentham had also evidently read in
French on Biblical topics, quoting Calmet who has already been mentioned as one of the main sources of Voltaires examples and Houtteville,
the author of La religion chretienne prouvee par les faits, alongside Pierre
Bayle.18
In Benthams wide-ranging satire, Voltaires arguments against Christianity in general and Roman Catholicism in particular are acclimatised,
as it were, to British controversies. This vein of rational critique of religious dogmas coupled with pungent sarcasm can be identified as one of
the roots of Benthams published and unpublished writings on religion.
In the 1780s, he devoted an essay, in French, to the examination of the
use of the religious sanction in legislation, which pursued the Voltairean
attack initiated in The White Bull.19 Bentham examined the power of religious motives . . . in relation to the end of Politics. What should be the
place of offences against religion in a complete body of laws? Bentham
identified two sorts of offences against religion: those which perverted the
contents of religion by giving to it a direction incompatible with human
happiness, and those which tended to diminish the strength of religious
motives.20 Religious precepts were gauged throughout according to the
standard of good utilitarian legislation: how far did they contribute to the
greatest happiness of the greatest number? Using that criterion, he condemned most of the dogmas of Christianity (Catholicism, Protestantism
and Anglicanism together) as different branches of cacotheism, or bad
religion. The passages on revealed religion as a dogma contrary to utility
are reminiscent of the early charges made in the preface to The White
Bull: the authority of an ancient book written in a dead language should
never be called upon to resist that of a rightful utilitarian sovereign, for
the authority of the Bible cannot be proven directly.21 In order to accept
a proof of the literal truth of the Bible and the religious dogmas derived
therefrom:
17
18
19
20
Thomas Stackhouse, History of the Holy Bible, from the beginning of the World to the establishment
of Christianity (London, 1737).
For these authors, see individual entries in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; C.-F. Houtteville, La Religion chretienne prouvee par les faits, avec un Discours historique et critique sur la methode
des principaux auteurs qui ont ecrit pour et contre le christianisme depuis son origine (Paris, 1740).
J. Bentham, Delits religieux, Revue detudes benthamiennes, 6 (2010) online transcript of UC 98,
ff. 64117.
21 ibid., f. 71. Original in French.
UC 98, f. 64. Original in French.
Satire and polemics
35
All the laws of interpretation, all the rules of criticism must be violated and
broken. To be able to attempt to give the appearance of truth to such an
enormous mass of errors, ones entire spirit must be imbued with falsity.22
Benthams work as a translator casts significant light on his early thought. It

allowed him direct and intimate contact with Voltaires style and arguments,
and held the promise, perhaps, of a direct introduction to the great man.
Decades later, he told John Bowring: I had not the courage to send
Voltaire a copy. He would have invited me to Ferney had I done so. In
1774, however, he had to be content with a spoof letter of thanks written
in elegant French by his friend John Lind.23
John Lind a European polemicist

John Lind was Benthams elder by several years. They had met at Oxford
in 1760 at Jeremiah Benthams request. Their acquaintance was renewed
in London in 1772 and they became close friends. Their collaboration
in 17746 brought Benthams early writings to a new level and served to
open prospects both in Britain and in Eastern Europe. After graduating
from Oxford, John Lind had been attached to John Murray24 during his
embassy to Constantinople and had gone from there to Poland, where
he had spent several years in the service of King Stanislaus Poniatowski.25
However, in 1772, his patron lost all political prerogatives when the
country was divided between the Eastern powers (Prussia, Austria and
Russia). Immediately after the partition, Lind left Warsaw to lobby
Western European nations in favour of the Polish cause: in London, he
was, as Bentham later explained, the unofficial minister and more than
the plenipotentiary of the King of Poland.26
Linds pamphleteering against the partition took different forms. First,
in the Letters concerning the present state of Poland, he attacked it as a crime
against the right of nations and jus gentium.27 Alongside this signed work he
was also, in all probability, the principal author of the anonymous satirical
play entitled The Polish partition in seven dramatick dialogues, that showed
22
23
24
25
26
27
ibid., ff. 106, 107. Original in French.

Bowring, vol. X, 83; and Correspondence (CW), vol. I, 18990.
John Murray (17141775), diplomat, British ambassador to Constantinople from 1766 to 1775.
W.P. Courtney, Lind, John (17371781), rev. M.E. Clayton, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography;
F. Venturi, The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 176ff.
J. Lind, Letters concerning the present state of Poland (London, 1773). Two editions were published
in 1773, the second augmented. References are to the second edition.
36
continental sovereigns sacrificing Poland to satisfy their lust for power.28

In the midst of a Europe-wide controversy on international affairs, the
work was almost immediately translated into French, Polish, Italian and
Dutch.29
The purpose of the Letters was to expose the unjustifiable ways in which
Frederick II of Prussia and the Empress Catherine II had ruthlessly decided
to share Poland between them, breaking through every law of nations and
of natural equity.30 Whereas in that work, the arguments were mostly
of a legal and moral nature and were addressed to an educated political
audience, the highly satirical Seven Dialogues proceeded along different
lines. The author stressed the contradictions between the public support
which Frederick and Catherine had given to enlightened ideas, and their
realpolitik. For that purpose, Lind caricatured the philosophes, showing that
their teaching justified every breach of moral and political principles. In
one of the dialogues, the King of Prussia attempted to defend the partition
in the following terms:
I have said already that our enterprise [carving up Poland] is of a nature
entirely new; but as it is highly advantageous to us all, and as utility with
me is the standard of morality, I am fully satisfied with what we are soon
to execute. I own, indeed, that according to the old notions, our convention
is unjust, violent, barbarous and abominable . . . but when I take a dose of
the new philosophy, from the prescriptions of David H E, Helvetius, or
Diderot, the spasm passes.31
While Linds provocations illustrate his familiarity with the codes and
debates of a cosmopolitan enlightenment and his polemical objectives,
they do not necessarily reveal a sustained philosophical position against
utilitarianism. In any case, they did not prevent increasing familiarity with
Bentham. Through Linds sisters, Bentham met the young Polly Dunkley,
whom he briefly hoped to marry. When his fathers opposition to the
marriage and his subsequent withdrawal of his allowance forced Jeremy to
consider writing as a source of income, Linds experience in that line seemed
invaluable. Linds pension from his Polish patrons was insufficient and he
28
29
30
Pansmouzer, G. [J. Lind], The Polish partition in seven dramatick dialogues: Or, Conversation pieces,
between remarkable personages, published from the mouths and actions of the interlocutors (London,
1773) (hereafter Seven Dialogues). See also note 38, p. 38, below. In several catalogues, the work is
erroneously attributed to the Unitarian divine Theophilius Lindsey (17231808). For Linds probable
authorship, see D. Horn, British Public Opinion and the First Partition of Poland (Edinburgh,
London, 1945), 29 and note.
F. Venturi, The End of the Old Regime in Europe, vol. II, 90911.
31 Seven Dialogues, 1112.
J. Lind, Letters, 174.
Satire and polemics
37
had a family to support. In the autumn of 1774, he drafted a critique of

Blackstones Commentaries on the Laws of England, which were universally
praised as the major legal synthesis of the period. Linds aim was clearly
polemical, as an early version of his pamphlet testifies. Almost immediately,
Bentham was recruited to this venture, taking up Linds line of criticism
but developing it considerably. The outcome was the publication in 1776
of A Fragment on Government.32
In the meantime, Lind and Bentham collaborated in a campaign
intended to win the support of the prime minister, Lord North, by providing arguments in favour of his position following American resistance
to the Tea Act of 1773. The Remarks on the Principal Acts of the Thirteenth
Parliament of Great Britain, signed by the author of Letters Concerning the
Present State of Poland, was published at the end of 1775. In it, Lind intended
to defend the full rights of the Westminster Parliament in American affairs
a topic that had aroused much indignation after Boston harbour was
shut down. Benthams part, as he later explained, was to contribute to the
arguments put forward in the first section of the work, in which the claim
that there should be no taxation without representation was attacked.33
Linds campaign on behalf of Lord North continued in the press with the
publication in the spring of 1776 of three letters signed Attilius in The
Gazetteer.34 Attilius attacked Dr Price, one of the earliest British supporters of the Americans republican claims. Price had famously defined liberty
as self-government to vindicate the claims of the American colonists. Borrowing from Bentham a purely negative definition of liberty as absence of
coercion, Lind argued in favour of the ministry. The immediate effect was
to bring the author to Lord Norths notice. When the letters were published in book form, Bentham remarked to his brother that Linds affairs
begin to wear a favourable aspect.35 Indeed, the ministry immediately
commissioned a third work from Lind to answer the Declaration of Independence. An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress came out
in September.36 Though Lind did not get any official position, an annual
32
33
34
35
36
Fragment (CW), vol. I, 2047.

The foundation [of the book] he had from me: it constitutes the first section of the work. Fragment,
520. For details on their collaboration, see H.L.A. Hart, The United States of America, Essays on
Bentham: Studies in Jurisprudence and Political Theory (Oxford, 1982), 568.
The Gazetteer, 2 March9 April 1776.
Correspondence (CW), vol. I, 334. The letters were published as J. Lind, Three Letters to Dr Price,
containing Remarks on his Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty (London, 1776).
J. Lind, An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress (London, 1776) (hereafter Answer).
This work also contained passages entirely drafted by Bentham: see Correspondence (CW), vol. I,
3414.
38
pension of 50 slightly improved his finances. Bentham was fully involved

in the paper war waged by Lind on behalf of the ministry, defending the
author of the Three Letters to Dr Price in a series of letters signed Hermes
published in July 1776 in The Gazetteer.37
As Linds fortunes rose in Britain, his reputation also spread in France:
the partition of Poland and the controversy following resistance to the
Tea Acts of 1773 were closely watched in official French circles, because
of their implications for the balance of power. The Letters on the State of
Poland were translated almost immediately into French, as were the Seven
Dialogues.38 The defence of Poland offered support to the official position
of the French Ministry, while the attack on the philosophes as accomplices
to the partition directly echoed the political line of French ministers. The
two works were probably translated on behalf of Rayneval, a high-placed
official in the French Ministry of the Interior.39 This association with the
anti-philosophe party in a French context explains why Bentham happened
to meet one of their most polemical representatives at Linds in 1776
the lawyer Linguet, Voltaires avowed enemy. Bentham described their
conversation to his brother in these words:
Linguet means to take up his abode in this country: being obliged to
sexpatrier [to leave his country] on account of some tracasseries [troubles]
he has had with the Parliaments. He was concerned for that great rascal, as
he is thought to be here at least, the Duc dAiguillon. I asked him about
Marmontel he knew nothing of him DAlembert he was his mortal
enemy. Helvetius he was a good sort of man enough a well meaning
man but DAlembert with all his pretensions to Philosophy etc. was the
merest intriguant [schemer] that ever lived. Linguet is a professed advocate
(so at least I have been told) in his books for despotism and domestic Slavery.
You might imagine I have no great envie to be very intimate with him. But
I shall probably find means to make him of use to me in two or three
particulars. I mean by giving me information in two or three points.40
Thanks to Linds continental connections, Bentham had access to a literary

underworld, or demi-monde, in which familiarity with published writers
37
38
39
40
The Gazetteer, 26 July and 1 August 1776. Correspondence (CW), vol. I, 336n.
See also note 27, p. 36; [J. Lind], Les droits des trois puissances alliees sur plusieurs provinces de la
Republique de Pologne (Paris, 1773); Pansmouzer, G. [J. Lind] Le partage de la Pologne en sept dialogues
en forme de drame (London, no date).
See M. Belissa, Les Lumières, le premier partage de la Pologne, et le système politique de lEurope,
Annales historiques de la Revolution francaise, 356 (2009), 5792. Bentham later met Rayneval on
behalf of Lord Lansdowne in Paris in 1785. See Correspondence (CW), vol. III, 340.
Satire and polemics
39
was expressed through gossip or flattery and in which the patronage of

influential political figures was required. In the passage quoted above,
Benthams concluding comment on Linguets potential usefulness reminds
us that he was keenly aware of the various routes open to literary fame and
patronage. There is not necessarily any opposition between his own sincere
admiration for Voltaire and DAlembert and his friendship with Lind, and
the anti-Enlightenment rhetoric the latter sometimes resorted to.
In many ways, Lind was emblematic of the cosmopolitan world of writers
and literati which Bentham frequented in the first decades of his life. Linds
connections ensured him membership, first of scientific societies such as the
Society of Arts and soon after of the Royal Society. An acquaintance with
Lord Mansfield, regular invitations to Lord Norths home and contacts
with Governor Johnstone (then one of the British Commissioners to the
American Congress) followed. Linds success was however only temporary,
and his death in 1781 left his sisters in relative poverty.41
The reciprocal porosity between Benthams occasional pamphleteering
with Lind on the one hand, and his more learned works on the other, has
long been stressed by commentators.42 As we shall see in the next chapter,
by 1773, his own system was already in place: he had established utility as
the foundation of morals and legislation and rejected the authority of habit
and natural law. Linds arguments sometimes conflicted directly with these
postulates. Lind was, however, no philosopher, but a professional pamphleteer whose choice of arguments was entirely subordinate to political
and polemical goals.43
Benthams translations and his early links with Lind enable us to place
him more precisely within the Republic of Letters and to delineate his
ambitions as a writer and a philosopher. Through Lind, he had access to
a world of patronage and relative literary fame that held the promise of
41
42
43
Through Lind, Bentham offered to accompany Johnstone to America in the place of Adam Ferguson, but did not receive a reply: see Correspondence (CW), vol. II, 94, 104. Bentham later intervened
to have Linds pension secured to his sisters: see The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. VI,
January 1798 to December 1801, J.R. Dinwiddy, ed., (CW) (Oxford, 1984), 370.
See especially H.L.A. Hart, The United States of America, D. Armitage, Globalizing Jeremy
Bentham and P. Rudan, Securing the Future. Jeremy Benthams A Fragment on Government and
the American Revolution, History of Political Thought, 34/3 (2013), 476506.
This accounts for a number of inconsistencies: in Letters, Lind had appealed to natural law as the
only standard in international relations but in his later works, in which Bentham had a hand, he
ridiculed the appeal of the American colonists to natural rights. The terms of natural and inherent
rights, when applied to men in [the state of civil society], are to my understanding perfectly
unintelligible. J. Lind, Remarks on the Principal Acts of the Thirteenth Parliament of Great Britain
(London, 1775), 191.
40
significant connections in both London and Paris. Though all published

anonymously, these writings of the 1770s played an important role in the
construction of Benthams ideas and in establishing his status as an author.
They also show that his ambitions were rooted from the start within a
European literary space.
chapter 3
Defining utilitarianism: private

connections and correspondence
So by 1776 Bentham had already published a number of works anonymously: his translations from Voltaire and Marmontel, the pamphlets coauthored with Lind, and most importantly A Fragment on Government,
which opened with an impassioned paean to the enlightened age and
through which he hoped at once to make a reputation as a promising writer
on legal reform and to publicise the rudiments of his system.[D]iscovery
and improvement in the natural world would be followed by reformation in
the moral, if the consequences of this fundamental axiom, it is the greatest
happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong were
truly developed.1
A Fragment on Government has deservedly received considerable attention as the first statement in print of the utilitarian doctrine. The wideranging critique of William Blackstones Commentaries on the Laws of
England that it contains has served to root Bentham firmly within the
common law tradition,2 but this focus on constitutional debates with
Blackstone, the leading English legal writer of the day, was certainly not
contradictory with Benthams European outlook in the 1770s.
In 1776 Bentham envisaged sending A Fragment to some French
contemporaries: Voltaire, DAlembert and Morellet.3 Only two years later,
once he had published his first signed work, A View of the Hard-Labour
Bill, did he in fact send printed volumes to France: to DAlembert and
Morellet, as previously planned, and to Chastellux.4 Voltaires death that
same year put an end to Benthams hopes of being introduced to him.
1
2
3
4
Fragment (CW), 393. Emphasis in original.

See G.J. Postema, Bentham and the Common Law Tradition.
J. Bentham, View of the Hard-Labour Bill; being an abstract of a pamphlet intituled Draught of a bill,
to punish by imprisonment and hard labour, certain offenders; and to establish proper places for their
reception. Interspersed with observations relative to the subject of the above draught in particular, and to
jurisprudence in general (London, 1778).
41
42
These letters some of which were sent while others remained drafts
filed in Benthams papers allow us to understand the terms in which
he intended to present his thought to his French contemporaries. They
highlight the common references they shared and cast light on Benthams
early ambitions to become part of a Republic of Letters whose citizens
strove to bring their nations closer to shared enlightened ideals.
Helvetius and his circle: the therapeutics of government

In 1776, a few months after the publication of A Fragment, Bentham drafted
a letter to Voltaire (which was never sent) in which he presented his work
as organised around the principle of utility. His ambition, he explained,
was not only to trace out a new model for the laws, for Britain, but
also keeping those of other countries all along in view. The cosmopolitan
dimension of his ambitions was thus stated at the outset. He then presented
the main lines of his system by quoting his philosophical sources: I have
built solely on the foundation of utility, laid as it is by Helvetius. Beccaria
has been lucerna pedibus, or if you please manibus, meis (a lantern unto
my feet, or if you please, unto my hand).5 This network of cross-references
served a double purpose: to place his thought within a specific European
intellectual context, and to make clear what he considered his specific
contribution. In fact, as he noted in a manuscript earlier in the decade,
[i]n the principle [of utility] itself there is nothing new: no more can there
be in any system founded on that principle, except the degree of consistency
with which it is . . . adhered to. Nevertheless we shall hardly have travelled
far under this guidance without coming to conclusions, which to most men
will appear new, and to some men, notwithstanding every thing that can
be said . . . will probably appear paradoxical and insupportable. For of all
qualities in mens conduct and opinions, perhaps the rarest is consistency.6
Helvetius was certainly the most important of all influences over Benthams
formative years. In the late 1810s, Bentham recalled his admiration for the
French philosopher and stressed how eager he had been to visit him in
person:
When I was about 22 or 23 or 24, being then already at the Bar, so struck
was I by the principle of Utility, as developed and supplied in an imperfect
manner, and in some small degree by Helvetius in his book De lEsprit,
5
6
Correspondence (CW), vol. I, 3678, quoting from Psalm 119, 105.

UC 69, f. 38. See Preparatory Principles Inseranda. Early Writings on Politics and Jurisprudence, D.
Long, ed. (forthcoming).
Defining utilitarianism
43
that, being at that time destitute of connection capable of introducing me

to any advantage, I used to keep feeding my imagination with a project for
presenting myself to him at Paris, with a petition to be employed as Clerk,
as though it were but as attendant at Table, so as I had but a felicity of being
an eye- and ear-witness of what passed there. My father being then alive and
his yoke heavy, I could not find the means, but could I but have had an
assurance of being received in the capacity of Clerk, I should certainly have
gone.7
The most significant landmark in the genealogy of utility, as Bentham

repeatedly acknowledged, was Helvetiuss De lEsprit (Essays on the Mind
and its Several Faculties)8 which had appeared in 1758, and in which
Helvetius established a conceptual vocabulary that was to remain in use
throughout the following decades. In this work, he stated the conjoined
ideas that happiness could be calculated by taking into account pleasures
and pains, and that happiness was one of the objects of sound morality
and a principle of government. He defined happiness as those measures
which appear to him to be the best calculated to promote his interest, his
disposition, his passion and interest as whatever may procure us pleasure
or exempt us from pain.9 These pleasures and pains were in turn quantifiable. The use of the vocabulary of public utility underlined the propriety
of taking into account these principles, and deriving from them the rules
of legislation.10 This method paved the way for a wide-ranging programme
of reforms then developed in the posthumously published De lHomme
(A Treatise on Man).11 A close reading of On Mind and of A Treatise on
Man shows the extent of Benthams debt: a sensualist account of the origins
of ideas, the quantification of pleasures and pains, the idea that interest is
a descriptive as well as a normative principle, the premise that each individual is the best judge of his or her interest, the insistence on defining
the words of morals and politics and a belief that the art of legislation can
7
8
9
10
11
The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. IX, January 1817 to June 1820, ed. S. Conway, (CW)
(Oxford, 1989), 311.
C.A. Helvetius, De lEsprit: or Essays on the Mind and its Several Faculties (London, 1759), (hereafter
On Mind).
ibid., 20, 24.
For recent assessments of Helvetiuss system in English, see D. Wootton, Helvetius: From Radical
Enlightenment to Revolution, Political Theory, 28 (2000), 30736; M. Sonenscher, Before the
Deluge. Public debt, inequality and the intellectual origins of the French Revolution (Princeton, 2007),
22681.
C.A. Helvetius, A Treatise on Man, his intellectual faculties and his education, 2 vols. (London,
1777).
44
shape individual and collective interests, are all found therein.12 As well as
adopting all these ideas, Benthams early writings are dotted with allusions
to Helvetiuss works which could not have escaped his contemporaries.13
In Helvetius, Bentham found more than the principle of utility and
the idea that philosophers had a role to play in the reform of legislation to
bring about public happiness. Helvetius also occupied a specific place in the
Republic of Letters: an immensely wealthy tax farmer, the direct beneficiary
of what would come to be identified as the most blatant abuses of the Ancien
Regime, he was also one of the most radical advocates of legislative and
political reform. His materialist theses had been openly condemned on the
publication of De lEsprit, but the commotion had been political too.14 As
Sophie Audidière has pointed out, Benthams admiration for Helvetius and
his constant references to him must be taken as a declaration of intention
in the context of debates raging in the Republic of Letters: Bentham had a
very clear understanding of the organisation of knowledge in France and of
the persons who shared his own reformist view of the relationship between
power and philosophy and were likely to uphold him.15
Helvetius had died in December 1771, making it impossible for his
English admirer to meet him in person though he entreated his brother
to [a]sk whether this benefactor of mankind is buried somewhere in Paris;
if that is so, go there on a pilgrimage and kiss his tomb.16
In 1778, on the publication of A View of the Hard-Labour Bill, Bentham
attempted to make contact with one of Helvetiuss most famous friends,
the Chevalier de Chastellux. Bentham was well aware of their common
admiration for Helvetius and chose to address him as one disciple to
another.17 In his Essay on Public Happiness [De la Felicite Publique], Chastellux had built on Montesquieu and Helvetius to reiterate the claim that it
is very certain that legislation and morals may render men either more, or
12
13
14
15
16
17
See F. Rosen, Helvetius, the Scottish Enlightenment, and Benthams idea of utility, in Classical
Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill (London, 2003), 8296; E. Pacaud, Sur lune des sources de
lutilitarisme benthamien: la theorie de lutilite de Claude Adrien Helvetius, in M. Bozzo-Rey and
E. Dardenne, eds., Deux siècles dutilitarisme (Rennes, 2011), 4152.
See E. de Champs, Marcel, the dancing-master. A note on the closing lines of An Introduction to
the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Utilitas, 26/1 (2014), 1203.
D. Smith, Helvetius. A Study in Persecution (Oxford, 1965); S. Audidière, J.-C. Bourdin, J.-M.
Lardic, F. Markovits and Y.-C. Zarka, eds., Materialistes francais du XVIIIe siècle. La Mettrie,
Helvetius, dHolbach (Paris, 2006), 103247.
S. Audidière, La correspondance sans suite de Bentham et Chastellux, la thèse de la felicite publique,
du revenu net au calcul felicitaire, in Bentham et la France, 22.
Correspondence (CW), vol. I, 261. Original in French.
Correspondence (CW), vol. II, 1201. Chastellux had written the anonymous Eloge de M. Helvetius
of 1774.
45
less happy.18 To his French correspondents, Bentham stressed likewise the

practical purposes to which his work tended, the reform of Jurisprudence,
while stressing the fact that his proposals were based on systematic philosophical enquiry, a system whose construction will be the object of [his]
life.19
Francois de Chastellux replied with a long letter in August 1778. Accepting Benthams declaration of mutual admiration and friendship, he pointed
out that they were both engaged in what may be called the therapeutics of
government, which he contrasted to political hygiene.20 What Chastellux
stressed was that their aims and methods were similar: as philosophers,
they had a responsibility for curing the body politic, not merely for maintaining existing systems. Benthams interest in Morellets work, especially
the protracted Dictionnaire de Commerce, betrayed similar interests.21 To
Voltaire, however, Bentham explained that despite the unmistakably Helvetian character of his thought, his system was spun out of [his] own brain,
neither borrowed nor pilferd.22 As the opening lines of A Fragment made
clear, Bentham believed that Helvetius had not gone far enough in applying the principle of utility systematically, nor in deriving from it the full
extent of desirable reforms. For this was only possible with a thorough
epistemological reflection.
DAlembert: the dynamics of fictions

The epistemological foundations of Benthams utilitarianism were set out
only in fragments or in allusions in his early published writings, but they
were explained at length in several letters to DAlembert. Before becoming
known from the early 1750s as the co-editor with Diderot of the Encyclopedie, DAlemberts reputation rested primarily on his work in mathematics and physics. A fellow of the French Academie des Sciences, his
early research on integral calculus was among the most significant contributions to the science and brought him into direct competition with
the Swiss Leonard Euler. This mathematical knowledge was put to direct
use in astronomy and physics, as for instance in the Traite de dynamique,
18
19
20
21
22
F.-J. de Chastellux, De la Felicite publique, ou Considerations sur le sort des hommes dans les differentes
epoques de lhistoire (Paris, 1989). Quoted in Audidière, La correspondance sans suite de Bentham
et Chastellux, 30.
Correspondence (CW), vol. II, 116. Original in French.
ibid., 13941. Original in French. My emphasis.
Morellet did not acknowledge Benthams letter, though they were later to become personally
acquainted (see below, Part III, pp. 6768).
Correspondence (CW), vol. I, 367; see also vol. II, 117.
46
which Bentham advised his brother to procure.23 After 1750, DAlemberts

work on the Encyclopedie and several essays, published in the periodically
re-edited and augmented Melanges de litterature, dhistoire et de philosophie,
established his credentials as one of the leading minds of the day. Institutionally and socially, he was at the heart of the scientific networks of
Enlightenment Europe and played a leading part in the major advances of
the period.24 For all these reasons, Bentham consistently admired him and
wrote to him in the spring of 1778. He stressed his debt in emphatic terms:
O Master! You and [Helvetius] have first put me on the path which I believe
to be that of truth; you have awoken me from the slumber in which the
most ancient of our universities had buried five of the most precious years
of my life. If some of the ideas that my mind is developing appear to be of
any use, these are the fruits born from the seeds your lessons planted in it.
From Helvetius I hold a torch that I hope to take one day into the narrowest
paths of politics and perhaps of morals. From you I hold the thread to the
labyrinth of human knowledge.25
In his brief reply, DAlembert explicitly encouraged the young Englishman

to persevere in that direction, writing that [i]t is good at least that some
Philosophes such as you should prepare [this precious change] by their
works,26 but he was also noncommittal as to the extent of his personal
support. From Benthams point of view, this exchange of letters remained
disappointing. This is also true for the scholar, especially considering the
numerous grounds there might have been for a sustained philosophical
discussion between the two authors. Of special notice is the fact that
Bentham chose to distinguish his debt to DAlembert from that which he
owed to Helvetius: DAlembert had given him the tools for unravelling the
thread to the labyrinth of human knowledge. The use of this metaphor
points to a specific part of Benthams epistemology. As he later wrote,
DAlembert had been the first to bring to view . . . the distinction between
names of real entities and names of fictitious entities.27 True, this later
23
24
25
26
27

For the historical elements on DAlembert in this section, see the editorial introduction by Christian
Gilain to J. Le Rond DAlembert, uvres complètes. Serie I. Traites et memoires mathematiques,
17361756. Volume 4a. Textes de mathematiques pures (Paris, 2007), xiiicxvii. DAlemberts major
contribution to integral calculus is now being rediscovered with the publication of his uvres
complètes. For a discussion in English see T.L. Hankins, Jean DAlembert. Science and the Enlightenment (Oxford, 1990).
Correspondence (CW), vol. II, 117. Original in French.
ibid., 11518 and 1212. DAlemberts answer is at 1356. Originals in French.
Chrestomathia (CW), 257, 273n. Bentham often described the theory of real and fictitious entities
as the clew to the labyrinth. See R. Harrison, Bentham (London, 1983), 34. My emphasis.
47
reminiscence was in part erroneous, for Bentham failed to find the relevant
passage in his copy of the Melanges, but the association of DAlembert with
fictions was anything but irrelevant.
In April 1776, the Englishman had drafted another long letter to the
academician, one that remained unfinished and unsent.28 The purpose of
that earlier draft was to engage in a philosophical conversation, and to
provide a very general sketch . . . of that which must constitute the matter
of my works.29 In fact, it is one of the most complete early statements of
how the analysis of action and the distinction between real and fictitious
entities relate to the reform of jurisprudence a connection that had
merely been sketched in a footnote to A Fragment on Government, and that
was to be fully worked out forty years later. On a more concrete level, it also
proves that Benthams vocabulary of real and fictitious entities, building
on a long scholastic tradition, was also clarified in imagined conversations
with Locke and DAlembert.30
In the draft letter, Bentham began by stating his ambition to work for the
reform of Jurisprudence and then set out to explain how his method was
based on a rigorous study of actions, so that the legislator could calculate
their effects and work out the force of motives as well as that of legal
penalties. Actions, the primary material used by the legislator in applying
sanctions, were to be understood as movement of matter. Bentham
summed up: Thus, after Descartes, I reduce everything to matter and
movement. Matter and movement are, in my opinion, all that exist. Quality,
properly speaking, does not exist.31 The distinction between existence and
non-existence was the main analytical division used by Bentham at several
key points in his analysis, but before settling for the distinction between
real and fictitious entities, he used several alternative distinctions. The
first was borrowed from Lockes method of definition, which resolved
the fundamental abstract words of politics and jurisprudence into an
assemblage of simple ideas.32 Locke had further divided complex ideas
28
29
30
31
Bentham wrote to Samuel on 17 April: It is possible I may send a copy of [the Fragment] or two
abroad 1 to dAlembert, and one perhaps to Morellet who you do not know. In this view I am
scribbling some French letters. The draft letter to DAlembert is at UC 169, ff. 5266.
On Benthams distinction between real and fictitious entities, see the bilingual edition J. Bentham,
De lontologie / Of Ontology, P. Schofield, J.-P. Clero and C. Laval, eds. (Paris, 1997). Opposing
real entities to fictitious ones has a long genesis in Western epistemological thought. See E. de
Champs, The Eighteenth-century Sources of Benthams Theory of Fictions, Journal of Bentham
Studies, 2 (1999). Benthams appropriation of scholastic terms is pointed out by James Murphy, The
Philosophy of Customary Law (Oxford, 2014), pp. 5989.
48
into Modes, Substances and Relations33 but to Bentham this served only
to highlight new problems: if relations, such as quality were undoubtedly
imaginary entities (des etres imaginaires), could modes be said to exist
or not?34
Benthams choice of words in French and in English shows him to be
familiar with contemporary French discussions of Lockean epistemology.
He had read Condillac, whose Traite des sensations published in 1754 had
applied and extended Lockes empiricism and popularised it in France.35
DAlembert himself discussed the topic directly in the successive editions
of the Elements de Philosophie. In 1776, Bentham first called entities objets
before settling for etres, and distinguishing them into etres reels and etres
fictifs. This was precisely the phrase that DAlembert had used in the
Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedie in which the academician had
named real beings (etres reels) the immediate and direct objects of our
sensations. Moreover, he had singled out the knowledge of real beings as
the principal field open for scientific enquiry, one to which mathematical
knowledge was a necessary, if subordinate, tool:
These beings, which are immediately relative to our needs, are also those
which it is most important for us to study. Mathematical abstractions help
us in gaining this knowledge, but they are useful only insofar as we do not
limit ourselves to them.36
Not surprisingly in a letter intended for the author of the Preliminary

Discourse Encyclopedie, Bentham spent considerable time explaining his
principles of arrangement and nomenclature, or map of the system of
human knowledge (système figure).37 Linnean nomenclature had served to
arrange diverse objects in relation to one another by showing their logical
relations. In the same way, a rigorous classification of actions was a necessary condition for establishing jurisprudence on solid foundations. The
comparison between natural sciences and jurisprudence also revealed the
33
34
35
36
37
J. Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding (first published in 1689) (hereafter Essay), P.H.
Nidditch, ed. (Oxford, 1975), Bk. II, Ch. XII, 3, 164.
First, Bentham doubted their existence (UC 169, f. 55), then he called them real entities (UC 169,
f. 58).
Chrestomathia (CW), 261.
Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot and DAlembert, R. Schwab, trans. and ed.
(Chicago, 1995), 21. The connection between Benthams epistemological theory and his early work
on mathematics is mentioned by Schofield, Utility and Democracy, 79. Its complex links with
contemporary advances in infinitesimal calculus and probabilities are examined in J.-P. Cleros
preface to De lontologie / Of Ontology, 2165.
The map inserted in the Encyclopedie was drawn up by Diderot. Bentham took up the phrase
système figure to present his own logical tree, UC 169, f. 60.
49
importance of distinguishing between real and fictitious entities: whereas

the objects classified by Linnaeus were all of them real entities, those which
jurisprudence had to work with were fictitious ones, which had arisen not
through observation, but through custom.38 The object of the legislator
was, therefore, to cast a critical eye on existing nomenclature and relate fictions such as rights and conditions to real entities. An analysis of actions
was a prerequisite for any logical organisation of the laws.
The choice of DAlembert as the recipient of Benthams early systematic
presentation of his epistemological theory made perfect sense in philosophical as well as in institutional terms. One can only regret that the letter
eventually sent did not do justice to the numerous similarities between the
approaches and methods of the two philosophers. As in the case of utility,
so in the case of real and fictitious entities, Benthams references reveal a
complex network of inspiration and invention.
Schwediauer and the Philosophical Dictionary

Benthams wish to play an active part in a truly European Republic of
Letters was only modestly realised by the inclusion of several extracts from
his early works in the Philosophical Dictionary published in London by
his friend Schwediauer in 1784. Bentham had met the Austrian physician
Francois-Xavier Schwediauer in London in 1778. Benthams knowledge
of the natural sciences was strong. He had been able to attend scientific
lectures despite the fact that no chemistry was officially part of his degree
in Oxford: Nathaniel Bliss had taught a course on mechanics and Thomas
Hornsby on natural philosophy. In London, he took up his readings in
chemistry and botany, two topics on which he shared long conversations
with his brother. Together, they had experimented on various kinds of airs
and Bentham had corresponded with Joseph Priestley on that subject in
1775. When Bentham and Schwediauer met in 1778, Bentham described the
Austrian physician to Samuel by highlighting both his scientific credentials
and his cosmopolitan connections:
I have had with me this morning one Schwediauer a German Physician
from Vienna recommended to me by Forster He will be of <service>
he is one of us. He has translated Fordyces Elements into German . . . he
thinks of going to Petersburgh in about a month.39
38
ibid., ff. 58, 59.
39
50
Schwediauer had discovered the origin of amber and presented his findings to the Royal Society in 1783. He was also a practising physician and
translator who specialised in rendering British scientific works into German. In 1780, he enlisted Benthams help in translating Bergmans Essay
on the Usefulness of Chemistry from German into English (the original had
been published in Swedish).40 Soon Bentham was describing the Austrian
physician as a man sent from God. What recommended him principally
to Bentham was the extent of his personal connections in European scientific circles. These included high-placed foreign scientists in London: Jan
Ingen-Housz, Daniel Solander, both fellows of the Royal Society, and also
Italian botanist Felice Fontana, together with their British counterparts
Joseph Priestley and Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society.
One introduction might lead to another: Ingen-Housz for instance was
intimate with Benjamin Franklin and Lord Shelburne. When he settled in
Edinburgh in 1784, Schwediauer continued to move in philosophical and
scientific circles, being a member of a club which accepted, in Benthams
words, nothing but Philosophers; Dr [Adam] Smith, [William] Cullen,
[Joseph] Black, Gowan.41
In 1778, Schwediauer had planned to move to St Petersburg and Bentham immediately saw the profit he could derive from this in making his
legislative work known there. Schwediauer encouraged Bentham to pursue
his work on legal reform, giving him information about recent political
developments on the Continent. More importantly, Schwediauers interest
in the sciences rested on a philosophical background akin to Benthams:
an admirer of Helvetius, he compiled in 1784 a Philosophical Dictionary
containing extracts from the writings of the most eminent philosophers
in Europe among whom Helvetius, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke and
Priestley figured prominently.42 The work also contained the first signed
extracts from Benthams Fragment on Government and from the still unpublished Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Chapters I to
V of the latter work were reproduced almost in full in the Philosophical Dictionary under articles such as Mankind Governed by Pain and Pleasure,
40
41
42
On this episode, and for examples of Schwediauers first draft amended by Bentham, see B. Linder
and W.A. Smeaton, Schwediauer, Bentham and Beddoes: Translators of Bergman and Scheele,
Annals of Science 24 (1968), 25973. In 1784, Bentham drafted a letter to the French translator of
Bergman, Guyton de Morveau. See UC 169, ff. 723. It seems to have remained unsent.
Correspondence (CW), vol. II, 184; vol. III, 294.
F.-X. Schwediauer, The Philosophical Dictionary; or, the Opinions of modern philosophers on metaphysical, moral and political subjects (Compiled from the writings of the most eminent philosophers in Europe)
(London, 1786). For details of the entries drawn from Benthams writings, see Correspondence (CW),
vol. III, 315n.
51
Sympathy and Antipathy, Standard of Right and Wrong, Sanctions, or

Sources of Pain and Pleasure and their Influence on Legislation, Value
of a Lot of Pleasure and Pain, how to be measured, and Pleasures and
Pains, values of their kinds. The articles were signed with Benthams name.
Schwediauer selected the extracts in which Benthams Helvetian inheritance
was the most obvious.
Though he wrote to Bentham that he had mentioned his name among
other Free-thinkers,43 Schwediauer was cautious not to offend with too
much provocation. On the existence of God, and on the authority of
Scriptures, he was careful to balance the more daring statements with the
arguments on both sides of the question.44 In the entries extracted from
Bentham, he omitted a footnote on the pleasures of the venereal sense and
the passage on the theological principle, in which Bentham had surmised
that appeals to Gods pleasure were neither more nor less than statements
relating to the good pleasure of the person.45
How subversive was such a position in the late 1770s and early 1780s? As
Voltaires example shows, fame and recognition did not preclude a radical
approach in religious matters. Writing from Britain, where he was not
exposed to the same level of censorship as Voltaire, Bentham pointed out
to DAlembert that religious satire still remained contentious:
One thing embarrasses me: the delicate topic of the Sanction I call Religious.
On the one hand, how can one leave untouched the source of such powerful
motives? On the other, how can one frankly present the advantages and the
inconveniences attached to the pains that derive from it? . . . Painting such
a sketch without even passing judgement on it, wouldnt that be enough to
cause outrage?46
In other words, should philosophers leave aside the religious implications

of their work for fear of persecution? This question was of course more
pressing in France than it was in Britain, though even there caution had
still to be exercised. Thus the translation of The White Bull was anonymous; Schwediauer refrained from publishing openly atheistic, or even
deist, statements. In An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Bentham himself stressed the usefulness of religion on several
occasions.47 Free-thinkers, to use Schwediauers phrase, believed that a
43
44
45
47
[A]mong other Free-thinkers, your name is most honourably mentioned. Correspondence (CW),
vol. III, 315.
F.-X. Schwediauer, Philosophical Dictionary, vol. I, Preface. See Atheism, vol. I, 508.
46 Correspondence (CW), vol. II, 117. Original in French.
IPML (CW), 47 and 31 respectively.
IPML (CW), 36, 202n.
52
critical attitude towards religion was a mark of intellectual emancipation.

To this movement Bentham fully and self-consciously belonged. This position was certainly radical, for its subversive implications were numerous.
However, it did not imply that those who held it were necessarily committed to subverting the existing social and political order. The Philosophical
Dictionary realised Benthams ambition to be integrated into a European
Enlightenment of reason and emancipation from religious prejudice, but
the limited distribution of the Dictionary was a source of disappointment.48
Conclusion
In Benthams early printed works, in his private correspondence and in his
personal contacts, his hopes of being included in a cosmopolitan Enlightenment can be traced and his readings and aspirations sketched out. Voltaire,
DAlembert and Helvetius, to whom these chapters have given a central
place as formative figures in Benthams youth, had never limited themselves
to national politics and sources. Voltaire was known as one of the most
relentless proponents of Lockean philosophy on the continent. Helvetius
was well acquainted with Mandevilles and Humes writings as well as
with Lockes Essay. DAlembert closely followed the progress of arts and
sciences throughout Europe, as the locations of his correspondents make
clear.49 One should not, therefore, oppose French roots of utilitarianism
with British ones. Bentham continued to read Locke and Hume alongside French works: these must be seen as complementary, not opposing,
influences.
Bentham did not see any incompatibility between his various pursuits;
translations, polemical pamphlets and letters were all oriented towards a
common purpose. The goal may have been identical, but Bentham was
keenly aware of the different implications of the various types of writings:
polemical pamphlets and translations remained anonymous, whereas A
View of the Hard-Labour Bill, which came out in 1778 and was intended to
have a bearing on Parliamentary debates on the fate of convicts, was not
only signed but actively promoted among contemporary British reformers
and philanthropists.
48
49
Benthams claim that the publication had taken place without his privity cannot be substantiated.
See IPML (CW), 2; and compare Correspondence (CW), vol. III, 31415. This statement probably
had more to do with a justification for publishing the volume in full in 1789.
Inventaire analytique de la correspondance de DAlembert, 17411783, I. Passeron, A.-M. Chouillet
and J.D. Candaux, eds. (Paris, 2009).
53
Benthams wish to be introduced to and included in the European

Enlightenment also allows us to delineate the contours of his radicalism.
Helvetius, Voltaire, Chastellux, DAlembert and Morellet were all established figures. They self-consciously promoted the image of philosophers
involved in social and political reform as physicians in charge of an ailing
body politic. They were all well established in the official networks of the
Enlightenment as the recipients of honours and pensions. Likewise, less
successful writers such as Lind and Schwediauer were typical of a kind of
literary underground that constantly sought the fame and financial profits
associated with successful publications, be it within academies, through
political patronage or among more informal literary circles. Neither in
France nor in Britain, it must be pointed out, was such a critical posture
incompatible with accepting the social order of the Ancien Regime, the
institutions that supported it or its hierarchy.
The foundations of Benthams utilitarianism were worked out in that
specific philosophical, linguistic and social context. In his translations,
his pamphlets and his correspondence, Bentham pursued a long-running
dialogue with three major figures of the French Enlightenment: Voltaire,
Helvetius and DAlembert. The doctrine of utility, as he pointed out
repeatedly, rested on three pillars. Firstly, the political and legislative implications of the doctrine of the greatest happiness of the greatest number
derived from Helvetius. Secondly, the irreverent rejection of established
authorities (be it in law or in religion) was inherited from Voltaires satirical vein. Thirdly, and as importantly, Benthams own theory of real and
fictitious entities, which made Benthamite utilitarianism distinctive, drew
on the epistemological reflection conducted by DAlembert in an on-going
dialogue with Locke and Condillac. Benthams principle of utility was an
idiom of the late Enlightenment. In his critique of William Blackstones,
Commentaries on the Laws of England, which took up a significant amount
of his time in the 1770s, the philosopher drew both on his expertise of
English common law and on the tools his French readings had provided
him. His preface to The White Bull is part and parcel of a wide-ranging
attack on the British legal establishment.
Benthams search for a unifying principle that would bring to fruition
the reforming impetus provided by Voltaire, Helvetius and DAlembert
could not be separated from social aspirations: recognition and patronage
were necessary to pursue this goal. In 1780, thanks to A Fragment on
Government, Bentham was finally noticed by an influential aristocrat, Lord
Shelburne. Shelburne was well known as a patron of philosophy and the
arts. Among others, he had offered patronage and protection to Richard
54
Price and Joseph Priestley. Although Bentham did not receive money or
posts from Shelburne, this relationship was extremely significant for his
career. Bentham progressively abandoned pamphlets and translations to
devote himself to the reform of legislation.50
50
On Bentham and Shelburne, see E. de Champs, Jeremy Bentham at Bowood, in N. Aston and
C. Campbell-Orr, eds., An Enlightenment Statesman in Whig Britain. Lord Shelburne in Context,
17371805 (Woodbridge, 2011), 23347.
part ii
Project for a complete body of laws

(Projet) and the reform of jurisprudence
in Europe
By the late 1770s, Benthams writing activities centred more and more
exclusively on legal reform. In 1778, he wrote to his friend John Forster
that he had embarked on a vast enterprise of law-mending sine privilegio.
He credited Helvetius for inspiring him to turn uncompromisingly to the
reform of legislation. His letter continued:
From [Helvetius] I got a standard to measure the relative importance of
the several pursuits a man might be engaged in: and the result of it was
that the way of all others in which a man might be of most service to his
fellow creatures was by making improvement in the science which I had
been engaged to study by profession. I had indeed gone but a little way in it
before I began to take more pleasure in the idea of seeing its imperfections
remedied, than in that of converting them to profit: for the defects of the
science are you know the patrimony of the profession.1
Roughly at the same time, the Frenchman Jacques Pierre Brissot de Warville
looked back on the decision that was to shape his literary career:
I abandoned the exercise of the legal profession to devote myself entirely to
important research on all social circumstances, on the abuses of different
legislations; I mostly fixed my eyes upon criminal laws.2
As plans multiplied throughout Europe for the improvement of antiquated

legal systems, legal reform was a promising career path for ambitious young
men. During his exile in London, Brissot strove to develop connections
with common-minded reformers and became acquainted with Bentham in
1
2

J.P. Brissot de Warville, Bibliothèque du legislateur, du politique, du jurisconsulte, ou Choix des meilleurs
discours, dissertations, essais, fragmens, composes sur la Legislation criminelle par les plus celèbres Ecrivains,
en francois, anglois, italien, allemand, espagnol, &c. pour parvenir a` la reforme des Loix penales dans
tous les pays: traduits & accompagnes de notes & dobservations historiques, 10 vols. (Berlin and Paris,
17825), vol. VI, 347.
55
56
Part II Project for a complete body of laws
1782. They met regularly during that period and continued to correspond
over the following decade.3
In the early 1780s, Benthams work on British legal institutions was
encouraged by Lord Shelburne, who was to become prime minister in
17823. Shelburne had admired A Fragment on Government and was one
of the first to read Benthams plan for a reform of the penal law. Directed
at first towards the critique and consolidation of English law, Benthams
early plans took on a more cosmopolitan dimension around 1783. Driven
by the wish to present his plans for legal improvement to Catherine II
of Russia, he started writing in French, drafting over five hundred folios
destined to make up a Projet dun corps de loix complet. As these chapters
show, if the change from English to French was driven at first by practical
considerations (French was one of the languages read by the Empress), it
also had a direct impact both on the nature of his reforming project and on
its contents. Unravelling the complex history of Projet allows us to place
Benthams early ambitions in the context of the movement in favour of
legal reforms that blossomed on the continent in the late Enlightenment.
3
For the early history of their acquaintance, see J.H. Burns, Bentham, Brissot et la science du
bonheur, 319.
chapter 4
The Genesis of Projet
Legal reform in Enlightenment Europe

In the letter to John Forster announcing the start of his project to reform
the law, Bentham explained that Helvetius, at the same time that he
suggested incentives, furnished [him] with instruments, for making the
attempt.1 In his Treatise on Man, Helvetius had called for philosophers
to become actively involved in legislative improvement: the topic had
been neglected so far, he argued, for two reasons. First, it met with the
indifference of the public for works of this sort and more importantly it
went against an infinity of personal interests, established abuses and plans
already adopted. Helvetius then highlighted a contradiction that lay at the
heart of the problem of legal reform. On the one hand, the aim was to
discover laws proper to render men as happy as possible. On the other,
the legislator had to find the means by which a people may be made to
pass insensibly from the state of misery they suffer, to the state of happiness
they might enjoy: reform should be as insensible, or as gradual, as possible.
These goals implied contradictory attitudes on the part of the reformer. To
reach the first,
we should have no regard to the resistance of prejudices, nor the friction of
contrary and personal interests, nor to manners, laws and customs already
established. The inquirer should act like the founder of a religious order,
who in dictating his monastic laws has no regard to the habits and prejudices
of his future subjects.2
But to reach the second, the reforming philosopher should pay close attention to the established customs of the people and devise the most imperceptible methods and tools for reform. In other words, Helvetius drew
attention to the tension between a programme of gradual reform and
1
C.A. Helvetius, A Treatise on Man, vol. II. 272.
57
58
top-down legal improvement from the hands of philosophers. Pointing

out this contradiction involved an implicit critique of Montesquieu, whose
Spirit of the Laws had set the agenda for a philosophical approach to legislation. In fact, Montesquieu had stated confidently that reforms had to take
into account the form of government, the nature of the climate and the
nature of the terrain, as well as the principles forming the general spirit,
the mores, and the manners of a nation.3 As Helvetius noted twenty years
later, this cautious approach had so far failed, for it lacked a clear focus on
the substantive content of the necessary reforms.
Between 1748, when Montesquieus work came out, and 1773, the date
of the posthumous publication of Helvetiuss Treatise on Man in French, a
number of philosophers across Europe addressed the issue of legal reform
directly. Voltaire was once again among the leading voices denouncing the
barbarity of French criminal legislation, for instance in his public defence
of Protestants wrongly accused and executed in the 1760s. In 1766, with
DAlembert, he encouraged Morellet to translate Cesare Beccarias On
Crimes and Punishments, a work that had been published in Italian two
years earlier.4
Beccaria echoed Voltaires calls for more humane forms of punishment.
Opening with the statement that laws should conduce to the greatest happiness shared among the greatest number,5 Beccaria set out to build a rationale
for penal reform explicitly drawn from the teachings of Montesquieu and
Helvetius.6 Like Montesquieu he attacked the barbarity of despotism head
on, and like Helvetius he strove to define principles that could guide
enlightened reformers. The closing sentence of his book summed up its
core principles:
In order that punishment should not be an act of violence perpetrated by one
or many upon a private citizen, it is essential that it should be public, speedy,
necessary, the minimum possible in the given circumstances, proportionate
to the crime, and determined by the law.7
3
4
5
6
C.L. de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (Cambridge, 1989). These are the
headings Montesquieu develops in Part 3 of his work, 231333.
See John Renwicks introduction to uvres de 1762 (III): Traite sur la tolerance a` loccasion de
la mort de Jean Calas, J. Renwick, ed., uvres Complètes de Voltaire, vol. LVI/c (Oxford, 2000),
ixxviii.
C. Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings (Cambridge, 1995), 7.
I set the date of my conversion to philosophy as five years ago, and I owe it to the reading of
the Persian Letters [by Montesquieu]. The second book which wrought a revolution in me was M.
Helvetius. Beccaria to Morellet, 3 January 1766, in On Crimes and Punishments, 122.
ibid., ch. 47, 113.
59
This call was heard by some European monarchs. Frederick II of Prussia had
embarked on a wide-ranging reform of the law in the 1740s. His advisor,
Cocceji, published several volumes of a new Frederician Code but the reform
was abandoned for forty years; only in 1794 were effective legal changes
implemented in Prussia. On her accession to the throne in 1762, Catherine
II of Russia picked up the legislative ambitions of her predecessor Peter the
Great and summoned a commission in charge of reforming and codifying
the imperial laws. In 1767, she wrote an Instruction containing principles
that should guide legislators.8 Heavily borrowed from Montesquieu and
Beccaria, the principles contained in the Instruction soon came to embody
the reforming objectives of the time and bore witness to the ambitions of
enlightened legislators throughout Europe.
The issue of legal reform is emblematic of the complex relationship between philosophers and monarchs. As the former soon realised,
sovereigns were far from being exclusively guided by humanitarian ideals,
for a reform of penal law could also be instrumental in consolidating central
autocratic power. The international reputation arising from the close relationships of some absolute monarchs with philosophers could also serve
that purpose. Voltaires break with Frederick in the 1750s and Diderots
with Catherine a few years later reminded the reading public of Europe
of these tensions.9 In that context, DAlembert advised Beccaria against
accepting the Empresss invitation to Russia in 1767. The changing relationship between the philosophers and monarchs were widely publicised
and led to a growing disillusionment with autocratic sovereigns within the
Republic of Letters, as the contradiction implied by the phrase enlightened
despot became obvious to many.
In the mid 1770s, however, criminal law reform received a new impetus when it was taken up by a number of learned societies who invited
contributions on that theme. In 1777, the conomical Society of Bern,
Switzerland, offered a prize for the best essay on the following topic:
The composition of a complete and finished plan of legislation, relative to
criminal cases, under these three articles or points of view: 1st, a consideration of the nature of crimes, and of the proportion to be observed in
the punishment of them. 2ndly, the nature and strength of proofs and presumptions. 3rdly, the manner of obtaining evidence by a criminal process, so
8
9
Catherine II, Instruction de Sa Majeste Imperiale Catherine II, pour la commission chargee de dresser le
projet dun nouveau code de lois (Petersburg, 1769).
On Diderots increasing defiance towards Catherine, see G. Dulac, Le discours politique de
Petersbourg, Recherches sur Diderot et sur lEncyclopedie, 1 (1986), 3258.
60

that clemency and mildness in the mode of trial and punishment may not
be incompatible with the speedy and exemplary chastisement of the guilty,
&c.10
Learned academies played a central role in the production and diffusion of

ideas regarding legal reform. In the academy in Chalons-sur-Marne, two
such topics were proposed for debate between 1777 and 1784, the first on
the nature of punishments suited to free citizens, the second on the most
expedient way of administering justice. In 1787, the academy in Marseille
asked: Does the extreme severity of the laws tend to diminish the number
and the gravity of offences in a depraved nation? Similar questions were
also set for discussion in the academies of Mantua and Utrecht.11 The
large number of replies surpassed expectations and even smaller societies
attracted competitors from throughout Europe.12
What set the Bern competition apart was its prize: 100 louis and the
patronage of an influential anonymous person, namely Voltaire himself,
who had doubled the sum initially provided by the Paris lawyer Elie de
Beaumont. Voltaire publicised the prize among his correspondents and
enlisted the support of Catherine II and Frederick of Prussia, while publishing an essay entitled Prix de la justice et de lhumanite to encourage
submissions.13 Forty-six treatises were submitted, while others, having been
published before the closing date, were not considered by the jury. The
administrative work generated by the success of the competition led to
delays: the prize was finally awarded in 1782, three years after the original
deadline.
Encouragingly, a number of smaller states began to put the new ideas
into practice. A code was adopted in 1783 for Corsica, recently fallen under
French rule. In Tuscany new penal laws came into force in 1786, soon
known as the Leopoldina (after King Leopold II). One year later, Joseph
IIs Austria followed suit. The Austrian code was afterwards adapted for
Lombardy, then under Austrian domination, where Beccaria was given
official positions under Joseph II and Leopold II. Meanwhile, Frederick
IIs second attempt at codification was taking shape. It bore fruit eight
10
11
12
13
The translation is taken from The Monthly Review, or Literary Journal, 58 (JanuaryJune 1778), 546.
J.P. Brissot, Bibliothèque du legislateur, vol. III. 322.
D. Roche, La diffusion des Lumières. Un exemple: lacademie de Chalons-sur-Marne, Annales.
Economies, Societes, Civilisations, 19 (1964), 887922.
N. Rothlin, La Societe economique de Berne et le debat sur la legislation criminelle. Le concours
institue en 1777 par un inconnu (Voltaire), in M. Porret, Beccaria et la culture juridique des Lumières
(Genève, 1997), 16973.
61
years after his death with the adoption of the Allgemeines Landrecht fur die
Preussischen Staaten in 1794.14
These reforms and codes were much debated throughout Europe.
Rousseau commented on the Corsican Code; Condorcet, a rising figure in
the Academie des sciences and a friend of DAlembert, on the Leopoldina;
and Mirabeau on the Prussian project, while Beccaria sat on the Lombard
committee in charge of transposing the Austrian code.15 Like his contemporaries, Bentham followed these reforms closely. His correspondence shows
him trying to procure books on the Russian Code in 1778, on the Code
Therese in 1779 and on the Corsican code in 1783.16
The momentum which seemed to be gathering also helps to account for
Brissots memory of the early 1780s as a favourable moment for the reform
of jurisprudence: [e]verything seemed to herald a coming revolution in the
legislation of the whole of Europe, he wrote, [p]hilosophers pointed out
abuses and princes seemed to look for ways of destroying them.17 However,
as he was to discover, this career was also fraught with dangers in autocratic
France it is from London that he compiled the ten-volume Bibliothèque
du Legislateur. The aim of the compilation was to collect significant essays
on legal reform in order to publicise them and increase their readership.
Though he felt increasingly isolated during this period, Brissot recognised
the comfort he received from his English counterparts. Among them, he
singled out M. Bentham, a writer fully devoted to the study of criminal
legislation.18
The rise and fall of Projet

Paradoxically, the outlook for legal reform was bleaker in England than in
many Continental nations. Taking pride in its common law inheritance, its
14
15
16
17
18
For a thorough presentation of each of these codes, see Y. Cartuyvels, Doù vient le code penal? Une
approche genealogique des premiers codes penaux au XVIIIe siècle (Montreal, Ottawa and Brussels,
1996).
M. da Passano, La giustizia penale e la riforma leopoldina in alcuni inediti di Condorcet; Un
autografo inedito di Honore-Gabriel Riqueti Comte de Mirabeau (1788), in G. Tarello, ed.,
Materiali per una storia della cultura giuridica, 9 vols. (Bologna, 19756), vol. V, 351451, and
vol. VI, 91186.
These codes are mentioned in Correspondence (CW), vol. II, 183, 272; and vol. III, 154.
Memoires de Brissot, vol. II. 18. For further details on the relationship between Bentham and Brissot
during this period, see J.H. Burns, Bentham, Brissot et la science du bonheur and Bentham,
Brissot and the Challenge of Revolution.
J.P. Brissot, Discours de lediteur servant de conclusion, Bibliothèque du legislateur, vol. X, 349.
For his later recollections of his friendship with Bentham, see Memoires de Brissot, vol. II, 2534.
62
legal system stood somewhat apart from contemporary European jurisprudence, which was structured around the legacy of Roman law. Moreover,
Montesquieu had praised British penal legislation for being in line with the
principles of political liberty. Torture had already been abolished, which
was according to Beccaria a strong testimony to the goodness of [English]
laws.19 In 1767, the English translator of Beccarias Essay acknowledged
that the national laws were generally admired, while stressing that there
was room for improvement in the day-to-day administration of justice:
It may however be objected, that a treatise of this kind is useless in England,
where from the excellence of our laws and government, no examples of
cruelty or oppression are to be found. But it must also be allowed that
much is still wanting to perfect our system of legislation: the confinement
of debtors, the filth and horror of our prisons, the cruelty of jailors and
the extortion of the petty officers of justice, to all which may be added the
melancholy reflection, that the number of criminals put to death in England
is much greater than in any other part of Europe, are considerations which
will sufficiently answer every objection.20
In the 1780s, reformers such as John Howard and Samuel Romilly also
close to Lord Shelburne focused on the most visible displays of punitive force: the state of prisons and the enforcement of the death penalty.21
These English views were strongly influenced by Beccarias book. In that
respect, English criminal law reform was part and parcel of wider continental movements. The more abstract field of jurisprudence, however,
remained dominated by the towering figure of William Blackstone. In his
Commentaries on the Laws of England, he had cursorily taken stock of Beccarias objections to the cruelty of punishments and the systematic reliance
on the death penalty, but as far as the structure of the law was concerned,
the Commentaries were a vibrant vindication of the precedent-based system
of the English common law.22
19
20
21
22
C. Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, Ch. 16, 42.

Anonymous preface to C. Beccaria, Essay on Crimes and Punishments (London, 1767), vivii.
J. Howard, The State of Prisons in England, with an account of some foreign prisons (Warrington, 1777);
S. Romilly, Observations on a Late Publication entitled Thoughts on Executive Justice (London, 1786).
For a study of Benthams contribution to criminal law reform in England, see F. Rosen, Liberty,
Utility and the Criminal Law Reform, in Classical Utilitarianism, 14465; and A.J. Draper, Cesare
Beccarias influence on English discussions of punishment, History of European Ideas, 26 (2000),
17799.
Blackstone quoted Beccaria in the fourth volume of his Commentaries, the only one to be published
after the English translation of Beccarias book. See C. Blamires, Beccaria et lAngleterre, in M.
Porret, ed., Beccaria et la culture juridique des Lumières (Geneva, 1997), 6981.
63
Benthams ambition to make a name for himself in the reform of English

jurisprudence unfolded in two directions. In his first signed pamphlet, A
View of the Hard-Labour Bill, published in 1778, he followed Howard
in denouncing the cruel and inefficient enforcement of prison sentences
and hoped to be quoted in Parliamentary debates on that subject. On
a more theoretical level, his writings were directed at the foundations
of English law championed by Blackstone. A Fragment on Government,
inspired by Linds polemical purposes, and the projected Comment on
the Commentaries bear witness to the latter approach.23 To understand
Benthams early work one must, however, broaden contextual readings to
include the wide-ranging European movement for reform. For instance,
his attack on lawyers and their personal interests and established prejudices
was pure Helvetius. For Bentham, Blackstone was not only a formidable
figure who needed debunking, but came to embody the sinister interests
of the English legal profession as a whole.24
Benthams positive proposals for reform in that early period have been
largely ignored. Indeed, they are difficult to fathom, for the manuscripts in
which they were presented were constantly reorganised as the initial project
changed over time. In Baconian fashion, he began by proposing a Digest of
the English common law: A Fragment on Government ended with an explicit
call for such a work to be undertaken.25 His early plans soon gave place to a
more ambitious project involving a thorough rethinking of the foundations
of jurisprudence. Benthams censorial or critical jurisprudence resonates
with Helvetiuss and Beccarias attempts at questioning the foundations of
existing systems.26 Starting from the utilitarian principle that Happiness
[was] the End of Legislation, Bentham derived both a definition and
a classification of offences and of punishments, as well as rules for the
composition and promulgation of laws.27 Between the early 1770s and
the eventual publication of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals
and Legislation, a book that drew abundantly on that preparatory work,
Benthams plans went through a number of significant changes.
Benthams emphasis on criminal law reform was clearly directed by
immediate developments in Europe. He read about the prize offered by
the Bern Academy in October 1777 and set to work immediately. This
23
24
25
26
27
See Part I, Chapter 2, p. 53 above.

J.H. Burns, Bentham and Blackstone, an Iliad of Argument, Journal of Bentham Studies, 3 (2000).
Fragment (CW), 499500. See D. Lieberman, The Province of Legislation Determined, 239ff.
D.G. Long, Censorial Jurisprudence and Political Radicalism: A Reconstruction of the Early
Bentham, The Bentham Newsletter, 12 (1988), 423.
UC 96, f. 72. Preparatory Principles Inseranda.
64
explains why, in 1778 and 1779, his plans to determine the best Laws
under every head of Jurisprudence came to focus almost exclusively on
penal aspects. During this period, Bentham referred to his projected book
as a Theory of Punishment or a Criminal Code.28 While making his name
known in Britain, working on this topic would also allow him to approach
Catherine II of Russia. Three years earlier, the municipality of Moscow had
sent public invitations . . . to Jurists to study a list of questions . . . relative
to the subject of criminal Jurisprudence. Sending the Prospectus of his
work on that topic to one of his acquaintances in Russia, Bentham hoped
that it would find its way to the imperial authorities.29 As part of this
strategy, Bentham planned to write a letter to Pilati di Tassullo, an Italian
writer on jurisprudence with whom Schwediauer was acquainted and who
had connections in Russia, pressing him to enter the competition and
offering to put some of his own notes at his disposal. Bentham explained
that this was another way of making his name known in imperial circles:
[Pilati] will understand that I am pretty well advanced, and as I imagine will
be taught to look upon me as rather a formidable concurrent, what I rather
expect is that he will not embrace the proposal. If so he will think it an act
of great magnanimity, at least I hope so, and will trumpet it about as such
to his young cubs and in Russia amongst other places.30
As Bentham was well aware, entering into a correspondence with other

renowned writers on legal topics was one way of acquiring a reputation
in Europe. We do not know if Bentham eventually sent a letter to Pilati,
in any case, the latter never replied, but the Englishman took advantage
of the connection when he wrote to the secretary of the Bern Academy
in the spring of 1779, ostensibly to ask him whether there would be a
way of conveying his work to him at a lesser cost than the postal rate.31
Benthams long letter presented the main points of his proposed submission
but also included a series of hints that would recommend him, an obscure
English writer, to the Society. Typically, like A Fragment and a number
of other early publications, the letter was unsigned and Bentham asked
to be known as the Author of a Criminal Code. In this letter, he made
multiple allusions to more famous people: he had the honour of not
being unknown to DAlembert and Chastellux thanks to their earlier
correspondence, had consulted Banks and Solander (both Royal Society
28
30
31
29 ibid., 98115.
Correspondence (CW), vol. II, 100, 174.
ibid., 182. On Pilati, see F. Venturi, The End of the Old Regime in Europe, vol. II, 545; and J. Israel,
Democratic Enlightenment, 3506.
65
connections of Schwediauer) in person, and had written to Pilati through

a common friend.32
In the end, Bentham did not send any contribution to Bern. Early
in the 1780s, he saw a variety of other avenues open. The deadline for
the Bern contest was pushed back, his friends in Russia were ready to
circulate his writings, his brother Samuel had set off for St Petersburg
and Shelburnes extensive connections in diplomatic circles offered the
promise of introductions there. Bentham detached the introductory sheets
written for the Bern contest, those forming an introduction to the proposed
penal code, and sent them to the press separately. From these sheets,
continuing to write as the type was being set, grew An Introduction to the
Principles of Morals and Legislation (the title was only added in 1789). At
least two copies were printed privately, one of them for the purpose of
being circulated in Russia, and perhaps translated into French or German,
the other remaining with the author in London. Eventually, he secured a
German translator through Schwediauer, but, for unknown reasons, the
translation was never completed.33 Had Bentham ever seriously considered
sending the introduction to Bern? In the event, he failed to do so, but
made a number of attempts to circulate it privately.
As the introduction was being printed, Bentham drafted a number
of letters to European sovereigns who had made some demonstration of
their interest in law reform: Frederick II of Prussia, Leopold II (Grand
Duke of Tuscany), Catherine II, the Marquis of Carraciolo (the viceroy of
Sicily), Gustavus III (king of Sweden) and the Marquis of Sambucca (in
charge of reforms in Naples). Benthams optimism also led him to address
sovereigns whose interest in legal reform was scarcely developed, let alone
demonstrated, such as the kings of France and of Britain (for the purpose
of legislating for India). His offer was similar in every case, as he tried to
obtain a commission to draft a complete body of the best possible laws,34
displayed his knowledge of the recent legal developments in each country
(obtained through the press or through books) and bestowed lavish praise
on the enlightened views of the intended recipients. Together with the
letters, he planned to send the preliminary principles according to which
the code was to be organised: the title Principes de la legislation en fait de
droit penal (Principles of legislation regarding penal law), which is to be
32
33
34
ibid., 24853. Original in French.

For Benthams dealings with potential translators, see Correspondence (CW), vol. III, 3; and E. de
Champs, An introduction to utilitarianism.
66
found in the letter to Frederick, refers to the printed sheets that were to
become An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.
In August 1780, Benthams plan for the complete work was as follows:
after a long introduction, Book I, a detailed Division of Offences, would
take up approximately 600 pages. Book II would be devoted to Penal
Procedure. Lastly, an Appendix would deal with the formal issues associated with codification: Composition Promulgation Interpretation
and Improvement, in other words the Form . . . of the System of Laws,
to be contrasted with its matter, as contained in the body of the work.
A final part, or perhaps another appendix, would be devoted to preventive institutions, the background work on private and public institutions
that would diminish the number of offences actually committed (which
Bentham later referred to as indirect legislation).35
Because the introduction remained incomplete, Bentham went back to
more abstract theoretical work on the meaning of the word law itself,
spurred on by the difficulty he had run into in the closing chapter, namely
that of determining the respective limits of morals and jurisprudence.36
Meanwhile, the prospects of a positive reception in Russia came to dominate his hopes. As he wrote in one of his draft letters to Catherine II,
Bern has only been a diversion by which I have sought to approach your
Majesty. I thought that if I had won the prize, the clamour of fame would
perhaps have helped to further my wishes.37 However, progress was slow,
and early in 1782 Samuel Bentham, having received only irregular news
from his brother, bemoaned the fact that he had not yet been sent anything substantial to present to the Empress.38 Meanwhile, Jeremys view
of the completed work remained similar to the general outline of 1780,
revolving principally around criminal law.39
In the summer of 1782, Bentham hinted for the first time at a probable
change of plans, as he wrote to Samuel that his projet dun corps de loix
was nearly completed. Benthams use of French in his letters to Samuel
was not unusual, as we have seen, but it is worth noting that the title now
encompassed law in all its branches and was not limited to criminal law.
In 1783, Samuel insisted that if the work be published in French it will
be certain of success, which seems to imply that his brother had already
35
36
37
39
Correspondence (CW), vol. II, 489n, containing a partial transcript of BL Add MS 33, 556, vol. XX,
13942.
Editorial Introduction, in Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence, P. Schofield, ed. (CW)
(Oxford, 2010), (hereafter Limits), xvxxxvi.
38 Correspondence (CW), vol. III, 120.
See the long letter written to Lord Ashburton in June 1782, Correspondence (CW), vol. III, 12334.
67
changed languages, something which is confirmed by internal evidence

in the manuscripts for Projet.40 A year later, as Jeremy was preparing to
join him in Krichev, where he was now stationed in the service of Prince
Potemkin, Samuel proposed to look for a Frenchman to revise the text.41
The brothers initial plan seems to have been that Jeremy should complete
the work in London and have it printed in Russia, at a lower cost, before
presenting it to Catherine. The clearest clue to Benthams plans in that
period can be found in a letter to Potemkin dated February 1785:
At the moment I am putting the finishing touches to a work on a topic
that has almost exclusively occupied the thinking years of my life. Its title is
Project of a detailed and complete Body of Laws for the use of any state.
It will make up two small octavo volumes of 20 to 30 sheets each. To have a
chance of obtaining a few more readers for a dry work on a dry topic, I am
writing it in my Anglo-French. I was lucky enough to receive an offer from
the Abbe Morellet to translate it into genuine French, despite the fact that
we have never met.42
It remains impossible to assess how advanced the work was, or indeed

if the abbe Morellet, the famous translator of Beccarias book, had been
contacted, when Bentham wrote to Potemkin. It is certain that when he set
out for Russia in August 1785, he took his unfinished French manuscripts
with him and continued to work on them throughout his stay, never
gathering enough courage to present the results to Catherine.43 By 1786,
George Wilson, his friend in London, had become strongly critical of a
plan that seemed to divert Bentham from making a name for himself in
Britain. He tried to get him to abandon the scheme,
40
41
42
43
Correspondence (CW), vol. III, 179. Though undated, UC 98, f. 189 contains a reference to A
Corsican Code I have not yet read, but of which I am expecting a copy any moment. A letter
to Shelburne, dated 5 February 1783, contains a request for the Code lately promulgated by the
French king for the government of Corsica: Correspondence (CW), vol. III, 1545.
ibid., 275.
Bentham to Potemkin, to be published in The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. XIV.
Original in French. No written evidence survives, but Bentham might have discussed his
project with the abbe Morellet through Lord Lansdowne in November or December 1784:
see A. Morellet, Memoires de lAbbe Morellet sur le dix-huitième siècle et sur la Revolution
(Paris, 1988), 266. In 1789, Bentham wrote to Morellet again (see Part I, Chapter 3,
p. 105) and alluded to the elder brother of a pamphlet he had sent in 1789, which might confirm that Morellet had indeed seen a version of Projet a few years earlier. See The Correspondence
of Jeremy Bentham, vol. IV, October 1788 to December 1793, A.T. Milne, ed., (CW) (London,
1981), 30.
The only dates which appear on the Projet manuscripts are 1785 and 1786, and such occurrences are
rare. An analysis of the paper is inconclusive, since Bentham probably took reams of paper with
him when he left England, and he also had some sent from London: see Correspondence (CW),
vol. III, 472.
68

[f]or I am still persuaded, my dear Bentham, that you have, for some years,
been throwing away your time; and that the way in which you are most
likely to benefit the world and yourself is, by establishing in the first place,
a great literary reputation in your own language, and in this country, which
you despise.44
These arguments seem to have had some weight with Bentham, who
seized upon the opportunity to address his fellow countrymen in the
Panopticon Letters.45 He clearly explained how several enterprises competed
for his attention: Code was going on at a very pretty jog-trot, till Sams
inspection-house came upon the carpet, not to mention his new model
of ship-building, and his other whimsies.46 George Wilson and James
Trail, his London friends, were not to be satisfied with this: It gives us
great pleasure, they wrote back, to learn that you have so many things
in forwardness; and we think the subjects are such as will do you credit,
but we are not quite reconciled to the French language, or to the form of
letters.47
In 1788, two and a half years after setting out for Russia, Bentham
still hoped, it seems, to make some use of the French manuscript. He
had three copies of it taken during his last year in Krichev. Crossing
Poland on the way home, he toyed with the idea of sending it to the king
Stanislaw Augustus Poniatowski, describing the draft as poorly written
and full of crossings out. The complete work, he surmised, would make
up two octavo volumes, which conformed to the original plans of 1785.48
Back in London in February 1788, Wilson and Trail informed him that
William Paley had published a rival utilitarian theory in his Principles of
Moral and Political Philosophy and strongly advised him to make his own
principles known in English. As a result, Bentham sent the publishers the
earlier introduction to the penal code that was published, with a few
additions, as An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation in
1789. However, the philosopher remained committed to the French Projet,
writing to his brother: As soon as I have finished such parts of Code as
44
45
46
ibid., 4901.
J. Bentham, Panopticon, or The Inspection-House: containing the idea of a new principle of construction
applicable to any sort of establishment, in which persons of any description are to be kept under inspection:
and in particular to penitentiary-houses, prisons, houses of industry and schools; with a letter written in
the year 1787, 3 vols. (Dublin and London, 1791). In 1787, he also wrote and published A Defence of
Usury, shewing the impolicy of the present legal restraints on the terms of pecuniary bargains: in a series
of letters to a friend, to which is added, a Letter to Adam Smith on the discouragements opposed by the
above restraints to the progress of inventive industry (London, 1787).
47 ibid., 532.
48 UC 169, f. 44. Original in French.
Correspondence (CW), vol. III, 518.
69
cannot be published one without the other, I go to Paris to get it corrected

and advise the printing of it.49 Events in France in 1789 got in the way
of Benthams Projet and in the end the manuscript remained buried in his
boxes.
49
chapter 5
Benthams Projet should not be taken as an isolated work produced for the
sole purpose of bringing his skills to the attention of Catherine II, but as
an attempt to bring together years of legal studies within the context of
the legislative reform movements of the time. As such, it casts light on his
early writings on jurisprudence as a whole. Written in French, and with
a cosmopolitan readership in mind, it bears the marks of the European
context in which his thought developed and makes it possible to place the
rise of utilitarianism in its continental historical dimension. The text bears
witness to Benthams vast knowledge of Roman law and of contemporary
reform schemes. It is also closely related to the only theoretical work he
published during that period in English, An Introduction to the Principles
of Morals and Legislation, and to the manuscript draft Of the Limits of the
Penal Branch of Jurisprudence. Further, it throws light on his later attempts
in the 1810s to convince his contemporaries of the necessity of codification,
when he wrote to a number of rulers, from America to Russia (again),
offering his services to codify local bodies of law.1
The Pannomion within the eighteenth-century

codification movement
The full title of Benthams Projet read: Project for a complete body of
laws for the use of any country, alongside principles and reasons, general
and particular, on which each article is founded.2 Though Bentham is
credited with introducing the noun codification into English only in
1817,3 the Projet of the 1780s marks a critical point in his attempt to lay
1
2
3
D. Lieberman, Bentham on Codification, in J. Bentham, Selected Writings, S.G. Engelmann, ed.

(New Haven, CT, 2011), 46077.
The Oxford English Dictionary quotes J. Bentham Papers Relative to Codification and Public Instruction
(London, 1817) as the first occurrence of the word.
70
71
the foundations for a fully codified body of laws. As we saw, although its
full proposed title did not use the word code, in his correspondence, his
shorthand title for the work was simply Code.
Since the first half of the eighteenth century, the idea of codification had
gradually taken root in Europe. But the word code, as Bentham argued,
had so far been misused by legislators. Under that name they had presented
disorganised digests that still incorporated a large amount of unwritten law,
or customary rules, or contained only one part of the laws of the country
(often the criminal). For that reason, Bentham used the words Pandicaion
or Pannomion, derived from the Greek (all + laws) to express the whole in
contradistinction to the part.4 He reserved the noun code to describe the
individual elements which together made up the Pannomion, for instance
the Civil Code, Penal Code or International Code. The theoretical work
conducted in 1782 on the definition of a complete law and on the relations
between the several parts of a complete code reinforced his belief that such
a code was necessary. He had expressed the hope that his work would serve
to frame for each nation a compleat code new in point of substance as well
as form, . . . with such alterations as shall be deemed requisite to adapt it
to the particular manners, sentiments and exterior circumstances of each
respective state.5
Though references to Bacons plans for a digest of statute law remained

commonplace in England in the second half of the eighteenth century,
on the Continent the rationale for codification developed from different
sources. The tradition of the Roman law and the prestige of Justinians
Institutes had long served to promote the ideal of a written body of law,
but in most French provinces and throughout continental Europe, legal
practice combined references to the Roman law and to customary law.
From the 1750s, a general trend in favour of codification developed. This
was an issue on which philosophers and statesmen seemed to be reconciled:
ruling monarchs tended to find fault with a complex body of local customs
and strove to unite large countries under one common legal authority.6
In the Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu had been in favour of digesting
local customs into a written body of legislation, but he had also drawn attention to the dangers of a general scheme of codification. The simplification
that necessarily followed would reduce the power of judges and eventually
4
6
5 Bentham, Limits (CW), 232.

X. Rousseaux, Le droit penal entre consolidation etatique et codification absolutiste au XVIIIe
siècle, in X. Rousseaux and R. Levy, eds., Le penal dans tous ses etats. Justice, Etats et Societes en
Europe, XIIe-XXe siècles (Brussels, 1997), 25178.
72
serve the interests of despots as opposed to those of their subjects.7 Nevertheless, calls for a general codification became more numerous after 1750.
In his Philosophical Dictionary, under the entry Laws, Voltaire mocked
the diversity of customs. In 1762, he explicitly called for the codification of
civil and criminal law, on the grounds that fixed and written laws afforded
protection against the arbitrary power of a despotic monarch.8 On this
point he agreed with Rousseau, who also advocated codification, not only
for the security it afforded but also as a way of unifying a country around
common patriotic rules. In Considerations on the Government of Poland,
Rousseau had written:
You must have three codes. One political, another civil, the third criminal.
All as clear, short and precise as possible. These codes will be taught not
only in the universities, but in all secondary schools, and there is no need
of another body of law. . . . As regards Roman and customary law, all this,
if it exists at all, has to be eliminated from the schools and the law courts.
They should recognise no other authority than the Laws of the State; these
should be uniform throughout the provinces in order to dry up one source
of litigation, and the questions not settled by the laws will have to be settled
by the good sense and the integrity of the judges.9
Beccaria echoed these calls in On Crimes and Punishments. He introduced

a utilitarian rationale in favour of codification, focusing on the use of the
code to citizens: a written code was useful, because it allow[ed] them to
evaluate exactly the drawbacks of wrongdoing.10 As Voltaire, Rousseau
and Beccaria pointed out, written laws also entailed a limitation of the
power of judges by restricting the interpretation of law and setting preordained penalties for crimes. Whereas Montesquieu trusted judicial power
to mitigate the arbitrary tendencies of kings, Voltaire was wary of abuses
and considered judges a conservative class driven by pecuniary interests.
In practice, however, the codification process as it unfolded in
eighteenth-century Europe did not attain the goals of simplification and
clarity the philosophes had envisaged for it, as digesting earlier customs
remained the norm and a complete overhaul of the law on new principles
was considered both dangerous and impracticable. The legislation adopted
7
8
9
10
C.L. de Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 6, Chs. 13, 726.

Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, T. Besterman, ed. (London, 2004), 2818; Idees republicaines, par
un membre dun corps, in uvres complètes de Voltaire, Louis Moland, ed. (Paris, 18771885), vol.
XXIV, XL, XLI, 424.
J.-J. Rousseau, Considerations on the Government of Poland, in The Social Contract, and other later
political writings, V. Gourevitch, ed. (Cambridge, 1997), 222.
C. Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, 4, 16.
73
by Sweden, Bavaria and Sardinia from the 1730s to the 1750s did not break
with existing customs. Writing in the early 1780s, Bentham was therefore
right in criticizing the failure of recent attempts at codification. The main
target of his criticism was the Frederician code drafted by Cocceji for Prussia in the 1750s. Though the title of the book, Code Frederic, seemed to
announce a fully written body of laws, Bentham argued that in the text, the
code itself was elusive, being referred to in several places but never stated
in terminis. The code thus remained an ideal and its letter was nowhere to
be found.11 He also examined the Danish code of 1683, the Swedish code
of 1734, the Sardinian code of 1770 and the Theresian code drafted for
Austria and concluded, rightly, that all were little more than fragmentary
digests of existing laws.12 As we have seen, only in the late 1780s were new
codes in line with the principles of enlightened reformers drafted.
Like Beccaria, and for similar utilitarian reasons, Bentham insisted that
only a written code could provide a clear and precise guide for action. He
was also wary of the adjudicating power of judges and strove to constrain it
within precise bounds. Bentham insisted on the protection afforded to the
people by a good and clearly written system of legislation: the work I give
the strong [i.e. the drafters of codes] serves to ensure the peace and quiet of
the weak.13 In Limits he had also presented the advantages of codification
as a way of check[ing] the licence of interpretation by judges: if his rules
for the organisation and wording of the code were followed, such a degree
of comprehension and steadiness might one day perhaps be given to the
views of the legislator as to render the allowance of liberal or discretionary
interpretation on the part of the judge no longer necessary.14 In Projet,
he developed this idea by proposing to insert alongside the laws proper a
number of articles containing commentaries on the reasons for the laws:
the legislator himself would therefore guide the judges interpretations.15
Nobody could apply a law, Bentham remarked, without interpreting it to
some extent. He singled out corrective interpretation to be avoided at all
costs: only the legislator could amend the text of the law.16
Benthams strong interest in the wording of the law cannot be separated
from his rejection of judicial interpretation. This explains why he chose to
11
13
15
16
12 UC 100, f. 65; 98, f. 189.

UC 33, f. 113.
14 Bentham, Limits, (CW), 2278.
ibid., f. 68. Original in French.
UC 198, f. 208. The idea of publishing a rationale for the laws was not new: Frederick II had written
a Dissertation sur les raisons detablir ou dabroger les loix (Utrecht, 1770), in which the sovereign
stated the rationale for the ongoing legal reforms. However, Bentham was the first to propose
that the rationale should be directly integrated within the code. This proposal was taken up in
Constitutional Code, vol. I, F. Rosen and J.H. Burns, eds. (CW) (Oxford, 1983).
UC 98, ff. 20711.
74
devote the first part of Projet to the form of a complete code of laws and
the second to the matter of civil, penal and constitutional law.
The form of laws

Bentham went much further than most of his contemporaries in addressing
the formal issues arising from codification. Before reflecting on the contents
of the laws themselves, preliminary work on the form in which they
were to be expressed was needed. To Bentham, this represented a major
contribution:
The philosophical spirit, the improving spirit, has not yet moved upon the
face of these waters. Montesquieu had no idea of order. Beccaria, who has
done so much for matter, wrote nothing regarding form.17
Beccaria had done little more than insist in general terms on the clarity of
the laws. Likewise, Catherine II had devoted a section of her Instruction to
the importance of an unambiguous wording of the laws, for which Brissot,
for instance, commended her:
The chapter on the style of laws is very philosophical. It is strange that
among enlightened nations laws should still be drafted in a barbarous style
and in unintelligible words. The legislator resembles the sphinx, he seems
to be proposing riddles to have the right to slaughter.18
As Brissot implied, the obscurity of laws allowed despotic rule to flourish.

Like Bentham, he described stylistic recommendations to legislators as
intrinsically philosophical work. For Brissot and Bentham, questions of
organisation and wording were the areas in which the collaboration between
jurists and philosophers was most crucial. The form section of Projet
opens with a quote from Horace highlighting the significance of order and
organisation: Tantum series juncturaque pollet, Tantum de medio sumptis
accedit honoris.19 This very passage had been chosen by DAlembert as
the incipit to the Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedie, in which he
insisted on the necessity of presenting the objects of knowledge together
in a synoptic table. DAlembert described his purpose in these words:
17
18
19
UC 33, f. 92. Original in French. On Benthams critical admiration of Montesquieu, see J.-P. Clero,
Bentham et Montesquieu, Revue francaise dhistoire des idees politiques, 35 (2012), 17182.
J.P. Brissot, Bibliothèque du Legislateur, vol. III. 175. The relevant section is in Instruction, Ch. XIX,
1325.
Such grace and order can connexion give; Such beauties common subjects may receive! Translation
in verse by Philip Francis, The Epistles and Art of Poetry of Horace, 3rd edn., 4 vols. (London, 1749),
vol. IV. 2845.
75
This consists of collecting knowledge into the smallest area possible and
of placing the philosopher at a vantage point, so to speak, high above
this vast labyrinth, whence he can perceive the principal sciences and the
arts simultaneously. From there he can see at a glance the objects of their
speculations and the operations which can be made on these objects; he can
discern the general branches of human knowledge, the points that separate
or unite them: and some times he can even glimpse the secrets that relate
them to one another. It is a kind of world map which is to show the principal
countries, their position and their mutual dependence, the road that leads
directly from the one to the other. The road is often cut by a thousand
obstacles, which are known in each country only to the inhabitants or to
travellers, and which cannot be represented except in individual, highly
detailed maps. These individual maps will be the different articles of the
Encyclopedie and the Tree or Systematic Chart will be its world map.20
DAlemberts synoptic table was specifically designed for use by philosophers (distinguished, in this instance, from the general public to whom
the articles of the Encyclopedie were also addressed). It allowed them to
embrace the entire field of knowledge and to work out the links between
its several branches. The opening pages of Benthams Projet are a direct
application of DAlemberts approach to the field of legislation. He uses
similar metaphors, that of a forest through which roads must be cut, and
that of a map onto which the entire field of law should be projected.21
The method proposed by DAlembert for organizing knowledge was not,
however, entirely adequate for Benthams purpose, for it failed to follow
a rigorous plan in the organisation and hierarchy of its branches. In that
respect, it was far from complete.22 Benthams chosen model, therefore,
was that which had been pioneered in the natural sciences by Linnaeus
and in chemistry by Bergman.23 For Bentham, completeness had to follow
from logical arrangement: this was to be achieved through the method of
bipartition or bifurcation. He presented it thus:
When a number of objects, composing a logical whole, are to be considered together, all of these possessing with respect to one another a certain
congruency or agreement denoted by a certain name, there is but one way
of giving a perfect knowledge of their nature; and that is, by distributing
20
21
22
23
DAlembert, Preliminary Discourse, 478.

A body of laws is like a vast forest: the better it is penetrated, the more it is known, UC 33, f.
109 and The work which geographers are doing on the physical universe I have transposed to the
universe of laws, UC 33, f. 117. Originals in French.
Bentham later criticised DAlemberts method at length in an Essay on Nomenclature and Classification, in Chrestomathia (CW), 16079.
UC 33, f. 95. For Benthams first-hand knowledge of Bergmans works, see Part I, p. 50.
76

them into a system of parcels, each of them a part, either of some other
parcel, or, at any rate, of the common whole. This can only be done in the
way of bipartition, dividing each superior branch into two, and but two,
immediately subordinate ones.24
As applied to the division of offences, the method had already run into
difficulties.25 These problems were compounded in Projet, for it proved
impossible to arrange existing categories (such as civil/penal/constitutional,
internal/international and temporal/spiritual) into a logical tree built on
the principle of bifurcation. Bentham thus proposed the categories he had
devised in Limits: opposing punitory to compensative laws, substantive to
adjective ones, direct to indirect ones, general to particular ones, permanent
to temporary ones, and constant to occasional ones.26 Eventually, however, he
fell back on the accepted division between civil and penal law, presenting
these categories not as independent kinds of laws, but as distinct projections
of similar matter onto different levels or, through a different metaphor, as
different languages expressing similar ideas:
Civil laws, penal laws, here are the two great branches issuing from the
throne of jurisprudence. They are intimately related. They penetrate each
other continuously: if you do not embrace them both, you embrace neither
one nor the other. . . . By envisaging the same objects from two different
points of views, we have created two languages. Obligation, right, service is
the language of civil law: injunction, prohibition, offence, culprit, criminal
is the language of penal law. Understanding how they relate to each other
means being able to translate the one into the other.27
Projet was to be organised around the existing distinctions of civil, penal

and constitutional law (with sections devoted to international and economic laws, among others). Civil and penal matter made up most of
the work, while constitutional issues were less fully developed. Bentham
chose this classification because it was [a]t once the most natural, the
most common and the most commodious.28 It had been followed by
Frederick II, for instance, in a pamphlet in defence of legal reform and any
24
25
26
27
IPML (CW), 187n.

Bentham had been obliged to create a category of anomalous offences to accommodate those
which did not fall into the categories resulting from bipartition. See IPML (CW), 18990, notes f
and g.
UC 33, f. 114. Punitory and compensative laws were distinguished by the type of sanction they
relied on; substantive and adjective ones by their ability or inability to stand alone (procedural
laws fell into the second category). These terms are also defined in Limits (CW), 77, 153, 233.
28 UC 33, f. 115. Original in French.
UC 33, ff. 116, 117. Original in French.
77
other distinction would have been obscure to his contemporaries. However,

Benthams reservations about that classification remained and would colour
his approach to civil and penal law throughout his life.
Bentham continued his quotation from Horace further than DAlembert
had, including an extra line: Ut cito dicta percipiant animi dociles, tenantque
fideles.29 This sequel highlighted the importance of style in the expression
of laws. Going further than any of his contemporaries, Bentham devoted
a large part of Projet to establishing precise rules for composition and
style. These rules had their origin in his early work on language and the
expression of will:
The object of laws, as regards style, is to ensure that whenever they bear
in one way or another on the citizens conduct, this citizen should be able
to have a notion in his mind corresponding to the will entertained by the
legislator regarding [the action] in question.30
This utilitarian approach emphasised the intimate connection between

the form and the matter of the law: the laws, no matter how good in
substance, could not be accurately known, understood and memorised if
the style in which they were expressed was faulty. In evaluating legal style,
Bentham relegated strength, harmony and nobility to the second rank,
and emphasised instead intelligibility, brevity, completeness, accuracy
and precision: the legislator had to be a consummate grammarian. Bentham then made a string of concrete proposals: the code should be in the
vernacular, it should exclude digressions and irrelevant matter, eradicate
ambiguity, and be neither too specific nor too general.31
Existing codes, Bentham pointed out, did not comply with any of these
rules, neither in the way they were organised, nor in the style. He examined
in turn the Danish, Swedish, Prussian, Sardinian and Austrian codes, as
well as the Polish and Hungarian ones. He also broadened his analysis
by including discussion of the English common law (as exemplifying the
defects of all customary legal systems) and of Justinians Institutes (or rather
Coccejis rendering of its principles).32 He concluded:
29
30
31
32
ibid., f. 109: Short be the precept / With which ease is gaind / By docile minds, and faithfully
retaind, Epistles and Art of Poetry of Horace, vol. IV. 253.
UC 100, f. 66. Original in French. For Benthams earlier interest in the logic of the will, see
Chapter 1, pp. 2425.
UC 100, f. 66; UC 98, ff. 18095 and 100, f. 6378. Originals in French. These rules correspond to
those set down in English in the 1810s: see Nomography, Bowring, vol. III, 23083.
For Benthams critical examination of contemporary codes, see UC 100, ff. 69, 65 and 98, f. 189.
78

What I say is only to justify myself, to show that the drafting of a detailed
code on a plan that takes its completeness into account is necessary, because
none of the existing ones really does: & that this is however not a new idea
& that the work I propose to do will not be superfluous anywhere.33
Benthams major innovation, however, was to break down the complete

code into general and particular codes. The general code would contain
the laws in which everyone has roughly an equal interest. On the contrary,
particular codes would assemble in single volumes all the laws relating to
specific categories among the population, either according to their status
(parent, tutor or child) or to their profession, trade or occupation (tenant,
shopkeeper, tobacco monger, citizen of one city or another).34 The first
advantage of this strategy, Bentham argued, was that it allowed the legislator
to print short and handy volumes that could be carried and consulted on
the spot whenever a doubt or a conflict arose. At any given point, any
given person might be apprised of the letter of the law. The invention of
individual codes is emblematic of Benthams object of making the rule
of law into a guide for personal conduct. Establishing such codes implies
the risk of creating different rules for different classes of the population,
according to social status, rank or class. In Projet, Bentham does not address
this issue because he perceives particular codes as summaries emanating
from one single body of laws, not as separate codes designed specifically
for each class.35
33
35

This suggestion was repeated in later works, such as Constitutional Code (CW), 78.
chapter 6
Manners, morals and legislation

Whereas personal codes could be carried in ones pocket, or posted on the
walls of shops, markets or gardens (stating the precise rules to be followed
in each place), the universal code, Bentham proposed, would be taught in
schools and read out in churches as a code of moral conduct. He explained
further how morals and legislation coincided: [s]acred books say, be just.
A good Pandicaion shows in every way what it is to be just, in how many
ways and in what ways one can fail to be.1
Like Helvetius, Bentham held legislation to be a branch of morals, and
sought to uncover the principles according to which each branch was
organised. In so doing, he took up one of the most fruitful articulations in
contemporary legal thinking. In the Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu had
devoted one chapter to examining [h]ow laws can contribute to forming
the mores, manners and character of a nation.2 In asking that question,
Montesquieu immediately postulated that laws could and should be distinguished from mores (murs) and manners (manières). For legislators, such
a distinction was crucial: only by separating the contents of each sphere
could they have a clear understanding of their field of action.
When a prince wants to make great changes in his nation, he must reform by
laws what is established by laws and change by manners what is established
by manners, and it is a very bad policy to change by laws what should be
changed by manners.3
1
2

C.L. de Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 19, Ch. 27, 325. This presentation of Montesquieu
relies principally on C. Larrère, Droit et murs chez Montesquieu, Droits. Revue francaise de
theorie juridique, 19 (1994), 1122; and B. Binoche, Introduction a` De lesprit des lois de Montesquieu
(Paris, 1998), 16284.
C.L. de Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 19, Ch. 14, 315.
79
80
In establishing this distinction, Montesquieu pointed out some limits to

the power of the legislator, but in the same chapter he also asserted the
primacy of ruling by law over ruling by manners.
Montesquieus insistence that laws should be distinguished from morals
was functional, for it served to delineate the obstacles that the legislator
could find in the course of exercising his power and to provide him with a
method for overcoming them: the means for preventing crimes are penalties, the means for changing manners are examples.4 It did not imply that
the spheres of law and morals were entirely independent. In numerous passages, Montesquieu showed how good laws and good manners mutually
reinforced each other, in a way that varied according to the political constitution of a given state. In republics, manners prevailed upon laws, whereas
despotic monarchs attempted to rule over the manners of the people by
imposing autocratic laws. A limited monarchy would avoid these pitfalls
by wisely examining the cases in which reform would be better effected by
enacting laws or by promoting good habits.5
During the 1780s, Bentham devoted a number of discussions to the
central question of the respective boundaries of morals and legislation.
The closing chapter of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation, added in 1789, sums up the conclusions of his enquiry:
Private ethics has happiness for its end: and legislation can have no other.
Private ethics concerns . . . the happiness and the actions of every member
of any community that can be proposed; and legislation can concern no
more. Thus far, then, private ethics and the art of legislation go hand in
hand . . . Where then lies the difference? In that the acts which they ought
to be conversant about, though in a great measure, are not perfectly and
throughout the same. . . . There is no case in which a private man ought not
to direct his own conduct to the production of his own happiness, and of
that of his fellow-creatures: but there are cases in which the legislator ought
not . . . to attempt to direct the conduct of the several other members of the
community.6
Utility serves to draw the line between the two fields, by excluding from
the field of penal law conduct for which punishment is groundless, inefficacious, unprofitable or needless.7 Though Montesquieu was very far
from adopting the criterion of utility exclusively, he believed, as Bentham
did, that the number of persons affected by a given conduct could serve to
4
6
5 ibid., Bk. 3, Ch. 5, 256.

C.L. de Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 19, Ch. 14, 315.
7 ibid., 28693, and Ch. 13, Cases unmeet for punishment, 15664.
IPML (CW), 285.
81
separate the legitimate spheres of ethics and legislation.8 However, although

they discussed similar examples, such as suicide, the implications of their
methods were significantly different: in Projet, the role ascribed to the laws
was not only to define the external boundaries of the field of morals but
also to influence its contents. A legal code driven by utility would serve
as an instrument for the reform of both manners and morals, whereas for
Montesquieu morality had an intrinsic value.
For Bentham, the code was an illustration as well as a plea for the
principle of utility: within the code, each provision would be justified by
reference to this principle. Whilst, as we have seen, his contemporaries
were familiar with vindications of legal changes being published at the
same time as the new legislation, Benthams proposal was thoroughly new.
By explaining why assassination should be punished, Bentham explained,
the legislator not only stated the obvious, but also provided the intellectual
tools that would allow the public to understand why cases such as suicide,
duelling and the infanticide of new borns by the parents were not to be
punishable. He continued:
If one must spell out the evil of stealing, it is not to convince men that
stealing is a bad thing. It is to convince them of a variety of equally true
statements regarding that topic, that have so far been ignored: amongst
other things, thefts that have been hitherto neglected or left entangled. It
is also to rule others out, which have so far been singled out from the rest
for specific punishment without any sufficient ground. Lastly, it is to bring
together all its true and genuine modifications, to distinguish among them
those that deserve to be so and to strike the spurious ones out.9
By explicitly relying on and deploying utilitarian arguments throughout,

Projet served to promote a strictly utilitarian reasoning in the fields of
morals and jurisprudence. Benthams originality lay in the fact that, for
him, utility excluded all appeals to natural law, whereas for many of his
contemporaries, calls to utility and to natural law mutually reinforced one
another. Beccaria, for instance, appealed indiscriminately to consequentialist arguments drawn from utility and to natural-law principles founded on
rights and humanity. Similarly, Beccarias commentators insisted on stating
natural law arguments alongside appeals to utility, one of them writing
that it is demonstrated that the publicity of a penal code, beyond its actual
8
All that concerns mores and all that concerns the rules of modesty can scarcely be included in a
code of laws. It is easy to regulate by law what one owes others, it is difficult to include in them all
that one owes oneself. C.L. de Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Bk. 7, Ch. 10, 106.
82
utility, is based on natural right.10 Bentham, however, hoped to exclude

all appeals to jus naturalis arguments. By defining offences according to
utility, the legislator forced his subjects to apply a different sort of moral
reasoning: in so doing, Bentham hoped they would be convinced to break
the sweet tyranny of instinct to substitute to it the often importunate yoke
of reason. In words that recall the language used in An Introduction to
the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Bentham used the words instinct,
prejudice and caprice interchangeably to reject appeals to nature or common sense.11 It was by promoting the principle of utility to the exclusion
of every other that Bentham hoped that a book of laws would provide
without further work and besides the letter of the law, a guide for history
and a handbook of philosophy and morals.12 This was directly reminiscent
of Helvetiuss statement that morality is evidently no more than a frivolous
science, unless blended with policy and legislation which concluded: if
philosophers would be of use to the world, they should survey objects from
the same point of view as the legislator.13
Stating the reasons for the laws was a central tool in utilitarian theory.
Besides this moral function, it also had legal and political implications. As
far as the distribution of legal power was concerned, it served further to
limit the role of judges by inscribing the interpretation of laws, something
that had long been their prerogative, within the code itself.14 In political
terms, it allowed the contents of the code to be closely watched both by the
sovereign and by the people. The idea that the rationale was both a guide
and a bridle is central in Benthams constitutional theory as it developed
in the 1820s. In that respect, the 1780s were a much more creative period
than has so far been recognised.15
Enlightened sovereigns and legal change

In the 1780s, as arguments in favour of legal reform multiplied, the debate
shifted to the means through which the proposed changes should be
10
11
13
15
J.P. Brissot, Bibliothèque du legislateur, vol. I, 277. Beyond rhetorical arguments, it has convincingly
been argued that Beccarias utilitarianism was stronger than his belief in natural law; see P. Audegean,
La philosophie de Beccaria. Savoir punir, savoir ecrire, savoir produire (Paris, 2010), 125; and G.
Francioni, Beccaria filosofo utilitarista, Cesare Beccaria tra Milano e lEuropa (Milan, Rome, Bari,
1990), 6987.) On the contrary, Brissots belief in natural rights eclipsed his utilitarianism.
12 ibid., f. 44. See also UC 100, f. 38. Original in French.
14 UC 98, ff. 207, 208.
Helvetius, On Mind, 81.
UC 33, f. 93; 170, f. 189. Compare Codification proposal, written in 1822 in Bowring, vol. IV,
53594.
83
implemented. France, Prussia and Russia were absolute monarchies. Likewise, the reforms implemented in smaller European states had been conducted by autocratic, if enlightened, monarchs. In that context, most
reformers had to apply to sovereigns as the main agents of change, but
the details of the proposed reforms and the steps envisaged as necessary to
carry them into practice did vary greatly.
Brissot, as a republican disciple of Rousseau, became more radical in
the early 1780s, as he was forced into exile from Paris to London, but in
works published at the time, he continued to appeal to sovereigns and to
praise their achievements. This implied a criticism of the French monarchy,
which had proved itself unable to match the modernizing pace set by its
enlightened neighbours, but the truly subversive features of his radicalism
lay elsewhere, in the analysis he proposed of the legal system. Likewise, in
order to understand the implications of Benthams agenda for legal reform,
one needs to go beyond the calls to enlightened monarchs and question the
ways in which he, like his fellow reformers, addressed the practical issues of
reform. In so doing, one must look first at the order in which the branches
of the laws should be reformed, and second, at the role given to the people
as agents of change.
In expressing his preference for the rule of law over that of virtue,
Montesquieu had distanced himself from the republican model. In the
second half of the eighteenth century, however, the rising fortunes of
republicanism had a direct impact on legal writing. This is revealed by
the way in which republican writers understood the relationship between
morals, manners and legislation.16 Rousseau, for instance, in reflecting on
the government of Poland, argued that when subjects became citizens, and
when their manners had been perfected by political responsibilities, fewer
laws would be needed. In pleading for a restricted number of laws, then,
Rousseau insisted on the primacy of moral, over that of legal, reform.
Rousseau and his republican followers thus reversed the order of priority
set by Montesquieu: there could be no legal reform without a preliminary
overhaul of corrupt political and civil institutions. As Brissot explained in
1780, crimes were especially numerous in France because of the depraved
morals of the corrupted rulers, who perverted the political system which,
in turn, corrupted the manners of the people.17 Likewise, in the essay he
16
17
For the place of the vocabulary of manners in the republican paradigm, see J.G.A. Pocock, Virtue,
Commerce and History, Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century
(Cambridge, 1985).
J.P. Brissot, Bibliothèque du Legislateur, vol. VI, 1516.
84
submitted to the Bern competition, Jean-Paul Marat, later known as the

Friend of the People, denounced a society in which [t]he unfair division of
wealth would be odious enough, if almost everywhere governments themselves did not force their poorest subjects to commit crimes by depriving
them of the means of subsistence.18 Brissot readily accepted these arguments, which served as the basis for his reforming agenda: reforming penal
or criminal law could not be attempted effectively before the foundations of
civil and constitutional legislation had been thoroughly rebuilt. In Moyens
de prevenir les crimes en France, he developed an argument he had already
put forward in Theorie des loix criminelles:
The more [civil law] tends to perfection, the less need there will be for criminal legislation. There will be almost none once civil law rests on its proper
basis, which is fixed and immutable; once the monarch has been taught to
respect the property and the liberty of subjects; once the unfortunate whom
fate caused to be born without property, although with needs, can by his
work correct the unfairness of his lot & remove inequality in the distribution
of wealth.19
Once the civil arrangements had been overhauled, the reformation of

morals would follow, the corruption of the wealthy would be exposed
and the number of crimes committed would fall. Brissots analysis clearly
stressed the primacy of civil law reform over that of criminal law and made
it clear that political reform was a necessary preliminary to any change in
the distribution of wealth in society.
Such arguments were conspicuously absent from Benthams proposals.
First, he reasserted that penal law had to come before civil law, working
from the utilitarian premise that classification had to be structured with
reference to pleasure and pain. Defined as dealing primarily with the
infliction of penalties as punishment for harm, penal law provided the
model according to which both civil and constitutional law were to be
understood. In Benthams words, penal matter was the most instructive,
for it most clearly brings to light the essence and the origin of the law,
it expresses in the clearest way the authority from whence it issues.20
In so doing, he took up a classic Hobbesian argument directed against
republicans.
Bentham dealt with civil law at length. Though he advanced equality
as one of the subordinate goals of civil law, its utility was always to be
18
19
Marats Plan de legislation en matière criminelle was published first by Brissot in the Bibliothèque du
Legislateur, vol. V, 147. It was reprinted in Paris in 1790.
20 UC 33, f. 117; Limits (CW), 198218.
J.P. Brissot, Bibliothèque du Legislateur, vol. VI, 25.
85
balanced against the possible threat to security.21 Bentham did recognise

that, other things being equal, a relative equality of property produced
a greater mass of happiness than an unequal distribution. The means he
proposed to reconcile these two diverging aims consisted in reforming the
law so that, in the absence of any direct heir (children, parents or siblings), inheritances should return to the state. This avoided diminishing
the legitimate expectations of property owners or of their close relatives.22
Benthams reluctance to pursue redistributive policies directly was justified
by the axiom according to which the evil of loss is greater than the profit
of gain.23 Similar reasoning also applied to the enfranchisement of slaves.
Opposing slavery on the utilitarian ground that the mass of unhappiness
produced by slavery always outweighed any gains from it, Bentham nevertheless argued against immediate enfranchisement and proposed three
measures: 1. that each slave should be entitled to purchase his freedom
from the owner; 2. that slaves should be freed on the owners death in the
absence of a direct heir; and 3. that a tenth of all slaves should be freed
on each succession, when there were direct heirs.24 These proposals were
far removed from the immediate enfranchisement which Brissot and his
friends increasingly called for in the same decade.
If Bentham disagreed with Brissot, for instance, on the order of priorities
for reform, he also differed on the role ascribed to the people themselves as
agents of change. Echoing Montesquieus arguments, most contemporary
authors explained how to accommodate universal principles of reform to
local circumstances, for instance by appointing local representatives, elected
or not, who could have a voice in debating the laws and adapt them to
national or local manners. Such a solution was suggested by Catherine II,
who drafted the Instruction to guide the choice of the assembly in charge
of reforming the law.
21
22
24
For a discussion of the four ends of civil law (subsistence, abundance, equality and security) in
Projet, see UC 29, ff. 1113; 99, ff. 345; for the conflict between equality and security, 99, ff. 963.
On this important question, see P.J. Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham
and the Civil Law (Oxford, 1990); F. Rosen, Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy. A Study
of the Constitutional Code (Oxford, 1983); G.J. Postema, Bentham and the Common Law Tradition;
M. Quinn, A failure to reconcile the irreconciliable? Security, subsistence and equality in Benthams
writings on the civil code and on the poor law, History of Political Thought, 29/2 (2008), 32043.
UC 99, ff. 835.
UC 99, ff. 938. Benthams hostility to slavery, as an institution, is discussed by F. Rosen, Jeremy
Bentham on Slavery and the Slave Trade, in B. Schultz and G. Varouxakis, eds., Utilitarianism
and Empire (Lanham, MD, 2005), 3356. The Projet writings confirm that reading, but the extent
of Benthams caution must be contrasted with some of his contemporaries more explicit calls for
abolition. Benthams abolitionism, it must be noted, became stronger over time.
86
Bentham was fully aware of these arguments. In an essay entitled Place

and Time written in 1782, he addressed the issue of imposing a new
(and supposedly good) code of law on a given country.25 In the past, he
argued, legislators did not pay heed to local circumstances, but [s]ince
Montesquieu, the number of documents which a legislator would require
is considerably enlarged. Accepting Montesquieus argument that manners
were liable to vary almost infinitely on account of local factors, he proposed
to list, for each country, the specific customs and habits of the people, so
that a precise map of the circumstances influencing sensibility in each
part of the country could be drafted.26 Among the list of circumstances,
Bentham included not only purely physical causes, that is, those derived
from the climate or the nature of the soil, but also the circumstances
of government, religion and manners, thereby presented as given, not as
instruments of change. The legislator should assess the mischief produced
under the existing circumstances and weigh it against the improvement
expected from the introduction of the new system. Bentham then laid out
the following rules to govern legal and moral reforms:
1. No law should be changed, no prevailing usage should be abolished, without special reason: without some specific assignable benefit
[which] can be shewn as likely to be the result of such a change.
2. The changing of a custom repugnant to our own manners and sentiments, for no other reason than such repugnancy, is not to be reputed
as a benefit.27
Benthams utilitarianism does not preclude the possibility of change. On
the contrary, it provides a clear rule to identify the juncture for resistance (when the probable mischiefs of resistance [speaking with respect
to the community in general] appear less . . . than the probable mischiefs of
submission28 ). However his opinion in the 1780s was that the dangers of
civil war almost always outweighed the disutility of the existing institutions. This point was made clearly in the French manuscripts: popular
25
26
27
28
Place and Time, in J. Bentham, Selected Writings, 152219. On this work, see S. Engelmann and
J. Pitts, Benthams Place and Time in The Tocqueville Review / La Revue Tocqueville, 32/1 (2011),
4266.
Place and Time, 156n.
The list continues: 3. In all matters of indifference, let the political sanction remain neuter: and let
the authority of the moral sanction take its course. 4. The easiest innovation to introduce is that
which is effected merely by refusing to a coercive custom the sanction of the law, especially where
the coercion imposed upon one individual is not attended with any profit to another. Place and
Time, 1734.
Fragment (CW), 484.
87
revolutions led to civil wars, which were the greatest of all possible evils.
The conclusion was unambiguous: [n]o government can be so bad that a
friend to mankind should be justified in advising revolt in order to substitute to it any other form of government.29 This argument also applied
retrospectively to the American Revolution. Bentham argued that for each
American, the cost of the revolt had been far higher than that of the taxes
imposed by British rule.30 The only solution one could hope for was to persuade autocratic despots to set rules to limit their own power. He believed
that recent developments afforded sufficient ground for optimism in that
respect:
See how Catherine II has abdicated despotism, see how joyfully Leopold has
planted democracy in the shadows of his laws, see how close Louis XVI has
come to following this magnanimous example.31
In the 1780s, Bentham was optimistic that such examples could spread
to the most autocratic of European countries, and he addressed them
directly. After 1789, in changing political circumstances, he turned to the
representatives of the people.
Public opinion and the English model

Benthams chosen subtitle to Projet was Offre faite par un Anglais aux Souverains de lEurope (An Englishmans offer to the Sovereigns of Europe).32
As an Englishman, he could claim to be familiar with a legal system that had
banished torture and with a constitution widely recognised as the freest in
the world. Bentham was conscious of the advantages that could be derived
from this position, primarily in debates about the best constitution. At the
beginning of the 1770s, he had stressed what set Britain apart from other
countries, namely its respect for freedom of opinion:
This age, say they, is the age of Philosophy. All the nations of Europe have
produced men of genius in this walk. All seem to occupy themselves in our
days in searching after moral truth. Be it so. But in what country can it with
impunity be divulged? There is but one: tis England . . .
No, England any more than Portugal is not wanting in men who as far as
wishes can make them are oppressors. But against the press what in London
29
31
32
30 ibid., f. 200.
ibid., f. 201. Bentham refers in footnotes to Catherines Instruction and Neckers Compte-rendu au
Roi (Paris, 1781). Original in French.
UC 99, f. 156.
88

is their power? . . . Liberty is the Britons [sic] birthright let them profit of
that liberty to give light unto the world. Let him lift up his head: . . . to shed
light among the nations.33
Bentham was, however, far from endorsing the praise usually bestowed on
the British constitution. In A Fragment on Government he had ridiculed
Blackstones panegyric, which rested on the idea that the perfection of
the British constitution derived from a harmonious synthesis of the three
classical forms of government, or from the happy balance of the three main
powers: the executive, the legislative and the judiciary.34 If Fragment criticised Blackstones method, it did not disagree with the idea that the British
constitution was far superior to all existing political arrangements, but
its superiority, Bentham argued, did not reside in its institutional arrangement, rather in a set of factors that set it apart from despotic governments:
the distribution of power among the office-holders, the changes of position
between rulers and ruled, the responsibility of office-holders and the liberty
of the press and public association.35
Projet further developed Benthams constitutional thought along similar
lines. Though his discussion of constitutional law was less developed than
those of the civil and the penal branches, Bentham argued that it was indeed
one of the three branches necessary in a complete code.36 Three chapters
are devoted to elementary political powers, with a view to establishing
a new nomenclature that would render the political institutions existing
throughout the world comparable, whereas present titles failed to make
political differences visible (the King of Polands power, for instance, had
little in common with the King of Britains). This was Benthams answer
to the tripartite division of power that he had ridiculed Blackstone for
adopting.
Moreover, Projet reasserted the idea, present in Limits, that there could be
effective restraints on the power of the sovereign, even though the highest
legislative authority could not be submitted to positive laws. Privileges,
such as freedom of conscience, of worship and of assembly, could be
granted to subjects or citizens or to provinces as a whole. How could
those privileges be enforced if the sovereign could not be legally punished?
Benthams answer was to invoke public opinion as the ultimate security
against abuses on the part of the sovereign. The sanction of public opinion
was the direct, the natural consequence of the sovereigns misconduct:
33
UC 27, f. 4.
34
Fragment (CW), 46174.
35
ibid., 485.
36
UC 33, f. 126.
89
Natural punishments are far from being inefficacious: immediate punishments, dishonour on the part of the sovereign, discontent on the part
of the subjects; subsidiary punishment, in the last resort, revolt and lost
sovereignty.37
The same opinion was reasserted as Bentham presented the constitutional

mechanisms required to make its exercise possible. These manuscript pages
contain what is probably the earliest reference to public opinion as a
tribunal. Under the heading Tribunal de la sanction populaire, he referred
to the check exercised by public opinion on the sovereign and on officeholders, and pointed to Jean-Louis De Lolme as the originator of this idea.
In his description of the English system, Bentham distinguished between
the power deriving from the liberty of the press and the power of electing
representatives. The former, censorial power, or that of openly canvassing
and arraigning the conduct of those who are invested with any branch of
public authority, was one of the foundations on which English liberty was
founded.38
Bentham listed a number of expedients against bad government, whose
common purpose was to create the conditions for the exercise of public
opinion in the state. These securities against misrule, as he later called
them, were broadly similar to those which had been stated in Fragment: laying out the reasons for the laws and all administrative measures, distributing power among several persons at each level of the chain of command,
placing the powers of appointing and dismissing in distinct persons, establishing short terms of office for official appointments, introducing strict
rules of procedure to avoid the exercise of undue power, controlling the
use of public money and lastly all the rights left to the people in the view
of giving to the public will the influence it should have: the right to bear
arms, the right to assemble, the right of confederation, which included
the liberty of the press.39 Bentham concluded that the difference between
free and despotic governments was not so much due to the form of their
institutions as to the degree of enlightenment of the people: Wherein does
37
38
39

ibid., f. 80. De Lolme was praised as the first who accurately assessed the immense weight of
that invaluable means, the immense prize of such an invaluable piece in the political clockwork
of government. Originals in French. See J.-L. De Lolme, The Constitution of England; Or, An
Account of the English Government, David Lieberman, ed. (Indianapolis, IN, 2007), Ch. 12, 199213.
This casts light on an earlier mention of De Lolme: [Blackstone] has copied, Mr. De LOlme has
thought, Fragment (CW), 473.
UC 170, ff. 2025. Original in French. These measures anticipate later provisions stated in Securities
Against Misrule and other Constitutional Writings for Tripoli and Greece, P. Schofield, ed. (CW)
(Oxford, 1990), 806. See F. Rosen, Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, 603.
90
the difference between the state of things under the governments in states
called monarchical and those called despotic lie, if not in the knowledge of
the people?40
Conclusion
Many features of Benthams early plans for the reform of jurisprudence
were elaborated in a dialogue with his contemporaries on the Continent.
Montesquieu and Helvetius had set the terms of the debate earlier in the
century. They included a rationale for codification, calls for reform (be it
top-down or bottom-up) and the order of priorities in reforming strategies.
In addressing them, Bentham showed that he was eager to engage in
continental discussions, not only in those taking place within an insular
common law context. More importantly, his close reading of contemporary
sources accounts for the specific features of his critical position, poised
between two very different legal systems. His two-pronged critique of the
common law and of Roman law allowed him to propose original solutions
to the issue of legal reform.
Clearly addressed to rulers in a position to make legal and political changes, Benthams Projet contained a comprehensive programme for
reform. However, it never entirely managed to solve the dilemma Helvetius
had highlighted: how could one reconcile a clear vision of the best system of
laws with the cautious gradualism necessary to avoid upsetting the existing
social order? Benthams solution, an appeal to a free and enlightened public
opinion, and to freedom of the press as the condition for political and legal
change, also referred back to Helvetius.41 However, unlike him and most
of his republican followers, Bentham consistently refused to consider a
thorough redistribution of property under new civil law rules. In civil and
constitutional law, he followed a specific route that broke with the radical
republican ideals of many of his contemporaries. This was clear in the
way he rejected the discourse of rights as a foundation for reform, refused
to consider popular participation in the institutions of government and
highlighted the dangers of revolution. In penal matters, however, Bentham
reasserted the calls uttered by the followers of Montesquieu and Beccaria
throughout Europe. He went further than them in calling for a complete
overhaul of existing legal systems, by targeting their historical and symbolic
40
41

See That we owe the truth to the people and Of the liberty of the press, in C.A. Helvetius, A
Treatise on Man, vol. II, 31822.
91
foundations (common law and Roman law) and by imposing a utilitarian

criterion as a critical tool in the hands of an enlightened public opinion.
Most of all, the specificity of Benthams proposal lay in his ambition to
found a new system of law, free from existing classifications and vocabulary.
In the 1770s and the 1780s, Benthams imagined audience was made up
of enlightened minds throughout Europe, what he called public opinion,
in French, opinion publique, . . . that tutelary power of which of late so
much is said, and by which so much is done. In addressing his educated
contemporaries in Britain and on the Continent and not the people at
large he strove to become part of a growing critical movement led by
intellectuals.42
By the end of 1788, it was clear to contemporaries that France was on
the brink of a major overhaul of Ancien Regime institutions. Despite his
opposition to violent change, Bentham soon realised that the context was
becoming favourable to new ideas and he set out to publicise his thoughts
there. The next chapters investigate the extent to which he had to adapt
his system to the new requirements of French politics and the mixed
reception his ideas received.
42
On public opinion, see R. Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (Durham,
NC, 1991), 2037; and K.M. Baker, Public Opinion as Political Invention, Inventing the French
Revolution (Cambridge, 1990), 16799.
part iii
Reflections for the Revolution in France

I want two selves: one to be a` laffut des affaires [to keep abreast
of developments] at Versailles, the other to collect here in England
examples that may be of use to you.
Bentham to Morellet, 6 May 17891
Soon after Bentham returned from Russia, Projet seemed all but forgotten as
the philosopher gave way to his friends insistence and had An Introduction
to the Principles of Morals and Legislation printed in London in the spring of
1789.2 One of his first visits was to Lansdowne House. Since the preceding
summer, events unfolding in France had been arousing enthusiasm among
many of Lansdownes friends and dependents. Like them, Bentham came
to see the opportunities opened by recent changes across the Channel
and started to draft a number of essays for the use of the nation, again
writing in French. Because Projet had remained unpublished, his expertise
in matters of legislation was still largely unknown. Through Lansdowne,
the early years of the Revolution allowed him to gain a definite, if restricted,
audience on the European continent.
This chapter studies that period in the light of Benthams earlier
interest in continental politics and through his personal connections in
Francophile networks. In 1789, and for the first time, he was in a position
that gave him hopes of being heard, as Lord Lansdowne gave him access
to a plentiful library and to precious personal contacts. Over the years
Lansdowne had built a strong network of allies and proteges across the
Channel. Through him, Bentham met Etienne Dumont, Samuel Romilly
and Benjamin Vaughan, who all spent time in Paris from 1788 to 1792.
What is more, his former friend Brissot was now rising as one of the leading
publicists of the Revolution. Alongside his unpublished manuscripts,
Bentham wrote a number of essays that were then sent to Paris and
translated by Dumont and others: Political Tactics and Draught of a Plan
for the Judicial Establishment in France. Earlier works such as Panopticon
and Defence of Usury were also sent across the Channel and translated.
1
2
Correspondence (CW), vol. XIV (forthcoming).

The work had been printed in 1780. A preface, a concluding note and several footnotes were added
when the text was published in 1789.
93
94
Part III Reflections for the Revolution in France
In many ways, the French Revolution was a defining moment in

Benthams career. His Russian trip had failed to make him noticed by
Catherine the Great, but he was now provided with an opportunity
to work out new applications of his utilitarian system. Like the most
enthusiastic of his contemporaries on both sides of the Channel, he saw
Revolutionary France as a laboratory in which new ideas could be tried
out, often using the theoretical work he had conducted in the preceding
decade as the basis for his proposals. Though he was to be disappointed
with the reception his ideas eventually met with in France, events allowed
him to develop personal and official connections within French political
circles and laid the foundations for the reception of his thought at the
beginning of the nineteenth century.
Benthams writings for the French Revolution have long posed problems
to scholars. To many, his enthusiasm for the Revolution was short-lived and
shallow. In the light of his earlier warnings against political upheavals and
revolutions in general, his willingness to support political change in France
can seem puzzling. Bentham indeed never accepted wholeheartedly the
theoretical foundations of French republicanism and soon condemned the
outbreaks of violence that accompanied the reform of French institutions.
In 1795, he drafted a pamphlet entitled Nonsense upon Stilts against the
anarchical consequences of adopting the Declaration of the Rights of
Man.
The question has long been posed in terms of Benthams conversion
to democracy. For Mary Mack, writing in 1962, Bentham was converted
to democratic ideals in 1790 but the Terror prompted a Fabian retreat
from popular politics. In contrast, James Burns showed by a close reading
of the manuscripts that Benthams genuine interest in French democratic
politics did not imply that he embraced radical politics at home and that
his interest could not, in that sense, be called a conversion.3 In a recent
study, Philip Schofield concluded that Bentham was edging towards the
development of a democratic utilitarian politics until the excesses of the
French Revolution persuaded him to abandon this course and instead
to defend the existing institutions of the British polity.4 This chapter
examines Benthams position towards reform and revolution in France as
3
4
J.H. Burns, Bentham and the French Revolution, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5/16
(1966), 95114.
P. Schofield, Utility and Democracy, 108. Mary Mack had claimed that The French Revolution was
decisive in making Bentham a democrat, Jeremy Bentham. An Odyssee of Ideas (New York, NY,
1962), 432. For a summary of the debate on Benthams conversion to democracy, see Utility and
Democracy, 7983.
95
it developed over time in relation first to Lansdownes circle and second to

French revolutionary debates. A contextual analysis of Benthams opinions
on some key aspects, such as cosmopolitanism, peace, rights, property and
popular politics, shows that these writings are not an anomaly in the course
of his intellectual and political career. Not only are they closely related to
the arguments put forward years before in Projet, but they are also in line
with the opinions circulating in moderate French circles at the time.
chapter 7
Frenchmen and Francophiles:

Lord Lansdownes network
Throughout his stay in Russia, Bentham had regularly sent Lord

Lansdowne news and intelligence. Eight years after his first visit, he spent
over two months during the autumn of 1789 at Bowood, the Marquiss
Wiltshire residence, and again the following year. These extended stays
aside, he dined at Lansdowne House almost every week throughout 1789
and 1790. He remained close to the Marquis until 1793 when he ceased to
be a regular guest either at Lansdowne House in London or at Bowood.1
In sketching out the history of Benthams interest in the French Revolution, commentators have recognised how much it owed his protector, a
noted Francophile and a diplomat with extensive connections. In practical
terms, Lansdowne provided Bentham with the opportunity to make
personal contacts in France: his son, Lord Wycombe, travelled there in 1789
and 1790; the abbe Morellet (to whom Bentham had unsuccessfully written
a decade earlier) was one of his most regular French correspondents; the
Genevan Etienne Dumont, who had been in his service since 1786, was
active in Mirabeaus circle; and two of his close dependents, Benjamin
Vaughan and Samuel Romilly, made several visits to France in the early
years of the Revolution. Moreover, Benthams knowledge of events in
France and the networks that enabled him to have his ideas circulate in the
country were shaped by the interests of his patron. But in what ways did
it colour his interpretation of the events and his own proposals for France?
French events seen from Lansdowne House

The marquis of Lansdowne was committed to the cause of constitutional
reform in France from the onset of the Revolution. In 1788, like many of
his British contemporaries, he welcomed the dawn of a freer government
over the Channel, hoping for a more speedy assemblage of the States, and a
1
For a more detailed account, see E. de Champs, Jeremy Bentham at Bowood.
97
98
better constitution of the Cour plenière, with a Habeas Corpus, restricted

to particular descriptions and bod[ie]s.2 His main interest, however, was
diplomacy and not internal politics. He strongly believed that peace with
France was desirable for the balance of power in Europe and would allow
the development of strong commercial bonds with Britain.3
During his time at the ministry, he had developed close links with
French diplomats who supported American independence. Many of these
enlightened members of the Ancien Regime aristocracy welcomed the
reforms of 1789 and 1790 and often took an active part in the early months
of the Revolution. In July 1788, in order to address mounting protests in
the kingdom, Louis XVI summoned the Estates General consultative
parliaments made up of elected representatives from the three orders (the
clergy, the nobility and the Third Estate, i.e. commoners). They met
in Versailles in May 1789. In the summer of 1789, deputies from the
Third Estate, joined by a few members of the aristocracy and of the
clergy, formed the National Constituent Assembly which remained in
place until 1791, when it was succeeeded by the Legislative Assembly. Some
of Lansdownes friends, like the duc de La Rochefoucauld dEnville, were
elected to the Estates General and to the Constituent Assembly. Lansdowne
himself played a part in supporting French constitutional reforms, if only by
granting leave to Etienne Dumont who was then employed in his service to
work alongside the marquis de Mirabeau and his associate Etienne Clavière
in Paris.4
In the light of the support the Marquis had given to the cause of
Parliamentary reform at home and of his connections with reformers in
France, it is not surprising that Bentham later recalled that his protector
witnessed the French Revolution with sincere delight.5 The marquis was
branded by the loyalist press for his Francophile tendencies: the Evening
Post wrote in 1791 that at Lansdowne House conversation [was] as free and
uncontrouled[sic] as in any Jacobine club in Paris.6 Numerous caricatures
2
5
6
Quoted by Bentham in Correspondence (CW ), vol. III, 621. In May 1788, the minister Lomenie de
Brienne proposed to create a cour plenière, or plenary court, in charge of registering royal edicts. The
rejection of this proposal, among others, led to the summoning of the Estates General.
R. Whatmore, Shelburne and Perpetual Peace: Small States, Commerce, and International Relations
within the Bowood Circle, in N. Aston and C. Campbell-Orr, eds., An Enlightenment Statesman in
Whig Britain, 24973; and Against War and Empire, 1829.
On Etienne Dumonts part in the Revolution, see the detailed account in C. Blamires, The French
Revolution and the Creation of Benthamism, 13280; and E. Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau et sur
les deux premières assemblees legislatives, J. Benetruy, ed. (Paris, 1950).
Bowring, vol. X, 187. For Lansdownes attitude towards popular politics in Britain, see John Norris,
Shelburne and Reform (London, 1963).
Evening Post, 24 December 1791.
Frenchmen and Francophiles
99
represented him and other Francophiles as Jacobins7 but opinions

varied within Lansdownes circle. Some, such as Richard Price and Joseph
Priestley, publicly took sides in favour of constitutional change in France.
Etienne Dumont was driven by a precise agenda regarding Genevan politics
and strongly supported the establishment of a British-style constitution in
France.8 Much more radical was Benjamin Vaughan, one of Lansdownes
closest agents at the time of American independence, who travelled frequently to Paris until he finally fled to France in 1794 to escape prosecution
for his pro-revolutionary activities in Britain.9 The young lawyer, Samuel
Romilly, a close friend of Dumont and whom Bentham had met through
George Wilson in 1784, was active in London radical circles. He had met
Mirabeau in 1784 and translated into English his anti-aristocratic pamphlet
Considerations on the Order of Cincinnatus. In the summers of 1788 and 1789,
Romilly and Dumont travelled to France. Soon after, Romilly called for the
influence of the French Revolution on Great-Britain, marvelling that so
great a revolution should have been effected with so little bloodshed.10 The
following year, under the pseudonym of a German traveller, the two friends
published a series of letters based on Dumonts eye-witness accounts of the
French events and explicitly called for constitutional reform in Britain.11
Lansdowne encouraged his Francophile friends and guests to come
together to discuss French affairs: he asked Bentham in November 1789 to
join Romilly and Vaughan to a weekly meeting club proposed to be formed
of the friends of the new principles, a society which Bentham suggested
calling the Philo-Gallicon Society,12 but this episode was anecdotal. It
7
See for instance, prints by Gillray (see online catalogues of the British Museum and National Portrait
Gallery): Malagrida, driving post (March 1792), Light expelling darkness (1795), or those by James
Sayers: Chauvelin (May 1794), John Bulls sacrifice to Janus (also figuring Priestley, 1794) or The
Republican Attack (November 1795, with numerous other politicians also close to radical circles).
There were heavy hints about his support of revolutionaries: Mons. Dumont, who has apartments
at Shelburne House, is another of our patriotic French Reformers. He has been of late very busy
between London and Paris. We do not learn whether the marquis of Lansdowne is studying under
his tuition. Evening Mail, London, 16 May 1792.
8 R. Whatmore, Etienne Dumont, the British Constitution and the French Revolution.
9 M.T. Davis, Vaughan, Benjamin (17511835), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
10 [S. Romilly], Thoughts on the Probable Influence of the French Revolution on Great-Britain (London,
1790). His enthusiasm for the early years of the Revolution is documented in S. Romilly, Memoirs
of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, written by himself [ . . . ] edited by his sons, 3 vols. (London, 1840),
vol. I, 102455.
11 [E. Dumont, S. Romilly and J. Scarlett], H.F. Groenvelt, Letters containing an account of the late
revolution in France, and observations on the Constitution, laws, manners, and institutions of the
English; written during the authors residence as Paris, Versailles and London, in the years 1789 and 1790
(London, 1792). The genesis of this work is carefully explained in D. Jarrett, The Bowood Circle,
17801793. Its ideas and its influence (Oxford, unpublished D. Phil, 1955). See also C. Blamires,
The French Revolution, 21019.
12 The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. IV, 17881793, A.T. Milne, ed. (CW ) (London,
1981,) 102. Lansdowne House Dinner Books confirm the dates and reveal the list of participants.
100
soon became clear that Lansdownes guests were far from unanimous in
their support for the Revolution. After one of the meetings, Bentham
confessed that it was composed partly of the friends to liberty, partly of
enemies, and partly of people who care nothing about the matter.13 In
fact, Lansdownes dinner books reveal that his guests and acquaintances
were drawn from a large array of British and foreign diplomats, scientists
and politicians, many of whom watched the collapse of the Ancien Regime
with dismay. His dinners were social, not political, events.
The suspension of the French kings powers in September 1792 and
the progress of popular violence in the late summer and autumn of that
year marked a turning point for most of Lansdownes correspondents,
despite the variety of their political views. On 4 September, the duc de
La Rochefoucauld dEnville was assassinated. A former correspondent of
Franklin, a patron of the sciences and a strong supporter of the American
cause, the duke had been among the first aristocrats to rally the deputies of
the Third Estate in June 1789. His death at the hands of anti-aristocratic
French patriots spread desolation both at Lansdowne House and at
Benthams (who was to have dinner with Dumont and the dukes first
cousin, the duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, when the news arrived).
From the beginning of September, a large number of emigres fled to
London. Some were received at Lansdowne House and even at Queens
Square Place.14
The death of Mirabeau in 1791 and the onset of the Terror had farreaching consequences for the attitudes of Benthams friends towards the
Revolution in France. Dumont distanced himself from French politics.
From Geneva, he heard the news of the September massacres and departed
for London soon afterwards.15 Romilly, in whose eyes the outbursts of
violence in 1789 and 1790 had been legitimate, was thoroughly shaken by
the unfolding events. He wrote to Dumont on 10 September 1792:
I observe that in your letter, you say nothing about France, and I wish I
could do so too, and forget the affairs of that wretched country altogether;
but that is impossible. I can scarcely think of any thing else. How could
we ever be so deceived in the character of the French nation as to think
them capable of liberty. Wretches, who after all their professions and boasts
about liberty, and patriotism, and courage, and dying, after taking oath after
13
14
15
On 4 November, the club comprised Vaughan, Bentham, Jan Ingen-Housz (FRS), and Samuel
Romilly. (Quoted with permission of the Trustees of the Bowood Collection.)
Correspondence (CW ), vol. IV, 103.
ibid., 391. Bentham had moved into his fathers house on Queens Square Place in 1792.
C. Blamires, The French Revolution, 20010, 21921.
101
oath, at the very moment when their country is invaded and an enemy is
marching through it unresisted employ whole days in murdering women
and priests and prisoners! One might as well think of establishing a republic
of tigers in some forest in Africa, as of maintaining free government among
them.16
Compared with Dumont and Romilly, whose disillusionment was on a

par with their former hopes, Benthams reaction seems to have been more
moderate. In October 1792, he accepted the French citizenship granted
to him by the National Assembly a month earlier, while mentioning with
some courage his deep sorrow at the recent massacres in his letter of
acceptance.17 By December, he could still write of the French who, whatever mischief they have done to us, but love and respect us and praise the
codification movement going on in Paris. In a pamphlet written in the same
period, French judiciary practice was favourably contrasted to the English.18
Tellingly, Samuel Romilly advised him against printing or circulating the
pamphlet on the grounds that the praise given to the French would, I have
no doubt, throw discredit on all the truth it contains. Bentham took his
friends advice and the pamphlet remained unpublished until 1823.19
Preserving peace in Europe

To understand the specificity of Benthams position, it is necessary to recognise the value he, like Lansdowne, placed on peace between the two nations.
In a letter describing Lord Wycombes opinions, written to his brother in
July 1789, Bentham wrote: [h]e is as zealous as myself for universal liberty
of government, commerce and religion, and for universal peace.20 This
statement could have been applied to Lord Lansdowne, Lord Wycombes
father. As noted earlier, the phrase universal liberty of government, as
applied to Landsowne, did not mean extensive parliamentary reform, but
16
17
18
19
Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, vol. II, 4. In Thoughts on the Probable Influence, he had
written: Who would regret that the long parliament made a stand against the tyrannical measures
of Charles I, because that very parliament murdered Lord Strafford and Archbishop Laud by bills
of attainder? The only difference between those murders and the murders of Foulon and Berthier
[during the storming of the Bastille] were, that the former were committed by men distinguished
by their talents, their knowledge, their opulence, and their titles; and the latter by the poor, the
ignorant, and the vulgar, 4.
On 26 August 1792, the National Assembly granted French citizenship to several foreigners :
Priestley, Paine, Bentham, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Mackintosh, David Williams, Gorani, Cloots,
Campe, Pauw, Pestalozzi, Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Klopstock, Kosciusco and Schiller.
Truth versus Ashhurst, Bowring, vol. V, 231, 236. Lord Ashhurst, Puisne Justice of the Kings Bench,
had given a charge against seditious meetings and corresponding societies.
20 ibid., 83.
Correspondence (CW ), vol. IV, 41415.
102
representative institutions on the British model. After 1790 Lansdowne

spoke exclusively on foreign affairs in Parliament, on the necessity of preserving peace with France, for reasons that had to do with his vision of a
European economic polity united by peaceful commercial ties.21
In a memoir entitled Reasons for the permanency of the French Revolution written at the end of 1791, Lansdowne spelled out his admiration
for the Revolution.22 As might be expected, his opinions turned mostly
on international relations. As far as the domestic situation of France was
concerned, he maintained a steady optimism, discarding the hypothesis
of a successful counter-revolution. Against all odds, after 1793, he always
regarded peace with France as imminent and called for an official recognition of the French republic.23 Lansdowne found an ally in Bentham. The
philosopher had long seen war as the most direct threat to the greatest
happiness of the greatest number. His stay in Russia and his brothers continuing presence there also account for his own interest in preserving peace
on the Continent. In July 1789, Lansdowne had invited Bentham to draft
letters for the press to denounce Pitts aggressive foreign policy in Eastern
Europe. A series of letters signed Anti-Machiavel were published in The
Public Advertiser. As Bentham wrote to the marquis before the debate took
place, [y]our prisoner has broke ground, and now is the time for you to
bring up your battering cannon.24
The collaboration with Lansdowne is only one element in the numerous
manuscripts Bentham wrote on how to preserve peace. The first author
to use the adjective international as applied to what was known as jus
gentium, Bentham sought to clarify the mutual rights and obligations of
sovereigns towards one another, both in peace and in wartime.25 As a citizen
of the world, however, his stated objective was to propose ways of avoiding
war, described as mischief upon the largest scale. Plan for an Universal
and Perpetual Peace was drafted in 1789 and was dedicated to the common
welfare of all civilised nations; but more particularly of Great-Britain and
21
22
23
24
25
R. Whatmore, Shelburne and Perpetual Peace.

L. Fitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, afterwards First Marquess of Lansdowne, with
extracts from his papers and correspondence, 3 vols. (London, 1876), vol. III, 4938. Original (with
title, but undated) in Bowood Papers, British Library, box 103. Fitzmaurice says it was written
shortly after the death of Mirabeau and omits the title.
W. Willcox, Lord Lansdowne on the French Revolution and the Irish Rebellion, Journal of Modern
History, 17/1 (March, 1945), 2936, 31f.
Correspondence (CW ), vol. IV, 73. For a detailed study of this episode, see S. Conway, Bentham
versus Pitt: Jeremy Bentham and British Foreign Policy 1789, Historical Journal, 30 (1987), 791809.
UC 33, ff. 812. The Matter material was drawn upon in Principles of International Law, Bowring,
vol. II, 53560, which includes A Plan of Universal and Perpetual Peace. See D. Armitage, Global
Bentham.
103
France.26 This manuscript is closely related to that of Emancipate your

colonies, which Bentham drafted as an address to the French in December
1792, shortly after having met, through Dumont, Talleyrand and Gallois,
two envoys from the French government. In both texts, Bentham identified
colonies as the main source of conflict between European powers and
presented economic arguments in favour of abandoning them. Bentham
hoped to convince the French that overseas dependencies were not worth
fighting for. Internal politics played only a secondary role.27
Like Lansdowne, Benthams hopes of peace with France survived the
beginning of the war in 1793. In 1796, he wrote to William Wilberforce,
suggesting that they mount a peace expedition to France, together with
the other Britons who had been made French citizens.28 Wilberforces
opposition to war with France was well known: as an MP he had supported
most of the amendments in favour of peace presented by the opposition
Whigs. However, he turned down Benthams offer, possibly because of
his close relation with Pitt.29 Bentham then turned to Lord St Helens, the
diplomat, to ask him to take him to France on a mission to negotiate peace.
Little is known of that short-lived initiative after St Helens dismissed it as
unseasonable the French offensive against Britain being about to begin.
It is interesting because it reveals Benthams enduring interest in security
in Europe. Conceived shortly after the writing of Nonsense Upon Stilts,
the plan shows that Benthams rejection of Terror did not compromise his
hopes that peace could be reached, even with a Republic based on natural
rights. In the letter to Wilberforce, Bentham mentioned that his initiative
would be less welcome to the French if they knew about Nonsense Upon
Stilts, but they had no way of being apprised of it. The same year, Bentham
also wrote an open letter to defend Benjamin Vaughan against charges of
treason, though he does not seem to have sent it to the papers.30
26
27
28
29
30
Bowring, vol. II, 546.

Emancipate your Colonies, Rights, Representation, and Reform: Nonsense upon Stilts and other
writings for the French Revolution, P. Schofield, C. Pease-Watkin and C. Blamires, eds. (CW )
(Oxford, 2002) 291313. See also Editorial introduction, xliv. Though printed in 1793 and circulated
privately after that, the pamphlet was only published in Britain in 1829 and translated into French
the same year (see J. Pitts, A Turn to Empire, 103ff. and Part V below, p. 197).
The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. V, January 1794 to December 1797, A.T. Milne, ed.,
(CW ) (London, 1981), 253.
Correspondence (CW), vol. V, 259.
UC 169, ff. 2456, draft letter to the Conductor of the Herald, 15 February 1796.
chapter 8
A cosmopolitan event?
At the very beginning of the Revolution, Bentham began to write for a
French audience using French again as he had done in Projet. In the spring
of 1789, Bentham added the following manuscript note to his proposal for
perpetual and universal peace:
The civilised world is a republic. The assembly room is the earth: printing
houses are the lobbies. The demagogues are the Philosophers. A Philosopher
is whoever has the courage to be one, and the right to speak out is no longer
a privilege.1
The ease with which information and people travelled between France
and Britain in the early years of the Revolution could only reinforce such
views. A strong network of correspondents provided the London press with
regular accounts of French politics. French papers, though expensive, were
available in the British capital. Benthams correspondence shows him eager
to procure news from the international press (the Gazette de Leyde and the
Courier de Londres). He first turned to George Wilson and then to Benjamin
Vaughan, with whom he apparently took out a subscription to Le Moniteur
Universel in 17901791.2 Benthams correspondence also testifies to the
various ways of procuring French pamphlets and books, through contacts
with booksellers, for instance, or private loans or exchanges. For him,
Lansdownes library was a recurring source. Letters from France, be they
from Dumont, Romilly or Vaughan, were circulated among Lansdownes
friends, providing these privileged readers with eyewitness accounts of
political events before they were printed in the papers.
Benthams hopes that the free circulation of information between the
two countries heralded the advent of a truly cosmopolitan public sphere
was expressed in one of his earliest pamphlets for France. In Presse libre,
1
2
UC 25, f. 34. Original in French. I thank M. Quinn for bringing this quote to my attention.
Correspondence (CW), vol. IV, 7981, 348.
104
105
written late in 1788, he called for freedom of the press to be established in

the kingdom. Without freedom of the press, he wrote, the popular policy
that has been adopted will be very inconsistent and quite contrary to the
aim it proposes to achieve. He went on to argue that it was beneficial to
the people, first, but also to the government.3 On the French side, freedom
of the press was one of the earliest revolutionary demands. It was enshrined
in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in the last days of
August 1789: article 11 stated that the free communication of thoughts and
opinions [was] one of the most precious rights of man. When Bentham
came to criticise the Declaration, he found fault with the wording of article
11 (on the grounds that it proved insufficient against slander), but, like the
men of 1789, he remained attached to the principle of the freedom of the
press.4 More generally, he highlighted the role that foreigners like himself
could play in the French public sphere. In 17881789, he regularly lamented
that invitations to citizens to contribute to the reform of institutions never
seemed to extend to foreigners.5
In his eagerness to react to the debates going on in Paris, Bentham made
it clear that he saw the Revolution as fulfilling his hopes of a cosmopolitan
Republic of Letters similar to the one he had called for in the preceding
decade. He wrote to Morellet that his advice was provided in payment of
the great debt [he had] contracted on the score of education from Frenchmen, among whom were Helvetius, DAlembert and Voltaire.6 In stressing
the universal nature of the Revolution, Benthams ideas echoed a common opinion held by many French Revolutionaries and by a large number
of international supporters throughout Europe and the New World. As
early as July 1789, Lord Stanhope wrote to the duc de la Rochefoucauld
dEnville to express the support of more than 300 Englishmen for the
French Revolution.7 A year later, Prices speech on the occasion of the first
anniversary of the fall of the Bastille was translated into French and sent
over to the President of the National Assembly. The translator insisted:
[i]t seems important to honour the feelings of strangers, friends of our
revolution. They will spread the true principles; they will destroy the false
3
4
5
7
Presse libre, Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), 5461. Original in French.
Nonsense Upon Stilts, Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), 3614. For an account of the
ambiguities of revolutionary debates on freedom of expression, see C. Walton, Policing Public
Opinion in the French Revolution. The Culture of Calumny and the Problem of Free Speech (Oxford,
2009), 7393.
6 Correspondence (CW), vol. IV, 501n.
Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), 5461, 65.
Quoted in S. Wahnich, Limpossible citoyen. Letranger dans le discours de la Revolution francaise (Paris,
1997), 16. See also M. Rapport, Nationality and Citizenship in Revolutionary France: the Treatment
of Foreigners 17891799 (Oxford, 2010).
106
opinions propagated in all countries by aristocrats.8 It is in a similar spirit

and using similar channels that Bentham sent Political Tactics and Draught
of a New Plan for the Organisation of the Judicial Establishment in France to
a number of correspondents. Like Lord Stanhope, he used Ancien Regime
networks to have his work transmitted from Lord Lansdowne to the duc
de La Rochefoucauld, personally wrote to Brissot and Morellet, and took
the more official route of addressing letters the President of the Assembly.9
Such universalistic views were by no means uncommon. They culminated in the summer of 1792 during the debate on whether French citizenship should be granted to deserving foreigners. The deputy Andre Chenier
called for France to become the congress of the entire world by inviting the
elite of all men from everywhere in the world. Like Bentham, he believed
that this would fulfil the wishes of the philosophes.10 Appealing to foreign
experts to intervene in domestic affairs, however, posed a number of problems. From the start, national pride limited appeals to external expertise.
As a Genevan, Etienne Dumont resented the xenophobic attacks on his
fellow citizens such as Necker and Clavière, and lamented that the French
had not taken more heed of British institutions. He bitterly reminisced
that Mirabeaus suggestion to look to British parliamentary proceedings
had been rebuffed with a curt [w]e are not English and we do not need the
English.11 Reluctance to borrow from the English model went together
with increasing controls on persons and goods at the borders. As early
as 1789, checks were imposed on the circulation of travellers. From 1791,
these restrictions became more numerous as decrees were passed to curb
emigration and passports became compulsory. When war broke out in
February 1793, suspicion of travellers increased. In December 1793, the
Englishman Thomas Paine and the Dutchman Anarchasis Cloots, who
had been elected to the National Convention, were excluded and soon
imprisoned for treason.
An English jurisconsults advice

The form taken by Benthams writings for France bears witness to his belief
that he was an active member in an international public sphere. They are
8
9
10
11
Quoted in S. Wahnich, Limpossible citoyen, 1634.

Correspondence (CW), vol. IV, 1246 and note. The letter to Brissot (ibid. 967) most probably also
dates from the spring of 1790 and not October 1789.
Archives Parlementaires, vol. XLVIII, 6889.
E. Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau (Paris, 1950) 108.
107
all written either as advice addressed to influential personalities or as commentaries on official documents produced in the course of the Revolution.
Framed as the opinions of un Anglois on issues that occupied French public opinion, the pamphlets written in 1788 and 1789 are direct answers to
French debates as reported in the papers, such as the call for advice issued
by Louis XVI in the summer of 1789 on the summoning of the Estates
General, or the questions asked by Necker to the Assembly of Notables
in the autumn.12 Line-by-line commentaries of projects submitted by the
French institutions (the 1789 Constitution, the plan for the organisation
of the judiciary and, later, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the
Citizen) also testify to his wish to be recognised as an expert providing
advice on the drafting of new legislation.
All these essays were written with the definite purpose of being read
and circulated in France though, in the course of events, only a small
number found their way across the Channel, however briefly, from 1790
to 1791. Two earlier essays also appeared in book form: A Defence of Usury
was published in two different translations in 1790, and Le panoptique,
a summary view of the Panopticon letters, compiled by Etienne Dumont,
was printed the following year by order of the National Assembly.13 The
continuity of Benthams position in the late 1780s is striking in these two
works originally drafted at the end of his stay in Russia. In both instances,
the French translations were faithful to the original and highlighted the
relevance of Benthams ideas to French debates.14 Meanwhile, a number of
extracts were translated, again by Dumont, and published in Mirabeaus
paper. They were drawn from two works drafted with French events in
mind but privately printed in London in English: Political Tactics and
Draught of a New Plan for the Organisation of the Judicial Establishment in
France. A large number of manuscripts also remained unpublished.
12
13
14
Considerations dun Anglois, Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), 65.

Apologie de lusure, redigee en forme de lettres, adressees a` un ami. Traduit de langlais de M. Jeremy
Bentham (Paris, 1790); Lettres sur la liberte du taux de linteret de largent, E. Delessert, trans. (Paris,
1790); Panoptique, memoire sur un nouveau principe pour construire des maisons dinspection (Paris,
1791). Turgots 1770 Memoire sur les prets dargent had been republished in 1789 as usury laws were
being debated at the Assembly: see A.R.J. Turgot, Memoires sur le pret a` interet et sur le commerce des
fers (Paris, 1789). Both translations highlighted the relevance of Benthams arguments to Turgots
and were directly related to the decree of 3 October 1789 allowing loan at an interest. See also M.
Quinns Editorial introduction to J. Bentham, Economic Writings, vol. I (forthcoming). I thank
N. Sigot for clarifications on these translations.
The several versions of the Panopticon texts are compared in C. Pease-Watkin, Benthams Panopticon and Dumonts Panoptique, Journal of Bentham Studies, 6 (2003); and A. Brunon-Ernst
Panoptique in the Editorial introduction to Traites de legislation civile et penale (Paris, 2010),
xxvixxxi.
108
In form and content, these proposals were close to the earlier writings
of the 1780s, though for obvious political reasons Bentham refrained from
alluding to his time in Russia or to his hopes of serving Catherine II. The
importance of Projet as a seminal text for Benthams revolutionary writings
can be felt in the two works that circulated the most broadly in France:
Draught of a New Plan for the Organisation of the Judicial Establishment
and Panopticon. In both works, his field of expertise was clearly delineated
in the terms set by Beccaria: the reform of the law was to be based first on
fairer legal proceedings and secondly on a prompt and rational application
of punishment.
Benthams expertise had to do with the form of laws and with the design
of institutions. In Draught of a New Plan for the Organisation of the Judicial
Establishment in France, he used the reflection conducted in Projet as the
basis for his critique of the plan submitted to the National Assembly and
for his alternative proposals. Characteristically, he constantly reminded the
revolutionaries of the importance of form: [w]ords in themselves are of no
sort of consequence; but when they are made the foundation of practical
institutions, then surely their propriety becomes worth investigation.15 In
Draught of a New Plan, he pointed out loose or contradictory formulations, inconsistencies between articles, or unclear chains of authority or
responsibility. This is directly reminiscent of the work on the form of
the laws conducted in Limits and continued in Projet: the wording of
legislation and the exposition of reasons deserve specific attention from
legislators. Writing for the French Assembly, Bentham also took up examples he had examined earlier, such as the discussion of a law quoted by
Puffendorf, stating that whosoever draws blood in the streets shall be put to
death.16
Benthams proposals were designed to fulfil the intention of French
legislators, be they committees of the Assembly or the Assembly itself.17
They offered the revolutionaries advice which the philosopher believed was
important to further the goals they had set themselves this did not always
reflect his personal stance on the questions. In Draught of a New Plan for the
Organisation of the Judicial Establishment in France, Bentham followed the
original proposal in providing for the popular election of judges. He did
not refrain from pointing out the problems he thought would follow from
opening the election of magistrates to all citizens. However, embracing
the received principles of the revolutionaries, he pointed out how to best
15
Draught of a New Plan, Bowring, vol. IV, 307.
16
ibid., 313.
17
ibid., 309.
109
effect it and advised against vesting in the king the power of appointing
judges designated by the people.18
As an Englishman, Bentham also used his specific knowledge of British
institutions to warn the revolutionaries against borrowing their principles directly. This was especially important in the case of the organisation of the judiciary, as a century of Enlightenment writing had praised
British rules of procedure. Provisions such as setting up juries or sending
judges on circuit were discussed in the Assembly. For the appointment of
judges, Bentham reminded his readers that on this point, neither the past
usages nor the present views of the two kingdoms afford any parallel.19
Though the English system undoubtedly possessed features that singled
it out among European practice, one should not be blind to its particular and very gross defects.20 These discussions were directly relevant
to French debates. When compiling extracts for the Courier de Provence,
Dumont selected passages that related to English courts, be it on juries or on
circuits.21
The reception of Benthams writings: legal reform

and philanthropy
Etienne Dumont was certainly the main channel through which Benthams
ideas became known in France, but he did not immediately circulate his
friends writings. He was one of the first readers of the philosophers French
pamphlets at the end of 1788 and he commented on them, but made no
attempt to revise them for a French readership. The following summer,
Bentham sent him what had been printed of Political Tactics. This time,
Dumont was enthusiastic:
I have shown this plan to M. de Mirabeau, to the duc de la Rochefoucaul[d],
and a few others who have admired its truly philosophical conception. Taken
together, it is the map of a truly new and original work. I dare to say, Sir,
that by completing this work, you will fill one of the lacunae in political
literature.22
18
19
21
22
ibid., 3079; Correspondence (CW), vol. X, 69; and P. Schofield, Utility and Democracy (Oxford,
2006) 93.
20 ibid., 313.
IIIe dissertation. Competence universelle de chaque tribunal Inconvenient des tribunaux
dexception Inconveniens des circuits anglois, Courier de Provence, 117 (1790), 4450.
Correspondence (CW), vol. IV, 92.
110
Accordingly, he used ideas put forward by Bentham in the newspaper he

was editing on Mirabeaus behalf.23 The Assembly was already in session
when the extracts came out, having adopted its own rules for debating on
29 July 1789 and members were more concerned with beginning legislative
activity than with setting themselves strict constraints.24 Dumont then
expressed his hopes that Benthams suggestions would come in time to be
implemented for the second sitting of the Assembly, but he was again to
be disappointed. One rare mention of his plan figures in Condorcets 1792
Revision des travaux de la première legislature, as a variant on the British
rules for the organisation of the speaking order.25
Bentham and Dumonts campaign in favour of Draught of a New Plan for
the Organisation of the Judicial Establishment in France was better orchestrated, if only marginally more successful. In December 1789, the Constitution Committee of the National Assembly had presented a number
of suggestions for a new organisation of the judiciary, one of the main
symbols of the arbitrary power of the Ancien Regime.26 Bentham set to
work immediately and printed the first issue of a running commentary
on the committees draft in March 1790. He had a hundred copies sent
to the members of the National Assembly using Lansdownes diplomatic
contacts in France.27 When debates opened in the Assembly a few days
later, they were reported in the Courier de Provence and interspersed with
extracts from Benthams proposals translated by Dumont (this time Benthams authorship was acknowledged).28 The Genevan also had a two-page
summary printed and distributed to official institutions, in which the main
23
24
25
26
27
28
Dixième Lettre du Comte de Mirabeau a` ses Commetans pendant la tenue de la première legislature,
712 June 1789, 89.
T. Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary. The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Emergence
of a Revolutionary Culture (17891790) (Princeton, NJ, 1996), 21418.
Then, if there were complaints, the assembly would arbitrate or the issue would be decided by
lot, the latter being regarded by M. Bentham as the fastest, without, in that case, being unfair at
all. Revision des travaux de la première legislature. Chronique du mois, in uvres de Condorcet,
vol. X, 373442, 376. The reference was noted in K.M. Baker, Condorcet: from natural philosophy to
social mathematics (Chicago, IL, 1975), 465n.
Projet de lorganisation du pouvoir judiciaire, Propose a` lAssemblee Nationale par le Comite de Constitution (Paris, 1789).
The copies were brought to France by Francois Barthelemy, a French diplomat. Bentham wrote a
detailed account of this event: see E. de Champs, Jeremy Bentham at Bowood, 2423.
Dissertation dans laquelle on etablit les principes suivans: La justice ne peut etre administree quau
nom du Roi &, dans chaque tribunal, un seul Juge., Courier de Provence, 2223 March 1790; Dans
chaque tribunal un seul juge, 2627 March 1790; Dans chaque tribunal un seul juge, suite,
3031 March 1790; IIIe dissertation. Competence universelle de chaque tribunal Inconvenient
des tribunaux dexception Inconveniens des circuits anglois, 29 April 1790; IVe dissertation. Des
bureaux de paix ou de conciliation, 1011 May 1790; Ve dissertation. Sur les Tribunaux dappel,
2122 May 1790. All the extracts were attributed to Bentham.
111
differences between Benthams proposal and that of the Committee were

brought to attention.29 Samuel Romilly sent a copy to his correspondents
Madeleine and Jean-Antoine Gautier, of Genevan descent, who in turn
transmitted it to an unidentified member of the Constitution committee who knows English perfectly.30 In May, Brissot briefly mentioned the
work in his paper, Le patriote francais, remembering their old friendship
and singling out the Englishmans opposition to judiciary circuits one
of the measures based on British practice that had been suggested by the
Committee:
We must concede that one of the best legal writers (jurisconsultes) now living
in England, a more methodical and above all more philosophical writer
than Bla[c]kstone, M. Bentham, objects to circuit judges. He has stated his
reasons in a plan for a new judicial establishment that is full of excellent
observations. He has drafted it and printed it for the use of the French
National Assembly and has addressed a hundred copies to its members.
This plan, we must add in passing, deserves the most serious attention
from the Assembly. It was drafted by a man who has been studying the
reform of legislation every day for twenty years (these twenty years are not
metaphorical; I myself have been witness to these persistent studies), who
has read through all existing codes, and so on.31
Despite having been put into the hands of a number of influential readers, Benthams proposals failed to influence the work of the Assembly:
debates on the judiciary stopped later in May and the decree reorganizing
it was passed on 16 August 1790. Brissot, Dumont and the duc de La
Rochefoucauld noted that Benthams contribution had arrived too late to
be considered seriously. They also alluded to the number of pamphlets
that had been published on the subject by Frenchmen. What Bentham
remembered, however, was that the plan had been deliberately obstructed
by Sieyès. A few years later, he recalled:
In Brissots as well as Mirabeaus Periodicals, flaming elogiums of some
extracts translated from my papers on the Judicial Establishment, which I
29
30
31
Organisation du pouvoir judiciaire. Vue sommaire des differences les plus remarquables entre le Projet
du Comite & le Projet Anglois, dont lauteur, Mr. Bentham, a fait hommage a` lAssemblee Nationale.
Son plan est accompagne de toutes les preuves, & dune critique detaillee de louvrage du Comite (Paris,
1790).
Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, vol. I, 397. Madeleine Gautier was the daughter of Etienne Delessert,
who had translated Lettres sur la liberte du taux de largent. Bentham hinted at the part Madeleine
Gautier and her husband Antoine had taken in the translation: see Correspondence (CW), vol. IV,
2634 and Chapter 4 below, pp. 142, 149.
Le patriote francais (4 May 1790), 2.
112

sent to the first Assembly (before they had taken to plundering etc.) and
which the Abbe Sieyès (proverbial there for jealousy and self-sufficiency)
prevented in spite of the endeavours of the Duc de la Rochefoucaul[d],
Brissot and others, (appearing in some measure from letters of them in
my possession) prevented, I say, from being translated by authority, and
printed.32
Sieyèss active opposition is difficult to document, but it might indeed

have played a part in the poor reception with which the work was met.
Admired but distrusted by Dumont, Sieyès had also written and published
his own opinions on the reform of the judiciary. He believed that justice
should be rendered in the Kings name, that summary causes to be judged
by justices of the peace should be distinguished from more serious ones to
be brought to local courts, and that juries should be summoned in both
civil and criminal cases. These proposals were markedly different from
Benthams plans. Sieyès became president of the Assembly in June 1790.
When Benthams proposal was submitted again to him he dismissed it
curtly, if politely.33
Only a year later did Bentham and Dumonts strategy bear some
fruit when Garran de Coulon, one of the deputies who read English,
noticed the work and presented it to the Assembly. As president of the
National Assembly, he proposed two distinct motions. The first was that the
Assembly
should invite all Citizens, and even Foreigners, to communicate their views
on the making of our new Code and on the improvement of Laws &
public administration in general. The second, that it should carry a vote
of special thanks to Jeremy Bentham for his useful project on our judicial
establishment and to invite him to further develop his thoughts on the
making of our civil laws & of our procedure.34
The first motion was adopted, the second adjourned. Therefore Benthams
Draught of a New Plan was forwarded to the Legislation Committee without any official vote of thanks. Garrans enthusiasm for Benthams proposals
led the philosopher to send him copies of most of his published works,
stressing that he should labour with redoubled energy if [he] could anticipate the chance of being useful by seconding the labours of so many
enlightened men.35
32
34
35
33 Correspondence (CW), vol. IV, 137n.

Archives Parlementaires, vol. XXXIV, 2501. Bentham read a full account in Journal de lAssemblee
Nationale ou Journal Logographique, see Correspondence (CW), vol. IV, 3657.
113
Benthams work regarding social and penal reform was also directly relevant to the business of French revolutionaries: in France, as in Britain,
pauperisation and crime were routinely addressed together, as the fate
of Benthams Panopticon plans testifies. Early on, the National Assembly
embarked on a revision of the penal code (a provisional version of which
was adopted in 1791), while in 1790 a Beggary Committee (Comite de
mendicite) was created in order to reorganise the distribution of poor relief.
The Committee was headed by the duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt,
whose connection with Lansdowne has already been noted. In the summer
of 1790, Liancourt sent a commission to Britain to enquire about the provision of poor relief and on that occasion Benthams plan was mentioned to
the French envoys. With the support of Benjamin Vaughan, the philosopher began to circulate the English version of the Panopticon Letters for the
use of the Committee.36 A French translation by Dumont was ready by the
end of 1791 and Bentham could include it in the selection of works he sent
to Garran de Coulon. On Garrans proposal, Panoptique, memoire sur un
nouveau principe pour construire des maisons dinspection was presented to
the Assembly and referred, like Draught of a New Plan, to the Legislation
Committee. Together with poor relief, the management of prisons had
been placed under the authority of the Committee for Public Assistance
(Comite des secours publics), as the Beggary committee had been renamed
in 1790. The pamphlet was duly passed over to the Committee for Public
Assistance which had it printed by the end of the year.
Bentham closely read the reports of the committee headed by Liancourt
and adjusted his proposals accordingly. In 1791 or 1792, he proposed to
replace the notorious Bicetre prison, in which criminals and paupers were
alike kept under custody, with several wooden Panopticons: this temporary
mode of construction would allow the principle to be tried out before a
larger prison was built in stone. Bentham based his plans on the reports
drafted for the committee.37 This episode was probably related to the
appointment of the duc dEnville as president of the Directoire de Paris
from October 1791 to August 1792. Bentham later recalled that dEnville
had invited him to build a Panopticon in Paris:
36
37
ibid., 1389, 236.

UC, 117a, ff. 1823. Bicetre prison was emblematic of the abuses of royal justice before the Revolution.
Romilly and Dumont visited it in 1788 and drafted a report published under Mirabeaus name: [S.
Romilly], Observations dun voyageur anglais sur la maison de force appelee Bicetre, suivies de Reflexions
sur les effets de la severite des peines, & sur la legislation criminelle de la Grande-Bretagne (Paris, 1788).
Bentham quoted from F.-A. de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Rapport fait au nom du comite de
mendicite des visites faites dans divers hopitaux, hospices et maisons de charite de Paris (Paris, 1790),
3661.
114

A[nn]o 1792 or thereabouts, the famous Talleyrand being the Envoy from the
constituted authorities in France to this Court soon after his arrival paid me
a visit in form (Dumont was the introducer) inviting me in the name of the
then Municipal Government of Paris of which the Duc de la Rochefoucauld
was president to go over and set up a Panopticon there upon the principle
developed in the book . . . At the same time I was given to understand from
another quarter that Rochefoucaul[d] had allotted for my use an apartment
which he expected me to occupy for the six months which he calculated
would be about the length of the time it might be requisite I should continue
there. No otherwise than by reputation had he any acquaintance with me.
Not long after took place the murder of that man, for virtue and talents
taken together, higher in estimation in his country than any other man at
that time.38
If Bentham is to be trusted, the death of the duc dEnville marked the end
of all hopes to have a Panopticon built in Paris.
Likewise, Political Tactics and Draught of a New Plan for the Organisation of the Judicial Establishment in France failed to have any concrete
influence on French institutions. However, the circulation of the works
reveals the strength of Benthams connections in influential circles. They
are also worth noticing because they correspond to a definite position in
the history of the French Revolution: a reforming and anglophile line in
which representatives of the Ancien Regime figured prominently. After
1792, and especially after the end of all hopes to establish a constitutional
monarchy in France, these men lost the influence they had on the course
of politics. Most of Lansdownes and Benthams French correspondents
were victims of the radical turn in the summer of 1792. Some, like the duc
dEnville, lost their life, but many emigrated: the duc de Liancourt went
to England and then America, the Gautiers and the Delesserts to Geneva.
Dumont returned to London in March 1793, after spending six months in
Geneva.39 Having gained reforming credentials from 1789 to 1792, while
remaining untainted by association with the Terror, Benthams friends and
supporters in France were in a good position to return to politics under
the Directory.40
38
39
40
Correspondence (CW), vol. IX, 31213. Benthams assertions are difficult to document as most of the
archives of the Directoire de Paris were destroyed by fire in 1871.
Brissot and Garran are exceptions to this model. Unlike the rest of Benthams French correspondents,
however, they did not have any association with Lansdowne.
The consequences of this are developed in Part IV.
chapter 9
Utility, rights and revolution: missed encounters?
How far did Bentham commit to French revolutionary ideals? He remained

more distant than many of his Lansdowne House friends, he did not travel
to France and he presented himself as a dispassionate foreign expert. For that
reason, it could be argued that his writings for France did not necessarily
reflect his own political ideas and that he systematically tailored his advice to
what he believed to be the expectations of his French readers.1 It is true that
he made a point of answering specific questions arising in France, but this
did not mean that he remained neutral on political issues. On the contrary,
he hoped to reinforce what he approved of and to limit the influence of
dispositions he considered dangerous. France offered a political laboratory
in which the effects of constitutional designs or of theoretical positions
could be worked out. It is not surprising therefore that the Revolution
helped crystallise his ideas regarding rights or constitutional engineering,
in a constant dialogue with revolutionary experiments.
Popular politics and the representation of interests

On the eve of the Revolution, Bentham had written against political commotion, arguing that no utilitarian argument could ever justify violent
change. This was consistent with his cautious approach regarding popular
participation in politics.2 On these issues, debates at Lansdowne House
certainly contributed to a change in his position. In 1789 and 1790, some
of his friends, including Samuel Romilly, were keen to point out that the
threats posed by kings were potentially greater than the excesses of democratic power. These arguments were refuted by Etienne Dumont, who
regularly stressed the dangers of direct popular involvement. The subject
preoccupied Bentham throughout the Revolution, be it in discussions of
1
2
J.H. Burns, Bentham and the French Revolution; P. Schofield, Utility & Democracy, 913.
See Chapter 2 above, pp. 8287.
115
116
popular participation through suffrage or in reflections on the desirable

pattern of political change. In 1791, as part of a discussion on the election
of judges a measure he personally disagreed with he wrote: I have no
horror of the people. I do not see in them that savage monster which their
detractors dream of.3
In Considerations dun Anglois sur la composition des Etats-Generaux, written in the autumn of 1788 but not circulated, Bentham commented on the
best mode of electing deputies to the Estates General a debate then
raging in France following the questions asked by Necker on the composition of the assembly.4 Though Bentham argued in favour of extending
the number of voters on the grounds that suffrage was the only way to
measure the desires of individuals (a necessary condition to calculate what
constitutes the greatest happiness of the greatest number), he excluded
women and imposed a minimum pecuniary qualification for males. By
1791, in Projet of a Constitutional Code for France, both these limitations had disappeared as he proposed that the Right of election shall
be in every French citizen, male or female, being of full age, of sound
mind, and able to read.5 While clearly more inclusive than earlier proposals, this did not amount to a full democratic commitment. According
to Benthams own calculations, over 70% of French citizens (and a larger
share of women) would be de facto excluded by the literacy requirement.6
This shift however reflects the increasing calls in France in favour of some
extension of the franchise. For the Estates General, all taxpayers had been
given the vote (which included some women in certain districts). The 1791
Constitution explicitly excluded women and retained a property qualification (cens) set at the value of three days work paid in taxes, in effect
enfranchising about 15% of the population. This limitation was finally
abolished late in August 1792 though women and men without any
source of livelihood remained excluded.7 The growing inclusiveness of
Benthams proposals from 1789 to 1791 could be explained as following
the trend of French public debates. However, his ideas differed greatly
from those of his French contemporaries on several counts: the qualifications adopted, the procedure itself and the rationale for popular participation. Benthams literacy qualification was highly original: though French
3
5
6
7
4 Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), xxv.

Projet of a Constitutional Code, in Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), 231. Compare with
Considerations dun Anglois, 6979.
P. Schofield, Utility and Democracy, 8394.
M. Crook, Elections in the French Revolution. An apprenticeship in democracy, 17891799
(Cambridge, 1996), 31, 38, 80. In French, see P. Gueniffey, Le nombre et la raison. La Revolution
francaise et les elections (Paris, 1993).
Utility, rights and revolution
117
revolutionaries were also anxious to limit the political power of illiterate

citizens, prior to 1795 it was widely held that the pecuniary qualification
constituted a sufficient barrier. Bentham consistently dismissed such views.
Moreover, he did not fail to criticise specific elements of French procedure, especially the practice of a two-tier voting system in which deputies
were elected by electoral assemblies. Bentham rejected gradual systems
of election such as those promoted by Mirabeau and Dumont because
they removed the deputies from the direct mandate of the electors.8 In
Benthams constitutional designs, the popular element was strong despite
the significant limits on the number of voters imposed by the literacy
qualification.
In Benthams plans, the secret ballot and annual elections (two provisions rarely discussed by French revolutionaries but promoted by British
radicals) ensured that constituents could exercise a strict control on the
work of their deputies. Through these requirements, the voting process
was devised to ensure that the interests of deputies (a word Bentham
preferred to representatives) coincided as much as possible with those
of the majority of the voters, thereby avoiding the want of conformity
between their sentiments and those of their constituents.9 Added to these
direct ways of ensuring the transmission of popular wishes, in a number of
cases a majority of voters could revoke their deputy by petition before the
end of his annual mandate.10 Such tight control was consistent with Benthams aggregative view of the public interest: general interest was made
up of the sum of individual interests, so the direct election of deputies
ensured that the candidate who pledged to promote the interests of the
greatest number of voters would be elected. As interests were fleeting, the
representative process had to ensure that changes would be transmitted as
promptly as possible to the deputies sitting in the Assembly. For judges
as well as deputies, Bentham gave the electorate a power of amotion,
that is to say, the right to dismiss them by petition. This was presented
as a way of remedying the dangers Bentham saw in the French system
in which power was to be granted unconditionally throughout a fixed
term.11
One of Benthams most original proposals, namely to hold patriotic
auctions for the election of judges, must be considered within a complex reflection on voting processes. More specifically, he suggested that
8
9
10
11
Considerations dun Anglois, Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), 10714.

Projet of a Constitutional Code, Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), 242.
Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), 5461, 1425, 248.
Draught of a New Plan, Bowring, vol. IV, 363; Projet of a Constitutional Code for France, Rights,
Representation, and Reform (CW), 230, 241.
118
candidates who stood for election to judicial functions would declare,

each of them, what he is willing to give, if anything, to the common fund
of the territory, in the event of his being elected to the office. The candidate
would also have to state his source of income, which in turn regulated the
amount of his salary. In a separate document, he would state his qualifications for the office and his experience.12 This de facto established a pecuniary
qualification for candidates, since those with independent means would
stand a higher chance of being elected. However, by this process, Bentham avoided confusing wealth and professional qualification: individual
wealth was only to be taken into account insofar as the candidate would
pledge to use it towards the public good. The candidates aptitude was
assessed separately and could be considered more important than wealth
by voters. For judges as for deputies, Bentham remained cautious about
attaching good salaries to official offices to avoid aristocratical monopoly.
Instead, he opened the door to a gradual professionalisation of legislative
and judiciary functions.13
Benthams politics of interests was not, however, limited to the transmission of the interests of voters to their deputies, for he clearly distinguished
between the power of making laws and that of determining who shall
make them.14 In the exercise of legislative power, deputies had the duty to
debate in public, to weigh arguments and to confront the mandates given
by their constituents in order to determine the course most suited to the
interests of the nation as a whole. Therefore, he took specific dispositions to
ensure that the Assembly served as a debating ground in which the general
interest would be worked out, not only as the sum of particular interests but
also as the outcome of a collective political reflection. On accepting office,
deputies had to swear an oath stating that they would be solely guided
and determined by what shall appear to [them] the most conducive to the
general welfare of the major part of the Citizens of the whole state, any
particular interests or wishes of the district for which [they] serve or any
other interest notwithstanding.15 This seems at first contradictory with
the fact that particular interests had to be represented and defended in
order that their sum could be accurately calculated. In fact, this provision
served as a check to prevent the dismissal of deputies by petition in cases
when they had supported a measure contrary to the particular interests of
12
14
15
13 ibid., 364, 3678.

UC 170, f. 3, quoted in Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), liv, note.
Projet of a Constitutional Code, Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), 246 and Veracite avec
fidelite, 513.
119
their constituents. The role of the Assembly as a debating house in which

the general interest could be discussed was reinforced by the publicity of
debates: public galleries were provided for, as well as the publication of
bills, debates and votes.16 This enabled the constituents to follow political
developments on a daily basis and to make their opinion known to their
deputies before the final vote. Bentham hoped that this would serve an
educating purpose by forcing individual voters to reconsider what they
believed to be their interest in the light of public arguments. It also provided an original way out of the French debate on the mission of deputies:
should they be bound exclusively by the interests of their constituents or
behave as the representatives of the Nation as a whole?17 In Bentham,
general interest could, through the voting and debating process, become
something more than the sum of its parts. However, French debates on
political representation took a different route. In the mass of pamphlets
and proposals, Benthams views were not noticed.18
Benthams complex institutional designs aimed at reconciling the conflicting demands of security, ability and democratic participation, for he
continued to believe that political stability was a necessary condition for
reform and that the responsibility of rulers was to work within existing
expectations. In reorganizing the judiciary, he constantly highlighted the
continuity of persons and principles: one had to ensure, for instance, that
customary law would still be in force until the new system was entirely
established, and that local priests could exercise the functions of justices
of the peace until new officials were appointed.19 For similar reasons he
opposed all immediate redistribution of property. He also opposed the restitution of lands that had been confiscated from Protestant families at the
time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes a century earlier: expectations
being extinct, there was no reason to despoil present owners.20
Utility, rights and stability

For a large number of revolutionaries, the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and the Citizen of 1789 was necessary to ensure political stability by
16
17
18
19
Political Tactics (CW), 2944.

On that debate, see M. Crook, Elections in the French Revolution, 1921; P. Gueniffey, Le nombre et
la raison, 3651.
The originality of Benthams theory of political representation has been noted by P. Rosanvallon,
Lutilitarisme francais et les ambigutes de la culture politique revolutionnaire (position dun
problème), in K.M. Baker, ed., The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture,
vol. I. The Political Culture of the Old Regime (Oxford, 1987), 43540.
20 UC 32, f. 4.
120
enshrining the imprescriptible rights of the people. For Bentham, on the

contrary, making laws constantly amendable was the only way to avoid
violent outbursts.
His hostility to the doctrine of the Rights of Man was probably one of
the most constant tenets in his long career. In 17751776 he had provided
John Lind with philosophical and legal arguments to attack those of the
separatists.21 By 1789, his opinion on the American republic had changed,
though it did not entail any variation in his position towards naturallaw principles. In the concluding note to Introduction to the Principles of
Morals and Legislation, he lamented that so rational a cause should be rested
upon reasons, so much fitter to beget objections, than to remove them.22
Accordingly, on hearing that the French were preparing a Declaration of the
Rights of Man and the Citizen in the summer of 1789, he wrote to Brissot
to warn him against what was maybe a necessary evil, but nevertheless an
evil.23 His arguments are well known and are in line with his rejection
of all appeals to natural rights and immutable laws in jurisprudence: the
only laws are those that have been promulgated by a legitimate sovereign
and they remain laws only as long as they are backed by the will of the
legislature. Before 1789, Benthams attacks on natural-rights theories mostly
had to do with the principles of jurisprudence. First, he accused naturallaw theorists of confusing different levels of discourse by allowing no
distinction between what is and what ought to be.24 During the period
of the American Revolution, he demonstrated that proclaiming universal
and natural rights went against any effective protection of private property:
what law could be opposed to claims of right?25
Up until 1792 or 1793, while regretting that a Declaration of Rights had
been adopted in France, Bentham continued to hope that it would pose
no threat to the political balance of the country. In the early years of the
Revolution, he believed these principles to hold little danger for the course
of reform. So long as men act wisely, he wrote in late 1789, their talking
nonsensically is a matter of very small importance.26 The stability of the
new American republic showed that such hopes were far from unrealistic.
Declarations of Rights, Bentham believed, were harmless if they were only
considered as a set of general principles and not given official status in the
form of a Declaration. In 1795, he wrote:
My opinion of the Declaration of Rights considered in itself was the same at
the moment of its first issuing as now. But there seemed some thing generous
21
23
25
22 IPML (CW), 311n.

See above, Chapter 2, pp. 3738.
24 IPML (CW), 298n.
26 Division of Power, Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), 406.
Fragment (CW), 16.
121
and liberal in the intention of it. Willing to hope the best, I flattered myself
it would slide quietly into neglect, and be even turned into a dead letter: that
either no attempt at all would be made to give it execution, to carry it into
practice, or that the first attempt of the kind that came to be made would
present such a view of the mischievous tendency of it, as should unite all
opinions of the sense of the necessity of laying it aside under the character
of a collection of moral precepts, designed but to guide men only, and not
to bind them.27
The legal status of the Declaration was a case in point. As a set of moral
precepts, it could do little harm, but when it was given an ambiguous legal
value, its consequences were dangerous. During the Terror, Bentham came
to see a direct link between the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights
of Man and the Citizen and the surge of popular and government violence. The disastrous social consequences of granting everyone seemingly
unbounded rights were developed in Nonsense upon Stilts, written in
1795 or 1796:
What has been the object, the perpetual and palpable object, of this Declaration of pretended Rights? To add as much force as possible to these passions
already but too strong: to burst the cords that hold them in: to say to the
selfish passions, there every where, is your prey: to the angry passions,
there, every where, is your enemy.28
Benthams hostility to the Declaration has sometimes been seen as proof

of his ambivalent attitude towards the French Revolution or of the lack
of consistency in his positions. Indeed, the adoption of the Declaration
of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789 soon became one of the
most emblematic moments of the Revolution. In 1791 the text was prefaced to the Constitution. Two years later it was extended to thirty-five
articles on the occasion of the 1793 Constitution. In August 1795, the
National Convention adopted a revised version stating the Rights and
Duties of the Citizen and appended it to a new Constitution designed
to avoid the concentration of powers that had made the Terror possible.
Despite the numerous ideological and political changes of the revolutionary
years, belief in the political and social value of a Declaration of the Rights
of Man remained common.
27
28
UC 146, f. 223, quoted in Rights, Representation, and Reform, xlvii. This is echoed by a contemporary
statement in Writings on the Poor Laws, vol. II, (CW), 1867n.
Nonsense upon Stilts, Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), 321. Benthams attack on natural
rights has been much commented upon. See P. Schofield, Jeremy Benthams Nonsense upon Stilts,
Utilitas, 15/1 (2003), 119.
122
The emblematic value the text held for successive generations of French
revolutionaries must not blind us to the fact that the decision to write
such a document was far from unanimous, even in the summer of 1789.29
In the registers of grievances submitted to the Estates General, calls to
respect the natural rights of all were commonplace. This reveals the wide
popular appeal of an idea promoted among others by Locke and
Rousseau, and embraced by republicans since the early 1770s. Brissots
growing reliance on the rhetoric of rights in the course of the 1780s provides
a good illustration of the way in which such discourse came to permeate
republican calls for reform. In the first half of 1789, a number of prominent
French personalities contributed to the debate on the Declaration: the duc
dOrleans, Sieyès, Lafayette, Condorcet and Brissot all drafted plans or
projects for a declaration of rights.30 Opposition to the Declaration within
the Assembly came from the royalists who, like Mounier, highlighted the
dangers of abstract principles and warned against their misinterpretation
by some disturbed imaginations misunderstanding our principles . . . [if]
some perverted minds, intent on misinterpreting them, were to lapse into
unruly behaviour and commit abuses voluntarily. For him, such abstract
principles had to be immediately checked and limited by a clear statement
of positive rights.31
Some leading figures of the Revolution, such as Mirabeau and Condorcet, were also wary of the rhetoric of rights, though they eventually accepted the political necessity of a Declaration. Mirabeau distrusted
abstract and universal statements.32 Dumont had similar reservations. In
August 1789, he wrote to Lansdowne that The Declaration of Rights
will be finished today. It is no masterpiece, but the foundations of any
good constitution are properly laid within it.33 In Reflexions sur ce qui a
ete fait et ce qui reste a` faire, Condorcet explained that the people could
29
30
31
32
33
For a detailed presentation, see S. Rials, La Declaration des droits de lhomme et du citoyen, 115319.
As Cyprian Blamires has noted, similar debates had been held in Geneva during the anti-aristocratic
revolution of 1782, as Mallet du Pan and Du Roveray refused to appeal to rights as too abstract and
metaphysical. C. Blamires, The French Revolution and the Creation of Benthamism, 162.
S. Rials, La Declaration, 11718.
Quoted in S. Rials, La Declaration, 122. Jean-Joseph Mounier (17581806) was the leader of the
constitutional monarchist party in the Constituent Assembly.
J. Jennings, The Declaration des droits de lhomme et du citoyen and Its Critics in France: Reaction
and Ideologie, The Historical Journal, 35 (1992), 83959, 845.
MS Dumont, box 78, (22 August 1789 to Lord Lansdowne). See also E. Dumont, Souvenirs sur
Mirabeau, 139. Dumont implied that Mirabeau had been convinced, through him, of the validity
of Benthams arguments. This appears unlikely; see C. Blount, Bentham, Dumont and Mirabeau.
A Historical Revision, University of Birmingham Historical Journal, 3 (1952), 5367; J.H. Burns,
Bentham and the French Revolution; C. Blamires, The French Revolution, 164.
123
misinterpret the extent of the rights granted to them and come to claim
them by force. Condorcets caution did not prevent him from fully supporting the principle of prefacing the Constitution with a Declaration of
Rights. It was necessary, he argued, both as a check to arbitrary power and
as a reminder of the political values of the Revolution. As Bentham would
later insist, Condorcet remarked that the Declaration had to be amendable.
Moreover, he questioned the legal status of a text that proclaimed rights
that were not, in the present state of things, guaranteed by any positive
laws and even went against them:
The Declaration of Rights may be criticised on two other counts. First,
because it includes rights that Citizens will never enjoy even after the
Decrees of this Assembly have been executed, such as proportional taxes,
and freedom of industry and commerce, which it states implicitly. Secondly, because it contains imprecisely worded articles, particularly such as
those in which phrases like public order, utility and common interest are
employed.34
In pointing to the necessity of defining words such as utility and common

interest, he echoed one of Benthams criticisms of the danger posed by
ambiguous words in legal documents.35 The words in need of definition
had been the object of a long-running political debate since Helvetius. On
natural law and natural rights, Helvetiuss position was also ambiguous.
On the one hand, he followed sensualists such as Condillac in warning his
readers against the dangers of taking natural law as innate and universal.
The laws of nature were not eternal and immutable; they were the product
of history and culture:
Some would have God himself inscribing on our hearts, at birth, the precepts of natural law. Experience affords evidence to the contrary. If God be
esteemed as the author of natural law, it is only as the author of physical
sensibility, which gives birth to human reason. When men entered into
society, their feelings forced them, as I have already had occasion to show,
to make mutual compacts and laws whose collection makes up what we
call natural Law. Has this Law been the same among different nations? No:
its greater or lesser perfection has always been proportioned to the progress
of the human mind, to the more or less extensive knowledge of what was
34
35
[N. Condorcet], Reflexions sur ce qui a ete fait et sur ce qui reste a` faire; lues dans une societe dAmis
de la paix (Paris, 1789), 58.
See Benthams commentary on article 2 of the Declaration, Nonsense upon Stilts, Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), 32837.
124

useful or harmful in each society. In every nation, this knowledge has been
the product of time, experience and reason.36
Though sceptical towards natural law arguments, Helvetius did not refrain
from appealing to rights, or even natural rights such as liberty and property.
After 1795 many of those who self-consciously presented themselves as
his disciples and still frequented his wifes salon in Auteuil also voiced
their doubts regarding the attempt to enshrine natural rights within a
Declaration: philosophers Garat and Volney, for example, made it clear
that politics had to be founded not on abstract ideas, but on sensations.
They took up arguments that had been voiced by counter-revolutionaries,
for instance that the Declaration of Rights had been used by Robespierre to
create anarchy, but unlike the counter-revolutionaries, they did not appeal
to the organic or ancient foundations of society. 37
After the fall of Robespierre, a new document was drafted to remedy
what were perceived to be the political and social dangers of the 1789
Declaration. In the Declaration of the Rights and Duties of the Man
and the Citizen, the Thermidorians defined rights as those of man in
society (and not as natural and imprescriptible rights) and listed the duties
that accompanied them. While acknowledging that the drafters of the
1795 Declaration had a sense of the absurdity of its predecessors and
the mischief that had been the fruit of it, Bentham set out to demonstrate
that in its form and wording it contained similar faults.38 In the Decade
Philosophique, the Ideologues were more optimistic, as they hoped that the
1795 Declaration would avoid the pitfalls the Declaration of 1789. They
were clear as to the latters shortcomings: it had been regularly violated, its
guarantees had been contradicted by the letter of the laws, and it contained
general maxims instead of concrete prescriptions. Moreover, during the
Terror, it had been used to legitimise popular violence rather than to protect
the rights of individuals.39
The most innovative of Benthams arguments and the most lasting of
his legacies was to consider appeals to rights entirely inconsistent with
36
37
38
39
C.A. Helvetius, De lhomme, G. Stenger, D. Smith, H. Brathwaite, J. Steffen, eds. (Paris, 2011),
194. [The 1777 English translation is faulty on several counts and has been corrected; see On Man,
vol. II, 12.]
S. Rials, La Declaration, 126.
Declaration of the Rights and Duties of the Man and the Citizen, A[nn]o 1795, in Rights,
Representation, and Reform (CW), 37688.
[J.-B. Say], Quelques idees sur le plan de Constitution de la Commission des Onze, La decade
philosophique, 44 (8 July 1795), 801. For the Ideologues shifting emphasis from utility to rights in
the 1790s, see C. Welch, Liberty and Utility (New York, NY, 1984), 11434; M. Staum, Minervas
Message, 1727; J. Jennings, The Declaration and its Critics, 8529.
125
utilitarian reasoning. For many contemporaries, however, the two types of

arguments mutually reinforced each other: calls for the social utility of a
Declaration of rights were commonplace, as the expected effects of such a
Declaration were presented and debated.40
Benthams general opposition to Declarations of rights also took on a
more personal and political dimension as he singled out Sieyèss drafts in
1789 and in 1795. Benthams distrust of Sieyès echoed Dumonts ambivalent
attitude towards the Frenchmans growing power and influence. Indeed,
Bentham referred to Sieyèss self-conceit and self-sufficiency.41 Besides
personal attacks, Bentham used Sieyèss proposals to attack the combination
of natural rights doctrines (based on contractual accounts of the origins of
society) and republican views of liberty. For Sieyèss proposals insisted on
both points, stating in 1789 that every man is free to exercise his personal
faculties together with the idea that every man is sole proprietor of his
own person: and this property is unalienable.42
Conclusion
In stating that the aim of good government was to promote general utility and that the test of general utility was general consent,43 Bentham
embraced most of the declarations of intent of the revolutionary period.
By reflecting and commenting on the proposals put forward in France, he
worked out why majority rule was a necessary condition of the greatest
happiness of the greatest number arguments that resurfaced when he
campaigned for parliamentary reform in Britain over two decades later.
Although the manuscripts in which these proposals were detailed did not
circulate in France, the ideas formed the basis of the long discussion on
the election of judges in the Draught of a New Plan for the Organisation
of the Judicial Establishment in France.44 The test of Benthams constitutional architecture resided in the ability of the people to work out and
express their interests in political terms. However, as outbursts of popular violence multiplied in France, he became increasingly pessimistic,
40
41
42
43
44
The debate on utility and rights was to be conducted around different lines in the post-revolutionary
years. See Part IV, 17583.
See Observations on the Declaration of Rights proposed by the Abbe Syeyès [sic.] (1789) and
Observations on the Declaration of Rights as proposed by Citizen Sieyès (1795), in Rights, Representation, and Reform, 1902 and 38997. See also Correspondence (CW), vol. V, 254.
Quoted by Bentham in Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), 190, 390.
UC 170, f. 3, quoted in Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), liv, note.
126
lamenting in 17921793 that as it is the bulk who govern, things will never
go on well till even the bulk are well informed.45 Benthams fear of the mob
increased throughout the Terror, leading him to highlight the responsibility
of democrats and republicans like Condorcet in the unleashing of popular
force and pointing out that they had logically been its first victims.46 While
he continued to advocate the spread of literacy in all classes of society
including paupers and prisoners by the mid 1790s he insisted that this
was not to be understood as a call for political emancipation: study to be
quiet and mind your own business was the political creed to be taught the
lower classes.47
Despite these later remarks, Benthams interest in French revolutionary politics should not be underestimated. For him and for many of his
contemporaries, the Revolution seemed to hold the promise of fulfilling
Enlightenment aspirations for legal and political reform. As a foreign expert
with personal connections in France, he believed he could play a role in the
transformation of politics in the country. Developments in French debates
had a direct impact on his political and legal thought, as they forced him to
develop the democratic implications of his utilitarian system and to adapt
them to the political demands of the revolutionaries. After 1793, hopes of
peaceful constitutional reform receded. In October 1793, Bentham wrote
to a correspondent: Apropos of Jacobinism, I begin to fear with you it has
taken too strong root in France to be exterminated. Could the extermination be effected, I should think no price we could pay for such a security
too dear.48
To many Britons, Jacobins had by then become shorthand for all types
of French revolutionaries. Benthams knowledge of ideas and parties in
France makes it clear that, like the majority of his friends and correspondents both at home and in France, he rejected the popular republicanism of
the Jacobin clubs, not the thorough reforming impulse of the early years of
the Revolution. Benthams position during the French Revolution is thus
best understood within Lansdownes circle, which determined his reading of French events. Though he occasionally reflected on the extension
of revolutionary principles to Britain,49 this was not his main objective.
This explains why he never took issue directly with either Burke or Paine,
writing, in one of the rare mentions of either name, that
45
46
47
48
49
UC 170, f. 51, quoted in Rights, Representation, and Reform, lviii.

Supply without Burden, in Economic Writings, vol. I (CW) (forthcoming).
UC 153, ff. 1338, quoted in P. Schofield, Utility and Democracy, 106.
Appendix C. Parliamentary Reform, in Rights, Revolution and Reform, 42834.
127
The system of the democrats is absurd and dangerous: for its subjugates
the well-informed to the ill-informed classes of mankind. Mr Burkes system, though diametrically opposite, is absurd and mischievous for a similar
reason, it subjugates the well-informed to the ill-informed ages.50
This specific position regarding French politics also laid the foundations
for the renewal of French connections around 1800, once the Directory
and the Consulate had brought more moderate men including some of
Benthams earlier acquaintances back to power.
50
UC, 154, ff. 35, quoted in Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), lix.
part iv
1802: Bentham in Paris

Benthams estrangement from Lord Lansdowne after 1793 was due to a
number of misunderstandings over the philosophers personal and political ambitions.1 It also coincided with the end of the hopes the Bowood
Circle had entertained about the French Revolution, and with the AngloFrench war that rendered communication between France and Britain
increasingly difficult. All these elements explain why French and continental affairs receded gradually from Benthams interests in the second half
of the 1790s. Paradoxically, precisely at that time, conditions in France
were becoming more propitious to the reception of his thought. Soon
after the fall of Robespierre, political and ideological conditions in France
changed markedly. In the seven-year period between the fall of Robespierre and the granting of life consulship to Bonaparte on 2 August 1802,
renewed political elites came to power in France and strove to maintain
a republic without a revolution.2
Coinciding with the preparation and publication of two of his works in
French: Traites de legislation civile et penale, and Esquisse dun ouvrage en
faveur des pauvres a few months earlier, this period was a seminal moment
for the history of Benthams ideas in France. In 1802, the philosophers
name was put forward twice in the election for the seat of foreign member
to the Class of Moral and Political Sciences at the National Institute. In the
autumn, he spent three weeks in Paris, among the flood of British travellers
who took advantage of the brief Amiens truce to travel to the Continent.3 It
is therefore surprising that the philosophers personal fame in Directory and
Consulate France should be difficult to substantiate. First, he did not have
any contact with the Ideologues the editors of the Decade Philosophique
and the avowed disciples of Helvetius in French politics who never mentioned his name or his ideas in print, though they shared many premises:
the primacy of interest, a sensualist approach to the origins of ideas, and
the ambition to create a new social science.4 What is more, the immediate
reception of Benthams works was disappointing: there were few reviews of
1
3
2 P. Serna, La Republique des girouettes, 366.

See E. de Champs, Bentham at Bowood.
Cross-Channel journeys were authorised, under certain conditions, between the autumn of 1801 and
the spring of 1803. R. Morieux, An inundation from our shores. Travelling across the Channel
around the Peace of Amiens, in Resisting Napoleon. The British Response to the Threat of Invasion,
M. Philp, ed. (London, 2006), 21740.
This was noted by C.B. Welch, Liberty and Utility, 235n.
129
130
Part IV 1802: Bentham in Paris
Esquisse or of Traites. Eventually, the Institute elected the German travelwriter Karsten Niebuhr and the philanthropist Count Rumford instead of
Bentham as foreign members. In legislation, contemporary French debates
over the Civil Code largely ignored his contribution, as became clear when
the code was finally adopted in 1804.
The reasons for this seemingly paradoxical state of affairs are to be found
in the complex political and ideological context of the Directory and the
Consulate. The fall of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794) and
the failure of the Thermidorians to maintain political stability had led to
the adoption of the Constitution of Year III, the most conservative and
bourgeois of the revolutionary years. A bi-cameral system was established
to maintain a balance of powers. The executive was placed in the hands
of five Directors. Two councils, the Council of Five-Hundred and the
Council of Elders, shared the legislative. Property and literacy qualifications restricted the number of voters, while a Declaration of Duties was
attached to that of the Rights of Man. The Directory strove to avoid the
pitfalls of a royalist restoration on the one hand and of Jacobin democracy on the other. However, the avowed ambition to end the Revolution
while maintaining the Republic did not suffice to preserve political unity
among groups and factions which had opposed each other since the early
years of the Revolution. The Directory was therefore riddled with corruption and under constant threat from coups and insurrections, as personal,
political and philosophical interests conflicted. This chronic instability
explains why a majority of the Directors and a large part of the ruling
elite supported Napoleons Brumaire coup which inaugurated the period
of the Consulate at the end of 1799.5 In the context of increasingly authoritarian rule, legal, moral and philosophical arguments became laden with
political undertones. As Bonaparte rose to power, the Ideologues fell from
grace and their ideas were gradually rejected, just as Benthams book came
out.
To assess Benthams reception in France in 1802, one must explore the
different personal and literary networks that contributed to his minor
reputation in France under the Directory and the Consulate. These networks can be traced directly to the personal contacts which Etienne
Dumont and Samuel Romilly had built before and during the Revolution. Through them, Benthams ideas circulated in Anglophile Protestant
circles and among French philanthropists.
5
On the Directory, see D.M.G. Sutherland, France 17891815. Revolution and Counterrevolution
(London, 1985), 279335; A. Jainchill, Reimagining Politics after the Terror; J. Livesey, Making Democracy in the French Revolution.
chapter 1 0
Dumonts editorship: from the Bibliothèque

britannique to Traites de legislation civile et penale
The first extracts: the Bibliothèque britannique

In August 1792, and at his own request, Etienne Dumont received a bulky
packet containing some manuscripts by Bentham, in French as well as in
English. These texts dated from the late 1770s and the 1780s.1 Dumont
began editing and translating on his return to London in 1793, after a year
spent in unsuccessful negotiations to assert Genevas right to independence
from Paris.2 He then worked intermittently on the papers until 1801. In
the extracts from Bentham published in France at the beginning of the
Revolution, Dumont had hoped to contribute directly to public debate
in the fields of penal reform, the organisation of the judiciary and the
discipline of political assemblies.3 That he continued to work on Benthams
manuscripts after 1793 implies that he had not lost all hope of contributing
to political and legal debate in Europe and that he believed that Benthams
writings remained topical. Instead of focusing on the philosophers current
work mostly devoted, after 1795, to the promotion of the Panopticon
scheme he worked exclusively from earlier manuscripts, namely, the
French writings that made up Projet.
Having returned to London in the spring of 1796, Dumont discovered
a translation from an English review of An Introduction to the Principles of
Morals and Legislation in a newly launched Genevan periodical called the
Bibliothèque britannique.4 The periodical founded by Marc-Auguste and
Charles Pictet was a commercial and scientific venture publicizing extracts
1
2
3
4

On this episode, see C. Blamires, The French Revolution, 22132.
See Part III, Chapter 8, pp. 10914 above.
C. Blamires, The Bibliothèque britannique and the birth of Utilitarianism, in D. Bickerton and J.
Proud, eds., The Transmission of Culture in Western Europe, 17501850 (Bern, 1999), 5168, 56. The
source for the review, identified by Blamires, was the Monthly Review dated 5 March, 1795. See also
E. de Champs, An introduction to utilitarianism, 274.
131
132
from recent British publications in the French-speaking world.5 The editors focus on Britain implied a political and ideological bias. Geneva was
then occupied by the French revolutionary army and became a French
departement in August 1798. The Pictets were learned men and scientists
and came from one of the most prominent families in the aristocratic faction of the city, putting them in a precarious personal position under French
rule. This explains why political issues were almost entirely absent from
the Bibliothèque britannique, which focused instead on practical improvements (especially in the fields of agriculture and philanthropy), scientific
innovation and morals. Scottish philosophers such as Thomas Reid and
Dugald Stewart figured prominently. In the preface to the first volume, the
editors summed up the core principles of the periodical:
Our guiding compass, the principle of u t i l i t y , does not . . . allow us to
rank all sciences equally. In our eyes, agriculture comes first among arts as
well as among sciences. We are also especially desirous of propagating the
principles of another science, the precious lessons of which are to be found
in the works of English and Scottish Moralists. No one has known better
than these Philosophers how to develop & cultivate this instinct for justice,
& to direct this burning and blind longing for happiness that is the secret
spring of the human heart.6
This opening statement shows that the meaning which the editors ascribed
to the notion of utility differed from Benthams. In the case of the Pictets,
as their admiration for Scottish moral philosophy testifies, the ubiquitous
mentions of utility did not imply that utilitarianism was adopted as a
doctrine. It legitimised their focus on useful arts and sciences and their
belief that social and scientific progress could be detached from political
considerations and international rivalries.
Their translation of the review of An Introduction to the Principles
of Morals and Legislation figured in the Morals section and contained
an extract from the long footnote in which Bentham attacked Scottish
moralists directly, ridiculing in transparent terms those who appealed to
moral sense, common sense or sympathy.7 Unsurprisingly, the editors
of the Bibliothèque britannique failed to take Benthams moral philosophy
seriously. This probably explains why they concluded with the following
statement:
5
6
D. Bickerton, Marc-Auguste and Charles Pictet, the Bibliothèque britannique 17961815 and the Dissemination of British Literature and Science on the Continent (Geneva, 1986).
7 IPML (CW), 269n.
Bibliothèque britannique, serie Litterature, 1 (1796), 67.
Dumonts editorship
133
We must confess that the extract which we have just read might not interest
a large number of readers; rather, we selected it to illustrate a specific type of
English moralist, which slightly resembles that which the famous Konigsberg
professor, Kant, has made fashionable in Germany. We doubt that this kind
of writing will be taken up in France.8
On reading the extract, Dumont immediately asked Bentham for permission to send the Bibliothèque britannique fragments from his manuscripts.9
Like many of Benthams friends, he felt that the philosophers lack of interest
in publishing his work was allowing others to take credit for his discoveries. Also, the publication of extracts would serve to sound the ground and
prepare the success of the great work the book he planned to draw from
the manuscripts.10 The editor, Pictet, responded enthusiastically and highlighted the topicality of Benthams writings. He congratulated Dumont in
these words:
The time seems propitious for drawing public attention to these subjects.
The need for order is so deeply felt everywhere, that the means of procuring and securing it are among the first interests of society. In France, but
also elsewhere, one is especially busy in rebuilding political structures, and
materials such as those which you are proposing to provide would not only
be timely, they would also be received attentively. Our paper would be
honoured to publish them.11
Accordingly, six extracts were published in the Bibliothèque britannique in

1797 and 1798, taken from two essays: Principles of the Civil Code, later
included in Traites, and Manual of Political Economy, which did not
come out in full until 1811 as part of Theorie des peines et des recompenses.12
In his opening Letter to the redactors of the Bibliothèque britannique,
Dumont cut short the debate on utility as the foundation of morals
to present Bentham as a theoretician of jurisprudence and a political
economist, and the extracts were published under the headings Legislation and Political economy. In the Letter, Dumont adopted the noncommittal political approach defended by the editors of the Genevan
periodical. According to Dumont, Benthams works were not concerned
8
9
10
11
12

I believe I have done the best thing to assure him of the correctness of his ideas; one can no longer
steal the plan of his works, one could no longer deny him the priority of some great principles.
BGE, MS Dumont, 17, f. 106.
BGE, MS Dumont, 33 f. 266.
Correspondence (CW), vol. V, 200. Principes du Code Civil, extraits Bibliothèque britannique serie
Litterature, 5 (1797), 277302, 6 (1797), 325, 281306; Manuel deconomie politique, Bibliothèque
britannique, serie Litterature, 7 (1798), 10533 and 36989.
134
with liberty or with broad political ideals but stated concrete principles on
which the happiness of the people could be secured:
While the storm is still raging on the horizon, only the present perils can be
attended to, but the time is nigh, when foresight will be possible. . . . [T]oday
the main object is liberty, that is to say political power, as the word liberty
is so often wrongly limited to. One should not oppose such a general cast
of mind head-on. Men will not be fooled. They will not be made to believe
that liberty is an evil because it has produced great evils, but they have to be
told the truth. That happiness is the sole end, the sole object of intrinsic
value. That political liberty is but a relative good, one of the means to
reach that end. That a people with good laws, even deprived of all political
power, can attain a high degree of happiness, & on the contrary, that with
the greatest political powers and bad laws, the deepest misery shall reign.13
The substance of this passage was almost entirely taken up in the Preliminary discourse to Traites written five years later, though the tone was
softened and the direct attack on positive liberty as a political principle
was left out. For Dumont, the rejection of republican liberty went together
with a growing distrust for democracy, which was itself the direct product
of his experience of revolutionary rule after 1792.14 This position coloured
Dumonts presentation of the politics of Traites. However, his insistence
on concrete happiness against the lure of an abstract love of liberty was
by no means anomalous in post-Thermidorian France, and it was in line
with Benthams own position. In presenting utilitarianism as a pragmatic
answer to the political situation, he addressed the shared concerns of his
French-speaking contemporaries in Paris or Geneva.
Publishing Traites de legislation civile et penale

Etienne Dumont and Samuel Romilly had remained finely attuned to
French politics after 1795. They knew personally some of the men who
came to political and intellectual prominence during the Directory and the
Consulate. In 1795, Romilly described to Dugald Stewart the reappearance
of royalist opposition in terms that show him to be well acquainted with
Parisian politics:
Many persons who have been proscribed in France ever since the establishment of the Republic now appear with security, and even challenge the
public attention by political publications. Among these, some of the most
13
14
Bibliothèque britannique, serie Litterature, 5, 1623.

R. Whatmore, Against War and Empire, 2749.
Dumonts editorship
135
remarkable are Vaublanc, Dupont de Nemours, and Bergasse; but the most
singular publications that have appeared at Paris are the different memoirs of
the Girondists, and which seem by the French papers to be very numerous.15
Dumont returned to Paris in 1801 to accompany the son of Lord Lansdowne, Henry Petty, and supervise the printing of Traites. On that occasion, he rebuilt networks constructed in the years directly preceding the
Revolution.16 Alongside his contacts among Mirabeaus friends, he had
become acquainted with the Girondins, including Brissot, Garat and
Roederer.17 Though Brissot was now dead, by 1795, Roederer was a significant figure in Paris political life, providing Morellet, another of Lansdownes friends, with work on his Journal deconomie politique.18 Many of
these men, though not all, remained in power after the rise of Napoleon.
By 1801, Talleyrand had become Minister of Foreign Affairs and Gallois
a member of the Tribunat. La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt was respected in
philanthropic circles, while the ageing Morellet was still a figure in intellectual life. Although Dumont knew all these people, he had not been directly
in contact with them since he had left the Continent in 1793.
Once in Paris, Dumonts first visit was to Talleyrand. The minister, he
wrote in his diary, welcomed him in the name of their old friendship
and invited him frequently.19 Dumont also saw Morellet regularly and
enjoyed his lively conversation, as well as that of another former academician, Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard. Dumonts relations with Roederer were
more complex. Dumont remained wary of Roederers shifting political
allegiances and described him in English as a time-serving man.20 A
large part of Dumonts diaries recalls dinners and evenings hosted, as was
usual, by women. Many of his connections revolved around Genevan and
Protestant circles in which Germaine de Stael was a prominent figure before
her exile in 1803.21 At dinners, Dumont rubbed shoulders with the leaders
of the Consulate, including Bonaparte himself. At Mme Gautiers, Mme
Delesserts, Mme Suards and Mme de Condorcets, he met leading intellectuals, including members of the National Institute, discussing metaphysics
15
16
17
18
19
21
Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, vol. II, 47.

E. Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, 1935; and C. Blamires, The French Revolution, 2035. Souvenirs
was written in 1799, though only published posthumously in 1832.
C. Blamires, The French Revolution, 205.
A. Morellet, Lettres dAndre Morellet, D. Medlin, J.-C. David and P. Leclerc, eds., 3 vols. (Oxford,
19911996), vol. III, 236.
20 ibid., f. 15.
BGE, MS Dumont, 5b, f. 4.
S. Balaye, Madame de Stael. Lumières et liberte (Paris, 1979). For links between the circle of Germaine
de Stael and Bentham, see Part 5, Chapter 15, pp. 1858.
136
with Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy, but also literature, philanthropy and
politics.22
Writing to Bentham in late 1801 and early 1802, Dumont painted an
extremely alluring picture of intellectual life in France and explained that
Benthams reputation preceded him: the Bibli. Britann, he insisted, is
known here by all those who can be called readers.23 His private notebooks
show that he was more cautious about the reception Traites would meet
with in Paris: though Morellet and Gallois, his close friends, encouraged
him to publish, he believed the rhythm of Parisian political life to be too
hectic for anything more than a shallow reception.24 He had one main
supporter: Talleyrand himself, who had taken an immediate interest in
the work and supported Dumont through all stages of the publication,
especially in negotiating the conditions with Bossange, the publisher. One
is left to conjecture as to the reason for Talleyrands interest in Traites.
Personal friendship with Dumont certainly played a part as well as, perhaps,
distrust of Portalis and the other members of the commission appointed
by Bonaparte to draft the Civil Code. In times of growing censorship,
Talleyrands support opened the doors of a prestigious publishing house
with an established international network of correspondents.25
On the title page of the first volume, Dumont presented Bentham as
an English jurisconsult, as he had in the Bibliothèque britannique. The
Preliminary discourse insisted both on the immediate topicality of Benthams works and on their theoretical value. The first volume opened with a
section entitled Principles of Legislation which presented the gist of Benthams utilitarianism as set out in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals
and Legislation, insisting on the instrumental dimension of that method.
Utility was first and foremost a tool to be employed in legal reform. This
presentation left out of the picture Benthams epistemological interrogations as to the nature and the use of principles, including that of utility.
Dumont had not forgotten the way in which the editors of Bibliothèque
22
23
24
25
BGE, MS Dumont, 5b and 6. Dumont was personally acquainted with Mme de Condorcet before
1792. See BGE, 74, ff. 170181.
Correspondence (CW), vol. VI, 459.
We lunched with Gallois at the abbe Morellets. Highly interesting morning thanks to the youthful
old mans active and instructive conversation. . . . I communicated to them my plan of having my
work on Bentham printed. They both welcomed it with the warmth and interest one finds more
commonly in France than elsewhere, but which might not be lasting. BGE, MS Dumont, 5b,
f. 24.
BGE, MS Dumont, 5b, ff. 401; and C. Blamires, The French Revolution, 2447. On Bossange, see
F. Barbier, Bossange, in Dictionnaire Encyclopedique du Livre, P. Fouche, D. Pechoin, P. Schuwer,
H.J. Martin, eds. (Paris, 2002) vol. I, 370.
Dumonts editorship
137
britannique had dismissed utility as a moral value. In order to answer these

critiques, he added a chapter in his own hand under the title Further
remarks. Objections to the Principle of Utility answered.26 Whereas in An
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation Bentham had openly
contrasted utility with the moral-sense or common-sense doctrine of contemporary Scottish philosophy, Dumont discarded those direct attacks and
framed the debate in classical terms, as a defence of Epicureanism against
Stoicism. Utility, he argued, had to be articulated with virtue and was not
contradictory with the dictates of justice. It was a secure foundation for
justice, because it provided strong rational grounds for obeying its dictates.
Promises and contracts had to be respected not because of the utility of this
or that promise, or of this or that contract, but because respecting former
commitments was in itself useful:
A man is not bound only by the utility of a particular promise or engagement;
for should the engagement become burdensome to either of the parties, he
would still remain bound by the utility of engagements in general; by the
confidence which every man of refinement wishes to have placed in his word,
so that he may be regarded as trustworthy, and thus enjoy the advantages
which attach to uprightness and to good repute.27
Utility was not opposed to religion either, Dumont insisted. Pleasures were
evidence of Gods goodness, and [e]cclesiastical history affords indisputable
proof of the frightful evils which have, in fact, resulted from religious
maxims imperfectly understood, he wrote, then quoting William Paley as
a theological caution.28 On the whole, Dumonts version preferred ruleutilitarianism to act-utilitarianism and explicitly rejected Benthams (and
Helvetiuss) emphasis on physical pleasures. He also attempted to reconcile
it with religion. This further served to obscure what Bentham owed to
Voltaire and DAlembert.29
Discarding the immediate programmatic value of Benthams 1780s Projet
dun corps complet de legislation, Dumont separated it into three essays:
General View of a Complete Code of Laws, Principles of the Civil Code
and Principles of the Penal Code, principles replacing what Bentham had
seen as concrete prescriptions. Due to a miscalculation by the printer, the
finished text ran to a little over two volumes. To complete it, Dumont
26
28
29
27 ibid., 22.
Traites, 213.
In Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, first published in 1785, Paley had used utilitarian
arguments in defence of non-conformist theological views. See P. Schofield, A Comparison of the
Moral Theories of William Paley and Jeremy Bentham, The Bentham Newsletter, 11 (1984), 422.
See Part I, Chapter 2, pp. 3035 and pp. 4549.
138
added his earlier translations of Panopticon, Essay on Time and Place in

matters of Legislation and Essay on the Promulgation of Laws. He wrote
to Bentham shortly before the completion of the third volume:
I still have eight or ten days hard work. A faulty calculation on the part of
the printer has made me short of two hundred pages to fill the third volume.
I called up everything I could find in order not to anticipate one of the
larger works. I put the Panoptique to good use, as well as the dissertation
on place and time, and a somewhat meagre and feeble dissertation on the
Promulgation of Laws and the rationale of laws, with Chapter 1 from the
Penal Code as an example of such a reasoned commentary. . . . With all
these additions, your scientific plan has become less visible, but I do not
care I think this part of the work is the one that reads the best. The only
inconvenience is that the style suffered somewhat from the haste, and that
it contains bold thoughts that will have the stupid up in arms. There is no
harm in causing some uproar, and this is better than the peace of death.30
Bentham read the proofs and asked for a number of corrections, none of
them relating to the selection of the essays or to the general reordering of
the original material.31 The work was announced in Le Moniteur on June
15, its price set at 15 francs.32
30
31
The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. VII, January 1802 to December 1808, ed. J.R. Dinwiddy,
(CW) (Oxford, 1988), 21.
32 ibid., 62.
For Benthams lists of errata, see Correspondence (CW), vol. VII, 2856.
chapter 1 1
A mixed reception
Aborted influence on French codification

As has been seen, Dumont was especially anxious that Benthams writings
could contribute to French legal reform. Although revolutionaries had
hoped to conduct a thorough reform of penal and civil laws, the pace of
events in France had not afforded enough time to draw up new codes.
The provisional penal code that had been adopted in 1791 remained in
force until 1810. The reform of civil law was announced by Cambacerès
in 1794, prompting Dumont to request some new material on the subject
from Bentham, pointing to the coming opportunity of putting the Code
itself to real use.1 Dumont appeared anxious to time the publication
of Benthams extracts with the current work on the French code, for
instance singling out Principles of the Civil Code for inclusion in the
Bibliothèque britannique in 1797. In the same year, interest in Benthams
views of penal law seemed to stir, as Morellet and Roederer published a
short extract from his manuscripts as an appendix to a new edition of
Beccarias Of Crimes and Punishments. Dumont, enraged that the extract
had been published without his knowledge and from an unknown source,
called it an abominable chaos.2 A French jurist, Bernardi de Valernes,
had also mentioned Benthams name in the press as an inspiration for his
own work: one must seriously think about concluding, Dumont wrote to
Bentham in May 1800.3
1
2

Traite des delits et des peines, par Beccaria, traduit de litalien par Andre Morellet; nouvelle edition
corrigee, precedee dune correspondance avec le traducteur, accompagnee de notes de Diderot; et suivie
dune Theorie des lois penales, par Jeremie Bentham, traduite de langlais par Saint-Aubin (Paris, 1797).
For Dumonts remark, see Correspondence (CW), vol. VI, 484. See also Memoires de lAbbe Morellet,
157.
Correspondence (CW), vol. VI, 293. Dumont alluded to an article in the Moniteur of 8 floreal year
VIII (28 April 1800), presenting J.E. Bernardi, Institution au droit francois civil et criminel: ou Tableau
raisonne de letat actuel de la Jurisprudence francoise (Paris, 1800).
139
140
Civil law was examined first. In 1800, Bonaparte appointed a fourman committee composed of Portalis, Bigot de Preameneu, Tronchet and
Maleville. Together, and relying on earlier plans and debates, they drafted
the Code that was finally adopted in 1804, after having been rejected twice
in 1802.4 Bentham followed French legislative work closely. He requested
from Dumont a copy of the Conference des observations des Tribunaux
dAppel sur le projet de Code Civil, published in 1801, volumes containing a
series of essays produced by members of the various commissions.5
As soon as he arrived in Paris in November 1801, Dumont enquired
about the work of the commission. He went to a presentation of the
project by Portalis on 24 November, on which occasion he complained of
the sentimental tone adopted by the speaker and regretted that the Roman
law division between res and persona (things and people) was to provide
the basis for the new Code. At Talleyrands, he heard that the old school
of Legislation now occupied in the Civil Code was under the influence of
his old enemy Sieyès.6 When the project for the Civil Code was rejected by
the Tribunat on 2 January 1802, Dumont might have regained some hope
that Benthams teachings would be heard: as he was putting the finishing
touches to Traites before publication, he modified the order in which the
essays were to be organised, placing General View of a Complete Code of
Laws first, to throw at the head of these starlings of legislation, to show
them what ensemble means.7 Dumont believed that the greatest teaching
legislators could derive from Bentham was the idea that a code of laws
should be systematic and uniform. Thus he wrote to Romilly:
It is good that we should have in front of us a civil code and a penal code on
the simplest and largest plan, not to adopt them immediately, but to instil
uniformity into the changes and to move gradually closer to a systematic
legislation.8
The contents of Traites were essentially geared towards that purpose. The
opening Principles of Legislation contained a presentation of the principle of utility and its application in jurisprudence. General View of a
Complete Code of Laws extracted from the form section of Projet, was
framed as a work of universal jurisprudence, as containing a method for
the analysis of all existing legal systems. Principles of the Penal Code and
4
5
7
8
The preliminary work of the commission is recalled and analysed in J.-L. Halperin, Limpossible code
civil (Paris, 1992).
6 ibid., 458. For Siey`
Correspondence (CW), vol. VI, 440.
es, see Part III.
Correspondence (CW), vol. VII, 12.
Dumont to Romilly, September 12, 1799, BGE, MS Dumont, 17, f. 126v.
A mixed reception
141
Principle of the Civil Code, which made up the bulk of the text, were
based on extracts from the matter manuscripts. Dumont reorganised the
material thematically around the following issues: the aim of a civil code
(ensuring utility by securing its four subordinate ends: subsistence, abundance, security and equality, and discussing how to arbitrate between their
conflicting demands), private property (contracts, taxation, inheritance)
and personal status (family law, slavery, services). In adopting this plan,
he fell back on Roman-law divisions between res and persona and between
civil and penal law adopted by the French, though such divisions had been
extensively criticised by Bentham.9
Had the members of the commission read Bentham? Did they attempt
to follow his ideas? The philosopher later wrote: Dumont fancied that
he saw traces of my ideas in the arrangement of that Code I, for my
part, could see none.10 Recueil des travaux preparatoires du Code Civil, in
which the preliminary work of the members of the commission and that
of occasional collaborators was recorded, does not contain any mention of
his name.11 There are reasons to believe that he was known among French
jurists: Bibliothèque britannique circulated in Parisian circles and Roederers
reissue of Beccarias translation was noticed and commented on (along
with its appendices).12 There may also have been private correspondence
involving Portalis, as a number of letters hint at. For instance, on 30 March
1801, Anne Romilly received a letter from her friend in Auteuil, Madeleine
Gautier:
Dont be surprised if I write again, though I wrote on the 20th and the
25th; and I ought to be discreet, remembering that we are inhabitants of two
countries, which horrid politics have made enemies; but we want Benthams
Civil Code. Mr Romilly will not fancy we shall turn it to a good account.
Those who are charged with the preparation of our Code are desirous of
having it.13
Could those who are charged with the preparation of our Code refer
to Portalis and other members of the committee? Bentham himself later
9
10
11
12
13
For Benthams arguments, see Part II, Chapter 5, p. 76.

Correspondence (CW), vol. VII, 125. For Dumonts allusions, see Preface, Theorie des peines et des
recompenses (London, 1811), vii.
P.A. Fenet, Recueil complet des travaux preparatoires du Code civil, suivi dune edition de ce code, a`
laquelle sont ajoutes les lois, decrets et ordonnances formant le complement de la legislation civile de la
France, et où se trouvent indiques, sous chaque article separement, tous les passages du recueil qui sy
rattachent, 15 vols. (Paris, 1836).
S. Solimano, Verso il Code Napoleon. Il progetto di codice civile di Guy Jean-Baptiste Target (Milan,
1998).
142
hinted that this might have been the case, writing that Portalis, hearing
of some printed but unpublished papers of mine, took a world of pains in
roundabout ways (it being in war time) to get a copy before it went public.14
However, we need to dissociate Benthams and Dumonts intentions of
being read and heeded by the French legislators from the reality of influence.
On the crucial issues of the organisation of a code of laws, private property
and family organisation (marriage and divorce), the reflections in France
took place entirely independently of Benthams writings.
First, the British philosopher had insisted that all the parts within a code
depended on one another, as General View demonstrated. Despite overall
agreement on codification itself and on the requirement that the wording
of the code should be as clear and unambiguous as possible, ideas that were
widely shared by late-Enlightenment reformers,15 there were significant
divergences between Bentham and the French legislators. For Bentham,
completeness and clarity in a code had a specific meaning that involved
precise rules for codification. In the essay on the Promulgation of Laws,
Dumont singled out Benthams argument:
To promulgate a law, is to present it to the minds of those who are to be
governed by it in such a manner that they may have it habitually in their
memories, and may possess every facility for consulting it, if they have any
doubts respecting what it prescribes.16
The main purpose of the law was to provide certainty, to preserve the
security of individual expectations. Dumonts presentation of the legal
interpretation of the principle of utility, in Principles of legislation, insisted
on the fact that a strict utilitarian analysis of action made it possible to
anticipate most of the circumstances surrounding a given act. The letter of
the law should refer to as many circumstances as possible: there is nothing
arbitrary about the method. It is not the judge, it is the law itself, which
modifies a particular punishment in accordance with sex, age, religious
profession, etc.17 Completeness meant that the code should be able to
cover the entire field of human action. For that reason it was to be constantly
amendable.18
Bentham insisted that reasons should be spelled out alongside every
article: the interpretation of legal rules was to be built into the fabric of the
code itself: Portalis is no more able than a pig to make a code with reasons
14
15
18
Correspondence (CW), vol. VII, 125. For the identification of Madeleine Gautier as Anne Romillys
correspondent, see, p. 149.
16 Traites, 431.
17 ibid., 40.
See Chapter 5.
ibid., 1523. For Benthams later statements on the topic, see Constitutional Code.
A mixed reception
143
to it, he fumed, [w]hat human being could be, who should take a code to
make by a particular day, as a tailor would a pair of breeches?19 Including
the reasons in the code and providing for each individual circumstance all
but ruled out the necessity or the possibility of legal exegesis or arbitration
outside the code.20 Judges are conspicuously absent from Traites, where
they are replaced by the figure of the Legislator.
Portaliss vision of the interplay between the text of the law and judicial
interpretation was markedly different. In the Preliminary discourse in
which he presented the Civil code to the Tribunate in 1801, he strongly
defended appeals to tradition in judicial interpretation and the use of
natural reason in adjudication. Opposing the complex fabric of human life
and interpersonal relations (the direct objects of civil law) to the limited
reason of legislators, he wrote: [i]t would therefore be a mistake to think
that a body of laws could have foreseen all possible situations and provided
for them in advance, while remaining within the grasp of every citizen.
This statement was followed immediately by praise for a legal tradition
built on exegesis and arbitration:
We are fortunate enough to have compilations and a continuing tradition
of uses, maxims and rules. They force us, so to speak, to judge today as we
judged yesterday, and to ensure that the only variations in public judgements
are those brought about by the progress of enlightenment and by the force
of circumstances.21
In Benthams reading, instead of going against earlier judicial practices,

the Civil Code reasserted their legitimacy. After the adoption of the Civil
Code in 1804, a mixed system developed in French legal practice: alongside
the text of the code, which remained remarkably stable for most of the
nineteenth century, a vast body of precedents and exegesis developed. In
the Constitutional Code, Bentham described these para-legal texts, reports
of judicial decisions, professed to be grounded on the law, together with
dissertations, grounded partly on the text, partly on this spurious matter,
and succeeding one another without end, as excrementitious matter. He
went on to explain that such matter had proliferated in France for want of
a method allowing the letter of the law to be regularly amended:
19
20
21
Correspondence (CW), vol. VII, 125. See also The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. XI, January
1822 to June 1824, C. Fuller, ed., (CW) (Oxford, 2000) 1889, where Benthams criticisms of the
French Civil Code are repeated.
Traites, 43140.
J.E.M. Portalis, Discours Preliminaire du Code Civil, Ecrits et discours juridiques et politiques, A.
Seriaux and F. Dorce, eds. (Marseille, 1988).
144

[I]n this respect the condition of France, since the prodigious improvement
received from Buonapartes [sic.] Codes, has been continually growing worse
and worse. Not more than a dozen years have those five Codes been in
authority, and already the field is crowded, the conception of the people
perplexed, and uncertainty continually rendered more uncertain by swarms
of commentaries.22
The debate over property rights

Bentham and the French legislators used similar language in many instances
and shared significant legal principles, but these similarities should not
blind us to the deep-seated grounds for disagreement over the scope and
purpose of the law. What is more, as the subject of private property illustrates, French legal debates were construed in a specific social and political
context that provided obstacles to the comprehension and therefore the
reception of Benthams writings. The main question concerned property
rights.
The Civil Code enshrined the rights of property owners in article 544:
Property is the right to enjoy and to dispose of things in the most absolute
manner provided that one does not make a use of them that is prohibited
by laws or regulations.23 Although this account derived from an ancient
natural-law tradition, the Code itself avoided all theoretical justifications,
eschewing discussions of the origins of private property, for its political aim
was to secure existing property rights in the hands of current owners. In
the immediate French context, this meant confirming the rights of those
who had bought estates seized either from the Church or from emigres and
nationalised.24
In the extracts given to the Bibliothèque britannique in 1797 and in
Preliminary discourse to Traites written in Paris in December 1801,25
Dumont insisted that Benthams ideas on property were especially relevant
to contemporary affairs. Indeed, Bentham had devoted lengthy sections to
the issue of private property in the manuscripts. As he made clear then, the
key issue was to ensure security of expectations: without a strong guarantee
22
23
24
25
Constitutional Code, Book II, in Bowring, vol. IX, 512. For a discussion of that passage, see also
J.R. Dinwiddy, Adjudication under Benthams Pannomion. Radicalism and Reform in Britain,
17501850 (London, 1992), 3639.
Article 544, Civil Code, J.H. Crabb, ed. and trans. (Littleton, CO, 1995), 127.
J.-L. Halperin, Histoire du droit des biens (Paris, 2008), 194. In his presentation, Portalis mentioned
natural-rights theories, but the code itself did not. In English, see J. Gordley, Myths of the French
Civil Code, The American Journal of Comparative Law, 42 (1994), 460505.
BGE, MS Dumont, 5bis, f. 50.
A mixed reception
145
for property owners there could be no expectation, no adequate utilitarian

calculation. Dumont paraphrased Benthams position in these words:
But how should goods be distributed, according to this overarching principle
of security? Precisely how they are distributed today: this is what security
prescribes.26
This was justified on strictly utilitarian grounds: present possession was the
best title to property. Arbitrary confiscations created more pain than pleasure, and they provoked alarm among all property holders. Property was
therefore presented as a necessary condition for human happiness. In that
respect, Traites amplified Benthams writings by insisting on the pathological axioms which justified possession.27 In line with the manuscripts,
Dumont also insisted on the danger of collectivism.28 This naturalistic
account of the pleasures derived from private property was balanced by a
positivist view of the legal origins of property: it was not a natural right,
it was created and defended by law.29 Bentham, and Dumont in his wake,
defended the right to raise taxes, as they were necessary for the State to
exercise its missions in preserving public security (army, police, justice,
defence against natural calamities, and also poor relief).30
In Traites, Dumont did not enter into any detail as to the nature of the
taxes envisaged by Bentham, except in the case of inheritances. Inheritances
were the main fiscal lever, because an individuals expectations ceased with
death. The most detailed part of the Principles of the Civil Code therefore
dealt with that matter, Dumont abstracting from Benthams manuscript a
model for a Succession code.
The legislator should have three objects in view, in framing laws of succession: (1) to provide for the subsistence of the rising generation; (2) to prevent
the pain of disappointment; and (3) to aim at the equalisation of fortunes.31
The rules of succession favoured descendants in direct line and, in their

absence, collateral successions were limited to the first degree of family
relations (parents and siblings, with their offspring). In the absence of
direct heirs, at least half of the deceaseds property would return to the
26
27
28
29
30

Traites, 203. For more general reflections, see A. Dube, The Theme of Acquisitiveness in Benthams
Political Thought (New York, NY, 1991).
Traites, 1812.
ibid., 176. For earlier statements of the same idea, see Fragment (CW), 16.
31 ibid., 215.
Traites, 1845.
146
State.32 As original manuscripts were written in the 1780s, it is obvious

that Bentham had not intended to take a position on the nationalisation
of church estates that took place from 1789, nor on the seizing of the
lands belonging to emigres. It is also doubtful that Dumont had such a
situation in mind when he wrote his preface. The main argument of the
Preliminary discourse is praise for political and social stability: according
to him, utilitarian reasoning would always exclude upheavals of property
or power.33
Traites however repeated the postulate that there is no such thing as
natural property: it is entirely the creature of the law.34 In a French context,
however, the chapters on property in Traites were read immediately as a
vindication of the States right to seize private estates as had been done
repeatedly during the Revolution. Such statements caught the attention of
Morellet, who continued to feel the injustice of measures that had deprived
him of his livelihood. In an exchange of letters with Dumont and Bentham,
he explained that the work contained
[a] capital and misleading error on the true origin and foundations of the
right of property. This error is to be found in the opinion that the right
of property derives from the authority of political society, whatever the
form of its government; that it is the product of a convention between
men which was established after they associated into civil society; that
property is national and that it only becomes or remains personal by the
will of government acting as the authority of the nation and with a mandate
from it.35
Morellet called on the authority of Locke in attacking the doctrines of those

he saw as the adversaries of natural property rights: Rousseau, Hobbes and
Bentham.36 Dumonts repeated reassurances that Bentham was as attached
as he was to private property could not convince him.37
32
33
35
36
37
This is consistent with Benthams proposal as set out in the 1795 pamphlet Escheat vice Taxation:
[T]he appropriating to the use of the public all vacant successions, property of every denomination
included, on the failure of near relations, will or no will, subject only to the power of bequest, as
hereinafter limited. . . . [T]he power of bequest, I should propose it to be continued in respect of
half of whatever property would be at present subject to this power. Bowring, vol. II, 586.
34 ibid., 145.
Traites, 5.
A. Morellet, Traite de la propriete e il carteggio con Bentham e Dumont, L.C. Boralevi and E. di
Rienzo, eds. (Florence, 1990), 56.
See E. di Rienzo, Morellet e la categoria della proprietà privata in Francia: dallAntico Regime alla
Restaurazione and Lea Campos Boralevi, Proprietà e politica in Bentham e Morellet: storia di una
delusione, in A. Morellet, Traite de la propriete.
Morellets position was echoed by Germain Garnier, another of Dumonts Paris acquaintances, who
was famous as the latest translator of Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations. See A. Smith, Recherches sur
la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations (Paris, 1802).
A mixed reception
147
In April 1803, Combes-Dounous, the member for the department of the

Lot, presented Traites de legislation civile et penale to the Corps Legislatif
(the legislative organ of the Consulate). A Protestant, he had met Dumont
at Lord Lansdownes before the Revolution.38 In his speech, he did praise
the topicality of Traites, as an a sort of catechism of legislation, particularly
destined for those who take a more or less active part in the making of
laws. However, his words remained vague. He took up the arguments
(and even the precise words) of Dumont in the Preliminary discourse
to recommend the book to legislators and not, it should be noted, to
codifiers. The French Civil Code had by then been completed and it had
been drafted without the slightest contribution from Benthams writings.
Philanthropy and poor relief

On a different topic, the fate of the translation of Benthams essays on poor
relief proves that his points of contact with French reformers were also
potentially numerous. French philanthropists followed closely the efforts
of their British counterparts in the field of poor relief. The reasons for their
growing interest were twofold. First, the Revolution and the continuous
wars in Europe had led to an increasing demand for State action to support
the poor. The concern was political as well as philanthropic, for Republican
ideas would only triumph if they could significantly improve the well-being
of the people.39 At the same moment, the issue of philanthropy had become
a focal point for public debate in Britain. The Poor Law crisis of 1795
triggered by the rise in the price of corn had put a strain on the old system
of relief and focused attention on the reforming efforts of philanthropists
such as Eden, Wilberforce, Young and Sinclair, often members of the Board
of Agriculture. Their innovative views were published in Youngs Annals of
Agriculture and promoted by the newly created Society for Bettering the
Condition and Improving the Comforts of the Poor.
Shortly after he became Interior Minister in July 1797, Nicolas-Louis
Francois de Neufchateau commissioned a series of translations from foreign languages on the issue of poor relief. Adrien Duquesnoy, a member
of the Societe dagriculture who worked in the Ministry, supervised and
published the series. Its purpose, as stated in the first volume, was to enable
38
39
Correspondence (CW), vol. IX, 26970.

A. Forrest, The French Revolution and the Poor (New York, NY, 1981); I. Woloch, From Charity to
Welfare in Revolutionary France, Journal of Modern History, 58 (1986), 779812.
148
Frenchmen to make use of innovations recommended by foreign experts.40

Duquesnoy followed closely the debates conducted in Britain, including
those taking place within the Board of Agriculture and in Youngs Annals of
Agriculture. In 1801, he edited Edens Recherches sur le nombre des habitans
de la Grande-Bretagne et de lIrlande in a translation by La RochefoucauldLiancourt. Duquesnoys selection reflected the practical objectives of the
French institutions: in Eden, the administrators found the beginnings
of a statistical method for establishing the number of inhabitants. Etienne Delessert supervised the translation of a work by Count Rumford
on the organisation of soup kitchens for the poor.41 At the same time,
the statistical work of the Board of Agriculture was praised in Decade
Philosophique:
The English acknowledge that the rapid progress of their agriculture in the
past few years is partly due to the work of that Board, to the light it has
spread, and to the impetus it has given to the public spirit.42
In 1802, a few months before Traites, and apparently without Dumonts

knowledge, a translation from Bentham under the title Esquisse dun ouvrage
en faveur des pauvres came out.43 In 1804, as part of the same collection, his
Letters to Lord Pelham on the design of the Panopticon were also translated.
The French Esquisse comprised the translation of the two essays originally
published separately in the Annals of Agriculture in 1797 and 1798, based
on the 1798 reprint of the two articles originally entitled Situation and
Relief of the Poor and Outline of a Work entitled Pauper Management
Improved.44 In his preface to the translation, the editor hinted at some
direct communication he had had with the British philanthropist: I am
informed that Jeremy Bentham, being aware that his work was being
published in French, is about to write a continuation. I shall translate this
into French as soon as I am in possession of it. In April 1802, however,
40
41
42
43
44
M. Saad, Le reseau franco-britannique du Recueil Duquesnoy, in A. Thomson, S. Burrows and E.

Dziembowski, eds., Cultural Transfers, 10314.; D. Margairaz, Francois de Neufchateau.
Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (17531814), born in British America, had been ennobled
after serving in the Bavarian army. He was known for his scientific work on heat and his plans for
poor relief.
Decade, 20 germinal year X (10 April 1802). On Sinclairs report to the Institute on the question,
10 messidor year X (29 June 1802), vol. XXXIV, 1315.
J. Bentham, Esquisse dun ouvrage en faveur des pauvres, adressee a` lEditeur des Annales dAgriculture,
A. Duquesnoy, trans. (Paris, 18012 (year X)).
This was established by Michael Quinn: see Editorial introduction to Writings on the Poor Laws,
vol. II, (CW), ci.
A mixed reception
149
Bentham told Dumont that that person never wrote to him.45 What
was then Duquesnoys source? In 1801, Samuel Romillys wife Anne had
received the following letter from Madeleine Gautier, who, in the same
period, acted as an intermediary between Frenchmen involved in the Civil
Code and Bentham:
I am required to write, again and again, to subject myself to the charge of
importunity; but we are occupied with the great work ourselves; and want
the aid of Bentham. The extracts published in the Bibliothèque britannique
have excited the liveliest curiosity. Bentham cannot refuse his aid when
our object is so meritorious. There is really here, at this moment, an eager
desire to do good nay, I may say, a benevolent fermentation which
is very impressive. Will it lead to practical consequences? you will doubt:
but you will not doubt that such a tendency is wise and praiseworthy, and
that it ought to be encouraged. Improvements in our hospitals and poorhouses are really in demand; and my [younger] brother, who is one of the
administrators named for this object, is so zealous, that I expect we shall call
on you soon to aid us in this particular.46
Bowring did not name the author, but Madeleine Gautier can be identified
with near certainty. Nee Delessert, she was a great friend of the Romillys
and her brother Benjamin had recently been appointed to the Conseil
General des Hospices.47 Indeed, when Esquisse was published, Duquesnoy
wrote to Benjamin Delessert thanking him for a work you were the first
to bring to France.48
The first essay contained in Esquisse reflected Benthams interest in statistics and classification. It contained two distinct tables, the first calling for
a precise assessment of the number of paupers, the cause of their distress and the kind of relief appropriate. The second attempted to establish the value of the work that could be extracted from each category of
paupers: the economic sustainability of Benthams system relied on the
product of the paupers work, so estimating its value was a prerequisite.
In the second, longer, section, Bentham detailed the management of the
houses of industry, their interior and exterior design under the Panopticon
45
46
47
48

The only source for this letter is Bowring, vol. X, 362, where it is translated. For its relation to the
genesis of Esquisse, see Editorial introduction to Writings on the Poor Laws, vol. II, (CW), ci. For
earlier contacts, see above, pp. 14142, n. 14.
It is likely that Madeleine Gautier acted as an intermediary on both occasions. Her younger brother
Benjamin Delessert was then a rising figure in French politics in the quote, Bowrings original
translation as elder brother is incorrect.
Archives departementales de Paris, Delessert papers, V13S 2.
150
principle, the daily organisation of relief (regulations for housing, work and
education, but also for clothes and food) and, lastly, the advantages of his
plan compared to other modes of administration. The inspection principle was part of a comprehensive design. Its clarity and precision directly
recommended it to Duquesnoy, who indicated that he had circulated the
first table (breaking down the population calling for relief into categories)
to the administration of each region and to the philanthropic committees
of Paris.49
The work had much to recommend it to French philanthropists. Many of
Benthams proposals could be seen as the practical implementation of ideas
that were already commonly held in these circles. First, his understanding of
human motivation (the search for pleasure and the avoidance of pain as the
true springs of action) was similar to many contemporary French analyses.
A letter on the Paris hospices,50 published in the Decade Philosophique in
the spring of 1802, pointed out the advantages of distributing premiums to
the nurses who kept the infants in their care healthy while insisting on the
necessity of surveillance and control:
Bounties and rewards are too efficacious to be ignored. How many men do
good without calculating the profit which they will derive from it? Do they
spare their efforts to evaluate each step or each pain?51
Second, Benthams essay insisted on the moral value of work. For, like his
French contemporaries, he believed that relief for the able-bodied should
be conditional upon work. In a circular issued in August 1798, the Minister
of the Interior had written:
Some truths bear repeating. All healthy individuals must earn their living:
those who are fed without doing corresponding work are fed at the expense
of those who work. By devouring the fruits of the land without labouring
and those of industry without working, their laziness and the bad example
they set are greater burdens to the public than the amount of money that
has to be paid for them. And the daily costs of workhouses are everywhere
enormous. In almost all of them, the daily price of food for each inmate is
over one franc. It should be at least halved, and from the age of ten onwards,
all individuals of both sexes are in a position to earn their subsistence.52
49
50
51
52
Esquisse, iiiiv. The last claim has not been substantiated.

[A.G.], Camus, Trois lettres sur les hospices de Paris, et, en particulier, celui de la Maternite,
Decade Philosophique, 20 pluviose, 20 ventose and 10 prairial, year X (9 February, 11 and 31 March
1802), vol. XXXIII, 205ff.
Decade, vol. XXXIII, 211.
Circulaire du 24 fructidor an VI sur les visites de canton, Recueil des lettres circulaires, instructions,
programmes, discours et autres actes publics, emanes du C.en Francois (de Neufchateau), pendant ses
A mixed reception
151
Benthams emphasis on productive work is well known. In his Poor Law

writings, it was made explicit by his choice of words: substituting the word
hand for that of pauper to convey the idea of a productive force instead
of a person in need of relief. This terminological shift was emphasised in
one of the very rare translators notes in Esquisse:
Instead of the words pauvres (paupers), individus (individuals) and the like,
the word travailleurs (workers) has been used in general, for it corresponds
as closely as possible to the word hands expressly chosen by M. Bentham.
This is faithful to the authors views and brings to mind on each occasion,
as in the original, the idea of work, which is one of the main foundations of
his plan.53
Reviews of the volume pointed out the importance of conducting practical

reforms based on sound theoretical principles, according to the British
model. Esquisse was immediately reviewed in Decade Philosophique by
Philippe Seignette, a friend of La Revellière-Lepeaux, who was one of
the prominent officials of the Directory and a member of the National
Institute.54 Seignettes review listed a string of concrete proposals inspired
by Benthams work. Like Duquesnoy, he praised the Pauper table: it was
necessary to state the various causes of indigence exactly, so that they could
be combatted in the most efficacious manner, and the most useful to the
state. The economic dimension of Benthams programme of poor relief
was noted in detail: a system privately funded and managed while remaining under public control, pauper banks and respect for market regulations.
The all-encompassing character of Benthams plan, establishing Houses of
Industry for whoever had no property nor known means of subsistence,
which implied extensive police powers in the hands of the new establishment, was mentioned but not directly recommended for France.
In France as in Britain, issues regarding prisoners were never fully separated from those of poor relief. In 1802, Dumont reprinted Le Panoptique
in the third volume of Traites. In the preface written for the new edition,
he insisted on the use that could be made of Benthams circular design in
53
54
deux exercices du ministère de lInterieur (Paris, 17989), vol. I, 170. I thank D. Margairaz for
communicating this reference.
Esquisse, insert between pages 16 and 17.
Decade, vol. XXXII, (December 1801February 1802), section Economics Administration, 206
8. Reprinted in J. Boulad-Ayoub, La decade philosophique comme système (Rennes, 2003), vol. VI,
4478. In its review, the Journal des debats, a newspaper containing official accounts of parliamentary
debates, as well as reviews and announcements, wrote: In the neighbouring country, an active and
clever philanthropy has produced a host of projects. The frequent support of wealth has allowed
[the British] to combine the results of experiments with theoretical speculations. 21 pluviose, year
X (10 February 1802).
152
practice. In private he was, however, pessimistic, noting that this plan [to
build a Panopticon in Paris] seems to be doomed, recalling its successive
abandonment by the National Assembly and then by the British government, telling Bentham in February 1802: I have spoken of Panopticon. It
was coldly received. They say Yes! it ought to be erected, and they would
think about it when the time came. The time anticipated is the time of
peace.55 As war resumed after the truce of Amiens, the prospect of peace
receded further.
In 1804, the collection of foreign works on houses of industry coordinated by Duquesnoy included one more work of Benthams on prison
management: Lettres a` Lord Pelham.56 The volume did not contain any
translators notes, nor has any review of it been traced. Its impact is therefore difficult to assess. Dumonts version of Panopticon had been published two years earlier, and Benthams Lettres a` Lord Pelham provided
another account of his system of penitentiary reform, which compared and
contrasted it explicitly with other solutions for criminals: deportation to
the colonies (which he strongly criticised), and the Philadelphian mode
of imprisonment described by La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt in 1795 in Des
prisons de Philadephie.
How influential were Benthams philanthropic writings in France?
Republishing Pauper Management Improved in English in 1812, the philosopher boasted that soon after the appearance of the translation in Paris in
1802, the suggestions contained in it were, to an extent more or less considerable, put to use.57 He might have had in mind the 1808 decree by the
French authorities that made begging an offence, and generalised internment of paupers in dedicated workhouses (depots). There is no denying that
Benthams writings on poor relief and prison management were known in
France: as we have just seen, they had circulated in printed form in 1791,
1802 and 1804, but their impact on contemporary practices remains difficult to substantiate. In many cases there are striking similarities between
Benthams proposals and French practice, but the precise connection is hard
to trace, many of these ideas being shared by contemporary philanthropists
on both sides of the Channel from the 1780s onwards.
55
56
57
Correspondence (CW), vol. VII, 13

J. Bentham, Second Letter to Lord Pelham, &c., &c., &c.: in continuation of the comparative view of
the system of penal colonization in New South Wales, and the home penitentiary system, prescribed by
two acts of Parliament of the years 1794 & 1799 (London, 1802).
J. Bentham, Writings on the Poor Laws, vol. II (CW), 695.
A mixed reception
153
What appears today as Benthams most innovative scheme, the contracting out of prison management and poor relief to a joint-stock company
accountable to the State, was indeed implemented by the Directory in a
decree of 17 thermidor year VI (4 August 1798). Workhouses (depots de
mendicite) were leased out to a private entrepreneur for a nine-year term.
Government grants covered the daily care of each inmate (individual costs
varied according to sex and age). The entrepreneurs were responsible for
maintaining specific standards of hygiene, and were allowed to keep half
of the profits made from the prisoners work.58 This system was also tried
out in Paris for the city hospitals (hospices civils), where different modes of
management were tried and contrasted.59 Dominique Margairaz emphasises the practical reasons for such a choice (the shortage of public money)
and the theoretical sources that supported it: earlier translations from the
English and articles published by Leclerc de Montlinot, a former journalist
turned philanthropist, the year before.60 It was also reminiscent of Ancien
Regime practices which allotted daily sums to jailors for the care of inmates
or, more generally, of habits of relying on private enterprise rather than
on direct state administration.61 The date of the decree, 1798, would be
sufficient to rule out Benthams influence. Duquesnoy only became aware
of Benthams articles and translated them in 18001801, three years after
the measure was passed and after the string of scandals they had caused.62
True, a similar proposal was contained in the 1791 version of Panoptique,
which must have been known to officials who had been involved in the
early Committees of the Revolution, but that seems too tenuous to establish a direct connection. Separately, many features such as surveillance,
the separation of convicts, and productive work were shared by numerous
philanthropic projects from the Philadelphian and Pennsylvanian systems
debated in the late 1790s to the programme of the influential Society for
58
59
60
62
J.-G. Petit, Ces peines obscures. La prison penale en France (17801875) (Paris, 1990), 143151. D.
Margairaz, Francois de Neufchateau, 328.
A.G. Camus contrasted the appointment of general contractors in charge of providing bedding,
linen, clothes, food of all kinds (bread excepted) at a daily cost determined for each inmate,
with the paternal regime which consists in supplying and feeding each workhouse either through
specific suppliers, or by first-hand purchases made directly by the administration, Decade, 10
prairial year X (30 May 1802), vol. XXXIII, 205 (3e`me lettre de Camus sur les hospices). In
the letter, Camus favoured the latter, justifying the expense by the importance of good care for
mothers.
61 See J.G. Petit, Ces peines obscures, 12532.
See D. Margairaz, Francois de Neufchateau, 328.
Duquesnoy himself was accused of embezzlement. See D. Margairaz, Francois de Neufchateau,
32931.
154
the Improvement of Prison Discipline, based in London, which lobbied

French prison reformers in the 1810s.63
Thus, to talk of Benthams influence seems as misleading in connection
with philanthropic works as it is in the case of legal reform. What these
examples do show is that Benthams ideas were known and discussed in
France because they were directly relevant to contemporary issues.
63
C. Duprat, Punir et guerir. En 1819, la prison des philanthropes, in M. Perrot, ed., Limpossible
prison: recherches sur le système penitentiaire au XIXe siècle, (Paris, 1980), 64122.
chapter 1 2
Autumn 1802: Three weeks in Paris
On 2 August 1802, Napoleon was made First Consul for life.1 This was the
most visible sign of Bonapartes grip on French politics. In the preceding
years, there had been growing opposition among Republicans to his overtures towards the Ancien Regime aristocracy and the Church, embodied
in the Concordat of 1801 reinstating Catholicism as the official religion.
Though many Republicans eventually voted for Bonapartes promises to
maintain stability at home, the political climate deteriorated soon after his
accession. In the autumn, public opinion became polarised for or against
Bonaparte and religious, moral and legal issues became saturated with
political undertones. The disappointing reception of Traites in the second
half of 1802 illustrates this tense and precarious political climate, despite
Dumonts efforts to promote the book.
Benthams Paris journey

Benthams French correspondents during that period are almost exclusively
to be found among the friends of Romilly and Dumont. Athough the
philosopher did maintain direct links with La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt,
corresponding about the Panopticon while Liancourt was in America in
1795, war prevented contacts between England and France until 1801.
Through his close friends, Bentham was however apprised of the political
situation and kept track of newspapers and recently published works.
On 1 January 1802, he took out a subscription to Le Moniteur.2 Among
a list of books borrowed or lent, starting from 1801, are a number of
French periodicals: some were pre-revolutionary titles ( Journal Etranger,
1
2
Bentham exercised the voting right which his honorary French citizenship (granted in 1792) gave
him to vote for Bonaparte; see Correspondence (CW), vol. VII, 63.
155
156
Journal litteraire and Journal de legislation), but more recent ones showed his
continuing interest in French affairs: Esprit des Journaux, Journal de France
and, of course, Decade Philosophique and Roederers Journal deconomie
publique.3 In the spring of 1802, Bentham read in the Moniteur that his
name had been put up for election to a vacant seat as a foreign member in
the Second Class of the National Institute.4 Dumont admitted to having
discussed the matter with some of his friends there, probably Roederer,
Gallois or Talleyrand himself.
The outcome at the National Institute was disappointing. First, Bentham
was never elected to the Class of Moral and Political Sciences, despite his
name having been put up twice. As he reported it, it was because on the
first occasion, someone had told the members, before the vote, that he
had recently died. In the next one, Charles Fox had been chosen over him,
which Bentham ascribed to Napoleons influence.5 However, Bentham had
been misled by his Parisian friends. Within the Class of Moral and Political
Sciences, his name had certainly been presented by Garran, who was in
charge of proposing names for the seat of foreign member. Whenever a
seat became vacant, each class shortlisted a small number of candidates.
A vote organised during a plenary session then nominated the successful
candidate. Benthams name was put up on 25 May 1802 and 24 August
1802. In the first instance, he was third on the shortlist and got only 100
votes (compared to 257 for Niebuhr, the German travel writer) which
rules out the hypothesis that voters had been told he was dead. In the
second instance, as his name came first on the shortlist, it was another
philanthropist, Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, who obtained 180
votes against Benthams 140 in the final plenary vote.6 Why was Rumford
preferred over Bentham against the wishes of the Class of Moral and
Political Sciences? As in the case of Fox, who was elected a few weeks later
(though not against Bentham), Napoleons influence might have been at
work: Rumford seems to have been in favour with the First Consul and
the members of the National Institute before the election. Losing to a wellknown politician in the name of high diplomatic interests was certainly
more respectable than to a fellow philanthropist who networked heavily
3
5
6
4 Correspondence (CW), vol. VII, 23.

BL MS Add 33, 564.
Correspondence (CW), vol. VII, 281. Charles Foxs nomination took place on 2 frimaire, year XI (22
November 1802).
Procès-verbaux de la Classe des Sciences Morales et Politiques. Pour les annees IX et X de la Republique
(Archives de lInstitut de France, A3 PV SMP, f. 79), Procès-verbaux des Seances generales pour les
annees IX et X de la Republique francaise (Archives de lInstitut de France: 3A4 PV IF, ff. 90, 104, 131).
The high number of votes is due to a complex system of plural voting.
Autumn 1802
157
in support of his schemes for popular soups, which might account for the
version of events that was reported to Bentham.7
Bentham set off for Paris on 7 September 1802 and was back in London
on 2 October having spent little more than two weeks there, a trip
described by Morellet as extravagant by its extreme brevity.8 His visit
coincided with Dumonts second stay in Paris that year, after a short stint
in Geneva in the summer, and with the longer visit of Samuel and Anne
Romilly. A Genevan friend wrote to Dumont:
[Benthams] Paris excursion is a pleasant affair. I am tempted to think he
wanted to experience personally the stir created by his and your work. Then,
sick of society and of the numerous assemblies in which he would have had
to appear, he told himself I cant afford it and went back home.9
In Paris, Bentham spent most of his time with Romilly and Dumont;
visited the hall of the legislative body, which is built on what was formerly
the Palais Bourbon; attended a meeting of the National Institute and
dined at the Gautiers in Passy.10 More importantly, he dined at the Societe
dAgriculture, where he met Gregoire, La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt and
several of his former acquaintances the Societe dAgriculture was home
to most of the influential philanthropists of the day, including Duquesnoy.
On the way back to London, he stopped at Liancourts.11 During this short
visit, he was entirely dependent on the connections formed by Dumont.
Reviewing Traites
Only two reviews of Traites have been traced in French periodicals
if one is to except the short positive notice posted by Roederer in the
Journal de Paris, apologizing for not reviewing a valuable book.12 The first
came out in Le Moniteur a few months after the publication of the three
volumes. Written by Gallois, one of Dumonts closest friends and a man
from Talleyrands circle, it was an invitation for readers to procure the
book: Bentham called the review Galloiss Puff. Briefed by Dumont,
Gallois presented the book in a very favourable light. He set out Benthams
credentials as a legal reformer in a portrait of a solitary thinker who had
7
8
10
12
On Rumford, see D. Knight, Thompson, Sir Benjamin, Count Rumford in the nobility of the
Holy Roman empire (17531814), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). I thank
Mariana Saad for information on Rumford and Napoleon.
9 Correspondence (CW), vol. VII, 145n.
Lettres dAndre Morellet, 345.
11 Correspondence (CW), vol. VII, 14654.
Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, 901.
Journal de Paris, 7 fructidor, year X (25 August 1802), 2103.
158
seen the world and hoped to contribute to the French Revolution, but who
eventually retreated into lofty seclusion, having resolved not to run after
events that kept ahead of him. Gallois then praised Dumonts editorial
skills before providing a short summary of the seven essays comprising
Traites. Announcing further analyses (which were never published in the
Moniteur), the reviewer remained extremely vague in his praise. He also
avoided making a direct injunction for the work to be used in France,
concluding that
Time only will give it its proper rank and allow it to bear all its fruit. But at
a time when so many nations in Europe are busy changing their legislation,
we think the publication of such a book will be regarded as a blessing for
mankind.13
For France, as we have seen, it was already too late. More interesting is
the review that was published five weeks later in the Mercure de France.
Edited by Chateaubriand and Fontanes, the Mercure was, in 1802, one
of Napoleons main supporters among the royalist press. The review was
signed with the letter F., standing for Joseph Fievee then a leading writer
of the royalist party.14 After mocking what the Edinburgh Review would
later call the division of labour between Bentham and Dumont, Fievee
attacked Traites both for its scope (the ambition to cover the principles of
legislation in three volumes) and for its philosophical foundations, clearly
identifying the inheritance of Helvetius:
Bentham lost his way on the track of Helvetius, whom he regards far too
highly. Many after him will also lose their way. The only legislator who can
come close to the truth is he, who in order to direct man, does not separate
him from his Maker.
Through his review of Traites, Fievee repeated one of his favourite themes,
which soon became the hallmark of conservative analyses of the French
Revolution: the Revolution had been caused by the blind application of
the erroneous principles of atheist philosophers. Human beings were not
rational creatures, as Rousseau thought. Reason was fallible; religion and
custom were needed to supplement it.
13
14
Gazette Nationale, ou Le Moniteur universel, 25 thermidor, year X, 132630 (13 August 1802). For
attribution to Gallois, see Correspondence (CW), vol. VII, 63.
For attribution to J. Fievee, see E. Dumont to F. Edgeworth, UC 174, f. 4. On J. Fievees career,
see J.D. Popkin, Conservatism under Napoleon: The political writings of Joseph Fievee, History
of European Ideas, 5 (1984), 385400; and B. Yvert, La pensee politique de Joseph Fievee, La
Restauration. Des idees et des hommes, 23659.
Autumn 1802
159
If he had to think at all times, man would be deprived of movement; therefore

all legislators have wanted our childhood to be shaped by religion, so that
our principles for conduct should be set, and that once these principles had
become habits, we could pursue our natural activity with confidence and
candour.15
The review denounced Benthams Protestant errors in order to reassert

the role of revealed religion in morals and politics. The review was not
entirely negative, however. Its political bias was obvious in the praise it
bestowed on the passages of Traites that criticised Blackstone and the British
constitution, and the attack on contractual accounts of government.16 It
also approved of the passages on duelling, in which Bentham opposed direct
prohibition. As these examples show, the review was less a philosophical
discussion of Traites than a vehicle allowing Fievee to play a well-rehearsed
part in contemporary French debates. Indeed, Fievee conflated Bentham
and the Ideologues in order to attack them together. Dumonts strategy
was possibly to blame: in the preface to Traites and in personal discussions,
he took up the contemporary discourse on utility, sensation and legislation
in the most general terms. Though Dumont carefully avoided all reference
to Helvetius and remained silent on Benthams admiration for Voltaire,
Traites nonetheless came to be associated with that of the Ideologues. This
association came too late to be useful, for 1802 signalled the demise of the
group from active politics and the Class of Moral and Political Sciences
at the National Institute was dissolved shortly afterwards a sure sign of
Napoleons shifting allegiances.
The disappointing reception of Benthams work in France in 1802 can
be partly explained by the troubled political context in which it was published. Its similarities with the Ideologues views, and Dumonts personal
connections, served, albeit on different levels, to identify it with an intellectual and political party that was among the first targets of Bonapartes
rise to power.
Conclusion
Soon after the publication of Traites, it was reported to Bentham that
Talleyrand had presented it to Napoleon, who had called it a work of
genius. Bentham used the anecdote in the 1820s, in Codification proposal
15
16
Mercure de France, 3 vendemiaire year XI [25 September 1802], vol. LXV, 1927.
Traites, 5960 and 56, respectively. British criticism of British institutions became a topos of French
Imperial propaganda.
160
addressed to all nations professing liberal opinions, to illustrate the reception

his ideas had met with in the country of codification.17 However, as the
philosopher was well aware, this professed admiration did not and could
not extend to any concrete adoption of his views: as Bentham put it, it
could not answer [Bonapartes purpose].18 For Bentham, speaking then in
the 1820s, this was due to the liberal character of his own system, which he
directly contrasted with Bonapartes despotism. Benthams appreciation
of the legacy of Napoleon always contrasted the utility of specific measures
with growing abuses of political power. In 1817, in an open letter addressed
to the Citizens of the American United States, he defended the French
codification movement as the legacy of the Cromwell of France:
With whatsoever horror the government of Napoleon, considered in a constitutional point of view, may, by so large a proportion of the thinking part
of the population of that state, be regarded; by some, in respect of the
damage to the interests of the ruling few by others, in respect of the injury
to the interests of the subject-many, scarcely should I expect to find a
Frenchman, of any party, to whom the reality of the service done by this
work, to all interests, would be spoken of as matter of doubt.19
From 1803 to 1815, as European wars resumed and Britain took the lead in
the opposition to Napoleons empire, personal and epistolary communications between the two nations were again prohibited. Dumont retreated
to London, from where he published Theorie des peines et des recompenses
in 1811. State censorship flourished, thus making unauthorised references
to an Englishman such as Bentham extremely rare until the Restoration.
One passing mention can be found in the critical review of British intellectual life by J. L. Ferri de St-Constant in 1804 and another in a work of
anti-British propaganda, LAngleterre jugee par elle-meme, where the author
quoted passages from Traites to ridicule the English common law system.20
17
18
20
J. Bentham, Legislator of the World: Writings on Codification, Law, and Education, P. Schofield and
J. Harris, eds., (CW) (Oxford, 1998), 258n.
19 Legislator of the World (CW ), 157.
J.L. Ferri de St-Constant, Londres et les Anglais (Paris, 1804) vol. II, 377; C.-J. Lafolie, LAngleterre
jugee par elle-meme, ou Appercus moraux et politiques sur la Grande-Bretagne, extraits des ecrivains
anglois (Milan, 1806), 41, 57, 11526, 131.
part v
Liberty, Utility and Rights (18151832)

During the Hundred Days following Napoleons return from Elba,
Bentham entertained brief hopes that even under Napoleon, France might
adopt representative institutions. Indeed, in June 1815, the Chamber of
Deputies drafted a plan for a liberal constitution which would extend
the franchise to every male citizen and establish the power of a bicameral
parliament above that of the executive. On that occasion, Bentham
sent Interior Minister Lazare Carnot a copy of Tactique des assemblees
legislatives, which had recently been printed both in Paris and in Geneva.1
However, within a few weeks, Louis XVIII, backed by European powers,
restored the monarchy. On 6 July, Bentham wrote: [James] Mill and I are
mourning the death of all hopes of a free government in France.2 Reading
the newspapers regularly (or in later years having them read out), the
philosopher remained keen to receive direct political news, for instance
asking Lafayette in 1827 for a short sketch of the present state of affairs in
your country from an intelligent hand.3 On a more personal note, Samuel
Bentham and his family moved to the South of France, finally settling at
Restinclières, a large estate north of Montpellier, where they resided from
1820 to 1826. The philosopher was thus quickly informed of events such
as the July Revolution in 1830, in which he took a strong interest, sending
pamphlets, for the last time, across the Channel in the hope of influencing
its course. The number of Continental visitors to Queens Square Place
also increased markedly in that period.
The Restoration (181530) was a seminal period in the definition of
French liberalism. The Charter granted by Louis XVIII in June 1814 and reestablished in 1815 guaranteed a number of rights: the equality of all before
the law, political and civil liberty, freedom of the press, freedom of worship
and the preservation of trial by jury and of the Civil Code. The king was
head of state: not only did he give his assent to all legislation, but also he had
the right to amend the laws, to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies and to
appoint new Peers, thereby ensuring a parliamentary majority in his favour.
1
2
3
The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. VIII, January 1809 to December 1816, S. Conway, ed.,
(CW ) (Oxford, 1988), 4578.
Correspondence (CW ), vol. VIII, 487.
The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. XII, July 1824 to June 1828, L. OSullivan and C. Fuller,
eds. (CW ) (Oxford, 2006), 364.
161
162
Part V Liberty, Utility and Rights
The only elected house, the Chamber of Deputies, was returned by stages,
with less than a fifth of the male population meeting voting qualifications.
Throughout the period, regular tensions arose between royal sovereignty
and parliamentary power. Despite periodic restrictions on the liberty of the
press (in 1817, 1820 and 1827 for instance), political debates were conducted
in the open, be it in the Chamber of Deputies or in a growing number of
periodical publications. With peace now secure in Europe, international
contacts developed anew and links with Britain intensified.4
There is no end to the success of Traites de legislation, and I would
not be surprised if a third edition was soon on its way, Dumont wrote to
Bentham in 1821.5 Back in Geneva, Dumont continued to publish recensions from the Englishmans works on a regular basis: Theorie des peines et des
recompenses contained essays on various aspects of penal theory alongside
an extract from Manuel deconomie politique the most complete statement of Benthams economic principles published in his lifetime. In 1816,
Tactique des assemblees legislatives suivie dun Traite des sophismes politiques
presented the rules of political debate in representative assemblies. The
second essay contained the first published version of Benthams critique of
the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen dating from the mid1790s, Nonsense upon Stilts.6 While Dumont continued, in preparing these
two volumes, to make use of the earlier manuscripts consigned to his care in
the 1790s, the next two were drawn, at least in part, from more recent material. Traite des preuves judiciaires, which came out in Paris in 1823, was based
on Benthams writings on evidence around 1809,7 and De lorganisation
judiciaire et de la codification included extracts from Codification proposal,
published in London in 1822, alongside Benthams earlier work on the
organisation of the judiciary in Revolutionary France. This further blurred
the chronological development of Benthams thought to French readers.
In Traites, as we saw, Dumont remained close to Benthams French
originals, his intervention being limited to the preface, the added chapter
on Objections answered and a few editorial footnotes. By the 1810s, though
still eager to defend and promote utilitarianism, he became more critical
4
5
6
E. de Waresquiel and B. Yvert, Histoire de la Restauration, 18141830. Naissance de la France moderne (Paris, 1996), 13840; and more recently F. Demier, La France de la Restauration (18141830;
Limpossible retour du passe (Paris, 2012), 24287; in English, P. Pilbeam, The Constitutional Monarchy
in France, 181448 (London, 2000).
Correspondence (CW ), vol. X, 378. In fact, there was no third edition of Traites.
See Part III, Chapter 9, pp. 12125. Dumonts interest in Political Tactics and in Benthams refutation
of the Rights of Man was directly related to his concerns with Genevan politics. See R. Whatmore,
Against War and Empire, 27989.
Correspondence (CW), vol. VIII, 35.
163
on specific aspects of Benthams ideas. In 1810, regarding the manuscripts

on evidence which Bentham had just sent him, he wrote indignantly:
I return you this tissue of abomination employ me to reestablish torture
anonymous accusations religious excommunications! force a man into the
company of executioners tyrants, inquisitors how can anybody publish
such horrors? I wash my hands of them, I have put in all into barbarous
French.8
As in 1802, Dumont was not the only channel through which Benthams
ideas circulated. Although not mentioned by the Genevan in print,
Benthams public position in favour of reform in British politics in
18171818 was known among the French public. More importantly, his
reputation as a radical and a republican reformer was enhanced through his
involvement in the liberal revolutions of Spain, Portugal and Greece. Three
Tracts relative to Spanish and Portugueze Affairs, published in London in
1821, was translated into French within two years.9 Bentham also circulated
his own English writings to French visitors, who were often presented with
a copy of each work of [his] that [was] still in print.10 At every opportunity,
he sent his latest works to French correspondents, including Jean-Baptiste
Say, Lafayette and Benjamin Constant. When an edition of his uvres
complètes in French was put together by the Belgian publisher Hauman,
it contained reprints of all Dumonts recensions, alongside Essais sur la
situation politique de lEspagne, a recent translation of Defence of Usury, and
Essay on Nomenclature and Classification (an extract from Chrestomathia
which George Bentham, the philosophers nephew, had translated in
1823).11 As Benthams personal fame increased in French circles, his
position was more and more routinely distinguished from Dumonts, and
8
10
11
Correspondence (CW), vol. VIII, 75. Bentham wrote on torture in the 1770s and in 1804, making
a case in favour of physical torture in specific circumstances, which set him apart from most
contemporary legal reformers who rejected it completely. Under Dumonts editorship, the argument
was turned around and presented the case against torture, see Traite des preuves judiciaires (Paris,
1823), vol. II, 35565. For recent examinations of Benthams views on torture, see P. Schofield,
Bentham for the perplexed (London, 2009), 13753; and J. Davies, The fire-raisers: Jeremy Bentham
on Torture 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 15 (http://www.19.bbk.ac
.uk/index.php/19/article/view/643/866, 2012).
Essais de Jeremie Bentham sur la situation politique de lEspagne, sur la constitution et sur le nouveau
code espagnol, sur la constitution du Portugal, etc. . . . traduits de langlais (par Ph. Chasles), precedes
dobservations sur la revolution de la peninsule . . . et suivis dune traduction nouvelle de la constitution
des Cortès (Paris, 1823).
Correspondence (CW), vol. XI, 164.
Bentham welcomed this new edition, but was preoccupied with the prejudice it might arouse
against Bossange, the Paris publishing house which had taken in most of the works by Bentham
edited by Dumont since 1802. See Bentham to Jacob Louis Duval, 20 October 1829, to be published
in The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. XIII (forthcoming).
164
it also meant that utilitarian ideas were regularly discussed among French
liberals.
These chapters first present the various papers and individuals that
circulated Benthams thought in France under the Restoration, then explain
how the philosophers knowledge of French events was relevant to the
development of his thought over that period. Last, it reveals the increasing
polarisation of French liberal opinion over utilitarianism.
chapter 1 3
For one disciple in this country, I have fifty

at least in France 1
The reception of Benthams radical politics in Paris

In a manuscript of 1809 entitled Parliamentary Reform Catechism,
Bentham criticised political corruption in Britain and set out his
arguments in favour of a reform of representation. He advocated new
rules to guarantee the aptitude of MPs: extended male suffrage, annual
elections, checks on attendance, rules for debating and the exclusion of
office holders appointed by the Crown. In 1817, he published Catechism
with a long introduction, as Plan of Parliamentary Reform. In the next
decade, this radical turn shaped his constitutional writings, as his attention
turned to the political reconstruction of recently emancipated states like
Greece, some of the former Latin American colonies and to the attempts
to establish liberal constitutions in Spain and Portugal. As Philip Schofield
has shown, Benthams radicalism gradually became openly republican in
those years: in his eyes, representative democracy was the only regime
favourable to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Monarchy, on
the contrary, was corrupt to the core.2
This political stance was markedly different from the cautious approach
Etienne Dumont had advocated in the preface to Traites.3 Though
Dumont never directly promoted Benthams democratic turn (he was
politically closer to the British Whigs), his recensions nonetheless covered
major aspects of utilitarian political theory. Thus Political Tactics contained
rules for democratic debate within representative assemblies, while new
regulations for legal procedure in Traite des preuves and De lorganisation
judiciaire set the framework for a regenerated legal system which would
preserve the rights of all to justice. De la codification, published in 1828,
1
2
3
Bentham to Robert Peel, 8 May 1826, Correspondence (CW ), vol. XII, 214.
On Benthams writings on Parliamentary reform, see P. Schofield, Utility and Democracy, 13770,
22149. Schofield argues that Benthams republican shift took place in 181718.
See Part IV, Chapter 10, pp. 13134.
165
166
presented Benthams case for a thorough reform of legal rules be they civil,
penal or constitutional.
The alliance of Benthams radical politics with utilitarianism found a
significant echo in one of the most prominent French political economists
of the time, Jean-Baptiste Say. The two men met in 1814. Back in 1789 the
young Say, a Protestant of Genevan descent, was employed by Mirabeau
at the Courier de Provence. Say did not deal with editorial content (unlike
Dumont, who was directly involved in providing articles). Ten years later,
he was among the editors of the Decade Philosophique. The rise of Napoleon
alienated him deeply from French politics. He went back to industrial
pursuits (as the owner of a spinning mill in the north of France), and
finally accepted a semi-official mission to Britain in 1814 in order to gather
economic and industrial intelligence.
By 1814, Says Traite deconomie politique, originally published in 1803,
had been substantially revised for a second edition, while his Catechisme
deconomie populaire was targeted at a broader readership. He was also a
noted republican, his opposition to Bonaparte having given way to a deep
hatred of the Bourbon monarchs. In economics, he believed free trade was
the necessary complement to civil and religious liberty. During his visit to
Britain, he was introduced to David Ricardo and to Bentham through the
radical Francis Place.4 With nearly 30 letters exchanged between 1815 and
1832, Say emerges as Benthams main French correspondent in that period.
In the early years of the Restoration, he regularly wrote to him on French
politics with unqualified candour:
The harm caused by 14 years of sedulous tyranny will not heal quickly. . . .
The publics common sense will remain warped for a long time because
of the distortions imposed on it. We shall continue to suffer for a long
time under the illiberal institutions by which Bonaparte has successively
replaced all those of the Republic. . . . A feeble and idiotic government, born
under the least auspicious of circumstances and poorly supported, . . . the
Ministry has few supporters apart from its clients or those who aspire to be
so. . . . The Ultra-royalists . . . have no other regret than not being in place,
and they appeal to principles solely when they can profit by them.5
Says interest in Benthams writings was renewed after 1817 when the latter
openly publicised his opinion in favour of political reform. Say immediately
4
5
R. Whatmore, Republicanism and the French Revolution. An Intellectual History of Jean-Baptiste Says
Political Economy (Oxford, 2000), 195; F. Demier, La France de la Restauration, 38091.
Correspondence (CW), vol. IX, 286ff. The Ultra-royalists, or Ultras, were a hard-line royalist faction
in Restoration politics. They advocated a complete return to pre-revolutionary institutions.
For one disciple in this country . . .
167
reviewed Plan of Parliamentary Reform in Le Censeur Europeen, a periodical

edited by Charles Comte (his brother-in-law and a noted radical, soon
to be forced into exile by Louis XVIII), stressing its relevance for French
politics. He began by summarizing Benthams analysis of the opposition
of interests:
There are two classes in the English nation, as in many others. One of them
is immense, ingenious and active. Its industry and its capital produce all
the commodities which meet the needs of the community at large. The
other class, under the pretext of maintaining order, confiscates for its own
profit the largest possible share of the power and resources of the nation.
This constitutes the particular interest, or the interest of some classes in
particular, as opposed to the general interest, or the interest of the nation.6
Say emphasised the way in which Napoleon had ruined both the politics and the morals of the nation: [t]he excesses of French demagogues,
the delirium of military victories, Bonapartes voracious and cruel ambition illustrated corruption as defined by Bentham.7 Says opinion of
Louis XVIIIs constitutional monarchy had to be toned down because of
the censorship in place in France at the time, but his conclusions were clear:
the effects of such long-lasting corruption were still felt and could only be
remedied by thorough political reform. In Benthams radical writings, Say
found the vocabulary in which such depredation could be analysed. He
adopted the phrase interet sinistre, directly copied from Benthams sinister
interest, the ubiquitous phrase he used for the corruption of the ruling
few. Say defined it as the pernicious influence of those who come between
man and truth . . . those who infringe on a legitimate right, or harm the
public good.8 Conversely, Benthams account of Restoration politics owed
a lot to Says radical opinions. For instance, he described the period as the
moment when, in conjunction with despotism, impiety and immorality
were re-seated on the throne.9
6
7
8
J.-B. Say, Plan of Parliamentary Reform, Le Censeur Europeen, vol. V (1818), 11112. There was to
be no French translation until 1839: Catechisme de la reforme electorale, precede dune lettre de Timon
sur letat actuel de la democratie en Angleterre, E. Regnault, trans. (Paris, 1839).
J.-B. Say, Plan of Parliamentary Reform, 113.
J.-B. Say, Cours complet deconomie politique pratique (Paris, 1829), 299. See P. Steiner, Interets,
interets sinistres et interets eclaires: problèmes du liberalisme chez J.-B. Say, Cahiers deconomie
politique, vol. XVI, 16/17 (1989), 2141, 27. For Says relations with Bentham, see R. Whatmore,
Republicanism and the French Revolution, 20714; and E. Schoorl, Bentham, Say and Continental
Utilitarianism, The Bentham Newsletter, 6 (1982), 818.
J. Bentham, Church-of-Englandism and its Catechism Examined, J.E. Crimmins and C. Fuller, eds.
(CW ) (Oxford, 2011), 349.
168
In 1818, French newspapers reporting on the British debate on parliamentary reform noticed Benthams arguments in favour of radical politics.
The Journal des debats, a conservative newspaper, noted Benthams alliance
with the radical MP Francis Burdett. In July 1818, the paper devoted a
feature article to A Sketch of the English Electoral System. It described
the unreformed system without omitting the irregularities in representation, the rotten boroughs or the abuses to which it was prone. According
to Conrad Malte-Brun, the royalist journalist who signed the article, this
system did not prevent a fair representation of popular interests. Indeed, a
number of loopholes allowed unrepresented industrialists to be registered
as voters in small boroughs. Corruption served to balance existing abuses,
for it was equally available to the Opposition and the Government. At the
end of the article, the journalist mocked Benthams recent Radical Reform
Bill for advocating universal suffrage:
Among the reform plans lately proposed, that of M. Jeremy Bentham is
the most curious. This obscure metaphysician, writing in a more neological language even than Kant or Mercier, jumping from one syllogism to
another, has reached this admirable conclusion: that every individual of
both sexes and above the age of 21 should participate in the election of the
representatives of the nation. M. Bentham is not especially a gentleman,
but hes so besotted with the universal suffrage that he cannot even bring
himself to exclude the insane, like Sir Francis Burdett. True, what harm
could a hundred madmen cause in such an assembly as that devised by M.
Bentham?10
In France, for the first time, the elections of 1819 returned a significant
number of liberal representatives to the Chamber of Deputies. Censorship
was abolished, but in February 1820, the assassination of the Duc de Berry,
the heir to the throne, provoked a backlash which particularly affected
newspapers and private correspondence. Bentham took increased precautions when sending letters to France, favouring personal channels over the
post. Later that year, he wrote to his brother that France had an odious and
contemptible government.11 Indirectly, the repression served to strengthen
French liberal networks and to involve Bentham more directly, through
the visits to London of proscribed Frenchmen such as Charles Comte,
Louis Le Dieu and Joseph Rey.12
10
11
C. Malte-Brun, Apercu du système electoral anglais, Journal des debats politiques et litteraires
(10 July 1818), 24.
12 ibid., as per index.
Correspondence (CW), vol. X, 211.
169
The Revue encyclopedique

United against the Ultra-royalists, the liberals were deeply divided as to the
principles on which reform should be founded. The monthly magazine
edited by Marc-Antoine Jullien, the Revue encyclopedique, which Bentham
called that Monthly Journal of France which is the journal of the rest
of the civilized world,13 provided a forum for an emerging liberal public
opinion. Jullien was an enthusiastic admirer of Bentham, writing to him in
1822:
I have been reading several of your works with the greatest interest for a
long time. I met your honourable friend M. Dumont, in Geneva, and he
taught me to value your noble character even more and to appreciate the
philanthropic goals of your useful works. One of the collaborators of the
Revue encyclopedique is preparing a review of your works for that publication.
My colleagues and I would be happy to offer you a public testimony of our
feelings of respect and veneration.14
Sometimes presented as following the ideas of J.-B. Say and J. Bentham15

the Revue encyclopedique also announced (and often reviewed) most of Benthams publications, whether concerned with British politics or with the
situation of Spain or Greece. In 182324 alone, it mentioned successively
Dumonts Tactique (a second edition of which had come out in 1822); Essais
sur la situation politique de lEspagne; Traite des preuves judiciaires; Manuel
des sophismes politiques; Truth versus Ashhurst and the second English editions of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation and A
Fragment on Government.
In 1826, Saint-Amand Bazard, the founder of a French society of Carbonari a secret republican organisation on the Italian model, contributed a long retrospective view of Benthams writings, which contained
a brief summary of his English publications.16 Saint-Amand Bazard and
13
14
15
16
Correspondence (CW ), vol. XII, 213. On the Revue encyclopedique, see B. Revelli, Presse periodique,
intellectuels et opinion publique sous la Restauration: La Revue Encyclopedique (18191831), in W.
Berelowitch and M. Porret, eds., Reseaux de lesprit en Europe: des Lumières au XIXe siècle: actes du
colloque international de Coppet (Geneva, 2009), 21729.
Correspondence (CW), vol. XI, 127.
Les doctrines de la Revue Encyclopedique, LEurope Litteraire. Journal de la litterature nationale et
etrangère, 51, (1833), 2056. On Julliens eventful career, see E. Di Rienzo, Marc-Antoine Jullien de
Paris (17751848). Una biografia politica, (Naples, 1999).
Saint-Amand [Bazard], Notice sur les ouvrages de Jeremie Bentham; suivie dune analyse des
pièces relatives a` la codification, Revue encyclopedique, vol. XXXI (1826), 312. It is reprinted in
N. Sigot, Bentham et leconomie. Une histoire dutilite (Paris, 2001) 20411. References are to the
original edition. After the failure of a Carbonari conspiracy in 1821, Saint-Amand Bazard abandoned
170
Marc-Antoine Jullien believed Benthams ideas to be relevant to contemporary French issues. The article also recalled the philosophers interest in
French politics in the early years of the Revolution, whilst his retreat from
French politics after 1792 was now interpreted as a sign of the soundness
of his principles.
The French Revolution excited his faculties and his interest in the highest
degree. He saw himself as a natural ally to this great enterprise in legislation,
and alone he worked more than any of the Committees of the Constituent
Assembly. He was ready to complete his Penal Code and to take up the
Civil Code: but he was soon discouraged by the state of disorder into which
the violence of the parties had thrown France, and he understood that the
peaceful voice of philosophy could not be heard in troubled times.17
Bazard and Jullien asserted Benthams status as a major reformer of English

law in short notes on Scotch Reform, Swear Not At All and Elements of the
Art of Packing.18 On the whole, their review essay presented Benthams writings as united by a strong and original analytical approach, and explained
that many of his proposals had had (or, rather, should have had) a direct
influence on existing practice in fields ranging from philanthropy to legal
reform. Benthams attacks on the Church of England did not attract any
criticism, a testimony to the strong anti-clerical tradition in French liberalism.19 Despite the fact that the article presented a reading of Bentham
that differed from that found in Dumonts recensions, the authors did not
criticise the Genevans work in any way, nor did the review imply that his
recensions provided only a partial view of Benthams thought.
Cosmopolitan liberal networks

From the early 1820s, Bentham was actively involved in London circles
supporting the uprising of Greek patriots against the Ottoman Empire,20
17
18
19
20
revolutionary politics. By 1825, he was one of the earliest collaborators of Claude-Henri de SaintSimon see below, p. 193.
Revue encyclopedique, vol. XXXI (1826), 6.
J. Bentham, Scotch Reform; considered with reference to the plan . . . for the regulation of the courts, and
the administration of justice, in Scotland (London, 1808); Swear Not at All: containing an exposure of
the needlessness and mischieviousness, as well as antichristianity of the ceremony of an oath (London,
1817); Elements of the Art of Packing, as Applied to Special Juries (London, 1821), reprinted in Bowring,
vol. V, 61186.
Church-of-Englandism and its Catechism examined had been published in 181718.
The story of Benthams involvement in the philhellenic movement is studied in F. Rosen, Bentham,
Byron and Greece. For the links between the committees of London and Paris, see D. Barau, La
cause des Grecs. Une histoire du mouvement philhellène (18211829) (Paris, 2009).
171
as well as the Trienio Liberal, the short-lived government established in

Spain from 1820 to 1823.21 Beyond Europe, his contacts with Tripolitan
reformers, such as Hassuna DGhies, and Latin American separatists developed throughout the decade. In these countries, Bentham saw favourable
conditions for the adoption of his constitutional principles, encouraged
by liberal propagandists such as Edward Blaquiere, Leicester Stanhope and
John Bowring, who relentlessly quoted his authority.22 Paris was a central hub for the European liberal movement. As early as November 1820,
Blaquiere wrote to Dumont, enlisting his help
to establish a bureau de correspondance at Paris and that the communications sent here from different points, should be published once or twice in
each month. We should thus be enabled to concentrate the public opinion of
Europe in the French capital, and I need scarcely point out to your penetrating mind, what a powerful influence such a work must exercise, as also its
effect in successfully opposing the encroachment of tyranny and arbitrary
power.23
Although this initiative came to nothing, Blaquiere, Bowring and Stanhope were active, each in their own ways, in publicizing Benthams support
for the liberal cause among French circles through publications, articles in
the press and institutional links among the members of the Greek committees of Paris and London. Bentham knew some members of the Paris
Committee personally, especially among those drawn from the philanthropic movement: La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Benjamin Delessert and
also Charles de Lasteyrie and Guillaume Ternaux.24
John Bowring emerges as a leading figure in this network. Like Blaquiere,
he travelled between France, Spain, Greece and Britain. In 1822, he was
arrested by the French police at Calais for attempted conspiracy (he was
carrying letters to the Portuguese opposition in London) and freed after
21
22
23
24
On Benthams support for the Spanish liberal cause, see Editorial introduction to J. Bentham,
Colonies, Commerce, and Constitutional law: Rid yourselves of Ultramaria and other Writings on
Spain and Spanish America, P. Schofield ed., (CW ) (Oxford, 1995); and M. Escamilla Castillo,
Bentham en Cadiz. Apuntes previos a un estudio, in M. Escamilla Castillo and J.D. Ruiz Resa,
eds., Utilitarismo y constitucionalismo: La ocasion de 1812 (Madrid, 2012), 11346.
Blaquieres and Stanhopes own ideas of their mission to promote the cause of liberty in southern
Europe and their skills in liaising between liberal movements have been studied by Frederick Rosen,
who also highlighted the differences between their political aims and Benthams: see Bentham, Byron
and Greece, especially 12563.
Quoted in F. Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, 132.
For Liancourt and Delesserts involvement in philanthropic circles, and their earlier contacts with
Bentham, see pp. 11314, 14849. Bentham had sent his Chrestomathic Tables to Lasteyrie in 1815. In
1822, Lasteyrie recommended Ternaux and another French visitor to Bentham: see Correspondence
(CW ), vol. VIII, 4934; vol. XI, 135, 217.
172
one month in jail as a result of Benthams direct intervention with British

Foreign Secretary, George Canning.25 In a pamphlet published the following year in London, Bowring called the French Ultra-royalists a despotic
faction, at the head of an unpopular and anti-national Government.26
Close to the circle of the Duc dOrleans in London, Bowring was keen to
highlight his links with the Liberals of France with whom he claimed to
have a more complete communion of thought.27 It was indeed through
his recommendations that many French liberals (such as dArgenson and
Jullien) visited Bentham in London.28
In 1823, Benthams Three Tracts on Spanish and Portugueze Affairs and
Letters to Count Toreno were translated into French by Philarète Chasles.29
The Preamble praised Benthams uncompromising democratic principles
and highlighted the courage of a philosopher who bravely spoke the
truth in stating the dangers into which the Spanish revolution might fall.
Though Chasless translation was faithful to Benthams ideas and style,
his own political analysis of the Spanish situation was markedly different:
the Preamble praised the Spanish national character and saw the roots
of representative democracy in Antiquity and Christianity.30 These texts
were, however, important in making Benthams recent writings available to
French readers.
Benthams cosmopolitan outlook was shared by Lafayette, his most regular French correspondent of the decade after Say.31 Ten years younger
than Bentham, Lafayette was, in 1821, still an important figure in French
liberal politics, having been elected to the Chamber of Deputies three years
25
26
28
29
30
31
J. Bowring, Details of the arrest, imprisonment and liberation of an Englishman by the Bourbon
Government of France (London, 1823). For Benthams intervention, see Correspondence (CW), vol. XI,
161.
27 ibid., 3.
J. Bowring, Details, ix.
Correspondence (CW ), vol. XI, 112, 134. On the interest of writers attached to the Westminster
Review in French affairs, see M.J. Turner, Arraying Minds against Bodies: Benthamite Radicals
and Revolutionary Europe during the 1820s and 1830s, History, 90 (2005), 23661.
J. Bentham, Three Tracts Relative to Spanish and Portugueze Affairs (London, 1821); Letters to Count
Toreno on the Proposed Penal Code, delivered in by the Legislation Committee of the Spanish Cortes,
April 25th, 1821 (London, 1822).
P. Chasles, Preambule, Essais . . . sur la situation politique de lEspagne, viiixxxi. Philarète Chasles
(17981873), later a professor at the Collège de France, became known for his essays on British
and German literature. In his autobiographical recollections, he failed to mention this youthful
work but boasted he had met Bentham in London in 1817, P. Chasles, Memoires (Paris, 18767),
1667. The claim was false and the details of the supposed interview with Bentham were directly
plagiarised from Carlyles The Spirit of the Age. See C. Pichois, Philarète Chasles et la vie litteraire au
temps du romantisme, 2 vols (Paris, 1965), vol. I, 51.
Thirteen letters have been preserved for the period 182132.
173
previously.32 For Restoration liberals, he provided the example of a personal and military career in the service of the ideals of 1789. His part in the
American Revolution, his support of the Revolution until the overthrow
of the 1791 Constitution and even his emigration after 1792, which left him
free from any association with the Terror, bore witness to his political credentials. Lafayette had returned to France in 1799 and, though a supporter
of Napoleon after Brumaire, he had retired into silent opposition after
1804. Coming back to politics after 1818, as a personal friend of Benjamin
Constant and the duc Victor de Broglie, the two leading lights of the liberal
party, he continued to be praised as the most illustrious of the defenders
of liberty.33
The French general was among those to whom Bentham had addressed
pamphlets in 1789, but contact remained at best indirect and there is no
evidence that Lafayette was aware of Bentham at that time.34 Precisely how
they came into epistolary contact in the summer of 1821 is not known,
but they had clearly become connected through an international, liberal
network of overlapping friends and political projects by the early 1820s.35
Like Bentham, he was a strong supporter of the Greek cause and took
an interest in Latin American movements for independence. Thanking
Bentham for the pamphlet On the Liberty of the Press, Lafayette wrote in
September 1821:
The cause of liberty on which you have bestowed so much affection and cast
so much light is now in a general crisis. The movement of liberty, despite
powerful opponents, is supported by a sympathetic union of patriots from
several nations. It cannot fail to bring about a happy result.36
For both men, this commitment to a cosmopolitan liberalism took concrete

form in facilitating the travels of political writers and activists. Bentham
and Lafayette exchanged recommendations for travellers such as Frances
Wright, a young Scottish author who had recently published her Views
of Society and Manners in America. Staying alternately at Queens Square
32
33
34
36
This period of Lafayettes life is comparatively little known. For two reassessments, see S. Neely, La
Fayette and the Liberal Ideal, 18141824: Politics and Conspiracy in an Age of Reaction (Carbondale
and Edwardsville, IL, 1992); and L. Kramer, Lafayette in Two Worlds. Public Cultures and Personal
Identities in an Age of Revolution (Chapel Hill and London, 1996). In French: P. Gueniffey, La
Fayette ou les impasses du liberalisme, Histoires de la Revolution et de lEmpire (Paris, 2011), 3164.
B. Constant, The liberty of the Ancients compared with that of the Moderns, in Political Writings,
B. Fontana, ed. (Cambridge, 1988), 327.
35 L. Kramer, Lafayette in Two Worlds, 79, 1029.
Correspondence (CW), vol. X, 395.
174
Place and La Grange (Lafayettes property outside Paris), she regularly

brought letters across the Channel. Likewise, Joseph Rey, who had been
involved in the secret revolutionary movement, the Carbonari, hid at La
Grange before meeting Bentham during his London exile.37
In the autumn of 1825, Bentham visited Paris for the last time, prompted
by a medical recommendation to cure a skin ailment.38 His stay was noted
in French papers, Le frondeur introducing him as [o]f all modern publicists,
the one with the boldest and the most original ideas.39 He visited not only
the assize court, but also the dissection room of the Saint-Louis hospital
and dined at Jean-Baptiste Says and at Marc-Antoine Julliens, where
philhellenic and liberal circles met.40 He sat for David dAngers and Aimee
Pagès, respectively a sculptor and a portraitist in vogue.41 On the way back
to London, he spent three nights at La Grange.42
37
38
39
40
41
42
Bentham also recommended his Tripolitan disciples to Lafayette, among whom was the young
Mohamed Khan, a friend of Hassuna DGhies: see Correspondence, (CW ), vol. XI, 183.
See Editorial introduction to Correspondence (CW ), vol. XI, xii, xxiv.
Le Frondeur, journal de litterature, des thea tres, des arts, des murs et de mode, 26 September 1825.
Quoted in Correspondence (CW), vol. XII, 176.
Besides editing the Revue encyclopedique, Jullien was an active member of the Paris Greek committee.
See D. Barau, La cause des Grecs, 94.
Bentham wrote to Dumont shortly after his journey: One bust by David pupil of the celebrated
painter and one portrait by Mademoiselle Pagès I have sat to at the entreating of these several
friends under the notion of serving them. Both are pronounced striking likenesses. A Lithograph of
the portrait you will have ere long, I am assured. The painting is to be exhibited one year in Paris,
the next in London and then lapse to me: i.e. to my Ex.ors etc. Correspondence (CW ), vol. XII,
178. David exhibited Benthams bust at the Salon de Paris in 1827 and visited him in London the
following year: see L. Baridon and M. Guedron, Corps et arts. Physionomies et physiologie dans les
arts visuels (Paris, 1999), 157.
Lafayette being under police surveillance, Benthams stay was duly reported to the authorities. See
L. Kramer, Lafayette in Two Worlds, 296n.
chapter 1 4
French affairs, as Bentham followed them from the regular reports he read
in the press or heard from his visitors and correspondents, fed his reflections
on politics. In this period his involvement with France is not as obvious
as that with Spain, Portugal or Greece: his expertise was called upon only
informally, through the correspondents and networks mentioned earlier.
His reflections on French politics show that his own theory did not develop
in the abstract, but in a constant dialogue with existing institutions and
practices. His analyses of constitutional limitations and his arguments
in favour of the liberty of the press or against the death penalty were
formulated in a pan-European liberal context.
The ideas and arguments put forward by the English philosopher resonated with French intellectuals and politicians, for they addressed some
of the most pressing political issues of the times. Though there was a clear
agreement in public policy, the fact that interest could be taken as the foundation of morals and legislation was debated among French politicians in
reference to the situation in both countries.
The 1814 Charter, or the anglico-austraico-gallico constitution

Under the Restoration, Bentham frequently commented on the French
Charter of 1814 in a way that casts light both on the variety of his French
sources and on the development of his own constitutional thought in the
1820s. He never tired of telling his French visitors to relinquish the British
model of a mixed monarchy. In an important letter to Ternaux, a liberal
deputy, in 1822, he applied to France an argument similar to the one he
had developed for Britain: monarchies were corrupt for they placed money
in the hands of those who were the most prone to abuse it.
To establish or tolerate an absolute monarchy is to establish or tolerate a
tyranny that is so powerful that it does not need corruption, even if it
175
176

has infinite matter of corruption in its hands. To establish or to tolerate a
limited or a mixed monarchy is to establish or tolerate a tyranny that relies
on corruption, but to which one has granted both the matter and the means
of corruption, in more than sufficient quantities.1
Looking for French sources to illustrate the depredation caused by monarchical institutions, he asked Ternaux, as he had asked Say a few years
earlier, to send him detailed figures relating to the Civil list and to political
corruption.2
Constitutional issues were at the forefront of Benthams work in the
1820s. This explains his interest in the working of the French Charter. In
1822, he wrote to the young lieutenant Francis Hall, the author of the
recently published Travels in France:
Your book on France had till lately lain on my shelf without exciting much
expectation. The country with every thing that passes in it being so generally
known, the work had presented itself to me as a sort of commercial speculation & with reference to my own pursuits & occupations not affording
a promise of much interest. Out of this torpor I was not long ago awakened by the assurance given me by some friends that at the conclusion of
it, I should find a most masterly and instructive account of the state of
the unhappily still unsubverted anglico-austraico-gallico Constitution & its
result: and such accordingly I have found it.3
By calling the Charter the anglico-austraico-gallico Constitution, Bentham emphasised its foreign origin (i.e. the pressure put on the French
monarchy by the allied powers at the Congress of Vienna in 1814). This
point was also stressed from the outset by Francis Hall. Hall drew on contemporary French criticisms to contrast the letter of the Charter with its
application. The Constitution de jure, as it was drafted, was called a capitulation between two parties, a compromise in which the peoples rights
were acknowledged and the Bourbons prerogative reasserted. However,
the Constitution de facto, as it was applied, was markedly different.
Hall used concrete examples to show how the Charter granted rights
verbally, while simultaneously ensuring the conditions of their constant
violation. For instance, Article 4 stated no one can be prosecuted, or
arrested, except in cases provided for by the law, and by regular process,
but how was an individual to obtain redress when this right was violated?
Hall explained that under French law, no subaltern ministerial agent can be
1
2
Correspondence (CW), vol. XI, 141. Ternaux had sent him an imprint of a speech he had made in the
Chamber of Deputies exposing corruption in French finances.
3 ibid., 76.
Correspondence (CW), vol. IX, 189; and vol. XI, 143.
177
proceeded against, but by virtue of a decree of the Council of State; that is,
the injured individual must obtain the sanction of ministers for proceeding
against their own employes.4 In practice, therefore, the government would
not support a citizen against an abuse of power on the part of an official.
Similarly, whereas Article 62 guaranteed the right to be judged by due
process, Article 63 provided exemptions for extraordinary courts martial.
Since Hall referred to his French sources abundantly throughout the work,
it is clear that these arguments were drawn from those of French liberals
published in periodicals such as La Minerve francaise and in particular from
the writings of Benjamin Constant.
The contradiction between the letter of the Charter and its application
put French liberals in a difficult position. Despite the fact that the government could apply the Charter in a way that was hostile to individual rights
and liberal values, the principles stated in it remained a blueprint which
the liberals were ready to defend throughout the Restoration. The rights
stated in it were regularly invoked against encroachments by the monarch,
first Louis XVIII and, after 1825, Charles X.
In writing that there is reason for adhering to the charter, a` toute outrance,
because, without the kings good-will, it is impossible for [the French] to
get anything better,5 Bentham was echoing the position of most French
liberals. He noted the contradiction that forced them to defend a text that
failed to provide the legal guarantees they wished to see established. This
situation, however, provided a clear illustration of a distinction he had
introduced much earlier in his own constitutional theory: the difference
between the popular and the legal sanction. His imperative theory of
law did not make it possible for a sovereign to tie his own hands by means
of a constitutional document: this is why he rejected the possibility of a
strictly legal limitation of legislative power, or, in other words, a supra-legal
constitution.6 As the French example illustrated, nothing could force a
sovereign body to respect texts limiting its own power. However, officially
recognizing such liberties and guarantees prepared public opinion to defend
them when they were violated, thereby applying a powerful check on the
exercise of power, albeit not a legal one.
4
6
5 Correspondence (CW), vol. IX, 459.

F. Hall, Travels in France (London, 1819).
Benthams views on constitutional securities and sovereignty are complex. P. Schofield has argued
that they changed in the early 1780s, when he came to recognise the legal value of constitutional
documents. Indeed, while continuing to hold the legislative power supreme, he acknowledged the
legal force that public opinion lent to written constitutions. See P. Schofield, Jeremy Bentham, the
Principle of Utility and Legal Positivism, Current Legal Problems, 56 (2003), 139; E. de Champs,
Constitution and the Code: Jeremy Bentham on the limits of the constitutional branch of jurisprudence, The Tocqueville Review / La Revue Tocqueville, 32, (2011), 2142.
178
Bentham reasserted this argument in his correspondence with Hassuna

DGhies, the young Tripolitan ambassador to Britain.7 In his advice to
DGhies, the philosopher explained that it was illusory to attempt to force a
binding constitution on the pasha of Tripoli, but that a text acknowledging
rights and liberties, a formal Acknowledgement of Rights, would serve to
form a public opinion watchful of its rights, and thus bring about gradual
improvement. The French Charter was taken to illustrate this point: being
granted by the King to the people, it did not have any binding character on
the monarch, leaving the people like cattle upon the will of the proprietor,
the lot of all the members of the Community declared dependent upon the
arbitrary will of a single one of them. By the power it placed in the hands
of the monarch, the Charter was indeed an instrument of oppression, but,
Bentham concluded:
Still however under this so inadequately bridled mixt Monarchy the lot of
the people is much less disastrous than under the despotism by which the
Revolution was produced.8
Despite the absence of legal checks and despite the encouragements to

depredation contained in the Charter, the text produced not an absolute
but a sort of mixt monarchy which provided some kind of security to the
people.
Liberty of the press

The issue of the liberty of the press further illustrated the contradictions
of the Charter. Article 8 stated: Frenchmen have the right to publish and
to have printed their opinions, while conforming with the laws, which are
necessary to restrain abuses of that liberty.9 This liberty was periodically
suspended, causing liberals to rise in its defence. Gallois, who had known
Bentham since at least 1792, sent him in 1814 (during the first Restoration)
an imprint of a speech he had made in favour of the liberty of the press.10
He protested against the establishment of censorship for short publications
(pamphlets and papers under 20 pages). In his reply, Bentham pointed out
that French liberals should go beyond the British model: indeed, in Britain,
7
8
9
10
P. Schofield, Editorial introduction, Securities Against Misrule (CW), xvxxxvi.

Securities Against Misrule (CW), 13941.
Charter, Article 8. For the full text of the Charter, see The constitutions and other select documents
illustrative of the history of France, 17891901, F.M. Anderson, ed. and trans. (Minneapolis, MN,
1904), 45663.
Correspondence (CW), vol. VIII, 429. G. Gallois, Opinion sur la liberte de la presse (Paris, 1814).
179
the licensing system gave authors the assurance of not being punished for
anything they write, but they remained open to libel prosecution on the
part of the powerful and the wealthy, which de facto limited the scope of
what could be written and published.11
In Traites, the argument in favour of liberty of the press was grounded
on the necessity of improving knowledge by public discussion in order to
prevent crimes committed in and by ignorance. In politics, we must allow
that the liberty of the press has its inconveniences; but none of the ills that
flow from it are to be compounded with the evil of censorship.12 Benjamin
Constant quoted precisely this passage in an article written as a reaction to
the re-establishment of partial censorship in February 1820, going further
than Benthams remark:
One can therefore state, with Bentham, that the evil resulting from censorship cannot be measured. It is impossible to say where this evil ends, it
amounts to the threat of opposing all progress of the human mind, in all
walks of life.13
By the 1820s, Benthams defence of the liberty of the press had become
closely attached to that of the freedom of association. On the Liberty of
the Press, originally written for Spain in 1820, was published a year later,
in English only. In his advertisement, Bentham stressed its relevance to
the liberal cause throughout Europe, especially in Britain and in France.
In both countries, ministers were absolute and the press was enslaved.
The purpose of the work, therefore was
the rendering it manifest, how indispensable, at all times and every where,
those two intimately-connected liberties the liberty of the press, and the
liberty of public discussion by word of mouth are to every thing that can,
with any propriety, be termed good government.14
The model to be followed was that of the United States, where the government did not have the power to prosecute contrary opinions. He believed
the truth of an alleged libel should be a legal defence and that libel should
be statutorily defined. He distinguished between individual citizens, who
had to be protected against defamation in their private capacity, and functionaries. In their official capacity, these latter should be liable to criticism
11
13
14
12 Traites, 338. See also 3369, 380, 3978.

B. Constant, Du retablissement de la censure des journaux, La Minerve Francaise, vol. IX
(4 February 1820), 13343.
On the Liberty of the Press, and Public Discussion and Other Legal and Political Writings for Spain
and Portugal, (CW) C. Pease-Watkin and P. Schofield, eds. (Oxford, 2012), 4.
180
from the press. Bentham justified these measures on utilitarian grounds:

by giving public opinion the right to examine the actions of government,
the good produced would be infinite, while, as private individuals, functionaries would be protected by libel laws.
Benthams argument in favour of the liberty of the press and public
discussion was grounded in a clear analysis of the power relations at stake
in any political system. His plea in favour of complete freedom of written
or oral opinions was therefore the opportunity to repeat his arguments
imposing a strict system of political checks on the rulers. Besides administrative checks (such as the ability to dismiss functionaries, what Bentham
called their dislocability), the main safeguard for official behaviour was the
Public Opinion Tribunal, opinion had to be given free rein in the press
and in public meetings.
On the Liberty of the Press was not translated into French at the time,15
but Bentham sent it to a number of French correspondents, including
Benjamin Constant who acknowledged receipt in these terms:
Benjamin Constant returns many thanks to Mr Jeremy Bentham for his
valuable Pamphlet on the liberty of the Press. [A]ll the endeavours of the
enemies of liberty will be fruitless, as long as the good cause has such able
champions, and it is a great encouragement to every man of feeling and
sense to see his opinions adopted and protected by writers of such antient
[sic] and lasting reputation as Mr Bentham. B. Constant will always do his
best not to remain behindhand in the defence of principles which are the
basis of all reasonable and free Governments.16
Benthams arguments in favour of publicity wove together representative

democracy, liberty of the press and of association and the accountability of
public officials. Letters to Count Toreno, written shortly after On the Liberty
of the Press, contained similar arguments. Bentham insisted on the intimate
connexion between the liberty of the press and good government, and
openly criticised the restrictions mentioned in the Spanish Constitution
(which punished severely all attempts to criticise the letter or the spirit of
the Constitution).17 Though much abridged, Philarète Chasless translation
of Letters to Count Toreno closely followed Benthams argument in that
respect: public speech or printed opinions should only be limited by laws
15
16
17
It is now available in Garanties contre labus de pouvoir et autres ecrits sur la liberte politique. M.-L.
Leroy, trans. (Paris, 2001), 4199.
Correspondence (CW), vol. X, 360. Original in English.
Letters to Count Toreno, in On the Liberty of the Press, and Public Discussion (CW), 113274, esp.
1301, 15779.
181
preventing the defamation of private individuals together with a precise

framing of libel which excluded arbitrary definitions of the offence by the
judge.18
Abolishing the death penalty

The defence of the liberty of the press was sufficiently widespread among
European liberals for Benthams arguments to be quoted in support of their
views. In relation to more polemical causes, such as the abolition of the
death penalty, things were different. Utilitarian arguments against capital
punishment had already been stated in Dumonts recensions, principally
in Theorie des peines et des recompenses. They had also appeared in Traites
and were repeated in Philarète Chasless translation of Essais sur la situation politique de lEspagne.19 Benthams argument was original because it
weighed the advantages of the death penalty alongside its inconveniences.
Bentham recognised that it met some of the requirements for utilitarian
punishment: the offender was prevented forever from committing new
crimes, it was analogous to murder, popular and exemplary. However, the
balance was decisively in favour of abolition.
In listing the defects of the death penalty, Bentham presented a strictly
utilitarian case. Firstly, the threat of death did not apply to all individuals
with the same force, so its deterrent power was uncertain. Secondly, it
could not be remitted, leaving judges unable to correct judicial errors.
Another point was directly inspired by English practice: when the death
penalty was maintained for theft or minor crimes, as was nominally the
case in England, judges and juries had an incentive to minimise the offence
through the accepted use of legal fictions. In most instances, the existence
of the death penalty made the law less efficient and less applicable.20
The abolition of capital punishment had been discussed in France since
Beccaria. During the Revolution, bills to that effect had been presented in
1791 and 1795, but none of them had passed.21 After 1814, the Penal Code
adopted under Napoleon in 1810 remained in force. It contained thirtynine capital offences. Throughout Europe, philanthropists continued to
oppose the death penalty. In Britain, Samuel Romilly grounded his case on
utilitarian and humanitarian arguments, presenting a number of bills for
18
19
20
21
Essais sur la situation politique de lEspagne, 5978.

Traites, 3289; Essais sur la situation politique de lEspagne, 817.
Theorie des peines et des recompenses, 3rd edn., 2 vols. (Paris, 18256), vol. I, 24081.
Abolition was enacted in 1795, but made conditional on internal and external peace. In fact it was
never implemented.
182
abolition in the House of Commons in the 1810s.22 In 1826, the Genevan

Jean-Jacques de Sellon offered a prize for essays in favour of abolition in
the context of the revision of the penal code in Geneva.23 This prompted
a number of responses from French and Genevan writers, many of whom
quoted Benthams authority from the French editions of his works.
Charles Lucas was the most influential of these early French abolitionists.
In the essay he submitted for the Genevan competition in 1826, he quoted
Bentham alongside Beccaria. Like Bentham, he believed prison to be best
suited to prevention as well as to reformation. He singled out among
Benthams arguments the one which established that the death penalty
could be an instrument of political oppression in the hands of a corrupt
political power. Lucas also used Traites to indicate that judges could not
have access to the intentions of a criminal: who but God, he added, could
scrutinise the secrets of consciences?24
In 1830, during the July Revolution, the debate was revived. Four exministers of Charles X had been arrested during a failed attempt to flee
abroad. In a heated political atmosphere, popular agitation demanded that
they be sentenced to death for treason. On Lucass initiative, Victor Destutt
de Tracy, a liberal deputy and the son of the Ideologue philosopher, brought
in a motion for abolition. Immediately, Bentham drafted an address To
his fellow-citizens of France on Death Punishment, which was published in
English early in 1831. Perfectly aware of the recent developments on the
issue in France, he made direct reference to the fate of the ex-ministers (who
were eventually sentenced to life imprisonment) and quoted Lucas. Most
of his arguments had been developed earlier: the death penalty was inefficient and irremissible, while its tendency was to promote crimes and
to encourage ill-applied pardons. In 1830, Benthams social and political
criticism then went further. For him, the popularity of the death penalty
with the people (in France, the republican crowds had been the first to call
for capital punishment) showed the extent to which public opinion had
been corrupted by the sinister interests of the aristocracy. Indeed, death
sentences fell principally on the poor: aristocrats and wealthy people in
general were almost certain to be exempted from it. Popular support for
22
23
24
S. Romilly, Observations on the Criminal Law of England, as it relates to capital punishments, and on
the mode in which it is executed (London, 1810).
Dumont and Sellon had met during the debates on the Genevan penal code. Following Bentham
and Romilly, Dumont was anxious to have the death penalty abolished in Geneva, but pessimistic
as to the adoption of such a measure. Sellon wrote Dumont a series of letters on abolition in 1828
(BGE, MS Dumont, 77, ff. 1935).
C. Lucas, Du système penal et du système repressif en general, et de la peine de mort en particulier (Paris,
1826), lxxvii, 110.
183
capital punishment was, therefore, an illustration of the effects of sinister

influence: that of the aristocracy combined with those of religion (especially
as informed by the Old Testament) and custom.25
Though the cause of abolition was common to a number of leading French liberals, utilitarian arguments were far from being universally
accepted. In 1822, Francois Guizot published De la peine de mort en matière
politique. In arguing for abolition he used some utilitarian arguments, resting his case partly on the search for the most efficient sanctions, but he
opposed a strictly utilitarian understanding of punishment. Specifically, he
refused to relinquish all appeals to natural rights, as Bentham had done.
It is not true that crimes are punished mainly because they do harm, nor that
in establishing punishments, utility is the major end in view. . . . This said,
and legal justice being brought under the empire of the principles of natural
justice, I concede that social interest is one of the motives that determines
offences and punishments. It is not the first, for it would be without value
if the moral force of the crime did not precede it. It is the second.26
This argument indicated what was to become the major dividing line
between the majority of French liberals and Benthamite utilitarianism. To
understand the directions in which this argument unfolded, we must leave
Guizot (who, after 1822, made few references to Bentham) and turn to
circles in which utilitarianism was directly addressed, such as the Groupe
de Coppet and industrialist writers.
25
26
Jeremy Bentham to his fellow-citizens of France, on death punishment, Bowring, vol. I, 52532.
F. Guizot, De la peine de mort en matière politique (Paris, 1822), 1001.
chapter 1 5
A utilitarian moment? French

liberals and utilitarianism
In 1817, Stendhal, already a prolific journalist, a writer and a notorious

liberal, wrote:
It was reported to me that last autumn, on the banks of the lake [in Geneva],
the most surprising reunion had taken place; the states-general of European
opinion. . . . If this were to last for several years, the decisions of all European
academies would look pale in comparison. I cannot see what they have
which could rival a salon in which the Dumont, Bonstetten, Prevot, Pictet,
Romilly, de Broglie, Brougham, de Breme, Schlegel and Byron discuss the
most important questions of morals and arts in front of Mrs Necker de
Saussure, de Broglie and de Stael.1
In this description Dumonts name figured alongside those of famous

figures in British Whiggism (Romilly, Brougham, Byron), of respectable
Genevan families (Prevot, Pictet, Necker de Saussure) and of a wide array
of French liberals, friends of Germaine de Stael and Benjamin Constant
(Bonstetten, de Broglie, de Breme). This picture of the estates-general of
European opinion at Germaine de Staels residence at Coppet in Switzerland illustrates, on the one hand, the personal and social affinities between
many European liberals drawn from parliamentary and institutional circles,
but, on the other, it conceals the deep theoretical divisions between them.
Though French liberals were unambiguous in considering Bentham, the
publicist, as one of them, not all were confident that utilitarian arguments
could serve as a theoretical foundation for liberal thought. Attacked by
Germaine de Stael and by Benjamin Constant, defended by Jean-Baptiste
Say and political economists, the principle of utility was debated in French
politics throughout the decade.2
1
2
Stendhal, Rome, Naples et Florence, 6 August 1817, in Voyages en Italie (Paris, 1989), 155.
Earlier studies include J.R. Dinwiddy, Bentham and the early nineteenth century, The Bentham
Newsletter, 8 (1984), 1532 and M.E.L. Guidi, Principe dutilite et conscience heroque. La reception
184
A utilitarian moment?
185
Sad utility
Germaine de Stael, an old acquaintance of Etienne Dumont, had read the
first articles he had published from Benthams manuscripts in Bibliothèque
britannique. In On the Current Circumstances Which Can End the Revolution, written in 1797 and published the following year, she noted that she
hoped to find in Bentham, the foundations of the work on legislation and
morals [she] was thinking about.3 By 1802, however, she had come to reject
utilitarianism, a move that coincided with her break with Bonaparte, her
exile from France and her discovery of Kantian principles. In Corinne, or
Italy, published in 1807, she praised disinterestedness as an aesthetic principle, and came down against that arid principle of utility which fertilises
a few more scraps of land but renders barren the vast domain of feeling
and of thought.4
These arguments were repeated and developed in Germany (De
lAllemagne), published in 1813. Throughout this book, idealistic arguments
were presented in favour of aesthetic inspiration, whether in literature,
music or art. Overall, sad utility was constantly opposed to sentiment,
imagination and thought. In a chapter devoted to ethics founded on
personal interest, and probably written in London, she identified the promoters of that moral doctrine as Helvetius, Diderot and Saint-Lambert,
the latter being a poet and Encyclopediste notorious for his materialist
views, and added a footnote in which she discussed Benthams work on
legislation, as published, or rather abstracted, by M. Dumont (i.e. Traites).
Throughout, she opposed interest properly understood to virtue and
duty, the true sources of moral behaviour.5 Utilitarian reasoning was presented as a cold calculation, the negation of inner impulses and religion.
Examining the appeal to utility in morals, she insisted that [t]he conduct of
a man is only truly moral when he esteems as nothing the happy or unhappy
consequences of those actions which his duty has dictated to him.6
Germaine de Stael made direct reference to Traites, singling out
the chapter answering a number of objections against the principle of
3
4
5
6
de luvre de Bentham au XIXe siècle, in K. Mulligan and R. Roth, eds., Regards sur Bentham et
lutilitarisme (Geneva, 1993), 2738.
G. de Stael, Des circonstances actuelles qui peuvent terminer la Revolution et des principes qui doivent
fonder la Republique en France (Geneva, 1979), 422.
G. de Stael, Corinne, or Italy, S. Raphael, trans. (Oxford, 1998), 77. See also, I love what is useless,
useless if life is only painful labour for a miserable profit, ibid., 179.
Since the eighteenth century, the phrase interest properly understood (interet bien entendu) referred
to utilitarian arguments in the broadest sense.
G. de Stael, Germany, O.W. Wight and F.M. Muller, trans. (New York, NY, 1864), vol. II, 235.
186
utility.7 In these pages, Dumont distinguished interest from egoism and

showed that utilitarian reasoning could lead to a sacrifice of present and
limited well-being in favour of higher purposes encompassing the greatest
happiness of the greatest number. Though Germaine de Stael did not deny
that the consequences of our actions should be taken into account, she
believed that an exclusively utilitarian outlook left no place for feelings
such as esteem, admiration, sympathy and justice. Contrary to duty,
the dictates of utility were not permanent, they could not be followed in
changing circumstances and they could provide no sure guide for action.
This criticism was a recurring theme among the members of the Groupe
de Coppet. Benjamin Constant wrote in his diary:
When we calculate only our interest, only the result tells us whether we were
wrong or not. And if we were wrong, no feeling can soften the pain we feel.
But if we obey duty, we cannot err, for the result, whatever it may be, does
not change what we should have done.8
For Constant and de Stael, true felicity had to do with disinterestedness

and self-sacrifice and not with pleasures, which were always egoistic and
sensual. Truly moral conduct could not be motivated by the expectation of
pleasure or gain, but by honour and devouement (devotion).9 Germaine
de Stael was in London when Germany came out. She was welcomed by
Etienne Dumont and received in Whig circles, especially at Lord Hollands
and Lord Lansdownes.10 During her visits, she made a number of impassioned pleas against utility. Dumont recalled one such evening at Bowood,
describing her
Alone against everyone in her attacks against Locke, against utility, against
Benthamite classifications and definitions, accusing us of killing religion,
7
8
10
De Stael slipped from Bentham to Dumont in her discussion, which is appropriate because the
chapter she discusses was written by Dumont himself (see p. 137).
Quoted in L. Jaume, Lindividu efface, ou le paradoxe du liberalisme francais (Paris, 1997), 65. Jaume
explains the reasons for Constants interest in Benthams theories (915) as does S. Holmes, Benjamin
Constant and the Making of French Liberalism, (New Haven, CT, 1984), 1257.
Bentham alluded to de Staels use of devouement in a letter: being an elève of Madame Stael I
am a little afraid of [B. Constant]: fearing lest, instead of the principle of the greatest happiness
of the greatest number, he should be beholding the foundation of good morality including good
politics, in the word devouement: a sort of profession, which it seems to me with some exceptions
no man can be more backward to realise, than those who are most forward to make it; and which
seems to be altogether incompatible with any clear insight into human nature as well as of affording
application and instruction for any useful purpose. Correspondence (CW), vol. XI, 183.
The son of Benthams earlier patron. For a detailed, richly illustrated account of this journey, see N.
King, The airy form of things forgotten: Madame de Stael, lutilitarisme et limpulsion liberale,
Cahiers staeliens, 11 (1970), 526.
187
imagination, poetry, enthusiasm for the great and the beautiful, of reducing
men to vile arithmetical machines and of deceiving them in morals.11
Such public and private declarations were reported to Bentham, who

refused to see her when she called at Queens Square Place, on the ground
that she both in print and conversation blasphemes the principle of utility.12
Similar arguments against utility were being developed in Conservative
circles at the same time, for instance by Chateaubriand in an article published in December 1818 in Le Conservateur. Opposing an opinion that he,
like Germaine de Stael, presented as representative of the times, he set out
to defend the ethics of duties over those of interests. While duty was fixed
in God, interests were on the contrary fleeting and illusory and as such
could not be taken as a foundation for morals, politics or jurisprudence:
Interest is a fiction when it is taken, as it is taken today, in its physical and
rigorous sense, since it is not in the evening what it was in the morning,
since at every moment its nature changes, since, being founded on fortune,
it is just as moveable. I have an interest in keeping the field I have acquired,
but my neighbour has an interest in taking it from me; if to make himself
master of it, the only thing he needs is to stir up a revolution, he will do it;
for it is acknowledged that wherever there is an interest, there is no crime.13
Duty and conscience were the only sure guides to distinguish right
from wrong. Like de Stael and Constant, Chateaubriand contrasted the
changeability of interest with the immutability of duty. Without the cement
of religion, there could be no common or general interest and individuals
were doomed to oppose each other relentlessly.
Despite their political and philosophical differences, Constant, de Stael
and Chateaubriand all used utilitarianism in a derogatory sense with
reference to recent French history. For de Stael and Constant, the Terror
had been a period in which every crime had been legitimised by misguided
appeals to the terrestrial interests of the people, while refusing to take the
dictates of eternal justice and humanity into account. De Stael repeated
that argument to describe the triumph of Napoleon, who had remained in
power by exalting an abstract national interest above virtue and sympathy.14
For Chateaubriand, whose article (quoted above) was more directly inspired
11
12
13
14
Etienne Dumont to Maria Edgeworth, quoted in King, The airy form of things forgotten, 17.
Jeremy Bentham to Pavel Chichagov, 28 January 1814, to be published in Correspondence (CW),
vol. XIV; and Bowring, vol. X, 467.
F.-R. de Chateaubriand, De la morale des interets et de celle des devoirs, Le Conservateur, 1/10
(1818), 46679, esp. 471.
B. Constant, De lobeissance a` la loi, Mercure de France, vol. IV (8 November 1817), 24455, esp.
251; G. de Stael, Of ethics founded on personal interest, Germany, vol. II, 23138.
188
by immediate politics, Louis XVIIIs exclusion of Ultra-royalist deputies

had been driven by a new morality, the morality of interests, while that
of duties is left to idiots.15 A mediocre government, more dangerous even
than revolutionary fanaticism, attempted to attack the very foundations of
virtue and duty in politics. These passages reveal a polemical shift in the
notion of utility in French political discourse, to be contrasted with the
rising fortune of idealism.
Rights vs. utility

Over the next decade, the theoretical opposition to utilitarianism developed mainly in a debate over natural rights. Benthams insistence on
founding politics on interests and his rejection of the vocabulary of rights
became known to French readers with the publication, in 1816, of Dumonts
Sophismes Anarchiques (Anarchical Fallacies) in the second volume of Tactique des assemblees legislatives. Passages from Dumonts book were read
publicly and discussed at Coppet in the spring of 1816.16
Benjamin Constant insisted on the necessity of grounding French liberalism on natural rights. His argument was presented as a direct criticism of
Benthams views in an essay entitled On obeying the laws, published in
1817. In this article, he reconstructed Benthams positivist argument in the
light of the French experience of the Revolution. If Bentham was right, and
if the will of the legislator was the only source of law,17 what were citizens to
have done under Robespierres dictatorship, when the laws forced them to
betray their friends and family? Under a tyrannical regime and in the storm
of revolutions, the doctrine of unlimited obedience to the law may have
caused more evil than all the other errors which have led people astray.18
Benthams argument, in the hands of a dictator or tyrant, would legitimate
any kind of oppression. Constant was aware that Bentham stated that the
duty to obey only applied when the evils of obedience were weighed against
those of disobedience,19 but he rejected the practicability of making such
15
16
17
18
19
F.-R. de Chateaubriand, De la morale des interets et de celle des devoirs, 466.

It is only in creating offences (that is to say, by establishing certain actions as offences), that the law
confers rights. If it confers a right, it is by giving the quality of offences to the different actions by
which the enjoyment of this right might be interrupted or opposed. The division of rights ought
therefore to correspond to the division of offences. Traites, 69.
Constant, De lobeissance a` la loi, 251.
Here we touch upon a question of the utmost difficulty. If the law is not what it ought to be, if it
openly contravenes the principle of utility, ought we to obey it? ought we to infringe it? ought we
to remain neutral between a law which ordains an evil and ethics which forbids it? The solution
189
a calculation at any precise juncture. On the contrary, individuals had to

follow the unchangeable dictates of duty, pity or justice to know if they
should or should not obey a given law at a given moment in time:
No duty can bind us to obey laws that would not only restrain our legitimate
liberties and oppose actions which they have no right to forbid, but which
would also command us to act contrary to the eternal principles of justice or
pity which man cannot cease to observe without renouncing his humanity.
Benthams error derived from his rejection of natural, inalienable and

imprescriptible rights. Constant noted that utility, like natural rights,
was liable to contradictory interpretations by different individuals or in
different circumstances.20 Natural law and morals were, alone, the foundations of our obedience to laws. For similar reasons, Germaine de Stael was
one of the first to articulate the argument that a political decision based
on a strict application of the principle of utility could justify the sacrifice
of innocents, by refusing to see what is true, sacred and divine in mans
destiny. In political terms, according to what arithmetical calculation is
this sacrifice enjoined? Can the majority dispose of the minority if the
former only exceed the latter by a few votes?21
Throughout his essay, Constant recognised that the political conclusions Bentham derived from his utilitarian reasoning were close to his
own, praising him as an English author of great merit and deep perspicacity and acknowledging that in most circumstances the dictates of utility
would meet those of justice, in the way in which he conceives it, it is
fundamentally but a different choice of words.22
Constants disagreement with Bentham rested on more than an issue of
vocabulary. Like the English philosopher, Constant distrusted the use of
abstract words in politics, a practice of which the Revolution had provided
numerous examples.23 Whereas for Bentham, these fictions could only be
exposed by showing, first, that they could not be explicated in terms of
real entities and were thus meaningless and, second, that their very lack of
meaning rendered them capable of exploitation by the powerful in their
20
21
22
of the problem involves considerations alike of prudence and of regard for others. We ought to
ascertain whether there is more danger in obeying the law or in violating it; whether the probable
mischief of obedience is less or greater than the probable mischief of disobedience. Traites, 51n.
The word law is as vague as the word nature: by abusing the first, one overthrows society; by
abusing the second, one tyrannises it, Constant, De lobeissance a` la loi, 250.
G. de Stael, Germany, vol. II. 240. See also: In a word, individuals, considering each other solely as
obstacles or instruments, will hate those who impede them, and will esteem those who serve them,
only as means of their success, 327.
23 Quoted in L. Jaume, Lindividu efface, 75.
Constant, De lobeissance a` la loi, 246, 247n.
190
efforts to disguise the manner in which the pursuit of their sinister interest
went directly opposite to utility, Constant insisted that the security and the
guarantees necessary to happiness could only be provided by speaking of
rights and natural laws. Issues of discourse were not simply formal; they
reached to the heart of what politics was about.
Tell a man: you have the right not to be put to death or despoiled arbitrarily:
you give him a much greater feeling of security and certainty than if you tell
him: it is not useful that you be put to death or despoiled arbitrarily. . . . By
using the language of right, you present an idea that is independent of all
calculation. By using the language of utility, you lead to the questioning of
the thing itself by submitting it to further verification.24
The arguments contained in On obeying the laws were repeated in numerous articles and books in the course of Constants prolific writing career.25
Like him, many French liberals were attached for historical reasons to the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, which they considered
the most important legacy of the Revolution. The reviewer of the second
edition of Tactique, which contained Anarchical Fallacies and Political Tactics, reached radically contrasting judgments on the two essays.
Whereas Benthams argument for a reform of parliamentary procedure was
readily accepted, the section on Anarchical fallacies was strongly attacked:
the author making at every page a sacrifice of reason, logic and the ideas
of liberty he had so far almost always respected.26
Bentham viewed Constants arguments with detachment, complaining
for instance to Dumont that the Frenchman had written another attack
against Saint Utility.27 He constantly publicised his opposition to the
doctrine of natural rights, but in one of his last addresses to the French, he
understood their attachment to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and
the Citizen as a foundational text:
Rights are fictitious entities the people real ones. Realities, on this occasion
as on all others, realities I prefer to fictions even the most innocent ones.
Realities I understand them better. But should my friend say to me Our
24
25
26
27
Constant, De lobeissance a` la loi, 2489n.

See M.-L. Leroy, Constant lecteur de Bentham: egosme, droit, utilite; J.-T. Ravix and M.
Deschamps, La liberte contre le bonheur: Morellet et Constant face a` Bentham, Bentham et
la France, 15363, 16576. For a recent discussion, see C. Welch, Anti-Benthamism, 138141.
D.L.M. Avenel, Tactique des assemblees legislatives, Revue encyclopedique, vol. XVII (March 1823),
50334; and Traite des sophismes politiques, Revue encyclopedique, vol. XIX (July 1823), 56885.
Tellingly, throughout the second article, the author was referred to as M. Dumont and not M.
Bentham.
Bentham to Dumont, quoted in King, The airy form of things forgotten, 23n.
191
fellow-citizens will understand us better if we say rights even so let it be.

Let us say what we will, our meaning is the same.28
Despite Constants esteem for Bentham, he did not review any of his
works after 1817.29 The Groupe de Coppets opposition to utility was
influential, for it combined attacks on the anthropological basis on which
Benthams science of man rested with a strong defence of natural rights,
which remained a rallying point among French liberals.
De Stael and Constants position also echoed the shift towards German
idealism in French philosophy. As early as 1819, in his Cours dhistoire de la
philosophie morale, Victor Cousin dismissed the philosophy of sensation as
outdated. He recalled its major figures from Hobbes to Locke to Bentham
in England, and from Condillac to Helvetius to Destutt de Tracy in France,
as illustrious adversaries disarmed by time.30 This statement was far from
being true, however, as debates on the value of utilitarianism in French
politics were to continue throughout the 1820s.
Utility in an industrial society: Jean-Baptiste Say and

the Saint-Simonians
Arguments against utility became more frequent in the second half of
the 1820s. This change of tone was well perceived by Benthams friends
and disciples. In Principes du droit politique, in fact a linear refutation of
Rousseaus Social Contract, Honore Torombert violently criticised references to utility and claimed that politics had to be founded on morals. He
presented Bentham as a follower of Helvetius and Condillac, a materialist
whose only creed was that the end justified the means. The Bibliothèque universelle (which had succeeded the Bibliothèque britannique in 1816) reviewed
Toromberts work and seized on the opportunity to defend utilitarian ideas
against such accusations of selfishness.31
28
29
30
31
Bowring, vol. XI, 568. In 1825, Bentham had written to Francois Andre Isambert, who had criticised
his position in Annales politiques et diplomatiques: As to your natural right, or natural religion, I
offer my congratulations if you can produce the text in which this is stated, and ask you if you
would kindly have one sent to me, so that I can conform myself to it. But since I never happened
to possess such treasure, the best I could do was to try and increase the sum of happiness as far as
I could, by following my own lights, however feeble. Correspondence (CW), vol. XII, 172. Original
in French.
Bossange wrote to Dumont in June 1822 regretting that Constants promise to review Tactique in
his paper, Le Constitutionnel, was not to be trusted: see BGE, MS Dumont, 74, f. 102.
V. Cousin, Cours dhistoire de la philosophie morale au dix-huitième siècle [18191820], in uvres de
Victor Cousin (Brussels, 1841), vol. II, 431.
H. Torombert, Principes du droit politique, mis en opposition avec le Contrat social de J.-J. Rousseau
(Paris, 1825), 6180; Bibliothèque universelle des sciences, belles-lettres et arts. Serie Litterature (Geneva,
18161835), vol. XXXI, 1826, 1215.
192
In May 1829, Jean-Baptiste Say wrote to Etienne Dumont to ask him

to write a defence of utility against the attacks made upon it by the
germanico-scholastic sect of duties, a phrase that directly pointed to de
Stael and Constant.32 Dumont refused, and he died a few months later.
Say then decided to write the article himself, for he had long been one
of the most vocal defenders of the principle of utility. From 1815 to 1819,
alongside other prominent liberal figures, he taught classes at the Athenee
royal, a private institute whose activities were regularly reported in the
Revue encyclopedique. From 1820 until his death in 1832, he gave public lectures at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers.33 Through him, it
was mostly among economists that the principle of utility came to be
defended.
Say presented utility as the only principle on which moral and political
sciences could be founded: this was especially important in his attempt
to present political economy as a new science. At the Athenee royal, he
explained that a true science could only rest on a sound experimental
method and a close observation of human nature and of the principles of
human action, in order to establish the laws according to which mens
actions occur. The principle of utility laid out the laws of individual
and collective behaviour and furnished the instruments through which
one could influence peoples actions. Significantly, he mentioned Robert
Owens New Lanark mill and Jeremy Benthams Panopticon prison as two
successful attempts in social engineering, or proofs that it was possible to
improve the moral and physical condition of the people by a scientific
approach to behaviour.34
Say devoted one of his lectures to a more general defence of the principle of utility, or interest properly understood.35 His defence of utility as
a moral and political principle was uneven. He closely followed Dumonts
chapter on Some objections answered in Traites, arguing that only a misguided understanding of interest could confound it with egoistic personal
32
33
34
35
J.-B. Say to E. Dumont, BGE, MS Dumont, 77, ff. 59.

The Athenee was founded in 1781 and survived throughout the Revolution and the Empire. It
organised courses of lectures on a number of subjects for an educated but non-academic audience.
The Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers was founded during the Revolution and transformed into
an institute of higher education in 1819, presided over by La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, with chairs
in chemistry, industrial economics and mechanics.
J.-B. Say, Cours a` lAthenee, in G. Jacoud and P. Steiner, eds., Lecons deconomie politique. uvres
Complètes de J.-B. Say, 5 vols. (Paris, 2003), vol. IV, 53189, esp. 5361. On this essay, see R.
Whatmore, Republicanism and the French Revolution, 21012.
Only fragmentary notes survive for this lecture, given three years in a row from 18151816 to 1818
1819. They are supplemented in the printed edition of the Lecons deconomie politique with the draft
of the Essai sur le principe dutilite which takes up many of its themes. See Lecons, 13054.
193
profit. However, his defence of utility as something which must be measured by bon sens (common sense) and which could be opposed neither to
justice nor to honesty, failed to capture the full extent of the critical and
analytical dimensions of the concept in Benthams thought. Says lecture
concluded with a plea for a free press, the only way through which the
people could truly be enlightened. This radical reading was illustrated with
examples showing the corruptive effect of religion on the Italian people
which might easily be read as an allusion to Germaine de Stael, who had
famously praised the mind-elevating beauties of Italy. Against the errors
disseminated by the powerful, clarity of reason and public education were
the only checks.
Say was influential in publicizing Benthams ideas among industrialists, the thinkers who sought to promote political economy as the science
appropriate to the emerging industrial system.36 In the doctrine promoted
by Saint-Simon after 1817, personal interests and economic actions were
closely interrelated. The turn towards industrial production, Saint-Simon
argued, had a wide-ranging impact on the social, political and spiritual
fabric. It was therefore necessary to lay new foundations for our understanding of society. Such an interpretation had its roots, at least in part,
in Says economic theory: by uncovering the principles of production and
exchange, Say had made it possible to understand the principles at work
in moral and political sciences. In 1824, Saint-Simon invited all liberals to rally to the banner of Industrialism, to publicise their belief in
the new social order produced by the Industrial Revolution. Though Say
and his circle (Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer) eventually broke
with Saint-Simon and his followers (including Saint-Amand Bazard, the
author of the long article on Bentham in the Revue encyclopedique), it
is no coincidence that they all appealed to Bentham in their attempt to
ground political economy on scientific foundations. What must be noted,
however, is that these arguments did not rest on a reading of Benthams
economic writings, strictly speaking. Says interlocutors in economics were
David Ricardo, first, and James Mill, not Bentham.37 When he mentioned
Theorie des peines et des recompenses, it was on secondary topics such as population and not on the main principle laid out by Bentham that capital
limits trade.
36
37
On industrialism, see G. Faccarello and P. Steiner, Interests, sensationism and the science of the
legislator: French philosophie economique, 16951830, European Journal of the History of Economic
Thought, 15 (2008), 123, esp. 19.
S. Hollander, J.-B. Say and the Classical Canon in Economics. The British Connection in French
Classicism (Abingdon, 2005).
194
What the French knew of Benthams own contribution to the science

was limited to Defence of Usury. This work was translated again, twice,
in 1828.38 In Defence of Usury, French readers found economic arguments
based on utility, but also a close account of the consequences of prohibitions
on interpersonal relations and on the progress of society as a whole. Usury
laws, Bentham argued against Smith, were ineffectual because they failed
to protect borrowers: unable to borrow at the legal rates, the poorest fell
into the hands of illegal lenders. The rate of interest, like the price of any
other commodity, had to be set by mutual agreement between the seller
and the buyer. Benthams central point, however, was that existing usury
laws hindered progress by restricting the access of projectors to capital.
Defense of Usury provided arguments in favour of invention and enterprise
in industry: projectors were pictured as the driving force in the progress of
society. The example of usury provided a clear illustration of the evils of a
system based on customary prohibitions, and of their social and economic
consequences for society as a whole.
In the long preface to his 1828 translation of Defence of Usury, SaintAmand Bazard quoted Say, alongside Bentham and Turgot, as one of the
theoreticians whose works contributed to hasten the coming reforms, but
otherwise failed to discuss his ideas regarding interest rates. Like SaintSimon, Bazard believed that the doctrines of sound political economy had
a major role to play in bringing the nation closer to the dawning industrial
age. Bazard explained that in an industrial society, the productive class of
workers and innovators would need unfettered access to capital, against the
non-productive class. However, his preface reads rather like a vehicle for
his own ideas, there is no serious attempt to discuss Benthams economic
principles.39
Though Say himself refused to follow Saint-Simon, some of his close
friends and collaborators embraced the vocabulary of industrialism before
38
39
For earlier translations, see p. 207. In Theorie, Dumont had inserted a chapter on usury to take up
Benthams main points on the subject (vol. II, 38094). See also E. Dumont, Compte-rendu de
Defense of Usury, Bibliothèque universelle, 5 (1817), 311.
Defense de lusure ou Lettres sur les inconvenients des lois qui fixent le taux de linteret de largent,
suivi dun Memoire sur les prets dargent, par Turgot, et precede dune introduction contenant une
dissertation sur le pret a` interet, [Saint-Amand Bazard, trans.] (Paris, 1828), 437. The implications
of a cross-reading of Benthams theories with those of Saint-Simon are worked out in M. Bellet,
Saint-Simonisme et utilitarisme. Saint-Simon lecteur de Bentham in Bentham et la France, 17796;
or, in English by the same author, On the Utilitarian roots of Saint-Simonism: from Bentham to
Saint-Simon, History of Economic Ideas, 17 (2009), 4164. Bazards approach to Benthams text is
pointed out in N. Sigot, An Activist Stance: the 1828 translation of Benthams Defence of Usury, a
paper presented at the Annual Conference of the History of Economic Society (HES), University
of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, 2022 June 2013.
195
breaking with Saint-Simons religious doctrines. Charles Comte and

Charles Dunoyer linked economic rationality with moral and political
change in their periodical Le Censeur europeen, published in 1817 and 1818.40
In 1826, Comte published a Traite de Legislation probably written during
his exile in London during which he had made several visits to Bentham.
A new society driven by industry needed a new moral and political organisation. Discoveries in all the branches of science had increased the quantity
of observable facts; it was now possible to derive scientific rules from these
observations and to set up a new system based on a clear understanding of
those rules. In legislation, Comte explained, Bentham and Dumont had
found the true principles of government, the old customs were deservingly discredited and a newly organised society could now be founded.41
Bentham congratulated Comte in 1828 on a prize he had received for the
work.42
On another level, the enduring association of Benthams names with liberal political economy, in which the various French translations of Defence
of Usury played a significant part, continued throughout the nineteenth
century. Although this is not the place for such an overview,43 one can
point out as evidence for his continued reputation outside specialist circles
Balzacs novel Eugenie Grandet, published in 1834. The heroines father,
Felix Grandet, is a provincial miser and sometimes usurer, who imagines
buying off his deceased brothers debts to put a halt to the disgrace of
bankruptcy. He is advised by a local magistrate:
My own opinion, said the [magistrate], is that in a few months time
you could buy up the debts for an agreed sum and pay the whole thing by
an amicable arrangement. Oh yes, you can lead dogs a long way if you show
them a piece of bacon. If there hasnt been a declaration of bankruptcy and
you hold the creditors claims documents, you become white as snow . . . .
A bill of exchange is a commodity that may rise and fall in value. Thats a
deduction from Jeremy Benthams theory of usury. He was a philosophical
40
41
42
43
E. Harpaz, Le Censeur. Le Censeur Europeen. Histoire dun Journal liberal et industrialiste (Geneva,
2000). Comte and Dunoyers understanding of industrialism had different implications from
Saint-Simons, but rested on a common understanding of the forces at work in an industrial society.
C. Comte, Traite de legislation, ou exposition des lois generales suivant lesquelles les peuples prospèrent,
deperissent, ou restent stationnaires, 4 vols. (Paris, 1826), vol. I, 41. Comte also defended the Rights
of Man against Benthams refutation, vol. I, 1268.
Bentham to J.-B. Say, 9 September 1828, to be published in Correspondence (CW), vol. XIII. In
Dunoyer, these arguments in favour of the industrial progress of society took on a racist dimension.
He was also critical of Benthams ideas on liberty. See C.-B. Dunoyer, Lindustrie et la morale
considerees dans leurs rapports avec la liberte (Paris, 1825), 424.
For one aspect of this presence, see N. Sigot, Des dangers de lutilitarisme benthamien: les
economistes liberaux francais du XIXe siècle face a` Bentham, in Bentham et la France, 20924.
196

writer who proved that the prejudice which disapproved of money-lending
was plain silly . . . .
Y-y-you c-c-call him J-j-jeremy Ben..
Bentham, an Englishman.44
44
H. de Balzac, Eugenie Grandet, S. Raphael, trans., C. Prendergast, ed. (Oxford, 1990), 989. Grandet
is faking a stutter as a means to upset his interlocutors.
Epilogue
Bentham in the July Revolution
In politics, Bentham welcomed the arrival of a liberal majority in the

Chamber of Deputies in 1827. In the summer of 1828, he sent Lafayette
several pamphlets on the English procedure for the impeachment of
ministers and offered informed comments about the constitutionality of
the practice of the French Chamber.1 In November, he still had hopes that
the liberal majority in the Chamber of Deputies would be powerful enough
to offset the influence of ministers appointed by the King.2 The crisis,
however, came to a head in July 1830, when the Ultra-royalist ministry
dissolved the lower house, leading to three days of popular insurrection
culminating in the overthrow of Charles X.3 On this occasion, Bentham
drafted two of his last pamphlets for France (the first at Lafayettes
request): Jeremy Bentham to his fellow-citizens of France on Houses of Peers
and Senates and On Death Punishment, as mentioned earlier. Emancipate
your Colonies, which dated from the Revolutionary period, was reprinted
and published on that occasion, though it was not translated into French
then.4 In a wave of optimism, Bentham also entertained fresh hopes
that the Panopticon would at last be built in Paris.5 Finally, he asked
1
2
3
4
Bentham to Lafayette, 18 August 1828, to be published in Correspondence (CW), vol. XIII. The issue
of ministerial responsibility stood on an ambiguous footing in the Charter, which led to endless
debates in the French press.
In favour of good government, he wrote to Daniel OConnell on 18 November 1828, Things are
going on swimmingly in France. To be published in Correspondence (CW), vol. XIII.
F. Demier, La France de la Restauration, 850920. For an outline in English, see P. Pilbeam, The 1830
Revolution in France (London, 1991).
For Lafayettes request, see Bowring, vol. IV, 419. In August 1829, Dumont published a two-part
article entitled La possession de colonies est-elle un avantage pour les metropoles?, abstracted from
earlier manuscripts by Bentham. Bibliothèque Universelle des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts, Cahier
Litterature, vol. XLI, 34976 and vol. XLII, 2748. For the specificity of Benthams positions on
colonies, see J. Pitts, A Turn to Empire, 10322.
In any event, would you like to take a part in [the Panopticon] if adopted at Paris? 1. In the
erection of it? 2. In the management of it by contract? . . . I think there are good hopes of it through
the influence of La Fayette. Bentham to Samuel Bentham, 25 August 1830, to be published in
Correspondence (CW), vol. XIII.
197
198
Epilogue
the publisher Hauman to consider a French translation of Constitutional

Code.6
None of the arguments put forward in these pamphlets were new and
their reception was disappointing. Jeremie Bentham a` ses concitoyens de
France. Sur les chambres des pairs et les senats was published in French in
1831, translated and introduced by Felix Bodin, a historian and anglophile
who moved in liberal circles.7 The preface insisted on the originality of
Benthams argument but it excluded any direct influence on the French
constitutional system: the question had been decided by our Charter
(the 1830 constitutional settlement) and the presence of a second chamber had been unanimously accepted.8 On the whole, Bentham was now
remote from influential circles in French politics. Though recalled in triumph in the summer, Lafayette was quickly sidelined by Louis-Philippes
government.9 Jean-Baptiste Say and his friends had no direct part in the
July Revolution and soon grew discontented with it. Indeed, the economist
wrote to Bentham in 1831:
After glorious revolutions, the herd of the timorous are afraid of having
gone too far. This is what this stupid middle-ground means, for it suits both
those who lack the courage to go forth and those who wish to go back. As
for me and my family, we are among those whose only ambition is to follow
you.10
The same year, even Felix Bodin, the translator of Benthams latest pamphlets into French, pointed out the gradual estrangement between day-today French politics and Benthams thought. He highlighted the difference
between French politicians writing in the midst of events and the theoretical products of a British philosophical mind. He contrasted his own, most
recent, pamphlet with Benthams works:
This is politics accommodated to the character of our Charter and of our
electors. It is middle term and transitional. I think it is what we will do
endlessly in this world. It is no less useful to mankind that such a legislator
6
7
9
10
Letter to L. Hauman, April 1830, to be published in Correspondence (CW), vol. XIII.

A prolific writer, Bodin had also supported the Greek cause. Bentham knew his Resume de lhistoire
de France (Paris, 1823), and his Resume de lhistoire dAngleterre (Paris, 1824), which he sent to Greece
through Bowring in 1824: see Correspondence (CW), vol. XII, 54.
J. Parent-Real, Questions politiques, de la pairie, de la loi electorale, des administrations municipales
(Paris, 1830), 19: As one can see, I shall not go as far as Jeremy Bentham in claiming that a second
house, whatever its name, with a chamber of deputies or a legislative body, is useless, dangerous
and only a waste of time. One can defend such a theory up to a point, but the fact that the charter
establishes two houses is sufficient for me to say that I must remain neutral on this point.
P. Gueniffey, La Fayette ou les impasses du liberalisme, 64.
To be published in Correspondence (CW), vol. XIII.
Bentham in the July Revolution
199
as you should be tracing the plan of a definitive edifice, in order to hold us

spellbound and to show us a goal we shall reach God knows when.11
Bodins fatalism clearly showed that the utilitarian moment had passed in
French politics. Soon afterwards new radical ideologies developed and provided a different language for republican reform. Benthams death in 1832
coincided with the adoption of new constitutional principles both in France
and in Britain: on one side of the Channel, the July Revolution gave rise to
a new form of liberal monarchy, while on the other Catholic Emancipation
and the Reform Bill opened a breach in the settlement inherited from the
Glorious Revolution. Benthams uncompromising attitude towards reform
was given further publicity, four years after his death, with the publication
by the Revue de Paris of an essay by German lawyer Edouard Gans under
the title A visit to Bentham. Remembering his dinner at Queens Square
Place in October 1831, Gans pointed out his hosts unfailing reforming
ardour and his poor opinion of the Reform Bill: measures that only signal
a change of decoration and which will only serve to turn this smoky chamber into a parlour where no-one will be better seated.12 On July 6, 1832,
on the very day of Benthams death, the bill received royal assent.
In France as in Britain, utilitarians were critical of the political compromise embodied in the new regimes, but in Britain, a new generation of
politicians continued to appropriate Benthams principles, ensuring that
they continued to play a role in public debate.13 In France, though utility
did not disappear from political discourse altogether, it never became a
rallying point for any political party.
11
12
13
ibid.
E. Gans, Visite a` Jeremie Bentham, La Revue de Paris (1836), vol. XXVII, 21447.
W. Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice 18171841 (Oxford, 1979).
Conclusion
This book has shown how utilitarianism was modified and transformed by
its reception in French and in France. France was a source of inspiration
to Bentham throughout his life. The course of events taking place over the
Channel from the end of the Ancien Regime to the Restoration spurred
him to write on specific legal, political and social issues, thus impacting
the doctrine itself as well as shaping its reception. Such appropriation
was possible because of the philosophers frequent use of Continental
sources and a common political and philosophical vocabulary inherited
from a cosmopolitan Enlightenment movement. Benthamite utilitarianism
was therefore the product of a consistent linguistic, cultural and political
context in continental Europe and not solely in Britain. In order to assess
this, it has been necessary to go beyond the common distinction between
influence and reception to trace a number of appropriations, references
and circulations.
The French context is arguably only one angle from which Benthams
long life and his plethoric writings may be viewed, but it is a meaningful one. In his French manuscripts of the 1780s, as presented in Part II,
Bentham repeatedly compared the law to a forest through which different
paths may be cut, each opening new prospects from which the whole might
be viewed. A similar approach may be taken for the study of his thought.
The French Bentham is not, therefore, and cannot be, the whole Bentham. It is an object created from a specific angle, a decentred view on a
philosopher who was involved in British politics and beyond, a true citizen
of the world. In the 1810s, his prospects opened to the new liberal states
in southern Europe and to Latin America, notably thanks to the notoriety gained by his French books. His position as an international advisor
remained in line with the prescriptions of Voltaire and Helvetius, whose
cosmopolitan visions reached beyond national boundaries. Again, Benthams interest in French thought and affairs is not to be taken as exclusive
of other national traditions. His cosmopolitanism was geographically and
200
Conclusion
201
historically grounded. Other roads have been and will be cut across
the forest of his writings, but no study can be complete without taking
into consideration the place of Britain in the wider world and how this
impacted political ideas and concepts.
Placing the birth of utilitarianism against the background of Enlightenment reform movements also makes clear the continuity between theory
and practice. Benthams position in public life, be it in France or in Britain,
can be best understood as the continuation of a posture shaped by the early
years in which he hoped to be recognised as an enlightened reformer, as
one of the philosophes. He re-wrote and re-shaped his ideas over time for
a variety of readers and with different political objectives, always hoping
to contribute to contemporary debates, both at home and abroad. As the
word publicist itself, as we have seen, had been commonly used in France
since the eighteenth century to describe him, it comes as no surprise that
its first occurrence in English may be traced to the Westminster Review, the
periodical founded by Bentham in 1824.
This detour via France casts light on significant internal issues in Benthams thought. First, it calls for a change of scale for the study of his politics
over sixty eventful years in European history. This book has presented Benthams thought as consistent over time, though modified and enriched by
contemporary events, especially by the transition from the Ancien Regime
to early liberalism in France and in Britain. Benthams own brand of radicalism, it has been shown, did not change much throughout his life. As has
been seen in Part II, its roots can be traced directly to Helvetius who, in
the 1770s, aroused Benthams awareness to the necessity of political reform
and to the forces of resistance that were to be expected. Though present
from the 1770s, this reforming ambition was to prove increasingly operative in Benthams own writings from the 1800s onwards. In politics, the
legacy of Helvetius was truly radical, and was well understood by French
contemporaries both during and after the Revolution. This radicalism
was intrinsically democratic, though the emphasis placed over direct and
immediate popular rule varied over time. It was also mitigated by Benthams constant attention to present happiness and to security of property.
The balance between the two forces changed over time as positions had to
be worked out in precise historical and geographical circumstances.
Benthams place in contemporary politics, from the pre-revolutionary
days to the years of the Restoration, made sense to his French contemporaries who often summed it up as the actualisation of Helvetius, as Parts IV
and V have made clear. The resurgence of debates on interest in nineteenthcentury politics and philosophy and the overwhelmingly negative response
202
Conclusion
it drew in France after 1802, are therefore to be understood as part of the

complex and divisive legacy of the Enlightenment and of the Revolution.
These debates impacted the reception of Benthams ideas in France as
they shaped most French intellectual life in the first third of the nineteenth
century.
There is also a collective dimension in the history of utilitarianism,
as further work on Benthams editors and compilers in Britain and elsewhere should make clear. A number of such editors and propagators have
appeared in this book. Beyond Dumont, influential writers such as Say,
Jullien and Bazard have been mentioned for their role in the spread of
Benthams ideas in France. Understanding how historical actors elaborate
a system of thought and following the concrete channels through which
ideas circulate do not detract from philosophical interest or complexity.
Classical utilitarianism was both a highly idiosyncratic system and a collective construct. In such a perspective, it becomes difficult to draw a clear-cut
line between Bentham and Benthamism, at least throughout the period
when the philosopher himself was still alive.
Etienne Dumont stands out as a central character in the narrative of
Benthams involvement with France, from the day they met in 1788 to
the Genevans death forty-one years later. It is now clear that he was
not only a translator and an adapter of Benthamite utilitarianism to the
French-speaking world, but also a public character involved in occasionally
powerful networks in French politics, especially in 1789, 1802 and after 1815.
That Geneva remained foremost in Dumonts thoughts cannot be denied.1
However Parts III and IV demonstrate that this led him to play an active
role in the political circles of Paris and London. His hopes of contributing
to French politics definitely waned after the Restoration, which coincided
with his growing involvement in Genevan public life. He consistently chose
to publish his volumes drawn from Benthams manuscripts in Paris and
not in Geneva (excepting Tactique, which was published jointly in the
two cities), for their readership was not to be confined to Switzerland and
indeed took on a worldwide dimension in the course of the nineteenth
century. As Part V has shown, important though Dumont was for the
dissemination of Benthams ideas, he was never the only source through
which French readers were acquainted with them. It is to be hoped that
further work on the early nineteenth-century political press in France will
confirm this analysis.
1
R. Whatmore, Against War and Empire, 27482.
Conclusion
203
Benthams death in 1832 did not put an end to debates over utility in
Europe. This book has demonstrated that understanding how utilitarianism was received and formulated in French and in France has important
implications for the study of the doctrine in the nineteenth century. In
Britain, the most widely read version of Benthams works after his death was
Theory of Legislation, an incomplete translation into English of Dumonts
Traites.2 This book was also the first work in which the young John Stuart
Mill studied utilitarianism.3 Beyond Britain, Benthams name and thought
were known throughout the world (including, most importantly, Latin
America) via translations from Dumonts volumes into Spanish.4 The utilitarian tradition remained alive in Mills works, but how the terms of
the French debate over utilitarianism were impacted by John Stuart Mills
writings and their reception in France still is still a topic for study.5
The specific nature of early nineteenth-century liberal debates may also

be recovered from this study of Benthams position in French politics,
especially at key moments such as 1790, 1802 and the 1820s. In many ways,
this brings to light the distinctive character of the views of a generation that
brought about the transition from the Ancien Regime to new liberal states
after 1815 and strove to adjust to the political demands of a changing world.
It is therefore not surprising that utilitarianism, as has long failed to be
recognised, played a central part in debates over representative democracy,
social control and individual rights. Examining Benthams positions on
each of these subjects has brought to light the contested battleground in
which contemporary liberalism was born and made clear that this divide
cannot be solely understood as an opposition between competing French
and British traditions.
We must recognise the ideological complexity of early liberalism and
accept its divergences with twentieth-century conceptions. The enduring
fortune of Benthams writings on the prison and on poor relief in France,
from early plans to have the Panopticon design adopted in Paris to the
success of Esquisse dun ouvrage en faveur des pauvres ten years later, reveal
that two aspects of his thought that have seemed contradictory to a number
2
3
4
5
J. Bentham, Theory of Legislation, R. Hildreth, ed. and trans. (London, 1840). The volume was
regularly re-edited throughout the nineteenth century.
See F. Rosen, La dette de Bentham a` legard de Dumont, in Bentham et la France, 946.
See full list in N. Sigot, Bentham et leconomie, appendix III, 21124; and in Chuo University Library,
A bibliographical catalogue of the works of Jeremy Bentham (Tokyo, 1989).
Recent work has cast light on Mills interest in French affairs and on the extent of his cosmopolitanism;
see G. Varouxakis, Mill on Nationality (London, 2002). A study on the reception of Mills thought
in France is overdue.
204
Conclusion
of twentieth-century scholars may be fitted together as part of a consistent

reformist stance in that period. In French politics, especially after 1820,
Benthams name was clearly identified to the liberal cause, and the main
objection to utilitarianism had nothing to do with his treatment of the
poor or of criminals, as his opponents consistently returned to the issue
of rights. In that sense, the rejection of Benthamite utiliarianism helped
shape liberalism itself.
It is therefore no coincidence that many of the terms in which utilitarianism is discussed today should echo those of Constant and de Stael.
As Part V has made clear, Benthams relentless rejection of rights-based
arguments had become by the 1820s the main bone of contention between
French liberals and utilitarianism. This had enduring consequences, as
many twentieth-century refutations of utilitarianism were based on rights
and on personal integrity, thus reinventing in part those of early French
liberals.6 Recent research in political thought, triggered by Michel Foucaults influential work on the archaeology of liberalism have provided a
way out of the enduring opposition between social control and liberty.
In his 1979 seminars at the Collège de France, Foucault argued that the
juridical path of liberalism, that of the rights of man, had to be combined
in France and in Britain with the government of interests that lay at the
heart of utilitarianism. These insights have been in turn successfully applied
to re-readings of Bentham.7 As this book has shown, a historical study of
utilitarianism can also provide a way out of the dichotomy between utility
and rights within the liberal paradigm.
6
7
J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA, 1970); B. Williams, Utilitarianism. For and Against,
J.J.C. Smart and B. Williams, eds. (Cambridge, 1973).
M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France, 19781979, A.I. Davidson,
ed., G. Burchell, trans. (Basingstoke, 2008), 2022. For recent reconsiderations of Bentham in this
line, see S.G. Engelmann, Imagining Interests in Political Thought (Durham and London, 2003); A.
Brunon-Ernst, ed., Beyond Foucault. New Perspectives on Benthams Panopticon (Farnham, 2012); and
A. Brunon-Ernst, Utilitarian Biopolitics. Bentham, Foucault and Modern Power (London, 2012).
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Index
American independence, 3738, 87, 120

see also, United States of America
aptitude, 118, 165
aristocracy, 98, 155, 18283
Ashhurst, William Henry, 101
atheism, 9, 31, 51, 158
Bacon, Sir Francis, 63, 71
Balzac, Honore de, 195
Banks, Sir Joseph, 50, 64
Bayle, Pierre, 34
Bazard, Saint-Amand, 169, 19394, 202
Beccaria, Cesare, 11, 42, 5963, 7274, 81, 90,
108, 141, 18182
Dei delitti e delle pene (On Crimes and
Punishments), 58, 72, 139
Bentham, Alicia, 21
Bentham, Jeremiah, 3, 19, 21, 3536
Bentham, Jeremy
Considerations dun Anglois sur la
composition des Etats-Generaux, 104,
116
Presse libre, 104
Projet of a Constitutional Code for France,
116
A Fragment on Government, 3, 19, 37, 41, 42,
45, 47, 50, 53, 56, 6364, 8889, 145, 169
A View of the Hard-Labour Bill, 41, 52, 63
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation, 34, 26, 5051, 63, 65, 66, 68,
70, 80, 82, 93, 13132, 136, 137, 169
De lorganisation judiciaire et de la
codification, 162, 165
Defence of Usury, 68, 93, 107, 163, 19495
Delits religieux, 34
Draught of a New Plan for the Organisation of
the Judicial Establishment in France, 6, 93,
10614, 125
Emancipate your colonies, 103, 197
225
Esquisse dun ouvrage en faveur des pauvres, 5,

129, 14851, 203
Essais sur la situation politique de lEspagne,
163, 169, 172, 181
Hermes letters, 38
Letters to Count Toreno, 180
Letters to Lord Pelham, 148
Lettres a` Lord Pelham, 152
Manuel de sophismes politiques, 169
Nonsense upon Stilts, 103, 105, 121, 162
Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of
Jurisprudence, 70, 73, 76, 88, 108
On the Liberty of the Press and Public
Discussion, 17980
Panopticon Letters, 68, 93, 107, 113
Panoptique, memoire sur un nouveau principe
pour construire des maisons dinspection,
10708, 113, 138, 151
Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace,
102, 104
Plan of Parliamentary Reform, 165, 167
Political Tactics, 6, 93, 10609, 114, 119,
165
preface to The White Bull, 27, 30, 33, 53
Projet dun corps de loix complet, 4, 6, 13,
5591, 93, 104, 108, 131, 137, 140
Sur les chambres des pairs et les senats, 198
Tactique des assemblees legislatives, 16162,
188, 190
Theorie des peines et des recompenses, 133, 160,
162, 181, 193
Three Tracts relative to Spanish and
Portugueze Affairs, 163
To his fellow-citizens of France on Death
Punishment, 182, 197
To his fellow-citizens of France on Houses of
Peers and Senates, 197
Traite des preuves judiciaires, 162, 165,
169
226
Index
Bentham, Jeremy (cont.)

Traites de legislation civile et penale, 2, 56, 14,
129, 136, 147, 179, 18185, 203
Truth versus Ashhurst, 101, 169
Bentham, Sir Samuel, 1, 21, 24, 28, 49, 54, 6567,
161
Bergman, Torbern, 50, 75
Berlin, Isaiah, 8
Bern, conomical Society of, 5960, 6364,
84
Bernardi de Valernes, Joseph Elzear Dominique,
139
Bible, authority of, 3034, 51
bicameralism, 130, 198
Bicetre, 113
see also, Panopticon prison; prisons
Blackstone, Sir William, 88, 111, 159
Commentaries on the Laws of England, 37, 41,
53, 62
Blamires, Cyprian, 14
Blaquiere, Edward, 171
Bodin, Felix, 198
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 15, 12930, 13536, 140,
144, 15561, 16667, 173, 181, 185, 187
Bossange, publishing house, 136, 163
Bowood Circle, 129
Bowood House, 5, 97, 129, 186
Bowring, Sir John, 21, 35, 171
Brissot de Warville, Jacques Pierre, 10, 55, 61, 74,
8385, 93, 106, 11114, 120, 122, 135
Bibliothèque du Legislateur, 61
Moyens de prevenir les crimes en France, 84
Theorie des loix criminelles, 84
British constitution, 88, 159
Burdett, Sir Francis, 168
Burke, Edmund, 126
Burns, James Henderson, 1011, 94
Cabanis, Pierre Jean Georges, 136
Calmet, Augustin, 31, 34
capital punishment, see death penalty
Carnot, Lazare, 161
Catherine II of Russia (the Great), 4, 36, 56, 59,
60, 6467, 70, 85, 87, 94, 108
Instruction, 59, 74
Charles X, king of France, 177, 182, 197
Charter of 181415, 161, 17578
Charter of 1830, 198
Chasles, Philarète, 172, 18081
Chastellux, Francois Jean de, 4, 41, 4445
Chateaubriand, Francois-Rene de, 6, 158, 187
Chenier, Andre, 106
citizenship, 106
Benthams French, 101, 155
Civil Code (French) of 1804, 130, 136, 13947,

149
civil law, 84, 90, 112, 141, 143
civil and penal law, division of, 76, 141
Clavière, Etienne, 98, 106
Cloots, Anarchasis, 101, 106
Cocceji, Samuel, 59, 73, 77
code
particular or personal, 7879
universal, 79
codification, 4, 60, 66, 7074, 81, 90, 101, 142,
159, 162, 165
colonies, 103, 152
Combes-Dounous, Jean Isaac, 147
Compton, Henry, 33
Comte, Charles, 16768, 193, 195
Condillac, Etienne Bonnot de, 53, 123, 191
Traite des sensations, 48
Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de
Caritat de, 61, 110, 12223, 126
Condorcet, Sophie Marie Louise de Grouchy de,
135
Constant, Benjamin, 6, 125, 163, 173, 177, 179,
180, 184, 18692, 204
constitutional law, 76, 84, 88, 90, 115
Consulate, 5, 127, 12930, 134, 135, 147
Coppet, Groupe de, 18384, 186, 191
cosmopolitanism, 2, 3, 5, 12, 16, 19, 29, 36, 39,
42, 49, 52, 56, 70, 104, 105, 17273, 200
Cousin, Victor, 191
cultural transfers, 2, 12
customary or common law, 7172, 77, 9091,
119
DAlembert, Jean Le Rond, 1, 4, 1011, 23, 38, 39,
41, 4549, 5153, 5859, 64, 75, 105, 137
Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedie,
48, 7475
Elements de Philosophie, 48
Melanges de litterature, dhistoire et de
philosophie, 46
Traite de dynamique, 45
David dAngers, Pierre Jean David, dit, 174
De Lolme, Jean Louis, 26, 39, 89
death penalty, 175, 18182
Declaration(s) of Rights, 105, 107, 11925, 130,
162, 190
Delessert, Benjamin, 149, 171
Delessert, Etienne, 107, 111, 114
democracy, 87, 94, 115, 119, 127, 130, 134, 165, 172,
180, 203
deputies, 100, 112, 11618, 188
Descartes, Rene, 47
Destutt de Tracy, Antoine, 124, 136, 191
Index
Destutt de Tracy, Victor, 182
DGhies, Hassuna, 171, 178
Diderot, Denis, 36, 185
Directory, 5, 15, 114, 127, 12930, 134, 151, 153
disinterestedness, 18586
Dumont, Etienne, 56, 1314, 93, 97117, 122,
125, 12938, 13945, 15560, 16566, 16971,
181, 18486, 188, 19092, 195, 20203
objections against the principle of utility
answered, 137, 186, 192
Preliminary discourse to Traites de legislation
civile et penale, 134, 136, 14347, 165
Dunkley, Polly, 36
Dunoyer, Charles, 193, 195
Duquesnoy, Adrien, 14748, 153, 157
duty
against interest, 18789, 192
and rights, 121, 124, 130
to obey the laws, 188
Eden, Sir Frederick Morton, 148
elections, 89, 11617, 168
see also, suffrage
Elmsley, Peter, 2627
English law, 4, 19, 56, 6263, 77, 170
see also, customary or common law
enlightened sovereigns, 59, 83, 87
Enlightenment, historiography of, 812
entities, real and fictitious, 4649, 53
Epicureanism, 137
equality, 84, 85, 141, 144, 161
evidence
and law, 59, 16263
and religion, 3233
expectations, 85, 119, 142, 14445, 186
Fenelon, Francois de Salignac de la Mothe,
2223
fictions
rights as, 190
see also, real and fictitious entities
Fievee, Joseph, 15859
Fontanes, Jean Pierre Louis, 158
form and matter of law, 66, 74, 77
Forster, John, 49, 55, 57
Foucault, Michel, 204
Francois de Neufchateau, Nicolas Louis, 147
Franklin, Benjamin, 50, 100
Frederick II of Prussia (the Great), 1, 36, 5960,
65
Frederician Code, 59, 73
Raisons detablir ou dabroger les loix, 81
French Charter of 1814, 198
French language, 24, 9, 19, 2526, 66, 104
227
French Revolution, 6, 1112, 25, 94, 95126, 129,

170
interpretation, 7, 97, 158
legacy, 8
Gallois, Jean Antoine Gauvin, dit, 103, 13536,
15658, 178
Gans, Edouard, 199
Garat, Dominique Joseph, 124, 135
Garran de Coulon, Jean Philippe, 11214, 156
Gautier, Antoine, 111, 114, 157
Gautier, Madeleine, 111, 114, 135, 141, 149, 157
Gibbon, Edward, 23
Godwin, William, 9, 11
Greece, 3, 14, 163, 165, 16971, 175, 198
Guizot, Francois, 183
Halevy, Elie, 7
Hall, Francis, 176
happiness, 34, 63, 80, 85, 132, 134, 145, 191, 201
and freedom, 8
calculation of, 43
greatest happiness of the greatest number, 1,
4, 16, 34, 41, 53, 58, 102, 116, 125, 165, 186
public, 22, 23, 44, 57, 134, 190
Hauman, publishing house, 163, 198
Helvetius, Claude Adrien, 1, 4, 5, 711, 16, 24,
36, 4245, 46, 5055, 5758, 63, 79, 82, 90,
105, 12324, 129, 15859, 185, 191, 20001
De lhomme (Treatise on Man), 43, 57
De lesprit (Essays on the Mind), 4244
Hobbes, Thomas, 84, 146, 191
Houtteville, Claude Francois Alexandre, 34
Howard, John, 6263
Hume, David, 8, 10, 36, 50, 52
Ideologues, 5, 16, 124, 12930, 159
Ingen-Housz, Jan, 50, 100
inheritance, law of, 85, 141, 145
interest(s)
and elections, 11719
and pleasure and pain, 43
as a fiction, 187
personal, 57, 63, 118, 125, 167, 18687, 19293
philosophy of, 7, 43, 129, 175, 185, 188, 204
public, 11719, 160, 167, 183, 187
self-interest, 16, 18586, 192
sinister, 63, 72, 160, 167, 182, 190
see also, disinterestedness; duty
international law, 16, 36, 102
international relations, 39, 102
jacobinism, Jacobins, 99, 126, 130
Jebb, John, 11
228
Index
judges, 71
and adjudication, 7273, 82, 143, 18182
and circuit, 109, 111
election of, 108, 11617, 125
sinister interests of, 72
judiciary, organisation of the, 88, 101, 10712,
11819, 131, 162
Jullien, Marc Antoine, 16970, 172, 174,
202
July Revolution, 6, 16, 161, 182, 19899
jurisprudence, 4, 13, 16, 45, 4748, 6164, 66,
70, 76, 81, 90, 120, 133, 140, 187
Justinian
Institutes, 71, 77
Kant, Immanuel, 16, 133, 168, 185
La Combe, 21, 23
La Rochefoucauld dEnville, Louis Alexandre de,
25, 98, 100, 105, 109, 111, 11314
La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Francois
Alexandre Frederic de, 100, 11314, 135, 148,
152, 155, 157, 171
Lafayette, Gilbert du Motier de, 122, 161, 163,
17273, 197
Laski, Harold, 8
Lasteyrie, Charles de, 171
Latin America, 23, 13, 165, 173, 200, 203
Le Dieu, Louis, 168
legal reform, v, 4, 26, 29, 41, 50, 55, 5761, 65,
70, 76, 8283, 90, 111, 126, 136, 139, 154,
170
Leopold II, king of Tuscany, 60, 65
liberalism
as a doctrine, 78, 15, 173, 201, 204
in French politics, 161, 168, 17073, 184,
188
liberty, 8, 85, 88, 100, 134
and property, 84
negative definition of, 37
of association, 179
of commerce, 123, 166
of government, 101, 161, 166, 173, 180
of opinion, 87, 180
of religion, 101, 166
of the press, 8890, 105, 16162, 173, 175,
17879, 193
Lind, John, 4, 3539, 41, 53, 63, 120
An Answer to the Declaration of the American
Congress, 37, 39
Letters concerning the present state of Poland,
35, 38
Remarks on the Principal Acts of the Thirteenth
Parliament of Great Britain, 37
The Polish partition in seven dramatick

dialogues, 35, 38
Three Letters to Dr Price, 3738
Linguet, Simon Nicolas Henri, 38
Linne, Carl von, 48, 75
Locke, John, 28, 47, 50, 5253, 122, 146, 186, 191
logic of the will, 24, 77
Louis XVI, king of France, 21, 87, 107
Louis XVIII, king of France, 161, 167, 177, 188
Lucas, Charles, 182
Malte-Brun, Conrad, 168
Mandeville, Bernard, 52
manners, 5758, 71, 7986
Mansfield, William Murray, first earl of, 36
Marmontel, Jean-Francois, 3, 26, 29, 38
Martin, David, 26
Marx, Karl, 78
materialism, 11, 44, 191
Mill, James, 161, 193
Mill, John Stuart, 14, 203
Mirabeau, Honore Gabriel Riqueti de, 56, 61,
97100, 106, 109, 111, 117, 122, 135, 166
Considerations on the Order of Cincinnatus,
99
monarchy, 165, 175
constitutional, 80, 167, 175, 178, 199
French, 114, 161, 176
of July, 16
Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondat de, 16,
23, 44, 58, 59, 62, 72, 74, 80, 83, 8586, 90
De lesprit des lois (The Spirit of the Laws), 58,
71, 79
morals
and legislation, 44, 66, 7980, 175, 185
and religion, 159
science of, 16, 25, 39, 43, 46, 68, 79, 8183,
13233, 18487, 189, 191
Morellet, Andre, 4, 26, 41, 45, 53, 58, 67, 97,
10506, 13536, 139, 146
motives, 34, 47, 51
Mounier, Jean Joseph, 122
Napoleonic Empire, 5, 160, 202
National Institute, 129, 151, 156, 159
natural law, 81, 120, 123, 144
natural rights, 11, 39, 103, 12025, 145, 183, 18891
Necker, Jacques, 87, 10607, 116
newspapers
Annals of Agriculture, 14748
Bibliothèque britannique, 13233, 136, 139,
141
Courier de Londres, 104
Courier de Provence, 10910, 166
Index
Decade Philosophique, 124, 129, 148, 15051,
156, 166, 215
Gazette de Leyde, 104
Journal de lAssemblee Nationale ou Journal
Logographique, 112
Journal de Paris, 157
Journal deconomie politique, 135
Journal des debats, 168
La Minerve Francaise, 177
Le Censeur Europeen, 167, 195
Le Conservateur, 187
Le Mercure de France, 158
Le Moniteur, 104, 138, 155, 157
Le patriote francais, 111
Lettre du Comte de Mirabeau a` ses
Commetans, 110
Revue de Paris, 199
Revue encyclopedique, 169
Oakeshott, Michael, 78
Pagès, Aimee, 174
Paine, Thomas, 9, 11, 101, 106, 126
Paley, William, 137
Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy,
68
Pannomion, 7071, 79
Panopticon prison, 113, 131, 148, 152, 192, 197,
203
parliamentary reform, 98, 125, 163, 165, 168
patriotism, 100
peace, 16, 95, 98, 10103
and commerce, 102
Penal Code of 1810 (France), 181
penal or criminal law, 5559, 64, 84, 90
Petty, John Henry, styled Lord Wycombe,
second Marquis of Lansdowne, 97, 101, 135,
186
Petty, William, second Earl of Shelburne and
first Marquis of Lansdowne, v, 45, 11, 25,
38, 50, 53, 54, 56, 62, 65, 67, 93, 95, 97104,
106, 110, 11315, 122, 126, 129, 147
philanthropy, 136, 14748, 17071, 181
philhellenism, see Greece
Pictet, Charles, 131
Pictet, Marc Auguste, 13133, 184
Pilati di Tassullo, Carlo Antonio, 64
Pingeron, Jean Claude, 26
Pitt, William, 103
Place, Francis, 166
pleasure and pain, 43, 50, 84, 137, 186
Poland, 3536, 69, 212
Poniatowski, Stanislaw Augustus, king of
Poland, 35, 69
229
poor relief, 113, 145, 147, 15053, 20304

Portalis, Jean Etienne Marie, 136, 14042
Porter, Roy, 9
Portugal, 3, 87, 163, 165, 175
Potemkin, Grigorii Aleksandrovich, 67
Price, Richard, 9, 11, 37, 54, 99, 105
Prideaux, Humphrey, 33
Priestley, Joseph, 11, 28, 4950, 54, 99, 101
prisons, 62, 68, 113, 152
property, 85, 90, 119, 120, 141, 144, 146,
201
Prussia, 59, 73, 77, 83
see also, Frederick II of Prussia (the Great)
public opinion, 90, 91, 177, 180
public opinion tribunal, 89, 180
publicity, 81, 119, 180
punishment, 58, 60, 89, 183
Queens College, Oxford, 3, 23
Queens Square Place, Westminster, 6, 100, 161,
174, 187, 199
radicalism, 1011, 53, 83, 165, 201
Rayneval, Mathias Joseph Gerard de, 38
reasons of laws, 82, 142, 158
Reform Act, 16, 199
republicanism, 8, 83, 94
Restoration, 5, 15, 16061, 164, 167, 173, 175, 177,
178, 201
Rey, Joseph, 168, 174
Ricardo, David, 166, 193
rights of man, 7, 11, 90, 94, 120, 146
Robespierre, Maximilien de, 124, 12930, 188
Roederer, Pierre Louis, 135, 139, 141, 156
Roman law, 4, 62, 7071, 9091, 140
Romilly, Anne, 141, 149, 157
Romilly, Samuel, 62, 93, 97, 99101, 104, 111, 115,
130, 134, 14041, 155, 157, 181, 184
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 8, 50, 61, 72, 83, 122,
146, 158, 191
Considerations on the Government of Poland,
50, 72, 83
Royal Society, 39, 50
Rumford, Benjamin Thompson, count, 130, 148,
156
Russia, 16, 50, 59, 61, 6469, 83, 93, 97, 102,
108
Saint-Simon, Claude-Henri de, 6, 8, 19395
sanction
legal, 47
moral, 25
popular, 88, 177
religious, 51
230
Index
Say, Jean-Baptiste, 6, 163, 16667, 169, 172, 174,

176, 184, 19294, 198, 202
Schwediauer, Francois Xavier, 4, 4953, 6465
Philosophical Dictionary, 4952
Scottish moralists, 132
security, 5, 85, 119, 141, 14445, 178
against misrule, 8889
Sellon, Jean Jacques de, 182
Sieyès, Emmanuel Joseph, 15, 11112, 122, 125,
140
slavery, 85
Smith, Adam, 10, 50, 146, 194
Solander, David, 50, 64
Spain, 3, 163, 165, 169, 171, 175, 179
Spinoza, Baruch, 10
St Helens, Alleyne FitzHerbert, first baron,
103
Stackhouse, Thomas, 34
Stael, Germaine de, 6, 18493, 204
Stanhope, Charles Mahon, third Earl, 10506
Stanhope, Leicester Fitzgerald Charles,
171
Stendhal, Henri Beyle, dit, 1, 16, 184
Stoicism, 137
Suard, Jean Baptiste Antoine, 135
sympathy, 51, 132, 18687
Talleyrand, Charles Maurice de, 15, 103, 114, 135,
136, 140, 156, 157, 159
Ternaux, Guillaume Louis, 171, 17576
Terror, 5, 94, 100, 103, 114, 121, 124, 126, 173,
187
Torombert, Honore, 191
Tripoli, 22, 178
Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques, 107, 194
Unitarians, 11
United States of America, 5, 13, 70, 120, 160, 179
Universal Grammar, 25
usury, 19495
utilitarianism
and religion, 34
as a doctrine, 12, 4, 7, 16, 36, 41, 132, 136,
162, 164, 185, 188, 191, 20004
French, 5, 70, 199
rule vs. act, 137
utility, principle of, 4, 22, 39, 42, 44, 53, 80, 132,
136, 142, 184, 189, 192
Vaughan, Benjamin, 93, 97, 99100, 10304, 113
Venturi, Franco, 9
Volney, Constantin-Francois Chassebuf de La
Giraudais, comte Volney, dit, 124
Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet, dit, 1, 3, 1011,
23, 25, 28, 3033, 3839, 4142, 45, 5053,
5860, 72, 105, 137, 159, 200
Essay on Manners, 23
Le Taureau Blanc (The White Bull), 25, 28,
3031
Philosophical Dictionary, 31, 72
Prix de la justice et de lhumanite, 60
Westminster School, 3, 23
Whiggism, 8, 165, 184
Wilberforce, William, 101, 103, 147
Wilson, George, 27, 67, 99, 104
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 11
Woolston, Thomas, 31
Wright, Frances, 173
Young, Arthur, 147
ideas i n context
Edited by
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1 r i c h a r d r o r t y , j . b . s c h n e e w i n d a n d q u e n t i n s k i n n e r (eds.)
Philosophy in History
Essays in the historiography of philosophy
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2 j.g.a. pocock
Virtue, Commerce and History
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3 m .m . g ol d s m ith
Private Vices, Public Benefits
Bernard Mandevilles social and political thought
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The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe
pb 978 0 521 38666 1
5 david summers
The Judgment of Sense
Renaissance naturalism and the rise of aesthetics
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6 laurence dickey
Hegel: Religion, Economics and the Politics of Spirit, 17701807
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7 margo todd
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8 lynn sumida joy
Gassendi the Atomist
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9 e d m u n d l e i t e s (ed.)
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10 w o l f l e p e n i e s
Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology
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11 t e r e n c e ba l l, j a m e s f a r r a n d r u s s e l l l . h a n s o n (eds.)
Political Innovation and Conceptual Change
pb 978 0 521 35978 8
12 g e r d g i g e r e n z e r et al.
The Empire of Chance
How probability changed science and everyday life
pb 978 0 521 39838 1
13 peter n ovick
That Noble Dream
The objectivity question and the American historical profession
hb 978 0 521 34328 2
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14 d a v i d l i e b e r m a n
The Province of Legislation Determined
Legal theory in eighteenth-century Britain
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15 d a n i e l pick
Faces of Degeneration
A European disorder, c.1848c.1918
pb 978 0 521 45753 8
16 k e i t h ba k e r
Inventing the French Revolution
Essays on French political culture in the eighteenth century
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17 i a n h a c k i n g
The Taming of Chance
hb 978 0 521 38014 0
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18 g i s el a b ock, q u e n t i n s k i n n e r a n d m a u r i z i o v i r o l i (eds.)
Machiavelli and Republicanism
pb 978 0 521 43589 5
19 d or ot hy r os s
The Origins of American Social Science
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20 k l a u s c h r i s t i a n ko h n k e
The Rise of Neo-Kantianism
German Academic Philosophy between Idealism and Positivism
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21 i a n m a c l e a n
Interpretation and Meaning in the Renaissance
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22 m a ur i z i o v iroli
From Politics to Reason of State
The Acquisition and Transformation of the Language of Politics 12501600
hb 978 0 521 41493 7
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23 m a r t i n v a n ge l d e r e n
The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt 15551590
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24 n i c h o l a s p h i l l i p s o n a n d qu e n t i n s k i n n e r (eds.)
Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain
hb 978 0 521 39242 6
25 j a m e s t u l l y
An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts
hb 978 0 521 43060 9
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26 r i c h a r d t u c k
Philosophy and Government 15721651
pb 978 0 521 43885 8
27 r i c h a r d y e o
Defining Science
William Whewell, Natural Knowledge and Public Debate in Early Victorian
Britain
hb 978 0 521 43182 8
pb 978 0 521 54116 9
28 m a r t i n w a r n k e
The Court Artist
On the Ancestry of the Modern Artist
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29 p e t e r n . m i l l e r
Defining the Common Good
Empire, Religion and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain
hb 978 0 521 44259 6
pb 978 0 521 61712 3
30 c h r i s t o p h e r j. be r r y
The Idea of Luxury
A Conceptual and Historical Investigation
pb 978 0 521 46691 2
31 e . j . h u n d e r t
The Enlightenments Fable
Bernard Mandeville and the Discovery of Society
hb 978 0 521 46082 8
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32 j u l i a s t a p l e t o n
Englishness and the Study of Politics
The Social and Political Thought of Ernest Barker
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33 kei t h t r ibe
Strategies of Economic Order
German Economic Discourse, 17501950
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34 s a c h i k o ku s u k a w a
The Transformation of Natural Philosophy
The Case of Philip Melanchthon
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35 d a v i d a rm ita ge , a r m a n d h i m y a n d qu e n t i n s k i n n e r (eds.)
Milton and Republicanism
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36 m a r k k u p e l t o n e n
Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought
15701640
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37 philip ironside
The Social and Political Thought of Bertrand Russell
The Development of an Aristocratic Liberalism
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38 n a n c y ca r t w r i g h t, jordi ca t , l o l a f l e c k a n d
thomas e. uebel
Otto Neurath:
Philosophy between Science and Politics
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39 d ona l d w i nch
Riches and Poverty
An Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain, 17501834
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40 j e n n i f e r p l a t t
A History of Sociological Research Methods in America
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41 k n u d h a a k o n s s e n (ed.)
Enlightenment and Religion
Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain
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42 g . e . r . l l o y d
Adversaries and Authorities
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43 r o l f l i n d n e r
The Reportage of Urban Culture
Robert Park and the Chicago School
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44 a n n a b e l br e t t
Liberty, Right and Nature
Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought
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45 s t e w a r t j. br o w n (ed.)
William Robertson and the Expansion of Empire
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46 h e l e n a r o s e n b l a t t
Rousseau and Geneva
From the First Discourse to the Social Contract, 17491762
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47 d a v i d r un cim a n
Pluralism and the Personality of the State
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48 a n n a b e l pa t t e r s o n
Early Modern Liberalism
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49 d a v i d we i n s t e i n
Equal Freedom and Utility
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50 y u n l e e t o o a n d n i a l l l i v i n g s t o n e (eds.)
Pedagogy and Power
Rhetorics of Classical Learning
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51 r e v i e l n e t z
The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics
A Study in Cognitive History
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52 m a r y s . m o r g a n a n d m a r g a r e t m o r r i s o n (eds.)
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Perspectives in Natural and Social Science
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53 j oe l m i c h ell
Measurement in Psychology
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54 r i c h a r d a . pr i m u s
The American Language of Rights
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55 r o b e r t a l u n j o n e s
The development of Durkheims Social Realism
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56 a n n e m c l a r e n
Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I
Queen and Commonwealth 15581585
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57 j a m e s h a n k i n s (ed.)
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Reappraisals and Reflections
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58 t . j . h o c h s t r a s s e r
Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment
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59 d a v i d a r m i ta ge
The Ideological Origins of the British Empire
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60 i a n h u n t e r
Rival Enlightenments
Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany
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The History of Political Thought in National Context
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62 i a n m a c l e a n
Logic, Signs and Nature in the Renaissance
The Case of Learned Medicine
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63 p e t e r m a c k
Elizabethan Rhetoric
Theory and Practice
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64 g e o f f r e y l l o y d
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65 m a r k k u p e l t o n e n
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66 a d a m s u t c l i f f e
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67 a n d r e w f i t z m a u r i c e
Humanism and America
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68 p i e r r e f o r c e
Self-Interest before Adam Smith
A Genealogy of Economic Science
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69 e r i c n e l s o n
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70 h a r r o h o p f l
Jesuit Political Thought
The Society of Jesus and the state, c.15401640
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71 m i k a e l h o r n q v i s t
Machiavelli and Empire
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72 david colclough
Freedom of Speech in Early Stuart England
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73 j ohn r oberts on
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Scotland and Naples 16801760
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74 d a n i e l c a r e y
Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson
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75 a l a n c r o m a r t i e
The Constitutionalist Revolution
An Essay on the History of England, 14501642
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76 h a n n a h d a w s o n
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77 c o n a l c o n d r e n , s t e p h e n ga u k r o g e r a n d i a n h u n t e r (eds.)
The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe
The Nature of a Contested Identity
hb 978 0 521 86646 0
78 a n g u s g o w l a n d
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Robert Burton in Context
hb 978 0 521 86768 9
79 p e t e r s t a c e y
Roman Monarchy and the Renaissance Prince
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80 r h o d r i l e w i s
Language, Mind and Nature
Artificial Languages in England from Bacon to Locke
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81 d a v i d l e opold
The Young Karl Marx
German Philosophy, Modern Politics, and Human Flourishing
hb 978 0 521 87477 9
82 jon parkin
Taming the Leviathan
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England 16401700
hb 978 0 521 87735 0
83 d we i n s t e i n
Utilitarianism and the New Liberalism
hb 978 0 521 87528 8
84 l u c y d e l a p
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Transatlantic Encounters of the Early Twentieth Century
hb 978 0 521 87651 3
85 b o r i s wi s e m a n
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86 d u n c a n b e l l (ed.)
Victorian Visions of Global Order
Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought
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87 i a n h u n t e r
The Secularisation of the Confessional State
The Political Thought of Christian Thomasius
hb 978 0 521 88055 8
88 c h r i s t i a n j e m d e n
Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of History
hb 978 0 521 88056 5
89 a n n e l i e n d e d i j n
French Political thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville
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hb 978 0 521 87788 6
90 p e t e r ga r n s e y
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From Antiquity to the Age of Revolution
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91 p e n e l o p e d e u t s c h e r
The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir
Ambiguity, Conversion, Resistance
hb 978 0 521 88520 1
92 h e l e n a r o s e n b l a t t
Liberal Values
Benjamin Constant and the Politics of Religion
hb 978 0 521 89825 6
Public Philosophy in a New Key
Volume 1: Democracy and Civic Freedom
hb 978 0 521 44961 8
pb 978 0 521 72879 9
Public Philosophy in a New Key
Volume 2: Imperialism and Civic Freedom
hb 978 0 521 44966 3
pb 978 0 521 72880 5
95 d on a l d win ch
Wealth and Life
Essays on the Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain, 18481914
hb 978 0 521 88753 3
pb 978 0 521 71539 3
96 f o n n a f o r m a n - b a r z i l a i
Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy
Cosmopolitanism and Moral Theory
hb 978 0 521 76112 3
97 g r e g o r y cl a e y s
Imperial Sceptics
British Critics of Empire 18501920
hb 978 0 521 19954 4
98 e d w a r d b a r i n g
The Young Derrida and French Philosophy, 19451968
hb 978 1 107 00967 7
99 c a r o l pa l
Republic of Women
Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century
hb 978 1 107 01821 1
100 c . a . b a y l y
Recovering Liberties
Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire
hb 978 1 107 01383 4
pb 978 1 107 60147 5
101 f e l i c i t y gr e e n
Montaigne and the Life of Freedom
hb 978 1 107 02439 7
102 j o s h u a d e r m a n
Max Weber in Politics and Social Thought
From Charisma to Canonization
hb 978 1 107 02588 2
103 r a i n e r f o r s t
(translated by Ciaran Cronin)
Toleration in Conflict
Past and Present
hb 978 0 521 88577 5
104 s o p h i e r e a d
Eucharist and the Poetic Imagination in Early Modern England
hb 978 1 107 03273 6
105 m a r t i n r u e h l
The Italian Renaissance in the German Historical Imagination 18601930
hb 978 1 107 03699 4
106 g eor g i os va rou xa kis

Liberty Abroad
J.S. Mill on International Relations
hb 978 1 107 03914 8
107 a n d r e w f i t z m a u r i c e
Sovereignty, Property and Empire, 15002000
hb 978 1 107 07649 5
108 b e n j a m i n s t r a u m a n n
Roman Law in the State of Nature
The Classical Foundations of Hugo Grotius Natural Law
hb 978 1 107 09290 7
109 l i i s i ke e d u s
The Crisis of German Historicism
The Early Political Thought of Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss
hb 978 1 107 09303 4
110 e m m a n u e l l e d e c h a m p s
Enlightenment and Utility
Bentham in French, Bentham in France
hb 978 1 107 09867 1

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ENL IGHTENMENT AND U T IL IT Y

Jeremy Bentham, the founder of classical utilitarianism, was a seminal

EN LIGHT ENMENT AND

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

Satire and polemics

Defining utilitarianism: private connections and

part ii: project for a complete body of laws

4 The Genesis of Projet

Projet in Enlightenment legal thought

The politics of legal reform

part iii: reflections for the revolution in france

Frenchmen and Francophiles: Lord Lansdownes network

British expertise for French legislators

Utility, rights and revolution: missed encounters?

part iv: 1802: bentham in paris

10 Dumonts editorship: from the Biblioth`eque britannique to

12 Autumn 1802: Three weeks in Paris

part v: liberty, utility and rights (18151832)

13 For one disciple in this country, I have fifty at least in

Utilitarian arguments in French politics

A utilitarian moment? French liberals and utilitarianism

Epilogue: Bentham in the July Revolution

This book was first presented as an habilitation thesis at University Paris

To improve readability, all quotes originally written in French have been

Covering Benthams formative years, Part I studies the Enlightenment

played a part in the interest taken by the French liberal opposition in

Tracing the history of the French Bentham forces us to reconsider national

To this day utilitarianism, both classical and contemporary, is felt in France

In Britain, Israel believes Unitarian thinkers were most representative of

24 See Note 20, above.

volumes of his active and passive correspondence, it is possible to recover

As Liebermans reference to Dumont implies, and as the pioneering studies

D. Lieberman, Economy and Polity in Benthams Science of Legislation, in Economy, Polity

Recent works in English on post-revolutionary politics include M. Staum, Minervas Message.

The ultimate failure of utilitarianism to be recognised within French

An Englishman in the Republic of Letters

Reading and speaking: Bentham and the French language

Part I An Englishman in the Republic of Letters

modern elements of Fenelons doctrine were regularly praised. Physiocrats,

Part I An Englishman in the Republic of Letters

of words and rules of agreement) were more than compensated by his

Bentham related the length of sentences to the hierarchical position of the

name of something higher than the king himself: by appealing to morals

Part I An Englishman in the Republic of Letters

wrote, scarcely any acquaintance in Paris.24 The few names mentioned in

After his return to London, Bentham supplemented the income provided

Bowring, vol. X, 66.

who ended up in debtors prison.29 In his dealings with Elmsley, Bentham

Part I An Englishman in the Republic of Letters

digesting and expelling it so that it could be sold to the mob. In comparing

The White Bull, vol. I, vlvi.

The White Bull, vol. II, 113, 66, 136, 112.

Benthams practice of translation may have been limited in quantity but

Though bearing universally relevant values, a text had to be accommodated

Satire and polemics

Religious satire: the English Voltaire

The White Bull, vol. I, ix.

Satire and polemics

Nebuchadnezzar to finally recover his human form and be reunited with

Part I An Englishman in the Republic of Letters

Beneath the irony, Voltaires message was unambiguous: the moral

Satire and polemics