Jones G.S., Claeys G. The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought
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II
Modern liberty and its defenders
8
From Jeremy Bentham’s
radical philosophy to J. S. Mill’s
philosophic radicalism
frederick rosen
The object of this essay is to explore the main philosophical features of
Jeremy Bentham’s (1748–1832) radical thought and to identify those aspects
which were later accepted or rejected by John Stuart Mill (1806–73)inhis
conception of philosophic radicalism. It is a study in the development and
transmission of a set of ideas that helped to define the nature of philosophy
and its application to politics in Britain and elsewhere in the first decades of
the nineteenth century. It was believed and argued that truth in numerous
fields, from politics to logic, possessed great utility (see Mill 1974, CWM,
vii,pp.11–12). The enhancement of understanding could lead to the relief
of human suffering and the advancement of happiness. It would be wrong
to see these fundamental beliefs as simply a development of a universal
rationalism associated with the Enlightenment. Although Mill could write
that ‘if there were but one rational being in the universe, that being might
be a perfect logician’ (Mill 1974, CWM, vii,p.6), neither Bentham nor Mill
expected everyone to philosophise or seek the truth. But the recognition
of the utility of truth led to a new kind of politics, theoretically open to all
and inspired by a philosophical concer n for truth, which dared, however
gradually, to transform the lives of everyone. This transformation was to
be achieved through a critical vision of society, released from oppression
and ignorance to find security and happiness in new laws, institutions and
practices.
Several topics will not be considered here. The fairly narrow empha-
sis in modern scholarship on Mill’s interpretation of Bentham’s principle
of utility in Utilitarianism has been discussed elsewhere (see Rosen 2003,
pp. 166–206). The nature of political radicalism and the circumstances sur-
rounding Bentham’s conversion to radicalism either at the time of the French
Revolution or in 1809–10 with the subsequent publication of Plan of Par-
liamentary Reform in 1817 has generated a considerable literature, but one
that has not generally attempted to discover what was unique and important
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Frederick Rosen
in Bentham’s philosophical approach to politics.
1
Finally, the Benthamite
contribution to the nineteenth-century revolution in government, which
has focused more on influence rather than on inheritance on the one hand,
and on politics and government to the exclusion of philosophic method on
the other, will not be discussed here.
2
This essay begins in 1802 with the publication of the Tra i t
´
es de L
´
egislation
Civile et P
´
enale (henceforth Tr ait
´
es), the first of the recensions of Bentham’s
writings prepared by
´
Etienne Dumont (1759–1829). Recent commentators
have tended to criticise Dumont’s achievement in terms of the oversimplifi-
cation and even the falsification of some of Bentham’s ideas (see Baumgardt
1952,pp.324–5; Bentham 1932, pp. xxix–xxx). Although there is some
truth in these criticisms, as Dumont consciously attempted to present a
more readable (and less controversial) version of Bentham’s thought, and
may easily have missed the meaning of some of his ideas (like the theory
of fictions), there is a danger in failing to appreciate the importance of the
Tra it
´
es and the other recensions in the development of Bentham’s thought
(see Lieberman 2000,p.108; cf. Schofield 2003,p.5n).
3
This issue has
tended to be intertwined with another concerning the weight to be given
to the Tra i t
´
es in this development. Baumgardt, for example, entitled his
chapter on An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)
(henceforth IPML) – ‘The Main Theme’ – and that on the Tr a i t
´
es as ‘The
French Interlude’ to signify the relative status of the two works (Baumgardt
1952,pp.163, 321). Both Baumgardt (1952,p.325) and Ogden (Bentham
1932, p. xxx) criticise earlier commentators (see Everett 1931,p.197;Hal
´
evy
1901–4, ii,p.357) for ignoring the philosophical significance of Bentham’s
later writings, but they inadvertently have contributed to this neglect by
failing to appreciate the new era of philosophical writing ushered in with
the publication of the Trait
´
es itself. While it is generally agreed that the
Tra it
´
es led to the massive enhancement of Bentham’s reputation throughout
theworld(seeDinwiddy1992b, p. 294), what has gone relatively unnoticed
is the stimulus given to Bentham’s philosophical ambitions as a result of the
Tra it
´
es.
1 See Bentham 1817, 1999, 2002a; Burns 1966; Crimmins 1994; Dinwiddy 1975;James1986;Mack
1962;Rosen2004; Schofield 1999a, 1999b.
2 See Brebner 1948; Conway 1990a, 1990b, 1991; Cromwell 1966; Finer 1972;Hart1965; Hume 1967;
MacDonagh 1958;Parris1960;Roberts1959.
3 Besides Bentham 1802, see Bentham 1811, 1816, 1823b, 1828, from which numerous editions and
translations followed (see Ikeda et al. 1989). See also the first collected Dumont edition (Bentham
1829–30), which was reissued in 1832 with a fur ther edition in 1840.
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In 1802 Bentham was fifty-three years old, but hardly at the pinnacle
of his career. His great practical project, the Panopticon prison system, on
which he had devoted so much time and energy, was doomed to failure
(see Semple 1993). If one considers his writings just prior to the appearance
of the Tra i t
´
es, they seem to be confined to issues surrounding Panopticon,
the poor laws and economic policy (see Bentham 1984,pp.487–8). In the
decades following its publication he began a number of works of philosoph-
ical significance, such as the writings on evidence and judicial procedure,
codification, education, logic, language, fallacies, religion, ethics and psy-
chology. Much of this material, covering thousands of manuscript folios,
looked back to the Tr a i t
´
es, which in turn provided a window to Bentham’s
earliest publications, such as A Fragment on Government (1776)andIPML,
which had been virtually forgotten by this time.
The Trait
´
es possesses an additional significance for this essay in that the
answer given by Robson to the question, ‘Which Bentham was Mill’s
Bentham?’ (‘if forced to answer in one word’) is ‘Dumont’s’ (Robson 1993,
i,p.206). For the Tr ait
´
es, read by Mill in 1821, was a major feature in his
earliest study of Bentham (see Robson 1993, i,p.197). Mill’s interest in the
Tra it
´
es was probably enhanced by the fact that he read it after his return from
France, where he acquired a fluency in that language during his visit with
Samuel Bentham’s (1757–1831) family (see Robson 1993, i,p.205; see also
Mill 1981, CWM, i,pp.577). It is arguable that the Tr a i t
´
es formed a lens
through which Mill read much of Bentham, and it focused Mill’s ideas in a
particular manner.
To the one-word answer to his question, Robson then added a footnote:
‘There is a major implication here that makes me a bit uneasy: i.e., that
Mill’s Bentham is the Continental (and indeed international) Bentham. Was
there, in Bentham’s lifetime at least, a significant English Bentham (one not
seen through Dumont)?’ (Robson 1993, i,p.208n). To this further question,
left unanswered by Robson, a provisional answer will be attempted here.
Dumont’s recensions presented Bentham mainly as a philosopher and jurist
and as a bridge from the Enlightenment to nineteenth-century thought.
Bentham’s radical, democratic views, particularly prominent after 1809–10
in his manuscripts and after 1817
with the publication of Plan
of Parliamentary
Reform, were of little importance to Dumont (see Dinwiddy 1992b, pp. 297–
9). If Mill’s Bentham was that of Dumont, Mill’s conception of philosophic
radicalism would have to deal with this discrepancy. As we shall see, Mill
attempted to reject Benthamite political radicalism (and what he saw as
its narrow self-regarding foundations) while at the same time adopting
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Frederick Rosen
and building on Bentham’s philosophical ideas generally, except for the
philosophic ideas not found in Dumont’s recensions – such as the writings
on language and logic. How Mill did this and how he was understood
will be explored in several respects in this essay. We shall also consider
Mill’s personal response to his inheritance from Bentham and his father,
which complicated his endeavours to establish ‘philosophic radicalism’ in
the 1830s.
1 Dumont’s Tr ait
´
es
The publication of Dumont’s Tra i t
´
es was greeted enthusiastically by Ben-
tham. When he received the proofs of the first two volumes in May 1802,
he wrote: ‘You have set me a strutting, my dear Dumont, like a fop in a
Coat spick-and-span from the Taylor’s’ (Bentham 1988a, p. 28). Bentham
had known Dumont since 1788, when, on his return from visiting his
brother Samuel in Russia, he became an active member of the Lansdowne
circle (see Blamires 1990). William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne and 1st
Marquis of Lansdowne (1737–1805) provided the resources and contacts in
France that were exploited by Bentham, Samuel Romilly (1757–1818)and
Dumont, leading to the publication of several of Bentham’s works or parts
of works by Dumont who was then also closely associated with Mirabeau
(see Bentham 1999 [1816], pp. xvi–xxvi, 2002, pp. xvii ff.; Dumont 1832).
Although Bentham did not have direct contact with Lansdowne after 1796
(Bentham 1984,p.400n), and the writings for France ceased with the anti-
Jacobin reaction, Bentham maintained his close friendships with Romilly
and Dumont. Dumont seems to have begun editorial work on the Tr a it
´
es,
at least by 1796, and some of the material was published in the Genevan
journal, Biblioth
`
eque Britannique between 1796 and 1798 (see Bentham 1981,
p. 200n). The whole project was fraught with difficulty. Dumont had to
obtain various manuscripts from a hesitant and even reluctant Bentham and
transform them into readable essays. Furthermore, when a French trans-
lation of some of Bentham’s Poor Law writings was to appear in 1802,
Dumont feared that it would not achieve an extensive circulation. The
publishers of the Tr a i t
´
es, Martin Bossange, similarly feared that there might
be a financial loss with the three-volume Trait
´
es, and only the interven-
tion of Talleyrand, then foreign minister under Napoleon, guaranteed its
publication on favourable terms (see Bentham 1984,pp.465
–7).
As
we have noted, the Tra i t
´
es, together with Dumont’s other recen-
sions, achieved large sales for philosophical works at this time, were widely
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distributed throughout the world, and were translated into numerous lan-
guages. But what were Bentham and Dumont attempting to achieve with
this first and most important of the recensions? As he had worked with Ben-
tham for many years, Dumont was well aware of the numerous important
manuscripts on legislation that Bentham had written but never completed.
For a variety of reasons, they were simply left to gather dust on his shelves.
Alternatively, once Bentham had made a draft or even an outline of a work,
he would often abandon it for more pressing or novel tasks. For Dumont,
these were valuable works, even in outline form, which should have been
completed and published.
When he received the proofs of part of the Tr a i t
´
es, Bentham, as we have
seen, was delighted. In the course of several letters to Dumont which con-
tained comments and corrections, he composed some notes for Dumont’s
‘puff Preface’, which, though not used by Dumont, provide an interest-
ing picture of Bentham’s thought at this time (see Bentham 1988a, p. 24).
Bentham first called attention to var ious thinkers who had developed a fun-
damental principle for morals and politics: ‘some cant word, or short form
of words, such as should serve as a sort of hook on which to hang the several
particular opinions and tenets of which their prejudices and passions with or
without the suggestion of interest had been productive . . . ’ (see Bentham
1988a, p. 24). Thus, in favouring absolute monarchy, Hobbes used the idea
of Leviathan and Filmer, the principle of parental power. In hoping to limit
monarchy, Locke developed the ‘fiction’ of the original contract. Bishop
Warburton used the ‘fiction’ of the alliance between church and state to
give certain people as much power as possible in society. Rousseau invented
his ‘fiction’ of the social contract in order to recommend democracy. The
principle of utility, however, was a different sort of principle. It would at
times agree and at other times disagree with the various principles of these
writers. Because of this potential opposition it was often ‘received with
coldness[,] aversion and neglect by all parties’ (Bentham 1988a, pp. 25–6).
Like many of his contemporaries Bentham regarded himself as a follower
of Bacon and Newton, but he used his discipleship to highlight his con-
cern with sensation and experience on the one hand, and obser vation and
experiment on the other. He liked to employ the analogy with medicine
and declared that many other writers on politics and morals would mistak-
enly expect diseases to be cured by a declaration of a right to good health.
Or they would proceed (as he thought that Locke and Rousseau had done)
by turning round and round in a circle, like the followers of Aristotle did
in physics, by defining one word by another until they returned to the first
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Frederick Rosen
word (Bentham 1988a, pp. 26–7). Bentham claimed to move slowly and
cautiously forward observing the connection between various acts and the
sensations felt by those involved:
while others were teaching legislation in matters of criminal law by declamations against
individual depravity on one hand and legal cruelty and tyranny on the other J.B. was
investigating the sensations produced in the breasts of the several parties affected and
interested by crimes and other pernicious acts: and according to the result of the
investigation in each case referring the act to its place in a system of classification in
the construction of which no lawyer nor any moralist but the Limdus’s [Linnaeus] the
Sauvages [Franc¸ois Boissier de Sauvages] and the Cullen’s [William Cullen] were his
guides. His division of offences is the Nosology of the body politic: in it offences are
classed as in the other case diseases according to the sensations produced or prevented
from being produced (the painful produced the pleasurable prevented) in each case and
accordingtothemannerinwhich...theeffectismadetotakeplace.(Bentham1988a,
p. 27)
Bentham’s proposed preface looked back to IPML, written more than two
decades earlier, and called attention to two important chapters (ii and xvi)
in that work (also reworked for the Tra i t
´
es) (see Bentham 1996 [1789],
pp. 17–33, 187–280, 1802, i,pp.10–21, ii,pp.240ff.). In chapter ii of IPML
Bentham listed a number of phrases employed by philosophers, such as
‘moral sense’, ‘common sense’, ‘understanding’, ‘rule of right’, ‘fitness of
things’, ‘law of nature’, ‘law of reason’, ‘right reason’, ‘natural justice’, ‘nat-
ural equity’, ‘good order’, ‘truth’ and ‘doctrine of election’, as foundations
of their systems, which he simply dismissed as meaningless, reflecting only
the feelings and prejudices of their authors (Bentham 1996 [1789], pp. 26n–
9n). In his proposals for a preface to the Tra it
´
es, Bentham focused more on
moral and political principles (i.e. those of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, etc.)
but dismissed them in a similar fashion.
In chapter xvi (the longest and most complex in IPML) he set out a
complex classification of all possible offences within any society, which
could then be used as the basis of a successful penal code. These chapters
in turn reflected Bentham’s method, which he, as we have seen, linked
more with medicine and botany than with traditional political philosophy.
The principle of utility was not an alternative to theories of the social
contract or of rights, because it rested on different foundations, concerned
with observation and experiment rather than the advocacy of particular
principles or arrangements. In the material on offences he was concerned
with the ways certain actions caused pain or harm to members of society and
hence did or did not deserve to be considered offences. Unlike Beccaria,
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Eden, Howard and others he did not take up an ideological position either in
favour of or against severe punishments (see Draper 1997, 2000, 2001; Rosen
2003,pp.144–65). The outcome in terms of leniency or severity depended
on the analysis of particular offences. Established sexual or religious offences
in a society might be treated with greater leniency, if they were observed
to cause less pain than murder and assault, but other offences might best be
treated more severely if they were to be deterred. To believe in leniency or
severity in punishment would not solve the complex problems associated
with designating which actions should be offences and how the offences
should be punished. Much additional work would be required.
John Stuart Mill was much taken with both of these chapters. In the
Autobiography he wrote regarding chapter ii that ‘the feeling rushed upon
me, that all previous moralists were superseded, and t hat here indeed was
the commencement of a new era in thought’ (Mill 1981, CWM, i,p.67).
As for the classification of offences in chapter xvi, which he preferred in
the version in the Trait
´
es over the more complex presentation in IPML,he
wrote:
I felt taken up to an eminence from which I could survey a vast mental domain, and
see stretching out into the distance intellectual results beyond all computation. As I
proceeded further, there seemed to be added to this intellectual clearness, the most
inspiring prospects of practical improvement in human affairs. (Mill 1981, CWM, i,
p. 69)
Mill then went on to declare that when he completed the Tra it
´
es (what
Packe 1954,p.49 has called ‘a rite of initiation’), ‘I had become a different
being.’ ‘It gave unity to my conception of things’, he continued. ‘I now had
opinions; a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy; in one among the best senses of
the word, a religion; the inculcation and diffusion of which could be made
the principal outward purpose of a life’ (Mill 1981, CWM, i,p.69).
2 Evidence
Within a year of the publication of the Tra i t
´
es in 1802, Bentham began
serious writing on the theme of evidence (Bentham 1988a, p. 250 and n;
see also Lewis 1990,pp.203–4). While it is tempting to see him turning
from the failure of the Panopticon project to evidence and hence to treat
the work on evidence as partly politically motivated, revealing a period of
transition to his acceptance of political radicalism in 1809 (see Twining 1985,
p. 24), it is more plausible to suggest that Bentham was stimulated by the
263