wholly external to the mind: it then becomes pleasure. Pleasure, then, must be the sole object of human action; and Pleasure variously transformed must give rise to all the virtues. If you are not satisfied with this, he cries, Show me any other external object which men either do care for or can care for. Summum Bonum, Honestum, kaλóv, why should they care for these if they give them no pleasure? And if they do, say so boldly, and have done with it. Of course the answer is, that we are so made that we do care for things on other grounds than are expressed, in any common and simple way, by saying they give us pleasure. Men's care for justice, honesty, truth, and female purity, is not expressed in any appropriate or intelligible or adequate way, by saying that these give them pleasure. Men are so constituted as to care for these things. But this idea of a constitution in man, an internal condition of morality, was quite out of Bentham's field of view. No, he said: I want you to point out the thing which men get, and try to get, by virtuous action. If you will not do this, I cannot understand you. If you do this, you must come to my standard. And this habit of mind was, I conceive, in him, not affected, but real and after a while, broke out, as I have said, in the most boisterous ridicule of all who differed from him.

In quitting these general considerations, and turning to detail, it would be unjust to Bentham not to allow that in that portion of Ethics in which his principle is really applicable, there is a great deal of felicity, and even of impressiveness, in the manner in which he follows out his doctrine. I speak of the virtues and duties which depend directly upon Benevolence. He enjoins kindness, gentleness, patience, meekness, good humour, in a manner which makes him conspicuous among the kindlier moralists. He has for instance such precepts as this: "Never do evil for mere ill

desert", with many other like precepts (209), &c. At the same time, it must be said that a great many of the precepts which he thus gives are rather rules of good manners than rules of morality. And though he extends his injunctions to the subjects of discourse and action in a wider view, he appears to be most at home in pointing out what Civility, or, as he calls it, negative efficient Benevolence, requires us to do, and to refrain from, in the very rudest provinces of good manners; and this he traces with a gravity and a technical physiological detail which are truly astounding†.

*Deontol. II. 193.

Ibid. 237, &c.

LECTURE XVI.

BENTHAM-CLASSIFICATION OF OFFENSES.

I

HAVE found myself obliged to speak with so much dispraise of Bentham's arrogance and unfairness, and of the narrow and erroneous basis of his moral philosophy, that you may perhaps not expect me to find in him anything which is valuable. This however is far from being the case. He laboured assiduously to reduce jurisprudence to a system; and such an attempt, if carried through with any degree of consistency, could hardly fail to lead to valuable results. In a body of knowledge so wide and various, all system-making must bring into view real connexions and relations of parts; and even if the basis of the system be wrong, the connexions and relations which it points out will admit of being translated into the terms of a truer philosophy. As Bacon says, truth emerges from error, sooner than from confusion. But Bentham's principle, of general advantage as the standard of good in actions, is really applicable to a very great extent in legislation; and covers almost the whole of the field with which the legislature is concerned. Almost, I say, not quite the whole and even this almost applies only to the material and external limitation of advantage, to which Bentham professes and endeavours to confine himself. If we make such advantage the absolute and uncorrected standard of law, we shall find that we cannot advance to the highest point of good legislation. But still the consideration of general utility, as the object of laws, extends so far, that an arrangement of the whole field of law, formed on this principle, will not fail to be interesting and instructive in a very high degree. Accordingly, the parts of Bentham's writings where

he employs himself on this task, appear to me to be both the one and the other. In his mode of performing the task, as in the whole of his writings, there are great merits and great drawbacks. The merits are, system, followed out with great acuteness, illustrated with great liveliness, and expressed in a neat, precise, luminous style; for at the period of which I speak he was content to construct English sentences, and to use English words; limitations which he afterwards discarded. The drawbacks are, the arrogance and self-conceit of which I have spoken, which breaks out from time to time, even in the most tranquil portions of his discussion. Moreover, though affecting much systematic rigour, he is really unable to carry out his system consistently into every part of his subject. Professing to classify offenses, for instance, by which he calls an exhaustive method, namely a method which exhausts all the kinds of difference among the things classified, and is therefore necessarily complete, he is really obliged frequently to desert his exhaustive process, and to take the classes which are suggested by the common habits of thought and language on such subjects. Thus he says of one such group (ch. xvii. p. 54): "It would be to little purpose to attempt tracing them out a priori by any exhaustive process: all that can be done is to pick up and hang together some of the principal articles in each catalogue by way of specimen." And he has several times to say things of this kind, in excuse of his deviations from his professed method*.

I will now give some account of that Chapter of Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation which is entitled Division of Offenses. I shall consider it in some measure with reference

*So Chap. XVIII. Par. x. note, Bentham laments: "But such is the fate of science, and more particularly of the moral branch; the distribution of things must in a great measure be dependent on their names arrangement, the work of mature reflection, must be ruled by nomenclature, the work of popular caprice."

to the classification of Rights which I have myself given, as one of the steps of Morality, and the enumeration of Wrongs according to the English and Roman Law, which I have given as exemplifying the historical form which this subject necessarily assumes *. Bentham, on the contrary, professes to classify Offenses or Wrongs in a manner independent of history, and equally applicable to the Laws of all Nations; -a bold, and, as I have said, an instructive attempt: but one which, I think, we have good reason for deeming incapable of full realization. His scheme, however, may very well serve to suggest corrections and completions, of which any other may stand in need; and I shall use it for this among other purposes. I shall not attempt to give the exhaustive process by which Bentham obtains his results, but shall briefly consider some of the results themselves.

His first division of Offenses is into five Classes, which are, 1. Private Offenses, detrimental to assignable individuals. 2. Semi-Public Offenses, detrimental to a class or circle of persons, but not to assignable individuals.

3. Self-regarding Offenses, against a man's self.

4. Public Offenses, against the whole community.

5. Multiform Offenses, (1) Offenses by Falsehood, (2) Offenses against Trust.

We already see the incongruity of the character of the fifth Class, as compared with the other four; we see that the difficulty of a homogeneous and symmetrical classification has not been overcome by Bentham; and this he fairly acknowledges. And notwithstanding this defect, we may allow that the classification is so far, good, simple, and convenient. Bentham subdivides these classes according to the interests which are affected; and thus he finds as Divisions of Class 1,

*Elements of Morality, including Polity, Book IV. (2nd edition.)