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decisions are classed with those of a superannuated judge, and the determination of moral causes is adjourned from the interior tribunal to the noisy forum of speculative debate.

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'Everything, without exception, is made an affair of calculation, under which are comprehended not merely the duties we owe to our fellow-creatures, but even the love and adoration which the Supreme Being claims at our hands. His claims are set aside, or suffered to lie in abeyance, until it can be determined how far they can be admitted on the principles of expediency, and in what respect they may interfere with the acquisition of temporal advantages. Even here, nothing is yielded to the suggestions of conscience, nothing to the movements of the heart: all is dealt out with a sparing hand, under the stint and measure of calculation. Instead of being allowed to love God with all our heart, and all our strength, the first and great commandment, the portion of love assigned him is weighed out with the utmost scrupulosity, and the supposed excess more severely censured than the real deficiency."

Pudet hæc opprobria nobis

Et dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli.

LECTURE XIII.

BENTHAM-HIS BIOGRAPHY-HIS STYLE OF DISCUSSION.

N order to complete our view of the progress of Moral

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Philosophy in England in recent times, I will give some account of Jeremy Bentham and his speculations on the subjects with which we are here concerned: for no moralist has been placed so high by his admirers, or has been more resolute and comprehensive in applying his principles to practical policy and legislation. The school of Bentham, for a time, afforded as near a resemblance as modern times can show, of the ancient schools of philosophy, which were formed and held together by an almost unbounded veneration for their master, and in which the disciples were content to place their glory in understanding and extending the master's principles. And though, to the general public, the Benthamite doctrines had an exceedingly harsh and repulsive aspect, and were made formidable by the sweeping purposes of reform with which they were connected; yet Bentham's real acuteness in discussion, his laborious perseverance, his exhibitions of complete and exhaustive systems of analysis and reasoning on many of the largest political questions; gave him great weight with many statesmen both at home and abroad. Perhaps few moral and political writers have exercised a greater influence upon their generation than he has done; and to us he is especially interesting as manifesting in a more complete and consistent form the results of that scheme of morality, which, in a less resolute manner, was put forwards by Paley.

Bentham lived in our own time, (he died in 1832 ;) and by

the ardent zeal of his disciples and admirers, and by his publications continued to the time of his death, and the references of other writers to them, was kept in a peculiar manner present to our minds as a contemporary. Yet by the earlier period of his life he belonged rather to the literature of the last century. He belonged to a club where he met Johnson* ; he was not much younger than Burke; he attended Blackstone's Vinerian lectures, and afterwards criticised the Commentaries as a contemporary work; he was anticipated unexpectedly by Paley in publishing a theory of morals founded upon Utility. But he was, through his long period of literary activity, eminently consistent. He adopted very early the views and doctrines which he employed his life in inculcating; and he also showed very early that peculiar onesidedness in his mode of asserting and urging his opinions which made him think all moderation with regard to his opponents superfluous and absurd. Here we are not concerned directly with the main field of his exertions, Jurisprudence, and the Politics of the time; but Morality, in his view and in our view, is clearly connected with the former of these, Jurisprudence; and his doctrines on Morality have excited perhaps quite as much notice as on the other subjects.

It may be worth our while to notice some circumstances connected with the earlier period of Bentham's literary and personal history. He was born in London in 1748. His father was a prosperous attorney, extremely desirous of the worldly prosperity of his son, whose precocious talents promised to gratify the paternal wish. He was sent to Queen's College, Oxford, at the unusually early age of twelve; and took his degree, not only of B.A. but of M.A. before he was of full man's age. Many of his school and college

* Johnson, b. 1709, d. 1784; Burke, b. 1730, d. 1797; Bentham, b. 1748. d. 1832.

exercises have been published by the affectionate zeal of his biographer, (Dr Bowring,) and show an average acquaintance with the Latin language; which is noticeable, because at a later period Bentham, probably having lost his acquaintance with the ancient writers, in consequence of a contempt for them which he carefully nourished and inculcated, scarcely ever made any reference to Greek or Latin without showing some extraordinary ignorance.

He appears to have been unhappy at Oxford, and to have learnt little there: but in later life, he was accustomed to refer to this period his adoption of his favourite universal principle of Morals and Politics*. Dr Priestley published his Essay on Government in 1768. He there introduced in italics, as the only reasonable and proper object of government, the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Mr Bentham fell in with this book at "a little circulating library belonging to a little coffee-house" close to Queen's College. By this expression of Priestley, Bentham conceived that his own principles on the subject of Morality, public and private, were determined. For us, who have traced the progress of opinions on this subject and of doctrines of this kind in other writers, it is evident that there was in the general current of literature and thought at that time a set towards such doctrines and such expressions; and indeed Bentham himself pointed out other previous writers in whom expressions and thoughts very similar occur. This being the case, it is extraordinary that he should so constantly have talked of himself, and have been talked of by his admirers, as the discoverer of the principle; the more so, as it was soon after, by Paley, put forth in a systematic manner, and unfolded into a treatise on Morality. But Bentham appears to have been one of those persons to whom every thing which passes through their own thoughts assumes quite a

* Deontol. I. 298.

different character and value from that which the same thing had when it passed through the thoughts of other persons.

Bentham, from this time, was engaged in following out his principle; but how far it assumed additional value in his hands we may afterwards have to examine. He also then or soon afterwards assumed the office, which he repeatedly exercised at subsequent periods, of a severe and pungent critic of current doctrines and their authors. The disposition to such criticism gave rise to his first considerable publication, A Fragment on Government. This subject was probably suggested to him in an especial manner by his residence at Oxford; for the work was a critique of certain portions of the Commentaries of Blackstone, whom, as I have said, he had himself heard lecturing. The Commentaries on the Laws of England, then recently published, had been received with great general favour, and acquired at once the reputation they still, I believe, retain. Yet probably there are few persons who, looking at the work carefully, will hold that it is composed in a very philosophical spirit, or that the general reasonings which are introduced, and those on Government in particular, are rigorous and blameless. Probably most of the admirers of the work, looking to it for merit of quite other kinds a clear and connected exposition of the existing law of England-would not think the goodness or badness of logic and philosophy of the author's general preliminary reflections, a matter of much consequence. Not such was the temper of Bentham. A fallacy, a sophism, or what he thought such, was to him an inevitable provocation to a vehement attack; and on this as on other occasions, he rushed upon such things as his prey, with something of the instinctive keenness with which a cat springs upon a mouse. I think we may allow that many of his objections to Blackstone's loose general talk are reasonable, though we may

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