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. xv. 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 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*.

and

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.)

Offenses against, 1, Person; 2, Property; 3, Reputation; 4, Condition; 5, Person and Reputation; 6, Person and Property.

You will recollect that our Divisions of Rights were those of, 1, Person; 2, Property; 3, Contract; 4, Family; and 5, Government.

And to see how far these are parallel with the classification of Bentham, we may observe that Offenses against the rights of Contract are relegated by Bentham into another general class, that of Multiform Offenses, by an arrangement which he allows to be anomalous; while both kinds of Rights in our scheme, those of Family and those of Government, are violated by Offenses against Condition: the term Condition being used by Bentham in a very wide sense, to include the Rights of Master and Servant, Guardian and Ward, Parent and Child, Husband and Wife. On this we may remark, that some of these conditions are rather expressed by Rights of Contract than by anything requiring a separate class. Thus the Rights of Master and Servant are, in this country at least, Rights of that kind of Contract called Hiring and Service; while the principal conditions, as Parent and Child, Husband and Wife, are evidently expressed by Rights of Family and though it may perhaps be true that other conditions, as Guardian and Ward, are not strictly included in the Rights of Family, still they may be classed with those of Family, as consequences, extensions, and analogous conditions. Other conditions again, as those of Patron and Client, may be more properly arranged with the Rights of Government. And it is plain, in fact, that the transition from the relations of Family to those of Government, that is, constitutional relations, must be gradual in most societies, and various in all, according to their history.

:

Proceeding further with the subdivision of the system, we come to what Mr Bentham calls the Genera of Class 1.

And these we may in the first place look at, in the result at which he arrives. I will insert them in a note*.

1 Wrongful non-investment of Property.
2 Wrongful interception of Property.
3 Wrongful divestment of Property.
4 Usurpation of Property.

5 Wrongful investment of Property.

6 Wrongful withholding of Services.

7 Wrongful destruction or endamagement.

9 Wrongful obtainment of Services.

10 Wrongful imposition of Expence.

11 Wrongful imposition of Services.
12 Wrongful occupation.

13 Wrongful detention.

14 Wrongful disturbance of proprietary Rights.

This laborious and complex analysis of the possible forms of offenses is not without its interest. It is not however made, and I think cannot be made, the groundwork of a code of

Offenses against Person and Property.

1

Forcible (wrongful) interception of property.

2 Forcible divestment of property.

3 Forcible usurpation.

4 Forcible investment.

5 Forcible destruction or endamagement.

6 Forcible occupation of moveables.

7 Forcible entry (immoveables).

9

10

Forcible detainment of immoveables.
Robbery.

Offenses against Condition.

a. Of Legal Institution.

1 Wrongful non-investment of Servantship.
2 Wrongful interception of Servantship, &c.
9 Abuse of Mastership.

10 Disturbance of Mastership.

11 Breach of duty in Servants.

12 Elopement.

13 Servant-stealing.

Guardian.

1 Wrongful non-investment of Guardianship.
2 Wrongful interception of Guardianship.