Studies in Literature and History
class are imperilled; the state of prisons does not concern them
personally; and so long as life and property are fairly secure, they
care little about an efficient police. The Englishman of whom a
Frenchman reported with amazement that he consoled himself for having
been robbed by the reflection that there were no policemen in his
country, must have belonged to this comfortable class. And the
inveterate conservation of abuses in the Church, the Law, and the Army
may be partially explained in a similar way. In France the Church and
the army were really privileged bodies: the vast ecclesiastical
revenues were protected from taxation, and the commissioned ranks of
the army were reserved for the _noblesse_; the French parliaments were
close magisterial corporations. In England these were all open
professions, with no special fiscal rights or social limitations; the
prizes were available for general competition, and as every one had a
chance of winning them by interest or even merit, there was no
formidable outcry against the system.
In politics, therefore, as well as in philosophy, the prevailing habit
of the English mind was more moderate, less thorough-going and
subversive, than in France. Mr. Stephen makes a keen and rapid
analysis of the common-sense psychology, as expounded by Reid and
Dugald Stewart, to show the correspondence at this period between
abstract reasoning and concrete political views, and to illustrate the
limitations which cautious Scotch professors endeavoured to place upon
the inexorable scepticism of Hume. The general spirit of their
teaching was empirical, but the logical consequence of taking
experience as the sole foundation of belief was evidently to cut off
the hidden springs of moral consciousness, and to support the
derivation of ethics from utility. In philosophy, as in politics,
there was a sympathetic recoil from extremes. So common sense was
brought in as capable of certain intuitive or original judgments which
were in themselves necessary, and which luckily coincided with some of
the firmest convictions among intelligent mankind. As Carlyle said
long afterwards, the Scottish philosophers started from the
mechanical premises suggested by Hume. 'They let loose instinct as an
indiscriminatory bandog to guard them against his conclusions; they
tugged lustily against the logical chain by which Hume was so coldly
towing them and the world into bottomless abysses of atheism and
fatalism.' To save themselves from materialism they invented
Intuitions, and thereby incurred the wrath of orthodox Utilitarianism,
which was rigidly empirical. They were, however, accepted in England,
where any haven was welcome, however uncertain might be the holding
ground, which sheltered the vessel from being blown by windy
speculation out into a shoreless sea.
The Scottish philosophy therefore
'was in philosophy what Whiggism was in politics. Like political
Whiggism, it included a large element of enlightened and liberal
rationalism; but, like Whiggism, it covered an aversion to
thorough-going logic. The English politician was suspicious of
abstract principle, but would cover his acceptance of tradition and
rule of thumb by general phrases about liberty and toleration. The
Whig in philosophy equally accepted the traditional creed,
sufficiently purified from cruder elements, and sheltered his
doctrine by speaking of intuitions and laws of thought.'
The foregoing quotation may serve to indicate briefly the situation,
in politics and philosophy, at the time when Bentham, 'the patriarch
of the English Utilitarians,' appeared upon the scene. Mr. Stephen's
sketch of his life and doctrines, which occupies the latter half of
the book's first volume, is eminently instructive and often amusing.
He excels in tracing the continuity of ideas, and in showing how they
converge upon the point of view that is gradually reached by some
writer of superior force and activity, who rejects, alters, or uses
them in the process of working out the doctrines of some new school.
It was the spread of philanthropy, of a conscientious fellow-feeling
for those classes of society who suffered from neglect and misrule,
that fostered the movement towards political and social reform. This
feeling was represented in Bentham's celebrated formula, originally
invented by Hutcheson, about 'the greatest happiness of the greatest
number'; and the criterion of utility was laid down as having the
widest possible application to all sorts and conditions of men.
Self-help, individualism, _laisser-faire_, the economic view that each
should be left free to pursue his own interests, were principles
intended to operate for the removal of abuses and the destruction of
unfair privileges: they were promulgated for the relief of humanity at
large, although the system which was built up on them came afterwards
to be denounced as narrow, selfish, and materialistic. These ideas
were undoubtedly congenial to the habits and character of Englishmen,
who, like free men everywhere, had a traditional distrust of strong
and active government, preferring King Log, on the whole, to King
Stork. Inequalities and incomprehensible laws were to be seen in the
course of Nature no less than in the English Constitution; and in
either case a man might rely upon his wits and energy to deal with
them. It might be that the defects in human government could only be
remedied by employing the forces of government to cure them; but if
you began to set going the administrative engine there was no saying
where it might stop. Bentham held all government to be an evil, though
he differed from the modern anarchist in holding it to be a necessary
evil; yet he needed a strong scientific administration for the purpose
of rooting out inveterate abuses. And this was the dilemma that
confronted him. He worked out his solution of the problem by laying
out a whole system of morals and a science of politics, with Utility
as their base and standard, which has profoundly influenced all
subsequent legislation, and led eventually to much more extensive
theories regarding the sphere and duties of government than he himself
would have advocated or approved.
The principal events of Bentham's life, and the development of his
opinions, are condensed by Mr. Stephen into one chapter with his usual
biographical skill. Bentham started in life as a barrister, and
attended Blackstone's lectures, with the result that he was deeply
impressed by the fallacies of the legal theories there expounded, and
soon afterward vowed eternal war against the Demon of Chicane. He
struggled against narrow means and obscurity until he made the
acquaintance of Lord Shelburne, through whom he became acquainted with
other leading statesmen, and with Miss Caroline Fox, to whom he made a
futile proposal of marriage some years later. At Bowood he also met
Dumont, and thereby formed his connection with the French jurists,
though in his old age he declared that Dumont, his chief interpreter
abroad, 'did not understand a word of his meaning'; the true cause of
his quarrel being that Dumont criticised Bentham's dinners. He
travelled on the Continent, and lived some time in Russia. Soon
afterward the Revolution made a clean sweep of all the old
institutions in France, and thus laid open a bare and level ground
just suited, as Bentham thought, for an architect who had his
portfolio full of new administrative plans. It was long, indeed,
before he could understand why systematic reforms were not immediately
accepted as soon as their utility was logically demonstrated. He lost
no time in providing the French National Assembly with elaborate
schemes for the reconstruction of various departments of government,
and he even offered to go to France to set up his model prison,
proposing himself 'to become gratuitously the gaoler thereof.' The
Assembly requited his zeal by conferring on him the title of a French
citizen; but social reorganisation took the shape of September
massacres and the Reign of Terror, whereat Bentham was disgusted,
though in no way disheartened, as a theorist.
'Never' (says Mr. Stephen) 'was an adviser more at cross purposes
with the advised. It would be impossible to draw a more striking
portrait of the abstract reasoner, whose calculations of human
motives omit all reference to passion, and who fancied that all
prejudice can be dispelled by a few bits of logic.'
Here, in fact, we have the key to Bentham's character, to its weakness
and also to its strength. A philosopher who plunges into the practical
affairs of the world without taking human feelings and imagination
into account is sure to find himself stumbling about among blocks and
blockheads, and tripped up by the ill-will of vested interests; but on
the other hand, if he has taken the right direction, his ardent
energies have the impetus of some natural force. Bentham's earlier
notion had been that political reforms could be introduced like
improvements in machinery; you had only to prove the superior utility
of your new invention to obtain its adoption by all who were concerned
in the business. Latterly he made the surprising discovery that in the
public offices, in the Law, and in the Church, the heads of these
professions are usually quite satisfied with their own monopolies, are
opposed to change, and are always ready with a stock of plausible
arguments to show the folly and danger of innovation. If the
Utilitarian appeals to facts, common sense, and experience, so also
does the Conservative; and until public opinion is decidedly for
progress the dead weight prevails. Not for a day did Bentham relax his
strenuous exertions, but he changed his tactics; he turned from his
mechanical workshop to the study of political dynamics, and he found
what he wanted in the rising radicalism--'his principal occupation, in
a word, was to provide political philosophy for radical reformers.'
Of the philosophic creed which Bentham undertook to proclaim from his
hermitage at Ford Abbey, with James Mill as his leading apostle, Mr.
Stephen gives us a very shrewd and incisively critical examination.
The founder of a new faith has usually begun by the earnest and
authoritative declaration of a few simple truths and positive
doctrines, for which his disciples provide, in course of time, the
necessary philosophical basis. Bentham's voice had been crying
ineffectually in the wilderness; and he now set about laying with his
own hands the foundations of his beliefs upon primary scientific
principles, always with unswerving aim and application to concrete
facts. He was a thorough-going iconoclast, wielding, like Mohammed, a
single formula, to the destruction of idols of the market or tribe,
and to the confusion of those who fattened upon antique superstitions.
'All government is one vast evil,' and can only be kept from mischief
by minute regulations and constant vigilance. Whatever is plainly
illogical must be radically wrong--'to make a barrister a judge is as
sensible as it would be to select a procuress for mistress of a girls'
school;' and a parish boy, if he could read properly, might go through
the Church services with the Prayer Book and the Homilies, so that an
established Church is a costly and indefensible luxury. Taking
Utility, founded on observation of actual facts, as his guide and his
measure of existing institutions, he treated them as colossal
iniquities, as frauds upon the people, as dead and ineffectual for the
purposes of moral and political life. Nevertheless, although he
condemned the whole fabric as it stood, Bentham was an absolute
believer in the unlimited power of laws and institutions; nor was he
far from wishing to deal with them on the principles applicable to the