01. Welcome

This website discusses the influence of Jeremy Bentham’s political philosophy on the political culture and institutions of Australia. Bentham believed that society should be ordered to create the greatest happiness.

Navigation is by the side bar to the left.

Jeremy Bentham’s auto-icon sits at University College London.

Australia is a Benthamite society. At least, so says Hugh Collins, now Master of Ormond College at Melbourne University, in his 1985 paper Political Ideology in Australia: The Distinctiveness of a Benthamite Society.¹

In this article Collins writes:

Australia’s perennial debates and present predicaments may be understood … if one begins by regarding Australia as a Benthamite society.

For Collins this is reflected in:

1) Action by government being designed to maximise individual interest of the majority.
2) the central place of legislation in Australian government.
3) the practical bent in the Australian ethos – assessing action and legislation according to its efficiency and effectiveness, not according to some tradition, religion or other dogma.

In Australia, Collins observes, Benthamism arrived with, and was reflected in, among other things, Chartism, administrative structures, political structures, and legislative programs. He continues:

The abstract Benthamite ideas that adhered to these concrete enactments and achievements of the nineteenth century endured as the dominant ideology in the twentieth century, shaping the nation’s institutions, images, and ideas. Indeed, so completely has this philosophy captured Australia’s public mind that the sporadic appearance of different political ideas, whether of the left or right, is better understood as a reaction against the hegemony than as the motion of independent forces.

Australia, then, according to Collins, is a thoroughly Benthamite society.

The Australian move to democracy from the 1830s was significantly influenced by British Benthamites such as Charles Buller, William Molesworth, and E.G. Wakefield. They played an essential role in the creation of the colonial constitutions, which reflected Benthamite principles. Australian land and trade policy also were also the result of Benthamite ideas and agitation. Later political actors in Australia influenced by Benthamite thought include:

Robert Lowe who played a substantial role in bringing representative institutions to New South Wales;

Henry Chapman who introduced the ‘Australia ballot’, subsequently adopted throughout the world.

Charles Kingston, premier of South Australia and a key author of the federal constitution. While that other Benthamite colony, New Zealand, was the first to give women the unrestricted vote, Kingston’s government was the first to give women the unrestricted vote and the right to stand for election. Kingston’s father had worked with the Benthamites selling land in London for the new settlement of South Australia, and later became Speaker in the Legislative Assembly. He helped introduce Benthamite constitutional reforms during the 1850s.

Even Alfred Deakin said of himself that he was a philosophical radical when young, probably meaning he supported (at that time) free trade.

The Chartists, important in the development of Australian democracy, were also significantly influenced by Benthamite thought. Two of the three authors of the Charter were key Benthamites. While much scholarly attention has been given to physical force Chartism and its attendant socialism - a form of Chartism that arguably faded around 1850 - far less attention has been given to moral force Chartism. Moral force Chartism was the form supported by all the authors of the Charter, and also the form that eventually triumphed, being implemented both in Australia and eventually in the UK. Henry Parkes, a moral force Chartist, is known as the father of Australian federation.

Social policy and government action in this country derive in good measure from Benthamite thought. Benthamite thought includes the elevation of self-interest. It is broadly allied with Adam Smith’s economic philosophy, also based on self-interest. However achieving the greatest happiness does not rely on any particular economic model, and in practice appears to require a mixed economic system.

In the United Kingdom Benthamism is associated with small government and classical economics. But the Benthamite view for Australia was different. Benthamite policy included the government selling crown land at prices set according to policy, not the market, in order to create the best society. It also included the massive subsidy of emigration. But the Benthamite view of government involvement in colonial economic activity went further even than these strong interventions. Thus in 1836 Wakefield said:²

With emigration on a large scale, and reduced to a system … [y]ou may, I think, safely employ public money in great works of national improvement; roads, harbours, railroads, here constructed by private individuals, might there be in the hands of Government, care being taken that they are useful works…

In Australia we still retain the understanding that government can have a role in the provision of infrastructure and services so long as it can be reasonably shown that the net effect is positive. Our politics tends to revolve around the degree of intervention that is considered useful. In broad terms the Liberal Party argues for less government involvement in the economy, and the Labor Party argues for more.³

A current example of the Australian attitude to government is that, in October 2008, it is being said in Australia that the tight regulatory environment governing Australian banking has helped us avoid the worst effects of the credit crisis.

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This website commenced in June 2007. It is a work-in-progress. On it you will find a growing number of transcripts of works which highlight the Benthamite contribution to Australia, as well as interpretive work which seeks to make the argument that Australia has been substantially, even overwhelmingly, influenced by Benthamite thought. The case is not difficult to make owing to the number of works up to 1915, and even beyond, which directly reference and describe the influence in Australia of Benthamite ideas. The odd thing is that these works have never been put together to form a Benthamite narrative for Australian history. Hence, few in Australia have heard of Bentham.

The broad position of the site is that this Benthamite influence has been a good thing. It is difficult to argue against the proposition that government, and society generally, should be ordered in such a way as to produce the greatest happiness. How can this be achieved? Well, Australia serves as one model, and a pretty successful model at that.

Your comments on the material at this website are highly appreciated.

(Below) Bentham at around 40 years old.

 

Bentham as 13 year old, by Thomas Frye

 

1. Collins, Hugh. 1985. Political Ideology in Australia: The Distinctiveness of a Benthamite Society. In Australia, the Daedalus Symposium, edited by S. R. Graubard. North Ryde, N.S.W.: Angus & Robertson.  [↩]
2. Report from the Select Committee of The Disposal of Lands in the British Colonies together with the Minutes of Evidence and Appendix, 1836, page 2. [↩]
3. The Liberal Party in Australia equates to the Republican Party in the USA, and the Conservative Party in the UK. The Labor Party (ALP) in Australia equates with the Democrats in the USA, and the Labour Party in the UK. For some reason the ALP, formed in the 19th century,  has adopted the US spelling for Labor. I guess it is because it makes it look revolutionary and republican. [↩]