Benthamiana

The list of reforms is mentioned by Charles Noble Gregory. In that article Gregory discusses the introduction of many of the reforms in the United States. [ctrl + f, “burton”, then backtrack 5 or so paras.]

The list is located in the second footnote in Burton’s article, but I have extracted it and put it directly below. Following the list you will find the complete article. You will not find the second footnote in the article as apparently my software will not permit such a long footnote. I have indicated its location in the text.

The book Benthamiana can be found in pdf format at Google books and at flipbooks. You can download it from flipbooks.

LIST OF REFORMS

Among the various practical reforms suggested by Bentham, the following are instances in which his views have been partially, or wholly adopted by the Legislature:—Reform in the Representative system. Municipal Reform in the abolition of inclusive privileges. Mitigation of the Criminal Code. The abolition of Transportation, and the adoption of a system of Prison discipline adapted to reformation, example, and economy. Removal of defects in the .Jury system. Abolition of arrest in Mesne process. Substitution of an effectual means of appropriating and realizing a Debtor’s property, to the practice of Imprisonment. Abolition of the Usury Laws. Abolition of Oaths. Abolition of law taxes, and fees in Courts of Justice, Removal of the exclusionary Rules in Evidence. Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, the Catholic Disabilities Acts, and other laws creating religious inequalities. Abolition or reduction of the Taxes on knowledge. A uniform system of Poor Laws under central administration, with machinery for the eradication of mendicancy and idleness. A system of training Pauper children, calculated to raise them from dependent to productive members of society. Savings Banks and friendly Societies on a uniform and secure system. Postage cheap, and without a view to revenue. Post-office Money Orders. A complete and uniform Register of Births, Marriages, and Deaths. A Register of Merchant seamen, and a Code of Laws for their Protection. Population Returns periodical, and on a uniform system, with the names, professions, &c., of individuals. The circulation of Parliamentary Papers as a means of diffusing the information contained in them. Protection to Inventions without the cumbrous machinery of the Patent Laws.

The following are among those of his proposed Reforms, which have received only a very partial, or no legislative sanction, but which have, each, a considerable and respectable class of supporters:—Free Trade. National Education. The Ballot. Equal Election Districts. Local Courts. A uniform and scientific method of drawing Acts of Parliament. Public Prosecutors. A general Register of Real Property, and of Deeds and Transactions. Sanatory Regulations for the protection of the public health, under the administration of competent and responsible officers. The circulation of Laws referring to particular Classes of society among persons who are specially subject to their operation.

AN OUTLINE OF THE OPINIONS OF JEREMY BENTHAM

THE GREATEST-HAPPINESS PRINCIPLE.

IT appeared to Bentham, at an early period of his life, that the Philosophy of human action was incomplete, until some general principle should be discovered, to which the actions of mankind ought all to tend. The way had been so far cleared by the Inductive system of Philosophy. Bacon laid down the grand and general law, that experiment is the means of obtaining a knowledge of what is true; but a question was left to be answered—to what end men – after having achieved the knowledge of what is true, should use that knowledge? It was clear, that though experiment might teach us how to achieve that end when once pointed out, it could not be the means of discovering the end itself; for the very supposal of an end predicates something, not sought after, but predetermined. It was after much thought that he decided that the end in view ought to be the creation of the greatest possible amount of happiness to the human race. The word “utility,” was the first shape in which the end presented itself;¹ but this term left the question “what constitutes utility” an open one. The answer to—what constitutes utility? and the more abstract principle afterwards adopted, were one and the same. That is useful which, taking all times and all persons into consideration, leaves a balance of happiness; and, —the creation of the largest possible balance of happiness—became the Author’s description of the right end of human action?. The manner in which he stated his axiom was at first in the words, “The greatest happiness of the greatest number,” or The greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number;” but as there were here two conflicting elements of extent—the intensity of the happiness and the number of persons among whom it is dispersed, the respective limits of which could not be fixed, the simple expression THE GREATEST HAPPINESS was determined on. He was quite aware that this principle is liable to the imperfection characteristic of all axioms. It was simply, like others of its kind, the closest approach to the abstract that could be made by reasoning. Logic could tender it no support; it must itself be the base on which reasoning should rest; and unless in so far as he could obtain admission for it, it must remain unproductive of good.

But it was not simply to the announcement of his first principle that Bentham trusted for its adoption, but to the influence it would have on the minds of his readers when they studied the forms in which he brought it out in detail. And this brings us to examine the extent to which the author lays claim to the merit of originality. It was not the principle itself, that constituted his discovery, but his rigid adherence to it in all his expositions—his never losing sight of it in what he did himself or called upon others to do. He did not say that the world had hitherto been ignorant of such a principle; he found the theory of utility to a certain extent promulgated by Hume, and references to the “greatest happiness” in the works of Beccaria and of Priestley; while something like the Utilitarian Principle is announced at the commencement of the Nicomachean Ethics. He found indeed that it was at the root of all systems of religion and morality, that all codes of law were more or less founded upon it; and that it was, in all places and at all times, an unseen and unacknowledged guide to human action. But he was the first to bring forth this guide, to prove to the world that it should be followed implicitly, and to show that hitherto, from not keeping their guide in view, men had often wandered from the right path. “The good of the community,” “the interests of the public,” “the welfare of mankind,” all expressions to be found in the mouths of those who talk of the proper ends of action, were so many acknowledgments of the greatest-happiness principle, and vague attempts to embody it. There is here an apt parallel with the philosophy of Bacon. Long before his day experiments were made, and thinkers, even in their emptiest theories, in some shape or other looked to experience. Fact was then, as now, the source of knowledge; but for want of an acquaintance with what their source of knowledge really was, men wandered about among vague theories, and Bacon was the first to discover, that wherever experience and the induction from it are lost sight of, there is no check to the errors of thought. In like manner does Bentham show, that, when the greatest happiness of mankind is lost sight of, in the pursuit of more immediate ends, there is no check to the aberration of human action.

There is, perhaps, no better illustration of the operation of the utilitarian principle in minds which are ignorant of, or do not acknowledge its existence, than in the appreciation which Bentham’s works have met with, by the majority of his readers. His general principle has received few adherents, in comparison with the number who have adopted his detailed applications of it. There is no project of change, or plan of legislative reform, in which he has not kept the greatest-happiness principle in his eye as the end to which it has been adapted; yet there are many who accede to his practical measures, while they repudiate his general principle.² There can be no doubt, that had he contented himself with an exposition of his leading principle, instead of giving the world, on so wide a scale, the details of its operation, he would have had far fewer followers than he has: and that, indeed, it has generally been through the influence of his practical adaptation of it, that he has brought his pupils to the adoption of his central principle.

It is a circumstance worthy of remark, that his philosophy met with an opponent even in the extent to which its leading principle was practically admitted. The quantity of utilitarianism that was in mankind, had rooted certain opinions so firmly in their breasts, that they entertained a suspicion of that sceptical philosophy which took them up and examined them, though the examination ended in approval. People lost patience with the system, when they heard its author ask whether theft and falsehood were hurtful to mankind, before he condemned such acts. When it was said that murder, if beneficial to society, would be a virtue instead of a vice, it was indignantly maintained, that under no presumable circumstances could it be anything but what it is the most atrocious of crimes. That fact was, indeed, one of the most broad and clear cases in which the utilitarianism of the world had made up its mind from the beginning. Almost, in all ages and in all nations, men had leaped at the conclusion without a perceptible interval of ratiocination. It was a startling thing to see so long decided a question called up for trial, and to hear the evidence against it investigated and weighed, before judgment was pronounced, as if there were really room for any dubiety. The feeling was somewhat akin to the popular cry which, in the case of a public and notorious criminal, tries to bear down the calm deliberation [352] of the judicial tribunal, and is scarcely content when the proceedings end in. punishment, because the very weighing of evidence, in such a case, seems to be a trifling with truth which frightens people into the belief that it is possible justice may be got the better of. It was a leading feature of his system, that nothing should be taken for granted, and that every link in the chain of inquiry should be examined. In morals as in mathematics, he considered it necessary to have clear views of the simpler propositions of a series, as a preparation for the more complex. It was in the neglect of this rigid system that he generally found the source of popular errors in morality. Though men admitted the evil effect of murder, they had not followed the utilitarian principle so closely as to see much mischief in condemning a man to death according to law, when a smaller punishment is sufficient – and while theft encountered condemnation almost universal, the number of those who carried out the principle to the condemnation of the wilful accumulation of debts, which the debtor knows he has no chance of paying, was small. In both cases, however, the simpler proposition was an introductory step to the proof of the more complex.

Having established the pursuit of the greatest happiness as the leading object which all men should hold in view, the next step was, to find what principles there were in human action to be made conducive to this end. In examining the real state of the actions and impulses of mankind, and going back from particulars to the most general principle of action, the philosopher came to the conclusion, that every human being, in every action which he performs, follows his own pleasure. He had to deal with a multitude of prejudices, in his use of this term, but he would perhaps have hardly propitiated his opponents if he had chosen a new one. The very universality of its individual action was against it as a general term; for every man felt so strongly that what was pleasure to his neighbour was not pleasure to himself, that he revolted against the application of the same word to qualify motives which appeared so distinct. Among a large class of persons, the expression, “the pursuit of pleasure,” had inherited the bad reputation which has popularly attended the doctrines of Epicurus. It was connected in some way with sensuality and mere corporeal enjoyment, and stood in opposition to those objects and pursuits which the better part of mankind hold in esteem. In the popular discussions on this subject, there is generally a want of observance of the distinction between pleasure as attained, or, in one word, happiness, and pleasure as an object sought after. The latter is an unknown quantity—the former presents us with the arithmetical results of the experienced pains deducted from the experienced pleasures. Many a man makes himself unhappy; but no man pursues unhappiness, though one maybe very unsuccessful in his pursuit of happiness.
Perhaps it may serve the purpose of farther explaining the sense in which Bentham used the terms happiness and pleasure, to compare them with those words which more nearly approach to them. The term nearest to being synonymous with pleasure, is volition; what it pleases a man to do, is simply what he wills to do. By considering it for a moment in the light of mere volition, we separate it from the notion of actual enjoyment—that popular acceptation which is most likely to lead [353] us astray. What a man wills to do, or what he pleases to do, may be far from giving him enjoyment; yet, shall we say that in doing it, he is not following his own pleasure? A man drinks himself into a state of intoxication: here, whatever may be the ultimate balance of happiness, people can at least imagine present enjoyment, and will admit that the individual is pursuing what he calls his pleasure. A native of Japan, when he is offended, stabs himself to prove the intensity of his feelings. It is difficult to see enjoyment in this case, or what is popularly called pleasure; yet the man obeyed his impulses—he has followed the dictate of his will – he has done that which it pleased him to do, or that which, as the balance appeared to him at the moment, was, in the question between stabbing and not stabbing, the alternative which gave him the more pleasure.

Those hasty acts, the result of sudden impulse, which one afterwards repents of having done because they militate against ultimate happiness, are the operations which people can with least facility ally to the pursuit of pleasure. They cannot imagine a balance struck in the mind in favour of pleasure, in cases which, by their results, and the feeling which the actor afterwards expresses regarding them, have evidently been so much the result of want of consideration. But, unless it be denied altogether that will has any influence in such cases, it cannot be denied, that what the man wills to do is that which gives him, at the moment, greater pleasure than abstaining from it. The acts which are called rash – those which are the effects of sudden volition, are notorious for their malign influence on happiness. The imperfection generally attributable to hasty operations is perceptible in them. By too rapidly making up his mind on the question what is for his pleasure, the hasty man makes a wrong decision, and does that which, in the end, brings him a heavy balance of misery. Sudden acts may be fortunate, but they are not to be calculated upon as the most conducive to happiness, and the suppression of the habit of doing them will be found to be one of the ends of morality. A gambler may make himself rich by a lucky turn of the dice; but the best chance of permanent opulence is in favour of the man who practises a rigid system of industry, honesty, and self-restraint.
The terms, choice and preference, are useful in explaining the meaning of the word pleasure, as used by Bentham, though they are not so completely equivalent as will, being only employable where more than one thing is presented to the will, each with its own inducements. Between two courses, which a man has before him, he adopts, from pique or disgust, that which is foolish, wicked, detrimental to his own happiness, and he repents of it afterwards; still, at the moment, it was not less the object of his choice, his preference, his will, his pleasure.

It is in the cases where the instruments of palpable enjoyment are given up by one human being for the sake of the happiness of others, that its common popular acceptation renders the use of the word pleasure in its philosophical sense least commodious. He who sacrifices self for the good of others will be said to yield to the dictates of duty, of generosity, of humanity, of benevolence, of patriotism, as the case may be; but generosity revolts against attributing to him the selfish motive of the pursuit of pleasure. There is no harm—indeed there is much good—in the terms of eulogy which are applied to the motives of such actions. Bentham was not less conscious of their excellence than other moralists; but in looking at their direct and immediate motive, he found it the same one ruling principle—the pursuit of pleasure—the doing that which it pleases a man to do—the doing that which volition suggests. The misunderstanding of his opinions arose from the defect already stated – the inability of men to see sources of pleasure to others, in things which were not sources of pleasure to themselves. When Howard found himself possessed of an unappropriated sum of money, the first use for it that suggested itself was a pleasure trip on the Continent; but on second thoughts he devoted it to the accomplishment of his benevolent schemes. In popular language, he was said in this instance to have made a sacrifice of his pleasure or of his enjoyment; and in the case of an ordinary man, had Howard possessed over him the power of appropriating to the improvement of prison discipline, the money which the owner of it had intended to spend on travelling, and had he so exercised his power, that owner would probably feel that Howard had deprived him of a pleasure. But the source of enjoyment and the will to choose it were fitted to each other, and placed in one mind; and who shall say that the choice he adopted was not that which gave Howard pleasure?³

Having found the psychological fact, that each man in all his actions pursues his own pleasure, and laid down the rule that the right end of action is the increase of the sum-total of the pleasure or happiness of mankind, the next question came to be – how the pursuit could be brought to bear upon the end and he decided that, as a general rule, the happiness of the community would have the greatest chance of enlargement, by each individual member doing the utmost to increase his own. The conclusion, that the pursuit of pleasure should thus be deliberately set down as the proper end of life—the great duty of man—seemed startling to those whose notions of felicity were drawn from its most palpable, but least potent department, sensual gratification. But here again, as in the other departments of his system, he appealed to the conduct of all men to the views of all moralists—as illustrations that he was founding no new system of morality, but merely clearing up that which had, with more or less of deviation, been acted upon and taught in all ages. The first great point to be kept in view is, to distinguish between the pursuit of immediate pleasure, and the doing that which, probably at an expenditure of present pain; will have the effect of securing a balance of pleasure when the whole transactions of a life are wound up. People call the former the pursuit of pleasure—-the latter they call the practice of morality. The gambler, the spendthrift, the drunkard, adopt the former course. Heedless of consequences, they snatch at present enjoyment; but before the end of their days the balance of pleasure has turned fearfully against them. The upright, industrious, abstemious man, has braced himself to resist these allurements. He has struck the balance accurately at the beginning, and at each passing moment of temptation he keeps it steadily in view. When the opportunities of fleeting enjoyment start up before him, he says, “No; I will pay dearly for it hereafter:” it will conduce to his pleasure afterwards that he has avoided it; and, reflexly, to avoid it is pleasure to him at the moment. When his days are ended, the book of life shows a balance of pleasure an increase to the stock of the happiness of society, to which he has been an. ornament and a benefactor by the acts which have conferred felicity on himself. Moralists and divines may disguise it as they will, but the balance of happiness is always the reward which they hold out for good actions. Be temperate you will secure health and respect. Make your expenditure meet your income you will avoid shame and embarrassment. Be liberal—you will have the good-will of mankind, their praise, and their kind offices. When the teacher looks beyond the world and opens up motives on which it is not necessary here to dwell, (for Bentham did not discuss religion in itself, but merely spoke of it as one of the influencing engines or society,) the appeal is still the same, and happiness in a future state is held out as the reward of virtue here.
In the mere discovery that it is a search after the greatest attainable amount of happiness, the rule of morality is far from being developed. The difficult problem, What line of conduct will be most conducive to happiness? has to be worked out. The Author, however, believed that he had done much to facilitate this operation by laying before people the ultimate, in place of the secondary objects of morality. He admitted that all the world—both the moral and the immoral part of it—were searching for the same desideratum; but he maintained that they would be more likely to find it, if they did not forget the object of their search by having their attention distracted by the various matters they encountered on their way. He found, that in the search two distinct classes of mistakes are made. Some act hastily, following the dictates of present enjoyment without weighing the consequences; these are the immoral men. Others, after a laborious investigation, divulge schemes, which being acted on, leave a balance of pain greater than the pleasure; these are the propounders of false moral doctrines. The object of morality and moral discussions is to show the former the folly of their ways, and to assist the latter in their attempts to discover the right path. It would be a very palpable mistake to presume that it was the Author’s meaning that immoral practices always bring their punishment with them in this world. The problem he works out is one of chances; not of direct cause and effect. He maintains only the possibility of discovering a moral rule, the pursuit of which will give the individual the best chance of leading a happy life.
It is one of the evils of the imperfection of language as an accurate vehicle of thought, that the full meaning of what is involved in Bentham’s views regarding the pursuit of happiness cannot be comprehended by any species of simple exposition: the student will know them best by examining them, inductively as it were, in the various works in which they are practically applied. Among the elements of the greatest-happiness principle, or of the utilitarian principle, he will find characteristics very different from that pursuit of sensual pleasure which popular prejudice attributes to the one, or that hard limitation to what are called the immediately useful and rejection of the ornamental objects of life, attributed to the other. There was no one more fully endowed with the feeling, that everything which lifts the soul of man above the clod he treads, and purifies its elements of enjoyment, tends to the fulfilment of that end which he had set before himself as the right one. The progress of a system of intellectual instruction, the most refined and elevated in its nature which the position of the individual could admit of, was one of his favourite schemes – one towards the practical adoption of which he laboured with a zeal worthy of better success. The gradual removal of the pupil s mind from contact with those objects and practices in which man shows the greatest amount of his animal, and the least of his intellectual nature, was the peculiar moral benefit he anticipated for his system. He was a zealous admirer of what may be called intellectual discipline. He conceived that the minds of youth, in almost all grades, and under all systems of education, were allowed too much relaxation from the bracing influence of severe thought. If it had been in his power, he would have made every man a thinker; he would have taught all men to meditate on the ends of their actions ; to check their propensity towards immediate enjoyment, to govern their passions, and to look into the future.⁴

Those petty sacrifices of selfish inclination, for the pleasure of others, which constitute the rules of good-breeding, politeness, and courtesy, formed part of his system of morality. These are not important acts, taken individually; but collectively they are the materials of which much of the happiness of social man is created. He was not deaf to the greater calls for admiration made by that species of disinterestedness, which makes large sacrifices of what is called personal enjoyment, for the good of others. He looked on the disinterested benefactors of their species— men rarely occurring, and highly gifted, as those whose greatest happiness was centred in the consciousness of doing good to mankind; and he conceived it right and just that the acknowledgment of their services should be amply given. But these were not the men for whom he could cast his scheme of morality. Greatly as they raise themselves, in the unapproached grandeur of their minds, above the people of the everyday world, it is for these latter that codes of morality must be constructed; it is to the size of such minds that they must be fitted. It is useless to ask whether it would be better that men should find their chief enjoyment in something higher than the usual objects of ambition; suffice it that experience shows these to be the ruling motives, and therefore the instruments with which the moralist must act. He who addresses himself only to Howards and Washingtons, leaves several millions of well-intentioned men, with narrower minds and lower objects of ambition, unguided. The economy of the world would be different from its present constitution were it otherwise; and it is not inconsistent with an appreciation of disinterestedness, to hold that mankind would not be advanced but deteriorated, if all the shopkeepers deserted their counters to revolve schemes for the public good. The produce of the selfish industry of commonplace moral men and good citizens, is the fund with which philanthropy deals on an extensive scale. Aggrandizing, money-getting Britain, gave twenty millions for the emancipation of slaves: how could such an act be accomplished by a nation of Aristideses and Epictetuses?

The main difficulty which has been raised against the greatest-happiness [357] principle, is in the allegation, that each man, in pursuing his own greatest happiness in this world is simply inviting him to pillage his neighbours of their proper fund of felicity. The answer to this is the same plea on which the Captain of a ship, which has run short of provisions, would recommend all the crew, both weak and strong, to submit to an arrangement for short allowance. To A. and B alone it would be their greatest happiness, perhaps, to have the run of the ship’s store, but there are C, and D, and E, and F, with the same inclinations counteracting them; and though A and B might resist all the calls of humanity and sympathy, and might be even able, at the moment, to carry their point of preference bv force, they would run the risk of a final accounting with the law. All, therefore, see that it will be their greatest happiness to make an average division; and good ship-economy will show how this is to be accomplished on such a system as to make an equal distribution, keeping in view the number of the crew and the time to be at sea. Just so is it in the worId at large. Each man feels that the best security for himself getting a share of happiness, is to give way to a certain extent to his neighbour. Such is the habit more or less in every portion of the globe; and it is in the countries where practice has settled the proportion of how much should be kept and how much given away, with the greatest accuracy, that the end of morality has been best accomplished. The strongest counter-illustration which an opponent could find, is, perhaps, that of a despotism; but even here the principle is followed, though, according to our Author’s opinion, very barbarously and unsatisfactorily. If the despot presides over a docile people who will not rebel, it is a sign that they prefer the ease of submission to the exertion of independence, and they are following their happiness in their own way. Among such a people, the temptation to play the pranks to which despotism is liable, is greatest, and, to say the truth, does least harm. But if an autocrat were calculating what course would produce him, on the whole, the greatest happiness, it is believed that he would not find it to be in roasting his subjects before slow fires, or skinning them alive, or hunting them with blood-hounds and that the despot who has taken the best estimate of a happy reign, is he who has resolved to make his sway wise and beneficent; to do justice and to love mercy. But it is seldom that the embers of the spirit of resistance have been so completely extinguished that no gust will waken them into a blaze; and more or less, the tear of resistance holds the despot in awe, providing in his person an illustration, though certainly but a rudely developed one, of the counteraction which is supplied by the universality of the pursuit of self-enjoyment.
There can be no better illustration of the wide-embracing influence of what has been denounced as “the selfish system,” than its extension not only to all classes of mankind, of whatever colour or persuasion, but to every living thing to which the Deity has given, along with animal life, the capacity of physical pain and pleasure. Bentham was a strenuous supporter of the legislative protection of the brute creation from cruelty,⁵ on principles which will be found more fully explained in Section Sixth.

1. See the Fragment on Government, Works, vol. i. p. 260 et seq [↩]

2. Second footnote, reproduced above the article in this post. [↩]

3. That this choice characterized an order of mind of which Bentham had a due appreciation, will be admitted by all who read his beautiful eulogy on the Philanthropist, as printed in the present selection, p. 332. [↩]

4. See the plan of a Chrestomathic System of Education, in the Works, vol. viii, p.1 et seq. See also the Rationale of Reward, in vol. ii. p. 192 et seq.: where the different beneficial objects of encouragement are discussed. See also vol. i. p. 569 et seq.: vol. viii. p. 395 et seq. [↩]

5. See the Works, vol. i. pp. 142-143, 562; vol. x. p. 549-550. [↩]