The Correspondence Of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 3 January 1781 To October 1788

688 Pages·2017·7.406 MB·English

by  Jeremy Bentham, Alexander Taylor Milne

The first five volumes of The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham contain
T h e C o l l e C Te d
over 1,300 letters written both to and from Bentham over a 50-year J
e
T
period, beginning in 1752 (aged three) with his earliest surviving letter to r h
e W o r k s o f
his grandmother, and ending in 1797 with correspondence concerning his m e

y C
attempts to set up a national scheme for the provision of poor relief. against B W o
the background of the debates on the american revolution of 1776 and e o l J e r e m y B e n T h a m
the french revolution of 1789, to which he made significant contributions, nT rk leC
h s
Bentham worked first on producing a complete penal code, which involved him T
a o e
in detailed explorations of fundamental legal ideas, and then on his panopticon m f d
prison scheme. despite developing a host of original and ground-breaking t he
ideas, contained in a mass of manuscripts, he published little during these t
years, and remained, at the close of this period, a relatively obscure individual. o h
f
e
nevertheless, these volumes reveal how the foundations were laid for the J Corre sp ondenCe
C
remarkable rise of Benthamite utilitarianism in the early nineteenth century. e
r o
The letters in this volume document Bentham’s meeting and friendship with
e r
the earl of shelburne (later the marquis of lansdowne), which opened a whole m r of
new set of opportunities for him, as well as his extraordinary journey, by way of
e
y
the mediterranean, to visit his brother samuel in russia. s

B p
e o Jeremy Ben T ham
Ian R. ChRIstIe (1919–98), historian, was educated at m agdalen
n
College, oxford, before being appointed successively as assistant lecturer n
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1948–51, lecturer 1951–60, reader 1960–6, professor 1966–79, and d
h
e
finally astor professor of British history 1979–84, in the department of
a n
history, uCl.
m C
GeneRal edItoR: J.h. BuRns (1921–2012), historian, r eader e v o l u m e 3
in the history of political Thought 1961–6 and professor in the history
of political Thought 1966–86 in the department of history, uCl, was in To
o Ja v
1961 appointed as the first General editor of The Collected Works of Jeremy C n o J a n u a r y 1 7 8 1
Bentham, a post he held until 1978. T u l
o a
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B r
e y m o C T o B e r 1 7 8 8
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1 17 e
7 8 3
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edIted By Ian R. ChRIstIe
Cover desiGn:
rawshock design
£45.00
Free open access versions available
from www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press
i

the collected

works of

jeremy bentham
General Editor
J. H. Burns
Correspondence
Volume 3
ii
iii
The

CORRESPONDENCE
of
JEREMY BENTHAM
Volume 3
January 1781 to October 1788
edited by
IAN R. CHRISTIE
iv
This edition published in 2017 by
UCL Press
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
First published in 1971 by The Athlone Press,
University of London
Available to download free: www.ucl.ac.uk/ ucl- press
Text © The Bentham Committee, UCL
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from The British Library.
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Attribution should include the following information:
Ian R. Christie (ed.), The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Vol.3: January 1781 to
October 1788. The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. Edited by J.H.Burns. London,
UCL Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781911576099
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781911576099
v
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

OF VOLUME 3
The third volume of Jeremy Bentham’s Correspondence was originally
published in 1971, under the editorship of the late Ian R. Christie and
the General Editorship of the late J.H. Burns. The Correspondence
volumes represent the ‘backbone’, so to speak, of the authoritative
edition of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, giving scholars
the orientation that enables them to begin to make sense of Bentham’s
published works and the vast collection of his unpublished papers,
consisting of around 60,000 folios in UCL Library and 12,500 folios in
the British Library.
The present volume has been attractively re-keyed in a typeface that
is sympathetic to the original design, and crucially the exact pagination
of the original volume has been retained, so that referencing remains
stable. The opportunity has been taken to incorporate the corrigenda
printed at the conclusion of Volume V of the Correspondence and
further corrections identified by the Bentham Project. Professor Anne
Brunon-Ernst (University of Paris II) has kindly checked the accuracy
of the reproduction of the French material according to the conven-
tions currently adopted in the edition as a whole.
The current volume opens as the American War of Independence
was coming to a conclusion and closes on the brink of the French
Revolution. In early 1781 Bentham, who was living in Lincoln’s Inn,
received a visit from the Earl of Shelburne (raised in the peerage to
Marquis of Lansdowne in 1785). Shelburne, who was known for his
intellectual interests, was also a major politician, becoming leader of
the administration from July 1782 to March 1783, with responsibility
for negotiating the peace with America. Bentham could not but have
been flattered by Shelburne’s attention, and he accepted Shelburne’s
invitation to visit his country home Bowood House in Wiltshire, where
he stayed for several weeks in the autumn of 1781. Bentham’s detailed
letters from Bowood to his friend George Wilson give a fascinating
insight into life in one of the country’s major aristocratic houses.
Bentham’s correspondence is, however, dominated by Russia. In
March 1780 his younger brother Samuel had arrived at St Petersburg,
where he had begun to establish his reputation as an engineer. Having
undertaken an expedition to Siberia, Samuel was taken into service by
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PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
Prince Potëmkin, a powerful aristocrat with a large estate at Krichëv
in the south of Russia, where Samuel took charge of Potëmkin’s
industrial and military concerns. In August 1785 Bentham left London,
travelled through the Mediterranean to Constantinople and then over-
land via Bucharest, and arrived at Krichëv in February 1786. He stayed
for nearly two years, living with his brother in a farmhouse provided
by Potëmkin, and spending most of his time writing, but also dealing
with various aspects of Samuel’s affairs. In late 1787 Bentham set off
back to England, travelled overland via Warsaw and Berlin, and
arrived home in February 1788.
Bentham had hopes of presenting his penal code to Catherine the
Great, Empress of Russia, but, remaining in his farmhouse, he failed
to seize the opportunity to meet her when she visited Krichëv early
in 1787. As was often the case, Bentham had not brought his work
to completion, despite composing a large mass of manuscripts (in
French, for the benefit of the Empress) under the headings of ‘Projet
Forme’ and ‘Projet Matière’. While in Krichëv, Bentham wrote Defence
of Usury, which George Wilson, his friend in London, saw through
the press, and which was published in late 1787. Bentham’s essay was
highly influential over a course of years in presenting the case for
the abolition of legal limits on rates of interest. It has appeared in the
Collected Works, along with other related material from these years, in
Writings on Political Economy: Volume I, edited by Michael Quinn,
published in 2016.
A further work to emerge from Bentham’s visit to Russia was his
scheme for a panopticon prison, which was eventually printed in 1791
as ‘Panopticon: or, The Inspection-House’. Samuel had proposed to
build a manufactory, arranged around a central point, from where he
could continuously inspect the activities of his workforce. Bentham
realized that the central-inspection principle might be applied to a
whole variety of institutions, including factories, schools, and hospitals.
The pressing need in England at the time was for a penitentiary, and so
Bentham focused his attention on prison design. He imagined a circu-
lar or polygonal building, with the cells on the outside, and an inspec-
tion tower in the centre. The attempt to build a panopticon prison in
London would come to dominate his life for over a decade following
his return to England.
As Christie explains in the ‘Introduction’ below, up to 80 letters
sent by Bentham to Samuel between 1781 and 1785 are missing.
Christie wondered whether the letters might surface in a Russian
archive, but they have not yet done so. He also explains that, while
all Samuel’s letters to Bentham appear to have survived, he exclud-
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PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
ed from the present volume those letters and parts of letters that
dealt exclusively with Samuel’s affairs. Christie went on to produce a
detailed account of Samuel’s activities, including his involvement in
the Russian defeat of the Turks at Ochakov in 1788, and of Bentham’s
hazardous and eventful journeys to and from Krichëv in his The
Benthams in Russia, 1780–1791 (Oxford and Providence, RI: Berg,
1993), which may now be supplemented with Roger Morriss’s Science,
Utility and Maritime Power: Samuel Bentham in Russia, 1779–91
(London: Routledge, 2015).
Philip Schofield
General Editor of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham
UCL, March 2017
vii
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ix
PREFACE

The thanks of the Bentham Committee are due to the following for
access to and permission to print Mss. in their possession as well
as for assistance afforded to the General Editor and to the editor of
this volume:  The Trustees of the British Museum; The Deputy
Keeper of the Public Records, the Public Record Office; The
Librarian, University College London; The Librarian, the William
L. Clements Library; The Most Hon. the Marquess of Lansdowne;
Col. Sir John G. Carew Pole, Bt., d.s.o., t.d., of Antony House,
Torpoint, Cornwall; Mr D. R. Bentham. The Committee also thanks
the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich Hospital Collection,
for permission to reproduce the picture which forms the frontis-
piece. The grateful acknowledgements of the Committee are also
due to the following bodies for financial assistance towards the cost
of the editorial work on this volume: The Rockefeller Foundation;
The Pilgrim Trust; The British Academy.
My labours as editor of this volume have been helped in the
highest degree by Mrs Sandra Hole, who bore the brunt of the work
of copying from manuscripts, checking typed transcripts, and
collecting information for footnotes; and by Miss Judith Stafford,
who gave valuable assistance in checking the proofs and compiling
the index. I am most grateful to them both, and to Miss Helen
Nowell, and also to Mrs Hilary P. Evans and Mrs Audrey Munro
who between them produced the typescript. It has been a pleasure
and relief to know that the great knowledge of Bentham possessed
by the General Editor, Professor J. H. Burns, has been available in
case of need, and I much appreciate the help he has given on many
points. I owe debts of gratitude to various colleagues in University
College, Professor R.  A. Humphreys, Dr J.  Kells, Dr W.  A.
Smeaton, and Dr M. Winterbottom, who came to my aid on partic-
ular matters; and special thanks are due to Dr C. L. Drage of the
School of Slavonic and East European Studies of the University of
London for his help in transcribing Russian documents, providing
typed transcripts of them complete with idiosyncrasies of spelling,
and correcting my attempts at translation. Dr A. G. Cross of the
School of European Studies, University of East Anglia, kindly
provided identifications of a number of more obscure Russian
personalities not to be found in the Soviet Encyclopaedia or the
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