[289] Wilberforce's Life, ii. 71.
[290] Works, x. 541.
IV. THE UTILITARIAN PROPAGANDA
Bentham in 1802 had reached the respectable age of fifty-four. He had published his first work twenty-six years, and his most elaborate treatise thirteen years, previously. He had been brought into contact with many of the eminent politicians and philanthropists of the day. Lansdowne had been a friendly patron: his advice had been treated with respect by Pitt, Dundas, and even by Blackstone; he was on friendly terms with Colquhoun, Sir F. Eden, Arthur Young, Wilberforce, and others interested in philanthropic movements, and his name at least was known to some French politicians. But his reputation was still obscure; and his connections did not develop into intimacies. He lived as a recluse and avoided society. His introduction to great people at Bowood had apparently rather increased than softened his shyness. The little circle of intimates, Romilly and Wilson and his own brother, must have satisfied his needs for social intercourse. It required an elaborate negotiation to bring about a meeting between him and Dr. Parr, the great Whig prophet, although they had been previously acquainted, and Parr was, as Romilly said by way of introduction, a profound admirer and universal panegyrist.[291] He refused to be introduced by Parr to Fox, because he had 'nothing particular to say' to the statesman, and considered that to be 'always a sufficient reason for declining acquaintance.'[292]
But, at last, Bentham's fame was to take a start. Bentham, I said, had long before found himself. Dumont had now found Bentham. After long and tedious labours and multiplied communications between the master and the disciple, Dumont in the spring of 1802 brought out his Traités de Législation de M. Jérémie Bentham. The book was partly a translation from Bentham's published and unpublished works,[293] and partly a statement of the pith of the new doctrine in Dumont's own language. It had the great merit of putting Bentham's meaning vigorously and compactly, and free from many of the digressions, minute discussions of minor points and arguments requiring a special knowledge of English law, which had impeded the popularity of Bentham's previous works.
The Jacobin controversies were passing into the background: and Bentham began to attain a hearing as a reformer upon different lines. In 1803 Dumont visited St. Petersburg, and sent home glowing reports of Bentham's rising fame. As many copies of the Traités had been sold there as in London. Codes were wanted; laws were being digested; and Bentham's work would supply the principles and the classification. A magnificent translation was ordered, and Russian officials wrote glowing letters in which Bentham was placed in a line with Bacon, Newton, and Adam Smith—each the founder of a new science.[294] At home the new book was one of the objects of what Dumont calls the 'scandalous irreverence' of the Edinburgh Review.[295] This refers to a review of the Traités in the Edinburgh Review of April 1804. Although patronising in tone, and ridiculing some of Bentham's doctrines as commonplace and condemning others as criminal, it paid some high compliments to his ability. The irreverence meant at least that Bentham had become one of the persons worth talking about, and that he was henceforth to influence the rising generation. In January 1807 the Edinburgh itself (probably Jeffrey) suggested that Bentham should be employed in a proposed reform of the Scottish judicial system. His old friend, Lansdowne, died on 7th May 1805, and in one of his last letters expresses a hope that Bentham's principles are at last beginning to spread.[296] The hope was fulfilled.
During the eighteenth century Benthamism had gone through its period of incubation. It was now to become an active agency, to gather proselytes, and to have a marked influence not only upon legislative but upon political movements. The immediate effect upon Bentham of the decline of the Panopticon, and his consequent emancipation from immediately practical work, was apparently his return to his more legitimate employment of speculative labour. He sent to Dumont at St. Petersburg[297] part of the treatise upon Political Economy, which had been naturally suggested by his later work: and he applied himself to the Scottish judiciary question, to which many of his speculations had a close application. He published a work upon this subject in 1808. To the period between 1802 and 1812 belongs also the book, or rather the collection of papers, afterwards transformed into the book, upon Evidence, which is one of his most valuable performances.
A letter, dated 1st November 1810, gives a characteristic account of his position. He refers to hopes of the acceptance of some of his principles in South America. In Spain Spaniards are prepared to receive his laws 'as oracles.' 'Now at length, when I am just ready to drop into the grave' (he had still twenty years of energetic work before him), 'my fame has spread itself all over the civilised world.' Dumont's publication of 1802 is considered to have superseded all previous writings on legislation. In Germany and France codes have been prepared by authorised lawyers, who have 'sought to do themselves credit by references to that work.'[298] It has been translated into Russian. Even in England he is often mentioned in books and in parliament. 'Meantime I am here scribbling on in my hermitage, never seeing anybody but for some special reason, always bearing relation to the service of mankind.'[299] Making all due allowance for the deceptive views of the outer world which haunt every 'hermitage,' it remains true that Bentham's fame was emerging from obscurity.
The end of this period, moreover, was bringing him into closer contact with English political life. Bentham, as we have seen, rejected the whole Jacobin doctrine of abstract rights. So long as English politics meant either the acceptance of a theory which, for whatever reason, gathered round it no solid body of support, or, on the other hand, the acceptance of an obstructive and purely conservative principle, to which all reform was radically opposed, Bentham was necessarily in an isolated position. He had 'nothing particular to say' to Fox. He was neither a Tory nor a Jacobin, and cared little for the paralysed Whigs. He allied himself therefore, so far as he was allied with any one, with the philanthropic agitators who stood, like him, outside the lines of party. The improvement of prisons was not a party question. A marked change—not always, I think, sufficiently emphasised by historians—had followed the second war. The party-divisions began to take the form which was to become more marked as time went on. The old issues between Jacobin and Anti-Jacobin no longer existed. Napoleon had become the heir of the revolution. The great struggle was beginning in which England commanded the ocean, while the Continent was at the feet of the empire. For a time the question was whether England, too, should be invaded. After Trafalgar invasion became hopeless. The Napoleonic victories threatened to exclude English trade from the Continent: while England retorted by declaring that the Continent should trade with nobody else. Upon one side the war was now appealing to higher feelings. It was no longer a crusade against theories, but a struggle for national existence and for the existence of other nations threatened by a gigantic despotism. Men like Wordsworth and Coleridge, who could not be Anti-Jacobins, had been first shocked by the Jacobin treatment of Switzerland, and now threw themselves enthusiastically into the cause which meant the rescue of Spain and Germany from foreign oppression. The generous feeling which had resented the attempt to forbid Frenchmen to break their own bonds, now resented the attempts of Frenchmen to impose bonds upon others. The patriotism which prompted to a crusade had seemed unworthy, but the patriotism which was now allied with the patriotism of Spain and Germany involved no sacrifice of other sentiment. Many men had sympathised with the early revolution, not so much from any strong sentiment of evils at home as from a belief that the French movement was but a fuller development of the very principles which were partially embodied in the British Constitution. They had no longer to choose between sympathising with the enemies of England and sympathising with the suppressors of the old English liberties.
But, on the other hand, an opposite change took place. The disappearance of the Jacobin movement allowed the Radicalism of home growth to display itself more fully. English Whigs of all shades had opposed the war with certain misgivings. They had been nervously anxious not to identify themselves with the sentiments of the Jacobins. They desired peace with the French, but had to protest that it was not for love of French principles. That difficulty was removed. There was no longer a vision—such as Gillray had embodied in his caricatures—of a guillotine in St. James's Street: or of a Committee of Public Safety formed by Fox, Paine, and Horne Tooke. Meanwhile Whig prophecies of the failure of the war were not disproved by its results. Though the English navy had been victorious, English interference on the Continent had been futile. Millions of money had been wasted: and millions were flowing freely. Even now we stand astonished at the reckless profusion of the financiers of the time. And what was there to show for it? The French empire, so far from being destroyed, had been consolidated. If we escaped for the time, could we permanently resist the whole power of Europe? When the Peninsular War began we had been fighting, except for the short truce of Amiens, for sixteen years; and there seemed no reason to believe that the expedition to Portugal in 1808 would succeed better than previous efforts. The Walcheren expedition of 1809 was a fresh proof of our capacity for blundering. Pauperism was still increasing rapidly, and forebodings of a war with America beginning to trouble men interested in commerce. The English Opposition had ample texts for discourses; and a demand for change began to spring up which was no longer a reflection of foreign sympathies. An article in the Edinburgh of January 1808, which professed to demonstrate the hopelessness of the Peninsular War, roused the wrath of the Tories. The Quarterly Review was started by Canning and Scott, and the Edinburgh, in return, took a more decidedly Whig colour. The Radicals now showed themselves behind the Whigs. Cobbett, who had been the most vigorous of John Bull Anti-Jacobins, was driven by his hatred of the tax-gatherer and the misery of the agricultural labourers into the opposite camp, and his Register became the most effective organ of Radicalism. Demands for reform began again to make themselves heard in parliament. Sir Francis Burdett, who had sat at the feet of Horne Tooke, and whose return with Cochrane for Westminster in 1807 was the first parliamentary triumph of the reformers, proposed a motion on 15th June 1809, which was, of course, rejected, but which was the first of a series, and marked the revival of a serious agitation not to cease till the triumph of 1832.