Jeremy Bentham is well known today as a moral philosopher; but his political thought, and the thought of those British radicals who considered him a teacher and inspiration, has been largely forgotten. This I consider to be unfortunate, not only because Benthamite radicalism is an enviable model of logic and clarity compared to other political traditions, but because it has continuing relevance: our politicians, and, indeed, our constitution, have not been so corrupt since the eighteenth century. We are much in need of the analytical rigour that comprised Bentham’s genius; and it is my sincere hope, that by sharing my investigations into this deep well of neglected thought, others might be persuaded of its value.
Bentham’s Plan of Parliamentary Reform was first published in 1817. He attacked the British constitution, blamed it for the prevalence of waste and corruption, and singled out the King—the ‘Corruptor-General’ in his idiosyncratic terminology—for propagating abuses. Bentham’s remedy was radical reform: the virtual universality of suffrage, whereby all interests would be represented, with the effect that the universal interest would be advanced. We know now that universal suffrage was not as perfect a remedy as it was once believed to be; but that is only because the conditions for its proper operation have been distorted by political economic circumstances that were not, in Bentham’s time, properly understood. Nevertheless, his observations about the constitution, and his defence of democracy, remain useful.
Misrule
‘What, according to these men, is the use of the constitution? To make the people happy? Make them happy? No! curse on the swinish multitude! What then? Why to make one man happy, the one object of legitimate idolatry, with the small number of others to whom it accords with his high pleasure to impart any of the means of happiness.’
‘Waste begets corruption; corruption, waste. Fed through the already enumerated drains—viz. useless places, needless places, overpay of needful places, groundless pensions, and sinecures, many times more richly endowed than the most richly endowed efficient offices—these, together with Peerages, and Baronetages, and Ribbons—for Peerage-hunters, Baronetage-hunters, and Ribbon-hunters—by their bare existence, always with the fullest effects, and never with the personal danger, or so much as the imputation attached to the word bribery, they operate in the character, and produce the effect of corruptive influence—that pestilential matter, against the infection of which not a household in the country can be said to be secure, from the Archbishop’s palace down to the hovel by the road side.’
‘Discarding the case of national subjection under a foreign yoke, take the case of domestic subjection:—take the case of Negro slavery. Is not the description of the case still the same? The Slave-holder, it may be said, has an interest in common with that of his slaves. True; and so has the Mail-Coach Contracter in common with that of his horses. While working them, and so long as they appear able to work, he accordingly allows them food. Yet, somehow or other, notwithstanding this community of interest, it too often happens that Negro as well as horse are worked to the very death. How happens this?—because in the same breast with the conjunct interest is lodged a separate and sinister interest, which is too strong for it. Even so is it in the case of Corruptor-General and Co. under whose management the condition of the poor people is day by day approaching nearer and nearer to the condition of the negro and the horse.’
‘At present, the cause of the misrule is this: that the power is completely in the hands of those whose interest, desire, and determination it is, that the misrule should continue; the thing required, is leaving the executive part of the government where it is, so to order matters, that the controuling part of the government shall be in the hands of those whose interest it is that good government shall take place of misrule in every shape; and more particularly in the two most intimately connected and mutually festering shapes, waste and corruption, corruption and waste.’
‘The immediate cause of all the mischief of misrule is, that the men acting as representatives of the people have a private and sinister interest, and sufficient power to gratify that interest, producing a constant sacrifice of the interest of the people.
‘The secondary cause of the mischief—the cause of this immediate cause is this, that these same agents are in one case unduly independent, in another unduly dependent. They are independent of their principals—the people; and dependant upon the Corruptor-General, by whose corruptive influence the above-mentioned sacrifice is produced.’
Can the people choose their rulers well?
‘On the ground of self-formed judgement, it is true that few could, in a case such as that in question, be expected to act with any tolerable degree of wisdom; but neither is it less so, that on the ground of derivative judgement, there exists not any such large and miscellaneous body of men, of whom the majority may not, even in such a case as this, be expected, and with reason, to act with a degree of propriety adequate to the purpose. For, in respect of those concerns, which to each individual taken by himself, are of still superior importance—viz. physic, law, and religion, does not every man who is not, in his own eyes, competent to make on the ground of his own self-formed judgement, choice of an agent or assistant, feel himself reduced to the necessity of acting on the ground of derivative judgement? In a word, on the ground of public opinion, and under the yoke of this, as well as so many other necessities, the business of private and domestic life goes on in the way we see. Well, and why not also of public life. The business of each individual? Well, and why not then the business of all?—And note, that on this occasion, the probability of making any such choice as shall be not only foolish but mischievous (and so far as it is not mischievous, no matter how foolish), is circumscribed within very narrow limits, by the nature and number of the individuals who, on such an occasion, can offer themselves, with the least prospect of finding acceptance, by the majority of so large a multitude as that in question: say, at least, several thousands. It is true that, were the electors the parishioners of a small parish, it might happen, that foolish and ignorant men in preponderant numbers, might agree in the choice of some artful and profligate man of their own level and their own set, by whom, to his own private and sinister purposes, their confidence would be abused. But when the electoral circle is of any such large dimensions as those intended, all such individual causes of deception are altogether out of the question: no man can either propose himself, or be reasonably expected to be proposed, but upon the ground of some reputed qualification, of his possession of which the whole population of the electoral districts will have the means of judging.’
The Constitution
The constitutional balance: ‘It will never do to talk of balance; leave that to Mother Goose and Mother Blackstone. Balance, indeed! A fine thing for politicians upon roses—by whom, on questions most wide in extent, and most high in importance, to save the toil of thinking, an allusion or an emblem is accepted as conclusive evidence, so as it has been accepted by others. What mean ye by this your balance? Know ye not, that in a machine of any kind, when forces balance each other, the machine is at a stand? Well, and in the machine of government, is the perpetual absence of all motion the thing which is wanted? And since you must have an emblem—since you can neither talk, nor attempt to think, but in hieroglyphics—know you not that, as in the case of the body natural, so in the case of the body politic, when motion ceases, the body dies?’
‘Let us define the simple substance—the real democracy, to be that form of government in which the interest of the whole people is the only interest provided for; and in which the only power is a power having for its object the support of that interest. If to this simple substance you add a power, employed in the support of the interest of one single person, and a power employed in the support of the interest of a comparatively small knot of persons, in either of these cases you have a mixture; well, and compared then with the simple substance, when and where can be the advantages of this mixture?’
Democratic Remedy
‘Virtual universality of Suffrage and practical equality of representation are … means for advancing the universal interest.’
How to advance the universal interest? ‘The due dependence of the representative upon his constituents:—that is, whenever the representative shall become, in the eyes of the acting majority of his constituents, unfit for his situation, by not possessing the requisite qualities, viz. appropriate honesty, intellectual abilities and active talents, it shall be in the power of his constituents, by means of a fresh election, to remove him from his seat before he has had time to produce any irremediable mischief.
‘The due independence of the representative of all other persons, but more particularly of Corruptor-General and Co. as it is by their corrupt influence alone that a majority of the representatives can be purchased.
‘The constant attendance of the representative to his duty in the House is another essential object to be obtained.’
Further securities for the universal interest: ‘Impermanence of the situation, secured by the annual recurrence of the elective process.
‘This species of instrumental security contributes in two distinguishable ways … 1. In proportion to the shortlivedness of the power, the profit capable of being reaped by Corruptor-General and Co. by corrupting the representative in question, and engaging him to betray his trust, diminishes. 2. The profit to Corruptor will diminish and therefore the price which he will be unwilling to pay, and thence the money which the corruptible representative will be able to receive will diminish. In the same proportion likewise, the corruption-opposing remedy, placed in the hands of his constituents, increases, the sooner the time for re-election comes, the earlier may that remedy be applied.
‘To reduce to the smallest quantity of time, during which it shall be in the power of the representative to continue in the supposed course of mischievous conduct, it would be requisite that immediately on the supposed commission of any such breach of trust, it should be in the power of the majority of his constituents to divest him of his trust.’
Plan
‘There are in my plan of radical reform ten principal arrangements, viz.
I. Applying to the situation of Elector.
- Comprehension of all interests.
- Virtual Universality of Suffrage.
- Practical Equality of Suffrage.
- Freedom of Suffrage.
- Secrecy of Suffrage.
II. Applying to the Situation of Representative.
- Due Dependence towards his Constituents.
- Due Independence towards Corruptor-General and Co.
- Impermanence of Situation from annual Elections.
- Exclusion of placemen from voting in the House.
- Universal Constancy of Attendance.’
Virtual Universality of Suffrage further considered
‘In all eyes but those to which tyranny is the only endurable form of government, what principle can be more impregnable than universal suffrage?
- Who is there that is not susceptible of discomfort and comfort, of pain and pleasure?
- Of what is human happiness, felicity, well-being, or welfare composed, but comfort, and absence of discomfort, pleasure and exemption from pain?
- What greater or less part of the universal happiness and unhappiness is the happiness or unhappiness of any one member of the community, high or low, rich or poor, in comparison with any other?
- Who is there by whom unhappiness is not avoided—happiness pursued?
- Who is there, by whom unhappiness ought not to be avoided, and happiness pursued?
- Who, in avoiding unhappiness and pursuing happiness, has not a course of conduct to maintain, which, in some way or other, he does maintain throughout life?
- Who is there, whose conduct does not take, on each occasion, its direction from a self-formed or derivative judgement?
- Who is there, whose conduct is never, on any occasion, directed by any other than a self-formed judgement? Who is there that, in relation to the most momentous of the private concerns of his life, does not frequently find himself under the obligation of taking for his guidance a judgement of the derivative kind?
- Is it not the part taken by a man, in relation to his own private affairs considered all together, of greater importance to himself, than any part could be, which, in relation to the whole number of public affairs taken together, could, even under a system of universal suffrage, ever come under his cognizance?
- Suppose that the interest of the subject many and of the ruling few are incompatible; in what way would either the prevalent or exclusive possession of the requisite intellectual talents by the ruling few conduce to the welfare or interest of the subject many, so long as in the bosoms of the ruling few dishonesty existed, instead of appropriate honesty?’
‘The supreme principle that ought constantly to be borne in mind, is that all interests should be comprehended and advanced: this is the foundation of the right of universal suffrage. But if it be sufficiently clear that any class of persons neither are nor can be in such a state of mind as to possess the intellectual fitness necessary to exercise the right of suffrage with advantage, then such a class may be excluded without injury to any thing useful in the principle of comprehending all interests.’
Exceptions to the suffrage: minors; women; soldiers and sailors on foreign service; non-readers.
Women: ‘If the great leading considerations and surest guides to just decision, namely, the principle of comprehending all interests, and the possession of the requisite honesty and requisite intellectual abilities do not apply with propriety to both sexes, it does not seem easy to say with what propriety they can be applicable to either … Thus, though in … several instances the propriety of vesting power in the female sex was confessedly established, yet in the case of democratic election, no such opinion has obtained, and any attempt towards giving a decided opinion on the subject would be altogether premature in this place. It may be asked what is the use, then, of these observations?—I answer, the use, at least the design, is to shew in what way so important a subject can be treated in respect to principle. It is left to the reader determine, which is the most proper manner of treating the subject; the manner of which an example is just given, or that which consists in a horse laugh, a sneer, an expression of scorn, or a common place witticism.’
Non-readers: ‘The principle of excluding from the right of suffrage all persons who cannot read, is not at variance with the principle of comprehending all interests; the duration of the exclusion is not only temporary, but it may also be greatly shortened by the exertion of the individual excluded, while it offers a reward as an incentive to those exertions. The proof of the excluded individual’s having gained for himself the right of suffrage, might be publicly reading the law by which the elections in this supposed reform state of things shall have been regulated.
‘For the moral and intellectual effects flowing from such an institution, inquire of the National Society; inquire of any body except those whose undissembled wish has been to keep us of the swinish multitude for ever in our state of swine.’
The Importance of Interest
‘In this public situation, or in any other, be the individual who he may, have you any wish of possessing either a clue to his conduct in time past, or a means of foreknowing his conduct in time future? Look to the situation he is in, in respect to interest.—Have you any such wish in regard to a body of men? Look still to interests:—look to the situation in which the whole or the majority of that body are in respect of interest.
‘In the case of an individual unknown, it is your only clue: in the case of a body—meaning the governing part of it, it is a sure one.
‘Yes: in this one short phrase, the state of interests—every man has at hand a glass, in which,—when set up in the field of morals—and more particularly in that part of it which embraces politics,—any man, who is not afraid of seeing things as they are, may at all times see, what it will not at all times be equally agreeable to him to see. Where the object or objects which it presents to his view have something more or less of unpleasantness in them—where the effect of them is to check the vivacity of that swaggering and strutting pace, which when in their vibrations before a looking-glass pride and vanity are so apt to assume,—nothing is more natural than that the eyes should have a tendency to close themselves.
‘In the case of a man, by whom a public situation in any way efficient is occupied,—the correctness of the conception which he himself has of what is passing and about to pass in his own mind,—and in particular of the springs of action by which his own conduct has been and is in a way to be determined,—is to the public at large, a point as indifferent as it is unascertainable: but, to that same public, a conception as correct as can be formed in regard to these same springs of action,—and the share they have respectively had, are in a way to have, in the production of several effects, is frequently a matter of no inconsiderable importance.
‘In the view of giving what facility it may be in my power to give to an inquiry of this sort, I will notwithstanding the repetition involved in them, venture to submit two rules or directions: the one positive, the other negative.
‘1. POSITIVE RULE.—To satisfy yourself beforehand, what, on a given occasion, will be the course a man will take, look to the state of interests: look out for, and take not of, the several interests, to the operation of which the situation he occupies stands exposed.
‘2. NEGATIVE RULE.—In your endeavour to satisfy yourself, what, on the occasion in question, is the course he will take, pay no regard whatever to professions or protestations:—to protestations, by whomsoever made, whether by the man himself or by his adherents: never to professions and protestations, directly made and in that very shape: still less to professions and protestations muffled up in any such disguise, as that of a storm of indignation poured forth upon the malignant and audacious calumniator, by whom any such expectation is held up to view, as that the conduct of the men in question will be in any degree likely to receive its direction, from those springs of action, on the predominant force and efficiency of which the preservation of every individual is dependant every day of his life.
‘The application of the above rules, it may sometimes happen to a man to be led into an erroneous conclusion, in the case of an individual. For, in the case of an individual, the most correctly framed general rules will sometimes fail.
‘Far otherwise is it in the case of a body of men; more particularly in the case of a body, the motives of which are in so great a degree open to universal observation as those of a political party. The larger the body, the more unerring the indications afforded by those rules.’
Coincidence of Interests between Whigs and Tories
‘All, in whom in all its several forms Parliamentary Reform finds opposers, may be considered as belonging to the class of Tories.
‘All by whom moderate reform is advocated or supported, to the exclusion of radical reform, may be considered as belonging to the class of Whigs.
‘Those by whom the exigences and demands of the universal interest—of the interest of the whole people, and those demands a Radical Reform, may, for distinction sake, be termed People’s-men.
’Now, then, both Tories and Whigs, acting under the dominion of the same seductive and corrupt influence, will be seen to possess the same separate and sinister interest: AN INTEREST COMPLETELY AND UNCHANGEABLY OPPOSITE TO THAT OF THE WHOLE UNCORRUPT PORTION OF THE PEOPLE.
’That which the Tories have in possession, the Whigs have before them in prospect and expectation.
‘1. In the first place, as to waste and corruption, corruption and waste. It ever has been, and ever will be, the interest of the Tories to keep that portion of the substance of the people, which is expended in waste and corruption, as great as possible: so of the Whigs likewise. Under non-reform, this quantity will be left untouched: under moderate reform the reduction in it, if any, would be little; under radical reform the reduction would be complete.
‘In the next place, as to seats. It is the interest of the Tories that the power belonging to the seats which they have at their disposal should remain undiminished, and therefore the number, as well as value, the seats themselves. On the part of the Whigs, so far as concerns the seats at their disposal, behold the self-same interest.
‘Partly to proprietorship, partly to terrorism (not to speak of bribery) are the Tories in the greater proportion indebted for their seats. To the same instrument of subjection, to the same extinguisher of freedom, without any ascertainable difference in respect of proportions, are the Whigs indebted for their seats.
‘In respect of their seats, it is in the interest of the Tories to be absentees at their own pleasure; absentees for the purpose of half the effect of corruption as before explained; absentees, for the purpose of private interest, dissipation, and idleness. On the part of the Whigs, with the exception of that corrupt purpose, in which none but those in power can be partakers, still the same sinister interest.
‘Among the Tories, it is the interest of all persons who have seats at command, to enjoy, clear of obligation, the full private benefit of those situations, and of the power they confer; clear of obligation in every shape, and in particular, clear of all such obligations as that of possessing the smallest grain of appropriate aptitude. In respect of interest, the Whigs, taken individually, will be seen to be in that same case.
‘Not having in possession, nor in any probable and near expectancy, any share in the existing mass of corruption; no public money at their disposal, no peerages, no factitious dignities; hence, (setting aside their private property,) they behold the sole efficient cause of whatever pre-eminence they can hope, as a party, to possess in the scale of influence, in the power attached to the seats they possess in the two Houses; but more particularly in the most efficient of the two. In the eyes of the people at large, the sort of union they have been wont to obtain among themselves, presents itself to them as securing to them a sort of chance, of entering, once more, on some unknown occasion, be it for ever so short a time, into the possession of efficient and profitable power. Impossible as it is for them, incompatible with their distinctive character, to outbid, or so much as to come up to the present occupants in that auction, at which, by greater and greater manifestations of obsequiousness, the favour of Corruptor-General must by all competitors, be at all times bid for. It is not in the nature of things, that any possession, which it may be supposed possible for them to attain, should be of any considerable continuance: of any continuance beyond that of the longest of those short-lived ones, which past experience has brought to view.
‘But if ever, as a body, the Tories go out altogether, the Whigs as a body, being the only formed body in existence, must come in; and, being a body, come in together. Here then, such as it is, is a chance; and that of which it is a chance being, so long as it lasts, a mass of power never much less, and now not at all less, than absolute. Thus it is that, being their every thing, were it even much less than it is, it could not be prized at any thing less than the full value. And the smaller the portion which is thus left to them, it being their all, the more, rather than the less, pertinacious will be their determination to preserve it undiminished.
‘Thus, without any need of concert—most probably, therefore, without any instance of actual concert—has a sort of tacit co-operation been kept up between the two contending parties: an alliance in form but defensive, but in effect but too offensive, against the people and their interests.’
Miscellany
‘As for the Habeas Corpus Act, better the statute-book were rid of it. Standing or lying as it does; up one day, down another; it serves but to swell the list of sham-securities, with which, to keep up the delusion, the pages of our law books are defiled. When no man has need of it, then it is that it stands; a time comes when it might be of use, and then it is suspended.’
‘our own matchless constitution—matchless in rotten boroughs and sinecures!’
Notes in the Margins of the Days 