1 Though the terms of discussion have altered considerably in the decades since, the debate can be said to have originated in Halévy's, Elie magisterial study, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism [La Formation du radicalisme philosophique, 1901–4], trans, by Morris, M. (1928; Clifton, N.J.: Augustus M. Kelley, 1972), esp. 17–18.Google Scholar Halévy outlined a tension in Bentham's utilitarianism between “the principle of the artificial identification of interests” and “the principle of the natural identity of interests.”

2 Long, Douglas G., Bentham on Liberty: Jeremy Bentham's Idea of Liberty in Relation to His Utilitarianism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977Google Scholar); Long, Douglas G., “Bentham on Property,” in Flanagan, Thomas M. and Anthony, Parel, eds., Theories of Property: Aristotle to the Present (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1979), 221–54Google Scholar; Dinwiddy, J. R., “The Classical Economists and the Utilitarians,” in Bramsted, E. K. and Melhuish, K. J., eds., Western Liberalism: A History in Documents from Locke to Croce (London: Longmans, 1978), 12–25Google Scholar; Hume, L. J., Bentham and Bureaucracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and Bahmueller, Charles F., The National Charity Company: Jeremy Bentham's Silent Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981Google Scholar).

3 Bentham MSS, UC 100/170 (ca. 1776), quoted in Long, Bentham on Liberty, 173.

4 UC 69/44 (ca. 1774), cited in ibid.; see also Dinwiddy, “The Classical Economists,” 21.

5 David Paul Crook discerned “authoritarianism” in Bentham's, proposals for the “powerful administrative departments” described in the Constitutional Code, “anticipating the positive state of the twentieth century” (American Democracy in English Politics 1815–1850 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965], 19–20Google Scholar); Parekh, Bhikhu highlights the authoritarian character of Bentham's theory of law in “Bentham's Theory of Equality,” Political Studies 18 (1970), 478–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Porter, John Riddoch refers to the “dogmatically authoritarian” character of Bentham's pauper plan in Society and Pauperism: English Ideas on Poor Relief, 1795–1834 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 109.Google Scholar

6 Schwartz, Pedro, “Jeremy Bentham's Democratic Despotism,” in Black, R. D. Collison, ed., Ideas in Economics (London: Macmillan, 1986), 74–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Bahmueller, The National Charity Company; the totalitarian character of Bentham's “panopticism” has also been suggested by Himmelfarb, Gertrude, “The Haunted House of Jeremy Bentham,” in Victorian Minds (New York: Knopf, 1968Google Scholar), chap. 2; and Manning, D. J., The Mind of Jeremy Bentham (London: Longmans, 1968Google Scholar).

8 Greenleaf, W. H., The British Political Tradition (3 vols.; London: Methuen, 1983–1987Google Scholar), Vol. 1, 248. Mack, Mary describes Bentham's political thought as “equalitarian state socialism,” in Jeremy Bentham: An Odyssey of Ideas, 1748–1792 (London: Heinemann, 1962), 299.Google Scholar

9 Long, Bentham on Liberty, 33; see also chap. 13, esp. 216–17.

10 See Hayek, F. A., Law, Legislation and Liberty: A New Statement of the Liberal Principles of Justice and Political Economy (3 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973–1979Google Scholar), Vol. 1, 22, 74, 95; Hayek, F. A., “The Errors of Constructivism,” in New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 3–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Long, Douglas G., “Science and Secularization in Hume, Smith and Bentham,” in Crimmins, James E., ed., Religion, Secularization and Political Thought: Thomas Hobbes to J. S. Mill (London: Routledge, 1990), 90–110.Google Scholar

11 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans, by Sheridan, A. (New York: Pantheon, 1979Google Scholar), chap. 3.

12 James E. Crimmins, “Religion, Utility and Politics: Bentham versus Paley,” in Crimmins, ed., Religion, Secularization and Political Thought, 145.

13 In many respects, the descriptive terms employed by both schools of interpretation are anachronistic, including the terms “liberal” and “liberalism.” The epithet “liberal” was used of a political movement for the first time in 1810 or 1811 when it was adopted by the Spanish party of Liberales—anticlerical members of the Cortes and their supporters who were in favour of liberty of the press (Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, Vol. 2, 20). As Rosen tells us, the term “liberalism” gained ideological purchase in England only in the second quarter of the nineteenth century; see Rosen, F., Bentham, Byron and Greece: Constitutionalism, Nationalism, and Early Liberal Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Rosen, F., Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy: A Study of the Constitutional Code (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983Google Scholar); Rosen, F., “The Origin of Liberal Utilitarianism: Jeremy Bentham and Liberty,” in Richard, Bellamy, ed., Victorian Liberalism: Nineteenth-Century Political Thought and Practice (London: Routledge, 1990Google Scholar), chap. 4; Boralevi, Lea Campos, Bentham and the Oppressed (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1984CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Kelly, P. J., Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990Google Scholar); Dube, Allison, The Theme of Acquisitiveness in Bentham's Political Thought (New York: Garland, 1991Google Scholar); and Postema, Gerald J., Bentham and the Common Law Tradition (1986; corrected ed.; New York: Clarendon Press, 1989Google Scholar).

15 Bentham to John Lind (March 27–28 to April 1, 1776), in The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. 1: 1752–1776, ed. by Sprigge, T. L. S. (2 vols.; London: Athlone Press, 1968), 311.Google Scholar The seeming contradiction with the quotation given above (from about the same date) disappears when it is considered that Bentham's focus here is on the “definition of liberty,” although individualist interpreters do not always appreciate the fact (see Dube, The Theme of Acquisitiveness, 311).

16 Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, 25–26 (emphasis in original).

17 Rosen, F., “Elie Halévy and Bentham's Authoritarian Liberalism,” Enlightenment and Dissent 6 (1987), 69.Google Scholar

18 Rosen, “The Origin of Liberal Utilitarianism,” 60, 62. See also Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, 4, 33–37, and for a discussion of “constitutional liberty” as “security” in Bentham's thought see the introduction more generally and chap. 2 of this work.

19 Skinner, Quentin, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and Theory 8 (1969), 3–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Naturally, not all commentators accept that Bentham's thought is as systematic as he supposed. For example, in the context of Bentham's panopticon scheme, Letwin points to the adoption of means which lead to ends contrary to those desired, see Letwin, Shirley Robin, The Pursuit of Certainty: David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Beatrice Webb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 188Google Scholar; and both Coates, W. H., “Benthamism, Laissezfaire and Collectivism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 9 (1950), 357–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, Vol. 1, note the conflicting “libertarian” and “collectivist” tendencies in Bentham's thought.

21 Bentham, Jeremy, Deontology together with a Table of the Springs of Action and the Article on Utilitarianism, ed. by Amnon, Goldworth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 131, 150.Google Scholar

22 Dinwiddy, “The Classical Economists,” 20; see also Dinwiddy, J. R., “Bentham on Private Ethics and the Principle of Utility,” in Radicalism and Reform in Britain, 1780–1850 (London: Hambledon Press, 1992), 315–38.Google Scholar

23 Dinwiddy, “The Classical Economists,” 20–21.

24 Ibid., 21. Dinwiddy's references are to Bentham's, Principles of Penal Law and The Book of Fallacies, in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (henceforth Works) (11 vols.; Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838–1843Google Scholar), Vol. 1, 568, and Vol. 2, 424.

25 Dinwiddy, “The Classical Economists,” 21, and Bentham, Jeremy, Panopticon: Or, The Inspection House (1791Google Scholar), in Works, Vol. 4, 64 (emphasis in original).

26 On Bentham's panopticon—a penitentiary for “grinding rogues honest and idle men industrious” (Works, Vol. 4, 342), see Himmelfarb, “The Haunted House of Jeremy Bentham,” chap. 2; Hume, L. J., “Bentham's Panopticon: An Administrative History,” in two parts, Historical Studies 15 and 16 (1973–1974), 703–21 and 36–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Semple, Janet, Bentham's Prison: A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993CrossRefGoogle Scholar). For critical accounts of Bentham's poor law proposals see Himmelfarb, Gertrude, “Bentham's Utopia: The National Charity Company,” The Journal of British Studies 10 (1970), 80–125CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Bahmueller, The National Charity Company.

27 Long, “Bentham on Property,” 244.

28 UC 152b/332–333 (1797), quoted in Long, “Bentham on Property,” 244; see also Bahmueller, The National Charity Company.

29 Bentham, Jeremy, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. by Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A. (1789; London: Athlone Press, 1970), 290Google Scholar, and Bentham, Jeremy, Method and Leading Features of an Institute of Political Economy, in Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings: Critical Edition Based on His Printed Works and Unprinted Manuscripts, ed. by Stark, W. (3 vols.; London: Allen and Unwin, 1952–1954Google Scholar), Vol. 3, 333. See Dube, Allison, “Hayek on Bentham,” Utilitas 2 (1990), 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Dube, The Theme of Acquisitiveness, 345.

30 Jacobs concedes that the panopticon and poor law proposals are an aberration from the general “liberal” character of Bentham's thought, and suggests that they can be defended, at least in part, in terms of liberal principles. Unfortunately, he contents himself with rehearsing a list of specific liberal proposals in Bentham's writings, from which he uncritically concludes that “Bentham is most of the time in the liberal camp”; Bentham supported some state interventions in the economy, as did Adam Smith, “but these are qualifications of liberal economics, not a rejection of it” ( Jacobs, Struan, Science and British Liberalism: Locke, Bentham, Mill and Popper [Aldershot: Avebury, 1991], 90, 100Google Scholar, but see chap. 6 for the complete account).

31 See Semple, Bentham's Prison.

32 Dube, The Theme of Acquisitiveness, 121.

33 Ibid., 311, 120.

34 Ibid., 311, 146. Dube associates Bentham and Hayek more directly in the individualist camp of the liberal tradition when he states that for both “freedom in the economic sphere is inseparable from political freedom” (ibid., 250). For the full discussion see chaps. 5–7.

35 Ibid., 315.

36 Ibid., 316.

37 Ibid., 333.

38 Other difficulties attend Dube's “reconstruction,” not the least of which is the suggestion that those who do not recognize that their individual interests are enhanced by pursuing the greatest happiness are in error in calculating their individual interest (ibid., 197), even though he uncritically quotes Bentham to the effect that the individual alone is in a position to estimate what is and what is not in his own interest (ibid., 213).

39 See Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, 25–26.

40 Bentham, An Introduction, 293 (emphasis added).

41 Bentham, Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings, Vol. 3, 311.

42 See Postema, Bentham and the Common Law Tradition, 167.

43 Semple, Bentham's Prison, 152.

44 Ibid., 153.

45 Ibid., 175.

46 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 204.

47 Semple, Janet, “Foucault and Bentham: A Defence of Panopticism,” Utilitas 4 (1992), 105–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Ibid., 315.

49 For example, ibid., 157.

50 Perhaps David Lieberman strikes the appropriate discordant note when he observes that Bentham's panopticon “was a society in which his basic legislative strategy was inoperable” ( Lieberman, David, “From Bentham to Benthamism,” The Historical Journal 28 [1985], 214CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

51 Bentham's essays “On the Influence of Time and Place in Matters of Legislation” and “Of Indirect Legislation” have been edited by C. Bahmueller and H. Weiting, Jr., for The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford, forthcoming). There is an incomplete essay on the subject “Of Indirect Means of Preventing Crimes” included as part 3 of Bentham's Principles of Penal Law, in Works, Vol. 1, 533–80. For a discussion see Long, Bentham on Liberty, 136ff; pp. 142–45 focus on indirect checks on the unwarranted interference by government in the lives of law-abiding citizens, such as freedom of the press and freedom of association.

52 Bentham, Panopticon, in Works, Vol. 4, 39.

53 See the mss. quotation to this effect in Everett, Charles Warren, The Education of Jeremy Bentham (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), 190–91.Google Scholar

54 Bentham, “An Essay on the Promulgation of Laws,” in Works, Vol. 1, 161.

55 Bentham, “Of Indirect Means of Preventing Crimes,” 533–80.

56 Ibid., 539.

57 Ibid., 561–70, 573–74.

58 Dube puts this construction upon Bentham's intentions in the context of the panopticon proposals (The Theme of Acquisitiveness, 315).

59 Bentham, Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings.

60 Jeremy Bentham, Manual of Political Economy, in Works, Vol. 3, 49 (not in the version in Bentham, Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings, Vol. 1, 219–73).

61 Bentham, Defence of Usury, Manual of Political Economy, Method and Leading Features of an Institute of Political Economy and Observations on the Restrictive and Prohibitory Commercial System, all in Bentham, Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings, Vol. 1, 121–207, 219–73, and Vol. 3, 303–80, 381–417.

62 Ibid., editor's introduction, Vol. 1, 49, and Vol. 2, 8.

63 Ibid., Vol. 3, 247–302.

64 Ibid., 257–58.

65 Ibid., 258–59.

66 At least one economist has argued that in Defence of a Maximum Bentham returned to a version of mercantilism ( Hutchison, T. W., “Bentham as an Economist,” Journal of Economics 66 [1956], 288–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar). For Stark's discussion of this essay see editor's introduction in Bentham, Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings, Vol. 3, 30–37.

67 Ibid., 30.

68 Parekh misses the point entirely when he writes: “The general import of his laissez-faire economic theory is that as long as no one in the community starves, it does not matter to Bentham who owns how much” (“Bentham's Theory of Equality,” 492).

69 Editor's introduction in Bentham, Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings, Vol. 3, 33. This understanding of Defence of a Maximum is reiterated by Kelly, P. J., “Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: The Civil Law and the Foundations of Bentham's Economic Thought,” Utilitas 1 (1989CrossRefGoogle Scholar), 81 note.

70 For example, Rosen, Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, 55–75; Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece, 4; and Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice, 71–103.

71 Ibid., 136; see also Kelly, “Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice.”

72 Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice, 106.

73 Ibid., 136.

74 UC 100/96–186. Other important manuscripts identified by Kelly, although written far later (in the 1820s), are UC 61/9–10, 19–21, 26–66, 83–97 and BL Add. MS 33550/48–144 (Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice, 73, note 8). The civil law manuscripts are also discussed by Long, Bentham on Liberty, chap. 10, where some of the same points are made about the relationship between the principle of utility and its subordinate principles as one finds in Kelly.

75 The “disappointment-preventing principle” first appeared in “A Commentary on Mr. Humphrey's Real Property Code” (1826), in Works, Vol. 5, 387–416, and later in the Constitutional Code, the “Article on Utilitarianism” (a revised version appears in Deontology), manuscripts incorporated into “Pannomial Fragments,” in Works, Vol. 3, 211–30, and the Equity Dispatch Court Proposal (1830), in ibid., 297–317. In the latter, Bentham refers to “the Disappointment preventive, or say Non-disappointment principle” which, he says, “next to the Greatest Happiness principle… is the immediate lineal descendent of that same parent principle” (ibid., 312, quoted by Dube, The Theme of Acquisitiveness, 146). Kelly's, references for the “security-providing principle” are UC 61/47 (1828Google Scholar) and BL Add. MS 33550/55 (Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice, 174–75, 138, note 5).

76 Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice, 171; see also Rosen, Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, 15. Postema discusses the disappointment-preventing principle in the context of Bentham's mature theory of adjudication (Bentham and the Common Law Tradition, 413–21).

77 Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice, 39.

78 Ibid., 7.

79 Ibid., 96.

80 See Postema, Bentham and the Common Law Tradition, 147–90.

81 Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice, 93.

82 Jeremy Bentham, Principles of the Civil Code, in Works, Vol. 1, 322, quoted by Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice, 95 (emphasis in original).

83 Ibid. 8.

84 Ibid., 10.

85 Ibid., 56.

86 Crossley, David J., “Utilitarianism, Rights and Equality,” Utilitas 2 (1990), 53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

87 Campos Boralevi, Bentham and the Oppressed, 186.

88 Bentham printed most of An Introduction in 1780, but did not publish it until 1789; chapter 2 contains Bentham's dismissal of principles contrary to that of utility. Even earlier, in the “Preparatory Principles” manuscripts of the mid-1770s, Bentham had developed a sophisticated analysis of the “fictions” that bedeviled legal, political and philosophical understanding, and both A Fragment on Government (1776) and its parent text, the posthumously published A Comment on the Commentaries, illustrate this aversion. For a discussion see Crimmins, James E., Secular Utilitarianism: Social Science and the Critique of Religion in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 40–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

89 UC 100/179 (ca. 1776), quoted in Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice, 179.

90 In Kelly's account this is what Bentham intended to achieve by what he came to call the “disappointment-preventing principle,” but it might be queried how the utilitarian legislator could do otherwise than count costs as well as benefits when calculating general utility.

91 Crossley, “Utilitarianism, Rights and Equality,” 53.

92 See J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, in Robson, J. M., ed., Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, Vol. 10 of The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 257.Google Scholar Mill may have imbibed the premise from his father, who frequently referred to it (see James Mill: Political Writings, ed. by Terence, Ball [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992Google Scholar], editor's introduction, xxii).

93 Thomas, William, Mill, in Skinner, Q., et al., eds., Great Political Thinkers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 257.Google Scholar

94 For example, Griffin, James, Weil-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Importance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 168, 371Google Scholar note. Among those who have dealt extensively with Bentham's moral theory, Baumgardt is one of the few to avoid reference to the dictum ( Baumgardt, David, Bentham and the Ethics of Today [New York: Princeton University Press, 1952Google Scholar]).

95 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 27.Google Scholar

96 For the complete argument see Hare, R. M., “Could Kant Have Been a Utilitarian?” Utilitas 5 (1993), 1–16, esp. 4–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hare ignores the fact that Bentham's utilitarianism was developed primarily in the form of legal theory and as a guide for the legislative pursuit of general utility. Ideally, the moral reasoning of private individuals should coincide with the prescriptions of utility. Bentham's theory of human nature, however, was that of a psychological egoist; thus his utilitarianism required the active participation of the legislator in the production of general well-being. To what degree and at what cost is the central issue.

97 Kymlicka, Will, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 34.Google Scholar

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99 Lyons, David, “Bentham, Utilitarianism, and Distribution,” Utilitas 4 (1992), 325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

100 Kelly cites UC 100/186 (ca. 1776), Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice, 188, but acknowledges that most of the discussion of this principle occurs in the context of Bentham's later writings on constitutional reform.

101 At one point Kelly suggests that the earlier civil law mss. (UC 100/96–186) reveal that Bentham was not as committed to the absolute protection of any given distribution of property as some passages from the Principles of the Civil Code might suggest (see, for example, Works, Vol. 1, 311, cited by Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice, 180).

102 For example, Plan of Parliamentary Reform (1818), Radical Reform Bill (1819) and Radicalism Not Dangerous (written 1819–20), in Works, Vol. 3, 433–622; see also note 101 above.

103 Unpublished papers, dated 1788–90; UC 170/87–121, 126/8–16, 126/1–7 and 127/6–19, respectively. For a discussion see Crimmins, James E., “Bentham's Political Radicalism Reexamined,” Journal of the History of Ideas 55 (1994), 259–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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105 Dicey, A. V., Lectures on the Relationship Between Law and Public Opinion in England During the Nineteenth Century (1905; 2nd ed.; London: Macmillan, 1914), 128–29, 131, 310.Google Scholar