gains strength with time and elevation from one. mer. He meditates the coming age. He hears "foregone conclusion," and looks out for facts and sees only what suits his purpose, or some and passing occurrences in order to put them into the dust and powder of some subtle theory, as the miller looks out for grist to his mill. Add of costume, the open shirt-collar, the singleto this physiognomical sketch the minor points ribbed stockings, and you will find in Mr Benbreasted coat, the old-fashioned half-boots and tham's general appearance a singular mixture of boyish simplicity and of the venerableness of age. In a word, our celebrated jurist presents the philosophical and the legal look; that is, bea striking illustration of the difference between tween the merely abstracted and the merely personal. There is a lackadaisical bonhommie about his whole aspect, none of the fierceness of pride person instead of a stately assumption of supeor power; an unconscious neglect of his own riority; a good-humoured placid intelligence into make others its prey or was afraid they might stead of a lynx-eyed watchfulness, as if it wished turn and rend him; he is a beneficent spirit, prying into the universe, not lording it over it; ruminator on the fate of mankind, not a painted a thoughtful spectator of the scenes of life, or pageant, a stupid idol set up on its pedestal of pride for men to fall down and worship with have made, and which, without that fear and idiot fear and wonder at the thing themselves wonder, would in itself be nothing. Mr Bentham is very much among philosophers what La Fontaine was among poets-in general habits and in all but his professional pursuits he is a mere child. He has lived for the last forty years in a house in Westminster, overlooking the Park, like an anchorite in his cell, reducing law to a system, and the mind of man to a machine. He scarcely ever goes out, and sees very little company. The favoured few who have the privilege of the entrée are always admitted one by He does not like to have witnesses to his conversation. He talks a great deal and listens to nothing but facts. When any one calls upon him he invites them to take a turn round his garden with him (Mr Bentham is an economist of his time, and sets apart this portion of it to air and exercise), and there you may see the lively old man, his mind still buoyant with thought and with the prospect of futurity, in eager conversation with some opposition member, some exasperated patriot, or transatlantic adventurer, urging the extinction of close boroughs, or planning a code of laws for some "lone island in the watery waste," his walk almost amounting to a run, his tongue keeping pace with it in shrill, cluttering accents, negligent of his person, his dress, and his manner, intent only on his grand theme of utility, or pausing, perhaps, for want of breath, and with lack-lustre eye to point out to the stranger a stone in the wall at the end of his garden (overreached by two beautiful cotton-trees) "inMr Bentham perhaps overrates the importscribed to the prince of poets," which marks the ance of his own theories. He has been heard to house where Milton formerly lived. say (without any appearance of pride or affectahow little the refinements of taste or fancy enter years of his life, a year at a time at the end of To show tion) that "he should like to live the remaining into our author's system, he proposed at one time to cut down these beautiful trees, to conthe next six or eight centuries, to see the effect vert the garden where he had breathed the air upon the world.” which his writings would by that time have had of truth and heaven for near half a century into live so long. Nor do we think, in point of fact, Alas! his name will hardly a paltry Chreistomathic scho 1, and to make that Mr Bentham has given any new or decided Milton's house (the cradle of "Paradise Lost") impulse to the human mind. a thoroughfare, like a three-stalled stable, for looked upon in the light of a discoverer in legisHe cannot be the idle rabble of Westminster to pass back-lation or morals. He has not struck out any wards and forwards to it with their cloven hoofs. great leading principle or parent-truth from Let us not, however, be getting on too fastMilton himself taught school. There is somewhich a number of others might be deduced, nor thing not altogether dissimilar between Mr Ben- stock of intelligence with original observations, has he enriched the common and established tham's appearance and the portraits of Milton-like pearls thrown into wine. One truth disthe same silvery tone, a few dishevelled hairs, a peevish yet puritanical expression, an irritable temperament corrected by habit and discipline. Or in modern times, he is something between Franklin and Charles Fox, with the comfortable double chin and the sleek thriving look of the one, and the quivering lip, the restless eye, and animated acuteness of the other. His eye is quick and lively, but it glances not from object to object but from thought to thought. He is evidently a man occupied with some train of fine and inward association. He regards the people about him no more than the flies of a sum. be so; for, like a new substance in nature, it covered is immortal, and entitles its author to cannot be destroyed. But Mr Bentham's forte is arrangement, and the form of truth, though not its essence, varies with time and circumstance. He has methodised, collated, and condensed all the materials prepared to his hand on the subjects of which he treats in a masterly and scientific manner; but we should find a difficulty in adducing from his different works (however elaborate or closely reasoned) any new element of thought, or even a new fact or illustration. His writings are, therefore, chiefly valuable as books of reference, as bringing down the account man, Every pleasure, says Mr Bentham, is equally a good, and is to be taken into the account as such in a moral estimate, whether it be the pleasure of sense or of conscience, whether it arise from the exercise of virtue or the perpetration of crime. We are afraid the human mind does not readily come into this doctrine, this ultima ratio philosophorum, interpreted according to the letter. Our moral sentiments are made up of sympathies and antipathies, of sense and imagination, of understanding and prejudice. The soul, by reason of its weakness, is an aggregating and an exclusive principle; it clings obstinately to some things and violently rejects others. And it must do so in a great measure or it would act contrary to its own nature. It needs helps and stages in its progress, and "all appliances and means to boot," which can raise it to a partial conformity to truth and good (the utmost it is capable of) 11 and bring it into a tolerable harmony with the To give an instance or two of what we mean. Those who on pure cosmopolite principles, or on the ground of abstract humanity, affect an extraordinary regard for the Turks and Tartars, have been accused of neglecting their duties to their friends and next-door neighbours. Well, then, what is the state of the question here? One human being is, no doubt, as much worth in himself, independently of the circumstances of time or place, as another; but he is not of so much value to us and our affections. Could our imagination take wing (with our speculative faculties) to the other side of the globe or to the ends of the universe, could our eyes behold whatever our reason teaches us to be possible, could our hands reach as far as our thoughts or wishes, we might then busy ourselves to advantage with the Hottentots, or hold intimate converse with the inhabitants of the moon; but being as we are, our feelings evaporate in so large a space-we must draw the circle of our affections and duties somewhat closer-the heart hovers and fixes nearer home. It is true, the bands of private, or of local and natural affection are often, nay in general, too tightly strained, so as frequently to do harm instead of good: but the present question is whether we can, with safety and effect, be wholly emancipated from them? Whether we should shake them off at pleasure and without mercy, as the only bar to the triumph of truth and justice? Or whether benevolence, constructed upon a logical scale, would not be merely nominal, whether duty, raised to too lofty a pitch of refinement, might not sink into callous indifference or hollow selfishness? Again, is it not to exact too high a strain from humanity, to ask us to qualify the degree of abhorrence we feel against a murderer by taking into our cool consideration the pleasure he may have in committing the deed, and in the prospect of gratifying his avarice or his revenge? We are hardly so formed as to sympathise at the same moment with the assassin and his victim. The degree of pleasure the former may feel, instead of extenuating, aggravates his guilt, and shows the depth of his malignity. Now the mind revolts against this by mere natural antipathy, if it is itself well-disposed; or the slow process of reason would afford but a feeble resistance to violence and wrong. The will, which is necessary to give consistency and promptness to our good intentions, cannot extend so much candour and courtesy to the antagonistic principle of evil: virtue, to be sincere and practical, cannot be divested entirely of the blindness and impetuosity of passion! It has been made a plea (half jest, half earnest) for the horrors of war, that they promote trade and manufactures. It has been said, as a set-off for the atrocities practised upon the negro slaves in the West Indies, that without their blood and sweat, so many millions of people could not have sugar to sweeten their tea. Fires and murders have been argued to be beneficial, as they serve to fill the newspapers, and for a subject to talk of this is a sort of sophistry that it might be difficult to disprove on the bare scheme of contingent utility; but on the ground that we have stated, it must pass for a mere irony. What the proportion between the good and the evil will really be found in any of the supposed cases, may be a question to the understanding; but to the imagination, the heart, that is, and to the natural feelings of mankind, it admits of none! Mr Bentham, in adjusting the provisions of a penal code, lays too little stress on the cooperation of the natural prejudices of mankind, and the habitual feelings of that class of persons for whom they are more particularly designed. Legislators (we mean writers on legislation) are philosophers, and governed by their reason: criminals, for whose control laws are made, are a set of desperadoes, governed only by their passions. What wonder that so little progress has been made towards a mutual understanding between the two parties! They are quite a different species, and speak a different language, and are sadly at a loss for a common interpreter between them. Perhaps the ordinary of Newgate bids as fair for this office as any one. What should Mr Bentham, sitting at ease in his arm-chair, composing his mind before he begins to write by a prelude on the organ, and looking out at a beautiful prospect when he is at a loss for an idea, know of the principles of action of rogues, outlaws, and vagabonds? No more than Montaigne of the motions of his cat! If sanguine and tender-hearted philanthropists have set on foot an inquiry into the barbarity and the defects of penal laws, the practical improvements have been mostly suggested by reformed cut-throats, turnkeys, and thief-takers. What even can the Honourable House, who when the Speaker has pronounced the well-known, wishedfor sounds "That this House do now adjourn," retire, after voting a royal crusade or a loan of millions, to lie on down, and feed on plate in spacious palaces, know of what passes in the hearts of wretches in garrets and night-cellars, petty pilferers and marauders, who cut throats and pick pockets with their own hands? The thing is impossible. The laws of the country are, therefore, ineffectual and abortive, because they are made by the rich for the poor, by the wise for the ignorant, by the respectable and exalted in station for the very scum and refuse of the community. If Newgate would resolve itself into a committee of the whole Press-yard, with Jack Ketch at its head, aided by confidential persons from the county prisons or the hulks, and would make a clear breast, some data might be found out to proceed upon; but as it is, the criminal mind of the country is a book sealed, no one has been able to penetrate to the inside! Mr Bentham, in his attempts to revise and amend our criminal jurisprudence, proceeds entirely on his favourite principle of utility. Convince highwaymen and house-breakers that it will be for their interest to reform, and they will reform and lead honest lives; according to Mr Bentham. He says, "All men act from calculation, even madmen reason." And, in our opinion, he might as well carry this maxim to Bedlam or St Luke's, and apply it to the inhabitants, as think to coerce or overawe the inmates of a gaol, or those whose practices make them candidates for that distinction, by the mere dry, detailed convictions of the understanding. Criminals are not to be influenced by reason; for it is of the very essence of crime to disregard consequences both to our selves and others. You may as well preach philosophy to a drunken man, or to the dead, as to those who are under the instigation of any mischievous passion. A man is a drunkard, and you tell him he ought to be sober; he is debauched, and you ask him to reform; he is idle, and you recommend industry to him as his wisest course; he gambles, and you remind him that he may be ruined by this foible; he has lost his character and you advise him to get into some reputable service or lucrative situation; vice becomes a habit with him, and you request him to rouse himself and shake it off; he is starving, and you warn him that if he breaks the law, he will be hanged. None of this reasoning reaches the mark it aims at. The culprit, who violates and suffers the vengeance of the laws, is not the dupe of ignorance, but the slave of passion, the victim of habit or necessity. To argue with strong passion, with inveterate habit, with desperate circumstances, is to talk to the winds. Clownish ignorance may indeed be dis. pelled, and taught better; but it is seldom that a criminal is not aware of the consequences of his act, or has not made up his mind to the alternative. They are, in general, too knowing by half. You tell a person of this stamp what is his interest; he says he does not care about his interest, or the world and he differ on that particular. But there is one point on which he must agree with them, namely, what they think of his conduct, and that is the only hold you have of him. A man may be callous and indifferent to what happens to himself; but he is never indifferent to public opinion, or proof against open scorn and infamy. Shame, then, not fear, is the sheet-anchor of the law. He who is not afraid of being pointed at as a thief, will not mind a month's hard labour. He who is prepared to take the life of another, is already reckless of his own. But every one makes a sorry figure in the pillory; and the being launched from the new drop lowers a man in his own opinion. The lawless and violent spirit, who is hurried by beadstrong self-will to break the laws, does not like to have the ground of pride and obstinacy struck from under his feet. This is what gives the "swells" of the metropolis such a dread of the tread-mill-it makes them ridiculous. It must be confessed, that this very circumstance renders the reform of criminals nearly hopeless. It is the apprehension of being stigmatised by public opinion, the fear of what will be thought and said of them, that deters men from the violation of the laws, while their character remains unimpeached; but honour once lost, all is lost. The man can never be himself again! A citizen is like a soldier, a part of a machine, who submits to certain hardships, privations, and dangers, not for his own ease, pleasure, profit, or even consciencè, but-for shame. What is it that keeps the machine together in either case? Not punishment or discipline, but sympathy. The soldier mounts the breach or stands in the trenches, the peasant hedges and ditches, or the mechanic plies his ceaseless task, because the one will not be called a coward, the other a rogue: but let the one turn deserter and the other vagabond, and there is an end of him. The grinding law of necessity, which is no other than a name, a breath, loses its force; he is no longer sustained by the good opinion of others, and he drops out of his place in society, a useless clog! Mr Bentham takes a culprit, and puts him into what he calls a Panopticon, that is, a sort of circular prison, with open cells, like a glass bee-hive. He sits in the middle, and sees all the other does. He gives him work to do, and lectures him if he does not do it. He takes liquor from him, and society, and liberty; but he feeds and clothes him, and keeps him out of mischief; and when he has convinced him, by force and reason together, that this life is for his good, he turns him out upon the world a reformed man, and as confident of the success of his handiwork, as the shoemaker of that which he has just taken off the last, or the Parisian barber in Sterne of the buckle of his wig. "Dip it in the ocean," said the perruquier, "and it will stand!" But we doubt the durability of our projector's patchwork. Will our convert to the great principle of utility work when he is from under Mr Bentham's eye, because he was forced to work when under it? Will he keep sober, because he has been kept from liquor so long? Will he not return to loose company, because he has had the pleasure of sitting vis-avis with a philosopher of late? Will he not steal, now that his hands are untied? Will he not take the road, now that it is free to him? Will he not call his benefactor all the names he can set his tongue to, the moment his back is turned? All this is more than to be feared. The charm of criminal life, like that of savage life, consists in liberty, in hardship, in danger, and in the contempt of death, in one word, in extraordinary excitement; and he who has tasted of it, will no more return to regular habits of life, than a man will take to water after drinking brandy, or than a wild beast will give over hunting its prey. Miracles never cease, to be sure; but they are not to be had wholesale, or to order. Mr Owen, who is another of their proprietors and patentees of reform, has lately got an American savage with him, whom he carries about in great triumph and complacency, as an antithesis to his "New View of Society," and as winding up his reasoning to what it mainly wanted, an epigrammatic point. Does the benevolent visionary of the Lanark cotton 14 mills really think this natural man will act as a Mr Bentham's method of reasoning, though * Owen died in 1858. Bentham is said to have made a small fortune by investing in his cotton mills at New Lanark. extricable periods, and it would never find its 66 Mr Bentham in private life is an amiable and so, and has dissipated part of a handsome fortune exemplary character. He is a little romantic or in practical speculations. He lends an ear to plausible projectors, and, if he cannot prove them to be wrong in their premises or conclusions, thinks himself bound in reason to stake his money on the venture. Strict logicians are to the late Mr Speaker Abbot-Proh pudor! licensed visionaries. Mr Bentham is half-brother He was educated at Eton, and still takes our novices to task about a passage in Homer, or a metre in Virgil. He was afterwards at the university, and he has described the scruples of an ingenuous youthful mind about subscribing the Articles in a passage in his "Church of Englandism," which smacks of truth and honour both, "to be honest" (or not to laugh at the very idea and does one good to read it in an age when Mr Bentham relieves his mind of honesty) "is to be one man picked out of ten thousand!" on a fine old organ, and has a relish for Hogarth's sometimes after the fatigue of study by playing prints. He turns wooden utensils in a lathe for He has no great fondness for exercise, and fancies he can turn men in the poetry, and can hardly extract a moral out of same manner. |