Utility and Democracy is the first comprehensive historical account of the political thought of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the philosopher and reformer. Philip Schofield draws on his extensive knowledge of Bentham's unpublished manuscripts and original printed texts, and on the new, authoritative edition of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. A compelling narrative charts the way in which Bentham applied his utilitarian philosophy to the rapidly changing circumstances of his age.

Schofield begins with a lucid account of Bentham's insights in the fields of logic and language,...

This is a major theoretical analysis of the harmful effects of colonies on commerce and constitutional democracy, and is one of the most important studies of colonialism written in the nineteenth century. In these essays, Bentham provided a penetrating critique of colonialism from within the liberal utilitarian tradition.

This is a collection of Bentham's essays, dating mainly from late 1822 and early 1823, concerning his attempts to draw up legislation for one Islamic state, and offer advice to another in the process of throwing off Islamic rule. The writings for Tripoli include the famous "Securities Against Misrule," as well as discussion of the social, political, and religious institutions of the country. The writings for Greece include a rare commentary on the first Greek constitution of 1822, and advice and warnings to the Greek legislators against the temptation of "sinister appetites." Both groups of...

This volume collects four essays--"Economy as Applied to Office," "Identification of Interests," "Supreme Operative," and "Constitutional Code Rationale"--dating from the spring and summer of 1822. Based exclusively on manuscripts, many of which have never been published, the essays represent an important application of utilitarian principles to the structure and organization of government and are a major contribution to the theory of representative democracy.

In 1824 Bentham conceived the idea of publishing a collection of essays in order to illustrate his own ideal of constitutional law, encapsulated in the aphorism "aptitude maximized, expense minimized" and to contrast it with practice under the British constitution, which he believed to be based on entirely the opposite principle. The volume was published in 1830 and was intended to complement the detailed administrative provisions which he had been drafting for his Constitutional Code, the major endeavor of the final decade of his life. The two works are therefore closely related, both...

In the two related works in this volume, Bentham offers a detailed critique of William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-9). In "Comment on the Commentaries," on which Bentham began work in 1774, he exposes the fallacies which he claims to have detected in Blackstone, and criticizes the theory of the Common Law. He goes on to provide important reflections on the nature of law, and more particularly on the nature of customary and of statute law, and on judicial interpretation.
A Fragment on Government, which was published in 1776, was detached from the "Comment on the...

Jeremy Bentham, the philosopher and reformer, was at the height of his fame and influence in the 1820s. The 301 letters in this volume, many of which are previously unpublished, contain correspondence with international leaders such as Simon Bolivar, the "Liberator," and Bernardino Rivadavia of Buenos Aires, British statesmen such as Robert Peel and Henry Brougham, and leading intellectuals such as John Stuart Mill and Sarah Austin.
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Utility and Democracy is the first comprehensive historical account of the political thought of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the philosopher and reformer. Philip Schofield draws on his extensive knowledge of Bentham's unpublished manuscripts and original printed texts, and on the new, authoritative edition of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. A compelling narrative charts the way in which Bentham applied his utilitarian philosophy to the rapidly changing circumstances of his age.

Schofield begins with a lucid account of Bentham's insights in the fields of logic and language,...

Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence, written in 1780-2, is the continuation of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, and thus part of the introduction to the projected penal code on which Bentham worked in the late 1770s and early 1780s. The work emerged from Bentham's attempt to distinguish between civil and penal law, which led him into an exposition of the nature and scope of an individual law and an analysis of such key legal terms as power, duty, right, property, contract, and conveyance. Bentham addresses the relationship between different "aspects"...

Church-of-Englandism and its Catechism Examined, printed in 1817 and published in 1818, was part of Bentham's sustained attack on English political, legal, and ecclesiastical establishments. Bentham argues that the purpose of the Church's system of education, in particular the schools sponsored by the Church-dominated National Society for the Education of the Poor, was to instil habits of insincerity into the population at large, and thereby protect the abuses which were profitable both to the clergy and the ruling classes in general. Bentham recommends the 'euthanasia' of the Church, and...