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 Pitt had actually proposed that respectable paupers should be supplied with cows. Bentham was almost alone in seeing clearly what were the chief evils, and he anticipated many of the principlcs which were embodied in the poor law of 1834. He desired the rigid application of the labour test, and he strove to do away with the wasteful anomalies of the settlement system. Through many of the details of his scheme — and Bentham as usual descended to details, even deciding of what material the paupers' beds were to be made — must be pronounced impracticable, his ideas as to the treatment of paupers are marvellous, considering the time when they were propounded, and the dangerous nonsense which was in fashion among his contemporaries. Poor-law reform was by no means the only subject which occupied him at this period. About 1798 he was busy scheming and writing on a multitude of other topics — e.g. a project for the issue of government annuity notes, as to which he had much correspondence with Sir George Rose and Mr. Vansittart.

Two important events may here be mentioned. At Bowood Bentham became acquainted with Dumont, an able, enlightened citizen of Geneva, whence political troubles had driven him. Romilly had sent some of Bentham's manuscripts to Dumont. Greatly impressed by their originality, Dumont offered to edit them. The offer was accepted. The same service was rendered, with patience and intelligence, in regard to other manuscripts, and for many years he acted as a sort of official interpreter between the great jurist and the world at large. Dumont was much more than an editor or populariser ; he placed other gifts at Bentham's disposal besides a clear style and a turn for happy illustration. Out of the chaos of manuscnpt confided to him — parts of the subject wholly omitted, parts defectively treated, others expounded with embarrassing redundancy — he composed a lucid narrative. Above Dumont's literary gifts, though great, was his enthusiasm for Bentham, who was to him a law. This submission of a really superior mind had scarcely any bounds ; his approval of the teaching of others was expressed in the saying : 'C'est convainquant, c'est la vérité même, c'est presque benthamique' (Notice nécrologique sur Dumont, by Sismondi). Bentham was assisted in a similar manner by a number of able auxiliaries. One of his best known and most brilliant works, that on fallacies, was edited by a 'friend.' The same service was rendered in regard to his papers on judicial procedure. This was a topic to which Bentham was in the habit of recurring for more than thirty years. 'The consequence,' writes the editor, Mr. Doane, 'was, an immense mass of manuscript on this subject, extending to several thousands of pages, was found at his decease. Very many of the chapters were written over and over again, each of them varying in some particulars, and all of them were in a more or less unfinished state.' His voluminous papers on logic were handed over to his nephew, [q. v.], to be reduced to order and to be amplified. One of J. S. Mill's earliest literary undertakings was the editing, that is, to a large extent the re-writing, of Bentham's papers on judicial evidence, which had been composed at various times from 1808 to 1812. Mr. Mill has described in his 'Antobiography' (4th edit. p. 113) the nature of his task. He had to take liberties with the manuscript far in excess of those which an editor permits himself. 'Mr. Bentham had begun this treatise three times at considerable intervals, each time in a different manner, and eachtime without reference to the preceding: two of the three times he had given over nearly the whole subject. These three masses of manuscript it was my duty to condense into a single treatise ; adopting the one last written as the groundwork, and incorporating with it as much of the two others as it had not completely superseded. I had also to unroll such of Mr. Bentham's involved and parenthetical sentences as seemed to overpass by their complexity the measure of what readers were likely to take the pains to understand.' Mr. Mill a*lso filled up gaps. He commented on a few of the objectionable points of the English rules of evidence which had escaped Bentham's attention, he replied to the reviewers of Dumont's book, and he added remarks on the theory of improbability (see Preface to edition five volumes, 1827). Those who desire to know the latitude which Bentham permitted his disciples in manipulating the materials committed to them, would do well to compare the manuscript handed to Mr. Grote of a work on natural religion with the printed book (, Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion, &c.), and to study Bentham's letter of instructions, containing directions as to the treatment of the manuscript 'in case of dotage, symptoms of which, if found,' he observes,' you will not fail to inform me of, that upon the first opportunity I may grow younger and enter a new lease for my life' (British Museum, Add. MS. 29806).

It is not surprising that the exact share which Bentham had in some of the works passing under his name is not clear. Having not a particle of literary vanity, he put 