Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/9



BICHENO, JAMES EBENEZER (1785–1851), colonial secretary in Van Diemen's Land, and a writer on economic and scientific subjects, was the son of the Rev. James Bicheno, a dissenting minister and schoolmaster at Newbury, Berkshire, who died 9 April 1831, and was the author of 'Friendly Address to the Jews' (1787); 'Signs of the Times' (1792-4); 'A Word in Season' (1795); and other politico-theological works. James Ebenezer was born in 1786. He spent the first part of his life at Newbury, and there wrote 'An Inquiry into the Nature of Benevolence, chiefly with a view to elucidate the Principles of the Poor Laws' (London, 1817; republished in an extended form, and under the title of 'An Inquiry into the Poor Laws,' London, 1824). This was an attack on the system of poor-law administration then prevailing in England. The relief afforded by it, he said, 'multiplied instead of mitigating distress.' He gave an historical sketch of poor-law legislation, and argued in favour of a gradual change to a method of dealing with pauperism such as is now in force. He married a Miss Lloyd in 1821, but lost his wife within a year. He was called to the bar by the Middle Temple 17 May 1822.

Whilst still a student he published a work on the 'Philosophy of Criminal Jurisprudence' (London, 1819), in which, after pointing out that to defend society and improve the wretched are 'the only proper ends of punishment which reason and virtue sanction,' he urged that the penalties of the then criminal code were too severe. He proposed that the punishment of death should be restricted to a few cases, that whipping should be abolished, and that we should not 'burden the colonies with the refuse of our prisons.'

Although Bicheno, after his call to the bar, joined the Oxford circuit, he did not engage seriously in the practice of his profession, but devoted himself to economic and scientific studies. He could the more easily do this, as his father was a man of some property, and he was his only surviving son and heir. He was a member of the chief English learned societies, and in 1824 he was appointed secretary to the Linnean Society. He contributed to their Transactions as well as to those of other societies, and assisted in the publication of several works, of which Jardine and Selby's 'Illustrations of Ornithology' (Edinburgh, 1830?) may be mentioned.

Bicheno engaged for some time in mining speculations in Wales, and the better to manage them he resided at Tymaen, near Pyle, in Glamorganshire, and here he filled several local offices. He was obliged finally to withdraw, with some loss, from this undertaking. In 1829 he made, in company with Mr. Frederick Page, a deputy-lieutenant of Berkshire and bencher of the Middle Temple, a very extensive tour through Ireland. This resulted in the publication of 'Ireland and its Economy' (London, 1830), in which he records his impressions of 'this land of strange anomalies,' as he calls it. The work is valuable as a fair account of the state of Ireland at the time.

In 1833 a commission, under the chairmanship of Archbishop Whately, was appointed to investigate the condition of the poor in Ireland. Bicheno was afterwards nominated a member, and he signed its second and third reports. To the last of these, presented in 1836, he appended some remarks of his own, in which he discussed the social condition of Ireland at considerable length. In his opinion, after all that could be done for that country, 'her real improvement must spring from herself, her own inhabitants, and