Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/507

 15. DILLON: INFLUENCE OF BENTHAM 493 Opposite views are entertained by others. It is worth while, therefore, to essay to define Bentham's place in the history of our law, and to attempt an estimate of the character and influence of his writings ; and such is the purpose of this hour. Bentham's fertile and active mind embraced in the scope of its operations many other subjects than those of law and legislation, such as ethics, political economy, polit- ical reform, and even practical politics. Nevertheless, his principal attention was given to the English law and to the mode by which its improvement could best be effected; and this lecture will be restricted to his writings and labors con- cerning English law and the method of reforming or amending it. It is essential to a correct view of the character and value of Bentham's labors to bear in mind the period of time covered thereby, and also the condition of the English law especially as it existed when his efforts for its improve- ment were begun. ^ Jeremy Bentham was born in London in 1748. In 1763, at the early age of sixteen, he was graduated with honors at Oxford. He was in due time called to the English bar. His first work, the Fragment on Government, qualified to judge, have assigned to Bentham a place in the foremost rank of men of extraordinary intellectual endowments. I subjoin an extract giving Macaulay's judgment. He is by no means a partial witness: he was a Whig of the Whigs; Bentham, a Radical of the Radicals. If there was anything that a Whig hated more than a Tory, it was a Radical. Macaulay had in Bentham's lifetime attacked with fierceness and rancor the Benthamic notions of politics. Yet within a few months after the death of Bentham, in reviewing (July, 1832) Dumont's " Mirabeau," Macaulay thus expresses his opinion of Ben- tham's character and labors: "Of Mr. Bentham," he says, "we would at all times speak with the reverence which is due to a great original thinker and to a sincere and ardent friend of the human race. In some of the highest departments in which the human intellect can exert itself he has not left his equal or his second behind him. From his contemporaries he has had, according to the usual lot, more or less than justice. He has had blind flatterers and blind detractors, — flat- terers who could see nothing but perfection in his style; detractors who could see nothing but nonsense in his matter. He will now have his judges. Posterity will pronounce its calm and impartial decision; and that decision will, we firmly believe, place in the same rank with Galileo and with Locke the man who found jurisprudence a gibberish and left it a science." (A general truth, rather too strongly expressed.) See below for opinions of Brougham and others concerning Bentham's writings and labors.
 * See ante Lecture XI.