Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/508

 494 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY being a criticism on a portion of Blackstone's Commentaries, was published (anonymously) in 1776; his attack on Usury Laws in 1787 ; his Panopticon in 1791 ; his protest against Law Taxes in 1796; his great work (Dumont's Edition, in Paris) on Legislation, Civil and Criminal, in 1802; on Codification in 1817; on Rewards and Punishments (Du- mont's Edition) in 1818; on Judicial Evidence, in Paris, in 1823, English translation thereof in 1825, and from original English manuscripts, edited by John Stuart Mill, in 1827. I omit in this enumeration, as not essential to my present purpose, some minor works concerning law or legislation, and many important writings relating to education, prison discipline, political reforms, morals, and kindred subjects. Bentham was, broadly speaking, contemporary with what may be styled the legal reign of Eldon. Tke common law in its substance and procedure was by everybody in England regarded with a veneration superstitious to the verge of idolatry. It was declared, and generally believed to be, " the perfection of reason." Lord Eldon and the Court of Chan- cery, with its suitorcide delays, " pressed heavily on man- kind." Imprisonment for debt, and distress for rent with all its harsh and oppressive incidents, were in unabated force. The criminal law, defective and excessively technical, abound- ing with capricious and cruel punishments, and which de- nounced the penalty of death on about two hundred offences, remained in a state which no one any longer hesitates to pronounce outrageous and shocking.^ It was on this system that Bentham, when he was under thirty years of age, solitary and alone, commenced the attack which he inces- santly continued until his death in 1832, at the age of eighty-four. He was a multiform man ; but it is as a law re- former that he stands the most conspicuous and pre-eminent. He had all the personal qualities of a reformer, — deep- hearted sincerity, unbounded faith in his own powers and self-suflSciency, unwearied zeal, and dauntless moral courage.^ One who should not bear in mind the peculiar aversion of the English people to innovation, the inveterate conservatism of the bar, and the awe and reverence with which they re- ' See post Lecture XIII. » See ante Lecture VI., p. 180,