Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/514

 500 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY keen, that he habitually hesitated and doubted; but his doubts and hesitations all had their origin in the dread of doing injustice, and a noble anxiety to know and to do the right. If he vigorously resisted amendment or change in our law, he as vigorously protected and conserved existing excellences and merits. Again I say I love old Eldon! With all his ultra-conservatism and dubitations, — his only defects, — I love his sturdy, genuine, honest nature. I have said this that you might not conceive an undue bias against Eldon from what Sydney Smith, Bentham and other Whigs have said of him and his court. ' The libel laws even were in Bentham's way. Not to men- tion other instances, as late as 1811 there was difficulty in obtaining a publisher for the " Introductjon to the Rationale of Evidence." More than one bookseller declined, giving as a reason that the book was libellous. The " Elements of the Art of Packing," which lay six years printed but unpublished, had alarmed the " trade," and it never was fully published until after Bentham's death. But Bentham kept right on. At length he began to attract the attention of a few gifted minds. One of the earliest of these was Sir Samuel Romilly, who of all English lawyers is, as I think, the one that nearest approaches a perfect model.^ be a most signal service. About 1788, when Bentham was forty years of age, Romilly sent to Genevese Dumont some of Bentham's writings. They greatly impressed this gifted man with their originality and value. Dumont gave a large portion of his life to the redaction and translating into French some of the most important of Bentham's works. But this required years. On April 5, 1791, Romilly writes to Dumont: "Ben- tham leads the same kind of life as usual at Hendon, — seeing nobody, reading nothing, and writing books which nobody reads." In 1802 Du- mont's French edition of Bentham's treatise on " Legislation Civil and Criminal " appeared, and was translated into Spanish, Russian and Italian; in 1811 "Rewards and Punishments," and in 1823 "Judicial Evidence," thus treated and translated by Dumont, were published in Paris. This gave Bentham a European reputation, and quickened his tardy appreciation at home. In the history of letters there is nothing more remarkable than the relation between Dumont and Bentham. Ma- caulay's account of the services rendered by Dumont is as interesting as it is, generally speaking, accurate. Of the character and value of Dumont's labors the great reviewer remarks: — " They can be fully appreciated only by those who have studied Mr. Bentham's works, both in their rude and in their finished state. The difference, both for show and for use, is as great as the difference be- tween a lump of golden ore and a rouleau of sovereigns fresh from the
 * Romilly was the means of rendering Bentham what turned out to