Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

Publications[edit]

• 1776. A fragment on government.
  • This was an unsparing criticism of some introductory passages relating to political theory in William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. The book, published anonymously, was well received and credited to some of the greatest minds of the time. Bentham disagreed with Blackstone’s defence of judge-made law, his defence of legal fictions, his theological formulation of the doctrine of mixed government, his appeal to a social contract and his use of the vocabulary of natural law. Bentham’s “Fragment” was only a small part of a Commentary on the Commentaries, which remained unpublished until the twentieth century.
• 1776. Short Review of the Declaration  – via Wikisource.
  • An attack on the United States Declaration of Independence.
• 1780. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. London: T. Payne and Sons.^[107]
• 1785 (publ. 1978). “Offences Against One’s Self,” edited by L. Crompton. Journal of Homosexuality 3(4)389–405. Continued in vol. 4(1). doi:10.1300/J082v03n04_07. ISSN 0091-8369. PMID 353189.^[108]
• 1787. Panopticon or the Inspection-House  – via Wikisource.
• 1787. Defence of Usury.^[109]
  • A series of thirteen “Letters” addressed to Adam Smith.
• 1791. “Essay on Political Tactics” (1st ed.). London: T. Payne.^[110]
• 1796. Anarchical Fallacies; Being an examination of the Declaration of Rights issued during the French Revolution.^[111]
  • An attack on the Declaration of the Rights of Man decreed by the French Revolution, and critique of the natural rights philosophy underlying it.^[112]
• 1802. Traités de législation civile et pénale, 3 vols, edited by Étienne Dumont.
• 1811. Punishments and Rewards.
• 1812. Panopticon versus New South Wales: or, the Panopticon Penitentiary System, Compared. Includes:
  1. Two Letters to Lord Pelham, Secretary of State, Comparing the two Systems on the Ground of Expediency.
  2. “Plea for the Constitution: Representing the Illegalities involved in the Penal Colonization System (1803, first publ. 1812)
• 1816. Defence of Usury; shewing the impolicy of the present legal restraints on the terms of pecuniary bargains in a letters to a friend to which is added a letter to Adam Smith, Esq. LL.D. on the discouragement opposed by the above restraints to the progress of inventive industry (3rd ed.). London: Payne & Foss.
  • Bentham wrote a series of thirteen “Letters” addressed to Adam Smith, published in 1787 as Defence of Usury. Bentham’s main argument against the restriction is that “projectors” generate positive externalities. G. K. Chesterton identified Bentham’s essay on usury as the very beginning of the “modern world.” Bentham’s arguments were very influential. “Writers of eminence” moved to abolish the restriction, and repeal was achieved in stages and fully achieved in England in 1854. There is little evidence as to Smith’s reaction. He did not revise the offending passages in The Wealth of Nations (1776), but Smith made little or no substantial revisions after the third edition of 1784.
• 1817. A Table of the Springs of Action. London: sold by R. Hunter.
• 1817. “Swear Not At All”
• 1817. Plan of Parliamentary Reform, in the form of Catechism with Reasons for Each Article, with An Introduction shewing the Necessity and the Inadequacy of Moderate Reform. London: R. Hunter.
• 1818. Church-of-Englandism and its Catechism Examined. London: Effingham Wilson.^[113]
• 1821. The Elements of the Art of Packing, as applied to special juries particularly in cases of libel law. London: Effingham Wilson.
• 1821. On the Liberty of the Press, and Public Discussion. London: Hone.
• 1822. The Influence of Natural Religion upon the Temporal Happiness of Mankind, written with George Grote
  • Published under the pseudonym Philip Beauchamp.
• 1823. Not Paul But Jesus
  • Published under the pseudonym Gamaliel Smith.
• 1824. The Book of Fallacies from Unfinished Papers of Jeremy Bentham (1st ed.). London: John and H. L. Hunt.
• 1825. A Treatise on Judicial Evidence Extracted from the Manuscripts of Jeremy Bentham, Esq (1st ed.), edited by M. Dumont. London: Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy.
• 1827. Rationale of Judicial Evidence, specially applied to English Practice, Extracted from the Manuscripts of Jeremy Bentham, Esq. I (1st ed.). London: Hunt & Clarke.
• 1830. Emancipate Your Colonies! Addressed to the National Convention of France A° 1793, shewing the uselessness and mischievousness of distant dependencies to an European state . London: Robert Heward – via Wikisource.
• 1834. Deontology or, The science of morality 1, edited by J. Bowring. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman.