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Experience itself will reveal our mistakes; research and criticism may convert them into wisdom. But act we must, and act as if we knew the nature of man and proposed to satisfy his needs. In other words, we must put man at the center of politics, even though we are densely ignorant both of man and of politics. This has always been the method of great political thinkers from Plato to Bentham.
He regards 'happiness' as precisely the least equivocal of words; and 'happiness' itself as therefore affording the one safe clue to all the intricate problems of human conduct. The authors of the Federalist, for example, had said that justice was the 'end of government. 'Why not happiness? asks Bentham.
It is, however, inconvenient to stretch the term, "utilitarianism" in this fashion. Certain forms of doctrine which, in its wider sense, it would include, have come to be known under names of their own; and, besides, the especial type of utilitarianism advocated by Bentham and John Stuart Mill appears to have a claim upon the appellation which they set in circulation.
It belonged more properly to the adherents of the 'rights of man, or the believers in abstract reason. It is to be found in Price and Paine, and in the French declaration of the rights of man; and Mr. Bentham expressly repudiated this view in his vigorous attack upon the 'anarchical fallacies' embodied in the French declaration.
"You mean borrowing money upon more than five per cent?" "Oh, curse the percentage. I agree with Bentham on the Usury Laws, no shackles in trade for me, whether in money or anything else. That's not it. But when one owes a fellow money even at two per cent, and 't is not convenient to pay him, why, somehow or other, it makes one feel small; it takes the British Liberty out of a man!"
Jeremy Bentham gave a new vigour to political speculation by his advocacy of the doctrine of Utility, and his definition of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" as the aim of political action. In 1809 Sir Francis Burdett revived the question of Parliamentary Reform.
He was secretary of the London Corresponding Society, a powerful labor union, which in 1795 had twenty branches in London. Most of the officers of this organization were at one time or another arrested, and some were kept in prison three years without a trial. Place, schooled in such experience, became a radical politician of great influence, a friend of Bentham, Owen, and the elder Mill.
Mill had "the dry light," and his meaning is always clear; he is occasionally open to the charge of being a formalist, allowing too little for the "infusion of the affections," save when touched, as Carlyle was, by a personal loss; yet the critical range indicated by his essay on "Coleridge" on the one side, that on "Bentham" on the other, is as wide as that of his friend; and while neither said anything base, Mill alone is clear from the charge of having ever said anything absurd.
The 'fairest and openest of them all' is the man who says, 'I am of the number of the Elect'; God tells the Elect what is right: therefore if you want to know what is right, you have only to come to me. Bentham is writing here in his pithiest style. His criticism is of course of the rough and ready order; but I think that in a fashion he manages to hit the nail pretty well on the head.
Does Mr Bentham profess to hold out any new motive which may induce men to promote the happiness of the species to which they belong? Not at all. He distinctly admits that, if he is asked why government should attempt to produce the greatest possible happiness, he can give no answer.
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