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I am a Benthamite, a benevolist, as a logician but the moment I leave the closet for the world, I lay aside speculation for others, and act for myself." "You are, at least, more frank than prudent in these confessions." "There you are wrong. It is by affecting to be worse than we are that we become popular and we get credit for being both honest and practical fellows.
You are no son, no son of mine, sir!" "Sir!" said Dick. "I'll tell you what you are, sir," pursued the Squire. "You're a Benthamite. I disown you. Your mother would have died for shame; there was no modern cant about your mother; she thought she said to me, sir I'm glad she's in her grave, Dick Naseby. Misinformed! Misinformed, sir? Have you no loyalty, no spring, no natural affections?
With this we must take another Benthamite doctrine, of which I have already spoken. 'Mr. Bentham demonstrated, says Mill, 'that the morality of an act does not depend upon the motive, and, further, that it 'is altogether dependent on the intention. Upon this he constantly insists.
If the soldiers of the Birkenhead had not gone down in line, or these marines of the Wager had walked away simply into the island, like plenty of other brave fellows in the like circumstances, my Benthamite arithmetician would assign a far lower value to the two stories.
The question has already been raised incidentally, and we have seen reason to dismiss both the individualist and the Benthamite argument for popular government as unsatisfactory.
This is one of the cases in which Fitzjames fully recognises the importance of some of Mill's practical arguments, though he disputes their position in the theory. The objections to making men moral by legislation are, according to him, sufficiently recognised by the Benthamite criterion condemning inadequate or excessively costly means.
To understand the real value of democratic government, we shall have to probe far deeper into the relations of the individual and society. I turn lastly to the question of liberty. On Benthamite principles there could be no question here of indefeasible individual right.
The unsettled conditions which followed the peace in various European countries found Bentham other employment. In 1809 Dumont did some codifying for the Emperor of Russia, and in 1817 was engaged to do the same service for Geneva. He was employed for some years, and is said to have introduced a Benthamite Penal Code and Panopticon, and an application of the Tactics.
They naturally exaggerated in some respects the completeness of the triumph. The English law has not yet been codified, and it was characteristic of the Benthamite school to exaggerate the facility of that process. In their hatred of 'judge-made law' they assumed too easily that all things would be arranged into convenient pigeon-holes as soon as 'Judge and Co. were abolished.
Some regretted that the fire of /Werter/ was so wonderfully abated; whisperings there might be about 'lowness, 'heaviness; some spake forth boldly in behalf of suffering 'virtue. Novalis was not among the speakers, but he censured the work in secret, and this for a reason which to us will seem the strangest; for its being, as we should say, a Benthamite work!
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