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Updated: May 27, 2025
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.
He held office in several Whig governments, and during his four years' service in British India, as member of the Supreme Council of Calcutta, he did valuable work in promoting education in that province, and in codifying the Indian penal law.
No one could mistake from his face the talent of the man; yet there lurked through its every feature an unpleasant something, which forced an unfavorable opinion of the individual. Mr. Livingston lived very many years in Louisiana, and rendered her great services in codifying her laws, and making them clear and easy of comprehension.
As already intimated, I have read and re-read most carefully the final draft of the By-Laws drawn up by that highly-talented, much-loved servant of Bahá’u’lláh, Mountfort Mills, and feel I have nothing substantial to add to this first and very creditable attempt at codifying the principles of general Bahá’í administration.
Still more characteristic is his application of what he calls the 'substantive-preferring principle. He would rather say, 'I give extension to an object, than 'I extend an object. Where a substantive is employed, the idea is 'stationed upon a rock'; if only a verb, the idea is 'like a leaf floating on a stream. A verb, he said, 'slips through your fingers like an eel. The principle corresponds to his 'metaphysics. The universe of thought is made up of a number of separate 'entities' corresponding to nouns-substantive, and when these bundles are distinctly isolated by appropriate nouns, the process of arranging and codifying according to the simple relations indicated by the copula is greatly facilitated.
He elaborately annotated the drafts of at least one important bill; he submitted remarks to be laid before the Council at Lord Lytton's request, and finally he wrote an elaborate minute upon codification generally. I need only say that, in accordance with what he had said in his last speeches at Calcutta, he held that nearly enough had been done in the way of codifying for India.
To codify is to classify, and Bentham might be defined as a codifying animal. Things thus present themselves to Bentham's mind as already prepared to fit into pigeon-holes. This is a characteristic point, and it appears in what we must call his metaphysical system.
But the 'unprofessional judge seldom gets beyond a certain number of illustrations and rules, more or less imperfectly understood. Hence the special necessity in India of reducing the laws to the clearest and most explicit shape possible, or, in other words, for the codifying process in which he had played his part.
A watered spark is good, but what of a harnessed volcano? When that eminent Civil servant, Sir Hugh Owen, retired from the Local Government Board, a gentleman wrote to the Daily Chronicle in favour of "harnessing this by no means extinct volcano to the great task" of codifying the Poor Law.
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