JB_094_418.xml

Title: [14 Dec 1807 Scotch reform Letter]

Description: 14 Dec 1807

Scotch reform

Letter [...?]

Ch. 12 [...?...?...?]

[...?] from changes but also[?]

Dangers of questioning judicial practice - law of libels being made by Judges, and [...?] excluded from judging.

With the rage of lord Kenyon, as any[?] data, so my observations end /terminate/. For the not extending them any further I have my reason: and not being in the habit of secresy either in respect of act or of reason these reasons being not of a sort[?] but of a public nature, I will venture with perfect simplicity to submitt them to Your Lordship's consideration.

To Lord Kenyon succeeded Lord Edinburgh. Lord Kenyon is a sage, a sort of a law-soul[?], in human[?]: upon earth he has no longer any other influence than that unapprovable influence which, if any, may be exercised through his prayers In the possession of Lord Edinburgh, with his urbanity, his [...?] with all his virtues intellectual and moral /mature[?] and liberal learning, humanity, and urbanity and suavity[?] and [...?] dignity/.

Now, my Lord /that noble and learned Lord being as the French say pale[?] of life plan[?] device/, as it is, that if for argument sake (and purely for argument sake, for I have taken leave to know nothing about the matter) so it were, that of the things so done by Lord Kenyon any one thing so done by Lord Edinburgh, and that thing wrong, and in another /common/ person presumably[?] wrong, and I were to bring it to light, the person punished who would it be? not the suppozed wrongdoer for doing it, but I for betting on it: and /forasmuch about punishment so applied would this bring according to my [...?] and perhaps [...?] but at any rate sincere[?] and learned[?] reason, be applied contrary to natural justice, I, having a regard for natural justice, not to speak of human prudence, would not be[?] willingly necessary /instrumental/ to the infliction.

I should find myself in the condition of the [...?...?] - who having something that was [...?] by a supremely noble and learned person of his team[?] who was at the head of the [...?] and consequently /as such/ above the law, was so punished for what he had seen[?], that crying out in his [...?] /[...?]/ anguish has aligned[?] ride [...?...?] human fear, he continued in shape of transportation and consequently of repentance to the last day of his life.

JB_160_174.xml

Title: [1821. April 16. First Lines]

Description: 1821. April 16.

First Lines

Means

Distributive

4. Equality

To descend from a higher to a lower place in the scale of opulence is a change which

can neither be endured nor apprehended without uneasiness. On the decease of any

possessor of property living without labour, laying out of consideration the widow or

the widower, no division can have place among the Children, but that at any rate, (if

it be an equal one), this inconvenience must be experienced: experienced by all of

them in a degree proportioned to their number. If, by the late proprietor, a House of

a certain extent and appearance with servants in a certain number, and a table

furnished at a certain expence, were kept up, in the comforts of all which, during

the life of the Father, the Children had, all of them, in a greater or less degree,

and naturally in an equal degree, participated, after the decease of the parent, no

such equal enjoyment, except on condition of a degree of harmony not to be expected

from equals so situated, and not under the controul of any superior, nor in that case

without universal renunciation of the comforts of matrimony, can /could/ be kept up

/maintained/.

But, in a situation of this sort, such is the course taken by self-regard, looking

forward to the time in which, in his own person, he will have ceased to exist,

imagination presents to a man, as a sort of substitute to his own person, that of

another who, in nature and denomination, and in amount of property shall come as near

to himself, as one person can come to another: a person whose body once formed a part

of his own, and in the rendering of whose mind a continuation of his own, as

/whatsoever/ much care and labour has been employed as it was agreeable to him so to

employ.

JB_103_431.xml

Title: [At top of sheet, Bentham has noted: ‘Satyrist]

Description: At top of sheet, Bentham has noted: ‘Satyrist 1 June 1810. N o 33 p. 570.

‘1. Broughham’s knowledge of the House – his opinion of it. Like L. James[?] Brookes[?] obliged to assume the appearance of frivolity that he might not frighten his Judges or like the professed wit called fool obliged to put on the Cap & Bells.’

‘Looking at the House of Commons with these views’ (says a writer on the subject of parliamentary reform) ‘my object would be to find out its chief defects, and to attempt the remedy of these, one by one. To propose no system, no great project, nothing which pretended even to the name of a plan, but to introduce in a temperate and conciliating manner .... one or two separate Bills....’ c

c

This was Brougham: the time about June 1810. Reference is made to the Government periodical called the Satyrist, (by Manners), June 1810. N o 33. p. 570. But that wretched performance is now pretty well forgotten.

Quere whether to insert this here, or under Graduality-preacher's fallacy?

In this strain were they proposed to be addressed, these men, A o 1810. by M r Brougham in this same strain were they addressed A o 1819 by Sir James Mackintosh, in moving for a Committee on the penal laws. To give a man any chance of doing any thing with them in this same way they have ever been addressed, and must ever be addressed, till by radical reform (for it can not be by any thing less) the House shall have been purged of a class of men of whom the most compleat inaptitude in respect of every element of appropriate aptitude, is an effectual characteristic. In the scale of appropriate probity, in the scale of appropriate intellectual aptitude, to find their level a man must descend below that of the very dregs of the people. Oh what a portrait is here drawn of them, and by so experienced a hand! How cutting, yet how unquestionably just, the perhaps-unintended perhaps intended satyre! To avoid awakening the real terrors of some, the sham-terrors of others, all consistency all comprehensive acquaintance with the field of action must be abjured. When with idolatry in all shapes shall have become extinct, and the word wise-ancestors no longer an instrument of deception but a bye-word, with what scorn will not ancestors such as these be looked back upon by their posterity!