Bentham and the Codifiers (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Bentham and the Codifiers In the preface to Bentham's collected works, edited by Sir J. Bowring and published at Edinburgh in 1838, it is pointed out that the circumstance that seems to have given the first impulse to the inquiries which engrossed his future life was the dispute between Great Britain and her colonies, which, during his law studentship, was the universal topic of conversation, so we of this country find a certain connection between the revolt of the philos Opher and of the colonies, and follow with especial interest the results of the new teaching. Bentham found, after some vacillation, in Hume's essays an unassailable central principle, the principle of utility as a test of moral precepts and legislation, looking to their tendency to promote the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number. To this test he adhered, and he applied it with great boldness, and, it may be often said, eccentricity, to all departments of morals, law, and government until his death, in 1832, at the great age of eighty-four years. Lord Loughborough declared the principle dangerous, but forty six years after he had first in print maintained it, Bentham noted that Loughborough's remark was shrewd and strictly true, as to the sinister interests of such a functionary, since in a government modelled on these principles, his Lordship could not have been attorney general with a year nor chancellor with a peer age, with a veto upon all justice, with a year, and with five hundred sinecures at his disposal. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.