69

CHAPTER III

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

I. Pauperism 87

II. The Police 99

III. Education 108

IV. The Slave-Trade 113

V. The French Revolution 121

VI. Individualism 130

CHAPTER IV

PHILOSOPHY

I. John Horne Tooke 137

II. Dugald Stewart 142

CHAPTER V

BENTHAM'S LIFE

I. Early Life 169

II. First Writings 175

III. The Panopticon 193

IV. Utilitarian Propaganda 206

V. Codification 222

CHAPTER VI

BENTHAM'S DOCTRINE

I. First Principles 235

II. Springs of Action 249

III. The Sanctions 255

IV. Criminal Law 263

V. English Law 271

VI. Radicalism 282

VII. Individualism 307

NOTE ON BENTHAM'S WRITINGS 319

INTRODUCTORY

The English Utilitarians of whom I am about to give some account were a
group of men who for three generations had a conspicuous influence upon
English thought and political action. Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and
John Stuart Mill were successively their leaders; and I shall speak of
each in turn. It may be well to premise a brief indication of the method
which I have adopted. I have devoted a much greater proportion of my
work to biography and to consideration of political and social
conditions than would be appropriate to the history of a philosophy. The
reasons for such a course are very obvious in this case, inasmuch as the
Utilitarian doctrines were worked out with a constant reference to
practical applications. I think, indeed, that such a reference is often
equally present, though not equally conspicuous, in other philosophical
schools. But in any case I wish to show how I conceive the relation of
my scheme to the scheme more generally adopted by historians of abstract
speculation.

I am primarily concerned with the history of a school or sect, not with
the history of the arguments by which it justifies itself in the court
of pure reason. I must therefore consider the creed as it was actually
embodied in the dominant beliefs of the adherents of the school, not as
it was expounded in lecture-rooms or treatises on f