ucation had
been bad, he had something of that cosmopolitan training which enabled
many members of the aristocracy to look beyond the narrow middle-class
prejudices and share in some degree the wider philosophical movements of
the day. He had enjoyed the friendship of Franklin, and had been the
patron of Priestley, who made some of his chemical discoveries at
Bowood, and to whom he allowed an annuity. He belonged to that section
of the Whigs which had most sympathy with the revolutionary movement.
His chief political lieutenants were Dunning and Barre, who at the time
sat for his borough Calne. He now rapidly formed an intimacy with
Bentham, who went to stay at Bowood in the autumn of 1781. Bentham now
and then in later years made some rather disparaging remarks upon
Shelburne, whom he apparently considered to be rather an amateur than a
serious philosopher, and who in the House of Lords talked 'vague
generalities'--the sacred phrase by which the Utilitarians denounced all
preaching but their own--in a way to impose upon the thoughtless. He
respected Shelburne, however, as one who trusted the people, and was
distrusted by the Whig aristocracy. He felt, too, a real affection and
gratitude for the patron to whom he owed so much. Shelburne had done him
a great service.[230] 'He raised me from the bottomless pit of
humiliation. He made me feel I was something.' The elder Bentham was
impressed by his son's acquaintance with a man in so eminent a position,
and hoped that it might lead by a different path to the success which
had been missed at the bar. At Bowood Bentham stayed over a month upon
his first visit, and was treated in the manner appropriate to a
philosopher. The men showed him friendliness, dashed with occasional
contempt, and the ladies petted him. He met Lord Camden and Dunning and
young William Pitt, and some minor adherents of the great man. Pitt was
'very good-natured and a little raw.' I was monstrously 'frightened at
him,' but, when I came to talk with him, he seemed 'frightened at
me.'[231] Bentham, however, did not see what ideas they were likely to
have in common. In fact there was the usual gulf between the speculative
thinker and the practical man. 'All the statesmen,' so thought the
philosopher, 'were wanting in the great elements of statesmanship': they
were always talking about 'what was' and seldom or never about 'what
ought to be.'[232] Occasionally, it would seem, they descended lower,
and made a