to put together the bricks according to the indications placed upon each
in order to construct the whole edifice.[256] As, however, the plan
would frequently undergo a change, and as each fragment had been written
without reference to the others, the task of ultimate combination and
adaptation of the ultimate atoms was often very perplexing. Bentham, as
we shall see, formed disciples ardent enough to put together these
scattered documents as the disciples of Mahomet put together the Koran.
Bentham's revelation was possibly less influential than Mahomet's; but
the logical framework was far more coherent.

Bentham's mind was for the present distracted. He had naturally returned
full of information about Russia. The English ministry were involved in
various negotiations with Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, the purpose of
which was to thwart the designs of Russia in the East. Bentham wrote
three letters to the _Public Advertiser_, signed Anti-Machiavel,[257]
protesting against the warlike policy. Bentham himself believed that the
effect was decisive, and that the 'war was given up' in consequence of
his arguments. Historians[258] scarcely sanction this belief, which is
only worth notice because it led to another belief, oddly characteristic
of Bentham. A letter signed 'Partizan' in the _Public Advertiser_
replied to his first two letters. Who was 'Partizan'? Lord Lansdowne
amused himself by informing Bentham that he was no less a personage than
George III. Bentham, with even more than his usual simplicity, accepted
this hoax as a serious statement. He derived no little comfort from the
thought; for to the antipathy thus engendered in the 'best of kings' he
attributed the subsequent failure of his Panopticon scheme.[259]

NOTES:

[214] _Works_, x. 66.

[215] _Ibid._ xi. 95.

[216] _Works_, x. 54.

[217] _Ibid._ i. 268 _n._

[218] _Works_, x. 121.

[219] _Ibid._ i. 227.

[220] _Ibid._ x. 79, 142. See also _Deontology_, i. 298-302, where
Bentham speaks of discovering the phrase in Priestley's _Essay on
Government_ in 1768. Priestley says (p. 17) that 'the good and happiness
of the members, that is of the majority of the members, of any state is
the great standard by which everything relating to that state must be
finally determined.' So Le Mercier de la Riviere says, in 1767, that the
ultimate end of society is _assurer le plus grand bonheur possible a la
plus grande population possible_ (Daire's _Economistes_, p. 470)