mmending it was proposed by R. Pole Carew, a friend of
Samuel Bentham. Although this report was suppressed, the scheme
apparently received an impetus. The Millbank estate was bought in
consequence of these proceedings, and a sum of only L1000 was wanted to
buy out the tenant of one piece of land. Bentham was constantly in
attendance at a public office, expecting a final warrant for the money.
It never came, and, as Bentham believed, the delay was due to the malice
of George III. Had any other king been on the throne, Panopticon in both
'the prisoner branch and the pauper branch' would have been set at
work.[283] Such are the consequences of newspaper controversies with
monarchs! After this, in any case, the poor Panopticon, as the old
lawyers said, 'languishing did live,' and at last 'languishing did die.'
Poor Bentham seems to have struggled vainly for a time. He appealed to
Pitt's friend, Wilberforce; he appealed to his step-brother Abbot; he
wrote to members of parliament, but all was in vain.

Romilly induced him in 1802 to suppress a statement of his grievances
which could only have rendered ministers implacable.[284] But he found
out what would hardly have been a discovery to most people, that
officials can be dilatory and evasive; and certain discoveries about the
treatment of convicts in New South Wales convinced him that they could
even defy the laws and the Constitution when they were beyond
inspection. He published (1803) a _Plea for the Constitution_, showing
the enormities committed in the colony, 'in breach of Magna Charta, the
Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act, and the Bill of Rights.'
Romilly in vain told him that the attorney-general could not recommend
the author of such an effusion to be keeper of a Panopticon.[285] The
actual end did not come till 1811. A committee then reported against the
scheme. They noticed one essential and very characteristic weakness. The
whole system turned upon the profit to be made from the criminals'
labour by Bentham and his brother. The committee observed that, however
unimpeachable might be the characters of the founders, the scheme might
lead to abuses in the hands of their successors. The adoption of this
principle of 'farming' had in fact led to gross abuses both in gaols and
in workhouses; but it was, as I have said, in harmony with the whole
'individualist' theory. The committee recommended a different plan; and
the result was the foundation of Millbank penit