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ong end. His reasoning had been thrown away upon the huge dead weight of official indifference, or worse than indifference. Why did they not accept the means for producing the greatest happiness of the greatest number? Because statesmen did not desire the end. And why not? To answer that question, and to show how a government could be constructed which should desire it, became a main occupation of Bentham's life. Henceforward, therefore, instead of merely treating of penal codes and other special reforms, his attention is directed to the previous question of political organisation; while at times he diverges to illustrate incidentally the abuses of what he ironically calls the 'matchless constitution.' Bentham's principal occupation, in a word, was to provide political philosophy for radical reformers.[300] Bentham remained as much a recluse as ever. He seldom left Queen's Square Place except for certain summer outings. In 1807 he took a house at Barrow Green, near Oxted, in Surrey, lying in a picturesque hollow at the foot of the chalk hills.[301] It was an old-fashioned house, standing in what had been a park, with a lake and a comfortable kitchen garden. Bentham pottered about in the grounds and under the old chestnut-trees, codifying, gardening, and talking to occasional disciples. He returned thither in following years; but in 1814, probably in consequence of his compensation for the Panopticon, took a larger place, Ford Abbey, near Chard in Somersetshire. It was a superb residence,[302] with chapel, cloisters, and corridors, a hall eighty feet long by thirty high, and a great dining parlour. Parts of the building dated from the twelfth century or the time of the Commonwealth, or had undergone alterations attributed to Inigo Jones. No Squire Western could have cared less for antiquarian associations, but Bentham made a very fair monk. The place, for which he paid L315 a year, was congenial. He rode his favourite hobby of gardening, and took his regular 'ante-jentacular' and 'post-prandial' walks, and played battledore and shuttlecock in the intervals of codification. He liked it so well that he would have taken it for life, but for the loss of L8000 or L10,000 in a Devonshire marble-quarry.[303] In 1818 he gave it up, and thenceforward rarely quitted Queen's Square Place. His life was varied by few incidents, although his influence upon public affairs was for the first time becoming important. The busier journalis
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