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