tham has become an
'ancestor,' and may teach us by his errors. Pointed and vigorous as is
his exposure of many of the sophistries by which Conservatives defended
gross abuses and twisted the existence of any institution into an
argument for its value, we get some measure from this of Bentham's view
of history. In attacking an abuse, he says, we have a right to inquire
into the utility of any and every arrangement. The purpose of a court of
justice is to decide litigation; it has to ascertain facts and apply
rules: does it then ascertain facts by the methods most conducive to the
discovery of truth? Are the rules needlessly complex, ambiguous,
calculated to give a chance to knaves, or to the longest purse? If so,
undoubtedly they are mischievous. Bentham had done inestimable service
in stripping away all the disguises and technical phrases which had
evaded the plain issue, and therefore made of the laws an unintelligible
labyrinth. He proceeded to treat in the same way of government
generally. Does it work efficiently for its professed ends? Is it worked
in the interests of the nation, or of a special class, whose interests
conflict with those of the nation? He treated, that is, of government as
a man of business might investigate a commercial undertaking. If he
found that clerks were lazy, ignorant, making money for themselves, or
bullying and cheating the customers, he would condemn the management.
Bentham found the 'matchless constitution' precisely in this state. He
condemned political institutions worked for the benefit of a class, and
leading, especially in legal matters, to endless abuses and chicanery.
The abuses everywhere imply 'inequality' in some sense; for they arise
from monopoly. The man who holds a sinecure, or enjoys a privilege, uses
it for his own private interest. The 'matter of corruption,' as Bentham
called it, was provided by the privilege and the sinecure. The Jacobin
might denounce privileges simply as privileges, and Bentham denounce
them because they were used by the privileged class for corrupt
purposes. So far, Bentham and the Jacobins were quite at one. It
mattered little to the result which argument they preferred to use, and
without doubt they had a very strong case, and did in fact express a
demand for justice and for a redress of palpable evils. The difference
seems to be that in one case the appeal is made in the name of justice
and equality; in the other case, in the name of benevolence