Editor’s Notepg 297Editor’s Note3005To Leicester Stanhope23 September 1823 (Aet 75)

Queens Square Place Westminster 23 Sep 1823

My dear Sir

In regard to the Greek boys for Hazlewood School, to prevent misconception and misrecollection, the following are the obligations I am willing and desirous to take upon myself on that account.²

If a boy be consigned to me by you with his charges to London defrayed, and £ | | in hand for a year's schooling, I will charge myself with the expence of sending him back to some port in Greece or the Ionian Islands at the end of that time which I shall do accordingly unless a remittance to the same amount reaches me before that time: and so from year to year until his education and instruction is regarded as finished, or he is deemed unfit for the purpose, or if after the first year the remittances come half yearly it will be sufficient.

To provide for the case of his being found unapt I must reserve to myself the power of sending the boy back at any time. I will, in that case return the money in my hands, after deducting the charge of his maintenance up to that time; as also half the expence of his conveyance back as above, the other half remaining as a charge upon me will, I suppose, be accepted as a sufficient security against arbitrary conduct on my part in that respect.

You have the printed Account of the terms; but in these, I believe neither Drawing nor French are included, both which I should regard as necessary, and Music as desirable: dancing alone as a useless consumption of time and money in this case.

Francis Place the Taylor contracts with Mr ⟨…⟩ year for each of the two pg 298sons³ he has sent at my ⟨…⟩ This⁴ includes every thing but cloaths and I believe payment for the vacation time of the year, which if I do not misrecollect is 2 Months or 2½ Months.

Cloathing could not be set at less than £15 a year. This will make £65 in the whole. But rather than miss of a promising subject I would charge myself with say from £15 to £20 a year of the expence. Something should come from the parents, as a sort of security for aptitude on the part of the child.

I would take two upon this same footing, provided they do not come together: but one after the other at a small interval If they come together or stay here together before they reach the school they will of course be talking together, and learn very little of the English language in comparison of what they would learn if separate.

I can not of course positively undertake for it; but part of my plan would be to have one or both of them, though not together, some part of their vacation time at my house: in which case I should have to pay the expense of the journeys to and fro.

You will see how necessary it is, considering how little dependence can be placed on remittances from a country so circumstanced, that the master of the school should be exempted from the danger of having upon his hands a boy, whom in no case he could get rid of, without such an expense as the above. But, should the boy turn out well, and stay with him three or four years, he might perhaps, at the end of that time, retain him as an assistant, and his service in that capacity might be an equivalent for the expence.

If a boy arrive, I should immediately take care to make provision for my death, by charging with the business, my Executor a most honorable and trustworthy person.

•                                            With the truest respect, I am
•                                                  Most affectionately Yours
•                                                       Jeremy Bentham.

Honble Leicester Stanhope

PS By M^r Bowring's consent the boys may be consigned to him.