pg 191JEREMY BENTHAM TO GREEK LEGISLATORS¹

pg 192pg 193Regenerative Legislators of Greece,

You enter upon your career under the most auspicious circumstances. Nothing to match them is to be found in history. Nothing to match them is to be found in present times. Obstacles which in other nations set up a bar to good government, and that bar an insuperable one, have no place in your case. You are not cursed with Kings. You are not cursed with Nobles. Your minds are not under the tyranny [of] Priests. Your minds are not under the tyranny of Lawyers.

Legislators! It is now more than five and fifty years since he [who] now addresses you first devoted himself to the service of mankind. He has served faithfully: he has toiled hard: he has had his sufferings: and he has not gone unrewarded! The grave is never out of his sight: nor is his cheerfulness ever diminished by it: he is contented with his lot: he has no complaint to make.

The sort of attention which, in his endeavour to serve you, he must call for at your hands, others in places correspondent to yours have given to him before.

Never is the day labourer, never is the helpless pauper, an object of contempt to me: I can not say the same thing of the purse-proud aristocrat: I can not say the same thing of the ancestry-proud aristocrat: I can not say the same thing of the official bloodsucker: I can not say the same thing of the man covered with the tokens of factitious honor: least of all can I say the same of a King. When a Monarch has thought to corrupt me and delude me, to degrade me to a level with the Castlereaghs, the Metternichs, the Hardenbergs and the Gentzs,¹ you may see at any time what he has got by it.

For the giving you honest advice, my situation is at the same time as favorable as it is possible to imagine, so favorable that a more favorable one can not be so much as imagined.

With no one of you all have I ever, either by word of mouth or by letter, directly or through the medium of any common friend or acquaintance, had any sort of intercourse: to me not one of you is or ever has been a source either of fear or hope.

Whatsoever the source of this advice be thought or supposed to be, I claim not, on the score of the whole or any part of it, any the least particle of praise. No self-sacrifice in any shape has the giving of it pg 194required at my hands. On many among you the object of it and effect of it, if it has any, may be to call for self-sacrifice, for sacrifice of personal interest to public, to an amount which lies not within the field of any calculation I can make: nothing can be more easy than to make a call upon others for such sacrifices: for Kings, nothing more difficult than to obey it.

After such observations as it here lies in my way to make—on human nature taken in the aggregate—and on human nature placed in political situations in particular, my expectation of producing by this part of my advice any effect whatsoever—my expectation of seeing a single needless or useless office struck off, or so much as a single atom of superfluous pay from any office, useful or useless, struck off—can not be very sanguine. But to me it belongs to offer the advice, to others, if it be good advice, to follow it.

Of the advice which I shall take the liberty of submitting to you, [two]¹ distinguishable sets of observations will be seen to be the sources.

1. 1. Observations made on human nature in general, on human beings in every situation in life, in all situations taken indiscriminately.

2. 2. Observations made on the conduct of men, and particularly men in ruling and other influential situations, under such Constitutions as have had for their object or end in view the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Grounding myself on these observations, the first piece of advice which I shall take the liberty of submitting to you is—not to suffer yourselves to be turned aside from any thing that follows by the observation that not the least atom of flattery in any shape is offered to you or any of you:

that the inducements by which on each occasion I expect to find your practice determined are no other than those self-regarding ones by which, with few or no exceptions, it has seemed to me that human conduct has in all places and at all times been determined:

that as I do not in the instance of any public man in any public situation look for willing self-sacrifice in any shape, so neither can I look for any such thing in your situation in the instance of you or any of you:

that accordingly I look not on any occasion for any such stile of conduct as can with any propriety be termed disinterested, produced by any other cause than a man's own conception of what at the moment of action is in the highest degree conducive to his own interest:

that when in this or that situation a sacrifice has been thought or pg 195said to have been made by a man in this shape—a sacrifice of his own interest—the sacrifice has been nothing more than a sacrifice of his interest in one shape to his interest in another, the sacrifice of what at the moment has been in his eyes a lesser to what has been in his eyes at that same moment his greater interest: the sacrifice for example of pecuniary interest to reputation: of a certain sum of money to such a quantity of general good opinion and good will and good offices at the hands of other men as according to his calculation would be worth more.

You stand clear from the temptation afforded by distant dependencies: you stand exempt from the danger of splitting upon that rock. You stand out of the danger of being driven into enmity by the correspondent appetite.

In this respect you have the advantage over Spain, Portugal, England, France, and the Netherlands: in particular over Spain and Portugal.

Were but one individual to manifest in the management of his own concerns any such degree of unsoundness of mind, any such symptoms of mental derangement, as are seen manifested by the rulers of both those nations in the management of those affairs of others as have been committed to their charge, what tolerably honest and intelligent Judge is there that would pause for a single moment before he took the so flagrantly abused power out of such palpably unapt hands: injustice the most palpable, inconsistency the most flagrant, impossibility of success in the mad and mischievous enterprize most compleat!

In the three other cases the impossibility of good government, the injuriousness of the practice to the inhabitants of both countries—that which is the seat of nothing but subjection—and that which is the seat of government, that is of those by which the yoke is kept upon the necks of their distant and unknown brethren—is little less flagrant: but the mischief from the practice is not as near so vast: nothing that can be spoken of as ruinous is included in it. Both countries are plundered and oppressed that a few in the domineering country may be enriched: but in neither country are the inhabitants exposed to the danger of a foreign yoke—or of a domestic tyranny—so galling as is to be seen in so many other countries.

Should it happen to any one among you to stand up, to make profession and protestation of love to the country, probity and disinter[este]dness, in a word virtue in any shape, and on the ground of any such strings of word[s] uttered by him lay claim to public confidence in any shape more than would be bestowed upon the meanest citizen, or even the most notorious criminal, let the manner in which pg 196such waste of words Is received by you be such as shall suffice to deter him and others from repeating any such experiment upon your credulity.

Protestations to any such effect are made with just as much facility by those in whose instance they are furthest from, as by those in whose instance they are nearest to, the truth.

You have not for your affliction any such unpunishable Depredator General, Oppressor General, Corrupter General, Deluder General, God upon earth, as that to which we cringe under by the name of Monarch—as in Germany, Italy, Russia, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Portugal and England. Standing on this pinnacle, you may look down with pity.

You have no Aristocratical cast of men to deal by you as the Helots were dealt with by the Spartans: men who, for the tyranny they experience at the hands of the despot, find a compensation in that which they concurr with him in exercising over their fellow slaves.

You are not inflicted with the plague of priests. For though a class of men who under that name pretend to that knowledge of the Almighty which it is not given to man to possess, yet you know them too well to suffer them to tyrannize over you: and ere long you will learn from the example of the Anglo-American United States that an established priesthood, paid at public expence by forced contributions, are no more necessary to the maintenance of piety than useful to the maintenance of morality: and as for the body, so for the soul, to those who think they have need of a physician you will leave the care of choosing one for themselves. Relieving your fellow citizens from all burthens imposed on them on this pretence, you will not forget the protection due to actual possession, nor suppose that possession derived by priests from priests is less entitled to protection than if it were derived by sons from fathers.

From this other eminence likewise, you may look down upon all those other nations whom I have brought under your review.

You are not as yet afflicted with the plague of lawyers. Ah, may you never be so unfortunate!

Judges you must have. But oh! place not in that necessary and worthily venerated station any man whose hand has been polluted by the gold of the wrongdoer. Advocates you must have—Yes, and hireling ones you must tolerate: for the weak in mind and body can not on every occasion command for this any more than any other purpose the assistance of gratuitous friendship. But let the avowed professor of insincerity—the indiscriminate defender of the injured and the injurer—be the last man you think of seating on the bench of justice.

Lay down the universal rule of action in the form of written law, the pg 197meanest understanding among you will find it an easier matter to learn from it all his rights and all his duties than the most learned and most acute of all lawyers that ever existed does in his endeavours to learn and, when paid, to teach that pretended unwritten law which, having in reality no existence, is essentially incapable of being learnt by any man.

You are not afflicted by the plague of spurious representatives: hundreds nominate[d] by their own creatures and dependents to plunder and oppress the millions. You have none of these bloodsuckers, these unpunishable malefactors, stigmatized and abhorred under the name of Borough-monger by all who are not their accomplices.

Stationed on this eminence, with the citizens of the Anglo-American United States on your side, you will look down upon all these other nations, but with the best-deserved scorn and contempt upon England and upon France.

In your struggle to free yourselves from the yoke of your Mahometan oppressors, you have no Monarchs, no Nobles, no Priests, no retainers of Monarchs, Nobles or Priests, to join with the arch-tyrants and do their utmost to keep, if that can not be to reseat[?], it on your necks. Your newly appointed Agents have therefore neither reason nor pretext for screening their malpractices in any shape from censure, by restraints on the liberty of public discussion and of the press. From imputations false in fact, as in the station of a private citizen, so in the situation of a public functionary in any department and any grade, protection will be given to reputation by the hand of law: for damage in any assignable and specific shape compensation will be awarded if produced by rashness, to which, if by wilful falshood, appropriate punishment will be added. But as in the Anglo-American United States, so with you, every man by whom any such imputation has been cast will be admitted to prove the truth of it: and considering that mischief capable of being done by functionaries is great in proportion to the power of which they are possessors or partakers, while defence against unjust imputation is in a correspondent degree easier, more indulgence will be shewn by you to ungrounded imputations upon public men than [to]¹ the like upon private Citizens. Legislators! the stronger the protection a man has from any other source whatever, the less, not the greater, is the need he has of that which is afforded by the hand of law.

Legislators! though servants to all, think not that by that universality you are placed in any other condition than that of servants. Legislators? I denounce to his fellow citizens as an usurper that man pg 198who in any address made to them collectively or individually shall presume to use any such language as that of a master. Think not by any assumption of superiority of wisdom, either justification or excuse can be made for assumption of independent and irresistible power.

Look round you and wherever you see a crown you will see under it some empty-headed sensualist whose title to respect is composed of a mass of wealth, sufficient for the subsistence of some myriads of industrious and productive hands, poured into his lap as a reward for idleness, or for exertions many times worse than idleness.

Look round and satisfy yourselves that as no such selfishness, no such cruelty, no such hatred and contempt of benefactors, so no such ignorance of all useful things, no such prejudice, no such folly, no such absurdity, no such meanness, no such utter incorrigibility, is any where to be found comparable to that which is always to be found upon every throne, and in every knot of those hereditary vermin who are never tired of crawling under the throne so long as they have any hope of feeding upon what drops from it.

Legislators! All men in your situation have five trials to undergo; five temptations to contend against, five insatiable and corruptive appetites to hold in subjection if they are able: appetite for money, appetite for power, appetite for factitious honour and dignity, appetite for revenge, appetite for ease.

To no [one] of these appetites can any gratification be afforded to rulers, but at the expence of subjects. Hence the uncontestable maxim that the less the amount of the gratification afforded to them the better. Here then we have minimization of expence—one of the two specific ends into which the general end of government divides itself.

To all these temptation-applying appetites belong their respective instruments of gratification afforded to them by the structure of government.

Offices, invested with various masses of money and power, separate or in combination, are the instruments from the possession and use of which these two appetites receive their gratification. These two instruments of human felicity—these two objects of general not to say universal desire, must in some proportion or other, must of necessity, whatsoever be the expence and cost to subjects, be placed in the hands of rulers. Of these the utmost that can be said is that, it being at the expence of subjects that they are created, and the sum of the enjoyment of those by whom they are received and enjoyed being never so great as the sum of the suffering on the part of those at whose expence they are created, the less the quantity that can be pg 199made to suffice for the accomplishment of the universal and only proper end of government, the better.

Cupidity holds out to your grasp needless offices, useless offices, overpay of needful and useful ones and to ones called Sinecures: revenge, the ruin of all who by appeals to the people, your constituents, shall presume to call in question your faultless excellence—that faultless and matchless excellence which men in your situation have no where failed to arrogate to themselves. If, under these temptations, you sink, you will fall with others; if you stand firm, you will stand alone. To prove their fitness for command, men have been seen in various countries subjecting themselves to the bodily torture: none who could revenge themselves have as yet endured patiently that torture which by obloquy, always the severer the more merited, is inflicted on the mind.

Legislators! the occupier of every place which is not absolutely needful as well as useful is a public robber: so is the receiver of whatever pay is over and above that which is needful in every needful and useful place. Every occupant of a sinecure Office is moreover a swindler: receiver of money extorted from the people on a pretence altogether false.

When I say to you, endure with patience whatever obloquy is cast upon you—treat with nothing but silent contempt any appellatives of vague reproach—defend yourselves against specific imputations—defend yourselves with no other arms than counter-argument and disproof, I call not upon you for any thing more than what for these | | years¹ [has]² been done by others in your place—I speak of all constituted authorities in the Anglo-American United States.

What is there in you that should render public virtue in you inferior to what it is in them? That which in them has for so many years been uninterrupted practice, to you is there any thing in it that is impossible? is not their nature yours likewise? is not possibility sufficiently proved by fact?

Those who cry out, restrain the licentiousness of the press, say in other words, give to me, and all those who are in league with me, success and impunity for all our crimes.

The next instrument of human felicity, created by rulers at the expence of subjects for their own use, is factitious honor or factitious dignity—call it which you please.

For this sort of article there is not in any the smallest quantity the least particle of use; much less is the employment of it, as in the case of those two others, matter of necessity. It is created at the expence pg 200of two different classes of the community: the members at large, and those persons [by]¹ whom preeminent and extraordinary service, preeminent and extraordinary in quantity [and]² quality, has been rendered to the public. In the instance of all those, appropriate honor and dignity—honor and dignity suited in quantity and quality to the nature of the service, are attached to it by the hand of nature. Thus all such factitious honor and dignity [is] productive of evil in a variety of shapes. 1. Oppression to the members of the community at large. 2. Injustice to the whole class of those by whom extraordinary service in any shape has been rendered. 3. Discouragement applied to the exertions of those by whom, were it not for the observation of such injustice, extraordinary service as above would have been rendered.

Of the manufacture of poison in this shape, I have the satisfaction of not being able to find any trace in your organic law.

Note that when the pretence of being contributory and necessary to the production of extraordinary public service is taken away, every pretence that could ever be imagined for the fabrication of this instrument of mischief is taken away: the characters of fraud and oppression are left upon the face of it in all their nakedness.^a

With only one exception, no government but one having ever existed which had for its end in view the greatest happiness of any persons other than those among whom the powers of it were shared and destined to be shared,³ no government having ever been in existence by which the interest and greatest happiness of those over whom, was not deliberately and on every occasion of competition constantly made a sacrifice to the interest real or supposed of those by whom the powers of it were exercised, hence if is that no government has ever existed by the very constitution of which, as well as by every act done in maintenance of it, provocation, constant, universal and perpetually repeated provocation, has not been given to all on whom and at whose expence the powers of it have been exercised. I say—the very constitution of it. For, take the instance of a Monarchy—a quantity of productive labour sufficient for the maintenance of fifty or a hundred thousand productive labourers, think of such a quantity extorted for the pampering of one individual, to the cramming withpg 201enjoyment a single individual, in whose sensory [not] so much as double the quantity of real enjoyment which any one of those same useful individuals would have possessed had he been left unmolested can after all be forced.

Here then by the very act by which this quantity of labour is extorted and the fruit of it thus miserably wasted, depredation, oppression and waste are exercised upon this vast scale, while by the pretences made in the endeavour to exculpate it, an insult is offered to every mind to which they are addressed, and corruption and depravation produced in every mind by which acceptance is given to them. On no better nor other ground than that of the immense amount of the depredation and extortion practiced for his benefit, virtue and merit in every imaginable shape, and in every shape matchless in degree, are attributed and ascribed to him. With their own hands these creatures of the idol manufacture it, and when thus manufactured they are the first to fall down and worship it. Out of the materials of Vice in all its forms they make it, and it is to this compound that they give the name of consummate Virtue!

Thus much by simple existence. But every arrangement in detail, and every act exercised in the business of giving execution and effect to such arrangements, having for its object and effect that same sinister sacrifice, thus it is that, with scarce an exception worth mentioning, in the exercise of the powers of government scarce an act is done by which injury is not done, and provocation thereby given, to the great body of the people.

All this while provocation can not be offered, injury can not be done, but resentment, in the event of any favorable opportunity, resentment at the hands of the injured, can not but with more or less anxiety be looked for and apprehended. Among those whom on every day of the year they have been treating as enemies, all the causes of blindness that apply to such exalted stations can not altogether prevent [them] from beholding so many individuals prepared upon each favorable occasion to act in their own defence, and in so doing to act as enemies.

The robber beholds of course an enemy in every one whom he has robbed: the oppressor in every one whom he has oppressed: and robbery and oppression upon an all-comprehensive scale being at all times the constant practice of every such government—all sharers in the exercise of the powers of it being as such public robbers, differing only from those who are commonly denominated and punished as such no otherwise than by superior magnitude of the mischief done, and the impunity with which it [is] clothed, hence it is that in every individual who is not or does not look to be a sharer with them in thepg 202fruit of the sinister sacrifice they behold an irreconcileable enemy, one who as such is an object of hatred and contempt to them: hatred in respect of the resentment which they can not but regard as having its abode in his breast; contempt for the patience and pusillanimity with which he submitts to such treatment at their hands.

Meantime notwithstanding all the immense mass which they have in their hands of the means of force and intimidation, added to the immense mass of the matter of good in all its shapes—of the external instruments of felicity in all their shapes—of the objects of general desire in all their shapes, ever and anon in the career of their universally injurious practice, resistance is here and there experienced by their ever-craving and ever-intolerant will: and thus it is that a state of morbid excitation—in a word a state of constant inflammation—is the state of every such high-seated and domineering mind. A mind which is thus the seat of perpetual hatred—of ill-will towards men—is in a state of perpetual torment: a sort of torment to which no prospect of mitigation is open but that which it looks to derive from the idea of human suffering on the part of those in whom the dissocial passion beholds its objects.

On the other hand, where there is suffering there will naturally be complaint: where a system of depredation and oppression is in view, indignation will be awakened in every generous and sympathizing breast, even of those who do not regard themselves as having been struck by it with any special injury. By both these causes, complaint as opportunity offers is naturally elicited: indication is made of the several particular sufferings, indication is made of this or that arrangement as affording a prospect of eventual remedy. Desire of relief from suffering, desire of seeing an end to it, desire of compensation, desire of security for the future—desire of revenge at the expence of the authors—all those desires concurr in giving expression to such complaints. But by every such expression, fresh provocation is given to the confederacy of depredators and oppressors. An emotion to which the word hatred can not with truth be said to be inapplicable, considering that by this word not any the slightest degree is excluded, is excited in every injured breast to which the cause of its sufferings is an object of attention and regard: hatred in respect of the course of injury perpetually inflicted and sustained: contempt incidentally in respect of the character of those who on this or that particular occasion are seen [to be] instrumental to the infliction of it, and the symptoms of folly and absurdity by which this or that particular injurious act is so frequently seen to be accompanied.

As by the words hatred and contempt no determinate degree of the respective emotions, affections and passions indicated by thempg 203respectively is marked out, nor consequently any degree how slight and gentle so ever excluded, hence it is that to take for the subject of discussion any one existing arrangement of government in the country in question, or any one act performed by any of the individuals among whom the powers of government are shared, and at the same time to hold it up to view in the character of one by the contemplation of which a sentiment of disapprobation has been produced, to do this without doing that by which a tendency to produce hatred at least towards those by whom the supposed pernicious arrangement is supported, or the supposed pernicious act been exercised, is plainly impossible.

Meantime of any observation made whether in oral discourse or in writing on the established arrangements or incidental acts and measures of those by whom the powers of government are exercised, the only possible use is the indication of this or that arrangement or this or that practice in the character of a proper object of disapprobation, on this or that account on each occasion mentioned: and thus doing that in relation to which its tendency to bring the government or the governors, one or both, into hatred and contempt can not consistently with truth be denied.

This being considered, to interdict under penalties all public discussion of the measures of government and to interdict by the like penalties every thing that has a tendency to bring the government and governors into hatred and contempt are thenceforth but two different names for exactly the same thing.

By every arrangement, by every measure, by which endeavours are used to stifle the liberty of public discussion, especially through the medium of the press, rulers, in proportion to the success with which such endeavours are attended, provide for the gratification not merely of the appetite for revenge, but for the more effectual and consummate and perpetual gratification of all those maleficent and dissocial passions to the influence of which I have been representing them as standing exposed, and at the same time to the utmost of their power yielding themselves: appetite for money, appetite for power, appetite for factitious honor and dignity: not to speak of the appetite for ease with which the list of universally [… ?] temptations will have to close. For by these same means of penal restrictions, while in case of violation, and in proportion to violation, gratifying the appetite for vengeance, in proportion to observance, they will have secured against opposition every avowed opinion, really or only pretendedly entertained,¹ and not only against punishment but against restraintpg 204every act of depredation by which money has injuriously been obtained, every act of oppression by which power has been injuriously exercised, every act of imposture by which, to the prejudice of true honor, true dignity—the reward of really extraordinary and meritorious public service—factitious honor and dignity has in any of its infinitely diversified and essentially mischievous and justly comtemptible forms been conferred and received.

From all this it will moreover appear—

1. 1. That if in any country there be to be found among its laws or judicial practices one by which penalties are denounced on him whose endeavours shall be by any discourse uttered in letter or speech to bring into hatred or contempt the government or any of the persons among whom the powers of government are shared, proof is hereby given of the most manifest and irrefragable kind that all persons by whom any such liberty shall be exercised as that of expressing disapprobation of the system or practice of government or governors or any part of it are to all persons by whom a part has been taken in the establishment of such law or practice, or in the making application of it, objects of hatred and contempt: insomuch as that this is an open declaration of war against all such members of the community as refuse to submitt themselves to every extremity of depredation and oppression in the character of slaves.

2. 2. That if there can be any just ground for hatred on the part of any one man towards any other, it is not possible for any set of men by their conduct to furnish a more just and proper ground for that dissocial yet unhappily never altogether avoidable sentiment than is afforded by the giving existence, support or execution to such a law.

In a word, that by a law to any such effect even so much as the pretence of good government, the very pretension to act otherwise than by the compleat sacrifice of the happiness of the whole community besides to the sinister interest of the ruling few, is abandoned and denied, and that not to entertain wishes and upon every favorable occasion use endeavours for the utter subversion and destruction of such a government is to join with it in making interminable war upon human happiness.

When in speaking of all these several corruptive appetites I have brought to view the observation that all men in your position—all legislators—have had to maintain a contest—have had incumbent on them the task of endeavouring to keep them in subjection—what I have meant to say is that in the instance of each such government the greatest happiness of the greatest number of the members of the community in the character of subjects has been in proportion to the success of any such endeavours as may be conceived to have beenpg 205directed by rulers to the keeping them within subjection, within due bounds: and that accordingly endeavours the most strenuous possible to that effect ought in every instance to have been used.

What I do not mean to say is—that in the instance of any government, unless there be one exception, have any such endeavours ever been used.

On the contrary, of every government as yet known—the main end of all endeavours has been the greatest happiness of those by whom the powers of government have been exercised: in no instance the greatest happiness of those over whom and at the expence of whom [the] powers of government have been exercised.

Now then, by what criterions can you put yourselves in a way to know in what instances and thence to what extent robbery in all these several shapes has been committed? Legislators! I will tell you. I will put you in possession of two such criterions.

The first is—Proof deduced from the universal and incontestable constitution of human nature that from the possession of the instruments of felicity in question on the part of rulers over and above a certain describable quantity nothing but evil can ensue to subjects. Say for shortness, proof from theory or proof from universal experience.

The other is—Indication of instances in which in the case of this or that other government the business of government is carried on as well or better with a less quantity of the expensive article in question than in this or that other government with a larger quantity.

Now as to the use capable of being made of particular experience. The following rule may serve for the expression of it:

Rule of economy as applied to the number of Offices.

If, for the performance of a certain portion of the business of government in the state in question Offices in a certain number having been created, indication has been given of any other political state in the government of which, for the performance of that same portion of business, not so many Offices have place, the difference between the whole number of Offices having place in the government in question and the whole number having place in the political state so referred to, say for shortness the pattern state, is superfluous, and belongs to the head of needless and useless Offices, and the expenditure made in respect of them is so much expenditure in waste.pg 206