Editor’s NoteEditor’s Note 833To William Pitt2 February 1792 (Aet 43)

Dover Street No. 2 Feb:y 10th 1792

Sir

Recent considerations and calculations have enabled me to put my proposal of Jan:y 23d 1791 relative to the Penitentiary system into a shape which removes altogether what I have all along understood to be the only objection to which that system has been looked upon as exposed.²

I am now ready to execute the plan stated in that proposal at an expence per man less by 25 per cent than that of the Hulk system: taking on myself all expence of building, and that without any advance to be made by Government for that purpose. £184 a man was to have been the least amount of that expence, as I now find by the Report made to the House of Commons in 1784.

Sir Charles Bunbury is ready to express his entire approbation of my plan, together with the most zealous wishes for its adoption, on all occasions, public as well as private, without reserve: and Lord Auckland, I have some reason to flatter myself, (though without having as yet been honoured by any direct communication from him) would not be backward in the expression of similar sentiments. The suffrages of these gentlemen, the original patrons of the Penitentiary system, may, I hope, afford some presumption that pg 360 the spirit of it has at least not suffered by the amendments I have presumed to make in it.

• I have the honour to be, with all respect,              
• Sir,                                             
• Your most obedient                   
• and humble Servant                 
• Jeremy Bentham                  

• Rt Hon. W. Pitt
• etc. etc. etc.