Volumes 1 and 2 of the Correspondence contain nearly four hundred letters, the vast majority now printed for the first time, revealing in manifold detail the formative years of an idiosyncratic genius. The Westminster schoolboy, the Oxford undergraduate, the student of the law hesitantly seeking in new friends and new scenes a broadening of his parentally circumscribed horizons—all these phases in Bentham's growth are faithfully reflected here. With the 1770s come greater independence and maturity: we see Bentham progressively realising what his life's work is to be. Law and the society of which law is the framework are the focal points of his endeavour. But they are by no means all-absorbing, and indeed in these letters we see much more of other, less familiar sides of Bentham's personality. We see his insatiable scientific curiosity as he exchanges letters on chemistry with Joseph Priestly. We seem him seeking the correspondence of Morellet and d'Alembert, deliberately allying himself with the aims and ideals of the Enlightenment. Above all, this is an intensely personal family correspondence. Two figures dominate it—Bentham's father, and his younger brother, Samuel. Bentham's letters exhibit the closeness and the complexity of these family relationships of his early life.
Dr. Sprigge's explanatory editorial comment has for the most part been combined, for ease of reference, with the detailed annotations appended to the letters and his notes form an invaluable guide to the rich and varied background of eighteenth-century England against which the correspondence unfolds. In all, these and succeeding volumes will reveal Bentham's life and personality more fully than ever before and lay an essential foundation for the understanding of his evolving ideas.
The philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was born in Spitalfields, London, on 15 February 1748. He proved to be something of a child prodigy: while still a toddler he was discovered sitting at his father's desk reading a multi-volume history of England, and he began to study Latin at the age of three. At twelve, he was sent to Queen's College Oxford, his father, a prosperous attorney, having decided that Jeremy would follow him into the law, and feeling quite sure that his brilliant son would one day be Lord Chancellor of England.
Bentham, however, soon became disillusioned with the law, especially after hearing the lectures of the leading authority of the day, Sir William Blackstone (1723-80). Instead of practising the law, he decided to write about it, and he spent his life criticising the existing law and suggesting ways for its improvement. His father's death in 1792 left him financially independent, and for nearly forty years he lived quietly in Westminster, producing between ten and twenty sheets of manuscript a day, even when he was in his eighties.
Even for those who have never read a line of Bentham, he will always be associated with the doctrine of Utilitarianism and the principle of `the greatest happiness of the greatest number'. This, however, was only his starting point for a radical critique of society, which aimed to test the usefulness of existing institutions, practices and beliefs against an objective evaluative standard. He was an outspoken advocate of law reform, a pugnacious critic of established political doctrines like natural law and contractarianism, and the first to produce a utilitarian justification for democracy. He also had much to say of note on subjects as diverse as prison reform, religion, poor relief, international law, and animal welfare. A visionary far ahead of his time, he advocated universal suffrage and the decriminalisation of homosexuality.
By the 1820s Bentham had become a widely respected figure, both in Britain and in other parts of the world. His ideas were greatly to influence the reforms of public administration made during the nineteenth century, and his writings are still at the centre of academic debate, especially as regards social policy, legal positivism, and welfare economics. Research into his work continues at UCL in the Bentham Project, set up in the early 1960s with the aim of producing the first scholarly edition of his works and correspondence, a projected total of some sixty volumes!
