Jeremy Bentham

“ You are chosen by the people: you mean to be so; you are chosen by the most numerous part, who must be the least learned, of the people. This quality, with all its advantages and disadvantages, you the children of the people, must expect more or less to partake of. Inform yourselves as you can, labour as you will, reduce your business as much as you will, you need not fear the finding it too light for you.—What a mountain of arguments and calculations must you have to struggle under, if you persevere in the system of colony-holding with its monopolies and counter-monopolies! ”

“ This and no other to excite and keep up a spirit of resistance to all laws — a spirit of insurrection against all governments - against the governments of all other nations instantly, against the government of their own nation against the government they themselves were pretending to establish even that, as soon as their own reign should be at an end. In us is the perfection of virtue and wisdom: in all mankind besides, the extremity of wickedness and folly. Our will shall consequently reign without controul, and for ever: reign now we are livingreign after we are dead. ”

“ Equality, were it brought to the highest pitch of perfection to which the hearts of the most sanguine votaries of the equalisation plan could wrish to carry it, would still be but the semblance of equality in effect. If equality in point of wealth be desirable, it can only be so in the quality of an efficient cause of equality in point of happiness: at least in as far as the quantum of happiness depends on that of wealth. But of equality in point of wealth, nothing like equality in point of happiness can be the result: not even in so far as happiness depends on wealth. ”

“ On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility [1] recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. ”

“ Ask your minister of the marine, can he spare 50 more to defend them against their protectors? Fifteen thousand are bound for Martinico to fight aristocrats: ask your war-minister whether Custine can spare 30,000 more of his best men to fight Britons.
Do not feed yourselves with illusions. You can not be every where: you can not do every thing. Your resources, great as they are, have still their limits. The land is yours. But do you think it possible for you to keep it so, and the sea likewise?—the land against every body, and at the same time the sea against Britain? ”

“ Take away the authority of the Acts in the character of an inspired writer—writing from supernatural inspiration, after an immediate and continued intercourse, in some unexplained and inexplicable manner, with the Almighty,—what remains, then, of the evidence, on the ground of which the mighty fabric of Paul and his doctrine has been erected?
A man, who is thus continually in contradiction—sometimes with himself, at other times with the most unimpeachable authorities—what credence can, with reason and propriety, be given to his evidence, in relation to any important matter of fact? ”

“ But the great cause of all is the prospect of acquiescence—a prospect first presented by hope, since realized over and over again by experience. It is too much to expect of a man of finance, that he should anticipate the feelings of unknown individuals: it is a great deal if he will listen to their cries. Taxes on consumption fall on bodies of men: the most inconsiderable one when touched will make the whole country ring again. The oppressed and ruined objects of the taxes on justice, weep in holes and corners, as rats die: no one voice finds any other to join with it. ”

“ There seems to be no name for the love of life that has a good sense; unless it be the vague and general name of prudence.
To save yourself from being hanged, pilloried, imprisoned, or fined, you poison the only person who can give evidence against you. In this case your motive will universally be styled abominable: but as the term self-preservation has no bad sense, people will not care to make this use of it: they will be apt rather to change the motive, and call it malice. ”

“ But, after all, for what reason is it, that men ought to keep their promises? The moment any intelligible reason is given, it is this: that it is for the advantage of society they should keep them; and if they do not, that, as far as punishment will go, they should be made to keep them. It is for the advantage of the whole number that the promises of each individual should be kept: and, rather than they should not be kept, that such individuals as fail to keep them should be punished. ”

“ If the right of enjoying liberty be unalienable, whence came so many of his Majesty’s peaceable subjects among them, without any offence, without so much as a pretended offence, merely for being suspected not to wish well to their enormities, to be held by them in durance? If the right of pursuing happiness be unalienable, how is it that so many others of their fellow-citizens are by the same injustice and violence made miserable, their fortunes ruined, their persons banished and driven from their friends and families? ”

“ For in no other shape could we be so certain of finding the three great qualities of Government so well and so happily united. If the supreme power were lodged in any one of the three branches separately, we must be exposed to the inconveniencies of either absolute monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy; and so want two of the principal ingredients of good polity, either virtue, wisdom, or power. ”

“ Whereupon as I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the Chief Priests, at midday, O, king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them that journeyed with me. And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice saying unto me in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the goad. And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. ”

“ Inequality is the natural condition of mankind. Subjection is the natural state of man. It is the state into which be is born: it is the state in which be always has been born, and always will be, so long as man is man: it is the state in which he must continue for some of the first years of his life, on pain of perishing. Absolute equality is absolutely impossible. Absolute liberty is directly repugnant to the existence of every kind of government. ”

“ What a precious task would the legislator find set for him by this declaration of sacred, inviolable, and imprescriptible rights! The protectors of reputation on one side of him: the idolators of liberty on the other: each with the rights of man in his mouth, and the dagger of assassination in his hand, ready to punish the smallest departure from the course marked out in his heated imagination for this unbending line. ”

“ Are they aristocrats? they hate you. Are they aristocrats? you hate them. For what would you wish to govern a people who hate you? Will they hate you the less for governing them? Are a people the happier for being governed by those they hate? If so, send for the Duke of Brunswick, and seat him on your throne. For what can you wish to govern a people whom you hate? Is it for the pleasure of making them miserable? Is not this copying the Fredericks and the Francis's? Is not this being aristocrats, and aristocrats with a vengeance? ”

“ I know what a groundless suit means—I know of no such thing as a frivolous one. No wrong that I know of can be a trivial one, which to him to whom it is done appears a serious one, serious to such a degree, as to make it worth his while to demand redress at the hand of justice.—Conduct is the test of feeling. I know of no right I have to set up any feelings of my own as the standard of those of my neighbour, in contradiction to a declaration of his, the truth of which is evidenced by his own conduct. What to one man again is trivial, to another man may be of high importance. ”

“ The lover of equality, in its most refined form, is the man to whose eyes the spectacle of another’s prosperity is intolerable. What is the envious man but the same? What, then, is this so much boasted passion for equality? It is a propensity which begins in vice and leads to ruin. In the scale of merit, it is as much below selfishness as selfishness is below the virtue of benevolence. ”

“ Society is held together only by the sacrifices that men can be induced to make of the gratifications they demand: to obtain these sacrifices is the great difficulty, the great task of government. What has been the object, the perpetual and palpable object, of this declaration of pretended rights? To add as much force as possible to these passions, already but too strong,-to burst the cords that hold them in, to say to the selfish passions, there everywhere is your prey! ”

“ Keep the sugar islands, it is impossible for you to do right:—let go the negroes, you have no sugar, and the reason for keeping these colonies is at end; keep the negroes, you trample upon the declaration of rights, and act in the teeth of principle.—Scruples must have a term: how sugar is raised is what you need not trouble yourselves about, so long as you do not direct the raising it. Reform the world by example, you act generously and wisely: reform the world by force, you might as well reform the moon, and the design is fit only for lunatics. ”

“ The rich man, the man who has time and money at command, he surely, if any, is the man to consume it litigiously and frivolously. No wonder however, if to a superficial glance, the poor should appear more litigious than he. There are more of the poor than of the rich: and to the eye of unreflecting opulence, the causes of the poor are all trivial ones.
We think of the poor in the way of charity, for to deal out charity gratifies not only benevolence, but pride. We think much of them in the way of charity, but we think little of them in the way of justice. ”

“ Oh, but the good citizens! what will be come of the good citizens?—What will become of them?—their fate depends upon yourselves. Give up your dominion, you may save them: fight for it, you destroy them. Secure, if you can do it without force, a fair emission of the wishes of all the citizens, if what you call the good citizens are the majority, they will govern: if a minority, they neither will nor ought to govern, but you may give them safety if you please. ”

“ Better a man should starve than hire himself; better half the species starve, than hire itself out to service. For, where is the compatibility between liberty and servitude? How can liberty and servitude subsist in the same person? What good citizen is there, that would hesitate to die for liberty? And, as to those who are not good citizens, what matters it whether they live or starve? Besides that every man who lives under this constitution being equal in rights, equal in all sorts of rights, is equal in respect to rights of property. ”

“ The power of the ordinary robber goes not beyond a few moveables; and such moveables as may easily and speedily be conveyed away: the power of the legislating robber extends to immoveables — to every tiling — to the future as well as to the present. The power of the ordinary robber extends not beyond the few whom chance may throw in his way: the power of the authorised robber extends over the whole territory of the state.
The passion for equality has no root in the benevolent affections: its root is either simply in the selfish affections, or in the selfish, combined with the malevolent. ”

“ Have they no passions to blind, have they no prejudices to mislead them? Are you so unable to comprehend your own interest, that it is only from the opinion of others that you can learn it, and those your enemies?—The king of England is your enemy:—but because he is so, will you put yourselves under his command? Shall it be in the power of an enemy to make you do as he pleases, only by employing somebody to propose the contrary?—See what a man exposes himself to by listening to such impertinences!—I am hired: but are not advocates hired, as often as a question comes before a court of justice? ”

“ That all men should have equal rights, not only would be politically pernicious, but is naturally impossible: but I hope this will not be said of equal justice.
Trivial causes require no such factitious checks: to such causes were all expenses struck off that can be struck off, there are natural checks in abundance, that are unavoidable. There is the pain of disappointment: there is expense, of which a certain measure will every now and then be absolutely unavoidable: there is consumption of time, which to the working classes, that is, to the great majority of the people, is expense. ”

“ Chemistry has commonly been reckoned, and not altogether without reason, among the most abstruse branches of science. In chemistry, we see how high they have soared above the sublimest knowledge of past times; in legislation, how deep they have sunk below the profoundest ignorance;— how inferior has the maturest design that be furnished by the united powers of whole nation proved, in comparison of wisdom and felicity of the chance-medley of the British Constitution. ”

“ It is only for equality, so far, and so far only as it is practicable, and practicable to advantage, that we contend: for the lopping off the superfluities of overgrown and excessive opulence, for alleviating the sufferings of excessive misery: for planting and maintaining the virtuous race of industrious proprietors, for planting and maintaining plenty without luxury, and independence without insolence. To push any system to an absurd excess, and then give the abuse of the system as the system itself — what can be more uncandid or more inconclusive? ”

“ Can you take a penny of that income more than they choose to give you? or would you if you could?—We have no such pretension, unless it be over conquered colonies, in our land of what you call imperfect liberty.
Oh, but of this income of theirs a great part centers here: it comes to buy our goods: it constitutes a great part of our trade—all this at least we should lose. Another illusion—Must you govern a people in order to sell your goods to them? Is there that people upon earth who do not buy goods of you? You sell goods to Britain, don't you? And do you govern Britain? ”