Jeremy Bentham

“ To acknowledge that any one promise may be void, is to acknowledge that if any other is binding, it is not merely because it is a promise. That circumstance then, whatever it be, on which the validity of a promise depends, that circumstance, I say, and not the promise itself must, it is plain, be the cause of the obligation which a promise is apt in general to carry with it. ”

“ In general then, at what precise juncture is it, that persons subject to a government, become, by disobedience, with respect to that government, in a state of nature? When is it, in short, that a revolt shall be deemed to have taken place; and when, again, is it, that that revolt shall be deemed to such a degree successful, as to have settled into independence?
26. As it is the obedience of individuals that constitutes a state of submission, so is it their disobedience that must constitute a state of revolt. ”

“ The principle of utility was an appellative, at that time employed by me, as it has been by others, to designate that which, in a more perspicuous and instructive manner, may as above be designated by the name of the greatest happiness principle. `This principle' (said Wedderburn) `is a dangerous one.' Saying so, he said that which, to a certain extent, is strictly true; a principle, which lays down, as the only right and justifiable end of Government, the greatest happiness of the greatest number how can it be denied to be a dangerous one? ”

“ A society, to come within the notion of what is originally meant by a political one, must be such as, in its nature, is not incapable of continuing for ever in virtue of the principles which gave it birth. This, it is plain, is not the case with such a family society, of which a parent, or a pair of parents are at the head. In such a society, the only principle of union which is certain and uniform in its operation, is the natural weakness of those of its members that are in a state of subjection ”

“ If every single instance whatever of such a violation were to be deemed an entire dissolution of the contract, a man who reflects at all would scarce find any-where, I believe, under the sun, that Government which he could allow to subsist for twenty years together. It is plain, therefore, that to pass any sound decision upon the question which the inventors of this fiction substituted instead of the true one, the latter was still necessary to be decided. ”

“ The habit of obedience in this country appears to have been more perfect in the time of the Saxons than in that of the Britons: unquestionably it is more so now than in the time of the Saxons. It is not yet so perfect, as well contrived and well digested laws its time, it is to be hoped, may render it. But absolutely perfect, till man ceases to be man, it never can be. A very ingenious and instructive view of the progress of nations, from the least perfect states of political union to that highly perfect state of it in which we live, may be found in Load Kaims's Historical Law Tracts. ”

“ First, Because the most mischievous, and under certain constitutions the most feasible, method of governing in opposition to the happiness of the people, is, by setting the Law itself in opposition to their happiness. Secondly, Because it is a case very conceivable, that a King may, to a great degree, impair the happiness of his people without violating the letter of any single Law. Thirdly, Because extraordinary occasions may now and then occur, in which the happiness of the people may be better promoted by acting, for the moment, in opposition to the Law, than in subservience to it. ”

“ And this is what we mean by the original contract of society; which, though perhaps in no instance it has ever been formally expressed at the first institution of a state, yet in nature and reason must always be understood and implied, in the very act of associating together: namely, that the whole should protect all its parts, and that every part should pay obedience to the will of the whole; or, in other words, that the community should guard the rights of each individual member, and that (in return for this protection) each individual should submit to the laws of the community ”

“ Something positive, however, in one place, we seem to have. These `single families,' by which the preservation of mankind was effected; these single families, he gives us to understand, `formed the first society.' This is something to proceed upon. A society then of the one kind or the other; a natural society, or else a political society, was formed. I would here then put a case, and then propose a question. In this society we will say no contract had as yet been entered into; no habit of obedience as yet formed. Was this then a natural society merely, or was it a political one? ”

“ Justice, Right Reason required it, the Law of Nature commanded it, and so forth; all which are but so many ways of intimating that a man is firmly persuaded of the truth of this or that moral proposition, though he either thinks he need not, or finds he can't, tell why. ”

“ Perhaps a short sketch of the wanderings of a raw but well-intentioned mind, in its researches after moral truth, may, on this occasion, be not unuseful: for the history of one mind is the history of many. ”

“ When leading terms are made to chop and change their several significations; sometimes meaning one thing, sometimes another, at the upshot perhaps nothing; and this in the compass of a paragraph; one may judge what will be the complexion of the whole context. This, we shall see, is the case with the chief of those we have been reading: for instance, with the words `Society','State of nature', original contract',not to tire the reader with any more. `Society', in one place means the same thing as `a state of nature' does: in another place it means the same as `Government'. ”

“ Make the most of this concession, one experiment there is, by which every reflecting man may satisfy himself, I think, beyond a doubt, that it is the consideration of utility, and no other, that, secretly but unavoidably, has governed his judgment upon all these matters. ”

“ Fourthly, Because it is not any single violation of the Law, as such, that can properly be taken for a breach of his part of the contract, so as to be understood to have released the people from the obligation of performing theirs. For, to quit the fiction, and resume the language of plain truth, it is scarce ever any single violation of the Law that, by being submitted to, can produce so much mischief as shall surpass the probable mischief of resisting it. ”

“ Those men, who are most alarmed at the dangers of a free enquiry; those who are most intimately convinced that the surest way to truth is by hearing nothing but on one side, will, I dare answer almost, find nothing of that which they deem poison in this third volume. ”

“ Not that we can believe, with some theoretical writers, that there ever was a time when there was no such thing as society; and that, from the impulse of reason, and through a sense of their wants and weaknesses, individuals met together in a large plain, entered into an original contract, and chose the tallest man present to be their governor. This notion of an actually existing unconnected state of nature, is too wild to be seriously admitted ”

“ The case is, that in common speech, when no particular object of comparison is specified, all persons in general are intended: so that when a number of persons are said simply to be in a state of nature, what is understood is, that they are so as well with reference to one another, as to all the world. ”

“ But, after all retrenchments, there will still remain enough to have laid mankind under indelible obligations. That the foundations of all virtue are laid in utility, is there demonstrated, after a few exceptions made, with the strongest force of evidence: but I see not, any more than Helvetius saw, what need there was for the exceptions. ”

“ But though society had not its formal beginning from any convention of individuals, actuated by their wants and their fears; yet it is the sense of their weakness and imperfection that keeps mankind together ”

“ It seemed tome the acknowledgment of a bad cause, the bringing a fiction to support it. `To prove fiction, indeed,' said I, `there is need of fiction; but it is the characteristic of truth to need no proof but truth. ”

“ The Troglodytes are a people who pay no regard to promises. By the natural consequences of this disposition, they fall from one scene of misery into another; and are at last exterminated. The same Philosopher, in his Spirit of Laws, copying and refining upon the current jargon, feigns a LAW for this and other purposes, after defining a LAW to be a relation. ”

“ Unless some superior were constituted, whose commands and decisions all the members are bound to obey, they would still remain as in a state of nature, without any judge upon earth to define their several rights, and redress their several wrongs.' Thus far our Author. ”

“ The observance of promises they had been accustomed to see pretty constantly enforced. They had been accustomed to see Kings, as well as others, behave themselves as if bound by them. This proposition, then, `that men are bound by compacts;' and this other, `that, if one party performs not his part, the other is released from his,' being propositions which no man disputed, were propositions which no man had any call to prove. ”

“ A tacit expression of will is that which is conveyed by any other signs whatsoever: among which none are so efficacious as acts of punishment annexed in time past, to the non-performance of acts of the same sort with those that are the objects of the will that is in question. ”

“ These formed the first society, among themselves; which every day extended its limits, and when it grew too large to subsist with convenience in that pastoral state, wherein the Patriarchs appear to have lived, it necessarily subdivided itself by various migrations into more. Afterwards, as agriculture increased, which employs and can maintain a much greater number of hands, migrations became less frequent ”

“ According to the accounts we have of those people, in most of their tribes, if not in all, the habit we are speaking of appears to be taken up only in time of war. It ceases again in time of peace. The necessity of acting in concert against a common enemy, subjects a whole tribe to the orders of a common Chief. ”

“ A parole expression of the will of a superior is a command. 9. When a tacit expression of the will of a superior is supposed to have been uttered, it may be styled a fictitious command. 10. Were we at liberty to coin words after the manner of the Roman lawyers, we night say a quasi-command. 11. The STATUTE LAW is composed of commands. The COMMON LAW, of quasi-commands. ”

“ It would be entering upon the definition of Treason, as distinguished from Murder, Robbery, Riot, and other such crimes, as, in comparison with Treason, are spoken of as being of a more private nature. Suppose the definition of Treason settled, and the commission of an act of Treason is, as far as regards the person committing it, the characteristic mark we are in search of. ”

“ Men were too obviously and too generally interested in the observance of these rules to entertain doubts concerning the force of any arguments they saw employed in their support It is an old observation how Interest smooths the road to Faith. ”

“ As to the two first, the Author himself, I am inclined to think, is not ill disposed, at present, to join with those who are of opinion, that they nsight, without any great loss to the science of Human Nature, be dispensed with. ”