Jeremy Bentham

“ Nor is a disposition to find `every thing as it should be,' less at variance with itself, than with reason and utility. The commonplace arguments in which it vents itself justify not what is established, in effect, any more than they condemn it: since whatever now is established, once was innovation.
Precipitate censure, cast on a political institution, does but recoil on the head of him who casts it. From such an attack it is not the institution itself, if well grounded, that can suffer. What a man says against it either makes impression or makes none. ”

“ The merit to which, as much perhaps as to any, the work stands indebted for its reputation, is the enchanting harmony of its numbers: a kind of merit that of itself is sufficient to give a certain degree of celebrity to a work devoid of every other. So much is man governed by the ear. ”

“ A new statute, it is manifest, cannot, unless it be simply a declaratory one, be made in any case, but it must break in upon some standing rule of Law. With regard to a Statute then to tell us that a `wanton' one has produced `inconveniences,' what is it but to tell us that a thing that has been mischievous has produced mischief? Of this temper are the arguments of all those doating politicians, who, when out of humour with a particular innovation without being able to tell why, set themselves to declaim against all innovation, because it is innovation. ”

“ For the very idea of a reason betokens approbation: so that to deliver a remark under that character, and that without censure, is to adopt it. A man will scarcely, therefore, without some note of disapprobation, be the instrument of introducing, in the guise of a reason, an argument which he does not really wish to see approved. Some method or other he will take to wash his hands of it: some method or other he will take to let men see that what he means to be understood to do, is merely to report the judgment of another, not to pass one of his own. ”

“ A new resolution made in the teeth of an old established rule is mischievouson what account? In that it puts men's expectations universally to a fault, and shakes whatever confidence they may have in the stability of any rules of Law, reasonable or not reasonable: that stability on which every thing that is valuable to a man depends. Beneficial be it in ever so high a degree to the party in whose favour it is made, the benefit it is of to him can never be so great as to outweigh the mischief it is of to the community at large. ”

“ Thus destitute of foundations are the terrors, or pretended terrors, of those who shudder at the idea of a free censure of established institutions. So little does the peace of society require the aid of those lessons which teach men to accept of any thing as reason, and to yield the same abject and indiscriminating homage to the Laws here, which is paid to the despot elsewhere. ”

“ For why is it an evil to a country that the minds of those who have the Law under their management should be thus enfeebled? It is because it finds them impotent to every enter prize of improvement.
Not that a race of lawyers and politicians of this enervate breed is much less dangerous to the duration of that share of felicity which the State possesses at any given period, than it is mortal to its chance of attaining to a greater. If the designs of a Minister are inimical to his country, what is the man of all others for him to make an instrument of or a dupe? ”

“ To a man who contents himself with simply stating an institution as he thinks it is, no share, it is plain, can justly be attributed (nor would any one think of attributing to him any share) of whatever reproach, any more than of whatever applause the institution may be thought to merit. ”

“ I speak of what are called written Laws: for as to unwritten institutions, as there is no such thing as any certain symbol by which their authority is attested, their validity, how deeply rooted soever, is what we see challenged without remorse. A radical weakness, interwoven into the very constitution of unwritten Law.↑ One may well say rare. It is a matter of fact about which there can be no dispute. The truth of it may be seen in the multitude of Expositors which the Jurisprudence of every nation furnished, ere it afforded a single Censor. ”

“ To fall in an adverse way upon a work simply expository, if that were all there were of it, would have been alike ungenerous and unnecessary. In the involuntary errors of the understanding there can be little to excite, or at least to justify, resentment. That which alone, in a manner, calls for rigid censure, is the sinister bias of the affections. ”

“ Spleen and turbulence may indeed prompt men to quarrel with living individuals: but when they make complaint of the dead letter of the Law, the work of departed lawgivers, against whom no personal antipathy can have subsisted, it is always from the observation, or from the belief at least, of some real grievance. The Law is no man's enemy: the Law is no man's rival. ”

“ Popular fame enters not into nice distinctions. Merit in one department of letters affords a natural, and in a manner irrecusable presumption of merit in another, especially if the two departments be such between which there is apparently a close affiance. ”

“ Nor in this is there any thing that need surprize us. The consequences of any Law, or of any act which is made the object of a Law, the only consequences that men are at all interested in, what are they but pain and pleasure? ”

“ Utility is that standard to which men in general (except in here and there an instance where they are deterred by prejudices of the religious class, or hurried away by the force of what is called sentiment or feeling) , Utility, as we have said, is the standard to which they refer a Law or institution in judging of its title to approbation or disapprobation. Men of Law, corrupted by interests, or seduced by illusions, which it is not here our business to display, have deviated from it much more frequently, and with much less reserve. ”

“ The Expositor, keeping within his sphere, has no concern with any other faculties of the mind than the apprehension, the memory, and the judgment: the latter, in virtue of those sentiments of pleasure or displeasure which he finds occasion to annex to the objects under his review, holds some intercourse with the affections. That which is Law, is, in different countries, widely different: while that which ought to be, is in all countries to a great degree the same. ”

“ Of these two whose lot among men would one choose rather, the Apologist's or the Censor's?
Of a piece with the discernment which enables a man to perceive, and with the courage which enables him to avow, the defects of a system of institutions, is that accuracy of conception which enables him to give a clear account of it. No wonder then, in a treatise partly of the expository class, and partly of the censorial, that if the latter department is filled with imbecillity, symptoms of kindred weakness should characterize the former. ”

“ Under the sanction of a great name every string of words however unmeaning, every opinion however erroneous, will have a certain currency. Reputation adds weight to sentiments from whence no part of it arose, and which had they stood alone might have drawn nothing, perhaps, but contempt. ”

“ It is wonderful how forward some have been to look upon it as a kind of presumption and ingratitude, and rebellion, and cruelty, and I know not what besides, not to allege only, nor to own, but to suffer any one so much as to imagine, that an old-established law could in any respect be a fit object of condemnation. ”

“ Thus much is certain; that a system that is never to be censured, will never be improved: that if nothing is ever to be found fault with, nothing will ever be mended: and that a resolution to justify every thing at any rate, and to disapprove of nothing, is a resolution which, pursued in future, must stand as an effectual bar to all the additional happiness we can ever hope for ”

“ That arrangement of the materials of any science may, I take it, be termed a natural one, which takes such properties to characterize them by, as men in general are, by the common constitution of man's nature, disposed to attend to: such, in other words, as naturally, that is readily, engage, and firmly fix the attention of any one to whom they are pointed out. ”

“ The age we live in is a busy age; in which knowledge is rapidly advancing towards perfection. In the natural world, in particular, every thing teems with discovery and with improvement. The most distant and recondite regions of the earth traversed and explored the all-vivifying and subtle element of the air so recently analyzed and made known to striking evidences, were all others wanting, of this pleasing truth.
Correspondent to discovery and improvement in the natural world, is reformation in the moral ”

“ Every false and sophistical reason that he contributes to circulate, he himself is chargeable with: nor ought he to be holden guiltless even of such as, in a work where fact not reason is the question, he delivers as from other writers without censure. ”

“ Wonderful, in particular, is that influence which is gained over young minds, by the man who on account of whatever class of merit is esteemed in the character of a preceptor. Those who have derived, or fancy themselves to have derived knowledge from what he knows, or appears to know, will naturally be for judging as he judges: for reasoning as he reasons ”

“ If it be a matter of importance and of use to us to be made acquainted with distant countries, surely it is not a matter of much less importance, nor of much less use to us, to be made better and better acquainted with the chief means of living happily in our own: If it be of importance and of use to us to know the principles of the element we breathe, surely it is not of much less importance nor of much less use to comprehend the principles, and endeavour at the improvement of those laws, by which alone we breathe it in security. ”

“ That a Law commanding or prohibiting such a son of action, has been established, is as much a fact, as that an individual action of that sort has been committed. The establishment of a Law may be spoken of as a fact, at least for the purpose of distinguishing from any consideration that may be offered as a reason for such Law.↑ `Arrogance'; our Author calls it the utmost arrogance, [IV Comm. p.50.] `to censure what has, at least, a better chance to be tight, than the singular notions of any particular man': meaning thereby certain ecclesiastical institutions. ”

“ The business of history is to represent the Law in the state it has been in, in past periods of its existence: the business of simple demonstration in the sense in which I will take leave to use the word, is to represent the Law in the state it is in for the time being. ”

“ All, in short, is darkness. Scarce a syllable by which a man would be led to suspect, that the affair in hand were an affair that happiness or unhappiness was at all concerned in. [27]
To return, once more, to our Author's Commentaries. Not even in a censorial view would I be understood to deem them altogether without merit. For the institutions commented on, where they are capable of good reasons, good reasons are every now and then given: in which way, so far as it goes, one-half of the Censor's task is well accomplished. ”

“ If, on the one hand, a hasty and undiscriminating condemner of what is established may expose himself to contempt; on the other hand, a bigotted or corrupt defender of the works of power, becomes guilty, in a manner, of the abuses which he supports: the more so if, by oblique glances and sophistical glosses, he studies to guard from reproach, or recommend to favour, what he knows not how, and dares not attempt, to justify. ”

“ Governed in this manner by a principle that is recognized by all men, the same arrangement that would serve for the jurisprudence of any one country, would serve with little variation for that of any other. ”

“ These childish paradoxes, begotten upon servility by false wit, are not more adverse to manly sentiment, than to accurate apprehension. Far from contributing to place the institutions they are applied to in any clear point of view, they serve but to dazzle and confound, by giving to Reality the air of Fable. ”

“ By some such words then as pain and pleasure, they may be expressed: and pain and pleasure at least, are words which a man has no need, we may hope, to go to a Lawyer to know the meaning of. [22] In the synopsis then of that sort of arrangement which alone deserves the name of a natural one, terms such as these, terms which if they can be said to belong to any science, belong rather to Ethics than to Jurisprudence, even than to universal Jurisprudence, will engross the most commanding stations. ”

“ If none, it is just as if nothing had been said about the matter: if it does make an impression, it naturally calls up some one or other in defence. For if the institution is in truth a beneficial one to the community in general, it cannot but have given an interest in its preservation to a number of individuals. ”

“ A technical arrangement, governed then in this manner, by a technical nomenclature, can never be otherwise than confused and unsatisfactory. The reason will be sufficiently apparent, when we understand what sort of an arrangement that must be which can be properly termed a natural one. ”

“ Of all men, surely none so fit as that sort of man who is ever on his knees before the footstool of Authority, and who, when those above him, or before him, have pronounced, thinks it a crime to have an opinion of his own. ”

“ In this our Author has been thought, and not, I conceive, without justice, to excel; at least in comparison of any thing in that way that has hitherto appeared. `Tis to him we owe such an arrangement of the elements of Jurisprudence, as wants little, perhaps, of being the best that a technical nomenclature will admit of. A technical nomenclature, so long as it is admitted to mark out and denominate the principal heads, stands an invincible obstacle to every other than a technical arrangement. ”