Jeremy Bentham

“ 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! ”

“ One and the same word, right-right, that most enchanting of words-is sufficient for operating the fascination. The word is ours,— that magic word, which, by its single unassisted powers, completes the fascination. In its adjective shape, it is as innocent as a dove: it breathes nothing but morality and peace. It is in this shape that, passing in at the heart, it gets possession of the understanding: - it then assumes its substantive shape, and joining itself to a band of suitable associates, sets up the banner of insurrection, anarchy, and lawless violence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Right, the substantive right, is the child of law: from real laws come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from laws of nature, fancied and invented by poets, rhetoricians, and dealers in moral and intellectual poisons, come imaginary rights, a bastard brood of monsters, "gorgons and chimæras dire." And thus it is, that from legal rights, the offspring of law, and friends of peace, come anti-legal rights, the mortal enemies of law, the subverters of government, and the assassins of security. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Still more cruel is the anarchist, who, for the purpose of effecting the subversion of the laws themselves, as well as the massacre of the legislators, tortures not only the words of the law, but the very vitals of the language.
All men are born equal in rights. The rights of the heir of the most indigent family equal to the rights of the heir of the most wealthy? ”

“ It saves it from succeeding legislators in one shape-it leaves it at their mercy in the other. Will it be said, that what it leaves exposed to punishment is only the abuse of liberty? Be it so. What then? Is there less of liberty in the abuse of liberty than in the use of it? Does a man exercise less liberty when he makes use of the property of another, than when he confines himself to his own? ”

“ It is your pleasure to take this office under your command, to the same purpose at the same time. It is my pleasure the people should do what I bid them, and not what you bid them; it is your pleasure they should do what you bid them, and not what I bid them:- which of us is to have his pleasure? The answer is,— he who has the strongest lungs, or if that will not do, he who has the strongest hand. To give everything to the strongest hand is the natural result of all the tutoring, and all the checking and controuling of which this lecture on the principles of government is so liberal ”

“ The law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has the right of concurring in person, or by his representatives, in the formation of it: it ought to be the same for all, whether it protect, or whether it punish. All the citizens being equal in its eyes, are equally admissible to all dignities, public places, and employments, according to their capacity, and without any other distinction than that of their virtues and their talents. ”

“ Whatever is not forbidden by the law, cannot be hindered; nor can any individual be compelled to do that which the law does not command.
Sentence 1. The law has no right (n'a le droit) to forbid any other actions than such as are hurtful to society. The law has no right (n'a le droit, not ne peut pas.) This, for once, is free from ambiguity. Here the mask of ambiguity is thrown off. The avowed object of this clause is to preach constant insurrection, to raise up every man in arms against every law which he happens not to approve of. ”

“ Banishment must, in a certain sense, be admitted to be equally penal, whether inflicted for the purpose of punishment, or only by way of precaution, — for the purpose of prevention, and without any view to punishment. Will it be said, that there is no case in which the supreme government of a country ought to be trusted with the power of removing out of it, not even for a time, any persons, not even foreigners, from whom it may see reason to apprehend enterprises injurious to its peace? ”

“ That the sentiment of dissatisfaction in me is so strong as to have given birth to a determined will that no such law should ever pass, and that determination so strong as to have produced a resolution on my part to oppose myself, as far as depends on me, to the passing of it, should it ever be attempted—a determination which is the more likely to meet with success, in proportion to the influence, which in the character of legislator or any other, my mind happens to possess over the minds of others. ”

“ The revolution, which threw the government into the hands of the penners and adopters of this declaration, having been the effect of insurrection, the grand object evidently is to justify the cause. But by justifying it, they invite it in justifying past insurrection, they plant and cultivate a propensity to perpetual insurrection in time future; they sow the seeds of anarchy broad-cast: in justifying the demolition of existing authorities, they undermine all future ones, their own consequently in the number. ”

“ As to punishment, a rule as strictly subor dinate to the dietates of utility, as the doctrine of undeviating equality is congenial to the capricious play of the imagination, is, not in any instance to employ more punishment than is necesary to the purpose. Where, as between two individuals, the measure of sensibility is different, a punishment which in name—that is, according to every description which could be given of it in and by the law, would be equal in the two instances-would in effect be widely different. ”

“ Suppose him innocent, and the defalcation made from his liberty is injurious and unwarrantable. The plain truth of the matter is, that the only rational ground for empowering a man to be arrested in such a case, is its not being yet known whether he be innocent or guilty: suppose him guilty, he ought to be punished - suppose him innocent, he ought not to be touched. But plain unsophisticated truth and common sense do not answer the purpose of poetry or rhetoric; and it is from poetry and rhetoric that these tutors of mankind and governors of futurity take their law. ”

“ It is for the hands of the legislator and all legislators, and none but legislators, that the shackles it provides are intended, it is against the apprehended encroachments of legislators that the rights in question, the liberty and property, and so forth, are intended to be made secure, - it is to such encroachments, and damages, and dangers, that whatever security it professes to give has respect. Precious security for unbounded rights against legislators, if the extent of those rights in every direction were purposely left to depend upon the will and pleasure of those very legislators! ”

“ Banishment would, upon the face of the law, be equal to banishment: but it will not readily be admitted, that to a servant of the public, who happens to have nothing to live upon but a salary, the receipt of which depends upon attendance at his office, it would be no greater punishment than to a sturdy labourer, who in one country as well as in another, may derive an equal livelihood from the labour of his hands. ”

“ All men, meaning doubtless all human creatures. The apprentice, then, is equal in rights to his master; he has as much liberty with relation to the master, as the master has with relation to him; he has as much right to command and to punish him; he is as much owner and master of the master's house, as the master himself. The case is the same as between ward and guardian. So again as between wife and husband. The madman has as good a right to confine anybody else, as anybody else has to confine him. The idiot has as much right to govern everybody, as anybody can have to govern him. ”

“ Instead of meaning stark nonsense, was the article meant after all simply to convey a memento to those who re superiors in office, to keep a good look-out after their subordinates? If this be the case, nothing can be more innocent and unexceptionable. Neither the child that is learning wisdom in his horn-book, nor the old woman who is teaching him, need blush to own it. But what has it to do in a composition, the work of the collected wisdom of the nation, and of which the object is, throughout and exclusively, to declare rights? ”

“ How stands the truth of things? That there are no such things as natural rights--no such things as rights anterior to the establishment of government—no such things as natural rights opposed to, in contradistinction to, legal: that the expression is merely figurative; that when used, in the moment you attempt to give it a literal meaning it leads to error, and to that sort of error that leads to mischief- to the extremity of mischief. ”

“ Is a law enacted or proposed in the National Assembly, which happens not to be agreeable to the body of the people? It will be equally censured by them, whether it be conceived, or not, to bear marks of a repugnancy to this declaration of rights. Is a law disagreeable to them? They will hardly think themselves precluded from expressing their disapprobation, by the circumstance of its not being to be convicted of repugnancy to that instrument; and though it should be repugnant to that instrument, they will see little need to resort to that instrument for the ground of their repugnancy ”

“ Being so superior to imitation so free to choose not tied down by usage as people in Britain are- how come they to have taken the English word representatives, which has given occasion to so many quibbles, instead of their own good word deputies, which cannot give occasion to anything like a quibble? The king of Great Britain is acknowledged to be the representative of the British nation, in treating with foreign powers; but does the whole nation ever meet together and join in signing an authority to him so to do? ”

“ The philosophical vortexmaker-who, however mistaken in his philosophy and his logic, was harmless enough at least the manufacturer of identical propositions and celestial vortices-little thought how soon a part of his own countrymen, fraught with pretensions as empty as his own, and as mischievous as his were innocent, would contest with him even this his favourite and fundamental maxim, by which everything else was to be brought to light. Whatever is, is not--is the maxim of the anarchist, as often as anything comes across him in the shape of a law which he happens not to like. ”

“ The aim of this fourth clause is to raise the hand of the individual concerned to prevent the apprehended infraction of his rights at the moment when he looks upon it as about to take place.
Whenever you are about to be oppressed, you have a right to resist oppression: whenever you conceive yourself to be oppressed, conceive yourself to have a right to make resistance, and act accordingly. ”

“ The rational censor, acknowledging the existence of the law he disapproves, proposes the repeal of it: the anarchist, setting up his will and fancy for a law before which all mankind are called upon to bow down at the first word the anarchist, trampling on truth and decency, denies the validity of the law in question, denies the existence of it in the character of a law, and calls upon all mankind to rise up in a inass, and resist the execution of it. ”