Jeremy Bentham

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Being now incapable of all labour, he must either perish, or, to keep him alive, the portion of other people must be laid under contribution to make up the difference. Here, then, comes the necessity of a system to answer the purpose of the present poor-laws, with this difference — that for maintaining the growing increase of the poor, there remain none but what are poor already. The dispensations of equality have brought back the age of virtue — be it so: but virtue, however it may diminish disease, will not destroy it; virtue will not extirpate the smallpox nor the contagious fever ”

“ While the levelling process is going on, it is destructive to security; when completed, it is destructive, and that for ever, of national opulence. The wealth of a nation is the sum of the fortunes of individuals; but the sum of the fortunes of individuals is reduced by the levelling system in an infinity of ways. Whatever be the quantum of wealth allowed of, to reduce fortunes to this standard the community must be emptied of all articles of wealth, which cannot exist but in a quantum superior to that standard. ”

“ Nobody would have any thing he could call his own: all property would in effect be destroyed — all present property, and all prospect of security in respect of property in future: all idea of subsistence except from hand to mouth: all incentive to labour beyond the satisfaction of the necessities of the day; for why should I bestow my labour to-day in the improvement of that property, which may be torn from me to-morrow? ”

“ Admitting that the existing generation might, upon the whole, be losers by such a change, those whose ardent zeal would prompt them to attempt it, may still think, or affect to think, the change an advantageous one for the human species upon the whole. But futurity would have as little reason to rejoice in it as present time.
Opulence is valuable, not merely on its own account, but as a security for subsistence. The rich, were they to deserve proscription because of their riches, deserve to be saved from proscription in quality of bankers to the poor. ”

“ Past equality does not answer the intention — present equality is the object; and whatever reason there may be for aiming at it at any one period of time, the same reason will there be for maintaining it at every other period of time. A fresh division must therefore be made upon every division that happened in the number of the sharers: a fresh division upon every birth, and upon every death a fresh division ”

“ To stop at any one point in the career of forced equalisation, would neither afford security to such of the rich as it left unplundered, nor satisfaction to the poor whom it left unenriched. An object being avowed, which can never be attained so long as I have a penny more than the beggar that plies before my door, what assurance can I give myself any day (says the rich man, Who hath as yet been spared) , that it may not be my turn the next? ”

“ Their employment need not be changed; they would continue labourers in husbandry, with this comfortable difference, as it would be thought, of labouring upon, and for the benefit of their own property, instead of other people's. But even these would for the most part gain nothing but ruin by the change. Their fragments of farms having no buildings on them, would be useless to them till buildings could be erected. A man might farm profitably, and live comfortably a year or two hence, if he were then alive: but in the meantime he would not be able to farm or live at all. ”

“ Hut the purchaser’s capital is all of it expended in the purchase: he has nothing, no fund left for the expenses of inclosure. One house, one set of outhouses, serves for the whole of the farm in its undivided state. Divide it into the £20 a-year portions, he who gets the dwelling-house is perhaps unable to get the outhouses; if he get the house and outhouses, he perhaps is unable to get any of the land; if he get a small scrap of the land, and it can be but a small one, none of the other fragments of farms carved out of the entire farm has any building belonging to it. ”

“ All human creatures are born and remain, says the declaration of rights, equal in rights. The child of two years old has as much right to govern the father, then, as the father has to govern the child. ”

“ Those who are exempt from domestic subjection, can in no intelligible sense be said to be equal in point of rights to those who are under it. If universal equality, then, were the object that ought to be in view, universal subjection, as strict as domestic subjection, would be the only means of obtaining it. ”

“ But if, of two persons, the one is to take from the other a portion of the property he possesses to-day, because he is the poorer; for the same reason, a third should take a portion of such property from both to-morrow, as being poorer than either; and so on, till all security in the possession of property — all hope of retaining it, were altogether abolished.
As no man could, at this rate, be secure of enjoying any thing for two moments together, no man would give himself the trouble to improve any thing by his labour: all men would live from hand to mouth. ”

“ The immense multitude of new created farms, all of them without buildings, would require an immense and instant multiplication of the number of workmen concerned in building. But this number, instead of being multiplied, or so much as increased, would be as immediately and permanently reduced: for they too would have their portions, as well as the labourers in husbandry: if they laboured any longer, it would be upon their own property, not upon other people’s. If they laboured at all, what inducement would they have to labour upon other peoples property, or indeed for other people? ”

“ Without the subjection of either the wife to her husband, or the husband to the wife, no domestic society as between man and wife could subsist. Without the subjection of the children to the parent, no domestic society, as between parent and child, could subsist: all children under a certain age must soon perish, and the species become extinct. But the persons thus placed under subjection by non-age, are at least half of the species, and those placed in a similar state by marriage not less than a third of the remaining half. ”

“ Putting idle-ness upon a footing of equality in point of future advantage with industry, and dissipation with frugality, it gives to each the portion of present pleasure with which it is attended, clear. ”

“ Here, then, is a perpetual race between dissipation and idleness on the one hand, and that plan of division, whatever it be, by which the law of equalisation is carried into execution, on the other: dissipation and idleness continually widening the gap; division of property using its best endeavours to fill it up. But the pace of dissipation is the pace of the racer ”

“ Under the division, one man has wherewithal to buy the meadow land only, another the wood-land only, and the arable must be divided into several little plots, to come within the quantum of purchase-money which the equalisation plan allows. ”

“ Every birth adds, during the age of helplessness, to the sum of burthens; every death, by taking from the sum of burthens, adds relatively to the sum of benefits. But the addition made to the sum of burthens by infirmity happening to a grown person, is much greater than that made by the birth of an infant: the adult requires many times as much os the infant for his sustenance. The portion of the adult, now become helpless, was too small to afford him subsistence without the benefit of his labour to improve it. ”

“ Hut as every man must have a house to live in, and every man who cultivates a farm must have outhouses of some kind or other to lodge the stock and produce of it, a fund for these articles of indispensable necessity must be provided in the first instance, and the fragments of farms must consequently be reduced to the miserable and unproductive pittance, the annual value of which corresponds to the small remnant of capital that remains to buy them. ”

“ Such would be the fruit of the equalisation system, while the execution of it was going on, until a certain portion of the national wealth having been destroyed in a variety of ways, and a certain portion of the national population destroyed by a mixture of famine and excess, the miserable would awaken from their delirium, curse the system and its inventors, and join their endeavours to bring back the former state of things. ”

“ The English nation is, for a nation of any considerable size, generally acknowledged to be the richest, in proportion to the number of the people, of any nation under the sun. But in this richest nation, those who have reckoned its wealth at the highest, have not set down the annual expenditure of its inhabitants, taking even the very richest into the account, at more than £20 a-year each. ”

“ A certain portion of land fit for one sort of culture, requires certain other portions of land fit for other sorts of culture, to be employed with most advantage; — to so much arable, so muck wood, so much meadow land. ”

“ Thus great is the part of the existing mass of wealth which would therefore be destroyed by the division, as being in its own nature incapable of division. Hut of that which remained, as not being in its own nature incapable of division, a great part again would be consumed in the process. The whole mass of national property would have to come under the hammer ”

“ It is more to the taste of the ignorant fool, and of the cowardly, than of the knowing or the brave: it is more apt to be employed in the defence of old abuses, than in the combating of novelties really pernicious. ”

“ Why, so long as I have a penny left, should I refuse the most expensive desire its gratification — w hen, whatever I dissipate of my own present stock, must be made up to me from that of other people? ”

“ Auctioneers with their retainers are already, in the present system of things, in no small number; men of law in greater number than most people would wish to see. On the system in question, the populousness of these predatory professions would be multiplied beyond all measure. An effective tithe of the national property, not to speak of a nominal tithe like the present ecclesiastical one, would scarcely be sufficient for the payment of this enormous mass of unproductive and disastrous services. ”

“ To what purpose should I earn more than the poorest of my fellow-citizens, when so much as I earn more than them, so much will be taken from me. Neither to idleness or to dissipation does it administer any new discouragement ”

“ It is — not that you will find it difficult to stop at a proper place, but that you ought not to stop anywhere: it is — not that you may be drawn on into the road to ruin, but that you ran not, in the nature of things, so long as you pursue your intent, stop anywhere short of ruin: it is — not that you may be led on by heat of temper or untoward accidents beyond the bounds which the principle you set out upon has prescribed to you, but that you can not stop anywhere short of ruin without the dereliction of your principle ”

“ To what purpose, while I have a penny left, should 1 plague myself with working — when, so long as 1 have any thing to pay, others will work for me with pay, and when 1 have no longer pay to give them, they must work for me without it? ”

“ All horses fit for military service; consequently, a great part of the manure which is supplied by that valuable species of cattle would be lost. In the earliest, and what are vulgarly culled the purest times of the Roman Commonwealth, those whose wealth enabled them to serve on horseback formed an order of men, distinct from and superior to those who served on foot. A commonwealth that admitted of such distinctions, could never lie tolerated under this system of equalisation. ”

“ Every preceding step will have afforded a precedent, and the commencement of a justification of the succeeding ones: what at first was theory, will have been settled into practice: what at first was innovation, will have become establishment; till at length the original race of proprietors having been reduced to nothing, and all hope or possibility of repairing an injustice done to them being annihilated, the opposition made by justice will have ceased: justice will have become indifferent, and as it were neutral: the injustice of going on will not be exceeded by the injustice of stopping. ”