Political Thought in the Age of Revolution 1776-1848: Burke to Marx by Michael Levin

Author:Michael Levin [Levin, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History & Theory, 19th Century, Europe, Modern, Political Science, 18th Century, History, General
ISBN: 9780230272101
Google: Cz1GEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 11695736
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2010-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Legacy

In Britain, Bentham’s greatest influence was on such politicians and reformers as Edwin Chadwick,78 Francis Place (who led campaign against the Combination Laws and helped draft the 1838 People’s Charter), Lord Brougham (who as Lord Chancellor, 1830–4, introduced reforms in the legal system and facilitated the passing of the 1832 Reform Bill through the House of Lords) and Sir Robert Peel (who as Prime Minister repealed the Corn Laws in 1846). Also, partially through his friend James Mill and John Stuart Mill, both of whom worked for the East India Company, Bentham came to have a considerable influence on British policy in India.79 Nevertheless, Michael Oakeshott’s point is apposite:

It is all very well to see Bentham’s influence everywhere in the legislation of the nineteenth century, but when we consider how extreme his views about English law actually were, what must be noticed is, not the number of his isolated suggestions which have been put into practice, but the total rejection which his fundamental principles have suffered.80

As a propagandist for his utilitarian doctrine, Bentham does not always seem to have been his own best friend for he only published a small proportion of what he wrote. He was, however, extraordinarily lucky in certain relevant respects. He inherited enough money to concentrate on his writing, he lived until the age of 84, and he gained a few devoted disciples who helped him spread the message. Bentham and Etienne Dumont were first in contact in 1788, with the consequences we have already noted. James Mill met Bentham in 1808 and soon became his friend, neighbour and major advocate of utilitarianism. Of particular note was the rigorous education James Mill imposed on his eldest son, John Stuart Mill, who was brought up to be the flag-bearer of utilitarianism for the next generation. In his influential essay on ‘Utilitarianism’ (1861), John Stuart attempted to meet the criticism that the doctrine was a hedonistic one worthy only of swine. For this purpose, he added a concern for the quality of happiness as an addition to Bentham’s calculus based solely on quantity. This, of course, considerably complicated the utilitarian arithmetic and so, on some accounts, Mill’s attempts to rescue utilitarianism from obvious objections merely landed it in still greater difficulties.

Later in the century, Henry Sidgwick suggested that utilitarians adopt a principle of justice in addition to the pursuit of pleasure. As with Mill’s quality axis, this attempt to deal with standard criticisms only made the utilitarian arithmetic even more impossibly complex. In accord with the current ‘New Liberalism’, Sidgwick also suggested that, on utilitarian grounds, extended state activity was necessary to remedy the failures of the market.

In a celebrated account of nineteenth-century thought, A.V. Dicey, in 1905 described Benthamism as ‘fundamentally a middle class creed’, which had been at the height of its influence between 1825 and 1870 when the middle class was dominant in parliament. There were, said Dicey, unintended consequences of the greatest happiness principle. The greatest number in the society were the working class,

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