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III. Jeremy Bentham and the Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2010

L. J. Hume
L. J. Hume
Affiliation:
Australian National University
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Extract

Within the last twenty years, historians' views about the significance of ‘Benthamism’ for the development of British government in the nineteenth century have fluctuated pretty widely. In 1948 J. B. Brebner set decisively in motion a movement away from the interpretation, stated in classic but curiously ambivalent form by A. V. Dicey, which made Bentham the philosopher and advocate of an allegedly dominant policy of laissez faire or ‘individualism’. Brebner attacked both legs of Dicey's argument, contending that in the years 1825–70 (which Dicey had identified as the period of individualism) the scale and variety of State intervention were extensive, and that the State intervention of the time ‘in practically all of its many forms was basically Benthamite—Benthamite in the sense of conforming closely to that forbidding, detailed blueprint for a collectivist state, the Constitutional Code’. More recently, some specialists in nineteenth-century administrative history have accepted, and have in some directions extended, one side of Brebner's thesis, but have cast doubt on the other side. Thus, reinforcing Brebner's interpretation of Victorian policy-making, David Roberts has located ‘the origins of the welfare state’ in the period 1832–54, and Oliver MacDonagh has argued that in ‘the middle quarters of the nineteenth-century…(contrary to all expectation and desire) the collectivist system of the present day began to take its shape’. But in developing their themes Roberts and MacDonagh have tended to attach little importance to what Dicey called ‘opinion’—consciously formulated and coherently worked-out beliefs or programmes—and to stress instead the pragmatic responses of politicians and administrators to problems and events.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , 1967 , pp. 361 - 375
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1967

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References

1 Brebner, J. B., ‘Laissez Faire and State Intervention in Nineteenth Century Britain’, Journal of Economic History, viii (1948), 62.Google Scholar

2 Roberts, D., Victorian Origins of the British Welfare State (Yale University Press, 1960).Google Scholar

3 MacDonagh, O., A Pattern of Government Growth 1800–60 (MacGibbon and Kee, 1961), P. 15.Google Scholar

4 It should perhaps be noted that Brebner did not represent philosophy or ideology as the decisive factor in the development of the collectivist state. On the contrary he argued (loc. cit. p. 65) that both laissez faire and State intervention were ‘exercises of political power, that is, instrumentalities of several kinds of interest’.

5 In addition to the books cited, see: Roberts, D., ‘Jeremy Bentham and the Victorian Administrative State’, Victorian Studies, ii (1958–59), 193–210Google Scholar; MacDonagh, O., ‘The Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government: a Reappraisal’, Historical Journal, i (1958), 52–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Delegated Legislation and Administrative Discretions in the 1850's: a Particular Study’, Victorian Studies, ii (1958–59), 29–44.Google Scholar

6 Parris, H., ‘The Nineteenth Century Revolution in Government: a Reappraisal Reappraised’, Historical Journal, iii (1960), 17–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Hart, Jennifer, ‘Nineteenth Century Social History: a Tory Interpretation of History’, Past and Present, xxxi (July 1965), 39–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 ‘Jeremy Bentham and the Victorian Administrative State’, loc. cit. p. 194.

9 A Pattern of Government Growth, pp. 348–9.

10 This point is not stated explicitly in the passages quoted above. But delegation and discretion were important characteristics of the ‘new world of government’ that Dr MacDonagh was contrasting with Bentham's scheme.

11 A Fragment on Government and Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Harrison, W. (Blackwell, 1960), Fragment, pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

12 Ibid. pp. 94–8.

13 Ibid.Introduction, pp. 411–12.

14 Book i of the Constitutional Code in vol. ix of Bentham's Works (ed. J. Bowring, Tait, 1843), p. 95. On the same page, there are other references to the ideas on the nature of a political society developed in The Fragment on Government. On a more specialized question, a passage in The Fragment clearly foreshadows one of the most original features of the Code, s his analysis of administrative functions (pp. 71–72). See also p. 376, n. 46, below.

15 Constitutional Code, Bk. i, Introduction (Works, ix, 6.)

16 Ibid. Bk. ii, ch. 6, s. xxix, art. 2 (Works, ix, 190).

17 Ibid. Bk. ii, ch. 6, s. i, art. 13 (Works, ix, 161).

18 Ibid. Bk. ii, ch. 11, s. ii, art. 18 (Works, ix, 430), cf. A Fragment on Government (ed. W. Harrison) p. 18 n: ‘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.’ Bentham was there arguing against the idea that ‘breaking in upon some standing rule of law’ was to be avoided.

19 Constitutional Code, Bk. ii, ch. 6, s. i, art. i. (Works, ix, 160). The case for omnicompetence was argued at length in Bk. i, ch. 16, s. 6 (pp. 119–24).

20 Ibid. Bk. ii, ch. 6, ss. xviii-xx (Works, ix, 163–6). See also s. xxix of the same chapter, dealing with members' motions.

21 Ibid. Bk. ii, ch. 11, s. ii (Works, ix, 430–1).

22 Bk. ii, ch. 9, s. xii, art. 61 (Works, ix, 225–6).

23 Ibid. Bk. i, ch. 16 (Works, ix, 122).

24 Ibid. Bk. ii, ch. 9, s. xxv, art. 33 (Works, ix, 321), cf. ch. 6 (The Legislature), s. xxxi, where he advised: ‘To no official situation, attach any more power than is necessary to enable the functionaries to exercise the functions of it with the most effectual subserviency to the dictates of the greatest happiness principle’ (art. 3, p. 192). This was ‘Rule i’ of a set designed to provide ‘an all-pervading system of the like securities, covering the whole field of the official establishment, and applying to all public functionaries in every department and sub-department’. The guiding principle was ‘confidence-minimization’ or ‘control-maximization’ (arts. 1–2, p. 191).

25 In devising a structure based on the line of authority, Bentham was developing in a quite sophisticated way the notion of what later came to be called the rational bureaucratic organization. But it should not be overlooked that for Bentham this was a development from, or perhaps a special case of, his model of ‘political society’. The key relationships in Bentham's account of ‘the Administrative’ were direction or command and obedience. Its special features were the rationalisation of command, so that orders issued ultimately from a single source, and the systematic prescription of arrangements—or sanctions—to exact obedience.

26 Ibid. Bk. i, Introduction (Works, ix, 5). cf. Bk. ii, ch. 6, s. xxxi, arts. 6–8 (p. 192).

27 Ibid. Bk. ii, ch. 9, s. iv, art. 65 (Works, ix, 226).

28 Ibid. ch. 9, s. xxv, arts. 34–37 (Works, ix, 321).

29 MacDonagh, A Pattern of Government Growth, p. 349. For an example of Bentham's prescription of this cycle, see his discussion of the functions of the health minister and his suberdinates (Constitutional Code, Bk. ii, ch. 11, s. x, arts. 1–3 (Works, ix, 443)).

30 It is certainly not true that the felicific calculus was all that the administrator needed to know (see above, p. 363). He needed at least two other sorts of knowledge—of the instructions and rules (Procedure Code) prescribed by the legislature, and of technical matters appropriate to the particular sub-department or branch in which he was employed. On the subject of technical knowledge, see the illustrative list supplied by Bentham in Bk. ii, ch. 9, s. xvi, art. 15 (Works, ix, 273).

31 Ibid. Bk. ii, ch. 9, s. xxv, art. 38 (Works, ix, 321).

32 Ibid. art. 42 (Works, ix, 322). Bentham's well-known dislike of the judiciary was accompanied by a determination to provide a fairly complete system of administrative law, including rules regulating the relations between officials and members of the public as well as among officials themselves, and certain administrative tribunals (see generally Bk. ii, ch. 9, ss. xx-xxi and s. xxv, art. 3.) This is an additional reason why Dicey found it difficult (as Parris has pointed out) to give a coherent account of Bentham that would align him on the side of ‘individualism’ in Dicey's sense.

33 Ibid. ch. 12, s. xxi, art. i (Works, ix, 508). Bentham's argument is confirmed by Dr MacDonagh's account of the development of the regulation of the emigrant traffic. By the end of the 1840s the ‘officers and commissioners not merely requested and secured, they even anticipated legislation which would award them the widest discretions and independence’ (A Pattern of Government Growth, p. 345). Dr MacDonagh sees this as part of ‘a new world of government’; but Bentham viewed it as characteristic of the old mode that he was bent on eliminating.

34 Cf. ibid. s. xxii, art. 4 (Works, ix, 511): ‘Note here, that need of interpretation may have place, without deficiency on the part of the Legislator…for, it may be, that at the time of enactment, the reason of the case requiring a certain species of objects to be included in the law, the existence of no individual belonging to that species was at the time realized, or could so much have been realized.’

35 Ibid. ch. 11, s. ii, art 20 (Works, ix, 431). This was substantially the same as the practice ‘laying in draft, subject to resolution that no further proceedings be taken’, on which see Kersell, J. E., Parliamentary Supervision of Delegated Legislation (Stevens, 1960), p. 16.Google Scholar

36 Constitutional Code, Bk. ii, ch. 12, s. xix, art 16 (Works, ix, 504).

37 Ibid. ch. 9, s. xxiv, arts. 4–9 (Works, ix, 316).

38 D. Roberts, ‘Jeremy Bentham and the Administrative State’, p. 194.

39 Constitutional Code, Bk. ii, ch. 11, s. x, arts. 3, 9–16, 21 (Works, ix, 443–4).

40 Ibid. arts. 8, 19 (Works, ix, 444–5).

41 Ibid. ch. 9, s. iv, art. 70 (Works, ix, 226).

42 Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings. Critical Edition based on his printed works and unprinted manuscripts, by W. Stark (Allen and Unwin; vol. i, 1952; vol. ii, 1952; vol. iii, 1954). For an illuminating commentary, see Hutchison, T. W., ‘Bentham as an Economist’, Economic Journal, lxvi (1956), 288–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Constitutional Code, Bk. ii, ch. 11, s. v, art. 4 (Works, ix, 439).

44 Ibid. s. xii, art. 2 (Works, ix, 447).

45 Ibid. Bk. i, ch. 16, s. vi (Works, ix, 123). These remarks were directed specifically against the ideas of Montesquieu and the authors of The Federalist.

46 A Fragment on Government (ed. W. Harrison), p. 94.

47 Constitutional Code, Bk. i, ch. 16, s. vi (Works, ix, 123).

48 Ibid. Bk. ii, ch. 6, s. i, art. i (Works, ix, 160).

49 Ibid. art. 6.

50 Ibid. ch. 29, s. i, art. i (Works, ix, 640); ch. 6, s. i, art. 5 (p. 160); ch. 6, s. iii, arts. 1–3 (p. 162).

51 A Pattern of Government Growth, p. 344.