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Benthamite Radicalism and its Scots Presbyterian Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2012

VALERIE WALLACE
VALERIE WALLACE*
Affiliation:
Harvard [email protected]
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Abstract

This article argues that James Mill's immersion in Presbyterianism inspired an aversion to hierarchical government and a bias in favour of the Church of Scotland. These views are discernible in Bentham's Church-of-Englandism. Bentham argued for disestablishment on principle but, praising the Scottish Church as a ‘model of perfection’, omitted the Kirk from his church reform manifesto. His position on disestablishment, however, and his endorsement of Presbyterianism were aligned with a voluntaryist strain of Presbyterian ecclesiological theory; Presbyterian dissenters and Benthamite Radicals began to protest against the Kirk's established status. Underpinned significantly by Presbyterian tradition and laced with Benthamic influence, a radical voluntary campaign emerged in Scotland which sought to dismantle the old order and usher in a new era of political democracy and religious voluntaryism. Radicalism in Scotland was not solely characterized by the ‘programmatic atheism’ which J. C. D. Clark believes defined Benthamite ideology; Benthamism, it transpires, was not straightforwardly secularist.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 1 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

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31 Plassart emphasizes Mill's independence, insisting that the ‘tone of “Puritan censure”’ found in the History of British India could not have been inspired by atheistic Bentham. Religion had a more profound influence on Bentham than Plassart has considered and in fact Mill's tone of Puritan censure can be detected in Bentham's own work. Plassart, ‘History of British India’, p. 528.

32 Bentham did acquire information from other sources, including James Anderson, the political economist, who sent Bentham a detailed account of the system of poor relief in Scotland; see The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 3, ed. I. R. Christie, The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham [hereafter CW] (London, 1971), pp. 30–43.

33 Schofield, ‘Political and Religious Radicalism’, pp. 286–7.

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42 Bentham to Koe, John Herbert, 21 Aug. 1817, The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 9, ed. Conway, S., CW (Oxford, 1989), p. 46Google Scholar. George Cook protested against pluralities and non-residence in the Church, publishing a pamphlet on the subject in 1816. He also defended lay patronage. These are all themes considered by Bentham in Church-of-Englandism. On Cook see, T. F. Henderson, ‘Cook, George (1772–1845)’, rev. S. J. Brown, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6137> (Oxford, 2004).

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48 See e.g. ‘Who Ought to be Substituted in the Room of Patronage?’, Scottish Advocate (Oct. 1834).

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54 In fact Bentham was aware of the complex divisions within the Scottish religious community. Around 1809 he compiled detailed lists of the different Scottish sects – including the Antiburgher and Burgher Seceders, the Relief, and even the obscure Buchanites and McMillanite Covenanters – and the numbers belonging to them. Bentham took his figures from the twenty-one volumes of the Statistical Accounts published between 1791 and 1799. It is unclear what Bentham's purpose was in compiling this list, and he makes no mention of the significance of Scottish dissent in Church-of-Englandism, UC cix. 40–2.

55 Dissenting congregations were not legally obliged to distribute poor relief and their dependence on Church of Scotland session aid caused resentment. In some cases dissenting congregations were told to reimburse the Kirk or were denied relief altogether; see Cage, R. A, The Scottish Poor Law 1745–1845 (Edinburgh, 1981), pp. 29Google Scholar, 52. This problem was alluded to by James Anderson in his letter to Bentham. Anderson declared there to be abuses which would ‘one day or other destroy the System’ (Correspondence, vol. 3, pp. 41–2). Anderson's prediction came true when the Disruption, which increased the number of dissenters and decreased the amount of aid available in the Kirk, rendered the system unworkable, helping to bring about poor law reform in 1845. Bentham, however, seems to have chosen to ignore the problem of dissent and emphasize instead the positive aspects of the Scottish establishment.

56 Marshall, Andrew, Ecclesiastical Establishments Considered (Glasgow, 1829)Google Scholar; Marshall, Andrew, Ecclesiastical Establishments Further Considered (Glasgow, 1831)Google Scholar.

57 See e.g. ‘Meeting, Resolutions, and Address of the Central Board of Scottish Dissenters’, United Secession Magazine (Jan. 1841).

58 Brown, ‘Rise of Liberalism’.

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60 Bentham acknowledged his debt to Conyers Middleton, who, in A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers (1749), attacked the reliability of the church fathers; see Not Paul, but Jesus, p. 2. On Middleton see Trevor-Roper, H., ‘From Deism to History: Conyers Middleton’, History and the Enlightenment, ed. Robertson, J. (New Haven, 2010), pp. 71–119Google Scholar. Jefferson, who was likewise influenced by Middleton, argued that Paul had corrupted Christianity; see The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. H. A. Washington, vol. 7 (Washington D.C., 1854), p. 156. Hoadly denied that episcopacy was ‘jure divino’ and accepted the validity of the ordinations of Presbyterians during the Interregnum. He also criticized High Church readings of Paul's advice in Romans 13; see S. Taylor, ‘Hoadly, Benjamin (1676–1761)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13375> (2004: Oxford, online edn., 2008).

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78 A Second Exposure of the Sentiments and Projects of the Voluntary Church Association (Edinburgh, 1833), p. 6; ‘To Editor’, Presbyterian Magazine (Feb. 1833).

79 ‘The Scottish Members of Parliament’, Tait's Edinburgh Magazine (Feb. 1837); ‘The Elections’, Tait's Edinburgh Magazine (Sept. 1837).

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85 See e.g. ‘Canada – Standing Armies’, Tait's Edinburgh Magazine (Nov. 1837); ‘Affairs of Nova Scotia’, The Scotsman (26 Jan. 1831). On the Radical Benthamite support in Britain for Canadian reform, see also M. J. Turner, ‘Radical Agitation and the Canada Question in British Politics, 1837–41’, Historical Research 79 (2006), pp. 90–114.

86 ‘Benthamisms’, Tait's Edinburgh Magazine (May 1838).

87 Lyon, E. G., Politicians in the Pulpit: Christian Radicalism in Britain from the Fall of the Bastille to the Disintegration of Chartism (Aldershot, 1999), pp. 49Google Scholar, 72–3.

88 Pentland, Radicalism, p. 150.

89 ‘Passive Obedience; or Non-Resistance’, Herald to the Trades Advocate (4 Dec. 1830). For contemporary attitudes expressed in the paper, see also ‘To Editor’, Herald to the Trades Advocate, 6 Oct. 1830; ‘To Editor’, Herald to the Trades Advocate (20 Nov. 1830).

90 Reformers’ Gazette (15 Oct. 1831); Reformers’ Gazette (14 Apr. 1832).

91 ‘The Church’, Glasgow Argus (3 Mar. 1838).

92 The Rev. Thomas Chalmers, leader of the campaign to defend the national church, criticized Benthamite poor law reform. In response, an article in the Westminster Review by John Hill Burton declared Chalmers's godly commonwealth experiment in Glasgow to have been a failure. Brown, Thomas Chalmers, pp. 232, 294–5; [John Hill Burton], ‘Poor Laws and Pauperism in Scotland’, Westminster Review (Oct. 1841), pp. 381–403.

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94 I should like to thank J. H. Burns, Colin Kidd, Michael Quinn, Philip Schofield and Miles Taylor for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this article.