第60章 BENTHAM'S LIFE(4)

A reference to it will show that Bentham by this time took the Voltairean view of the Old Testament.Bentham,however,was still on the side of the Tories.His first publication was a defence of Lord Mansfield in 1770against attacks arising out of the prosecution of Woodfall for publishing Junius's letter to the king.This defence,contained in two letters,signed Irenaeus,was published in the Gazetteer.Bentham's next performance was remarkable in the same sense.Among the few friends who drifted to his chambers was John Lind (1737-1781),who had been a clergyman,and after acting as tutor to a prince in Poland,had returned to London and become a writer for the press.He had business relations with the elder Bentham,and the younger Bentham was to some extent his collaborator in a pamphlet(23)which defended the conduct of ministers to the American colonies.Bentham observes that he was prejudiced against the Americans by the badness of their arguments,and thought from the first,as he continued to think,that the Declaration of independence was a hodge-podge of confusion and absurdity,in which the thing to be proved is all along taken for granted.(24)Two other friendships were formed by Bentham about this time:one with James Trail,an unsuccessful barrister,who owed a seat in Parliament and some minor offices to Lord Hertford,and is said by Romilly to have been a man of great talent;and one with George Wilson,afterwards a leader of the Norfolk circuit,who had become known to him through a common interest in Dr Fordyce's lectures upon chemistry.

Wilson became a bosom friend,and was one of Bentham's first disciples,though they were ultimately alienated.(25)At this time,Bentham says,that his was 'truly a miserable life.'(26)yet he was getting to work upon his grand project.He tells his father on 1st October 1776that he is writing his Critical Elements of Jurisprudence,the book of which a part was afterwards published as the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.(27)In the same year he published his first important work,the Fragment on Government.The year was in many ways memorable.The Declaration of Independence marked the opening of a new political era.Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Gibbon's Decline and Fall formed landmarks in speculation and in history;and Bentham's volume,though it made no such impression,announced a serious attempt to apply scientific methods to problems of legislation.The preface contained the first declaration of his famous formula which was applied to the confutation of Blackstone:

Bentham was apparently roused to this effort by recollections of the Oxford lectures.The Commentaries contained a certain quantity of philosophical rhetoric;and as Blackstone was much greater in a literary than in a philosophical sense,the result was naturally unsatisfactory from a scientific point of view.He had vaguely appealed to the sound Whig doctrine of social compact,and while disavowing any strict historical basis had not inquired too curiously what was left of his supposed foundation.Bentham pounced upon the unfortunate bit of verbiage;insisted upon asking for a meaning when there was nothing but a rhetorical flourish,and tore the whole flimsy fabric to rags and tatters.