The English Utilitarians, Volume I.

ices. His first recorded ancestor, Brian Bentham, was a pawnbroker, who lost money by the stop of the Exchequer in 1672, but was neither rui

n, Jeremy, was born in Red Lion Street, Houndsditch, 4th February 1747-48 (o.s.) The only other child who grew up was Samuel, afterwards Sir Samuel Bentham, born 11th January 1757. When eighty years old, Jeremy gave anecdotes of his infancy to his biographer, Bowring, who says that their accuracy was confirmed by contemporary documents, and proved his memory to be as wonderful as his precocity. Although the child was physically puny, his intellectual development was amazing. Before he was two he burst into tears at the sight of his mother's chagrin upon his refusal of some offered dainty. Before he was 'breeched,' an event which happened when he was three and a quarter, he ran home from a dull w

iterature, and he was crammed with such solid works as Rapin, Burnet's Theory of the Earth, and Cave's Lives of the Apostles. Various accidents, however, furnished him with better food for the imagination. He wept for hours over Clarissa Harlowe, studied Gulliver's Travels as an authentic document, and dipped into a variety of such books as then drifted into middle-class libraries. A French teacher introduced him to some remarkable books. He read Télémaque, which deeply impressed him, and, as he thought, implanted in his mind the seeds of later moralising. He attack

sily in French than English. Some of his writings were originally composed in French. He was, according to Bowring, elected to one of the King's scholarships when between nine and ten, but as 'ill-usage was apprehended' the appointment was declined.[207] He was at a boarding-house, and the life of the boys on the foundation was probably rougher. In June 1760 his father took him to Oxford, and entered him as a commoner at Queen's College. He came into residence in the following October, when only twelve years old. Oxford was not more congenial than Westminster. He had to sign the Thirty-nine Articles in spite of scruples suppressed by authority. The impression made upon him by this childish compliance never left him to the end of his life.[208] His experience resemble

mber to hear Blackstone's lectures. These lectures were then a novelty at an English university. The Vinerian professorship had been founded in 1758 in consequence of the success of a course voluntarily given by Blackstone; and his lectures contained the substance of the famous Commentaries, first published 1765-1769. They had a great effect upon Bentham. He says that he 'immediately detected Blackstone's fal

d in Redgauntlet, had 'a cause or two at nurse' for the son. The son's first thought was to 'put them to death,' A brief was given to him in a suit, upon which ￡50 depended. He advised that the suit should be dropped and the money saved. Other experiences only increased his repugnance to his profession.[211] A singularly strong impression had been made upon him by the Memoirs of Teresa Constantia Phipps, in which there is an account of vexatious legal proceedings as to the heroine's marriage. He appears to have first read this book in 1759. Then, he says, the 'Demon of Chicane appeared to me in all his h

s said of him in Romilly's Life. Parr's Works, i. and viii., contains some letters. See also R. Dale Owen's Threading my Way pp. 175-78. A little book called Utilitarianism Unmasked, by the Rev. J. F. Colls, D.D. (1844), gives some reminiscences by Colls, who had be

Works,

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Westminster in 1792 for attackin

, I take it, means this. Bentham, in any case, w

Works,

d. viii.

Works,

id. x. 5

. 219-20 ('Rationale of Evidence'). Several editions appeared from 1725

viii. 148