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The Benthamite Theory of Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

R. Cranford Pratt
R. Cranford Pratt*
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Extract

Successful political movements are frequently accompanied by, and well served by, theoretical defences of their positions which later reflection shows to be inadequate for purposes other than popular political polemics. The history of the reform movement in England in the early decades of the nineteenth century provides an excellent example. The defence of political democracy offered by Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and their followers gave the Radicals of the 1820's and 1830's their main intellectual arguments for the Great Reform Act. A close examination of this theory suggests, however, that it is inadequate in its view both of the nature of a democratic society and of the process of policy formation therein. It is, moreover, also apparent that Bentham's theory of democracy is sharply inconsistent with the main body of Benthamite doctrines.

The basic problem in Bentham's political theory is a product of the manner in which he resolved a contradiction that exists between his ethical and his psychological theory. Utilitarian ethics rests on the principle that the rightness or wrongness of an act is decided by its effect on the happiness of the greatest number. Bentham's psychological theory, however, is egoistic and hedonistic. He offered no hope that a man will act other than in pursuit of his own interests, and little hope that these interests will naturally be associated with the interests of others.

If this psychology is valid, individuals will choose, voluntarily, the ethically proper act only when, by chance, it coincides with that act which they perceive will maximize their own personal pleasure. Bentham realized this. As a consequence, he argued that if individuals are to be brought into harmony and if the greatest happiness is to be achieved, then legal sanctions and incentives must be introduced to influence individual hedonistic calculations in favour of acts that do not diminish the happiness of others more than they increase the happiness of the doer.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , February 1955 , pp. 20 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1955

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References

1 Bentham also recognized the existence of moral sanctions (the fear of popular disfavour) and religious sanctions (the fear of pain and expectation of pleasures in the after-life). See his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Oxford, 1948), chap. IV.Google Scholar

2 See Edinburgh Review, no. LXI, 12, 1818, 165–203.Google Scholar This review is discussed briefly by Halévy, Elie, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, tr. Morrison, Mary (London, 1938), 418–19.Google Scholar

3 The political theory of Sir James Mackintosh contains surprising parallels with that of John Stuart Mill. Like Mill he was concerned with the effect of actions on men's characters as well as on their happiness. As Whewell notes, he instructed men and governments to “aim at man's general well-being, and not merely at his gratification” (Wm. Whewell, in his preface to SirMackintosh, James, Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, Edinburgh, 1862, xxxvi Google Scholar). Moreover, he anticipated Mill's belief that political activity is essential to the development of character. In a sentence that could easily have appeared in Mill's Representative Government, Mackintosh wrote that the “effects of free government on the character of a people … are … to be considered as among its greatest blessings” ( Edinburgh Review, no. LXI, 12, 1818, 178 Google Scholar). A wide franchise, moreover, “engages the pride, the honour, and the private interest as well as the generosity, of every part of the community” (ibid., 178). Mackintosh was concerned, as, later, Mill was to be, that Parliament should contain a group “of a more neutral and inactive character … to mediate or arbitrate in the differences between the more busy classes” (ibid., 176). Finally there are in Mackintosh anticipations of Mill on the relation between liberty and progress and on the distinction between higher and lower pleasures.

4 Halévy, , The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, 419.Google Scholar

5 Mill, James, Essay on Government in The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill, ed. Burtt, E. A. (New York, 1939), 861.Google Scholar

6 Essay on Government, chap. V.

7 It is of interest that Bentham felt the secret ballot to be of greater significance than the extension of the franchise (see Works, ed. Bowring, John, Edinburgh, 1838, vol. IV, 518).Google Scholar

8 Many of these proposals are also strongly influenced by Bentham's theory of morals. From Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments onwards, the sanction of public opinion played an important role in Utilitarian ethics. To Smith, indeed, it was the very basis of morality. Bentham, though less hopeful of its efficacy, equated the moral with the popular sanction. Such proposals as the immediate publication of debates are, in part, attempts to make this sanction more effective. It influenced even his attitude towards the extension of the franchise. A secondary, but to Bentham important, argument in its favour was that widening the M.P.'s audience would lead him to seek pre-eminence by pursuing social ends rather than by seeking the honours distributed by autocracy and the Crown.

9 Bowring ed., vol. III, 445–50.

10 Bowring ed., vol. IX.

11 Ibid., 6–7.

12 We have been careful to call this the dominant view. There are also sections in both Bentham and Mill which, had they been developed, might have led them to view the democratic majority as being itself a collection of partial and hence sinister interests. See, for example, James Mill's discussion of Lord Liverpool's proposals for constitutional reform in chapter VIII of his Essay on Government, and Bentham's discussion of his principle of universal interest comprehension in his Constitutional Code (Bowring, ed., vol. IX, 452–60).Google Scholar

13 Francis Place shared this belief. In a letter to Hobhouse, written in 1830, he wrote: “… they [the vulgarity] have fewer sinister interests to induce them to do wrong; their choice is influenced by the desire to do good to themselves, and it so happens that their good must always be the public good.” Quoted in Wallas, Graham, The Life of Francis Place (rev. ed., London, 1918), 155.Google Scholar

14 Of What Use is the House of Lords? (London, n.d.).

15 Ibid., 1–2.

16 Bentham, , Fragment on Government (Oxford, 1948), 102–3.Google Scholar

17 This view of policy formation explains the importance which Bentham attached to such purely institutional reforms as the introduction of a hard-working committee system and legislative minister and the participation of government experts in the House debates. See in particular Constitutional Code.

18 Quoted in Kent, C. B. Roylance, The English Radicals (London, 1899), 229.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., 187.

20 This view is supported by the opinion of J. A. Roebuck. He wrote: “The object of the Reform Bill they said (and said truly) was to prevent the House of Lords ruling this country by means of a corrupt majority in the House of Commons” (The Conduct of Ministers Respecting the Amendments of the House of Lords, London, n.d.).

21 Wrote Lord Macaulay in a review of James Mill's Essay on Government, “It cannot be pretended that it is not for the immediate interest of the people to plunder the rich” ( Edinburgh Review, no. XCVII, 03, 1829, 180 Google Scholar).

22 Evidence of this can be seen in James Mill's Essay on Government and his Essay on the Freedom of the Press and in Bentham's introduction to his A Plan of Parliamentaty Reform and his Radicalism Not Dangerous.

23 Mill, John Stuart, Autobiography (London, 1873), 106.Google Scholar

24 Essay on Government, in English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill, 888.

25 “On the Qualification Clause of the Municipal Corporation Bill” in The Dorchester Labourers (London, n.d.), 15.Google Scholar

26 Quoted in Wallas, , The Life of Francis Place, 155–6.Google Scholar

27 Quoted in Edinburgh Review, no. XCVIII, 06, 1829, 282.Google Scholar

28 Utilitarianism, in English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill, 923.

29 See in particular Green's use of the idea of a universal reason slowly realizing itself in the world. Prolegomena to Ethics (Oxford, 1883), 216 Google Scholar; and Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (London, 1901), 24.Google Scholar

30 Mill, J. S., On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government (McCallum, ed., Oxford, 1947), 121.Google Scholar

31 Indeed T. H. Green regarded this as the main contribution of Utilitarianism. (Prolegomena to Ethics, 365–6).

32 For an impressive list of legislative measures in the interests of greater personal liberty which were promoted or supported by the Benthamites, see Dicey, A. V., Law and Opinion in England (London, 1905), lecture VI.Google Scholar

33 In any list of social objectives which Bentham provided, liberty was noticeably absent. For example, he listed the ends of civil law as security, subsistence, abundance, and equality. Again, in eulogizing the United States, he claimed that it “provided all that men value,” and, in the list that followed, liberty was not included. (See Radicalism Not Dangerous, Bowring, ed., vol. L, 202–5Google Scholar). There is finally his famous “Call them monks, call them slaves, call them machines, be they but happy I do not care.”

34 Wallas, , The Life of Francis Place, 90.Google Scholar