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Consultations on a Constitution for Tripoli, between Jeremy Bentham and Hassuna D'Ghies, 1823

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2015

Duncan Cumming
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Extract

If Britain had needed a written constitution, the country would not have been short of draftsmen to prepare fundamental laws defining the legislature and the executive and delegating to them appropriate powers of government. However, their services have not been required. It has been mainly in the past twenty-five years that they have found an outlet for their talents through the drafting of constitutions for the many sovereign states that emerged during a period of imperial fission. Although these constitutions have differed in content, they have one thing in common: all of them include constitutional concepts and principles derived from the work of Jeremy Bentham.

It is surprising, however, to find that Jeremy Bentham himself drafted a constitution for the ‘Barbary State’ of Tripoli in 1823. At the time, Tripoli was part of the Ottoman Turkish realm; a form of Islamic state in which concepts of government and law differed so clearly from those of the secular nation-states of Europe that comparison cannot be made succinctly. However, comparisons are unnecessary for present purposes. The operative point in 1823 was that Muslim law and Ottoman tradition left no room for the introduction of a secular constitution in one of its provinces. Nothing short of provincial secession or political revolution at the centre-the two most trodden paths to constitutional reform—could bring about what Bentham would have liked to achieve with his pen. He was not unaware of the difficulties that faced the project and this is reflected in the form he gave to his draft; for it is open to question whether it amounted to what is usually expected of a ‘constitution’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Libyan Studies , Volume 3 , 1972 , pp. 21 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Libyan Studies 1972

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References

References

1 See The Works of Jeremy Bentham published under the superintendence of his executor, John Bowring, Edinburgh, 1843, Vol. 8, pp. 55 to 600. In a preliminary note to Securities Against Misrule, Bowring explains that, ‘the originals are in detached masses, to which the Author does not seem to have applied any system of arrangement: probably owing to the circumstance that the work was abruptly interrupted, either because he found that it could not be immediately applied to practical use, or for some other cause.’ Bentham's notes on Tripoli, which he collected before beginning his draft, were not included by Bowring in his Works of Jeremy Bentham. A definitive edition of Bentham's works is currently being prepared by The Bentham Committee at University College, London. Securities Against Misrule will appear in Section V, Constitutional Law. So far, to 1972, three volumes of his correspondence (1752–88) and two legal volumes, Of Law in General, and An Introduction to the Principles af Morals and Legislation, have appeared.Google Scholar
2 Corsair (med. Latin cursarius; marauder, pursuer) was the term used loosely in Europe for a person or vessel operating as a privateer from the ports of the Barbary States. In Britain, the Barbary States were regarded as comprising Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, and sometimes Morocco.Google Scholar
3 D'Ghies is the transliteration used in all European references to his name. I t may derive from the Turkish dagh-iasi or mountain bear, a term used as a nick-name for ‘a rough fellow’. Different versions of his other names are given. His correct name seems to have been Muhammed Hassuna D'Ghies, but other members of his family had these names also. For present purposes, the father is called Muhammed and the son Hassuna, the name by which he was usually known to his contemporaries.Google Scholar
4 Col. Warrington expressed astonishment to London that Hassuna should have been received by the King. ‘I believe the Bashaw's Head is a little turned …’, he added (FO. 76/16, 24 June 1822, Warrington to R. Wilmot).Google Scholar
5Hazlitt, W., Spirit of the Age, 1825, p. 1.Google Scholar
6Edinburgh Review, Vol. 55, p. 552, in an unsigned review Souvenirs sur Mirabeau. The article was, in fact, written by Lord Macauley, vide The Wellesley Index, vol. 1, p. 476, no. 1401.Google Scholar
7Bowring, J., Works etc., vol. 4, pp. 267–75.Google Scholar
8 Bentham MSS, Box X, University College, London.Google Scholar
9 FO 76/18, Warrington to Bathurst, 23 02, 1824.Google Scholar
10 Cf. Bentham MSS, Box 24/19. This is a pamphlet entitled: Letter to Sir James Scarlett M.P., a member of the African Institute, on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 12 May 1822. By Hassuna D'Ghies. Translated by Dr Kelly, Mathematician. Printed for the Author, 1827. There is also a lithographed version of Hassuna's original manuscript in French.Google Scholar
11 The incident is described in detail in Missions to the Niger, Vol. I, Hakluyt Society Series II, Vol. cxxiii, E. W. Bovill, Cambridge, 1964. But the extent of Hassuna D'Ghies' contacts in London does not appear to have been fully appreciated.Google Scholar
12Quarterly Review, vol. 24, pp. 450–75. Unsigned review of Journal d'un Voyage à Temboctoo by René Caillé. In fact, the article was written by Sir John Barrow, secretary to the navy: vide The Wellesley Index, vol. 1, p. 709. Barrow criticized Edmé-Francois Jomard, who had been one of Napoleon's savants on his Egyptian expedition, and who had edited Caillé's account of his visit to Timbuctoo. He suggested that Jomard had concocted much of Caillé's information from Laing's papers supplied by Hassuna D'Ghies through Baron Rousseau, the French consul at Tripoli.Google Scholar
13 The memoranda were printed as Blue Books: FO. 76/33Google Scholar