Jeremy Bentham

the point to be noticed is the light which the scheme throws on the nature of Bentham’s intellect.

Bentham, in his “Fragment on Government,” and Austin, in his “Province of Jurisprudence Determined,” resolve every law into a command of the lawgiver, an obligation imposed thereby on the citizen, and a sanction threatened in the event of disobedience;

Bentham seems to me from several expressions to have supposed that if the English Law of Evidence were re-constructed on his principles questions of fact would cease to present any serious difficulty.

In their task of ameliorating the law the praetors proceeded as unobtrusively as possible, by tacit rather than by open legislation, and rather by innovations in the adjective code, to use Bentham’s expression, or code of procedure, than in the substantive code.

Such a society might claim to justify its name of anarchist in so far as it knew nothing of a formal court or of those ‘names of office’ which Bentham considered the most decisive mark of established government.

Among the many proposals which have been made for reforming it since Bentham became an authority among us, one frequently put forward may be described as a proposal to carry to its farthest consequences the early process of change in which feudalism begun.

Bentham, Traités de Législation, vol.