Part 2

The popular notion that Bentham was a morose visionary is far removed from fact. It is true that he looked upon general society as a waste of time and that he disliked poetry as "misrepresentation"; but he intensely enjoyed conversation, gave good dinners and delighted in music, in country sights and in making others happy. These features of Bentham's character are illustrated in the graphic account given by the American minister, Richard Rush, of an evening spent at his London house in the summer of the year 1818. "If Mr Bentham's character is peculiar," he says, "so is his place of residence. It was a kind of blind-alley, the end of which widened into a small, neat courtyard. There by itself stands Mr Bentham's house. Shrubbery graced its area and flowers its window-sills. It was like an oasis in the desert. Its name is the Hermitage. Mr Bentham received me with the simplicity of a philosopher. I should have taken him for seventy or upwards. Everything inside the house was orderly. The furniture seemed to have been unmoved since the days of his fathers, for I learned that it was a patrimony. A parlour, library and dining-room made up the suite of apartments. In each was a piano, the eccentric master of the whole being fond of music as the recreation of his literary hours. It is a unique, romantic-like homestead. Walking with him into the garden, I found it dark with the shade of ancient trees. They formed a barrier against all intrusion. The company was small but choice. Mr Brougham; Sir Samuel Romilly; Mr Mill, author of the well-known work on India; M. Dumont, the learned Genevan, once the associate of Mirabeau, were all who sat down to table. Mr Bentham did not talk much. He had a benevolence of manner suited to the philanthropy of his mind. He seemed to be thinking only of the convenience and pleasure of his guests, not as a rule of artificial breeding as from Chesterfield or Madame Genlis, but from innate feeling. Bold as are his opinions in his works, here he was wholly unobtrusive of theories that might not have commended the assent of all present. When he did converse it was in simple language, a contrast to his later writings, where an involved style and the use of new or universal words are drawbacks upon the speculations of a genius original and profound, but with the faults of solitude. Yet some of his earlier productions are distinguished by classical terseness."--(_Residence at the Court of London_, p. 286.) Bentham's love of flowers and music, of green foliage and shaded walks, comes clearly out in this pleasant picture of his home life and social surroundings.

Whether or no he can be said to have founded a school, his doctrines have become so far part of the common thought of the time, that there is hardly an educated man who does not accept as too clear for argument truths which were invisible till Bentham pointed them out. His sensitively honourable nature, which in early life had caused him to shrink from asserting his belief in Thirty-nine articles of faith which he had not examined, was shocked by the enormous abuses which confronted him on commencing the study of the law. He rebelled at hearing the system under which they flourished described as the perfection of human reason. But he was no merely destructive critic. He was determined to find a solid foundation for both morality and law, and to raise upon it an edifice, no stone of which should be laid except in accordance with the deductions of the severest logic. This foundation is "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," a formula adopted from Priestly or perhaps first from Beccaria. The phrase may, however, be found in writers of an earlier date than these, e.g. in Hutcheson's _Enquiry_, published in 1725. The pursuit of such happiness is taught by the "utilitarian" philosophy, an expression used by Bentham himself in 1802, and therefore not invented by J.S. Mill, as he supposed, in 1823. In order to ascertain what modes of action are most conducive to the end in view, and what motives are best fitted to produce them, Bentham was led to construct marvellously exhaustive, though somewhat mechanical, tables of motives. With all their elaboration, these tables are, however, defective, as omitting some of the highest and most influential springs of action. But most of Bentham's conclusions may be accepted without any formal profession of the utilitarian theory of morals. They are, indeed, merely the application of a rigorous common sense to the facts of society. That the proximate ends at which Bentham aimed are desirable hardly any one would deny, though the feasibility of the means by which he proposes to attain them may often be questioned, and much of the new nomenclature in which he thought fit to clothe his doctrines may be rejected as unnecessary. To be judged fairly, Bentham must be judged as a teacher of the principles of legislation. With the principles of private morals he really deals only so far as is necessary to enable the reader to appreciate the impulses which have to be controlled by law.

As a teacher of legislation he inquires of all institutions whether their utility justifies their existence. If not, he is prepared to suggest a new form of institution by which the needful service may be rendered. While thus engaged no topic is too large for his mental grasp, none too small for his notice; and, what is still rarer, every topic is seen in its due relation to the rest. English institutions had never before been thus comprehensively and dispassionately surveyed. Such improvements as had been necessitated were mere makeshifts, often made by stealth. The rude symmetry of the feudal system had been long ago destroyed by partial and unskilful adaptations to modern commercial life, effected at various dates and in accordance with various theories. The time had come for deliberate reconstruction, for inquiring whether the existence of many admitted evils was, as it was said to be, unavoidable; for proving that the needs of society may be classified and provided for by contrivances which shall not clash with one another because all shall be parts of a consistent whole. This task Bentham undertook, and he brought to it a mind absolutely free from professional or class feeling, or any other species of prejudice. He mapped out the whole subject, dividing and subdividing it in accordance with the principle of "dichotomy." Having reached his ultimate subdivisions he subjects each to the most thorough and ingenious discussion. His earlier writings exhibit a lively and easy style, which gives place in his later treatises to sentences which are awkward from their effort after unattainable accuracy, and from the newly-invented technical nomenclature in which they are expressed. Many of Bentham's phrases, such as "international," "utilitarian," "codification," are valuable additions to our language; but the majority of them, especially those of Greek derivation, have taken no root in it. His neology is one among many instances of his contempt for the past and his wish to be clear of all association with it. His was, indeed, a typically logical, as opposed to a historical, mind. For the history of institutions which, thanks largely to the writings of Sir Henry Maine, has become a new and interesting branch of science, Bentham cared nothing. Had he possessed such a knowledge of Roman law as is now not uncommon in England, he must doubtless have taken a different view of many subjects. The logical and historical methods can, however, seldom be combined without confusion; and it is perhaps fortunate that Bentham devoted his long life to showing how much may be done by pursuing the former method exclusively. His writings have been and remain a storehouse of instruction for statesmen, an armoury for legal reformers. "Pille par tout le monde," as Talleyrand said of him, "il est toujours riche." To trace the results of his teaching in England alone would be to write a history of the legislation of half a century. Upon the whole administrative machinery of government, upon criminal law and upon procedure, both criminal and civil, his influence has been most salutary; and the great legal revolution which in 1873 purported to accomplish the fusion of law and equity is not obscurely traceable to the same source. Those of Bentham's suggestions which have hitherto been carried out have affected the matter or contents of the law. The hopes which have been from time to time entertained, that his suggestions for the improvement of its form and expression were about to receive the attention which they deserved, have hitherto been disappointed. The services rendered by Bentham to the world would not, however, be exhausted even by the practical adoption of every one of his recommendations. There are no limits to the good results of his introduction of a true method of reasoning into the moral and political sciences.

Bentham's _Works_, together with an Introduction by J. Hill Burton, selections from his correspondence and a biography, were published by Dr Bowring, in eleven closely printed volumes (1838-1843). This edition does not include the _Deontology_, which, much rewritten, had been published by Bowring in 1834. Translations of the _Works_ or of separate treatises have appeared in most European languages. Large masses of Bentham's MSS., mostly unpublished, are preserved at University College, London (see T. Whittaker's _Report_, 1892, on these MSS., as newly catalogued and reclassified by him in 155 parcels); also in the British Museum (see E. Nys, _Etudes de droit international et de droit politique_, 1901, pp. 291-333). See farther on the life and writings of Bentham: J.H. Burton, _Benthamiana_ (1843); R. von Mohl, _Geschichte und Literatur der Staatswissenschaften_, bk. iii. (1858), pp. 595-635; R.K. Wilson, _History of Modern English Law_ (1875), pp. 133-170; J.S. Mill, _Dissertations_ (1859), vol. i. pp. 330-392; L. Stephen, _The English Utilitarians_ (1900), vol. i.; _A Fragment on Government_, edited by F.C. Montague (1891); _The Law Quarterly Review_ (1895), two articles on Bentham's influence in Spain; A.V. Dicey, _Law and Opinion in England_ (1905), pp. 125-209; C.M. Atkinson, _Jeremy Bentham_ (1905). (T. E. H.)

BENTINCK, LORD WILLIAM (1774-1839), governor-general of India, was the second son of the 3rd duke of Portland and was born on the 14th of September 1774. He entered the army, rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and was present at Marengo. In 1803 he was nominated governor of Madras, where he quarrelled with the chief justice, Sir Henry Gwillim, and several members of his council. The sepoy mutiny at Vellore in 1807 led to his recall. His name was considered at this time for the post of governor-general, but Lord Minto was selected instead; and it was not until twenty years later that he succeeded Lord Amherst in that office. His governor-generalship (1827-1835) was notable for many reforms, chief among which were the suppression of the Thugs (q.v.), the abolition of suttee, and the making of the English language the basis of education in India. It was on this last subject that Lord Macaulay's famous minute was written. Lord William's administration was essentially peaceful, but progressive and successful. He died at Paris on the 17th of June 1839.

See Demetrius C. Boulger, _Lord William Bentinck_, in the "Rulers of India" series (1892).

BENTINCK, LORD WILLIAM GEORGE FREDERICK CAVENDISH, better known as LORD GEORGE BENTINCK (1802-1848), British politician, was the second surviving son of the fourth duke of Portland, by Henrietta, sister of Viscountess Canning, and was born on the 27th of February 1802. He was educated at home until he obtained his commission as cornet in the 10th hussars at the age of seventeen. He practically retired from the army in 1822 and acted for some time as private secretary to his uncle George Canning. In 1828 he succeeded his uncle Lord William Bentinck as member for Lynn-Regis, and continued to represent that constituency during the remaining twenty years of his life. His failures as a speaker in parliament seem to have discouraged him from the attempt to acquire reputation as a politician, and till within three years of his death he was little known out of the sporting world. As one of the leaders on "the turf," however, he was distinguished by that integrity, judgment and indomitable determination which, when brought to bear upon weightier matters, quickly gave him a position of first-rate importance in the political world. On his first entrance into parliament he belonged to the moderate Whig party, and voted in favour of Catholic emancipation, as also for the Reform Bill, though he opposed some of its principal details. Soon after, however, he joined the ranks of the opposition, with whom he sided up to the important era of 1846. When, in that year, Sir Robert Peel openly declared in favour of free trade, the advocates of the corn-laws, then without a leader, after several ineffectual attempts at organization, discovered that Lord George Bentinck was the only man of position and family (for Disraeli's time was not yet come) around whom the several sections of the opposition could be brought to rally. His sudden elevation took the public by surprise; but he soon gave convincing evidence of powers so formidable that the Protectionist party under his leadership was at once stiffened into real importance. Towards Peel, in particular, his hostility was uncompromising. Believing, as he himself expressed it, that that statesman and his colleagues had "hounded to the death his illustrious relative" Canning, he combined with his political opposition a degree of personal animosity that gave additional force to his invective. On entering on his new position, he at once abandoned his connexion with the turf, disposed of his magnificent stud and devoted his whole energies to the laborious duties of a parliamentary leader. Apart from the question of the corn-laws, however, his politics were decidedly independent. In opposition to the rest of his party, he supported the bill for removing the Jewish disabilities, and was favourable to the scheme for the payment of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland by the landowners. The result was that on December 23rd, 1847, he wrote a letter resigning the Protectionist leadership, though he still remained active in politics. But his positive abilities as a constructive statesman were not to be tested, for he died suddenly at Welbeck on the 21st of September 1848. It was to be left to Disraeli to bring the Conservative party into power, with Protection outside its programme.

See _Lord George Bentinck: a Political Biography_ (1851), by B. Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield).

BENTIVOGLIO, GIOVANNI (1443-1508), tyrant of Bologna, descended from a powerful family which exercised great influence in Bologna during the 15th century, was born after the murder of his father, then chief magistrate of the commune. In 1462 Giovanni contrived to make himself master of the city, although it was nominally a fief of the church under a papal legate. He ruled with a stern sway for nearly half a century, but the brilliance of his court, his encouragement of the fine arts and his decoration of the city with sumptuous edifices, to some extent compensated the Bolognese for the loss of their liberty. Cesare Borgia (q.v.) contemplated the subjugation of Bologna in 1500, when he was crushing the various despots of Romagna, but Bentivoglio was saved for the moment by French intervention. In 1502 he took part in the conspiracy against Cesare, but, when the latter obtained French assistance, he abandoned his fellow-conspirators and helped Borgia to overcome them. During the brief pontificate of Pius III., who succeeded Alexander VI. in 1503, Bentivoglio enjoyed a respite, but the new pope, Julius II., was determined to reduce all the former papal states to obedience. Having won Louis XII. of France to his side, he led an army against Bologna, excommunicated Bentivoglio and forced him to abandon the city (November 1506). The deposed tyrant took refuge with the French, whom he trusted more than the pope, and died at Milan in 1508.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--P. Litta, _Le Famiglie celebri Italiane_, vol, iii. (Milan, 1834); P. Villari, _Machiavelli_ (Eng. trans., London, 1892); M. Creighton, _History of the Papacy_ (London, 1897); A. von Reumont, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom_, vol. iii. (Berlin, 1868). (L. V.*)

BENTIVOGLIO, GUIDO (1579-1644), Italian cardinal, statesman and historian, was born at Ferrara in 1579. After studying at Padua, he went to reside at Rome, and was received with great favour by Pope Clement VIII., who made him his private chamberlain. The next pope, Paul V., created him archbishop of Rhodes in 1607, and appointed him as nuncio to Flanders and afterwards to France; on his return to Rome in 1621 he was created cardinal and entrusted by Louis XIII. with the management of French affairs at the papal court. He became the intimate friend of Pope Urban VIII., who appointed him to the suburban see of Palestrina in 1691. An able writer and skilful diplomatist, Bentivoglio was marked out as Urban's successor, but he died suddenly on the 7th of September 1644 at the opening of the conclave. Bentivoglio's principal works are:--_Della Guerra di Fiandria_ (best edition, Cologne, 1633-1639), translated into English by Henry, earl of Monmouth (London, 1654); _Relazioni di G. Bentivoglio in tempo delle sue Nunziature di Fiandria e di Francia_ (Cologne, 1630); _Lettere diplomatiche di Guido Bentivoglio_ (Brussels, 1631, frequently reprinted, best edition by L. Scarabelli, 2 vols., Turin, 1852). The complete edition of his works was published at Venice in 1668 in 4to. A selection of his letters has been adopted as a classic in the Italian schools.

BENTLEY, RICHARD (1662-1742), English scholar and critic, was born at Oulton near Wakefield, Yorkshire, on the 27th of January 1662. His grandfather had suffered in person and estate in the royalist cause, and the family were in consequence in reduced circumstances. Bentley's mother, the daughter of a stonemason in Oulton, was a woman of excellent understanding and some education, as she was able to give her son his first lessons in Latin. From the grammar school of Wakefield Richard Bentley passed to St John's College, Cambridge, being admitted subsizar in 1676. He afterwards obtained a scholarship and took the degree of B.A. in 1680 (M.A. 1683). He never succeeded to a fellowship, being appointed by his college, before he was twenty-one, headmaster of Spalding grammar school. In this post he did not remain long, being selected by Dr Edward Stillingfleet, dean of St Paul's, to be domestic tutor to his son. This appointment introduced Bentley at once to the society of the most eminent men of the day, threw open to him the best private library in England, and brought him into familiar intercourse with Dean Stillingfleet, a man of sound understanding, who had not shrunk from exploring some of the more solid and abstruse parts of ancient learning. The six years which he passed in Stillingfleet's family were employed, with the restless energy characteristic of the man, in exhausting the remains of the Greek and Latin writers, and laying up those stores of knowledge upon which he afterwards drew as circumstances required.

In 1689 Stillingfleet became bishop of Worcester, and Bentley's pupil went to reside at Oxford in Wadham College, accompanied by his tutor. Bentley's introductions and his own merits placed him at once on a footing of intimacy with the most distinguished scholars in the university, Dr John Mill, Humphrey Hody, Edward Bernard. Here he revelled in the MS. treasures of the Bodleian, Corpus and other college libraries. He projected and occupied himself with collections for vast literary schemes. Among these are specially mentioned a _corpus_ of the fragments of the Greek poets and an edition of the Greek lexicographers. But his first publication was in connexion with a writer of much inferior note. The Oxford (Sheldonian) press was about to bring out an edition (the _editio princeps_) from the unique MS. in the Bodleian of the Greek _Chronicle_ (a universal history down to A.D. 560) of John of Antioch (date uncertain, between 600 and 1000), called John Malalas or "John the Rhetor"; and the editor, Dr John Mill, principal of St Edmund Hall, had requested Bentley to look through the sheets and make any remarks on the text. This originated Bentley's _Epistola ad Millium_, which occupies less than one hundred pages at the end of the Oxford _Malalas_ (1691). This short tractate at once placed Bentley at the head of all living English scholars. The ease with which, by a stroke of the pen, he restores passages which had been left in hopeless corruption by the editors of the _Chronicle_, the certainty of the emendation and the command over the relevant material, are in a style totally different from the careful and laborious learning of Hody, Mill or E. Chilmead. To the small circle of classical students (lacking the great critical dictionaries of modern times) it was at once apparent that there had arisen in England a critic whose attainments were not to be measured by the ordinary academical standard, but whom these few pages had sufficed to place by the side of the great Grecians of a former age. Unfortunately this mastery over critical science was accompanied by a tone of self-assertion and presumptuous confidence which not only checked admiration, but was calculated to rouse enmity. Dr Monk, indeed, Bentley's biographer, charged him (in his first edition, 1830) with an indecorum of which he was not guilty. "In one place," writes Dr Monk, "he accosts Dr Mill as [Greek: o Ioannidion] (Johnny), an indecorum which neither the familiarity of friendship, nor the licence of a dead language, can justify towards the dignified head of a house." But the object of Bentley's apostrophe was not his correspondent Dr Mill, but his author John Malalas, whom in another place he playfully appeals to as "Syrisce." From this publication, however, dates the origin of those mixed feelings of admiration and repugnance which Bentley throughout his career continued to excite among his contemporaries.

In 1690 Bentley had taken deacon's orders in the Church. In 1692 he was nominated first Boyle lecturer, a nomination which was repeated in 1694. He was offered the appointment a third time in 1695 but declined it, being by that time involved in too many other undertakings. In the first series of lectures ("A Confutation of Atheism") he endeavours to present the Newtonian physics in a popular form, and to frame them (especially in opposition to Hobbes) into a proof of the existence of an intelligent Creator. He had some correspondence with Newton, then living in Trinity College, on the subject. The second series, preached in 1694, has not been published and is believed to be lost. Andrew Kippis, the editor of the _Biographia Britannica_, mentions MS. copies of them as in existence. Scarcely was Bentley in priest's orders before he was preferred to a prebendal stall in Worcester cathedral. In 1693 the keepership of the royal library becoming vacant, great efforts were made by his friends to obtain the place for Bentley, but through court interest the post was given to Mr Thynne. An arrangement, however, was made, by which the new librarian resigned in favour of Bentley, on condition that he received an annuity of L130 for life out of the salary, which only amounted to L200. To these preferments were added in 1695 a royal chaplaincy and the living of Hartlebury. In the same year Bentley was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1696 proceeded to the degree of D.D. The recognition of continental scholars came in the shape of a dedication, by Graevius, prefixed to a dissertation of Albert Rubens, _De Vita Flavii Mallii Theodori_, published at Utrecht in 1694.