Chapter XXX: Act II: Scene 3

177. ‘_Would submit to the sufferings_‘, _etc._ Malthus, p. 539.

180. ‘_The scanty relief_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ p. 415.

‘_If, as in Ireland_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ p. 548.

181. ‘_It is not enough_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ p. 549.

183. ‘_In some conversations_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ p. 553.

_Anthony’s repeated declaration._ _Julius Caesar_, Act III. Scene
2.

184. ‘_It very rarely_,’ _etc._ Malthus’s _Essay_ (1st edition, 1798),
p. 34.

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE

189. JEREMY BENTHAM. This essay appeared originally in the _New Monthly
Magazine_ (1824, vol. X. p. 68), of which Thomas Campbell was
editor from 1820 to 1830. For an account of Bentham’s life and
work, see Sir Leslie Stephen’s _The English Utilitarians_, vol.
I. pp. 169–326.

_The old adage._ ‘A prophet is not without honour, save in his own
country, and in his own house.’ _St. Matthew_, xiii. 57.

_In the plains of Chili_, _etc._ Bentham had many disciples among
the patriots of South America, and in 1808 thought seriously of
going to Mexico.

_Westminster, where he lives._ In Queen Square Place, now Queen
Anne’s Gate. Hazlitt himself was from 1812 to 1819 a tenant of
Bentham’s in Milton’s old house in Petty France, the garden of
which Bentham had added to his house in Queen Square. See
frontispiece to vol. III., and _ante_, p. 190.

‘_I know thee_,’ _etc._ ‘I have seen thee in her, and I do adore
thee: my mistress show’d me thee, and thy dog, and thy bush.’
_The Tempest_, Act II. Scene 2.

_Mr. Hobhouse._ John Cam Hobhouse (1786–1869) was defeated at
Westminster in February 1819, but was returned in the following
year.

_Lord Rolle._ John Rolle (1795–1842) was the hero of _The
Rolliad_, and sat for the great maritime county of Devonshire.
He was raised to the peerage in 1796. See Wraxall’s _Historical
and Posthumous Memoirs_ (ed. Wheatley, IV. 116–119).

‘_That waft a thought_,’ _etc._ ‘And waft a sigh from Indus to the
Pole.’ Pope, _Eloisa to Abelard_, 58.

_Sir Samuel Romilly._ Romilly was returned for Westminster in July
1818. He had already taken an active part in Parliament as a
law-reformer.

190. ‘_Lone island_,’ _etc._ ‘Some happier island in the watery waste.’
Pope, _Essay on Man_, I. 106.

_Chrestomathic School._ The object of this was to apply
Lancasterian principles to the education of the middle classes.
An association, of which Mackintosh, Brougham, James Mill, and
others were trustees, was formed in 1814, and Bentham offered
his garden as a site, but the scheme came to nothing. See Sir
Leslie Stephen’s _The English Utilitarians_, vol. II. p. 22.

_Franklin._ Bentham seems to have had a strong personal
resemblance to Benjamin Franklin.

191. _Foregone conclusion._ _Othello_, Act III. Scene 3.

192. _Mr. Bentham is not the first writer_, _etc._ The principle of
utility had been expressed by (among others) Priestley (_Essay
on Government_, 1768), Hutcheson (_Enquiry concerning Moral Good
and Evil_, 1725), and Beccaria (_On Crimes and Punishments_,
1764). See _The English Utilitarians_, vol. I. p. 178.

‘_He has not allowed for the wind._’ A familiar expression which
Hazlitt may have seen in _Ivanhoe_, Chap. xiii.

‘_Bound volatile Hermes._’ _Paradise Lost_, III. 602–3.

193. ‘_All appliances_,’ _etc._ _Henry IV._, Part II., Act III. Scene
1.

_Posthæc, etc._ ‘Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.’ Virgil,
_Aeneid_, I. 203.

195. _No more than Montaigne_, _etc._ Essays, Booke II., Chap. xii. An
Apologie of Raymond Sebond. Florio’s translation, _Temple
Classics_, Vol. II., p. 209.

196. ‘_All men act_,’ _etc._ ‘Men calculate, some with less exactness,
indeed, some with more: but all men calculate. I would not say,
that even a madman does not calculate.’ _Principles of Morals
and Legislation_, Chap. XIV. § xxviii.

196. _Too knowing by half._ ‘That’s too civil by half.’ Sheridan, _The
Rivals_, Act III. Scene 4.

197. _A Panopticon._ ‘A mill for grinding rogues honest, and idle men
industrious’ (Bentham, _Works_, X. 226). Bentham published an
account of the scheme in 1791 under the title of ‘The
Panopticon, or the Inspection House,’ and spent a great deal of
money in connection with it. Ultimately a committee reported
against the scheme and proceeded to found the Millbank
Penitentiary, which was opened in 1816. See _The English
Utilitarians_, I. 193–206.

197. ‘_Dip it in the ocean_,’ _etc._ ‘But I fear, friend, said I, this
buckle won’t stand ... you may immerse it, replied he, into the
ocean, and it will stand.’ _A Sentimental Journey_, The Wig,
Paris.

198. _Mr. Owen._ Cf. _Political Essays_ (vol. III. pp. 121–7) and
_Table-Talk_ (‘On People with one Idea’).

_His address to the higher and middle classes._ The second of
Coleridge’s Lay Sermons (1817) was ‘addressed to the higher and
middle classes.’

_Hunter’s captivity among the North American Indians._ J. Dunn
Hunter’s _Memoirs of a Captivity amongst the Indians of North
America, from Childhood to the Age of Nineteen_, _etc._, 1824.

199. _In nook monastic._ ‘To forswear the full stream of the world and
to live in a nook merely monastic.’ _As You Like It_, Act III.
Scene 2.

‘_Men of Ind._’ _The Tempest_, Act II. Scene 2.

_Mr. Speaker Abbott._ Charles Abbot (1757–1829) was Speaker from
1802 to 1817, when he retired and became Lord Colchester. His
mother was the second wife of Bentham’s father. His unique Diary
and Correspondence, extending from 1795 to 1829, were published
in 3 vols. in 1861.

_He was educated at Eton._ Bentham was a Westminster boy.

200. _At the University._ Bentham went to Queen’s College, Oxford, in
1760, and took his M.A. degree in 1766.

_Church-of-Englandism._ _Church of Englandism and its Catechism
examined_, published in 1818.

‘_To be honest_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2.

‘_Looked enough abroad_,’ _etc._ ‘The corrupter sort of
politicians, who are not by learning established in a love of
duty, nor ever look abroad into universality.’ _Advancement of
Learning_, Book I.

_Mr. Godwin._ For Godwin see C. Kegan Paul’s _William Godwin: his
Friends and Contemporaries_, 2 vols. 1876.

201. _Political Justice._ Godwin’s _Enquiry concerning Political
Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness_ was published
in 1793, _Things as they are; or the Adventures of Caleb
Williams_ in 1794.

_As Goldsmith used to say._ ‘Whenever I write any thing, the
public _make a point_ to know nothing about it.’ Boswell, _Life
of Johnson_ (ed. G. B. Hill), III. 252.

_Sedet, in eternumque, etc._

‘Sedet, aeternumque sedebit,
Infelix Theseus.’
Virgil, _Aeneid_, VI. 617–18.

_The false Duessa._ _The Faerie Queene_, Book II., Canto ii., and
Canto viii. Stanzas 46–8.

201. _His House of Pride._

‘And all the hinder partes, that few could spie,
Were ruinous and old, but painted cunningly.’
_Ibid._ Book I., Canto iv. Stanza 5.

‘_The pillar’d firmament_,’ _etc._ _Comus_, 598–9.

202. ‘_What, then_,’ _etc._ _St. Matthew_, xi. 7.

_Mr. Southey’s Inscriptions._ Southey’s early ‘Inscriptions’
(1796–9), some of which he reprinted in the collected edition of
his poems (1837–8), are, like his _Joan of Arc_ and _Wat Tyler_,
strongly radical in sentiment. See Hazlitt’s _Political Essays_
(vol. III. p. 205).

_Mr. Coleridge’s Religious Musings._ Published in _Poems on
Various Subjects_, 1796.

‘_Like Cato_,’ _etc._ Pope, _Prologue to the Satires_, 208. The
line is taken from Pope’s own Prologue to Addison’s _Cato_.

‘_By that sin fell the angels._’ _Henry VIII._, Act III. Scene 2.

204. ‘_There was the rub_,’ _etc._

‘There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.’
_Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 1.

204. ‘_Trenchant blade._’

‘Let not the virgin’s cheek
Make soft thy trenchant sword.’
_Timon of Athens_, Act IV. Scene 3.

‘_All is conscience and tender heart._’ Chaucer, _Prologue_, 150.

Note. See John Leland’s _A View of the Deistical Writers_, _etc._,
Letter vii.

205. ‘_So ran the tenour of the bond._’ Cf. _The Merchant of Venice_,