Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham (; 4 February 1747/8 O.S. [15 February 1748 N.S.] – 6 June 1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated individual and economic freedoms, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and (in an unpublished essay) the decriminalizing of homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of slavery, capital punishment, and physical punishment, including that of children. He has also become known as an early advocate of animal rights. Though strongly in favour of the extension of individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights (both of which are considered "divine" or "God-given" in origin), calling them "nonsense upon stilts". His wealthy family were supporters of the Tory party. He was reportedly a child prodigy: he was found as a toddler sitting at his father's desk reading a multi-volume history of England, and he began to study Latin at the age of three.

Bentham began to develop this model, particularly as applicable to prisons, and outlined his ideas in a series of letters sent home to his father in England. He supplemented the supervisory principle with the idea of contract management; that is, an administration by contract as opposed to trust, where the director would have a pecuniary interest in lowering the average rate of mortality.

The Panopticon was intended to be cheaper than the prisons of his time, as it required fewer staff; "Allow me to construct a prison on this model", Bentham requested to a Committee for the Reform of Criminal Law, "I will be the gaoler. You will see ... that the gaoler will have no salary—will cost nothing to the nation." As the watchmen cannot be seen, they need not be on duty at all times, effectively leaving the watching to the watched. According to Bentham's design, the prisoners would also be used as menial labour, walking on wheels to spin looms or run a water wheel. This would decrease the cost of the prison and give a possible source of income.

The ultimately abortive proposal for a panopticon prison to be built in England was one among his many proposals for legal and social reform. But Bentham spent some sixteen years of his life developing and refining his ideas for the building and hoped that the government would adopt the plan for a National Penitentiary appointing him as contractor-governor. Although the prison was never built, the concept had an important influence on later generations of thinkers. Twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that the panopticon was paradigmatic of several 19th-century "disciplinary" institutions. Bentham remained bitter throughout his later life about the rejection of the panopticon scheme, convinced that it had been thwarted by the King and an aristocratic elite. Philip Schofield argues that it was largely because of his sense of injustice and frustration that he developed his ideas of "sinister interest"—that is, of the vested interests of the powerful conspiring against a wider public interest—which underpinned many of his broader arguments for reform.

thumb|[[Multiview orthographic projection#Elevation|Elevation, section and plan of Bentham's panopticon prison, drawn by Willey Reveley in 1791]]

On his return to England from Russia, Bentham had commissioned drawings from an architect, Willey Reveley. In 1791, he published the material he had written as a book, although he continued to refine his proposals for many years to come. He had by now decided that he wanted to see the prison built: when finished, it would be managed by himself as contractor-governor, with the assistance of Samuel. After unsuccessful attempts to interest the authorities in Ireland and revolutionary France, he started trying to persuade the prime minister, William Pitt, to revive an earlier abandoned scheme for a National Penitentiary in England, this time to be built as a panopticon. He was eventually successful in winning over Pitt and his advisors, and in 1794 was paid £2,000 for preliminary work on the project.

The intended site was one that had been authorised, under the Appropriation Act 1799 (39 Geo. 3. c. 114) for the earlier penitentiary, at Battersea Rise; but the new proposals ran into technical legal problems and objections from the local landowner, the Earl Spencer. Other sites were considered, including one at Hanging Wood, near Woolwich, but all proved unsatisfactory. Eventually Bentham turned to a site at Tothill Fields, near Westminster. Although this was common land, with no landowner, there were a number of parties with interests in it, including Earl Grosvenor, who owned a house on an adjacent site and objected to the idea of a prison overlooking it. Again, therefore, the scheme ground to a halt At this point, however, it became clear that a nearby site at Millbank, adjoining the Thames, was available for sale, and this time things ran more smoothly. Using government money, Bentham bought the land on behalf of the Crown for £12,000 in November 1799.

From his point of view, the site was far from ideal, being marshy, unhealthy, and too small. When he asked the government for more land and more money, however, the response was that he should build only a small-scale experimental prison—which he interpreted as meaning that there was little real commitment to the concept of the panopticon as a cornerstone of penal reform. Negotiations continued, but in 1801 Pitt resigned from office, and in 1803 the new Addington administration decided not to proceed with the project. Bentham was devastated: "They have murdered my best days."

Nevertheless, a few years later the government revived the idea of a National Penitentiary, and in 1811 and 1812 returned specifically to the idea of a panopticon. Bentham, now aged 63, was still willing to be governor. However, as it became clear that there was still no real commitment to the proposal, he abandoned hope, and instead turned his attentions to extracting financial compensation for his years of fruitless effort. His initial claim was for the enormous sum of nearly £700,000, but he eventually settled for the more modest (but still considerable) sum of £23,000. The Penitentiary House, etc. Act 1812 (52 Geo. 3. c. 44) transferred his title in the site to the Crown.

More successful was his cooperation with Patrick Colquhoun in tackling the corruption in the Pool of London. This resulted in the Depredations on the Thames Act 1800 (39 & 40 Geo. 3. c. 87).

South Australian colony proposal

On 3 August 1831 the Committee of the National Colonization Society approved the printing of its proposal to establish a free colony on the south coast of Australia, funded by the sale of appropriated colonial lands, overseen by a joint-stock company, and which would be granted powers of self-government as soon as was practicable. Contrary to assumptions, Bentham had no hand in the preparation of the 'Proposal to His Majesty's Government for founding a colony on the Southern Coast of Australia, which was prepared under the auspices of Robert Gouger, Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, and Anthony Bacon. Bentham did, however, in August 1831, draft an unpublished work entitled 'Colonization Company Proposal', which constitutes his commentary upon the National Colonization Society's 'Proposal'.

The Westminster Review

In 1823, he co-founded The Westminster Review with James Mill as a journal for the "Philosophical Radicals"—a group of younger disciples through whom Bentham exerted considerable influence in British public life. One was John Bowring, to whom Bentham became devoted, describing their relationship as "son and father": he appointed Bowring political editor of The Westminster Review and eventually his literary executor. Another was Edwin Chadwick, who wrote on hygiene, sanitation, and policing and was a major contributor to the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834: Bentham employed Chadwick as a secretary and bequeathed him a large legacy.

thumb|Bentham's public dissection

Bentham's wish to preserve his dead body was consistent with his philosophy of utilitarianism. In his essay Auto-Icon, or Farther Uses of the Dead to the Living, Bentham wrote, "If a country gentleman has rows of trees leading to his dwelling, the auto-icons of his family might alternate with the trees; copal varnish would protect the face from the effects of rain." On 8 June 1832, two days after his death, invitations were distributed to a select group of friends, and on the following day at 3 p.m., Southwood Smith delivered a lengthy oration over Bentham's remains in the Webb Street School of Anatomy & Medicine in Southwark, London. The printed oration contains a frontispiece with an engraving of Bentham's body partly covered by a sheet.

It is currently kept on public display at the main entrance of the UCL Student Centre. It was previously displayed at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the college until it was moved in 2020. Upon the retirement of Sir Malcolm Grant as provost of the college in 2013, however, the body was present at Grant's final council meeting. As of 2013, this was the only time that the body of Bentham has been taken to a UCL council meeting. (There is a persistent myth that the body of Bentham is present at all council meetings noted as "Present-but not voting".)

Personal life

Bentham lived a highly structured and disciplined life, but he also exhibited eccentric behavior. He referred to his walking stick as "Dapple" and his cat as "The Reverend Sir John Langbourne." He had several infatuations with women, and wrote on sex, but he never married. Bentham's daily pattern was to rise at 6 am, walk for 2 hours or more, and then work until 4 pm.

An insight into his character is given in Michael St. John Packe's The Life of John Stuart Mill:

A psychobiographical study by Philip Lucas and Anne Sheeran argues that he may have had Asperger's syndrome.

Correspondence and contemporary influences

thumb|Bentham by an unknown artist,

Bentham was in correspondence with many influential people. In the 1780s, for example, Bentham maintained a correspondence with the ageing Adam Smith, in an unsuccessful attempt to convince Smith that interest rates should be allowed to freely float. As a result of his correspondence with Mirabeau and other leaders of the French Revolution, Bentham was declared an honorary citizen of France.

In 1821, John Cartwright proposed to Bentham that they serve as "Guardians of Constitutional Reform", seven "wise men" whose reports and observations would "concern the entire Democracy or Commons of the United Kingdom". Describing himself, among the names mentioned which also included Sir Francis Burdett, George Ensor, and Sir Matthew Wood, and as a "nonentity", Bentham declined the offer.

United States

Bentham's views on the United States changed over time. He initially disapproved of the American revolution and the natural rights philosophy behind it, describing the United States Declaration of Independence as a "hodge-podge of confusion and absurdity in which the thing to be proved is all along taken for granted". By the end of his life, Bentham was a strong admirer of the United States, describing himself in an 1817 letter to John Adams Smith as a "Philo-Yankee". Writing to Andrew Jackson in 1830, Bentham described himself as "at heart more of a United-States-man than an Englishman".

Influences

left|thumb|upright=0.8|Bentham was influenced by Epicureanism.

Amongst his influences, Bentham cited d'Alembert, Beccaria, Epicurus, Hume, Locke, Montesquieu and Priestley.

Bentham was greatly influenced by the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. It is believed that Bentham encountered the works of Epicurus during his studies at Oxford, possibly being attracted to Epicureanism through reading the account, although an unsympathetic one, given in Cicero's Tusculan Disputations. A voracious reader, Bentham likely also read works by contemporary Epicurean writers.

According to Bentham's later reminiscences, a copy of Helvétius' De l’esprit "fell into [his] hands" at the age of 20. Bentham described his philosophy as having been "built solely on the foundation of utility, laid as it is by Helvétius". Regarding the influence of Helvétius on his works, Bentham recalled "Montesquieu, Barrington, Beccaria, and Helvétius, but most of all Helvétius, set me on the principle of utility".

Views

Aesthetics

Bentham viewed aesthetic value as related to pain and pleasure, remarking "Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry. If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either"

Racial views

Bentham believed each race to be different, independent of climate or place of birth. He wrote in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation:

In the 1782 essay Of the Influence of Time and Place in Matters of Legislation, Bentham wrote "The ascendancy of the English is an ascendancy of wisdom and understanding:—it is the same ascendancy that a Brahmin has over a Parias — a European over a Brahmin — and an Englishman over another European". Whilst opposing imperialism, Bentham wrote in Emancipate Your Colonies that "it was in the long-term interests of India to be governed by a civilized nation like Britain".

Bentham viewed the Aboriginal Australians as an uncivilised people. In an 1802 letter to Lord Pelham, Bentham described the Aboriginal people in New South Wales as "brutes in human shape", "the very dregs even of savage life—a species of society beyond comparison less favourable to colonisation than utter solitude", and "a set of living nuisances". Writing in Colonization Company Proposal (1831), Bentham described the "hostility of the uncivilized aborigines".

Work

Animal rights

Bentham is widely regarded as one of the earliest proponents of animal rights. He argued and believed that the ability to suffer, not the ability to reason, should be the benchmark, or what he called the "insuperable line". If reason alone were the criterion by which we judge who ought to have rights, human infants and adults with certain forms of disability might fall short, too. In 1780, alluding to the limited degree of legal protection afforded to slaves in the French West Indies by the Code Noir, he wrote: Regarding the role of government in the economy, he said "With the view of causing an increase to take place in the mass of national wealth...the general rule is, that nothing ought to be done or attempted by government. The motto, or watchword of government, on these occasions, ought to be - Be quiet." Whilst recognising the law of diminishing marginal utility, that an extra £1 contributes less utility to a rich man than it does to a poor one, and viewing some amount of redistributive taxation as warranted, he cautioned against complete redistribution of property. Whilst arguing that "the pain of death, which would presently fall upon the starving poor, would be always a more serious evil than the pain of disappointment which falls upon the rich when a portion of his superfluity is taken from him", Bentham added "In the amount of the legal contribution we ought not to go beyond what is simply necessary. To go beyond that would be taxing industry for the support of idleness."

Bentham stated that pleasures and pains can be ranked according to their value or "dimension" such as intensity, duration, certainty of a pleasure or a pain. He was concerned with maxima and minima of pleasures and pains; and they set a precedent for the future employment of the maximisation principle in the economics of the consumer, the firm and the search for an optimum in welfare economics.

Bentham advocated "Pauper Management" which involved the creation of a chain of large workhouses.

Andrew Lawless writes that Bentham's "theoretical contributions to the political, economic, legal and psychological structures of English capitalism were enormous. Even Marx moved through a world that had been well-described by the arch-Philistine's voice. In his unique way, Bentham defined and analyzed the England of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, creating not only a comprehensive social theory but, with the help of James Mill and others, a political movement to go with it."

Monetary economics

Bentham's opinions about monetary economics were completely different from those of David Ricardo; however, they had some similarities to those of Henry Thornton. He focused on monetary expansion as a means of helping to create full employment. He was also aware of the relevance of forced saving, propensity to consume, the saving-investment relationship, and other matters that form the content of modern income and employment analysis. His monetary view was close to the fundamental concepts employed in his model of utilitarian decision making. His work is considered to be an early precursor of modern welfare economics.

Gender and sexuality

Bentham said that it was the placing of women in a legally inferior position that made him choose in 1759, at the age of eleven, the career of a reformist, though American critic John Neal claimed to have convinced him to take up women's rights issues during their association between 1825 and 1827. Bentham spoke for a complete equality between the sexes, arguing in favour of women's suffrage, a woman's right to obtain a divorce, and a woman's right to hold political office.

The essay "Paederasty (Offences Against One's Self)" argued for the liberalisation of laws prohibiting homosexual sex. The essay remained unpublished during his lifetime for fear of offending public morality. Some of Bentham's writings on "sexual non-conformity" were published for the first time in 1931, but Paederasty was not published until 1978. Bentham does not believe homosexual acts to be unnatural, describing them merely as "irregularities of the venereal appetite". The essay chastises the society of the time for making a disproportionate response to what Bentham appears to consider a largely private offence—public displays or forced acts being dealt with rightly by other laws. When the essay was published in the Journal of Homosexuality in 1978, the abstract stated that Bentham's essay was the "first known argument for homosexual law reform in England".

Imperialism

Bentham's writings in the early 1790s onwards expressed an opposition to imperialism. His 1793 pamphlet Emancipate Your Colonies! critiqued French colonialism. In the early 1820s, he argued that the liberal government in Spain should emancipate its New World colonies. In the essay Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace, Bentham argued that Britain should emancipate its New World colonies and abandon its colonial ambitions. He argued that empire was bad for the greatest number in the metropole and the colonies. According to Bentham, empire was financially unsound, entailed taxation on the poor in the metropole, caused unnecessary expansion in the military apparatus, undermined the security of the metropole, and were ultimately motivated by misguided ideas of honour and glory. Barbara Arneil at the University of British Columbia describes Bentham as "best understood as a pro-colonialist and anti-imperialist thinker".

Law reform

thumb|1829 etching by G.W. Appleton

Bentham was the first person to be an aggressive advocate for the codification of all of the common law into a coherent set of statutes; he was actually the person who coined the verb "to codify" to refer to the process of drafting a legal code. He lobbied hard for the formation of codification commissions in both England and the United States, and went so far as to write to President James Madison in 1811 to volunteer to write a complete legal code for the young country. After he learned more about American law and realised that most of it was state-based, he promptly wrote to the governors of every single state with the same offer.

During his lifetime, Bentham's codification efforts were completely unsuccessful. Even today, they have been completely rejected by almost every common law jurisdiction, including England. However, his writings on the subject laid the foundation for the moderately successful codification work of David Dudley Field II in the United States a generation later.

Privacy

For Bentham, transparency had moral value. For example, journalism puts power-holders under moral scrutiny. However, Bentham wanted such transparency to apply to everyone influential. This he describes by picturing the world as a gymnasium in which each "gesture, every turn of limb or feature, in those whose motions have a visible impact on the general happiness, will be noticed and marked down". He considered both surveillance and transparency to be useful ways of generating understanding and improvements for people's lives. His ambition in life was to create a "Pannomion", a complete utilitarian code of law. He not only proposed many legal and social reforms, but also expounded an underlying moral principle on which they should be based. This philosophy of utilitarianism took for its "fundamental axiom" to be the notion that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong. Bentham claimed to have borrowed this concept from the writings of Joseph Priestley, although the closest that Priestley in fact came to expressing it was in the form "the good and happiness of the members, that is the majority of the members of any state, is the great standard by which relating to that state must finally be determined."

Bentham was a rare major figure in the history of philosophy to endorse psychological egoism.

Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation focuses on the principle of utility and how this view of morality ties into legislative practices. His principle of utility regards good as that which produces the greatest amount of pleasure and the minimum amount of pain and evil as that which produces the most pain without the pleasure. This concept of pleasure and pain is defined by Bentham as physical as well as spiritual. Bentham writes about this principle as it manifests itself within the legislation of a society. For Bentham, according to P.J. Kelly, the law "provides the basic framework of social interaction by delimiting spheres of personal inviolability within which individuals can form and pursue their own conceptions of well-being". It provides security, a precondition for the formation of expectations. As the hedonic calculus shows "expectation utilities" to be much higher than natural ones, it follows that Bentham does not favour the sacrifice of a few to the benefit of the many. Law professor Alan Dershowitz has quoted Bentham to argue that torture should sometimes be permitted. Through Mill’s revisions, Bentham’s utilitarian framework was softened and adapted in ways that allowed it to shape liberal conceptions of what state policy should seek to achieve.

Bentham's critics have claimed that he undermined the foundation of a free society by rejecting natural rights. Eric Hobsbawm, in The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848, writes that Bentham's reforming ideas "expressed the bourgeois Britain of the 1830s".

Bentham influenced economists such as Milton Friedman and Henry Hazlitt.

In their youth, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were interested in Bentham's ideas and utilitarian philosophy. Marx later became disillusioned with Bentham's ideas, describing him as "a genius of bourgeois stupidity", and viewed Bentham's views as too English and petite bourgeoisie, saying "With the dullest naïveté he takes the modern petty-bourgeois philistine, especially the English philistine, as the normal man. Whatever is useful to this queer variety of normal man, and to his world, is useful in and for itself. This yardstick, then, he applies to past, present and future."

The Faculty of Laws at University College London occupies Bentham House, next to the main UCL campus.

Against One's Self. Written 1785, published 1978 in the Journal of Homosexuality, 3(4), 398–405, continued in 4(1). . . .
(1787).
Defence of Usury (1787). Ed. 4 – London: Payne and Foss, 1818.
A series of thirteen letters addressed to Adam Smith.
Essay on Political Tactics. London: T. Payne, 1791.
(1796).
An attack on the Declaration of the Rights of Man decreed by the French Revolution, and critique of the natural rights philosophy underlying it.
. Edited and translated into French by Étienne Dumont, 1802. Ed. 3 – Paris: Rey et Gravier, Libraire, 1830 – vol. 1, vol. 2 vol. 3.
. Edited and translated into French by Étienne Dumont, 1811.
Ed. 3 – Paris: Bossange Frères, Libraire, 1825 – vol. 1, vol. 2.
English ed. 1 – vol. 1 (The Rationale of Punishment), London: Robert Heward, 1830; vol. 2 (The Rationale of Reward), London: John and H. L. Hunt, 1825.
The English volumes were published in the reverse of the French language publication order.
Panopticon versus New South Wales: or, the Panopticon Penitentiary System, and the Penal Colonization System, Compared. London: Robert Baldwin and James Ridgway, 1812. The text con'tains:
Two letters to Lord Pelham, Secretary of State, Comparing the two Systems on the Ground of Expediency.
"Plea for the Constitution: Representing the Illegalities involved in the Penal Colonization System (1803, first publ. 1812)
Defence of Usury, &c. London: Payne and Foss, 1816.
Bentham wrote a series of thirteen "Letters" addressed to Adam Smith, published in 1787 as Defence of Usury. Bentham's main argument against the restriction is that "projectors" generate positive externalities. G. K. Chesterton identified Bentham's essay on usury as the very beginning of the "modern world". Bentham's arguments were very influential. "Writers of eminence" moved to abolish the restriction, and repeal was achieved in stages and fully achieved in England in 1854. There is little evidence as to Smith's reaction. He did not revise the offending passages in The Wealth of Nations (1776), but Smith made little or no substantial revisions after the third edition of 1784.
Plan of Parliamentary Reform. London: R. Hunter, 1817.
Swear Not At All (1817).
A Table of the Springs of Action. London: R. Hunter, 1817.
Church-of-Englandism and Its Catechism Examined, &c. &c. London: Effingham Wilson, printed 1817, published 1818.
The Elements of the Art of Packing, as Applied to Special Juries, Particularly in Cases of Libel Law. London: Effingham Wilson, 1821.
On the Liberty of the Press, and Public Discussion. London: William Hone, 1821.
A collection of four essays directed towards the Spanish public, written September–October 1820.
Analysis of the Influence of Temporal Happiness, of Mankind. London: R. Charlie, 1822.
Written with George Grote.
Published under the pseudonym Philip Beauchamp.
Not Paul, But Jesus. London: John Hunt, 1823.
Published under the pseudonym Gamaliel Smith.
The Book of Fallacies: From Unfinished Papers of Jeremy Bentham. Ed. 1: London: John and H. L. Hunt, 1824.
A Treatise on Judicial Evidence Extracted from the Manuscripts of Jeremy Bentham, Esq. Edited by Étienne Dumont, translated from French into English. London: Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, 1825.
Rationale of Judicial Evidence, Specially Applied to English Practice. London: Hunt and Clarke, 1827 – vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3, vol. 4, vol. 5.
. London: C. and W. Reymell for Robert Heward, 1830.
Deontology; or, the Science of Morality. Edited by John Bowring. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Browne, Greene, and Longman; Edinburgh: William Tait, 1834 – vol. 1, vol. 2.

Notes

:a Better scan available through HeinOnline .

Posthumous publications

On his death, Bentham left manuscripts amounting to an estimated 30 million words, which are now largely held by University College London's Special Collections ( manuscript folios) and the British Library ( folios). University College London also holds a collection of c.500 books either by, about, or owned by Jeremy Bentham.

Bowring (1838–1843)

John Bowring, the young radical writer who had been Bentham's intimate friend and disciple, was appointed his literary executor and charged with the task of preparing a collected edition of his works. This appeared in 11 volumes in 1838–1843. Bowring based much of his edition on previously published texts (including those of Dumont) rather than Bentham's own manuscripts, and elected not to publish Bentham's works on religion at all. The edition was described by the Edinburgh Review on first publication as "incomplete, incorrect and ill-arranged", and has since been repeatedly criticised both for its omissions and for errors of detail; while Bowring's memoir of Bentham's life included in volumes 10 and 11 was described by Sir Leslie Stephen as "one of the worst biographies in the language". Nevertheless, Bowring's remained the standard edition of most of Bentham's writings for over a century, and is still only partially superseded: it includes such interesting writings on international relations as Bentham's A Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace written 1786–89, which forms part IV of the Principles of International Law.

Stark (1952–1954)

In 1952–1954, Werner Stark published a three-volume set, Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings, in which he attempted to bring together all of Bentham's writings on economic matters, including both published and unpublished material. Although a significant achievement, the work is considered by scholars to be flawed in many points of detail, and a new edition of the economic writings (retitled Writings on Political Economy) is currently in course of publication by the Bentham Project.

Bentham Project (1968–present)

In 1959, the Bentham Committee was established under the auspices of University College London with the aim of producing a definitive edition of Bentham's writings. It set up the Bentham Project The volume Of Laws in General (1970) was found to contain many errors and has been replaced by Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence (2010) In 2017, Volumes 1–5 were re-published in open access by UCL Press.

To assist in this task, the Bentham papers at UCL are being digitised by crowdsourcing their transcription. Transcribe Bentham is a crowdsourced manuscript transcription project, run by University College London's Bentham Project,

Sources

External links

Transcribe Bentham, initiative run by the Bentham Project that has its own website with useful links.
The curious case of Jeremy Bentham at Random-Times.com
Jeremy Bentham, categorised links
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an extensive biographical reference of Bentham.
"Jeremy Bentham at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2007" A play-reading of the life and legacy of Jeremy Bentham.
Jeremy Bentham, biographical profile, including quotes and further resources, at Utilitarianism.net
Bentham Book Collection at University College London
Bentham Papers at University College London