Bentham, Jeremy

Bentham, Jeremy. Works. Edited by John Bowring. 1838-1843. Edinburgh: Tait. 11 vols.

"A considerable amount of Bentham is still worthy of study. He may be considered as the philosophic founder of modern British democracy. He held that the State exists to promote the individual happiness of the citizens who compose it and that ministers are the servants of the electors. For our purposes, the more important works are: (1) A Fragment on Government (1776), (2) Defense of Usury (1787), (3) An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789). As a Utilitarian, an Individualist, and a reformer of laws and institutions, he deserves more attention than he now receives. Bentham is, like Locke, influential, but known chiefly through the work of his pupils and disciples." - PI.

Bentham, Jeremy, Defense of Usury. 1787. Many editions. 232pp.

Jeremy Bentham whose reputation has hitherto been that of a moralist, a founder of Utilitarianism, a logician, a great political and legal philosopher and reformer, was also, it is now being discovered, an outstanding economist. Until very recent years, by far the greater part of Bentham's economic work was completely unknown - locked up in chaotic and illegible manuscripts. The Royal Economic Society commissioned Dr. W. Stark to make a closer scrutiny of this material, which in 1952 was published in three volumes under the title Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings (London: Allen and Unwin).

The Defense of Usury, however, which is included in these volumes, was published in 1787 and acquired immediate celebrity. Bentham was a great admirer of Adam Smith, whom he called "the father of political economy" and a writer of consummate genius." But he was not an uncritical admirer, and in the Defense of Usury, which he published eleven years after the appearance of The Wealth of Nations, he ventured to take the master to task for his inconsistency in approving so-called anti-usury laws while opposing government price-fixing in practically every other field.

"The Liberty of Bargaining in money matters," wrote Bentham, is "a species of liberty which has never yet found an advocate." Yet "fixing the rate of interest, being a coercive measure, and an exception to the general rule in favor of the enforcement of contracts, it lies upon the advocates of the measure to produce reasons for it." Examining the reasons that had been offered, Bentham rejected them as invalid, and proceeded to explain the positive "mischiefs" done by the anti-usury laws. He concluded that there is "no more reason for fixing the price of the use of money than the price of goods."