BENTHAM 535 also disappointed in an attempt wlrich he made at this time to be appointed secretary of the commission sent out by Lord North to pro- pose terms to the revolted American colonies. Meanwhile his writings, though neglected at home, yet served to make him known at Paris, whence he received letters addressed to him in the character of a philosopher and reformer from D'Alembert, Moreljet, Ohastellux, Bris- sot, and others. They also gained for him the acquaintance and friendship of Lord Shel- burne, who in 1781 paid him a visit in his Lincoln's Inn garret. After much urging, Shelburne at length prevailed upon him to become a visitor at his country seat of Bo- wood. The ice once broken, Benthain be- came a frequent inmate there, and a great favorite, especially with Lady Shelburne. He was indeed more noticed by the ladies, whose musical performances he accompanied on the violin, than by Camden, Barr6, and other great men of the day whom he met there. Still this introduction to Bowood was a great thing for Bentham. It raised him, as he himself express- ed it, from the " bottomless pit of humiliation " into which he was fast sinking, and inspired him with new confidence in himself and new zeal for his favorite studies. He had also the additional excitement of falling in love. A very young lady whom he met there, whose frank simplicity was in strong contrast with the stiff- ness and prudery which was the prevailing style at Bowood, made an impression on his heart, which, though it did not result in marriage, yet lasted through life. Already before his acquaintance with Lord Shelburne he had printed part of an introduction to a penal code which he had undertaken to construct; but the unfavorable or lukewarm opinion of his un- dertaking expressed by Oamden and Dunning, to whom Shelburne had shown the sheets; and by some other friends whom he consulted, joined to his ill success in finishing the work to his mind, long kept this printed fragment un- published. In 1785 he left England on a visit to his younger brother, then employed, with the rank of colonel in the Russian army, in the service of Prince Potemkin, in an abortive scheme, of which Krikov on the Don was the seat, for introducing English methods in manu- factures and agriculture into that barbarous region. Furnished with funds by a maternal uncle, Bentham proceeded by way of Paris, his third visit thither, across the Alps to Leghorn. There he embarked in an English ship for Smyrna, and from Smyrna sailed in a Turkish vessel to Constantinople. After passing sev- eral weeks in that city, he travelled by land through Bulgaria, Wallachia, Moldavia, and the Ukraine, to his destination in White Russia. Here he spent a year and a half, living most of the time a very solitary life, occupied amid many annoyances and privations, among which was want of books, with his favorite studies. Tired out at last, in the absence of his brother, detained at Kherson by an expected attack from the Turks, he started for home by way of Poland, Germany, and Holland, and reached England in the spring of 1788. While resid- ing at Krikov he had written his " Letters on Usury," occasioned by the report that the legal rate of interest was to be lowered. He sent the manuscript to England ; his father caused It to be printed while he still remained absent, and it proved with the English public the most successful of his works. Renewing his visits to Bowood, he there met Romilly, whom he had known slightly before, and with whom he now formed an intimacy which lasted as long as Romilly lived. He now also first formed the ac- quaintance of the Swiss Dumont, who had been domesticated at Lord Shelburne's during his absence. Bentham had become so much dis- gusted at his failure to attract attention in Eng- land that he had adopted the idea of publishing in French, and had made some essays in that language. Romilly had shown some of these French sketches to Dumont, who, very much impressed by them, offered his services to cor- rect and rewrite them with a view to publica- tion. Another friend of Bentham's, with whom he had kept up a correspondence while absent in Russia, had written to him of Paley's success in applying the principle of utility to morals, and had urged him to set to work to complete some of his own treatises, or at least to publish the already printed part of his introduction to his unfinished penal code. These sheets, after lying in hand for eight years, were now at length published under the title of "An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation," but they attracted very little attention. Du- mont, however, who about this time went to Paris and became connected with Mirabeau, aided to spread Bentham's reputation, and in the Oourrier de Provence, of which he was one of the editors, gave publicity to some of his manuscripts. Meanwhile Bentham, with the idea of aiding the deliberations of the states- general, then about to meet, drew up and print- ed, but did not publish, his " Parliamentary Tactics," and with the same object in view pre- pared and printed a " Draft of a Code for the Organization of the Judicial Establishment in France ; " services which the national assembly recognized, by conferring on him the citizen- ship of France, in a decree (Aug. 23, 1792) in which his name was included with those of Priestley, Paine, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Mackin- tosh, Anacharsis Clootz, Pestalozzi, Washington, Klopstock, Kosciuszko, and several others. In this character of French citizen Bentham next year addressed to the national convention a new pamphlet, " Emancipate your Colonies," the first work which laid down the principle of ranking colonies as integral parts of the mother country. While residing at Krikov, Bentham's attention had been attracted by an architectural idea of his brother's, who was a person of great mechanical genius, though like himself given to running from one thing to another without stop- ping to finish anything. This idea was that of
