15. DILLON: INFLUENCE OF BENTHAM 507 If time permitted, it would be easy to trace Bentham's in- fluence through other minds, and in the way here pointed out, in England and in this country,^ not only in modifica- tions and changes in specific legislation and in modes of judi- cial procedure, but Upon existing notions in respect of legal education, the necessity for and the methods of legal reform. It would be interesting, for example, to draw the parallel between Bentham and Austin, one of Bentham's most eminent disciples, and to show the partial reaction of Austin against He was never called to the bar. I may here mention what, it seems to me, is a remarkable circumstance. When Bentham was seventy-seven years of age he committed to John Stuart Mill, then about nine- teen years of age, who was without other legal training than that above mentioned, the work of editing and preparing for the press " The Ra- tionale of Evidence." Speaking of this subject. Mill in his Autobiog- raphy (chap, iii.), says: "About the end of 1824, or beginning of 1825, Mr. Bentham, having lately got back his papers on Evidence from M. Dumont (whose Traits des Preuves Judiciaires, grounded on them, was then first completed and published), resolved to have them printed in the original, and bethought himself of me as capable of preparing them for the press. I gladly undertook this task, and it occupied nearly all my leisure for about a year, exclusive of the time afterwards spent in seeing the five large volumes through the press. Mr. Bentham had be- gun this treatise three times, at considerable intervals, each time in a different manner, and each time without reference to the preceding; two of the three times he had gone over nearly the whole subject. These three masses of manuscript it was my business to condense into a sin- gle treatise, adopting the one last written as the groundwork, and in- corporating with it as much of the two others as it had not completely superseded. I had also to unroll such of Bentham's involved and paren- thetical sentences as seemed to overpass by their complexity the meas- ure of what readers were likely to take the pains to understand. It was further Mr. Bentham's particular desire that I should, from myself, endeavor to supply any lacunae which he had left; and at his instance I read, for this purpose, the most authoritative treatises on the English Law of Evidence, and commented on a few of the objectionable points of the English rules, which had escaped Bentham's notice." " My name as editor was put to the book after it was printed, at Mr. Bentham's positive desire, which I in vain attempted to persuade him to forego." " The ' Rationale of Judicial Evidence ' is one of the richest in matter of all Bentham's productions. The book contains, very fully developed, a great proportion of all his best thoughts; while among more special things it comprises the most elaborate exposure of the vices and defects of English law, as it then was, which is to be found in his works, not confined to the Law of Evidence, but including, by way of illustrative episode, the entire procedure of practice of Westminster Hall."
- The influence of Bentham in America, not only in respect of the
emendations of the Law of Evidence, but through the efforts of other men who had caught his spirit, is directly seen in the extent to which codification has been adopted. See ante Lecture IX., p. 260, note. The labors of the celebrated Edward Livingston afford another interesting illustration of Bentham's influence in this country. In the prime of his
