534: BENTHAM tinction. Some Latin verses of his on the ac- cession of George III. attracted considerable at- tention as the production of one so young. Into the disputations which formed a part of the college exercises he entered with much satisfac- tion ; but he never felt at home in the univer- sity, of which he retained the most unfavorable recollection. In his old age he seldom spoke either of Westminster school or Oxford but with asperity and disgust. In 1763, while not yet 16, he took his degree of A.B. Shortly after he commenced eating his commons in Lin- coln's Inn, but went back to Oxford to hear Blackstone's lectures. To these lectures he listened without the presumption, at that time, to set himself up as a critic, yet not without some occasional feelings of protest. Returning to London, he attended as a student the court of king's bench, then presided over by Lord Mansfield, of whom he continued for some years not only a great admirer, but a profound worshipper. Among the advocates, Dunning's clearness, directness, and precision most im- pressed him. He took his degree of A. M. at the age of 18, the youngest graduate, so says Dr. Southwood Smith, that had been known at either of the universities; and in 1772 he was called to the bar. Bentham's grandfather had been a Jacobite; his father, educated in the same opinions, had, like others of that party, transferred his sentiments of loyalty to the reigning family. The young Bentham had breathed from infancy, at home, at school, at college, and in the courts, an atmosphere con- servative and submissive to authority. Yet in the progress of his law studies, beginning to contrast the law as it was with law such as he conceived it might be and ought to be, lie came gradually to abandon the position of a submis- sive and admiring student, anxious only to make of the law a ladder by which to rise to wealth and eminence, for that of a sharp critic, an indignant denouncer, a would-be reformer. His father, who fondly hoped to see him lord chancellor, had some cases in nurse for him on his admission to the bar, and took every pains to push him forward. But it was all to no pur- pose. His temperament, no less than his moral and intellectual constitution, wholly disquali- fied him for success as a practising lawyer. He soon abandoned with disgust, to the infinite dis- appointment of his father, all attempts in that line. With a feeling in the highest degree dis- tressing of having failed to fulfil the great expec- tations formed of him by his friends, and enter- tained by himself, he continued for years, to borrow his own words, " to pine in solitude and penury in his Lincoln's Inn garret," living on a very narrow income, drawn partly from some legacies, and partly from a small property con- veyed to him by his father at the time of his second marriage. Still, however, he continued a diligent student and serious thinker, amusing himself with chemistry, then a new science, though mainly devoted to jurisprudence, but rather as it should be than as'it was. The writ- ings of Hume and Ilelve'tius had led him to adopt utility as the basis of morals, and espe- cially of legislation ; and already he began to write down his ideas on this subject the com- mencement of a collection of materials for and fragments of a projected but never completed code, which, for the whole remainder of his long life, furnished him with regular and almost daily employment. In the controversy be- tween Great Britain and her American col- onies, which became at this time a leading topic of public discussion, Bentham did not take any great interest. His tory education, and his idea of the law as it was, led him, un- warped, as he says, by connection or hopes, to favor the government side. In the arguments on behalf of the colonies, used on either side of the water, he saw nothing to change his mind. "The whole of the case," to borrow his own statement, " was founded on the as- sumption of natural rights, claimed without the slightest evidence of their existence, and sup- ported by vague and declamatory generalities." Had the argument been placed on the ground of the impossibility of good government at such a distance, and the benefits that would accrue to both parties from a separation grounds more in accordance with his ideas of the true basis of laws it would then have attracted his attention. As it was, ho had some hand, though small, in a book, " Review of the Acts of the 13th Parliament," published in 1776, by a friend of his, one John Lind, in defence of Lord North's policy. The next year he ventured to print a book of his own, under the title of "A Fragment on Government." He had contemplated a critical commentary on the commentaries of Blackstone, then lately published ; but in this piece he confined himself to what Blackstone says of the origin of gov- ernment. Rejecting the fiction of an original contract, suggested by Locke and adopted by Blackstone, he found government sufficiently warranted and justified by its utility ; while in place of conformity to the laws of God and nature, which appeared to him to rest too much in vague assertion and opinion, ho suggested " the greatest happiness of the greatest num- ber " as a precise and practicable test of right and wrong, both in morals and laws. This pamphlet, for it was scarcely more, appeared anonymously, and attracted at first some at- tention. It was even ascribed to Mansfield, to Camden, and to Dunning. The impatient pride of Bentham's father having led him to betray the secret of its authorship, the pub- lic curiosity, which had been aroused by the work, not in its character of a philosoph- ical treatise but of a personal attack, speed- ily subsided. A second pamphlet, published in 1778, a criticism, though on the whole a friendly one, on some amendments to the law of prison discipline, prepared in the form of a printed bill, with a preface by Mr. Eden (after- ward Lord Auckland), assisted by Blackstone, did not attract much more attention. He was
