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Had we been here 200 years ago, on the 12th of October 1804, we would have been standing in Queen Square, as Queen Anne's Gate was then called, and we would have seen a narrow passage leading away from where we are standing. At the end of that passage would have been the two houses which constituted Queen Square Place, and the larger of the houses would have belonged to Jeremy Bentham.
We might have tried to gain admittance to Mr Bentham's house. We might not have been successful in our attempt, for many who would have liked to have met him, did not enjoy the privilege. For instance, Madame de Stael, who once said that the two most important men of the age were Napoleon and Bentham, was refused an audience with Bentham-she presumably reassessed her view of Bentham as a consequence of what she considered to be a snub. Simon Bolivar, the Liberator of South America, only got as far as Bentham's garden. The garden, however, was no doubt worth seeing, given Bentham's lifelong interest in botany, and the trade in exotic seeds in which he engaged. It was also an enormous garden, for the greater part of what is now the site of the Home Office was the site of Bentham's house and garden.
Bentham very much revelled in his reclusiveness. He called himself the Hermit of Queen Square Place. Indeed, on the day after our imagined visit, he wrote to his brother: 'I see scarce any body than I can help seeing, yet when I do, it is with good humour, chattering freely upon all sorts of subjects'. Assuming we did gain entry into his house, we would probably have found Bentham in his study, working on the subject of judicial evidence, which would, twenty years and more hence, be edited by John Stuart Mill, and appear as Rationale of Judicial Evidence.
Many people did, of course, gain entrance, and a procession of statesmen, politicians (including at least two Home Secretaries), lawyers, and intellectuals made that same journey down the narrow passage as we have just imagined ourselves to do, unless they knew about the entrance to Bentham's garden and house which passed through a gate on Bird Cage Walk. Visitors to his house included Henry Brougham, the Lord Chancellor and law reformer, Francis Burdett, the radical MP for Westminster, Francis Place, the radical tailor of Charing Cross, Samuel Romilly, the law reformer, not to mention Bernardino Rivadavia, later the first President of the Argentine Republic, Prince Adam Czartoryski, Russian statesman and Polish patriot, and John Quincy Adams, later President of the United States of America.
The Hermit of Queen Square Place Bentham might have been, but he also described himself as 'a citizen of the world'. He was very proud of the fact that José del Valle, the Guatemalan statesman, addressed him as 'legislator of the world'.
But why did such a recluse enjoy such a world-wide reputation?
Bentham was the founder of the doctrine of utilitarianism-by his insistence that actions be judged by their consequences in terms of happiness, he did more than anyone perhaps to lay the foundations for a tolerant, equitable, rational, and secular society.
Here lies a further link with organizations such as the Home Office-he was the first theorist of bureaucracy, and in his magisterial Constitutional Code laid down detailed principles for the construction of a government administration, characterized by the injunction to maximize official aptitude and minimize expense. These were the two main ends of government. Public examination and public accountability lay at the centre of Bentham's thinking-and these principles applied to ministers just as much as they did to any other official.
Bentham altered the course of British politics with his utilitarian justification of democracy, summed up in his principle that everyone is to count for one, and no one for more than one.
In economics, cost-benefit analysis can be seen to have its origin in Bentham's utilitarian methodology.
Bentham is the father of modern jurisprudence, having been the first to define clearly the main issues which legal philosophers are still debating today.
Bentham is the inventor of the modern concept of surveillance. He provides a plausible justification of identity cards should anyone be in need of such a justification by linking security with civil liberty, and thereby showing the fallacy of the arguments of those who claim that civil liberties are necessarily infringed by an increase in regulation.
Bentham would, however, be disappointed with the current emphasis on human rights in our political and legal discourse. He would probably see it, as he did many things, as a stratagem employed by lawyers to increase their earning potential. Bentham developed a profound critique of such rights, albeit in the guise of natural rights, in the process of which he coined the memorable saying that talk of natural rights is simple nonsense, while talk of natural and imprescriptible rights is nonsense upon stilts.
Bentham still has much of relevance and importance to say to us, beyond his obvious historical importance. However, there is no complete and accurate edition of his works. Hence the Bentham Project has been established in order to produce an authoritative edition of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. Twenty-five volumes have been published to date, and there will be sixty-eight or so altogether. With good progress currently being made thanks to the support of University College London and of other funding bodies-the Economic and Social Research Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Board, the Wellcome Trust, and the British Academy when complete the edition will be a monument to scholarship.
Professor Brian Barry, the eminent political theorist, once said that if Bentham had been French or German, an edition of his works would have been fully funded and completed long ago. It was, however, Bentham's misfortune to be British, to be English, to be a Cockney even, and we perhaps do not cherish as we should our great intellectual tradition.
At least today's unveiling of this plaque to Bentham goes some way towards recognizing Bentham, and on behalf of the Bentham Project I would like to thank Westminster City Council, the Home Office, and University College London, for responding with such enthusiasm and goodwill to our suggestion that the plaque be erected. Apart from providing a new tourist attraction for the thousands of Benthamites who visit London each year, it considerably enhances the appearance of this wall-and therefore certainly contributes to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.