Page 164 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Western Political Thought

Notes The nine points were as follows:
1. The punishment must be great enough to outweigh the profit of the offence to the offender.
2. The greater the mischief of the offence, the greater the punishment should be.
3. and (4) are corollaries of (2).
5. Punishment should never be greater than the least amount required to make it effective.
6. The sensibility of the offender must always be taken into account.
7. The more uncertain it was that the offender would suffer it, the greater the punishment should
be.
8. The more distant it was, the greater it should be.
9. If the offence was of a kind likely to be habitual with the offender, the punishment should be
increased to outweigh the profit not only of the immediate offence but also of the other offences
probably committed with impunity.
Bentham’s concern to define punishment as precisely as possible, to establish a definite ratio
between the degree of punishment and the magnitude of the crime, emanated from the hope of
confining pain as narrowly as possible by making it more objective.
Bentham’s defence of the principles of utility led him to plead a case for democracy, manhood,
and later on universal suffrage, including female enfranchisement. Suffrage and democracy were
crucial for the realization of the greatest happiness principle. In his Plan for Parliamentary Reform,
he contended that community interest would emerge the moment the government took cognizance
of the people, for they would not wish to be governed badly, nor would they desire a sacrifice of
universal interest for something narrow and sectarian.
It was for this reason that Bentham supported universal suffrage, for it not only safeguarded
people’s interests, but also checked governmental abuse of that interest. Universal suffrage would
make governments more accountable and less whimsical. As a result, he drafted a complete
scheme of parliamentary democracy in his Constitutional Code, pleading for secret ballot, delineating
a scheme for elementary, secondary and technical public education, and rejecting plural voting.
He was convinced that a good government was possible only by what he called the “democratic
ascendancy”. He recognized that misrule in England was due to many reasons, including defects
in the electoral system. He was equally concerned with the need to explore and combat methods
by which the “subject many” were not dominated by the “ruling few”. In Church and Englandism,
he attacked the established church as a close ally of the political elite, for it taught intellectual
submissiveness among its followers.
From 1809 to 1823, Bentham devoted his time and energies to weeding out religious beliefs and
practices, and eventually religion from the minds of individuals. He was an atheist and a denouncer
of organized religion. He subjected religious doctrines, rituals and practices to the test of utility,
and found them inadequate, reconfirming his atheism and his desire to build a rational society
according to secular notions. He confidently and out rightly denied the truth of religion, of the
existence of an-immortal soul, of a future life and of the existence of God. Here, he was influenced
by his radical friend Francis Place (1771-1854). He had immense faith and confidence in the power
of reason to tell us what was, and what was to be expected. In this, he was influenced by the
thinkers of the French Enlightenment (Voltaire, Helvetius and Paul Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach
(1723-1789)), and like them, believed that in order to recreate it was necessary to destroy. His
hatred for religion, like Voltaire, increased with the passage of time. He was anti-clergy and
disagreed with religion as an instrument of moral improvement. Like Holbach, he regarded religion
as a source of human misery.
Bentham sought to use the institutions of conventional religion to serve secular ends and public
service. He advocated that the clergy could serve as disseminators regarding job vacancies, or

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