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Unit 9: Jeremy Bentham

compile statistics to aid endeavours at poor relief. The church could be used as a bank for the poor Notes
after the Sunday services. The clergy could become moral instructors in the panopticon. He believed
that people had a right by law to leave their bodies for dissection.
In a secular utilitarian society, there would be no God and no idea of an immortal soul. There
would be no supernatural sanction for morality. A good deed would be remembered for one’s
family and commemorated by one’s fellow citizens. Instead of religious rewards and punishments,
there would be verdict by future generations, renewable every century in the case of great men.

9.3 The Modern State

Bentham regarded the notion of a modern state as an ideal, an aspiration, and examined the
techniques of state building and methods that would promote modernization. He regarded diversity
and fragility within political order as inevitable. For Bentham, the state was a legal entity with
individualism as its ethical basis. He was categorical that modernization required two things: first,
it needed a broad-based and diversified legal system which would take into account individuals’
desires; and second, institutions that would support the legal system, namely bureaucratization of
public service and legislation as a continual process, accommodating both change and diversity.
Bentham characterized the state as a legal entity, with individualism as its ethical basis. “Bentham’s
theory brought together in a particular way the two great themes of modern political thought:
individualism and the modern sovereign state”.
Bentham preserved the individualist notion of moral autonomy, with priority to individual interests.
He also recognized that these autonomous individuals, governed by their interests, constituted
themselves into fragile groupings which the state had to maintain through discipline and cohesion,
if it had to be an effective body. Through institutions and other techniques, the community was
made responsive to the state, but the state was not allowed to trample on individual interests and
wills. It would have to protect them by getting the individuals involved in the state through
consent, or by representing them as masters and judges of the state’s actions. Bentham thought of
ideas and devices to guarantee governmental protection of individual interests, namely that public
happiness should be the object of public policy, government was a trust (as it was in the case of
Locke), with legislation as the primary function, and that uniformity, clarity, order and consistency
were essential to both law and order. He was equally conscious of the need for institutional
safeguards to ensure that the government pursued public interest. He contended that the reason
for misrule was that the government was controlled by those whose interests it was to perpetuate
bad governance. This could be changed if people who desired good government were made to
take charge.
Bentham was confident that representation would ensure congruence between the interests of the
government and those of the community as a whole. It was for this reason that he championed
universal adult franchise, and as early as 1790 recommended it to all those who could read the list
of voters. His association with James Mill, whom he met in 1809, reinforced his intrinsic faith in
democracy.
As opposed to natural rights and natural law, Bentham recognized legal laws and rights that were
enacted and enforced by a duly constituted political authority or the state. A state was sovereign,
being primarily a law making body. He defined the state or political society as:
a number of persons (whom we may style subjects) are supposed to be in the habit of
paying obedience to a person, or an assemblage of, persons, of a known and certain
description (whom we may call governor or governors) such persons altogether (subjects
and governed) are said to be in a state of political society.
Bentham defined law as the command of the sovereign. He considered the powers of the sovereign
as indivisible, unlimited, inalienable and permanent. His views on sovereignty were reiterated

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