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Western Political Thought

Notes the accepted social minimum, thus ensuring pro-ductivity and efficiency of the economy without
being callous and heartless.
Bentham insisted that workers in the free market were to receive higher wages than those in the
industry houses, with the permission to spend freely, something that would be denied to the
indigent. The government would be restrained from providing for the indigent by making available
non-alcoholic beverages, uniform dress and any other rules which in its own judgement, were
conducive to the benefit of either a particular individual or the community at large, at whose
expense he was to be relieved.
Bentham demanded a ceiling on the price of grain during shortages, favoured protection of small
groups of producers and desired government action to control inflation. He contended that
whenever it could be proved and shown that the advantages accrued from interference outweighed
the costs, the measure should be regarded as good rather than bad. While he preferred an
interventionist state in a backward country, he was generally for private enterprise in advanced
countries. He favoured an attentive and active government, and as long as the government promoted
happiness, he did not fear the horrible hand of the government. Government interference was not
as abhorrent as its negligence. He repeatedly asserted that it was “incumbent on government to
make sure that the community pursued courses of actions conducive to the maximum well being”.
In fact, it was not until 1801 that the first elementary census data were available in England. The
second obstacle was the inertia and apathy of the British bureaucracy. The third reason was the
ambiguity of the meaning of the principle of utility. He kept expanding the phrase and redefining
its fundamental tenets. The principle of utility was rephrased as the “greatest happiness principle”,
and subsequently as the “universal self-preference principle” and “interest function prescribing
principle”:

Bentham was the first to realize the difficulties in applying the principle of utility to social
and political problems. After slogging for 10 years in trying to collect correct statistics for
the gross national income, tax revenues, and agricultural production, he realized the
complete unavailability of reliable economic and social statistics in the late eighteenth
century.

He was no longer so assured of the infallibility of his hypotheses; he was no longer so
confident of the parallel between the physical and moral sciences, Newton and Bentham.
Yet he did not give up the expectation of founding a new moral discipline, a unique
conjunction of art and science.
9.5 Notion of Liberty, Rights and Law

Bentham defined liberty as absence of restraints and coercion. Fundamental to his concept of
liberty was the idea of security linking his idea of civil and political liberty. A legislator established
a framework of security through law, within which the individual enjoyed liberty. At the level of
civil law, a legislator secured right to property, prevented interference, simplified judicial
proceedings and encouraged healthy commercial competitiveness. In the realm of criminal law, a
legislator protected the individual against crime through a system of a rational criminal code, a
strong effective police force and a judiciary. At the level of constitutional law, a legislator guaranteed
against misrule, abuse and arbitrary exercise of power.
For Bentham, the principle of utility provided the objective moral standard noticeably different
from other theories that supplied purely subjective criteria. Like Burke, he was particularly scathing

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