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Western Political Thought

Notes property, as the government had the right to interfere with property in order to ensure security.
Bentham distinguished between sudden and critical attack on property from the fixed, regular
and necessary deductions from the wealth of the people, which were needed to finance and
support the functions and services rendered by governments. He defended the need for adequate
compensation in case of a violation of the individual’s right to property. Property was neither
natural, absolute nor inviolable.
Bentham defined “right” and “duty” in the context of positive law. Unlike “right” and “duty”,
“law”, “sovereign” and “sanctions” were concrete terms, for they were tangible and could be
identified. “Right” and “duty” assumed sense only if translated into propositions about laws and
sanctions. When one talked of duty, it implied an action by the sovereign on pain of some sanction.
Talk of “right” meant the beneficiary of a “duty”, meaning that one benefited from another’s
performance of an action which was required of him by a sovereign on pain of sanction. Right and
law were correlative terms. Without a lawgiver there could be no law, no right and no duty. A
natural right was like a son who never had a father.
Bentham applied his celebrated distinction between “descriptive” and “censorial” jurisprudence,
namely what the law ought to be or whether a particular law was bad or good, to establish the
validity of moral propositions about legal rights. It made sense if one contended that an individual
ought to have a particular legal right. It became nonsensical when claimed that an individual
already had some natural right in virtue of which the legal right was called for. Moreover, there
could be no absolute claim to rights and liberties. There was need for some constraints, so, at best,
one could speak of a clearly qualified commitment to liberty, property, democracy, and so on:
In vain would it be said, that though no bounds are here assigned to any of these
rights, yet it is to be understood as taken for granted and tacitly admitted and assumed
that they are to have bounds; viz. such bounds as it is understood will be set them by
the laws. Vain, I say, would be this apology; for the supposition would be contradictory
to the express declaration of the article itself... . It would be self-contradictory, because
these rights are, in the same breath in which their existence is declared, declared to be
imprescriptable; and imprescriptable ... means nothing unless ft excludes the
interferences of the laws.
Once qualifications on rights were revealed, they undermined the initial thrust of the argument.
There was a need to mention modifications and exceptions to rights by law.
Bentham believed that without positive law human life would be intolerable, insecure, dismal and
miserable, resembling Hobbes’ stale of nature. Law ensured security, society and economy. If the
law itself was attacked, then it was likely to result in chaos and insecurity, similar to the Terror of
the 1790s. In the background of this, it was imperative that irrespective of the way a government
was established, nothing was to be done to undermine the fabric of the law. Furthermore, the
happiness of the subjects was to be always kept in mind. Both these imperatives were ignored by
the proponents of natural rights. Bentham found the natural rights argument distasteful, not
because it was non-compliant, but because it encouraged rebellion, which was associated with
anarchy, terror and insecurity—his primary concerns. He emphasized that disobedience and
revolution were two different things.
Bentham was equally critical of the notion of equality of rights, for that ignored the distinctions that
society had found useful to make. He also pointed out that the absolutism inherent in the doctrine
of natural rights was based on the Utopian presumption that government could fulfil all aspirations.
The final reason for Bentham’s indictment of natural rights was that they threatened social solidarity
and attenuated selfishness in society.
The great enemies of public peace are the selfish and the dissocial passions—necessary as they
are—the one to the very existence of each individual, the other to his security. On the part of these

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