Plan of Parliamentary Reform, in the Form of a Catechism, with Reasons for Each Article: With an Introduction, Shewing the Necessity of Radical, and the Inadequacy of Moderate Reform

Jeremy Bentham

2001-01 · The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

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Bentham, Jeremy. Plan of Parliamentary Reform, in the Form of a Catechism, with Reasons for Each Article. With an Introduction, Shewing the Necessity of Radical, and the Inadequacy of Moderate, Reform. London: T.J. Wooler, 1818. 156 pp. Reprinted 2002 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 00-058816. ISBN 1-58477-121-6. Cloth. $75. * The legendary law reformer points his pen directly at the British class system as it is manifested in the Parliament and its processes, calls for expansive democratic reform in the form of "democratical ascendancy," (15) and praises the United States Constitution. After the publication of this volume in 1818, his plea for universal suffrage was criticized by the Edinburgh Review for the expectation that it would lead to attacks on property. See Holdsworth, History of English Law XIII:104, 251.

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Jeremy Bentham was born in London, on February 15, 1748, the son of an attorney. He was admitted to Queen's College, Oxford, at age 12 and graduated in 1763. He had his master's degree by 1766 and passed the bar exam in 1769. An English reformer and political philosopher, Bentham spent his life supporting countless social and political reform measures and trying as well to create a science of human behavior. He advocated a utopian welfare state and designed model cities, prisons, schools, and so on, to achieve that goal. He defined his goal as the objective study and measurement of passions and feelings, pleasures and pains, will and action. The principle of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," set forth in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, governed all of his schemes for the improvement of society, and the philosophy he devised, called utilitarianism, set a model for all subsequent reforms based on scientific principles. Bentham also spoke about complete equality between the sexes, law reform, separation of church and state, the abolition of slavery, and animal rights. Bentham died on June 6, 1832, at the age of 84 at his residence in Queen Square Place in Westminster, London. He had continued to write up to a month before his death, and had made careful preparations for the dissection of his body after death and its preservation as an auto-icon.