A lecture delivered over the remains of Jeremy Bentham, Esq / [Southwood Smith].

  • Smith, Southwood, 1788-1861.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A lecture delivered over the remains of Jeremy Bentham, Esq / [Southwood Smith]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/78 (page 16)
    tlie will of his father to the study and practice of the English law, he commenced the study, and entered on the practice. But what was the position in which he found himself placed ? What, when examined by a simple and clear understanding—what, when the practical operation of it came to he witnessed by a pure and benevolent heart—was the English law? Like every one else for ages past, he had been told that it was the perfection of human reason. According to those who taught it, according to those who prac¬ tised it, according to those who subsisted by it, according even to those who suffered by it—suffered evils countless in number and measureless in extent, it was matchless alike for the purity of its aims, and the efficiency of the means provided for their accom¬ plishment; it was a fabric reared by the most exalted intellects ; reared with incredible labour, through a long succession of ages, with a difficulty not to be estimated, yet with a skill so admirable, arid a result so felicitous, as had never before been witnessed in any work merely human. The understanding that did not bow down before it, that did not worship it with prostrate reverence, was low and base: the hand that was raised to touch so much as a single particle of it, to change it, was profane. It was the master- production of the matured, experienced, and virtuously-