JB/014/426/001

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15

Mr Bentham's Fragment on Government was published
in 1776. It produced no little sensation in the world.
The reputation of Blackstone's Commentaries was at its very height
& it was the first successful attempt to lower the reputation &
curtail the influence of that eloquent flatterer of all
English abuses - that indiscriminating worshipper of good & evil
Dr Johnson attributed the work to Dunning & Mr Bentham
confesses that he had to a great extent made Dunning style the
model of his own - having been struck by its "precision, correctness
clearness, guardedness in expression & closeness in argumentation."
Though The immediate object of the Fragment was to destroy
the foolish fable of original contract & natural right - upon
which lawyers had been long in the habit of raising the edifice
of government;-& the instrument used for the overthrow of an assumptions
so groundless was the greatest happiness principle of utility - &
with that principle in hand complete was the demolition of
the great Commentator's Theory. In the Fragment however
the language of happiness is not substituted to that of utility -
both terms are employed, as if convertible - & translated as it
were, one into the other. Beyond this primary step the
Fragment did not proceed. Neither was the word utility, - nor
the word happiness analysed into its component
elements. Pains & pleasures are not brought into view -
still less are they divided into their different species, or
classified according to their separate, or comparative value. Mr
Bentham has often said that so intimate in his own mind
was then the association between utility & happiness - that he
could scarcely fancy the ideas separated in the mind of any
man. Whatever was left undone by the Fragment it succeeded
in annihilating the "Original Contract" scheme - Mr Benthams first

Identifier: | JB/014/426/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 14.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	014	Main Headings	deontology
Folio number	426	Info in main headings field
Image	001	Titles
Category	linking material	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f15
Penner	sir john bowring	Watermarks	[[watermarks::[partial fleur de lys motif]]]
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	5189
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