JB/118/405/001

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14 Sept. 1812
To Ld Sidmouth

(a) Upon the Panopticon Non-Panopticon plan, of
Expence of Building and "fitting" alone, expence (as per estimate
confessedly loose)+ Mr Hardwicke to Penitentiary Supervisors 26 June 1812: date of H. of Commons Order for printing 27 June 1812, No 302. ..... £259,725

This for building

Remain expences of fitting up required furnishing this town
of which 600 separate Houses form a part: plus item also that of Stocking
whatsoever manufactories may ever be proposed to be sustained carried on
in it.

As to these expenses, Parliament remains to this hour
in the dark. And thus it is that all comparison, and
by that means all exposure, has been set at defiance.

⊞ ⊞ At random, and
for the present, setting
down the whole at
£300,000, I set
down these three items,
together with the uncertain
liquidated addition announced
as requiring
to be made to the Building
Estimate, and
the difference between
expence as per estimate
and expence
as per experience, at
no more than £40,375:
and under the
utter impossibility of
liquidation, in which
I am involved by omissions,
with none
of which I am chargeable,
I must beg
of your Lordship to
consider the figures as
remaining in some
degree afloat, and to
hold in reserve for me
the eventual faculty of submitting to your Lordship any
such supplemental information as may at any time present
itself. For the purpose for which they are hazarded, the figures
such as they are, will be sufficient, should they be found to afford a
sufficient provisional support, to the practical result here grounded on them.

The fixation of the expence, the whole mass of it together,
on whom does it depend? On a multitude of persons, of various
ranks and classes, but all agreeing on this, viz. that a usual it
is their common interest to swell it to the very highest
amount, which it is supposed that Parliament and the
public can be brought to endure.

In the first instance and on the lower ground, supplies architects and suppliers
of labour and materials, and architect all paid by a percentage
on the amount of the expence: on the upper ground, and
in official language for a check be thence upon them underlings, i.e. in effect for a to them,
Honourable Gentlemen, of men of virtue, whose
dignity is much too high, and their time by much too
valuable, to be expended on any such illiberal operation
as that of limiting narrowing and pinching the encouragement
due to elegant arts and useful manufactures.

Identifier: | JB/118/405/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 118.
Date_1	1812-09-14	Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	118	Main Headings	panopticon
Folio number	405	Info in main headings field	to ld sidmouth
Image	001	Titles	note (a)
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f14
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks	th 1806
Marginals		Paper Producer	andre morellet
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year	1806
Notes public	draft of enclosure to letter 2190, vol. 8	ID Number	39459
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