1776 - A Fragment of Goverment - 2. `But happily for us in this island the British Constitution has long remained, and I trust will long continue, a standing exception to the truth of this observation. For, as with us the executive power of the laws is lodged in a single person, they have all the advantages of strength and dispatch that are to be found in the most absolute monarchy: and, as the legislature of the kingdom is entrusted to three distinct powers entirely independent of each other; first, the King; secondly, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, which is an aristocratical assembly of persons selected for their piety, their birth, their wisdom, their valour, or their property; and thirdly, the House of Commons, freely chosen by the people from among themselves, which makes it a kind of democracy;
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In the members of a Democracy in particular, there is likely to be a want of wisdom Why? The greater part being poor, are, when they begin to take upon them the management of affairs, uneducated: being uneducated, they are illiterate: being illiterate, they are ignorant. Ignorant, therefore, and unwise, if that be what is meant by ignorant, they begin
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What is curious is, that the same persons who tell you (having read as much) that Democracy is a form of Government under which the supreme power is vested in all the members of a state, will also tell you (having also read as much) that the Athenian Commonwealth was a Democracy. Now the truth is, that in the Athenian Commonwealth, upon the most moderate computation, it is not one-tenth part of the inhabitants of the Athenian state that ever at a time partook of the supreme power: women, children, and slaves, being taken into the account.* Civil Lawyers, indeed, will tell you, with a grave face, that a slave is nobody; as Common Lawyers will, that a bastard is the son of nobody. But, to an unprejudiced eye, the condition of a state is the condition of all individuals, without distinction, that compose it.
Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 1. 6/8/2018. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2009#lf0872-01_label_2293
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(1843?) APPENDIX—: ON DEATH-PUNISHMENT.
JEREMY BENTHAM TO HIS FELLOW-CITIZENS OF FRANCE.
§ I.: Introduction.
Fellow-Citizens!—Hear me speak a second time!
1. Among the topics of the day§ I behold the punishment of death. Shall it be abolished?
V.—IV.: Bad property the fourth—Enhancing the evil effects of undue Pardon.
1. Throughout the civilized world, pardon is as yet upon an unapt footing: and of this inaptitude, death-punishment is the main cause. Fellow-Citizens! you look for explanation: here it follows.
2. Punishment is everywhere an evil; but everywhere a necessary one: punishment, that is to say, suffering applied purposely by public functionaries. No punishment, no government; no government, no political society.
5. In what way? you ask. I answer—in this way. Whenever monarchy has place,—a public functionary there is, in whose hands pardon-power has place; and the monarch is that functionary. How the case stands in [529] this respect under a pure aristocracy, as in Switzerland,—how, in a representative democracy, as in the Anglo-American United States,—I stay not to inquire: to the present purpose any such inquiry would be irrelevant: only that you may see they are not overlooked, is this brief mention made of those cases.
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1843 - Constitutional Code
CHAPTER XII.: Judiciary Collectively.
Section XIII.: Justice for the Helpless.
In monarchies, pure and mixed, but most of all in the mixed monarchy of England, oppression in this shape is, manifestly and undeniably, the result of design and system. In the only Representative Democracy as yet fully established, in the Anglo-American United States,—in so far as it still has place, it is the mixed result of design and negligence: design on the part of the lawyer tribe; on the part of non-lawyers, design in some, namely, the richer classes; negligence and ignorance on the part of the rest.