Bentham, Modernity and the Nineteenth Century Revolution in Government

Abstract

Albert Venn ncey has described the mid-nineteenth century, especially the years from

1830 to 1865 or 1870), as "the period of Benthamism or Individualism" Citing the

judgment of Bentham's contemporaries as to his genius and influence, Dicey did not hesitate

to declare that "Bentham was primarily neither a utilitarian moralist nor a philanthropist:

he was a legal philosopher and a reformer of the law.‥· These labours[to remodel

the law of England in accordance with utilitarian principles] were crowned by extraordinary

success, though the success was most manifest after the end of Bentham's

life.""' This kind of assessment of Bentham, and definition of what is called the nineteenth

century revolution in government came under fierce fire from some professional

historians between the late 1950s and early 1970s, even though it is not difficult to find

moderate advocates for traditional views against this trend.

The immediate question was whether there was in this period a revolution in the sense

of a fundamental challenge to the established constitutional and governmental arrangements.

Some commentators argue that there was no sudden spurt of growth in public

expenditure, no rapid expansion of the function of the state. Some historians have shown

their sympathy to the conservative view in which the lack of radical discontinuities in

modem British history and the relative unimportance of industrialisation in transforming

Britain in the nineteenth century were to be emphasised But there can be little doubt that

significant qualitative reforms were accomplished about 1830. In the wake of political reforms,

government gradually took greater initiative in legislation and the apparatus of the

state started to be transformed from an arbitrary, inefficient, irrational, premodern form

of rule to a law-based, efficient, rational, modem one. Yet it is important not to exaggerate

this trend. A unitary interpretation of society or state should be avoided"'