a general registration of transfers of real property, may yet be adopted. To Bentham more than any other law reformer we owe the simplification of the forms of statutes, the impulse given to the work of codification, and the abolition of arbitrary rules exchiding from the cognisance of juries facts material for them to know. In a series of statutes, one of which (3 & 4 Will. IV, s. 42) was passed a year after Bentham's death, the legislation approached step bv step towards his principle that no class of witnesses should be incompetent and no species of evidence excluded, but that every fact relevant to the inquiry should be admitted for what it is worth. The criminal law in particular bears many traces of his influence. It was his good fortune to be aided by zealous disciples of great ability. Brougham, Komilly, Homer, and Mackintosh were assistants in the work of legal reform ; but the originating spirit was Bentham's.
One of his charactieristics as a reformer may be noted. His suggestions did not consist of the enunciating of abstract principles. He was rarely satisfied with solving a problem in general terms : he delighted to follow out exhaustively all the details. His work on parliamentary tactics, for example, descends to such minutiæ as the manner in which motions are to be made in the House of Commons. In his remarks on pauper management he insists that beds shall be made with Straw, and that bookkeeping by double entry shall not be used, almost as emphatically as on any of the great principles of his scheme.
In the history of ethics Bentham stands out as one of the ablest champions of utilitarianism. He was not the first to propound this as the test of morality. Paley's work was written before Bentham's 'Introduction to Principles of Morals and egislation,' and he admits that he derived the idea of utility as the touchstone of morality from Helvetius and Hume's essays. But he is original so far as expounded this theory apart from theological accessories, and drew boldly all the consequences of his theory, declaring that increase of happiness should be the sole object in view of the legislator and the moralist: that quantity and intensity being equal, one pleasure was as good as another : and that, pleasure for pleasure, 'push pin was worth as much as poetry.' Utilitarianism might not he presented today in the fashion in which Bentham described it : never has it perhaps been stated more logically.
His style was at first terse, clear, and even brilliant. Some of his earlier pages might rank with the masterpieces of Swift and Addison. But about 1810 there came a deterioration. He coined new words, often with entire disregard of the genus of the language. Some of those which he minted are useful and have got into currency; for example, 'international,' 'codify,' 'minimise.' Others were much too harsh and barbarous to be ever adopted. The diifuseness of his later writings is in sharp contrast with the conciseness of his style in 'Escheat versus Taxation.' He spares the reader nothing; every pamphlet, no matter what the subject, is preceded by a résumé of his principles as to everything. Originally simple and pure, his sentences became complex ; parenthetical matter was inserted anyhow: and he who had satirised so keenly the laboured, technical style of lawyers and legislators, as kept up for purposes of corruption, lived to exempiify the very same faults. The style of a particularly unwieldy statute of the time of George III is perhaps the nearest thing in literature to Bentham's latest manner. A graver fault is discernible. He acquired a habit of using violent language in stereotyped conventional fashion. Through many pages of his later writings on law reform runs the fallacy that legal fictions are lies and those who use them little better than liars; that a bad system must be worked by wicked men ; and that law fees must be imposed with the design of extortion. He greatly exaggerated the ease of codifying, and the specimens which we have of his own style of drafting (e.g. parts of the Constitutional Code) do not bear out his theory. He railed at English judges, such as Mansfield, for making law, when in truth their fault was that they made it too timidly. He was dogmatic, and apt to be intolerant of opinions which were remote from his own, and which he had not taken the trouble to understand : those who differed from him were classed as corruptionists, dupes, and knaves. He was, especially in later years, not sufficiently alive to the limitations of the eflicacy of laws. In his works is an essay on 'The Influence of Time and Place on Legislation' (i. 185), written in 1782; but in practice he reasoned too often as if a constitution good for Spain might, with a little change, be exported as suitable for China. In the peculiarities of the laws or customs of societies remote from those of our own time he had little interest. 'The Mirror of Justice' was to him not a valuable historical document, but merely 'one of the most trumpery books that ever was written;' and though he gave much thought to the affairs of India, there is nothing to show any curiosity as to its indigenous laws and
