conception of Chatham, as well as of the ordinary Englishman, that the two countries were 'natural enemies'—enemies by inheritance and by the inevitable force of events and circumstance. But by an irony the Plan was projected almost on the eve of the French Revolution. It would be doing wrong to Bentham to say that this world-shaking event disturbed and distorted his sense of values. But it made him most anxious and resolute that his own understanding of values should not be misunderstood and perverted by others. 'Is', 'has been', 'ought to be', 'shall be', 'can': all, he exclaimed, are put for one another; all are pressed into the same service, made to answer the same purpose. By this 'inebriating compound' the elements of men's understanding had been put in confusion, every fibre of the heart had been inflamed, the lips had been prepared for every folly, the hand for every crime. 'From imaginary laws, from laws of nature, fancied and invented by poets, rhetoricians, and dealers in moral and intellectual poisons, come imaginary rights, a bastard brood of monsters, "gorgons and chimaeras dire".' The 'anarchist' may be known by the language which he uses. 'He will be found asserting rights, and acknowledging them at the same time not to be recognized by government', using instead of 'ought and ought not, the words is or is not—can or can not. In former times, in the times of Grotius and Puffendorf, these expressions were little more than improprieties in language, prejudicial to the growth of knowledge; at present, since the French Declaration of Rights has adopted them, and the French Revolution displayed their import by a practical comment, the use of them is already a moral crime, and not undeserving of being constituted a legal crime, as hostile to the public peace'.[1] Bentham grossly misapprehended the
- ↑ 'Anarchical Fallacies', towards the end. In this work Bentham examined the Declarations of Rights issued during the French Revolution.
