Part 32

"I rose to go, and one or two others did the same; Neal sat still. 'Ah!' said Bentham, as he drew a black silk night-cap over his spare gray hair, 'you think that's a hint to go. Not a bit of it. Sit down! I'll tell you when I am tired. I'm going to _vibrate_ a little; that assists digestion, too.'

"And with that he descended into the trench-like passage, of which I have spoken, and commenced walking briskly back and forth, his head nearly on a level with ours, as we sat. Of course we all turned toward him. For full half an hour, as he walked, did he continue to pour forth such a witty and eloquent invective against kings, priests, and their retainers, as I have seldom listened to. Then he returned to the head of the table and kept up the conversation, without flagging, till midnight ere he dismissed us.

"His parting words to me were characteristic:--'God bless you,--if there be such a being; and at all events, my young friend, take care of yourself.'"

His weak childhood had been followed by a healthy and robust old age. But he wore out at last, and died June 6, 1832, characteristically leaving his body to be dissected for the benefit of science. The greater part of his published writings were collected by Sir John Browning, his executor, and issued in nine large volumes in 1843.

OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY

From 'An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation'

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, _pain_ and _pleasure_. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think; every effort we can make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire; but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The _principle of utility_ recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.

But enough of metaphor and declamation: it is not by such means that moral science is to be improved.

The principle of utility is the foundation of the present work; it will be proper, therefore, at the outset to give an explicit and determinate account of what is meant by it. By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question; or, what is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose that happiness. I say of every action whatsoever; and therefore not only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government.

By utility is meant that property in any object whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness (all this in the present case comes to the same thing), or (what comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered: if that party be the community in general, then the happiness of the community; if a particular individual, then the happiness of that individual.

The interest of the community is one of the most general expressions that can occur in the phraseology of morals: no wonder that the meaning of it is often lost. When it has a meaning, it is this: The community is a fictitious _body_, composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting, as it were, its _members_. The interest of the community, then, is what? The sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.

It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest of the individual. A thing is said to promote the interest, or to be _for_ the interest, of an individual, when it tends to add to the sum total of his pleasures: or, what comes to the same thing, to diminish the sum total of his pains.

An action, then, may be said to be conformable to the principle of utility, or for shortness' sake to utility (meaning with respect to the community at large), when the tendency it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any it has to diminish it.

A measure of government (which is but a particular kind of action, performed by a particular person or persons) may be said to be conformable to or dictated by the principle of utility, when in like manner the tendency which it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any which it has to diminish it.

When an action, or in particular a measure of government, is supposed by a man to be conformable to the principle of utility, it may be convenient for the purposes of discourse to imagine a kind of law or dictate called a law or dictate of utility, and to speak of the action in question as being conformable to such law or dictate.

A man may be said to be a partisan of the principle of utility, when the approbation or disapprobation he annexes to any action, or to any measure, is determined by and proportioned to the tendency which he conceives it to have to augment or to diminish the happiness of the community; or in other words, to its conformity or unconformity to the laws or dictates of utility.

Of an action that is conformable to the principle of utility, one may always say either that it is one that ought to be done, or at least that it is not one that ought not to be done. One may say also that it is right it should be done, at least that it is not wrong it should be done; that it is a right action, at least that it is not a wrong action. When thus interpreted, the words _ought_, and _right_ and _wrong_, and others of that stamp, have a meaning; when otherwise, they have none.

REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD

During my visits to Barking, I used to be my grandmother's bedfellow. The dinner hour being as early as two o'clock, she had a regular supper, which was served up in her own sleeping-room; and immediately after finishing it, she went to bed. Of her supper I was not permitted to partake, nor was the privation a matter of much regret. I had what I preferred--a portion of gooseberry pie; hers was a scrag of mutton, boiled with parsley and butter. I do not remember any variety.

My amusements consisted in building houses with old cards, and sometimes playing at 'Beat the knave out of doors' with my grandmother. My time of going to bed was perhaps an hour before hers; but by way of preparation, I never failed to receive her blessing. Previous to the ceremony, I underwent a catechetical examination, of which one of the questions was, "Who were the children that were saved in the fiery furnace?" Answer, "Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego." But as the examination frequently got no farther, the word Abednego got associated in my mind with very agreeable ideas, and it ran through my ears like "Shadrach, Meshach, and To-bed-we-go," in a sort of pleasant confusion, which is not yet removed. As I grew in years, I became a fit receptacle for some of my grandmother's communications, among which the state of her family and the days of her youth were most prominent.

There hung on the wall, perpetually in view, a sampler, the produce of the industry and ingenuity of her mother or her grandmother, of which the subject-matter was the most important of all theologico-human incidents, the fall of man in Paradise. There was Adam--there was Eve--and there was the serpent. In these there was much to interest and amuse me. One thing alone puzzled me; it was the forbidden fruit. The size was enormous. It was larger than that species of the genus _Orangeum_ which goes by the name of "the forbidden fruit" in some of our West India settlements. Its size was not less than that of the outer shell of a cocoanut. All the rest of the objects were as usual in _plano_; this was in _alto_, indeed in _altissimo rilievo._ What to make of it, at a time when my mind was unable to distinguish fictions from realities, I knew not. The recollection is strong in me of the mystery it seemed to be. My grandmother promised me the sampler after her death as a legacy, and the promise was no small gratification; but the promise, with many other promises of jewels and gold coins, was productive of nothing but disappointment. Her death took place when I was at Oxford. My father went down; and without consulting me, or giving the slightest intimation of his intention, let the house, and sold to the tenant almost everything that was in it. It was doing as he was wont to do, notwithstanding his undoubted affection for me. In the same way he sold the estate he had given to me as a provision on the occasion of his second marriage. In the mass went some music-books which I had borrowed of Mrs. Browne. Not long after, she desired them to be returned. I stood before her like a defenseless culprit, conscious of my inability to make restitution; and at the same time, such was my state of mental weakness that I knew not what to say for apology or defense.

My grandmother's mother was a matron, I was told, of high respectability and corresponding piety; well-informed and strong-minded. She was distinguished, however; for while other matrons of her age and quality had seen many a ghost, she had seen but _one_. She was in this particular on a level with the learned lecturer, afterwards judge, the commentator Blackstone. But she was heretical, and her belief bordered on Unitarianism. And by the way, this subject of ghosts has been among the torments of my life. Even now, when sixty or seventy years have passed over my head since my boyhood received the impression which my grandmother gave it, though my judgment is wholly free, my imagination is not wholly so. My infirmity was not unknown to the servants. It was a permanent source of amusement to ply me with horrible phantoms in all imaginable shapes. Under the pagan dispensation, every object a man could set his eyes on had been the seat of some pleasant adventure. At Barking, in the almost solitude of which so large a portion of my life was passed, every spot that could be made by any means to answer the purpose was the abode of some spectre or group of spectres. So dexterous was the invention of those who worked upon my apprehensions, that they managed to transform a real into a fictitious being. His name was _Palethorp_; and Palethorp, in my vocabulary, was synonymous with hobgoblin. The origin of these horrors was this:--

My father's house was a short half-mile distant from the principal part of the town, from that part where was situated the mansion of the lord of the manor, Sir Crisp Gascoigne. One morning the coachman and the footman took a conjunct walk to a public-house kept by a man of the name Palethorp; they took me with them: it was before I was breeched. They called for a pot of beer; took each of them a sip, and handed the pot to me. On their requisition, I took another; and when about to depart, the amount was called for. The two servants paid their quota, and I was called on for mine. _Nemo dat quod non habet_--this maxim, to my no small vexation, I was compelled to exemplify. Mr. Palethorp, the landlord, had a visage harsh and ill-favored, and he insisted on my discharging my debt. At this very early age, without having put in for my share of the gifts of fortune, I found myself in the state of an insolvent debtor. The demand harassed me so mercilessly that I could hold out no longer: the door being open, I took to my heels; and as the way was too plain to be missed, I ran home as fast as they could carry me. The scene of the terrors of Mr. Palethorp's name and visitation, in pursuit of me, was the country-house at Barking; but neither was the town-house free from them; for in those terrors, the servants possessed an instrument by which it was in their power at any time to get rid of my presence. Level with the kitchen--level with the landing-place in which the staircase took its commencement--were the usual offices. When my company became troublesome, a sure and continually repeated means of exonerating themselves from it was for the footman to repair to the adjoining subterraneous apartments, invest his shoulders with some strong covering, and concealing his countenance, stalk in with a hollow, menacing, and inarticulate tone. Lest that should not be sufficient, the servants had, stuck by the fireplace, the portraiture of a hobgoblin, to which they had given the name of Palethorp. For some years I was in the condition of poor Dr. Priestley, on whose bodily frame another name, too awful to be mentioned, used to produce a sensation more than mental.

LETTER FROM BOWOOD TO GEORGE WILSON (1781)

SUNDAY, 12 o'clock.

Where shall I begin?--Let me see--The first place, by common right, to the ladies. The ideas I brought with me respecting the female part of this family are turned quite topsy-turvy, and unfortunately they are not yet cleared up. I had expected to find in Lady Shelburne a Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick, sister of an Earl of Ossory, whom I remember at school; instead of her, I find a lady who has for her sister a Miss Caroline V-----: is not this the maid of honor, the sister to Lady G-----? the lady who was fond of Lord C------, and of whom he was fond? and whom he quitted for an heiress and a pair of horns? Be they who they may, the one is loveliest of matrons, the other of virgins: they have both of them more than I could wish of reserve, but it is a reserve of modesty rather than of pride.

The quadrupeds, whom you know I love next, consist of a child of a year old, a tiger, a spaniel formerly attached to Lady Shelburne--at present to my Lord--besides four plebeian cats who are taken no notice of, horses, etc., and a wild boar who is sent off on a matrimonial expedition to the farm. The four first I have commenced a friendship with, especially the first of all, to whom I am body-coachman extraordinary _en titre d'office_: Henry, (for that is his name) [the present Lord Lansdowne] for such an animal, has the most thinking countenance I ever saw; being very clean, I can keep him without disgust and even with pleasure, especially after having been rewarded, as I have just now, for my attention to him, by a pair of the sweetest smiles imaginable from his mamma and aunt. As Providence hath ordered it, they both play on the harpsichord and at chess. I am flattered with the hopes of engaging with them, before long, either in war or harmony: not to-day--because, whether you know it or not, it is Sunday; I know it, having been paying my devotions--our church, the hall--our minister, a sleek young parson, the curate of the parish--our saints, a naked Mercury, an Apollo in the same dress, and a Venus de' Medicis--our congregation, the two ladies, Captain Blankett, and your humble servant, upon the carpet by the minister--below, the domestics, _superioris et inferioris ordinis_. Among the former I was concerned to see poor Mathews, the librarian, who, I could not help thinking, had as good a title to be upon the carpet as myself.

Of Lord Fitzmaurice I know nothing, but from his bust and letters: the first bespeaks him a handsome youth, the latter an ingenious one. He is not sixteen, and already he writes better than his father. He is under the care of a Mr. Jervis, a dissenting minister, who has had charge of him since he was six years old. He has never been at any public school of education. He has now for a considerable time been traveling about the kingdom, that he may know something of his own country before he goes to others, and be out of the way of adulation.

I am interrupted--adieu! _le reste à l'ordinaire prochain_.

FRAGMENT OF A LETTER TO LORD LANSDOWNE (1790)

It was using me very ill, that it was, to get upon stilts as you did, and resolve not to be angry with me, after all the pains I had taken to make you so. You have been angry, let me tell you, with people as little worth it before now; and your being so niggardly of it in my instance, may be added to the account of your injustice. I see you go upon the old Christian principle of heaping coals of fire upon people's heads, which is the highest refinement upon vengeance. I see, moreover, that according to your system of cosmogony, the difference is but accidental between the race of kings and that of the first Baron of Lixmore: that ex-lawyers come like other men from Adam, and ex-ministers from somebody who started up out of the ground before him, in some more elevated part of the country.

To lower these pretensions, it would be serving you right, if I were to tell you that I was not half so angry as I appeared to be; that, therefore, according to the countryman's rule, you have not so much the advantage over me as you may think you have: that the real object of what anger I really felt was rather the situation in which I found myself than you or anybody; but that, as none but a madman would go to quarrel with a nonentity called a situation, it was necessary for me to look out for somebody who, somehow or other, was connected with it.

JEAN-PIERRE DE BÉRANGER

(1780-1857)

BY ALCÉE FORTIER

Béranger, like Hugo, has commemorated the date of his birth, but their verses are very different. Hugo's poem is lofty in style, beginning--

"Ce siècle avait deux ans! Rome remplaçait Sparte, Déjà Napoléon perçait sous Bonaparte, Et du premier consul déjà, par maint endroit, Le front de l'empereur brisait le masque étroit."

(This century was two years old; Rome displaced Sparta, Napoleon already was visible in Bonaparte, And the narrow mask of the First Consul, in many places, Was already pierced by the forehead of the Emperor.)

Béranger's verses have less force, but are charming in their simplicity:--

"Dans ce Paris plein d'or et de misère, En l'an du Christ mil sept cent quatre-vingt, Chez un tailleur, mon pauvre et vieux grand-père, Moi, nouveau-né, sachais ce qui m'advint."

(In this Paris full of gold and misery, In the year of Christ one thousand seven hundred and eighty, At the house of a tailor, my grandfather poor and old, I, a new-born child, knew what happened to me.)

Authors of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries are more subjective in their writings than those of the seventeenth, whose characters can rarely be known from their works. A glance at the life and surroundings of Béranger will show their influence on his genius.

Béranger's mother was abandoned by her husband shortly after her marriage, and her child was born at the house of her father, the old tailor referred to in the song 'The Tailor and the Fairy.' She troubled herself little about the boy, and he was forsaken in his childhood. Béranger tells us that he does not know how he learned to read. In the beginning of the year 1789 he was sent to a school in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and there, mounted on the roof of a house, he saw the capture of the Bastille on the 14th of July. This event made a great impression on him, and may have laid the foundations of his republican principles. When he was nine and a half his father sent him to one of his sisters, an innkeeper at Péronne, that town in the north of France famous for the interview in 1468 between Louis XI. and Charles the Bold, when the fox put himself in the power of the lion, as related so vividly in 'Quentin Durward.'

Béranger's aunt was very kind to him. At Péronne he went to a free primary school founded by Ballue de Bellenglise, where the students governed themselves, electing their mayor, their judges, and their justices of the peace. Béranger was president of a republican club of boys, and was called upon several times to address members of the Convention who passed through Péronne. His aunt was an ardent republican, and he was deeply moved by the invasion of France in 1792. He heard with delight of the capture of Toulon in 1793 and of Bonaparte's exploits, conceiving a great admiration for the extraordinary man who was just beginning his military career. At the age of fifteen Béranger returned to Paris, where his father had established a kind of banking house. The boy had previously followed different trades, and had been for two years with a publishing house as a printer's apprentice. There he learned spelling and the rules of French prosody. He began to write verse when he was twelve or thirteen, but he had a strange idea of prosody. In order to get lines of the same length he wrote his words between two parallel lines traced from the top to the bottom of the page. His system of versification seemed to be correct when applied to the Alexandrine verse of Racine; but when he saw the fables of La Fontaine, in which the lines are very irregular, he began to distrust his prosody.

Béranger became a skillful financier, and was very useful to his father in his business. When the banker failed the young man was thrown into great distress. He now had ample opportunity to become familiar with the garret, of which he has sung so well. In 1804 he applied for help to Lucien Bonaparte, and received from Napoleon's brother his own fee as member of the Institute. He obtained shortly afterwards a position in a bureau of the University. Having a weak constitution and defective sight, he avoided the conscription. He was however all his life a true patriot, with republican instincts; and he says that he never liked Voltaire, because that celebrated writer unjustly preferred foreigners and vilified Joan of Arc, "the true patriotic divinity, who from my childhood was the object of my worship." He had approved of the eighteenth of Brumaire: for "my soul," says he, "has always vibrated with that of the people as when I was nineteen years old;" and the great majority of the French people in 1799 wished to see Bonaparte assume power and govern with a firm hand. In 1813 Béranger wrote 'The King of Yvetot,' a pleasing and amusing satire on Napoleon's reign. What a contrast between the despotic emperor and ruthless warrior, and the simple king whose crown is a nightcap and whose chief delight is his bottle of wine! The song circulated widely in manuscript form, and the author soon became popular. He made the acquaintance of Désaugiers and became a member of the Caveau. Concerning this joyous literary society M. Anatole France says, in his 'Vie Littéraire,' that the first Caveau was founded in 1729 by Gallet, Piron, Crébillon _fils_, Collé, and Panard. They used to meet at Laudelle the tavern-keeper's. The second Caveau was inaugurated in 1759 by Marmontel, Suard, Lanoue, and Brissy, and lasted until the Revolution. In 1806 Armand Gouffé and Capelle established the modern Caveau, of which Désaugiers was president. The members met at Balaine's restaurant. In 1834 the society was reorganized at Champlanc's restaurant. The members wrote and published songs and sang them after dinner. "The Caveau," says M. France, "is the French Academy of song," and as such has some dignity. The same is true of the Lice, while the Chat Noir is most _fin de siècle_.