the imprescriptible rights of man, nonsense on stilts. When the French revolutionaries made their
"Déclaration des droits de l'homme," Bentham called it "a metaphysical work--the ne plus ultra
of metaphysics." Its articles, he said, could be divided into three classes: (1) Those that are
unintelligible, (2) Those that are false, (3) Those that are both.
Bentham's ideal, like that of Epicurus, was security, not liberty. "Wars and storms are best to read
of, but peace and calms are better to endure."
His gradual evolution towards Radicalism had two sources: on the one hand, a belief in equality,
deduced from the calculus of pleasures and pains; on the other hand, an inflexible determination
to submit everything to the arbitrament of reason as he understood it. His love of equality early led
him to advocate equal division of a man's property among his children, and to oppose
testamentary freedom. In later years it led him to oppose monarchy and hereditary aristocracy, and
to advocate complete democracy, including votes for women. His refusal to believe without
rational grounds led him to reject religion, including belief in God; it made him keenly critical of
absurdities and anomalies in the law, however venerable their historical origin. He would not
excuse anything on the ground that it was traditional. From early youth he was opposed to
imperialism, whether that of the British in America, or that of other nations; he considered
colonies a folly.
It was through the influence of James Mill that Bentham was induced to take sides in practical
politics. James Mill was twenty-five years younger than Bentham, and an ardent disciple of his
doctrines, but he was also an active Radical. Bentham gave Mill a house (which had belonged to
Milton), and assisted him financially while he wrote a history of India. When this history was
finished, the East India Company gave James Mill a post, as they did afterwards to his son until
their abolition as a sequel to the Mutiny. James Mill greatly admired Condorcet and Helvétius.
Like all Radicals of that period, he believed in the omnipotence of education. He practised his
theories on his son John Stuart Mill, with results partly good, partly bad. The most important bad
result was that John Stuart could never quite shake off his influence, even when he perceived that
his father's outlook had been narrow.
James Mill, like Bentham, considered pleasure the only good and