Jeremy Bentham : his life and work

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Chapter I

Bentham's birth and parentage — His relations with his father : the doctrine of "push" — Physical weakness as a child — Pleasures and pursuits — Early education — Westminster School — Residence at Oxford — Entry at Lincoln's Inn — Attends Dr. Blackstone's Lectures — Visit to Yewhurst — M.A. at eighteen — The "Greatest Happiness" principle — Second marriage of his father . . pages I -2 1

CHAPTER 11

Bentham's distaste for the legal profession — His relish for reform — Abandonment of active practice at the Bar — Life in chambers — Earlier and later styles compared — The principle of "utility" — His friends, George Wilson and John Lind — Translation of Le Taureau Blanc — Publication of The Fragvient on Government — The Theory of Punishments — View of the Hard Labour Bill — Preparation of a Penal Code — Reception of Fragment on Government : speculations _ as to its authorship — Wedderburn and Dunning — Introduction to Lord Shelburne ..... 22-44

Chapter III

Arrival at Bowood — Relations with Lord Shelburne — Attachment to the Hon. Caroline Fox — Visit to Wilton — Guests at Bowood : Chatham, Pitt, Camden, Dunning — Miss (afterwards Lady Elizabeth) Pratt — Mrs. Dunning (afterwards Lady Ashburton) . 45-57

Appendix To Chapter III. Extracts From Historical Preface To "a Fragment On Government"

Alexander Wedderburn (Earl of Rosslyn) — Lord Mansfield — Lord Camden — ^John Dunning (Lord Ashburton) — Colonel Barr^ — Blackstone's reception of The Fragment — Blackstone and the Penitentiary System ...... 58-73 viii CONTENTS

Chapter IV Residence In Russia And Relations With Dumont (1782-89)

Shelburne becomes Prime Minister— Preparations for visit to Russia —Departure for Russia— Arrival at Crichoff- 7"/^^ Dejeiue of Usury 1 — Conception_oflhePaa04Jticon Scheme— Its promotion and ultimate failure-^^^^Paiey's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy — Bentham's return to England— Bentham and George III.— His friendship with Romilly and Dumont — Relations with Dumont — Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation pages 74-94

Chapter V

Dawn of the Revolution — Death of Lady Lansdowne — Essay on Political Tactics — Code for the Organisation of the Jiidicial Establishment in France — Bentham becomes a French citizen — His attitude towards the Jacobins — The tract Eviancipate your Colonies — Treatise on Anarchical Fallcuies — Proposal to Wilberforce of a mission to Paris — Life on a farm near Hendon — His desire to enter Parliament : correspondence with Lord Lansdowne — His last visit to Bowood — Sir Reginald Pole-Carew — Death of Bentham's father — Estrangement from Lord Lansdowne : its cause suggested . . 9S-125

CHAPTER VI FIFTEEN years' WORK ON LEGAL REFORM (1793-1808)

The Panopticon Scheme — Writings on Law Reform — Truth v. Ashhurst — Protest against Law Taxes — Supply without Burden — The Poor Laws — Observations on Pitt's Bill — Pauper Management — Proposals in Annals of Agriculture — Plan for Conversion of Stock into Note Annuities, etc. — Dumont's Traitis de Legislation — Principles of Punishment — Lex Talionis — Nature and extent of Punishments — Reformative influences — Cruelty to animals — Success of the Traitis — Review in Ediriburgh — Effect of Bentham's writings in Russia, Spain, etc. — Death of Lord Lansdowne — Scotch Law Reform — Bentham's influence on Romilly — Acquaintance with James Mill — Residence at Barrow Green . . . . 126-155

CONTENTS ix

Chapter VII Bentham Becomes A Politician (1808-18)

Influence of James Mill — Elements of the Art of Packing Juries — Catechism of Parliamentary Reform — William Cobbett — Major Cartwright — Tenancy of Ford Abbey — Relations between Bentham and James Mill — Writings on Political Economy — Chrestomathia — Swear not at a//— Plan of Reform by Bentham and Burdett — Burdett's motion in Parliament — Westminster election — Death of Romilly ..... pages 156-179

Chapter VIII

Life at "The Hermitage" — Lord Brougham — Book of Fallacies — Guests at "The Hermitage" — Sir John Bowring — The Westminster Review — Official Aptitude Maximised : Expense Minimised — Lord Eldon — Radical Reform £ill—Fx&s Trade — Bentham's politics — Daniel O'Connell — Codification — Codification Proposal — Petitions ioxCodification^xAJustice — Duke of Wellington — The Constitutional Code — Visit to Paris — Prince Talleyrand — Death of Bentham — Characteristics — Theological views . . . 180-2 1 1

Chapter IX

The " Benthamites "—Axiom of "utility"— Application of "Greatest Happiness '' principle : its nature and limitations — Table of Springs of Action — Bentham's disqualifications as a writer — Operation of the "Sanctions" — Exposure of Legal Abuses — Suggestions for legislation — Rationale of Evidence — Necessity for legal reform — Reform of Criminal Procedure — The evidence of accused persons — Wrongful convictions — Bankruptcy, insolvency, and imprisonment for debt — Bentham's theory of government . . . 212-237

Preface

SIR JOHN BOWRING'S valuable but incomplete edition of Bentham's works contains some five thousand five hundred pages, closely printed in double columns. The diffuse Memoirs collected in the tenth and eleventh volumes cover, in addition, nearly eight hundred pages. By the reforms of the last seventy years several treatises have been deprived of the interest originally attached to them, while others are written in the involved and difficult style affected by Bentham in the later years of his life.

In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the volumes so laboriously compiled by Bowring are rarely taken down from the shelves of our public libraries. Yet a great part of the collection is of deep and lasting interest ; and throughout every volume there are scattered countless passages which admirers of Bentham's genius would not willingly let die.

This sketch of his life and work has been published in the hope that it may induce some readers to seek a closer acquaintance with his writings.

The sources to which the writer is indebted for the materials of this book are acknowledged by references xii PREFACE

in the footnotes ; and it will be seen that he is under special obligation to the works of M. Elie Halevy, Sir Leslie Stephen, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice and Mr. Graham Wallas. In the case of some brief citations from Bowring's Memoirs it has not been thought necessary to indicate the precise reference.

C. M. A.

Chapter I Boyhood And Early Years

BENTHAM'S ancestors had been, for three generations at any rate, substantial London citizens of credit and renown. The great-grandfather was a prosperous pawnbroker of the time of Charles II.; the grandfather, a flourishing attorney in the early years of the eighteenth century — " neither better nor worse," as his grandson said, " than the average rate of attorneys," who in those days were but "little thought of." Jeremiah Bentham, the father, clerk to the Worshipful Company of Scriveners, and himself a scrivener, had, by the acquisition of freehold land and leases, added largely to an already considerable patrimony. Bentham, in after years, was fond of narrating how his father used to take him, when a boy at Westminster School, to the Rainbow coffee-house, where "the quality of the Scriveners' Company mustered." More than once the child was allowed to be present on the occasion of the great annual festival, which was, it seems, usually preceded by a small but choice banquet for the entertainment of a select coterie : " Under the plea of

B catering for the many at the great dinner, the privileged few, among whom my father was, always managed to get for themselves an initiatory — a little dinner; and the Scriveners' Company paid for both. I remember when they got to turtle dinners ; and the next step was to send home turtle to their wives."

Bentham's grandparents had resolved that their son should marry a young lady of their acquaintance with the comfortable jointure of some .£'10,000 ; but, much to their chagrin, the young man, at the age of thirty, fell deeply in love with one Alicia Grove, whom he had met accidentally at Buckholt Acres, a place of entertainment in or near Epping Forest. Miss Grove's father was a prosperous tradesman of Andover, and appears to have been a man of gentle birth. On his death, his widow sold the business and withdrew, with the rest of the family, to a pleasant country residence near Reading, known as Browning Hill. The Benthams, however, persisted in regarding the connection as a mesalliance, and Jeremy's paternal grandmother always spoke to him of his parents' marriage as a sad mistake.

The marriage took place in the autumn of 1744, and, on the 15th of February, 1748 (new style), a son was born in Red Lion Street, Houndsditch, a quarter of the town at that time still frequented by the professional classes. The boy was called Jeremy after the name of his father, though in a slightly curtailed form, on the double ground that it was shorter and, moreover, manifested a preference for the nomenclature of the New Testament over that of the Old. A second son, Samuel, who afterwards became a prominent official in the Russian service, was born some

BOYHOOD AND EARLY DAYS 3

nine years later. Recognised as an able and ingenious man, Samuel acquired considerable distinction in this country as a naval architect and inventor of mechanical contrivances. He was knighted and died in 1831, the year before the death of his elder brother.^

The father of these boys was an active, kindly man, capable in the conduct of affairs, and in many respects a thoughtful and affectionate parent. But, being vain and inordinately ambitious, Jeremiah Bentham utterly failed to comprehend the sensitive, retiring character of his son Jeremy, who valued intellectual treasures only. " Never," says Dr., afterwards Sir John, Bowring,^ " were two natures more unlike. The consequence was that Bentham never opened his heart to his father. He could not even communicate to him his sorrows." In old age the son, naturally of a happy, gay, and even jovial disposition, was wont to declare that this want of sympathy had resulted in the memories of his boyhood being overshadowed by many a gloomy thought and painful association.

Intensely proud of the child's mental powers, which were conspicuous from earliest infancy, the elder Bentham was for ever urging Jeremy to press towards the goal of worldly fame. He entirely failed to perceive that his son was born to be something better and nobler than a successful schemer for preferment in Church or State.

" While my father lived, from my birth to his death,

^ Sir Samuel's son, George Bentham (1800-1884), was a botanist of repute ; he published at Paris, in 1823, French translations of some of his uncle's works, and, also, wrote a notable book on Logic.

^ Bentham's biographer (i 792-1 872); knighted 1854.

I never gave him any ground to complain of me. Often and often have I heard from him spontaneous and heartfelt assurances of the contrary. My conduct may, indeed, have sometimes been a cause of regret and dissatisfaction to him ; but on what ground ? My ' weakness and imprudence ' in keeping wrapt up in a napkin the talents which it had pleased God to confer on me — in rendering useless, as he averred, my powers of raising myself to the pinnacle of prosperity. The seals were mine, would I but muster up confidence and resolution enough to seize them. He was continually telling me that everything was to be done by ' pushing ' ; but all his arguments failed to prevail on me to assume the requisite energy. 'Pushing,' would he repeat — 'pushing' was the one thing needful; but 'pushing' was not congenial to my character."

Another counsellor (whose name is not recorded) urged him to the like effect, though, happily, with no greater success : " If you mean to rise, catch hold of the skirts of those who are above you, and care nothing for those who are beneath you." Bentham at all times turned a deaf ear to the plausible doctrine of " push,'' and would have none of this advice ; but the friend who gave it, says Dr. Bowring, caught hold of the skirts of an archbishop and became a judge. " O God, my God ! " cried St. Augustine, " what misery did I then endure, what deception ! For it was held up to me, as the whole duty of a boy, to obey those who exhorted me to get on in the world, and make a name in wordy arts, which minister to the glory of man and deceitful

riches. i Confessions, Dr. Bigg's edition, at p. 45.

It was a saying of Bentham's that his family had been distinguished by virtues on the female side ; and certainly all that we know of Alicia Grove — the cause of Jeremiah Bentham's matrimonial "mistake" — reveals her as a most loving, gentle creature, and devoted mother. Her husband, in his own phrase, lived with her "in a constant and uninterrupted state of nuptial happiness," while her sons entertained for her an abounding affection. Let her speak for herself In August, 1749, when "Jerry" was eighteen months old, she writes home from Andover, whither she had gone on a visit : —

" I try to divest myself of all uneasy cares, and think of nothing at home but the joys I left behind — my sweet little boy and his still dearer papa ; though there are little anxious fears about death and fever, and too great a hurry and perhaps vexations in business, which may overpower the spirits, and I not present to bear my part, and soothe those cares ; which I flatter myself would be in my power, were it only from my desire of doing it. Shall you see the dear little creature again ? I dreamed he had been like to have been choked with a plum-stone. Surely nurse will not trust him with damsons. God preserve him from all evil accidents ! "

To the tender care of this good woman who, unhappily, died just before he reached the age of eleven years, Bentham owed much, and he was ever ready to make grateful acknowledgment of the debt. Sorely did the child stand in need of a mother's fostering care. Slight and delicate of frame, he was, in stature, almost a dwarf, and so remained until, at sixteen years of age, he grew ahead. He afterwards described himself as having been "the feeblest of all feeble boys"; and used to relate how, when, as a tiny creature of seven, an attempt was made to teach him to dance, he proved to be so weak that he could not support himself upon tiptoes. " One Mr. Harris, a Quaker, offended me not a little by asking me whither my calves were gone a-grazing."

At the age of seventy-eight he pronounced himself to be stronger than he had ever been at any previous period of his life. Even in his Oxford days, a certain Goodyear St, John, " a drunken fellow who became a parson," by way of providing diversion for the company, would hold him up by the heels. " He used to take me by the heels and hold me, my head downwards ; and I remember," the narrator characteristically added, " losing half a guinea in consequence, which fell out of my pocket."

The child did not suffer merely from physical weakness : he was nervous and sensitive to a painful degree. As an evidence of the acuteness of his sensibilities, he would often, when an old man, recall the fact that his earliest recollection was the pain of sympathy. It was on the occasion of some unusual feasting in the family house at Barking ; he was still a mere baby unable to walk alone, and had been supplied by his nurse to satiety. Afterwards his grandfather came in and offered something more, of which the child partook : " thereupon came my mother smiling ; she came with her natural claims upon my affections — but it was out of my power to accept her intended kindness ; and I burst into tears, seeing the chagrin and disappointment which it cost her ! "

The subject of ghosts, he declared, had always been among the torments of his life. In his boyhood it was a permanent source of amusement for the servants to ply him with horrible phantasms : every spot that could be made to answer the purpose was the abode of some spectre or another ; and, seventy years afterwards, he still retained impressions created by the tricks then played upon a nervous susceptibility. " Though my judgment is wholly free," the old man would say of his ghostly fears, " my imagination is not wholly so."

Nothing gave the boy so much pleasure as the country delights of Browning Hill and Barking, where he spent a great deal of time with his two grandmothers. " At Browning Hill everybody and everything had a charm. . . . We had a garden and an orchard, bountifully productive ; a large extent of stabling and out-houses ; venerable elms scattered here and there offered ornament and shade ; the access to the estate was over a pleasant green studded with cottages."

Hazlitt asserted that Bentham had " a great contempt for out-of-door prospects, for green fields and trees" — a curiously inaccurate statement. M. Halevy suggests that Hazlitt, in this respect, confused Bentham with James Mill ; and, indeed, Bentham's sense of enjoyment of country scenes was always most acute. To use his own phrase, he was ever " passionately fond " of flowers. " So long as I retained my sense of smell," he exclaimed shortly before his death, " a wallflower was a memento of Barking, and brought youth to my mind."

For boyish amusements of the ordinary type he was entirely unfitted, alike by physical infirmity and natural disinclination ; companions of his own age he had none. Referring to a later period, presumably his life at Oxford, he said, " I was a member of a cricket club, of which Historian Mitford was the hero. I was a dwarf, and too weak to enjoy it." ^ Fishing he declared to be an abominable sport, waste of time associated with cruelty : " yet I fished ; I wanted new ideas and new excitements." He had, however, neither the skill nor the strength to practise fly-fishing ; and, as for shooting, although he went out once or twice with the ostensible object of destroying partridges, he disliked the pursuit, complained that the flash of the gunpowder hurt his eyes, and, thereafter, excused himself from joining in the sport, which probably had, on other grounds, become distasteful to him, for he ever shrank from the sight of animal suffering. " To my apprehension," wrote he, '' every act by which, without prospect of preponderant good, pain is knowingly and willingly produced in any being whatsoever, is an act of cruelty ; and like other bad habits, the more the correspondent habit is indulged in, the stronger it grows, and the more frequently productive of bad fruits." ^

The rapid and remarkable growth of the boy's mental powers afforded a striking contrast to his tardy physical development. His father was for ever "bragging" of Bentham's accomplishments : " He was always talking to me and to others of my powers." His father's friends used to call the child " Philosopher " when he

' William Mitford (1744-1827), brother of the first Baron Redesdale, and a contemporary of Bentham at Queen's College, Oxford. His History of Greece began to appear in 1 784.

^ Letter to Morning Chronicle, 4th March, 1825 ; Bowring, x. p. 550.

was only five years of age ; and no biographical notice of Jeremy omits the story of his escaping one day from the company of his elders to scamper home and call for a huge folio of Rapin's History of England. " This," he said, "occurred before I was breeched, and I was breeched at three years and a quarter old. . . . The tale was often told in my presence of the boy in petticoats, who had come in and rung the bell, and given orders to the footman to mount the desk upon the table, place the folio upon the desk, and provide candles without delay." Bowring does not identify the passages selected for perusal by the student, but we have Bentham's own avowal that, whatever benefits he may have derived from the history in other respects, it was certainly of little advantage to him from a moral point of view. Rapin, he tells us, was a soldier by trade, and his history a history of throat-cutting on the largest scale for the sake of plunder ; this throat-cutting and plundering being placed by him at the summit of virtue.

Such written evidence as is accessible undoubtedly supports the oral tradition as to Bentham's precocity. We may refer, for example, to certain confirmatory entries in his father's account books. Thus, in 175 1, when the boy was in his fourth year, we find, " Ward's Grammar, is. 6d. ; Fani Colloquendi Formulce, 6d. ; and Nomenclator Classicus Trilinguis, %d. : being 2s. 8d. for Jeremy, Junior " ; while among other memoranda of the elder Bentham is treasured a line of Latin, neatly written in a child's hand, and labelled " Mem : The line pasted hereon was written by my son, Jeremy Bentham, lo JEREMY BENTHAM

the 4th of December, 1753, at the age of five years, nine months, and nineteen days.

One of his father's many embarrassing attempts to exhibit the boy's talents bore memorable fruit. Jeremy was dining with his father at the house of Dr. Markham, at that time headmaster of Westminster School, and afterwards Archbishop of York ; a discussion took place as to what was meant by " genius," and the child, then six years of age, was required to give his ideas as to the meaning of the term. Bentham assured Dr. Bowring that, though he looked foolish and humbled, making no answer, the question haunted him for many a long day. Thirteen or fourteen years later, it occurred to him that genius was derived from gigno, and meant invention or production. " Have I a genius for anything ? " he asked himself. And then, " What of all earthly pursuits is the most important ? " " Legislation,'' was the answer given by Helvetius, whose De PEsprit he had just been reading. " And have I a genius for legislation ? " he inquired again and again. At last the answer came, fearfully and tremblingly, " Yes."

Latin grammar and the Greek alphabet Bentham learned on his father's knee. One Thomas Mendham, a clerk, was brought in from the scrivener's office to instruct him in the rudiments of writing, and in music, an art associated with his earliest pleasures, and one which furnished him with the keenest enjoyment to the end of his days. Very soon he found himself " in possession of a fiddle in miniature, and able to scrape Foote's minuet " ; whereupon, to improve his practice, a regular music master was introduced, to whom a

BOYHOOD AND EARLY YEARS ii

guinea was paid for eight lessons — a course of instruction pursued until the boy was sent to school. " Mr. Bentham," wrote Hazlitt in the Spirit of the Age," relieves his mind sometimes after the fatigue of study by playing a fine old organ, and has a relish for Hogarth's prints."

At the age of seven, or thereabouts, Bentham was provided by his father with a French tutor named La Combe, who, for the sake of distinction, dubbed himself La Combe d' Avignon. "Le pere de JMmie Bentham^' says M. Hal^vy, " nest qu'un riche bourgeois, mais il suit et aime le franqais, et r^dige son journal quotidien dans une sorte de frangais bizarre, meU de mots anglais et danglicismes." From La Combe's residence in the household the boy derived much profit and no small degree of pleasure. He soon acquired a considerable familiarity with the French language, and accustomed himself to write in that tongue ; indeed, he was wont to declare in later years that, as a youth, he wrote with greater facility in French than in English, for, with a limited choice of words, he scribbled boldly on, not pausing to pick or weigh the value of his phrases.

Under the strict regime of his parents, Bentham had been debarred from access to any book "by which amusement in any shape might be administered," and, though he read with avidity every work on which he could lay his hands, the restriction had been rarely relaxed until the arrival of M. La Combe, who at once introduced him to a collection of fairy tales. From these stories the child passed on to the delights of F^nelon's Telemachus. "That romance may be regarded as the foundation-stone of my whole character ;

the starting-post from whence my career of life commenced," he said one day to Bowring : "the first dawning in my mind of the principles of utility may, I think, be traced to it." Telemachus was followed by Voltaire's Life of Charles XII., General History, and Candide, together with certain other examples of French literature which, it is hardly surprising to learn, somewhat startled the elder Bentham.

Ifi 175s Jeremy was sent to board at Westminster. He was the smallest boy in the school but one, and stood in prodigious awe of Dr. Markham, who was (he says) "an object of adoration." In later years he described the doctor as a tall, portly man, but a shallow fellow withal, satisfied with Latin and Greek. " His business was rather in courting the great than in attending to the school. Any excuse served his purpose for deserting his post. He had a great deal of pomp, especially when he lifted his hand, waved it, and repeated Latin verses. If the boys performed their task well, it was well ; if ill, it was not the less well."

Westminster, according to Bentham, was at that time a wretched place for instruction. Some of the masters did little or nothing, and the boys were taught few useful and many useless things. The "horrid despotism" known as the " fagging " system was then in full force, though Bentham asserted that he himself never felt the touch of the rod at school nor knew what the pain of being punished was.^ Among the few agreeable

' "That Westminster in those days must have been a scene not merely of hardship, but of cruel suffering and degradation to the younger and weaker boys, has been proved by the researches o. the Public Schools Commission." — Goldwin Smith's Cowper (English Men of Letters Series).

memories that he retained of Westminster was his recollection of the stories told him, at night time, by his bedfellow, an amiable boy named Mitford, who in after life was able to afford him some assistance in the famous Panopticon project. In these stories, the product of Mitford's fancy, the heroes and heroines were models of kindness and beneficence, exhibiting the quality which Bentham afterwards styled " effective benevolence." " I remember," said he, " forming solemn resolutions, that, if ever I possessed the means, I would be an example of that excellence which appeared so attractive to me." Before he was eleven he was able to write letters in Greek and Latin to Dr. Bentham, the sub-Dean of Christ Church,^ and, on the 27th June, 1760, rather more than a year after the death of his mother, he set out with his father for Oxford, being, at the age of twelve years, entered a commoner of Queen's College in that University.

The boy returned to Westminster until the following October, and then went into residence at Oxford, where he inhabited gloomy rooms looking into the churchyard of St. Peter's-in-the-East, and covered with lugubrious hangings: "upon the two -pair -of- stairs' floor, in the further corner of the inner quadrangle, on the right hand as you enter into it from the outer door." These dismal surroundings revived Bentham's fears of ghosts, and he was made additionally miserable by the morose disposition of his tutor, one Jacob Jefferson — " a sort of Protestant monk" — whose chief care was to prevent

^ Edward Bentham (1707-76); Canon of Christ Church, 1754; Regius Professor of Divinity, 1763.

his pupil from having any enjoyment whatsoever. He prohibited even the mild amusement known as battledore and shuttlecock. The dons generally made a very unpleasant impression on the boy's mind; some were profligate, others morose, the greatest part insipid. Their mornings were spent in "useless routine," their evenings in playing cards. "We just went," he said, " to the foolish lectures of our tutors to be taught something of logical jargon." Gibbon, too, describes the fellows " or monks " of this time as supinely enjoying the gifts of the founders : " From the toil of reading, writing, or thinking, they had absolved their consciences."

The solitude and gloom of his rooms led Bentham to secure, in exchange, another set with somewhat more cheerful surroundings " on the ground floor, on the righthand side of the staircase, next on the left [?] hand, as you go from the outer quadrangle to the staircase that leads to the former ones." The migration, " in consideration of the two guineas that accompanied it," was concealed from his father as though it had been a crime ; he had, it seems, got two guineas " for his thirdings on account of his better furniture." Once, at least, he found himself in debt and was driven to seek the good offices of Dr. Bentham, whose intervention resulted in ten pounds being sent from home to eke out his narrow allowances.

Bentham found little delight in the society of those whom he met at Oxford. Neither at school nor at college did his father supply him with means for entertaining friends or indulging in extravagant pleasures ; indeed, the son complained that he could never get money from his father but to play cards at an aristocrat's house. This was, presumably, part of the disastrously unsuccessful policy of " push." He often dined at the table of the Duke of Leeds (father of two schoolfellows) and was generally "tipped " a guinea, but it was always taken from him at home. " Only when I won money," he said to Dr. Bowring, "was I allowed to keep it ; so that a passion for play was likely to be excited in me. But I was cured at Oxford, where they always forced me to pay when I lost ; and, as I could never get the money when I won, I gave up the habit." As late as 31st December, 1765, there is an entry in his father's memoranda : " Lent Jerry sixpence to pay for his losses at cards."