BENTHAM

JEREMY, was the son of a London attorney. At the age of twelve he entered Queen’s College, Oxford, where he took his B.A. degree in 1763. Eventually he became the best critic of legislation and government in his day. He wrote A Fragment on Government, The Hard Labour Bill (a pamphlet), and Rationale of Punishments and Rewards. In the two last he did more than any other writer of his time to make the theory of punishments more rational, by the consideration of their kinds and effects, their real objects and the conditions of their efficiency. He was the philosophic pioneer of Liberalism and Radicalism to a certain extent.