CAPITALISM'S ACHILLES HEEL Dirty Money and How to

view in 1824 as an outlet for their ideas. Intended to counter Whig policies
advocated in the Edinburgh Review and Tory opinions expressed in the
Quarterly Review, this important journal published works by Byron, Tennyson,
Coleridge, Carlyle, and many others. Taken over by James Mill’s son,
John Stuart Mill, in the mid-1830s, it continued publishing until the beginning
of World War I in 1914.
RELATED INTERESTS
The Joys of Jeremy Bentham 305
Comfortably fixed with properties generating some £500 to £600 a year after
the passing of his father, Bentham’s active mind turned to many other
projects. In the late 1700s, the American Bill of Rights and the French Declaration
of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen incensed him. He wrote
(though it remained unpublished for many years) a scathing Critique of the
Doctrine of Inalienable, Natural Rights, finding the very concept completely
illogical, since such preexisting endowments could fall outside the framework
of measurable utility. Obviously enjoying the use of language, he
opined: “Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible
rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.” 13 Carried too far, Bentham
saw natural rights producing ridiculous outcomes: “If a constable call
upon you to serve in the militia, shoot the constable and not the enemy; . . .
If a bailiff, throw him out the window. If a judge sentence you to be imprisoned
or put to death, have a dagger ready, and take a stroke first at the
judge.” 14
In a 1798 proposal entitled Pauper Management Improved, Bentham
demonstrated how far he was prepared to subordinate rights to society’s
greater good, as he saw it. He proposed establishing a nationwide system of
“industry-houses,” 250 in number, each with 2,000 confined poor, thus
serving 500,000 of England’s indigent. His scheme gave power “to anyone
to apprehend a beggar begging in any public place and conduct him either
to a constable or to the nearest Industry-house.” In fact a reward of 10 to
20 shillings would be paid for each person delivered and such costs
“charged to the beggar’s account.” 15 Bentham then called for “the extraction
of labour to as great a value as may be, consistently with the regard due to
health, customary relaxation and the observance of religious duties. ...
When ability adequate to the task is certain and laziness apprehended, no