A Fragment on Government;

'it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong' (Preface)

The first Dublin edition, printed the same year as the first, of this anonymously published critique by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) of William Blackstone's philosophy of law. A remarkably precocious work extracted from his wider unfinished Commentary on Commentaries, unpublished until 1928, which contains the first manifestation of his greatest happiness principle.

A Fragment on Government follows on from the course of lectures Bentham attended as a young pupil barrister given by Blackstone (1723-1780), then Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford, which formed the basis of the latter's monumental Commentaries on the Laws of England, published between 1765 and 1769. In it Bentham takes issue with Blackstone's tendency to find 'everything as it should be', which led him to defend the archaic out of a misplaced veneration for antiquity, and personify the Law as some kind of 'living creature' which placed it above censure and improvement. The essay criticises in particular Blackstone's defence of judge-made law, his reliance on legal fictions, and invocation of social contract theory.

Bentham's ultimate ambition was to create a complete body of law, which he termed the 'Pannomion' (from the Greek meaning 'all the laws'), that would be predicated on a universal system of moral philosophy governed by the principle of utility. The present work contains Bentham's first published definition of this 'fundamental axiom', that 'it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong', and so 'the obligation to minister to general happiness, was an obligation paramount to and inclusive of every other' (Preface).

First Dublin edition; 8vo (20 x 12.5 cm); contemporary ownership inscription in pen to title, later inscription in pen to front free endpaper; later half tan calf, marbled boards, contrasting red morocco lettering-piece to spine, later endpapers, upper joint cracked but holding, [2], xli, [1], 132pp.

ESTC N3305; Chuo F2.