ppreciate his theories: a fallacy excusable only
by the pettishness of old age. Bowring, however, had a natural dulness
which distorted many anecdotes transmitted through him; and we may hope
that in this case there was some exaggeration.

Bentham's emergence was, meanwhile, very slow. The great men whom he met
at Lord Lansdowne's were not specially impressed by the shy philosopher.
Wedderburn, so he heard, pronounced the fatal word 'dangerous' in regard
to the _Fragment_.[245] How, thought Bentham, can utility be dangerous?
Is this not self-contradictory? Later reflection explained the puzzle.
What is useful to the governed need not be therefore useful to the
governors. Mansfield, who was known to Lind, said that in some parts the
author of the _Fragment_ was awake and in others was asleep. In what
parts? Bentham wondered. Awake, he afterwards considered, in the parts
where Blackstone, the object of Mansfield's personal 'heart-burning,'
was attacked; asleep where Mansfield's own despotism was threatened.
Camden was contemptuous; Dunning only 'scowled' at him; and Barre, after
taking in his book, gave it back with the mysterious information that he
had 'got into a scrape.'[246] The great book, therefore, though printed
in 1781,[247] 'stuck for eight years,'[248] and the writer continued his
obscure existence in Lincoln's Inn.[249] An opinion which he gave in
some question as to the evidence in Warren Hastings's trial made, he
says, an impression in his favour. Before publication was achieved,
however, a curious episode altered Bentham's whole outlook. His brother
Samuel (1757-1831), whose education he had partly superintended,[250]
had been apprenticed to a shipwright at Woolwich, and in 1780 had gone
to Russia in search of employment. Three years later he was sent by
Prince Potemkin to superintend a great industrial establishment at
Kritchev on a tributary of the Dnieper. There he was to be
'Jack-of-all-trades--building ships, like Harlequin, of odds and ends--a
rope-maker, a sail-maker, a distiller, brewer, malster, tanner,
glass-man, glass-grinder, potter, hemp-spinner, smith, and
coppersmith.'[251] He was, that is, to transplant a fragment of
ready-made Western civilisation into Russia. Bentham resolved to pay a
visit to his brother, to whom he was strongly attached. He left England
in August 1785, and stayed some time at Constantinople, where he met
Maria James (1770-1836), the wife successively of W. Reveley and of