er. If so, it
was in 1783, though Bentham seems to imply an earlier date.

[250] _Works_, x. 77.

[251] _Ibid._ x. 147.

[252] _Works_, x. 176.

[253] Reid's _Works_ (Hamilton), p. 73.

[254] _Works_, x. 171.

[255] _Works_, x. 163-64. Cf. _Ibid._ x. 195, where Wilson is often
'tempted to think'--erroneously, of course--that Paley must have known
something of Bentham's work. Paley's chief source was Abraham Tucker.

[256] See J. H. Burton in _Works_, i. 11.

[257] Given in _Works_, x. 201-12.

[258] See Lecky's _Eighteenth Century_, x. 210-97, for an account of
these transactions.

[259] Bowring tells this gravely, and declares that George III. also
wrote letters to the _Gazette de Leyde_. George III. certainly
contributed some letters to Arthur Young's _Annals of Agriculture_, and
is one of the suggested authors of Junius.

III. THE PANOPTICON

The crash of the French revolution was now to change the whole course of
European politics, and to bring philosophical jurists face to face with
a long series of profoundly important problems. Bentham's attitude
during the early stages of the revolution and the first war period is
significant, and may help to elucidate some characteristics of the
Utilitarian movement. Revolutions are the work of passion: the product
of a social and political condition in which the masses are permeated
with discontent, because the social organs have ceased to discharge
their functions. They are not ascribable to the purely intellectual
movement alone, though it is no doubt an essential factor. The
revolution came in any case because the social order was out of joint,
not simply because Voltaire or Rousseau or Diderot had preached
destructive doctrines. The doctrines of the 'rights of man' are obvious
enough to have presented themselves to many minds at many periods. The
doctrines became destructive because the old traditions were shaken, and
the traditions were shaken because the state of things to which they
corresponded had become intolerable. The French revolution meant (among
other things) that in the mind of the French peasant there had
accumulated a vast deposit of bitter enmity against the noble who had
become a mere parasite upon the labouring population, retaining, as
Arthur Young said, privileges for himself, and leaving poverty to the
lower classes. The peasant had not read Rousseau; he had read nothing.
But when his discontent began to affect the educated classes, me