ont had now found Bentham. After long and
tedious labours and multiplied communications between the master and the
disciple, Dumont in the spring of 1802 brought out his _Traites de
Legislation de M. Jeremie Bentham_. The book was partly a translation
from Bentham's published and unpublished works,[293] and partly a
statement of the pith of the new doctrine in Dumont's own language. It
had the great merit of putting Bentham's meaning vigorously and
compactly, and free from many of the digressions, minute discussions of
minor points and arguments requiring a special knowledge of English law,
which had impeded the popularity of Bentham's previous works.

The Jacobin controversies were passing into the background: and Bentham
began to attain a hearing as a reformer upon different lines. In 1803
Dumont visited St. Petersburg, and sent home glowing reports of
Bentham's rising fame. As many copies of the _Traites_ had been sold
there as in London. Codes were wanted; laws were being digested; and
Bentham's work would supply the principles and the classification. A
magnificent translation was ordered, and Russian officials wrote glowing
letters in which Bentham was placed in a line with Bacon, Newton, and
Adam Smith--each the founder of a new science.[294] At home the new book
was one of the objects of what Dumont calls the 'scandalous irreverence'
of the _Edinburgh Review_.[295] This refers to a review of the _Traites_
in the _Edinburgh Review_ of April 1804. Although patronising in tone,
and ridiculing some of Bentham's doctrines as commonplace and condemning
others as criminal, it paid some high compliments to his ability. The
irreverence meant at least that Bentham had become one of the persons
worth talking about, and that he was henceforth to influence the rising
generation. In January 1807 the _Edinburgh_ itself (probably Jeffrey)
suggested that Bentham should be employed in a proposed reform of the
Scottish judicial system. His old friend, Lansdowne, died on 7th May
1805, and in one of his last letters expresses a hope that Bentham's
principles are at last beginning to spread.[296] The hope was
fulfilled.

During the eighteenth century Benthamism had gone through its period of
incubation. It was now to become an active agency, to gather proselytes,
and to have a marked influence not only upon legislative but upon
political movements. The immediate effect upon Bentham of the decline of
the Panopticon, and his consequent