6 - From the Panopticon to the Constitutional Code

Summary

The Panopticon project came to an end in March 1801, when the Treasury recorded their decision to substitute for Bentham's scheme a smaller one and one unacceptable to Bentham. It took Bentham more than a year to recognize that he could not, by persuasion or the pressure of public opinion, induce the Government to reverse that decision. He devoted most of 1802 to agitation among his friends and to the drafting of a long critique of the Government's policies and conduct, provisionally entitled ‘A Picture of the Treasury, with a Sketch of the Secretary of State's Office…’ By the end, however, that had ceased to be a means of bringing about a change of mind and had become merely an instrument for punishing the Government. In 1803 Bentham recognized, though with many backward glances, that the episode was over and he began to turn his mind to other subjects. While he continued to see his tracts on the Panopticon as among the most valuable and most characteristic of his works, it did not again occupy a central place in his thoughts except for short periods in 1807–8 and 1811–13 when he was involved in negotiations with the Government concerning the financial and legal problems left unsettled in 1801. From 1802 onwards his activities and writings display what appear to be rapid changes and a wide range of interests and subject-matters until he began to concentrate mainly (but not exclusively) on the Constitutional Code in 1822.

The bare record of his life and achievements between 1802 and 1822 suggests that this was a blank period in his progress towards a comprehensive theory of government.