The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham: Correspondence, Volume 11

The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham: Correspondence, Volume 11 Synopsis

This eleventh volume of Bentham's Correspondence contains nearly three hundred letters, and covers the period from January 1822 to June 1824. The letters, most of which have never before been published, have been collected from archives, private and official, as far afield as Athens and Bogotá, as well as from the collections of Bentham Papers at University College London and the British Library. By the early 1820s Bentham had acquired an international reputation, and corresponded with leading figures in Europe, the United States of America, and many of the newly independent states of Central and South America. His correspondents included such notable figures as Simón Bolívar, the Liberator of South America; Jean Pierre Boyer, President of Haiti; José da Silva Carvalho, Minister of Justice in Portugal; Étienne Dumont, Bentham's Genevan editor; Bernardino Rivadavia, first President of the United Provinces of Río de la Plata; Jean Baptiste Say, the economist; and members of the provisional government of Greece. Bentham also corresponded with numerous public figures and personal friends in Britain, including Edward Blaquiere, James Silk Buckingham, Richard Carlile, John Cartwright, Rowland and Matthew Davenport Hill, James Mill, Samuel Parr, Francis Place, Leicester Stanhope, and Frances Wright. As well as covering such matters as the launch of the Westminster Review, and his first plan for the Auto-Icon, the volume testifies to the growing importance to Bentham of his writings on codification. Having received news that the Portuguese Cortes had accepted his offer to draw up a complete code of laws, he began to draft material for his Constitutional Code. He became involved in promoting constitutional reform in Tripoli and Greece, and was extensively involved in the negotiations surrounding the Greek Loan raised in London in 1824.