Bentham's Fragment on Government

1776

A young London barrister named Jeremy Bentham published a cold attack on Blackstone's Commentaries, arguing that law should be judged only by its consequences - the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The Utilitarian movement, that most English of philosophies, was born in a pamphlet about legal jargon. Bentham would spend the next fifty years designing reforms for prisons, parliaments, and the poor, many adopted long after his death.