Duncan Bell, Liberalism, and Bentham

While the term “liberal” had long been used in English to denote assorted aristocratic dispositions, mores, and pursuits, it only assumed a specifically political meaning in the early nineteenth century. Borrowed from the Spanish Liberales of the 1812 Constitution, the term was first employed in a derogatory manner by Tories to malign their Whig opponents. During the 1820s it was reclaimed by some radical Whigs, in a classical example of rhetorical redescription, to characterise individuals and policies dedicated to non-revolutionary reform, although it also became associated with the small but vocal group of “philosophic radicals,” including the young John Stuart Mill. “Liberal” was increasingly utilised to describe the politico-economic demands of the emergent middle classes. Yet it was still an obscure and marginal category: during the 1820s and 1830s ‘“liberals’ were not a firmly defined group and ‘liberalism’ did not securely mark out a single intellectual phenomenon.” It was only during the second half of the century that usage proliferated, though it remained closely tied to the creed of the newly named Liberal Party.--Duncan Bell (2014) "What Is Liberalism?" Political Theory, 2014, Vol. 42(6) 6 693

I have quoted the passage from Duncan Bell's famous paper before (recall here). In that post I argued that the political meaning of 'liberal' can be found in Adam Smith and that, in fact, other scholars have shown that Smith played a very considerable role in the debates around the Spanish 1812 Constitution. It is outside my competence to argue that the Liberales were inspired by Smith to call themselves 'liberals,' but I am willing to put money on it. Either way, this matters because 'liberalism' was invented at the same time a doctrine called 'mercantilism' was invented in order to attack mercantilism and to situate liberalism as the ameliorative alternative to it.

Of course, that's compatible with the diffusionist account in the passage I have quoted from Bell above. Even so, there is also something off with the spirit of that account if we reflect on the role of Bentham in Bell's argument. Bentham is mentioned four times in the body of the paper. And each time he figures in retrospective, backward projections by later authors who tell origin stories of liberalism. And the very natural reading of Bell's argument -- I hope he corrects me if I am mistaken -- is to suggest that all such backward projections are anachronistic narratives. 

Now, in what follows I want to suggest that Bentham was a key vector in connecting Spanish Liberales to the 'philosophical radicals'. And that, in fact, Bentham's interventions in the debates over the fate of the Spanish constitution in 1820/1 also reveal that 'liberal' was taking on something like the Smithian use of a wider political program (or ideology, if you insist) that is not limited to economic matters. My key evidence derives from Bentham's (1821) Three Tracts Relative to Spanish and Portuguese Affairs. (London: William Hone).* The three tracts are three letters that Bentham had sent to intervene in the debates about the Spanish constitution. And the Three Tracts also includes material on the reception and circulation of Bentham's letters.

In the advertisement to the first letter of the Three Tracts, the relationship to the three pieces by Bentham and political events in Spain and Portugal is recounted. The first passage I quote is from that context:

While corruptionists and their dupes are in extacy at the sight of their Utopia With her stag-neck, and three Old Men of the Woods fastened upon it, Spain and Portugal are congratulating themselves on having each but one of them, and his hold growing every day looser and looser, while they are cheered by Yankee-land, whose neck has, for these forty years, been free from all such vermin, and who bids the haw bitable globe observe and declare, whether, in any and what respect, she is the worse for it.

At a time when those prospects, - which are now so­ happily realized, had not so much as opened, the name of Bentham had become familiar to whatever was liberal in the great southern peninsula of Europe. That exclusion which the system of corruption has hitherto put upon it in England, the united force of Censorships and Inquisitions has never been able to effect either in Spain or Portugal. (iv)

It is pretty clear that here 'liberal' means a particular political or social outlook that is not confined to Spain and Portugal and that is also not self-evidently reducible to the party or parliamentary faction. Admittedly this is slender evidence. The Three Tracts defends (inter alia) one-man-one-vote, attack the veto power of landed aristocracy, argue for the role of judiciary and fair jury trials in securing freedom, and attacks imperialism because it is a source of corruption and absolutism. Economic matters are subsidiary to political ones.

The (rather brief) Three Tracts ends with an appendix with three (short) letters from the Portuguese Cortes about the translation of Bentham's Collected Works into Portuguese by the Portuguese government. The second of these letters starts as follows:

Read by Secretary Freire a Letter, presented by Senhor Sepulveda to whom it had been addressed by Senhor Carvalho, Member of the Regency of the Kingdom, along with the works of Jeremy Bentham, offered by their venerable author to the Portugueze nation: in which letter of Senhor Carvalho it was said, that the writer could not give a more authentic testimony of the value he set upon so flattering an offer­ing, than by accompayig it with a wish, that, in their practice, the Cortes may take their guidance the liberal doctrines of the principal and earliest constitutionalist of Europe. (53)

Now, it's possible, of course, to read 'liberal' here as meaning, generous. But the structure of the Three Tracts book-ends Bentham's material with the appellation 'liberal.' And, in fact, the last quoted sentence strongly implies that Bentham is the seminal and original liberal constitutional theorist. Bentham himself also used 'liberal' in this way on the front page in his 1822 Codification Proposal (of the law) addressed to "all nations professing liberal opinions."

So, let me wrap up. In so far as later narratives about the nature of liberalism backwardly projected liberalism as a broader coherent set of political and constitutional doctrines onto earlier English philosophical radicals, including Bentham, they deployed or re-activated, I would argue, material that had been at least articulated in the context of Bentham's Iberian intervention for some such purpose. And while the original audience for Bentham's letters were Iberian, the Three Tracts is directed at an English audience. 

If I understand Bell's narrative correctly, the material I have discussed here precedes the derogatory use of the term 'liberal'. Obviously, I am not claiming that Three Tracts generated a huge diffusion. But what I am claiming is that the use of 'liberal' in it presupposes familiarity with the term in a sense quite familiar to us. And I suspect that's due to the impact of Smith's writings, including its uptake by the Spanish Liberales. And Bentham's willingness to make himself known as a liberal.

 

 

*For useful background to this material see Philip Schofield "Jeremy Bentham and the Spanish Constitution of 1812." Happiness and Utility: Essays Presented to Frederick Rosen (2019): 40-58

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[David Duffy]

"In the political field, liberal and liberalism are used as self-laudatory terms by a party in the state, and are generally associated, in the meaning of those who employ them, with the
original idea of liberty, liberals, the advocates of liberty ; liberalism, the principles of liberty applied to public life."

P 60 of Volume 2 of DEONTOLOGY OR,THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY: FROM THE MSS. OF JEREMY BENTHAM. 1834