INDIVIDUALISM as regards legislation is popularly, and not without reason, connected with the name and the principles of Bentham. The name of one man, it is true, can never adequately summarise a whole school of thought, but from 1825 onwards the teaching of Bentham exercised so potent an influence that to him is fairly ascribed that thorough-going though gradual amendment of the law of England which was one of the main results of the Reform Act. 2
Bentham's genius and position were fully understood by his contemporaries.
"The age of law reform and the age of Jeremy "Bentham are one and the same. He is the father "of the most important of all the branches of reform, "the leading and ruling department of human im-
____________________1
See Bentham, "Memoirs and Correspondence," Works, x. xi.; Montague Bentham's Fragment on Government; L. Stephen, English
Utilitarians, i., especially chaps. i.-iii.; Elie Helévy, La formation
du radicalisme philosophique; G. Wallas, Life of Francis Place, ch. iii.; Bowen on "Administration of the Law, from 1837-1887," Reign of
Queen Victoria, i. 281.
2
The influence even on law reform of Adam Smith and his
disciples ought, of course, not to be forgotten, but in 1830 the
economists and the. Benthamites formed one school.
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