Dumont à Romilly, 9 janv. 1802. (Mem. IL, p
105. Bowring, vol. X, pp. 382, 383 : lettres de Bentham à Dumont, 16 fév. 1802; de Dumont à Bentham, 7 mars 1802.
IT
MACKINTOSH, PAINE ET GODWIN
1. Vindiciæ Galliciæ. Defence of the French Revolution and its English admirers, against the accusations of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke,
including some strictures on the late production of Mons. de Calonne, by James Mackintosh, London, 1791.
2, The Rights of Man, being an answer to Mr. Burke’s attack on the French Revolution, by Thomas Paine, secretary for foreign affairs to congress in the American war : première partie, 13 mars 1791 ; seconde partie, 7 fév. 1792.
3. An Enquiry concerning Political Justice, and its influence on general virlue and happiness, 1193. La préface est datée du 7 janvier. — 2: éd.,
4. Reflections, Works, vol. V, pp. 124-125. The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man’s nature, or to the quality of his affairs.... The simple governments are fundamentally defective, to say no worse of them. If you were to contemplate society in but one point of view, all those simple modes of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each would answer its single end much more perfectly than the more complex is able to attain all its complex purposes. But it is better that the whole should be imperfectly and anomalously answered, than that, while some parts are provided for with great exactness, others might be totally neglected, or perhaps materially injured, by the over care of a favourite member. — p. 81 : In your old states you possessed that variety of parts corresponding with the various descriptions of which your community was happily composed : you had all that combination, and all that opposition of interests, you had that action and counteraction which, in the nature and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers, draws out the harmony of the universe. These opposed and conflicting interests which you considered as so great a blemish in your old and in our present constitution, interpose a salutary check to all precipitate resolutions. They render deliberation, a matter not of choice, but of necessity ; they make all change a subject of compromise, which naturally begets moderation; they produce femperaments.…. — P. 304 : We compensate, we reconcile, we balance. We are enabled to unite into a consistent whole the various anomalies and contending principles that are found in the minds and affairs of men. From hence arises, not an excellence in simplicity, but one far superior, an excellence in composition.
5. Lelters on a Regicide Peace, letter II, on the genius and character of the French Revolution as it regards other nations. Works, vol, VIII, p. 182. — Cf. pp. 179, 181. — C£. Vindicat. of Nat. Soc. (vol. I, p. 37) : The simplest form of government is despotism, where all the inferior orbs of power are moved merely by the will of the Supreme, and all that are subjected to them, directed in the same manner, merely by the occasional will of the magistrate.
