thing determined upon and known, that of the three returned Mr. Bentham was to be the one chosen (Gre goire told him so after the Society's dinner, at the public table). A few days after arrived Charles James Fox. Mr. Fox vouchsafed to be a member, and of course was the person seated. Mr. Bentham was already a French citizen. By the second of the two French Assemblies he had received that distinction, in company with Thomas Paine, Joseph Priest ley, Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Clarkson, and a few &c. &c. But in the very focus of equality a mark of distinc tion had been contrived: first came Thomas Paine, next came Joseph Priestley, third came Jeremy Ben tham, these three separated from one another by two commas; but next to Jeremy Bentham came a semicolon, and by this semicolon were these three distinguished from the rest, who were distinguished from one another no otherwise than by commas.

About the year 1817, Mr. Ben tham, being a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, was called to the bench, a master of arts degree having been conferred striking off two out of the five years of studentship. He had been called to the bar very soon after he became of age. $

In the year 1806 came out his work intitled "Scotch Reform," in letters to Lord Grenville. The occasion of it was an invitation he received from Lord Grenville, during his short administration, through the present Marquis of Lansdowne, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Sir Samuel Romilly, then Solicitor-General, to attend on a particular day to consider of the plan to be adopted for the division of the Scotch Court of Sessions into two sections, and the introduction of jury trial. Sir Samuel Romilly, by his practice in Scotch Appeals, had had particular occasion to become acquainted with Scotch Judicature. Mr. Bentham's question to Sir Samuel Romilly was, "Are you to be at the meeting?" Answer "No. "Mr. Bentham's conclusion was, that nothing good was intended or had any chance of being willingly adopted. He therefore declined accepting the invitation, in order that, in his observaLions on the subject, he might stand

free from those obligations and personal égards, which could not but have been imposed by the forms of a personal meeting.

Besides the Defence of Usury, it was during his stay at his brother's, in Russia, that he wrote the first part of his work, styled " Panopticon;" or, the Inspection House. The original idea was his brother's, by whom it was not thought of being applied to convicts, but only to working hands, in whose instance it might be adopted with most unremitting constancy and universality of inspection, at a minimum of expense; and by whom, some twenty years after or thereabouts, it was actually applied to that purpose, under the patronage of the Emperor Alexander, at the recommendation of Admiral Tchichagoff, Sir Samuel Bentham then being there on a commission from this government; but not long after his return from Russia, the building was unfortunately burnt by the carelessness of the managers, the precariousness of his stay at Petersburgh rendering it necessary to erect it of wood for the purpose of saving time. In March, 1792, Mr. Bentham having framed a plan of management grounded on this plan of construction, and ascertained that management by contract was the only mode that presented any chance of effecting any considerable part of the good capable of being effected by it, presented to Mr. Pitt his proposal for that purpose; and on which was grounded a contract, the terms of which are to be found in the Parliamentary Paper, printed by the House of Commons, in the year 1797 or 8, as part of the grand report of the Finance Committee for those two years; chairman, the present Lord Colchester; and reprinted in 1811, by the committee, got up for the purpose of grounding the substitution of the existing Penitentiary at Millbank. It was embraced with enthusiasm by the acting men of that time, Mr. Pitt, Minister, Lord Dundas, Secretary for Home Affairs, Mr. Rose, Secretary of the Treasury, and Mr. Pitt's right hand man, the only one of the two Secretaries by whom any thing was done or understood, Mr. Long, now Sir Charles. Mr. Bentham's father dying but a short time before Mr. Bentham

succeeded to his present residence, it became a show place in which Sir Samuel's models of Panopticons, and his inventions for the finding appropriate employment to prisoners, were exhibited.

By a cause then unknown, notwithstanding all that enthusiasm, it was made to linger till the close of the session of 1794, when an act passed, enabling the Treasury to enter into a contract for the purpose, and to appropriate to it the ground allotted at Battersea Rise, by a former act, and a consequent valuation of a jury, or to purchase other land; for Lord Spencer having an interest in the land in Battersea Rise, and having acceded to administration as first Lord of the Admiralty, made that use of his public trust. When Mr. Abbot's Finance Committee was sitting, Mr. Pitt and his associates thought the opportunity favourable for employing its authority in support of Mr. Bentham's plan against the opposing, and to every body out of the Cabinet secret influence; and upon reference made to the Treasury by the Committee, a report as it may be seen, though in a tone of coolness produced by timidity, was made in favor of it. Mr. Abbot, the chair man,imputing the delay to negligence on the part of Mr. Pitt's ministry, spoke in the committee in terms of vehement reprobation of the barbarity of the treatment given to Mr. Ben tham. Years were spent in a struggle between the ministry and the secret influence. In the mean time the ground, at present occupied by the existing Penitentiary, was purchased as part of the fourscore acres or thereabouts, stipulated for in the contract entered into between the Treasury and Mr. Bentham, in virtue of the act. The land, subject to certain leases at present occupied, was paid for at the price of £12,000, instead of for half the money, which was the price for which the incomparably more appropriate land at Battersea Rise might have been taken under the valuation, was put in the possession of Mr. Bentham. To enable him to enter into actual possession, nothing now remained but the payment of a £1,000 in compensation for the surrender of some of the leases, and the Treasury

had gone so far as to cause advertisements to be inserted for the purpose of compelling the sale of the ulterior quantity, stipulated for under the contract. For the issue of this £1,000, the signature of George III. was necessary. It being looked upon as certain, considering the length to which the matter had been brought, the Treasury clerks made no secret of the fact when the intrument was sent to the King for his signature. But there it stopped for ever. In 1811, a committee was got up by Lord Sidmouth, a Mr. Holford, chairman, for the purpose of forming a ground for the substitution of the existing inscrutable Prison to Mr. Bentham's literally, as well as metaphorically, transparent Panopticon. For the violation of public faith no reason was assigned, either in the report or in the act grounded on it. "Between 20 and £30,000, or some such sum, was what it was to have cost the public under his plan for building under the existing plan, it has already cost several hundred thousand pounds, and will cost some hundred thousand pounds more before it is completed for the 600 prisoners instead of 1000, which his was to have contained. To defray the expenses he had been at, in consequence of the arrangements which he had been indisputably called upon by the ministry to take, on the acceptance given to his proposal in 1792, Mr. Bentham had sold estates to the amount of between 5 and £600 a year, to great disadvantage. In addition to £2,000 advanced to him for a commencement, it cost the public £23,000, for a compensation under the act of 1811, a sum a little more than the value of the estates so sold. As to the causes of the King's invincible enmity, they are not unknown, but to explain them would take more room than on the present occasion can be spared. In 1785 commenced: Mr. Bentham's acquaintance with Sir Samuel Romilly. To that acquaintance. may be referred the small quantity of good which Sir Samuel Romilly was permitted to effect, or dared so much as venture to propose. Some of his motions were taken from Mr. Bentham's papers.

(To be continued.)

After a happy union of several years with the man of her heart, Mrs. Beverley became a widow, and life would have been to her comparatively a blank, had she not been blessed with a son, to whom she could transfer, and in whom she could centre all those strong affections, which had hitherto been divided between her child and his father.

She was naturally of a fine temper, and that temper was improved by the strongest religious impressions. She, therefore, found the task of resignation easier than she expected; and, while thankfully contemplating the blessings which she still possessed, she learnt to hush every impatient regret for that which she had lost.

Charles Beverley was indeed of so mixed a character, a being so calculated to excite maternal anxiety, while he gratified maternal pride, that Mrs. Beverley had little leisure to revert to the past, so constantly was she engrossed with cares for the present and fears for the future. She had vainly hoped that Charles, when he had taken his degree,and had returned to his paternal roof, would have become a clergyman, and like his father have been an ornament to the church, and a blessing to his parishioners; but unfortunely he was of a speculating, ambitious nature, and he preferred risking his fortune in a commercial concern, in which he was offered a considerable share. At first all went on well, but on his partner's sudden Eur. Mag. April, 1823.

death, his son, a dissipated, unprincipled young man, succeeded to the business, and in a very few years Mrs. Beverley found herself obliged to advance a considerable sum of money, out of her own income, in order to avert impending bankruptcy from Charles and his rash partner, William Dixon.

But, as is usually the case in such instances, the money was expended in vain'; Charles was obliged to own to her that it was not in her power to save him from ruin, and he had wisely resolved to insist on calling the creditors together; when all at once his partner appeared in the highest spirits, produced money for every emergency, and, forcing bank notes on the astonished Charles, desired him not to trouble himself concerning their affairs, for that the storm was weathered, and all would soon be well.

Charles was only too willing to believe him, and he eagerly imparted his recovered tranquillity and its cause to that tender mother who had been the participator, the soother, and the help of his troubles. But the calm was transient, and the storm which followed of terrible duration. Scarcely had Mrs. Beverley rejoiced, though in trembling, over this surprising letter, when, just as she was preparing for bed, she heard a knock at the door, and on its being opened Charles, pale and agitated, rushed into the house; sad, indeed, was the tale which he had to tell. Dixon, he found, had been for sometime connected with forgers,-the notes which he had circulated himself, and given Charles to circulate, were forgeries-he was already in custody, and so would Charles himself have been had he not escaped by a back-door, and hastened to the village where his mother resided, in order to give her the comforting assurance that he was an innocent victim of his partner's guilt, and to consult with her on what it was best for him to do in this alarming emergency.

66

'Surrender yourself, and stand a trial!" was the dictate of her judgment, and also of her trust in Providence; but maternal anxiety, and Charles's conviction that it would be difficult to prove that he was not privy to the forgeries, got the better of every other feeling and terror, lest this beloved child should be condemned to perish on a scaffold, made her urge him to escape to another country, and to assist him with the means of immediate flight.

Dreadful under such circumstances was the parting of the mother and son but it was cheered to both by Mrs. Berverley's positive declaration, that she would ultimately settle wherever he did, and would know no other home or country but his. It was, indeed, impossible for her to remain where she was, for Charles's flight had convinced every one of his guilt; and when Dixon was tried, convicted, and executed, she thought that she read in the eyes even of every friend whom she saw, "Such ought to have been the fate of your son!" while she knew that her assurances of his innocence must be given in vain. She, therefore, impatiently expected news of his safe arrival in Norway, whither he was bound, and in the mean while she made every preparation to join him in that country. But all hope of being reunited to her beloved son in this world was soon destroyed; for she received a letter from a friend of his at Elsineur, informing her that the ship in which Mr. Beverley sailed had been wrecked off the coast of Norway, and that every one on board had perished!

He added, that amongst the bodies which had been washed on shore, he had recognised that of Charles Beverley, and had endeavoured to revive him; but, not understanding the means of resuscitation so well known, and so successfully practised in England, he had not succeeded in his efforts, and that he was then going to follow the remains of his lamented young friend to the grave.

At first the reason of the bereaved mother tottered under this unexpected calamity, but those, who in every trial look upwards for relief, are always sure to obtain it; and, though bending to the earth with the burthen of her sorrow, Mrs.

Beverley was at length able to seek refuge, as usual, from her sense of suffering in active employment.

But the idea that, had the proper remedies been applied to the body of her son, he might have been saved, was constantly recurring to her mind, adding bitterness to her regrets; and she continued to cling to this idea, occasionally with a degree of even insane tenacity, when she was forced from it by the power of equally painful certainties; for she learnt that she had to mourn over a greater evil than that of the death of her son: namely, the conviction of that son's immorality of conduct.

She found that he had private debts to a considerable amount, and that those debts had chiefly been incurred for the sake of an abandoned and expensive woman, who had long been his mistress. But the mind of Mrs. Beverley rebounded at length from the pressure of even this overwhelming affliction, and she again endeavoured to forget her son's evils in active exertions for the good of others, saying to herself, as she did

So,

"Since it is the will of Heaven that I should still exist, it is also its will that I should not live for myself alone!"

It was to the abode of her childhood, to the scenes where her maternal heart had first opened to the delight of seeing her son, when just able to walk, bounding before her on the pebbly shore in all the gaiety of infancy, that Mrs. Beverley had directed her steps, and she had taken up her abode in a large oldfashioned house on a remote coast of England. She had once possessed a house in this village, but had been forced to sell it in order to answer some of her son's demands; but wild, desolate, and straggling as the place was, it was so endeared to her by pleasing and even by mournful recollections, that she preferred this situation to every other for its own sake, and she soon learnt to prize it still more for the sake of others.

There was not a coast in England more notorious for repeated shipwrecks than the one on which Mrs. Beverley had taken up her abode; and, scarcely had the Equinoxial gales begun to blow, when her

shrinking sensibility, and her most agonizing associations were called forth by wrecks of a very affecting nature, for vessels were able to come so near the shore that the cries of the crew for succour could be distinctly heard, and their features could be easily distinguished.

Those, therefore, whom fruitless humanity led as anxious spectators to the scene of misery and danger, were exposed to the additional agony of forming an acquaintance with the features of the despairing and the sinking; and of not only seeing them, in torturing remembrance, when the last wave had closed over their heads, but also of hearing, in fancy, or during the stillness of night, their dreadful and unavailing shrieks, when those shrieks had long been ended by the powerful grasp of death. To any one their remembered looks and remembered sounds would have been fraught with anguish, but they urged Mrs. Beverley to a feeling of almost frantic misery; for such (said she to herself) were probably the looks and shrieks of my dear shipwrecked child! But this encreased degree of occasional suffering, to which her new situation exposed her, brought its own medicine along with it; for while it made her live over again the scene of her son's death, and of recalling at the same time her regret that his friend had not been able to revive him, her benevolent heart was taught by the renewed consiousness of her own sorrows to feel for the sorrow of other mothers, and not only to feel for them, but to try as much as she could to prevent their recurrence in future.

"Had my son's friend possessed (as he said) the means of resuscitation known and followed in England, he might yet have lived!" she exclaimed one evening after her suddenly averted eye had unconsciously rested upon a corpse just thrown upon the shore beneath her.

From that moment Mrs. Beverley never rested till she had obtained from the Humane Society directions how to proceed in endeavours to restore drowned persons to life, had procured every necessary assistance, and had appropriated a part of her own dwelling to the reception of all

bodies that should be thrown on shore from wrecks in future.

Never was house better situated for the purpose; as it stood on a rock, and was the nearest building to the spot where vessels were usually ship-wrecked.

The first time that, through the means which she had caused to be used, she beheld a fellow creature restored to life, her joy and thank fulness were great even to a painful excess, but not long after, her be

nevolent interference received a still greater reward.

One of the persons saved from apparent death by the indefatigable efforts which she obliged her agents to make proved to be the son of a sort of decayed gentleman, well known both to Dixon, and once acquainted with Charles Beverley.

This man frequently visited Dixon in prison; and, being with him the night before his execution, the culprit shewed him a paper which he had drawn up, in which he solemnly declared the innocence of Charles Beverley, and exculpated him from any knowledge, suspicion of, or participation in the crime for which he suffered. "This paper," said Dixon, "I mean to give to the sheriff, that poor Beverley's reputation may be cleared from all stains." The sheriff! No, no, give it to me," replied Williams, "I will take care that it is made public directly!" The unhappy man believed him, entrusted the paper to his care, and Charles Beverley's name remained uncleared; for Williams was the father of Charles Beverley's mistress; and having, though very unjustly, attributed his daughter's original fall from virtue to him, he felt towards him sensations of the most vindictive nature; and now it was in his power to gratify those feelings.

"No," cried he, in the bitterness of his soul, when he left the prison, and held in his hand the affecting document, penned by a repentant sinner in the fullness of a contrite heart. "No! This paper shall never meet the light. As my poor child's honor and reputation were destroyed by Charles Beverley, his reputation, as a sort of retributive justice, shall remain injured for ever!"

But when he found from the re