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Étienne Dumont: Genevan Apostle of Utility*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Cyprian Blamires
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Extract

In the years 1829 and 1830 there appeared in Geneva a short-lived journal called l'Utilitaire, edited by Antoine-Élysée Cherbuliez. In the preface to the first issue, the editor wrote that he was working ‘in the spirit of Bentham’, but did not wish to found a party tied to Bentham's name. He wished to emulate Bentham's thinking in so far as it was synonymous with a detached, neutral perspective on the world, a viewpoint superior to the strife of factions. Having spoken eulogisti-cally of Bentham in these terms, the writer added that a well-merited share of the Englishman's glory belonged to Dumont. The names of Jeremy Bentham and Étienne Dumont ‘must no more be separated than those of Kepler and Newton’. After giving some consideration to the question of why Dumont's work was so important for Bentham, I shall concentrate in this article on why the Genevan became so committed to the task of disseminating the utilitarian thought of his English mentor. I will be focusing on the initial stages of Dumont's editorial and translation work in the 1790s and will not be attempting here to give a comprehensive history of a relationship that lasted nearly forty years.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , May 1990 , pp. 55 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Dr. Stephen Conway for his much-valued advice and encouragement in the preparation of this article. I am also grateful to Professor John Dinwiddy and Dr. Rudolph Muhs for some suggestions.

References

1 For Cherbuliez see Rappard, W. E., Économistes Genevois du xixe siècle, Geneva, 1966, pp. 61–268.Google Scholar

2 l'Utilitaire, i (1829)Google Scholar, ‘Discours Préliminaire’, p. xxiii.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., p. xxx, n. 1.

4 ‘France’, Bentham MSS, UC clxx. 17Google Scholar, University College London; and see An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1970 (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), p. 309 and n., and p. 310 (thereafter cited as IPML (CW)).Google Scholar

5 For details on Mazzei, see Gerbi, Antonello, The Dispute of the New World, Pittsburgh, 1973, pp. 268–75.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., pp. 52–66.

7 Ibid., p. 272. Knowledge of French was not in fact widespread in North America itself; see ibid., p. 274, n. 512.

8 See especially UC xxix. 11–54Google Scholar; xxxii. 1–46; li (b); c; cxl. 154–218; cxlii; clxx.

9 Notably in the Traités de Législation Civile et Pénale, 3 vols., Paris, 1802.Google Scholar

10 UC clxix. 95.Google Scholar The extract produced below is in my translation.

11 See also ‘France’, UC clxx. 32Google Scholar; and The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. Bowring, J., 11 vols., Edinburgh, 1838–43, ii. 229.Google Scholar

12 Samuel Von Cocceji, Von Carmer's predecessor as Chancellor and as reformer of the Prussian Legal Code.

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16 2 vols., London, 1811.

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‘Jean, le gros fermier du Canton,

Vient de mourir—bien riche?—oh non

Vous m'étonnez: c'étoit un homme

Grand travailleur, grand économe:

D'ailleurs beau domaine, ample fonds—

Je sais—mais voici l'enclouûre;

Par un caprice de la nature,

Jean dépensoit tout en culture,

Et laissoit périr la moisson’.

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21 The only book-length biographical study of Dumont is Martin's, Jean Étienne Dumont 1759–1829. L'ami de Mirabeau, le voyageur, le patriote genevois, Neuchâtel, 1942.Google Scholar A recent article in English with some biographical detail on Dumont is Dinwiddy, J. R., ‘Bentham and the Early Nineteenth Century’, Bentham Newsletter, viii (1984), 15–33.Google Scholar A considerable store of unpublished material is to be found in the Dumont Archive at the Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire in Geneva.

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26 Ibid., pp. 147–49.

27 See The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. iii, ed. Christie, I., London, 1971 (CW), pp. 345–619.Google Scholar

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30 Roth, , p. 80.Google Scholar

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43 Correspondence (CW), iv. 30.Google Scholar

44 See Ibid., iv. 48, 70.

45 Kohler, , pp. 286–87; my translation.Google Scholar

46 Blount, Charles, ‘Bentham, Dumont and Mirabeau’, in University of Birmingham Historical Journal, vol. iii, no. 2 (1952), 157.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., 158.

48 Correspondence (CW), iv. 33–4.Google Scholar

49 UC clxx. 122–33Google Scholar; and see Correspondence (CW), iv. 17–18.Google Scholar

50 Correspondence (CW), iv. 68–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 Blount, , 158 n. 27.Google Scholar

52 Häusermann, , p. 49.Google Scholar

53 The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. vi, ed. Dinwiddy, J. R., London, 1984 (CW), p. 459; my translation.Google Scholar

54 Maria Edgeworth in France and Switzerland, ed. Colvin, Christina, Oxford, 1979, p. 7.Google Scholar

55 Häusermann, , p. 51.Google Scholar

56 Bibliothèque Britannique, i (1796), 6. (Henceforth Bibl. Brit.)Google Scholar

57 Ibid., 7.

58 Ibid., (literature section) iii (1796), 137–50; 265–83.

59 Ibid., v. (1797), 155–56.

60 Ibid., 156; my translation.

61 Traités de Législation Civile et Pénale, ‘Discours Préliminaire’, p. ix.Google Scholar

62 IPML (CW), p. 196, n. q.Google Scholar

63 Bibl. Brit. (literature section), v (1797), 157.Google Scholar

64 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract, ed. Cranston, M., Harmondsworth, 1986, p. 101.Google Scholar

65 Bibl. Brit. (literature section), v (1797), 158.Google Scholar

66 Ibid.

67 Revue Encyclopédique, xliv (10 1829), 258–68.Google Scholar There is a translation of this article in Neal, , pp. 157–72, with comments by the latter.Google Scholar

68 Ibid., 260–61.

69 Ibid., 261; my translation.

70 Ibid., my translation.

71 Ibid., my translation.

72 Published in Traités de Législation Civile et Pénale, ii. 1–238.Google Scholar

73 Bibl. Brit. (literature section), vi (1797), 4; my translation.Google Scholar

74 Bibi. Brit. (literature section), vi (1797), 281–306.Google Scholar

75 Some of this material was included in the Théorie des Peines et des Récompenses; see Jeremy Bentham's Economie Writings, ed. Stark, W., 3 vols., London, 1952–1954, i. 57–8.Google Scholar It appeared in Bibl. Brit. (literature section), vii (1798), 105–33, 369b89.Google Scholar

76 Bibl. Brit. (literature section), v (1797), 159; my translation.Google Scholar

77 Ibid., my translation.

78 Ibid., 158.

79 2 vols., London, 1811.

80 UC clxxiv. 15; my translation.Google Scholar

81 UC clxxiv. 9; my translation.Google Scholar

82 Dumont to Richard Lovell Edgeworth, 4 October 1806, UC clxxiv. 4.Google Scholar See also Then Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. viii, ed. Conway, Stephen, Oxford, 1988 (CW), p. 78 and n. 9.Google Scholar

83 Neal, , p. 151.Google Scholar

84 Mill, J. S., AutobiographyGoogle Scholar, in Autobiography and Literary Essays, ed. Robson, J. M. and Stillinger, J., Toronto, 1981 (Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. i.), i. 67.Google Scholar

85 Ibid., pp. 67–8.

86 Ibid., p. 69.

87 For some useful discussion of the topic, see Baumgardt, D., Bentham and the Ethics of Today, Princeton, 1952, pp. 323–69.Google Scholar Also Halévy, E., La Formation du Radicalisme Philosophique, 3 vols., Paris, 1901–1904, i. La Jeunesse de Bentham, 369–97.Google Scholar