Some Bentham on Decolonization, Perpetual Peace, federalism, courts of arbitrage: from Smith to Kant and Cobden.

I never thought I would say this, but “I have been reading Oakeshott’s essays with pleasure” [in the New and Expanded Liberty Fund edition (1991) of Rationalism in Politics and Other essays.] Many of his essays are lively (even catty) and poignant and do not tax the reader with his more prolix prose familiar from On Human Conduct. In “The New Bentham” (1932), he is especially catty not just towards Bentham, who he thinks is best treated as a philosophe—which here means a boundless enthusiasm coupled with a certain philosophical superficiality. And while lampooning Ogden (the great polymath and who also edited some of Bentham’s work) even more, Oakeshott insists that Bentham’s “A Plan for an Universal Peace” (hereafter: A Plan) is “of the least interest to-day.” (p. 145)

As a weird aside, when I book.googled, "a plan for an universal peace" I only found the phrase in Oakeshott essay and a (1819) issue of New Monthly Magazine, and Universal Register (Vol 12), Nov 1, in an essay on Aristophanes in the context of the discussion of his Peace. (It also shows up in works plagiarizing this New Monthly piece.) And that’s because the real title is “A Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace.” (I’ll qualify that in a second.)

Since the 1930s prompted a revived interest in all kinds of federal and peace projects, and the title of Bentham’s work reminded me of Kant’s famous work that partially shaped that interest, I decided I should look for A Plan. Also because friend of this blog, Kristen Collins, has been nudging me to give Bentham more attention in light of my liberal art of government project.

Thanks to Jennifer Pitts’ (2005) A turn to empire: The rise of imperial liberalism in Britain and France, I already knew of Bentham’s anti-imperial sensibility. But her explicit treatment of A Plan is very brief.

A Plan is the fourth of the essays published in 1843, under the title Principles of International Law. This is in (vol II) The Works of Jeremy Bentham: Principles of judicial procedure edited by Bowring. The original edition suggests the essays were manuscripts written in 1786-9. This timing matters because we know he was then immersed in Smith’s Wealth of Nations because he published the first edition of his Defence of Usury, which included his famous criticism of Smith’s views of usury, in 1787.

Unfortunately, as Pitts notes, contemporary editors strongly suspect that Bowring re-organized these manuscripts in all kinds of ways. Gunhild Hoogensen’s (2001) essay, suggests that A Plan is itself a complex (even “Frankensteinian”) compilation of three essays: “Pacification and Emancipation,” “Colonies and Navy,” and “Cabinet No Secresy.” It’s pretty clear that while this material can be used to understand Bentham’s reception and sources, one should be cautious in using it to understand Bentham’s intentions. In what follows I focus on sources and implied impact.

This made me wonder if the title of A Plan was even original (since it’s so Kantian inflected, yet Kant’s Perpetual Peace is from 1795), but Hoogensen explains this is based on an original, rudiment outline in Bentham’s hand. This title of this rudiment sheet “itself is titled Pacification and Emancipation Ordo International.” Ordo friends take note.

A Plan defends four proposals, the first two mentioned at outset: “1. The reduction and fixation of the force of the several nations that compose the European system;---2. The emancipation of the distant dependencies of each state.” It should be immediately noted that when he speaks of ‘European system’ he is primarily and explicitly focused on France and England. (At one point the naval and political contexts of Spain and Holland enter in, too.) And he believes that “that supposing Great Britain and France thoroughly agreed [to arms reduction], the principal difficulties would be removed ta the establishment of a plan of general and permanent pacification for all Europe.”

As Bentham notes in the former he is building on an argument by Dean Tucker, and the latter by James Anderson. This has been nicely explored in a 2011 article by Peter Cain. Tucker’s argument was not unique to Tucker because versions of it circulated since 1713 when Saint-Pierre had proposed arms reduction as a means to perpetual peace (which also caught Rousseau’s and Kant’s attention). As Bentham’s way of phrasing it already indicates, Anderson was not against colonizing as such, but he thought it made more sense to do so in underdeveloped parts of Great Britain (especially Scottish highlands). As Salim Rashid notes, this was part of a wider trend in the aftermath of American independence, and arguably built on the experience of colonizing Ireland.

Lurking in A Plan is the idea that under modern conditions wars of conquests are costly and self-defeating, although they may be profitable for a part of the (conquering) nation.

There is a third important proposal: “the establishment of a common court of judicature for the decision of differences between the several nations, although such court were not to be armed with any coercive powers.” This echoes the 1623 New Cineas by Emeric Cruce and also William Penn’s 1693 pamphlet " Essay toward the Present and Future Peace of Europe." (New Cineas was relatively obscure, although because Leibniz mentions it I have wondered if it was better known; I am unsure about the impact of Penn’s pamphlet.) That matters because arbitration of conflict becomes a mainstay of Cobden and Bright (and their ideas for functional integration through trade) in the middle of the nineteenth century. I now think, thus, that the publication of A Plan is important to the development of liberalism. I return to this below.

Bentham also anticipates Wilson’s hostility to secret diplomacy: “That secresy in the operations of the foreign department ought not to be endured in England; being altogether useless and equally repugnant to the interests of liberty and to those of peace.” And to the best of my knowledge (but I am NO diplomatic historian) this is original to Bentham.

I could stop here, but I think the Smithian elements in A Plan have been underplayed in the literature. So, for example, the argument against foreign colonies rests on the Smithian claim that they increase the chance of wars. But I think the connection with Smith’s writings is much more integral to A Plan (without wishing to deny its distinctiveness).

Now, Cain recognizes that Bentham is also building on Smith’s critique of the Mercantile system. Smith had basically argued that while monopolistic trade with foreign colonies was highly profitable for some it was at the expense of consumers, undermined domestic investment, and also involved the tax-payers in open-ended costly wars to defend often strategically vulnerable dependencies. As Smith puts it, “Britain derives nothing but loss from the dominion which she assumes over her colonies.” (WN 4.7.c.65, 616) Bentham basically accepts this argument, but unlike Smith (who had made an exception to his free trade principles on this very point) Bentham also attacks the navigation act in A Plan.

In fact, A Plan argues from normative and theoretical Smithian premises to an anti-Smithian prescriptive conclusion. For the very paragraph after 4.7.65, starts with: “To propose that Great Britain should voluntarily give up all authority over her colonies, and leave them to elect their own magistrates, to enact their own laws, and to make peace and war as they might think proper, would be to propose such a measure as never was, and never will be adopted, by any nation in the world. No nation ever voluntarily gave up the dominion of any province, how troublesome soever it might be to govern it, and how small soever the revenue which it afforded might be in proportion to the expence which it occasioned.” (WN 4.7.66, 616-7).

For, the stated aim of A Plan is “The objection, and the only objection to it, is the apparent impracticability of it;---that it is not only hopeless, but that to such a degree that any proposal to that effect deserves the name of visionary and ridiculous. This objection I shall endeavour in the first place to remove; for the removal of this prejudice may be necessary to procure for the plan a hearing.” (emphasis added.) Now, Smith says that is pride and, more important, the “private interests” of governing parts of the state that prevent it.

The late Donald Winch claims (in 1997) that Bentham’s fundamental axiom, “That the increase of growing wealth every nation in a given period, is necessarily limited by the quantity of capital it possesses at that period” is a subtle deviation from Smith. Because according to Winch for Smith trade is limited by “new markets.” Winch undoubtedly gets the spirit of Smith’s position right (the division of labor is limited by size of market). Here’s the key passage

The extent of the home-trade and of the capital which can be employed in it, is necessarily limited by the value of the surplus produce of all those distant places within the country which have occasion to exchange their respective productions with one another. That of the foreign trade of consumption, by the value of the surplus produce of the whole country and of what can be purchased with it. That of the carrying trade, by the value of the surplus produce of all the different countries in the world. Its possible extent, therefore, is in a manner infinite in comparison of that of the other two, and is capable of absorbing the greatest capitals. (WN 2.5.36)

I agree this says that effective demand (our and their surplus) limits trade. And So Winch is right. But, as Smith also indicates in the first quoted sentence, you do need capital for distant trade. It is a necessary condition for trade; and its stock grows only by savings, greater productivity, or income from rents. Because Bentham only emphasizes capital as a constraint, Winch is right to suggest that is “A simplified and more dogmatic version of Smith's economic ideas.”

But this not the only economic idea that Bentham deploys from Smith. For example, after agreeing with Smith (and against mercantile and physiocratic systems) that of all branches of the economy, “no one is to such a degree more beneficial to the public than the rest, as that it should be worth its while to call forth the powers of law to give it an advantage,” A Plan goes on to claim “but if there were any, it would unquestionably be the improvement and cultivation of land.” And this is exactly Smith’s position (especially for small-landholding) because (as Smith notes) it is least risky (“The capital of the landlord, on the contrary, which is fixed in the improvement of his land, seems to be as well secured as the nature of human affairs can admit of.”) In fact, Bentham goes on to claim that “It is impossible that while there is ground untilled, or ground that might be better tilled than it is, that any detriment should ensue to the community from the withholding or withdrawing capital from any other branch of industry, and employing it in agriculture.” (This echoes Smith’s arguments against entails and primogeniture: “Compare the present condition of those [great] estates with the possessions of the small proprietors in their neighbourhood, and you will require no other argument to convince you how unfavourable such extensive property is to improvement.”)

Another key argument of A Plan (and this has elicited commentary in secondary literature) is the following:

“Other reasons against distant dominions may be found in a consideration of the good of the government. Distant mischiefs make little impression on those on whom the remedying of them depends. A single murder committed in London makes more impression than if thousands of murders and other cruelties were committed in the East Indies. The situation of Hastings, only because he was present, excited compassion in those who heard the detail of the cruelties committed by him with indifference.”

But what’s been ignored is that here notably A Plan uses Smith’s moral psychology (that distance affects our motivation to act) to argue for Smith’s claim that principal-agent problems beset colonial government. (Smith thought the East India charter should be revoked precisely because it was tyrannical and principal-agent problems could not be overcome.) Compassion, a synonym for sympathy. plays a much bigger role in Smith’s moral philosophy than Bentham’s! I don’t recall Smith applying it to the Hastings impeachment, so that’s especially neat. (Burke by contrast wanted to preserve and improve colonial administration.)

Other Smithian principles that are articulated are that the government should not promote export subsidies (bounties), use duties or taxes on imports of other countries’ manufacturers.

Now, so far, it looks like A Plan does not address the issue of honor/pride. And so seems to have ignored Smith’s concern that de-colonization is not to be expected. (undermining my claim). But A Plan does so in an ingenious way. It points out that if a (peace) treaty is used to set favorable conditions for oneself and de facto is felt as humiliating of the other side, then that treaty must be thought unstable, even an invitation to further war. (He uses Rome’s first peace treaty with Carthage as an example.) That is, he advices that all states should address each other’s sense of honor and fears when they make treaties with each other. Lurking in Bentham is a view about public opinion and that the government rests on public opinion. (This is a view more ordinarily associated with Hume [who plays an important role in A Plan, about which some other time more], but Paul Sagar has rightly emphasized it’s also in Smith.) I return to this below.

As I noted, one of Bentham’s main proposals in A Plan is a court of arbitrage that eventually may get enforcement powers and eventually require “a clause guaranteeing the liberty of the press in each state.” (EU take note!) And this is the plank of the proposal that is introduced by A Plan when he confronts the objection that it is visionary.

“Can the arrangement proposed be justly styled visionary, when it has been proved of it---that

1. It is in the interest of the parties concerned.

2. They are already sensible of that interest.

3. The situation it would place them in is no new one, nor any other than the original situation they set out from.”

At this point A Plan argues a court of arbitrage is not a new invention but exists in several (federal) contexts: The American confederation, The German diet., The Swiss league. And while in each case there are complications, it is pretty clear, then, that such a court would be the building block (and this is the fourth main proposal) for a kind of federalism. (Recall that it is likely that Bentham drafted all of this before Kant’s Perpetual Peace.)

As regular readers know, the culmination of Wealth of Nations is a proposal for a federal parliamentary union with the American colonies. Bentham is drafting after that is no more a live possibility. But clearly has similar vision for Europe. This actually draws on ideas going back to Thomas More, but revived by Spinoza and more widely discussed since St. Pierre (also by Hume).

A Plan proposes that such a court to be instituted alongside a disarmament treaty in which the arms savings are publicly announced such that the benefits of peace are made clear to public opinion. A key example of the power of public opinion is the instance of Swedish public opinion (then an absolutist monarch) that produced an effective veto on Swedish King’s attempt to invade Russia.

That is, what ties many elements of A Plan together is an attempt to remedy the problem — it’s Smith’s key objection — that some ruling parts of a state benefit from war and monopoly. Bentham’s response is the interlocking effects of publicity, no secrecy, a free press, public opinion and the avoidance of humiliating treaties. And, anticipating Kant and Cobden, once federal/arbitration mechanisms are in place, these, in turn, can introduce further mechanisms to reduce the possibility and attractiveness of mutual war.

Here’s where we are. In my view Smith’s Wealth of Nations galvanized a political argument for economic and federal integration of sovereign states. But he also leaves key objections to it in place. Kant and Bentham both offer different kinds of mechanisms to tackle the objection. However, Bentham gets there first, and in some ways is much more radical. In the context of his anti-colonial argument, Bentham, then, is the father of functionalist integration and Cobden and Bright ran with it.