The Benthamite-Liberal critique of John Locke
John Bowring (1792 – 1872) created and published a (1834) Benthamite text known as “History of the Greatest Happiness Principle” published near the end of Bentham’s Deontology. Because I am myself not a bona fide Bentham scholar — although about to publish my first real paper on him and at least aware enough to realize that Bowring’s edition has been discredited — I am not wholly sure whether some contemporary scholars treat the authorship of “History of the Greatest Happiness Principle” (hereafter History) as principally Bowring’s now. (This is also the natural reading of the text.) We do know that the 1834 History was, at least in part, based on Bentham’s manuscript ‘A Short History of Utilitarianism.’ Somewhat sadly I am unaware of the exact relation between the two texts.
Luckily, for my present purposes it’s fine that the exact authorship of the passages I am about to discuss is uncertain. They were, however, taken to convey Bentham’s views throughout the nineteenth century. And they accurately portray how nineteenth century radical/Benthamite liberals would have thought about the subject matter that I wish to pursue here: the subject matter is the status of Locke as a liberal and to what degree one should think of him as belonging to or even founding the liberal tradition. (This is a topic of a joint project with John Thrasher (Chapman).)
Locke is introduced early in the History in the context of ancient discussions of the role of utility. (My page-numbers are to Bowring’s edition.)
Neither of them seems to have understood the value and importance of the doctrine [utility as a motive to conduct] they put forward. In neither case does it occupy the position of a great and important principle. It was adopted by no sect; it was avowed, followed, worshipped by no votaries. It was wholly in an embryo state. It had no influential, no presiding power; it had not obtained a place in the Elysian fields, among those aphorisms, written in letters of light, which Æneas found Anchises passing under review. Unvalued and unheeded, it remained, like the truth which dropped by chance from the heedless pen of Aristotle,-that all ideas have their origin in the senses; another magnificent principle whose consequences were hidden from the perception of many, many generations. Locke was the first to discern the value of an observation, whose development enabled him to subvert the universal empire usurped by so-called logic, under the command of Aristotle himself, while David Hume, in 1742, gave importance to the word Utility. (p. 291)
That is, Locke is introduced for his championing (what we would call) empiricism. Locke’s own incipient utilitarianism is wholly ignored. But that’s not very surprising because Locke’s early Essays on the Law of Nature were, I think, wholly unknown during the nineteenth century.
The next mention of Locke is more important to our purposes. In Bowring’s History it is recalled that already in 1776, Bentham had criticized the social contract doctrine in A Fragment on Government. In this context, a History mentions that Locke was responsible for introducing the “social contract scheme,” (p. 303) and that Bentham was responsible for “annihilating” this “dogma.” (p. 304)
As an aside, in A Fragment, Locke is barely mentioned. But when he is, it is part of a quote from Blackstone (who is the main target of A Fragment). In that quote, Locke is associated with a theory of the division and equilibrium of powers among the different branches. Strikingly in Blackstone’s hands what’s key to Locke’s argument — and one looks glancingly at the daily headlines — is that when one of the branches, and, especially the legislative falls under the control of the executive, this would entail the dissolution of the original [social] contract [which had created the independence of the legislative] and put society back in conditions of anarchy. In the quoted passage, Blackstone himself treats this as a bit much.
To our eyes it is a bit odd to treat Locke as a founder as the doctrine of the original contract. But let’s leave that aside. I actually like Blackstone’s reading of Locke here. It’s also worth mentioning that this supports the interpretation of Duncan Bell who in his famous “What is Liberalism”essay treats Locke’s association with the social contract as something outdated by nineteenth century utilitarians. In fact, in A History, Bowring heaps scorn on Locke’s account of the social contract.
Bowring then suggests that Locke’s action theory is similarly misguided, “Again, his doctrine respecting uneasiness as the cause of action as if a man enjoying certain pleasures could not seek other pleasures in addition, shows how vaguely the ideas of pleasure presented themselves to his mind.” (p. 306; emphasis in original.) I tend to think of this more as Hobbes’ position, by the way.
Be that as it may, a more extended discussion of Locke follows shortly thereafter. And this is quite pertinent to us. I apologize for the length of the passage, but it is really important (and luckily not very abstruse).
Sad, unguarded, infelicitous, was in truth that ill-considered definition, that attempt to lay with such loose materials the foundation of human happiness, as resting alone upon justice and the rights of property. Sad the triumphs which, by a designing and uncandid antagonist, might on this occasion have been reaped over that honest, candid, and in every respect amiable mind! Property the only thing intitled to be the object of care to government! Possessors of property, accordingly, the only persons intitled to be objects of that same care! The possessor of property the only person intitled to be represented in and by a representative body forming part and parcel of the sovereign authority! The poor, in a body, held up as a community which the rich, in a body, are intitled to make slaves of, and for ever treat as such! Corporeal slavery, a state of things still worse, perhaps, than political slavery; a state of things the production and maintenance of which is a proper object of government! The meridian of the West Indies is the meridian where the supposed champion of liberty and good government would find a striking application of his theory! For, indeed, with but too much reason might the theory of John Locke have been employed for the defence of slavery, -for the defence of boundless mischief, -for the defence of boundless misery.
The case is, that in the mind of this philosopher,-to whom, after all, the debt owed by mankind is so indisputable, real and extensive, -experience had not at that time at least, gone beyond aristocracy, the opulent rulers and influential few; the people, the unopulent and subject many, had not as yet fallen within the sphere of his observation, or arrived at an apparent importance necessary to the being numbered among the objects of his care.
This is not the most charitable interpretation of Locke. But it is pretty clear that Bowring treats Locke as an ideologue of the Whig aristocracy. In fact, Bowring treats the effect of Locke’s writings, not unfairly, as a source of religious intolerance and bigotry toward Catholicism (this was, in fact, also Price’s interpretation at the start of the French revolution) and the justification of chattel slavery Stateside and in the Caribbean. And central to these problematic effects of Locke’s position is, on Bowring’s view, the centrality of the defense of property as the source of justification and aim of legal authority in Locke’s political theory.
As I note, this is not a nuanced reading of Locke’s views. But it is instructive of how early liberals treat and read Locke. Rather than seeing continuity between their own political orientation and Locke’s within a seamless tradition, they treat Locke as an important target who is often wholly misguided and responsible for creating the ideology or class biases implicated in political evils.
Bowring's reading of Locke wasn't nuanced. But Locke doesn't deserve nuance, any more than other apologists for slavery.