The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Now First Collected: Under the Superintendence of His Executor, John Bowring ...

Front Cover
W. Tait, 1839
 

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 24 - The statesman, who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.
Page 19 - Sober people, who will give for the use of money no more than a part of what they are likely to make by the use of it, would not venture into the competition.
Page 24 - To give the monopoly of the home market to the produce of domestic industry, in any particular art or manufacture, is in some measure to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, and must, in almost all cases, be either a useless or a hurtful regulation. If the produce of domestic can be brought there as cheap as that of foreign industry, the regulation is evidently useless. If it cannot, it must generally be hurtful. It is the maxim of every prudent master of a. family,...
Page 23 - But it is only for the sake of profit that any man employs a capital in the support of industry ; and he will always, therefore, endeavour to employ it in the support of that industry of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, or to exchange for the greatest quantity either of money or of other goods.
Page 13 - ... in any nation, the greater superfluity there will be beyond what is necessary to carry on the business of exchange and the common concerns of life.
Page 1 - That no man of ripe years and of sound mind, acting freely, and with his eyes open, ought to be hindered, with a view to his advantage, from making such a bargain, in the way of obtaining money, as he thinks fit ; nor (what is a necessary consequence) anybody hindered from supplying him upon any terms he thinks proper to accede to.
Page 2 - ... ashamed of doing so, nor is it usual so much as to profess to do otherwise. Why a man who takes as much as he can get, be it six, or seven, or eight, or ten per cent, for the use of a sum of money, should be called usurer, should be loaded with an opprobrious name, any more than if he bad bought a house with it, and made a proportionable profit by the house, is more than I can see.
Page 189 - has thus in every country supplied the shortsightedness of individuals, by doing for them what they would have done for themselves, if their imagination had anticipated the march of nature.
Page 33 - ... in England abundance of useful things are done by individuals which in other countries are done either by government or not at all ... [while] in Russia, under Peter the Great, the list of sponte acta being a blank, that of agenda was proportionately abundant.

Bibliographic information