The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham: Official Aptitude Maximized, Expense Minimized (Hardcover)

Jeremy Bentham

ISBN 10: 0198204035 / ISBN 13: 9780198204039

Published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993

About this Item

Hardcover. The essays which Bentham collected together for publication in 1830 under the title of Official Aptitude Maximized; Expense Minimized, written at various times between 1810 and 1830, deal with the means of achieving efficient and economical government. In considering a wide range of themes in the fields of constitutional law, public finance, and legal reform, Bentham places the problem of official corruption at the centre of his analysis. He contrasts hisown recommendations for good administration, which he had fully developed in his magisterial Constitutional Code, with the severe deficiencies he saw in English practice. The core of the volume consists of fourmajor essays directed against the principles and policies of four leading statesmen: Edmund Burke, George Rose, Robert Peel, and Lord Chancellor Eldon. Of particular concern to Bentham were the abuses sanctioned by the judges and their officials in the Westminster Hall courts, which, he argues, resulted in the denial of justice to the majority of the population. In this volume, Bentham not only displays the precise logical reasoning for which he is well known, but also his considerable skillsas a rhetorician of reform. This volume contains the papers prepared by Bentham to illustrate his ideal of constitutional law, summed up in the aphorism of the title, and to contrast it with practice under the British constitution, which he believed to be based on entirely the opposite principle. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780198204039

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham: Official Aptitude Maximized, Expense Minimized (Hardcover)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, Oxford
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198204035
• ISBN 13: 9780198204039
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

In 1824 Bentham conceived the idea of publishing a collection of essays in order to illustrate his own ideal of constitutional law, encapsulated in the aphorism "aptitude maximized, expense minimized" and to contrast it with practice under the British constitution, which he believed to be based on entirely the opposite principle. The volume was published in 1830 and was intended to complement the detailed administrative provisions which he had been drafting for his Constitutional Code, the major endeavor of the final decade of his life. The two works are therefore closely related, both chronologically and thematically. For this latest volume in the new critical edition of the works and correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Philip Schofield has undertaken a complete survey of the manuscripts composed by Bentham in the process of drafting the papers which formed Official Aptitude, and included hitherto unpublished essays in the three Appendices.

About the Author

Philip Schofield is a Research Fellow at University College London.