Description

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composed by Bentham in the process of drafting the papers which formed Official Aptitude, and included hitherto unpublished essays in the three Appendices.