ABSTRACT
Individualism as regards legislation is popularly, and not without reason, connected with the name and the principles of Bentham. "The age of law reform and the age of Jeremy" Bentham are one and the same. He is the father of the most important of all the branches of reform, the leading and ruling department of human improvement. In Bentham's intellect were united talents seldom found in combination; a jurist's capacity for the grasp of general principles and the acumen of a natural born logician were blended with the resourcefulness of a mechanical inventor. The Benthamites were, indeed, for the most part democrats, but the most democratic of the utilitarians did not attack any foundation of the English social system. The course of parliamentary legislation with regard to the Combination Law in 1824 and 1825 was singular, but in all its features it exactly represents the Benthamite individualism of the day.
