ABSTRACT
The Patent opposition between the individualistic Lecture liberalism of 1830 and the democratic socialism of 1905 conceals the heavy debt owed by English collectivists to the utilitarian reformers. From Benthamism, the socialists of to-day have inherited a legislative dogma, a legislative instrument, and a legislative tendency. The guides of English legislation during the era of individualism, by whatever party name they were known, accepted the fundamental ideas of Benthamism. In France the Declaration of the Rights of Man has kept alive the conviction that a National Legislature ought not to possess unlimited authority. Benthamites, indeed, differed among themselves more deeply than they probably perceived, as to the relative importance of the principle of utility and the principle of non-interference with each man's freedom. Nominally, indeed, every utilitarian regarded utility as the standard by which to test the character or expediency of any course of action.
