ABSTRACT
[The Constitutional Code from which the following pages are taken was intended to be Bentham's greatest work. It was to encompass the entire range of political thought from the highest general principles to the minutest details of political organisation. Bentham planned it in three volumes. Vol. I was to deal with the ends and forms of government, and the nature, powers and functions of the electorate, public-opinion tribunal; legislature and the prime minister. Vol. II was to deal with the powers and functions of different ministers and 'defensive forces'. Finally, Vol. Ill was to deal with the judiciary, justice minister, lawyers, and the legislative and executive arrangements at the district and sub-district level. Of the three projected volumes Bentham managed to publish only Vol. I (and ch. I of vol. II) in his lifetime, and that too without an 'Introductory Dissertation' discussing the merits and demerits of different forms of government. He did, however, say in his preface to Vol. I that to the completion of the other two 'very little is now wanting; they are, both of them, in such a state of forwardness that, were the author to drop into his last sleep... able hands are not wanting from which the task of laying the work before the public would receive its completion'. (P.V.) Vol. IX of Bowring's collected works includes the whole of Bentham's Vol. I and large parts of Bentham's manuscripts. Excerpt for Vol. I from which the following three chapters are excerpted, I have relied on the mss. In order not to interrupt the flow of the argument, I have not indicated where passages and chapters have been omitted.]
