I am often asked by students, colleagues and friends to recommend a good book on Jeremy Bentham, and there has always been a problem of how to respond. Although many fine studies exist, their target is such that each one's scope is hopelessly reduced; it is a sign of the peculiar straits in which Bentham Studies has found itself that the century-old Growth of Philosophical Radicalism has remained so relevant. But no longer: Professor Schofield's volume spans Bentham's notoriously long and full writing career, giving a vivid account of the work of young projector and old Radical alike. Anyone who wants to know Bentham better (and we all have a lot yet to learn) should read this book.

Utility and Democracy addresses a recurring question about Bentham. How is it that this thinker remained so doggedly consistent in some respects, so changeable in others? If utility was a lifelong pursuit, why did Bentham alternately reject and embrace democracy? Many commentators have argued that Bentham was ‘converted’ to democracy in 1808 or 1809 at the ripe age of 50 or 51, and probably under the influence of James Mill. A minority perspective holds that Bentham was pretty much always a democrat and that French Revolution writings on representation offer proof; according to this view, any retreat during the 1790s, whether strategic or sincere, was a minor chapter in a lifelong commitment to fundamental political reform. Schofield reminds us that Bentham's politics, however periodized, was not ever really of the French, American, or even Westminster type. Democracy was a means to an end, never an end in itself; after Bentham's discovery of ‘sinister interest’ in or around 1804, however, democracy and eventually republicanism came to be seen by him as necessary means. The end, of course, was always utility. Schofield's approach to Bentham is very much that of the historian of political thought, but he remains faithful throughout to Bentham the philosopher. Utility and democracy, yes: because, after sinister interest, utility requires democracy.

Sinister interest is really any interest of the ruling few that prevails over that of the subject many, thus thwarting the advancement of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Schofield reminds us of the radicalism of Bentham's early Fragment on Government, the polemic against Blackstone that already had branded lawyers as a ‘passive and enervate race’, ‘ “deaf to the voice of reason and public utility: obsequious only to the whisper of interest, and to the beck of power” ’ (p. 112). The idea though that lawyers, or anyone else in authority, acted the way they did more out of interest than out of ignorance or other incapacity was never systematically entertained until much later. Bentham's projections consistently focused on the law as an instrument of security, pushing its radical reconstruction as a means to make government serve the governed and to provide expedients against both tyranny and anarchy (misrule and no-rule). What he learned from bitter experience (most of all, according to Schofield, the failure of Panopticon) is that what stood in the way of reform was, above all, sinister interest. Sinister interest was perfectly consistent with Bentham's early theory of motivation. But it joined his psychological insights to what we would now call a social theory. From 1804 on a kind of class analysis ensued, identifying a series of establishments: first the ‘judicature’ of lawyers and judges, then the broader establishment of Parliament, Church, monarchy, and aristocracy. The latter three would eventually be seen to require complete elimination or ‘euthanasia’: consistent with Bentham's ‘disappointment-preventing principle’, this wouldn't be a matter of expropriation so much as withering away, allowing present members to live out their sinecures but forbidding any distribution to newcomers. Central to legal reform was codification and central to political reform was publicity; throughout the system the application of the ‘junction-of-interests prescribing principle’ would destroy sinister interest by forging these and other instruments of security guaranteeing that the individual interest of officials would be consistent with the aggregate interest of the whole.

The opening chapters of Utility and Democracy treat fundamental matters that preoccupied Bentham from an early age and that served as a foundation for all subsequent work: real and fictitious entities, the principle of utility, and the critique of natural law and natural rights. We learn in the first sentence that ‘Jeremy Bentham was afraid of ghosts’; thus begins a discussion of Bentham on ontology, logic, and language. Schofield does a great service with this discussion: clarifying the subservience of ontology to eudaemonics (and all science to its corresponding art), the propositional theory of language, the indispensability of (names of) fictitious entities and their expounding as (names of) real entities through paraphrasis, the ultimate reconciliation between utility and truth in the expediency of correct belief. Like this first chapter and the book as a whole, the chapter on the principle of utility is not out to resolve disputes about the proper meaning, scope, and application of its subject-matter; but it is out to provide a definitive statement of what Bentham himself actually thought. We learn that Bentham was always quite serious about the measurability of and equivalence between the motive force and the utilitarian value of discrete pains and pleasures, the central place of intra- and inter-personal calculation in morals and legislation, the sacrifice (within the context of security) of minority interests if they are outweighed by majority interests, and the act-utilitarian basis for both private and public decision-making. Any other approach to conduct substitutes either asceticism or the cloaked idiosyncrasies of private judgement for the independent, measurable, and communicable criteria of utility. Utilitarian judgments might not align, but at least they avoid nonsense: ‘While appeal to the principle of utility did not rule out disagreement, at least the parties would be talking meaningfully to each other’ (p. 49).

Bentham encountered a lot of nonsense, in Blackstone's lectures and American and French Declarations alike. Whether by finding standards in existing practice or finding them in nature, both conservatives and revolutionaries confused law as it is with law as it ought to be, all to the detriment of meaningful exposition and censure. Schofield explores the critiques of natural law and natural rights, showing that Bentham's attack on the latter is perfectly consistent with openness and even enthusiasm for accompanying political and legal innovations. He devotes a chapter to the French Revolution, following closely Bentham's evolving proposals for a changing situation in France (which include at one point support for female suffrage). Although he notes an early willingness to contemplate far-reaching reform in Britain that suffers in reaction to events in France, Schofield points out that all of Bentham's early projections were attuned to local circumstance, and that none of them challenged the basic political framework (whether imperial or national-revolutionary) for which they were drafted: Bentham was no committed democrat, and certainly no republican. The narrative builds to the discovery of sinister interest as a turning point; if we must speak of a transition to political radicalism, it is here that we should find it.

Chapters 5–12 tell the story of the appearance and effect of sinister interest in several areas. These chapters deftly combine faithfulness to the (nineteenth-century) chronology of Bentham's evolving concerns with a logical arrangement that explains why they emerge as such, and with a treatment of each topic (parliamentary reform, the Church, official aptitude, etc.) that considers its place in Bentham's work from its (eighteenth-century) beginnings. This is no mean feat, requiring the kind of intimacy with his subject that Schofield has acquired from years of manuscript work. And the treatment is not in any way blinkered; it is clear that the author is well immersed in the vocabularies and perspectives of Bentham's milieu. Like the book as a whole, these chapters make fine use of Bentham text, manuscript, correspondence and the work of contemporaries. They also show a good familiarity with older and newer secondary literature well beyond Bentham Studies (although some historians might quibble here with the greater reliance on older sources). Schofield effectively brings Bentham the intellectual to life. We really learn how he performed as such, in ways that might provide a model for today: publicly excoriating while privately encouraging a variety of partners, and combining strict adherence to principle with sharp strategic intuitions (disentangling, for example, the cause of legal from political reform). Schofield's main purpose, though, is to clarify the place and meaning for Bentham of key political concepts (e.g. sovereignty, public opinion), and he successfully does this by conjoining rich historical detail with concise expositions of relevant texts.

Not everyone will find what he or she needs here, of course. One area that receives particularly scant treatment is political economy, and there is no attempt to sort out the ‘four ends’ of utilitarian rule – security, subsistence, abundance and equality – that we find there but also in early civil code and late Pannomial fragments. The story Schofield tells is, however, a remarkably full one. The book ends with a lively discussion of ‘Auto-Icon’, followed by an excellent summary (pp. 342–9) of the argument as a whole. The great usefulness of the volume is enhanced by its elaborate footnotes (not endnotes), and by a strong bibliography and index.