WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.380 Good morning everyone and how wonderful to see such a big welcoming crowd for our talk. 2 00:00:07.500 --> 00:00:09.840 Thank you all for coming out this morning. 3 00:00:11.420 --> 00:00:17.280 I'll introduce us first, maybe me first seeing how I'm talking. 4 00:00:17.380 --> 00:00:21.840 I'm Stephanie Johnston, former book publisher at Wakefield Press 5 00:00:21.840 --> 00:00:26.260 and now practising urban and heritage planner 6 00:00:26.260 --> 00:00:33.240 and one of the big projects I've been working on for the past, it's actually seven years now, 7 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:38.380 is the Mount Lofty Rangers World Heritage nomination 8 00:00:38.380 --> 00:00:42.120 and I also sit on the Adelaide Parklands Authority. 9 00:00:42.600 --> 00:00:49.880 So that is actually the context for my encounter with Dr Tim Cawzer. 10 00:00:50.600 --> 00:00:55.840 Tim is Senior Research Associate at the Bentham Project 11 00:00:55.840 --> 00:00:56.240 and he's been working on the Mount Lofty Rangers World Heritage nomination 12 00:00:56.260 --> 00:00:59.940 at the UCL, University College of London's Faculty of Laws 13 00:00:59.940 --> 00:01:06.600 and he's brought here by Arts Humanity Research Council of the UK, Research Council. 14 00:01:06.940 --> 00:01:13.660 So I came across Tim in my research for the Mount Lofty bid. 15 00:01:13.840 --> 00:01:16.920 So at the heart of a World Heritage nomination 16 00:01:16.920 --> 00:01:22.480 is the requirement to meet at least one criterion. 17 00:01:22.920 --> 00:01:24.680 There are seven altogether. 18 00:01:24.680 --> 00:01:27.700 And half of those are cultural criteria 19 00:01:27.700 --> 00:01:30.340 and the other half are natural criteria 20 00:01:30.340 --> 00:01:32.840 which is already a sort of uncomfortable division. 21 00:01:33.500 --> 00:01:38.280 However, those two sort of areas, UNESCO areas, 22 00:01:38.500 --> 00:01:41.820 are actually brought together in the world of cultural landscapes 23 00:01:41.820 --> 00:01:45.080 which are landscapes that have evolved over time 24 00:01:45.080 --> 00:01:49.280 through the interaction of people and the environment. 25 00:01:49.740 --> 00:01:52.700 And so what we're looking at in the Mount Lofty Rangers 26 00:01:52.700 --> 00:01:54.660 and also I might add that the Adelaide Parklands Authority 27 00:01:54.660 --> 00:02:00.220 are also now moving to go for a World Heritage nomination 28 00:02:00.220 --> 00:02:03.240 and it may end up that the two end up being combined. 29 00:02:03.760 --> 00:02:07.500 And they will be under an historical argument. 30 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:11.400 So what we're trying to do is demonstrate one of the, 31 00:02:11.500 --> 00:02:12.580 well a couple of the criteria. 32 00:02:12.940 --> 00:02:16.940 One is to demonstrate a significant stage in world history 33 00:02:16.940 --> 00:02:20.520 and the other is to be directly or tangibly associated 34 00:02:21.560 --> 00:02:24.640 with events or ideas of outstanding unity. 35 00:02:24.640 --> 00:02:24.940 So we're going to look at the two. 36 00:02:24.940 --> 00:02:25.560 So the first one is the idea of universal significance 37 00:02:27.180 --> 00:02:33.600 which brings us to Jeremy Bentham and the Philosophical Radicals 38 00:02:33.600 --> 00:02:37.260 in London back in the 1820s and 30s. 39 00:02:37.880 --> 00:02:40.480 And I'm going to ask Tim to explain to us 40 00:02:40.480 --> 00:02:44.160 who were the Philosophical Radicals and what kind 41 00:02:44.160 --> 00:02:45.900 of radical ideas did they promote? 42 00:02:46.520 --> 00:02:49.460 Tim Williams The Philosophical Radicals were sort 43 00:02:49.460 --> 00:02:52.880 of the first people moving towards democratic reform of, 44 00:02:52.960 --> 00:02:54.620 but the most important thing was that they were, 45 00:02:54.640 --> 00:02:55.760 the British establishment essentially. 46 00:02:56.040 --> 00:02:59.820 So reform of the franchise, abolition of slavery, 47 00:03:00.540 --> 00:03:03.540 anti-transportation to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. 48 00:03:04.160 --> 00:03:07.960 And many of them were influenced by Bentham. 49 00:03:08.020 --> 00:03:12.060 Many of them were Benthamites, men like Sir William Molesworth 50 00:03:12.060 --> 00:03:16.120 in particular was a real, he was the Benthamite's Benthamite 51 00:03:16.120 --> 00:03:16.600 as it were. 52 00:03:17.680 --> 00:03:21.760 But George Grote, Robert Torrens, these were people 53 00:03:21.760 --> 00:03:22.560 who Bentham knew. 54 00:03:24.640 --> 00:03:26.600 And these were these regular reading and discussion clubs 55 00:03:26.600 --> 00:03:30.100 in London they would meet to discuss Bentham's works 56 00:03:30.100 --> 00:03:31.080 as well as others. 57 00:03:31.800 --> 00:03:36.140 So it's sort of, Bentham is at the heart of this nexus 58 00:03:36.140 --> 00:03:39.300 of reform even though as ever with Bentham, 59 00:03:39.920 --> 00:03:42.500 it's not usually him that has the direct influence 60 00:03:42.500 --> 00:03:43.660 upon government policy. 61 00:03:43.820 --> 00:03:47.680 It's usually the next generation of Benthamites who do. 62 00:03:47.800 --> 00:03:51.020 So for instance with the abolition of transportation, 63 00:03:51.420 --> 00:03:54.620 Bentham wrote about New South Wales in 1802 and 1803. 64 00:03:54.640 --> 00:04:00.160 1803, but it wasn't until several decades later in the 1830s, and particularly with 65 00:04:00.160 --> 00:04:09.140 the Select Committee of 1837 and 1838, chaired by William Molesworth, which partly led to 66 00:04:09.140 --> 00:04:15.120 the abolition of transportation to New South Wales. Molesworth's report on transportation 67 00:04:15.120 --> 00:04:20.900 is a really Benthamite document. It follows the same methodology as Bentham did 35 years 68 00:04:20.900 --> 00:04:28.360 earlier, uses the same language, and it's the same as we'll see with the colonisation 69 00:04:28.360 --> 00:04:33.460 of South Australia. I think that Bentham's ideas are in there. And democratic reform, 70 00:04:34.340 --> 00:04:42.440 Bentham wanted annual parliaments, universal franchise, votes for women, so he was ahead 71 00:04:42.440 --> 00:04:43.720 of his time in that sense. 72 00:04:44.020 --> 00:04:50.880 Okay, and I guess it's what we're looking at now, and I think it's a very important 73 00:04:50.900 --> 00:04:55.020 thing. What we're looking at is trying to make these connections between Bentham the 74 00:04:55.020 --> 00:05:01.720 Man and South Australia. But maybe you could also, apart from those big, broad, big picture 75 00:05:01.720 --> 00:05:10.280 ideas, which I guess were really the beginning of modern democracies as we know them, what 76 00:05:11.180 --> 00:05:17.780 else was Bentham in terms of his philosophies and so on, and what else is he most known 77 00:05:17.780 --> 00:05:20.100 for beyond his time? 78 00:05:20.240 --> 00:05:20.520 Yes. 79 00:05:20.520 --> 00:05:20.880 Yes. 80 00:05:21.700 --> 00:05:27.200 Bentham, I guess, is best known for three things. Firstly, and most importantly, he's 81 00:05:27.200 --> 00:05:35.160 the founder of the modern doctrine of utilitarianism. That is the idea that every action and piece 82 00:05:35.160 --> 00:05:39.080 of legislation should be to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number, as he's 83 00:05:39.700 --> 00:05:45.700 most famously known for saying. So the principle of utility, Bentham applied to everything 84 00:05:45.700 --> 00:05:50.880 that he thought about later in his life. So he was, he thought people were most important 85 00:05:50.880 --> 00:05:55.800 to him. He was motivated by the avoidance of pain and the gaining of pleasure, and pleasure 86 00:05:55.800 --> 00:06:03.820 being the analogue for happiness. So Bentham's essential philosophy was that the government 87 00:06:03.820 --> 00:06:08.480 should act in the greater good, which sort of leads to the second thing he's most famous 88 00:06:08.480 --> 00:06:14.940 for, the, this, the Panopticon Penitentiary Scheme, which is Bentham's design, which he 89 00:06:14.940 --> 00:06:20.400 came up with in the early 1790s. He spent a decade trying to persuade the government to 90 00:06:20.400 --> 00:06:25.380 build one. So essentially it's a circular prison with the cells arranged around the 91 00:06:25.380 --> 00:06:29.940 outer wall. The centre of the prison would have been dominated by an inspection tower 92 00:06:30.580 --> 00:06:35.560 in which the governor sat, and the governor could look into the cells at any moment, see 93 00:06:35.560 --> 00:06:39.600 what the prisoners were up to, but the, most importantly, the prisoners couldn't see the 94 00:06:39.600 --> 00:06:44.200 governor. So they had to assume they were being watched at all times and behave in order 95 00:06:44.200 --> 00:06:50.180 to avoid the punishment that would follow. And, and it's essentially sort of the god 96 00:06:50.180 --> 00:06:53.380 in the machine would be the governor, and the governor would have been Bentham if he'd 97 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:59.300 persuaded the government to build one. So he spent ten years trying to get it done, a 98 00:06:59.300 --> 00:07:04.200 lot of energy, a lot of money, and he found it utterly dispiriting when the government 99 00:07:04.720 --> 00:07:10.200 welched on the deal. The legislation, the 1794 Penitentiary Act and the Appropriation 100 00:07:10.200 --> 00:07:16.380 Act of 1799 had authorised the building of the Panopticon, and Bentham thought that ministers 101 00:07:16.380 --> 00:07:20.020 had just set aside this legislation on their own authority. 102 00:07:20.180 --> 00:07:28.040 And this was unjust. And it, it's the Panopticon experience, we think, which made Bentham 103 00:07:28.040 --> 00:07:32.160 more radical. And he developed this theory of what he called sinister interests, the 104 00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:36.760 idea that the government was acting in its own interests and in the interests of the 105 00:07:36.760 --> 00:07:42.440 rich and the powerful and the nobility, whereas they should be acting in the interests of 106 00:07:42.440 --> 00:07:49.600 the people and applying the principle of utility. Oddly relevant, these ideas, I find. 107 00:07:51.400 --> 00:07:55.820 So he became more and more radical throughout the rest of his life. Essentially, he was 108 00:07:55.820 --> 00:07:57.940 a Republican Democrat by the time he died. 109 00:07:58.260 --> 00:08:00.460 But I gather he's actually in New York at the moment. 110 00:08:00.580 --> 00:08:08.100 Yes. The third thing he's most famous for is asking to be dissected after his death 111 00:08:08.100 --> 00:08:15.800 and then his skeleton to be reassembled and put on display. So Bentham died in 1832, just 112 00:08:15.800 --> 00:08:18.660 prior to the passage of the 1832 Anatomy Act. 113 00:08:19.340 --> 00:08:20.160 And this was a very important moment for Bentham. He was a very important figure in the history 114 00:08:20.160 --> 00:08:29.640 of this story. The story of Bentham was restored in 1922. The story of Bentham was restored in 115 00:08:29.640 --> 00:08:31.240 1922. The story of Bentham was restored in 1922. The story of Bentham was restored in 116 00:08:31.240 --> 00:08:31.520 1922. The story of Bentham was restored in 1922. The story of Bentham was restored in 117 00:08:31.520 --> 00:08:32.880 1922. The story of Bentham was restored in 1922. The story of Bentham was restored in 118 00:08:32.880 --> 00:08:37.260 1922. The story of Bentham was restored in 1922. The story of Bentham was restored in 119 00:08:37.820 --> 00:08:41.280 1922. The story of Bentham was restored in 1922. The story of Bentham was restored in 120 00:08:41.280 --> 00:08:44.460 1922. The story of Bentham was restored in 1922. The story of Bentham was restored in 121 00:08:44.460 --> 00:08:49.740 1922. The story of Bentham was restored in 1922. The story of Bentham was restored in 122 00:08:49.740 --> 00:08:56.080 about it for many years. And he was dissected in front of an audience of his friends, which 123 00:08:56.080 --> 00:09:02.560 may have been a bit odd for them, but not for him. And after the dissection, the body 124 00:09:02.560 --> 00:09:08.340 was reassembled by one of his disciples, Thomas Southwood Smith, another philosophical radical 125 00:09:08.340 --> 00:09:14.580 who was involved in the passage of the 1832 Anatomy Act. And the auto-icon is Bentham's 126 00:09:14.580 --> 00:09:20.140 skeleton. It's padded out, dressed in a suit of his own clothes, and with a wax head on 127 00:09:20.140 --> 00:09:26.020 top. He wanted his real head to be part of it, but the preservation process didn't go 128 00:09:26.020 --> 00:09:31.820 very well. So there's this likeness. And yes, as Stephanie says, it's currently in New York 129 00:09:31.820 --> 00:09:39.140 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on an exhibition about the human body. So I think he'll be 130 00:09:39.140 --> 00:09:43.940 back in London in August. He might get back. In fact, actually, he might get back to the 131 00:09:43.940 --> 00:09:44.560 UK in the fall. 132 00:09:44.560 --> 00:09:47.040 I do. I'll race him. 133 00:09:50.300 --> 00:10:01.140 So I guess the next area I'd like to explore. So I think many of you will be aware here. 134 00:10:01.320 --> 00:10:06.080 Well, I find most people in South Australia are aware of Colonel Light and the role that 135 00:10:06.080 --> 00:10:12.460 Light played and the sort of on-the-ground Governor Hindmarsh and the debates about where 136 00:10:12.460 --> 00:10:14.540 to locate Adelaide and so on. 137 00:10:14.560 --> 00:10:20.840 But I found when I was director of Wakefield Press that Edward Gibbon Wakefield wasn't 138 00:10:20.840 --> 00:10:24.920 actually nearly as well known, maybe amongst this audience. But in terms of the broader 139 00:10:24.920 --> 00:10:30.580 public, school kids and so on, everyone had this vague idea of maybe the Wakefield plan 140 00:10:30.580 --> 00:10:36.760 for South Australia. But I found myself explaining the way, well, learning and explaining as 141 00:10:36.760 --> 00:10:42.580 I went along, being corrected by my historian business partner. But I thought it might be 142 00:10:42.580 --> 00:10:44.060 useful just to run through. 143 00:10:44.060 --> 00:10:51.080 What is what were the core tenets of the Wakefield plan? And then we look at how that relates 144 00:10:51.080 --> 00:10:55.180 to Jeremy Bentham and back to England. 145 00:10:55.660 --> 00:11:03.440 So we were talking about the philosophical radicals and Wakefield Press. I mean, Wakefield 146 00:11:04.620 --> 00:11:12.600 was actually in prison reading all that material, I think, and in particular the anti-colonisation 147 00:11:12.600 --> 00:11:13.220 material. 148 00:11:13.220 --> 00:11:23.420 And that's where he kind of cooked up his idea for a way to colonise that wouldn't require 149 00:11:23.980 --> 00:11:32.920 slavery and wouldn't require convicted transportation. And the core areas, the core ideas he came 150 00:11:32.920 --> 00:11:38.980 up with was rather, when he looked at other failed colonies, and one of them was in fact 151 00:11:38.980 --> 00:11:43.200 the Swan River Valley, Perth's original colony, which made an attempt to find a way to colonise 152 00:11:52.580 --> 00:11:52.940 this land. 153 00:12:00.080 --> 00:12:01.140 The story of this story is story 154 00:12:04.580 --> 00:12:08.220 and that everything should be sold well in advance, 155 00:12:09.200 --> 00:12:11.120 and that the money from the sale of that land 156 00:12:11.120 --> 00:12:13.900 would then pay for settlers to come out. 157 00:12:15.080 --> 00:12:19.040 And it was very important that there were to be a certain kind of settler, 158 00:12:19.080 --> 00:12:22.180 so young couples and possibly children, 159 00:12:23.760 --> 00:12:30.240 and that the price of the lands when these couples came out 160 00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:33.920 would require them to have to work for a number of years 161 00:12:33.920 --> 00:12:36.080 before they could afford to buy their own land. 162 00:12:36.320 --> 00:12:39.560 But the carrot of eventually owning land in a new colony 163 00:12:39.560 --> 00:12:42.120 was there to entice people out. 164 00:12:43.000 --> 00:12:45.420 And other ideas that came in here 165 00:12:45.420 --> 00:12:47.700 were the idea to concentrate the settlement, 166 00:12:47.860 --> 00:12:51.960 so to not let it be dispersed and therefore uncivilised. 167 00:12:51.980 --> 00:12:56.040 So it was trying to set up a civilised society from the start. 168 00:12:56.880 --> 00:13:00.840 And in all that was the importance of self-sufficiency as well, 169 00:13:00.960 --> 00:13:03.900 so the idea that it would be a self-supporting, 170 00:13:03.920 --> 00:13:05.520 a supporting society that wouldn't be a drain, 171 00:13:06.320 --> 00:13:07.320 the mother country, if you like. 172 00:13:07.480 --> 00:13:10.480 And involved in that was the idea of agriculture 173 00:13:10.480 --> 00:13:12.560 at the heart of that society. 174 00:13:12.780 --> 00:13:17.160 So you can start to see where the idea of the agricultural landscapes 175 00:13:17.840 --> 00:13:21.360 and their connection to these ideas fits in. 176 00:13:21.480 --> 00:13:25.220 And a happy society, so that's probably a way... 177 00:13:25.220 --> 00:13:31.720 So how much of a connection was there actually between Bentham 178 00:13:31.720 --> 00:13:33.700 and how do we know that Bentham was involved? 179 00:13:33.920 --> 00:13:36.160 How did Bentham get involved in all this planning by Wakefield? 180 00:13:36.220 --> 00:13:37.900 Because we tend to hear about Wakefield, 181 00:13:37.940 --> 00:13:39.400 but we don't hear much about Bentham. 182 00:13:39.560 --> 00:13:44.620 Yeah, in August 1831 Bentham wrote this document, 183 00:13:44.800 --> 00:13:46.840 Colonisation Company Proposal, 184 00:13:46.840 --> 00:13:50.940 his own sort of outline for how this free democratic colony 185 00:13:50.940 --> 00:13:54.300 which would promote utility could be founded in South Australia. 186 00:13:54.760 --> 00:14:02.420 And as Bentham scholars, it can seem a bit incongruous 187 00:14:02.420 --> 00:14:03.900 with what Bentham wrote. 188 00:14:03.900 --> 00:14:05.440 Bentham wrote about colonies elsewhere. 189 00:14:06.660 --> 00:14:10.500 He's generally regarded as an anti-colonial thinker. 190 00:14:11.240 --> 00:14:15.700 During the 1790s he wrote an address to the National Assembly of France, 191 00:14:15.840 --> 00:14:20.580 in 1793 actually, the year before he'd been made an honorary citizen of France. 192 00:14:21.060 --> 00:14:25.920 And it was called Jeremy Bentham's Address to the National Assembly, 193 00:14:26.060 --> 00:14:26.780 something along those lines. 194 00:14:26.880 --> 00:14:30.920 But he only published it in 1830, and it was called Emancipate Your Colonies. 195 00:14:31.240 --> 00:14:33.700 So it gives you an idea of where he's coming from. 196 00:14:35.060 --> 00:14:39.240 Bentham's basic arguments against colonies were that they were an economic drain 197 00:14:39.240 --> 00:14:44.280 upon the mother country, that capital was better invested 198 00:14:44.280 --> 00:14:48.780 in the mother country itself, that colonies exacerbated, 199 00:14:48.800 --> 00:14:53.540 were a cause of war in that European powers would fight over them 200 00:14:54.140 --> 00:14:55.660 and their alleged resources. 201 00:14:56.500 --> 00:15:02.520 It meant that the European powers had to maintain huge standing armies to, 202 00:15:02.560 --> 00:15:03.880 and send out expeditions to, 203 00:15:03.900 --> 00:15:06.040 and the revolutionary forces to put down any rebellions. 204 00:15:06.240 --> 00:15:11.060 And by emancipating their colonies, France would save money, 205 00:15:11.220 --> 00:15:14.600 be an example to the rest of the world in emancipating their colonies 206 00:15:14.600 --> 00:15:18.540 and giving freedom to French citizens abroad. 207 00:15:18.900 --> 00:15:22.780 So in that sense, this can seem odd, 208 00:15:23.500 --> 00:15:28.380 but Bentham was always willing to see the potential benefits of colonies 209 00:15:28.380 --> 00:15:32.420 and colonization if it could be done in an ordered fashion, 210 00:15:32.420 --> 00:15:37.020 without any of the corruption that other colonies had seen, 211 00:15:37.120 --> 00:15:39.260 such as particularly in the penal colony of New South Wales, 212 00:15:39.480 --> 00:15:41.580 and thought had been established entirely illegally. 213 00:15:43.080 --> 00:15:49.000 So he was always willing to countenance having a colony, 214 00:15:49.140 --> 00:15:54.020 particularly if it would act as a safety valve in terms of allowing 215 00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:59.080 what they called excess population in the UK to emigrate. 216 00:15:59.320 --> 00:16:02.020 So there's the whole debate around Thomas Malthus, 217 00:16:02.420 --> 00:16:07.100 and the fear of population outstripping subsistence, 218 00:16:07.160 --> 00:16:09.540 and not being able to supply its population. 219 00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:13.020 Bentham definitely knew Edward Gibbon Wakefield. 220 00:16:13.180 --> 00:16:15.260 It's not entirely clear when they met, 221 00:16:16.380 --> 00:16:21.860 but Bentham definitely knew Wakefield's father for at least 25 years before he wrote this. 222 00:16:23.380 --> 00:16:27.600 And there's a letter somewhere where Wakefield Senior is described as being one 223 00:16:27.600 --> 00:16:31.480 in Bentham's intimate circle, so they're reasonably close. 224 00:16:33.220 --> 00:16:36.760 Wakefield did send one of his works anonymously to Bentham in 1829. 225 00:16:38.780 --> 00:16:42.920 And Bentham's copy of this pamphlet is in the British Library in London, 226 00:16:43.080 --> 00:16:46.280 and it's got a very bemused note from Bentham written on it, 227 00:16:46.340 --> 00:16:47.440 saying something along the lines of, 228 00:16:47.460 --> 00:16:50.380 sent by anonymous author without an explanatory note. 229 00:16:51.320 --> 00:16:56.780 But in Wakefield's work, England and America, which was published in 1833, 230 00:16:57.840 --> 00:17:01.020 Wakefield suggests that, or implies at least, 231 00:17:01.020 --> 00:17:02.400 that he converted Bentham to a British library, 232 00:17:02.400 --> 00:17:09.180 and that Bentham was a British writer. 233 00:17:09.180 --> 00:17:09.840 And Bentham's work is a very well-known book, 234 00:17:09.840 --> 00:17:11.100 and it's a very well-known book. 235 00:17:11.680 --> 00:17:15.240 And Bentham's work is a very well-known book. 236 00:17:15.640 --> 00:17:16.800 And Bentham's work is a very well-known book. 237 00:17:16.800 --> 00:17:19.500 And Bentham himself would have disagreed with the idea that Wakefield converted him 238 00:17:19.500 --> 00:17:23.000 with an unpublished letter in the Bentham Project, 239 00:17:23.260 --> 00:17:28.480 written in June 1831 to another radical MP called Joseph Hume, 240 00:17:29.400 --> 00:17:31.400 where Bentham says he had essentially 241 00:17:32.340 --> 00:17:32.380 written a letter to the British Library in 1831, 242 00:17:32.400 --> 00:17:34.120 where Bentham says he had actually thrown his mantle over Wakefield 243 00:17:34.120 --> 00:17:35.400 and he would turn into good account. 244 00:17:35.720 --> 00:17:40.100 So Bentham seems to be saying that he converted Wakefield to his way of thinking. 245 00:17:40.380 --> 00:17:43.400 So I think it's probably somewhere in the middle, 246 00:17:44.080 --> 00:17:45.160 I suspect it was discussions, 247 00:17:45.320 --> 00:17:49.620 that there isn't a paper trail, sadly, that we have at the moment 248 00:17:49.620 --> 00:17:52.220 to suggest how and why they met, 249 00:17:52.360 --> 00:17:54.880 and how and why they may have influenced one another. 250 00:17:55.720 --> 00:17:59.160 It's a way, essentially, we'll have to sort of tease these ideas out 251 00:17:59.160 --> 00:18:01.880 of what Bentham wrote, and what Wakefield wrote, 252 00:18:01.880 --> 00:18:05.440 and what the other members of the Colonisation Society 253 00:18:05.440 --> 00:18:06.900 and Wakefield's associates wrote. 254 00:18:07.160 --> 00:18:10.540 Yes, and one of the very timely things that, 255 00:18:11.880 --> 00:18:16.520 well, I guess it's not a coincidence that it's timed with your visit to Australia, 256 00:18:16.700 --> 00:18:20.380 but is the actual transcription of this document. 257 00:18:20.480 --> 00:18:22.920 So this document was written in 1832, 258 00:18:23.120 --> 00:18:28.120 but it has remained in handwriting with some attempts at transcription. 259 00:18:28.600 --> 00:18:30.880 But this is the first time it's been properly transcribed, 260 00:18:31.100 --> 00:18:34.960 and will be published in book form for the first time. 261 00:18:35.060 --> 00:18:40.840 But I'm kind of interested also in the whole work of your whole Bentham project. 262 00:18:41.140 --> 00:18:45.440 And I guess this is one of the last things to be transcribed, 263 00:18:45.680 --> 00:18:49.760 but how does that fit in with the big picture of the whole Bentham project? 264 00:18:50.260 --> 00:18:56.020 Yes, well, the Bentham project was founded in 1958 at UCL by a UCL committee, 265 00:18:57.240 --> 00:19:00.580 when its essential work is to produce a new edition 266 00:19:00.580 --> 00:19:01.860 of Bentham's collected works. 267 00:19:02.140 --> 00:19:07.340 So it's a recognition of Bentham as an internationally important philosopher 268 00:19:07.340 --> 00:19:09.840 and his ideas of universal significance. 269 00:19:10.560 --> 00:19:17.700 So the Bentham project has thus far produced 33 of what we think will be projected 80 volumes. 270 00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:26.720 At UCL we have about 80,000 manuscript pages like this written or composed by Bentham. 271 00:19:26.800 --> 00:19:29.640 The British Library has another 15,000 or so. 272 00:19:30.580 --> 00:19:33.500 So it's a colossal job just transcribing the stuff 273 00:19:33.500 --> 00:19:36.240 and then being able to edit them into text. 274 00:19:36.460 --> 00:19:40.980 So the new edition of Bentham's works is based upon both unpublished manuscripts 275 00:19:41.580 --> 00:19:43.440 and texts that he published in his lifetime. 276 00:19:43.820 --> 00:19:48.420 So we then compile those texts, edit them, 277 00:19:48.560 --> 00:19:51.560 and add historical annotation to assist the reader 278 00:19:51.560 --> 00:19:55.780 in understanding what Bentham was talking about in many instances. 279 00:19:56.040 --> 00:19:58.720 We have, since 2010, 280 00:19:58.720 --> 00:20:01.920 run a crowdsourcing project 281 00:20:01.920 --> 00:20:06.040 where we've just finished digitising all of Bentham's papers, 282 00:20:06.300 --> 00:20:07.620 we're putting them online, 283 00:20:07.900 --> 00:20:11.200 and volunteers from around the world have been helping us to transcribe them. 284 00:20:11.680 --> 00:20:13.980 So since October 2010, 285 00:20:14.740 --> 00:20:19.240 volunteers have now transcribed over 21,000 pages like that. 286 00:20:20.040 --> 00:20:24.360 Not all like that, because I have to say that handwriting is abysmal. 287 00:20:25.020 --> 00:20:27.760 I mean, in 1831, Bentham was... 288 00:20:29.440 --> 00:20:29.880 83. 289 00:20:31.040 --> 00:20:33.360 And he was functionally blind at that point, 290 00:20:33.500 --> 00:20:35.400 so it's pretty wretched. 291 00:20:35.900 --> 00:20:40.180 But earlier in his life, his handwriting was patchy but readable. 292 00:20:40.660 --> 00:20:41.900 But as you can see there, 293 00:20:42.840 --> 00:20:45.040 all the deletions, 294 00:20:45.720 --> 00:20:48.780 there's several, I mean, a lot of the manuscripts he was editing as he went along, 295 00:20:48.880 --> 00:20:52.380 so he would write a draft, come back to it, edit it, scratch things out, 296 00:20:52.500 --> 00:20:54.720 add interlineal additions. 297 00:20:54.900 --> 00:20:58.680 So it's very much a detailed editorial project. 298 00:20:58.720 --> 00:21:02.540 And there are 50 manuscripts in this particular document, 299 00:21:02.740 --> 00:21:05.220 which as Stephanie said has never been published before. 300 00:21:05.400 --> 00:21:07.840 My head of department, Professor Philip Schofield, 301 00:21:07.940 --> 00:21:09.120 who's the director of the Bentham Project, 302 00:21:09.980 --> 00:21:12.600 transcribed it maybe 25 years ago. 303 00:21:12.720 --> 00:21:15.180 So we've gone back to it and sorted it out. 304 00:21:15.280 --> 00:21:18.080 But you might have 50 manuscript pages, 305 00:21:18.580 --> 00:21:21.060 but they're by no means in order. 306 00:21:21.440 --> 00:21:25.980 So you then have to work out what text Bentham might have discarded, 307 00:21:26.720 --> 00:21:28.520 put it in order, rearrange it, 308 00:21:28.520 --> 00:21:33.500 so the text might finish on, say this is folio five, 309 00:21:33.880 --> 00:21:36.520 might finish halfway onto that, on that page, 310 00:21:36.580 --> 00:21:39.700 and then jump ahead five pages in the numerical sequence. 311 00:21:39.900 --> 00:21:42.380 So it's a complicated process. 312 00:21:43.080 --> 00:21:46.760 But having transcribed Bentham along is fantastic 313 00:21:46.760 --> 00:21:50.880 because it means we have draft transcripts available to work with 314 00:21:50.880 --> 00:21:52.760 of a particular manuscript. 315 00:21:53.040 --> 00:21:55.360 So if you were editing a volume, 316 00:21:55.440 --> 00:21:57.640 I'm editing Bentham's writings on Australia, 317 00:21:58.700 --> 00:22:00.720 and these are the contents of that volume. 318 00:22:01.480 --> 00:22:03.600 Some of these were printed in Bentham's lifetime, 319 00:22:03.860 --> 00:22:04.780 but if it's a manuscript, 320 00:22:05.060 --> 00:22:07.580 you would have to go through the entire Bentham collection, 321 00:22:07.780 --> 00:22:09.760 all 100,000 pages, 322 00:22:10.360 --> 00:22:14.060 looking for the correct, all the relevant manuscripts, 323 00:22:14.640 --> 00:22:17.520 transcribe them, edit them into coherent texts. 324 00:22:18.100 --> 00:22:21.740 So if we have draft transcripts available via Transcribe Bentham, 325 00:22:21.780 --> 00:22:23.080 it saves a huge amount of time, 326 00:22:23.160 --> 00:22:26.340 and we can crack on with the editorial process. 327 00:22:26.440 --> 00:22:28.280 And the volunteers who contribute, 328 00:22:28.520 --> 00:22:32.220 will be acknowledged in every introduction to the volumes 329 00:22:32.220 --> 00:22:33.300 to which they've contributed. 330 00:22:33.780 --> 00:22:37.560 And they'll be acknowledged when their transcripts are uploaded 331 00:22:37.560 --> 00:22:42.380 to our free digital repository for everyone to access Bentham's thoughts. 332 00:22:42.580 --> 00:22:47.600 So it's, yeah, we're maximising happiness, I would like to say. 333 00:22:48.100 --> 00:22:51.060 Applying the principle of utility to this. 334 00:22:52.700 --> 00:22:55.980 One of the, when Tim sent me this, 335 00:22:57.220 --> 00:22:58.500 a very interesting article, 336 00:22:58.500 --> 00:22:59.120 a transcription, 337 00:22:59.480 --> 00:23:03.940 and along with all the photos of the original pages, 338 00:23:05.080 --> 00:23:08.260 one of the interesting things to come out of it 339 00:23:08.260 --> 00:23:11.560 is the discussion around the name for the new colony. 340 00:23:12.180 --> 00:23:17.540 And some of us will be familiar with Don Dunstan's book 341 00:23:17.540 --> 00:23:18.940 that he named Felicia. 342 00:23:19.860 --> 00:23:23.800 And I think until this moment most, 343 00:23:23.940 --> 00:23:27.400 and that appears, so a few names appear in the book, 344 00:23:28.500 --> 00:23:29.720 one is Liberia, 345 00:23:30.500 --> 00:23:35.440 and then there are anecdotes in the margin, 346 00:23:35.580 --> 00:23:37.980 you know, with Felicia or Feliciana. 347 00:23:38.000 --> 00:23:40.340 Obviously these have meanings, you know, 348 00:23:40.360 --> 00:23:42.680 associated with those ideas of freedom and happiness. 349 00:23:43.180 --> 00:23:47.340 But I gather that there might be some questions around 350 00:23:47.340 --> 00:23:52.620 at least the name Felicia and attributing that to Bentham. 351 00:23:52.740 --> 00:23:53.340 Yes. 352 00:23:54.020 --> 00:23:56.240 Bentham refers to his proposed, 353 00:23:56.440 --> 00:23:58.480 the proposed colony as Liberia, 354 00:23:58.480 --> 00:24:00.880 and does so on several occasions throughout the text. 355 00:24:01.680 --> 00:24:04.580 Most of the manuscript is in Bentham's hand, 356 00:24:04.760 --> 00:24:06.020 which is the ink there. 357 00:24:06.360 --> 00:24:10.720 But there are a number of pencil annotations 358 00:24:10.720 --> 00:24:12.200 in an unknown hand, 359 00:24:12.340 --> 00:24:13.660 which we're still trying to identify. 360 00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:16.040 And it's this unknown hand that suggests, 361 00:24:16.140 --> 00:24:19.860 as you say, Felicitania or Felicia as an alternative. 362 00:24:21.660 --> 00:24:23.640 I'm quite keen to figure out who this is. 363 00:24:23.960 --> 00:24:26.160 Because there are certain other comments 364 00:24:26.160 --> 00:24:29.320 that may have influenced what Bentham might have thought. 365 00:24:29.520 --> 00:24:31.520 We don't think it's Wakefield, 366 00:24:31.660 --> 00:24:36.060 because there's a, in, following this manuscript 367 00:24:36.060 --> 00:24:40.400 in Bentham's papers is a letter from Wakefield with comments, 368 00:24:40.520 --> 00:24:44.060 it's called Comments upon the Colonization Society's Plan. 369 00:24:44.780 --> 00:24:46.620 And the handwriting is very different. 370 00:24:46.860 --> 00:24:49.540 So we're still trying to work that out. 371 00:24:49.600 --> 00:24:51.180 It's very annoying. 372 00:24:53.300 --> 00:24:55.040 Might have to crowdsource that as well. 373 00:24:57.480 --> 00:25:01.600 In all this context and discussion around ideas, 374 00:25:01.800 --> 00:25:05.440 I guess we're all also familiar with the concept 375 00:25:05.440 --> 00:25:11.320 of the South Australian colony being a paradise of dissent. 376 00:25:11.680 --> 00:25:17.320 And these plans were all very much about attracting labour, 377 00:25:18.080 --> 00:25:19.740 but also entrepreneurs, 378 00:25:20.100 --> 00:25:24.380 people who were really prepared to come out and make a go of it. 379 00:25:24.580 --> 00:25:26.140 But it seems to me that, 380 00:25:26.160 --> 00:25:28.420 there was a kind of natural marriage between that, 381 00:25:29.280 --> 00:25:30.860 attracting the entrepreneurs 382 00:25:30.860 --> 00:25:34.800 and also attracting religious dissenters. 383 00:25:35.840 --> 00:25:37.540 Can you sort of expand on that, 384 00:25:37.560 --> 00:25:38.780 maybe through Bentham's eyes, 385 00:25:38.840 --> 00:25:42.120 but also through the way it might have been written up in the documents 386 00:25:42.120 --> 00:25:44.260 or how that came about? 387 00:25:44.720 --> 00:25:47.560 Bentham, he doesn't mention religion specifically, 388 00:25:47.620 --> 00:25:49.280 but you get the sense that it's, 389 00:25:49.280 --> 00:25:51.280 like even the name Liberia, 390 00:25:52.280 --> 00:25:53.240 suggests freedom. 391 00:25:53.360 --> 00:25:54.780 And throughout the manuscript, 392 00:25:54.780 --> 00:25:59.480 it's preaching tolerance and acceptance and democracy. 393 00:25:59.880 --> 00:26:02.840 So I think that's certainly implied. 394 00:26:04.300 --> 00:26:09.760 And the manuscript has very many similarities 395 00:26:09.760 --> 00:26:13.360 with the Wakefield plan that was being put forward. 396 00:26:13.660 --> 00:26:14.900 So we see, 397 00:26:14.980 --> 00:26:20.720 and there are so many similarities that it would be very remarkable 398 00:26:20.720 --> 00:26:23.740 if one hadn't influenced the other 399 00:26:23.740 --> 00:26:29.320 in sort of both plans suggest founding the colony by a joint stock, 400 00:26:29.420 --> 00:26:33.680 or the joint stock company would oversee the colonisation of South Australia, 401 00:26:33.860 --> 00:26:36.880