‘The most perfect truth in the procedures of a political assembly’

I have noted that Bentham rarely exhibited any interest in locating evidence for his prescriptions in describable events. Despite the fact that, for exam­ple, the experience of the House of Commons was quite accessible to him, he did not trouble the reader with thoughtful citations to the Journals of the House of Commons.

Bentham employed ‘evil’ 33 times. He invoked the hierarchy good, better or best 107 times, with bad, worse, worst employed 20 times. Under the heading of inconveniences, for example, Bentham drew attention to ‘inde­cision’ as a negative outcome. ‘The time lost in [quarrels] is the least evil’. Bentham’s ‘search of remedies’ took him to ‘good rules’ and ‘good regula­tions’ or to one of his mediate points of progress, an assembly’s appetite for ‘good discussion’.³⁷ Bentham ranked under the general head ‘Falsehoods... all acts opposed to the most perfect truth in the procedures of a political assembly’.³⁸ Bentham offered this (and like rankings) to support his claim that a ‘system of tactics will the more nearly approach perfection, the more completely it tends to prevent [inconveniences], or to minimise or reduce them to their lowest term’.³⁹

Bentham also called attention to divergences: these mattered to his analysis when observed behaviour departed from that behaviour which he expected of legislators. At this breezy level of abstraction, he was eager to call attention to divergence in such phrases as ‘standard of comparison and model of imitation’, ‘the proper model for regular debate’ or ‘model for imitation’.

At other times Bentham employed modelling as if the mind of the assem­bly was observing its members at work. ‘The mode of proceeding in the States-General, which ought naturally to have been the model for popu­lar or pretended-popular assemblies, was too unsettled to serve as a model for anything, even for itself’.⁴² Bentham offered virtualisation as an adjunct

‘The tactics of political assemblies’ 129 effort to the assembly’s program of producing better merit outcomes. This creative and critical self-referencing was at the core of his project. He fea­tured this approach when he asked: ‘What theory would have pitched upon as a model of perfection, practice presented as having been successfully pur­sued: never was the accord more perfect between reason and experience’.⁴³ Bentham was likewise explicit about his reliance on experiments in parlia­mentary procedure. Bentham awkwardly related that ‘females are not per­mitted to be present at the parliamentary debates. They have been excluded from the House of Commons, after the experiment has been tried, and for weighty reasons’.⁴⁴ Striking a more imaginative note, Bentham conjured a ‘mechanical apparatus’ for employment in the assembly. His Essay sketched a ‘general idea of this table... for exhibiting to... the assembly the motion on which they are deliberating’.

We may suppose a gallery above the president’s chair, which presents a front consisting of two frames, nine feet high by six feet wide, filled with black canvas, made to open like folding doors; - that this canvas is regularly pierced for the reception of letters of so large a size as to be legible in every part of the place of meeting.

In the course of detailing the ‘giant hook’ by which ‘large... letters’ were placed on ‘black canvas’, Bentham’s reasoning lurched back and forth, offering the reader benefits that were probable and those that were highly conjectural.

We have seen that it would preserve the orators from involuntary errors: it would be no less serviceable to the assembly as a security against intentional false misrepresentations - against insidious representations, by which sentiments are imputed to an antagonist which do not belong to him.⁴⁶

Even those who appreciated Bentham’s contributions to parliamentary science - Josef Redlich’s work will be mentioned shortly - were amazed at the ‘crochetty persistence [mit dem schrullenhaften Eifer] with which [Bentham] advocated his gigantic “table of motions”.’⁴⁷ Most of what passes for rhetorical flourish in an assembly consists of twisting an oppo­nent’s words to use against him or at least recasting an opponent’s posi­tion on the motion before the assembly. These everyday facts of legislative life did not deter Bentham from overselling his readers on the virtues of his table of motions: ‘The table of motions would contribute in many respects to the perfection of the debate’.⁴⁸

Bentham’s larger purposes, however, redeemed his table. Employment of this device could decrease the risk of members’ confusion when words and numbers were balloted, gradatim, for inclusion in the text of a given motion.

Today one might imagine a parliamentary navigator - suitably named The Hatsell - running on a mobile device; the software would guide members through the repeated ballots by which they express their preferences for words in, words out and words to be swapped. Bentham’s giant table would have its test run in software operating on a hand-held device. Bentham’s passion for virtualisation guided him - and correctly so - to visual aids guid­ing collaborative behaviour in a legislative assembly.