‘The order to be observed supposes an end'
In the preface to his Essay on Political Tactics, Jeremy Bentham stressed the pedagogical function of his parliamentary science. The ‘tactics of politiÂcal assemblies’, he declared, ‘form the science which teaches how to guide them to the end of their institution, by means of the order to be observed in their proceedings’.1 The ‘science’ that ‘teaches’ is the vital link, he explained, between the ‘Order to be observed’ with ‘the End, of a legislative assembly.
Bentham had plenty of neologisms and awkward terms to dangle before his readers. When he employed ‘decree’, Bentham directed attention to an assembly’s merit acts and resolutions.2 Later in this chapter Bentham’s clumsy terms ‘Additive’, ‘Suppressive’, and ‘Substitutive’ will appear. By these elocutions Bentham directed attention to words (or numbers) added, deleted and swapped with respect to text recommended for members’ conÂsideration in the course of debate-and-ballot. Making sense of Bentham’s manuscripts has drawn scholarly attention. I have previously noted that his editors gathered the 1843 edition of his Essay on Political Tactics from his manuscripts, supplementing the fragment of the Essay, which he published in 1791.3Merit outcomes - Bentham’s ‘decrees’ - were the designed product of assemblies. Parliamentary process was the means by which legislators wrote product into the pages of the assembly’s journals or the nation’s statute books. If an assembly consciously committed itself to create and apply procedures, any given procedure could be tested for its potential utility in delivering benefits to civil society. Some rules were best suited to guide and govern when the assembly crafted canal or turnpike bills. Budgeting should call for carefully constructed pathways which would reliably bring forward financial details and thereby fulfil the assembly’s oversight responsibility.
Bentham had no interest, however, in tethering process to merit outcomes, taken by subject matter.Bentham treated legislative process as a unified subject of study. This assumption bootstrapped Bentham’s broad claim that process was a causal factor in merit outcomes. This was as radical as any other assertion regarding the role of parliamentary assemblies in the eighteenth century. Parliamentary procedure was not neutral. One rule was definitely not as good as any other. Bentham also claimed that any procedure - proposed for adoption - could be vetted in isolation via the heuristics and performance standards he proposed.
Bentham approached the issues (that his Essay raised) without serious citation to the experience of the House of Commons. His paltry nine referÂences to Precedents of Proceedings were swamped by Jefferson’s 123 citaÂtions to Hatsell’s work in his Manual, which runs a little more than half the size of Bentham’s Essay. Hatsell’s anecdotes filled four volumes of his Precedents of Proceedings. These vignettes and thumbnails illustrated the commands, prohibitions or permissions (conditioned or contingent) that Hatsell’s Observations brought up for detailed discussion. By linking history (as packaged in his Precedents of Proceedings) with shouldness, Hatsell put a human face on the path forward when members encountered a procedural hurdle in real time.
At the opening of the Essay, however, Bentham framed his discussion to more angular effect. Bentham equated parliamentary science with the acquisition of technical know-how to be exhibited in the chamber or in committee as members progress towards command of the skills which parÂliamentary science made available to the novice. The essence of this science was how to knowledge that marked a path forward to achieve the required level of expertise. The Oxford English Dictionary (1971) notes that science may be ‘contradistinguished from art’, explaining that science is ‘concerned with theoretic truth, and an art with methods for effecting certain results’.4 Bentham employed ‘science’ eight times and ‘art’ 13 times in the Essay on Political Tactics, a work of 57,236 words.5 What follows is Bentham’s listÂing of skills; these may be taken to ‘designate the art of conducting the operations of a political body’.6 Bentham calendared:
1 Previous promulgation of motions, projects of laws and amendments.
2 Making the motion which exhibits the project.
3 Occasionally ordering it to be printed and published.
4 Seconding the motion.
5 Deliberating upon it.
6 Putting the question.
7 Voting summarily.
8 Declaring the result of the summary voting.
9 Dividing the assembly - that is, demanding distinct voting.
10 Collecting the votes regularly.
11 Declaring the result.
12 Registering all the proceedings.7
Bentham introduced this list with the phrase ‘in order to produce a decree’. In ‘the ordinary course of things’, he explained, ‘many steps or intermediate acts [are] proper to be taken’.8 In detailing his inventories of ‘due conduct’
‘The tactics of political assemblies’ 123 and a ‘specification’ of preferred ‘practice’, Bentham summed up the posiÂtive facet of his project.9