AFTER THE VICE PRESIDENT of the United States Aaron Burr killed his political rival Alexander Hamilton in a duel, on July 11, 1804, his reputation grew steadily more radioactive, until some years later he was forced to leave the country that he had long served. Traveling Europe between 1808 and 1812 as a largely friendless object of controversy, Burr found something of a refuge with two of the great utilitarians, William Godwin and Jeremy Bentham, figures who never went out of their way to avoid controversy when they could instead productively cause it.
Burr had long admired Godwin’s famous (and alas, late) wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, author of the 1792 Vindication of the Rights of Woman and one of the world’s first great feminists. Burr believed in equality for women and used to have Wollstonecraft’s picture hanging over his mantel. Godwin, living in London with his family, welcomed Burr’s company. Burr, for his part, was delighted to be received by one of the most amazing literary families in history, and he developed a special affection for the daughter of Godwin and Wollstonecraft, Mary, who would in short order run off with and then marry the scandalous, brilliant atheist poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and write the horror classic Frankenstein. As Charlotte Gordon has observed, even at age thirteen Mary was impressive. One evening, the children persuaded Burr
to listen to eight-year-old William deliver a speech that Mary had written, entitled ‘The Influence of Government on the Character of the People’. Fanny served tea while Burr admired a singing performance by Jane . …
Burr praised the tea and the song, but he reserved his greatest praise for the speech and the speechwriter. Even at thirteen, Mary knew that she was the one who had taken the laurels. She had won Burr’s attention with her pen. Her father had taught her that writing was her legacy, that she was the daughter of Wollstonecraft and Godwin, the child of philosophers.1
When Burr was not at home with the Godwins, or traveling around Europe, he might well be found at home with Bentham, enjoying the run of Bentham’s library. Burr stayed with Bentham, using his mailing address, during his time of European exile, and he introduced the freethinking Irish artist Amelia Curran to him in 1811. Curran painted Bentham’s portrait and spent much time with him at Queen’s Square Place. She apparently grew quite close to Bentham, who took the place in her heart that Burr had previously occupied. Bentham and Burr were reconciled, but what became of the relationship with Curran remains unknown, though she did become close friends with Percy and Mary Shelley, painting several portraits of the poet.
Burr did however proclaim himself Bentham’s disciple.2
Did Burr also meet the precocious young John Stuart Mill, whose father was one of Bentham’s disciples and consulted Bentham on the education of his children?
The great classical utilitarians lived and worked in just such amazing, absorbing webs of people and places. Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Aaron Burr, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Amelia Curran, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill—such are the fascinating figures featured in this book, which seeks to bring to life the history of classical utilitarianism in a way worthy of its founders, who ought to be as controversial now as they were then. Their struggles continue, not least their struggles to guarantee a decent education for all and an end to needless suffering. Oddly enough, and despite the passing of centuries, no one today really knows with any finality what is living and what is dead in the classical utilitarianism of Godwin, Bentham, Mill, and Sidgwick, the main characters featured in this book. Their defenses of the claim that the greatest happiness, or pleasure, of the greatest number is the ultimate moral standard remain both rich, historically contextualized resources and a set of ongoing research projects, with the history informing the research and vice versa. The more one probes, the more one needs to probe—the strange only leads to the stranger, to more possibilities. But even in our broken world, the possibilities are very promising.