1. M. James ‘Public Interest and the Majority Rule in Bentham’s Democratic Theory’, Political Theory, IX, 1 (February 1981) pp. 49–64.
2. I say inadvertently because, as Dr James noted, Bentham was not open to the charge of ‘majoritarianism’, that is, he did not propose a commonwealth where the majority could do as it wished (p. 52).
3. See D. C. Mueller, Public Choice (Cambridge University Press, 1979) pp. 2–3 and passim.
4. ‘What motives (independent of such as legislation and religion may chance to furnish) can one man have to consult the happiness of another? by what motives, or, which comes to the same thing, by what obligations can he be bound to obey the dictates of probity and beneficence? In answer to this, it cannot but be admitted, that the only interests which a man at all times and upon all occasions is sure to find adequate motives for consulting, are his own.’ An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation in J. H. Burn and H. L. A. Hart (eds), in The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham (CW) (London: The Athlone Press, 1970) p. 284.
5. Much of what appears in the Constitutional Code was present in a previous text about which I would rather write a separate article, to wit, ‘Rid Yourselves of Ultramaria’. This MS, which Bentham put aside in 1823, had something to say about the agency problem, namely ‘that of the sweets of government the quantity in the hands of the functionaries of government should be as small as possible, consistently with the exercise of the power of government in a manner contributing to the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and as to the sweets of misgovemment no such sources of mischief should have place’ (UC, clxxii, 225). I owe my knowledge of ‘Rid Yourselves’ to Dr C. Rodriguez Braun, ‘Pensamiento económico y cuestión colonial en el siglo clásico: los casos de Bentham y Marx’ (Doctoral Dissertation, Madrid, 1984), and to the transcript of the Bentham MS by Miss Claire Gobbi.