"In the ideal state of affairs, no one would record a vote in an election until he or she had read the eleven volumes of Jeremy Bentham and the whole of the works of John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer and Bastiat as well as Morley's Life of Cobden." - Ernest Benn
This quote made me curious to check out those books, however, there is no eleven-volume collection of Bentham currently in print, so please make me an updated reading list based on this quote.
A Practical “Benn List” for Twenty-First-Century Voters
Below is a streamlined syllabus that captures the spirit of Ernest Benn’s tongue-in-cheek prescription—giving you the essential arguments each thinker wanted citizens to weigh before casting a ballot. For every author you’ll see:
- Core texts (★) – the minimum to grasp their programme.
- Deep cuts (◇) – where to go next if the core hooks you.
- Recommended modern edition / access point – in print or freely online.
1. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) – founding utilitarian & legal reformer
| Tier | Title | Why it matters | Modern access |
|---|---|---|---|
| ★ | An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) | Bentham’s utilitarian calculus & the “greatest happiness” rule. | Oxford World’s Classics re-issue (paper, 2020) (Amazon) |
| ★ | The Panopticon Writings | Shows his obsession with institutional design and surveillance. | Verso Radical Thinkers, 2nd ed. (2011/2024) (Verso) |
| ◇ | Rights, Representation & Reform: “Nonsense upon Stilts”… | His ferocious attack on natural-rights theory; key to modern rights debates. | Collected Works vol. 2, OUP (2002) (oxfordscholarlyeditions.com) |
| ◇ | Of Laws in General | A blueprint for a scientific jurisprudence. | Collected Works, Athlone/OUP (1995 reprint) (Amazon) |
| ◇ | For completists: the original 11-volume Bowring edition (1838-43) – digitised free at Liberty Fund. (Liberty Fund) + UCL’s Collected Works project (36 vols. so far, open access). (University College London) |
Suggested path: read Introduction, then jump to “Nonsense upon Stilts” for the rights debate, and dip into the Panopticon letters for flavour.
2. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) – liberal utilitarian for the modern electorate
| Tier | Title | Modern access |
|---|---|---|
| ★ | Quad-pack: On Liberty, Utilitarianism, Considerations on Representative Government, The Subjection of Women | All four in one Oxford World’s Classics volume (2nd ed., 2015) (Amazon) |
| ★ | Autobiography | Collected Works vol I, Liberty Fund (free) (Liberty Fund) |
| ◇ | Principles of Political Economy (abridged) | Hackett ed., 2004 / 2021 reprint (hackettpublishing.com) |
| ◇ | Collected Works (33 vols.) – key vols now in affordable paper (Liberty Fund) (Liberty Fund) |
Suggested path: Read the quad-pack straight through; follow with the Autobiography to see Mill apply those principles to his own political life.
3. Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) – evolution-driven individualism
| Tier | Title | Modern access |
|---|---|---|
| ★ | Social Statics (1851) | Liberty Fund online facsimile (Liberty Fund) |
| ★ | The Man versus the State (1884) | Liberty Fund paperback (2020 re-run) (Liberty Fund) |
| ◇ | The Principles of Ethics (2 vols.) | Legare Street Press reprint, 2023 (Amazon) |
| ◇ | Education: Intellectual, Moral & Physical | Dover thrift ed., 2004 (Amazon) |
Suggested path: Social Statics → Man versus State for the mature political attack on state overreach; dip into Education for his applied philosophy.
4. Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) – the free-trade pamphleteer
| Tier | Title | Modern access |
|---|---|---|
| ★ | The Law (1850) | in Liberty Fund’s Collected Works vol. 3 or FEE booklet (pocket size) (Liberty Fund) |
| ★ | Economic Sophisms | Liberty Fund “Collected Sophisms” (2018 digital) (Liberty Fund) |
| ◇ | Selected Essays on Political Economy | FEE trade pbk (1995) (Amazon) |
| ◇ | Harmonies of Political Economy | Legare Street Press reprint, 2023 (Amazon) |
| ◇ | Full 6-volume Collected Works (Liberty Fund, ongoing). (Liberty Fund) |
Suggested path: Start with The Law (30 pages) for a lightning-bolt intro; then the Sophisms essays to watch him demolish protectionism.
5. John Morley’s Life of Richard Cobden (1867/79) – context for free-trade politics
- Core: 2-volume Cambridge Library Collection reprint (2011); or free Liberty Fund HTML/PDF. (Amazon, Liberty Fund)
- Supplement: Letters of Richard Cobden digital archive (2023) for primary sources. (The History of Parliament)
Read alongside Bastiat to see how free-trade arguments played out on the floor of Parliament.
How to Tackle the List
- Short-to-long spiral – begin with Bastiat’s pamphlets (quick wins), then Mill’s On Liberty, before diving into Bentham or Spencer.
- Mix authors – alternate utilitarians (Bentham/Mill) with free-market polemic (Bastiat/Cobden) to keep ideas fresh.
- Allowance for time – the ★ items total ~2,400 pages—doable in a year at 50 pp/week. Deeper cuts add as curiosity allows.
Free & open resources
Almost everything above can be read gratis via Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty, Econlib, or archive.org; the recommended print editions give you introductions, annotations, and pagination useful for citation.
Happy (and electorally responsible) reading!
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