Rammohun Roy, MP?

Abstract

Jeremy Bentham was an eccentric person. Few who have seen the Auto-Icon or have had the pleasure, as did this author, of dining with it at University College would doubt this.¹ Yet some things that nineteenth-century contemporaries thought odd, or worse, evoke a different response today. “Jerry Bentham’s Cruise”—Byron’s mocking reference to the septuagenarian’s habit of jogging for exercise through St. James’s Park—is an example that comes to mind.² Bentham’s unpublished views on homosexuality also get a different hearing today than they would have gotten in his own day.³ Bentham was also ahead of his time in suggesting that Rammohun Roy should sit in the House of Commons.