Principles of Morals and

Principles of Morals and Legislation/171
for example, who is considered as being invested with that condition.
But in offences against public trust, it is the influence they have on the
interests of the public that constitutes by much the most material part of
their pernicious tendency: the influence they have on the interests of any
individual, the only part of their influence which would be readily brought
to view by the appellation of offences against condition, is compara-
tively as nothing. The word trust directs the attention at once to the
interests of that party for whom the person in question is trustee: which
party, upon the addition of the epithet public, is immediately understood
to be the body composed of the whole assemblage, or an indefinite por-
tion of the whole assemblage of the members of the state. The idea
presented by the words public trust is clear and unambiguous: it is but
an obscure and ambiguous garb that that idea could be expressed in by
the words public condition. It appears, therefore, that the principal part
of the offences, included under the denomination of offences against
trust, could not, commodiously at least have been included under the
head of offences against condition.
XXVI. It is evident enough, that for the same reasons neither could
they have been included under the head of offences against property. It
would have appeared preposterous, and would have argued a total inat-
tention to the leading principle of the whole work, the principle of util-
ity, to have taken the most mischievous and alarming part of the of-
fences to which the public stands exposed, and forced them into the list
of offences against the property of an individual: of that individual, to
wit, who in that case would be considered as having in him the property
of that public trust, which by the offences in question is affected.
Nor would it have been less improper to have included conditions,
all of them, under the head of property: and thereby the whole catalogue
of offences against condition, under the catalogue of offences against
property. True it is, that there are offences against condition, which
perhaps with equal propriety, and without any change in their nature,
might be considered in the light of offences against property: so exten-
sive and so vague are the ideas that are wont to be annexed to both these
objects. But there are other offences which though with unquestionable
propriety they might be referred to the head of offences against condi-
tion, could not, without the utmost violence done to language, be forced
under the appellation of offences against property. Property, considered
with respect to the proprietor, implies invariably a benefit, and nothing
else: whatever obligations or burthens may, by accident, stand annexed

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172/Jeremy Bentham
to it, yet in itself it can never be otherwise than beneficial. On the part of
the proprietor, it is created not by any commands that are laid on him,
but by his being left free to do with such or such an article as he likes.
The obligations it is created by, are in every instance laid upon other
people. On the other hand, as to conditions, there are several which are
of a mixed nature, importing as well a burthen to him who stands in-
vested with them as a benefit: which indeed is the case with those condi-
tions which we hear most of under that name, and which make the great-
est figure.
There are even conditions which import nothing but burthen, with-
out any spark of benefit. Accordingly, when between two parties there
is such a relation, that one of them stands in the place of an object of
property with respect to the other; the word property is applied only on
one side; but the word condition is applied alike to both: it is but one of
them that is said on that account to be possessed of property; but both of
them are alike spoken of as being possessed of or being invested with a
condition: it is the master alone that is considered as possessing a prop-
erty, of which the servant, in virtue of the services he is bound to render,
is the object: but the servant, not less than the master, is spoken of as
possessing or being invested with a condition.
 The case is, that if a man’s condition is ever spoken of as constitut-
ing an article of his property, it is in the same loose and indefinite sense
of the word in which almost every other offence that could be imagined
might be reckoned into the list of offences against property. If the lan-
guage indeed were in every instance, in which it made use of the phrase,
object of property, perspicuous enough to point out under that appella-
tion the material and really existent body, the person or the thing in
which those acts terminate, by the performance of which the property is
said to be enjoyed; if, in short, in the import given to the phrase object
of property, it made no other use of it than the putting it to signify what
is now called a corporeal object, this difficulty and this confusion would
not have occurred. But the import of the phrase object of property, and
in consequence the import of the word property, has been made to take
a much wider range. In almost every case in which the law does any
thing for a man’s benefit or advantage, men are apt to speak of it, on
some occasion or other, as conferring on him a sort of property. At the
same time, for one reason or other, it has in several cases been not
practicable, or not agreeable, to bring to view, under the appellation of
the object of his property, the thing in which the acts, by the perfor-

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