What thus impressed me was the chapter in which Bentham passed judgment on the common modes of reasoning in morals and legislation, deduced from phrases like "law of nature," "right reason," "the moral sense," "natural rectitude," and the like, and characterized them as dogmatism in disguise, imposing its sentiments upon others under cover of sounding expressions which convey no reason for the sentiment, but set up the sentiment as its own reason.

It had not struck me before, that Bentham's principle put an end to all this.

The feeling rushed upon me, that all previous moralists were superseded, and that here indeed was the commencement of a new era in thought.

This impression was strengthened by the manner in which Bentham put into scientific form the application of the happiness principle to the morality of actions, by analysing the various classes and orders of their consequences.

But what struck me at that time most of all, was the Classification of Offences, which is much more clear, compact, and imposing in Dumont's _redaction_ than in the original work of Bentham from which it was taken.