The Spirit of the Age Bentham (1748–1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social and legislative reformer. He was a major proponent of Utilitarianism, based on the idea of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number", which he was the first to systematise, introducing it as the "principle of utility". Hazlitt's link with Bentham was unusual, as Bentham was his landlord and lived close by. Bentham would sometimes take his exercise in his garden, which was visible from Hazlitt's window. The two were not personally acquainted, yet what Hazlitt observed enabled him to interweave personal observations into his account of the older man. Bentham was
Jeremy Bentham influence on later generations of thinkers. Twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that the Panopticon was paradigmatic of several 19th-century "disciplinary" institutions. Bentham became convinced that his plans for the Panopticon had been thwarted by the King and an aristocratic elite acting in their own interests. It was largely because of his brooding sense of injustice that he developed his ideas of "sinister interest" – that is, of the vested interests of the powerful conspiring against a wider public interest – which underpinned many of his broader arguments for reform. More successful was his cooperation with Patrick Colquhoun in tackling