agreed on. The fact would hardly be worth mentioning, but for the
circumstance, that the name I gave to the society I had planned was the
Utilitarian Society. It was the first time that anyone had taken the
title of Utilitarian; and the term made its way into the language, from
this humble source. I did not invent the word, but found it in one of
Galt's novels, the _Annals of the Parish_, in which the Scotch
clergyman, of whom the book is a supposed autobiography, is represented
as warning his parishioners not to leave the Gospel and become
utilitarians. With a boy's fondness for a name and a banner I seized
on the word, and for some years called myself and others by it as a
sectarian appellation; and it came to be occasionally used by some
others holding the opinions which it was intended to designate. As those
opinions attracted more notice, the term was repeated by strangers and
opponents, and got into rather common use just about the time when those
who had originally assumed it, laid down that along with other sectarian
characteristics. The Society so called consisted at first of no more
than three members, one of whom, being Mr. Bentham's amanuensis,
obtained for us permission to hold our meetings in his house. The number
never, I think, reached ten, and the Society was broken up in 1826. It
had thus an existence of about three years and a half. The chief effect
of it as regards myself, over and above the benefit of practice in oral
discussion, was that of bringing me in contact with several young men at
that time less advanced than myself, among whom, as they professed the
same opinions, I was for some time a sort of leader, and had considerable
influence on their mental progress. Any young man of education who fell
in my way, and whose opinions were not incompatible with those of the
Society, I endeavoured to press into its service; and some others I
probably should never have known, had they not joined it. Those of the
members who became my intimate companions--no one of whom was in any sense
of the word a disciple, but all of them independent thinkers on their own