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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 35
[foreword]
"Among the works read in the course of this year (1822) which contributed materially to my development, I ought to mention a book (written on the foundation of some of Bentham's manuscripts, and published under the pseudonyme of Philip Beauchamp), entitled 'Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind.'
"This was an examination not of the truth, but of the usefulness of religious belief in the most general sense, apart from the peculiarities of any special Revelation; which, of all the parts of the discussion concerning religion, is the most important in this age, in which real belief in any religious doctrine is feeble and precarious, but the opinion of its necessity for moral and social purposes almost universal; and when those who reject revelation very generally take refuge in an optimistic Deism, a worship of the order of Nature and the supposed course of Providence, at least as full of contradictions and perverting to the moral sentiments as any of the forms of Christianity, if only it is as completely realized. Yet, very little, with any claim to a philosophical character, has been written by sceptics against the usefulness of this form of belief.
"The volume bearing the name of Philip Beauchamp had this for its special object. Having been shown to my father in manuscript, it was put into my hands by him, and I made a marginal analysis of it as I had done of the 'Elements of Political Economy.' Next to the 'Traité de Législation,' it was one of the books which by the searching character of its analysis produced the greatest effect upon me. On reading it lately after an interval of many years, I find it to have some of the defects as well as the merits of the Benthamic modes of thought, and to contain, as I now think, many weak arguments, but with a great overbalance of sound ones, and much good material for a more completely philosophic and conclusive treatment of the subject."—John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, page 69.
"This essential portion of the inquiry into the temporal usefulness of religion is the subject of the present Essay. It is a part which has been little treated of by sceptical writers. The only direct discussion of it with which I am acquainted is in a short treatise, understood to have been partly compiled from manuscripts of Mr. Bentham, and abounding in just and profound views; but which, as it appears to me, presses many parts of the argument too hard."—J. S. Mill's Essay On The Utility Of Religion, page 76.
"Although not generally known, it is, we believe, a fact that the late Mr. Grote was the author of a treatise on Natural Religion, published under an assumed name so far back as the year 1822. The full title of this work is 'Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion, &c., &c., by Philip Beauchamp.'"—The Athenæum, May 31, 1873.