A Picture of the Treasury, published here for the first time from the manuscript, is addressed to the Home Secretary Lord Pelham and contains Bentham’s narrative of the events between 1798 and 1801 that led to the ‘relinquishment’ of the panopticon penitentiary scheme by the British government. The story is told through correspondence and official documents, to which Bentham adds a detailed commentary, in which he explains his own motives and his emotional state at the time, as well as his opinions about the character of officials at the Treasury and Home Office with whom he had to deal. Hoping to acquire land at Tothill Fields, Bentham was instead informed that the Millbank estate of the Marquis of Salisbury would be purchased for the proposed penitentiary. Bentham explains the difficulties in putting the land to its intended use, the prevarication of government around the number or prisoners to be built for, and the disingenuous claim that Bentham had increased his terms.

The volume is completed by two Appendices that inform the primary text. The first contains earlier material addressed to Pelham. The second is a draft letter to Speaker of the House of Commons, dated March 1802, enquiring about an unsigned document presented by the Treasury to the House of Commons that claimed that the panopticon penitentiary had been delayed due to Bentham’s increasing his terms, which Bentham rejected as a falsehood.