Consultations on a Constitution for Tripoli, between Jeremy Bentham and Hassuna D'Ghies, 1823

If Britain had needed a written constitution, the country would not have been short of draftsmen to prepare fundamental laws defining the legislature and the executive and delegating to them appropriate powers of government. However, their services have not been required. It has been mainly in the past twenty-five years that they have found an outlet for their talents through the drafting of constitutions for the many sovereign states that emerged during a period of imperial fission. Although these constitutions have differed in content, they have one thing in common: all of them include constitutional concepts and principles derived from the work of Jeremy Bentham. It is surprising, however, to find that Jeremy Bentham himself drafted a constitution for the ‘Barbary State’ of Tripoli in 1823. At the time, Tripoli was part of the Ottoman Turkish realm; a form of Islamic state in which concepts of government and law differed so clearly from those of the secular nation-states of Europe that comparison cannot be made succinctly. However, comparisons are unnecessary for present purposes. The operative point in 1823 was that Muslim law and Ottoman tradition left no room for the introduction of a secular constitution in one of its provinces. Nothing short of provincial secession or political revolution at the centre-the two most trodden paths to constitutional reform—could bring about what Bentham would have liked to achieve with his pen. He was not unaware of the difficulties that faced the project and this is reflected in the form he gave to his draft; for it is open to question whether it amounted to what is usually expected of a ‘constitution’.