In early 1802, Jeremy Bentham realised that his efforts to persuade the British government to build a ‘panopticon’ penitentiary, which had occupied him for much of the previous decade, had been in vain. Bentham was particularly exercised by the ministry's preference for transporting criminals to NSW, a punishment he had long believed to be unjust and corrosive.

One outlet for Bentham’s frustration was the writing, in 1802-3, of a virtually-unknown history of his dealings with government: ‘A Picture of the Treasury’. It is an extraordinary, intimate work, and many hundreds of manuscript pages long. However, the only parts published were two ‘Letters to Lord Pelham’ and ‘A Plea for the Constitution’, which appeared in 1812 in a single volume as Panopticon versus New South Wales.

This paper will examine Bentham’s utilization of these texts in 1802-3 as leverage for the panopticon, by threatening to expose to the public both NSW, and how in founding the colony politicians had violated justice and the constitution. It will explore Bentham’s personal and philosophical hostility to NSW alongside his grander ambition of causing the ‘evacuation of that scene of wickedness and wretchedness’, and thereby connections between his personal ambition and imperial policy.