 The political upheaval in France provided Bentham with an opportunity to put certain of his ideas into practice and also the context in which he first developed the utilitarian logic of democracy based on the identification of interests between the ruler and the ruled. He nevertheless stopped short of publicly advocating parliamentary reform in Britain and at this stage was very far from the republicanism he adopted in later life (Dinwiddy 1975; Crimmins 1994; Schofield 2006). With Dumont’s assistance, in 1788 Bentham began sending pamphlets of suggestions to the Comte de Mirabeau. In 1790 he wrote a Draught of a New Plan for the Organisation of a Judicial Establishment in France which, together with Dumont’s translation of parts of Panopticon and parts of An Essay on Political Tactics dealing with the organisation of legislative proceedings, was also placed before the French National Assembly. The bloody excesses of the Terror reinforced his criticism of the abstract and slippery nature of natural and imprescriptible rights, which he famously dismissed as “nonsense on stilts” (1795 [2002, 330])—a disposition formed while listening to Blackstone’s lectures and which shaped his contribution to John Lind’s An Answer to the Declaration [of Independence] of the American Congress (1776). Nevertheless, Bentham’s efforts to stimulate reform in France were recognised in the granting of honorary citizenship in September 1792.