 For all Bentham’s success abroad, in the early years of the nineteenth century he was little known in his own country. The April 1804 issue of the Edinburgh Review announced his arrival on the British stage in a substantial critical review of Dumont’s Traités, though his main appeal was initially confined to a small band of law reformers determined to tackle the antiquated and notoriously harsh punishments meted out by English penal law. In the years following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, however, when calls for legal, social, and political reform were becoming commonplace, Bentham’s reputation in Britain was transformed from that of an eccentric and often misunderstood oracle on the periphery of the intellectual and political world to that of a venerable sage situated at the center of a broad reform movement. Throughout the following century his influence continued to be felt, particular in discussions of moral and legal philosophy and economic theory and practice.