The Rationale of Punishment includes some relatively late material apparently from Bentham’s hand. Étienne Dumont noted that material for two chapters, one on deportation and one on “House of Penance – Panopticon,” came from Bentham’s Letters to Lord Pelham, published in 1802.^ The Rationale of Punishment, Book II, Chapter 2, includes a reference to an exotic adventure narrative published in 1796.^ In addition, Book II, Chapter 1, includes the following footnote not present in Dumont’s work:

The Chinese, owing perhaps to the extensive use they make of this mode of punishment, have attempted, by fixing the length and breadth at the extremities, and weight of the bamboo, to render uniform the amount of the suffering produced by this mode of punishment; but one material circumstance that they have omitted to regulate, and certainly the most difficult to regulate, is the degree of force with which the stroke is to be applied; an omission that leaves the uncertainty nearly in the same state as in this country.—See the Penal Code of China, translated by Sir G. T. Staunton, p. 24.^

That note reflects Bentham’s interests and style of analysis. Staunton’s translation was published in London in 1810. Richard Smith, who worked as a government bureaucrat and an unpaid editor of Bentham’s manuscripts, probably had neither time nor interest to read Staunton’s Penal Code of China. The above note most likely came from a Bentham manuscript written in 1810 or afterwards.