Reader, have a care, Tread lightly, lest you rouse a sleeping bear; Religious, moral, generous, and humane He was—but self-sufficient, rude, and vain; Ill-bred and over-bearing in dispute, A scholar and a Christian—yet a brute.
[7] He also asserted that: "We are unable to give life, and therefore ought not wantonly to take it away from the meanest insect, without sufficient reason; they all receive it from the same benevolent hand as ourselves, and have therefore an equal right to enjoy it.
"[8] He married twice, but left no progeny:[9] Jenyns died in London of a fever, on 18 December 1787 and was buried at the church of the Holy Trinity, Bottisham.
In twenty-three very small pages he had disposed of the "Objections to the Taxation of Our American Colonies" in a manner highly satisfactory to himself and doubtless also to the average reading Briton, who understood constitutional questions best when they were "briefly considered," and when they were humorously expounded in pamphlets that could be had for sixpence.
...The heart of the question was the proposition that there should be no taxation without representation; upon which principle it was necessary to observe only that many individuals in England, such as copyholders and leaseholders, and many communities, such as Manchester and Birmingham, were taxed in Parliament without being represented there.
As for "liberty," the word had so many meanings, "having within a few years been used as a synonymous term for Blasphemy, Bawdy, Treason, Libels, Strong Beer, and Cyder," that Mr. Jenyns could not presume to say what it meant.Jenyns has been cited as an example of an Anglican utilitarian.