At this time, Bentham says, that his was 'truly a miserable life.'[226] Yet he was getting to work upon his grand project. He tells his father on 1st October 1776 that he is writing his _Critical Elements of Jurisprudence_, the book of which a part was afterwards published as the _Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation_.[227] In the same year he published his first important work, the _Fragment on Government_. The year was in many ways memorable. The Declaration of Independence marked the opening of a new political era. Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ and Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_ formed landmarks in speculation and in history; and Bentham's volume, though it made no such impression, announced a serious attempt to apply scientific methods to problems of legislation. The preface contained the first declaration of his famous formula which was applied to the confutation of Blackstone. Bentham was apparently roused to this effort by recollections of the Oxford lectures. The _Commentaries_ contained a certain quantity of philosophical rhetoric; and as Blackstone was much greater in a literary than in a philosophical sense, the result was naturally unsatisfactory from a scientific point of view. He had vaguely appealed to the sound Whig doctrine of social compact, and while disavowing any strict historical basis had not inquired too curiously what was left of his supposed foundation. Bentham pounced upon the unfortunate bit of verbiage; insisted upon asking for a meaning when there was nothing but a rhetorical flourish, and tore the whole flimsy fabric to rags and tatters. A more bitter attack upon Blackstone, chiefly, as Bowring says, upon his defence of the Jewish law, was suppressed for fear of the law of libel.[228] The _Fragment_ was published anonymously, but Bentham had confided the secret to his father by way of suggesting some slight set-off against his apparent unwillingness to emerge from obscurity. The book was at first attributed to Lord Mansfield, Lord Camden, and to Dunning. It was pirated in Dublin; and most of the five hundred copies printed appear to have been sold, though without profit to the author. The father's indiscretion let out the secret; and the sale, when the book was known to be written by a nobody, fell off at once, or so Bentham believed. The anonymous writer, however, was denounced and accused of being the author of much ribaldry, and among other accusations was said to be not only the translator but the writer of the _White Bull_.[229]