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122
John Stuart Mill.
their interests are not fairly represented; that they are not
dealt with in a fair spirit of trust and forbearance; if they
be isolated and estranged by pride and neglect; or sought for
to be cajoled; or hardened by want of sympathy: then,
when . they awaken to the sense of their full power, they
may, in “bettering the example,” be “dangerous;”—but not
else !
Art.
V.—.John Stuart Mill.
Autobiography. By John Stuart Mill. London:
Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer. 1873.
rFHE present memoir which John Stuart Mill has bequeathed
J. to the world contains, not the narrative of a life, but the
growth of a mind. We find none of the smaller incidents and
details that make up the history of the individual, and which
readers commonly look for with a pardonable curiosity and
interest, greater or less in degree, according to the importance of
the place the author of the biography has filled in public estima
tion. It is not therefore surprising that those who had expected
a graphic picture of an entire career, intellectually remarkable,
should feel some disappointment, and conclude that the real
memoir has still to be written. Against any expectation of this
sort Mr. Mill in the first words of the autobiography has done
his utmost to guard. He wrote it, he tells us, not with any con
ception of self-importance, but because education is now a subject
of more profound study among us than at any former period of
our history, and the experiment, as it might well be called, of
which he is an example, may tend to economize the tasks of the
young, and save the many early years that are little better than
wasted; because it might interest and help those, who in an age
of transition are searchers for truth, to see how one engaged in
the same pursuit has profited by a readiness to learn and to un
learn in his forward course; and last, but not least, because he
desired to acknowledge the debt which he believed that in his
moral and intellectual development he owed to others.
. The absence of any minute record of passing events affecting
himself or the persons and objects immediately around him, can
not be regarded as a defect. It is obviously the very condition
under which the work is prepared. We see that the author
rigidly adheres to the purposes indicated. He does not permit
himself to be diverted by any matters, however interesting they
might have been to himself, but which he looks upon as valueless
�John Stuart Mill.
123
to the world. His evident design is, first to convey by the testi
mony of experience of no ordinary kind, a great lesson on the
extent of teaching or education that it is possible for the mature
mind to communicate to the immature; and again, on that neverceasing process of education which continues from youth to man
hood, and thence to the latest period of life, which it is the
business of every mind to gather for itself.
In order that this education should have its proper and benefi
cent influence on character, he shows that it must not simply
operate on the reasoning powers—that there is needed the culture
of the feelings as well as of the reason; that the work is moral
as well as intellectual. Having dwelt on the process for reaching
more perfectly that condition of mental equilibrium the best
suited for forming a right judgment of the result of conduct and
action, we learn the effect which his labour to attain, and his
progress toward that condition, had in confirming or modifying
his. earlier views of the great subjects affecting mankind,
sociological and economical principles, law, religion, and political
government.
Although it is difficult to assent to the judgment Mr. Mill
pronounces upon himself, that in powers of apprehension and
memory, and in activity and energy of character, he was rather
below than above par, yet it is impossible not to perceive from
the facts stated to what an incalculable degree he was indebted
to the early training of his father, which enabled him, as he says,
to start with the advantage of a quarter of a century over his
contemporaries.
James Mill must be regarded as one of the most remarkable
men of his own or any other age. Born without any of the
advantages of fortune, and educated by the aid of one of the
Barons of the Exchequer in Scotland, after whom he named
•his son, he went through the studies of the University of Edin
burgh, and was licensed for a preacher, but finding himself
unable to believe the Church doctrines, he left the profession.
Holding, and always fearlessly asserting, opinions both in politics
and religion more odious at that time to the influential and
wealthy of this country than they have been either before or
since, he maintained himself and his family by his work as a
tutor and an author. Amidst the perpetual interruptions of
settled labour, caused by this necessary struggle for existence,
added to the time employed in the education of his children, he
planned and in about ten years completed the “ History of India.”
In this work lie comments with great severity on many of the
acts of the East India Company in their government, and ex
presses unqualified hostility to their commercial privileges. A
book full of opinions and modes of judgment of a democratic
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John Stuart Mill.
radicalism, then regarded as extreme,—he might, as his son truly
observes, have expected it at some future period to win for him
reputation, but certainly not advancement. The Directors of the
East India Company, feeling a far deeper personal responsibility
in the exercise of their powers than perhaps can be expected from
the members of an executive government, whose attention is at
best divided between considerations of party exigency and
regard for the public good, perceived in the author of the History
the qualities of a public servant of inestimable value, and disre
garding his adverse criticisms, appointed him to an important
office in their establishment. It is an event rare in the dispen
sation of public patronage, and should be ever remembered to
their honour. The Autobiography contains very much relating
to the character and works of James Mill, which deserves
an attentive perusal, and there are few who will not agree in the
judgment, that his place w7as an eminent one in the literary and
political history of his country. He died in 1836. “ The
eighteenth century/’ Mr. Mill observes, “ was an age of strong
and brave men and he was a fit companion for its strongest and
bravest. The last of that century, as Brutus was called the last
of the Romans, he had continued its tone of thought and senti
ment into, without partaking of the reaction which was the
characteristic of, the first aste of the nineteenth.
It was the good fortune of Mr. Mill that his education from his
earliest years was conducted by such a teacher. The account of
the progress which he made is full of instruction for a people
now entering upon the work of National Education, and who are
almost everywhere treating the mere instruments of knowledge as
its substitute. While this Autobiography was in the press, an
address was delivered by one who has given as much
study to the subject of Education as any one living,
pointing out the utter insufficiency of an educational method which
assumes that the power to read will develop the love of reading—
the ability to understand and appreciate what is read, to choose
the worthy and reject the unworthy, elevate the taste, arm it
against temptation, and ennoble life !
* What is needed is the
training of the mind, “ to observe nature, animate and inanimate,
to watch and classify ordinary social arrangements, to. trace the rela
tion of cause and effect, to think of the consequences of different kinds
of actions, and to guide conduct accordingly; to forego immediate
enjoyment for the sake of greater good to oneself or others.” We
perceive in the Autobiography, how these, the true objects of
Education, were attained, the mechanical part being subordinated
* See “ Professor Hodgson’s Address as President of the Educational De
partment, Social Science Congress, Norwich,” (Transactions). 1873.
�John Stuart Mill.
125
and acquired almost unconsciously. Mr. Mill tells us that he had
no remembrance of the time when he began to learn Greek.
He had been told that it was when he was three years old. His
earliest recollection on the subject was that of committino- to
memory what his father termed vocables, being lists of common
Greek words, with their signification in English, which he wrote
out for him on cards. Of grammar, until some years later, he
learnt no more than the inflexions of the nouns and verbs, but
after a course of vocables, proceeded at once to translation :—
“ The only thing besides Greek, that I learnt as a lesson in this part
of my childhood was arithmetic : this also my father taught me ; it was
the task of the evenings, and I well remember its disagreeableness. But
the lessons were only a part of the daily instruction I received. Much
of it consisted in the books I read myself, and my father’s discourses
to me, chiefly during our walks. From 1810 to the end of 1813 we
were living in Newington Green, then an almost rustic neighbourhood.
My father’s health required considerable and constant exercise, and we
walked habitually before breakfast, generallv in the green lanes
towards Hornsey. In these walks I always accompanied him, and
with my earliest recollections of green fields and wild flowers is
mingled that of the account I gave him daily of what I had read ’the
day before. To the best of my remembrance this was a voluntary
rather than a prescribed exercise. I made notes on slips of paper while
reading, and from these in the morning walks, I told the story to him •
for the books were chiefly histories, of which I read in this manner a
great number : Robertson’s histories, Hume, Gibbon ; but my great
est delight, then, and for long afterwards, was Watson’s Philip the
Second and Third............ Next to Watson, my favourite histori
cal reading was ‘ Hooke’s History of Rome.’ Of Greece I had seen at
that time no regular history, except school abridgments and the last
two or three volumes of a translation of Rollin’s Ancient Historv,
beginning with Philip of Macedon. But I read with great delight
‘ Langhorne’s Translations of Plutarch.’ In English history, beyond
the time at which Hume leaves off, I remember reading ‘ Burnet’s
History of his Own Time,’ though I cared little for anything in it
except the wars and battles ; and the historical part of the ‘ Annual
Register,’ from the beginning to about 1788, where the volumes my
father borrowed for me from Mr. Bentham left off. I felt a lively in
terest in Frederick of Prussia during his difficulties, and in Paoli, the
Corsican patriot; but when I came to the American War, I took my
part, like a child as I was (until set right by my father) on the
wrong side, because it was called the English side. In these frequent
talks about the books I read, he used, as opportunity offered, to give
me explanations and ideas respecting civilization, governments
morality, mental cultivation, which he required me afterwards to re
state to him in my own words. He also made me read, and give him
a verbal account of many books which would not have interested me
sufficiently to induce me to read them of myself. Arnone others
‘ Millar’s Historical View of the English Government,’ a book of great
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John Stuart Mill.
merit for its time, and which he highly valued ; 1 Mosheim’s Ecclesias
tical History,’ ‘McCrie’s Life of John Knox,’ and even 1 Sewell and
Rutty’s Histories of the Quakers.’ . . . Two books which I never
wearied of reading were ‘Anson’s Voyages,’ so delightful to most
young persons, and a collection (Hawkesworth’s, I believe) of ‘ Voyages
round the World,’ in four volumes, beginning with Drake and ending
with Cooke and Bougainville. Of children’s books, any more than
playthings, I had scarcely any, except an occasional gift from a relation or
acquaintance ; among those I had, ‘ Robinson Crusoe’ was pre-eminent,
and continued to delight me through all my boyhood. ” It was no
part, however, of my father’s system to exclude books of amusement,
though he allowed them very sparingly.”
The Latin and Greek stories were carried on from his eighth
to his twelfth year. Among other authors he read much of
Cicero. His strongest predilection was for history, especially
ancient, and writing histories was throughout his boyhood a
voluntary exercise. A spontaneous attempt at a continuation
of Pope’s Iliad, led to a command of his father to continue
his attempts at English versification. Experimental Science,
especially Chemistry—not by actual experiment, but as treated
in scientific works—was also one of his greatest amusements. In
this course of instruction a method was adopted in which the
mind was actively employed without being overtaxed.
“ Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into
them have their mental capacities not strengthened, but overlaid by
it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions or
phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the
power to form opinions of their own ; and thus the sons of eminent
fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow
up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their
minds, except in the furrows traced for them. Mine, however, was
not an education of cram. My father never permitted anything which
I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory; he strove to
make the understanding not only go along with every step of the
teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anything which could be found
out by thinking I never was told until I had exhausted my efforts to
find it out for myself.”
Once be had used the word idea, and his father instantly
asked what an idea was, and expressed displeasure at his in
effectual attempts to define the word. On another occasion, he
used an expression—still commonly repeated by not less than
nine out of ten of the so-called instructed classes—that some
thing was true in theory, but false in practice; provoking the
indignation of his father, who, after making him vainly strive to
define the word theory, explained its meaning, and showed him
the fallacy of the vulgar form of speech he had uttered. In and
after his twelfth year the objects of instruction were chiefly re-
�John Stuart Mill.
127
garded—not the aids and appliances of thought, but the thoughts
themselves. The reading of the scholastic logic, then begun, was
accompanied and followed by the numerous and searching ques
tions of his father in their daily walks.
“ It was his invariable practice, whatever studies he exacted from
me, to make me, as far as possible, understand and feel the utility of
them. ... I well remember how, and in what particular walk in
the neighbourhood of Bagshot Heath (where we were on a visit to
his old friend Mr. Wallace, then one of the mathematical professors
at Sandhurst), he first attempted, by questions, to make me think on
the subject, and frame some conception of what constituted the utility
of the syllogistic logic ; and when I had failed in this, to make me
understand it by explanation. The explanations did not make the
matter at all clear to me at the time; but they were not, therefore,
useless; they remained as a nucleus for my observations and reflec
tions to crystallize upon; the import of his general remarks being
interpreted to me, by the particular instances which came under my
notice afterwards. My own consciousness and experience ultimately
led me to appreciate, quite as highly as he did, the value of an early
practical familiarity with the school logic. I know of nothing, in my
education, to which I think myself more indebted for whatever
capacity of thinking I have attained. The first intellectual operation
in which I arrived at any proficiency was dissecting a bad argument,
and finding in what part the fallacy lay; and though whatever
capacity of this sort I attained, was due to the fact that it was
an intellectual exercise in which I was most perseveringly drilled by
my father; yet, it is also true, that the school logic and the mental
habits acquired in studying it, were among the principal instruments
of this drilling, I am persuaded that nothing, in modern education,
tends so much, when properly used, to form exact thinkers, who
attach a precise meaning to words and propositions, and are not im
posed on by vague, loose, or ambiguous terms. The boasted influence
of mathematical studies is nothing to it, for in mathematical processes
none of the real difficulties of correct ratiocination occur. It is also
a study peculiarly adapted to an early stage in the education of philo
sophical students, since it does not presuppose the slow process of
acquiring, by experience and reflection, valuable thoughts of their
own. They may become capable of disentangling the intricacies of
confused and self-contradictory thought, before their own thinking
faculties are much advanced; a power which, for want of some such,
discipline, many otherwise able men altogether lack; and when they
have to answer opponents, only endeavour, by such arguments as they
can command, to support the opposite conclusion, scarcely even at
tempting to confute the reasonings of their antagonists ; and, there
fore, at the utmost, leaving the question, as far as it depends on
argument, a balanced one.”
There was no author to whom James Mill had thought himself
more indebted for his own mental culture than Plato, or whom
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John Stuart Mill.
he more frequently recommended to young students ; and to
the value of this recommendation his pupil bears the like tes
timony. By the Socratic method, the man of vague generali
ties is constrained either to express his meaning to himself
in definite terms, or to confess that he does not know
what he is talking about.The perpetual testing of general
statements by particular instances, the siege in form laid
to abstract terms, the distinctions which limit and define
the thing sought, and separate it from the cognate objects,
Mr. Mill pronounces to be an education for precise thinking
which is inestimable, and one which, even at that early
age, took such hold of him as to become part of his own
mind.
High as the cultivation of the intellect stands, it is not that
alone that is needed for the creation of a better ideal of humanity.
In the parental intercourse there had been, if not a want of
tenderness, at least the absence of its display. His father,
Mr. Mill remarks, resembled most Englishmen in being ashamed
of the signs of feeling, and starving it by want of demonstration.
He found that intellectual culture required correction by joining
other kinds of cultivation with it. Poetry, art, music, to which
he had not before been unsusceptible, began at an early period
to fill a large place in his thoughts. In this part of his self
education he encountered, in his circle of friends, an opposite
theory. There were those who, if possessed of strong suscepti
bilities of temperament, yet found them more painful than
pleasurable—as standing rather in their way than the contrary ;
and who, therefore, regarded the pleasures to be derived from
the fine arts as impediments, rather than aids in the formation
of character.. Mr. Mill considered it too much a part of the
English habit, derived from social circumstances, to count the
sympathies for very little in the scheme of life,—to see little
good in cultivating the feelings, and none at all in doing so
through appeals to the imagination. He more than once adverts
to tnis side of English life—the absence of enlarged thoughts
and unselfish desires, the low and petty objects on which °the
faculties are, for the most part intent, and the habit of taking
for granted that they are always the motives of conduct; and
the effect of this, in lowering the tone of feeling, making people
less earnest, and causing them to look on the most elevated
objects as unpractical, or too remote from realization, to be more
than a vision or a theory.
Several incidents in the Autobiography are introduced to
show, the wholesome and vivifying power which the fancy and
imagination can exercise over the will. Between his eighth and
twelfth years he spent intervals of time at Ford Abbey, the occa-
�John Stuart Mill.
129
sional abode of Mr. Bentham, and he regarded these visits as
fruitful in his education. Elevation of sentiments in a people
are nourished by the large and free character of their habitations.
The mediaeval architecture and the spacious and lofty rooms of
Ford Abbey, so unlike the cramped externals of English middle
class life, gave the sentiment of a larger and freer existence. The
house and grounds in which it stood, secluded, umbrageous, and
full of the sound of falling’waters, were to him in themselves a
sort of poetic cultivation. Again, two or three years later, Sir
Samuel Bentham and his wife, whom he refers to as “u daughter
of Dr. Fordyce, and a woman of much knowledge and good
sense of the Edgeworth kind,” invited their brother’s young
friend and disciple to their residence in the South of France, at
the Chateau of Pompignan, on the heights overlooking the plain
of the Garonne between Montauban and Toulouse. He spent
nearly a year in this visit, accompanying his hosts in an excur
sion of some duration to the Pyrenees. This, his first introduc
tion to the highest order of mountain scenery, gave a colour to
his tastes through life. After adverting to the lectures on che
mistry, zoology, and logic which he attended in the winter at
Montpelier, he adds that the greatest, perhaps, of the many
advantages which he owed to this episode in his education was,
that of having breathed for a whole year the free and genial
atmosphere of continental life, though at that time he did not
estimate or consciously feel the advantage he was deriving It
was not until long afterwards that he learnt to appreciate the
general culture of the understanding, which results from the
habitual exercise of the feelings, and is thereby carried down
into the most uneducated classes of several countries on the Con
tinent in a degree rarely equalled in England.
The impulse and force given to the cultivation of new tastes
and sympathies, served to elevate the ideal of a noble and un
selfish life which his previous teaching had done much to form.
Of his earliest historic readings he says, “ the heroic defence of
the knights of Malta against the Turks, and of the revolted
provinces of the Netherlands against Spain, excited in me an
intense and lasting interest.” His father was fond of putting
into his hands books which exhibited men of energy and resource
in unusual circumstances, struggling against difficulties and over
coming them. The interest which in boyhood he had taken in
the wars and conquests of the Romans culminated in an engross
ing contemplation of the struggles between the patricians and
plebeians, and in his juvenile essays he vindicated the Agrarian
Laws, and upheld the Roman Democratic party. In his fifteenth
or sixteenth year, in 1821 or 1822, after bis visit to France, he
read the history of the French Revolution. Then, he says : —
[Vol. CI. No. CXCIX.l—New Seeies, Vol. XLV. No. I.
K
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John Stuart Mill.
“ I learnt with astonishment that the principles of democracy, then
apparently in so insignificant and hopeless a minority everywhere in
Europe, had borne all before them in France thirty years earlier, and
had been the creed of the nation. As may be supposed from this, I
had previously a very vague idea of that great commotion. I knew
only that the French had thrown off the absolute monarchy of Louis
XIV. and XV., had put the King and Queen to death, guillotined
many persons, one of whom was Lavoisier, and had ultimately fallen
under the despotism of Bonaparte. From this time, as was natural,
the subject took an immense hold of my feelings. It allied itself
with all my juvenile aspirations to the character of a democratic
champion. What had happened so lately, seemed as if it might easilv
happen again ; and the most transcendant glory I was capable of con
ceiving was that of figuring successful, or unsuccessful, as a Girondist
in an English Convention.”
This admiration of great and persistent effort in a worthy
cause, which with advancing years he came more and more to
regard as of incalculable value, in bringing the memory and
imagination to the aid of conduct, had been early rooted in his
mind.”
“ Long before I had enlarged in any considerable degree the basis
of my intellectual creed, I had obtained, in the natural course of my
mental progress, poetic culture of the most valuable kind, by means
of reverential admiration for the lives and • characters of heroic per
sons ; especially the heroes of philosophy: The same inspiring effect
which so many of the benefactors of mankind have left on record
that they had experienced from ‘Plutarch’s Lives,’ was produced on
me by ‘ Plato’s Picture of Socrates,’ and by some modern biographies,
above all by ‘ Condorcet’s Life of Turgot’—a book well calculated to
rouse the best sort of enthusiasm, since it contains one of the wisest
and noblest of lives, delineated by one of the wisest and noblest of
men. The heroic virtue of these glorious representatives of the
opinions with which I sympathized, deeply affected me, and I perpe
tually recurred to them as others do to a favourite poet, when needing
to be carried up into the more elevated regions of feelino- and
thought.”
"
°
It is interesting to trace the abiding influence of the remem
brance of great examples, and of the memories of an heroic
past, in the fact which Mr. Mill mentions, that upwards of thirty
years after the impressions, of which he speaks in the foregoing
extract, had taken root, the thought of completing and giving to
the world as a volume the “ Essay on Liberty,” first arose in
his mind, in mounting in 1865, the steps of the Capitol.
W e have described Mr. Mill in his youth, as a disciple of
Bentham, but this he does notappear thoroughly to have become
until, in 1821 or 1822, he read the Traite de Legislation, which
he terms an epoch in his life. The standard of “ the greatest
�John Stuart Mill.
131
happiness/’ the exposure of the fallacy contained in such
sounding expressions, as “ law of nature,” “ right reason,” and
“ moral sense,” burst upon him with all the force of novelty. The
classification of offences and punishment under the guidance of the
ethical principle, of pleasurable and painful consequences, seemed
to place the moralist and student of jurisprudence upon an
eminence, from which he could survey a mental domain of vast
extent, affording the most aspiring prospects of practical
improvement in human affairs. It opened to him a grand
conception of the changes to be effected in the condition of
mankind through that doctrine. Before this time the book
which had contributed most largely to his education in the best
sense of the word, was his father’s History of India. In this
he was not alone. There are others living who acknowledge, as
he does, their debt to this work, and to its disquisitions on society
and civilization, on institutions, and acts of government, for a
multitude of new ideas, and for a great impulse and stimulus as
well as guidance in their future studies.
After the Traitfi de Legislation followed the reading of most of
the other works of Bentham; of Locke’s Essay, an abstract
was made, and discussed, and the other principal English writers
on mental philosophy were also read. In 1822 he wrote his first
argumentative essay, on the aristocratic prejudice which is
supposed to attribute to the rich, moral qualities superior to those
of the poor, and in the winter of the same year he gathered
together and formed a small society of young men called the
Utilitarian Society.
*
In 1823 his father obtained for him
an appointment in the office of Examiner of India Correspondence
in the service of the Company.
The constant occupation in the India House had the necessary
effect of abridging his opportunities of gratification afforded by
a country life, and by travel. The latter was now restricted to the
short annual holiday.
“ I passed (he says) most Sundays throughout the year in the
country, taking long rural walks on that day even when residing in
London. The month’s holiday was, for a few years, passed at my
father’s house in the country: afterwards a part or the whole was
spent in tours, chiefly pedestrian, with some one or more of the young
men who were my chosen companions ■ and at a later period, in
longer journeys or excursions, alone, or with other friends. France,
Belgium, or Rhenish Germany were within easy reach of the annual
holiday : and two longer absences, one of three, the other of six months,
under medical advice, added Switzerland, the Tyrol, and Italy to my
list. Fortunately, also, both these journeys occurred rather early, so
* A title borrowed from Gait’s “ Annals of the Parish.”
K 2
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John Stuart Mill.
as to give the benefit and charm of the remembrance to a large
portion of my life.”
In a chapter entitled “Youthful Propagandism,” we are told
of the efforts which were made to propagate the main tenets of
Utilitarian Radicalism in the columns of the Globe and Traveller,
the Morning Chronicle, and finally in the Westminster Review.
His part in the first appearance of this Review, had been that
of reading through all the volumes of the Edinburgh Review,
and making notes of the articles which he thought his father
would like to examine for the purpose of his intended paper.
This article, of James Mill, treated the Edinburgh Review as
the political organ of one of the two aristocratic parties constantly
endeavouring, without any essential sacrifice of aristocratical
predominance, to supplant each other. The Quarterly Review
was the subject of an article, as a sequel to that of the
Edinburgh. Mr. Mill was one of the most active of the very
small number of young men who, drawn around his father, had
imbibed from him a greater or smaller portion of his opinions,
and were supposed to form the so-called Bentham school in
philosophy and politics. The chief characteristics of their creed
were in politics, an almost unbounded confidence in the efficacy
of two things ; representative government and complete freedom
of discussion; and in psychology the formation of all human
character by circumstances, through the universal principle of
association, and the consequent unlimited possibility of improv
ing the moral and intellectual condition of mankind by
education. It was in the spirit of what Mr. Mill terms youthful
fanaticism that these opinions were seized by the little knot of
young men of whom he was one. For himself, he conceives that
the epithet of “ reasoning machine” was not altogether untrue,
or may be said to be as applicable to him as it could well be to
any one, for two or three years of his life :—
“ Ambition and desire of distinction I had in abundance, and zeal for
what I thought the good of mankind was my strongest sentiment,
mixing with and colouring all others. But my zeal was little else, at
that period of my life, than zeal for speculative opinions. It had not
its root in genuine benevolence, or sympathy with mankind, though
these qualities held their due place in my ethical standard. Nor was
it connected with any high enthusiasm for ideal nobleness. Yet of this
feeling I was imaginatively very susceptible : but there was at that time
an intermission of its natural aliment, poetical culture, while there was
a superabundance of the discipline antagonistic to it, that of mere logic
and analysis. Add to this, as already mentioned, my father’s teaching
led to the under-valuing of feeling. It was not that he was himself
cold-hearted or insensible; I believe it was rather from the contrary
quality; he thought that feeling could take care of itself; that
�John Stuart Mill.
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there was sure to be enough of it if actions were properlv cared
about.” ....
“ From this neglect both in theory and in practice of the cultivation
of feeling, naturally resulted, among other things, an undervaluing
of poetry, and of imagination generally, as an element of human
nature.” . . . . “As regards me (and the same thing might be said
of my father), the correct statement would be, not that I disliked
poetry, but that I was theoretically indifferent to it. I disliked any
sentiments in poetry which I should have disliked in prose, and that
included a great deal. And I was wholly blind to its place in human
culture, as a means of educating the feelings; but I was always per
sonally very susceptible to some kinds of it. In the most sectarian
period of my Benthanism, I happened to look into Pope’s Essay on
Man, and though every opinion in it was contrary to mine, I well re
member how powerfully it acted on my imagination.”
A time came when something more was felt to be needed.
The attainment of a condition of physical comfort alone, in which
the pleasures of life would no longer be kept up by struggle, and in
the midst of privation, could afford no sufficient hope of human
happiness. What had been founded in a large degree on the
intellectual and abstract conception of aggregate results, had to be
converted into an exercise of genuine benevolence, and sympathy
with individual distress and suffering. For the mere rational
conviction that such and such things were good and evil, and the
proper objects of praise and blame, reward and punishment, higher
and deeper motives were substituted. At the same time in ex
ternal things, a sense of vague and general admiration of grandeur
and beauty was concentrated and intensified by examples brought
into immediate contact with the mind and eye. The experiences of
the time led him to adopt a theory of life which, while admitting
that all rules of conduct must be tried by their tending to pro
mote happiness as the end of life, yet that end could not be
reached by its direct and sole pursuit, or by making it the princi
pal object of desire.
This has given occasion to a singular
criticism. “ He found,” say the objectors, “ that it was not a safe or
successful course to pursue happiness as a direct end, therefore,”
they add, “ it follows, that it is not the proper end and aim of life,
and the utilitarian principle fails !” This is a confusion of two
things entirely distinct from each other, the particular and the
general happiness, and the diverse methods of their pursuit.
Nothing in the theory that the happiness of the individual should
not be the direct end of his existence, would forbid the direct
pursuit of ordinary pleasures. He may attend the performance
of a play of Shakspeare, or listen to a composition of Mendelssohn,
set out on a spring day for a woodland walk, or ascend an
Alpine hill, with a direct view to the enjoyment which such a
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use of his time will produce. But if one passes his life in seeking
nothing else but his own direct and personal enjoyment, if he
does not look beyond this to a higher and nobler purpose of
existence—a purpose into which the idea of its bearing upon his
individual happiness does not enter, except as a sense of the
performance of duty in the promotion of the good of others,
which is attended with an unsought pleasure—the narrow objects
he has pursued will ultimately fail him, and the time will come
of decaying natural powers, and of blunted capacities for the
accustomed enjoyment. Breadth of affection is an element in
its durability. “ When people who are tolerably fortunate in
their outward lot do not find in life sufficient enjoyment to make
it valuable to them, the cause generally is, caring for nobody but
themselves. To those who have neither public nor private
affections, the excitements of life are much curtailed, and in any
case dwindle in value as the time approaches when all selfish
interests must be terminated by death; while those who leave
after them objects of personal affection, and especially those who
have also cultivated a fellow-feeling with the collective interests
of mankind, retain as lively an interest in life on the eve of death
as in the vigour of youth and health.”* “ I do not,” he said, in
concluding his address to the University of St. Andrews,
“ attempt to instigate you by the prospect of direct rewards,
either earthly or heavenly: the less we think about being re
warded in either way, the better for us. But there is one reward
which will not fail you, and which may be called disinterested,
because it is not a consequence, but is inherent in the very fact of
deserving it; the deeper and more varied interest you will feel in
life, which will give it tenfold its value, and a value •which will
last to the end. All merely personal objects grow less valuable
as we advance in life ; this not only endures but increases.”
He was also now led to give its proper place to internal culture,
as among the prime necessities of human well-being. We have
seen how much of the pleasure lie had before enjoyed had been
derived from the love of rural objects and natural scenery. He
now found in the poetry of Wordsworth, the expression not alone
of outward beauty, but of “ states of feeling, and of thought
coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty.”
“ In. them I seemed to draw from a source of inward joy, of sym
pathetic and imaginary pleasure, which could be shared in by all
human beings; whicli had no connexion with struggle or imperfection,
but would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or
social condition of mankind. From them I seemed to learn what
would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils
* Utilitarianism.
Its Meaning, p. 20.
�John Stuart Mill.
135
of life shall have been removed. And I felt myself at once better
and happier as I came under their influence.” . . . . “ I needed
to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil
contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without turn
ing away from, but with a greatly increased interest in the common
feelings and common destiny of human beings.”
This part of the Autobiography introduces the acquaintance
with Frederick Maurice and John Sterling, the former a disciple
of Coleridge, and the latter of Coleridge and Maurice, and both
were of use in his development. Nothing is more interesting
than the account Mr. Mill gives us of his intimacy with
them :—
“ With Sterling I soon became very intimate, and was more
attached to him'than I have ever been to any other man. He was
indeed one of the most loveable of men. His frank, cordial, affec
tionate, and expansive character ; a love of truth, alike conspi
cuous in the highest things and humblest; a generous and ardent
nature, which threw itself with impetuosity into the opinions it
adopted, but was as eager to do justice to the doctrines and the men
it was opposed to, as to make war on what it thought their errors ;
and an equal devotion to the two cardinal points of Liberty and Duty,
formed a combination of qualities as attractive to me, as to all others
who knew him as well as 1 did. With his open mind and heart, he
found no difficulty in joining hands with me across the gulf which as
yet divided our opinions. He told me how he and others had looked
upon me (from hearsay information) as a made or ‘ manufactured’
man, having had a certain impress of opinions stamped on me, which
I could only reproduce; and what a change took place in his feelings
when he found, in the discussion on Wordsworth and Byron, that
Wordsworth, and all that that name implies, ‘ belonged’ to me as
much as to him and his friends.”
From a brief view of the sources and method of Mr. Mill’s
education, and the primary effect it had on his mind and cha
racter, we pass to the opinions of his mature years, and then
to some of the results of those opinions upon his labours in
moral and political science, as well as in practical politics.
And first, on the subject of religion, the Autobiography sup
plies us with a less perfect account of the opinions of Mr. Mill
than it is understood we may expect from some hitherto unpub
lished essays which will be soon before the world. What is to
be collected from the work before us cannot, however, properly
be passed over in silence. The views of James Mill are clearly
stated.
My father had been early led to reject not only the belief in
Revelation, but the foundations of what is commonly called natural
religion. I have heard him say that the turning-point of his mind
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on the subject was reading Butler’s Analogy. That work, of which
he always continued to speak with respect, kept him, as he said, for
some considerable time, a believer in the divine authority of Chris
tianity ; by proving to him that whatever are the difficulties in
believing that the Old and New Testaments proceed from, or record
the acts of, a perfectly wise and good being, the same and still greater
difficulties stand in the way of the belief, that a being of such a
character can have been the Maker of the Universe. He considered
Butler’s argument as conclusive against the only opponents for whom
it was intended. Those who admit an omnipotent as well as perfectly
just and benevolent maker and ruler of such a world as this, can say
little against Christianity but what can, with at least equal force, be
retorted against themselves. Finding, therefore, no halting place in
Deism, he remained in a state of perplexity, until, doubtless, after
many struggles, he yielded to the conviction that, concerning the
origin of things, nothing whatever can be known. .... These
particulars are important, because they show that my father’s rejec
tion of all that is called religious belief, was not, as many might sup
pose, primarily a matter of logic and evidence ; the grounds of it were
moral still more than intellectual. He found it impossible to believe
that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining
infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness.”
While he impressed upon his son from the first that the man
ner in which the world came into existence was a subject on
which nothing was known—
“ He at the same time, took care that I should be acquainted with
what had been thought by mankind on these impenetrable problems.
I have mentioned at how early an age he made me a reader of ecclesi
astical history ; and he taught me to take the strongest interest in the
Reformation, as the great and decisive contest against priestly tyranny
for liberty of thought.”
In this negative state of opinion on religion which one of the
critics of the Autobiography gravely attributes to the want, on
the part of both father and son of a comprehension of the higher
mathematics, Mr. Mill grew up.
“ I looked (he says) upon the modern exactly as I did upon the
ancient religion, as something which in no way concerned me. It did
not seem to me more strange that English people should believe what
I did not, than that the men I read of in Herodotus should have done
so. History had made the variety of opinions among mankind a fact
familiar to me, and this was but a prolongation of that fact.”
Of unbelievers (so called) as well as of believers, Mr. Mill
observes, there are many species, including almost every variety of
moral type, many of the best of the former being more generally
religious in the best sense of the word, than those who exclusively
arrogate to themselves the title. They repudiate all dogmatism,
and especially dogmatic atheism, which they regard as absurd;
�John Stuart Mill.
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but they deny that beings endowed with reasoning faculties
are justified in permitting themselves to receive as true the
character and acts commonly attributed to an Omnipotent
Author of all things, who created the human race with the
infallible foreknowledge, and therefore with the intention that
the great majority of them were to be consigned to terrible and
everlasting torment.
“Though they may think the proof incomplete that the universe is
a work of design, and they assuredly disbelieve that it can have an
Author and Governor who is absolute in power as well as perfect in
goodness, they have that which contributes the principal worth of all
religions whatever, an ideal conception of a Perfect Being, to which
they habitually refer as the guide of their conscience ; and this ideal
of good is usually far nearer to perfection than the objective Deity of
those who think themselves obliged to find absolute goodness in [one
whom they are taught to believe is] the author of a world so crowded
with suffering and so deformed with injustice as ours.”
In this aspect, the argument, however orthodox believers
are disposed to repudiate it, ought to be regarded even by
them according to its manifest design, as an effort to vindi
cate the Divine Ideal. It is the belief of those who thus argue
that a low and imperfect conception of the Being which is
adored, radically vitiates the standard of morals, and causes
fictitious excellences to be set up and substituted for genuine
virtues. It is true that—
“ Christians do not in general undergo the demoralizing consequences
which seem inherent in such a creed, in the manner, or to the extent
which might have been expected from it. The same slovenliness of
thought, and subjection of the reason to fears, wishes, and affections,
which enable them to accept a theory involving a contradiction in terms,
prevents them from perceiving the logical consequences of the theory.”
Another cause through which such consequences areavoided may
be found in the great counteracting principles that are embodied
in the Christian doctrine, and which teach forbearance, love of
others, and self-sacrifice.
These, the fundamental teachings of
Christianity, apart from dogma, few would appreciate better than
Mr. Mill. He found in them the corroboration of the doctrine
he advocated. “In the golden rule,” he says, “of Jesus of
Nazareth we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To
do as you would be done by, to love your neighbour as yourself,
constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.”
Mr. Mill attributes one bad consequence to this part of his
education. In giving him an opinion contrary to that of the
world, his father thought it necessary to give it as one which
could not be prudently avowed to the world. This lesson of
keeping his thoughts to himself at that early age was attended
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John Stuart Mill.
with some disadvantages, though his limited intercourse with
strangers, especially such as were likely to speak to him on
religion, prevented him from being placed in the alternative
of avowal or hypocrisy. Looking at the present advance in the
liberty of discussion since the time of which he was speaking,
he thinks that few men of his father’s intellect and public spirit,
with such intensity of moral conviction, would now withhold his
opinions from the world, unless in cases, becoming fewer every
day, in which frankness would risk the loss of subsistence, or be
an exclusion from a sphere of usefulness to which the individual
was particularly suited. On religion—
“ The time appears to have come, when it is the duty of all, who
being qualified in point of knowledge, have on mature consideration
satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false but
hurtful, to make their dissent known; at least, if they are among
those whose station or reputation, gives their opinion a chance of
being attended to. Such an avowal would put an end, at once
and for ever, to the vulgar prejudice, that what is called, very
improperly, unbelief, is connected with any bad qualities either of
heart or mind. The world would be astonished if it knew how great
a proportion of its brightest ornaments—of those most distinguished
even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue—are complete
sceptics in religion; many of them refraining from avowal, less from
personal considerations, than from a conscientious, though now in my
opinion a most mistaken apprehension, lest by speaking out what
would tend to weaken existing beliefs, and by consequence (as they
suppose) existing restraints, they should do harm instead of good.”
As years have passed on, the evidences of the truth of this
view of the progress of thought have multiplied. Mr. Mill
mentions the well-remembered collision of his friend Frederick
Maurice with orthodox opinion, and the penalty to which he
submitted rather than recognise a doctrine utterly inconsistent
with a Divine benevolence. Between himself and Sterling the
distance in opinion we find was always diminishing. Still later
the author of “Literature and Dogma,’1 setting out from a
starting-point as distant as the poles, and pursuing an entirely
different route, has sought like him to raise an ideal conception
of a true Divine Guide. What is the object of that moral and
intellectual culture which Mr. Mill has laboured to prove the
most suitable for mankind, other than that ihev should be taught
to know, “the best that has been thought and said in the
world ?” In what does the Ideal of Perfection, to which
he refers as the best guide of the human conscience, differ
from that “ Enduring Power, not ourselves, which makes for
righteousness ?”
Turning to philosophy let us see what was the especial object
�John Stuart Mill.
139
which Mr. Mill had in view in his examination of that of Sir
William Hamilton. And here the first thing that strikes the
reader is, that even in his most abstract works, those apparently
of a nature purely speculative, and falling within the region of
metaphysics, he had chiefly, if not wholly, in view a great and
practical end. He did not seek merely to establish a barren
theory of remote application, but to assert a truth which to the
extent to which it was accepted and influenced conduct, might
have a practical result in the consideration of the conditions of
human existence. It was nothing less than this which led him
to attack the foundation of a system, that theoretically denies
the effect of the conditions of existence upon the moral as
well as the intellectual state of society, and thus goes far
to discourage and cripple real efforts for improvement.
“ The difference between these two schools of philosophy, that of
Intuition and that of Experience and Association, is not a mere
matter of abstract speculation; it is full of practical consequences,
and lies at the foundation of all the greatest differences of practical
opinion in an age of progress. The practical reformer has continually
to demand that changes be made in things which are supported by
powerful and widely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent
necessity and indefeasibleness of established facts ; and it is often an
indispensable part of his agreement to show, how those powerful
feelings had their origin, and how those facts came to seem necessary
and indefeasible. There is therefore a natural hostility between
him and a philosophy which discourages the explanation of feelings
and moral facts, by circumstances and associations, and prefers to treat
them as ultimate elements of human nature ; a philosophy which
is addicted to holding up favourite doctrines as intuitive truths, and
deems intuition to be the voice of Nature and of God, speaking with
an authority higher than that of reason. In particular, I have long
felt that the prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions
of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore
the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences,
whether between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only
might, but naturally could be produced by differences in circumstances,
is one of the chief hindrances to the rational treatment of great social
questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human
improvement. My father’s Analysis of the Mind, my own Logic,
and Professor Bain’s great Treatise, had attempted to re-introduce a
better mode of philosophizing, latterly with quite as much success as
could be expected; but I had for some time felt that the mere
contrast of the two philosophies was not enough, that there ought to
be a hand-to-hand fight between them, that controversial as well as
expository writings were needed, and that the time was come when
such controversy would be useful.”
The treatise on Liberty Mr. Mill regards as likely to sur
vive longer than anything else he has written, with the possible
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John Stuart Mill.
exception of the Logic. It stood pre-eminent in his estimation,
not only from its intrinsic importance, but as the last and most
elaborate result of the joint labours of himself and his wife, and
consecrated to her memory. None of his other writings was
either so carefully composed or sedulously corrected. “ After it
had been written as usual twice over, we kept it by us, bringing
it out from time to time, and going through it de novo, reading,
weighing, and criticising every sentence.”
The joint revision, which was to have been the work of the
winter of 1858-9, was frustrated by Mrs. Milks death. Its pub
lication was his first undertaking after that event. It is, he
says, the text-book of a single truth—the importance to man
and society of a large variety in types of character, and of giving
full freedom to human nature to expand itself in innumerable
and conflicting directions. A danger was that the growth of social
equality, and of a submission to public opinion, should impose
on mankind an oppressive yoke of uniformity in opinion and
practice. The doctrine of Individuality, the right and duty of
self-development, asserted by insulated thinkers from age to age,
worked out in the labours of Pestalozzi, and having among its
promulgators Wilhelm von Humboldt, Goethe, De Tocqueville,
and others less known but not less ardent in its cause, was with
modifications and differences of detail embodied in this work.
It was, moreover, in direct conflict with Positivism. Agreeing
with Comte that from the necessity of the case, the mass of man
kind, even including their rulers, must accept many of their
opinions on political and social matters, as they do on physical,
from the authority of those who have made those subjects their
especial study ; that Europe during the Middle Ages had greatly
profited by the distinct organization of the spiritual power, and
the moral and intellectual ascendancy once exercised by priests
would naturally pass into the hands of philosophers, he yet repu
diated with his utmost energy the conclusion that a corporate
hierarchy should be formed of the latter. He could not see in
such a body any bulwark against oppression, or security for good
government. The “Systeme de Politique Positive” he regarded
as the most complete system of spiritual and temporal despotism
which had ever emanated from the human brain, except possibly
that of Ignatius Loyola. “ The book stands a monumental
warning to thinkers on society and politics, of what happens
when once men lose sight in these speculations, of the value of
Liberty and Individuality.” The Essay on Liberty has recently
been the subject of an able and appreciative article by Mr. John
*
Morley, to which we may refer our readers.
* Fortnightly Review, August, 1873, pp. 234-256.
�John Stuart Mill.
Ill
On Political Economy, especially in the distinction between
the laws of the production and distribution of wealth, Mr. Mill’s
later views were a material modification of his earlier ones. The
capacity to learn and unlearn, which he regards as essential to
real progress, one of his reviewers describes as a constant state
of vacillation, and an absence of any firm standing ground. Mr.
Mill had no fear of such reproaches. In the days of his most
extreme Benthamism he tells us that he had seen little further
than the old school of political economists, into the possibilities
of fundamental improvement in social arrangements. He sub
sequently became less indulgent to ordinary social opinion, and
less willing to be content with secondary and more superficial
improvements. Any diminution of the evil involved in the fact
that while some are born to riches, the vast majority inherit
nothing but poverty—except such amelioration as might result
from a voluntary restraint on the numbers of the latter—had
before appeared chimerical. While still repudiating the tyranny
of the society over the individual which most Socialistic systems
involve, he came to look forward to a time when the division of
the produce of labour will depend less on the accident of birth,
and it will be more common for all to labour strenuously
to procure benefits that shall not be exclusively their own, but
shall be shared by the society of which they are members. The
capacity of all classes to learn by practice to combine and labour
for public and social purposes, and not solely for narrowly inte
rested ones, had always existed, and was not hindered by any
essential difficulty in the constitution of our nature. Why should
it be more difficult to persuade a man to dig or weave for his
country than to fight for it ? In the gradual formation of such
opinions, and their publication in the second and third editions
of the Principles of Political Economy, we must not pass over
the share which Mr. Mill attributes to his wife. No one who
knew him will feel surprise at the place which her memory fills
in the Autobiography. Few narratives appeal more powerfully
to every mind sensitive to human affections than the story of
their partnership of thought, of feeling, concurrent labour, and
entire existence ; and in truth there seem to have been qualities
existing in each which made their association with one another
eminently valuable. One happily possessed that which the other
needed. The chapter on Political Economy which Mr. Mill
believes has had the most influence on opinion,—that on “ The
Probable Future of the Labouring Classes,” he informs us is entirely
due to his wife. She pointed out the need of such a chapter,
and the imperfection of the book without it. It certainly
deals with that part of the subject in which the reflections of
an acute woman, conversant with the social necessities of the
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John Stuart Mill.
people around her, would be likely to be of great value. Tho
roughly sensible of the folly of premature attempts to dispense
with the inducements of private interest in social affairs, they
welcomed all experiments, such as co-operative societies, which
whether they succeeded or failed, would be an education for
those who took part in them, by cultivating their capacity for
acting upon motives pointing directly to a more general good.
Speaking of this work, he says :—
“ It was chiefly her influence that gave to the book that general tone
by which it is distinguished from all previous expositions of political
economy that had any pretensions to being scientific, and which has
made it so useful in conciliating scientific minds which those previous
expositions had repelled. This tone consisted chiefly in making the
proper distinction between the laws of the production of wealth, which
are real laws of nature, dependent on the properties of objects, and the
modes of its distribution, which, subject to certain conditions, depend
on human will. The common run of political economists confuse these
together, under the designation of economic laws, which they deem
incapable of being defeated or modified by human effort ■ ascribing the
same necessity to things dependent on the unchangeable conditions of
our earthly existence, and to those which, being but the necessary con
sequences of particulai' social arrangements, are merely co-extensive
with these: given certain institutions and customs, wages, profits, and
rent will be determined by certain causes ; but this class of political
economists drop the indispensable presupposition, and argue that these
causes must, by one inherent necessity, against which no human means
can avail, determine the shares which fall, in the division of the pro
duce, to labourers, capitalists, and landlords. The ‘ Principles of
Political Economy’ yielded to none of its predecessors in aiming at the
scientific appreciation of the action of these causes, under the conditions
which they presuppose; but it set the example of not treating those
conditions as final. The economic generalizations which depend, not on
necessities of nature, but on those combined with the existing arrange
ments of society, it deals with only as provisional, and as liable to be
much altered by the progress of social improvement.”
An observation is often made that Mr. Mill was not a practical
politician. Indeed, his more virulent detractors have not shrunk
from attributing to him an “ utter incapacity to grapple with
practical legislation or the real business of life.” The ground of
this conclusion is not very difficult to discover. It arises from a
radical difference in the sense of duty. To those who measure
the value of the business of life, and the practical character of those
who undertake it, by the immediate prospect of success, by the
probability of their acquiring some personal distinction or profit,
in fact, by the question whether the work is likely “ to pay,”
Mr. Mill’s labours will naturally appear mistaken and absurd.
We can fancy the supreme contempt with which such critics
�John Stuart Mill.
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must have read in the Autobiography, “the idea, that the
use of my being in Parliament was to do work which others were
not able or not willing to do, made me think it my duty to come
to the front in defence of advanced Liberalism, on occasions when
the obloquy to be encountered was such as most of the advanced
Liberals in the House preferred not to incur.” Mr. Mill was one
of those who are dissatisfied with human life as it is, and whose
feelings are wholly identified with its radical amendment. With
such there are two main regions of thought, one that of ultimate
aims, the constituent elements of the highest realizable ideal of
human life; the other that of the immediately useful and
practically attainable. Some test of the value of these criticisms
may be found by selecting one or two of the principal subjects
within the domain of politics, to which a portion of the labours
of Mr. Mill have been directed. For this purpose let us take,
first, the general question of Government, in the aspect in which
it is presented to modern inquirers ; and secondly, the legislation
affecting the proprietorship or occupation of land.
First, on government, Mr. Mill thought that in his father's
“Essay on Government,” the premises were too narrow, and
included but few of the general truths on what, in politics, the
important consequences depend. He was dissatisfied with the
answer to the criticisms of Macaulay, and thought a better reply
would have been, “I was not writing a scientific treatise on
politics, but an argument for Parliamentary reform.” His pro
gress in logical analysis subsequently helped him to a different
conception of philosophical method as applicable to politics, of
the pedantry of adopting and promulgating asystematized political
creed. He acquired a conviction that the true system of political
philosophy was something much more complicated and manysided than he had previously had any idea of, and that its object
was to supply, not a set of model institutions, but principles from
which the institutions suitable to any given circumstances might
be deduced. This train of thought produced a clearer conception
than he had ever before had of the peculiarities of an era of
transition in opinion, and he ceased to mistake the moral and
intellectual characteristics of such an era for the normal attributes
of humanity. He looked forward to a period of unchecked
liberty of thought, and unbounded freedom of individual action
in all modes not hurtful to others, combining the best qualities
of the critical with the best qualities of the organic times.
A complete view of his most matured opinions on the subject
will be found in the Considerations on Representative Govern
ment. The problem stated is the combination of complete
popular control over public affairs, with the greatest attainable
perfection of skilled agency. James Mill, as well as his son,
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John Stuart Mill.
were in comparison with others who hold democratic opinions,
comparatively indifferent to monarchical or republican
forms; and, in this work, the existence of a constitutional
monarchy—with an hereditary king—is considered, as in many
cases, a favourable condition for the attainment of good govern
ment. He may, by his position, have an interest in raising
and improving the mass, under circumstances such as those
which make up a great part of the history of the English Par
liament. In other cases where none, or only some fraction of
the people feels a degree of interest in affairs of State necessary
to the formation of a public opinion, and the suffrage is only
used by the electors to serve their private interest, or that of
the locality, or of particular persons, of whom they are adhe
rents or dependents, the selfish and sordid factions of which
the assembly is likely to be composed, if struggling for the Pre
sidency or chief place in the Government, would, as in the case
of Spanish America, keep the country in a state of chronic revo
lution and civil war. A despotism of illegal violence would be
exercised by a succession of political adventurers, and represen
tation would have no effect but that of preventing that stability
of government by which some of the evils of a legal des
potism are mitigated. In such a case, the struggle for place—
under an hereditary king—would be far less mischievous. The
tranquillity of Brazil, as compared with that of the other parts
of the South American continent, is an illustration of this argu
ment. In our own government, Parliament virtually decides
who shall be Prime Minister, or who shall be the two or three
individuals from whom the Prime Minister shall be chosen,
without nominating him, but leaving the appointment of the
head of the administration to the Crown, in conformity with the
general inclinations which the Parliament has manifested. This
initiative method, in the formation of the executive government,
seemed to Mr. Mill to stand on as good a footing as possible. In
this conclusion he will have the sympathy of most of the English
people, who will not readily be persuaded that the periodical
election of a President would be an improvement in Govern
ment.
The evil effect produced on the mind of any holders of power,
whether an individual or an assembly, by the consciousness of
having only themselves to consult, was the consideration which
appeared to him of the greatest weight in favour of a second
chamber. Without it the majority in a single assembly, might
easily become overweening and despotic. It was this which
induced the Romans to have two Consuls. In every polity there
should be a centre of resistance to the predominant power. If
any people, possessing a democratic representation, are, from
�John Stuart Mill.
145
their historical antecedents, more willing to tolerate such a centre
of resistance in the form of a second Chamber or House of
Lords than in any other shape, this constitutes a strong reason
for so constructing it. It did not, however, appear to him
the best or most efficacious shape. Of such a body, the con
struction of the Roman Senate seemed to be the best example.
He suggests how a chamber of statesmen might be formed of
the heads of the Courts of Law ; those who had been Cabinet
Ministers ; the more distinguished chiefs in the Army and Navy ;
the diplomatic servants of long-standing; governors of colonies
and dependencies. In England it was highly improbable, from
its historical antecedents, that any second chamber could possibly
exist which is not built on the foundation of the House of
Lords; but there might be no insuperable difficulty in adding
the classes mentioned, to the existing body, in the character of
peers for life.
It is in the constitution of the Representative Assembly that
his hopes of good Government depend, and he devotes a chapter
to the consideration of its infirmities and dangers. The greatest
among these is the delivery over of the management of public
affairs to the representatives of a numerical majority alone, and the
placing of all the unrepresented classes at their mercy. It is as
possible, and as likely, for this numerical majority, being the
ruling power of a democracy, to be as much under the dominion
of sectional or class interests, or supposed interests, as any other
ruling power. The constituencies to which most of the highly
educated and public-spirited persons in the country belong—those
of the large towns—are in great part either unrepresented or mis
represented. This had been thought irremediable, and from
despairing of a cure, people had gone on for the most part to
deny the disease. An attempt to obtain a somewhat more true
representation, proposed by Earl Russell in one of the Reform
Bills, met with no support. The late Mr. Marshall subsequently
suggested the method of the cumulative vote, to rescue at least
some portion of a constituency from the tyranny of the numerical
majority. This system is now tolerably well understood from the
experience of the school board elections, and consists in enabling
the electors of every constituency, having more than one represen
tative, not only to give, as before, one vote to each person to be
chosen, but, instead of that, to give all their votes to one, or dis
tribute them as they please among the candidates. The effect of
this system may be made clearly intelligible in a few words, which
will show also its infirmities, as a vehicle for bringing into the
elected body any complete expression or representation of the
individual thought or study of the members of a large community.
Thus suppose 100 persons are about to elect a committee of 4 to
[Vol. CI. No. CXCIX.J—New Series, Vol. XLV. No. I.
L
�146
John Stuart Mill.
settle some business which concerns them, and that 21 out of the
100 place their confidence in A, while 51 prefer B, C, D, and
E, as those through whom their interests will be better secured.
Under the old system, the latter might have elected the whole
committee ; and not only the 21 desiring to be represented by A,
but as many as 28 others might have been excluded from any
voice in their deliberations.
With the cumulative system,
every voter may give his 4 votes to any one or more candidates,
and thus 21 persons may give their single candidate 84 votes;
the other 79 persons cannot altogether poll more than 316 votes,
one of their candidates at least must, therefore, be left with no
more than 79 votes, and the election of the candidate of the
united 21 is thus secured. It will be thus seen that though it is
a great improvement on the exclusive majority system, it yet re
quires that the holders of opinions differing from the majority
shall combine and adhere rigidly together in voting for the same
person in order that their success may be certain. If one or two
of the 21 had failed to poll for their candidate, the efforts of all
the rest of the 21 might be thrown away; or the 79, not
submitting to direction, may, if there were more candidates than
5, have less representatives than they are entitled to by their
numbers. Meetings, verbal and written communications, and the
guidance of party leaders are necessary ; and every sort of mani
pulation may thus be brought to bear. If the voter does not
approve of the candidates presented to his constituency, he is
helpless ; and if he does, he cannot, without placing himself in
the hands of the party leaders or agents, be certain that his
vote will have any effect.
The method of popular election, which has since been known
under the various appellations of the Minority, Personal, Propor
tional, and Preferential, system, had been put forward in a crude
form in 1857, and in its matured shape in 1859.t This
*
system effected the object that Mr. Mill had thought desir
able as an antidote to the exclusive representation, and there
fore exclusive rule of local majorities, and was at the same
time subject to none of the infirmities and inconveniences of the
cumulative system, inasmuch as it enabled every single elector,
while he exercised the most extensive choice practicable, to give
an independent vote, with the certainty that it will not be thrown
away. The scheme was made known to Mr. Mill in 1859, after
the publication of his “Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform,” and it
immediately obtained his assent and adoption. After a careful
* “ The Machinery of Representation.” Maxwell, 1857.
j- “A Treatise on the Election of Representatives, Parliamentary and
Municipal.” Longmans, 1859.
�John Stuart Mill.
147
examination of the proposed plan, in a letter suggesting an
*
alteration in a matter of detail, he said that it appeared to him
“ to have exactly, and for the first time, solved the difficulty of
popular representation, and by so doing to have raised up the
cloud of gloom and uncertainty that hung over the futurity of
representative government, and therefore of civilization?’ In a
conversation on the subject which took place a few weeks after
wards Mr. Mill expressed his belief and expectation that the idea
of such an improvement as was proposed would soon have a pro
minent place in the minds of statesmen and reformers ; and those
who were present have not forgotten that almost his first inquiry
was, whether the plan had been brought to the attention of
Mr. Gladstone. “ Had I met with the system,” Mr. Mill says,
in his Autobiography, “ before the publication of my pamphlet,
I should have given an account of it there. Not having done
so, I wrote an article in Fraser’s Magazine, reprinted in my
miscellaneous writings, principally for that purpose. In his
“ Considerations on Representative Government,” he devotes the
greater part of a chapter to this subject.t After explaining the
mode in which the votes would be given and counted, and re
ferring to Mr. Fawcett’s pamphlet on the system, he explains its
immediate result, that all parties sufficiently numerous to be en
titled to be represented would be sure of being so ; that the re
presentation would be real and not merely nominal, or what is
called “ virtualthat the tie between the elector and represen
tative would commonly have a strength, value, and permanence
now unknown ; that while localities would secure adequate atten
tion, general andnational interestswould be paramount; that every
person in the nation honourably distinguished among his country
men would have a fair chance of election, and with such
encouragement such persons might be expected to offer them
selves in numbers hitherto undreamt of; that when the electors
were no longer reduced to Hobson’s choice, the majorities would
be compelled to look out and put forward men of higher calibre,
and their leaders could no longer foist upon the people the
first person who presents himself with the catchword of the party
in his mouth, and three or four thousand pounds in his pocket;
that it would correct the tendency of representative government
towards collective mediocrity; that though the representatives of
the majorities would be the most in number, they must speak
and vote in the presence and subject to the criticism of their
opponents, and before the public.
* March 3, 1859.
f Chapter vii. “True and Talse Democracy i Representation of All, and
Representation of the Majority only.”
L2
�148
John Stuart Mill.
11 The multitude have often a true instinct for distinguishing an able
man when he has the means of displaying his ability in a fair field
before them. If such a man fails to obtain any portion whatever of his
just weight, it is through institutions or usages which keep him out of
sight. In the old democracies there were no means of keeping out of
sight any able man : the bema was open to him ; he needed nobody’s
consent to become a public adviser. It is not so in a representative
government; and the best friends of representative democracy can
hardly be without misgivings that the Themistocles or Demosthenes
whose counsels would have saved the nation, might be unable during
his whole life to obtain a seat. But if his presence in the represen
tative assembly can be insured, or even a few of the first minds in the
country, though the remainder consists only of average minds, the
influence of these leading spirits is sure to make itself sensibly felt in
the general deliberations, even though they be known to be in many
respects opposed to the tone of popular opinion and feeling.............
This portion of the assembly would also be the appropriate organ of a
great social function, for which there is no provision in any existing
democracy, but which in no government can remain permanently un
fulfilled without condemning that government to infallible degeneracy
and decay. This may be called the function of Antagonism. In every
government there is some power stronger than all the rest; and the
power which is strongest tends perpetually to become the sole power.
Partly by intention, and partly unconsciously, it is ever striving to
make all other things bend to itself, and is not content while there is
anything which makes permanent head against it, any influence not in
agreement with its spirit. Yet, if it succeeds in suppressing all rival
influences, and moulding everything after its own model, improvement
in that country is at an end, and decline commences. Human im
provement is a product of many factors, and no power ever yet consti
tuted among mankind includes them all; even the most beneficent
pow’er only contains in itself some of the requisites of good, and the
remainder, if progress is to continue, must be derived from some other
source. No community has ever long continued progressive, but while
a conflict was going on between the strongest power in the community
and some rival power: between the spiritual and temporal authorities;
the military or territorial and the industrious classes ; the king and the
people; the orthodox and religious reformers. When the victory on
either side was so complete as to put an end to the strife, and no other
conflict took its place, first stagnation followed, and then decay. The
ascendancy of the numerical majority is less unjust, and on the whole
less mischievous, than many others, but it is attended with the very
same kind of dangers, and even more certainly ; for when the govern
ment is in the hands of one or a few, the many are always existent as
a rival power, which may not be strong enough ever to control the
other, but whose opinion and sentiment are a moral, and even a social,
support to all who, either from conviction or contrariety of interest,
are opposed to any of the tendencies of the ruling authority. But
when the democracy is supreme, there is no one or few strong enough
for dissentient opinions and injured or menaced interests to lean upon.
�John Stuart Mill.
149
The great difficulty of democratic government has hitherto seemed to
be, how to provide in a democratic society what circumstances have
provided hitherto in all the societies which have maintained themselves
ahead of others—a social support, a point d’appui, for individual
resistance to the tendencies of the ruling power ; a protection, a rallying
point, for opinions and interests which the ascendant public opinion
views with disfavour. For want of such a point d'appui, the older
societies, and all but a few modern ones, either fell into dissolution or
became stationary (which means slow deterioration) through the exclu
sive predominance of a part only of the conditions of social and mental
well-being.
11 Now, this great want the system of personal representation is fitted
to supply, in the most perfect manner which the circumstances of
modern society admit of. ... . The representatives who would be
returned to Parliament by the aggregate of minorities, would afford that
organ in its greatest perfection. A separate organization of the instructed
classes would, if practicable, be invidious, and could only escape from being
offensive by being totally without influence. But if the elite of these
classes formed part of the Parliament, by the same title as any other of its
members—by representing the same numberof citizens,the same numeri
cal fraction of the national will—their presence could give umbrage to
nobody, while they would be in the position of highest vantage, both for
making their opinions and counsels heard on all important subjects,
and for taking an active part in public business. Their abilities would
probably draw to them more than their numerical share of the actual
administration of government; as the Athenians did not confide re
sponsible public functions to Cleon or Hyperbolus (the employment
of Cleon at Pylos and Amphipolis was purely exceptional), but Nicias,
and Theramenes, and Alcibiades, were in constant employment both
at home and abroad, though known to sympathize more with oligarchy
than with democracy. The instructed minority would, in the actual
voting, count only for their numbers, but as a moral power they would
count for much more, in virtue of their knowledge, and of the influence
it would give them over the rest. An arrangement better adapted
to keep popular opinion within reason and justice, and to guard it
from the various deteriorating influences which assail the weak side
of democracy, could scarcely by human ingenuity be devised. A de
mocratic people would in this way be provided with what in any
othei’ way it would almost certainly miss—leaders of a higher grade
of intellect and character than itself. Modern democracy would have
its occasional Pericles, and its habitual group of superior and guiding
minds.”*
Subsequently in Parliament, in moving, as an amendment to
Mr. Disraeli’s Reform Bill, the introduction of clauses for the
distribution of seats according to the proportional system, Mr.
Mill brought it forward in an expository and argumentative
* “ Considerations on Representative Government.”
3rd edit. p. 148-152.
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John Stuart Mill.
speech * The House was, however, as might be expected, un
prepared for its consideration. The debate is not, however,
uninteresting, as much perhaps for what was not, as for what
was, said. Mr. Mill, in his Autobiography, adds on this sub
ject : —
“ I was active in support of the very imperfect substitute for that
plan, which in a small number of constituencies, Parliament was
induced to adopt. This poor makeshift had scarcely any recommen
dation, except that it was a partial recognition of the evil which it
did so little to remedy. As such, however, it was attacked by the
same fallacies, and required to be defended on the same principles,
as a really good measure; and its adoption in a few parliamentary
elections, as well as the subsequent introduction of what is called the
Cumulative Vote in the elections for the London School Board, have
had the good effect of converting the equal claim of all electors to a
proportional share in the representation, from a subject of merely
speculative discussion, into a question of practical politics, much
sooner than would otherwise have been the case.”
The view which Mr. Mill took of the absolute need of this
change in the method of creating representative bodies, is in no
small degree justified by the attention which it has since received
in our ownf and in nearly every other country where free institu
tions exist.£ Its fundamental principle is, in fact, a corollary of
that oi Individuality. It puts forward in a practical shape the
necessity of freedom for individual action. It liberates every
voter from the condition of being an instrument of those around
him, and enables him to bring all he knows and feels,—his matures!
judgment, to his aid in the choice of the man in whose hands he
would place power. We know that there are many who are
ignorant or stupid, and to whom this discretion would be of little
use. It is enough to say that they would be no worse off than
they now are, and could do far less harm in corrupting and
degrading the constituency of which they are a part. On the
other hand, there are large numbers whose intelligence and
public spirit ought not to be wasted and lost to the nation. A
careful observer of the English mind and manners, and one who
certainly takes no optimist view of the present or future condi
tions of society, in his latest publication, remarks that “no nation
in the world possesses anything like so large a class of intelli* “Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates,” 30 May, 1867, vol. clxxxvii. pp.
1343-1362.
t See “ The Debate on Mr. Morrison’s Bill—Hansard’s Parliamentary De
bates,” vol. ccxii. pp. 890-926
+ “ The Election of Representatives, Parliamentary and Municipal.” A
Treatise. By Thomas Hare. 4th edit. Appendices A to 0, pp. 292-380.
See also on the Empirical Character of the Three-cornered Constituency
Clause, and the Cumulative Vote.—Ibid. pp. 16-19. Longmans, 1873.
�John Stuart Mill.
151
gent, independent, and vigorous-minded men in all ranks of life,
who seriously devote themselves to public affairs, and take the
deepest possible interest in the national success and well-being
while he truly adds that, “the character of our public men is
the sheet-anchor on which our institutions depend. So long as
political life is the chosen occupation of wise and honourable
men, who are above jobs and petty personal views, the defects
of Parliamentary Government may be endured ; but if the per
sonal character of English politicians should ever be seriously
lowered, it is difficult not to feel that the present state of the
constitution would give bad and unscrupulous men a power for
evil hardly equalled in any other part of the world.”* The
safeguard surely is to place it distinctly and certainly in the
power of every intelligent and vigorous-minded elector to give a
vote which shall secure the return of a wise and honourable man.
Secondly, on the Land Laws. A pamphlet, entitled “England
and Ireland,” published before the season of 1868, after an argu
ment to show the undesirableness, for Ireland as well as for
England, of separation, contained a proposal for settling the
land question by giving to the tenants a permanent tenure, at a
fixed rent, to be assessed after due inquiry by the State :—
“If no measure short of that which I proposed would do full jus
tice to Ireland, or afford a prospect of conciliating the mass of the
Irish people, the duty of proposing it was imperative; while if, on
the other hand, there was any intermediate course which had a claim
to a trial, I well knew that to propose something which would be
called extreme, was the true way not to impede, but to facilitate a
more moderate experiment. It is most improbable that a measure
conceding so much to the tenantry as Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Land
Bill, would have been proposed by a Government, or could have been
carried through Parliament, unless the British public had been led to
perceive that a case might be made, and perhaps a party formed, for
a measure considerably stronger. It is the character of the British
people, or at least of the higher and middle classes who pass muster
for the British people, that to induce them to approve of any change,
it is necessary they should look on it as a middle course : they think
every proposal extreme and violent unless they hear of some other
proposal going still further, upon which their antipathy to extreme
views may discharge itself. So it proved in the present instance;
my proposal was condemned, but any scheme for Irish Land Reform,
short of ruin, came to be thought moderate by comparison. I may
observe that the attacks made on my plan usually gave a very incor
rect idea of its nature. It was usually discussed as a proposal that
the State should buy up the land and become the universal landlord;
though, in fact, it only offered to each individual landlord this as an
* “ Parliamentary Government.” By James Eitzjames Stephen, Q.C. Con
temporary Review, Dec. 1873, p. 3.
�152
John Stuart Mill.
alternative, if he liked better to sell his estate than to retain it on
the new conditions ; and I fully anticipated that most landlords would
continue to prefer the position of landowners to that of Government
annuitants, and would retain their existing relation to their tenants,
often on more indulgent terms than the full rents on which the com
pensation to be given them by Government would have been based.”
With regard to the English land system, Mr. Mill says that
the criticisms of the St. Simonians had some effect in showing
the very limited and temporary value of the old political economy,
which assumes all the rules affecting private property and
inheritance as indefeasible facts, and the abolition of entails and
primogeniture—the freedom of production and exchange, as the
dernier mot of social improvement. The question here, as in
other subjects, was the way in which all practicable ameliorations
could be justly and wisely aided, by the promulgation of
sound principles and adopting the means best suited to lead
to their application. Asserting emphatically the value of
private property as the root of industry, the ultimate object
appeared to be that of uniting the greatest individual liberty
of action with a wide diffusion and accessibility of the owner
ship of land—the raw material of the globe. With this view
Mr. Mill took the chief part in framing the programme of the
Land Tenure Reform Association, to which he gave his name and
cordial support. We find in this programme the result of a
careful study both of what he thought desirable, and what he
deemed at once possible—the distant ideal, and the course to be
immediately taken towards its accomplishment, or to bring us
nearer to a better condition of things. It contains all that is
comprehended in the words “free land” as recently interpreted,
but it does not stop there. Concurring with those who believe
that merely opening the ownership of land to competition in the
money market, however valuable it may be in one of the aspects
of economical improvement, would do but very little towards
placing it under the control of the workman or giving him a
direct interest in it; he regarded it as an indispensable condition
that some part of the land of the kingdom should be placed
within the reach of the industrious labourer, so as to be attainable
in the shape of property of reasonable duration. The programme
of the Association consists of ten articles. The earlier clauses
contain the old tenets of the “free land” reformers. We will
take the clauses in their inverse order, the last seven being
especially the work of Mr. Mill. A prominent object, we find, is
the mental culture of the classes which have the least opportunity
for such improvement, by encouraging and fostering their tastes
for rural scenery, for history, and art. The things to which he
felt himself so greatly indebted—the love of nature and of
�John Stuart Mill.
153
beauty, and the cultivation of the power of recalling in the
imagination what is memorable and great in former ages, he
would bring home to all, as things not to be forgotten in the
daily struggles for material results. The programme (X.) claims
the preservation of all natural objects or artificial constructions
attached to the soil, of historical, scientific, or artistic interest;
that (IX.) the less fertile lands, and especially those within reach
of populous districts, should be retained in a state of wild
natural beauty, for the general enjoyment of the community, and
the encouragement in all classes of healthful rural tastes, and
of the higher order of pleasures. The next clauses deal with
land already belonging to the public, or dedicated to permanent
uses, not of a private character. They ask (VIII.) that land of
which Parliament alone can authorize the inclosure shall be
retained for national uses, compensation being made for manorial
and common rights; that (VII.) lands belonging to the crown,
to public bodies, or charitable and other endowments, be made
available to be let for co-operative agriculture, and to small
cultivators, as well as for the improvement of the dwellings
of the labouring classes; and no such lands to be suffered (unless
in pursuance of those ends, or for exceptional reasons) to pass
into private hands. To protect such lands from alienation to
private uses, which is rapidly taking place ; to obviate all legal
impediments to a voluntary dedication of land to public objects,
and to secure their prudent and productive administration under
skilled district agents of local appointment, exercising their
powers without partiality to any class, Mr. Mill approved the
action of the Association in the preparation and introduction
of the “Public Lands and Commons Bill/’ of 1872 His view of
*
endowments it is known differed materially from that of Turgot.
It forms the subject of the first article in his “Dissertations and
Discussions/
Notwithstanding, he observes, the reverence due
to that illustrious name, it is now allowable to regard his opinion
of that subject as the prejudice of the age. Mankind are
dependent for the removal of their ignorance and defect of
culture, mainly on the unremitting exertions of the more
instructed and cultivated, to awaken a consciousness of this
want, and to facilitate the means of supplying it. “ The
instruments for the work are not merely schools and col
leges, but every means by which the people can be reached,
either through their intellect or their sensibilities, from
* See “ Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates,” vol. ccxii. p. 583. (Erroneously
printed as “ Commons’ Protection, &c., Bill ”) 3 July, 1572.
t “The Kight and Wrong of Stale Interference with Corporation and
Church Property.” Published in The Jurist for May, 1833.
�154
John Stuart Mill.
preaching and popular writing, to national galleries, theatres,
and public games. Here is a wide field of usefulness open to
foundations.”
His article on this subject, first published in 1833, shadowed
forth the policy which has now, in spite of the opposition of
bodies and persons interested in retaining local patronage, and
influence arising from the power of dealing with estates, and
selecting beneficiaries, been partially adopted by the Govern
ment and Parliament. The only point as to which Mr. Mill’s
opinions had undergone a change was on the question of the
utility of endowments being held in the shape of land. In the
essay referred to, he spoke of the evils of allowing land to pass
into mortmain—adding that trustees ought to have no concern
with the money, except applying it to its purposes. Their time
and attention should not be divided between their proper busi
ness and the management of landed estates. He now felt that
the only objections to the application of the produce of land to
the uses of endowments would be obviated altogether by sepa
rating the management of the property from the administration
of its income. If the management were placed under competent
local agents, having charge of large districts, responsible alike to
the public and the several institutions, and always accessible to
the offers of cultivators and tenants of all classes, vast tracts of
land in the country, and extensive areas covered with houses in
cities and towns, would be opened to co-operative associations
and others, whom the prejudices of private owners, in favour of
fewer or more wealthy occupiers, might exclude. The Bill therefore
proposed to repeal the mortmain Act of George II., which pre
vents land only from being devoted to charitable uses, leaving
all other property to be so disposed of. It is not surprising that
the House ■was unprepared for such a measure. It is only
after repeated agitation that it is likely to succeed; but such
tentative proceedings are obviously the practical course. A
reform bill was introduced many successive years before it passed.
It will, some day, probably be thought wrnrth while to appoint a
committee or commission to examine the subject. It will be
found that nothing could be more moderate or just than the
proposed measure : it secured the interests of the objects of the
trust, and left the trustees unencumbered with alien duties, and
at liberty to employ their undivided attention exclusively to the
business of making the best use of the fund.
*
The great im* This subject is discussed in a Paper read at the Social Science Associa
tion, on the 27th Jan. 1873—“On Lands held by Corporations, and on the
Policy either of their Alienation or of Providing for their Management with
regard to the Public Utility.”
�John Stuart Mill.
155
pediment in the way of measures such as these, is the fact that
almost every constituency contains a few persons, forming a
compact body of much influence, whose importance in the loca
lity may be lessened by the withdrawal of public property from
their control. Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, in the article before
referred to, points out the power of a small knot of persons in a
constituency to turn the balance against any candidate who
has the courage to take an independent view differing from
*
them.
The two next articles of the Land Tenure Programme (V. VI.)
are for the encouragement of co-operative agriculture and the
tenancies of small cultivators. Of the remaining clause (IV.),
proceeding from Mr. Mill, the claim of the State to intercept
by taxation the unearned increase in the rent of land, it is un
necessary here to say much. It has, perhaps, been subjected to
more adverse criticism than any other part of the programme;
but it exhibits the elaborate care with which, in any great
change, he endeavoured to guard existing interests. All who
have read or heard the explanation which Mr. Mill has repeat
edly given of this suggestion know well that not the value of
one farthing, of any realized or existing property, would be taken
thereby from any proprietor. To characterize the proposal,
therefore—as has been done recently—as one involving the
virtual confiscation of the estates of the great landowners, and
whereby, as regards the present, most landed proprietors would
be reduced to ruin, is a gross misrepresentation.
So much space has been occupied in thus attempting to
convey a just idea of the vast field over which Mr. Mill’s labours
have extended, and upon which his autobiography, is full of
interest and instruction, that a multitude of subjects must still
remain untouched. Of his work on the Subjection of Women,
and in the cause of extending to them the political franchise,
we need not speak. They have been more or less discussed
in most houses and families.
In December, 1859, appeared “A Few Words on Non-Inter
vention,”! in which he pointed out the situation of Great Britain,
“ as an independent nation, apprehending no aggressive designs,
and entertaining none, seeking no benefits at the expense of
others, stipulating for no commercial advantages, and opening
its ports to all the world; yet, finding itself held up to obloquy
as. the type of egotism and selfishness, and as a nation which
thinks of nothing but outwitting and outgeneralling its neigh* Contemporary Review, December, 1873, pp. 6, 7.
f Fraser’s Magazine, vol. lx., p. 766.
�156
John Stuart Mill.
hours. This was the continental estimate of English policy.
What was the cause of this ? First, was it not our common
mode of argument for or against any interference in foreign
matters, that we do not interfere in this or that subject ‘ because
no English interest is involved ?’ Secondly, how is the impres
sion against us fostered by our acts ? Take the Suez Canal—a
project which, if realized, would give a facility to commerce, a
stimulus to production, an encouragement to intercourse, and
therefore to civilization, which would entitle it to high rank
among the industrial improvements of modern times. Assume
the hypothesis that the English nation saw in this great benefit
to the world a danger, a damage to some peculiar interest of
England—such as, for example, that shortening the road would
facilitate the access of foreign navies to its Oriental possessions,
that the success of the project would do more harm than good
to England—unreasonable as the supposition is. Is there any
morality, Christian or secular, which would bear out a nation in
keeping all the rest of mankind out of some great advantage,
because the consequence of their obtaining it may be, to itself,
in some imaginable contingency, a cause of inconvenience ? If
so, what ground of complaint has the nation who asserts this
claim, if in return the human race determines to be its enemies ?
In the conduct of our foreign affairs in this matter, England had
been made to appear as a nation which, when it thought its own
good and that of other nations incompatible, was willing to pre
vent others even from realizing' an advantage which we ourselves
are to share.” The subsequent history of the Suez Canal has
proved the errors of English diplomacy here pointed out. The
remainder of the article on the few and rare cases—if any—in
which interference in the domestic affairs of one nation by
another is permissible, has probably not been, and will not be,
without its influence in the subsequent and future history of the
world.
Mr. Mill’s sympathy with the downtrodden and oppressed,
whether as slaves, while there still existed a slave power in
America, or in the condition of their emancipated brethren in
Jamaica, is well known. He saw from the first, as many
clear-sighted persons in our country did—though perhaps they
formed a minority—that the Civil War in America “ was an
aggressive enterprise of the slave owners, under the combined
influences of pecuniary interest, domineering temper, and the
fanaticism of a class for its class privileges—to extend the terri
tory of slavery.” A passage in his article on “ The Contest in
America,”*
justifyingthe determined course taken by the North, is
* Fraser’s Magazine, Jan. 1862.
�John Stuart Mill.
157
worth quoting as an emphatic rejection of a misplaced feeling of
humanitarianism—a feeling which in a fitting case no one would
have respected more than he. He says : —“I cannot join with those
who cry Peace, Peace. I cannot wish it should be terminated
on any conditions but such as would retain the whole of the
territories as free soil. War in a good cause is not the greatest
evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not
the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral
and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing 'worth a war is
worse.”
There are some who say they find in this Autobiography evi
dence of self-sufficiency and self-glorification, and that it is
defaced by egotism ' Such charges appear amazing, not only to
those who remember Mr. Mill's entire freedom from self-asser
tion, and readiness to attribute to others even the merit of works
or suggestions proceeding from himself, but to the readers of the
Autobiography, who find throughout instances of the same selfabnegation. He is only bold and uncompromising in the asser
tion of what he deems right. Instead of egotism, he is, at other
times, charged with sentimentality and weakness in ascribing
such praise to others. One distinct proof of the absence of any
thought of self-sufficiency or egotism is found in a passage in the
Autobiography which hasprobably no parallel inanyother personal
memoir : “ Whoever,” he says, either now or hereafter, may
think of me, and of the work I have done, must never forget
that it is the product, not of one intellect and conscience, but of
three.” It is a painful example of the low pitch to which lite
rary criticism may at this day sink, to read a comment on it such
as this: “All touches of natural affection have been sedulously
kept under or suppressed ; his brothers and sisters are only men
tioned as annoyances or checks to progress.”* So far from
* The tone of complacent triumph with which the author of an Article in
Fraser’s Magazine, for Dec. 1873, acquaints his readers of the “rapid change
of the public mind concerning Mr. Mill,” and of the “ startling collapse of his
reputation which has happened,” since, as he says, Mr. Mill’s admirers met the
“mildest protest” against his fame with “clamour and abuse,” might provoke
a smile. He has probably reiterated this announcement so many times that at
length he fancies himself “the public,” as the three tailors in Tooley Street
styled themselves, “ We, the people of England.” It will, however, be a
somewhat curious chapter in the literary annals of the day, if he should inform
his readers in some future paper when and whence this “ mildest ” of protests
issued, and who were the “audacious” delinquents who tried, and how, to
put down discussion. Was it put down because the answer was so complete
that nothing was left to be said ? At present, however, those who listen to
every breath relating to the venerated object of their regard, have heard only
of one unjust attempt to cast reproach on a pure and honourable life, which,
when indignantly challenged, was found to be utterly unsupported by even the
pretence of evidence. It cannot, however, but be regretted that a periodical
�158
John Stuart Mill.
his brothers and sisters being mentioned as hindrances, Mr. Mill
tells us expressly that, from the discipline involved in teaching
them, which after his eighth year his father required, he derived
the great advantage of learning more thoroughly, and retaining
more lastingly, the things which he was set to teach. The
insinuation that natural feeling was wanting, leads us to borrow
a passage from the current number of the Workman’s Magazine
(p. 385): “ It was our good fortune,” says the writer, “ to know
Mr. Mill in early life. One of our class-fellows at University
College was James Bentham Mill, a younger brother of John,
and we (the younger ones) soon became very intimate friends.
Strong mutual sympathies led to interchanges of visits during
the long vacations and after we had left the college, so that we
had frequent opportunities of seeing and conversing with the
elder brother in his pretty cottage home at Mickleham, where
the whole family spent all the summer months for several years.
. . . John Stuart Mill was, of course, then unknown to fame,
but we well remember the impression he made on us by his
domestic qualities, the affectionate playfulness of his character
as a brother in the company of his sisters, and of the numerous
younger branches of the family.”
Without further noticing comments such as that which has led
us to introduce this reminiscence, it seems strange, as a corre
spondent of the Spectator touchingly remarks, “ to hear accused
of heartlessness and coldness in his affections the man over whose
grave a chorus of friends has just been pouring the strains of
sorrowing love and gratitude, to hear of the ‘ meagre nature,’
‘ the want of homely hopes,’ £ the monotonous joylessness ’ of him
whose delight in nature and in music, whose knowledge of flowers,
whose love of birds, whose hearty happiness in country walks,
with friends, whose long genial talks with those friends, have
been so variously and beautifully delineated.”
We are able to add to that chorus another strain issuing from
the voices of some who, a few years ago, visited him in his
southern home, and there learnt his genial powers of participa
tion and sympathy with various and dissimilar tastes. Mr. Mill’s
fondnessfor natural studies and appreciation of historic associations
had taken him much through Provence and Languedoc, parts
of which they visited with him. None failed to be struck
with the uncommon degree of affection and reverence with
which he and his step-daughter were met in their neighso high in character as Fraser's Magazine should have admitted into its columns
an Article that, first misrepresenting Mr. Mill, both as respects his words and
works, then proceeds to draw unfounded inferences from them, which nothing
but a prurient imagination could have suggested.
�John Stzuirt Mill.
159
bourhood, and journeying with them was made doubly plea
sant from their cordial and warm reception by those to whom
they were known. Mr. Mill’s conversation carried all vividly
back to the Roman and mediaeval days, of which the ruins in the
country round Avignon reminded him. Under his guidance
every spot became replete with interest: “ One day we traversed
the hills above Vaucluse'”—we copy from the journal of one to
whom Mr. Mill was before unknown—“over the mountains, among
the wildest stony paths, through gorges, over dwarf box, lavender,
thyme, cistus, rosemary, fragrant as it was crushed under our
feet, botanizing, talking, till finally we descended, as the day
closed, to Petrarch’s fountain. Whether visiting the flourishing
town of Carpentras, or ascending Mont Ventoux, he directed
attention to a multitude of interesting objects, taking himself
the most laborious part and exhibiting no symptom of fatigue/’
“ Apart from the charm of his converse,” writes another, “ there
was the unceasing kindness with which he pointed out to one the
rarer flowers, to another the geological formation, and again the
peculiar construction of the several ancient remains; and all saw
and felt his delight at having brought them to the summit of the
hill, on which stands the excavated and almost deserted town and
castle of Les Baux, at a moment ■when they could behold the
beauties of the lovely light of sunset shedding its glory over the
valley of the Rhone.”
“ The life of one,” says the writer we have quoted, “ who lives
and strives in opposition to the ideas of his age, will scarcely be
expected to be a very bright and cheerful one ; but it is noble in
stead, and many a one will feel that for such nobleness he would
exchange all that the world calls pleasant.” We have gathered
enough from Mr. Mill’s works, and the testimony of others, to
show that a career of unselfish devotion to the highest object on
which man can be employed—the welfare of his fellow creatures
—is consistent with every rational enjoyment of life, while it
incalculably increases the capacity to enjoy it.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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John Stuart Mill
Creator
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Hare, Thomas [1806-1891]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: p. 122-159 ; 22 cm.
Notes: A review essay of Mill's Autobiography, London: Longman, Green, Reader, and Dyer. 1873. The attribution of reviewer and name of journal from Virginia Clark's catalogue. Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Westminster Review 45 (January 1874).
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[s.n.]
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[1874]
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CT28
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Book reviews
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (John Stuart Mill), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Autobiographies
Book Reviews
Conway Tracts
John Stuart Mill