(continued)
Mill was so entirely serious in his pursuit of truth, and entirely
convinced of the advantages of its publicity, that he readily risked
conventional consequences on that account. He held it to be desirable
that those who had important convictions, should be free to make them
known, and even be encouraged to do so. In thinking this he was in no
way compromised by, nor had he any complicity with, the convictions of
others. But this did not prevent him being made answerable for them, as
in the case of the distribution of papers sent to him by friends in his
company. A copy of it came into my possession which assuredly he did
not write, and the terms of which he could never have approved, had
they been submitted to him. On one occasion he sent to me a passionate
repudiation of concurrence or recommendation in any form, of methods
imputed to him.
These eccentricities of imputation, supposed to have died by time, were
found to be alive at Mills death.
The chief resurrectionist was one Abraham Hay-ward, known as a teller
of salacious stories at the Athenaeum. He was a man of many gifts,
who wrote with a bright, but by no means fastidious, pen. In some
unexplained, inconsistent, and inexplicable way, Mr. Gladstone was
on friendly terms with him. No sooner was Mill dead, and illustrious
appreciators of the great thinker were meditating some memorial to his
honour, than Mr. Hayward sent an article to the _Times_, suggesting
intrinsic immorality in his opinions. He also sent out letters privately
to deter eminent friends of Mill from giving their names to the memorial
committee. He sent one to Mr. Stopford Brooke, upon whom it had no
influence. He sent one to Mr. Gladstone, upon whom it had, and who, in
consequence, declined to join the committee.
Hayward was, in his day, the Iago of literature, and abused the
confiding nature of our noble Moor.* Yet, when Mr. Mill lost his seat
for Westminster, Mr. Gladstone had written these great words: "We all
know Mr. Mill's intellectual eminence before he entered Parliament.
What his conduct principally disclosed to me was his singular moral
elevation. Of all the motives, stings and stimulants that reach men
through their egotism in Parliament, no part could move or even touch
him. His conduct and his language were in this respect a sermon. For the
sake of the House of Commons, I rejoiced in his advent and deplored his
disappearance. He did us all good, and in whatever party, in whatever
form of opinion, I sorrowfully confess that such men are rare."
* My little book, "John Stuart Mill, as the Working Classes
Knew Him," was written to show Mr. Gladstone the answer that
could be given to Hayward.
There was no tongue in the House of Commons more bitter, venomous, or
disparaging of the people than that of Lord Robert Cecil, afterwards
Lord Salisbury; yet I record to his honour he subscribed L50 towards the
memorial to Mr. Mill. One of the three first persons who gave L50 was
Mr. Walter Morrison. The Duke of Argyll, the Earl of Derby, the Duke of
Devonshire, Sir Charles and Lady Dilke, Mr. and Mrs. P. A. Taylor were
also among the subscribers of L50 each. Among those who gave large
but lesser sums were Mr. Herbert Spencer, Stopford Brooke, Leonard
H. Courtney, Frederic Harrison, G. H. Lewes, W. E. H. Lecky. Sir John
Lubbock, G. Croome Robertson, Lord Rosebery, Earl Russell, Professor
Tyndall, and Professor Huxley. So Mr. Mill had his monument with honour.
It stands on the Thames Embankment, and allures more pilgrims of thought
than any other there.
Purity and honour, there is reason to believe, were never absent from
Mill's mind or conduct; but trusting to his own personal integrity, he
assumed others would recognise it His admiration of Mrs. Taylor, whom he
frequently visited, and subsequently married, was misconstrued--though
not by Mr. Taylor, who had full confidence in Mr. Mill's honour. No
expression to the contrary on Mr. Taylor's part ever transpired. It
might be due to society that Mr. Mill should have been reserved in
his regard. But assured of his own rectitude, he trusted to the proud
resenting maxim, "Evil be to him who evil thinks," and he resented
imputation--whether it came from his relatives or his friends. Any
reflection upon him in this respect he treated as an affront to himself,
and an imputation upon Mrs. Taylor, which he never forgave. A relative
told me after his death, that he never communicated with any of them
again who made any remark which bore a sinister interpretation. If ever
there was a philosopher who should be counted stainless, it was John
Stuart Mill.
In the minds of the Bentham School, population was a province of
politics. It would seem incredible to another generation--as it seems
to many in this--that a philosopher should incur odium for being of
Jowett's opinion, that the most vital information upon the conduct of
life should not be withheld from the people. To give it is to incur
conventional reprehension; as though it were not a greater crime to be
silent while a feeble, half-fed, and ignorant progeny infest the land,
to find their way to the hospital, the poor house, or the gaol, than to
protest against this recklessness, which establishes penury and
slavery in the workman's home. Yet a brutal delicacy and a criminal
fastidiousness, calling itself public propriety, is far less reputable
than the ethical preference for reasonable foresight and a manlier race.
Mr. Mill's success in Parliament was greater than that of any
philosopher who has entered in our time. Unfortunately, very few
philosophers go there. The author of "Mark Rutherford" (W. Hale White)
writing to me lately, exclaimed: "Oh for one session with Mill and
Bright and Cobden in the House! What would you not give to hear Mill's
calm voice again? What would you not give to see him apply the plummet
of Justice and Reason to the crooked iniquities of the Front Benches? He
stands before me now, just against the gangway on the Opposition side,
hesitating, pausing even for some seconds occasionally, and yet holding
everybody in the House with a kind of grip; for even the most foolish
understood more or less dimly that they were listening to something
strange, something exalted, spoken from another sphere than that of the
professional politician."
Mr. Christie relates that in the London Debating Society, of which Mill
was a member when a young man, it used to be said of him in argument,
"He passed over his adversary like a ploughshare over a mouse."
Certainly many mice arguers heard in Parliament, who made the public
think a mountain was in labour, ended their existence with a squeak when
Mr. Mill took notice of them.
The operation of the suffrage and the ballot, questions on which Mill
expressed judgment, are in the minds of politicians to this day, and
many reformers who dissented from him do not conceal their misgivings as
to the wisdom of their course. "Misgivings" is a word that may be taken
to mean regret, whereas it merely signifies occasion for consideration.
The extension of the franchise and the endowment of the ballot have
caused misgivings in many who were foremost in demanding them. The wider
suffrage has not prevented an odious war in South Africa, and the ballot
has sent to the House of Commons a dangerous majority of retrograde
members. John Bright distrusted the vote of the residuum. John Stuart
Mill equally dreaded the result of withdrawing the vote of the elector
from public scrutiny. I agreed with their apprehensions, but it seemed
to me a necessity of progress that the risk should be run. While the
Ballot Act was before the House of Lords, I wrote to the _Times_ and
other papers, as I have elsewhere related, to say that the Ballot Act
would probably give us a Tory government for ten years--which it did.
I thought that the elector who had two hundred years of transmitted
subjection or intimidation or bribery in his bones, would for some time
go on voting as he had done--for others, not for the State. He would not
all at once understand that he was free and answerable to the State
for his vote. New electors, who had never known the responsibility
of voting, would not soon acquire the sense of it Mr. Mill thought it
conduced to manliness for an elector to act in despite of his interest
or resentment of his neighbours, his employer, his landlord, or his
priest, when his vote became known. At every election there were martyrs
on both sides; and it was too much to expect that a mass of voters,
politically ignorant, and who had been kept in ignorance, would
generally manifest a high spirit, which maintains independence in the
face of social peril, which philosophers are not always equal to. No
doubt the secrecy of the vote is an immunity to knaves, but it is the
sole chance of independence for the average honest man. The danger
of committing the fortune of the State to the unchecked votes of the
unintelligent was an argument of great power against a secret suffrage.
Lord Macaulay, though a Whig of the Whigs, gave an effective answer when
he brought forward his famous fool, who declared "he would never go into
the water until he had learnt to swim." The people must plunge into the
sea of liberty before they can learn to swim in it. They have now been
in that sea many years, and not many have learned the art yet. Then was
found the truth of Temple Leader's words, that "if the sheep had votes,
they would give them all to the butcher." Then when reformers found that
the new electors voted largely for those who had always refused them the
franchise, the advocates of it often expressed to me their misgivings
as to its wisdom. Lord Sherbrooke (then Robert Lowe) saw clearly that
if liberty was to be maintained and extended, the State must educate its
masters.
But has this been done? Has not education been impeded? Have not
electoral facilities been hampered? Has not the franchise been
restricted by onerous conditions, which keep great numbers from having
any vote at all? Has not the dual vote been kept up, which enables
the wealthy to multiply their votes at will? Before reformers have
misgivings concerning the extension of liberty to the masses, they must
see that the poor have the same opportunity of reaching the poll as the
rich have. George Eliot, who had the Positivist reluctance to see the
people act for themselves, wrote: "Ignorant power comes in the end to
the same thing as wicked power."* But there is this difference in their
nature. "Ignorant power" can be instructed, and experience may teach
it; but "wicked power" has an evil purpose, intelligently fixed and
implacably determined.
* "Felix Holt," p 265. Blackwood's stereotyped edition.
Does any reflecting person suppose, that when the vote was given to the
mass of the people, they would be at once transmuted into intelligent,
calculating, and patient politicians--that their passions would be
tamed, and their vices extinguished--that they would forthwith act
reasonably? Much of this was true of the thoughtful working men. But
for a long time the multitude must remain unchanged until intelligence
extends. We have had renewed experience that--
"Religion, empire, vengeance, what you will,
A word's enough to rouse mankind to kill.
Some cunning phrase by fiction caught and spread,
That guilt may reign, and wolves and worms be fed."
But the reformer has one new advantage now. He is no longer scandalised
by the excesses of ignorance, nor the perversities of selfishness.
Giving the vote has, if we may paraphrase the words of Shakespeare, put
into
"Every man's hands
The means to cancel his captivity."
It is no mean thing to have done this. There is no reason for misgiving
here. If the people misuse or neglect to use their power, the fault is
their own. There is no one to reproach but themselves.
Abolitionists of slavery may, if supine, feel misgivings at having
liberated the negroes from their masters, where they were certain of
shelter, subsistence, and protection from assault of others, and exposed
them to the malice of their former owners, to be maltreated, murdered at
will, lynched with torture on imaginary or uninvestigated accusations.
Those who aided the emancipation of the slaves are bound to ceaseless
vigilance in defending them. But despite the calamities of liberty,
freedom has added an elastic race (who learn the arts of order and of
wealth) to the family of mankind, and misgivings are obsolete among
those who have achieved the triumphs and share the vigils and duties of
progress.
Mr. Mill was essentially a teacher of the people. He wished them to
think on their own account--for themselves, and not as others directed
them. He did not wish them to disregard the thoughts of those wiser
than themselves, but to verify new ideas as far as they could, before
assenting to them. He wished them not to take authority for truth, but
truth for authority. To this end he taught the people principles which
were pathways to the future. He who kept on such paths knew where he
was. Herbert Spencer said he had no wrinkles on his brow because he
had discovered the thoroughfares of nature, and was never puzzled as to
where they led. Mr. Mill was a chartmaker in logic, in social economy,
and in politics. None before him did what he did, and no successor
has exceeded him. By his protest against the "subjection of women," he
brought half the human race into the province of politics and progress.
They have not all appeared there as yet--but they are on the way.