E-text prepared by the Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State
University Libraries, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team
JOHN STUART MILL: HIS LIFE AND WORKS
Twelve Sketches by
Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison,
and Other Distinguished Authors
Boston: James R Osgood and Company
(Late Ticknor & Field and Fields Osgood, & Co.)
1873
CONTENTS.
JOHN STUART MILL
I. A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE.
H. R. Fox Bourne
II. HIS CAREER IN THE INDIA HOUSE.
W. T. Thornton
III. HIS MORAL CHARACTER.
Herbert Spencer
IV. HIS BOTANICAL STUDIES.
Henry Trimen
V. HIS PLACE AS A CRITIC.
W. Minto
VI. HIS WORK IN PHILOSOPHY.
J. H. Levy
VII. HIS STUDIES IN MORALS AND JURISPRUDENCE.
W. A. Hunter
VIII. HIS WORK IN POLITICAL ECONOMY.
J. E. Cairnes
IX. HIS INFLUENCE AT THE UNIVERSITIES.
Henry Fawcett
X. HIS INFLUENCE AS A PRACTICAL POLITICIAN.
Millicent Garrett Fawcett
XI. HIS RELATION TO POSITIVISM.
Frederic Harrison
XII. HIS POSITION AS A PHILOSOPHER.
W. A. Hunter
I.
A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE
John Stuart Mill was born on the 20th of May, 1806. "I am glad," wrote
George Grote to him in 1865, with reference to a forthcoming article
on his "Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," "to get an
opportunity of saying what I think about your 'System of Logic' and
'Essay on Liberty,' but I am still more glad to get (or perhaps to
_make_) an opportunity of saying something about your father. It has
always rankled in my thoughts that so grand and powerful a mind as his
left behind it such insufficient traces in the estimation of
successors." That regret was natural. The grand and powerful mind of
James Mill left very notable traces, however, in the philosophical
literature of his country, and in the training of the son who was to
carry on his work, and to be the most influential teacher in a new
school of thought and action, by which society is likely to be
revolutionized far more than it has been by any other agency since
the period of Erasmus and Martin Luther. James Mill was something more
than the disciple of Bentham and Ricardo. He was a profound and
original philosopher, whose depth and breadth of study were all the
more remarkable because his thoughts were developed and his knowledge
was acquired mainly by his own exertions. He had been helped out of
the humble life into which he had been born by Sir John Stuart, who
assisted him to attend the lectures of Dugald Stewart and others at
Edinburgh with a view to his becoming a minister in the Church of
Scotland. Soon finding that calling distasteful to him, he had, in or
near the year 1800, settled in London as a journalist, resolved by
ephemeral work to earn enough money to maintain him and his family in
humble ways while he spent his best energies in the more serious
pursuits to which he was devoted. His talents soon made him friends,
and the greatest of these was Jeremy Bentham.
As erroneous opinions have been current as to the relations between
Bentham and James Mill and have lately been repeated in more than one
newspaper, it may be well here to call attention to the contradiction
of them that was published by the son of the latter in "The Edinburgh
Review" for 1844. "Mr. Mill and his family," we there read, "lived
with Mr. Bentham for half of four years at Ford Abbey,"--that is,
between 1814 and 1817,--"and they passed small portions of previous
summers with him at Barrow Green. His last visit to Barrow Green was
of not more than a month's duration, and the previous ones all
together did not extend to more than six months, or seven at most.
The pecuniary benefit which Mr. Mill derived from his intimacy with
Bentham consisted in this,--that he and his family lived with him as
his guests, while he was in the country, periods amounting in all to
about two years and a half. I have no reason to think that his
hospitality was either given or accepted as pecuniary assistance, and
I will add that the obligation was not exclusively on one side.
Bentham was not then, as he was afterwards, surrounded by persons who
courted his society, and were ever ready to volunteer their services,
and, to a man of his secluded habits, it was no little advantage to
have near him such a man as Mr. Mill, to whose advice and aid he
habitually had recourse in all business transactions with the outward
world of a troublesome or irksome nature. Such as the connection was,
it was not of Mr. Mill's seeking." On the same unquestionable
authority we learn, that "Mr. Mill never in his life was in debt, and
his income, whatever it might be, always covered his expenses." It is
clear, that, from near the commencement of the present century, James
Mill and Bentham lived for many years on terms of great intimacy, in
which the poorer man was thoroughly independent, although it suited
the other to make a fair return for the services rendered to him. A
very characteristic letter is extant, dated 1814, in which James Mill
proposes that the relations between him and his "dear friend and
master" shall be to some extent altered, but only in order that their
common objects may be the more fully served. "In reflecting," he says,
"upon the duty which we owe to our principles,--to that system of
important truths of which you have the immortal honor to be the
author, but of which I am a most faithful and fervent disciple, and
hitherto, I have fancied, my master's favorite disciple,--I have
considered that there was nobody at all so likely to be your real
successor as myself. Of talents it would be easy to find many
superior. But, in the first place, I hardly know of anybody who has so
completely taken up the principles, and is so thoroughly of the same
way of thinking with yourself. In the next place, there are very few
who have so much of the necessary previous discipline, my antecedent
years having been wholly occupied in acquiring it. And, in the last
place, I am pretty sure you cannot think of any other person whose
whole life will be devoted to the propagation of the system." "There
was during the last few years of Bentham's life," said James Mill's
son, "less frequency and cordiality of intercourse than in former
years, chiefly because Bentham had acquired newer, and to him more
agreeable intimacies, but Mr. Mill's feeling never altered towards
him, nor did he ever fail, publicly or privately, in giving due honor
to Bentham's name and acknowledgment of the intellectual debt he owed
to him."
Those extracts are made, not only in justice to the memory of James
Mill, but as a help towards understanding the influences by which his
son was surrounded from his earliest years. James Mill was living in a
house at Pentonville when this son was born, and partly because of the
peculiar abilities that the boy displayed from the first, partly
because he could not afford to procure for him elsewhere such teaching
as he was able himself to give him, he took his education entirely
into his own hands. With what interest--even jealous interest, it
would seem--Bentham watched that education, appears from a pleasant
little letter addressed to him by the elder Mill in 1812. "I am not
going to die," he wrote, "notwithstanding your zeal to come in for a
legacy. However, if I were to die any time before this poor boy is a
man, one of the things that would pinch me most sorely would be the
being obliged to leave his mind unmade to the degree of excellence of
which I hope to make it. But another thing is, that the only prospect
which would lessen that pain would be the leaving him in your hands. I
therefore take your offer quite seriously, and stipulate merely that
it shall be made as soon as possible; and then we may perhaps leave
him a successor worthy of both of us." It was a bold hope, but one
destined to be fully realized. At the time of its utterance, the "poor
boy" was barely more than six years old. The intellectual powers of
which he gave such early proof were carefully, but apparently not
excessively, cultivated. Mrs. Grote, in her lately-published "Personal
Life of George Grote," has described him as he appeared in 1817, the
year in which her husband made the acquaintance of his father. "John
Stuart Mill, then a boy of about twelve years old,"--he was really
only eleven,--"was studying, with his father as sole preceptor, under
the paternal roof. Unquestionably forward for his years, and already
possessed of a competent knowledge of Greek and Latin, as well as of
some subordinate though solid attainments, John was, as a boy,
somewhat repressed by the elder Mill, and seldom took any share in the
conversation carried on by the society frequenting the house." It is
perhaps not strange that a boy of eleven, at any rate a boy who was to
become so modest a man, should not take much part in general
conversation; and Mr. Mill himself never, in referring to his father,
led his hearers to suppose that he had, as a child, been in any way
unduly repressed by him. The tender affection with which he always
cherished his father's memory in no way sanctions the belief that he
was at any time subjected to unreasonable discipline. By him his
father was only revered as the best and kindest of teachers.
There was a break in the home teaching in 1820. James Mill, after
bearing bravely with his early difficulties, had acquired so much
renown by his famous "History of India," that, in spite of its adverse
criticisms of the East-India Company, the directors of the Company in
1817 honorably bestowed upon him a post in the India House, where he
steadily and rapidly rose to a position which enabled him to pass the
later years of his life in more comfort than had hitherto been within
his reach. The new employment, however, interfered with his other
occupation as instructor to his boy; and for this reason, as well
probably as for others tending to his advancement, the lad was, in the
summer of 1820, sent to France for a year and a half. For several
months he lived in Paris, in the house of Jean Baptiste Say, the
political economist. The rest of his time was passed in the company of
Sir Samuel Bentham, Jeremy Bentham's brother. Early in 1822, before he
was eighteen, he returned to London, soon to enter the India Office as
a clerk in the department of which his father was chief. In that
office he remained for five and thirty years, acquitting himself with
great ability, and gradually rising to the most responsible position
that could be there held by a subordinate.
But, though he was thus early started in life as a city clerk, his
self-training and his education by his father were by no means
abandoned. The ancient and modern languages, as well as the various
branches of philosophy and philosophical thought in which he was
afterwards to attain such eminence, were studied by him in the early
mornings, under the guidance of his father, before going down to pass
his days in the India Office. During the summer evenings, and on such
holidays as he could get, he began those pedestrian exploits for which
he afterwards became famous, and in which his main pleasure appears to
have consisted in collecting plants and flowers in aid of the
botanical studies that were his favorite pastime, and something more
than a pastime, all through his life. His first printed writings are
said to have been on botany, in the shape of some articles contributed
to a scientific journal while he was still in his teens, and it is
probable, that, could they now be detected, we should find in other
periodicals traces of his work, at nearly if not quite as early a
period in other lines of study. That he worked early and with
wonderful ability in at least one very deep line, appears from the
fact that while he was still only a lad, Jeremy Bentham intrusted to
him the preparation for the press, and the supplementary annotation,
of his "Rationale of Judicial Evidence." That work, for which he was
highly commended by its author, published in 1827, contains the first
publicly acknowledged literary work of John Stuart Mill.
While he was producing that result of laborious study in a special and
intricate subject, his education in all sorts of other ways was
continued. In evidence of the versatility of his pursuits, the veteran
author of a short and ungenerous memoir that was published in "The
Times" of May the 10th contributes one interesting note. "It is within
our personal knowledge," he says, "that he was an extraordinary youth
when, in 1824, he took the lead at the London Debating Club in one of
the most remarkable collections of 'spirits of the age' that ever
congregated for intellectual gladiatorship, he being by two or three
years the junior of the clique. The rivalry was rather in knowledge
and reasoning than in eloquence, mere declamation was discouraged; and
subjects of paramount importance were conscientiously thought out." In
evidence of his more general studies, we may here repeat a few
sentences from an account, by an intimate friend of both these great
men, of the life of Mr. Grote, which was published in our columns two
years ago. "About this time a small society was formed for readings in
philosophical subjects. The meetings took place at Mr. Grote's house
in Threadneedle Street, on certain days from half past eight till ten
in the morning, at which hour the members (all in official employment)
had to repair to their respective avocations. The members were Grote,
John Mill, Roebuck, William Ellice, William Henry Prescott, two
brothers Whitmore, and George John Graham. The mentor of their
studies was the elder Mr. Mill. The meetings were continued for two or
three years. The readings embraced a small manual of logic, by Du
Trieu, recommended by Mr. Mill, and reprinted for the purpose,
Whately's Logic, Hobbes's Logic, and Hartley on Man, in Priestley's
edition. The manner of proceeding was thorough. Each paragraph, on
being read, was commented on by every one in turn, discussed and
rediscussed, to the point of total exhaustion. In 1828 the meetings
ceased; but they were resumed in 1830, upon Mill's 'Analysis of the
Mind,' which was gone over in the same manner." These philosophical
studies were not only of extreme advantage in strengthening and
developing the merits of Mr. Mill and his friends, nearly all of whom
were considerably older than he was, they also served to unite the
friends in close and lasting intimacy of the most refined and
elevating sort. Mr. Grote, his senior by twelve years, was perhaps the
most intimate, as he was certainly the ablest, of all the friends whom
Mr. Mill thus acquired.
Many of these friends were contributors to the original "Westminster
Review," which was started by Bentham in 1824. Bentham himself and the
elder Mill were its chief writers at first; and in 1828, if not
sooner, the younger Mill joined the number. In that year he reviewed
Whately's Logic; and it is probable that in the ensuing year he
contributed numerous other articles. His first literary exploit,
however, which he cared to reproduce in his "Dissertations and
Discussions" was an article that appeared in "The Jurist," in 1833,
entitled "Corporation and Church Property." That essay, in some
respects, curiously anticipated the Irish Church legislation of
nearly forty years later. In the same year he published, in "The
Monthly Repository," a remarkably able and quite a different
production,--"Poetry and its Varieties," showing that in the
department of _belles-lettres_ he could write with nearly as much
vigor and originality as in the philosophical and political
departments of thought to which, ostensibly, he was especially
devoted. Shortly after that he embarked in a bolder literary venture.
Differences having arisen concerning "The Westminster Review," a new
quarterly journal--"The London Review"--was begun by Sir William
Molesworth, with Mr. Mill for editor, in 1835. "The London" was next
year amalgamated with "The Westminster," and then the nominal if not
the actual editorship passed into the hands of Mr. John Robertson. Mr.
Mill continued, however, to be one of its most constant and able
contributors until the Review passed into other hands in 1840. He
aided much to make and maintain its reputation as the leading organ of
bold thought on religious and social as well as political matters.
Besides such remarkable essays as those on Civilization, on Armand
Carrel, on Alfred de Vigny, on Bentham, and on Coleridge, which, with
others, have been republished in his collection of minor writings, he
contributed many of great importance. One on Mr. Tennyson, which was
published in 1835, is especially noteworthy. Others referred more
especially to the politics of the day. From one, which appeared in
1837, reviewing Albany Fonblanque's "England under Seven
Administrations," and speaking generally in high terms of the
politics of "The Examiner," we may extract a few sentences which
define very clearly the political ground taken by Mr. Mill, Mr.
Fonblanque, and those who had then come to be called Philosophical
Radicals. "There are divers schools of Radicals," said Mr. Mill.
"There are the historical Radicals, who demand popular institutions as
the inheritance of Englishmen, transmitted to us from the Saxons or
the barons of Runnymede. There are the metaphysical Radicals, who hold
the principles of democracy, not as means to good government, but as
corollaries from some unreal abstraction,--from 'natural liberty' or
'natural rights.' There are the radicals of occasion and circumstance,
who are radicals because they disapprove the measures of the
government for the time being. There are, lastly, the Radicals of
position, who are Radicals, as somebody said, because they are not
lords. Those whom, in contradistinction to all these, we call
Philosophical Radicals, are those who in politics observe the common
manner of philosophers; that is, who, when they are discussing means,
begin by considering the end, and, when they desire to produce
effects, think of causes. These persons became Radicals because they
saw immense practical evils existing in the government and social
condition of this country, and because the same examination which
showed them the evils showed also that the cause of those evils was
the aristocratic principle in our government,--the subjection of the
many to the control of a comparatively few, who had an interest, or
fancied they had an interest, in perpetuating those evils. These
inquirers looked still farther, and saw, that, in the present
imperfect condition of human nature, nothing better than this
self-preference was to be expected from a dominant few; that the
interests of the many were sure to be in their eyes a secondary
consideration to their own ease or emolument. Perceiving, therefore,
that we are ill-governed, and perceiving that, so long as the
aristocratic principle continued predominant in our government, we
could not expect to be otherwise, these persons became Radicals; and
the motto of their Radicalism was, Enmity to the aristocratical
principle."
The period of Mr. Mill's most intimate connection with "The London and
Westminster Review" forms a brilliant episode in the history of
journalism; and his relations, then and afterwards, with other men of
letters and political writers,--some of them as famous as Mr. Carlyle
and Coleridge, Charles Buller and Sir Henry Taylor, Sir William
Molesworth, Sir John Bowring, and Mr. Roebuck,--yield tempting
materials for even the most superficial biography; but we must pass
them by for the present. And here we shall content ourselves with
enumerating, in the order of their publication, those lengthier
writings with which he chiefly occupied his leisure during the next
quarter of a century; though that work was frequently diversified by
important contributions to "The Edinburgh" and "The Westminster
Review," "Fraser's Magazine," and other periodicals. His first great
work was "A System of Logic," the result of many years' previous
study, which appeared in 1843. That completed, he seems immediately to
have paid chief attention to politico-economical questions. In 1844
appeared "Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy,"
which were followed, in 1848, by the "Principles of Political
Economy." After that there was a pause of ten years, though the works
that were issued during the next six years show that he had not been
idle during the interval. In 1857 were published two volumes of the
"Dissertations and Discussions," consisting solely of printed
articles, the famous essay "On Liberty," and the "Thoughts on
Parliamentary Reform." "Considerations on Representative Government"
appeared in 1861, "Utilitarianism," in 1863, "Auguste Comte and
Positivism" and the "Examination of Sir William Hamilton's
Philosophy," in 1865. After that, besides the very welcome "Inaugural
Address" at St. Andrew's in 1867, his only work of importance was "The
Subjection of Women," published in 1869. A fitting conclusion to his
more serious literary labors appeared also in 1869 in his annotated
edition of his father's "Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind."
When we remember how much and what varied knowledge is in those
learned books, it is almost difficult to believe, that, during most of
the years in which he was preparing them, Mr. Mill was also a hard
worker in the India House, passing rapidly, and as the reward only of
his assiduity and talent, from the drudgery of a junior clerk to a
position involving all the responsibility, if not quite all the
dignity, of a secretary of state. One of his most intimate friends,
and the one who knew far more of him in this respect than any other,
has in another column penned some reminiscences of his official life;
but if all the state papers that he wrote, and all the correspondence
that he carried on with Indian officials and the native potentates of
the East, could be explored, more than one volume would have to be
written in supplement to his father's great "History of British
India."
Having retired from the India House in 1858, Mr. Mill went to spend
the winter in Avignon, in the hope of improving the broken health of
the wife to whom he was devotedly attached. He had not been married
many years, but Mrs. Mill, who was the widow of Mr. John Taylor, a
London merchant, had been his friend since 1835, or even earlier.
During more than twenty years he had been aided by her talents, and
encouraged by her sympathy, in all the work he had undertaken, and to
her rare merits he afterwards paid more than one tribute in terms that
have no equal for the intensity of their language, and the depth of
affection contained in them. Mrs. Mill's weak state of health seems to
have hardly repressed her powers of intellect. By her was written the
celebrated essay on "The Enfranchisement of Women" contributed to "The
Westminster Review," and afterwards reprinted in the "Dissertations
and Discussions," with a preface avowing, that by her Mr. Mill had
been greatly assisted in all that he had written for some time
previous. But the assistance was to end now. Mrs. Mill died at Avignon
on the 3d of November, 1858, and over her grave was placed one of the
most pathetic and eloquent epitaphs that have been ever penned. "Her
great and loving heart, her noble soul, her clear, powerful, original,
and comprehensive intellect," it was there written, "made her the
guide and support, the instructor in wisdom, and the example in
goodness, as she was the sole earthly delight, of those who had the
happiness to belong to her. As earnest for all public good as she was
generous and devoted to all who surrounded her, her influence has been
felt in many of the greatest improvements of the age, and will be in
those still to come. Were there even a few hearts and intellects like
hers, this earth would already become the hoped-for heaven."
Henceforth, during the fourteen years and a half that were to elapse
before he should be laid in the same grave, Avignon was the chosen
haunt of Mr. Mill.
Passing much of his time in the modest house that he had bought, that
he might be within sight of his wife's tomb, Mr. Mill was also
frequently in London, whither he came especially to facilitate the new
course of philosophical and political writing on which he entered. He
found relief also in excursions, one of which was taken nearly every
year, in company with his step-daughter, Miss Helen Taylor, into
various parts of Europe. Italy, Switzerland, and many other districts,
were explored, partly on foot, with a keen eye both to the natural
features of the localities, especially in furtherance of those
botanical studies to which Mr. Mill now returned with the ardor of his
youth, and also to their social and political institutions. Perhaps
the longest and most eventful of these excursions was taken in 1862 to
Greece. On this occasion it had been proposed that his old friend, Mr.
Grote, should accompany him. "To go through those scenes, and
especially to go through them in your company," wrote Mr. Grote in
January, "would be to me pre-eminently delightful; but, alas! my
physical condition altogether forbids it. I could not possibly stay
away from London, without the greatest discomfort, for so long a
period as two months. Still less could I endure the fatigue of horse
and foot exercise which an excursion in Greece must inevitably
entail." The journey occupied more than two months; but in the autumn
Mr. Mill was at Avignon; and, returning to London in December, he
spent Christmas week with Mr. Grote at his residence, Barrow
Green,--Bentham's old house, and the one in which Mr. Mill had played
himself when he was a child. "He is in good health and spirits," wrote
Mr. Grote to Sir G.C. Lewis after that visit; "violent against the
South in this American struggle; embracing heartily the extreme
Abolitionist views, and thinking about little else in regard to the
general question."
It was only to be expected that Mr. Mill would take much interest in
the American civil war, and sympathize strongly with the Abolitionist
party. His interest in politics had been keen, and his judgment on
them had been remarkably sound all through life, as his early articles
in "The Morning Chronicle" and "The London and Westminster Review,"
and his later contributions to various periodicals, helped to testify;
but towards the close of his life the interest was perhaps keener, as
the judgment was certainly more mellowed. It was not strange,
therefore, that his admirers among the working classes, and the
advanced radicals of all grades, should have urged him, and that,
after some hesitation, he should have consented, to become a candidate
for Westminster at the general election of 1865. That candidature
will be long remembered as a notable example of the dignified way in
which an honest man, and one who was as much a philosopher in practice
as in theory, can do all that is needful, and avoid all that is
unworthy, in an excited electioneering contest, and submit without
injury to the insults of political opponents and of political
time-servers professing to be of his own way of thinking. The result
of the election was a far greater honor to the electors who chose him
than to the representative whom they chose; though that honor was
greatly tarnished by Mr. Mill's rejection when he offered himself for
re-election three years later.
This is hardly the place in which to review at much length Mr. Mill's
parliamentary career, though it may be briefly referred to in evidence
of the great and almost unlooked-for ability with which he adapted
himself to the requirements of a philosophical politician as distinct
from a political philosopher. His first speech in the House of
Commons, delivered very soon after its assembling, was on the occasion
of the second reading of the Cattle Diseases Bill, on the 14th of
February, 1866, when he supported Mr. Bright in his opposition to the
proposals of Mr. Lowe for compensation to their owners for the
slaughter of such animals as were diseased or likely to spread
infection. His complaint against the bill was succinctly stated in two
sentences, which fairly illustrated the method and basis of all his
arguments upon current politics. "It compensates," he said, "a class
for the results of a calamity which is borne by the whole community.
In justice, the farmers who have not suffered ought to compensate
those who have; but the bill does what it ought not to have done, and
leaves undone what it ought to have done, by not equalizing the
incidence of the burden upon that class, inasmuch as, from the
operation of the local principle adopted, that portion of an
agricultural community who have not suffered at all will not have to
pay at all, and those who have suffered little will have to pay
little; while those who have suffered most will have to pay a great
deal." "An aristocracy," he added, in words that as truly indicate the
way in which he subjected all matters of detail to the test of general
principles of truth and expediency,--"an aristocracy should have the
feelings of an aristocracy; and, inasmuch as they enjoy the highest
honors and advantages, they ought to be willing to bear the first
brunt of the inconveniences and evils which fall on the country
generally. This is the ideal character of an aristocracy: it is the
character with which all privileged classes are accustomed to credit
themselves; though I am not aware of any aristocracy in history that
has fulfilled those requirements."
That, and the later speeches that Mr. Mill delivered on the Cattle
Diseases Bill, at once announced to the House of Commons and the
public, if they needed any such announcement, the temper and spirit in
which he was resolved to execute his legislative functions. The same
spirit and temper appeared in the speech on the Habeas Corpus
Suspension (Ireland) Bill, which he delivered on the 17th of February;
but his full strength as a debater was first manifested during the
discussion on Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill of 1866, which was brought
on for second reading on the 12th of April. His famous speech on that
occasion, containing the most powerful arguments offered by any
speaker in favor of the measure, and his shorter speech during its
discussion on the 31st of May, need not here be recapitulated. They
were only admirable developments in practical debate of those
principles of political science which he had already enforced in his
published works. The other leading topics handled by Mr. Mill during
the session of 1866 were the expediency of reducing the National Debt,
which he urged on the occasion of Mr. Neate's proposal on the 17th of
April; the Tenure and Improvement of Land (Ireland) Bill, on which he
spoke at length and with force on the 17th of May, then practically
initiating the movement in favor of land-reform, which he partly
helped to enforce in part with regard to Ireland, and for the more
complete adoption of which in England he labored to the last; the
Jamaica outbreak, and the conduct of Governor Eyre, on which he spoke
on the 31st of July; and the electoral disabilities of women, which he
first brought within the range of practical politics by moving, on the
20th of July, for a return of the numbers of householders, and others
who, "fulfilling the conditions of property or rental prescribed by
law as the qualification for the electoral franchise, are excluded
from the franchise by reason of their sex."
In the session of 1867 Mr. Mill took a prominent part in the
discussions on the Metropolitan Poor Bill; and he spoke on various
other topics,--his introduction of the Women's Electoral Disabilities
Removal Bill being in some respects the most notable: but his chief
action was with reference to Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill, several
clauses of which he criticised and helped to alter in committee.
Though he was as zealous as ever, however, in his attendance to
public business, he made fewer great speeches, being content to set a
wise example to other and less able men in only speaking when he felt
it absolutely necessary to do so, and in generally performing merely
the functions of a "silent member."
In 1868 he was, if not more active, somewhat more prominent. On March
the 6th, on the occasion of Mr. Shaw-Lefevre's motion respecting the
"Alabama Claims," he forcibly expressed his opinions as to the wrong
done by England to the United States during the civil war, and the
need of making adequate reparation; and on the 12th of the same month
he spoke with equal boldness on Mr. Maguire's motion for a committee
to inquire into the state of Ireland, repeating anew and enforcing the
views he had lately put forward in his pamphlet on Ireland, and
considerably aiding by anticipation the passage of Mr. Gladstone's two
great measures of Irish Reform. He took an important part in the
discussion of the Election Petitions and Corrupt Practices Bill; and
among a great number of other measures on which he spoke was the
Married Women's Property Bill of Mr. Shaw-Lefevre.
Soon after that the House of Commons was dissolved, and Mr. Mill's too
brief parliamentary career came to an end. The episode, however, had
to some extent helped to quicken his always keen interest in political
affairs. This was proved, among other ways, by the publication of his
pamphlet on "England and Ireland" in 1868, and of his treatise "On the
Subjection of Women" in 1869, as well as by the especial interest
which he continued to exhibit in two of the most important political
movements of the day,--all the more important because they are yet
almost in their infancy,--the one for the political enfranchisement
of women, the other for a thorough reform of our system of land
tenure. The latest proof of his zeal on the second of these important
points appeared in the address which he delivered at Exeter Hall on
the 18th of last March, and in two articles which he contributed to
"The Examiner" at the commencement of the present year. We may be
permitted to add that it was his intention to use some of the greater
quiet that he expected to enjoy during his stay at Avignon in writing
frequent articles on political affairs for publication in these
columns. He died while his intellectual powers were as fresh as they
had ever been, and when his political wisdom was only ripened by
experience.
In this paper we purposely limit ourselves to a concise narrative of
the leading events of Mr. Mill's life, and abstain as far as possible
from any estimate of either the value or the extent of his work in
philosophy, in economics, in politics, or in any other of the
departments of thought and study to which, with such depth and breadth
of mind, he applied himself; but it is impossible for us to lay down
the pen without some slight reference, however inadequate it may be,
to the nobility of his character, and the peculiar grace with which he
exhibited it in all his dealings with his friends and with the whole
community among whom he lived, and for whom he worked with the
self-sacrificing zeal of an apostle. If to labor fearlessly and
ceaselessly for the good of society, and with the completest
self-abnegation that is consistent with healthy individuality, be the
true form of religion, Mr. Mill exhibited such genuine and profound
religion--so permeating his whole life, and so engrossing his every
action--as can hardly be looked for in any other man of this
generation. Great as were his intellectual qualities, they were
dwarfed by his moral excellences. He did not, it is true, aim at any
fanciful ideal, or adopt any fantastic shibboleths. He was only a
utilitarian. He believed in no inspiration but that of experience. He
had no other creed or dogma or gospel than Bentham's axiom,--"The
greatest happiness of the greatest number." But many will think that
herein was the chief of all his claims to the honor of all men, and
the best evidence of his worth. At any rate, he set a notable example
of the way in which a man, making the best use in his power of merely
his own reason and the accumulated reason of those who have gone
before him, wisely exercising the faculties of which he finds himself
possessed, and seeking no guidance or support from invisible beacons
and intangible props, may lead a blameless life, and be one of the
greatest benefactors of his race. No one who had any personal
knowledge of him could fail to discern the singular purity of his
character; and to those who knew him best that purity was most
apparent. He may have blundered and stumbled in his pursuit of truth;
but it was part of his belief that stumbling and blundering are
necessary means towards the finding of truth, and that honesty of
purpose is the only indispensable requisite for the nearest approach
towards truth of which each individual is capable. That belief
rendered him as charitable towards others as he was modest concerning
his own attainments. He never boasted; and he despised no one. The
only things really hateful to him were arrogance and injustice, and
for these he was, to say the least, as willing and eager to find
excuse as could be the most devout utterer of the prayer, "Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do." We had noted many
instances, coming within our own very limited observation, of his
remarkable, almost unparalleled magnanimity and generosity; but such
details would here be almost out of place, and they who need such will
doubtless before long receive much more convincing proof of his moral
excellence.
We shall not here dilate on those minor qualities of mind and heart
that made Mr. Mill's society so charming to all who were fortunate
enough to have any share in it; and these, especially in recent years,
were many. When the first burden of his grief at the loss of his wife
had passed,--perhaps partly as a relief from the solitude, save for
one devoted companion, that would otherwise have been now forced upon
him,--he mixed more freely than he had done before in the society of
all whose company could yield him any satisfaction or by whom his
friendship was really valued. His genial and graceful bearing towards
every one who came near him must be within the knowledge of very many
who will read this column; and they will remember, besides his
transparent nobility of character, and the genial ways in which it
exhibited itself, certain intellectual qualities for which he was
remarkable. We here refer, not to his higher abilities as a thinker,
but to such powers of mind as displayed themselves in conversation.
Without any pedantry,--without any sort of intentional notification to
those with whom he conversed that he was the greatest logician,
metaphysician, moralist, and economist of the day,--his speech was
always, even on the most trivial subjects, so clear and incisive, that
it at once betrayed the intellectual vigor of the speaker. Not less
remarkable also than his uniform refinement of thought, and the
deftness with which he at all times expressed it, were the grasp and
keenness of his observation, and the strength of memory with which he
stored up every thing he had ever seen, heard, or read. Nothing
escaped his notice at the time of its occurrence: nothing was
forgotten by him afterwards. His friends often found, to their
astonishment, that he knew far more about any passages in their lives
that he had been made aware of than they could themselves remember;
and, whenever that disclosure was made to them, they must have been
rejoiced to think, that this memory of his, instead of being, as it
might well have been, a dangerous garner of severe judgments and
fairly-grounded prejudices, was a magic mirror, in which their follies
and foibles were hardly at all reflected, and only kindly
reminiscences and generous sympathies found full expression.
But he is dead now. Although the great fruits of his life--a life in
which mind and heart, in which senses and emotions, were singularly
well balanced--are fruits that cannot die, all the tender ties of
friendship, all the strictly personal qualities that so much aided his
work as a teacher of the world, as the foremost leader of his
generation in the search after truth and righteousness, are now
snapped forever. Only four weeks ago he left London for a
three-months' stay in Avignon. Two weeks ago he was in his customary
health. On the 5th of May he was attacked by a virulent form of
erysipelas. On the 8th he died. On the 10th he was buried in the grave
to which he had, through fourteen years, looked forward as a pleasant
resting-place, because during fourteen years there had been in it a
vacant place beside the remains of the wife whom he so fondly loved.
H. R. FOX BOURNE.
II.
HIS CAREER IN THE INDIA HOUSE
I have undertaken to prepare a sketch of Mr. Mill's official career,
but find, on inquiry, scarcely any thing to add to the few particulars
on the subject which have already found their way into print. Of his
early official associates, all have, with scarcely an exception,
already passed away; and there is no one within reach to whom I can
apply for assistance in verifying or correcting my own impressions.
These are in substance the following.
In the few last decades of its existence, the East-India Company's
establishment, in Leadenhall Street, consisted of three
divisions,--the secretary's, military secretary's, and examiners'
offices,--in the last of which most of the despatches and letters were
composed which were afterwards signed by the directors or the
secretary. Into this division, in the year 1821, the directors,
perceiving an infusion of new blood to be very urgently required,
introduced, as assistant examiners, four outsiders,--Mr. Strachey
(father of the present Sir John and Major-Gen. Richard Strachey),
Thomas Love Peacock (author of "Headlong Hall"), Mr. Harcourt, and
Mr. James Mill; the selection of the last-named being all the more
creditable to them, because, in his "History of British India," he had
animadverted with much severity on some parts of the Company's
administration. Two years afterwards, in 1823, the historian's son,
the illustrious subject of these brief memoirs, then a lad of
seventeen, obtained a clerkship under his father. According to the
ordinary course of things in those days, the newly-appointed junior
would have had nothing to do, except a little abstracting, indexing,
and searching, or pretending to search, into records; but young Mill
was almost immediately set to indite despatches to the governments of
the three Indian Presidencies, on what, in India-House phraseology,
were distinguished as "political" subjects,--subjects, that is, for
the most part growing out of the relations of the said governments
with "native" states or foreign potentates. This continued to be his
business almost to the last. In 1828 he was promoted to be assistant
examiner, and in 1856 he succeeded to the post of chief examiner;
after which his duty consisted rather in supervising what his
assistants had written than in writing himself: but for the three and
twenty years preceding he had had immediate charge of the political
department, and had written almost every "political" despatch of any
importance that conveyed the instructions of the merchant princes of
Leadenhall Street to their pro-consuls in Asia. Of the quality of
these documents, it is sufficient to say, that they were John Mill's;
but, in respect to their quantity, it may be worth mentioning that a
descriptive catalogue of them completely fills a small quarto volume
of between three hundred and four hundred pages, in their author's
handwriting, which now lies before me; also that the share of the
Court of Directors in the correspondence between themselves and the
Indian governments used to average annually about ten huge
vellum-bound volumes, foolscap size, and five or six inches thick, and
that of these volumes two a year, for more than twenty years running,
were exclusively of Mill's composition; this, too, at times, when he
was engaged upon such voluntary work in addition as his "Logic" and
"Political Economy."
In 1857 broke out the Sepoy war, and in the following year the
East-India Company was extinguished in all but the name, its
governmental functions being transferred to the Crown. That most
illustrious of corporations died hard; and with what affectionate
loyalty Mill struggled to avert its fate is evidenced by the famous
Petition to Parliament which he drew up for his old masters, and which
opens with the following effective antithesis: "Your petitioners, at
their own expense, and by the agency of their own civil and military
servants, originally acquired for this country its magnificent empire
in the East. The foundations of this empire were laid by your
petitioners, at that time neither aided nor controlled by Parliament,
at the same period at which a succession of administrations under the
control of Parliament were losing, by their incapacity and rashness,
another great empire on the opposite side of the Atlantic."
I am fortunate enough to be the possessor of the original MS. of this
admirable state paper, which I mention, because I once heard its real
authorship denied in that quarter of all others in which it might have
been supposed to be least likely to be questioned. On one of the last
occasions of the gathering together of the Proprietors of East-India
Stock, I could scarcely believe my ears, when one of the directors,
alluding to the petition, spoke of it as having been written by a
certain other official who was silting by his side, adding, after a
moment's pause, "with the assistance, as he understood, of Mr. Mill,"
likewise present. As soon as the Court broke up, I burst into Mill's
room, boiling over with indignation, and exclaiming, "What an infamous
shame!" and no doubt adding a good deal more that followed in natural
sequence on such an exordium. "What's the matter?" replied Mill as
soon as he could get a word in. "M----[the director] was quite right.
The petition was the joint work of ---- and myself."--"How can you be
so perverse?" I retorted. "You know that I know you wrote every word of
it."--"No," rejoined Mill, "you are mistaken: one whole line on the
second page was put in by----."
In August, 1858, the East-India Company's doom was pronounced by
Parliament. The East-India House was completely re-organized, its very
name being changed into that of the India Office, and a Secretary of
State in Council taking the place of the Court of Directors. But a
change of scarcely secondary importance to many of those immediately
concerned was Mill's retirement on a pension. A few months after he
had left us an attempt was made to bring him back. At that time only
one-half of the Council were nominated by the Crown, the other half
having been elected, and the law prescribing that any vacancy among
these latter should be filled by election on the part of the remaining
elected members. On the first occasion of the kind that occurred,
Mill was immediately proposed; and I had the honor of being
commissioned to sound him on the subject of the intended offer, and to
endeavor to overcome the objections to acceptance which it was feared
he might entertain. I went accordingly to his house at Blackheath, but
had no sooner broached the subject than I saw that my mission was
hopeless. The anguish of his recent bereavement was as yet too fresh.
He sought eagerly for some slight alleviation of despair in hard
literary labor; but to face the outside world was for the present
impossible.