The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Textual Introduction
• Essays On Politics and Society
• Use and Abuse of Political Terms 1832
• Rationale of Representation 1835
• De Tocqueville On Democracy In America [i] 1835
• State of Society In America 1836
• Civilization 1836
• Essays On Government 1840
• De Tocqueville On Democracy In America [ii] 1840
• Reform of the Civil Service 1854
• On Liberty 1859
• Editor’s Note
• Chapter I: Introductory
• Chapter II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
• Chapter III: Of Individuality, As One of the Elements of Well-being
• Chapter IV: Of the Limits to the Authority of Society Over the Individual
• Chapter V: Applications

Textual Introduction

JOHN M. ROBSON

the essays in this volume comprise the main body of Mill’s writings specifically on political and social theory, including On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government, his most valued contributions to this area. Given his abiding interest in the application of theory to experience, and the testing of theory by experience, and given also his view of the “consensus” that obtains in social states, it is impossible to isolate essays that deal only with political and social theory, or to include in one volume (or even in several) all his essays that touch on such matters. Perhaps the most obviously necessary exclusions in a volume of this kind are the final Books of the System of Logic and the Principles of Political Economy, both of which are essential to an understanding of Mill’s ideas. The decision to include or exclude particular essays is in large measure a pragmatic one, and students of Mill’s political and social thought will want to refer, inter alia, to some of his essays and newspaper writings on economics, on particular political and social events, and on law and equality, which will be found in other volumes of the Collected Works. The main characteristics determining the selection of the essays in this volume are the focus on abiding and theoretical questions, and thematic interdependence.¹

While the themes and purposes of these essays show much similarity, their provenances, comparative weights, and histories are diverse. Two of them, On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government, are separate monographs, the former of which went through, in Mill’s lifetime, four Library Editions and the latter, three; each also appeared in often-reprinted inexpensive People’s Editions. Both of these have, it need hardly be said, earned a lasting place in discussions of British political thought. Of the other eleven items (excluding the Appendices), one, Thoughts onParliamentary Reform, first appeared as a pamphlet, which went through two editions and then was republished in Volume III of Mill’s Dissertations and Discussions; and another is a solicited paper in support of competitive civil service examinations, which was first published in Parliamentary Papers and then reprinted as a pamphlet.

The other nine items are articles: one (the earliest) from Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine; five from the Westminster Review (including three from the London Review before it merged, in April, 1836, with the Westminster); two from the Edinburgh Review; and one from Fraser’s Magazine. Of these nine, three were republished in Dissertations and Discussions: these are “Civilization” (the only one which is not actually a review) from the Westminster, the second review of Tocqueville on democracy in America from the Edinburgh, and “Recent Writers on Reform” from Fraser’s. Such republication indicates, of course, the relative importance he attached to these essays,² and so one must note that both “Rationale of Political Representation” and the first review of Tocqueville (both from the Westminster) are represented in Dissertations and Discussions by the lengthy excerpts that make up the “Appendix” to Volume I (here reprinted as Appendix B). None of the others (including the review of Taylor’s Statesman, contributed to the London and Westminster by George Grote and Mill, which here appears as Appendix A) was republished by Mill.³

The background, composition, and publishing history of these essays, spread as they are over Mill’s most active years of authorship, from the early 1830s to the 1860s, provide valuable insights into his intellectual history and influence. After he and his father had virtually severed relations with the Westminster Review in the late 1820s, the younger Mill wrote voluminously for newspapers, especially the Examiner, and sought out avenues for longer essays, since the major reviews, the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and Blackwood’s, were closed to him on political grounds. His main outlet was in the Unitarian Monthly Repository, but four of his articles, the first of which was his review of George Cornewall Lewis’s Use and Abuse of Political Terms (the first essay in this volume), appeared in the short-lived Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine. His review of Lewis’s book (which he had commented on a month earlier in the Examiner of 22 April, 1832) shows clearly his growing interest in logic,⁴ particularly in the language of political and ethical speculation, which came to maturity not in these essays, but in the System of Logic. Though he does not refer to the essay in his Autobiography,⁵ his correspondence indicates something of his view of his writings at that time. On 23 May, 1832, Mill wrote to the proprietor of the magazine, William Tait: “Since you have thought my article worthy of insertion it is very probable that I may place another or others at your disposal. . . .”⁶ Six days later, in a letter to Thomas Carlyle, he refers to this review, along with his recent writings in the Examiner (including the shorter notice of Lewis’s book), as probably having no interest for Carlyle, except as coming from Mill. “On the whole,” he says, “the opinions I have put forth in these different articles are, I think, rather not inconsistent with yours, than exactly corresponding to them, & are expressed so coldly and unimpressively that I can scarcely bear to look back upon such poor stuff” (EL, CW, XII, 105). Later, however, he returned to the matter in another letter to Carlyle (12 January, 1834), saying:

Meanwhile the matter of the review had been in his mind for, in what must be a reference to the passage on 13 below, he wrote to Tait on 24 September, 1833: “I have not given up the idea of those ‘Essays on the Ambiguities of the Moral Sciences’ but for the present I see no chance of my having time for it” (ibid., 179)—again, only in the System of Logic did he return to this question.

Towards the end of the review of Lewis, Mill proposes “a more comprehensive view” that “would unite all the exclusive and one-sided systems, so long the bane of true philosophy . . .” (13). This aim is, of course, a theme he explores most notably in On Liberty; more particularly, he expressly tried to fulfil it personally in the next few years, as is shown in the essays he wrote in the 1830s.

“Rationale of Representation,” “De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [I],” “State of Society in America,” and “Civilization,” the next four essays in this volume, form a coherent group. The actual circumstances of their publication give them an evident persuasive purpose that is not fully consonant with the retrospective account in his Autobiography, where he says of this period in his development:

And he adds (98) that he would willingly have taken Goethe’s “device, ‘many-sidedness,’ ” as his own. These comments would seem to apply to the years just before the founding in 1835 of the London Review, of which Mill was “the real,” if not “the ostensible, editor” (Autobiography, 120), and are consistent with his account of his editorial aims, where “many-sidedness” is implied. It was, however, predominantly a Radical many-sidedness, and was further limited, as he indicates, by the need to represent strongly the Philosophic Radicals’ viewpoints, especially those congenial to James Mill. So, the “old Westminster Review doctrines, but little modified . . . formed the staple of the review” (ibid.), and, though Mill does not say so, the party polemic also appears strongly—though not solely—in his own early articles, most obviously in those, not here included, dealing with specific political questions, but also in the four here collected. Only one of them, “Civilization,” it may again be noted, was republished in full by Mill,⁷ because, in his own view, the others suffered from one or more of the characteristics he lists in the Preface to Dissertations and Discussions: the excluded essays “were either of too little value at any time, or what value they might have was too exclusively temporary, or the thoughts they contained were inextricably mixed up with comments, now totally uninteresting, on passing events, or on some book not generally known; or lastly, any utility they may have possessed has since been superseded by other and more mature writings of the author.”⁸

Looking at only the last of these characteristics,⁹ one may say, in justification of republication, that our view of utility includes an opportunity to assess the development of the views expressed in the “more mature writings” here included. At the very least, these essays were important to Mill when they were written and reveal some of his attitudes towards contemporary opinions, and also towards the purposes of a radical review. For example, in a letter of 15 April, 1835, Mill asked Joseph Blanco White to tell James Martineau, who had offered to review Bailey’s Rationale of Representation, that “after a good deal of deliberation among the three or four persons who take most share in the conduct of the review, it has appeared to us that a subject involving so directly and comprehensively all the political principles of the review, should be retained in the hands of the conductors themselves . . .” (EL, CW, XII, 258; cf. 263).

Alexander Bain says of this article: “Bailey’s view being in close accordance with his own. [Mill] chiefly uses the work as an enforcement of the radical creed. After Bentham and the Mills, no man of their generation was better grounded in logical methods, or more thorough in his method of grappling with political and other questions, than Samuel Bailey.”¹⁰

Unlike Bailey, an old ally of the Philosophic Radicals, Tocqueville, the author of the work reviewed in the next article here printed, represented the new influences flooding in on Mill in this period His subject, the workings of democracy in the United States, was, however, of great interest to all British Radicals, who looked to the American system as a model, either ideal or experimental, on which to found their arguments for reform. And Tocqueville’s views held special importance, as coming from a Frenchman with the background of the great Continental Revolution, the other main foreign topos for political discussion. In fact, these two exemplars were used by political and social writers of all shades of blue as well as red.

The great importance to Mill of Tocqueville’s work is brought out in his Autobiography (115), where he comments on the “shifting” of his “political ideal from pure democracy, as commonly understood by its partisans, to the modified form of it,” set forth in Considerations on Representative Government. This gradual change, he says, which began with his reading of Tocqueville, may be seen by comparing his two reviews of Democracy in America with one another and with Considerations on Representative Government.

On hearing of Tocqueville’s book from Nassau Senior, Mill initially offered it, in February, 1835, to Blanco White for review in the second (July) number of the London Review.¹¹ When he had himself read it, however, he quickly developed an admiration for it and sought information about its author, and when in May Blanco White decided not to write the review, Mill took on the task for the third (October) number.¹² He met Tocqueville later that spring, and began (partly with a view to securing him as a contributor to the London Review) an extremely interesting and mutually laudatory correspondence with him that casts important light on the political and methodological views of both.¹³

Mill’s esteem, which continued and grew, led to his second review of Democracy in America in 1840; in the meantime, probably stimulated by his reading of Tocqueville’s book, he contributed to the next number of the London Review (January, 1836) a review of five works on the United States, entitled “State of Society in America.” The particular line of argument adopted, based on the value of comparative studies of states of society, reminds one that this was a period of gestation for the last Book of the Logic, and justifies Bain’s remark that the essay “may be called one of his minor sociological studies.”¹⁴

The next article in this volume, “Civilization,” appeared in the first number of the amalgamated London and Westminster Review (April, 1836) and further develops his sociological and cultural themes. In his Autobiography (121), Mill mentions that his father, then in the final year of his life, approved of this article, into which, he says, “. . . I threw many of my new opinions, and criticized rather emphatically the mental and moral tendencies of the time, on grounds and in a manner which I certainly had not learnt from him.”¹⁵

Light on Mill’s reasons for republishing this article in Dissertations and Discussions is thrown by his comments in a letter to George Cornewall Lewis two years after its first appearance. There he declines Lewis’s article on authority in matters of belief because it is “suited only for students, & not for the public.” Believing now that, as a “popular periodical,” the London and Westminster should not publish such essays. Mill says that if this policy had been in effect earlier, neither his “Civilization” nor his “On the Definition of Political Economy” would have been published there.¹⁶

There are over one hundred and fifty substantive variants between the first version of this essay and that reprinted below, all but nine of them introduced in the first edition of Dissertations and Discussions. (In general, as would be expected, the earlier of the essays in those volumes were more rewritten by Mill than the later ones: cf. Collected Works, Vol. X, p. cxxii, and see also Vol. IV, p. xlvi.) Of these variants, about 15 per cent reflect a change of opinion (often minor), correction of information, or the passage of time and the altered provenance; the others are about equally divided between qualifications (of judgment and tone) and minor verbal alterations (including changes in capitalization and italicization). Various interesting examples may be cited, as illustrative of the changes found not only in this essay, but in others reprinted in Dissertations and Discussions. For instance, at 131^s-s, referring to the “refined classes” in England. Mill in 1835 said: “When an evil comes to them, they can sometimes bear it with tolerable patience, (though nobody is less patient when they can entertain the slightest hope that by raising an outcry they may compel somebody else to make an effort to relieve them).” In 1859 he substituted this less condemnatory sentence: “The same causes which render them sluggish and unenterprising, make them, it is true, for the most part, stoical under inevitable evils.” Sometimes a seemingly minor variant disguises a significant (if occasionally enigmatic) change, such as that at 145^t, where, describing the place history should play in education, he said in 1835 that he accorded it importance “not under the puerile notion that political wisdom can be founded upon it”; this remark was excised in the republished version a quarter of a century later. One sentence on 127 will serve to illustrate three different kinds of change: the first, altered usage over time, the second, a minor verbal change; and the third, Mill’s typical kind of qualification. Originally the sentence read: “With Conservatives of this sort, all Radicals of corresponding enlargement of view, could fraternize as frankly and cordially as with many of their own friends . . .”; in 1859 “democrats” replaced “Radicals”, “aims” replaced “view” (and the comma was dropped), and “many” became “most”. The type of variant reflecting changed provenance and or passage of time may be illustrated by those in which attribution is altered, as at 134^l-l, where Mill deleted the specific reference in quoting from a paper by himself, and at 138^z-z, where, in the version of 1859, Carlyle is identified as the source of a comment (cf. the references to Maurice and Hamilton at 140^f-f and 142^p-p). Finally, as an example of Mill’s sensitivity to the unintentionally ludicrous, one may refer to 122^t-t, where the paragraph beginning “Consider the savage” had, in 1835, a more direct invitation, “Look at the savage” (cf. 122^x-x).

The next item in this volume, Mill’s short review of a work entitled Essays on Government, was not republished, and may here be treated in brief compass. It appeared in September, 1840, after the termination of his editorial relation with the Westminster Review (which now dropped London from its title), but may reflect a commitment earlier entered into. While slight, it touches on many issues central to radical politics at the time.

Mill’s separation (not a total severance) from the Westminster in 1840 was of great significance for him, as symbolizing the end of his direct adherence to the party politics of his youth.¹⁷ His last article during his editorship was the celebrated essay on Coleridge; his first major essay subsequently was his second review of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (now completed), which appeared in that full-throated organ of Whiggism, the Edinburgh Review, second only to the Tory Quarterly Review as the target of the early Philosophic Radicals’ excoriating analysis.¹⁸ That his switch was for him an end and a beginning is indicated, at least slightly, by his mention of the second Tocqueville review and its provenance in the concluding sentence of Chapter v of the Autobiography, Chapter vi being “General Review of the Remainder of My Life.” The move (which led to his impressive series of essays on French historians) caused him some uneasiness, however, as is implied in a letter to Tocqueville announcing that his review will appear:

During the interval (1835-40) between the two parts of Tocqueville’s work, Mill had of course not anticipated his giving up the Westminster connection, and had been continuing his efforts to get Tocqueville to contribute to the Review. As early as 1836 he had reconciled himself, for the moment, to Tocqueville’s not having time to write more than one article, because his book was absorbing his time: and in January, 1837, hoping that the London and Westminster would be the first British review to notice the second part of Democracy in America, he asked Tocqueville if he could have advance sheets of the work (EL, CW, XIII, 316). When it finally appeared in 1840, Mill’s anticipations were more than met, and once more the correspondence is full of mutual esteem.¹⁹

When Mill republished this second review in his Dissertations and Discussions, he interpolated passages from his first review of Democracy in America²⁰ and added a section from his “Duveyrier’s Political Views of French Affairs,” which had appeared in the Edinburgh in 1846. While there are 101 substantive variants in the text between the versions of 1840 and 1859 (nine more appear in the version of 1867),²¹ few are of significance on their own. Apart from the kinds illustrated above in the discussion of “Civilization,” there are two types that deserve mention. In one type, of more interest to textual than other scholars, there is evidence of Mill’s preparatory editing: see 163^t-t and 164^w-w, where a correction and a tentative rewording are found in Mill’s own copy (Somerville College, Oxford) of the 1840 article. The other type will prove of interest to those concerned with nuances and shading in Mill’s political thought; they are not trivial in cumulative effect, especially when seen in conjunction with the changes that Mill made in reproducing Reeve’s translation of Tocqueville (see 162^q and the collation of the translation in the Bibliographic Appendix). Some of these are merely changes in initial capitalization, but (and the same is true in On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government) the hints they give, in sum, justify their indication in this volume as substantive variants: see, for example, 170^c-c to ^f-f, where the words involved are “democracy,” “democratic,” “society,” and “state.”

The following decade, marked by the publication of Mill’s first books—the System of Logic (1843), Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844), and the Principles of Political Economy (1848)—as well as the series of essays on the French historians and many newspaper articles, saw no separate major articles by Mill on political and social theory, though those writings contain much material relevant to these areas. And in the 1850s, the decade of his marriage, he published very little of any kind, being occupied, with Harriet’s collaboration, in the composition of many of his later works.

By the 50s, however, Mill was very widely known as a philosopher with practical interests,²² and so his approbation was solicited by Trevelyan for the proposed reform of entrance to the civil service. Mill, who was enthusiastic about the similar reform of 1853 in the Indian civil service, had already praised the proposal in a letter to his wife, noting that the “grand complaint” about it was that it would “bring low people into the offices! as, of course, gentlemen’s sons cannot be expected to be as clever as low people” (LL, CW, XIV, 147, 175 [2/2/54, 3/3/54]). He was therefore pleased by Trevelyan’s request of 8 March, 1854, to comment on the plan, and in response hailed it as “one of the greatest improvements in public affairs ever proposed by a government. If the examination be so contrived as to be a real test of mental superiority, it is difficult to set limits to the effect which will be produced in raising the character not only of the public service but of Society itself.” And he offered to write further in support at a later time (ibid., 178-9). Gratified at the response by Trevelyan and in the House of Commons and the press to the announcement of his approval (ibid., 184, 187-8), he sent the paper here printed as a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and subsequently yielded, with “great regret,” to Trevelyan’s request for the softening of the wording of a sentence concerning religious tests.²³

Among the works that Mill wrote in the 1850s,²⁴ with Harriet’s aid, is the best known of all his writings, On Liberty. In the Autobiography (144) he says: “I had first planned and written it as a short essay, in 1854. It was in mounting the steps of the Capitol, in January 1855, that the thought first arose of converting it into a volume.” The contemporary evidence, unfortunately, does not quite bear out this retrospective account. Mill, travelling in southern Europe for his health from December 1854 till June 1855, wrote almost daily to Harriet about his thoughts and experiences, and it is clear that the idea struck him some days before he actually visited the Capitol. He may, however, be forgiven the attractive, if mistaken, collation of events. “On my way here [from Viterbo to Rome],” he comments to her on 15 January, 1855, “cogitating” on the effect of the Italian sights in taking off “my nascent velleity of writing,”

It is very unlikely that Harriet sent the earlier manuscript to him, but she did approve his turning to the subject, which he said he would “think seriously about,”²⁶ and, heartened by the effect he believed his evidence on limited liability in partnerships before a Parliamentary committee was having, he wrote again to her on the subject:

The note struck here, of approaching death, is characteristic of his correspondence with his wife in these years, and explains much of their attitude towards their self-imposed task of reform through writing.²⁷ The revised plan for a separate volume on liberty did not fit into their earlier scheme, which was for a volume of republished essays and another posthumous volume (or volumes) of new essays, the latter including the previously composed and briefer discussion of liberty and the “Life” (that is, what became the Autobiography).²⁸ The strategy of publication concerned them; Mill, considering again the collection of republished essays that they had thought of as early as 1839,²⁹ wrote to his wife: “Above all, it is not at all desirable to come before the public with two books nearly together, so if not done now it cannot be done till some time after the volume on Liberty—but by that time. I hope there will be a volume ready of much better Essays, or something as good. . . .”³⁰

The period after his return to England in mid-1855 until Harriet’s death in late 1858 is very thin in evidence about writing, and he published very little. His responsibilities at the India House increased in 1856 when he became head of the Examiner’s Office, and his intense involvement in the East India Company’s resistance to the government’s assumption of full control included the drafting of their petition and the writing of several pamphlets in which, as Bain says, “he brought to bear all his resources in the theory and practice of politics.”³¹ Nevertheless, it is certain that he wrote and rewrote On Liberty during these years, as well as preparing new editions of his Logic and Principles. The revision of the latter for its 5th edition (1857) gives us the best evidence we have that he had worked on the Liberty early in this period, for he writes to Parker on 16 December, 1856: “I am engaged about a new book (in one smaller volume [than the Principles]) which I think I could finish in time for publication in May, and I am not so certain of being able to do so if I put it aside to revise the Pol. Economy.”³² He did not, however, finish it then, for he wrote to Theodor Gomperz on 5 October, 1857, almost a year later, saying: “I have nearly finished an Essay on ‘Liberty’ which I hope to publish next winter.” And—surely most authors will sympathize—more than another year went by before he could write to Gomperz, on 4 December, 1858, to say: “My small volume on Liberty will be published early this winter” (LL, CW, XV, 539, 581). The arrangement had just been made with Parker, to whom Mill had offered the book on 30 November, saying: “You can have my little book ‘On Liberty’ for publication this season. The manuscript is ready; but you will probably desire to look through it, or to have it looked through by some one in whom you confide, as there are some things in it which may give offence to prejudices.”³³

The offer was not prompted, however, by a feeling that the manuscript was finally in its best form; rather, the death of Harriet, on 3 November, 1858, drove Mill to consider it almost as a memorial to her that should never be altered by revision. As he says in the Autobiography (144):

His full account of the work, a few pages later in the Autobiography (149-52), should be consulted, not only as giving his testimony to his wife’s importance on this aspect of his thought, but also as revealing his assessment of its value in the present and the future. He also comments on the question of the originality of On Liberty,³⁴ and concludes the account by returning to the circumstances of its publication. “After my irreparable loss one of my earliest cares was to print and publish the treatise, so much of which was the work of her whom I had lost, and consecrate it to her memory. I have made no alteration or addition to it, nor shall I ever. Though it wants the last touch of her hand, no substitute for that touch shall ever be attempted by mine.”³⁵

This promise has been taken at face value, but, as is the case in all of Mill’s major works, there was some revision, though in this instance very slight, and not of much consequence. On Liberty went through four Library Editions, two in 1859, a third in 1864, and a fourth in 1869, as well as a People’s Edition in 1865 (see n37 below). Only three variants were introduced in the 2nd edition;³⁶ twenty-eight changes, however, were made for the 3rd edition. Except for the transposition of two words (252^e-e), none of these involves more than one word, and many are simply initial capitalization (e.g., of “State” four times on 303-4). One may mention that the mistake in the title of Comte’s Système de politique positive (identified as his Traité in the 1st edition) was corrected by Mill (227^c-c). The most important revisions are those such as 242^c-c, where “genuine principles” was changed to “general principles” (and here perhaps a printer’s error was involved). In the 4th edition only two minor changes were made, the movement of quotation marks at 234^b-b, and the substitution of “When” for “Where” at 243^d-d. In short, Mill’s statement is not strictly accurate, for there are substantive changes, but On Liberty is, by a significant margin, the least revised of his works, and his homage to Harriet is not damaged by the textual evidence.

In spite of its popularity and controversiality, and Mill’s increased reputation in the 1860s, On Liberty, as mentioned above, after the issuance of a 2nd edition in the year of first publication, went through only two further Library Editions (both now rare), in 1864 and 1869. The explanation is that Mill agreed to the publishing in 1865 of a cheap People’s Edition of On Liberty (and of his Principles and Considerations on Representative Government)³⁷ by Longmans (who had taken over Parker’s business). Thousands of these inexpensive copies of On Liberty were sold in the next few years, at a considerable pecuniary sacrifice resulting from both the low price and the reduced sales of the Library Edition;³⁸ the accessibility of his thoughts to a broad and less affluent public clearly more than compensated him for the sacrifice.

Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, the next item in this volume, had, like On Liberty, lain fallow for some years before it appeared in February, 1859, but, it being a more occasional piece, the timing of its publication, as of its composition, was determined by political events. In the Prefatory Note (see 313^a below) he says:

As the pamphlet was completed in 1858, the “five years” takes one back to 1853, and a letter to Harriet of 9 January, 1854, confirms that it was drafted by then. There Mill refers to an article by W. R. Greg in the October, 1853, number of the Edinburgh, in which he notes an extraordinary parallel to the ideas on the ballot expressed in their “unpublished pamphlet” (LL, CW, XIV, 126). The next reference in the correspondence, on 24 June, 1854, is to “the political pamphlet that was to have been” (ibid., 218, to Harriet); the appropriate occasion had by then gone by, with the withdrawal of the Bill put forward by Russell during the Aberdeen administration, and another did not arise until Derby’s proposal of 1859, the expectation of which aroused considerable discussion. So, even at the height of his grief at Harriet’s death, and while On Liberty was going through the press, he was able to respond to a suggestion from Chadwick that he contribute to the debate, referring to the pamphlet “written several years ago” and now adapted “to the present time” (ibid., XV, 584). The necessary adaptation, the addition of a suggested plurality of votes for some electors based on “proved superiority of education,”³⁹ is mentioned in Mill’s account in the Autobiography (152-3), where he also dwells on the other two features of the pamphlet that from a Radical point of view would be viewed as “heresies”⁴⁰ —the rejection of the secret ballot, and support for minority representation.

Unlike plural voting, the argument against the ballot not only had his wife’s approval but had originated with her. One piece of inferential evidence, a revision of the text of the Logic,⁴¹ suggests that the change of opinion (in which, as he says, Harriet preceded him), came as early as 1851. That she was more eager than he to make known their abandonment of this part of the Radical credo appears in his letters to her in June, 1854; indeed. one can easily sense his prudent reserve about offending allies and giving comfort to enemies.⁴²

Concerning minority representation it is worth noting that, while he approved of Garth Marshall’s proposal for cumulative votes when Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform was published (as he had in 1853 when the pamphlet was drafted), it very quickly lost in importance for him when Thomas Hare’s scheme for Personal Representation came to his attention. In his account in the Autobiography (153-5) he indicates that had he known of it earlier, he certainly would have included Hare’s proposal in Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, and mentions his almost immediately subsequent treatment of it in “Recent Writers on Reform” (the next essay in this volume). Actually this account disguises one further step in his propagandism for Hare’s scheme. By 3 March, 1859, just after the first publication of Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, Mill had read Hare’s Treatise, and must soon have written his review of it. Austin’s Plea. and Lorimer’s PoliticalProgress, for by 29 March he was able to tell Hare that it would appear in Fraser’s Magazine, as it did in April.⁴³ But later in 1859, when a second edition of Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform was called for, he appended to it a long section from “Recent Writers on Reform” dealing with Hare’s plan.⁴⁴ When the two essays appeared in the third volume of Dissertations and Discussions (1867)—the form in which Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform is usually read—there was, of course, no need to append the section, since it was included in “Recent Writers on Reform.”⁴⁵

All of the matters discussed in Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform and “Recent Writers on Reform” are treated at greater length in Mill’s main treatise devoted to political theory, Considerations on Representative Government,⁴⁶ the next item in this volume, which was written in the following year, 1860. Mill wrote to Henry Fawcett on 24 December of that year that he had completed two works, “one of them a considerable volume” (the other was Utilitarianism, which appeared in serial form in Fraser’s late in 1861), and made “good progress with a third” (the Subjection).⁴⁷ Little is known of the details of composition, though it would appear from letters to Charles Dupont-White that much of the work was completed by April of 1860, and it was in the press in early March of 1861.⁴⁸ The first edition was soon exhausted, and Mill revised the work in early summer by, as usual, “des changemens purement verbaux,” and adding a note to Chapter xiv and several pages in defence of Hare’s scheme to Chapter vii.⁴⁹ A third edition being called for three years later, Mill finished the revision by 6 November, 1864,⁵⁰ and the edition appeared in February, 1865.

At the end of the Preface, Mill introduced in the 2nd edition a comment (see 373^a) that, apart from the pages added to defend Hare’s scheme (462^r-r465), and a short note (528n), the only changes introduced were “purely verbal,” (Cf. his comments to correspondents cited above.) In fact, he made 105 substantive changes (including another added footnote), of which about one-half involve at least a minor qualification. There is no prefatory indication in the 3rd edition of the further eighty-eight substantive variants (including four added footnotes) there introduced. (There are in addition seventeen variants in the self-quotations from Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform and “Recent Writers on Reform,” some of them more important than might be expected.) Only a few of these may here be mentioned, though many are of more than passing interest, especially because popular reprints are often based on the 1st edition. Those mentioned in the Preface to the 2nd edition should of course be studied (that at 528n contains a further correction of fact in the 3rd edition), as should those mentioned in letters by Mill (465n, on Personal Representation, and 534-5^b-b, on the democratic institutions of the New England States),⁵¹ and that in the closing paragraph of Chapter ix, on indirect election (486-7^f-f). The qualifications for senatorial office are interestingly modified, in the second edition at 517^i-i, and (of special note for academics) in the third at 517^k-k. There are quite a few variants reflecting changed circumstances in other countries—for example, the emancipation of the serfs in Russia (382^h), the revolution in Greece (415n), and the Civil War in the United States (553^a-a to ^c-c, 557^g-g to ^i-i. A kind of minor change, noted above in other contexts as having significance in cumulative effect, which might escape notice, is illustrated at 403^c-c, where in 1865 “a people” was changed to “the people.” And finally, passing by more important matters that the attentive reader will note, two oddities may be mentioned: at 473^g-g, the change in the 2nd edition from “the” to “a” somewhat disguises a probable allusion to Swift; and at 497^u-u, the change in the 3rd edition from “euphonious” to “euphemistic” calls attention to what would appear to be an unusual lapse on Mill’s part rather than a printer’s error.

Among the People’s Editions of Mill’s works, that of Representative Government is unique in having some claim to textual authority, in that the variants, substantive and accidental, suggest that it was prepared from the text of the final Library Edition in Mill’s lifetime (both were published in 1865).⁵² The number of typographical errors in the People’s Edition, however, and the problems of deciding among the accidentals (which are few and trivial), make it unwise to depart from our policy of using the final Library Editions as copy-text; the substantive variants between the People’s and Library Editions are given in Appendix E.

It should be mentioned that more editions of Mill’s works appeared in 1865 than in any other year: in addition to the two editions of Representative Government, the fifth editions of both the Logic and the Principles, the People’s Editions of On Liberty and the Principles, the periodical and first book editions of Auguste Comte and Positivism, and the first and second editions of the Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy. The sale of all these, and his public reputation, were enhanced by his unusual and successful candidacy for Westminster in this same year.

The final item in this volume, “Centralisation,” which appeared in the Edinburgh Review for April, 1862, explores, through its review of works by Dupont-White and Odilon Barrot, a theme long on Mill’s mind, one not examined as thoroughly as might be expected in Representative Government, which he had presumably just completed before reading Dupont-White’s Centralisation.⁵³ The article itself is not referred to in the Autobiography (few of Mill’s late articles are), but the importance of the theme is developed at length in his homage to Tocqueville (115-16), which concludes with a reference to his “serious study” of the problems of centralization. This study included the reading of Dupont-White’s L’Individu et l’Etat in 1858, when the two began a fairly extensive correspondence that shows Mill steering his course between extremes, but certainly closer to his own shore than Dupont-White’s. Their relations were cemented by the latter’s translations of On Liberty (1860) and Representative Government (1862), and Mill was attracted towards giving an account of the Frenchman’s ideas after reading his Centralisation, a continuation of L’Individu et l’Etat.⁵⁴ He therefore wrote, on 1 May, 1861, to Henry Reeve, editor of the Edinburgh, proposing a review to be completed during the summer or autumn, and including mention of Odilon Barrot’s book.⁵⁵ Although Reeve was himself writing on centralization (in education) for the July, 1861, number of the Edinburgh, Mill’s suggestion was taken up. Having written the review after his return from Avignon in June, he reported on 4 December to Dupont-White that he had sent the review to Reeve; although Mill thought it might be too long, it was accepted, and appeared in April, 1862.⁵⁶

This article would be better known had Mill chosen to republish it in the third volume of Dissertations and Discussions (1867). In fact, he would seem to have planned to include it, for his library in Somerville College includes, among articles cut from reviews, “Centralisation,” prepared like the others for republication.⁵⁷ There is no evident reason for his excluding it, especially as Volume III (which includes essays up to 1866), is slimmer than the first two volumes.

This essay of 1862, though it is the latest in this volume, does not, of course, mark the end of Mill’s interest in political and social questions. But henceforth his published opinions were more closely attached to particular events, or have their main focus elsewhere, especially during his parliamentary career from 1865 to 1868.

TEXTUAL PRINCIPLES AND METHODS

as throughout this edition, the copy-text for each item is that of the final version supervised by Mill.⁵⁸ There are, it is to be regretted, no extant manuscripts for any of the essays here included. Details concerning revisions are given in the headnotes to each item and in the discussion above.

Method of indicating variants. All the substantive variants are governed by the principles enunciated below; “substantive” here means all changes of text except spelling, hyphenation, punctuation, demonstrable typographical errors, and such printing-house concerns as type size, etc. There being few cases of changed initial capitalization, and some of them having at least suggestive significance, these are given as substantives. All substantive variants are indicated, except the substitution of “on” for “upon” (twenty-one instances). The variants are of three kinds: addition of a word or words, substitution of a word or words, deletion of a word or words. The following illustrative examples are drawn, except as indicated, from “De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [II].”

Addition of a word or words: see 157^b-b. In the text, the passage “will, in general, longest hesitate” appears as “will^b, in general,^b longest hesitate”; the variant note reads “^b-b+67”. Here the plus sign indicates the edition of this particular text in which the addition appears. The editions are always indicated by the last two numbers of the year of publication: here 67 = 1867 (the 2nd edition of Volumes I and II of Dissertations and Discussions). Information explaining the use of these abbreviations is given in each headnote, as required. Any added editorial comment is enclosed in square brackets and italicized.

Placing this example in context, the interpretation is that when first published (1840) the reading was “will longest hesitate”; this reading was retained in 1859 (the 1st edition of Volumes I and II of Dissertations and Discussions); but in 1867 the reading became “will, in general, longest hesitate”.

Substitution of a word or words: see 157^c-c. In the text the passage “he has of necessity left much undone, and” appears as “he has ^cof necessity left much undone,^c and”; the variant note reads “^c-c40 left much undone, as who could possibly avoid?” Here the words following the edition indicator are those for which “of necessity left much undone” were substituted; applying the same rules and putting the variant in context, the interpretation is that when first published (1840) the reading was “he has left much undone, as who could possibly avoid? and”; in 1859 this was altered to “he has of necessity left much undone, and”; and the reading of 1859 (as is clear in the text) was retained in 1867.

In this volume there are very few examples of passages that were altered more than once: an illustrative instance is found in Considerations on Representative Government at 456^k-k. The text reads “^kor who could not succeed in carrying the local candidate they preferred, would have the power to^k fill up”; the variant note reads “^k-k61¹ would] 61² would have the power to”. Here the different readings, in chronological order, are separated by a square bracket. The interpretation is that the reading in the 1st edition (1861), “would fill up”, was altered in the 2nd edition (also 1861) to “would have the power to fill up”, and in the 3rd edition (1865, the copytext) to “or who could not succeed in carrying the local candidate they preferred, would have the power to fill up”.

Deletion of a word or words: see 157^e and 23^g-g. The first of these is typical, representing the most convenient way of indicating deletions in a later edition. In the text at 157^e a single superscript^e appears centred between “second” and “is”; the variant note reads “^e40 (published only this year)”. Here the words following the edition indicator are the ones deleted, applying the same rules and putting the variant in context, the interpretation is that when first published (1840) the reading was “second (published only this year) is”; in 1859 the parenthesis was deleted, and the reading of 1859 (as is clear in the text) was retained in 1867.

The second example (23^g-g) illustrates the method used in the volume to cover more conveniently deletions when portions of the copy-text were later reprinted, as in the case of “Rationale of Representation,” part of which was republished in the “Appendix” to Dissertations and Discussions, Volume I. (That is, there is here, exceptionally, a later version of part of the copy-text, whereas normally the copy-text is the latest version.) In the text the words “a most powerfully” appear as “a ^gmost^g powerfully”, the variant note reads “^g-g—67.” The minus sign indicates that in the edition signified the word enclosed was deleted; putting the example in context the interpretation is that when first published (1835) the reading was (as is clear in the text) “a most powerfully”; this reading was retained in 1859, but in 1867 it was altered to “a powerfully”.

Dates of footnotes: see 164n. Here the practice is to place immediately after the footnote indicator, in square brackets, the figures indicating the edition in which Mill’s footnote first appeared. In the example cited, “[59]” signifies that the note was added in 1859 (and retained in 1867). If no such indication appears, the note is in all versions.

Punctuation and spelling. In general, changes between versions in punctuation and spelling are ignored. Those changes that occur as part of a substantive variant are included in that variant, and the superscript letters in the text are placed exactly with reference to punctuation. Changes between italic and roman type are treated as substantive variants and are therefore shown, except in foreign phrases and titles of works.

Other textual liberties. Some of the titles have been modified or added, as explained above; the full titles in their various forms will be found in the headnotes. The dates added to the titles are those of first publication. When footnotes to the titles gave bibliographic information, these have been deleted, and the information given in the headnotes. In two places a line space has been inserted between paragraphs where there is a page break in the copy-text; in both cases the space is justified by other editions and parallel cases.⁵⁹ On 200, where Mill added part of another essay, a series of asterisks replaces a rule; square brackets are deleted; and the explanatory paragraph is raised to normal type size. (In the same essay, at 176.9, “first part” is altered to “First Part” to conform to earlier and adjacent usage.)

Typographical errors have been silently corrected in the text; the note below lists them.⁶⁰ In the headnotes the quotations from Mill’s bibliography, the manuscript of which is a scribal copy, are also silently corrected; again, the note below lists them.⁶¹ While the punctuation and spelling of each item are retained, the style has been made uniform: for example, periods are deleted after references to monarchs (e.g., “Louis XIV.,”), dashes are deleted when combined with other punctuation before a quotation or reference, and italic punctuation after italic passages has been made roman. Indications of ellipsis have been normalized to three dots plus, when necessary, terminal punctuation. The positioning of footnote indicators has been normalized so that they always appear after adjacent punctuation marks; in some cases references have been moved from the beginning to the end of quotations for consistency.

Also, in accordance with modern practice, all long quotations have been reduced in type size and the quotation marks removed. In consequence, it has occasionally been necessary to add square brackets around Mill’s words in quotations; there is little opportunity for confusion, as there are no editorial insertions except page references. Double quotation marks replace single, and titles of works originally published separately are given in italics. Mill’s references to sources, and additional editorial references (in square brackets), have been normalized. When necessary his references have been silently corrected; a list of the corrections and alterations is given in the note below.⁶²

Appendices. Two items have been taken out of the normal chronological order and appended, but otherwise treated uniformly with the main text: Appendix A, the review of Taylor’s Statesman, is placed here because it was jointly authored by George Grote and Mill and the precise contribution of each is not known; Appendix B, the “Appendix” to Volume I of Dissertations and Discussions, is here relegated because it combines portions of “Rationale of Representation” and “De Tocqueville on Democracy in America[I],” both of which are fully reprinted in the text.

Appendix C consists of an extract from a letter from Benjamin Jowett on the proposed competitive examinations for the Civil Service that contains opinions criticized by Mill in his submission on the same topic, and a footnote editorially appended to Mill’s own submission, containing Jowett’s reply to Mill’s criticism. These materials are included because they give context to Mill’s remarks, and because the footnote appears in the pamphlet version of Mill’s submission.

Appendices D and E, for reasons given above, list, respectively, the substantive variants between the People’s Editions of On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government and the last Library Editions of those works in Mill’s lifetime.

Appendix F, the Bibliographic Appendix, provides a guide to Mill’s references and quotations, with notes concerning the separate entries, and a list of substantive variants between his quotations and their sources. The items in this volume contain references to over 160 publications (excluding Statutes and Parliamentary Papers, and unidentified anonymous quotations, but including classical tags, and references that occur in quotations from others). Mill quotes from over one-half of these, including the sixteen works he reviews. He quotes from nine of his own writings, and refers to six more. (There are also quotations from three of his father’s writings, and references to three others.) The most extensive quotation is, as one would expect, from reviewed works; a large number of the shorter quotations (some of which are indirect) are undoubtedly taken from memory, with no explicit references being given, and the identification of some of these is inescapably inferential. It will be noted that Mill habitually translates from the French. Except for the standard classical authors, few important references are made to standard works in the history of political thought. In this context, one may refer (without predicting the effect of the reference) to Mill’s praise of Lewis (5n below) for having “spared himself the ostentatious candour of mentioning the authors to whom he was indebted, they being mostly writers of established reputation” whose “truths . . . are the common property of mankind”; the contrary practice implies “either that the author cares, and expects the reader to care, more about the ownership of an idea than about its value; or else that he designs to pass himself off as the first promulgator of every thought which he does not expressly assign to the true discoverer.” Whatever view one may take of Mill’s attitude towards real property, he evidently was not, in 1832 an advocate of pedant proprietorship.

Because Appendix F serves as an index to persons, writings, and statutes, references to them do not appear in the Index proper, which has been prepared by Dr. Bruce Kinzer.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

to the members of the Editorial Committee, and especially Alexander Brady and J. B. Conacher, to the editorial and printing staff of the University of Toronto Press, and especially the copy-editor. Rosemary Shipton, and to my research assistant, Judith Le Goff. my most sincere appreciation and thanks. I am deeply indebted to the staffs of various libraries, including the British Library, the University of Toronto Library, the Victoria University Library, the University of London Library, the British Library of Political and Economic Science, the London Library, and (a special thanks for prompt and ever-courteous aid) the library of Somerville College, Oxford. Among others who have helped in various ways, and to whom this mention is insufficient reward, are C. J. Allen, John Anton, Joan Bigwood, Frank Collins, Roland Hall, William J. Hyde, Patricia Kennedy, L. M. Kenny, Michael Laine, Jane Millgate, Ann Christine, John, and William Robson, Flora Roy, James P. Scanlan, Francis Sparshott, James Steintrager, and Kenneth Thompson. And, last and foremost, to my wife who, society and politics notwithstanding, has aided me cheerfully and expertly, my reiterated but still heartfelt gratitude.

[1 ]Fuller comment on the principles of inclusion and exclusion, and of editing procedures in these volumes, will be found in the Textual Introduction to Collected Works (henceforth indicated as CW), IV (Essays on Economics and Society), xliii ff. and in my “Principles and Methods in the Collected Edition of John Stuart Mill,” in John M. Robson, ed., Editing Nineteenth-Century Texts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), 96-122.

[2 ]Mill discusses the question briefly in the “Preface” to Dissertations and Discussions, reprinted in CW, X, 493-4, there are no specific references therein to the essays here reprinted.

[3 ]Specific details about the provenance and publishing history of the essays are given in individual headnotes to each. When Mill entitled an article, his title is of course used, but when, as is common in the Reviews of the period, the essays were not headed by titles, the running titles are used; to distinguish between the two reviews of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, “[I]” and “[II]” have been added to their titles, and a descriptive title has been added to Mill’s letter on civil service examinations.

[4 ]The relation is demonstrated in his quoting from both reviews of Lewis in his System of Logic (see CW, VII, 153n-154n VIII, 818).

[5 ]He merely mentions “several papers he contributed to Tait’s in 1832 (actually two appeared in 1832, and two in 1833). See Autobiography ed. Jack Stillinger (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1969), 109 (Subsequent references to the Autobiography are to this edition, and are given, when practicable, in the text).

[6 ]Later Letters, ed. Francis E. Mineka and Dwight N. Lindley CW, XVII (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), 1957. Subsequent references to the four volumes of Later Letters (including some earlier letters, such as this one discovered after the appearance of the earlier volumes), as well as to the two volumes of Earlier Letters (ed. Mineka [Toronto University of Toronto Press, 1963]), are given (when practicable, in the text) simply by LL (for Earlier Letters) or LL (for Later Letters) and CW, with the volume and page number, and, where necessary, the date in short form (23/5/32 means 23 May, 1832).

[7 ]The parts of “Rationale of Representation” and “De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [I]” that were republished as “Appendix” in the first volume of Dissertations and Discussions have been cited frequently by commentators on Mill’s political views, especially on his alleged elitism. It will be noted that Mill made some changes in their texts in the reprinted versions (ten in the first essay, twenty in the second); he also altered slightly (three changes) the passage from “Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy” that he quotes in “Rationale of Representation” and the passages (eight changes) from “De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [I]” that he incorporated in “De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [II]” for the version in Dissertations and Discussions (the passages do not appear in the periodical version). While most of these variants are of a minor kind, some of them, especially in the context of other changes made for Dissertations and Discussions, are not without interest, see, e.g., 23e-e, 72h-h,i-i,k-k.

[8 ]CW, X, 493.

[9 ]The others are briefly commented on in the Textual Introduction to CW, IV, xliv-xlv.

[10 ]John Stuart Mill (London: Longmans, 1882). 46-7. Mill’s next review of Bailey, on a non-political subject, Berkeley’s theory of vision, was unfavourable, see CW, XI.

[11 ]EL, CW, XII, 249.

[12 ]See ibid., 259, 261, 263. That Mill had read the book before the July number appeared is shown by the reference at 18n below. His review was “nearly finished” in September (ibid., 272).

[13 ]See especially ibid., 265, 272, 283-4, 287-8, 300: Tocqueville, Correspondance anglaise, Vol. VI of Œuvres, Papiers et Correspondances, ed J.-P. Mayer (12 vols Paris: Gallimard, 1951-70), 302-4: and also, for James Mill’s reaction, Autobiography, 121. A later judgment by Mill of Tocqueville’s too harsh view of democracy is seen in LL, CW, XVI, 1055 (24/5/65).

[14 ]John Stuart Mill, 48.

[15 ]In the Early Draft (ed. Jack Stillinger [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961]), 159, the words “and moral” do not appear.

[16 ]EL, CW, XII, 360 (24/11/37). “On the Definition of Political Economy” was also republished, in his Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844).

[17 ]Bam remarks (John Stuart Mill, 55), with some justification, if one is thinking of the period up to Harriet’s death at the end of 1858, that Mill’s “Reorganization of the Reform Party,” which appeared in the London and Westminster for April, 1839, was his farewell to political agitation. It was not, of course, a farewell to political thought, even during those years.

[18 ]See, for example, the satiric treatment in the essays by the two Mills in the first and second numbers of the Westminster (1824).

[19 ]EL, CW, XIII, 433-4 (the letter continues with the passage quoted above, concerning Mill’s switch of allegiance to the Edinburgh), 457-8, and Tocqueville. Œuvres VI, 330.

[20 ]Undoubtedly Mill would agree with Bain’s comment (John Stuart Mill, 47) that the first “may be considered as superseded” by the second, but the articles are quite different in approach, and it should be noted that not only the interpolated passages but also the latter half of the “Appendix” to Vol. I of Dissertations and Discussions gave further currency to parts of the first review (see Appendix B, 650-3 below).

[21 ]There are also six variants (excluding those simply relating to the convenience of quotation) from the original text of the passage quoted from his first review of Tocqueville, and five from that of the passage quoted from his review of Duveyrier.

[22 ]See, e.g., the five extracts of his evidence before Parliamentary committees, dating from this period, that are printed in Vol. V of the Collected Works.

[23 ]LL, CW, XIV, 184, 187-8, 205-7. The sentence referred to is almost certainly that on 209-10 where Mill attacks Jowett’s suggestions, what the earlier version was is not known, as Trevelyan marked it on a proof copy that has not been found.

Mill’s continued enthusiasm for such measures may be seen in a letter of 1869 recommending open competition for offices in the United States (ibid., XVII, 1572).

[24 ]For comments on the others, see the Textual Introduction, CW, X, cxxii-cxxix.

[25 ]LL, CW, XIV, 294. Cf. his comment to her four days later: “With returning health & the pleasure of this place [Rome] I find my activity of mind greater than it has been since I set out & I think I shall be able & disposed to write a very good volume on Liberty, if we decide that that is to be the subject” (ibid., 300). Apparently he still had not spent time on the Capitol, which he mentions in a letter of 24 Jan., five further days later (ibid., 307).

[26 ]Ibid., 320 (9/2/55), from Naples.

[27 ]See his diary note for 19 Jan., 1854: “I feel bitterly how I have procrastinated in the sacred duty of fixing in writing, so that it may not die with me, everything that I have in my mind which is capable of assisting the destruction of error and prejudice and the growth of just feelings and true opinions” (Hugh S. R. Elliot, ed., The Letters of John Stuart Mill [London: Longmans, Green, 1910], II, 361).

[28 ]See LL, CW, XIV, 142 (29/1/54), to Harriet.

[29 ]See EL, CW, XIII, 411 (4/11/39), to John Sterling. The revived notion may well partly derive from Mill’s reading of Macaulay’s Essays at this time (see ibid., XIV, 332 [17/2/55], to Harriet), as the original idea may have come from the publication of Carlyle’s.

[30 ]LL, CW, XIV, 348 (25/2/55), from Palermo. In the event, other factors outweighed this consideration, and Mill offered Parker On Liberty and Dissertations and Discussions at the same time, though suggesting (as actually happened. On Liberty appearing in February, and Dissertations and Discussions in April, 1859) that the latter be published “somewhat later in the season” (ibid., XV, 579 [30/11/58]).

[31 ]John Stuart Mill, 95.

[32 ]LL, CW, XV, 519. Actually the year does not appear on this letter, but its being dated from India House rules out any later edition of the Principles, and the other information rules out earlier ones.

Internal evidence shows that at least part of the text of Chap. iv was composed after the beginning of October, 1856 (see 287n), and one footnote was added as late as 1858, presumably after the text had taken substantially its final form (see 228n), it might be inferred that those at 231n, and 240n (after mid-1857) were added at the same time.

[33 ]Ibid., 578-9. The letter, which includes also the offer of Dissertations and Discussions (with a list of contents), proposes that the payment for On Liberty be on the same terms as for the Principles, that is, “one edition at half profit,” with renegotiation for later editions. When a second edition was called for (it appeared in August, 1859), he wrote to Parker to say that he thought he could “fairly ask for £200 for the edition,” if 2000 copies were printed (ibid., 630).

[34 ]He omits what he might well have mentioned, the place the work has in the Philosophic Radical tradition (cf. Bain, John Stuart Mill, 104), and his own previous arguments for freedom of thought and action. (For a useful gathering of early texts, see Bernard Wishy, ed., Prefaces to Liberty Selected Writings of John Stuart Mill [Boston: Beacon Press, 1959].)

[35 ]Autobiography, 152 Cf. the dedication to Harriet, 216 below, and his response to Frederick Furnivall’s approbation of the work and especially of its dedication which, Mill says, “caused me a still deeper feeling, I did not for a moment think of doing any good by those few words of preface, but only of expressing some insignificant fraction of what I feel to the noblest and wisest being I have known. But I could do nothing more useful with the rest of my life than devote it to making the world know and understand what she was, if it were possible to do it.” (LL, CW, XV, 615 [4/4/59].)

An early indication of his resolution not to revise On Liberty is shown in his letter to Parker concerning the second edition: “I do not propose to make any additions or alterations” (ibid., 630 [18/7/59]).

[36 ]It would appear that most pages of the 2nd edition were reprinted from a second state of the first edition. All the accidentals (six, three of which are unique to the 2nd edition) as well as the three substantives (which are continued in the 3rd and 4th editions) occur in Chapter v, between pp. 177 and 192 of the original (where probably the text was reset). That Mill did not pay much heed to the 2nd edition is indicated by his failure in it to correct the title of Comte’s work (227c-c), mentioned in the text immediately below.

[37 ]The fourth of his works to appear in a People’s Edition was the Logic, which was published posthumously in 1884 (see Collected Works, VII, lxxxvi). After the issuance of the People’s Editions, no further Library Editions of Representative Government were called for, and only one each of On Liberty (1869) and the Principles (1871), while there were two more of the Logic (1868 and 1872), which had already gone through six Library Editions (the first in 1843), compared to five of the Principles (the first in 1848), three of On Liberty (the first in 1859), and three of Representative Government (the first in 1861).

Our policy in this edition is to accept the final Library Edition in Mill’s lifetime as copy-text, and not to record in the usual fashion substantive variants occurring uniquely in the People’s Editions; however, in the case of On Liberty and Representative Government, the widespread use of the People’s Editions (and of reprints from them) suggested the propriety of listing the substantive variants, as is done in Appendices D. and E. Attention may be called to one of these in On Liberty, both because the passage in which it occurs is frequently quoted, and because it has more importance than might at first appear at 224.32 the People’s Edition reads “of a man” rather than “of man”. (Concerning Representative Government, see also lxxxvi-lxxxvii below.)

[38 ]See Autobiography, 165 For the financial arrangements, which were confused by an error in advertised price, see LL, CW, XV, 921, 964: XVI, 1035, 1040-1, 1044: XVII, 1815, 1819, 1820.

[39 ]Plural voting, about which he had not consulted Harriet (Autobiography, 153) was never as important to him as the other proposals in Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, though he continued to hold by it. See LL, CW, XV, 606 (17/3/59, to Bain) and ibid., 596 and 597 (2/3/59, to John E. Cairnes and to Holyoake); in the letter to Cairnes the question of double voting (election a deux degres) is examined as a substitute. Fuller discussion of all these matters is found in Considerations on Representative Government.

[40 ]See the letter to Bain cited in the previous note.

[41 ]See John M. Robson, “ ‘Joint Authorship’ Again: The Evidence in the Third Edition of Mill’s Logic.” Mill News Letter, VI (Spring, 1971), 18-19.

[42 ]See LL, CW, XIV, 218 (24/6/54) and 222 (30/6/54). Cf. ibid., XV, 559, 592, 601, 667, and also 619 (14/5/59), when, probably referring mainly to On Liberty and to “Enfranchisement of Women,” in Dissertations and Discussions, II, Mill may also have had in mind the rejection of the secret ballot, in writing to Harriet’s brother. Arthur Hardy: “I have been publishing some of her opinions. . . .”

[43 ]See LL, CW, XV, 598-9, 613.

[44 ]See ibid., 656 (21/12/59), to Charles Dupont-White, and 339k below.

[45 ]Like other essays reprinted in the third volume of Dissertations and Discussions, these two reveal very few substantive changes, there being eleven in Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform and thirteen (including those in self-quotations) in “Recent Writers on Reform.” Of the former, two merit mention here: 339k, where Mill introduced reference to Hare’s scheme for proportional representation in the second pamphlet edition (a passage excised from the reprint in Dissertations and Discussions, as mentioned above); and 332f-f, where (arguing against the secret ballot) in 1867 Mill identities as his father the “philosopher who did more than any other man of his generation towards making Ballot the creed of Parliamentary Reformers.” None of the variants in “Recent Writers on Reform” calls for special comment.

[46 ]In fact, he quotes from both essays in Chapter x. “Of the Mode of Voting,” which incorporates the discussion of the ballot in Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (see 491-5 below). His discussion of Considerations on Representative Government in the Autobiography (157-8) gives, like most of his comments on his writings, an overview, though many of the detailed questions not mentioned there are touched on in other sections of the Autobiography to which references have been given above.

[47 ]LL, CW, XV, 716, cf. Bain. John Stuart Mill, 116 Cf. also Autobiography, 157, where he refers to his work in 1860-61, and mentions The Subjection of Women (not published until 1869).

[48 ]Ibid., 690 (6/4/60) and 721 (4/3/61).

[49 ]Ibid., 730 (5/7/61), to Hare, and 737 (8/8/61), to Dupont-White, the latter indicating that the second edition was about to appear. For the major variants see 462i-i and 528n below.

[50 ]Ibid., 964, to William Longman.

[51 ]Ibid., 969 (1/12/64), to Hare, and XVI, 992 (9/2/65), to Joseph Henry Allen.

[52 ]It sold for 2s., though 2/6 was the price first agreed on. See ibid., 921 (24/2/64) 964 (6/11/64); XVI, 1035 (17/4/65) and 1040 (30/4/65). For a further issue, see XVII, 1819 (15/5/71).

[53 ]See ibid., XV, 715 (24/12/60), to Dupont-White.

[54 ]See ibid., and 721 (4/3/61).

[55 ]Ibid., 725-6, cf. his letter to Dupont-White on the same day, 724.

[56 ]See ibid., 729 (26/5/61), 753 (4/12/61), 761 (10/1/62), and 764 (12/1/62, to Grote).

[57 ]See Editor’s Note, 580 below.

[58 ]The argument for this practice is given in my “Principles and Methods in the Collected Edition of John Stuart Mill,” in John M. Robson, ed., Editing Nineteenth-Century Texts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), 96-122.

[59 ]See 243 and 358; for the first, cf. 252 and 257, for the second, 352.

[60 ]Typographical errors in earlier versions are ignored. The following are corrected (the erroneous reading is given first, followed by the corrected reading in square brackets):

4.36 King—[King.]

25.38 constitueney [constituency]

102.25 sym [sym-] [dropped character]

111.24 “[‘] [this edition restyles quotation marks]

141.3 distinterestedly [disinterestedly]

146.30 [line space omitted in 67: added as in 36.59]

155.11 channel [Channel] [as in 40,75]

156.26 M [M.]

161.42 Is it [It is] [as in 40.59]

196.16 country, [country.]

201.2 govern [govern-] [dropped character]

256.12 been [being]

269.13 individuasl [individuals]

302.34 generation [generation,] [as in 591,592]

320.3 parliament [Parliament] [as in same paragraph, and in 592]

387.23 permanence [Permanence] [as in 611,612]

393.18 it [it.]

402.42 racalcitrant [recalcitrant]

417.1 upo [upon]

419.22 mentioned [mentioned.]

432.14 acts: [acts;] [as in 611]

464.23 candidates [candidates.]

470.31 bu [but]

494.26 kind [kind.]

514.40-1 overagainst [over against] [as in People’s Edition]

549.11 non German [non-German] [as in 611,612]

576.31-2 equally and [equally unknown and] [as in 611,612]

635.n1 T. [J.] [correctly given in Source]

641.n1 ἤκιστα ἥκιστα

641.n3 ἀρχόντας ἄρχοντας

647.6 von [van]

[61 ]In a few cases my reading of the manuscript differs from that in the edition by Ney MacMinn, J. M. McCrimmon, and J. R. Hainds, Bibliography of the Published Writings of J. S. Mill (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1945), to which page references (as MacMinn) are given in the headnotes. The corrected scribal errors (the erroneous reading first, with the corrected one following in square brackets) are:

92.18 entituled [entitled]

92.18 America, [America,”]

118.5-6 entituled [entitled]

206.4-5 hereupon [thereupon]

206.5 1844-5 [1854-5]

214.4 past [post]

342.13 Austen [Austin]

372.4 Representable [Representative]

580.7 Bant’s [Barrot’s]

[62 ]Following the page and line notation, the first reference is to JSM’s identification, the corrected identification (that which appears in the present text) follows in square brackets. There is no indication of the places where a dash has been substituted for a comma to indicate adjacent pages, where “P.” or “Pp.” replaces “p.” or “pp.” (or the reverse), or where the volume number has been added to the reference. In “De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [I],” where appropriate, page references to the French original are added, and “Reeve” inserted before the references given by Mill

76.13 p. 58 [pp. 58-9]

76.n1 p. 313 [pp. 313-14]

102.34 p. 284, notes [pp. 284-6]

105.n11 p. 268, notes [pp. 268-9]

107.41-67 [47]

112.8-9 p. 252-263 [pp. 252-3, 261-3]

113.n5 p. 9 [pp. 9-10]

173.13-14 Ibid. [Reeve, Vol. II, pp. 118-19; Tocqueville, Vol. II, pp. 111-13]

261.n2 11-13 [11.13]

346.37 p. 13 [Pp. 13-14] [reference moved to end of quoted passage]

350.41 p. 23 [Pp. 23-5] [reference moved to end of quoted passage]

355.32 p. 17 [Pp. 17-18]

369.26 p. 126 [Pp. 126-7]

495.n1 32-36 [31-7]

496.n3 p. 39 [pp. 39-40]

497.n12-13 26 and 32 [32 and 26]

596.22 p. 268 [pp. 267-8]

597.3 297-9 [298-9]

598.36 p. 277 [pp. 277-8]

608.19 p. 586 [pp. 586-7]

610.17 p. xxi [pp. xxi-xxii]

611.8-127 [126]

612.18 P. xxix [Pp. xxix-xxx]

612.26 P. 361 [Pp. 360-1]

612.39-15 [15-16]

622.32 p. 263 [Pp. 263-5]

626.20 p. 13 [Pp. 13-16]

626.36 p. 162 [Pp. 162-3]

629.33 p. 156 [Pp. 156-9] [transferred from 628.43 for clarity]

635.33-4 p. 60 [Pp. 60-1]

636.23 p. 65 [Pp. 63-5]

641.11 p. 132 [Pp. 132-3]

642.6 p. 36 [Pp. 36-7]

643.38 p. 54 [Pp. 53-6]

644.14 p. 21 [Pp. 21-2]

644.32 p. 30 [Pp. 30-1]

645.21 p. 37 [Pp. 37-8]

645.37 p. 144 [Pp. 144-5]

646.11 p. 220 [Pp. 220-1]

646.37 p. 233 [Pp. 233-5]