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• Introduction
• Textual Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• Essays On Politics and Society
• Mignet’s French Revolution 1826
• Modern French Historical Works 1826
• Scott’s Life of Napoleon 1828
• Alison’s History of the French Revolution 1833
• The Monster Trial 1835
• Carlyle’s French Revolution 1837
• Armand Carrel 1837
• Michelet’s History of France 1844
• Guizot’s Essays and Lectures On History 1845
• Duveyrier’s Political Views of French Affairs 1846
• Vindication of the French Revolution of February 1848 1849
• Appendices
• Appendix A: Guizot’s Lectures On European Civilization (1836)
• Appendix B: French Texts of Material Quoted In Vindication of the French Revolution of February 1848 (1849)
• Appendix C: Textual Emendations
• Appendix D: Index of Persons and Works Cited, With Variants and Notes

Textual Introduction

JOHN M. ROBSON

though mill is properly celebrated as a political philosopher, logician, and economist, throughout his work one finds evidence of an intense interest in history. Indeed his first childhood writings, prompted by his father’s History of British India, which was composed at the table across which the child worked at his lessons, were histories of India, Rome, and Holland. He never wrote a history in his adult years, but rather occupied himself with the philosophy of history and with the implications of that philosophy for social theory and practical politics. While he took great interest in British and classical history (see especially Volumes VI and XI of the Collected Works), his principal concentration was on French history, particularly in its social and political manifestations. Rich evidence of his fascination with French affairs is to be found throughout his works, especially in his newspaper writings and letters, as well as in the details of his life, from his boyhood visit to Pompignan and Montpellier in 1820-21 to his death in Avignon in 1873.

French history had the immediacy of current politics, for he first read of the Revolution of 1789 in the midst of his apprenticeship in British radicalism, and dreamt of being a British Girondist.¹ Later, when he was seeking an independent role for himself as a radical journalist, the Revolution of 1830 gave him a model in the young republicans, especially Armand Carrel. During and after the struggle for the English Reform Act of 1832, Mill followed and wrote about French politics, always keeping an eye on parallels with and lessons for Britain. The Revolution of 1848 again found an advocate in him, his growing interest in socialism being so stimulated by the experiments during the short-lived republic that he modified crucial passages in his Principles of Political Economy for its second edition of 1849 and more thoroughly for the third edition of 1852. One could cite much more evidence of various kinds, but the essays gathered in this volume give proof enough of both his interest and his understanding; reference to other volumes in the edition will further confirm the assertions just made.

The eleven essays in the main text and a twelfth, which appears as Appendix A, were published between April 1826, just before Mill’s twentieth birthday, and April 1849, just before his forty-third. In provenance they are less diverse than those in other volumes of this edition, seven having appeared in the Westminster Review, two in the Monthly Repository, and three in the Edinburgh Review. Chronology provides apt groupings: (1) of those in the Westminster, three were published between 1826 and 1828, during its first period, before the Mills withdrew over disagreement with the editorial policy and practice of John Bowring; indeed the third of these, Mill’s review of Scott’s Life of Napoleon, was his last contribution until his own editorship. (2) The two in the Monthly Repository (1832 and 1835) were written during the hiatus between his periods of contribution to the Westminster. (3) The next three (1836-37) are again to be located in sets of the Westminster (one, Appendix A, during the brief life of the London Review, the other two in the London and Westminster). (4) When in 1840 he relinquished the London and Westminster, he immediately began writing for the Edinburgh, where his greatest essays (1844-46) were those on French history.² (5) Then, finally so far as this volume is concerned, his defence of the French Revolution of 1848 was assigned to the Westminster, in recognition of the essay’s radical compatibility with his old periodical ground.

THE EARLY WESTMINSTER ESSAYS

nothing is known about the composition of the first two essays, “Mignet’s French Revolution” and “Modern French Historical Works,” which appeared in successive issues of the Westminster (April and July 1826) during one of Mill’s most intensely active periods. He had probably just finished editing Jeremy Bentham’s Rationale of Judicial Evidence, which appeared in five volumes in 1827; he was contributing long essays both to the Westminster and to the Parliamentary History and Review; he was very active in the London Debating Society and in the early morning discussion group at George Grote’s house; and he was working his way upward in the India Office (his salary was raised to £100 per annum in May 1827 and then he leaped ahead in position and salary to £600 in 1828).³

The review of Mignet shows by direct statement and implication the young Mill’s awareness of the sources for French history; it also demonstrates his control of the language in that, though he cites the English translation of Mignet in the heading to the article, the quotations (which are extensive, occupying over fifty percent of the text) are not taken from that translation, but are rendered in his own words. (This practice of translating extensive passages came to characterize Mill’s reviews, in accordance with his purpose of making the historians known; it also made the reviews easier to write for one who translated with such facility.) It is also worth noting that he promises (on behalf of the Westminster) to go more generally into the question of the French Revolution in a later number; he kept this promise to some extent in his review of Scott two years later, but one can infer his desire, finally abandoned only when Carlyle took up the task, to write a history of that revolution.

Neither the review of Mignet nor “Modern French Historical Works,” the article that appeared in the next number of the Westminster, presents any special textual problem. The latter concentrates on an earlier period in European history, the age of chivalry, and Mill uses the opportunity to assert that the English have more need of “monitors than adulators,” because French literature (in which category he would, of course, include history) has surpassed English, especially in that the French write not merely to say something, but because they have something to say (17). He manages thus to combine the habitual Westminster line on history, politics, and literature with his own bias towards the French. Varied sources, English and French, illustrate Mill’s claim to mastery of the issues—at least it seems likely that the review’s readers would not infer its author to be a twenty-year-old with no formal academic training.

Impressive as these two articles are, the third in this group, “Scott’s Life of Napoleon” (April 1828), is much more mature. Bain calls it a “masterpiece,” saying that in execution “it is not unworthy to be compared with the Sedgwick and Whewell articles,”⁴ and indeed it would not be out of place in Dissertations and Discussions with those better known essays. Given pride of first place in the Westminster,⁵ its ample scope (sixty-three pages of the Westminster) shows that the editor was nothing loath to give the young Mill his head. The article, Mill says,

Some evidence of his reading has survived in a letter of 1 January, 1828, to Charles Comte, whom he had met in Paris through J.B. Say some years earlier. He remarks that he has been working for a long time on the review, and asks Comte’s help with a task beyond his powers and knowledge, one he has taken on only because—a constant refrain in his writings on France—the English are so ignorant of their neighbour’s history. His reading, he says, has included most of the memoirs (presumably he refers to the massive Collection des mémoires relatifs à la révolution française that appeared in the 1820s) as well as Mignet, Toulongeon, “et autres” (later to Carlyle he says he had read the first two volumes of Montgaillard for the Scott review).⁷ The review contains long extracts in French, taken usually from sources ignored by Scott, who is heavily criticized for errors, ignorance, and Tory bias, but Mill concludes with a statement that he feels no hostility towards Scott, “for whom, politics apart,” he has “that admiration which is felt by every person possessing a knowledge of the English language” (110).⁸ The words I have italicized reveal the main force of the account. Mill’s particular personal bias shows in the extensive treatment given to the Gironde (98-109), towards whom, he says, Scott has, not untypically, been unjust: “of none have the conduct and aims been so miserably misunderstood, so cruelly perverted” (98). Evidently pleased with the article himself, he had offprints made, sending some to Charles Comte in Paris;⁹ these are textually identical with the original. And many years later, near the end of his life, he still clearly remembered the article (though not its date), writing to Emile Acollas about views he had held since youth: “en 1827 (alors même j’avais beaucoup étudié la Révolution française) j’ai publié un article dans la revue de Westminster où j’ai soutenu par des preuves irrécusables précisément votre thèse, savoir que l’attaque a toujours été du côté de la Contre Révolution et que la Révolution n’a fait que se défendre.”¹⁰

ESSAYS IN THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY

the first of these, “Alison’s History of the French Revolution” (July and August 1833), shows in its recorded history and text the influence of Mill’s new and overbearing friend, Thomas Carlyle, whose presence will be seen in most of the essays from the 1830s here reprinted. Their letters early in 1833 deal with a multitude of personal and intellectual matters, one of which was history (Mill had been reading, for example, some manuscript pages of Grote’s History of Greece, the first volumes of which appeared only in 1846). In the spring, Mill asked Carlyle about the advisability of reading and reviewing Alison’s work.¹¹ Encouraged by Carlyle, he hoped to have an article ready for the June number of the Monthly Repository, but completed it only in time for it to appear in two parts, as the conclusion of the July number and the opening piece in that for August. He reported to Carlyle that the review was not worth his perusal and that it would have been better to wait until it could all appear at once. “I shall in future,” he adds, “never write on any subject which my mind is not full of when I begin to write; unless the occasion is such that it is better the thing were ill done than not at all, that being the alternative.”¹² Perusal of the article, in spite of Mill’s warning, must have been ego-warming to Carlyle, for it begins with a long quotation from his “Biography” (identified as to title and provenance, though not as to author), and the same essay is quoted later, as is a passage from a private letter Carlyle wrote to Mill on 13 January, 1833 (the source of which is not identified). Mill continued, as will be shown below, this habit of quoting overtly and covertly from Carlyle until their disagreements came to outweigh their mutual admiration (always more sincere on Mill’s side).

The second of Mill’s articles in the Monthly Repository on French matters appeared in June 1835, at another time of intense activity. He was strenuously occupied in bringing out the first issues of the London Review, which he not only edited, but wrote extensively for: in the first number, for April, appeared his “Sedgwick” and “Postscript”; in the second, for July, his “Tennyson,” “Rationale of Representation,” and “Parliamentary Proceedings of the Session.” He was also writing in the Globe, was presumably still recovering from the shock of having been responsible for the burning in March of the manuscript of the first volume of Carlyle’s French Revolution, and was planning a trip in Germany for July and August. It is not surprising, then, that “The Monster Trial,” as he entitled his article (after the French procès monstre), occupies only four pages of the Monthly Repository. Its brevity, however, does not imply insignificance, for he touches on major concerns, especially freedom of the press. He also asserts again that the English are negligent of French affairs; only the Examiner has, in the last four years, “placed carefully” before its readers “the passing events . . . with regular explanatory comments” (125)—of course written by Mill himself. He in fact then quotes a long passage from his own article of 26 January, 1834,¹³ on the persecution of the French republicans, with whom he had acquaintance (as is indicated by the mention of his having been in Paris when the manifesto of the Société des Droits de l’Homme was issued) and also much sympathy.

ESSAYS IN THE LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW

after 1834, Mill’s disillusionment with the course of French politics in the age of the juste milieu, as well as his increasing involvement in British politics, where he thought (quite mistakenly) that the time had come for Radical sharing of power if not indeed leadership, led him away from public comment on contemporary French events, though not on the history of France and its historians. So, early in the career of his own journal, the London Review (later the London and Westminster), Mill requested from Joseph Blanco White a review of Guizot’s Lectures on European Civilization, which appeared in the number for January 1836. In the event, Mill was a joint author of the article (which we therefore print here as an appendix). Just how much he contributed is not certain, though his extant letters to White are helpful in this respect, showing Mill as an editor supple, if determined, in his relations with contributors. On 21 October, 1835, he wrote to White:

The comment in a letter to Henry S. Chapman, asking that the article be set and proof sent as soon as possible, indicates a somewhat different judgment. He refers to an essay by John Robertson “and another (the one on Guizot which I have, I think, with tolerable success) manufactured from a so-so article into a good one.”¹⁵ The silky tone returns, however, in the next letter to White:

Since Mill listed the article in his bibliography of published writings, one may assume that White accepted the version given him. On internal evidence and that of these letters, one may speculate that the portions by Mill are those at 369.33-370.16, 384.14-389.15, and 392.4 to the end.

The next article in this volume has a personal character, for it marks the real culmination of Mill’s friendly relations with one of the strongest influences on him in the 1830s. In “Carlyle’s French Revolution,” after praising Carlyle’s “creative imagination,” Mill lauds also his research, and adds: “We do not say this at random, but from a most extensive acquaintance with his materials, with his subject, and with the mode in which it has been treated by others” (138). He could with justice have gone further, and asserted his intimate knowledge of the author and his writings, for Mill and Carlyle had indeed come to know one another well from the time when Carlyle thought Mill’s “The Spirit of the Age” signalled the appearance of a “new mystic” available for discipleship. The most recent manifestation of their friendship had been Mill’s soliciting of Carlyle’s “Parliamentary History of the French Revolution,” for the April 1837 issue of the London and Westminster. An editorial note to that article, however, adumbrated differences that were to surface later: Mill indicated that some opinions expressed by Carlyle were not consonant with the review’s attitudes, which would likely be developed in the next number.¹⁷ That promise was fulfilled, though not through emphasized disagreement, in Mill’s highly laudatory review of Carlyle’s French Revolution.

That the article appeared so quickly is indicative of Mill’s strength of will (surely motivated in part by remorse over the destruction of Carlyle’s manuscript), for, though Carlyle had arranged in January that Mill would receive unbound sheets of the book to expedite a review, it seems that only at the end of April did Mill receive the “first copy” the printer could get bound.¹⁸ And if he had been busy before, he must now have been nearly frantic: in addition to running the London and Westminster, he had published in it in January his review of Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd, in April his articles on Fonblanque and (with Grote) on Taylor, and in July, along with the Carlyle review, he contributed “The Spanish Question” (with Joseph Blanco White); further, although he was on a walking tour in Wales during part of September and October, the October number contained his “Parties and the Ministry” and “Armand Carrel.” Most significantly, he was, especially from June to August, working hard at his System of Logic, to that end reading Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences, rereading Herschel’s Discourse, and becoming excited over the first two volumes of Auguste Comte’s Cours de philosophie positive. He was also now, after his father’s death in mid-1836, the male head of a large family. In the circumstances, it is not surprising that the review of Carlyle shows some signs of haste, most evidently in the length of the quoted extracts.

Mill’s not including the essay in Dissertations and Discussions may appear somewhat odd, in view of his statements that it was one of few in the London and Westminster that achieved their intended goals, in this case to make a strong claim for Carlyle’s genius before others had a chance to deny it.¹⁹ The claim is repeated in the part of the Autobiography drafted seventeen years later,²⁰ by which time there was quite enough evidence of the distance between them practically and ideologically; there is not much indication that between 1854 and 1859, when Dissertations and Discussions appeared, their relations, already bad, had significantly worsened. It is sure enough, of course, that Harriet Taylor had a part in making the selection for Dissertations and Discussions, though she did not live to see its publication, and perhaps she was more strongly offended by Carlyle than Mill was. In any case, it seems a pity that Mill did not at least include parts of the review, as he did in other cases where the article in full appeared outdated or relatively insignificant.

Mill continued for a few years to use Carlyle as an authority in other essays, sometimes openly and sometimes quietly. In “Armand Carrel,” which was published in October 1837, the bearing of witness is at its height. In the first paragraph Mill uses a German phrase undoubtedly taken from Carlyle’s French Revolution; at 182-3 he uses an image found in a letter to him from Carlyle; at 187 the “formulas” attributed by Carlyle to Mirabeau appear again (cf. 161 where Mill cites the French Revolution); at 201, in the midst of a long quotation from a letter from himself to Carlyle, he puts in quotation marks “quiet emphasis,” a term Carlyle had applied in another letter to Mill’s tone in the review of Alison (Carlyle was not in 1837 identified here; see the discussion of textual variants at cxv); and at 215 a common remark of Carlyle’s is attributed to “one of the greatest writers of our time” (in 1837 he had been “one of the noblest spirits of our time”). Other places in the present volume also reveal traces of their relations: in “Michelet” (1844), the final text at 227 praises Thierry for making “the age tell its own story; not drawing anything from invention, but adhering scrupulously to authentic facts”; as first published, the essay says that Thierry, in this laudable adherence, is “like Mr. Carlyle.” Similarly, in “Guizot’s Essays and Lectures on History” (1845) at 261 the comment that the “Oxford theologians” have “a theory of the world” originally included the comment, “as Mr. Carlyle would say.” By 1859, when the revised version appeared, Mill was happier to keep his prophetic authority veiled.

“Armand Carrel” is, according to the heading in the London and Westminster for October 1837, a review of “Armand Carrel, his Life and Character. From the French of D. Nisard. Preceded by a Biographical Sketch, abridged from the French of E. Littré.” Republished in Dissertations and Discussions, it reveals in its history and content a very strong personal as well as political attachment to the subject. Mill followed Carrel’s career from the time of the Revolution of 1830, especially in relation to the French government’s continued limitation of press freedom. They met in Paris in 1833 (the encounter is outlined in the letter from Mill to Carlyle quoted in the article at 201-2) and perhaps again in London in 1834 and/or 1836; Mill made much of Carrel’s speech in the Cour des Pairs in defence of the National in December 1834; he tried repeatedly to get contributions from Carrel for the London and Westminster, believing that his signature alone would benefit the review, and made sure Carrel got the issues as they appeared.²¹ Carrel epitomized for Mill the best features of the young men of the mouvement, and provided an ideal, even if an unrealized one, for Mill’s own activities as a radical publicist and reformer in the 1830s.

Given the strength of Mill’s feeling, it is somewhat surprising that he seems not to have begun his article until a year after Carrel’s death, at which time, recalling their first meeting, he wrote to Carlyle (8 August, 1837) to ask for the return of his descriptive letter.²² By 29 August he had finished the article, or at least was confident that it would be ready for the October number, and a month later, while on a holiday tour, he wrote to his sub-editor, John Robertson, revealing the special significance Carrel had for him: “We want now to give a character to the Review, as Carrel gave one to the National. . . . I dare not violate my instinct of suitableness, which we must the more strive to keep up the more we are exposed to swerve from it by our attempts to make the Review acceptable to the public.”²³ At least part of what he meant is indicated in the article, when he says: “The English idea of a newspaper, as a sort of impersonal thing, coming from nobody knows where, the readers never thinking of the writer, nor caring whether he thinks what he writes, as long as they think what he writes;—this would not have done for Carrel, nor been consistent with his objects” (197).

Rather slight changes in the article as republished call attention to otherwise hidden peculiarities. In Dissertations and Discussions the title reads “Armand Carrell. Biographical Notices by MM. Nisard and Littré,” while the title in 1837, “Armand Carrel, his Life and Character,” clearly implies that a single work is under review. Also the first words of the original version, “This little work is” are modified in the version of 1859 to “These little works are”; and further on “one distinguished writer” is replaced by “two distinguished writers.” In fact no copy has been found of the separate publication (a pamphlet, one would judge) that was apparently under review in 1837, and it appears likely that it never was published. Désiré Nisard’s article on Carrel, which is clearly the source of Mill’s translations and references, appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes in October 1837, and (given the frequent friendly correspondence between him and Mill about the London and Westminster, to which Nisard contributed) a prepublication copy was probably sent to Mill. Emile Littré’s account of Carrel seems not to have appeared in print until it was published in 1854 as an introductory “notice biographique” to Charles Romey’s edition of Carrel’s Oeuvres littéraires et économiques, well after the first appearance of Mill’s article, but before its republication; again Mill’s quotations and references clearly come from this notice, although seventeen years intervene between Mill’s citations from it and its independent publication. Odd as the sequence of events may seem, one may infer that Mill, who was acquainted with Littré, was given the text for translation, it being assumed that it would also appear in French at about the same time.²⁴ Finally, Hooper, named in 1837 as the publisher of the “not yet published” work, was at that time the publisher of the London and Westminster. What seems most likely is that Mill proposed to Hooper a pamphlet consisting of Nisard’s and Littré’s essays, translated (and likely paid for) by himself; he then reviewed a work (his translation, perhaps unfinished) that existed in manuscript, but was never published.

If this interpretation is correct, it strengthens the already powerful evidence of Mill’s extraordinary attachment to Carrel’s character and career, an attachment, as is demonstrated by John Cairns in the Introduction above (lxii-lxvii), that was not short-lived. For example, he wrote to Henry Chapman immediately after the French Revolution of February 1848: “In my meditations and feelings on the whole matter, every second thought has been of Carrel—he who perhaps alone in Europe was qualified to direct such a movement, to have perished uselessly, and the very man who killed him, now a prominent reformer. . . .” And, sending a set of Dissertations and Discussions to Charles Dupont-White mainly because he had been a friend of Carrel, he comments: “Je me réjouirai toujours de l’avoir, moi aussi, personnellement connu, et je conserve de lui un souvenir des plus vifs.”²⁵

ESSAYS IN THE EDINBURGH REVIEW

mill’s intense political involvement of the 1830s having ended in disillusionment, at least so far as his personal ambitions as editor or actor were concerned, he decided to divest himself of the London and Westminster and, though as author mainly concerned in the last stages of composition of his Logic, to offer his services as essayist and reviewer to the Edinburgh. This connection began with his second review of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, but even before that article was written he outlined his further hopes to Macvey Napier, editor of the Edinburgh, in a letter partly quoted in the Introduction above:

Nothing came of this notion for some time, though in 1842 Mill did much reading on Roman history, consulting the German authorities as well as Michelet and Arnold.²⁷ Eventually his attention moved from Rome back to France, and in a letter to Alexander Bain (of which unfortunately only part is known) he says: “I am now vigorously at work reviewing Michelet’s History of France for the Edinburgh. I hope to do Napier, and get him to insert it before he finds out what a fatal thing he is doing.”²⁸ The reference here is to what he had earlier described to Napier as his “strongly Guelphic” views, and later identified to R.B. Fox as his “arrant Hildebrandism,” that is, his favouring the popes over the kings,²⁹ a matter that emerges in a letter to Michelet while the article was in progress, as well, of course, as in the text itself. Reporting to Bain that the essay was in Napier’s hands by 3 November, 1843, Mill commented, “If he prints it, he will make some of his readers stare.” With the hindsight of a half-century, in some respects dulled but percipient in others, Bain remarks in his biography of Mill: “We have a difficulty, reading it now, to see anything very dreadful in its views. But a philosophic vindication of the Papacy and the celibacy of the clergy, as essential preservatives against barbarism, was not then familiar to the English mind.”³⁰

The essay, being cogitated and written during the final stages of Mill’s work on his System of Logic, shows many signs of his matured views on the lessons and methods of history, for instance on the three stages of historical writing and the formation of national character (“Ethology,” as he called the new science in his Logic). It also introduces a theme more dominant later in his writings, the historical record of women’s outstanding contributions to political and social life, and furthermore suggests the instructive role he now saw as more appropriately his than the active one he strove for in the 1830s.

The second notion canvassed by Mill when he wrote to Napier about contributing an historical series to the Edinburgh was further comment on Guizot. This came to fruition in “Guizot’s Essays and Lectures on History” (1845), a much more comprehensive essay than the jointly written “Guizot’s Lectures on European Civilization” in the London Review nine years earlier. Like “Michelet’s History of France,” it was republished in Dissertations and Discussions in 1859, where they together make a major contribution to the effect of that collection.

Mill was moving into a new period of activity when this essay was composed, though the themes of the Logic were still running through his mind, as one can see especially in the article’s discussions of such issues as scientific history as an interpretative tool, the relations between successive states of society, and the constructive, indeed essential, role of antagonism in cultural, intellectual, and social progress. This last theme is of course predictive of Mill’s future work as well, being central to On Liberty and important in other of his essays; his comment on the “stationary state” in “Guizot” also suggests the development of this idea in his Principles; and again there is mention of the role of women in history, one of the principal emphases in his Subjection of Women. When beginning work on “Guizot,” Mill was also seeing through the press the first edition of his Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844), the questions having remained unsettled since he wrote the essays in the early thirties (and to this day not entirely resolved). He was already planning to develop his ideas on political economy into a treatise,³¹ and he published “The Currency Question” in the Westminster in June 1844 and “The Claims of Labour” (on which he was working in this period) in the Edinburgh in April 1845.

Unlike these two articles, Mill’s accounts of the French historians were not occasional, not even in the sense of being responses to recent publications. He therefore was not specially anxious to rush his thoughts into print. So, though Napier was evidently pressing him early in 1844, he indicated that he would not have “Guizot” ready for the spring number, even if there were room for it; and, though he told John Sterling in May that he had been writing it, he remarked to Napier in November that “Guizot of course can wait indefinitely.”³² And wait it did, until after the appearance of the number containing “The Claims of Labour” and the next number in July. When it was published in October it was well received, Francis Jeffrey commenting.

These remarks were made before Jeffrey knew the author’s identity; when informed, Jeffrey said: “Your key to the articles has, in some instances, surprised me, as to Neaves especially, and as to Mill also: for though I have long thought highly of his powers as a reasoner, I scarcely gave him credit for such large and sound views of realities and practical results as are displayed in that article.”³³ One of the reasons for such approval may be the article’s echo, noted by Napier, of ideas advanced by the eighteenth-century. Scottish school, including Gilbert Stuart and Millar. In any case, the success of the account was understandably pleasing to Mill, who received (without asking for them) reprints, and rather surprisingly agreed that Napier’s excision of the conclusion of his essay was warranted. Unfortunately, the manuscript (like those of almost all Mill’s review articles) has not survived, and so we lack the text of what would undoubtedly be the most interesting variant, for which we must rely on his statement to Napier:

“Duveyrier’s Political Views of French Affairs,” which appeared in the Edinburgh in April 1846, is similarly non-occasional; indeed Mill began writing it in the spring of 1844, thinking it might find a place in the British and Foreign Review, then edited by John Mitchell Kemble.³⁵ On 6 June, disappointed in his hopes that it would be finished (part was completed and the rest in draft), he wrote to Kemble promising that, official work and a holiday intervening, he would finish it in time for the August number; again on 14 August he asked for a stay, being “loaded with occupation.”³⁶ The next surviving evidence leaves us in darkness as to the intermediate history: a letter to Napier on 1 May, 1846, acknowledges a generous remittance for the article, and then refers to what is, for us, yet another not-to-be-retrieved variant:

Here Mill shows less indulgence for a fellow editor’s need to maintain a steady colouration in a journal, perhaps because his own editorship was a further two years in the past, but more likely because the subject was of greater contemporary importance, the essay on Duveyrier being much more concerned with current issues than that on Guizot. Mill does not ignore history, but the history that matters is mainly that since 1830, when France embarked on a constitutional course with, as it were, no native roots. The July monarchy was, of course, apparently continuing at the height of its success, with no portents of its downfall in less than two years. Mill was able here to draw on his extensive knowledge of the development of the French constitution in theory and practice during the preceding decade and a half, as well as his acquaintance with Duveyrier and his writings, and draw conclusions about the immediate problems and eventual solutions. His essay indeed typifies those of his writings (see especially the essays in Volume VI of the Collected Works) where one finds assessments that combine urgency with measured comment, one of the best of his remarks here being, “It is not the uncontrolled ascendancy of popular power, but of any power, which is formidable” (306).

In recognition, perhaps, of the dual nature of the essay, Mill did not include it in Dissertations and Discussions, but extracted the more generalized part for insertion in the revised version of “Tocqueville on Democracy in America [II]” there reprinted.³⁸ Only this passage then provides variants.

THE WESTMINSTER AGAIN

the french revolution of 1848, with its concomitant upheavals elsewhere in Europe, once again fired Mill’s imagination, the idealist heat being heightened by Harriet Taylor’s enthusiasm. Though the socialist experiment was short-lived, its lessons, he believed, were of lasting value, as he indicates in the Autobiography when discussing the changes made in the Principles of Political Economy for the 2nd (1849) and 3rd (1852) editions. The increased value attached to socialism (in his use of the term) was the result, he says, partly of “the change of times, the first edition [1848] having been written and sent to press before the French Revolution of 1848, after which the public mind became more open to the reception of novelties in opinion, and doctrines appeared moderate which would have been thought very startling a short time before.” In the next year or two, he adds, he and his wife (as she became in 1851) gave much time “to the study of the best Socialistic writers on the Continent, and to meditation and discussion on the whole range of topics involved in the controversy. . . .”³⁹

The reason for these changes may not have been so evident to contemporary readers of the Principles, but Mill had responded earlier, if at first anonymously, to the Revolution, choosing for his vehicle the Westminster, which was more open to radical views than the Edinburgh. In “Vindication of the French Revolution of February 1848,” published in April 1849, he takes as opponent the ever-available judgments of Lord Brougham (one of the originators and early mainstays of the Edinburgh). Though in this respect occasional, the article had lasting value for Mill as a defence of principles valid for the foreseeable future, and Brougham’s pamphlet, Letter to the Marquess of Lansdowne, though viciously assailed, merely served as the best available entrée to the subject, which again brought back excited memories. The remark quoted above showing Mill’s regret that Carrel was not living at that hour is echoed emphatically in Bain’s recollection of their conversations at the time. The “Vindication,” Bain says, “like [Mill’s] ‘Armand Carrel,’ is a piece of French political history, and the replies to Brougham are scathing. I remember well, in his excitement at the Revolution, his saying that the one thought that haunted him was—Oh, that Carrel were still alive!”⁴⁰ As a glance at the article will show, Mill here engages major constitutional and practical questions in defending the revolutionists, and, in elucidating principles of comparative politics, brings to bear his careful consideration of the development of French institutions.

The essay takes forensic form, and Mill’s concern over the basis of his defence is seen in his decisions about the authenticating evidence. This concern appears strongly in a letter to Hickson probably written in March of 1849:

These “notes,” which consist of the original passages that Mill translated, do not appear in the article, but they are attached as an appendix to the pamphlet offprint, and appear in Dissertations and Discussions as an appendix to Volume II; here, acknowledging Mill’s attachment to them, we include them as Appendix B.

Other indications of the significance of the argument to Mill are seen in his procuring and disposing of offprints (he referred to the article even before publication as a “pamphlet”), and in his reprinting it in Dissertations and Discussions, long after what Bain calls his “sanguine belief in the political future of France” had disappeared following the “fatality of December, 1851,” when Louis Napoleon engineered his coup d’état.⁴²

The initial composition is not well documented, although there is no doubt that he and Harriet were highly offended by the British press’s revealing through its animosity its ignorance of France. The first extant reference to the article dates from 6 February, 1849, when Mill reported to Hickson that it was finished, except for the revision, which was retarded by difficulties he was having with his eyesight. He will, he says (making a rare and welcome reference to reading Dickens), “ ‘make an effort’ (vide chap. 1 of Dombey) and let you have it soon” for the Westminster. And less than two weeks later he writes to Harriet: “The pamphlet [sic] has gone to Hickson—I had thought of sending one of the separate copies to L. Blanc. Whom else should it go to? To all the members of the Prov[isional] Gov[ernment] I think, & as it will not be published till April I had better take the copies to Paris with me & send them when there as it saves so much uncertainty & delay.”⁴³

He returned to the matter of the titles in reporting on 14 March to Harriet Taylor on the article’s progress:

In sending a copy to Louis Blanc, Mill expressed strongly his approbation of the revolutionists’ behaviour:

Ten years later the question of attribution arose again when Blanc wished to pay public tribute to Mill’s account. Mill responded:

As indicated in the editorial headnote to the text, Mill’s wishes concerning the titles were acceded to; however, some of the remaining “sting” that he thought could not be spared was extracted in the reprint in Dissertations and Discussions, ten years after the letter to his wife quoted above. Indeed, it seems certain that this was one of the two articles (the other probably being “Sedgwick’s Discourse”) in which he felt the need to remove some of the “asperity of tone” of the original version.⁴⁷ The number of “softening” variants helps make this (given its date) one of the most heavily revised essays in Dissertations and Discussions.

The accession to imperial power of Louis Napoleon provides much of the explanation of Mill’s not writing at length or publicly on France during the remainder of his life. He felt not only abstract revulsion but personal distress during the Second Empire, as his letters show, but no major essays dwell on his concern. Furthermore, his extended comments in essays on history and historians after 1850 are exclusively devoted to the classical period, where his interest in philosophy was intertwined with historical considerations. But his extensive and intensive examinations of the themes developed in this volume, valuable in themselves, may also be seen behind his major political and social writings of the 1850s and 1860s.

TEXTUAL VARIANTS

the great majority of textual variants in Mill’s periodical essays derive from their revision for the first two volumes of Dissertations and Discussions (1859), which contain articles from 1832 to 1853; alterations in the second edition of those volumes (1867) were infrequent. The articles, dating from 1859 to 1866, that were republished in the third volume of Dissertations and Discussions (also 1867), were less thoroughly revised (or, perhaps it is fairer to say, needed less revision). The fourth and final volume (1875), containing materials dating from 1869 to 1873, was prepared for publication after Mill’s death by his step-daughter, Helen Taylor; there is no evidence that Mill was responsible for any of the rare changes in it (and in the third edition of Volumes I and II, and the second edition of Volume III, which were published with it in 1875). There is, indeed, a gradual decrease in frequency of changes, substantive and formal, both as the years progress and as the gap between the time of first publication and of republication decreases.

These generalizations, which derive from a study of all the revisions, are borne out by the essays in this volume, six of which appeared in Dissertations and Discussions, two in part and four in full, all in Volumes I and II. Because he chose not to include in Dissertations and Discussions any of his apprentice essays, the first three essays in this volume were not rewritten; neither, as mentioned above, was the review of Carlyle’s French Revolution. “The Monster Trial” was not reprinted, undoubtedly because Mill thought it too occasional for long wear, but it reveals variants of some interest in Mill’s self-quotation of a passage from an article in the Examiner. The results of collation of the texts that Mill could have prepared will be seen in footnotes, which record the substantive variants in accordance with the system outlined on cxiv-cxvi below.

While a full appreciation of the significance of Mill’s changes can be gained only by examining each in context, an impracticable goal here, some indications of their general tenor are appropriate. A rough initial classification (used also in the other volumes of this edition) will help in describing the kind and frequency of his revisions: one can distinguish (though there is overlapping) among changes that reveal (1) alterations in opinion or fact, including omissions, amplifications, or corrections; (2) alterations resulting from the time between versions or from their different provenances; (3) alterations that qualify, emphasize, or give technical clarity; and (4) alterations that are purely verbal, or give semantic clarity, or result from shifts in word usage, and alterations in emphasis indicated by changes from italic to roman typeface.

In “The Monster Trial” there are only three substantive changes between the quoted passage as it appeared in the Examiner in 1834 and in the Monthly Repository in 1835 (see 126^a, ^b-b, 128^c). Of these, the second is a trivial example of the fourth type, but the other two, involving excision of passages having to do with a radical view of the rights of property, illustrate type 1 because they involve important differences in intention and effect. It will be noted, of course, that they could be classed as type 2 because the passages, appropriate in a newspaper, might be thought not to serve the different ends of a periodical, especially after the passage of a year and a half.

More illustrative, of course, are the changes in the six essays reprinted in whole or in part in Dissertations and Discussions. In all there are 488 substantive variants, of which 38 may be seen as type 1, 45 as type 2, 152 as type 3, and 253 as type 4. Of the total, only 37 reflect changes resulting from revision in the 1867 edition of Dissertations and Discussions, and almost all of these are type 4. In “Alison’s History” (a comparatively short essay, it will be recalled, only part of which was reprinted) there are 41 variants, of which over two-thirds are type 4; 15 of these (including the one variant from 1867) result from the removal of italics, a quieting revision found in the essays dating from the early 1830s that in their original forms show Carlyle’s influence on Mill’s prose. The one change that I have labelled as type 1 is that from “men’s” to “people’s” (119^r-r), an acknowledgment by Mill of the pronominal gender distortion that he tried to alleviate in his writings after the early 1850s.⁴⁸ As an illustration of type 2 changes, one may cite 120^x-x, in which the “Tories” of 1832 became “Conservatives” in 1859, reflecting the change in terminology (not, of course, that the earlier term disappeared). A type 3 change, typical not only of its kind but also of Mill’s ceaseless search for precise categorization, is seen at 120^a-a, where “never” was replaced by “has scarcely ever”.

General illustrations of the types of alteration may be seen in the most heavily and most interestingly revised essay, “Armand Carrel,” which contains 246 changes, more than half of those in this volume as a whole, 23 of them being type 1 and 31 type 2. Of the former, good instances will be found at 173^j-j, ^k(the motivation here a little mysterious), 177^e-e, and ^g(cf. the footnote where the fact is corrected). At 185^j-j one sees the common qualification of Mill’s early enthusiasm for August Comte—but compare 228^s-s. At 185^k-k there is a reflection of Mill’s further reading in the philosophy of history as Vico and Condorcet are listed with Herder, while von Müller is dropped. The type 2 changes reflecting the passage of time are illustrated by 187^t (cf. 187n), where Mill, having referred in 1837 to the hoped-for completion of Guizot’s Histoire de la révolution d’Angleterre (2 vols., 1826-27), deleted the promissory note, for the work had been completed by four further volumes, two in 1854 and two in 1856; the type 2 changes reflecting the change of provenance are illustrated close by, at 188^v-v, where the revision includes deletion of the reference to “this review” (it also includes the type 4 change from “contemporaries” to “cotemporaries,” Mill’s common form). An interesting series of type 3 changes, close in effect to type 1, will be seen at 192^n-n and following, where the proper ways of describing the effects of the Revolution of 1830 are explored. Such changes are related to those counted as type 4 that soften the elegiac tone at 169^h, ^j-j, 173^g, 199^l-l, ^m-m, and 212^e-e; these have a cumulative effect indicating that individually minor changes can have an importance going beyond type 3 to type 1. It should be mentioned that only 8 of the variants in “Armand Carrel” date from 1867, but 24 arise from Mill’s quotations from one of his letters to Carlyle; these are of unequal significance, but certainly should not be ignored in any close study of Mill’s political views in the 1830s.⁴⁹ Finally (though one is tempted to continue exhaustively and exhaustingly), material of interest to historians of the language can be found in those variant notes that show a change from italic to roman type for words taken into English from French; Mill was, one may infer, an important source of such loan words, his works providing in this, as in other respects, significant material for philologists.

In “Michelet’s History of France,” “Guizot’s Essays and Lectures,” and the small part of “Duveyrier’s Political Views” that was republished, the substantive changes bear out the generalizations made above about frequency and importance: “Michelet” reveals 63 variants, 7 of them dating from 1867; only 8 of the total show the characteristics of types 1 and 2 “Guizot” has 44, a surprising proportion (nearly a quarter) from 1867; all but 2 of the total are of types 3 and 4. And “Duveyrier” shows only 4, of which 1 is from 1867, and 3 are type 4. “Vindication of the French Revolution of February 1848” is an exception to the pattern; for reasons stated above, both its subject and its personal attack on Brougham gave matter for thought in the ten years intervening between its first publication and its republication in Dissertations and Discussions. In fact it contains 90 revisions (10 of them from 1867),⁵⁰ of which 10 may be seen as type 1; once more it may be claimed that students of Mill, in this case especially those interested in the roots of his qualified socialism, should look carefully at these first and second thoughts.

The accidental variants (not reported in detail in this edition), mainly consisting of changes in punctuation and spelling, do not reveal sufficient evidence to justify major generalizations. They of course show, to an indeterminable extent, the preferences of printers, editors, and publishing houses. (The Edinburgh Review, for instance, may have revised Mill’s manuscripts by removing some hyphenations, judging by the comparative frequency of such changes when revisions in essays from it are compared with those from the Westminster.) As usual in Mill’s case, the essays show a slight lightening in punctuation in their republication, but “Armand Carrel” reveals in Dissertations and Discussions a great preponderance of added over removed commas. As elsewhere, the earlier “any thing” and “every thing [body]” are collapsed into one word, and participles with “s” (“realising,” “analysed”) tend to take “z” forms, except for “recognize” and its cognates, where the reverse occurs; the forms of “shew” take the “o” spelling, and “enquiry” and its cognates take an initial “i”. The addition or removal of initial capital letters (roughly in balance) has not yielded any conclusions, nor are any of these changes suggestive of altered emphasis, as they are in other places, for example in some of the works in Volumes XVIII-XIX of the Collected Works.

TEXTUAL PRINCIPLES AND METHODS

as throughout this edition, the copy-text for each item is that of the final version supervised by Mill, unless only a part of an essay was later reprinted, in which case the latest full version is adopted.⁵¹ 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 (including initial capitalization), hyphenation, punctuation, demonstrable typographical errors, and such printing-house concerns as type size, etc. All substantive variants are indicated, except the substitution of “on” for “upon” (twenty-two instances) and of “though” for “although” (five 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 “Armand Carrel.”

Addition of a word or words: see 170^n-n. In the text, the passage “or even who can” appears as “or ⁿevenⁿ who can”; the variant note reads “^n-n+59,67”. Here the plus sign indicates the editions 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 59 = 1859 (the first edition of Volumes I and II of Dissertations and Discussions); 67 = 1867 (the second edition of those volumes). 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 (1837) the reading was “or who can”; this reading was altered in 1859 to “or even who can” and the latter reading was retained in 1867 (the copy-text).

Substitution of a word or words: see 169^j-j. In the text the passage “We can still remember” appears as “^jWe can still^j remember”; the variant note reads “^j-j37^1,2 It is still given to us, to”. Here the words following the edition indicator are those for which “We can still” were substituted, applying the same rules and putting the variant in context, the interpretation is that when first published (in 1837 as article and offprint) the reading was “It is still given to us, to remember”; in 1859 this was altered to “We can still remember”; and the reading of 1859 (as is clear in the text) was retained in 1867.

In this volume there are few examples of passages altered more than once: see 201^a-a. The text reads “^aMr. Carlyle’s^a words”; the variant note reads “^a-a33 your] 37^1,2 the”. Here the different readings, in chronological order, are separated by a square bracket. The interpretation is that the reading in the earliest version (1833), “your words”, was altered in the second version (1837¹ and the identical 1837²) to “the words”, and in the final versions (1859 and 1867, the copy-text) to “Mr. Carlyle’s words”. (The circumstances are unusual, for the version of 1833 is from a letter from Mill to Carlyle.) The other cases, all instances of a wording altered and then returned to its original reading, are signalled by the absence of an expected edition indicator. See, e.g., 206^h, where the variant note reads “^h59 or seemed to present”; the lack of the expected “67” indicates that the words “or seemed to present” were added in 1859 but deleted in 1867 in a return to the original reading.

Deletion of a word or words: see 169^h and 118^j-j. The first of these is typical, representing the most convenient way of indicating deletions in a later edition. In the text at 169^h a single superscript appears centred between “gone” and “; and”; the variant note reads “^h37^1,2. . . He is gone”. Here the words following the edition indicators are the ones deleted; applying the same rules and putting the variant in context, the interpretation is that when first published (1837) the reading was “gone. He is gone; and”; in 1859 the period and “He is gone” were deleted, and the reading of 1859 (as is clear in the text) was retained in 1867.

The second example (118^j-j) 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 “Alison’s History of the French Revolution,” part of which was republished in 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 “The hundred political revolutions” appear as “The ^jhundred^j political revolutions”; the variant note reads “^j-j-59,67”. The minus sign indicates that in the editions signified the word enclosed was deleted; putting the example in context the interpretation is that when first published (1832) the reading was (as is clear in the text) “The hundred political revolutions”; this reading was altered in 1859 to “The political revolutions”, and the latter reading was retained in 1867.

Dates of footnotes: see 187n. Here the practice, when a note was added by Mill to a version after the first, 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, “[67]” signifies that the note was added 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 supplied; 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. Having adapted our practices to composition by word-processor, we have not reproduced digraphs. At 204n-5n quotation marks have been added to what was clearly intended to be recognized as a quotation. In the headnotes the quotations from Mill’s bibliography, the manuscript of which is a scribal copy, are also silently corrected; the note below lists them.⁵² 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.”), and their numerical designations are regularized as capital roman numerals; 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 corrected; a list of the corrections and alterations is given in the note below.⁵³

Appendices. Appendix A, the review of Guizot’s Lectures, is placed here because it was jointly written by Joseph Blanco White and Mill, and the precise contribution of each is not known; otherwise it is treated uniformly with the main text.

Appendix B contains the French texts of the material quoted in Mill’s own translation in “Vindication of the French Revolution of February 1848.” The importance Mill attached to their being available is explained at cviii-cix above.

Appendix C consists of the textual emendations; its headnote outlines the principles and practices adopted in altering Mill’s text.

Appendix D, the Index of Persons and Works Cited, 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 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; this volume gives the best evidence of his very considerable skill.

Since Appendix D serves as an index to persons, writings, and statutes, references to them do not appear in the general Index, which has been prepared by Dr. Maureen Clarke and Dr. Jean O’Grady.

[1 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 63-5.

[2 ]There also was published in 1840 his second review of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, which, with his first review in 1835 (both of which are in CW, XVIII, 47-90, 153-204), provides much that is germane to the themes of this volume.

[3 ]Bain, John Stuart Mill, 31. For a fuller account of his activities in these years, see the Introduction to CW, I, xii-xiii.

[4 ]John Stuart Mill, 37.

[5 ]Two other of Mill’s early Westminster articles also lead their numbers. “Law of Libel and Liberty of the Press” in April 1825, and “The Game Laws” in January 1826.

[6 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 135. Cf. John Cairns’ Introduction, xxxix and li above.

[7 ]EL, CW, XII, 21-2, 217 (2 Mar., 1834). Mill was acquainted with much of the contents of the Collection des mémoires, ed. Saint-Albin Berville and Jean François Barrière, 68 vols. (Paris: Baudoin, 1820-28), though even his voracious appetite may have failed before the end.

[8 ]For praise of Scott’s novels as historical sources, see 184-5 and 226.

[9 ]EL, CW, XII, 24-5 (27 June, 1828).

[10 ]LL, CW, XVII, 1831 (20 Sept., 1871).

[11 ]See the Introduction, pp. xlvi-l above, for a full discussion. Only the first two volumes of Alison’s work were reviewed by Mill History of Europe during the French Revolution. Embracing the Period from the Assembly of the Notables, in MDCCLXXXIX, to the Establishment of the Directory, in MDCCXCV, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Blackwood, London, Cadell, 1833) Eight further volumes were published, III and IV (1835) with a different subtitle, and V-X (1836-42) with the title History of Europe from the Commencement of the French Revolution in 1789 to the Restoration of the Bourbons.

[12 ]EL, CW, XII, 158 (20 May, 1833), 159 (June, 1833), and 162 (5 July, 1833).

[13 ]The variants between the two versions reflect merely the different house styles of the Examiner and the Monthly Repository.

[14 ]EL, CW, XII, 280.

[15 ]Ibid., 284 (n.d., but certainly November 1835).

[16 ]Ibid., 285 (24 Nov., 1835).

[17 ]“The opinions of this review on the French Revolution not having yet been expressed, the conductors feel it incumbent on them to enter a caveat against any presumption respecting those opinions which may be founded on the Newgate Calendar character of the above extracts. Some attempt at a judgment of that great historical event, with its good and its evil, will probably be attempted in the next number.” (CW, I, 603-4.) The disagreement here intimated, and more than hinted at in Mill’s article (see, e.g., 157-8, 160-3), had reached serious proportions when Carlyle’s “Memoirs of Mirabeau” in the number of the review for January 1837 had repelled many of Mill’s friends and political associates. Though Mill defended his choice of Carlyle as a contributor, the “Parliamentary History” was actually Carlyle’s final article in the London and Westminster, and while there seems not to have been a break in their personal relations for some years, eventually they came into stark and unrelenting opposition in public over Ireland and the West Indies.

[18 ]Carlyle to Mill, Collected Letters, IX, 113, 197-8 (9 Jan. and 27 Apr., 1837).

[19 ]EL, CW, XIII, 427 (16 Apr., 1840).

[20 ]CW, I, 233-5.

[21 ]EL, CW, XII, 197, 239, 254, 255, 262, and 281.

[22 ]Ibid., 346. He subsequently returned the letter to Carlyle, the manuscript being in Carlyle House.

[23 ]Ibid., 349 and 353 (28 Sept., 1837, Mill’s italics).

[24 ]At one point (196) Mill says, “We will not spoil by translation M. Littré’s finely chosen phraseology”—and quotes part of a sentence in French as it appeared seventeen years later.

[25 ]EL, CW, XIII, 731-2 (29 Feb., 1848), LL, CW, XIV, 644 (5 Nov., 1859). Mill’s attachment is hinted at also in his early suggestion to Molesworth that he would “probably publish the article with [his] name hereafter” (LL, CW, XVII, 1978 [22 Sept., 1837]). When “Armand Carrel” was published in Dissertations and Discussions in 1859, it was already known to be his, even in its first form it had appeared with his habitual signature, “A,” and he had distributed some offprints. It is interesting to note that Walter Bagehot (not claiming special knowledge) was aware that Mill was the author of the article in its original form. In the second of his “Letters on the French Coup d’Etat of 1851” he says (and it is likely Mill would have been pleased at the comment). “I remember reading, several years ago, an article in the Westminster Review, on the lamented Armand Carrel, in which the author, well known to be one of our most distinguished philosophers, took occasion to observe, that what the French most wanted was ‘Un homme de caractère’ ” (in Collected Works, ed. Norman St. John Stevas, IV [London: The Economist, 1968], 38).

[26 ]EL, CW, XIII, 431 (27 Apr., 1840).

[27 ]See ibid., 498, 504-5, 529, 543, 548-9, and 551.

[28 ]Ibid., 595 (Sept., 1843).

[29 ]Ibid., 505, 602 (3 Mar., 1842, and 23 Oct., 1843).

[30 ]Ibid., 612; Bain, John Stuart Mill, 78. Here Bain, like most of his contemporaries, including Mill and others of Scottish origin and residence, uses “English” rather than “British,” although the Edinburgh Review in its origin and continuing force was true to its name.

[31 ]See EL, CW, XIII, 629-30 (29 May, 1844), he wrote most of the Principles in 1846 (see the Textual Introduction to CW, II, lxv-lxvii).

[32 ]EL, CW, XIII, 618, 629-30, 646.

[33 ]Letters to Macvey Napier of 8 and 13 Oct., 1845, in Macvey Napier (the younger), Selections from the Correspondence of Macvey Napier (London: Macmillan, 1897), 507, 509-10. Jeffrey had not entertained the same high view of Mill’s “Michelet,” commenting to Napier on 27 December, 1843 (and thus indicating that the number appeared—as was common—before its ostensible publication date). “There is thought and some clever suggestions in Mill’s Michelet, but nothing systematic nor much well made out. I cannot but think, too, that he has made a bad choice of citations, the greater part of which are harsh, self-willed, and affectedly dogmatic.” (Ibid., 455.)

[34 ]EL, CW, XIII, 683 (20 Oct., 1845).

[35 ]Ibid., 627 (May? 1844).

[36 ]Ibid., 632-3, 634.

[37 ]Ibid., 701.

[38 ]He explicitly excluded from Dissertations and Discussions material of passing interest, carrying the policy so far—if not always immediately intelligibly—as to exclude all the essays gathered in Volume VI of the Collected Works.

[39 ]Autobiography, CW, I, 241.

[40 ]Bain, John Stuart Mill, 93-4. Mill’s correspondence at the time further supports these judgments. His view of Carrel’s relevance was not idiosyncratic. In the immediate aftermath of the February Revolution, on 2 March, there was a procession to Carrel’s grave in the St. Maur cemetery, as a preliminary to his remains being removed to the Pantheon. Present were many “respectable young men, who walked arm-in-arm, wearing sprigs of everlasting in their hats, and sung in chorus the ‘Chant des Girondins,’ ” Marrast (now editor of the revived National, the voice of the Provisional Government) delivered a eulogy. Then Emile de Girardin, editor of La Presse, “by whose hand Carrel fell . . . bewailed his own misfortune in having occasioned the death of so illustrious a citizen. . . .” The French were more forgiving of Girardin than was Mill (see the Introduction, lxvii n above), for he “was loudly applauded” and then “embraced” by Marrast. (See “The Republic of France,” Daily News, 4 Mar., 1848, 4, and 6 Mar., 2.)

[41 ]LL, CW, XIV, 13-14.

[42 ]John Stuart Mill, 93.

[43 ]LL, CW, XIV, 7, 10. He went to France about 20 April, returning about 12 May, and so perhaps this plan was fulfilled.

[44 ]Ibid., 15.

[45 ]Ibid., 23-4 (Apr. 1849).

[46 ]Ibid., XV, 545 (11 Jan., 1858). Consequently Blanc quoted the long passage on the droit du travail, prefacing it by saying it was appropriate for him to leave his defence “in the hands of one whose authority the English people have long since learned to respect,—a man highly distinguished for his qualities both of head and heart, and incontestably the first political economist of our day, Mr. John Stuart Mill.” And he followed the quotation by describing Mill as “one of the most eminent philosophers and writers of this country.” (Blanc, 1848, Historical Revelations, 83-7. Blanc quoted the passage: “To one class of thinkers . . . the present race of mankind” [348-50 below].)

[47 ]See CW, X, cxix and 494.

[48 ]Recurrences after the first such change, which may be taken to derive from it, are like all similarly entailed revisions counted as type 4. For further comment on this particular change, see John M. Robson, “ ‘Joint Authorship’ Again: The Evidence of the Third Edition of Mill’s Logic,” Mill News Letter, VI (Spring 1971), 15-20.

[49 ]In two cases our reading of the letter to Carlyle differs from that in Earlier Letters at 204j, a cancelled “at” appears more likely than “on”, and at 204v-v the manuscript seems to agree with the reading in all versions of “Armand Carrel,” i.e., “respect”.

[50 ]One type 4 change, the addition of “de” to Lamartine’s name, is noted only on its first appearance (338k-k).

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

[52 ]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

168.15 intituled [entitled]

258.14 Lecture on history [Lectures on History]

296.7 Duveyriai’s [Duveyrier’s]

318.9 Bunghan’s [Brougham’s]

367.8 articles [article]

[53 ]Following the page and line notation, the first reference is to Mill’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

7.36 41 [41-5]

10.39 57 [60-6]

12.2 289 [289-92]

12.29 379 [379-81]

14.5 161 [160-1]

21n.1 xx [xx-xxi]

29n.1 142 [142n]

30n.1 10 [10-11]

31n.2 94 [94-5]

31n.4 136 [136-7]

35n.6 36 [36-7]

36n.1101 [101-2]

36n.2 111 [111-12]

36n.12 114 [114-15]

36n.18 120 [120-2]

44n.1 102 [101-3]

44n.1 203 [201-4]

44n.1 309 [308-9]

44n.2 240 [239-40]

48n.1 318 [318-19]

48n.2 347 [347-8]

48.27 297 [297-8]

50n.1 243 [242-3]

68n.14 xl [xx]

75n.3 215-16 [215n-17n]

75n.13 177 [174-7]

75n.23 127 [126-7]

85n.7 310, 318 [308, 316]

85n.10 236-7 [237-8]

85n.10 481 [482-8]

88.35 130 [130-1]

93n.12 25 [23]

94n.1 278 [277-8]

100n.7 389 [388-91]

104n.3 42 to 47 [46-7] [moved from text and reference divided to match quotations]

106n.1 449 [450] [moved to footnote in this ed.]

106n.2 455 [454-6] [moved to footnote in this ed.]

140n.1 461 [461-2]

141n.17 256 [256-62] [full reference for the document cited]

142n.6 262 [262-76] [full reference for the document cited]

146n.1 324 [324-5]

146n.4 319 [318-20]

147n.3 267-306 [267-400]

148n.12 i [no vol. given, as 1st ed. in fact one volume, same change throughout this essay]

149n.6 149, &c [149-51]

150n.1 12-48-84, &c [48, 12, 84, 48]

152n.1 141-166 [141-65]

151n.2 Note, p. 281 [p. 282n]

153n.1 310 [110]

153n.2 161 [160-1]

157n.2 ii, 75-87. [Vol. II, pp. 71-7.] [to conform to the ed. used elsewhere in this volume, and to the events described]

237n.7 171 [171n]

244n.1 343 [343-4]

247n.1 297-302 [297-8, 300-2] [moved from text and reference divided to match quotations]

250n.2 538-543 [537-43]

251n.3 607-8 [606-7]

272n.1 Vol. iv p. 191 [Vol. III, pp. 191-2]

281n.1 Vol. iii ad fin [Vol. II, pp. 451-2] [not at the end]

301.30 168 [168-70]

304.35 3-6 [4-6] [earlier reference to 3 added above]

310.35 69-84 [83-4] [the preceding quotations are given specific references, JSM is presumably referring to the whole of the third Letter, which begins on 69, but his first quotation from the Letter is from 71, and the Letter ends on 100]

379n.2 vol. iii p. 165 [Vol. XIX, p. 239] [the given reference not being verifiable (the passage is in Chap. 16 of Bk. 5, so perhaps the “p. 165” is explicable), the actual reference in the SC ed. is given]