The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Additional Earlier Letters 1824–1848
• Additional Later Letters 1849-1873
• Undated Letters
• Appendix A; Letters to Theodor Gomperz: Variant Readings
• Appendix B: List of Form Letters At the India Office Library and Records
• Appendix C: Additions and Corrections to the Check List of Mill’s Indian Despatches In Volume Xxx
• Appendix D: List of Letters to Mill
• Appendix E: Index of Correspondents
• Appendix F: Index of Persons, and Works Cited, With Variants and Notes

UNDATED LETTERS

No. 1.

TO HENRY COLE1

Dear Cole

After seeing you I remembered a prior dinner engagement which in an unfortunate hour I made & should have written to you about it, but that from what Grant told me I concluded there was no chance for this Wednesday.

It is provoking, but pray try to fix some other day.

Yours ever

J.S. Mill

No. 2.

TO HENRY COLE1

• India House

Wedy.

My dear Cole—

I presume this2 is printed only for private use. If it were to appear in any newspaper or be otherwise published I should wish my name for various reasons to be struck out.

As it stands, I have no correction to make in what you make me say, as I have no objection to the substance of it & it only purports to be your report of a conversation. If I were speaking for myself I should state my opinion in rather different words, but that, if it is sure not to be published, is immaterial.

I have not shewn it to Peacock or Melvill3 & had rather not to the latter—therefore I should not save you any trouble by becoming your medium of communication with the former.

Yours faithfully

J.S. Mill

No. 3.

TO HENRY COLE1

• I.H.

Wedy.

Dear Cole

If I were you I would for the sake of apparent fairness cite rather than describe the “ambiguous” letter from Hume,2 & I would avoid the words hallucination or monomania. It seems to me that if you also suppressed the whole of the concluding paragraph you would not at all weaken the effect. All which is there said is so completely suggested by the previous paragraph that you do not strengthen the impression by adding anything more.

Perhaps also the short note, which is as it were the “lie direct” had better be omitted.

Yours ever

J.S. Mill

No. 4.

TO HENRY COLE1

Thursday

Dear Cole

If the article is to be made up it is I conclude only to save time & not to preclude alterations afterwards. But I shall see all about it today.

Ever yours

J.S. Mill

No. 5.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK1

• India House

Monday
[after 1834]

Dear Chadwick,

It appears that your official frank is of no validity quoad postage to or in India—Even the President of the Board of Control sends his India letters here to be franked by the Chairman, Deputy Chn or Secretary who alone have the power of franking—& whom I hardly like to ask to frank anything larger than a letter since I cannot say that it is for strictly official purposes. Perhaps there may be an opportunity of sending by a private hand.

yours faithfully

J.S. Mill

No. 6.

TO JOHN TEMPLE LEADER1

Dear Leader

I have great pleasure in introducing to you Mr Fox, whom I need not say that you ought to know, & that he ought to know you—I am desirous on every account to make him and you acquainted, & should probably have taken another opportunity, if one had not presented itself on which you may possibly be of use to him. He will explain in what way—

Ever yours truly

J.S. Mill

No. 7.

TO NASSAU WILLIAM SENIOR1

Dear Senior

I will duly account to Chapman for the cheque.2

I go into town daily at the usual time—about ¼ before 9.3

yours faithfully

J.S. Mill

No. 8.

TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT1

• I.H.

Monday
[Apr. 1836-Mar. 1840]

My dear Sir

The L. & W. review will be published about the end of this month. If there is any little thing which you could do for it there is still room, & it would give me much pleasure.

ever yours

J.S. Mill

No. 9.

TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT1

• Ex. Off.

Wedy
[between 1836 and 1846]

My dear Sir

Mr Bonham’s2 application has been received & is with the Financial Department (Mr Thornton).3 Nothing has yet been done respecting it.

Yours faithfully

J.S. Mill

No. 10.

TO MR. STONE1

[summer; probably before 1851]

Dear Sir

I am extremely sorry to hear that you are unwell—and still more sorry that you sat up waiting for me—especially as I was a little behind my time; I was too late partly by being too early, and partly by making too much haste—according to the old proverb.

I shall leave town for a few weeks on Friday night—if we could finish this matter first it would be better, but if it would task your health or your convenience in the least, we will wait till I return—which I shall regret the less, as it will be somewhat inconvenient to myself to come here tomorrow evening—however I think I could come.

Yours ever

J.S. Mill

A note addressed to me at the India House, early tomorrow, will reach me in time. I leave at four.

No. 11.

TO CATHERINE STANLEY1

• I[ndia] H[ouse]

thursday
[before Aug. 1858]

Dear Mrs Stanley—

I would come to you tomorrow evening with great pleasure but I am engaged, I am afraid for all the evening.

yours ever

J.S. Mill

No. 12.

TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT1

• I.H.

Monday
[before Aug. 1858]

My dear Sir

I will certainly have the pleasure of attending the celebration2 on the 25th July.

Yours truly

J.S. Mill

No. 13.

TO WILLIAM CHARLES BONAPARTE WYSE1

• Saint Véran, Avignon

Saturday.
[after Dec. 1859]

Dear Sir

Though very busy, I shall be happy to see you and your two friends:2 I shall be in town this afternoon about three, and will have the pleasure of calling on you then if convenient to you. If not I shall be glad to see you here between two and three o’clock on Monday. I am

yours very truly

J.S. Mill

No. 14.

TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT1

Dear Sir—

I very much recommend writing as an occupation of leisure, & as a means of self-improvement, but not as a profession, or in the hope of making money by it. The very best writers have almost always to wait many years before they attain the reputation which procures lucrative literary employment. If you like to send me your essay, I will willingly read it, but however high my opinion of it may be, I cannot recommend it to editors, from which even in the case of personal friends I find it necessary to abstain. I see no objection to a young writer himself offering his writings to editors or publishers. He must expect to be generally unsuccessful, & will do well to persevere in writing & to be content with such chance successes as may offer themselves.

No. 15.

TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT1

Gentlemen—

I have received from you an acknowledgment of the receipt of my notice for Policy No. [blank] but no acknowledgment of my Policy No. [blank] & of the fact that you have received the original policies Nos. & all of which came under the same cover as the notice No. [blank] receipt of which you have acknowledged. I shd be obliged therefore by receiving an acknowledgment in form of the original policies of both numbers.

APPENDICES

Appendix A

[1 ]MS not located; typescript McCrimmon. Addressed: Henry Cole Esq. / 4, Adam Street / Adelphi. Probably written in the early 1830s.

[1 ]MS not located; typescript McCrimmon.

[2 ]Not identified; perhaps the document referred to in No. 3 below.

[3 ]For Melvill and Peacock, see Letters 290.1 and 237.2 above, respectively.

[1 ]MS not located; typescript McCrimmon. Perhaps dealing with the same document as No. 2 above.

[2 ]Presumably Joseph Hume.

[1 ]MS not located; typescript McCrimmon. Possibly related to the matter discussed in the two preceding letters, Nos. 2 and 3.

[1 ]MS at University College London. Between 1834 and 1846, Chadwick, as Secretary to the Poor Law Commission, was the Chief Executive Officer under the Poor Law Amendment Act. In this capacity, his signature was sufficient to send letters free in England. It is reasonable to assume that this request came early in his tenure, before he learned the intricacies of the perquisite system.

[1 ]MS in the Keynes Collection, King’s College, Cambridge. Addressed: J.T. Leader Esq. M.P. / 8 Stratton Street.

John Temple Leader (1810-1903), one of the active Philosophic Radicals in the post-Reform parliament, was M.P. for Bridgenorth 1835-37 and for Westminster 1837-47. As he had not yet met William Johnson Fox (1786-1864), the Unitarian clergyman, editor and author, an intimate friend of Mill’s, one may infer that the letter dates from the earliest days of Leader’s parliamentary career.

[1 ]MS in the Varnhagen von Ense Collection, Jagiellonian Library, Cracow.

[2 ]Presumably the reference is to Henry Samuel Chapman (1803-81), a journalist who assisted with the financial affairs of the London Review after his return from Canada in 1834.

[3 ]Mill was probably staying at the family’s summer residence in Mickleham.

[1 ]MS in the University of Iowa Library, Iowa City. Dated by the reference to the London and Westminster Review.

[1 ]MS in the Osborn Collection, Yale University. Dated from Thornton’s tenure in the Secretary’s Office.

[2 ]Not identified.

[3 ]Possibly Edward Thornton (1799-1875), who would have handled financial matters in his capacity as Assistant in Charge in the Secretary’s Office between 1836 and 1846.

[1 ]MS in the Mill-Taylor Collection, British Library of Political and Economic Science.

Stone has not been identified, nor has the “matter” in question. Mill in general was absent from the India Office for extended periods only in the summer months. The wording also suggests that the letter was written before his marriage in 1851.

[1 ]MS at the College of Law, Nihon University, Tokyo. As dated from India House, before August 1858.

Presumably Catherine Stanley (née Leycester) (1792-1862), wife of Edward Stanley (1779-1849), Bishop of Norwich, and mother of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-81), later Dean of Westminster.

[1 ]MS in the possession of Professor J.R.deJ. Jackson, University of Toronto. As dated from India House, before August 1858.

[2 ]Not identified.

[1 ]MS at the College of Law, Nihon University, Tokyo.

William Charles Bonaparte Wyse (1826-92), son of Sir Thomas Wyse, whom Mill had met in Athens in 1855, and Laetitia Wyse (daughter of Lucien Bonaparte). W.C.B. Wyse first arrived in Avignon in December 1859, and later, becoming a friend of Frédéric Mistral and a writer in the Provençal dialect, took a house there.

[2 ]Not identified.

[1 ]MS draft in the Mill-Taylor Collection, British Library of Political and Economic Science. Presumably written no earlier than the 1860s, when Mill reached the height of his reputation as an author.

[1 ]MS draft in pencil in the Mill-Taylor Collection, British Library of Political and Economic Science. Nothing is known of Mill’s insurance policies.