The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface
• Introduction
• Abbreviations and Short Titles
• The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill 1812–1837
• 1812–1830
• 1831
• 1832
• 1833
• 1834
• 1835
• 1836
• 1837

1812–1830

1.

TO JEREMY BENTHAM¹

[July 28, 1812]²

My dear Sir,

Mr. Walker³ is a very intimate friend of mine, who lives at No. 31 in Berkeley Square. I have engaged him, as he is soon coming here, first to go to your house, and get for me the 3.^d and 4.^th volumes of Hooke’s Roman history.⁴ But I am recapitulating⁵ the 1.^st and 2.^d volumes, having finished them all except a few pages of the 2.^d. I will be glad if you will let him have the 3.^d and 4.^th volumes.

I am yours sincerely

John Stuart Mill.

• Newington Green,

Tuesday 1812.

2.

TO AN UNIDENTIFIED FRIEND OF THE FAMILY¹

September 13, 1814

I have arrived at Ford Abbey without any accident, and am now safely settled there. We are all in good health, except that I have been ill of slight fever for several days, but am now perfectly recovered.

It is time to give you a description of the Abbey.² There is a little hall and a long cloister, which are reckoned very fine architecture, from the door, and likewise two beautiful rooms, a dining-parlour and a breakfast-parlour adorned with fine drawings within one door; on another side is a large hall, adorned with a gilt ceiling; and beyond it two other rooms, a dining and drawing-room, of which the former contains various kinds of musical instruments, and the other is hung with beautiful tapestry.

To this house there are many staircases. The first of them has little remarkable up it, but that three rooms are hung with tapestry, of which one contains a velvet bed, and is therefore called the velvet room. The looking-glass belonging to this room is decorated with nun’s lace.

Up another staircase is a large saloon, hung with admirable tapestry, as also a small library. From this saloon issues a long range of rooms, of which one is fitted up in the Chinese style, and another is hung with silk. There is a little further on a room, which, it is said, was once a nursery; though the old farmer Glyde, who lives hard by, called out his sons to hear the novelty of a child crying in the Abbey! which had not happened for the whole time he had lived here, being near thirty years. Down a staircase from here is a long range of bedrooms, generally called the Monks’ Walk. From it is a staircase leading into the cloisters. The rest of the house is not worth mentioning. If I was to mention the whole it would tire you exceedingly, as this house is in reality so large that the eight rooms on one floor of the wing which we inhabit, which make not one-quarter of even that floor of the whole house, are as many as all the rooms in your house, and considerably larger.

I have been to the parish church which is at Thornecomb. Mr. Hume³ has been here a great while. Mr. Koe⁴ came the other day, and Admiral Chietekoff⁵ is expected. Willie⁶ and I have had rides in Mr. Hume’s curricle.

[He goes on to say—] What has been omitted here will be found in a journal which I am writing of this and last year’s journeys. [He then incontinently plunges again into descriptive particulars about the fish-ponds, the river Axe, the deer-parks, the walks, and Bentham’s improvements.]

3.

TO MRS. HARRIET BURROW¹

Ford Abbey, Oct. 27^th 1817

Dear Grandmother,

I write to you now, as both my Sisters are writing, and there is not likely to be another parcel going to town for a great while.

I have very little news to tell you: Willie has informed you of the accident which has happened to James’s² eye. Willie, Harriet,³ and Clara,⁴ have begun music: and you learn from Willie’s and Clara’s letters, this also. Willie and Clara are ready to begin the first lesson: Harriet has not finished the treble notes.

The rainy weather has at length set in here, after an exceedingly dry autumn. I am however very glad to say, that no rain now can do any injury to the crop, which is almost all in.

We are still learning to write. How much Willie and Clara have improved you will know by reading their letters.

I hope that all my aunts and uncles are very well. I did not know that I had a new little cousin, till Willie saw it in the paper. I believe my Mother has written to you a very long letter: and I suppose that she has told you all the little news that we have: so that I have very little to tell you: moreover, I had only two days notice to write four letters: or else I would probably have written more.

We are all in very good health, except little Jane,⁵ who has got a little cough. I had lately the tooth-ache very bad. I hope that you are also in very good health.

Since we were here, there has been a groping in the pond for eels. Mr. Bragg’s two sons went into the mud, (after almost all the water had been let out) and groped with their hands for eels. Those caught were, many of them, very large ones. A number of trout, caught in the river, were afterwards put in that pond.

All of us send our love to you and all our other relations, and our good friends. I am,

Your affectionate Grandson

John Stuart Mill

4.

TO SIR SAMUEL BENTHAM¹

Acton Place, Hoxton, July 30, 1819

My dear Sir,

It is so long since I last had the pleasure of seeing you that I have almost forgotten when it was, but I believe it was in the year 1814, the first year we were at Ford Abbey. I am very much obliged to you for your inquiries with respect to my progress in my studies; and as nearly as I can remember I will endeavour to give an account of them from that year.

In the year 1814, I read Thucydides, and Anacreon, and I believe the Electra of Sophocles, the Phœnissæ of Euripides, and the Plutus and the Clouds of Aristophanes. I also read the Philippics of Demosthenes.

The Latin which I read was only the Oration of Cicero for the Poet Archias, and the (first or last) part of his pleading against Verres. And in Mathematics, I was then reading Euclid; I also began Euler’s Algebra, Bonnycastle’s principally for the sake of the examples to perform. I read likewise some of West’s Geometry.

Æt. 9.—The Greek which I read in the year 1815 was, I think, Homer’s Odyssey. Theocritus, some of Pindar, and the two Orations of Æschines, and Demosthenes on the Crown. In Latin I read the six first books, I believe, of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the five first books of Livy, the Bucolics, and the six first books of the Æneid of Virgil, and part of Cicero’s Orations. In Mathematics, after finishing the first six books, with the eleventh and twelfth of Euclid, and the Geometry of West, I studied Simpson’s Conic Sections and also West’s Conic Sections, Mensuration and Spherics; and in Algebra, Kersey’s Algebra, and Newton’s Universal Arithmetic, in which I performed all the problems without the book, and most of them without any help from the book.

Æt. 10.—In the year 1816 I read the following Greek: Part of Polybius, all Xenophon’s Hellenics, The Ajax and the Philoctetes of Sophocles, the Medea of Euripides, and the Frogs of Aristophanes, and great part of the Anthologia Græca. In Latin I read all Horace, except the Book of Epodes; and in Mathematics I read Stewart’s Propositiones Geometricæ, Playfair’s Trigonometry at the end of his Euclid, and an article on geometry in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia. I also studied Simpson’s Algebra.

Æt. 11.—In the year 1817 I read Thucydides a second time, and I likewise read a great many Orations of Demosthenes and all Aristotle’s Rhetoric, of which I made a synoptic table. In Latin I read all Lucretius, except the last book, and Cicero’s Letters to Atticus, his Topica, and his treatise, De Partitione Oratoria. I read in Conic Sections an article in the Encyclopædia Britannica (in other branches of the mathematics I studied Euler’s Analysis of Infinities and began Fluxions, on which I read an article in the Encyclopædia Britannica), and Simpson’s Fluxions. In the application of mathematics I read Keill’s Astronomy and Robinson’s Mechanical Philosophy.

Æt. 12.—Last year I read some more of Demosthenes, and the four first Books of Aristotle’s Organon, all which I tabulated in the same manner as his Rhetoric.

In Latin, I read all the works of Tacitus, except the dialogue concerning oratory, and great part of Juvenal, and began Quintilian. In Mathematics and their application, I read Emerson’s Optics, and a Treatise on Trigonometry by Professor Wallace, of the Military College, near Bagshot, intended for the use of the cadets. I likewise re-solved several problems in various branches of mathematics; and began an article on Fluxions in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia.

Æt. 13.—This year I read Plato’s dialogues called Gorgias and Protagoras, and his Republic, of which I made an abstract. I am still reading Quintilian and the article on Fluxions, and am performing without book the problems in Simpson’s Select Exercises.

Last year I began to learn logic. I have read several Latin books of Logic: those of Smith, Brerewood, and Du Trieu,² and part of Burgersdicius, as far as I have gone in Aristotle. I have also read Hobbes’ Logic.

I am now learning political economy. I have made a kind of treatise from what my father has explained to me on that subject,³ and I am now reading Mr. Ricardo’s work⁴ and writing an abstract of it. I have learnt a little natural philosophy, and, having had an opportunity of attending a course of lectures on chemistry, delivered by Mr. Phillips, at the Royal Military College, Bagshot,⁵ I have applied myself particularly to that science, and have read the last edition of Dr. Thomson’s system of chemistry.

What English I have read since the year 1814 I cannot tell you, for I cannot remember so long ago. But I recollect that since that time I have read Ferguson’s Roman and Mitford’s Grecian History. I have also read a great deal of Livy by myself. I have sometimes tried my hand at writing history. I had carried a history of the United Provinces from their revolt from Spain, in the reign of Phillip II., to the accession of the Stadtholder, William III., to the throne of England.

I had likewise begun to write a history of the Roman Government, which I had carried down to the Licinian Laws. I should have begun to learn French before this time, but that my father has for a long time had it in contemplation to go to the Continent, there to reside for some time.⁶ But as we are hindered from going by my father’s late appointment in the East India House,⁷ I shall begin to learn French as soon as my sisters have made progress enough in Latin to learn with me.

I have now and then attempted to write Poetry. The last production of that kind at which I tried my hand was a tragedy. I have now another in view in which I hope to correct the fault of this.

I believe my sister Willie was reading Cornelius Nepos when you saw her. She has since that time read some of Cæsar; almost all Phædrus, all the Catiline and part of the Jugurtha of Sallust, and two plays of Terence; she has read the first, and part of the second book of Lucretius, and is now reading the Eclogues of Virgil.

Clara has begun Latin also. After going through the grammar, she read some of Cornelius Nepos and Cæsar, almost as much as Willie of Sallust, and is now reading Ovid. They are both now tolerably good arithmeticians; they have gone as far as the extraction of the cube root. They are reading the Roman Antiquities and the Greek Mythology, and are translating English into Latin from Mair’s Introduction to Latin Syntax.

This is to the best of my remembrance a true account of my own and my sisters’ progress since the year 1814.

I hope Lady Bentham, and George,⁸ and the young ladies are in good health.

Your obedient, humble servant,

John Stuart Mill.

To Sir Saml. Bentham.

5.

TO SARAH AUSTIN¹

Montpellier² 17 Janv. 1821

Madame

Je n’ai reçu que depuis deux jours la lettre dont vous avez bien voulu m’honorer. Croyez, Madame, à ma réconnaissance de tout ce qu’elle contient: réconnaissance qui aurait été grande, si vous aviez écrit sous de meilleures auspices: jugez donc combien elle doit l’être dans le cas actuel. J’avoue que je ne suis point digne de cet effort que vous avez fait pour m’écrire: puisque deux ou trois lignes à la fin d’une lettre à mon père sont tout ce que vous avez eu de ma part, depuis que j’ai quitté l’Angleterre. Je vous prie de vouloir bien pardonner ma negligence, et recevoir cette lettre en expiation de ma faute. Puisque vous lisez toutes mes lettres à mon père, il est inutile que je vous raconte la manière dont je m’occupe ici: la lettre qui accompagne celle-ci vous donnera tous les renseignemens là dessus que vous pouvez désirer. Il ne me reste donc plus qu’à vous remercier des bons conseils que vous me donnez: ne doutez pas qu’ils ne produisent tout l’effet que vous souhaitez.

Le cours publics que je suis dans ce moment ne termineront pas encore de quelque temps. Le professeur de Logique³ ne fait guère que d’entrer dans son sujet: le professeur de Zoologie⁴ n’a fait encore que douze leçons. Il est cependant probable que si les cours durent encore longtems, je n’en attende pas la fin: Je partirai d’ici au milieu du mois prochain, pour retourner à Paris. J’aurai donc l’honneur de vous revoir avant qu’il soit longtems: J’espère que nous aurons l’occasion de causer ensemble sur toutes les choses dont vous parlez, et sur beaucoup d’autres dont je n’ai pas la place ni le tems de vous entretenir momentanément. Ce sera alors que j’aurai l’honneur de vous assurer moi même de ma reconnaissance, non seulement de l’interêt que vous prenez à tout ce qui m’arrive, mais de la bonté avec laquelle vous vous êtes donner la peine de soigner l’éducation de mes sœurs: Je ne sais si elles sentent toute l’étendue de cette bonté, mais je vous assure que je la sens, et que je ne manquerai pas de vous en remercier, à mon retour, de vive voix. — Je suis très fâché que vous ne jouissiez pas d’une santé pareille à mes vœux: J’espère qu’elle vous sera bientôt rendue. Veuillez bien, assurez M^r votre époux de mes sentimens de réconnaissance pour lui; et croyez, Madame, que je serai toujours,

Votre serviteur très obligé

J. S. Mill

Pardonnez mon embrouillomanie.

6.

TO JAMES MILL¹

• [Paris]

25 Avril 1821

Mon cher père,

Je vous écris cette lettre de Paris, où je suis arrivé hier, après un heureux voyage. Vous voyez que mon départ a été un peu retardé, presque de jour en jour, mais je n’ai pas la place de vous donner des détails: ce sera pour la prochaine lettre que je ne tarderai pas à vous envoyez. Il y a long tems que je ne vous ai rien ecrit. Ce n’est pas qu’il me manquait de la matière, mais il y a bien près d’un mois que je devais partir incessamment de Montpellier, par consequent pour diminuer le post, je n’ai pas voulu pas ecrire avant mon arrivée ici. J’aurai encore de quoi remplir deux longues lettres pour ramener le journal à la date de la présente. Je vous les enverrai de suite.

J’apprends par vos deux lettres à M. Say,² qu’il a eu l’extreme complaisance de me communiquer, qu’il est décidé que j’irai passer quelque tems à Caen. Je suis bien convaincu que vous avez formé cette determination après avoir bien pesé le pour et le contre: et c’est certainement vous êtes le plus capable d’en juger. Cependant malgré le respect que je dois à M. Lowe,³ et les bontés qu’il a pour moi, je ne vous cache pas que je suis fâché d’aller chez lui en revenant de chez M. Bentham, et cela principalement parceque je vois bien que cela fait de la peine à toute la famille. Ne croyez pas qu’ils soient guidés par l’amour propre, mais leur plus grand desir était toujours que je revinsse chez vous aussitôt que je les eusse quittés pourque vous puissiez juger des instructions qu’ils ont eu la bonté de me donner, et savoir si leurs idées cadrent avec les vôtres. Ce n’est pas le sentiment d’un seul d’entre eux mais de toute la famille; et je ne puis que me féliciter qu’ils n’aient pas su d’abord que je devais aller ailleurs que chez vous après les avoir quittés: car s’ils l’avaient su je suis persuadé qu’ils ne se seraient jamais donnés tant de peine pour mon instruction—Je ne puis plus ecrire; croyez que je serai toujours

votre dévoué et obéissant fils

J. S. Mill

7.

TO JAMES MILL¹

• [Norwich]

[Autumn, 1822]²

[The letter begins with a short account of his studies. He read Blackstone (with Mr. Austin) three or four hours daily, and a portion of Bentham’s “Introduction” (I suppose the “Morals and Legislation”) in the evening.] I have found time to write the defence of Pericles³ in answer to the accusation which you have with you. I have also found some time to practise the delivery of the accusation, according to your directions. [Then follows an account of a visit of ten days with the Austins to the town of Yarmouth, with a description of the place itself. The larger part of the letter is on the politics of Norwich, where “the Cause” (Liberal) prospers ill, being still worse at Yarmouth. He has seen of Radicals many; of clear-headed men not one. The best is Sir Thomas Beever,⁴ whom he wishes to be induced to come to London and see his father and Mr. Grote.⁵ At Yarmouth he has dined with Radical Palmer,⁶ who had opened the borough to the Whigs; not much better than a mere Radical.] I have been much entertained by a sermon of Mr. Madge,⁷ admirable as against Calvinists and Catholics, but the weakness of which as against anybody else, I think he himself must have felt. [The concluding part of the letter should have been a postscript—]

I wish I had nothing else to tell you, but I must inform you that I have lost my watch. It was lost while I was out of doors, but it is impossible that it should have been stolen from my pocket. It must therefore be my own fault. The loss itself (though I am conscious that I must remain without a watch till I can buy one for myself) is to me not great—much less so than my carelessness deserves. It must, however, vex you—and deservedly, from the bad sign which it affords of me.

8.

TO MR. AND MRS. GEORGE GROTE¹

Q[ueen] S[quare] 14 Nov^r. 1822

My dear Sir and Madam,

I crave pardon for addressing you jointly. It is a liberty for which, like a true lawyer, I have two reasons, a technical and a rational one. My technical reason (for confirmation of which vide Blackstone) is that baron and feme are one person in law. My utilitarian reason is that to do otherwise might imply that I failed of rendering to one of you, the tribute of gratitude which your friendship so justly deserves at my hands.

I have little news to tell you, save that which regards the Util. Soc.² On this subject my father still preserves the most profound silence. (I am sure that I shall often remind you of the pleasure with which I anticipate its meetings, by the life-and-death style in which I speak and write about it). The unsettled state of mind in which Alfred³ has been, and is still kept, from the uncertainty of his destination, has prevented him from giving any attention to the thing: and I have great fears that in the event of his being able to enter into it at all he will still have too little time to read and to study hard on Utilitarian subjects. Still I have great hopes of him, but I have greater hopes of R. Doane,⁴ who as I see, is very much in earnest about the thing, who has read my father’s Pol. Ec.⁵ with great attention as a preparative. He has also made considerable progress in writing his introductory essay; and I will venture to prophecy, from what I know of him by his conversation and by the application which he shows, nothwithstanding his want of encouragement, that he will be an active and useful member, and will profit by the Society, as well as that he will be a source of profit to all the other members.—I have not seen Mr. W. Prescott⁶ since I saw you last, but it is unnecessary that I should see him till Alfred’s fate is decided. As for myself, I have not only completed Jug True,⁷ but have commenced writing for the Util. Rev.⁸ and I hope that, on your return, the Defence of Pericles,⁹ which is now undergoing a transmutation from a highly illegible to a tolerably legible state, will undo all the impression which the accusation may have made on your mind. (A propos, pardon this scrawl).

You who interest yourself so strongly in favour of M. Berchet,¹⁰ will be delighted with Santa Rosa:¹¹ who grows every day in the good opinion of all the Utilitarians who see him. I hope to see him play a conspicuous role in your society: both for his own sake, and for yours.

ERRATUM in your letter. For STERN MORALIST read DESPONDING PHILANTHROPIST. It is the more appropriate appellation. The other I do not think at all correct.

Yours ever

J. S. Mill

9.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK¹

Saturday
afternoon
[February 19, 1827]

Dear Chadwick

As Graham² is unable to walk tomorrow we had better perhaps postpone our walk to next Sunday.

Very truly yours

J. S. Mill

10.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK¹

• E.I.H. [East India House]

Monday
[March 26, 1827]

Dear Chadwick

If you have any influence with Thwaites,² you will oblige me greatly by exercising it in favour of a gentleman of the name of Taylor³ who is about to appear for the first time as a public singer, at the Concert at Covent Garden or Drury Lane (I forget which) on Wednesday. I could tell you much about Mr Taylor which would interest you very strongly in his behalf, but this I reserve till I see you. I believe his qualifications to be of a very high order, but he does not ask to be praised, he is only anxious that if he should sink, he may sink quietly, without being treated with severity or with ridicule.

Very truly yours

J. S. Mill

I should say perhaps that I write to you not at his request but at that of his relations who are my very particular f[riends].⁴

J.S.M.

11.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK¹

Thursday
½ past four
[April 12, 1827]

Dear Chadwick

Being engaged to breakfast with M^cCulloch² tomorrow, I cannot walk before breakfast—but if the weather should be sufficiently fine to tempt you out I shall hope to meet with you chez Graham at eleven: Elliott³ has been informed.

I hope you are not the “young law student of Lyon’s Inn” whose chère amie tried to throw herself into the Thames yesterday?

yours most truly

J. S. Mill

P.S. What is the reason that you lawyers always have pens with nibs an inch wide?

12.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK¹

Saturday
2 o’clock
[1827?]

Dear Chadwick

Graham is absolutely engaged tomorrow, & I am conditionally so. I have therefore agreed with Grant² not to walk tomorrow unless Elliott comes, which I understand is not probable—But if you think he will come, pray come yourself and I shall be ready to join you.

Very truly yours

J. S. Mill

13.

TO JEREMY BENTHAM¹

[ca. April 24, 1827]

I certainly did not understand you to have expressed any desire that my name should be in the title page. Nevertheless, if you positively require it, I am willing that it should be so,² rather than that you should imagine I had taken less pains with the work under the idea of its being (so far as I am concerned) anonymous. But I confess I should greatly prefer that my name should be omitted. That the work should be benefited by it is out of the question. I myself might be benefited inasmuch as it would prove that you thought me worthy to be the editor of a work of yours. But on the other hand very little of the labour which I have bestowed upon the book appears on the face of it, or can be known to any one who was not acquainted with the MS.³ If my name were annexed to it people would think that I wished to make a parade either of your good opinion [of]⁴ me, or of the few notes which I have added.⁵ The notes are not of sufficient value to make it of any consequence to the public to know who wrote them—I should be very sorry to be suspected of wishing to obtain a reputation at a cheap rate by appearing before the public under the shelter of your name.

14.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK¹

[1827?]

Dear Chadwick

Tooke² cannot come this evening—therefore I must beg you to defer your visit till further notice—Tuesday & Friday next he is disengaged, therefore I hope you will also keep yourself at liberty for one of those days—I cannot yet answer for myself.

Yours ever

J. S. Mill

15.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK¹

Tuesday
[1827?]

Dear Chadwick

Tooke will be with me tonight.

Yours ever

J. S. Mill

16.

TO ARTHUR AYLMER¹

[Nov. 27, 1827]

London Debating Society

Sir

The half yearly subscription² for September last being now due, you are requested to forward it, with all arrears of former subscriptions, to my address.

I am, Sir
Your most ob^t. Serv^t.

J. S. Mill, Treasurer

• 1 Queen Square
• Westminster

17.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK¹

• E.I.H.

Friday
[Dec. 22, 182(7?)]

Dear Chadwick

I am requested by Mr. & Mrs. George Grote to beg the favour of your company at dinner this day se’nnight at six—62 Threadneedle Street. You will meet Graham and Roebuck,² & probably myself.

Very truly yours

J. S. Mill

18.

TO W. H. FERRELL¹

[Jan. 14, 1828]

London Debating Society

Sir,

I have the honour to recal [sic] your attention to my last half yearly circular, and to request that your arrears of Subscription, amounting to £1 may be discharged at your earliest convenience.

I have the honour to be,

Your obedient Servant

J. S. Mill, Treasurer.

• 1 Queen Square
• Westminster

19.

TO CHARLES COMTE¹

Londres, 25 janvier 1828.

Mon cher Monsieur Comte

Je m’occupe depuis quelque temps d’une critique de la Vie de Bonaparte par Sir Walter Scott,² et surtout des deux premiers volumes, contenant une esquisse historique de la révolution française. Je ne me dissimule pas combien la tâche que je me suis imposée est au dessus de mes forces; mais on est ici dans une si crasse ignorance sur la révolution, et tous, jusqu’aux individus les plus instruits, ont des idées tellement ridicules sur la nature de cette crise politique, qu’avec mon peu de lumières et de connaissance des faits j’ai crû pouvoir faire quelque chose pour dessiller les yeux de mes compatriotes. C’est pour avoir des renseignemens un peux moins imparfaits sur quelques-uns des évènements les plus remarquables de la révolution, que j’ose vous prier de vouloir bien m’indiquer les preuves sur lesquelles s’appuient trois faits, énoncés comme certains dans votre Histoire de la Garde Nationale.³

1° L’intention qu’eut la cour, dans les jours antérieurs à l’époque de 14 juillet, de faire le procès des chefs du parti populaire.

2° L’intention qu’elle eut de faire la contre-révolution, en-fesant partir le roi de Versailles pour aller à Metz, à l’époque du repas des gardes du corps dans les premiers jours d’octobre 1789.

3° Les assurances solennelles faites par le roi à M. de Lafayette, avant le voyage de Varennes, qu’aucun projet d’évasion n’était entré dans sa tête.

Les preuves que j’ai pu recueillir sur ces trois faits ont bien assez de poids pour que moi en me[. . . ?]⁴ particulier je n’en doute nullement. Cependant elles ne montent pas audessus d’une grande probabilité, et il faut quelque chose de plus que des probabilités, pour satisfaire à un public aussi prévenu que le nôtre. Vous me ferez donc, Monsieur, le plus grand plaisir, en m’indiquant les moyens de parvenir à une certitude plus parfaite à l’égard de ces circonstances.

D’ailleurs, comme il est probable que vous ayez lû l’ouvrage de Sir Walter Scott, je n’ai pas besoin de vous dire combien d’obligation je vous aurais de toute indication que vous voulûssiez bien me donner relativement aux erreurs de ce livre. Elles sont si nombreuses, qu’il est impossible de les relever toutes; mais, d’autant qu’on connaît un plus grand nombre, on est à portée de faire une meilleure choix, pour démontrer l’infidélité de cet ouvrage prétendu historique, et le faire tomber dans le decrédit absolu qu’il mérite.

Pour vous épargner pourtant une peine inutile, je dois vous dire que je sais déjà à peu près tout ce qu’on peut apprendre en lisant la plupart des Mémoires sur la Révolution, ainsi que les ouvrages historiques de Mignet,⁵ Toulongeon,⁶ et autres. Dans le cas donc où vous eussiez la bonté de me donner quelques renseignemens, il n’est pas besoin de vous occuper de ces matières-la.

Mon père me charge de le rappeler à votre souvenir, et de vous prier de servir d’interprète à ses sentimens auprès de M^me votre épouse, ainsi que de M. et M^me Say, et de leur aimable famille. Veuillez bien agréer le témoignage de mon respect et de mon amitié.

J. S. Mill

20.

TO JOHN BOWRING¹

10^th March 1828.

My dear Sir

Your letter, which I received this morning, is a more good-natured one than I fear mine was. I am much obliged to you for not being offended at my taking huff as I did, and I will now tell you exactly what I think of Mr George Bentham’s book² —and what I am ready to say of it, if you think that it would be more satisfactory to Mr Bentham³ than an entire omission.

I do not think that Mr. G. B’s book affords any proof of want of talent—far from it—but many of haste, and want of due deliberation. This mistake was, as it seems to me, that of supposing that he was qualified to write on such a subject as Logic after two or three months’ study, or that so young a logician was capable of maintaining so high a ground as that of a critic upon Whately.⁴ The consequences of his mistake have been twofold: first of all, he has produced nothing but minute criticism, which even when most just, is particularly annoying to the person criticized when so much stress appears to be laid upon it. This minute criticism is often just, sometimes very acute, but frequently, also, if I am not mistaken, altogether groundless. Instead of this, a good critic on Whately should have laid down as a standard of comparison, the best existing or the best conceivable exposition of the science, & examined how far Whately’s book possesses the properties which should belong to that. In the second place, Mr George Bentham seems not to be aware, that Dr Whately is a far greater master of the science than he is, & that the public will think the disproportion still greater than it is. It would therefore have been wiser in him not to have assumed the tone of undisputed & indisputable superiority over Whately, which marks the greater part of his critique. To be entitled to do this, a writer should not only be superior, but prove himself to be superior, in knowledge of the subject, to the author whom he criticizes. He should let people see that if he differs from Whately, it is not because W. knows more than he but because he knows more than W.

I have put this more strongly, and enlarged upon it more fully, to you, than I should in the W. R.⁵ But I should think it wrong, in noticing the book, not to say something of this sort.

Very truly yours,

J. S. Mill

21.

TO BENJAMIN KEEN¹

[April 23, 1828]

London Debating Society

Sir

The half yearly subscription for March last being now due, you are requested to forward it, with all arrears of former subscriptions, to my address.

Arrears £2

Subscrⁿ 10/

I am, Sir
You most ob^t. Serv^t.

J. S. Mill, Treasurer

• 1 Queen Square
• Westminster

22.

TO CHARLES COMTE¹

• Londres

27 juin
1828

Mon cher M. Comte

Vous me ferez plaisir en voulant bien accepter quelques exemplaires de ma critique de Walter Scott,² dont M. Bodin³ a la bonté de se charger. Je vous prie d’en garder autant que vous voudrez, et de placer les autres comme vous le trouverez bon. Je vous engage seulement à en faire part à M. Say, et de lui en donner un ou deux, s’il veut bien me faire l’honneur de les accepter.—Comme il est très probable que j’écrive encore quelques articles de revue, sur la révolution française et sur l’ancien régime, je désirerais beaucoup que ceux qui pourraient avoir les moyens et la bonne volonté de me faire parvenir des renseignemens utiles là dessus, pûssent juger au moyen de cette brochure, quelles sont ceux qui me manquent. Au reste, je ne vois guère que [?] moi en angleterre qui rendent justice à la révolution.

Agréez, Monsieur, l’expression de mes sentimens respectueux.

J. S. Mill

J’ai lieu de vous remercier très sincerement, de m’avoir fait faire la connaissance de M. Victor Jacquemont.⁴ Il me paraît très estimable à tous les égards.

23.

TO ARCHIBALD THOMSON¹

[Nov. 26, 1828]

London Debating Society

Sir

The half-yearly subscription for September last being now due, you are requested to forward it, with all arrears of former subscriptions, to my address.

The same to Mr Alfred Thomson (£1.)

• 1 Queen Square
• Westminster

23A.

TO THOMAS COATES (see page 742)

24.

TO GUSTAVE D’EICHTHAL¹

London, 11^th March, 1829

My dear friend,

I have been so much occupied of late that I have not had leisure even to think of writing to you, and if your brother² had not afforded me the present opportunity, I should probably have deferred that pleasure some time longer. I hope that you will receive the Statements and Reports of the Council of the London University³ along with this letter, the Warden⁴ having promised to send them to me in time to be given to your brother before his departure. If he should omit to do so, which I trust he will not, I will take the earliest subsequent opportunity of sending them to you. I am glad to hear that you are busily engaged in writing on the subject of England, and am not surprised to learn that you find a great number of unexpected difficulties in giving an account of the state of society here.⁵ As there is nobody even in England who is by any means qualified to treat so immense a subject with any thing like completeness, it would be very wrong in you to be discouraged by finding that there is a great deal that you do not know—it is sufficient if you know, as I am satisfied you do, very much on the subject of England which is known to few, perhaps to none of your countrymen. It would have been a good thing for the interest of your book, if you had been here at this moment: you would have seen, what you did not see when you were here, a state of great political excitement. The excitement does not reach the labouring classes, but it pervades all the rest of the community to such a degree that, as I am credibly informed, it has to a great degree put a stop to buying and selling, at least on a large scale, as no one can think of any thing except the Catholic question. Since the debate in the House of Commons, and the majority of 188 in favour of the question, nobody doubts the success of the bill;⁶ and it is very gratifying, and most creditable to our ministers, that they have not clogged the measure with any objectionable or ungracious provisoes or restrictions. The most disgraceful artifices have been employed by the Duke of Cumberland⁷ and Lord Eldon⁸ in order to work upon the mind of the King; & it is a fact which you may rely upon, that the Duke of Wellington, the Lord Chancellor,⁹ and Mr Peel,¹⁰ left Windsor on Wednesday last out of office, their resignations having been accepted, & the Anti-Catholics had already begun to arrange a ministry when the King grew alarmed and sent off an express to beg the Duke of Wellington still to consider himself in office. It is of the greatest importance that the probable effect of this measure should be known in France. Its effect in Ireland will be a trifle compared to its effect in England. It forms an era in civilization. It is one of those great events, which periodically occur, by which the institutions of a country are brought into harmony with the better part of the mind of that country—by which that which previously existed in the minds only, of the more intelligent portion only of the community, becomes the law of the land, and by consequence raises the whole of the community to its own level. The greatest advance in the national mind, until thus adopted by the government and incorporated in the institutions of the country, is the advance only of the leading minds, of those who already were furthest in advance: It does not bring forward the whole nation, but widens the distance between the advanced posts and the rear. Much as we have improved in the last 20 years, it is only a part of us that has improved, there remained millions of men in a state of the same brutal ignorance and obstinate prejudice in which they were half a century ago. But this measure will bring forward the rear-guard of civilization: it will give a new direction to the opinions of those who never think for themselves, & who on that account can never be changed unless you change their masters & guides. The intelligent classes lead the government, & the government leads the stupid classes.—Besides all this, the alteration of so important and so old a law as that which excludes Catholics from political privileges, has given a shake to men’s minds which has loosened all old prejudices, and will render them far more accessible to new ideas and to rational innovations on all other parts of our institutions: our ministry, moreover, having been so reviled and attacked by the Tory & high church party that it never can act in concert with them again, must now throw itself wholly on the liberals for support. As for the Tory party, it is broken; it is entirely gone. It placed all on this stake, & it has lost it. What would not in itself have taken much from their power, will now utterly destroy it, because, as they had mustered all their strength to resist this question, it is their decisive overthrow. Ten or twelve years ago, Lord Sidmouth¹¹ said to an acquaintance of mine, that the King’s government had not strength to do any thing which the clergy opposed. That idea is now at an end; the clergy have opposed this with all their might, & as they have failed, the influence of the church, its moral influence at least, is gone. The Church has no hold on the affections of the people: All its influence rested upon the opinion of its power: It is now seen to have very little power; and the effect of this discovery will be so great that I really begin to think that I shall see the downfall of the church in my time. I have said nothing to you on any subject except the Catholic question, but it is so much the most important event now happening that I could hardly have chosen a topic likely to be more interesting to you. By the way, it is now certain that our ministers are disposed to carry freedom of trade even further than their predecessors: I hope that you will do the same. Believe me,

Yours ever

J. S. Mill.

25.

TO JOHN STERLING¹

• India House

Wednesday
[April 15, 1829]

Dear Sterling

I have given a greater number of perusals to your note than I believe I ever gave to any epistle before. I should not however have troubled you with any answer to it, if you had not seemed to take sufficient interest in what concerns me, to lead me to believe that I might talk to you upon a subject so entirely personal as the state of my own mind without your considering it a bore or an intrusion. I was unwilling that you should leave the London Debating Society without my telling you how much I should regret that circumstance if it were to deprive me of the chance not only of retaining such portion as I already possess, but of acquiring a still greater portion of your intimacy—which I value highly for this reason among many others, that it appears to me peculiarly adapted to the wants of my own mind; since I know no person who possesses more, of what I have not, than yourself, nor is this inconsistent with my believing you to be deficient in some of the very few things which I have. But though I feared that this loss to myself would, or at least might, be the consequence of your resignation I never imputed that resignation to any other cause than those which you have stated, and which are, in good truth, cause sufficient. I am now chiefly anxious to explain to you, more clearly than I fear I did, what I meant when I spoke to you of the comparative loneliness of my probable future lot. Do not suppose me to mean that I am conscious at present of any tendency to misanthropy—although among the very various states of mind, some of them extremely painful ones, through which I have passed during the last three years, something distantly approximating to misanthropy was one.² At present I believe that my sympathies with society, which were never strong, are, on the whole, stronger than they ever were. By loneliness I mean the absence of that feeling which has accompanied me through the greater part of my life, that which one fellow traveller, or one fellow soldier has towards another—the feeling of being engaged in the pursuit of a common object, and of mutually cheering one another on, and helping one another in an arduous undertaking. This, which after all is one of the strongest ties of individual sympathy, is at present, so far as I am concerned, suspended at least, if not entirely broken off. There is now no human being (with whom I can associate on terms of equality) who acknowledges a common object with me, or with whom I can cooperate even in any practical undertaking without the feeling, that I am only using a man whose purposes are different, as an instrument for the furtherance of my own. Idem sentire de republicâ, was thought by one of the best men who ever lived to be the strongest bond of friendship:³ for republicâ I would read “all the great objects of life,” where the parties concerned have at heart any great objects at all. I do not see how there can be otherwise that idem velle, idem nolle, which is necessary to perfect friendship.⁴ Being excluded therefore from this, I am resolved hereafter to avoid all occasions for debate, since they cannot now strengthen my sympathies with those who agree with me, & are sure to weaken them with those who differ.—Yours faithfully

J. S. Mill

26.

TO GUSTAVE D’EICHTHAL¹

London, 15^th May 1829

My dear d’Eichthal,

Many thanks to you for your interesting letter, which has been read not only by Tooke² and myself but by several others of our friends with very great pleasure. Before I say more, I will answer the question which your brother has just put to me in your name. The Parliamentary accounts of the expenses of management, amounts of deposit, and other information relating to Saving Banks are not at all mixed up with those of Benefit Societies. They are quite separate.—Nothing of much importance or interest has taken place here since the settlement of the Catholic question,³ except the discussion respecting the duties on Silk,⁴ which shews that our ministry is disposed not only to persevere in the measures of their predecessors with respect to free trade, but to carry the principle still further. It is much to be feared that they will not take the opportunity which the present state of our relations with Portugal affords, for abrogating the Methuen treaty,⁵ by which we are bound to admit the Portugal wines at a lower duty than those of other countries. If we were free from this engagement, it might be hoped that your ministry would consent to lower the duties on some of our manufactures, on condition of our lowering those on your wines. But I suppose the stupid affairs of Russia & Turkey would prevent any discussions between the two Governments on commercial policy at present.⁶ —I am glad to hear that you have made so much progress in your work on England.⁷ I am however inclined to think from your letter to Tooke, that there is some danger of your praising this country beyond its due. You were very naturally struck with the superiority of the English to the French in all those qualities by which a nation is enabled to turn its productive and commercial resources to the best account. But this superiority is closely connected with the very worst point in our national character, the disposition to sacrifice every thing to accumulation, & that exclusive & engrossing selfishness which accompanies it. I am well aware how much of this is owing to our political institutions, under which every thing is accessible to wealth and scarcely any thing to poverty. But I fear that the commercial spirit, amidst all its good effects, is almost sure to bring with it wherever it prevails, a certain amount of this evil; because that which necessarily occupies every man’s time & thoughts for the greater part of his life, naturally acquires an ascendency over his mind disproportionate to its real importance; & when the pursuit of wealth, in a degree greater than is required for comfortable subsistence,—an occupation which concerns only a man himself & his family,—becomes the main object of his life, it almost invariably happens that his sympathies & his feelings of interest become incapable of going much beyond himself & his family. You must have observed even while you were here, although mixing as you did, with the best class of Englishmen, how difficult it is to interest them in any thing which has not some bearing upon what they call their advancement in life. In all countries you find men in middle life in a great degree selfish & worldly, but there are few countries besides this where even the young men are many of them avowedly so. In France or Germany the laughable aberrations of sentiment & enthusiasm are common, the odious ones of coldness & selfishness rare. In this country the reverse is the case. Here, it requires great tact & knowledge of society to enable a man to appear deeply in earnest on any subject without exposing himself to be laughed at—& the etiquette of what is called good society is to appear profoundly insensible to every impression, external or internal. You say that you dread to think what a great nation we shall be, now when we have got rid of bigotry. I do not myself think that bigotry was, or is, our worst point. It is indifference, moral insensibility, which we have need to get rid of. I wish that I saw the least chance of our improving in this respect, without either a political revolution, or such a change in our national education as it would, I fear, require a revolution to bring about. You are far ahead of us in France. You have only to teach men what is right, & they will do it: they are uninformed, but they are not prejudiced, & are desirous & eager to learn. Here, the grand difficulty is to make them desire to learn. They have such an opinion of their own wisdom that they do not think they can learn; & they have too little regard for other people to care much whether they learn or no, in things which only interest the nation in general, or mankind at large. Our middle class moreover have but one object in life, to ape their superiors; for whom they have an open-mouthed & besotted admiration, attaching itself to the bad more than to the good points, being those they can most easily comprehend & imitate. It is true that those who wish to do good, are here enabled, by that esprit d’association which you so much admire, to effect more, in proportion to their numbers, than they do in France. It is a great fault in your nation to surround themselves as you say with an atmosphere of personal vanity, which makes them desire to get all the honour of every thing to themselves, & not to call in the cooperation of others lest they should be compelled to share the credit with them. The fault of your public men certainly is, a desire for display. Here there is not so much anxiety of that kind. Applause which “leads to nothing”, is less valued. But the applause which has exchangeable value, that which produces its worth in pounds sterling, or in substantial power, the applause of the ruling classes, is as highly esteemed & as anxiously sought after here as elsewhere. We are it is true improving rapidly; chiefly however in throwing off prejudices. We no longer think our institutions the best possible; but we commit gross blunders in every attempt we make to mend them. Still it is something to have a fair field open. Sound ideas and good sense applied to public affairs, have, I believe, considerably more chance of being listened to & exercising influence at the present moment than at any time in the last hundred years. But where are they to be found? There are no men of talents among us. Our writers & our orators are, almost to a man, des gens mediocres. I do not know whether yours are any better; probably not; but they will be. We have at any rate not one member of either house of parliament who approaches within twenty degrees of M. de Broglie.⁸ —Tooke desires me to ask you, whether you can recommend to him any French works adapted for the instruction of the people on the elements of the sciences of politics & morals. It seems that the Society for the Diffusion of Useful (or rather Useless) Knowledge⁹ has appointed a Translation Committee, of which Tooke is likely to be one of the most active members. I suppose that if there be any such works they must be very recent, I am almost sure there are none prior to the present century.—He also wishes to know whether you can point out any works which it would be worth while for him to read, for his own instruction, on French Administration, & on the science of Administration in general—a science so little studied here that we are indebted to France both for the name & the very idea.—Of course the thing goes on here as well as every where else, but it has been so little thought of or studied scientifically that the very word itself is not yet naturalized in our island. Tooke also wishes to know whether a collection of the works of St Simon¹⁰ & his school, just sufficient to give him an idea of their general views & principles, would be voluminous or expensive. I am only now about to begin to read the work of M. Comte¹¹ which you so strongly recommended to me. When I have read it, I shall be extremely desirous of having some discussion with you on the principles of the Producteur party, especially that respecting “l’hérédité de la proprieté,” on which subject their doctrine as you express it seems to me a great heresy, but of course I cannot tell what I should think of it until I know with what qualifications & reservations they receive it. I myself think, with Mr Bentham, that property ought to escheat to the state in preference to collateral heirs, where there is no testamentary disposition. You will probably have perceived from our debates that the proposition of introducing some system of Poor Rates into Ireland is about to be seriously entertained by our Government.¹² The progress of opinion on this subject within a few years has been very striking. I am inclined to think that the discussions on this subject will be extremely instructive, & well worthy of attentive consideration from your statesmen.

Believe me yours faithfully

J. S. Mill.

27.

TO GUSTAVE D’EICHTHAL¹

London 8^th October 1829

My dear d’Eichthal

I can hardly expect forgiveness for having allowed so long an interval to elapse without writing to you, especially after you so warmly invited me, not only to write, but to correspond and discuss with you on some of the subjects on which it is of most importance that you, and I, and all men, should think rightly. The truth is however that it was long before I found time to read the books which you were so kind as to leave with me, and since that time I have been too much occupied with other things to be able to write to you at all. I have not yet been able to read any of the articles of the Producteur.² I cannot therefore give you my opinion so fully as I may perhaps hereafter, on the doctrines of the St Simon school. As far however as I can judge at present, if I were ever to become a proselyte of that school, it would rather be on the grounds of your last letter to me, than of any of the books I have read. In your letter I do not know that there is much in which I disagree though there are some things. I cannot say as much for the books. When I read the “Opinions Littéraires, Philosophiques et Industrielles”³ which I took up with some expectations, I was perfectly astonished at the shallowness of it. It appeared to me the production of men who had neither read nor thought, but hastily put down the first crudities that would occur to a boy who had just left school. When, however, I read Comte’s “Traité de Politique Positive,”⁴ I was no longer surprised at the high opinion which I had heard you express of the book, & the writer, and was even seduced by the plausibility of his manner into forming a higher opinion of the doctrines which he delivers than on reflexion they appear to me at all entitled to. I find the same fault with his philosophy, that he does with the philosophy of the eighteenth century [;] it is only the partie critique which appears to me sound, the partie organique appears to me liable to a hundred objections. It abounds indeed, with many very acute remarks though all of them of a kind which the progress of events is suggesting at this moment to all minds, which are au niveau du siècle throughout Europe: but it is a great mistake, a very common one too, which this sect seem to be in great danger of falling into to suppose that a few striking and original observations, are sufficient to form the foundation of a science positive. M. Comte is an exceedingly clear and methodical writer, most agreeable in stile, and concatenates so well, that one is apt to mistake the perfect coherence and logical consistency of his system, for truth.⁵ This power of systematising, of tracing a principle to its remotest consequences, and that power of clear and consecutive exposition which generally accompanies it, seem to me to be the characteristic excellencies of all the good French writers; and are nearly connected with their characteristic defect, which seems to me to be this: They are so well satisfied with the clearness with which their conclusions flow from their premisses, that they do not stop to compare the conclusions themselves with the fact though it is only when they will stand this comparison that we can be assured the premisses have included all which is essential to the question. They deduce politics like mathematics from a set of axioms & definitions, forgetting that in mathematics there is no danger of partial views: a proposition is either true or it is not, & if it is true, we may safely apply it to every case which the proposition comprehends in its terms: but in politics & the social science, this is so far from being the case, that error seldom arises from our assuming premisses which are not true, but generally from our overlooking other truths which limit, & modify the effect of the former. It appears to me therefore that most French philosophers are chargeable with the fault which Cousin imputes to Condillac,⁶ of insisting upon only seeing one thing when there are many, or seeing a thing only on one side, only in one point of view when there are many others equally essential to a just estimate of it. If I were to point out all the instances in which this fault is observable in Comte’s book, I must go through every page, for it pervades his whole book; & as it seems to me, it is this fault which alone enables him to give his ideas that compact & systematic form by which they are rendered in appearance something like a science positive. To begin with the very first and fundamental principle of the whole system, that government and the social union exist for the purpose of concentrating and directing all the forces of society to some one end. He cannot mean that government should exist for more than one purpose, or that this one purpose should be the direction of the united force of society to more than one end. What a foundation for a system of political science this is! Government exists for all purposes whatever that are for man’s good: and the highest & most important of these purposes is the improvement of man himself as a moral and intelligent being, which is an end not included in M. Comte’s category at all. The united forces of society never were, nor can be, directed to one single end, nor is there, so far as I can perceive, any reason for desiring that they should. Men do not come into the world to fulfil one single end, and there is no single end which if fulfilled even in the most complete manner would make them happy. Then again when M. Comte comes to enquire what this end is, it must be either the dominion of man over man, which is conquest, or the dominion of man over nature, which is production: the first was the end of society in the ancient world & in the feudal ages, (not true in the least)—this is gone by, therefore the other must be the end of society now: why so, pray? Are conquest & production, the only two conceivable purposes that human beings can combine for! This is one of a thousand things which shew that the St Simon philosophy could only originate in France. If M. Comte were a native of England, where this idol “production” has been set up and worshipped with incessant devotion for a century back, & if he had seen how the disproportionate importance attached to it lies at the root of all our worst national vices, corrupts the measures of our statesmen, the doctrines of our philosophers & hardens the minds of our people so as to make it almost hopeless to inspire them with any elevation either of intellect or of soul, he would have seen that a philosophy which makes production expressly the one end of the social union, would render the only great social evil, of which there is much danger in the present state of civilisation, irremediable. It leads too, to the grand practical conclusion of the St Simon school, that the business of government must be placed in the hands of the principal industriels, the pouvoir temporel at least, & the pouvoir spirituel in the savans & artistes: I do not know how it may be in France, but I know that in England these three are the very classes of persons you would pick out as the most remarkable for a narrow & bigotted understanding, & a sordid & contracted disposition as respects all things wider than their business or families. I have a thousand things more to say on this subject, but I must pass to another. There is according to M. Comte only one law of the development of human civilisation. You who have been in England can say whether this is true. Is it not clear that these two nations, England & France, are examples of the advance of civilisation by two different roads, & that neither of them has, nor probably ever will, pass through the state which the other is in? It is the lower animals which have only one law, that of their instinct. The order of the developement of man’s faculties, is as various as the situations in which he is placed. It is melancholy to observe how a man like M. Comte has had all his views of history warped & distorted by the necessity of proving that civilisation has but one law, & that a law of progressive advancement; how it blinds him to all the merits of the Greeks & Romans (& the demerits of the middle ages) because there was improvement in some things at such periods, he thinks there must have been so in all: why not allow that while mankind advanced in some things, they went back in others? There is positively no place for England in M. Comte’s system: he has given a list of all the states which the social system can be in, and England is in none of them. Notwithstanding all this there are many excellent & new remarks in M. Comte’s book: & if people could be contented to take part & leave the rest, these doctrines would probably receive the proper corrections & modifications & would be very valuable. But if the proselytes of Saint Simon insist upon forming a sect, which is a character above all to be avoided by independent thinkers [,] & imagine themselves under a necessity, if they belong to the sect, to take all its dogmas without exception or qualification, they will not only do no good but I fear immense mischief. Substituting one fragment of the truth for another is not what is wanted, but combining them together so as to obtain as large a portion as possible of the whole. I have not even left myself space to tell you with how much pleasure I have read your pamphlet, which has made almost an entire convert of me, and the few sheets which your brother shewed me of your work on England.⁷ I shall however write to you again by your friend, I hope I may now say our friend, M. Victor Lanjuinais,⁸ whom I hope I shall see more of when he returns from Scotland; what I have seen of him I like extremely. Meanwhile believe me

Yours faithfully

J. S. Mill.

28.

TO GUSTAVE D’EICHTHAL¹

• India House
• London

7^th November 1829

My dear d’Eichthal,

As I am several letters in your debt, I take advantage of the departure of our friend M. Lanjuinais² to pay one instalment. To my great regret I have seen but little of M. Lanjuinais during his residence here, having been prevented first by his absence from town, then by my own, afterwards by his again, and finally by his departure before the expected period. However he permits us to hope that we shall see him again for a short time in the early part of next summer.—One object which I have in writing to you at present is to inform you of a project which we have formed and which there is some prospect though but a doubtful one of our being able to realize, of starting a morning newspaper, of which Chadwick should be the editor, and almost all your friends in this country frequent writers.³ The prospects of success would be very encouraging. You know in how low a state the newspaper press of this country is. In France the best thinkers & writers of the nation, write in the journals & direct public opinion; but our daily & weekly writers are the lowest hacks of literature, which when it is a trade, is the vilest & most degrading of all trades, because more of affectation & hypocrisy, & more subservience to the baser feelings of others, are necessary for carrying it on, than for any other trade, from that of a brothelkeeper upwards. We are not in so low a state here, as not to have in some measure found this out; & there is consequently rather a general sense of the needfulness of some newspaper conducted by men really in earnest about public objects, & really forming their opinions from some previous knowledge & not from the mere appearances of the moment, or the convenience of party advocacy. The old ties of party and the attachment to established opinions have at the same time been so greatly weakened among all the reading classes, that the times are very favourable for starting new opinions, and especially any which hold out sufficient hopes of extensive good, to enlist in their behalf that enthusiasm and dévouement, which are now wandering about the world seeking an object worthy of them. We possess moreover the means of rendering this paper the best as a mere vehicle of intelligence; as a mere newspaper in short, which yet exists; & have therefore no doubt of its success provided we can raise the money which of course is doubtful, but of which we have considerable hopes. As this newspaper will pay very particular attention to French affairs, and will endeavour, as one of its grand objects to make its readers understand not only French politics but the whole social state of France, including all that is doing in the world of literature & philosophy by that active and important member of the European community, & in short to explain the character of that general movement which is taking place in the human mind all over the Continent of Europe but especially in France, we shall be very anxious to have a first rate correspondent at Paris, capable of supplying, (along with the general news of the day in politics, literature & philosophy) sound & enlarged views on all these subjects. I imagine there is scarcely any person except yourself who, with the other necessary qualifications, possesses that knowledge of England, which a Frenchman writing for Englishmen would need, & I am speaking the sentiments of all my expected collaborateurs when I request, that if we succeed in realizing our scheme, you will undertake this department of it. We should wish to have regular letters as often as you could find time to write them, similar to those in the Times, which, though by no means first rate, have done great good here. Of course we should not wish you to undertake so great a portion of our labour without participating in our reward (the pecuniary part of it I mean) either in the shape of a regular engagement, or of a proportion of the profits in case of success, according to your own preference, and to the amount of capital which we can succeed in raising, to commence our operations. If by ill fortune you should not be disposed to undertake what I have proposed to you, I beg that you will consider whether there is any other person whom you could recommend to us for the same purpose, or with whom you could divide the task. In the mean time, as it is best that a scheme of this sort should be known to as few persons as possible until it is certain of being prosecuted, it will be desirable that you should not speak of it more than may be necessary for obtaining what we want.—I have not left myself room to say much to you on the Saint Simon school, & indeed, having been out of town, I have not yet had an opportunity of reading any of the articles of the Producteur.⁴ I am chiefly anxious at present to tell you of the things which I approve and admire in this school, as I am rather afraid that my former letter may have left an impression on your mind, that I do not think so highly of them as I actually do. In the first place then I highly approve and commend one of the leading principles of their system, which they have established to conviction, the necessity of a Pouvoir Spirituel. They have held out as the ultimate end towards which we are advancing & which we shall one day attain, a state in which the body of the people, i.e. the uninstructed, shall entertain the same feelings of deference & submission to the authority of the instructed, in morals and politics, as they at present do in the physical sciences. This, I am persuaded, is the only wholesome state of the human mind; & the knowledge that we ought to look to it as the ultimate end, has a great tendency to protect us from many errors which the philosophers of the 18^th century fell into, & which all will be liable to who suppose that the diffusion of knowledge among the labouring classes & the consequent improvement of their intellects is to be the grand instrument of the regeneration of mankind. Before, however, this state can be attained or even aimed at it is necessary that several great steps should be taken in the improvement of the social organisation; & principally that the great social sinister interests should be removed, since while these exist, those, who would otherwise be the instructed classes, have no motive to obtain real instruction in politics & morals, & are subjected to biasses from which the students of the physical sciences are exempt. They can drive a trade in the ignorance and prejudices of others; they either write for the classes who have sinister interests, and minister to their selfishness and malevolence, or else, addressing themselves to the common people, they find in the well grounded discontent of the people against their institutions sufficient materials for acquiring popularity without either instructing their intellects, or cultivating right habits of feeling and judging in their minds. I object altogether to the means which the St Simonists propose for organizing the pouvoir spirituel. It appears to me that you cannot organise it at all. What is the pouvoir spirituel but the insensible influence of mind over mind? The instruments of this are private communication, the pulpit, & the press. If you attempt to collect together the instructed, you must have somebody to chuse them, & determine who they are: in what respect, then, will this differ from an elective national assembly, with a qualification for eligibility, not a qualification of property but of education?—The second great service which in my opinion the St Simonists have rendered, is not by having been the first to notice (for all persons of course have adverted to it more or less) but having illustrated more copiously than had been done before, and having paid more attention & attached more importance than other philosophers to the fact, that institutions which if we consider them in themselves, we can hardly help thinking it impossible should ever have produced any thing but the most unqualified mischief (the Catholic church for example) may yet, at a particular stage in the progress of the human mind, have not only been highly useful but absolutely indispensable; the only means by which the human mind could have been brought forward to an ulterior stage of improvement. A due attention to this great truth, which is the result of enlarged views of the history of mankind, is also thereby a necessary condition to those views. Without it, there is no possibility of viewing or judging past times with candour, or trying them by any standard but that of the present. And yet, he who does not do this, will judge the present as ill as the past. For surely at every present epoch there are many things which would be good for that epoch, though not good for the being Man, at every epoch, nor perhaps at any other than that one: & whoever does not make this distinction must be a bad practical philosopher even for his own age, yet he will not make the distinction for the present who does not make it for the past. Every age contains countries, every country contains men, who are in every possible state of civilisation, from the lowest of all, to the highest which mankind have reached in that age, or in that country. Yet one hardly meets with a single man who does not habitually think & talk as if whatever was good or bad for one portion of these countries or of these individuals was good or bad for all the other portions. It is very unlikely that any person who is imbued with the spirit of the St Simon school, should fall into this error. They have, and their system tends to produce even as it appears to me in excess, that eclecticism, and comprehensive liberality, which, as it widens the range both of our ideas and of our feelings, is far more pardonable & less mischievous even when most exagéré, than the opposite fault. They have that spirit which is most opposed to the spirit of criticism and disceptation; that which induces us, not to combat but to pass over & disregard the errors in what is presented to us, in order to seize and appropriate to ourselves that portion or fragment (however diminutive) of truth, which there must necessarily be at the bottom of every error, which is not a mere fallacy in ratiocination. As the great danger to mankind is not from seeing what is not, but from overlooking what is; since clever & intelligent men hardly ever err from the former cause, but no powers of mind are any protection against the evils arising from imperfect and partial views of what is real; since not errors but half truths are the bane of human improvement, it seems to follow that the proper mode of philosophizing & discussing for a person who pursues the good of mankind & not the gratification of his own vanity, should be the direct opposite of the philosophie critique of the last century: it should consist, not in attacking men’s wrong opinions, but in giving them that knowledge which will enable them to form right ones that will push off the wrong ones, as the new leaves push off the withered ones of the last year. The great instrument of improvement in men, is to supply them with the other half of the truth, one side of which only they have ever seen: to turn round to them the white side of the shield, of which they seeing only the black side, have cut other men’s throats & risked their own to prove that the shield is black. It is not sufficiently considered by many zealots for even right opinions, that you have done little or nothing for a man when you have merely given him an opinion. An opinion suggests hardly anything to an uninformed mind; it may become a watchword, but can never be a moving & influencing and living principle within him. Words, or any thing which can be stated in words, benefit none but those minds to whom the words suggest an ample store of correct and clear ideas, & sound & accurate knowledge previously acquired concerning the things which are meant by the words. It is therefore of little use altering men’s opinions, & it is often very mischievous to unsettle them, until you have brought their minds to that higher state of cultivation, of which better opinions are the natural & almost spontaneous growth. But merely in order to do this, we must not attack their opinions en masse, but fix our attention on what is good in those opinions, & endeavour to lead them on from this & through this to something better. This is practical eclecticism. Without intending it I have been illustrating at great length one of the most valuable parts of the St Simon philosophy, though not at all peculiar to it, the distinction between the partie critique & the partie organique of any philosophy & between the critical, & the organical, epochs of the human mind. I am inclined to think that one idea connected with this matter, did really originate with them, viz. that a principle may be valuable & in a certain sense even true comme principe critique which comme principe organique or even as a simple logical proposition is false. The logical explanation of this I take to be, that a proposition, though false as a whole, may comprehend as part of itself, may logically include the negation of some prevailing error. I think that the St Simonists have also great merit in having pointed out as the first step in the investigation of practical political truths, to ascertain what is the state into which, in the natural order of the advancement of civilisation the nation in question will next come; in order that it may be the grand object of our endeavours, to facilitate the transition to this state. Keeping this in view, it will often follow, that we must uphold or even establish institutions which are liable to produce great evils, evils which in other states of society might be without alloy; provided that these institutions have, at the same time, a tendency to counteract other mischievous tendencies, which happen to be more prevailing or more to be apprehended in that age, by which of course must always be meant, in that state of the human mind. On this subject I should differ from the St Simonists, chiefly in this respect; they seem to think that the mind of man, by a sort of fatality or necessity, grows & unfolds its different faculties always in one particular order, like the body; & that therefore we must be always either standing still, or advancing, or retrograding; whereas I am satisfied, that better consideration would shew, that different nations, indeed different minds, may & do advance to improvement by different roads; that nations, & men, nearly in an equally advanced stage of civilization, may yet be very different in character, & that changes may take place in a man or a nation, which are neither steps forward nor backward, but steps to one side. Here ends, I believe, all that I have to say at present on the St Simon school.—Tooke has shewn me all your letters; in the last there are two things which pleased me extremely. One is your remark that analysis & synthesis have directly opposite meanings in mathematics from what they have in philosophy: this, which is not only a just but a profound observation, also occurred to Dugald Stewart,⁵ the second volume of whose Philosophy of the Mind contains that with many other excellent remarks on similar subjects. The other is, your observation that there is no incompatibility between the morality of enlightened self-interest & that of dévoûement: neither of these phrases comprises the principle of morals, but they express two kinds of impulses, both of which might, & do to a certain extent, lead men to virtue, & which it is desirable to put forward alternately as incentives to it, according to the age, the nation, or even the individual, whom you are addressing.

I hope soon to hear from you after having merited that pleasure by these two long letters. For the present believe me

Yours most sincerely

J. S. Mill.

29.

TO GUSTAVE D’EICHTHAL¹

London, 9^th February 1830

My dear Gustave

I had for several weeks been on the point of writing to you a long letter on the great subject which you have so deeply at heart, and had just for the first time obtained an interval of leisure for that purpose, when the horrible event took place which has deprived me of one whom I had counted upon as a friend and companion through my whole life.² I could not mix up the first intelligence of our loss with an abstract philosophical discussion. Poor M^r Tooke³ was anxious that you should be informed of it, and wished me to communicate it to you, but I anxiously hoped that you might learn it first through some other channel. I am deeply indebted to you, my dear Gustave, for your expressions of sympathy in my own affliction.⁴ There is no ground for the apprehensions which you express of my being overcome and crushed by this unexpected blow. Many who knew him and loved him less than I did, have felt the immediate shock much more forcibly. It is not the intensity, but the durability of such grief, which bears hard upon me, and I feel it most in the enervation, & almost extinction, for the present, of all my activity, and all my concern for mankind or for my duties. It seems to me as if I had never cared for any one but him, and had never laboured but for his sympathy and approbation. Yet though I should detest myself if I ever ceased to think and feel as I now do concerning his loss, I know that this effect of it will not last. The more affectionately I cherish his memory, the more ardently shall I pursue those great objects in which he took so deep an interest. I should care little for life or for mankind, but for the thought that there are among them a few men like him, & that all have in them the capacity of becoming at least an approximation to what he was. There are yet two or three living, but for whom I should no longer value existence: for though there have been a few, very few, who had sufficient native energy and firmness to pursue cheerfully the good of posterity, without being upheld by the aid and encouragement of some in their own generation, I am so far removed from that state of mind that I can just understand it sufficiently to believe it possible. But as I have said before, those who made life valuable to me are not all gone, and though scarcely any of them were equal to Eyton and none superior to him in purity and singleness of mind combined with warmth and kindliness of affection, yet I cannot entirely droop or relax in my exertions while they survive, and remain unchanged towards me, and progressively improving in the developement of their intellectual and moral capabilities. I know too, that our loss will be an additional bond of connexion to me with those who loved him and who pursue the great objects of his life. The time however when I shall feel this effect of it has not yet arrived.

While I write this, I have received your note enclosing Eyton’s last letter to you:⁵ the expression of his last thoughts and feelings on the great interests of humanity. It was kind in you to send it, particularly now when the last relic of our friend must be so valuable to you. I had however seen it already, as he shewed it to me before he sent it off. I accept gratefully your offer of sending a reply to it, addressed to me; but I do so, only because I should be interested by any thing which you would write on those topics; for though I fundamentally agreed with him, his objections to the St Simonian philosophy are not exactly those on which I should mainly insist, nor are stated in the exact terms or manner in which I should urge them. I am not about to make this letter a controversial one, for this event has so scattered my thoughts that I have been able to carry on no continued train of reflexion since it occurred. Besides, I have a great dislike to controversy, and am persuaded that discussion, as discussion, seldom did any good. This may shew you how completely I am cured of those habitudes critiques, which, you seem to suppose, are the only obstacle to my adopting the entire doctrine of your school. The esprit critique is almost the only one which prevails among the best and most instructed men of this country as well as of France; and it will be one of the objects of my philosophical and practical labours, (as it would have been one of those of poor Eyton if he had happily lived to pursue his designs), to contribute to the formation of a better spirit. This is a debt which I owe partly though not entirely to the St Simonian school: I had much changed from what I was, before I read any of their publications; but it was their works which gave order and system to the ideas which I had already imbibed from intercourse with others, and derived from my own reflexions. A part of the objection I have to controversy, is that it keeps up the esprit critique. I am averse to any mode of eradicating error, but by establishing and inculcating (when that is practicable) the opposite truth; a truth of some kind inconsistent with that moral or intellectual state of mind from which the errors arise. It is only thus that we can at once maintain the good that already exists, and produce more. And I object to placing myself in the situation of an advocate for or against a cause. I will read the books of those from whom I differ, I will consider patiently and mature in my own mind the ideas which they suggest, I will make up my own opinion, and set it forth with the reasons. When I see any person going wrong, I will try to find out the fragment of truth which is misleading him, & will analyse and expound that; I will suggest to his own mind not inculcate in him as from mine the idea which I think will save him. And when this is done, or at least if it were universally done, no one’s offended amour propre would make him cling to his errors; no one would connect, with the adoption of truth, the idea of defeat; and no one would feel impelled by the ardour of debate & the desire of triumph, to reject, as almost all now do whatever of truth there really is in the opinions of those whose ultimate conclusion differs from theirs. In short, I do not insist upon making others give up their own point of view & adopt mine, but I endeavour myself to unite whatever is not optical illusion in both. When by this means I shall have clearly embraced in my own view the entire truth, & shall be able to represent to others that whole, of which they have before seen a part, I shall have great confidence in their ultimate adoption of it. Truth will then have no enemy but the esprit critique, which makes men unwilling to look for truth in the midst of error; & I am unwilling to strengthen this spirit by maintaining any opinions in the spirit of argumentation and debate. This being the system which I have determined to act upon, I shall of course apply it to my intercourse with you. I will read every thing which you may be so kind as to send me, whether from yourself or from the results of the united labours of your school. All that I have read of their works is of a character to make me wish to be acquainted with all their other speculations. If the result of the perusal of these works should be, my entire conversion, which I regard as extremely unlikely, I shall at once confess it; if I desire further explanations, I shall solicit them from your kindness, and I will always state to you my reasons for differing where I do differ. But on no account will I discuss with you. And therefore I do not feel that I should be justified in encouraging the project which you give me some hints that you have formed, of coming to England with a view to my complete initiation in the St Simonian doctrine. As a friend whom I extremely value, and who shared with me the friendship of him whom we have lost, it would give me great pleasure to see you, and to converse with you; and I am both touched and flattered that you should think me of so much importance either to yourself or to society, as to think of undertaking a journey with the sole view of bringing me over to opinions identical with your own. But I am well convinced that if this be ever accomplished, it will not be the effect of any sudden or rapid conviction produced by a few days or weeks of verbal discussion, but the result of time and my own reflexions aided by those works, & those suggestions, which I hope you will continue to furnish me with, from time to time. I should therefore decline all verbal controversy even if you were here. It would only risk the weakening or altering our present feelings towards each other, as we should probably find each other much more intractable than we expect, and as almost every man shews himself in dispute worse than he really is & appears unreasonably wedded to his opinions when called upon to defend them on a sudden, & is apt to put forward other arguments than those which have really made an impression on his own mind.

I no longer adhere to the objections I formerly urged against the St Simonian school, as some of the points which I objected to, appeared from a perusal of the Producteur (every word of which I have read with as great care and interest as any book I ever saw) never to have been held by them in the sense in which I thought them objectionable, & as you informed me in your answer⁶ to my two letters that the other points had been given up. I was much pleased to find that although you are a sect, you are an improving sect, and that your creeds are not made up never to be altered. Of all the improvements in your doctrine, mentioned in your letter, I fully approve: but I still retain all my objections to your practical views, to your organisation, which appears to me impracticable, & not desirable if practicable, like that of Mr Owen.⁷ You know, however, that I have not yet read or heard the reasons which you can adduce and my mind therefore remains open to conviction. But your proposal that when I am convinced of the soundness of your views I should correspond and cooperate with your society induces me to state to you at once the reasons which would prevent me from doing so even if I were convinced that the whole body of your doctrine is true. It appears to me utterly hopeless and chimerical to suppose that the regeneration of mankind can ever be wrought by means of working on their opinions. I think that mankind, and I am sure that my own countrymen, are in a state of mind which renders them incapable of receiving a true doctrine générale, or of understanding it in a true sense if they did receive it. In France it is perhaps possible that they might receive it, but not in the sense in which it is meant, nor would it produce, even admitting its truth, the good effects which you anticipate from it. I can conceive a whole people professing St Simonism, and acting precisely as they do now, just as there have been & are many entire nations professing Christianity, & whose conduct is yet utterly selfish and worldly, and in defiance of the whole scheme of Christian ethics. In England, on the other hand, the very idea of beginning a reformation in men’s minds by preaching to them a comprehensive doctrine, is a notion which never would enter into the head of any person who has lived long enough in England to know the people. Englishmen habitually distrust the most obvious truths, if the person who advances them is suspected of having any general views. To produce any effect on their minds, you must carefully conceal the fact of your having any system or body of opinions, and must instruct them on insulated points, & endeavour to form their habits of thought by your mode of treating single and practical questions. When you have gained a high reputation with them for knowledge of facts, & skill and judgment in the appreciation of details, you may then venture on enlarged views; but even then, very cautiously and guardedly. A journal which should start by a systematic exposition of far-sighted views and extended principles, would not have twenty subscribers. I conceive therefore that your school, in their method of proceeding, by declaring themselves the apostles of a new doctrine, and seeking to inculcate that doctrine first, and to produce all other kinds of good as consequences of that, are violating the first & greatest rule of their own philosophy, which is, that we ought to consider what is the stage through which, in the progress of civilization, our country has next to pass, and to endeavour to facilitate the transition & render it safe & healthy. I am convinced that my own country & I suspect that France must pass through several states before it arrives at St Simonism, even if that doctrine is true; & that although we ought to arrive if we can at a general system of social philosophy, and to keep it always in our own view, we ought not to address it to the public, who are by no means ripe for its reception, but to avail ourselves of the good which is in them, to educate their minds by accustoming them to think rightly on those subjects on which they already think, to communicate to them all the truths which they are prepared for, and (in England at least where the philosophie critique has never yet got the better of the doctrine théologique et féodale) to endeavour to alter those parts of our social institutions and policy which at present oppose improvement, degrade and brutalize the intellects and morality of the people, & by giving all the ascendency to mere wealth, which the possession of political power confers, prevents the growth of a pouvoir spirituel capable of commanding the faith of the majority, who must and do believe on authority. You are also I am convinced mistaken in supposing that the religious feelings which prevail here, are of a character with which St Simonism would at all be capable of allying itself. But of this I must write hereafter, and it shall be soon. Excuse the very imperfect exposition of my sentiments which I have given. M^r Tooke I understand is somewhat recovered from the dreadful shock, M^rs Tooke is still very ill. I have seen neither since it occurred.

Yours affectionately

J. S. Mill.

On reading this letter again today (10^th. February) I think I can express my meaning better by saying that I conceive your error to be this: you imagine that you can accomplish the perfection of mankind by teaching them St Simonism, whereas it appears to me that their adoption of St Simonism, if that doctrine be true, will be the natural result and effect of a high state of moral and intellectual culture previously received: that it should not be presented to the minds of any who have not already attained a high degree of improvement, since if presented to any others it will either be rejected by them, or received only as Christianity is at present received by the majority, that is, in such a manner as to be perfectly inefficacious.

I have a thousand other things to write, and your future letters shall be answered without any repetition of this unseemly delay.

J.S.M.

30.

TO GUSTAVE D’EICHTHAL¹

March 6, 1830

My dear Gustave

I take the opportunity of a friend who is going to Paris, for fulfilling the intentions of our deceased friend as expressed in his last letter to you, by sending you the enclosed pamphlet of D^r Channing,² the American preacher. I quite agree in his admiration of it, and I conceive that it expresses very clearly and forcibly the great vice of your system as well as that of M^r Owen, and many others qui courent le monde aujourd’hui. I hope you will read it and tell me what you think of it.

I have read and forwarded the letter to M^r Burns.³ The report which it contains of the proceedings at one of your meetings would have convinced me if I were not already satisfied, of the unfitness of your scheme for this country at least. It would be impossible to induce any one here to look at it with a serious face. I wonder how you have hitherto escaped the jokers and epigrammatists of the Parisian salons.

Pray be so good as to make my remembrances to Adolphe. I will write to him as soon as I have time & I hope he will write to me.

Yours in great haste

J. S. Mill.

31.

TO HENRY COLE¹

India House. 26 May. 1830.

My dear Cole

As I know that you are acquainted with D^r Hooker,² which is an honour I have not attained to, I should be obliged to you if you would do me the favour to communicate to him the accompanying notes which I made in looking over his excellent British Flora³ just published. I request you however to do so only in case you should think on reading them, that there is any thing in them which might possibly be interesting to D^r Hooker.

The only points which I myself think of any consequence, are those which relate to Œnanthe aprifolia & Vicia sativa, & you would not be far wrong if you were to suppose that most of the remainder are put down chiefly to make up a number. However it is possible that some of the Stations mentioned may be unknown to D^r Hooker.

As I am very favourably situated for observing the plants of Surrey, which have hardly been observed at all since Ray’s⁴ time if we except those in the immediate vicinity of London, which are figured in Curtis’s Flora Londinensis⁵ and many of which appear to have become extinct in the situations where Curtis found them I may possibly be able hereafter to make other communications of a nature similar to this, if the present one should prove to be of any use. I have explored some parts of the County very fully, and almost every part of it more or less, but I expect to make many more discoveries before I have done.

Pray excuse my troubling you in this matter, and believe me

Yours ever,

John S. Mill

32.

TO SARAH AUSTIN¹

7^th August 1830

Dear M^rs Austin

At your request I put into writing what I said to you the other night on the subject of Mr Austin’s lectures.² What appears to me of most importance is that he should not spend time in endeavouring to make the lectures which have been already delivered, better than they are. They stand greatly in need of curtailment, but I do not believe that there is a single member of the class who would wish them to be changed in any other respect. There is only one opinion expressed in the lectures which I have heard controverted at all; & the manner of exposition has excited the admiration of every body. The only fault found is, that the different points are over explained; that they are dwelt upon longer & repeated oftener, than is necessary to a complete understanding of them. I am certain that all which the class would desire in respect to the earlier lectures is that they should be very much abridged & perhaps many of the historical details dispensed with altogether: not because those details are not considered useful & interesting, but because it is impossible to do every thing, and because there are other things which they are much more anxious to know.—Though the class were extremely delighted with the course as far as it went, they certainly were very much disappointed that Mr Austin did not get through a greater portion of the subject; & they anticipate with great pleasure the completion of it in the lectures on which he has obtained for them the privilege of attendance, at the conclusion of the next year’s course. The only thing which in my opinion could at all endanger the permanent success & utility of the professorship, would be his not being able to include a view of all the essential parts of the science in his next series of lectures. Now the present class very well know that next to his health, the great cause of his getting through so little was his being obliged to prepare his lectures as he went on, not having them ready written. If he spends any time in improving his present lectures, more than is necessary for sufficiently shortening them, he will be in precisely the same difficulty, with the remainder of his subject, as he was this year with the whole of it. On the contrary, if he contents himself with using the scissors abundantly, & sets about the preparation of the subsequent lectures immediately, he will be several months in advance, & will be able, without that fatigue & harassing excitement which destroy his health, to prepare the lectures carefully, include a large portion of the subject in each, & avoid repetition & over explanation.

I would not recommend his continuing the Tables at present, as those which are printed embrace the entire field of law, & it is of so much more importance that he should complete his course of lectures next year.

From the very high opinion which has been expressed of the last course by those to whom I have lent my notes, I have considerable hopes that the class next year will be satisfactory in respect of numbers. But I should not be at all discouraged even if the number was small—because it is only a complete course, which can do much to spread the reputation of the lecturer. If he should be able to complete the subject next year, I have not the least doubt that he will have a numerous class the year after.

I deem it however of the greatest importance with a view to his class next year, that he should deliver an interesting introductory lecture. I know his well grounded aversion to vague generalities, & I know as certainly as he does, that it is impossible to teach any thing that is worth knowing of a whole science, in a short general view. But it is not necessary that an introductory lecture should be an abridged view of the science. The best introductory lectures extant are not so: Brown’s³ introductory lecture to his course of metaphysics for example. The proper notion of an introductory lecture seems to be that it should resemble the preface to a book, which gives the reasons for writing the book & the reasons for reading it. Especially on the moral sciences, whose rank as sciences or whose scientific character itself is not generally recognized, there seems to be an ample field for remarks of a most useful description in opening a course of lectures. He might explain, what is meant by general jurisprudence: in what respect a course of jurisprudence differs from a course of lectures on the law of any particular country, & also from lectures on the science or art of legislation: the grounds of the opinion, that there really is a science of general jurisprudence, & that it is worth studying: proof of the perverting & confusing effect of the study of law as it is commonly pursued, without being accompanied by the study of jurisprudence: examples of the erroneous notions usually formed as to what jurisprudence is, & the silly talk of Blackstone,⁴ & others of our lawyers, when they erect the technical maxims of their own law into principles of jurisprudence. All these topics, with a hundred others of the same kind, which will occur to Mr Austin himself, would afford ample materials for a highly useful introductory lecture, & one which need not be chargeable with vagueness or generality. I am satisfied, & so are several others of the class, that if his introductory lecture of last year had treated of these topics, in the manner in which we all know he would have treated them if at all, his class would have been twice as numerous as it was. I am quite convinced that if he delivers a lecture of this kind next year, he will have a numerous class, & that if he does not, he will have a comparatively small one.

But if he will not write such a lecture as this, let him not think of writing another but deliver the first lecture of the course itself as his introductory lecture. The general remark last year in his class room after the close of his lecture on Law in general, was, that it was very unfortunate that he had not delivered that very lecture instead of his introductory one.

Yours affectionately

J. S. Mill.

P.S. The one opinion which, as I mentioned in the letter, has been controverted, is this: that every right of action must be founded on an injury. Excuse bad penmanship, as I write unavoidably in haste.

33.

TO JAMES MILL¹

• [Paris]

[Aug. 13, 1830]

I have had some conversation with M. Say,² and a great deal with Adolphe d’Eichthal and Victor Lanjuinais, and I have been a very assiduous reader of all the newspapers since I arrived. . . . At present, if I were to look only at the cowardice and imbecility of the existing generation of public men, with scarcely a single exception, I should expect very little good; but when I consider the spirit and intelligence of the young men and of the people, the immense influence of the journals, and the strength of the public voice, I am encouraged to hope that as there has been an excellent revolution without leaders, leaders will not be required in order to establish a good government. [He then goes on to give a detailed account of how the revolution was accomplished—the flinching of the generals of the army, the cowardice and meanness of Dupin³ above everybody. He has the lowest opinion of the ministry, not a Radical among them except Dupont de l’Eure;⁴ all mere place-hunters. Thiers,⁵ at the meeting for organizing the resistance, showed great weakness and pusillanimity. (I heard him long afterwards say he detested Thiers.) Of the new measures he praises most the lowering of the age-qualification to the Chamber from 40 to 30: he has seen no one that attaches due importance to this change.] I am going to the Chamber of Deputies to-morrow with Mr. Austin, and next week, I am to be introduced to the Society of “Aide-toi,”⁶ where I am to be brought in contact with almost all the best of the young men, and there are few besides that I should at all care to be acquainted with. . . . I have heard an immense number of the most affecting instances of the virtue and good sense of the common people.

34.

TO JAMES MILL¹

• [Paris]

August 20th, 1830.

I have mixed very much among the people since I arrived, and have taken every opportunity which I could find or make of conversing with persons of all classes. The result so far exceeds all my previous expectations of good, that I can scarcely trust it without further experience. The fact with which I have been most struck in the French people, is the extraordinary simplicity of character which seems to pervade them all, especially the working classes. I have conversed with many who have taken part in the three days’ contest, not to mention the wives and families of some of them, and I have invariably found that their sole anxiety was to convince me that they had acted right, or rather there seemed to be no design to make any particular impression upon me, but they appeared to come out with what was uppermost in their own minds, and that was the morality and lawfulness of their resistance. I have not perceived the slightest tinge of fanfaronnade or vanity in their language or in their sentiments. I have not heard one word of self-applause, nor boasting about the heroism or dévouement of the people of Paris, nor any credit taken to themselves for having preserved order or avoided excesses; it does not seem to occur to them at all that they have done any thing extraordinary. They had but one idea, that of fighting for their legal rights, and the observance of the legal rights of others followed as an immediate corollary. The inconceivable purity and singleness of purpose, almost amounting to naïveté, which they all shew in speaking of these events, has given me a greater love for them than I thought myself capable of feeling for so large a collection of human beings, and the more exhilarating views which it opens of human nature will have a beneficial effect on the whole of my future life. Though I mention particularly their language and conduct with respect to politics, I have seen the same simplicity of character in their every day intercourse, and I could relate various traits of it, but I will not, because none of them separately prove much, though their number, and the total absence of all indications of a contrary nature, constitute a strong body of evidence.

Another most striking circumstance, is the total absence of acrimony with which they speak of the authors of the attempt to establish despotism. This speaks wonderfully in favour of their character as a people, even if it should lead them, as I fear it will, to a culpable leniency in their treatment of these great offenders. The feeling of satisfaction at having got rid of men whom they despised, appears to have superseded all personal feelings of hostility against the individuals, and the struggle bore in their minds so exclusively the character of self-defence, that the ulterior purpose of executing vengeance upon their enemies hardly occurred to them. The conduct of the manufacturing population of the faubourgs has been exemplary. Attempts were made to excite disturbances among them, with a view to the destruction of machinery and the exclusion of foreign artizans. A large body of them assembled and marched to the Prefecture of Police with a petition on these two subjects. The prefect, M. Girod (de l’Ain)² came out and agreed [argued?] the matter quietly with them, in a short and pithy speech, upon which they very peaceably marched back. The next day, however, the attroupemens were rather more numerous and considerable, and I know from several quarters, that the government were seriously alarmed; they arrested some of the instigators, some of whom proved to be criminals returned from the galleys, and three were printers of an ultra-Catholic and royalist journal. But the next day all was quiet, and people who had been much alarmed the day before, confessed that there was no danger. It is very curious to see proclamations stuck about the streets, from all sorts of obscure individuals, sometimes of the humblest class, on all subjects which came uppermost. On this occasion there appeared several excellent placards from common workmen, explaining to their fellow-labourers the interest which they had in maintaining the security of property, and the advantage they ultimately derive from all improvements in the productive power of labour. I will try to procure one or two of these placards and take them to England with me, though I fear it will be rather difficult to get them. Among other curious placards which are stuck up, there is an exculpatory one from the charcoal-carriers (charbonniers). A deputation of these people had waited upon Charles the Tenth a few days before the coup d’etat on the occasion of a fête, and it had been reported that one of them had used some expressions of encouragement to him, which gave great offence to the remainder of the people. The charbonniers finding themselves in consequence slighted and looked shy upon by the other classes of the people, put forth this proclamation, signed by several of them in behalf of the rest, saying, that they had gone to the Tuileries because they could not help it, as they would have been thrown out of employment and reduced to starvation if they had not, but that none of their number had used any such expressions as those described [ascribed?] to them, and that they had fought like the others on the 28th and 29th. This vindication, which I have seen numbers of men in ragged coats spelling out as they best could on the walls, did not, it seems, produce the desired effect; consequently the charbonniers assembled, hoisted an enormous tri-coloured flag, and proceeded to the Prefecture of Police, where the eternal M. Girod de l’Ain came out and was harangued by them; heard their justification of themselves, and their complaint against the sort of stigma which had been thrown upon them; told them that he believed their story, and hoped that nobody would thereafter say any thing to their disadvantage, so thereupon they marched back. I have seen as much of my former friends at Paris as their time would allow, and have made a number of new acquaintances; this, however, is a very bad time for making the acquaintance of any of the known men, as they are for the most part employed, or are soon likely to be employed on public duties. I have, however, been able to compare a multitude of testimonies on the recent and present state of affairs, and have found that what I have hitherto told you is perfectly correct in the gross, though incorrect in many of the details. Thus, I have now reason to believe that what I told you respecting the good conduct of Lafitte³ during the revolution was at least exaggerated and that he was scarcely an exception to the general apathy and cowardice of the monied classes. On the other hand, it is not true that none of the Deputies took part in the fight. There are about fifteen or sixteen, all members of the extrême gauche, whom, as I am assured by — of the Society Aide-toi the Society can perfectly count upon as the devoted friends of the people (and this I already begin to see in their Parliamentary conduct). Of these, as many as were at Paris, took a share from the first in the whole business, and ran the same risk with the others. You will not be surprised to hear that Lafayette⁴ and his son are among these fifteen or sixteen, but Benjamin Constant⁵ is not, nor Lafitte, nor Casimir Perier,⁶ nor almost any one whom you probably knew by name. Though the libéraux in the Chamber of Deputies are generally so little to be relied upon (and those in the Upper House are in general much worse), I have the greatest confidence in the force of circumstances and of public opinion. The cry is becoming general for the dissolution of the Chamber, and there are already signs, that in order to prolong their political existence, they will consent to make a number of the required concessions. Within the last day or two the newspapers have assumed a much more decided tone than before in favour of important alterations in the constitution, and in particular a considerable extension of the elective franchise. There are about 100 resignations or annullations of election, and a law is now passing through the Chamber, compelling all who accept places to vacate their seats, as in England. This law is retrospective to the beginning of the present session, and it is said that many place-holders will lose their seats. These elections are expected to strengthen exceedingly the bands of the côté gauche. The Society Aide-toi, which contributed so greatly to the success of the two last general elections, will apply itself with the same rigour, and with a great increase of power, to the management of the approaching partial one. My next letter⁷ will relate chiefly to this Society, which is one of the most powerful and best organized political bodies that ever existed, and the leading members of which will most certainly, in a few years, direct the destinies of France. They are quite eager to place me au courant of all their proceedings, and to give me all kinds of information concerning France, and I shall endeavour to keep up a correspondence with some of them when I return to England, as I think it may be of considerable use. I had almost forgotten to tell you that one of the things most talked of here, is a proposition for reading [sending?] a deputation to thank the people of England for their subscriptions. I believe that an exaggerated notion of the amount of the money subscribed had much to do with this scheme, and that it is not likely to be realized immediately, if at all. If the deputation goes, * * * will probably be a member of it.

I have not told you a tenth part of what I have to say. I shall write again in a day or two.

35.

TO JAMES MILL¹

Paris, Aug. 21, 1830

Affairs are now in so strange and critical a situation, that I have determined to write you a letter to-day, in spite of my having sent you a hasty, long epistle yesterday. I hope the matter it will contain will prove a sufficient apology.

The Chamber of Deputies is now an Assemblée Constituante, possessing, in fact, the power of working any reform, no matter how extensive. No outward force opposes itself, or can oppose itself, to its determinations, on any ground derived from right springing from existing or past institutions. It has elected a monarch: it has suppressed the religion of the state; it has declared every peer created by Charles to be no longer a peer. Its power, in short, is illimitable, provided it act in accordance with the will of the people. The fear is not, that it will hazard too much, that it will exceed the people’s wishes, but that it will fall far short of what the people most vehemently desire. It seems the universal opinion, that both in ability and intention it is unfit for its situation—that it is no fair representation of the French nation—that it is calculated seriously to retard improvement, and in great measure for the present moment to nullify, in a beneficial sense, the effects of the present revolution. Elected under circumstances widely different from the present, its intended mission was of a different character from that which has now devolved on it. Under Charles the electors and the vast body of the people had identical interests; the popular candidates were then those who combated Charles: under Philippe the electors and the people have widely different interests; they who were popular candidates have lost that character, and since the courage of the Parisian workmen has routed the old enemy, and placed them at the head of affairs, they have begun to play the master, and to attempt the subjugation of the very class to whom they owe even their very existence. This is practised after various forms and under various names; all their proceedings being replete with deeply instructive lessons for those who are accustomed to abuse the people.

When the workmen of Paris, after three days’ fighting, had driven out Charles and dispersed his army, they were absolute masters of the city. In the midst of their highest excitation, in the moment of victory, surrounded by their dead and wounded brothers, fathers, aye, and children and wives and mothers—these men, these ignorant, despised, and long-abused people shrunk from all unnecessary carnage—the moment resistance ceased, that moment they abstained from assault—they took equal care of the soldier who had opposed and of the citizen who had aided them. Surrounded by every temptation that perfect licence could offer, not one excess was committed. Vast treasures passed through their hands untouched, and signal punishment was immediately the lot of any one who for one instant departed from the strictest honesty and decorum. (One man was shot by his comrades for stealing a melon.) These men were actually starving, and yet they would take no recompense. Having effected their glorious object, they calmly retired to their homes and resumed their accustomed avocations. The educated and the rich now came upon the stage. The hour of danger was passed, one government was overthrown, another was to be framed. Compare the conduct of this party with that of the people, the mob, who had fought during the ever memorable three days.

No sooner was it ascertained that all danger was really past, than a hungry crowd appeared, eager for place and careless of public interests. The old generals and courtiers of Napoleon, the abettors and fautors of Charles, the rich bourgeois, all appeared in the character of place-hunting courtiers of Philippe. A spectacle more disgusting can hardly be imagined. The scoundrels who had been the willing instruments of despotism under Charles, and Louis, and Napoleon, now came to be on the watch for the good things that were to be anew distributed in consequence of the popular victory. The Chamber of Deputies was, in fact, now to be the distributor. In the first place the crown was given to the Duke of Orleans: this was perhaps a matter politically wise, or at least necessary. Then came the Ministers. You know the choice. Sebastiani,² who has never done, and is incapable of doing any thing good: Gérard,³ whose first act has been to create himself a Marshal of France: Dupin, who has lost all public confidence by his cowardice and base servility: Guizot,⁴ a favourer of the new Aristocracy: Louis,⁵ who is universally disliked, perhaps I might say despised: in short, not one person, Dupont excepted, has been chosen who has the confidence and good will of the people. Now come the acts of those persons. First, a constant striving to shield the instruments of the late Government from punishment. The magistrature continued. The very men who had opposed the liberty of the press; who had condemned and severely punished every writer who was bold enough to attack the Ministry of Charles; who to their utmost had striven to maintain his abominable despotism; these men are continued in their situations. Next, in the moment when a new Government was to be framed, a mere juridical law, viz. relating to punishment, is introduced, solely to preserve the late Ministers from death. Then comes the series of operations carried on to maintain power in their own hands. The first grand instrument to this end is delay; this, in the first days of their sitting, was so palpable, that it roused the indignation of the young men who surrounded the door of the Chamber, and gave a healthy movement to this corrupt body, by the salutary influence of fear. There was shown an unwillingness to propose explicit and formal guarantees; these, however, they were obliged to propose. The King, better than they, met them more than half way; he was more willing to offer than they to propose guarantees. The law of election next occupied their attention. It is curious to see how this has been dealt with. When we first arrived, every journal, with perhaps the single exception of the Courier, endeavoured to stultify the people, and convince them that no necessity for change existed. This would not do, the public were too wise, so, gradually, step by step, and as slowly as possible, the journals have turned round, and now the lowering the suffrage is almost universally proposed; but the Chamber has done nothing more than abolish the double vote and make the age required in the elector 25, in the elected 30. The qualification has not been touched, neither as regards the deputy nor the electors. They have been exceedingly busy, however, in changing the prefects, the mayors, and all the place-holders in the departments. Their friends have now come in, and the situation of deputy has at length become a profitable appointment. But as for regulating the internal government in a way to secure peace and safety to the citizens, they seem never to dream of the necessity of such a thing. Every thing really important is formally put off to the next session, and matters by which humbug may have influence are taken into consideration. They now pretend to be occupied with the accusation of the Ministers. They have instituted a committee, which committee yesterday moved for new powers, and obtained them; but they have so completely mystified their very plain duty, that I can by no means understand what they are driving at. One thing is plain, they are doing every thing to create delay, in the hope that the public indignation will subside.

During all these sad delays the country is really without a Government, and here we cannot but compare the conduct of the people and the Deputies, and offer homage to the former. Without a Government, the country is nevertheless perfectly quiet: since the revolution not a single murder or robbery has taken place in Paris. Again, the poor starving workmen assembled some days since, and went in a body to the Prefect, beseeching him to exclude all the foreign workmen. The Prefect made them an excellent speech, pointing out to them the error under which they lay, and the poor fellows immediately returned, and quietly dispersed. Are not these speaking examples of true devotion to the cause of good government; as splendid as the conduct of the Deputies is base? I know no more important matter for investigation than would be now the state of the popular mind at Paris, and the causes which produced it. There appears among the victors of the three days no personal feeling, nothing but a desire to manifest to the world the justice of their cause, to prove that they have been actuated by no sinister interests, but were led on solely first to defend themselves, and then to rid themselves of an evil which was no longer supportable. The same spirit which then directed still continues to influence them. No riot, no attempt at pillage, no vain glory has been manifested by them. They calmly await the requisite reform of their Government, despairing indeed of much good from the present Chamber, but looking forward with hope to the next. So far from the journals being now in advance of the people, it is plain that the people are impelling the journals forward. They have now to make a great advance, or others will arise, and being au niveau of the people, will completely ruin the existing papers. It is strange to see how little of true knowledge those now in existence contain. They all can declaim well, but I have often heard more real sense, and really applicable knowledge, in one conversation, than has been contained in all the journals that have appeared since I arrived here. A new and very different set of instructors is now evidently required by the people.

36.

TO JAMES MILL¹

• [Paris]

27 August 1830
finished on the 28th

I have been exceedingly fortunate during my stay here, in having been brought into contact with a much greater number of persons such as I most desired to know, than I could possibly have had reason to expect at a time when all persons of any note are so much occupied. I am even much inclined to believe that I know more of the views and expectations professed by the different coteries than many of the men themselves, as it seems to me that most people at Paris associate chiefly with the men, and read the journals, of their own precise nuance d’opinion. But I consider myself particularly fortunate in having formed an acquaintance with M. Tanneguy Duchâtel,² and with the principal members of the society Aide-toi.

I have had some most interesting conversations with M. Duchatel whose correspondence with Mr. Wilmot Horton³ you probably remember. I knew him by reputation as one of the most enlightened men in France, and particularly as one of those who had profited most by the writings of the English political economists. I found that this was perfectly true. He seems to me to unite in an extraordinary degree the best qualities of a young Frenchman (for he seems to be under thirty) with the acquirements of an instructed Englishman, and especially with a knowledge of details and a habit of reflection on important practical questions, which few Frenchmen possess, the events of the last fifteen years having called into exercise few valuable qualities except those of a party pamphleteer, or at most a writer on the first principles of government. Most of the men with whom I converse seem to be well aware of this deficiency, or at least, readily admit it when stated. If there were many young men like Duchâtel, you would soon see a great difference in the character of their newspapers and of their parliamentary debates. At present any one of twenty men whom one could name in England could write every day the leading articles of all their newspapers as rapidly as his pen could move. But now when all the great questions of legislation, education, & social improvement in general will be brought on the tapis successively, the men who are already prepared to discuss these subjects avec connaissance de cause will soon occupy almost exclusively the ear of the public, & will also, if things go on smoothly, obtain the greatest influence in the government. Duchâtel is already appointed a conseiller d’état. What he told me about the present state of politics I will tell you another time. The information he gave me concerning the state of the labouring classes, the division of property, the restraints on population, & the state of education I have not time to put on paper just now, but I believe that Roebuck has written a long letter to Mr. Grote⁴ on the subject, which he has probably shewn to you. I shall see M. Duchâtel as often as I can while I remain here, & shall endeavour to obtain his permission to correspond with him. He made very particular enquiries respecting you and your occupations.

The society Aide toi et le Ciel t’aidera is composed of men probably much less instructed than M. Duchâtel, but far more democratic in their opinions and more capable of taking a leading part in turbulent times by their qualifications as men of action. They are all young men, & most of them have been engaged in active hostility to the government from very early youth; several who belonged to the society have even suffered capital punishment for having engaged in some of the numerous conspiracies which have existed at different periods since the restoration. M. Odilon-Barrot,⁵ the most distinguished avocat in the Courts at Paris, was president of the society for some time, & is still a member, but being now préfet of Paris he of course can take no part in their proceedings. The present organisation of the society was, I believe, formed for the purpose of facilitating anti-royalist elections under the Villèle ministry:⁶ they had, and have, correspondents all over France, and without some such association these elections certainly would not have taken the turn they did, especially as all the liberal newspapers were then tied up by the censorship. The success of the last elections was also in a great degree owing to the efforts of the society; & they were the first persons who gave the signal for the late revolution, in which the little concert & organisation which existed was wholly their work. They are in constant communication with Lafayette, & with a very small number of deputies, the few whom they believe to have a real wish for the establishment of a popular government in France, the purpose for which they now remain united, & in the pursuit of which they are willing, & believe themselves able, to overturn the present ministry if it refuses the concessions which they consider necessary. I have no doubt that when the exertions of these people become more visible than they have been hitherto, they will be called the republican party: but it certainly is not true that they wish to establish a republic. If it had depended upon them, they would have made the duke of Orleans king, but after making considerable alterations in the constitution: and they appear now to regret extremely that when they had arms in their hands, when the people looked to them as their leaders & would have obeyed them before the hommes du lendemain had made their appearance, they did not proceed to the Hotel de Ville with Lafayette and Audry de Puyraveau⁷ & declare Lafayette lieutenant general of the kingdom & themselves a provisional government, by a proclamation signed by Lafayette & countersigned by their president: who being in correspondence with every considerable town would have been followed by the leading liberals all over France, all of whom are in the habit of receiving L’Empulsion from the society. The society is not wholly composed of men of the same shade of opinion but the committee takes care to have a majority always on its side; the members of the committee are agreed on the following points: that as an ultimate end, universal suffrage should be aimed at: that however in the present stage of education among the people, not above one third of whom can write (M. Duchâtel told me that some members even of the departmental colleges could not write their names) they ought to be satisfied with a considerable extension of the suffrage; that the whole people might however either now, or in a very little time, be admitted to chuse a body of electors, that there should be no hereditary peerage, & no conditions of eligibility except the age of 25. They are extremely dissatisfied with the conduct of the ministry. They say, that the men who have profited by the revolution are afraid of the men who made the revolution, & for that very reason. In consequence, the ministers have no confidence in what the society, who know more about the state of the country than anyone else, tell them respecting the general dissatisfaction they are exciting in the departments by some of the appointments which they have made & by their efforts to keep down l’élan révolutionnaire all over the country. The situation of the ministers is certainly difficult, but they have the folly to be guided in their appointments not by the wishes of the district itself but by the recommendation of the deputy, who nine times out of ten is a man who dreads the popular feeling, & who is so little of the same mind with the public that he has not the slightest chance of being reelected. The members of the society appear to be apprehensive that in consequence of the pusillanimity of the ministry the royalists may be able to raise disturbances in some of the provinces: but from what I can learn, this appears to me very improbable. You may judge of the degree of influence which the society is supposed to have among the people, by the circumstance that Lafayette, a few days ago when there was some danger of violent proceedings on the part of some bodies of workmen, sent to request that the society would issue an address to the labouring classes. Lafayette is in constant communication with the society, & several of the leading members are on his staff. I am to be presented to him by the president of the society next Tuesday, which is the day on which he receives company. I find in all those people the most friendly inclinations towards England: which I am glad to know as I am convinced that I shall hear the contrary asserted in many quarters at home, in the progress of events. They also seem to have a much better comprehension of English politics than is common in France: they understand the vices of our government, they see through the Whigs, & at the same time they, or at least those of them who have been in England, know enough of the state of feeling in English society to be aware of the mischief that might arise from their fraternising with any party among us, and especially from their connecting themselves with the disreputable part of our radicals. I think that I have myself been of some use in putting them on their guard against Sir Thomas Beevor and Cobbett,⁸ against Bowring⁹ and people of that kind. If you see Mr. Murray¹⁰ of The Times, pray tell him that his visit to Lafayette has evidently been of great use. It is probable that two or three members of the society will (as individuals) come to England shortly. If they do, we must exert ourselves to the utmost to make their stay there useful & agreeable and to make them as much our friends as we possibly can, since the occasions will be innumerable when they will need such information & such advice as we & our friends can alone give them among Englishmen advice which they are at present very well disposed to receive from us as they know how hearty we are in their cause.

Lanjuinais will probably come—I am very anxious that he should be acquainted with you.

J.S.M.

37.

TO WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER¹

• East India House.

12th October
1830.

Dear Sir,

Pray accept my most sincere thanks for the very interesting and handsome present of specimens which you have been so obliging as to confer upon me.

I will take an early opportunity of sending to you specimens of the few plants, which I was so fortunate as to find that I had had greater opportunities than yourself of observing. I shall also avail myself of your permission to communicate to you any observations which I may hereafter be able to make, that are likely to be at all interesting to you. I had not the slightest idea when I made the former ones, that they could be of any value to any one except myself.

I have gathered for you some specimens of what I imagine to be the Atriplex erecta; it is certainly the only Atriplex to be found in the station mentioned by Smith,² and it has not the characters of any other English Atriplex. The valves of the calyx of the fruit are in many instances very thickly set with projecting sharp points, but these points do not amount to prickles, being composed of the same herbaceous substance with the calyx itself; and moreover the calyx has not unfrequently, though in a slight degree, the appearance of the leaves of the ice-plant, which must arise from a number of small shining glands, easily rubbed off by the touch. I do not know whether the specimens will preserve this character when dry, therefore I mention it now, having examined the plant more minutely than I ever did before. I have not Smith’s work by me at this instant, else I would consult it to see whether his Atriplex erecta possesses the last mentioned character.

I will endeavour to collect Fungi for you, indeed I have already picked up some, but I am afraid I shall not be able to effect much this autumn.

Believe me
most sincerely yours

J. S. Mill

[1. ]Addressed: Jeremy Bentham Esq. / Queen Square Place / Westminster. The holograph of this letter (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS 33,544, f. 621) is believed to be the earliest extant in the handwriting of John Stuart Mill.

Jeremy Bentham (1748 NS-1832). The intimate connection between James Mill and the great Utilitarian philosopher began about 1808, when JSM was two years old. In 1810 Bentham, in order to maintain a closer collaboration with the elder Mill, gave him as a residence the house once John Milton’s, which Bentham owned and which adjoined Bentham’s home known as Queen Square Place. A few months’ trial of the house proved it to be so little habitable that Mill was obliged to move his family. Until 1814 they lived at Newington Green, when Bentham at last secured Mill as a neighbour by leasing No. 1 Queen Square and renting it to him at a reduced rate. Bentham, who had also been a child prodigy, interested himself in JSM’s education. Beginning in 1809 the Mill family often paid extended summer visits to Bentham at his summer homes, first at Barrow Green House, Oxted, and later at Ford Abbey. (See Letters 2 and 3.) Shortly before JSM wrote this letter his father had evidently mentioned to Bentham his forebodings of what his own untimely death might mean to his son’s education. Bentham, in a letter to James Mill dated July 25, 1812, promised, “if you will appoint me Guardian of Mr. John Stewart [sic] Mill, I will in the event of his father’s being disposed of elsewhere, take him to Q.S.P. [Queen Square Place] and there or elsewhere, by whipping or otherwise, do what soever . . . necessary and proper, for teaching him to make all proper distinctions, such as between the Devil and the Holy Ghost, and how to make Codes and Encyclopedias and whatsoever else may be proper to be made, so long as I remain an inhabitant of this vale of tears . . .” (MS at Yale). A portion of James Mill’s acceptance of the offer, printed in Bain, James Mill, pp. 119-20, expresses the hope that “we may perhaps leave him [JSM] a successor worthy of both of us.”

[2. ]A note on the verso in another (probably Bentham’s) hand says 29 July 1812, but Tuesday of that week fell on July 28.

[3. ]Unidentified.

[4. ]Nathaniel Hooke, The Roman History, from the Building of Rome to the Ruin of the Commonwealth (4 vols., London, 1738-71, and later editions). By a happy coincidence JSM’s essay based on Hooke’s history has been preserved. A friend of the family copied it out in a manuscript now in the possession of the British Museum (Add. MSS 33,230). The six-year-old JSM did more, however, than merely recapitulate uncritically Hooke’s history, as this footnote reveals: “Plutarch (vi[vide] p. 273, 301) calls this man Publicola. But Hooke (vi p. 255) and Dionysius Halicarnassus (chronology of the Consuls (pp. 766-7) calls him Poplicola. It is always spelt Ποπλικολας (Poplicola) in Greek not Πυβλικολας (Publicola). Therefore that is the reason of its being Poplicola in Dionysius not Publicola, as in Plutarch. Livy also calls him Poplicola. I know not the reason of its being Poplicola in Hooke and Livy. It is also spelt Ποπλιος (Poplius) in Greek, not Πυβλιος (Publius). It must doubtless be a mistake in Langhorne’s Plutarch.”

[5. ]Substituted for “going over,” which has been crossed out.

[1. ]Published in Bain, JSM, pp. 4-5. MS not located. The portion in brackets is Bain’s summary. Bain says, “The event which gave rise to the letter was the migration of the whole family (in July) to Bentham’s newly acquired residence, Ford Abbey, in Somersetshire.” The first paragraph would seem to suggest a somewhat earlier date than Bain gives. On July 30 James Mill wrote Francis Place from Ford Abbey: “Mrs. Mill & the children arrived in safety on Monday evening. . . . John has had a pretty sharp indisposition for the last two days; occasioned by something in disorder in the digestive system, which a sudden change in times & modes of dieting has probably occasioned. Today he is better; but he has had so much fever, as to be already weakened” (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS 37,949, f. 18).

[2. ]This was the first year of Bentham’s occupancy of Ford Abbey. The Mill family spent substantial portions of the following three years with him there. For other accounts of the building, see Bain, James Mill, pp. 129-36; Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. J. Bowring (Edinburgh and London, 1838-43), X, 478-80; and C. M. Atkinson, Jeremy Bentham (London, 1905), p. 163.

[3. ]Joseph Hume (1777-1855), radical MP 1818-55, was a lifelong friend of James Mill from the time of their schooldays at Montrose Academy in Scotland.

[4. ]John Herbert Koe (1783-1860), barrister, and later judge of county courts, had been for some time an amanuensis of Bentham.

[5. ]Paul Vasilievitch Tchitchagof (or Chichagov) (1767-1849), Russian admiral, was a friend of Bentham and his brother, Sir Samuel, who had spent a number of years in Russia.

[6. ]Wilhelmina Forbes Mill (1808-1861), JSM’s eldest sister.

[1. ]MS at LSE. Addressed: Mrs. Burrow. Published in Packe, p. 35.

Mrs. Burrow, JSM’s maternal grandmother, was of a Yorkshire family. After the death of her husband she continued to administer his private asylum for the insane at Hoxton.

[2. ]James Bentham Mill (1814-1862), JSM’s brother.

[3. ]Harriet Isabella Mill (1812-ca. 1897).

[4. ]Clara Esther Mill (1810-1886).

[5. ]Jane Stuart Mill (1816?-1883).

[1. ]Published in Bain, JSM, pp. 6-9. MS not located. A copy of the first three paragraphs, in an unidentified hand, is at Johns Hopkins. On June 17, 1820, Jeremy Bentham in a letter to David Ricardo discussing the importance of securing James Mill’s assistance in establishing a “Chrestomathic” school in Bentham’s garden, cited this “letter, which I believe you [Ricardo] saw, and which though I have never told him [James Mill], I intend to trumpet forth in print” as proof of James Mill’s skill as an educator. “The letter in question is one written by John Mill in answer to one from my Brother to me, concerning the progress made by him in his studies.” (The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. Piero Sraffa [11 vols., Cambridge, 1951-55], VIII, 198.) There is no evidence that the letter was printed before Bain published it. Bain records that the letter was given to J. A. Roebuck in 1827 by JeremyBentham’s amanuensis, and that it was endorsed in Bentham’s handwriting:

Sir Samuel Bentham (1757-1831), younger brother of Jeremy, naval architect and engineer, rose to the rank of brigadier general in the service of Russia; in England, was Inspector General of Navy Works, 1795-1807, and Commissioner of the Navy, 1807-12. After retirement he bought an estate in the south of France. This letter may have served to pave the way for Sir Samuel’s invitation to JSM to come to France for an extended residence in 1820-21. Its account of his studies should be compared with that in his Autobiography.

[2. ]Seven years later JSM and the friends associated with him in the study club that met at George Grote’s home in Threadneedle Street reprinted Du Trieu’s work (see Autobiog., p. 85): Philippus Du Trieu, Manuductio ad Logicam; sive Dialectica Studiosae Juventuti ad Logicam Praeparandae. Ab Editione Oxoniensi anni 1662 Recusa. Londini, typis B. M’Millan, 1826. A copy of this rare reprint is at the University of Chicago; another is at Somerville College, Oxford.

[3. ]JSM’s first instruction in the subject was given to him by his father during their walks (Autobiog., p. 19): “He expounded each day a portion of the subject, and I gave him next day a written account of it, which he made me rewrite over and over again until it was clear, precise, and tolerably complete. . . . The written outline of it which resulted from my daily compte rendu served him afterwards as notes from which to write his Elements of Political Economy.”

[4. ]David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (London, 1817); James Mill played a major part in the production of this work, for it was undertaken by his reluctant friend only after Mill’s persistent insistence.

Ricardo seems to have been genuinely interested in JSM’s development, invited the boy to his home, and on the very day (Sept. 5, 1823) when he was stricken with his fatal illness addressed to James Mill an extended criticism of a paper by JSM on the measure of value (Works of David Ricardo, IX, 385-87).

[5. ]For an account of this experience and of the impression made by JSM at the College, see his father’s letter to Ricardo, Oct. 26, 1818 (Works of David Ricardo, VII, 313-14). Ricardo in reply commented on JSM’s retired education and noted the boy’s “need of that collision which is obtained only in society, and by which a knowledge of the world and its manners is best acquired” (ibid., p. 326).

[6. ]That James Mill had talked with his friends about moving his family to France as early as the autumn of 1814 may be seen in a letter from Edward Wakefield to Francis Place, Nov. 27, 1814 (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS 35,152, ff. 114-15). On Sept. 6, 1815, James Mill wrote to Francis Place to encourage the latter to join him in moving to the Continent: “I foresee nothing there which would make it uncomfortable for us to reside as soon as we please. Assure yourself that the French people will soon be very quiet & contented slaves, & the despotism of the Bourbons a quiet, gentle despotism. There I may live cheap—my children will acquire a familiarity with the language & with the manners & character of a new people. When they have enough of this we shall remove into Germany, till the same effects are accomplished, & after that if we please, we may go to Italy. We shall then return accomplished people, and, men & women of us, I hope, able to do something for the cause of mankind. We shall, at any rate, have plenty of knowledge; the habit of living upon little; & a passion for the improvement of the condition of mankind” (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS 35,152, ff. 160-64).

[7. ]He was appointed on May 12, 1819, as Assistant to the Examiner of India Correspondence at a salary of £800. Rising by fairly rapid steps, he became head of the office, with the rank of Examiner, on Dec. 1, 1830. JSM was appointed a junior clerk in the office on May 21, 1823.

[8. ]George Bentham (1800-1884), son of Sir Samuel, became one of the most distinguished of nineteenth-century botanists.

[1. ]Addressed: A / Madame Austin. MS at King’s.

Sarah Austin, née Taylor (1793-1867), translator and miscellaneous writer. She married John Austin (1790-1859), later known as a writer on jurisprudence, in 1819. Their first home was in Queen Square, in close proximity to the homes of Jeremy Bentham and James Mill. JSM quickly grew fond of the Austins, and they were close friends for many years. JSM studied German with Mrs. Austin, and in 1821-22 Roman law with her husband. As a young man JSM often greeted her in his letters as “Dear Mütterlein,” but in later life he criticized her severely (The Early Draft of John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography, ed. Jack Stillinger [Urbana, 1961], pp. 147-48).

[2. ]JSM was the guest of Sir Samuel Bentham and family from June, 1820, to June, 1821, first at Sir Samuel’s château in the valley of the Garonne, then at an apartment in Toulouse. In the fall, after an extended tour of the Pyrenees, the Benthams took him to a new estate which they had purchased near Montpellier. For about six months JSM attended courses in the Faculté des Sciences in the local university. A manuscript letter-journal addressed to his father and covering approximately the first six months of his stay in France is in the British Museum (Add. MSS 31,909). Professor Anna Jean Mill has recently published most of this journal as well as portions of a contemporary notebook of JSM which is in her possession: John Mill’s Boyhood Visit to France (Toronto, 1960).

[3. ]One M. Gergonne, “a very accomplished representative of the eighteenth century metaphysics” (JSM, Autobiog., chap. ii). Identified by Professor Mill as Joseph Diez Gergonne (1771-1859), professor of astronomy and Dean of the Academy at Montpellier. An exercise book containing JSM’s notes on Gergonne’s lectures on logic is at LSE. Professor Mill prints the text of the notes on the 19th lecture (John Mill’s Boyhood Visit to France, pp. 110-15). Another notebook, entitled by JSM, “Traite de Logique / redigé d’après le cours de Philosophie / de M. Gergonne / Doyen de la Faculté des Sciences / de l’Academie de Montpellier / avec des Notes / par J. Mill,” is in the Pierpont Morgan Library.

[4. ]Professor Mill identifies him as Jean Michel Provençal.

[1. ]Original not located. Text from copy contained in unpublished letter of Jeremy Bentham to Sir Samuel Bentham, in Brit. Mus., Add. MSS 33,545, f. 516.

[2. ]Jean Baptiste Say (1767-1832), prominent French economist. In 1814 Say had visited England and through James Mill had been introduced to Ricardo and Bentham. JSM was a guest in Say’s home for a time in 1820. (See Works of David Ricardo, VI, xxv.)

[3. ]Joseph Lowe, a Scottish friend of James Mill and a writer on statistical subjects, who had emigrated to Caen in 1814.

[1. ]Published in Bain, JSM, pp. 27-28. MS not located. The portions in brackets are Bain’s summary.

[2. ]According to Bain, the letter was undated, but written while on a visit to Norwich with the Austins. The approximate date, however, can be inferred from the reference to the composition of the defence of Pericles here and in the succeeding letter.

[3. ]In his Autobiog. (pp. 50-51) JSM records that after he wrote his first argumentative essay in the summer of 1822 his father recommended that his next exercise in composition should be of the oratorical kind: “Availing myself of my familiarity with Greek history and ideas and with the Athenian orators, I wrote two speeches, one an accusation, the other a defence of Pericles, on a supposed impeachment for not marching out to fight the Lacedemonians on their invasion of Attica.”

[4. ]A mis-spelling of the name of Sir Thomas Branthwayt Beevor (1798-1879), a Norfolk squire who became a supporter of William Cobbett.

[5. ]See Letter 8, n. 1.

[6. ]Presumably Nathaniel Palmer (1779-1854), solicitor. The Examiner for Jan. 20 and May 19, 1822, in reports of Norfolk County meetings on Jan. 12 and May 11, 1822, respectively, summarized portions of the remarks by Mr. N. Palmer of Yarmouth, attacking the Tory ministry.

[7. ]Rev. Thomas Madge (1786-1870), co-pastor of Octagon Chapel (Unitarian), Norwich, 1811-25; minister of Essex Street Chapel, Strand, London, 1825-60.

[1. ]MS in the possession of Mr. E. F. Buxton, Fairbridge, Tonhill, Kent, in 1944.

George Grote (1794-1871), banker, MP (1832-41), and historian of Greece, was introduced to James Mill by David Ricardo in 1819and soon became an intimate of the Bentham-Mill circle. He and his wife Harriet (née Lewin) frequently entertained many of the Benthamite group in their home over the banking establishment in Threadneedle Street. Except for some later periods of estrangement from Mrs. Grote, JSM was a lifelong associate of the couple.

[2. ]The Utilitarian Society, the first of the study and discussion groups with which JSM was associated (Autobiog., p. 56). The Society at first consisted of only three members, Richard Doane, W. G. Prescott, and JSM. Later members included Eyton Tooke, William Ellis, George J. Graham, and J. A. Roebuck.

[3. ]Identification uncertain. Possibly Alfred Say, son of the French economist, J. B. Say.

[4. ]Richard Doane, then an amanuensis to Jeremy Bentham. It was he who secured permission for the Society to meet in Bentham’s house. Doane was called to the bar of the Inner Temple in 1830, and practised in the courts until his death on Feb. 8, 1848.

[5. ]Elements of Political Economy (London, 1821).

[6. ]William George Prescott (1800-1865), then junior partner in the banking firm of Grote, Prescott, & Co.

[7. ]The reference is obscure, but may be to his lost “reply to Paley’s Natural Theology” (Early Draft, ed. Stillinger, p. 79). Bentham and his friends often denominated Christianity as Jug (shortened form of Juggernaut).

[8. ]Possibly the plans for the Society included the establishment of such a review, but the reference is more probably to the long-projected Benthamite organ which eventually materialized in Jan., 1824, as the Westminster Review.

[9. ]See preceding letter, n. 3.

[10. ]Probably Giovanni Berchet, Italian poet and patriot then a refugee in England, rather than Ambrogio Berchet, likewise an Italian refugee. See M. C. W. Wicks, The Italian Exiles in London, 1816-1848 (Manchester, 1937).

[11. ]Santorre Annibale de Rossi de Pomarolo, Count of Santarosa (1783-1825), Italian patriot, who had arrived in London in early Oct., 1822, after having been denied further refuge in France. Santarosa was an especial favourite of Sarah Austin. See ibid., and Gordon Waterfield, Lucie Duff Gordon (London, 1937), p. 36.

[1. ]Addressed: Edwin Chadwick Esq / 9 Lyon’s Inn. Postmark: 8 MORN 8 / 19 FE / 1827. MS at UCL.

Edwin (later Sir Edwin) Chadwick (1800-1890), sanitary reformer. At this time, a law student and journalist; secretary to Jeremy Bentham, 1831-32; member of various Poor Law, factory, and sanitary commissions. A lifelong friend and correspondent of JSM.

[2. ]George John Graham (1801-1888), a member of JSM’s Utilitarian Society; in 1838 became Registrar General of Births and Deaths.

[1. ]Addressed: Edwin Chadwick Esq. / 9 Lyon’s Inn. Postmark: 2.A.NOON / MR26 / 1827 and T.P. / Lombard St. Paper watermarked 1818. MS at UCL.

[2. ]The proprietor of the Morning Herald, for whom Chadwick had worked as a reporter.

[3. ]Edward Taylor (1784-1863), after having failed in business, was at this time embarking upon a career in music, in which he achieved distinction. From 1837 to 1863 he was Gresham Professor of Music, Gresham College, London. His performance on March 28, 1827, at Covent Garden was favourably reviewed in the Morning Chronicle on March 29. JSM had probably become acquainted with the Taylor family of Norwich through John Austin and his wife Sarah (Taylor) Austin.

[4. ]Corner torn off.

[1. ]Addressed: Edwin Chadwick Esq. MS at UCL. Published in S. E. Finer, The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (London, 1952), p. 11, but dated 1824. The date is established by the event recorded in the second paragraph. The Times on April 12, 1827, p. 3, reported the attempted suicide of one Mary Ann Jones, who had been “cohabiting with a young law student of Lyon’s Inn.”

[2. ]John Ramsay McCulloch (1789-1864), economist.

[3. ]Thomas Frederick Elliot (1808-1880), nephew of the first Earl of Minto, and later Permanent Assistant Under-Secretary for the Colonies, 1849-68.

[1. ]Addressed: Edwin Chadwick Esq. / 9 Lyon’s Inn. MS at UCL.

[2. ]Horace Grant (1800-1859), a colleague of JSM in the Examiner’s office at the India House, 1826-45.

[1. ]MS at Yale. Draft of letter on sheet used first to cover letter of another person addressed to “J. Bentham Esq. / 2 Queen Square Place / Westminster” and then to cover a note addressed “John S. Mill Esq.” It is endorsed in JSM’s hand “Notes from Mr. Bentham respecting the publication of my name as editor of his Rationale of Evidence” and has a label attached, “Notes from Mr. Bentham 1827 to 1830. No. 1.” Published in part in Packe, p. 73.

Yale also has three letters by Bentham on this matter, to one of which this is evidently an answer.

It is matter of no small surprise to me to see the title page without your name to it. Nothing could be more clearly understood between us than that it should be there. I do not say that the word title page was used on that occasion—but such was the meaning. If what you have done has been written under a different impression, so much the worse for me—and if the book be good for any thing, for the [world?] at large.

J.B.

J. S. Mill Esq.

Your name is of far too great importance to the work to be omitted in the title page to it.

J.B.

J. S. Mill Esq.

My substituted title I suppose you have. / If you have not you will let me know.

[2. ]Bentham accepted JSM’s reluctantly given consent:

Amen.

If you know not what that means send to the Booksellers for a Hebrew Dictionary.

J.B.

J. S. Mill Esq.

P.S. Name at the end of the Preface

[3. ]JSM had begun in late 1824 or early 1825 preparing the Rationale of Judicial Evidence for publication. “Mr. Bentham had begun the treatise three times, at considerable intervals, each time in a different manner, and each time without reference to the preceding. . . . These three masses of manuscript it was my business to condense into a single treatise.” (Autobiog., p. 80.) He had also to make Bentham’s involved style readable, and to supply “any lacunae which he had left.” The work was published in 1827 in five volumes, with a Preface signed John S. Mill. For JSM’s later attitude to this work, see Letter 226, esp. n. 2.

[4. ]Page torn.

[5. ]The word “added” is crossed out but the word substituted for it, which may have been “appended,” is mostly torn away.

[1. ]Addressed: Edwin Chadwick Esq. / 9 Lyon’s Inn. Paper watermarked 1825. MS at UCL.

[2. ]William Eyton Tooke (1808-1830), son of the economist Thomas Tooke (1774-1858) and one of JSM’s closest friends. His suicide in 1830 (see Letter 29) deeply affected JSM.

[1. ]Watermark: 18[25?]. Paper appears identical with that of preceding letter. MS at UCL.

[1. ]Addressed: Arthur Aylmer Esq / 41 Great Russel [sic] Street / Bloomsbury. Postmarks: ??? / ??? / 1827; 2ANOON2 / 27NO / 1827; ?ANOON? / 28[?]NO / 1827; and ??? / 27 NO / ??? On outside in another hand: “Turn Over” “Gone away not known where / T Redbourn / R T [?] Summers [?]” MS at LSE; a page of JSM’s “Speech on the Church” (published in Autobiography by JSM, with an Appendix of Hitherto Unpublished Speeches, ed. Harold J. Laski [London, 1924], pp. 310-25) is written on verso. Actually a form letter in another hand; JSM filled in “September,” his signature and address, and wrote the address on the outside.

Aylmer has not been identified.

Early Draft, ed. Stillinger (pp. 112-15) contains a somewhat fuller account of the founding and early years of the London Debating Society than does Autobiog.

[2. ]Ten shillings.

[1. ]Addressed: Edwin Chadwick Esq. / 9 Lyon’s Inn. Postmark: 2A. NOON / DE 22 182[7?]. MS at UCL.

[2. ]John Arthur Roebuck (1801-1879), politician. At this time a law student, he had first been introduced to JSM at the India House by Thomas Love Peacock about 1824. For some years Roebuck, George John Graham, and JSM (the “Trijackia” they called themselves) were very close friends. The cause of the ultimate break between JSM and Roebuck in the 1830’s was probably Roebuck’s disapproval of JSM’s attachment to Mrs. John Taylor.

[1. ]Addressed: W. H. Ferrell Esq / 22 Hatton Garden. Postmarks: 12 NOON 12 / 14 JA / 1828 and 10FNOON10 / JA 15 / 1828. On outside in another hand: “Gone away not known where—G [?]. Ellis / E. Midzoth” [?] obscured by postmark. MS at LSE; the last page of JSM’s “Speech on the Church” is written across the outside of the letter; across the letter itself is written: “write to Bowring.” Like Letters 16, 21, and 23, this is a form letter; JSM filled in the amount of arrears (“£1”), his signature and address, and wrote the address on the outside.

Ferrell has not been identified.

[1. ]Addressed: A Monsieur / Monsieur Comte / Rue Richer / à Paris / France. Postmarks: Angleterre, and Janvier / 28 / 1828. MS at LSE.

François Charles Louis Comte (1782-1837), liberal political writer, son-in-law of the economist J. B. Say.

[2. ]Published as “Scott’s Life of Napoleon,” WR, IX (April, 1828), 251-313.

[3. ]Histoire de la Garde nationale de Paris . . . (Paris, 1827).

[4. ]MS torn.

[5. ]F. A. M. Mignet, Histoire de la Révolution française de 1789 à 1814 (Paris, 1824; London, 1826). JSM had reviewed it with high praise in WR, V (April, 1826), 385-98.

[6. ]François Emmanuel, vicomte de Toulongeon, Histoire de France depuis la Révolution de 1789 . . . (Paris, 1801-10).

[1. ]Addressed: John Bowring Esq. / 4 Highbury Park. Postmark: EVEN. 4 / MAR 10 / 1828. MS at LSE. Published with one omission in Packe, p. 65.

John Bowring (1792-1872), linguist, writer, and later statesman, had been editor of the Westminster Review since its inception in 1824. He was a close associate of Jeremy Bentham and became his literary executor.

[2. ]George Bentham published An Outline of a New System of Logic in 1827.

[3. ]Jeremy Bentham, George’s uncle.

[4. ]Richard Whately (1787-1863), then Principal of St. Alban’s Hall, Oxford, and later (1831) made Archbishop of Dublin, had published his Elements of Logic in 1826.

[5. ]No such review by JSM appeared in the Westminster.

[1. ]Addressed: Benjamin Keen Esq. / 1 Pump Court / Temple. Postmarks: 7. NIGHT.7/23.AP/1828 and 10.F.NOON.10/AP.25/1828. Endorsed: [Neither direction nor signature is legible] / T. Forth. MS at LSE; written on the verso of a page of the debating speech published by Laski as “Notes of my Speech against Sterling” (Autobiog. ed. Harold J. Laski, pp. 300-309). A form letter in another hand, except for details filled in by JSM, as in Letters 16 and 18.

Keen has not been identified.

[1. ]Addressed: A Monsieur / Monsieur Comte. MS at LSE.

[2. ]See Letter 19, n. 2.

[3. ]Possibly Félix Bodin (1795-1837), journalist and historian.

[4. ]Victor Jacquemont (1801-1832), naturalist and traveller. Presumably JSM met him in London, where he consulted with British authorities and the East India Company before sailing for India in the summer of 1828.

[1. ]Addressed: Archibald Thomson Esq. / 17 Mitre Court Buildings / Temple. Postmarks: ?? ??? ?? / 26 NO / 1828 and ??VEN / NO 27 / 1828 and T.P. / BdWay We?r. Endorsed: Gone abroad. [Two illegible signatures]. MS at LSE; written on the verso of a page of the debating speech published as “Notes of my Speech against Sterling” (Autobiog., ed. Harold J. Laski, pp. 300-309). A form letter in another hand, except for details filled in by JSM, as in Letters 16, 18, and 21.

Neither Thomson has been identified.

[1. ]Addressed: A Monsieur / M. Gustave d’Eichthal / à Paris. Draft (incomplete) at LSE. MS at Arsenal. Published, with minor errors, in Cosmopolis, VI, 22-25, and in D’Eichthal Corresp.

Gustave d’Eichthal (1804-1886), son of a rich Jewish banking family, first became acquainted with the writings of Henri Saint-Simon through his mathematics teacher, Auguste Comte. D’Eichthal on a visit to England first saw JSM on May 30, 1828, when he accompanied Eyton Tooke to a meeting of the London Debating Society at which JSM spoke. D’Eichthal became a close friend of JSM, his chief contact with the Saint-Simonians, and a lifelong correspondent.

[2. ]Adolphe d’Eichthal, younger brother of Gustave.

[3. ]The first report of the council of the recently established University had been made on Oct. 30, 1826. Other early reports and statements by the Council are listed in H. H. Bellot, University College, London, 1826-1926 (London, 1929), App. I, pp. 429-30.

[4. ]Leonard Horner (1785-1864), geologist and educator, was Warden of London University, 1827-31.

[5. ]D’Eichthal’s projected book on England was never completed. His son, Eugène d’Eichthal, later published some of the notes he had taken for the book: “Condition de la classe ouvrière en Angleterre (1828),” in Revue historique, LXXIX (May, 1902), 63-95.

[6. ]This was a division on the first reading of the Catholic Emancipation bill in the early morning hours of Saturday, March 6. Final passage of the bill in the House of Commons came on March 30, and in the House of Lords on April 10; royal assent was granted on April 13, 1829.

[7. ]Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (1771-1851), fifth son of George III, had long been strongly opposed to any relaxation of the Catholic penal laws.

[8. ]John Scott, first Earl of Eldon (1751-1838), jurist, was twice Lord Chancellor.

[9. ]John Singleton Copley, Baron Lyndhurst (1772-1863), had succeeded Eldon as Lord Chancellor in 1827.

[10. ]Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), long an opponent of Catholic Emancipation, but convinced that the country was determined to have it, in March 1829 introduced the bill for granting the measure.

[11. ]Henry Addington, first Viscount Sidmouth (1757-1844), Tory politician.

[1. ]Published in Elliot, I, 1-3. MS at King’s. The date has been pencilled in in a different hand. Paper bears 1827watermark.

John Sterling (1806-1844), son of Edward Sterling (1773-1847), the “Thunderer” of The Times, though a writer of some merit, is best known as the subject of Thomas Carlyle’s finest biography. After leaving Cambridge in 1827, he was associated with his college friend, Frederick Denison Maurice, in the editing of the Athenæum, July-Dec., 1828. Disciples of S. T. Coleridge, he and Maurice joined the London Debating Society “as a second Liberal and even Radical party, on totally different grounds from Benthamism and vehemently opposed to it” (JSM, Autobiog., p. 90). In two debates devoted to discussing the respective merits of Wordsworth and Byron, JSM allied himself for the first time with Sterling and the Coleridge-Wordsworthians. (See Karl Britton, “J. S. Mill: A Debating Speech on Wordsworth, 1829,” Cambridge Review, LXXIX [March 8, 1958], 418-23.) This was the beginning of the intimate friendship with Sterling, to whom JSM later said he had been more attached than he had ever been to any other man (Autobiog., p. 108). Sterling likewise testified to the value of the friendship: in a letter to his son, July 29, 1844, he wrote, “My intimacy with him [JSM] has been one of the great fortunes of my life,—though hardly—I suppose were ever two creatures more unlike than he & I” (Tuell, John Sterling, p. 69).

The occasion of this letter was Sterling’s resignation from the London Debating Society. In the first draft of his Autobiography (see Early Draft, ed. Stillinger, p. 133) JSM attributed Sterling’s resignation to an especially sharp exchange between the two of them in a debate involving their political philosophy. The resignation was followed, however, by the development of an even closer personal friendship than had previously existed. The earliest extant letter of Sterling to JSM, March 31, 1830 (King’s), is concerned with seeking JSM’s advice on assisting the Spanish rebels.

[2. ]This seems to be the only reference in an extant letter to JSM’s soul-crisis, which had its onset in the winter of 1826-27 and which is discussed in Autobiog., chap. v. Similar later disturbances, however, are mentioned in letters to Carlyle, e.g. Letter 72.

[3. ]The thought of the quotation is characteristically Ciceronian, though it has not been possible to find in Cicero’s writings a statement worded precisely in JSM’s phrasing. Cf. Cicero, De Amicitia, iv, 15; De Officiis, I, xvi, 51; and Oratio Pro Cnæo Plancio, ii, 5.

[4. ]Cf. Idem velle atque nolle, ea demum firma amicitia est (“An identity of likes and dislikes is after all the only basis of friendship”), Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, xx, 15. Cf. also this passage: “A question was started, how far people who disagree in a capital point can live in friendship together. Johnson said they might. Goldsmith said they could not, as they had not the same idem velle atque idem nolle—the same likings and the same aversions.” (James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, ed. J. W. Croker [London, 1839], III, 218.)

[1. ]Addressed: A Monsieur / M. Gustave d’Eichthal. MS at Arsenal. Published in part in Cosmopolis, VI, 25-28, and in D’Eichthal Corresp., pp. 7-12.

[2. ]Eyton Tooke also corresponded with D’Eichthal; some of his letters are in D’Eichthal Corresp.

[3. ]See Letter 24, n. 6.

[4. ]An extensive debate on the subject had taken place in the House of Commons on April 13 and 14.

[5. ]English policy was in opposition to the reactionary King Miguel I, who had usurped the throne of Portugal. His young niece Maria, the legitimate Queen, was at this time in England. The Methuen Treaty had been in force since 1703. By it and a similar arrangement with Spain, Portuguese and Spanish wines had long been admitted into England at a much lower duty than French wines.

[6. ]England and France were both deeply concerned in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29, and later this year both participated in a settlement of it which also guaranteed the independence of Greece.

[7. ]See Letter 24, n. 5.

[8. ]Achille Léonce Victor Charles, duc de Broglie (1785-1870), liberal statesman.

[9. ]The Society, which Thomas Love Peacock nicknamed the “Steam Intellect Society,” had been founded in 1826 under the leadership of Henry Brougham to publish in inexpensive editions works on science, history, economics, ethics, and philosophy. For a good brief account of the Society’s activities, see R. K. Webb, The British Working Class Reader, 1790-1848 (London, 1955), pp. 66-73.

[10. ]Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), founder of the school of French socialist thought which was to be the subject of many of JSM’s letters during the next three years. For studies of his connections with the movement, see Emery Neff, Carlyle and Mill (New York, 1926); Richard K. P. Pankhurst, The Saint Simonians, Mill and Carlyle (London, [1957]); and the unpublished Columbia University doctoral dissertation by Dwight N. Lindley, “The Saint-Simonians, Carlyle, and Mill” (1958), available from University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Mich. The best modern study of Saint-Simon is Frank E. Manuel’s The New World of Henri Saint-Simon (Cambridge, Mass., 1956).

[11. ]Auguste Comte (1798-1857), pioneer sociologist and founder of positivism, with whom JSM conducted an extensive correspondence between 1841 and 1847 (see Letters 334 ff.), though the two never met. In 1828 D’Eichthal had sent JSM a copy of Système de politique positive, which Comte had written while still a disciple of Saint-Simon and which formed the Troisième cahier du Catéchisme des Industriels (1823).

[12. ]The question had been discussed in the House of Commons on May 7, and on May 14 Lord Darnley presented a petition in the House of Lords for the extension of the English Poor Laws to Ireland in a modified form.

[1. ]Addressed: A Monsieur / M. Gustave d’Eichthal / à Paris. MS at Arsenal. Published, with minor errors, in Cosmopolis, VI, 28-32, and in D’Eichthal Corresp., pp. 13-21.

[2. ]A periodical (Oct., 1825-Dec., 1826) established after the death of Saint-Simon by his disciples, edited for the first six months as a weekly by a M. Cerclet and thereafter as a monthly by Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin.

[3. ]By various writers, including Saint-Simon, Léon Halévy, Dr. Joseph Bailly, and Charles Duveyrier, Paris, 1825.

[4. ]Evidently Comte’s Système de politique positive. See Letter 26, n. 11.

[5. ]This passage should be read in the light of Macaulay’s slashing criticism of James Mill in three successive numbers (March, June, and Oct., 1829) of the Edinburgh Review, a criticism which is also reflected in JSM’s Logic, VI, vii and viii. See also Autobiog., pp. 110-13.

[6. ]The closest approximation to this criticism of Condillac that the present editor has been able to find is in the third lecture of Victor Cousin’s Cours de l’histoire de la philosophie: Histoire de la philosophie du XVIIIe siècle (2 vols., Paris, 1829).

[7. ]See Letter 24, n. 5.

[8. ]Victor Lanjuinais (1802-1869), economist and liberal politician.

[1. ]Addressed: A Monsieur / M. Gustave d’Eichthal / à Paris. MS at Arsenal. Published, with errors and omissions, in Cosmopolis, VI, 32-38, and in D’Eichthal Corresp., pp. 22-34. D’Eichthal’s answer appears in the latter volume, pp. 39-68.

[2. ]See preceding letter, n. 8.

[3. ]Nothing came of this projected newspaper.

[4. ]See preceding letter, n. 2.

[5. ]Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), Scottish philosopher. His Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind appeared in three volumes between 1792 and 1827.

[1. ]Addressed: A Monsieur / Monsieur Gustave d’Eichthal / Place des Victoires No 5 / à Paris. Postmarks: Fevrier/15/1830/ and F/11-4. MS at Arsenal. Published, with minor errors and omissions, in Cosmopolis, VI, 348-55, and in D’Eichthal Corresp., pp. 117-30. The latter work also includes the last letter of Eyton Tooke to D’Eichthal (pp. 90-110) and D’Eichthal’s letter of Feb. 3 to JSM on Tooke’s death (pp. 111-16).

[2. ]Eyton Tooke committed suicide on Jan. 27, 1830. For a notice of the inquest, see Examiner, Jan. 31, 1830, p. 76. Henry Solly in These Eighty Years (London, 1893), I, 134-38, attributes Tooke’s derangement to what Tooke mistakenly thought was an unrequited love for Solly’s sister. See also, however, Letter 117.

[3. ]Thomas Tooke, the father of Eyton.

[4. ]In D’Eichthal’s letter of Feb. 3, 1830, to JSM. See n. 1 above.

[5. ]Evidently Tooke’s letter of Jan. 19, 1830. See n. 1.

[6. ]D’Eichthal’s letter of Nov. 23, 1829 (D’Eichthal Corresp., pp. 39-68) rather than his letter of Dec. 1, 1829 (ibid., pp. 69-89).

[7. ]Robert Owen (1771-1858), wealthy manufacturer and pioneer socialist, sponsor of various communal experiments in both England and America, author of A New View of Society (1813-14). For JSM’s account of his and his friends’ debates with Owenites in 1825, see Autobiog., pp. 86-88.

[1. ]MS at Arsenal.

[2. ]William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), Unitarian clergyman and writer. One may conclude from Tooke’s remarks in his last letter to D’Eichthal, Jan. 19, 1830 (D’Eichthal Corresp., p. 106), that the pamphlet must have been the reprint of a Christian Examiner article of Channing’s: Remarks on the Disposition which now prevails to form Associations, and to accomplish all objects by organized masses (London: Edward Rainford, 1830). Collected editions of Channing’s works usually reprint it with the title: “Remarks on Associations.” It contains interesting anticipations of some of JSM’s views in On Liberty, particularly on the values of individuality and the dangers of the tyranny of society.

[3. ]William Burns, author of The New Era of Christianity; or, its influence on the moral regeneration of society (London, 1831). See Pankhurst, p. 43.

[1. ]MS at Kew.

For earlier evidence of what became JSM’s lifelong interest in botany see John Mill’s Boyhood Visit to France, ed. Anna Jean Mill. Over the years he contributed many notes to the Phytologist (see MacMinn, Bibliog.). A number of his notebooks containing botanical observations are in the Mill-Taylor Collection of LSE.

Henry (later Sir Henry) Cole (1808-1882), official and editor, was later a member of many commissions dealing with public exhibitions. He first became acquainted with JSM in the London Debating Society and in the summer of 1832 accompanied him on a walking tour.

[2. ]Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785-1865), botanist and director of Kew Gardens.

[3. ]The British Flora (London, 1830).

[4. ]John Ray (1627-1705), sometimes called the father of natural history in England.

[5. ]William Curtis (1746-1799), botanist and entomologist. An edition in five volumes of his Flora Londinensis, enlarged by G. Graves and W. J. Hooker, is dated London, 1777-1828.

[1. ]Addressed: Mrs John Austin / 26 Park Road. Sealed by a red seal, bearing the letters JSM. MS in the possession of Mr. Gordon Waterfield.

[2. ]When the University of London opened in 1828, John Austin, who had been appointed in 1827 to the chair of jurisprudence and the law of nations, was unable because of ill health to lecture in the first session. He began his lectures in the fall of 1829 to a large class of able students. Though an eloquent, profound, and original lecturer, he did not continue to attract students, because of his passion for accuracy and elaboration. In Nov., 1830, so few students registered that he postponed beginning the course until Jan., 1831, when eight students enrolled. He persevered for two more years but gave up lecturing after June, 1833, though he did not resign his chair untilJan., 1835. See Bellot, University College, pp. 96-102. Eventually JSM contributed part of his notes on Austin’s lectures to fill a lacuna in the MS when they were published in full.

[3. ]Thomas Brown (1778-1820), professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh and a highly popular lecturer. The reference here is to his Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (4 vols., Edinburgh, 1820).

[4. ]Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780), judge, first professor of English law at Oxford, author of the famous and influential Commentaries on the Laws of England (4 vols., Oxford, 1765-69).

JSM is here in the Benthamite tradition in criticizing Blackstone; Bentham’s first sizable book, A Fragment on Government (1776), was an attack on the Commentaries.

[1. ]Published in part in Bain, JSM, pp. 41-42. MS not located. The portion in brackets is Bain’s summary.

JSM seems to have arrived in Paris during the week of Aug. 8; he remained until the first week of Sept. The Revolution had arisen swiftly after the publication on July 26 of reactionary ordinances which violated the Charter of 1815 by suppressing the liberty of the press, dissolving the recently elected chambers, and proclaiming a new electoral law. By July 30 the Revolution was in effect completed when Charles X revoked the new ordinances. On July 31 the Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe, was proclaimed Lieutenant General of the kingdom, and on Aug. 2 Charles abdicated. Louis Philippe was formally offered the throne on Aug. 7, and took the oath of office as King of the French on Aug. 9.

[2. ]Probably Jean Baptiste Say rather than his son Horace Emile Say (1794-1860), also an economist.

[3. ]André Marie Jean Jacques Dupin (1783-1865), called Dupin aîné, a cautious participant in the overthrow of Charles X, was too much attached to the cause of Louis Philippe to suit the republicans.

[4. ]Jacques Charles Dupont (de l’Eure) (1767-1855), liberal statesman, member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1817 to 1848. He was appointed Minister of Justice by the new government, but after struggling in vain against the reactionary tendencies of the new dynasty, resigned his post before the end of the year.

[5. ]Louis Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877), historian and statesman, then virtually at the beginning of his long political career, which culminated in the Presidency, 1871-73. In Jan., 1830, with Armand Carrel and François Mignet he had founded the National newspaper, which supported the liberal opposition to Charles X’s government. He favoured constitutional monarchy rather than a republic, however, and played a major role in publicizing and advancing the claims of Louis Philippe to the throne.

[6. ]Aide-toi, le ciel t’aidera, a political society formed during the Restoration to combat reaction and foster liberal ideas. Among its members were Barrot, Béranger, Carrel, Duchâtel, Guizot, Lafayette father and son, and J. B. Say. See also Letter 36.

[1. ]Published, but with no identification of authorship, in the Examiner, Aug. 29, 1830, p. 547, as one of three letters on the “State of the Public Mind and of Affairs at Paris.” A prefatory note was appended: “We have been favoured with copies of the following letters from two gentlemen, whose knowledge, ability, and exalted principles, induce us to attach great value to all their opinions and statements. The importance of the subject matters treated in the letters, and the close insight they give us of the state of affairs at Paris, have induced us to insert them entire, though we thus somewhat transgress the space usually allotted for political disquisition.”

The two gentlemen were undoubtedly John Arthur Roebuck and JSM. Evidence for this identification may be found in the present editor’s article, “JSM: Letters on the French Revolution of 1830,” Victorian Studies, I (Dec., 1957), 137-54. The MS has not been located.

[2. ]Louis Gaspard Amédée Girod (de l’Ain) (1781-1847), Orleanist politician, under the new government Prefect of Police in Paris from Aug. 1 to Nov., 1830. His speech to the workers referred to was made on Aug. 16.

[3. ]Jacques Laffitte (1767-1844), financier and statesman. His house in Paris had been virtual headquarters of the moderates who gained control of the Revolution. Although one of the leaders in the movement to place the Duke of Orleans on the throne, he was within a year bitterly regretting that action. On Nov. 3, 1830, he became President of the Council of Ministers but in March, 1831, he was ignominiously ousted.

[4. ]The aged Lafayette (he was seventy-three), who assumed command of the National Guard, was the one leader of the liberal forces who by his tremendous prestige and popularity might have been able to establish a republic. Though his sympathies were republican, he was gradually persuaded to accept as then safer for France what he hoped would be a “popular throne, in the name of the national sovereignty, surrounded by republican institutions.” His public acceptance of Louis Philippe on the balcony of the Hotel de Ville on July 31 ended the hopes of the republicans and clinched the throne for Louis Philippe. In the following Dec., Lafayette, having served his purpose for the King, was ousted from the command of the National Guard. His son, Georges Washington Motier de Lafayette (1779-1849), a member of the Chamber of Deputies, had been away from Paris during the “Three Days” of the Revolution, but returned on Aug. 1.

[5. ]Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (1767-1830), influential writer and liberal politician. Lafayette had written him on July 26: “A terrific game is being played here. Our heads are at stake. Bring yours along.” Although in failing health, Constant drove at once to Paris and participated in the deliberations of the leading deputies. In August he was appointed President of the Legislative Committee of the Council of State. Louis Philippe gave him 200,000 francs to pay his debts.

[6. ]Casimir Périer (1772-1832), financier and statesman, a moderate liberal who had at first tried to mediate between the liberals and the throne, had been a member of the provisory commission of five during the Revolution, and had only reluctantly accepted Charles X’s dethronement and Louis Philippe’s elevation. He succeeded Laffitte as head of the ministry in March, 1831.

[7. ]Letter 36 not 35.

[1. ]Printed, like the preceding letter (see n. 1), in the Examiner, Aug. 29, 1830, pp. 547-48. MS not located.

[2. ]Count François Horace Bastien Sebastiani (1772-1851), Minister of the Navy in the new government, and later Minister of Foreign Affairs. Like Périer, he had been reluctant to make the break with King Charles.

[3. ]Count Etienne Maurice Gérard (1773-1855) had been one of Napoleon’s favourite generals and was long an opponent of the Bourbons. He co-operated closely with Lafayette during the Three Days. Despite JSM’s statement he seems not to have been made a marshal until the following year.

[4. ]François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787-1874), historian and statesman. Though a former president of the Society Aide-toi and a leader of the liberal opposition to the government of Charles X, he sought a middle way between absolutism and democracy. On July 27 he had been called upon to draft the protest of the deputies against the ordinances which had provoked the Revolution. He has been called the champion of “a monarchy limited by a limited number of bourgeois.” From Aug. to Nov., 1830, he was Minister of the Interior in the new government and thereafter held various posts; from Oct., 1840, to the fall of Louis Philippe in the Revolution of 1848, he was the master spirit of the government. JSM later came to regard Guizot as a great thinker and writer (see Letters 282 and 304).

[5. ]Baron Joseph Dominique Louis (1755-1837) held the portfolio of finance until Nov., 1830.

[1. ]Addressed:James Mill Esq. / East India House / London / Angleterre / . Postmarks: 28 / AOUT / 1830 and AU 31 / 1830. MS in the Charles A. Brown Collection in the University of Rochester Library, Rochester, N.Y. First published in Victorian Studies, I (Dec., 1957), 137-54.

[2. ]Charles Marie Tanneguy, comte Duchâtel (1803-1867), one of the founders of the Globe, later held various ministerial posts.

[3. ]Sir Robert John Wilmot-Horton (1784-1841) had published in four series An Inquiry into the Causes and Remedies of Pauperism (London, 1830), the third series of which contained a correspondence with Duchâtel.

[4. ]George Grote had been in Paris in the spring of 1830 and had been introduced to the Lafayette circle. On July 29 he opened a credit with his banker at Paris (Jacques Laffitte) for £500 for the use of the committee directing the revolutionary cause at the Hôtel de Ville (see Mrs. Grote, The Personal Life of George Grote [London, 1873], pp. 63-65).

[5. ]Camille Hyacinth Odilon Barrot (1791-1873), liberal politician, had joined the National Guard and taken active part in the Revolution. He served also on the committee appointed to usher the deposed King out of the country.

[6. ]The reactionary ministry of Jean Baptiste Seraphin Joseph, comte de Villèle (1773-1854), lasted from 1822 to 1827.

[7. ]Pierre François Audry de Puyraveau (1773-1852), industrialist and politician, who actively supported Lafayette in the Revolution. On July 28 he contributed muskets to the revolting workers.

[8. ]Following a dinner on Aug. 16 at the London Tavern to honour the people of Paris for their part in the Revolution, Beevor and James Paul Cobbett (1803-1881), son of William Cobbett (1763-1835), the well-known radical writer and politician, were sent to Paris as “Ambassadors of the Reformers of England” to present an “Address to the brave people of Paris.” The presentation was made on Aug. 23 at the Hôtel de Ville with Lafayette and a deputation of the National Guard in attendance (see The Times, Aug. 27, 1830, p. 2). Beevor’s and James Cobbett’s speeches were later printed in Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, Sept. 11, 1830, pp. 342-45. Cobbett radicals and Benthamite radicals were always scornful of each other.

[9. ]John Bowring on Aug. 28 also made a presentation of English addresses to the people of Paris at the Hôtel de Ville in the presence of Lafayette and the Prefect of Paris. Bowring, however, represented a different group of English reformers from Cobbett’s followers. Bowring bore an address from a dinner on Aug. 17 (one night after Cobbett’s dinner) at the London Tavern, at which were present such men as Henry Warburton, MP, Joseph Hume, MP, George Grote, and James Silk Buckingham. The Times reported this dinner at length on Aug. 18, p. 5. Bowring, though an intimate of Jeremy Bentham, was never highly regarded by either James or John Mill.

[10. ]James Murray (d. 1835), Foreign Director of The Times.

[1. ]MS at Kew.

[2. ]Sir James Edward Smith (1759-1828), founder of the Linnean Society and author of English Botany (36 vols., 1790-1814), and English Flora (4 vols., 1824-28).