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

1837

185.

TO ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE¹

7 Jan. 1837.

My dear Tocqueville,

This is the first moment in which I have been able, with any comfort to myself, to take up my pen in order to write to you. And now, it is rather to ask for news of you than to say anything from myself. I am anxious to hear how you are getting on with the second part of La Démocratie—& when there is a likelihood of its appearance. I look forward with great eagerness to the pleasure first of reading it, & next of reviewing it. A propos, it would be of the greatest importance to the London & Westminster Review, to be the first English periodical that contained a notice of it, & if that notice could be given before the publication of the work, it would be a very great benefit to us indeed. Would this be possible? Could you send it to me in sheets? Or even by piecemeal, in order that I might be studying it & preparing myself to have an article ready at the first moment. One of the great secrets of success for a review in this country, is to have early notices of books that excite a general interest, & as often as possible to notice them before publication. Murray continually keeps back the books which he publishes, in order that the article in the Quarterly Review may precede the book it reviews.

The number of the review which has just appeared, & which if you have not yet received you soon shall, will I think interest you very much. The first article² in it is a coup de parti, a manifesto as we say of the radicals (or rather for the radicals) on the subject of the Whigs—intended to awaken the slumbering energy of the radical leaders, & to force the Whigs to take a decided part. It is written by Sir W. Molesworth, who has been making a considerable figure for the last few months—if you have seen English papers during that time. You will have marked the gradual development of the plan which he & several other of the radical members have formed and are executing. I think them quite right. Whatever may be the appearances do not suppose that the mass of the middle & working classes are indifferent to the movement: they seem so, because, at elections & otherwise, everything they do for reform costs them immense sacrifices of their personal interests, sacrifices which they are ready to make for a great object but not for a small one. If any ministry would now bring forward the ballot, they would excite greater enthusiasm than even that which was excited for the Reform Bill. But as matters stand, the Whigs’ majority is slipping away from them, & nothing will keep the Tories long out of power except either the adoption by the Whigs of a more radical policy, or the rise among the radicals themselves of able & energetic leaders, acting quite independently of the Whigs, as Molesworth, Roebuck, Leader & others are doing now. Of these two outlets from our false position, if we can but gain the last, we shall soon have the first two. You will soon see the ballot a cabinet measure, & then reform will have finally triumphed: the aristocratical principle will be completely annihilated, & we shall enter into a new era of government. The approaching session will be next to that of 1830/1831, the most important since 1688—& parties will stand quite differently at the commencement & at the close of it.

Did you see Buller when he was at Paris? I have seen him but once since his return, & forgot to ask him. He arrived at Paris, & at the very hotel where I was, the day after I had left it. He will I think play a very conspicuous part hereafter in our politics—he rose exceedingly in public estimation last year. At present his rôle is that of a mutual friend, or conciliator, between the Whigs & radicals—it is very desirable that there should be such a person, & he is well suited to the character. As for your politics—they seem to be still in the same torpid state.

I send today, to Beaumont, through the embassy, a very important pamphlet on Ireland, by the Secretary to the late Commission of Poor Law Enquiry.³ I am not able to send a letter along with it, for I positively have not time. Pray make my excuses to him & tell him that it would be of the greatest use to the review if he (or you) would furnish at least notes for a review of Bulwer’s book.⁴

Is there a chance of your coming here soon? I hope very much that we shall have Beaumont for a few months in the spring. Ever, my dear Tocqueville, yours faithfully

J. S. Mill.

• India House.

186.

TO EDWARD LYTTON BULWER¹

• 18 Kensington Square

Saturday
[Jan., 1837]

My dear Sir—Your note found me laid up with the influenza, which must be my excuse for not having immediately answered it. I had not previously contemplated a review of LaValliere,² for the same reason which has prevented our reviewing any former writing of yours: a critical estimate of you & your works was too serious a task to be lightly ventured upon, & your reputation had long passed the stage at which the cursory notice of a review could promote the success of any of your writings. However since an occasion has arisen on which you think that something we can do may be of service, the case is altered, & since I received your note I have been considering what would be the best way of having it done. I have good hopes, & I can promise that nothing shall prevent it, unless the very few persons who could do it as it ought to be done, should all fail me.³

There can be but one opinion as to the attacks in the Times;⁴ those in the Spectator⁵ I have not seen: but nobody can well doubt that if such a play as LaValliere had been written by anybody against whom there was no personal or political jealousy or hostility it would have obtained the loud encomiums of the whole press. You can however well afford to despise such attacks. Nobody whose judgment one cares for pays the least regard to the theatrical criticisms of newspapers—how they may affect the playgoing public I do not know.

I have been looking impatiently for some token of the appearance of “Athens”⁶ —& did not like to say anything more to you about articles till I was sure that was off your hands but I have been thinking very much about subjects, & now when your most welcome announcement comes, I can suggest two, viz. Goldsmith, (Prior’s Life)⁷ & Cowper, a propos of the two new editions of him.⁸ Either would be an excellent subject for an article of philosophical & imaginative criticism. But I have no preference for them, if you should like anything else better, especially any old writer.

Molesworth has not measured his words very scrupulously,⁹ but the object was to act upon the radicals, who are people not easily moved. He wanted to give them a violent shake, in order to set them going. You will not find him at all intemperate now, or in the least desirous of turning out the ministry.

Ever yours faithfully

J. S. Mill.

I am concerned to see your note edged with black—whom have you lost?

187.

TO WILLIAM JOHNSON FOX¹

• 18 Kensington Square

[Jan., 1837]

I hope our Poor Law offences² have not made it hopeless to induce you to write for us a notice of Bulwer’s play³ —no one but you can do it in the only way in which it ought to be done, that of setting the stage in its proper position of worthiness, and encouraging the best writers to write for it. Bulwer wishes that we should notice it, because he is rather more sore than need be at the newspaper attacks, & thinks his play needs support against them—if it can need support against such attacks it should have it. You I believe think highly of the play—& if so there would be nothing to guard against, except that we should not seem to be paying him in puffs for an article of his which we shall probably have in the very same number—& that we should not seem to sanction as much as is merely conventional in the morality of that LaValliere story—but this is a point on which it is quite unnecessary to say anything to you—

You have no conception how much you would oblige me if you could manage to do it—though I know well what it is to ask more work from an overworked person—

I am here laid up by influenza, & have been so for some days.

J.S.M.

188.

TO WILLIAM JOHNSON FOX¹

• 18 Kensington Square

Friday
[Jan. 27, 1837]

I feel the position you are in with regard to Horne² —& all the rest of what you say on that subject. I feel it to my cost too. What to do I do not know. There is not a creature living who would do that for me, & whom I could trust to do it, unless it be you. Is there no remedy? could I in any way forward it? is there anything I could do for your paper³ that would give you a few hours respite from it? or is there no hope?

I put “our” to the “poor law offences”⁴ because it would be cowardly not, since I am as much responsible for them as any one can be. I hope you believe without my saying it, that I should not have put the article in, if it had appeared to me as it does to you, personally disrespectful to yourself—& this not because you are a contributor, but because you are you. The two between whom you are placed⁵ may be “thieves”—I do not know them—& if so, it is natural you should feel offended—but I am persuaded the writer of the article does not think them such; in fact he compliments one of them, & I have reason to think, has a good opinion of at least the intentions of both. Neither did it seem to me that the T[rue] S[un] was spoken of disparagingly on the whole, though a difference of opinion was expressed with much warmth on a particular point.

I differ from you as entirely as the writer does, on the Poor Law question, & on a whole class of questions therewith connected. Nor have your articles in answer to the review, though I recognize in them your best & most effective stile of discussion, at all narrowed the difference between us, but rather widened it. But I hope there is no reason against letting this be an “open question” both among radicals & among London reviewers.

J.S.M.

I am not out yet—I mean not at the I.H. but I shall on Monday, I hope. she⁶ is much better—how are you & yours?

189.

TO SARAH AUSTIN¹

• 18 Kensington Square

28^th January 1837

My dear Mütterlein—I could not send you the review last month, as I could not get a copy soon enough. If you ever see English newspapers, you will have seen that Molesworth’s article² has been making considerable noise—as indeed it ought. His letters, speeches, & conduct in all respects for the last three months, have raised every one’s opinion extremely of his talents & caractère & made him a sort of hero of the day—which however he is not intoxicated by, but as docile & modest as any one can well be.

You may wonder that I have been so long in writing to you—though after all, I write first: but you would not wonder if you knew the endless drudgery I have had upon my hands, with arrears of India house business, & private affairs, without counting review matters or any other writing. I came back with my general health & strength everything that could be wished for, though the complaint in my head, as a mere local affection, did not give way & is still nearly as troublesome as ever;³ that is, would be troublesome if I had not learnt not to mind it. I saw Switzerland well, & Milan & the Italian lakes, & Piemont & the bay of Genoa thoroughly, but could not get further unless I had chosen to pass a fortnight in a lazaretto. Pray tell Mr Lewis⁴ that I gave his present to M. Lacroix⁵ at Nice whom I found a very obliging good natured old gentleman & liked very much: he spoke with much regard of M^r Lewis.

I have heard nothing of you, any of you, subsequent to your arrival at Malta—& wish very much to hear of everything which concerns you but especially about Mr Austin’s health. I wish to ask his advice too about an inscription on a marble slab we are going to erect in the church where my father was buried. Nobody’s opinion in such a matter would be of a tithe of the value of Mr Austin’s, & I certainly will not do anything in the matter without his approbation. What has occurred to me is, to add after the usual particulars, these words—

• “His life was one of consistent usefulness,
• and history will appreciate its results.
• His works are his best monument.”

If Mr Austin does not like this, or not so well as any other, perhaps he could in some interval of his laborious duties, find five minutes to think of something better—He perhaps alone of all persons living is as much interested in the matter as I am.

There is a review just started called the “Church of England review” the first number of which contains an attack on Lewis’s last article⁶ —pray tell him this. I have not seen it.

I can tell you little of any one in whom you are interested—for I see nobody but those who come to me. I have time to go to nobody. I must except Carlyle who has finished his book⁷ & is in great joy thereat—not for any hope he may have of its success, but for having done with it.

I do hope I shall hear from you some time—though I am a bad correspondent I am always your Söhnchen

J.S.M.

190.

TO JOHN PRINGLE NICHOL¹

• 18, Kensington Square,

29th January, 1837.

My dear Nichol,

You must think me sadly neglectful of you, for I have not written to you a single line since that from Milan, although I knew how much you would wish to hear something about my health, at least. My excuse is, the quite oppressive weight of business I find resting on me. Till now I never knew what it was to be a thorough mechanical drudge. The accumulation of India House business from my long absence, and slack performance of duty for nearly a year previous, leaves me none of the occasional hours and days of respite I used to have there; above three hours a day are taken up by exercise; my occupations, pecuniary, preceptorial and other connected with my several trusts as executor, guardian, and so forth, take up much time; and I have not needed your caution against writing much for the Review, for the mere mechanical drudgery connected with editorship has so filled up the chinks of my time that I have hardly written a line since I returned. You saw the very little I wrote for the last number;² even that was all prepared last spring, though I had not put any of it on paper. And then you would hardly believe the quantity of letters I have to write—further, I am general referee, and chamber counsel to Molesworth and others of the active Radicals—whenever anything is to be done, I am to be asked whether it is right—whenever anybody is to be moved to do anything, I am to be moved first to move him—then I have to prepare myself for the Political Economy club every month—in short this will not do—and shall not. As for my health—I returned with my head no better,³ but my general health and strength quite restored—nor has my head got at all worse since; indeed, no quantity of thinking or writing affects it at all; reading India House papers, beyond a certain number of hours, affects it, but on the whole I have to keep any tendency to increase (if there be any) completely under. I have not contrived, however, to keep off the influenza, which has run through our family as through most others, and has kept me in confinement here for the last fortnight, with cough, catarrh, sore throat, feverishness, and disordered stomach, the usual pleasures which accompany it. I have got quite rid of it now, or next thing to it, and shall go to the India House to-morrow to resume my drudgery.

And you—how are you? and what are you thinking of? Your class,⁴ of course, in the first instance, but that can give you so little trouble that you cannot need to think of it much. What think you of the last number of the Review? What of the aspect of politics? What do people in your part of Scotland think of the Molesworth controversy?⁵ Here there is a great outcry against Molesworth by all the Whigs and the timid Radicals, but for all that those very Radicals are making note of preparation for the active and unshackled line of conduct which Molesworth inculcates, and which they never would have felt themselves either prompted or compelled to if he, or some person of mark, had not taken a decided position, and so forced them to do the like. Whoever takes a step boldly in advance, risks much for himself, but is sure to do good to his cause. One thing is certain, Molesworth has greatly raised his character for judgment and tact—all those letters of his he wrote down in Cornwall with nobody near him to consult except Leader,⁶ and yet how skilfully they were all worded—not a false step, except, indeed, that pettish letter to Fonblanque,⁷ —and there he saw his error, and has since sent an ample apology, and they are now friends and will soon be allies. He is trying to form a party. I do not know what chance he has. Hume and Grote are with him, and Hume will act up to what he professes; whether Grote will, time only can show; Grote’s was a good speech at the dinner.⁸ You probably have not heard Molesworth’s last move; he refused to go to the dinner at Leeds because the Radicals and Whigs jointly had sent resolutions to him pledging him to support ministers. He told them what kind of support alone he could give; thereupon they held a meeting, and the Radicals carried resolutions by an immense majority against the Whigs, concurring completely in his views, and sent a deputation to him to communicate them. This has broken the union of parties at Leeds, but he has the Whigs in his hands, for if he stands and does not turn out Beckett⁹ he will turn out Baines,¹⁰ therefore, the Whigs must end by coming to a decided coalition with him. I do think something will come out of the Radical party in this session, but I cannot foresee exactly what. I often wish I were among them; now would be the time for knitting together a powerful party, and nobody holds the scattered threads of it in his hands except me. But that cannot be while I am in the India House. I should not at all mind leaving it if I had £300 a year free from anxiety and literary labour, but I have at most £100. Sed tempus veniet. Write to me soon.

Yours affectionately,

J. S. Mill.

191.

TO FRANCIS PLACE¹

• I.H.

Thursday.
[Feb. 9(?), 1837]

Dear Place

I do not above half like Roebuck’s speech² —but friends, & radicals, should stand by one another—& therefore if it be decided to reprint the speech, there shall be no obstacle from the want of a pound from me.

I heartily wish that those who did such great things for the Stamp Question³ would set about doing the same thing for the Ballot. It seems to me of infinite importance that Grote’s motion⁴ this year, should be preceded by a strong demonstration from the country in the form of public meetings & petitions. There are a hundred reasons for this, which to you, I need not state. Perhaps with the ballot might be joined repeal of the rate paying clauses—& if they were also to moot the question of a new schedule A for the small boroughs (where the ballot would have no effect)—either abolishing those boroughs, or throwing them (together with other unrepresented towns) into districts of boroughs, like the Scotch & Welsh—so much the better. I would not meddle with household suffrage at present. It raises enemies & does no good that would not be done by repealing the ratepaying clauses, though this appears so much smaller a change. Do not you think it was injudicious in Hume⁵ to give notice of a motion for household suffrage?

Yours ever

J. S. Mill.

192.

TO FRANCIS PLACE¹

• I. H.

Thursday
[Feb. 9(?), 1837]

My dear Place

I am very glad to hear of the Ballot meeting—there should be a Common Hall, after the West^r meeting.

If you lose that £10, or any part if it, I will ask permission to divide the loss with you.²

The meeting should not merely vote resolutions & a petition, but should name a deputation to go to Lord Melbourne & Lord John Russell & badger them on the subject. That is the way to bring them to terms—but I am speaking to you who know all these things far better than I do

ever yours

J. S. Mill.

193.

TO FRANCIS PLACE¹

• I.H.

Friday
[Feb. 10, 1837]

My dear Place

It is disgraceful that those who rendered so great a service should be out of pocket.² Since there is a loss I must be allowed to bear my part of it to which purpose please to apply the enclosed.³

As for the ballot—there is nothing like timing the matter well. If £100 would suffice this time as well as last, I am convinced it might be raised in two days, for the radicals are feeling at last the necessity of doing something, & they want public meetings & petitions now to help them on.

As for Roebuck’s speech⁴ —it has greatly raised his character, & will do good—but in so far as it goes beyond Molesworth, I do not agree in it.

I think Fonblanque in the wrong,⁵ but you need not I think regret having served him, for he is still as radical as ever & will be with us again soon, I am convinced.

Pray do not think of hibernating.⁶ Radicalism seems to me to have a better chance just now than it has ever had before—the few who are active, having now determined to go on without the rest, which will soon oblige the others to follow.

Ever truly yours

J. S. Mill.

194.

TO ALBANY FONBLANQUE¹

• I.H.

Monday
[Feb. 13(?), 1837]

Dear Fonblanque—I called on you yesterday, (which I had not been able to do any evening last week) wishing to talk over a hundred things with you—but there is one thing which cannot wait, & which I must write to you about.

Unless you and a few others bestir themselves, & give the word to the people to meet & petition for the ballot during the next three weeks, Grote’s motion² will go off as flatly as it did last year & if so, the consequences will be unspeakably mischievous. I reckon a Tory majority, & a Tory ministry almost certain at a very early period, unless we have a government which will propose the ballot. I know nobody at all acquainted with the constituencies who does not think the same. Buller for instance is half mad about it, & is for throwing overboard Reform of the Lords & everything else & pushing for the ballot & the ballot only. As for Ministers—I have advised Molesworth & shall advise every radical I know, to be guided in his tone & conduct about the ministry, mainly by the part they take on Grote’s motion.

It is enough to drive one mad to see everybody thinking of everything except the precise thing which is of importance at the time, & so every opportunity lost.

I wrote to Place³ to see if the Committee who managed all the correspondence & petitioning on the newspaper stamps for two sessions & only spent £110, would do the same for the ballot—he answered, that even those £110 they had not been able to raise & were £20 out of pocket! I had subscribed both years, that is £2, which was in proportion to my means, but I could not help sending him £5 now⁴ for my share of the loss. In answer I received the enclosed which I shall keep as a memorial of the spiritless, heartless imbecility of the English radicals.⁵ Pray read it & send it back to me, as I mean to fling it in the teeth of some of them.

I shall be surprised if after reading this you still think that it was not worth while risking something in order to awaken the people from their torpor.

Ever faithfully yours

J. S. Mill

I am delighted with the three volumes⁶ —everything in them is quite fresh, & as good as new.

195.

TO ALBANY FONBLANQUE¹

• I.H.

Thursday
[Feb. 16(?), 1837]

My dear Fonblanque

Since I wrote to you I have heard again from Place, who says—but I had better enclose what he says. I do so that you may be au courant of what is doing as a word in the Examiner would be of great importance to the object.

Please return this & Place’s other letter, which I want to shew to Molesworth & others.

It was a good debate on the qualification² —& a good division but Warburton, I think, played the fool³ —& his bill must be watched. If they get the law merely relaxed, so as to include personal property, they will enforce it, & so make it practically worse than at present.

Ever yours

J. S. Mill

196.

TO THOMAS CARLYLE¹

[Feb. 23, 1837]

Mr Hunt’s Article² will be in time if it be not later than the 12^th of March: and whether it be printed or not in this N° (tho’ I am anxious that it should) I undertake that he shall be paid for it.

197.

TO GUSTAVE D’EICHTHAL¹

• India House

3^d March
1837

My dear d’Eichthal

I have indeed been very remiss in answering the letter which you wrote to me from Ems. But if you knew how completely my time has been occupied all this winter, I am sure you would pardon me. I was absent from the India House full five months last year & from England 3½ months in hopes of getting rid of a troublesome local affection of the head, which has not even yet left me. Since my return I have had arrears of all sorts of business to clear off, & have been obliged to put off everything which could be put off. I did not however postpone reading your book.² The copies you ordered to be sent to me I have never received, & I should not have known that the book existed, if I had not, in passing through Paris in November last, called upon your brother Adolphe, who gave me a copy. This I have read & read with very great interest indeed. It would be very difficult without going through the whole book chapter by chapter, to say exactly how much of the book I agree in—but in the main it appears to me very valuable: & your views respecting the difference between the Oriental & the European character, seem to me perfectly just. I quite agree with you that an infusion of the Oriental character into tha[t]³ of the nations of northern Europe would form a combination very much better than either separately. All the doubt I have, is, whether any considerable effect of that kind can be expected from the causes you contemplate—But doubtless whatever promotes friendly intercourse between these two varieties of mankind, & whatever teaches them to know & to like one another, must have a certain tendency of that sort.

In your little note from Vienna you do not tell me anything of your health—I am very anxious to hear whether it is completely reestablished.

I am forced to write to you very hastily & very briefly, as I am still so busy, I actually [do?] not know which way to [turn?]. You I suppose have more leisure, at least for the present, & I hope to hear from you soon at greater length.

I cannot close this note without saying how sincerely I lament the loss of your excellent Mother—

ever yours faithfully

J. S. Mill

198.

TO LEIGH HUNT¹

• India House

Monday
[March 13, 1837]

My dear Sir

I regret much that I was from home when you took the trouble to call—but I hope to be indemnified another time & that our personal acquaintance thus begun will henceforth grow & prosper.

I am just about to send your MS.² to press with very great satisfaction at our having got it, & still more so at our having enlisted you as a contributor, I hope a frequent one. The remainder will be quite in time tomorrow there being no probability that there will be any points requiring discussion.

Ever truly yours

J. S. Mill

199.

TO LEIGH HUNT¹

• India House

Wednesday
[March 15, 1837]

My dear Sir

If my letter gave you pleasure I am sure yours gave as much to me independently of the very great value to us of the MS.² which accompanied it & which it was delightful to have to read among so many bad articles or (worse still) articles which required a world of trouble to make them good.

It is part of our plan to have signatures—what shall yours be? your sign manual?³ ☞

In answer to your P.S.—I believe in the practice of most reviews, & certainly of ours, the book reviewed belongs to the reviewer, & we should never think of deducting its price from our payment.

Ever truly yours

J. S. Mill

200.

TO WILLIAM JOHNSON FOX¹

Wed^y
[March 15, 1837]

Thanks—it² is beautifully done, & will illuminate our number. I would gladly, whenever possible, give a good many articles to T.S.³ for such another.

Probably the Cromwell extracts⁴ with such comment as they may need, may be added at the end without altering anything. At all events, the alteration can be made in the proof.

Thanks once more—I feel them—& the more because I have given you so little to thank me for—

J.S.M.

201.

TO JOHN MACRONE¹

• Kensington

Thursday ev^g
[March 30 (?), 1837]

My dear Sir

As you are acquainted with the nature of my connexion with the London & Westminster Review, & are also, I believe, aware that M^r Falconer is about to resign the editorship, I need not apologize for addressing myself to you instead of to Mr. Falconer, to save time. The review will, from a concurrence of very untoward circumstances, be delayed beyond the proper day.² Now it occurs to me that the best thing to be done in this case is to put a bold face upon it, & to tell all the booksellers that they need not wonder at not getting the review exactly to a day as it is intended hereafter not to publish on a fixed day, but to regulate the bringing out of the review with a view to the timing of the articles which it contains. This you may safely say; because it is the determination of the gentleman³ who is to succeed Mr Falconer, that the review shall always be ready for publication by the 20^th of the month so that it may be brought out at whatever may appear the most advantageous moment between that & magazine-day.

I hope you will excuse my making this suggestion to you, but it seems to me of great importance & it is at the suggestion of the gentleman who is to be the future editor, that I make it. We are also, both of us, anxious that the country copies should not wait for the next monthly parcels, but should be sent off in separate parcels, the expense of which the review will of course pay.

I think you will have reason to be much pleased with the new editor. I am satisfied you will find him a most efficient man of business, & a man of infinite resource for the management of a review.

Believe me

very truly yours

J. S. Mill

John Macrone Esq.

202.

TO LEIGH HUNT¹

• I.H.

Thursday
[April 6 (?), 1837]

My dear Sir

Many thanks for all the kind & agreeable things in your note, which I have not had time to acknowledge sooner.

You will have perceived that I had only cancelled a single sentence,² & that for reasons which I think you will assent to, the first time I have an opportunity of stating them to you.

We have been thrown out this time by a concurrence of accident & I fear mismanagement. Some of our most important articles were thought of too late—others were accidentally delayed—& the holidays make printing establishments unusually inefficient.

We shall hereafter avoid I hope all such inconveniences—The present managing editor is about to retire & we have got a most efficient man, who understands the business in hand most perfectly, to supply his place.³

Ever yours truly

J. S. Mill

203.

TO SARAH AUSTIN¹

• India House

26^th April 1837

My dear Mutterlein

You may believe how glad I was to read your long letter & to learn all that it told me. Most of all I was delighted, & so were all to whom I have told it, that something has been already done,² & that a thing which, once done, is done for all countries & not only for poor little Malta. What you say of the feelings of the English to the Maltese³ is all that one expected in kind but much worse in degree—it makes Canada quite intelligible to one—a subject on which our ministers have been dragging themselves & their supporters through the dirt, including Strutt & some other apostate radicals.

I send you the review—the last number to be brought out by Falconer⁴ —he & I have all along differed completely as to the management & the difference at last came to a crisis & he resigned. It is now in the hands of a man⁵ as efficient as he was inefficient, a man who seems made by nature to conduct the detail business of a review, & who (he is very young) promises, I think to be fit for much better things too. He is the author of the article on Shakespear’s life,⁶ in the October number. The present number has, I think, less intrinsic merit than most of the preceding, but is much more calculated for success. A propos of your remark on Carlyle’s article Mirabeau:⁷ I am not at all surprised that M^r Austin or that Lewis should dislike it, but it has been the most popular article we ever had in the review & I think has been extremely useful to us. Except Roebuck, Grote, & Senior, I have met with nobody here, of any account, who disliked it: & those three dislike everything, the style of which is not humdrum: for instance, Grote thinks the style of Henry Taylor’s book⁸ affected, & Senior thinks it execrable. Of course I do not mean that the same is the case with Mr Austin or with Lewis; I know the contrary; but I think, generally speaking, those who have disliked the article Mirabeau are those who cannot endure any peculiarities of style. On the other hand we have never had any article which has been so much admired by so many people. I do not think with you that Carlyle’s usual peculiarities are exceeded in it, I think it falls greatly short of the average degree of them.

I have consulted Lord Langdale about the epitaph⁹ —he thought mine a good one if there was to be any but on the whole preferred to have none—saying “I incline to think that a monumental inscription should contain no more than is required for the identification of the man. If the name does not live in history, we see what monumental inscriptions come to—if the name does live, as your father’s will, the inscription however short which identifies it, excites the interest & awakens the recollections which are desired.” This I think is an instance of his usual good sense & I have at length determined to abide by it. I do not however think that it is a fault in an epitaph to be pretentious (if I may coin such a word), provided it does not pretend to more than is thought just by friends & admirers. People expect that an epitaph shall contain what a man’s admirers think of him—not what is thought by all the world.

The radicals as you will have seen have been unusual[ly] active, & Roebuck & Charles Buller are now in ver[y] high reputation everywhere—those two in particular, & th[e] party in general.¹⁰ It is all owing to Molesworth, & to what he wrote & did during the three months previous to the opening of parliament. You say he is too fond of going to dinners—it may seem so at a distance, but to us who are here it is plain that he did not go to one dinner too many—he went only when a demonstration was needed, & has produced an effect through the country which will be permanent. That, & its consequences, have altered the whole aspect of politics here, as you would feel if you could hear the things now said of radicalism & the radicals, by people not at all partial to them. I have been driving them these four years to what they have now at last done, & done most successfully.

I am quite well now except the merely local ailment in my head, & so are the boys & all the family. I have much more to say but have not time to say it.

Yours affect^y

J. S. Mill

Henry Taylor & some other people have been arranging for Carlyle to give lectures on German literature¹¹ next month & with considerable prospects of success—there are about 100 tickets taken, many of them by people of note—

204.

TO SARAH AUSTIN¹

• I.H.

28^th April
1837

My dear Mütterlein—I have written to you by Henry Reeve’s² parcel, but I have something to say which induces me to write again.

Would Mr Austin like to be the Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow? The chair is vacant, & it is worth £700 a year, but so long as old Mylne³ lives (he is 83 years of age) it will only be worth £300. It is in the gift of the Professors, & one of them, my friend Nichol, who is an admirer of Mr Austin has written to me to ask if he would like it & to say that he could perhaps carry Mr Austin’s election to the chair with such testimonials as it would be easy to get. If Mr Austin declines, he has nobody better than Bailey of Sheffield, & means to try for him.

Pray answer this as soon as you are able

Your Söhnchen

205.

TO HARRIET GROTE¹

May, 1837

What you say of W.² accords with my expectations. I consider him, with his crotchettiness, and his fussiness, and his go-between inclinations, to be the evil genius of the Radical party. . . . He is “out of my books,” as completely as Strutt and the rest of the pseudo-Radicals who voted for the extinction of popular government in Canada.³

206.

TO EDWARD LYTTON BULWER¹

• I.H.

Wednesday
[May or June (?), 1837]

My dear Sir

I have read your article² with great eagerness & delight—it is such as I expected from you & if we could have one such article in every number I should have no misgivings respecting our critical reputation.

I have hardly found a sentence in the article which has not my heartiest concurrence except perhaps some part of what you say of Shelley,³ & there I am not sure that there is any difference—for all that you say to his disparagement, I allow to be true though not I think the whole truth—it seems to me that much, though not most of Shelley’s poetry is full of the truest passion, & it seems to me hardly fair to put Shelley in the same genus as Gray when the imagery of the one however redundant & occasionally farfetched is always true to nature, that of the other as you say yourself drawn from books, & false—the one the exuberant outpouring of a seething fancy, the other elaborately studied & artificial.

But perhaps you think all this as well as I—if so, & only if so, would not some little addition or qualification give a truer impression?

I had not time the other evening to tell you how much I am delighted with “Athens”⁴ —the book is so good, that very few people will see how good.

Ever yours,

J. S. Mill

207.

TO ARISTIDE GUILBERT¹

• India House

19^th June 1837

My dear Guilbert

I have been so busy, such a mere mechanical drudge all the winter & spring, that I have neither had time nor energy to take pen in hand for any purpose which could possibly admit of postponement, & I was still in this condition when I received your letter of the 26^th of last month. I have now, by seven months hard labour, acquired something of a respite & though I have been made rather unwell by this disagreeable, strange, irregular season, I have been able to find courage to write to you.—Do not vex yourself about any delay in your article on the Army;² even when we have it we may not be able to publish it immediately, for we must watch our opportunity & bring it out at the time when the public mind is turning to that class of subjects & when consequently it is most likely to be read. Of course the sooner we have it the better but I beg you by no means to put your health to any hazard for the sake of finishing it earlier—nor even to neglect any occupation which circumstances may render more pressing.

I cannot account for your not having received the Review. It has been regularly sent through M. Fillonneau, with the usual understanding that all who were on the list were to have copies. Perhaps M. Paulin can explain it. (Is he satisfied with the article on the Histoire Parlementaire?)³ But at all events the matter shall be set right, for the review is now under a new editor; printer, publisher & everything else is changed, & it will not, I trust, be mismanaged in future. Whoever is our agent, you & all our other friends shall have written orders, on presenting which you will receive your copies.

Under the new management we have prospects of much greater pecuniary success than before—that is we may hope to pay our expenses, which we have never yet done.

The radicals, as you have seen, have been much more active this year than ever before, & have shewn, in parliament, much more talent. They are however much divided; some of them are for giving more, & others less, support to the ministry. As for me I am with the extreme party; though I would not always go so far as Roebuck, I entirely agree with those who say that the whole conduct of the Whigs tends to amortir l’esprit public, & that it would be a good thing for invigorati[ng]⁴ & consolidating the reform party if the Tories were to come in. But the country does not go with us in this & therefore it will not do for the radicals to aid in turning out the ministry; by doing so they would create so much hostility in their own party, that there would be no hope of a real united reform party with the country at its back, for many years. So we must linger on, each man doing for the present such good work as lies nearer to his hand—

ever yours my dear Guilbert

J. S. Mill.

208.

TO JOHN ROBERTSON¹

• Kensington

Friday night
[June, 1837]

Dear Robertson

Pray read Clarkson’s article² & say what you think of it. I am sure you will agree with me that it is, in its present state, totally inadmissible. I think it much worse on the whole than Atkinson’s,³ though better in some respects. I am anxious for your opinion as to whether it is possible by any omissions & alterations to make it tolerable. I am sure it will require many hours continued labour of a ready writer who knows a good deal about the subject himself. There is nothing good in the article that I can discover except an expression here & there, & the evidence he extracts from the Report.

There is the devil to pay on another score—the new printers have begun with page 1 instead of page 285—& if Bulwer’s article is printed off, that error is so far irremediable.⁴

These said new printers are dreadfully inaccurate—so were Clowes’s at times, but generally not. They will do better when they know the handwriting. Some of their blunders in my article were however very unaccountable to me.

My article I am sorry to say reads damned bad—not so the extracts, which are splendid.⁵

I have sent back one sheet, the only one I had, corrected, at nine this evening & shall call tomorrow morning for another.

I have an offer of twelve pages on the immediately present state of French politics, the marriage of the Duke of Orleans &c.⁶ written republicanly by Thibaudeau one of the liveliest & wittiest writers now in France, & translated by Leader⁷ —to be ready by Wednesday morning. I have not said yea or nay. Think of it & if you cannot come, send me word to the I.H. what you have thought.

Yours

J.S.M.

209.

TO THOMAS CARLYLE¹

• India House

30^th June 1837

My dear Carlyle

I send you the review. The article on your book² is I think producing a good effect, although the opinions which have reached me concerning the article either in print or orally are mostly unfavorable.

There has been a review of the book in Fraser,³ evidently by Heraud. He labours a good deal to prove, that you are very like him, & therefore very good; but that you want something of being entirely like him, & therefore are not altogether perfect; & towards the end he prophecies for you & other writers in Fraser (apparently himself) present neglect & future undying fame. There is in Heraud a placid disregard of contemporary opinion, which would be greatness if he were not so quite sure of living for ever. But now he reminds one of the dying penitent’s answer to his confessor who proposed to him, as a motive for patience, the example of Christ: “Ah, mon père, quand J.C. mourut le vendredi, il savait bien qu’il resusciterait le dimanche.”

There are one or two good thoughts, well expressed, in the article too: but on the whole it will do the book little good: for instead of resting the justification of the unfamiliar, on familiar principles, he rests it on principles ten times more remote from common apprehension than the book itself, & has defended the book in an article ten times more unintelligible than it, with none of the beauty & not more than a tenth part of the truth.

Henry Taylor whom I met the other day has not read much of the book & has not made much of it, but he says it makes a very strong impression indeed upon some people, among whom he mentioned Frederic Elliot.⁴ He says that Lockhart told him he found in every page something that offended him most exceedingly but yet he could not lay the book down. I hope Lockhart will review it himself & say so, though we thereby lose Croker.⁵ Taylor did not know whether there would be a review or not. T. says that your lectures⁶ have made a very favorable impression, except upon two or three people who did not attend after the first two lectures & had not sufficient common sense to see what ailed those.

Everybody is hurrying away to get reelected or elected. As for me I shall be here till the middle of September, though I have very little to do here at present. I have worked off my arrear of business at this office, & the work does not now come in nearly so fast as I can do it. It is the way of my work to go in that sort of manner—in fits—& I like that well enough, as it gives me intervals of leisure. I am using this interval to get on with my book—a book I have done little to since the review began, & which you will think very little worth doing—a treatise on Logic. I hope I do not overrate the value of anything I can do of that kind but it so happens that this, whatever be its value, is the only thing which I am sure I can do & do not believe can be so well done by anybody else whom I know of. In regard to all things which are not merely for the day, that seems to be the best rule for chusing one’s work.—Further, I do it in order to deliver myself of various things which I have in my head on the subject. As for its being read, it will be so by fewer people than even yours, but it may be of use to some of those few.

Write soon & tell me how you enjoy your repose—

ever faithfully

J. S. Mill.

too late for S & M’s⁷ parcel.

The Times says, your book “sometimes excites our admiration by its original eloquence & powerful thinking, sometimes offends us beyond endurance by its extravagant caprices of style & expression. The diction is sometimes almost monstrous.”⁸

209A.

TO HENRY MILL (see page 743)

210.

TO LEIGH HUNT¹

• India House

7^th July 1837

My dear Sir

I fear you have not had your copy of the Review. We have adopted the plan of not sending copies to our contributors but letting them send for them—on the ground that it is less inconvenience to each of them to send to one place, than to us to send to many. But as the reason of the practice does not apply to contributors living so far off as you do, neither is it fit that the practice should, & I will therefore take upon myself individually to see you supplied.

I hope we shall have something from you in our next number² —does anything occur to you? & most sincerely do I now wish that you had written an article for us on Lamb, instead of Bulwer,³ who has done it very little to my liking.

Believe me

Ever yours truly⁴

I wish all success to the old Repository in your hands.⁵

211.

TO JOHN ROBERTSON¹

July 12, IH [India House], 1837.

Dear Robertson,

[. . .] I have had a letter from Tocqueville which shows that we can scarcely have his book² before our April number, and one from Nisard, alluding to a previous letter, which I never received, coming into our plans, and having no doubt of his being in time for this number. I send you a letter to him.

I do not think I can write anything worth having about Whewell³ this time. Blackie’s⁴ I do not think will do, for an article on Menzel⁵ is an article on Goethe, of whom Menzel is the great literary enemy. Moore,⁶ if favorable, is not worth doing; if unfavorable, Peacock should do it, and it should not be in the same number as Southey⁷ [. . . .]

If I had known you meant to write to Harriet Martineau, I should have wished for a consultation first, as the manner of doing it is of considerable interest to me personally. She and I are not upon terms, and I know her too well to make it likely that we ever shall be. I am therefore desirous, 1st, that she should not be identified with the Review more than its interest requires; 2d, that all communications with her should take place through another medium than mine; 3d, that nevertheless she should not think, as she is exactly the person to think, that her connection with the Review is in spite of me,—that I would prevent it if I could, but am unable.

If I knew exactly how you have written to her, I should know how to comport myself with a view to making the other impression. There is a letter for you from her at Hooper’s:⁸ have you left any instructions with Hooper about forwarding letters? I have read her book,⁹ and like it less than I expected. I like all the feeling of it, but not the thought; but I should think an article by her on Miss Sedgwick’s writings,¹⁰ such as you suggest, would be interesting and useful to us.

Besides the letter to Nisard I send you one to Guilbert; if he is not in town he is at Saint-Germain, and you should go to him there. Those will be the most useful letters to you. Both Guilbert and Nisard speak English well; Guilbert excellently, and Nisard is married to an Englishwoman. I do not know anybody else who is likely to be in town except the d’Eichthals: Adolphe is too busy to be of any use to you, and Gustave you can always, if you like, call upon and use my name; he is the ex-St. Simonian author of a book on Greece¹¹ (and the East generally) which he wants reviewed, but which will scarcely do for us[. . . .] I advanced £25 to Bisset¹² on my own account, not for the Review. I do not wish to have anything more to do with the Review in that capacity[. . . .]

I saw Dickens yesterday; he reminds me of Carlyle’s picture of Camille Desmoulins,¹³ and his “face of dingy blackguardism irradiated with genius.” Such a phenomenon does not often appear in a lady’s drawing-room.

Yours ever,

J. S. Mill.

212.

TO JOHN ROBERTSON¹

July 28, 1837.

[. . . .]² Guilbert’s offer, however, promises fair, but I have never found that a Frenchman’s promise to do anything punctually could be depended upon. They promise everything and do nothing. They are not men of business. Guilbert is better, being half an Englishman. Do you, however, decide.

The sheets of Mignet³ will be a catch. Those of Hugo not, because he is exhausted and effete. Châles⁴ is a humbug, whom I showed up in a letter intended for the National, but published in the Monthly Repository,⁵ and the bare idea of his reviewing George Sand is enough to make one split. I would not give a farthing for the opinion of Galebert,⁶ or anybody connected with his review, about writers, for they are mere milksops themselves; and Hugo’s opinions, like most French literary men’s opinions of one another, are affairs of coterie and puffery. I thought your Statistical Society article was for the January.⁷ I of course defer to you about all questions of timing. But I differ from you about geology not being called for. I think the zoölogical speculations connected with geology are quite in season just now, and Nichol, I am sure, would do it with originality and well, judging from his articles for us, both of which were written when ill or in a hurry.⁸ You may think him not a popular writer, but you will think quite differently when you read his Architecture of the Heavens.⁹

The falling off to be guarded against in substantial merit and originality does not arise from our having lost any of our writers, but in our not using them. I do not understand the false position you speak of, nor do I know what friends of ours we have attacked. Written, as you see, in a great hurry, and just as one chatters in walking quick from the India House to Hooper’s.

Ever truly,

J. S. Mill.

213.

TO JOHN ROBERTSON¹

India House, Saturday,
August 6, 1837.

Dear Robertson,

I entirely approve your intention of remaining at Boulogne as long as possible, and I hope you will remain as long as what requires to be done here can be done by me, of which you are the most proper judge.

None of the three articles you expect are at Hooper’s, nor any other article except one on Poland by a Pole,² which I have not looked at. There are a few books, chiefly Spencer’s Circassia³ (from Colburn) and a translation of the King of Bavaria’s Poems.⁴ Hooper says he was mistaken about 1025 copies having been sold; it was only 925. That is only 25 since you went away. . . . Nichol says his article will be here next week. You do not know Nichol. He is one of the three or four persons living for whom I would answer that whatever they think and say they can do they can. He says: “I expect that the article will direct scientific attention to some few moot points in a mode not quite so limited as that of existing discussion regarding them. At all events, I shall show general readers at what geology has arrived.” I will write to him immediately about connecting it with the geological transactions.⁵

As for me, I am so immersed in Logic and am getting on so triumphantly with it that I loathe the idea of leaving off to write articles. I do not think you are right about the elections. The Tories, where they have gained, have gained impartially from the Whigs and Radicals, and so where they have lost. The only exceptions are Middlesex and the City; in both of which many Tories chose to split with Whigs for the express purpose of turning out Hume and Grote.⁶ Whenever the Tories choose to do this, of course the Radical candidates will, in the present state of parties, be in great danger. The Radicals seem to have lost most only because they have lost some of their most leading men, but those will come in again for some other place very soon; and a great number of the new members are very decided Radicals, though generally not intemperate ones. Neither are the Tories who are turned out the extreme Tories. They almost all belong to the hack official jobbing adventurer Tories, who are seldom ultras, as Twiss,⁷ Bonham,⁸ Ross,⁹ and such like. On the whole, this election will so increase the already great difficulties of the Whigs that they must either propose the ballot and dissolve on it, or contrive to divide the Tory party, and make a compromise with one section of it. They stand much nearer to both goals than they ever did before, and have, I think, got clean up to the parting of the two roads. Either would be a decided improvement on the present aspect of affairs. For the present politics are wonderfully dull; and for the first time these ten years I have no wish to be in Parliament. If the offer you speak of is made me, which I shall not think at all probable until it is done, I shall not accept it unless I find by inquiry here that I can hold it with my situation in this house. For an object of importance I should not mind sacrificing my own pleasures and comforts, and obliging all connected with me to alter their style of living and go (as the vulgar phrase is) down in the world; but I certainly would not do it in order to exchange the speculative pursuits which I like, and in which I can do great things, for the position of a Radical member of this coming Parliament.

Ever yours faithfully,

J. S. Mill.

I can do nothing about Hanover¹⁰ without you. Châles is the man I mean.¹¹ He writes in the Journal des Débats and is a humbug; his reputation is, however, high.

214.

TO THOMAS CARLYLE¹

• India House

8th August 1837

My dear Carlyle

The immediate object of my writing to you is to ask you whether you can manage to give me (if it be still in existence) a letter which I wrote to you in 1833² after my return from Paris, in which I said a great deal about Carrel. I have to write something about him for the review,³ & it would be of great service to me were I able to refer back to what I wrote in the freshness of my impressions.

It is a great bore to me having to write anything just now, except my book,⁴ which I am getting on with, fast & satisfactorily. But it cannot be helped.

The book I think will be a good book; which is more than I would venture to say of any other book which I could attempt to write just now. One good thing that it will do is, it will let you & me see whether we really differ, & if so, how far, without the fruitless attempt to become intelligible to each other by spoken words on a subject so complicated & on which so many of the premisses have to be settled beforehand. Certainly we should, at present, differ much in our language, but I question whether our opinions are so widely apart as they may seem. You call Logic the art of telling others what you believe. I call it, the art, not certainly of knowing things, but of knowing whether you know them or not: not of finding out the truth, but of deciding whether it is the truth that you have found out. Of course I do not think that Logic suffices for this without any thing else. I believe in spectacles, but I think eyes necessary too. Neither do I mean by Logic, the Aristotelian way solely, or even mainly; nay, that I do consider to be only a way of stating a process of thought, not itself a process of thought at all. I do not think that I can explain myself any farther in fewer words than my book will consist of. Thanks for your promise of reading it, which I did not more than half expect, & did not at all think myself entitled to claim.

I suppose you saw the three columns of the Times⁵ on your three volumes. Mr Sterling I suppose wrote it, & no doubt sent it to you—at least that is the belief I try to entertain whenever my conscience twits me that I did not. In case you have not seen it, I can give you in few words a summary of its contents: That the stile is nearly the worst possible, everything else nearly the best possible. The writer does not seem to be aware that this is something very like a contradiction in terms. But it is well meant, & cannot but give you many readers & Fraser some buyers who would not otherwise have been had.—However I fully sympathize in your wish to forget the book entirely—I promise you I shall forget mine, soon enough after it is published—nay probably before.

I am very glad you are resting yourself by doing nothing. I am resting myself by doing something—something which is not mere every day business, but allows me & requires me to exert my best (or some of my best) faculties. In truth I have not, for years before, had a mind free from occupation with pettinesses. That is the only true meaning of leisure—choice of work. It is not good for everybody, nor for anybody at all times: for me, just at present, it is good, & I am consequently happier than I have ever been since I had it last. I get a great deal into the country too, among trees & green fields, though with a very small share of rivulets & altogether without the Solway tide waves you speak of.

On the whole things go well with me, not the less so because I am as you say of yourself “sadder” than I have ever been—

Ever affectionately

J. S. Mill

215.

TO GUSTAVE D’EICHTHAL¹

24 août 1837

Soyez persuadé mon cher ami que si je ne vous ai pas écrit c’était seulement par excès d’occupations: j’ai sur les mains l’India house, la revue, et un traité de Logique que j’avais commencé il y a longtemps, que j’ai repris dernièrement et qui s’avance rapidement vers sa fin. Par suite de cette préoccupation j’ai ajourné de jour en jour la réponse à vos lettres. Je les ai reçues, ainsi que trois exemplaires des Deux Mondes,² qui me sont parvenus successivement à de très courts intervalles. J’ai placé un exemplaire à la revue d’Edinbourg, un autre au British & Foreign Review. Pour en parler dans notre revue j’attends une occasion quelconque qui permette de la rattacher à quelque intérêt du moment: règle essentielle à observer chez nous, où les revues en général ne font pas bien leurs affaires et surtout essentielle pour nous, qui l’avons trop negligée et qui sommes forcés à présent de nous populariser autant que possible.

Avez vous reçu la dernière livraison de la revue? Sinon, demandez-en un exemplaire à M. Aristide Guilbert, Rue du Clos-Georgeot, No. 4. Si vous l’avez reçu vous aurez vu que Carlyle vient de publier un ouvrage fort remarquable sur la révolution française. Il se souvient toujours de vous avec plaisir. Il demeure 5 Cheyne Row Chelsea; M^me Carlyle y est à présent, son mari est pour le moment en Ecosse.

Je voudrais bien avoir le temps de vous écrire sur les questions générales, et encore plus de causer avec vous. Mais cela ne se peut pas pour le moment. Je dirai seulement que depuis bien des années je suis au même point que vous sur le repos: comme le sont en général tous ceux qui ont été formés à l’école poétique de Wordsworth et de Shelley. Mais j’avais ajourné cela comme n’étant pas de notre temps, et je ne sais pas si le commerce avec l’Orient nous y amenera—il me semble que nous n’y arriverons que par les changements sociaux qui peuvent progressivement arriver chez nous. Il y a des bornes très étroites à ce qu’un peuple ou même à ce qu’une personne peut apprendre des autres: Si nous pourrions apprendre cela en Orient, nous la pourrions en Italie—le dolce far niente n’est autre que le Kilf.³ Je dis cela sans déroger à la valeur de votre ouvrage qui me semble un morceau de haute philosophie sociale, mais (chez nous au moins) en liant ces idées à la question d’Orient vous devez nécessairement nuire à leur succès.

Bien des amitiés à Adolphe—quand vous aurez un chemin de fer au Havre ou à Dieppe, et nous à Brighton, je viendrai quelquefois passer le dimanche avec vous—

J. S. Mill

216.

TO ARISTIDE GUILBERT¹

• India House

29^th August
1837

My dear Guilbert

It will be quite impossible to insert M. de Cormenin’s article² in the next number, because we shall have an article on Carrel,³ which will fill all the space we can devote to French politics. In the January number there will be room for it, & if M. de Cormenin will trust me with it I should like much to read it. You are aware how highly I think of M. de Cormenin as a thinker & as a political writer for France—but to say the truth I do not think his mode of treating his subject at all suitable to England. However since the article is already written, there is no occasion to judge upon presumptions. Ever yours my dear Guilbert—in great haste

J. S. Mill

Without hurrying you, we should like to have your article on the French army soon.⁴

217.

TO JOHN ROBERTSON¹

• Leamington

Friday evening
[Sept. (?), 1837]

Dear Robertson

I agree with you in thinking the Sedgwick² quite unobjectionable, though there is less in it than I expected, & the extracts given do not inspire me with any admiration for the books praised. I think your Theodore Hook³ a much better article, though I have cancelled one or two portions of sentences positively (for various reasons too long to be mentioned here) & proposed to you to cancel or alter one or two more. There are one or two ideas which I think questionable, but with those I have not meddled, nor do I propose to do so. In reading the article this time it has struck me that there is a fault in some of your best sentences, which there used to be very often in mine, & perhaps is still, that of crowding too much into them, & in doing that, falling into a Latinism of construction, which in our non-inflected language, leaves it doubtful what substantives some of your adjectives are intended for. In this article there is also I think, (but not so often as I should have expected in an article written as you said this was, invitâ Minervâ) the fault of using three or four words which do not exactly fit, instead of one which does. In the few instances where this fault appeared to me to amount to a serious one I have tried to correct it, & I hope you will find, not at the sacrifice of any portion of your meaning. In other respects I like the article. The subject is I think viewed in the right light, & disposed of by making a few points & those the important ones, & treating them in a decided manner.

The Italian article⁴ came to me I suppose in a proof from which corrections had already been made, but as I have made many more it will require to be carefully gone over. The translation, for instance, of the verses on Napoleon, required a great deal of correction. I doubt very much the expediency of the deviation from the old plan of keeping the same heading throughout a whole article: I think in our last number the headings puzzled & displeased people, & though the modification you now propose is not so objectionable, I think it is still rather so & I do not see any sufficient advantage to be gained by it—but if you wish decidedly to try the experiment I do not object, provided you will follow the old plan as to my own particular articles, for I don’t like people not to see at once what they are about.

I hope exceedingly that you will be able to finish your other article⁵ as it was begun, & for this number. If you cannot, it must lie over to the next, for the subject is not pressing & it is much better to have it later in time than inferior in quality in which case it will not do us the good we expect from it. I shall be much disappointed however if we are obliged to adopt either alternative & I will hope the contrary. Of course you have carte blanche about fill-up matter, as long as I see it at some stage or other. I would not be particular about going to the extent of our 16 sheets when we have a good number, & plenty of bills to make it look thick.

As to the order of the articles, I think Usiglio & Carrel⁶ should not immediately follow one another, therefore if “Position of Parties”⁷ goes first, Usiglio third, Carrel fifth, the only question is if Sedgwick should be second & Hook fourth, or the reverse. I should have been glad if Wheatstone⁸ could have gone in either place & Sedgwick or Hook been left to follow Carrel: but I suppose that was not to be. You will make it all right I have no doubt & I sh^d have said nothing about it if you had not asked me.

I have seen all there is to see at Leamington, & there being nothing that interests me in this dull part of England I am going to shift my quarters, & in doing so shall pass through town, of which opportunity I shall make all the use I can for the review. I expect to be at Kensington on Monday evening & will call at Hooper’s some time in Tuesday forenoon where if I do not find you I hope I shall find a packet from you, & directions for finding you somewhere else.

I have written to Napier,⁹ most likely his terms are per article & may not be higher than ours when the article is long which I hope this will be. You will see that I have attended to your suggestions about the political article & have altered, besides, some passages which were rather declamatory. Pray attend carefully to the revise—I tremble for it.

As we shall so soon meet I leave off—ever yours

J.S.M.

218.

TO JOHN ROBERTSON¹

Ross, 28 September, 1837

Dear Robertson,

I have read Harriet Martineau’s article² with the greatest desire to do it justice, and the result is more unfavorable to it than ever before. I always thought the notion it presupposes of the Queen’s position an incorrect one, and I now think that even if that notion were correct she does not speak to the Queen in the right tone or give her the right advice. It seems to me that if we occupy ourselves with the Queen at all, we ought to make her believe that people feel interested about her just at present from mere curiosity, and not because they really believe she can do much; and that unless she has the qualities of Elizabeth she will be nothing, but that she should aspire to have these qualities, and that if she has she may be as great a ruler as Elizabeth.

Instead of that, H.M. says to her that Elizabeth in these days could do comparatively little for us, and that she must not aim at being like her; and why? Because she has many wills besides her own to consult—as if Elizabeth had not!—and a giant democracy to struggle with; yes, to struggle with! (is that what we should teach her?) as if Elizabeth had not Catholicism and Puritanism, and Philip and Catherine di Medici and Mary! I think this paper altogether contrary to the character which we are trying to give to the Review, namely, a character of dignity, and besides of practicalness. It is most completely unpractical; it is what a woman’s view of practical affairs is supposed to be, and what the view of a person ignorant of life always is. She always treats the Queen like a young person. Now the Queen cannot be young, except in ignorance of the world, and kings and queens are that even at sixty. She always treats the Queen as artless. She cannot be artless, as a person full of anxieties, or who will be so, about doing her duty to her subjects. I am convinced she is just a lively, spirited young lady, thinking only of enjoying herself, and who never is nor ever will be conscious of any difficulties or responsibilities,—no more than Marie Antoinette, who was a much cleverer woman and had much more will and character than she is ever likely to have. She is conscious, I dare say, of good intentions, as every other young lady is; she is not conscious of wishing any harm to any one, unless they have offended her, nor of intending to break any one article of the Decalogue. That is the nature of the well-meanings of a person like her, and if we wish to give her any higher feelings or notions about her duties, we cannot go a worse way to work than H.M. does. If she reads us, she will not recognise any one of her own feelings in what the article says, and therefore will not mind us at all; besides, the article is a ready-made apology to her for being and for doing nothing.

This is a very small part indeed of what this last reading of the article has made me think to its disadvantage. It seems to me childish, and if we take away the prettiness and masculine structure of some of the sentences it is what people may forgive and like well enough in a woman, but not in a parcel of men. There is continual trying hard for philosophy in the article, and not an opinion or observation that you may not drive a coach and six through. I could not have believed how much this was the case till I examined it minutely, for I was imposed upon at first by the writing, which is in the style of a better kind of thought, and yet just the writing one would expect from Miss Mitford,³ or any other woman who has written tragedies, and learnt to put good woman’s feelings into men’s words, and to make small things look like great ones. It is not like a person who knows what she is writing about, or who knows life in the world or the feelings produced by particular circumstances, and it will give us an air of attempting and not attaining, the sort of ignorance of courts which most excites the ridicule of those who know them, especially when exhibited in sententious, goody, small moralizing.

Altogether I cannot reconcile myself to its insertion in any shape, nor can I think of any note to prefix to it which would not in my view have a still worse effect, if possible, than inserting it just as it is, though even Dilke,⁴ you see, thinks we ought to separate ourselves from it to a certain extent; and Dilke’s opinion in favor of inserting it may be influenced by a wish to do her a good turn which might serve his turn in many ways, and this without any impeachment of his sincerity. I would not tell H.M. all I think of the article, but I would tell her what is true,—that I think it all very well from a woman to a woman, but not such as should be addressed by a body of men who aim at having authority to a woman and the public of that woman. We want now to give a character to the Review, as Carrel gave one to the National; and I am sure, if you attempt to scheme out to yourself the sort of article which with that view it would suit us to write to and of the Queen, you would arrive at an idea of one which this would not at all answer to. I dare not violate my instinct of suitableness, which we must the more strive to keep up the more we are exposed to swerve from it by our attempts to make the Review acceptable to the public. If you are not convinced by my reasons, consider it as a caprice which I cannot help. I hope you do not consider my putting a negative upon any article on such grounds as inconsistent with our conventions. . . .⁵ I will write to you from Chepstow to tell you where next to write to me. I want to hear how you are getting on, and whether your foot is recovered.

Ever yours,

J. S. Mill.

I will try to send you my article⁶ from Chepstow further improved.

219.

TO JOHN ROBERTSON¹

• Brecon

Thursday
[Oct. 5, 1837]

Dear Robertson—

I sent off my article from Chepstow yesterday by the Pembroke & Milford Haven mail—& I hope it arrived safe. I got your letter the same morning. I detest that vile Queen thing² more than ever for being the cause of the first real difference we have ever had about the review. But I cannot see the force of what you say about our being committed. I am not committed, nor are you in any way which you cannot get rid of by throwing all upon me. You cannot be serious in what you say about Dilke: asking his opinion was not undertaking to be bound by it, & we never either of us looked upon it in that light: you will remember I am sure, that if we had, I should not have consented to his being asked, for I said over & over that I did not consider his opinion decisive, & that I expected him to take the same view with you. We never thought of taking his opinion but in conjunction with others. As for H.M. you have only to say to her that it is necessary for the review to ménager me, & that I have seen the article & decidedly object to it: you may say if it will assist you, that you tried to overcome my objection & thought you had succeeded, but were mistaken. This will relieve you entirely, at the price only of admitting yourself to be under the restraint of considerations of expediency from which no editor is or can be free. As for me, I am willing, as in this case I am bound, to take entirely upon myself the resentment of a very spiteful person, rather than admit the article. The truth is, I feel that I never can have stronger objections to any article, nor justified to myself by stronger reasons, & that to let them be overruled would be to give up all power whatever over the review, for a power which does not amount even to the right of excluding, in an extreme case, is no power at all. You completely misunderstood my meaning in what passed between us that evening: I never considered anything as settled, & I expressly said, two or three times, that I would take time to consider. I did think, towards the end of the evening, that you were assuming rather too confidently, that the compromise we proposed would be adopted, & I blame myself exceedingly that I led you into mistake by a foolish repugnance to put myself on the defensive, & weigh my words when I was discussing confidentially with you. Until I had made up my mind to say no decidedly, it was unpleasant to be constantly pulling up & drawing in. We should never have been in this embarrassment if I had not been so extremely averse to bring a matter about which you had so strong an opinion, to a direct “collision” as they say in Parliament; one house throwing out a bill which the other has passed. I caught eagerly at every straw which offered in the shape of a compromise, & the one you suggested, of sending the article forth as H.M.’s, & not as our own, seemed to me the last chance of our settling the matter “without a division.” But on reading the thing again I felt my objections to it so much strengthened, & my idea of its counterbalancing good qualities so much lowered, that nothing could reconcile me to its being inserted with any note which did not express dissent from it, with the reasons—& you must see how ridiculous that would make us. Putting it in an obscure place only adds a fresh ridicule to the rest—no place but a conspicuous one suits the subject—the first place or the last. I did not think that anything relating to the review could have given me the worry & annoyance this has, from first to last. It was in an evil hour we asked her to write. But it was she who proposed the subject, I only said it promised the best of several which she proposed. If it is but left out of this number, we will leave the question open for next number if you like. If we cannot settle it so I must come to town though that will be a great bore to me.

I wrote to you on Tuesday from Chepstow telling you that Aberystwith is the place to send to me. I shall wait there or thereabouts till I receive your answer to this letter

Ever yours

J.S.M.

220.

TO JOHN ROBERTSON¹

• Farnborough

Sunday
[Oct. 29(?), 1837]

Dear Robertson

I do not think Garnier has any claim to be paid for the article on the Tyrol, unless we use it, which will depend upon your view of its suitableness to us.² I see no objection whatever, but no immediate demand. The article was not written in any way at our suggestion, but was brought to me ready written—I took it only for consideration, & gave him no reason direct or indirect to believe that it was accepted, unless our keeping it so long without returning it can be so considered—which it cannot, as it would have been returned to him & a positive answer given to him at any time if he had expressed any wish to that effect. So unless you think it will suit us he has I conceive no claim on the review—but if he thinks he has, & can make out any shadow of a case, pay him for it & charge it to me—& at any rate if he is going away for any length of time or for good, & you think he is in need of money, I shall be glad if you can find any pretext to make him take any sum he may require not exceeding £25 or £30, on my private account, though nominally it may be from the review.

As to the H.M. matter³ I have no objection to discussing it in any way you think best, though if your feelings did not appear to be so much involved in it I should say the way you propose was making very much of a small matter. At all events I can say little about it until I know how & why you consider your honour implicated or your self respect endangered. To me these seem words greatly disproportioned to the occasion which appears to me a very simple one—a mere question of fact—Did I, or did I not, give you sufficient reason to think that I had waived my objection to the insertion of the article? I say I did not—you, I suppose, say I did—if so we have only for the future to take care to understand one another better, & to settle every thing finally & clearly between us two before we implicate ourselves with contributors—a caution which it would have been well if I had observed with Bisset as well as you with H.M. Unless indeed you understood our conventions to be such that while they lasted I could not exercise any veto. [But]⁴ if you understood that, then certainly [we] quite misunderstood each other: [I] not only [did] not, but could not, so long as I was carrying on the review for another person (who looked [to] me & not to you as responsible for its maintaining a certain character & a certain general spirit) give up all control over the contents. But it is of no use saying any more about it till I hear from you

Ever yours

J. S. Mill.

221.

TO JOHN ROBERTSON¹

Saturday
[Nov. 11, 1837]²

Dear Robertson,

To my great satisfaction Carlyle consents to do at least the Scott,³ and wishes to begin on Monday morning.

I should not like to baffle him in that, but in order to do it he wants Volume I of the Scott; so, pray, if you can buy, beg, or borrow it before that time, do. He has also a great wish to have the two books of and about Colonel Crockett,⁴ and I think has a “month’s mind” to write about them. So, pray, send those too, and if the Review does not find its account therein I will pay for them.

Yours in haste,

J. S. Mill.

222.

TO WILLIAM TAIT¹

• India House

Saturday
[Nov. 18, 1837]

My dear Sir

I write to you in greate haste just after receiving your letter—to say that before I can undertake what you propose, I must understand the circumstances better. I always fancied that a Life of Bentham by Bowring was to form part of the collected edition of his works:² was I mistaken? and next: This publication is in obedience to Mr Bentham’s will, & by virtue of an engagement between you & his executors: how would they like my intermeddling? & on the other hand, neither do I like intermeddling with them, nor being in any way mixed up with their proceedings as I like to avoid getting into a hornet’s nest.

Believe me
Yours ever

J. S. Mill

223.

TO WILLIAM TAIT¹

• India House

Monday
[Nov. 20, 1837]

My dear Sir

I wrote you a short & hurried note on Saturday, immediately after receiving your letter, in which I stated some difficulties about undertaking what you proposed to me. I have since considered the subject more fully & the result is that even independently of those difficulties, I am obliged to decline your proposition. I have several reasons for this, among which I will only mention, that the proper place for me to speak about Mr Bentham is the Review; that I intend, & have long intended, to write a very elaborate article, speaking my whole mind about him, on the occasion of the appearance of your edition of his works; & that I desire to reserve for that opportunity all I have to say.²

Regretting my inability to oblige you, believe me

Yours ever truly

J. S. Mill

224.

TO LEIGH HUNT¹

• India House

Monday
[Nov. 20, 1837]

My dear Sir

I observed in a recent number of the M.R.² a complaint made by you, in your usual gentle & kindly manner, of some reviewer who had lately spoken of M^r Fonblanque as having rescued the journalism of the (radical) party from contempt, an expression which by whomsoever used would be grossly unjust to several writers & to yourself more than any, & which I will venture to say never could have been used by any one not grossly ignorant of the history of radical opinions. It did pass through my mind that the party complained of might be myself, but feeling sure that I had made no such misstatement, I dismissed the idea—however I have since been led to believe that I was the person meant & I have searched through my article³ on Mr Fonblanque’s late publication to ascertain what ground I had given for the mistake & how much I have to apologize for: but I have not found that I had anything to reproach myself with, beyond omitting an opportunity which I might fairly, & indeed ought to, have used for putting upon record my sense of your great merits as a political journalist, & of what you have done & suffered in the cause, in these very times the badness of which is dwelt upon in the article in question. I am sure if you will do me the justice to refer again to the article, you will not find it said, even by the most distant implication, that the journalism of the party, as such, was an object of contempt to anybody: what is said is, that radical opinions were an object of contempt to almost all persons of station & consideration; which I think you will allow they were, notwithstanding the exertions of a few persons, whose merits as writers even those same classes were constrained to allow: & it is no more than might have been said of Christianity after it had produced several generations of heroes & martyrs. It was not yourself only,⁴ & Hazlitt, & Cobbett; Godwin, & Bentham, & my father, & various others, had laboured for radicalism with more or less of acceptance, & had gained or were gaining reputation to themselves individually, but the cause had not yet profited much by them: it has since, & we are now benefitting by what was then done—

Believe me with best wishes for yourself & the M.R.

ever truly yours

J. S. Mill

Have they sent your copy of this number of the Review?

225.

TO GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS¹

• India House

24^th November
1837

My dear Lewis

I was out of town at the end of last month, otherwise I should have written to you in the packet containing Mrs. Austin’s copy of the review.² I hope you liked the number. The political article³ is I think in complete accordance with the views which you expressed in your little note to me which I wish had been a long letter. The article has had great success & the review is rising both in sale & in influence. A completely new tone must now however be taken, since the suicidal declaration of the Whigs against the reform of the reform bill.⁴ I do not yet know what the radical members will do, though I know what they ought to do. They are in a great state of excitement. I hope it will not all end in a whiff of smoke.

I am chiefly desirous to speak to you of your article, on Authority in matters of Belief.⁵ It is the first thorough & elaborate discussion of the subject that I have seen, & I think it admirable as an essay, nor is there I think one word in it that I do not concur in. But I see an insuperable difficulty in its appearing in our review. It seems to me suited only for students, & not for the public. Such articles however excellent are more than a dead weight, they are a positive injury to a popular periodical; our review must by this time have been abandoned if we had gone on publishing dissertations on abstract subjects, & on our present system, by which for the first time we are beginning to gain a footing with the public, neither my own article on Civilization nor that on Political Economy⁶ would have been published. I am now convinced that this is a salutary necessity; doctrines make their way best with the public when they are introduced a propos of something in which the public is feeling an immediate interest; & we are forced upon the most effectual way of promoting our ends, by the happy impossibility of attaining them at all in any other. If you will publish your paper in a volume of Essays, the review shall do all it can to attract notice to it—& the principles it inculcates are, as I have long thought, so extremely needed at the present day, that I am most eager to aid in promulgating them in any way which would give them a chance of being read by any considerable number of readers.

I have not time to write to Mrs. Austin this month, but I will not fail next month unless I have reason to suppose you are about to return. I hear good news of them from Henry Taylor.

ever yours

J. S. Mill

226.

TO JOHN HILL BURTON¹

• India House

29^th November 1837

Sir

If it is proposed to reprint, along with the Rationale of Evidence,² my preface & notes, I should like much to see the proofs, as there are various things in the notes which I regret having published. Otherwise I have nothing to suggest.

I should rather have suggested putting the “Introduction”³ after the Rationale itself—as being a sort of summary or résumé of it, a kind of Table Analytique, as I imagine it to be—& more dry & more abstruse than the work itself, consequently rather calculated to repel readers from it. But without having read the Introduction (except a small portion which was printed in Mr. B.’s lifetime) I cannot presume to judge.

With thanks for the attention shewn me by your troubling to write to me on the subject

believe me
your obed^t Serv^t

J. S. Mill

227.

TO JOHN ROBERTSON¹

Friday
evening
[Dec., 1837]

Dear Robertson

I have gone carefully over the Caricatures² & have cut out two or three sentences that struck me as feeble or superfluous & transposed a few more. On the whole I like it very much, though the Grose part³ is a little in the way, as the matter explanatory of it is thrown into a note, where I could have wished that it also had been relegated. However I did not venture to do this without you, nor do I think it necessary to detain the MS from press, whither I shall tomorrow morning convey it, all except the last three or four pages which I keep to enable me to understand better what follows.

At present I think the article might stand first in the N^o. but I wait to see it as a whole.

I return Chorley⁴ with the first two pages cancelled & no other alteration except taking out a word here & there—The article improves upon acquaintance. I hardly agree with him in the operatic & dressed out character he ascribes to Souvestre’s writing, the passages from which seem to me to come from an article of quite a superior order to Howitt. I wish you would compare the two & tell me if you do not think so.

The Hoskins you sent is the wrong book: I want the Travels in Ethiopia, not the visit to the Oasis.⁵ If you have not got it I will procure it somehow—

J.S.M.

228.

TO JOHN PRINGLE NICHOL¹

• Kensington,

21st December, 1837.

My dear Nichol,

First as to the “great subject”, I will read Peacock’s Algebra.² Meanwhile, have you read a book termed Cours de Philosophie Positive by Auguste Comte,³ the same Comte whose Traité de Politique Positive you have among the earlier of the St. Simonian tracts (by-the-bye, I should like soon to have these St. Simonian books⁴ again, one is always wanting them)? This said book is, I think, one of the most profound books ever written on the philosophy of the sciences; and that of the higher branches of mathematics it appears to me to have created; the elementary and purely metaphysical parts it leaves nearly as it found them. I shall be much astonished if this book of Comte’s does not strike you more than any logical speculations of our time. There are two enormous octavo volumes out, and two more to come.

Do by all means send both your articles, and the sooner the better: before the 1st of January if you can. If we are only able to take one this time, it will probably suit us best to take the Double Stars,⁵ being a fresher subject. With regard to the Geological article, the present editor, Mr. Robertson—a countryman of yours, and a man who has a decided genius for managing a Review—says, “I would not insert an article by an angel on Geology, unless it reviewed and estimated the ‘Geological Society’ ”;⁶ as he has a project for successively stirring up all the learned Societies, by articles which would excite a personal as well as scientific interest among bodies of men whom our Review has scarcely yet reached, a thing which in his opinion would do very much for our sale. Will you meditate on this suggestion, and consider whether your article admits of being adapted to it? You can send the articles under cover to Buller, 1, Queen Square Place, Westminster; or Molesworth, 79, Eaton Square, with the words Review written somewhere conspicuously (not on the outside).

The Review is at present in a transition state. Molesworth is tired of spending money on it; and although there are hopes that this would not be necessary much longer, he does not like to be identified, now, with opinions which often differ from his. I do not choose to ask any new person to spend money on it, as I am going to try it myself. Our last number rose very decidedly in sale, and made a deep impression in many new quarters; it brought Robertson and me into communication both with the dissenters and the working-classes⁷ —who are now courting us—and has made me a sort of puissance among the Radical members, which I was not before. Altogether it is a lever not to be let go, and I trust to vigour and energy in the prosecution of our improved plans of management to carry me through without sinking much money; especially if a few among those of our friends who can afford it will help us for a time with articles of the kind we want, to be paid for only in case of success, and at the convenience of the Review. Our plans are (1) in our literary articles to make freshness a primary object, never following on in the wake of other publications when the public curiosity is already sated; (2) always, if possible, to address a pre-existing curiosity; (3) in our serious articles to make our abstract speculations (except on purely scientific subjects) grow out of special occasions, and track the principle chiefly through the application; (4) to make all large bodies of people, of whatever kind, find something in our Review to interest them in particular; (5) to make ourselves a rallying-point for every section of the multifarious Radical party by thorough discussions, in a catholic spirit, of the particular questions most interesting to them. There are many other points, but it would be too long to enter into them, and it has taken us nearly a year to work the system into shape, and new points to be attended to are rising up every day.

You can be eminently useful to the Review by doing and by suggesting things in the spirit of this plan—among other things, by looking out for, and enabling us to give the earliest popular account of, the most interesting scientific novelties. If we could get the sort of scientific character which Playfair⁸ gave The Edinburgh it would have a great effect on our sale.

The Radical members ought to have done at once, after Lord J.R.’s declaration,⁹ what you say. I urged it upon them, and raved and stormed with no effect, but that of being thought an impracticable enthusiast. Molesworth, Leader,¹⁰ Harvey¹¹ and Wakley¹² alone went with the things proposed. M.’s address to the Leeds people¹³ was put forth on the failure of our attempt to obtain a collective demonstration. But the movement in the country has acted strongly upon them since, and I was yesterday at a meeting at Molesworth’s of the above four, with Grote, Warburton and a few other Radical members, together with Roebuck, Rintoul, Fox and myself at which they showed a good deal of spirit, and resolved to form a party, and quitting the Ministerial benches, take up a separate position in the House. Grote in particular has got on wonderfully; and I think something will come of it.

There is much to be said about Ireland. I myself have always been for a good stout Despotism—for governing Ireland like India. But it cannot be done. The spirit of Democracy has got too much head there, too prematurely. I should much enjoy going there with you, but I have demands on my vacations (short as they are) which tie me up very much as to such journeys, and this year I believe I shall hardly get away for more than short periods of time, nor for any long distances.

I am delighted with what you are doing about Canada. I do not know what statistical materials there are, but Roebuck does. Talking to him by a third party is not enough; write to him using my name—he knows yours very well—tell him what you are about, and ask him to tell you what information would be of use to you and can be got. I do not myself think much information needful now; it has come to a fight, and right or wrong originally, the question now is, will this country give men and money to prevent a colony by force from separating when it has a mind to it?¹⁴

Tell me all that you would suggest about publishing arrangements for the Review. We have, on much consideration, abolished the system of agencies, i.e. of sending out copies for sale or return—but having lately received an application from Adam Black’s¹⁵ house to be our agents, we thought their name so valuable to us that we made an exception to our rule in their single instance. Tell me your opinion fully on the whole thing.

You are interested, I know, about Henry.¹⁶ He is in excellent health, bringing up his mathematics by attending De Morgan¹⁷ at University College. I have carried him through the Aristotelian logic this year, and he is now working at Hobbes.

Ever yours faithfully,

J. S. Mill.

[1. ]Published in Mayer, pp. 316-18; in reply to Tocqueville’s of Nov. 19, 1836, ibid., pp. 313-16. MS in Tocqueville archives.

[2. ]“Terms of Alliance between Radicals and Whigs,” LWR, XXVI (Jan., 1837), 279-318.

[3. ]John Revans, Evils of the State of Ireland, their Causes and the Remedy—a Poor Law (London, 1837).

[4. ]See Letters 113, n. 2, and 172, n. 2.

[1. ]MS in the possession of Lady Hermione Cobbold. Text provided by Dr. Eileen Curran.

[2. ]The Duchess de la Vallière, published in 1836, but first produced, at Covent Garden, on Jan. 3, 1837.

[3. ]He persuaded W. J. Fox to write the review. See Letters 187 and 200.

[4. ]“It is in the worst taste of the worst school—the school of modern French romance” (The Times, Jan. 5, 1837, p. 3).

[5. ]“We cannot pass uncensored the dramatist who calls upon us to sympathize with the woes of a discarded mistress and a disappointed voluptuary. It is the pathos of the stews.” (Spectator, Jan. 7, 1837, p. 10.)

[6. ]See Letter 147, n. 8.

[7. ]James Prior, The Life of Oliver Goldsmith (2 vols., London, 1837).

[8. ]Neither suggestion was adopted by Bulwer. The new editions of Cowper were those edited by Robert Southey in 15 vols. (1835-37) and by T. S. Grimshawe in 8 vols. (1835, 1836).

[9. ]Probably a reference to his speech at a Reform Dinner at Bath on Jan. 5, 1837, but perhaps to his article in the Jan. LWR. See preceding letter, paragraph 2.

[1. ]Published, except for last sentence, in Garnett, pp. 183-84. MS at King’s.

[2. ]“Fallacies on Poor Laws,” LWR, XXVI (Jan., 1837), 357-82, signed W. E. H[ickson].

[3. ]See preceding letter, n. 2, and Letter 200, n. 2.

[1. ]Published, except for postscript, in Garnett, pp. 184-85. MS at King’s.

[2. ]R. H. Horne, with whose editorship of the Monthly Repository Fox was dissatisfied.

[3. ]The True Sun. See Letter 200, n. 3.

[4. ]See preceding letter.

[5. ]The article had alluded to “the doctrines maintained, and the tone assumed by ‘the London Dispatch,’ ‘The True Sun,’ ‘The Weekly Dispatch.’ ” Fox himself later wrote also for the Weekly Dispatch.

[6. ]Mrs. Taylor.

[1. ]Addressed: Mrs. Austin. MS at King’s. Mrs. Austin’s unpublished letter in reply from Malta, March 3, 1837, is at LSE.

[2. ]See Letter 185, n. 2.

[3. ]His illness had produced a chronic facial twitch, an affliction from which he suffered the rest of his life.

[4. ]George Cornewall Lewis. He and John Austin were then in Malta as commissioners to inquire into the administration of the island.

[5. ]Unidentified.

[6. ]“The London and Westminster Review for October 1836—The Voluntary Principle,” Church of England Quar. Rev., I (Jan., 1837), 121-40, was an attack upon Lewis’ “Endowment and the Voluntary Principle: Separation of Church and State,” LWR, XXVI (Oct., 1836), 244-77.

[7. ]The French Revolution.

[1. ]Published by Knight, pp. 673-74. MS not located.

[2. ]“Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd,” LWR, XXVI (Jan., 1837), 348-57.

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

[4. ]Nichol had become Regius Professor of Astronomy at the University of Glasgow the preceding year.

[5. ]After announcing in Sept., 1836, that because of loss of support by old-line Whigs he would not again seek to represent East Cornwall in Parliament, Molesworth had become a candidate for Leeds. He was pursuing an intransigent Radical line, especially on the question of the ballot, which was threatening to destroy the uneasy alliance between the Whigs and the Radicals.

[6. ]John Temple Leader (1810-1903), then MP for Westminster.

[7. ]See Examiner, Dec. 25, 1836, p. 819. Molesworth had been irked by Fonblanque’s criticism of him in the leader of Dec. 18 (ibid., p. 801).

[8. ]At a great Reform Dinner at Drury Lane Theatre on Jan. 23, 1837. See Examiner, Jan. 29, 1837, pp. 71-73.

[9. ]Sir John Beckett (1777-1847), the Tory candidate, head of the Leeds banking firm of Beckett & Co., was defeated in the General Election held in July. Molesworth and Baines were elected.

[10. ]Edward Baines (1774-1848), journalist and MP for Leeds, 1834-41.

[1. ]MS at Brit. Mus.

[2. ]At the opening of Parliament on Jan. 31, 1837, in the debate on the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne, Roebuck had sharply attacked the Whig ministry from the Radical, democratic point of view and had charged that there was a virtual alliance against further reform. Place greatly admired the speech; he at once wrote Roebuck a congratulatory note: “God bless you, my dear boy” (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS 35,150, f. 238).

[3. ]On the repeal of the stamp tax on newspapers.

[4. ]Grote had already announced his intention to present a bill for the election of members of Parliament by ballot. See Examiner, Feb. 5, 1837, p. 87. A similar motion had failed the preceding year.

[5. ]Joseph Hume had announced his intention to introduce a bill to extend the elective franchise to householders in general.

[1. ]MS at Brit. Mus.

[2. ]See the two following letters.

[1. ]Addressed: Francis Place Esq. / 21 Brompton Square. Postmarks: 2 AN 2 / FE 10 / 1837, and TP / Cornhill. MS at Brit. Mus.

[2. ]See Letters 192 and 194.

[3. ]£5. See Letter 194.

[4. ]See Letter 191, n. 2.

[5. ]Fonblanque in the Examiner’s leading article for Feb. 5, 1837, had been critical of Roebuck for his attack on the Whig ministry.

[6. ]Place retorted: “I have no present inclination to waste my time with men who are infirm of purpose, and worry myself to no useful purpose” (quoted in Graham Wallas, Life of Francis Place [London, 1898], pp. 351-52). The full draft of Place’s letter is in Brit. Mus. Add. MSS 35,150, ff. 241-42.

[1. ]MS at LSE. Excerpts published in Life and Labours of Albany Fonblanque, ed. E. B. de Fonblanque (London, 1874), pp. 30-31.

[2. ]It was due to be presented on March 7.

[3. ]Letter 191.

[4. ]Letter 193.

[5. ]Ibid., n. 6.

[6. ]Fonblanque’s England under Seven Administrations, a three-volume collection of his political pieces in the Examiner. Published this month, the book was reviewed by JSM in LWR, XXVII (April, 1837), 65-98.

[1. ]MS at LSE.

[2. ]In the House of Commons on Tuesday, Feb. 14, Molesworth had moved for leave to bring in a bill to abolish the property qualification of members of Parliament. The motion lost by a vote of 104 to 133.

[3. ]Henry Warburton, who had previously given notice of a motion to amend the property qualification, supported Molesworth’s motion, but suggested that in Committee some alteration of the qualification might be substituted for abolition of it.

[1. ]MS not located. An excerpt quoted in an unpublished letter by Carlyle to Leigh Hunt, dated Friday morning [Feb. 24, 1837], in Cornell University Library: “I have just received a letter from Mill; of which this is the first paragraph: [quoted paragraph] Hand to the work, therefore! And best speed to you! So says, / Yours always / T. Carlyle.” JSM’s letter was in answer to Carlyle’s of Wednesday [Feb. 22, 1837], in A. Carlyle, pp. 147-48.

[2. ]“Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,” published in LWR, XXVII (April, 1837), 130-64.

[1. ]Addressed: Monsieur / Monsieur Gustave d’Eichthal. MS at Arsenal.

[2. ]Probably Les Deux Mondes par M. Gustave d’Eichthal . . . , servant d’introduction à l’ouvrage de M. Urquhart “La Turquie et ses ressources,” though the only copy located bears the imprint, Leipzig, 1837.

[3. ]Brackets indicate where page is torn.

[1. ]Addressed: Leigh Hunt Esq. / 4 Upper Cheyne Row. MS at Brit. Mus. Carlyle, on Saturday, March 11, had urged Hunt to get his article to JSM that very night (see A. Carlyle, p. 149). On the outside of the letter is written: “I send you this back to read, because giving pleasure to others I knew it would give pleasure to yourself / L.H. [Leigh Hunt]”; and in pencil in yet another hand: “This moment arrived / ½ past 6. / T. C.”

[2. ]See Letter 196, n. 2.

[1. ]MS at Brit. Mus. MS dated in pencil in another hand: [?] circ 1840; the reference to Hunt’s first contribution to the London and Westminster Review (see Letters 196 and 198), however, permits the inference of the date here assigned.

[2. ]See Letter 196, n. 2.

[3. ]Hunt continued to use this as his signature for other articles in the Review.

[1. ]Addressed: Rev. W. J. Fox / 366 Strand. Marked: private. Postmarks: T. P. / Leadenhall, and 4 EG4 / MR 15 / 1837. MS at King’s. Published in Garnett, p. 185.

[2. ]“Bulwer’s Tragedies,” LWR, XXVII (April, 1837), 247-70. See Letters 186 and 187.

[3. ]The True Sun. JSM made at least one contribution to this newspaper to free Fox to write the review; it was an unheaded article on the sale of public lands in the colonies, True Sun, Feb. 22, 1837, p. 3.

[4. ]Fox’s review contained generous extracts of Bulwer’s tragedy Cromwell, which was not published until four years later in The Dramatic Works of Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer (London, 1841).

[1. ]MS at LSE.

John Macrone (ca. 1810-1837) best known as the early publisher of Charles Dickens, had published the Westminster and continued as publisher of the London and Westminster until his death in Sept. of this year.

[2. ]Originally announced for publication on March 31, the April number did not appear until April 6. See Examiner, March 26, 1837, p. 208; April 2, p. 224; and April 9, p. 240.

[3. ]John Robertson (d. 1875), a native of Aberdeen, who had been called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn and who had been working on the Morning Chronicle. He was to remain as nominal editor until JSM relinquished control of the Review in 1840.

[1. ]Addressed: Leigh Hunt Esq. / 3 Upper Cheyne Row / Chelsea. MS at Brit. Mus.

[2. ]In Hunt’s article, “Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.” See Letter 196, n. 2.

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

[1. ]Addressed: Mrs. Austin. MS at King’s. Sent in parcel by Henry Reeves to Malta (see Letter 204). In reply to Mrs. Austin’s unpublished letter of March 3 (MS at LSE).

[2. ]Mrs. Austin had written: “With this packet they [John Austin and G. C. Lewis] send home their report on the Liberty of the Press & a draft of a Libel law which is entirely his [Austin’s] & which Lewis says he believes to be the most perfect specimen of legislation in existence.”

[3. ]Mrs. Austin had written: “If I escape poisoning you may rejoice. . . . I am sorry to be an object of hostility to anybody, but civility to the Maltese is an inexpiable offence in the eyes of the English ladies, and I had no choice.”

[4. ]The April, 1837, number.

[5. ]John Robertson.

[6. ]“Shakspeare,” LWR, XXVI (Oct., 1836), 30-57, signed M.R.

[7. ]“Memoirs of Mirabeau,” LWR, XXVI (Jan., 1837), 382-439. Mrs. Austin had written: “Mr Lewis & my husband are clamorous against poor Carlyle’s article & say you will ruin the review if you admit any more. I am afraid this is a very general opinion, though I grieve it should be so. I am anxious to see his book [The French Revolution] and yet I dread to see it. The article is certainly one of his most extravagant as to style.”

[8. ]The Statesman (London, 1836), reviewed by Grote (and in part by JSM) in the LWR, XXVII (April, 1837), 1-32.

[9. ]For James Mill. See Letter 189. Mrs. Austin had written with reference to the proposed epitaph: “What does Lord Langdale say? He really knew & loved your father.”

[10. ]Brackets in this sentence indicate where page is torn.

[11. ]This was the first of four series of public lectures Carlyle delivered annually, 1837-40. The first lecture was delivered on May 1, 1837.

[1. ]Addressed: Mrs. Austin / Malta. Franked by H. Taylor. MS in the possession of Mr. Gordon Waterfield.

[2. ]Henry Reeve (1813-1895), man of letters, editor of the Edinburgh Review, 1855-95. He was a nephew of Mrs. Austin.

[3. ]James Milne (1754-1839), who held the chair from 1797 until his death. He was succeeded by William Fleming (1791-1866).

[1. ]Excerpt published in [Mrs. Harriet Grote], The Philosophic Radicals of 1832 (London, 1866), p. 34. MS not located.

[2. ]Probably Henry Warburton.

[3. ]On March 6 Lord John Russell for the Whig ministry had presented to the House of Commons a set of ten resolutions dealing with the troubled affairs of Lower Canada and in effect declaring an intention to suspend representative government in the province. The House approved the resolutions by a large majority on March 8 despite the strenuous opposition of such Radicals as Roebuck, Hume, and Molesworth.

[1. ]Published in Elliot, I, 107. MS in the possession of Lady Hermione Cobbold. Collated by Dr. Eileen Curran.

[2. ]“The Works of Thomas Gray,” LWR, XXVII (July, 1837), 1-16.

[3. ]Ibid., pp. 14-15.

[4. ]Athens, Its Rise and Fall was published in May, 1837.

[1. ]Addressed: Monsieur / M. Aristide Guilbert / recommandé aux soins de / Monsieur Peschot / Propriétaire / 5 Rue Jadot / à Paris. Postmarks: E 21; 19 / JUNE / 1837 /; and Angleterre / Par Calais / 21 / JUIN / 1837. MS at King’s. Printed in Morrison, p. 257, but dated June 29, 1837.

[2. ]No such article appeared in LWR.

[3. ]By Carlyle, LWR, XXVII (April, 1837), 233-47.

[4. ]Page torn.

[1. ]Addressed: J. Robertson Esq. MS at LSE. Dated by the references to the July, 1837, LWR.

[2. ]Probably “The School of Design,” ibid., pp. 116-39, signed E.C., which contained an analysis of a recent parliamentary inquiry and report on arts and manufactures.

[3. ]Not identified.

[4. ]Evidently it had been printed off, for Bulwer’s “The Works of Thomas Gray” begins on page 1 of the July number.

[5. ]JSM’s review of Carlyle’s The French Revolution (LWR, XXVII, 17-53) contains copious extracts.

[6. ]No such article appeared.

[7. ]John Temple Leader.

[1. ]Addressed: Thomas Carlyle Esq. MS at Brit. Mus. One passage published in William Foster, The East India House (London, 1924), p. 214. Carlyle’s answer of July 18, 1837, in A. Carlyle, pp. 153-56.

[2. ]See preceding letter, n. 5.

[3. ]Fraser’s, XVI (July, 1837), 85-104.

[4. ]Thomas Frederick Elliot.

[5. ]John Wilson Croker. The Quarterly did not review the book.

[6. ]See Letter 203, n. 11.

[7. ]Simpkin and Marshall, Booksellers.

[8. ]Not located. It is not from the long review (by W. M. Thackeray) in The Times, Aug. 3, 1837, p. 6.

This postscript is written on the outside, diagonally, above the address.

[1. ]MS at Brit. Mus.

[2. ]It was to be over a year before another of Hunt’s was to appear in the LWR. See Letter 240, n. 2.

[3. ]“Letters of Charles Lamb,” LWR, XXVII (July, 1837), 229-43.

[4. ]The signature has been cut out.

[5. ]Hunt had just taken over from R. H. Horne the proprietorship of the Monthly Repository. See Mineka, The Dissidence of Dissent, pp. 382-93.

[1. ]Published by Towers, pp. 58-59. MS not located. Mrs. Towers says that it was addressed to Robertson at Boulogne, France, where he was vacationing. The bracketed ellipses indicate Mrs. Towers’ deletions.

[2. ]Tocqueville in his letter of June 24, 1837 (Mayer, p. 324), had expressed his hope that the second part of Démocratie en Amérique might be published by the spring of 1838; it did not appear, however, until 1840.

[3. ]William Whewell (1794-1866), later Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, published his History of the Inductive Sciences this year.

[4. ]John Stuart Blackie (1809-1895), Scottish professor and man of letters, who had published a verse translation of Faust in 1834.

[5. ]Wolfgang Menzel (1798-1873), poet, critic, and historian, had published his Die deutsche Literatur in 1836.

[6. ]Tom Moore.

[7. ]No article on either Moore or Southey appeared in LWR.

[8. ]Henry Hooper, bookseller, had recently become publisher of LWR.

[9. ]Presumably her Society in America, published in May, 1837.

[10. ]Miss Martineau’s first contribution to LWR, “Miss Sedgwick’s Works,” appeared in the Oct., 1837, number, XXVIII, 42-65. Catherine Maria Sedgwick (1789-1867) was a popular American novelist.

[11. ]Les Deux Mondes (Leipzig, 1837).

[12. ]Andrew Bisset, a contributor to the Review.

[13. ]In Bk. IV, chap. iv of The French Revolution. Dickens at this point was at the height of his early fame because of the extraordinary popularity of his nearly completed Pickwick Papers.

[1. ]Published by Towers, p. 59. MS not located.

[2. ]Mrs. Towers summarizes the first part of the letter as saying that Guilbert has been vexed to have missed seeing Robertson, who has by this time left Paris.

[3. ]F. A. M. Mignet (1796-1884), historian, associated with Le National. The work referred to cannot be identified.

[4. ]Philarète E. Chasles (1798-1873), journalist, librarian, and later professor at the Collège de France.

[5. ]“Letter from an Englishman to a Frenchman, on a Recent Apology in ‘The Journal Des Débats,’ for the Faults of the English National Character,” MR, VIII (June, 1834), 385-95.

[6. ]Probably Léon Galibert. editor of the Révue britannique.

[7. ]“Transactions of the Statistical Society of London,” signed R., did not appear in the LWR until April, 1838 (XXIX, 45-72).

[8. ]In the numbers for April, 1835, and July, 1836.

[9. ]Views of the Architecture of the Heavens (Edinburgh, 1837).

[1. ]Published by Towers, p. 60. MS not located.

[2. ]No such article appeared in LWR.

[3. ]Edmund Spencer, Travels in Circassia, Krim Tartary, etc. (2 vols., London, 1837).

[4. ]A Selection from the Poems of Louis the First, King of Bavaria, Imitated in English Verse, by G. Everill (London, 1837).

[5. ]See Letter 228.

[6. ]Joseph Hume was defeated for Middlesex, but was almost immediately returned for Kilkenny; George Grote barely escaped defeat for the City of London.

[7. ]Horace Twiss (1787-1849), wit and politician, vehement opponent of reform, defeated for Nottingham.

[8. ]Francis R. Bonham, defeated for Harwich.

[9. ]Charles Ross (1799-1860), defeated for Northampton.

[10. ]Presumably the article, “History of Hanover,” signed S.R.T., LWR, XXVIII (Oct., 1837), 198-216.

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

[1. ]Addressed: Thomas Carlyle Esq. / Scotsbrig / Ecclefechan / N.B. Postmark: LS / 8 AU 8. MS at Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Carlyle’s reply of Aug. 10, 1837, is in A. Carlyle, pp. 157-59.

[2. ]Letter 91.

[3. ]“Armand Carrel,” LWR, XXVIII (Oct., 1837), 66-111.

[4. ]On logic.

[5. ]Of Aug. 3. JSM was mistaken as to Edward Sterling’s authorship of the review; it was by W. M. Thackeray.

[1. ]MS at Arsenal. Letter bears no salutation or address.

[2. ]See Letter 197, n. 2.

[3. ]Sic. Professor Georg Iggers has pointed out that this is probably intended for kief (modern form keyif), a Turkish word defined by D’Eichthal as “cette heureuse disposition à jouer de ce qu’il y a de bon dans toutes les situations où l’on se trouve, sans trop s’inquiéter de ce qu’elles ont de mauvais” (Les Deux Mondes, p. 240).

[1. ]Addressed: Monsieur / Aristide Guilbert / Rue de Clos Georgeot / à Paris. Postmarks: 29 / AUG / 1837 and 31 / AOUT / 1837. MS in the possession of Dr. James M. Osborn, Yale University.

[2. ]Unidentified; no article by De Cormenin appears to have been published during JSM’s editorship.

[3. ]See Letter 214, n. 3.

[4. ]See Letter 207, n. 2.

[1. ]Published, with omissions, by Towers, p. 61. MS at King’s.

[2. ]See Letter 211, n. 10.

[3. ]“Works of Theodore Hook,” LWR, XXVIII (Oct., 1837), 169-98. Theodore Edward Hook (1788-1841), novelist, wit, founder in 1820 of the John Bull newspaper, and editor of the New Monthly Magazine, 1836-41.

[4. ][Angelo Usiglio], “Italian Literature since 1830,” LWR, XXVIII (Oct., 1837), 132-68.

[5. ]Presumably “Congregational Dissenters,” ibid., pp. 217-60.

[6. ]JSM’s “Armand Carrel,” ibid., pp. 66-111.

[7. ]JSM’s “Parties and the Ministry,” ibid., pp. 1-26.

[8. ][Charles Wheatstone], “Willis on Reed Organ Sounds,” ibid., pp. 27-41. Charles (later Sir Charles) Wheatstone (1802-1875), scientist and inventor.

[9. ]Sir William F. P. Napier contributed an article to the next number: “The Duke of Wellington,” LWR, XXVIII (Jan., 1838), 367-436.

[1. ]Published by Towers, pp. 62-63. MS not located.

[2. ]An article on the new Queen, which never appeared in LWR. Mrs. Towers prints (p. 62) part of a letter of Miss Martineau’s, dated Aug. 26, 1837: “Here is my say about the Queen. It will appear to you very obvious, I fear, and perhaps too sermon-like; but indeed I think this strain of meditation much wanted to be uttered.”

[3. ]Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855), novelist and dramatist.

[4. ]Charles Wentworth Dilke (1789-1864), editor of the Athenæum, 1830-46.

[5. ]The omission is Mrs. Towers’.

[6. ]Probably his political article for the Oct. number; see preceding letter, n. 7. The Oct. number was not published until Oct. 23.

[1. ]Addressed: John Robertson Esq / 4 Grove Place / Brompton / London. Postmarks: TP / Rate 2d; 10 FN 10 / OC 6 / 1837; and BRECON. Published with omissions by Towers, pp. 64-65. MS at King’s.

[2. ]See preceding letter.

[1. ]Addressed: John Robertson Esq. / care of Mr Hooper bookseller / 13 Pall Mall East. Postmark: [ . . . ] 8 / [ . . . ] 31 / 1837. Published in part by Towers, p. 65; there dated as of Oct. 31, but the nearest Sunday fell on Oct. 29. MS at King’s.

[2. ]No such article appeared in LWR.

[3. ]See the two preceding letters.

[4. ]Page torn. Words in brackets appear in Mrs. Towers’ published version.

[1. ]Published by Towers, p. 61. MS not located.

[2. ]Mrs. Towers dates as probably of Sept., 1837, but Carlyle in a letter of Friday, Nov. 10 (in A. Carlyle, p. 162), alludes to JSM’s talk with him on Nov. 9 about the review of Lockhart’s Life of Scott.

[3. ]Carlyle’s review, “Lockhart’s Life of Scott,” appeared in the Jan., 1838, LWR, XXVII, 293-345.

[4. ]David Crockett (1786-1836), American frontiersman. One of the books must have been A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, Written by Himself (London, 1834), which was written to correct erroneous impressions created by an unknown writer’s Sketches and Eccentricities of Colonel David Crockett (London, 1834).

[1. ]Addressed: William Tait Esq. / Bookseller / Edinburgh. Postmarks: LS / 18N018 / 1837; and NOV / C20F / 1837. MS at LSE.

[2. ]John Bowring’s Memoirs of Jeremy Bentham was eventually published in 1843 in vols. X and XI of The Works of Jeremy Bentham (Edinburgh and London, 1838-43).

[1. ]Addressed: William Tait Esq / Bookseller / Edinburgh. Postmarks: LS/21N021/ . . . / and NOV / 23 / 1837. MS at LSE.

[2. ]This eventuated in his article “The Works of Jeremy Bentham,” LWR, XXIX (Aug., 1838), 467-506.

[1. ]Addressed: Leigh Hunt Esq. / 3 Upper Cheyne Row / Chelsea. Postmarks: 4 EG 4 / NO 20 / 1837, and Leadenhall St. MS at Brit. Mus.

[2. ]“Explanation and Retrospection—The Examiner Twenty Years Ago,” MR, Enlarged Series I (Oct., 1837), 225-35.

[3. ]“Fonblanque’s England under Seven Administrations,” LWR, XXVII (April, 1837), 65-98.

[4. ]Hunt as the original editor of the Examiner had suffered various prosecutions and had been imprisoned for two years (1813-15) for a libel on the Prince Regent.

[1. ]MS at Columbia University.

[2. ]Both Lewis and the Austins were still in Malta.

[3. ]See Letter 217, n. 7.

[4. ]On Nov. 20, at the opening of the new Parliament, Wakley and Molesworth for the Radicals had attempted to amend the Address to the Throne by making it advocate extension of the franchise, vote by ballot, and shortening of the parliamentary term. Lord John Russell, for the Whig ministry, took a stand against further alteration of the Reform Act on the ground that “entering into this question of the construction of our representation so soon again would destroy the stability of our institutions” (Examiner, Nov. 6, 1837, pp. 757-58).

[5. ]Not published at this time. Probably an early version of chap. iv (“On the Applicability of the Principle of Authority to Questions of Religion”) of Lewis’ An Essay on the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion (London, 1849).

[6. ]In the LWR for April and Oct., 1836, respectively.

[1. ]Addressed: J. H. Burton Esq. / 9 Warriston Crescent / Edinburgh. Postmarks: LS / 30 NO 30 / 1837, and DEC / C2F / 1837. Original in possession of Professor John Burton Cleland, of Adelaide, South Australia, the grandson of J. H. Burton. Copy supplied by Professor Cleland’s son-in-law, Professor J. A. La Nauze of the Department of History, University of Melbourne.

John Hill Burton (1809-1881), Scottish historian, at the time of this letter was engaged in the editing of the collected edition of The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the superintendence of Bentham’s executor, John Bowring.

[2. ]Bentham’s Rationale of Judicial Evidence, ed. JSM, 5 vols., 1827, was reprinted in the collected edition, vols. VI and VII. To the reprinted original Preface was added the following note, presumably by JSM: “At an interval of more than ten years from the first publication of this work, the original Editor feels that an apology is due from him for the air of confident dogmatism perceptible in some of his notes and additions, and for which he can only urge the palliation of their having been written in very early youth—a time of life at which such faults are more venial than at any other, because they generally arise, not so much from the writer’s own self-conceit, as from confidence in the authority of his teachers. It is due, however, to himself to state, that the tone of some of the passages in question would have been felt by him, even then, to be unbecoming, as proceeding from himself individually: he wrote them in the character of an anonymous Editor of Mr. Bentham’s work, who, in the trifling contributions which the author desired at his hands, considered (so far as mere manner was concerned) rather what would be accordant with the spirit of the work itself, and in Mr. Bentham admissible, than what would be decorous from a person of his years and his limited knowledge and experience. His name was subsequently affixed, contrary to his own strongly expressed wish, at the positive desire of the venerable author, who certainly had a right to require it.” See also Letter 13.

[3. ]Bentham’s An Introductory View of the Rationale of Evidence is placed at the beginning of vol. VI in the collected edition.

[1. ]Addressed: John Robertson Esq. MS at King’s.

[2. ]Robertson’s article, “Caricatures,” LWR, XXVIII (Jan., 1838), 261-93.

[3. ]Discussion of the theory of caricature expounded by Francis Grose (1731?-1791), antiquarian and author of Rules for Drawing Caricatures, 1788.

[4. ]The article was eventually published in the Aug., 1838, LWR (XXIX, 352-72). Bearing the title “England and Britany,” it compared books on rural life by the French novelist Emile Souvestre (1806-1854) and the English miscellaneous writer William Howitt (1792-1879).

Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808-1872), miscellaneous writer and music critic for the Athenæum, 1830-68.

[5. ]G. A. Hoskins, Travels in Ethiopia (London, 1835); Visit to the Great Oasis of the Libyan Desert (London, 1837).

[1. ]Published by Knight, pp. 674-76. MS not located.

[2. ]George Peacock, A Treatise on Algebra (Cambridge, 1830).

[3. ]Two volumes of the eventual six had been published by this time: I. Les Préliminaires généraux et la philosophie mathématique (Paris, 1830); II. La Philosophie astronomique et la philosophie de la physique (Paris, 1835).

[4. ]See Letter 102, postscript.

[5. ]No such article appeared in LWR.

[6. ]See Letter 213.

[7. ]Presumably Robertson’s article, “Congregational Dissenters” in the Oct., 1837, LWR, had helped to bring this about.

[8. ]John Playfair (1748-1819), mathematician and geologist.

[9. ]See Letter 225, n. 4.

[10. ]John Temple Leader.

[11. ]Daniel Whittle Harvey (1786-1863), then MP for Southwark.

[12. ]Thomas Wakley (1795-1862), medical reformer, founder of the Lancet; MP, 1835-62.

[13. ]“To the Electors of Leeds,” in the advertising columns, Spectator, Dec. 3, 1837, p. 1149. Except for a few words at the beginning and end, it was written by JSM (see MacMinn, Bibliog., p. 49).

[14. ]Word had just been received in London that armed rebellion against the government had broken out in November in Lower Canada. The rebellion had actually been suppressed by Canadian forces by mid-December, but the news of its outbreak arriving on the eve of a parliamentary recess for Christmas led to much speculation whether the Whig ministry would resort to war. JSM earlier in the year had indicated his opposition to Whig policies on Canada (see Letter 205), and throughout 1838 he devoted much of his political activity and writing to the support of the Radicals’ position and the work of Lord Durham, who on Jan. 15, 1838, accepted appointment as High Commissioner and Governor General of British North America (see Letters 231, 239, 248, 249, 250, and 252).

[15. ]Adam Black (1784-1874), Edinburgh publisher and politician.

[16. ]JSM’s brother.

[17. ]Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871), professor of mathematics at University College, London, 1828-31 and 1836-66.