1840
271.
TO LEIGH HUNT
Wedy
[Feb. 12, 1840]
My dear Sir
Many thanks for the letter which is very interesting & does great honor to the writer. As to the review however it will either cease or go out of my hands after the forthcoming number which will be out in a few days.
It must be some namesake of mine who sent the congratulations, unless it so happen that Robertson sent them in my name which he was well warranted in doing. Ill health & family distresses have come in aid of other causes which keep me away from the theatre but I read the announcement of your brilliant success with no ordinary pleasure & I trust it is the commencement of a new era of prosperity for you. It is time that the world began to pay off its long arrear of debt for your services to it.
ever faithfully yours
J. S. Mill
272.
TO CLARA MILL
Saturday
[Feb. 15, 1840]
My dear Clara
There is nothing new to tell you since my letter to Derry of yesterday. I understand from Oliver Grant that you will still have to buy bedding, or at least mattresses & bolsters—he has undertaken to enquire whether they provide sheets & blankets or not. Whatever money you require at Falmouth Messrs Fox will readily advance to you having been asked to do so in the letter from Capt. St Croix. One advantage of your going by the Florence instead of the packet, will be, that as the Florence is not going any farther than Madeira, there will be no hurry about your landing—& you had better write from the vessel to Mr Innes, that he may make the necessary arrangements—since he will have expected you by the packet & finding you not come by it, will not know when to expect you. We will probably have to provide a palankeen for Derry as well as to take lodgings or rooms at a hotel &c &c.
The Florence may be expected I presume at Falmouth by the end of the week. I am heartily glad we have been able to make so good an arrangement.
We have all written to James. I hope some of you will write to give him the latest news of Derry.
I do not wonder that you find Falmouth beautiful. I wish there were a railroad that I might come down & see you for a day or so before you go.
I have been so busy I hardly knew which way to turn, & have not been well, besides—but I think I am getting better again. I shall write often while you remain at Falmouth.
Ever affectionately
J.S.M.
I have written to Sterling. As he was not to be at Madeira I am heartily glad for the sake of all of you that he was at Falmouth.
273.
TO HENRY COLE
Thursday
[Feb. (?), 1840]
Dear Cole,
The review has been altogether so expensive an affair to me, & I am at present drained so dry by that, by my own journey, by this new call upon me for Madeira, etc., that I cannot incur the smallest extra expense on account of the next number of the review, and, all things considered, I would not recommend your doing so.
Unless the number sells more than 1,200, the article will do no good, as that has been for a long time the ordinary number sold—though I believe the last number sold rather fewer.
The conditional authority you mention I readily give—subject to the chance of Beaumont’s accepting.
Ever yours,
J. S. Mill
274.
TO CLARA MILL
Wednesday
[Feb., 1840]
Dear Clara
We received your yesterday’s letters. What may have been received at Kensington today I do not know.
After full consideration Harriet prefers fatigue to the probability of seasickness & thinks that it will probably less unfit her for what she will have to do when she arrives. Her place has therefore been taken by the Falmouth mail for Thursday (tomorrow) & she anticipates being able to go right through at once & arrive on Saturday morning. You of course will know at what time the mail may be expected to come in & will do whatever is advisable.
I shall send money by her sufficient for a present supply.
I will write tomorrow either to you or to poor dear Derry—& Harriet will of course know anything that I may have to say.
Arnott has told both Harriet & me since you were at Falmouth that it was not a case in which a medical man would have recommended going to Madeira, & that the chief reason was that I so much wished it. So far therefore he is not in fault—& he has shewn much real feeling through it all—but why was he not sincere with me sooner, so as to enable ourselves to judge? Why did he continue to do all he possibly could to persuade us that his not getting rid of the cough was quite an ordinary & not an alarming thing?
275.
TO HENRY COLE
Friday
[Feb. (?), 1840]
My dear Cole,
Robertson tells me of a mode of carrying on the review with you and him combined which he says you are willing to agree to —on which however it is quite impossible for me to decide unless I first see you. I waited till rather late at Kensington this morning thinking you might possibly come—& should then have gone to your house if I had thought I should find you there. This misadventure makes it impossible to terminate matters immediately, as I go out of town this afternoon & cannot return till Monday. But I think you may proceed with your arrangements on either supposition. I am more annoyed about Hickson, who has reasons for wishing for a speedier decision.
Ever yours,
J. S. Mill
276.
TO HENRY COLE
Saturday
[Feb. or March (?), 1840]
My dear Cole,
I am afraid you will think me very changeable, but since I saw you last I have thought a good deal more about the proposed arrangement concerning the review, & have heard the opinion of one or two friends on the matter (I had consulted nobody before) & I find their opinion to be exceedingly strong that if the review goes on at all under the same name it will not be possible for me to destroy the connexion in people’s minds between it and myself—& that it is much more to my credit that it should cease entirely than that it should be continued as anything else than the philosophical & political organ it was designed to be. I am not sure that after what has passed between us you have not a right to hold me to what was conditionally agreed upon but I hope you will not think it necessary to do so. Of course I hold myself responsible for the expense of the Postage article & will pay for any work that you have entered into engagements for, & I hope that by laying all the blame, where alone it can justly fall, on me, you will be able to terminate the thing without any unpleasantness.
Ever yours truly,
J. S. Mill
277.
TO HENRY COLE
Thursday
[Feb. or March (?), 1840]
My dear Cole,
If you are willing to carry on the review under the name of Westminster, & with some slight alteration in the cover, I am willing to make it over to you, without requiring that it should be a new series or new numbering—unless before the present number comes out I receive some communication, at this eleventh hour, from Beaumont, or from another quarter almost as improbable.
It will give me still greater satisfaction to deliver it over to you & Hickson jointly, as he proposes, as it will both diminish your risk & aid you very much in the management.
Ever yours,
J. S. Mill
278.
TO JOHN ROBERTSON
[March (?), 1840]
I am exceedingly grieved by the consciousness that I must appear to you (what I never have been nor could be intentionally) unkind to you. The thought of this matter has been, ever since it was first mentioned by you in a letter last July, but especially of late, no small addition to the burthens of various sorts that have lain upon me.
I feel, however, that I have meant rightly to you and to every other interest concerned, and that I have acted to the best of my judgment; and though I feel painfully the impossibility of my convincing you that I am right, I am sure you will respect me more for acting upon my own conviction than for giving way, from feelings of friendship and confidence, without being convinced.
Cole repeatedly expressed his wish not to stand in the way of any arrangement more beneficial to you and independent of him; but we seemed to have already exhausted the possibilities of such, and as it was impossible to keep Hickson any longer without an answer, I have told Cole that I considered the Review as made over to them, although the formal transfer has not yet taken place.
I am sure you have that in you which a disappointment in so poor a hope as this cannot unnerve or permanently discourage.
Ever yours,
J. S. Mill
279.
TO JOHN ROBERTSON
Kensington, Monday
[March, 1840?]
Dear Robertson,
Some points in your letter positively require from me a few words to set right a few matters in which you have quite misunderstood me, and in which it would be very unpleasant to me that you should continue to do so.
First. I did not allude to that number of the Review for any purpose of disparagement. Why should I? It has fully less of the defects to which I alluded than I thought it would have. I referred to it bona fide, as I professed to do, namely, as evidence you could appeal to in contradiction to my opinion if I was wrong.
Second. When I spoke of unconciliativeness to contributors, I never meant that you were in the wrong in your disputes with them, but that you gave them unnecessary offense by matters of mere manner, and did not spare their vanity, which I am sure I have often said to you before; and also that I think you, in that particular, extremely unpractical, since no one can use others as instruments unless he makes them like his service.
Third. When I spoke of subserviency, I carefully explained that I was not speaking of your intentions or feelings, but of their expectations.
Fourth. I never said that you would get a character like Fonblanque’s, but that the Review would. I have distinctly said to you several times that you personally would not suffer in any way, and I said it most distinctly in the very same sentence by saying I should be glad to aid you in a ministerial course by any other means than the Review.
Fifth. Finally, I do feel that I can and ought to support the ministry, but not connect myself with them (unless I had a voice in their councils); that is, I can neither take their money nor make over power which is in my hands and put it into theirs, though any power in my own hands I would, while I see as much cause as I now do, use in their support.
Having endeavored to put myself right in these points, I will now say that your readiness to give up a project, in my objections to which you do not at all concur, is a thing which, you may rely upon it, I shall not forget.
I think your letter to Lord N[ormanby] in perfectly good taste, as well as right feeling towards him.
Ever yours,
J. S. Mill.
280.
TO HENRY COLE
12th March
1840
My dear Cole,
I hereby make over to you & Mr William Hickson my whole interest in the London & Westminster Review—the work hereafter to be called the Westminster Review & the change of proprietorship to be announced in the next number.
Yours very truly
J. S. Mill
281.
TO RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES
Saturday
[March, 1840]
My dear Sir
My course on Monday morning next will be not anti-solar but at right angles to the sun’s course, as I shall be on my way from Sussex. & even on other days I can seldom manage to stop on my way, as I do not like to arrive here much after ten. We keep earlier hours here both in the morning & in the afternoon, than the Government offices at the West End. Therefore I am obliged to renounce the pleasure, which would have been a great one, of breakfasting with you.
I cannot omit this opportunity of thanking you for the very interesting & valuable article you have contributed to this number of the London & Westminster, & which I am very happy to have been the means of publishing before the termination of my connexion with the review.
Every truly yours
J. S. Mill
282.
TO ROBERT BARCLAY FOX
16th April
1840
My dear friend (if you will allow me to adopt this “friendly” mode of address) your kind & sympathizing letter has given me great pleasure. There is no use in my saying more than has been said already about him who has gone before us where we must so soon follow—the thought of him is here & will remain here, & seldom has the memory of one who died so young, been such as to leave a deeper or a more beneficial impression on the survivors. Among the many serious feelings which such an event calls forth, there is always some one which impresses us most, some moral which each person extracts from it for his own more especial guidance—with me that moral is, “work while it is called today—the night cometh in which no man can work.” One never seems to have adequately felt the truth & meaning of all that is tritely said about the shortness & precariousness of life till one loses some one whom one had hoped not only to carry with one as a companion through life, but to leave as a successor after it. Why he who had all his work to do has been taken, & I left who had done part of mine and in some measure as Carlyle would express it “delivered my message,” passes our wisdom to surmise. But if there be a purpose in this, that purpose it would seem can only be fulfilled in so far as the remainder of my life can be made even more useful than the remainder of his would have been if it had been spared. At least we know this that on the day when we shall be as he is, the whole of life will appear but as a day, & the only question of any moment to us then will be, Has that day been wasted. Wasted it has not been by those who have been, for however short a time, a source of happiness & of moral good even to the narrowest circle. But there is only one plain rule of life eternally binding, & independent of all variations in creeds & in the interpretations of creeds & embracing equally the greatest moralities & the smallest—it is this—try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties & outward circumstances being both duly considered—and then do it—
You are very kind to say what you have said about those reviews —the gift of unsold copies of an old periodical could under no circumstances have called for so warm an expression of thanks, & would have deserved an opposite feeling if I could not say, with the utmost sincerity, that I do not expect you to read much of it, or any of it unless you feel thereunto moved. My principal feeling in the matter was this—You are likely to hear of some of the writers, & judging of your feelings by what my own would be, I thought it might be sometimes agreeable to you to be able to turn to something they had written & imagine what manner of persons they might be. As far as my own articles were concerned there was also a more selfish pleasure in thinking that sometimes, however rarely, I might be conversing with my absent friends at 300 miles distance—We scribblers are apt to put not only our best thoughts but our best feelings into our writings, or at least if the things are in us they will not come out of us so well or so clearly through any other medium—& therefore when one really wishes to be liked (it is only when one is very young that one cares about being admired) it is often an advantage to us when our writings are better known than ourselves.
As for these particular writings of mine, all in them that has any pretension to permanent value will I hope during the time you are in London be made into two little volumes which I shall offer to no one with greater pleasure than to you. The remainder is mostly politics—of little value to any one now—in which, with considerable expenditure of head & heart, an attempt was made to breathe a living soul into the Radical party—but in vain—there was no making those dry bones live. Among a multitude of failures I had only one instance of brilliant success—it is some satisfaction to me to know that, as far as such things can ever be said, I saved Lord Durham—as he himself, with much feeling, acknowledged to me, saying that he knew not to what to ascribe the reception he met with on his return from Canada, except to an article of mine which came out immediately before. If you were to read that article now you would wonder what there was in it to bear out such a statement—but the time at which it appeared was everything—every one’s hand seemed to be against him, no one dared speak a word for him, the very men who had been paying court & offering incense to him for years before (I never had) slunk away, or ventured only on a few tame & qualified phrases or excuse—not, I verily believe, from cowardice so much as because, not being accustomed to think about principles of politics, they were taken by surprise in a contingency which they had not looked for, and feared committing themselves to something they could not maintain—& if this had gone on, opinion would have decided against him so strongly that even that admirable Report of his & Buller’s could hardly have turned the tide & unless some one who could give evidence of thought & knowledge of the subject, had thrown down the gauntlet at that critical moment, & determinedly claimed honour & glory for him instead of mere acquittal, & by doing this made a diversion in his favour & encouraged those who wished him well to speak out, & so kept people’s minds suspended on the subject, he was in all probability a lost man, & if I had not been the man to do this nobody else would. And three or four months later the Report came out & then everybody said I had been right, & now it is being acted upon.
This is one of only three things, among all I attempted in my reviewing life, which I can be said to have succeeded in. The second was, to have greatly accelerated the success of Carlyle’s French Revolution, a book so strange & incomprehensible to the greater part of the public, that whether it should succeed or fail seemed to depend upon the turn of a die—but I got the first word, blew the trumpet before it at its first coming out & by claiming for it the honours of the highest genius frightened the small fry of critics from pronouncing a hasty condemnation, got fair play for it & then its success was sure.
My third success is that I have dinned into people’s ears that Guizot is a great thinker & writer, till they are, though slowly, beginning to read him—which I do not believe they would be doing, even yet, in this country but for me.
There, I think, is a full account of all the world has got by my editing and reviews.
Will you pardon the egotism of this letter? I really do not think I have talked so much about myself in the whole year previous as I have done in the few weeks of my intercourse with your family—but it is not a fault of mine generally, for I am considered reserved enough by most people—& I have made a very solemn resolution when I see you again to be more objective and less subjective in my conversation (as Calvert says) than when I saw you last.
Ever yours faithfully,
J. S. Mill
It seems idle to send remembrances—they saw enough to know I am not likely to forget them.
283.
TO JOHN STERLING
22d April
1840
My dear Sterling
Your letter should have been answered when I first received it, which was just before I left Falmouth. The bustle & turmoil of London when one comes back to it, & the accumulation of different sorts of business which I have had to dispose of, are very uncongenial to the mood in which such a letter is read or in which it should be responded to.
I rejoice greatly that we met at Falmouth; independently of the good, of many kinds, which your presence did, it is very much to me now, & more than I thought it would be, that my last recollections of Henry are shared with you. If he had lived he would certainly have been an additional bond between us, & now that he is dead his memory will be so—& perhaps as you say he is conscious of it. I do feel as you do that we have been more to each other lately than ever before, & I think on one side this is easily to be explained, for it is natural to you to feel more affectionately in proportion as you have shewn more kindness—that is one of the ways in which acts of love fructify & yield a large increase. On my own side less explanation is needed, for it seems to me that you have at all times been giving more & more to me—though there have been times when the contrary may have seemed to be the case—in consequence partly of constitutional or habitual defect of quickness of sensibility, but much more of the jarring elements both in my own character & in my outward circumstances which I have had to reconcile, as indeed is the case with most people, but I think both in an unusual degree and in an unusual manner with me—& which have made me describe an orbit very different from the direction of any one of the forces which urged me. And even now I am very far from appearing to you as I am—for though there is nothing that I do not desire to shew, there is much that I never do shew, & much that I think you cannot even guess.
My mother & sisters & George have returned, & George is certainly better, not worse, for his journey. I have much anxious thought about him—to him the loss of Henry is a greater calamity than he can yet feel.
As for me, I have begun to get ready my reprint—but I find some difficulty in finding enough for two volumes. I have softened the asperity of the article on Sedgwick, & cut out whatever seemed to take an unfair advantage against his opinions, of his deficiencies as an advocate of them.
ever affectionately
J. S. Mill.
284.
TO MACVEY NAPIER
22d April
1840
My dear Sir
It is just possible you may have heard—though it is most likely you have not—that my connexion with the Westminster Review has terminated. The review has gone into other hands, & although I wish well to the new proprietors & think they will conduct it creditably & usefully, I do not feel myself in such a manner bound to them that I should wish to exclude myself from the power of addressing a larger auditory. This is also the feeling of several of the best of my late coadjutors in the Westminster, to whom, as well as to myself, it would be agreeable, if you give any encouragement to the proposition, to establish a connexion with the Edinburgh. I believe it is the feeling of nearly all Reformers that this is not a time for keeping up a flag of disunion among them—& even I who have been for some years attempting it must be owned with very little success, to induce the Radicals to maintain an independent position, am compelled to acknowledge that there is not room for a fourth political party in this country—reckoning the Conservatives, the Whig-Radicals, & the Chartists as the other three. Of a clear view of this fact a natural consequence is, a different notion of what my own course ought to be—if I can hope to do any good it can only be by merging in one of the existing great bodies of opinion; by attempting to gain the ear of the liberal party generally, instead of addressing a mere section of it. There seems no longer any reason why my little rivulet should continue to flow separate, little as it can contribute to decide the colour or composition of that great stream.
Among those contributors to the Westminster who would like to become contributors of yours, those who I think would be of most use to you (besides Charles Buller with whom I believe you are already in communication) are Robertson, the late editor, & writer of many articles and George Fletcher, the author of two very interesting papers, one in the number for December, 1838, on Heloisa & Abelard, the other (in the last number) on Robin Hood. If you have not seen these articles I am sure it would give you pleasure to read them especially the former.
Of Robertson’s articles some were hastily got up under many disadvantages & he did himself scanty justice in them—but others I think are sufficient proof that he can do something considerable especially those on “Cromwell” “Caricatures” “Statistical Society” “Congregational Dissenters” & one or two others.
Ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
285.
TO MACVEY NAPIER
April 27, 1840
My dear Sir,
Permit me in the first place to make my acknowledgments for the extremely kind & flattering manner in which you have received my proposition for becoming a contributor to the Edinburgh. You have done me only justice in supposing that the idea of any compromise of the principles of the E. Review never entered into my mind—it did not occur to me even to disavow such a thought. Of course I did not expect to have the same range of subjects as I had in a review under my own exclusive control, nor to be allowed to commit the review to opinions which would be obnoxious to its other writers & its supporters. I look for no other latitude than that commonly allowed by periodical works to the individual modes of thinking of their various contributors. There will be no difficulty in our understanding one another, since the principles of the review are public property, & what I have written in the last year or two, or what I may now write will soon shew you what are the points if any, on which mine are irreconcileable with them. I am myself under an impression that there is very little of what I should now be inclined to say to the public in a review, which would be at all in contradiction to the established character & purposes of the Edinburgh.
As you conjecture, it is only occasionally that I should find time to write for you, especially at present, as I am desirous of finishing a book I have in hand. But the subject you suggest, my friend Tocqueville’s book, is so very attractive to me that if the other arrangement you mention should not take effect, I would make an effort to get an article ready on Tocqueville for your October number. With regard to other subjects, one thing which I should like very much, & on which I should not interfere with any of your existing contributors, would be to write occasionally on modern French history & historical literature, with which from peculiar causes I am more extensively acquainted than Englishmen usually are. If I had continued to carry on the London & W. review, I should have written more than one article on Michelet a writer of great & original views, very little known among us. One article on his history of France, & another combining his Roman history with Arnold’s, might I think be made very interesting & useful. Even on Guizot there may be something still to be written. I mention these things only that you may know the course my thoughts have taken in regard to future articles.
I will immediately make known to Robertson & Fletcher your answer in respect to them & I have no doubt that you will find them valuable auxiliaries.
Ever my dear Sir
Truly yours,
J. S. Mill
286.
TO GUSTAVE D’EICHTHAL
7th May
1840
My dear Gustave
I have been very long in answering your letters, having been absent from London for some weeks attending the deathbed of a brother, who was the pride & hope of our whole family & whose loss I shall have cause to regret as long as I live. This absence occasioned my losing the opportunity of seeing MM Stéphane Mony & Isaac Pereire, both well known to me by their antécédents & the former personally. I have to thank you for a letter I have received from M. Michelet accompanying two volumes of his admirable history, & which as I had not time to answer immediately I shall now defer answering until I have read the new volume. I was already intimately acquainted with the former volumes as well as with all his other works, & I beg of you to tell him that I have long felt the warmest admiration for them & have expressed it publicly on several occasions before the one which attracted your notice. I had long meditated reviewing his Roman history in the Westminster, & now that I am no longer connected with that review it is probable that I shall have the satisfaction of making both that, & his History of France still more widely known by means of the Edinburgh review in which I have engaged to write some articles on the new French historical school. Would you oblige me with M. Michelet’s address?
I have no doubt that the two books which you mention, Lyon’s Voyage & Crawfurd’s History, may be obtained here by watching an opportunity, at a tolerably cheap rate, but it is impossible to say how cheap, as it depends on accident. I would recommend to you for such commissions a bookseller named Edward Rainford, 86 High Holborn, & if you will communicate with him the first time through me you will have no difficulty with him afterwards. He is a most deserving person, & manages to get books exceedingly cheap.
I have not yet seen M. Guizot, though I have been very near seeing him several times—& should have ventured to call on him if I were not so circumstanced as to hours, that it is impossible for me to call at any time of the day suitable to a civilized being.
Your opinion on the decisive character of the late triumph of parliamentary government (ostensibly) & of democracy really, in France, is very interesting to me. It is a great event, & makes me recur to what I have so often thought, les choses marchent vîte en France (& in this age, altogether one may add)
ever yours
J. S. Mill
287.
TO ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
11th May, 1840
My dear Tocqueville,
I shall have the greatest pleasure in owing to your friendship a copy of the second part of your great work. I had already possessed myself of it & have now finished one careful persual of it: several more will be required before I can master it, for although my own thoughts have been accustomed (especially since I read your First Part) to run very much in the same direction, you have so far outrun me that I am lost in the distance, & it will require much thought & study to appropriate your ideas so completely as to be qualified to say what portion of them I shall at last feel to be demonstrated & what, if any, may seem to require further confirmation. In any case you have accomplished a great achievement: you have changed the face of political philosophy, you have carried on the discussions respecting the tendencies of modern society, the causes of those tendencies, & the influences of particular forms of polity & social order, into a region both of height & of depth, which no one before you had entered, & all previous argumentation and speculation in such matters appears but child’s play now. I do not think that anything more important than the publication of your book has happened even in this age of great events—& it is truly happy that it was produced in France & is therefore sure of being read by every thinking person both in France and out of it. Even in this stupid island where Guizot’s Lectures had scarcely penetrated until Guizot himself came here as ambassador—& when hardly anybody knows that there is a French philosophy subsequent to Voltaire—even here your book, par exception, is read, because luckily Sir R. Peel praised it, & made the Tories fancy it was a Tory book: but I believe they have found out their error. It could only have been written in France or in England, & if written in England it would probably never have been known beyond a small circle.
Among so many ideas which are more or less new to me I have found (what I consider a very great compliment to the justness of my own views) that one of your great general conclusions is exactly that which I have been almost alone in standing up for here, and have not as far as I know made a single disciple—namely that the real danger in democracy, the real evil to be struggled against, and which all human resources employed while it is not yet too late are not more than sufficient to fence off—is not anarchy or love of change, but Chinese stagnation & immobility. Finding this view of the matter to have presented itself with the same strength of evidence to you, who are the highest living authority (& therefore the highest that has ever lived) on the subject, I shall henceforth regard it as the truth scientifically established, and shall defend it envers et contre tous with tenfold pertinacity.
When I last wrote to you I lamented that from having terminated my connection with the London & Westminster Review I should not have the opportunity of reviewing your book there, but I have now the pleasure of telling you that I am to have the reviewing of it in the Edinburgh Review which as you know is much more read, and which has never had a review of your First Part—I suppose none of the writers dared venture upon it, and I cannot blame them, for that review is the most perfect representative of the 18th century to be found in our day, & that is not the point of view for judging of your book. But I & some others who are going to write in the Ed. Review now, shall perhaps succeed in infusing some young blood into it. They have given me till October for this article.
I received a long & most acceptable letter from Beaumont, when I was 300 miles off, attending a very dear brother in his last illness. I owe him a long letter in return which shall be paid very shortly.
Though I am not a very regular correspondent you may believe me when I say that there is no living man in Europe whom I esteem more highly or of whose friendship I should be more proud than I am of yours. Unfortunately I have only one means of shewing it, but that I have used pretty freely, for your name somehow finds itself under my pen almost whenever I write—.
Ever affectionately yours
J. S. Mill.
288.
TO ROBERT BARCLAY FOX
Friday [May 22, 1840]
Pray do not think of Saturday for the Museum if you have any other day disposable. My concern for your welfare bids me assure you that it is much pleasanter to go to such places when there is no crowd: besides which I have a secret reason which I do not mean to tell you, viz. that Saturday week is the only possible day on which I could not be there to welcome you, as I am inexorably bound to pass that Saturday and Sunday more than thirty miles from town. Woe is me—but the case is such that there is no help for it.
If however your ill fortune will have it that you are to see the Museum and Dulwich without my agreeable society, various topics of consolation suggest themselves, as for instance that it will be all the same thing a hundred years hence, that what can’t be cured must be endured &c. &c. These & similar reflections I hope will enable you to bear your affliction with becoming fortitude & I will endeavour to support mine with antique heroism, that is to say as the antique heroes always did, by trying all they could to remove the cause of it. As a first step to which I send you an admission for Mondays & Thursdays that you may have no excuse for going on Saturday. Please to fill up the blank with some name or other before you go.
I am glad you are going to Carlyle’s —if your sisters can go you should ask leave to bring them.
J.S.M.
289.
TO ROBERT WERE FOX
Tuesday
[May 26, 1840]
My dear Sir
I will not take so ungenerous an advantage as not to tell you that Nichol is not coming today & that he is coming on Thursday. If this should prevent you from coming this evening, the loss is ours—but at least I hope it will not unless you can come on Thursday instead, either to dinner or in the evening.
Mrs. Nichol & I hope Nichol also, will be of the party to the Museum here; & to Dulwich afterwards if what we are hardly allowed to think possible, should come to pass—but if it should not, & if Saturday is the most convenient day to your party, being also as convenient for my sisters as any other, I am not such a dog in the manger as not to protest in the most earnest manner against any consideration being had of me in the matter—especially as I am so much hampered as to hours.
Ever yours faithfully
J. S. Mill
290.
TO ROBERT BARCLAY FOX
Thursday
[June 4, 1840]
My dear friend
As you say you reached home “this morning” I perceive you made no more haste than good speed—indeed to make the former compatible with the latter seemed, under the aspect of affairs last night, rather hopeless. Let me congratulate you on the fact that the safe preservation of all of you was, under these somewhat inauspicious circumstances, achieved. As for us we have none of us experienced anything unpleasant except the remembrance of the shortness of your visit, & the uncertainty which as yet hangs over the next.
You might well doubt whether I had received your note, for such a note surely merited some acknowledgment—however not being able to respond to it in the only suitable manner viz. in verse, I left it without any response at all—feeling all the while a vast respect for you, for being able to write such good verses. But the feelings towards myself which they express require me to say once more how highly I value your friendship & how unexpectedly gratifying it is that in me, seen as you have seen me, you have found as much to like, as these verses seem to indicate. For you have not, nor have even those of your family whom I have been so fortunate as to see more of, as yet seen me, as I really & naturally am, but a me artificially made self-conscious, egotistical, & noisily demonstrative by having much feeling to shew & very little time to shew it in. If I had been looking forward to living peaceably within a stone’s throw or even a few hours’ walk or ride of you, I should have been very different. As it is, that poor little sentence of the poor Ashantee really expresses the spirit of all I have said & done with regard to any of your party, almost from the beginning until now, when one is to be but a remembrance, it is difficult to refrain from even awkward attempts to make the remembrance last for more than a few days or weeks.
And now till I have the opportunity of doing it myself, will you express for me, my warmest regards to your father & mother—& for your sisters & yourself, remember that you have not only as many additional “blessings in disguise” as there are sisters at Kensington, but also (unless it be peculiarly a feminine designation) one more, namely, yours affectionately
J. S. Mill
291.
TO GUSTAVE D’EICHTHAL
17th June 1840
My dear d’Eichthal
Your very interesting letter came in due course. As the prices of the books seemed to me reasonable, & quite as low as it was likely Mr Rainford could procure them for without waiting, perhaps a considerable time, for an opportunity, I sent your note at once to Mr Russell Smith. On receiving your subsequent note I called on Mr Smith who told me that the books were sent to Paris, in a parcel along with other books, on the 7th of this month, & that as soon as they arrived, you would receive a letter by the petite poste informing you where to send for them.
Since I received your letter I have written to M. Michelet. I addressed my letter aux archives du royaume. If you have an opportunity perhaps you would ask him whether it arrived properly. But it did not require nor did I expect any answer.
I dined last Saturday with M. Guizot whose conversation quite corresponds to the high idea I had formed of him from his writings. He was very kind & gave me a general invitation to call upon him. His having come here as ambassador is a real événement, for it makes our stupid incurious people read his books. You would be astonished how few here, even yet, know that there is such a thing as a philosophy of the 19th century in France, different from the 18th. We are certainly an ignorant nation, with all our self-conceit—& by reason of it. Still, we are improving—the best ideas of the age are in some degree insinuating themselves into our minds, though we in general are very little aware how or from whence they come to us.
You may measure the distance between France & England by that between Guizot & Peel, each the leader of the Conservative party in their respective countries. Happily though we are slow we are sure. We are the ballast of Europe, France its sail.
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill.
292.
TO JOHN MITCHELL KEMBLE
26th June 1840
My dear Sir
I know you will not consider it an intrusion on my part to ask you whether among the many persons of mental cultivation & attainments with whom you must necessarily be acquainted, who have the world still “before them where to choose” & perhaps nothing very promising as yet offered for their choice, there be any one whom you could recommend as tutor to the eldest son (about twelve years old) of a person of very high rank & of ideas & aspirations on the subject of education, considerably above what are common in any rank? I am not yet at liberty to say who the party is—it has only been told to me in confidence, because if it were to transpire there would be a troublesome quantity of applications & a corresponding number of disappointments. But there is, probably, no situation of the kind in England in respect to which more important consequences may depend on its being well filled.
Do you think your friend Mr. Edgeworth would accept such a situation? & do you think him qualified for it? I only mention him because his writings prove him to be a man of considerable powers & accomplishments, & I think I have understood that he is not in such circumstances as would prevent his taking employment of this kind.
Ever truly yours
J. S. Mill
293.
TO [JOHN MITCHELL KEMBLE?]
Thursday
[July, 1840?]
My dear Sir
It would seem that Mr Edgeworth is still at Edgeworthstown, but I know that he is, or was till lately, often in or near London. I wait for your further instructions before authorizing any communication to him.
From the little I know or have heard of the Mr Thompson whom you speak of, I should think his recommendation a valuable one.
Ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
294.
TO ROBERT BARCLAY FOX
Kensington 3d August 1840
My dear friend
Your letter came & was most welcome, & the same may be said of certain other missives which I had the pleasure of despatching to Guildford. It was very pleasant to be able to figure to oneself your mode of existence at Penjerrick —I often think one never knows one’s friends or rather they are not properly one’s friends until one has seen them in their home, & can figure to oneself some part at least of their daily existence. I am sure we all feel much nearer to all of you by having become so familiar with your local habitation or I may say habitations, & with so many of your haunts on that lovely coast—how often I fancy myself looking through the transparent spring air across the lovely blue bay to Pennace —nor are reminiscences of Penjerrick either unfrequent or faint.
It is curious that your letter about Tocqueville & Brown found me also occupied with both of them—reviewing the one, & reading the other once again after an interval of many years. I have not however yet got to his theory of the moral feelings, & though I remember that I did not like it, & took great pains, as I fancied quite successfully, to refute it, I cannot say I remember what it is—& so many of my philosophical opinions have changed since, that I can trust no judgment which dates from so far back in my history. My renewed acquaintance with Brown shews me that I was not mistaken in thinking he had made a number of oversights, but I also see that he has even more than I formerly thought of these characteristic merits which made me recommend him as the best one author in whom to study that great subject. I think you have described his book by the right epithets, & I would add to them that it seems to me the very book from which to learn both in theory & by example the true method of philosophising—the analysis in his early lectures of the true nature & amount of what we can learn of the phenomena of the world, seems to me perfect, & his mode of inquiry into the mind is strictly founded upon that analysis.
As for Tocqueville I do not wonder that you should find him difficult, for in the first place the philosophical writers of the present day have made almost a new French language, & in the next place he is really abstruse—by being so abstract, & not sufficiently (especially in the 2d part) illustrating his propositions. I find it tough work reviewing him, much tougher than I expected, especially as I was prevented from beginning so soon as I ought.
So you are now all or nearly all reassembled & we again see or fancy the family picture in its accustomed & original frame. That is much, although not so much as it would have been if we had not seen you in the opposite circumstances of London—I was going to say the uncongenial circumstances, but you are all so happily constituted that no circumstances are uncongenial to you—still some are more congenial than others & I can fancy for instance that if you were standing beside Sterling in one of Raphael’s stanze in the Vatican you would find the situation very congenial indeed.
I cease to regret Sterling’s sudden departure when I learnt that your party had had so much more of him & he of them in consequence of it. What a pleasant winding up of their “mankind” tour.
I return the old Michelet with my prayer that your youngest sister whom I have hardly yet forgiven for not taking it & who must by this time be weary of the sight of it, will make haste to lay it up in some crypt of her autograph-cabinet & let the world see no more of it. I trust she is satisfied, for I have now kept it till another came—which proves to me by the extravagance of its compliments upon the letter I wrote to him, that if one gives a man exactly the sort of praise he wants to receive, one is sure of getting into his good graces.
The knowledge that an autograph of Guizot has probably reached you or will reach you from other quarters consoles me for not having one to offer—for his invitations to dinner are printed forms. I have dined with him again but one gets so little real conversation with any one who has to attend to his guests. The last time it was a most successfully made up party, I mean that fortune was most propitious to me in particular for of six guests three were persons I always like to meet & two of the other three were the two persons I most wished to meet—Thirlwall, with whom I renewed an acquaintance of which the only event was a speech he made in reply to one of mine when I was a youth of nineteen—(it has remained impressed upon me ever since as the finest speech I ever heard)—& Gladstone whom I had never seen at all—and with both these I hope I have laid the foundation of a further knowledge especially as Thirlwall will now be in town in parliament time. How delighted Sterling must be at finding him a bishop—but hardly more so than I am.
Have you heard yet that Cunningham after all will only let us have one likeness of the present deponent —so how my mother & Sterling are to settle it I do not know, as Mammy resolutely declines the equitable method of tossing up a halfpenny.
My sisters I dare say have written this very day. Pray tell us how your Aunt at Clifton goes on & when your mother returns.
Your message to Carlyle shall be delivered—ever faithfully
J. S. Mill
295.
TO MACVEY NAPIER
5th September
1840
My dear Sir
My article has gone to Longman’s this day. Whether it will answer your expectation I cannot venture to predict—but you will not find me, (as I have generally found those who have themselves conducted periodicals) an intractable contributor. If you were to bid me cancel the whole article & begin again, it would be no more than I have done before now with other articles of mine at the instigation of my own editor.
If the article suits you & it is not inconsistent with the practice of your Review, I should like to have half a dozen or at most a dozen separate copies chiefly to send abroad (of course I will readily pay the expense of them)—& I should also like to reserve the power of reprinting my articles & particularly this one, as I intend next spring to publish a collection of the few things I have written which either I or any one else thinks worth preserving, & I should like to include this in it as forming a sort of completion & winding up of the view which the publication will exhibit of my present opinions & modes of thinking.
With regard to alterations I repeat that you will not find me troublesome, but I should like, whenever time permits, to have the making of them myself. I do not mean that I object to your making any alteration in the first instance, since it often happens that the shortest & best way of making the nature of an objection intelligible is to suggest the exact change which would remove it.
Ever my dear Sir
Yours truly
J. S. Mill
296.
TO MACVEY NAPIER
21st September
1840
My dear Sir
Allow me to thank you for your kind compliance, & more than compliance, with my wishes about the separate copies & the power of reprinting & to express the pleasure it gives me that you should have found reason to think favorably of my article. Of course I cannot have the slightest objection to the omission of the sentence you mention, & am only glad that it is the only one upon which you feel it necessary to exercise your editorial scissors. I was prepared to find that there were parts of the article in which you could not agree, but on the points you mention I think a little explanation would remove most of the difference between us. I did not mean to class the power of combination as an element (except in a certain limited sense) of fitness for political power but only as one of the causes which actually create a political power whether the parties are fit for it or not. And my argument requires no more. My remarks also on Tocqueville’s opinion that democracy does not bring to the helm the fittest persons for government, were only intended to moderate the strength with which he claims admission for that opinion, & to suggest grounds of hesitation & further examination; not to contradict the opinion itself for on the whole I to a great degree coincide in it, though not to the extent to which he carries it.
On the possibility of a mixed government it is probable that you & I & Tocqueville would on explanation agree. I agree & have long agreed in all you say on the point, but he would say that one of the three powers always could by constitutional means, carry any point it was in earnest about, if it chose to encounter the consequent odium & that the other two could not unless aided by the one or by a portion of it.
About future articles—those which I have chiefly thought about would require a good deal of reading & reflection, & considering that I have a book to finish I could hardly venture to name any particular time for their being ready. They are mostly historical—for instance one on the Romans & their history, a propos of Arnold’s History and Michelet’s—or, if you think the French Revolution not too stale a subject, I could write an article on Alison’s book, or on the Histoire Parlementaire that would perhaps have still something of novelty in its views. But I should not like to undertake either of these if it were necessary to appoint any time within a year for their being ready—though they might possibly be finished much sooner. If I am to undertake anything soon it must be something requiring less time & research.
I have been much pressed to write on the Report (or rather Minutes of Evidence) of the Committee on Currency & Banks—especially by Mr. Tooke with whom I agree on the subject more than with anybody else who has written on it—but I suppose you would look to McCulloch on that question, and even if he were not likely as I suppose he is, to write on it himself, you would probably hardly think it fair to him to put in an article which would contain what he would consider heresies. Mr. Tooke says he has no doubt the Quarterly would take it, & perhaps it would, but I think liberal writers ought to stick to liberal reviews, & my adhesion to the Edinburgh is in a certain sense political as well as literary.
Believe me, with much satisfaction at the new connexion which is now formed between us,
Yours ever faithfully
J. S. Mill
297.
TO JOHN STERLING
1st Oct. 1840
My dear Sterling
Döring’s Life of Goethe is a little book, about as long as one of the thicker volumes of the small edition of Goethe’s works: therefore unless by a really first rate hand it is likely to be but meagre. The booksellers say it is thought well of but I can learn nothing specific about it. They know of no other Life. Nutt says the price is six shs but offered me for four sh. the only copy he had, a worn one. A bookseller named Senior says the price is 4 s. but he had sold all his copies. Shall I order one from him? & shall it be sent to Knightsbridge?
I am to have a dozen separate copies of my review of Tocqueville & I will send you one. There is a review of him in Blackwood, cleverish but hollow. What an antigallican tone in this whole number of Blackwood: & not a man among the writers who is not persuaded that he knows the whole French people, intus et in cute. There is much more danger of war than people are aware of. More than one credible testimony of Frenchmen now in Paris or lately there, assures me that the war feeling there is universal, & has for the time silenced all others, that even those whose personal interests are opposed to it share the feeling, & that there is not now one voice against the fortifying of Paris which excited such clamour a few years ago. And that this is not from love of war, for they dislike it, but because they feel themselves blessé & humiliated as a nation. This is foolish, but who can wonder at it in a people whose country has within this generation been twice occupied by foreign armies? If that were our case we should have plenty of the same feeling. But it is melancholy to see the rapid revival of hatred on their side & jealous dislike on ours.
I am curious to see the review of Carlyle in the Quarterly. From extracts I have no doubt it is by the author of the article on Socialism. Merivale’s article has many sound criticisms, as much of appreciation as you can expect from an Edinburgh reviewer, & a few damnable heresies. Carlyle’s dislike of it seems to me excessive, & nothing that he says surprises me more than that he should think Macaulay would have done it better. Macaulay would not have had half as much appreciation of him.
What you say about the absence of a disinterested & heroic pursuit of Art as the greatest want of England at present, has often struck me, but I suspect it will not be otherwise until our social struggles are over. Art needs earnest but quiet times—in ours I am afraid Art itself to be powerful must be polemical—Carlylean not Goethian—but “I speak as to the wise—judge ye what I say.”—
Ever yours,
J. S. Mill
298.
TO SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH
19th November 1840
Your Leeds demonstration seems to me a very proper thing, done in the very best way, and I think that is the general impression about it. I cannot but think it has done, and will do, good both in France and here, and I am sure it has had a good effect in raising your public character.
299.
TO MACVEY NAPIER
23d Novr 1840
My dear Sir
Many thanks for the very handsome payment which reached me this morning.
I have not yet seen Fletcher since I returned to town, but I am in daily expectation of doing so. He is unfortunately apt to be behind his time & though he was particularly anxious not to be so in this instance he was also particularly desirous to do his very best which may perhaps cause him to be behindhand—but I hope not.
I will keep Arnold in view & set to work upon him as soon as I can. How soon that will be I do not precisely know: but it may very possibly be in time for your spring number. I feel much obliged for the latitude you give me.
Ever yours
in haste
J. S. Mill
300.
TO ROBERT BARCLAY FOX
25 Nov. 1840
My dear friend
It is very long since I either heard from you or wrote to you, but the correspondence between your sisters & mine, which is considerably more active than ours, has kept up a sort of communication between us, which though very agreeable I do not find entirely to supply the place of direct correspondence. I am not, I know, entitled to expect frequent letters while I shew myself so remiss in fulfilling my own part of the implied contract between absent friends. But we people whose whole life is passed in writing either to “Our Governor General of India in Council” or to everybody’s governor general the English public, are I believe excusable if we like better to receive letters than to write them. I enclose a copy of a recent epistle of mine to the latter of those great authorities. It will reappear as part of two little volumes which although you already have nearly all the contents of them, will some time or other in the course of next year appear before you as suppliants for a place on your shelf. About the same time I hope to have finished a big book the first draft of which I put the last hand to a few weeks ago. I do not know whether the subject of it will interest you—but as you have been so much pleased with Brown, many of whose views I have adopted, perhaps it may.
We have all of us been in great trepidation about the state of affairs in Europe. It would have been too bad if the two most lightheaded men in Europe, Palmerston and Thiers, had been suffered to embroil the whole world & do mischief which no one now living would have seen repaired. I do not know which of the two I feel most indignant with. The immediate danger is I hope over, but the evil already done is incalculable—the confidence which all Europe felt in the preservation of peace will not for many years be re-established & the bestial antipathies between nations & especially between France & England have been rekindled to a deplorable extent. All the hope is that founded on the French character which as it is excitable by small causes may also be calmed by slight things—& accordingly alternates between resentment against England and Anglomania.
You know of course that George is at Torquay & also that Sterling is there, perhaps for the winter, perhaps only till he sets out for Italy. With kind regards to all, ever faithfully yours,
J. S. Mill.
301.
TO GEORGE HENRY LEWES
Thursday
[probably late 1840]
My dear Sir
I lost no time in setting about your paper on Shelley. It abounds in true & important things & yet (for I know you want me to tell you exactly the impression it has made upon me) there is something about it which satisfies me less than is usually the case with your writings. It is easier however to say this, than to tell exactly what that something is, or to point out how the article could have been or could now be improved. After thinking a good deal about it I can get no nearer than this—that you do not seem to me to have laid down for yourself with sufficient definiteness, what precise impression you wished to produce, & upon what class of readers. It was particularly needful to have a distinct view of this sort when writing on a subject on which there are so many rocks & shoals to be kept clear of. For example I think you should have begun by determining whether you were writing for those who required a vindication of Shelley or for those who wanted a criticism of his poems or for those who wanted a biographic Carlylian analysis of him as a man. I doubt if it is possible to combine all these things, but I am sure at all events that the unity necessary in an essay of any kind as a work of art requires at least that one of these should be the predominant purpose & the others only incidental to it. If I can venture an opinion on so difficult & delicate a matter, I would say that the idea of a vindication should be abandoned. Shelley can only be usefully vindicated from a point of view nearer that occupied by those to whom a vindication of him is still needed. I have seen very useful and effective vindications of him by religious persons, & in a religious tone: but we, I think, should leave that to others, & should take for granted, boldly, all those premisses respecting freedom of thought & the morality of acting on one’s own credo, which to anyone who admits them, carry Shelley’s vindication with them. By descending into that other arena I think we only spoil what is already going on much better than anything we can do in that way can possibly mend.
I intended to say but a word now, & more when we meet, but I have run on to this length—I will add that there are several things in the article which Hickson could not, I am sure, with any common prudence print in his review.
You are certainly a conjurer, in finding out my old obscure articles. The only valuable thing in these two is I think the distinction between poetry & oratory. The “Genius” paper is no favorite with me, especially in its boyish stile. It was written in the height of my Carlylism, a vice of style which I have since carefully striven to correct & as I think you should do—there is too much of it in the Shelley. I think Carlyle’s costume should be left to Carlyle whom alone it becomes & in whom it would soon become unpleasant if it were made common—& I have seen as you must have done, grievous symptoms of its being taken up by the lowest of the low.
As to my Logic, it has all to be rewritten yet.
ever yours,
J. S. Mill
come soon.
302.
TO JOHN STERLING
3rd December, 1840.
My dear Sterling—
I suppose this will reach you although directed only to the Torquay Post Office. I write only to keep up the thread of our correspondence, as I have nothing very particular to say.
When I advised you, if you go to Italy, to see Genoa and the Corniche, I forgot that you had not seen Venice and Munich. You certainly ought by no means to miss the pictures, of course, better than anything you would see there, though I cannot help thinking that the Venetian school is but the Flemish “with a difference”—that difference being chiefly the difference between Italian physique and Belgian or Dutch. But then again some of the sculptures at Munich are among the very first extant—and you will be interested in the modern German art; it is probably from knowing nothing of the subject, that what I saw of it appears to me a feeble, hot-house product. But quære whether anything so essentially objective as painting and sculpture can thrive in Germany—any more than Shakespeare or Beethoven could have been produced in Italy. This, however, is sus Minervam.
Have you any idea who that Fellow of St John’s is, who publishes in the Monthly Chronicle his notes on Italy? He has something in him but seems, as yet, very [low?] & inexperienced. Have you read either of Laing’s books? You should read his defence of them in the said Monthly Chronicle.
I have been considering whether I ought to postpone revising my Logic in order to read the German books you mention. On the whole I think not,—their way of looking at such matters is so very different from mine, which is founded on the methods of physical science, & entirely a posteriori.—
Ever yours faithfully
J. S. Mill
I suppose George has seen you though we have not heard from him since—
303.
TO JOHN STERLING
19th Decr
1840
My dear Sterling
In consequence of what you wrote about Ritter’s book I have, after two unsuccessful attempts to get it in London, ordered it from Germany.
I think & feel very much as you do on the subject of the bad spirit manifested in France by so many politicians & writers & unhappily by some from whom better things were to be expected. But this does not appear to me to strengthen Palmerston’s justification. I do not believe that Thiers would have acted, in power, in a manner at all like his braggadocio afterwards when he knew that he had only the turbulent part of the population to throw himself upon, & no watchword to use but the old ones about making the Mediterranean a French lake, getting rid of the treaties of 1815, &c. I have no doubt that he would have attempted to make such an arrangement as should leave a powerful state at that end of the Mediterranean under French influence & I think he had a good right to attempt this, & we no right at all to hinder it if the arrangement was not objectionable on any other account. It appears to me very provoking treatment of France that England & Russia should be extending their influence every year till it embraces all Asia & that we should be so indignant at the bare supposition that France wishes to do a little of what we do on so much larger a scale. It is true we do it almost in spite of ourselves, & rather wish to keep others out than to get ourselves in; but we cannot expect France to think so, or to regard our professing it as anything but attempting to humbug them & not doing it well. I believe that no harm whatever to Europe would have resulted from French influence with Mehemet Ali, & it would have been easy to bind France against any future occupation of the country for herself. We should then have avoided raising this mischievous spirit in France—the least evil of which will be what Lord P.’s supporters no doubt think a great one, viz. that in another year France will be in strict alliance as to all Eastern matters with Russia as the only power who will give her anything for her support & moreover as her only means of retaliating upon England.
No one seems to me to have raised himself by this but Guizot, & he has done what perhaps no other man could have done & almost certainly none so well.
I am extremely grateful for your attentions to George & glad that you give so good an account of him. I wish you had been able to give a better one of the health of your own family. I have not seen either Carlyle or Mrs. Austin (I think) since I last wrote to you. Calvert I have heard nothing of for a long time except the rather indifferent news of him in your letter.
This is only an apology for a letter but for the present it must serve—
ever faithfully
J. S. Mill
304.
TO ROBERT BARCLAY FOX
23d Decr 1840
My dear friend
I return with many thanks what I ought to have returned much sooner, the notes of the Welsh sermon. It is a really admirable specimen of popular eloquence, of a rude kind—it is well calculated to go to the very core of an untaught hearer—I believe there is much preaching of that character among the Methodists & more perhaps among their still wilder kindred the Ranters &c. Do you know Ebenezer Elliott’s poem of the Ranter? This might be such a man—I believe even this does good when it really penetrates the crust of a sensual & stupid boor who never thought or knew that he had a soul or concerned himself about his spiritual state. But in allowing that this may do good I am making a great concession, for I confess it is as revolting to me as it was to Coleridge to find infinite justice represented as a sort of demoniacal rage that must be appeased by blood & anguish but provided it has that, cares not whether it be the blood & anguish of the guilty or the innocent. It seems to be but one step farther, & a step which in spirit at least is often taken, to say of God what the Druids said of their gods that the only acceptable sacrifice to them was a victim pure & without taint. I know not how dangerous may be the ground on which I am treading, or how far the view of the Atonement which is taken by this poor preacher may be recognised by your Society or by yourself; but surely a more christianlike interpretation of that mystery is that which—believing that Divine Wisdom punishes the sinner for the sinner’s sake & not from an inherent necessity, more heathen than the heathen Nemesis—holds as Coleridge did that the sufferings of the Redeemer were (in accordance with the eternal laws on which this system of things is built) an indispensable means of bringing about that change in the hearts of sinners, the want of which is the real & sole hindrance to the universal salvation of mankind.
I marvel greatly at the accuracy of memory which could enable Mrs Charles Fox to write down from recollection so wonderfully vivid and evidently almost literally correct report of this sermon. I know that Friends cultivate that kind of talent but I should think few attain so high a degree of it.
The Testimony of the Yearly Meeting I have read with great interest & though I had read several similar documents before I do not remember any in which the peculiarities of the Society in reference to the questions of Church Government &c which agitate the present day, are so pointedly stated & so vigorously enforced.
I am glad you have seen Molesworth. He is genuine, & is perfectly the thing he is; complete within his limited sphere. One ought to be satisfied with that; so few are as much & so very, very few are more. A man of Molesworth’s sort of limitation has a natural tendency to be intolerant, because unappreciative of ideas & persons unlike him & his ideas—I knew how to excuse all that because I have been just like him myself & I believe knowing me keeps him out of much intolerance & prejudice because he sees that many things which are nothing to him are much to one whom he allows to be fully a match for him in the things in which his strength lies. I believe if I have done any good a large share of it lies in the example of a professed logician & political economist who believes there are other things besides logic & political economy. Molesworth in spite of his bluster, at least half believes it too, on trust from me. Par exemple one that will never be made to believe it at all, least in the sense I do, is one of the best of men & a highly instructed man too, Mr Grote—of whom Mrs Grote, with more natural quickness & natural liveliness, is in point of opinions the caricature.
I am glad you like my article. I have just had a letter from Tocqueville who is more delighted with it than I ventured to hope for. He touches on politics, mourning over the rupture of the Anglo-French alliance & as the part he took in debate has excited much surprise & disapproval here it is right to make known what he professes as his creed on the matter, viz. that if you wish to keep any people, especially so mobile a people as the French, in the disposition of mind which enables them to do great things you must by no means teach them to be reconciled to other people’s making no account of them. They were treated, he thinks, with so great a degree of slight (to say the least) by our government that for their public men not to shew a feeling of blessure would have been to lower the standard of national pride which in the present state of the world he thinks almost the only elevated sentiment that remains in considerable strength. There is really a great deal in this although it does not justify & scarcely excuses the revival of the old national animosity or even the warlike demonstrations & preparations. A nation can shew itself offended without threatening a vengeance out of proportion to the affront & which would involve millions that never offended them with units that did, besides ruining themselves in the end, or rather in the beginning. And the tricky policy of Thiers, which is like the whole character of the man, is not in the least palliated by the offence given. But I do think it quite contemptible in England to treat the bare suspicion of France seeking for influence in the East as something too horrible to be thought of; England meanwhile progressively embracing the whole of Asia in her own grasp. Really to read our newspapers any one would fancy such a thing as a European nation acquiring territory & dependent allies in the East, were a thing never dreamt of till France perfidiously cast a covetous eye on the dominions of Mehemet Ali. I cannot find words to express my contempt of the whole conduct of our government or my admiration for the man who has conjured away as much as was possible of the evil done & has attained the noblest end, in a degree no one else could, by the noblest means. Of course, I mean Guizot who now stands before the world as immeasurably the greatest public man living. I cannot think without humiliation of some things I have written years ago of such a man as this, when I thought him a dishonest politician. I confounded the prudence of a wise man who lets some of his maxims go to sleep while the time is unpropitious for asserting them, with the laxity of principle which resigns them for personal advancement. Thank God I did not wait to know him personally in order to do him justice, for in 1838 & 1839 I saw that he had reasserted all his old principles at the first time at which he could do so with success & without compromising what in his view were more important principles still. I ought to have known better than to have imputed dishonourable inconsistency to a man whom I now see to have been consistent beyond any statesman of our time & altogether a model of the consistency of a statesman as distinguished from that of a fanatic.
You have been a little premature in saying anything to a bookseller about my Logic for no bookseller is likely to hear anything about it from me for many months. I have it all to rewrite completely & now here is Sterling persuading me that I must read all manner of German Logic which though it goes much against the grain with me, I can in no sort gainsay. So you are not likely to see much of my writing for some time to come except such scribble as this—
All send love to all. Pray write soon—
Yours always—
J. S. Mill
305.
TO GUSTAVE D’EICHTHAL
25th Decr 1840.
My dear d’Eichthal
I did not write to you when I received the mournful & to me quite unexpected news of the loss of your father—not that I did not feel with you & for you, but I knew how little comfort words can give in such a case—& if they could, how many you have who are nearer & more efficacious consolers than I can be. There is certainly something in a father’s death (quite independently of personal affection) more solemn & affecting than in any other loss. It closes the past, & as it were severs the connexion between oneself & one’s youth. The only still worse loss is that which closes the future, as the death of a beloved wife or child, because there disappointed hopes are superadded. I had something like this to bear when I lost, less than a year ago, a brother only in his twentieth year who was likely if he had lived to be one of the most valuable men of our time as he was already one of the most loveable. But allah akhbar as your friends the Mussulmans say.
I received duly your letter to Sir T. Buxton & forwarded it to him & I have since received the pamphlet for which I thank you very much. What prospect is there of the appearance of the work itself? One of our principal papers, the Times I think, inserted the account which appeared in the Moniteur. There is every appearance that you have made out your case, & if you have it is a very important thing to have done. Islamism is a fortunate thing for the Africans & I sometimes think it is very unfortunate for the Indians of America that Mussulmans did not land there instead of Christians, as they would have been much more likely to adopt that type of religion & civilization than the other. You are very usefully employed in throwing light on these dark subjects—the whole subject of the races of man, their characteristics & the laws of their fusion is more important than it was ever considered till of late & it is now quite a l’ordre du jour & labour bestowed upon it is therefore not lost even for immediate practical ends.
I am out of heart about public affairs—as much as I ever suffer myself to be. I never thought that in our day one man had the power of doing so much mischief as that shallow & senseless coxcomb Palmerston has done. Half the Liberal party, even many of the old Whigs, are against him, & it is most mortifying to think if the Tories had been in power & had done this (which they never would have dared) how gloriously we should have turned them out upon it & thereby cemented the friendship of France & England for generations to come. But the ten years of Whig administration have entirely demoralized our Liberal party. Lord Holland certainly died of it, so old Rogers says who you know is the familiar of the Whig houses & he adds that it will kill him too. The worst is that with all the good will in the world I can only palliate, not excuse the conduct of France & the spirit displayed by the French press & much of the French public. And this display you may believe me when I say it, has made numbers of our best & most thinking persons think Palmerston in the right who would otherwise have been grievously incensed against him. It is that which has done the mischief here. I fear the present generation of English will never again feel confidence in the French people. They are now convinced that the spirit of military & Bonapartist aggression & the bitterness of resentment against England are still alive—that France cannot be conciliated to England & that the only chance for peace in Europe is in a strong conservative government which shall keep down the democracy & the public feeling for its own sake. I do assure you that until the French journalists & orators irritated & alarmed our public there was not a particle of feeling here against France or of interest one way or the other in the Egyptian question. The whole was a wretched freak of Palmerston for which God reward him instead of us—but quicquid delirant Whigges plectuntur Achivi.
It is impossible not to love the French people & at the same time not to admit that they are children—whereas with us even children are care-hardened men of fifty. It is as I have long thought a clear case for the croisement des races.
It is really quite time that I should see & converse with you again, & with my dear & most valued friend Adolphe. We are both of us much changed since we last met, you & I I mean, for Adolphe I should think is much the same as before. You probably have found out by experience as I have the meaning of growing “sadder & wiser” as one grows older & that too without growing at all unhappy but on the contrary happier. And you have felt as I have how one’s course changes, as one gets experience but changes by widening & therefore still keeps the same direction as before only with a slower movement as attempting to hit more points at once. There is so much to say if one begins to let oneself go that I must not go on. Pray write soon & tell me among other things whether Guizot is likely to stand & what you now think of him. As for me I honour and venerate him, (it is but little to say) before all living statesmen though I differ from many of his opinions.
ever affectionately yours
J. S. Mill
306.
TO ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
30th December 1840.
My dear Tocqueville,
You may imagine how much pleasure it gave me to find that you were pleased with my review of your Second Part. I can very easily believe that many of those who had ventured to give an opinion upon your speculations had not taken so much pains or so conscientiously striven to understand & enter into the spirit of your speculations as I did, & many doubtless were not so well prepared for doing so by the previous direction of their thoughts and studies. And it is no more than natural to a mind like yours to be much more gratified by any evidence of your book’s having worked in another mind & given birth to thought than by any amount of eulogy, or by a much more unqualified expression of concurrence, when not accompanied by such evidence.
It does not surprise me that this second part should be less popular than the first. The reason you assign, no doubt is partly the true one, but besides this, the thoughts in the second part are much more recondite, & whether one assents to them or not, are brought from a much greater depth in human nature itself, than those in your first publication. It constitutes still more than the other did, an era in science. I know how much thought it calls for from the reader when I remember how long it was before I could make up my mind about it, although few of my countrymen are so much accustomed to that kind of speculation and also I had previously thought that if there was any one of the leading intellects of this age to which I could flatter myself that my own had a kind of analogy it was probably yours. I therefore cannot wonder at the smaller extent of immediate popularity, especially as the most competent judges are exactly those who are not in a hurry to express any opinion on thoughts for the most part so entirely new.
Your observation that you do not believe in the errors of the public judgment as to literary works will be assented to by few Englishmen, and that such a thing should be said by a philosopher so much in advance of his countrymen is a high compliment to the French public which is certainly the cleverest public in the world, & as M. de Stendhal says, can understand everything, so far as intellect goes, even what they would have been quite incapable of originating. That is far from being the case with either the German or the English; who probably have more original genius than the French have hitherto manifested, but whose ideas seldom make much way in the world until France has recast them in her own mould & interpreted them to the rest of Europe & even sometimes to the very people from whom they first came. It is my belief however that in political & social philosophy the French are not only original but the only people who are original on a large scale & that as soon as they shall have appropriated, & fitted into their theories, the stricter & closer deductions of the English School in political economy & in some other matters of comparative detail they will give the law to the scientific world on these subjects. I do wish they would thoroughly master Ricardo & Bentham. Tanneguy Duchâtel did the former. They need not for that reason contract their telescopic view to our microscopic one, but they could and would combine the two & make them reconcilable.
I am very glad to have had from yourself your view of the unhappy embroilment between our two countries & I have shown that part of your letter to several people who had received a painful impression from your speech in the Chamber. I agree with you in thinking our ministry very culpable, but our people are not to blame. You know that the English public think little & care little about foreign affairs & a ministry may commit them beyond redemption before they are aware. If the Tories had been in power they would have been suspected of anti-French predilections, they would have been watched, & would never have dared as these men have, or if they had, we should have gloriously turned them out on this question. But the ministry being liberal, and at a moment too when the liberal party has become entirely demoralised by seven years of a weak whig government, the public looked on in confidence that all was right, and that Palmerston knew more about the matter than they did, never dreaming that they had been brought to the brink of a war until it was revealed to them by the manifestations of feeling in France. Then, however, I firmly believe that the reaction you speak of in favour of the French alliance would have taken place, if there had not been such a lamentable want both of dignity & of common sense on the part of the journalists & public speakers in France. The whole of the feeling which has arisen since in this country, has arisen, you may believe me on such a subject, from the demonstrations since made in France—from the signs of rabid eagerness for war, the reckless hurling down of the gauntlet to all Europe, the explosion of Napoleonism and of hatred to England, together with the confession of Thiers & his party that they were playing a double game, a thing which no English statesman could have avowed without entire loss of caste as a politician. All this has made the most sober people here say openly that from the feeling which has shown itself in France, Palmerston must have had stronger grounds for his conduct than appear on the surface—never considering that Palmerston’s conduct has revivified morbid feelings that were dying away. You know how repugnant to the English character is anything like bluster, & that instead of intimidating them, its effect when they do not treat it with calm contempt is to raise a dogged determination in them not to be bullied. All these feelings are decidedly beginning to abate since the peace party has had so strong a majority in the chamber of deputies, but the mischief is that the distrust will continue for a long time on our side as well as the resentment on yours. Palmerston supported by all the Tories and by half the Liberals will carry all before him in our Parliament but the opinion of most wise men here is that the Whig party have really destroyed themselves in the country by this. For my part, I would walk twenty miles to see him hanged, especially if Thiers were to be strung up along with him. Do pray write to me again & at more length about this matter as I am most anxious to know your whole mind upon it—en attendant our meeting at Paris which I hope will be in the coming year.
Ever faithfully yours,
J. S. Mill.
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