The Online Library of Liberty

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• The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill 1838-1848
• 1838
• 1839
• 1840
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• 1842
• 1843
• 1844
• 1845
• 1846
• 1847
• 1848

1847

495.

TO RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES1

• I.H.

Wedy [1847?]

My dear Milnes

It would be very agreeable to me to breakfast with you on Saturday, but I cannot venture to play truant from my office to the extent which that would require.

Yours ever

J. S. Mill

496.

TO SIR ALEXANDER DUFF-GORDON1

• India House

Jan. 27, 1847

My dear Sir Alexander,

I regret to hear that Mr. Austin is again suffering from illness, which has, perhaps, been brought on by the application required in writing his admirable article in the “Edinburgh”,2 and by the very natural and intelligible reaction after it was finished. In his bad health he must at least have the consolation of feeling himself useful, for the article is exactly one of those things which he can do so well, and which so few are capable of doing at all—a thorough discussion of the subject it treats of, going down to the roots and fundamentals of a matter never treated in that way before—eminently calculated not only to give clear ideas and to correct vague feelings and confused notions on that particular subject, but also to educate the minds of those who wish to study such subjects—a class that would probably be much more numerous if there were not so lamentable a paucity of such helps to them. One of the persons of greatest intellect that I have known said, after reading the article, “What a pity the same man does not, in the same manner, precisionize other and even more important questions of political morals;” and I do hope that he will now be encouraged to do so. There is really some hope of this now that he has actually finished something; for his inability to satisfy himself is the only thing except ill health which has ever seemed to me to stand in the way.

Very truly yours,

J. S. Mill

497.

TO ALEXANDER BAIN1

27 January 1847

You will have seen by this time how far the ministry are from having adopted any of my conclusions about Ireland,2 though Lord J. Russell3 subscribes openly to almost all the premises. I have little hope left. The tendency of their measures seems to me such that it can only bring about good to Ireland by excess of evil. . . . I have so indoctrinated the Chronicle writers with my ideas on Ireland, that they are now going on very well and spiritedly without me, which enables me to work much at the Political Economy, to my own satisfaction. The last thing I did for the Chronicle was a thorough refutation, in three long articles, of Croker’s article on the Division of Property in France.4

498.

TO GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE1

[February 22, 1847]2

Of practical conclusions there are also several from which I should decidedly differ, particularly Communism.

The use made of the word “morality” is likely to give an idea of much greater agreement with the ordinary moral notions, emanating from and grounded on religion, than I should suppose you intend. Most people do not understand by morality a subject as open to discussion as any other, and on which persons have different opinions, but think it a name for the set of opinions they have been accustomed to.

499.

TO HENRY S. CHAPMAN1

• India House

9th March, 1847.

My dear Chapman,—

My conscience has been reproaching me for months with not having yet redeemed my promise of writing to you again, especially after having received your interesting letter of April last. But you must, I am sure, know by experience how difficult it is to keep engagements of that sort when one’s mind and time are much occupied, and when the distance of one’s correspondent and the long time requisite for an interchange of letters prevents communication from being habitual and in a manner spontaneous. To give you an idea of some of my hindrances I will just tell you what my occupations are. In the first place, a great increase of my India House business, both from the general and progressive growth of the correspondence, and also from my having the charge of a second department in addition to my own, being responsible for a branch of the correspondence which is now carried on by my brother George. In the next place I have had a book to write which will be as large a one when printed as the Logic, and which I have now (within the last week) completed, sauf the revising, or rather rewriting, which is an indispensable part of anything of importance which I write. This book is the one you had had some incorrect information about, as you thought it was to be an edition of Adam Smith, whereas it is a book to replace Adam Smith, that is, to attempt to do for political economy what A.S. did at the time when he wrote, to make a book which, while embodying all the abstract science in the completest form yet attained, incorporating all important improvements, should at the same time be essentially a book of applications exhibiting the principles of the science in the concrete. I was the more prompted to do this inasmuch as it would enable me to bring in, or rather to bring out, a great number of opinions on incidental matters, moral and social, for which one has not often so good an opportunity, and I have used this privilege as freely as Adam Smith did, and I fully expect to offend and scandalize ten times as many people as I shall please, but that is “all in a day’s work,” and I always intended to make that use of any standing I might get among publicists. I have got a certain capital of that sort by the Logic, and I now cannot too soon use it up in useful investments. That then, has been my second occupation. My third has been to write a good deal this autumn and winter on the questions of the day, especially the Irish question,2 on which people seem to me to be running mad, each more than the other. No one idea that has been started for using this opportunity to effect anything for the permanent good of Ireland has met with any favourable reception; the whole English people are rushing frantically to expend any number of millions upon the present exigency, without much caring how, and taking their revenge on the Irish gentry by the infliction of a lavish poor law which if it passes will as it seems to me render the evils of Ireland incurable except by an universal seizure of the land and expulsion of the proprietors; and almost all the men on whom one counted for resisting any such monstrosity, have thrown themselves headlong into the very midst of the stream. Roebuck, of all men in the world, is quite an active leader in the movement, and as for the first time in his public life he is enlisting his talents in support of the madness of the movement, he has suddenly made himself a person of much more importance than he ever was before, and is continually flattered by the Times, which is the real author and leader of this movement and the substantial ruler of the country. Molesworth, except that he has only made one speech3 instead of fifty, is just as bad. Lord J. Russell and Lord Lansdowne4 six weeks before the meeting of Parliament, expressed in private the strongest opinions against any such measure as the one they have now introduced. I find nobody but Senior and Grote who are true to their colours. The English Poor Law, with the strongest profession of adherence to its principle, is in fact to be thrown overboard by abolishing the Central Board and substituting a functionary who is to sit in Parliament and to be virtually a member of the Ministry. Of course every little workhouse squabble will become a Parliamentary affair, and to avoid a debate in Parliament everything will be given up. Have not these people just ordered “a day of fasting and humiliation”5 merely to escape a debate on a motion by Mr. Plumptre,6 the man who thinks that the potato failure is a punishment from Heaven for the grant to Maynooth?7 Besides this new officer will go out with every Ministry, and besides, he will never be able to get elected without giving pledges inconsistent with a faithful discharge of his duties. I have never felt so thoroughly disgusted with the state of public affairs. The only good I see likely to arise out of all these things is that I think they are sure to give a great stimulus to colonization, for Ireland will be in a state next year that will make the landlords sell the clothes off their backs to get rid of the people. But it will be a colonization wholly of Irish, and of the very worst sort; and with an outdoor relief poor law they will just set about peopling again, and will replace even two millions in half a generation. The only propitious circumstances is the great progress of free trade. Our repeal of the Corn laws is working wonders; first the great relaxation of the American tariff, next the triumphal progress of Cobden8 through Europe. Think of the French Government authorising a League (Societe des Libres Exchangite)9 and permitting public meetings and speeches. I have great sympathy too with the fine old Pope.10 I hope he has many years to live; he is much younger than Popes usually are, but unhappily they say he has had epileptic fits when a child, and has had a return of them lately. The priests will poison him if they can, as the Jesuits are said to have poisoned Ganganelli.11 O’Connell is done up,12 and probably dying, killed, I should think, by the death of O’Connellism.

Yours most truly,

J. S. Mill

500.

TO ALEXANDER BAIN1

March 27, 1847

The people are all mad, and nothing will bring them to their senses but the terrible consequences they are certain to bring on themselves, as shown in Whately’s speech yesterday2 in the House of Lords—the only sensible speech yet made in either House on the question. Fontenelle said that mankind must pass through all forms of error before arriving at truth.3 The form of error we are now possessed by is that of making all take care of each, instead of stimulating and helping each to take care of himself; and now this is going to be put to a terrible trial, which will bring it to a crisis and a termination sooner than could otherwise have been hoped for.

501.

TO JOHN AUSTIN1

13^th April 1847.

Dear Mr. Austin,—

There is no occasion to send anything you may write to me by any circuitous channel. If I did pay postage I should not grudge it for your letters, but in fact I do not. The I.H. pays all my letters except penny post letters which everybody pays before sending.

The notice in the Chronicle,2 to which I am indebted for your letter, was, as you supposed, mine. It is really a pity that all the trouble you must have taken with the article on Centralisation should have produced nothing more than a review article.

I am very glad that you should write anything whatever; but I hope especially now when your pecuniary affairs are settled in the manner you desire, that you will rather write books than reviews. An entirely unknown person, whose books no one would read, must begin by reviews, but you have written a book which, for the kind of book, has been very successful, and what you write is more likely to be read with your name than without it. A book gives much more scope than a review for your peculiar forte, the analysis of a subject down to its ultimate scientific elements. A review is not a slight thing to you; you take the same pains with it as you would with a scientific treatise, which in fact it is; & all who can be benefited by it at all would prefer to have it in a permanent form. It seems to me that reviews have had their day, & that nothing is now worth much except the two extremes, newspapers for diffusion & books for accurate thought. Every thinker should make a point of either publishing in his life if possible, or at any rate leaving behind him the most complete expression he can produce of his best thoughts, those which he has no chance of getting into any review. There are two books I have heard you speak of as projects: a continuation of “The Province of Jurisprudence” that is in fact a publication & completion of your lectures: this would be the easiest to you, so much of it being already done: the other which would be more important is a systematic treatise on morals. This last may wait long for any one with the intellect & the courage to do it as it should be done. And until it is done we cannot expect much improvement in the common standard of moral judgments & sentiments.

Of the two subjects you mention in your letter, the “province of government” is no doubt important in itself, & peculiarly a question of the present time. I have necessarily thought a good deal about it lately for the purposes of a practical treatise on Pol. Economy & I have felt the same difficulty which you feel about the axiomata media. I suspect there are none which do not vary with time, place, & circumstance. I doubt if much more can be done in a scientific treatment of the question than to point out a certain number of pro’s and a certain number of con’s of a more or less general application, & with some attempt at an estimation of the comparative importance of each, leaving the balance to be struck in each particular case as it arises. But that subject is I think tolerably safe as far as theory is concerned, for the thinking minds of the Continent & of England have fairly thought up to it & it is sure to be amply discussed & meditated upon for the next ten or twenty years. It is hardly a subject for any one who is capable of things much in advance of the time.

On the other subject, The “antecedents of the Revolution,” I much doubt if what you propose to write will do any good to those whom you hope to influence by it. I think with you that the English higher classes (of the German I know nothing) mean well, “what little they do mean” as my father said of some person. They have grown good even to goodiness, as they shew every year more & more. But also every year shews more & more their pitoyable absence of even that very moderate degree of intellect, & that very moderate amount of will & character which are scattered through the other classes but of which they have certainly much less than the average share, owing to the total absence of the habit of exerting their minds for any purpose whatever. I used to hope, as my father did (with all his democratic predilections), that when their political monopoly was taken away they would be induced to exert themselves in order to keep ahead of their competitors, but I have quite ceased to think so. If there is anything of which experience convinces me more & more it is that (beyond a certain point) facilities, as they are called, are hindrances, & that the more the path to any meritorious attainment is made smooth to an individual or a class, from their early youth, the less chance there is of their realising it. Never to have had any difficulties to overcome seems fatal to mental vigour. The doctrine of averting revolutions by wise concessions to the people does not need to be preached to the English aristocracy. They have long acted on it to the best of their capacity, & the fruits it produces are soup-kitchen and ten hours bills.

As far as I see, the influence of democracy on the aristocracy does not operate by giving them any of the strength of the people but by taking away that which was their own; making them bend with a willing submission to the yoke of bourgeois opinion in all private things, and be the slaves, in public matters, of the newspapers which they dislike & fear. I confess I look less & less to that quarter for anything good. Whatever is valuable in the traditions of gentlemanhood is a fait acquis to mankind; as it is really grounded on the combination of good feeling with correct intellectual perceptions, it will always be kept alive by really cultivated persons; the most complete parvenus now in this country have as much of it as people of family, & for its diffusion must not our real reliance be on the extension & improvement of education? I have even ceased to think that a leisured class, in the ordinary sense of the term, is an essential constituent of the best form of society. What does seem to me essential is that society at large should not be overworked, nor over-anxious about the means of subsistence, for which we must look to the grand source of improvement, repression of population, combined with laws or customs of inheritance which shall favour the diffusion of property instead of its accumulation in masses.

It is, I dare say, very natural, that living in France, you should be much impressed with the unfavourable side of a country that has passed through a series of revolutions. The inordinate impulse given to vulgar ambition, down to even a low class, & the general spirit of adventurership are I have no doubt disgusting enough, but may not much of them be ascribed to the mere accident of the brilliant fortune of a “certain lieutenant of artillery” (as Stendhal says), & much to the habitual over-governing by which power & importance are too exclusively concentrated upon the Government & its functionaries. In England on the contrary I often think that a violent revolution is very much needed, in order to give that general shake-up to the torpid mind of the nation which the French Revolution gave to Continental Europe. England has never had any general break-up of old associations & hence the extreme difficulty of getting any ideas into its stupid head. After all, what country in Europe can be compared with France in the adaptation of its social state to the benefit of the great mass of its people, freed as they are from any tyranny which comes home to the greater number, with justice easily accessible, & the strongest inducements to personal prudence & forethought. And would this have been the case without the great changes in the state of property which even supposing good intentions in the Government could hardly have been produced by anything less than a Revolution?

I judge M. Guizot’s conduct in the Spanish affair3 as you do: he is evidently not above low tricks & equivocations, which seem to be quite excused to every Frenchman by their being for the supposed honour & glory of France.4 Guizot I wished to think better of, but after all this only brings me back, and that not altogether, to my first opinion of him, which some parts of his public conduct from 1839 downwards had modified.5

Your impression of Comte’s delinquencies is a fine instance of the growth of rumour: your informants must be either ill-informed or such exaggerators that I wonder you should have believed them. In the first place, Comte (to whom I did not give money, but Grote and Molesworth did) never wrote to Grote anything but what was perfectly convenable. He wrote a letter to me which he authorised me to shew to G. & M. if I thought fit, & I did think fit; but it contained nothing like reproaches.6 It contained a theory that, in default of the government, it is the duty of rich individuals to subscribe their money to enable philosophers to live and carry on their speculations. I do not agree in his theory.7 I thought it an instance of “the importance of a man to himself” but even with the addition of his not having economised the money previously given to him this is a totally different thing from what you have been told.

The judgment to be passed on this incident would involve the wide subject of how the degree in which a person should be judged by his own deliberate principles should be combined with one’s judgment on the principles themselves, and one’s opinion of the causes which made him adopt them.8

You ask what I think of the Irish measures. I expect nothing from them but mischief, or if any good, only through excess of evil. If you were here you would, I believe, think as I do. The Government & the public seem both alike to have quite parted company with experience & common sense. There is not one man in the H of C [House of Commons], & only two or three in the H of L [House of Lords] (Whately being one) who seem to have a single sound or rational idea on the whole subject: those from whom one had most right to expect better are just as bad as the rest. I doubt if outdoor relief would do for Ireland under any mode of administration, but as it is they are holding out to the people the most unbounded expectations, & if the poor law is to be worked without fulfilling them, the life of no guardian & no relieving officer will be worth a week’s purchase, & the country will be ungovernable except by military occupation of every village. The only good I expect is that the result must produce a strong reaction in the public mind against the present wild notions about the mode of being good to the poor.9

I expect to be in Paris shortly with the friends with whom I always endeavour to pass my holidays but it is uncertain if they will remain long enough to admit of my going to see anyone; if I do I will certainly call on you.10

Ever sincerely yours,

J. S. Mill

502.

TO ALEXANDER BAIN1

5th May 1847

[Before arriving in London this year, I had another letter (5th May). He delays to commence rewriting his book till he sees the upshot of the Irish business.] The conduct of the ministers is wretched beyond measure upon all subjects; nothing but the meanest truckling at a time when a man with a decided opinion could carry almost anything triumphantly.

503.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

• India House

Saturday
[May 8, 1847]

My dear Hickson

It would not be convenient to me at present to write an article on currency. Neither could I write the article wanted just now, without a much greater knowledge than I possess or could easily acquire respecting the facts of the money market. My opinions on the general subject “with the latest additions & corrections” will come out next winter in my book.

I believe I agree with most of what you say in your note.

yours ever

J. S. Mill

504.

TO AUGUSTE COMTE1

• India House

le 17 mai 1847

Mon cher Monsieur Comte

Je pense qu’il pourrait vous être intéressant d’avoir quelques renseignements sur les choses qui se passent actuellement en angleterre et en Irlande, d’autant plus qu’elles me semblent caractériser, d’une manière frappante, une sorte de crise sociale.

Vous savez que le siècle où nous sommes est celui des transactions, et surtout de la grande transaction qui se renouvelle sans cesse à des conditions variables, entre les pouvoirs anciens et les idées modernes. Vous savez aussi que l’Angleterre est le pays des transactions par excellence. Ce que, peut-être vous ne savez pas, c’est la forme particulière que revêtit aujour-d’hui chez nous la grande transaction européenne. Nous sommes entrés à plein voile dans le système du gouvernement charitable. Il y a longtemps qu’on prêche aux classes supérieures qu’elles ne remplissent plus leur mission, qu’elles sont tenues à faire quelque chose pour ceux dont le travail les nourrit, qu’elles n’ont le droit de gouverner qu’à condition d’être moralement responsables du bien-être de la société, et notamment de la classe pauvre, etc. Or, comme cette remontrance amicale leur est venue d’un côté tandis que le chartisme et le socialisme apparaissaient de l’autre, elles ont dû, quelle que fût leur insouciance, y obtempérer quelque peu, et petit à petit elles sont venues jusqu’à prendre au sérieux ces doctrines de responsabilité gouvernementale, qui, au fond, ne laissaient pas d’être passablement flatteuses à leur amour-propre d’aristocratie. Seulement, elles ont entendu cette obligation de la manière dont elles le pouvaient, c. à d. de la manière la plus facile et la plus ignoble, en la réduisant aux proportions de l’aumône. Aujourd’hui il n’est question que de donner aux pauvres; non seulement de l’argent, mais aussi, il est juste de le dire tout ce qu’on croit leur être utile, comme le raccourcissement des heures de travail, une meilleure police sanitaire, de l’éducation même, chrétienne et protestante surtout, mais sans exclusion de quelques connaissances terrestres. Il s’agit enfin de les gouvernor paternellement, et la cour, les nobles, les riches s’y disposent tout tranquillement, sans jamais se douter qu’il faille pour cela autre chose que de la bonne volonté, et en concevant le but selon la mesure de leur propre capacité intellectuelle et morale, c. à d. d’abord en fesant abstraction complète de la dignité morale de la classe pauvre. Cela est très naturel, attendu qu’ils n’ont que faire de ce sentiment pour eux-mêmes, n’ayant plus la dignité morale du passé, et n’ayant pas encore celle de l’avenir; d’ailleurs s’ils en avaient, ils ne la croiraient pas faite pour des gens pauvres, pour des ouvriers. Ensuite ils oublient complètement, ou plutôt ils n’ont jamais su, que le bien-être ne s’accomplit pas par les seules qualités passives, et qu’en général ce qu’on fait pour les personnes ne leur est utile qu’à condition de seconder seulement ce qu’elles font pour elles-mêmes. Ils se flattent que le bonheur des prolétaires dépend des riches, et ne se doutent pas qu’en définitif il dépend de l’énergie, du bon sens et de la prévoyance des prolétaires eux-mêmes; que le philanthrope le plus haut placé n’y peut rien, qu’en éclairant et en renforçant ces précieuses qualités chez les pauvres et que si au contraire il y porte attente, s’il tâche de mettre l’intervention sociale à la place de ces vertus individuelles, il devient nécessairement nuisible au lieu d’utile. Mais de cela nos philanthropes comme il faut n’ont pas la moindre idée, dénués qu’ils sont de toute connaissance approfondie et pétris de suffisance aristocratique.

La tendance que je viens de caractériser, et qui se signale depuis plusieurs ans d’une manière croissante, arrive aujourd’hui à une expérience décisive, amenée par la disette irlandaise. Cette île malheureuse, victime si longtemps de la tyrannie et de l’intolérance anglaises, dont maintenant elle n’a plus à se plaindre, semble destinée à être victime encore une fois de notre philanthropie. Vous connaissez le déplorable état industrial de ce pays, partagé entre une multitude démesurée de paysans paresseux et affamés, et un petit nombre de grands propriétaires insouciants et la plupart endettés, qui tirent du sol tout ce qu’il peut rendre, en rançonnant les paysans non pas par la force brutale mais par la concurrence effrénée de ces malheureux, toujours prêts à promettre plus que la terre ne produit. Depuis longtemps ce fléau est signalé à l’opinion publique: les Anglais reconnaissent le mal, ils désirent y remédier, mais ils y ont toujours échoué devant leur propre incapacité politique et sociale; n’ayant d’autre idée d’amélioration générale que celle de faire entrer tous les pays dans le système anglais, tant politique qu’industriel, tandis que ce système est tout à fait impropre à l’Irlande. C’est un grand malheur pour l’Irlande que de se trouver sous la domination d’un pays tout exceptionnel, et dont les principes ne sont en toute chose que la généralisation de l’exception, tandis qu’elle appartient, elle, au type normal européen, et que ce sont des idées continentales qu’il lui faut. Pour tout autre penseur qu’un anglais, le remède est clair, c’est le système de la petite propriété convenablement modifiée. Il faudrait assurer aux propriétaires actuels, en rente fixe, le revenu net de leurs terres, en laissant la terre elle même à la disposition absolue des cultivateurs. Avec cela on aurait probablement en peu de temps, une production triple ou quadruple de celle d’aujourd’hui, et une population aussi laborieuse, aussi prévoyante, et aussi indépendant que les paysans français. Or, les anglais ne comprennent rien à ce système; ceux qui croient en savoir quelque chose, et c’est le plus petit nombre, sont remplis des idées les plus fausses. Ils n’ont jamais pu concevoir d’autre amélioration en Irlande que d’en faire une autre angleterre, c. à d. un pays à grande culture, avec une population de laboureurs salariés. Or, sans rien préjuger sur l’avenir lointain de l’humanité, il est certain qu’aujourd’hui en Irlande ce système-là ne vaut rien. En le supposant même possible avec le caractère Irlandais, il entraînerait la suppression de la presque moitié de la population ouvrière actuelle. Ne pouvant donc pas réaliser cette heureuse idée, que fait-on? On jette à l’Irlande une loi des pauvres. On décrète que la population ouvrière tout entière vivra d’aumône. On lui promet au moins que tous les indigens auront de l’aumône autant qu’il leur en faut, et les indigens c’est toute la population agricole.

Pour moi je ne vois de cette loi d’autre résultat probable pour l’Irlande que celui de réduire tout le monde au niveau de la misère générale, après quoi je m’attends à une dissolution sociale complète. Lorsqu’on aura passé par d’affreux malheurs, il faudra procéder à la reconstitution de la société, du sein d’une désorganisation totale, sans une idée constructive quelconque, et après avoir fait prendre au peuple des mœurs essentiellement anarchiques, car je ne connais pas de gouvernement possible là où la majorité a pris l’habitude de demander à grands cris la subsistance et le bonheur aux autres au lieu de les chercher par elle-même. Certes, on n’a pas eu de pareilles idées en 1793, et on n’a aujourd’hui chez les communistes rien d’aussi profondément anti-social. Ce qui en sortira, impossible de prévoir. J’y vois pour seule consolation, une réaction certaine contre le système du gouvernement charitable. On aura une grande preuve expérimentale de cette vérité qu’on ne peut pas traiter l’ouvrier comme on traite le bétail, c. à d. le faire travailler pour les autres en lui donnant une bonne nourriture et un bon gîte. Cela n’était possible que lorsqu’on y ajoutait le fouet. On ne peut pas plus en industrie qu’en autre chose, faire marcher l’ancien système en lui ôtant l’un après l’autre tous ses moyens d’action.

tout à vous

J. S. Mill

505.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

• India House

16th June 1847

My dear Hickson

I send you a short review of a political economy treatise—written by my youngest sister,2 who is a student in political economy and who wishes to take the chance of your thinking the paper fit for insertion. It is the first attempt of a beginner in writing for the press & you will not therefore expect anything very brilliant. I am able to countersign the political economy of the article. In other respects & indeed in all respects you will of course exercise your own judgement. The writer has no such great opinion of her own performance as to be astonished at a decision in the negative, but I do not think the paper will do you any discredit, or I would not have undertaken to propose it to you.

ever your truly,

J. S. Mill

506.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK1

• India House

Wed^y
[June? 1847]

My dear Chadwick

After much consideration I have come to the decision that my best course will be to sell the certificates if I can get 20 per cent for them. But I do not know how to effect this unless you will kindly manage it for me. If you would have no objection to ask your correspondent to dispose of £6000 more of the certificates, if it can be done on the same terms as yours, you would confer an obligation on me & I would in that case send you the certificates in time to be sent over by the packet on the 4^th.

I have found the printed Case & I will give it my best attention.

ever truly yours

J. S. Mill

507.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK1

• I.H.

Friday
[June? 1847]

My dear Chadwick

I have read this letter2 carefully through twice & I have nothing to suggest for the improvement of it except the correction of numerous clerical errors—these I have either corrected in pencil, or made a mark opposite to them when I was unable to supply the correction.

I should have returned it sooner, but not having had a pencil with me when I first read it, I waited till I had time to read it again.

ever truly yours

J. S. Mill

Such a letter ought to satisfy any statesman of his good fortune in having the writer of it at his disposal—but whether any of these men have sufficient brains to appreciate brains in another, remains questionable.

508.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK1

• Kensington

Saturday
[June 19, 1847]

My dear Chadwick

You have a most powerful case in your own defence & against the Commissioners—reinforced with great effect by Tufnell’s letter.2 There are only two things which I can suggest: first, that you should dwell more on the point which Lord J. R. the other day laid almost exclusive stress upon as an accusation against you. viz. your telling the Ass^t Com^rs that their representations of abuses would be far from welcome3 (N.B. I have no doubt you told them in that respect the exact truth) & secondly a careful revision of the composition. The long paper4 in particular is full of unfinished & ill constructed (sometimes ungrammatical) sentences—this is evidently owing in many cases, but not always, to incorrect copying.

I am extremely obliged both to you & to Mrs Chadwick’s relation for your kindness about the certificates.5 With regard to the power of attorney, as some of the certificates belong not to me but to my sisters, do you suppose they must all give powers of attorney (which would be difficult, they are so scattered, & some of them out of England) or is it sufficient that I, being empowered though not formally, by them to dispose of their certificates, should give a single power of attorney for the whole lot?

As I suppose you went through the same formalities in your own case, you can also tell me in what manner the Lord Mayor is to attest the power. The letter you sent me is worded as if the Lord Mayor had personally to appear before the Consul.

yours ever truly

J. S. Mill

509.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK1

• I.H.

Friday
[June or July?, 1847]

My dear Chadwick

Many thanks. I will do as you direct.

I have received the Settlement Evidence2 & have read a great part of yours with pleasure & admiration. It will be of much use to me. I differ from you as yet only on one (not fundamental) point.

Yours

J. S. Mill

510.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK1

• Kensington

Monday evg.
[Aug. 20, 1847]

My dear Chadwick—

The enclosed speaks for itself & I have written it on a separate paper that it may more conveniently be sent to Mr. Stuart2 if you see no objection. I should have spoken to you about it when I saw you, as well as renewed my thanks to you & Mrs Chadwick, if I had found you alone—but you will easily understand that I did not wish to admit any other persons to unnecessary confidences on my money affairs or those of my relations.

ever your most obliged

J. S. Mill.

511.

TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER1

[Summer?, 1847]

My dear Sir

I write this note to introduce to you Miss Hall,2 who being unacquainted with the name of the present editor of Fraser’s Magazine but understanding that you are now the publisher, is desirous of addressing herself to you on the subject of a contribution to the Magazine. I was well acquainted with her mother, the late Mrs. Hall, for whom I had a great respect & who had contributed several things to Fraser’s Magazine in the time of Dr. Maginn.

Very truly yours

J. S. Mill

512.

TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER1

• India House

27^th October
1847

My dear Sir

When I wrote to you hastily the other day about the Political Economy proposing that the conditions of our agreement should be the same as for the Logic, I had not referred to the agreement itself, & I did not know what I find to be the fact, that our engagement for the Logic was for all future editions. In the present case I do not wish to bind myself for the future, but to engage only for one edition, leaving the question entirely open as to future editions in case they should be wanted. This is the more reasonable, as there cannot this time be any considerable risk of loss, since the present book being on a popular subject is pretty sure to sell as many copies as will pay its expenses. It would probably be much more to my advantage to publish the Political Economy on my own account, which I am quite ready & disposed to do, if the publication of a single edition at half profit should not be agreeable to you.

Believe me
Very truly yours

J. S. Mill

513.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

• India House

15 Nov. 1847

My dear Hickson

To enable me to make up my mind decidedly on the question of resuming the Westminster or not, it would be necessary for me to know exactly the position & circumstances of the review. & in particular 1st the Average N^o of copies sold. 2nd the annual expenses 3rd what replies per number it affords on the average for the payment of contributors.

If I had this information I could very speedily give you an answer.

Yours ever truly

J. S. Mill

514.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK1

• India House

19 Nov. 1847

My dear Chadwick

It would be great injustice to this article2 to compare it with the review of the same book by Croker in the Quarterly,3 but I am still more sorry to read it because its evident honesty and carefulness will make it a great deal more mischievous.

What I thought about Rubichon’s book I have said in the Morning Chronicle of the 9^th, 11^th, 13^th & 16^th of last January.4 It is I think right that the author of the article should see those papers, & should be aware of the facts & books there cited.

He will easily detect one error in the second article of the Chronicle, into which the Quarterly reviewer misled me. But it does not touch the main question.

I have acquired some additional facts of importance since that time: among others the last Census of the French population. I strongly recommend to the writer of the article M. Legoyt’s paper on the Census, in the Journal des Economistes for March & May last.5 He will there find among other things that for the last quarter of a century the number of births has been stationary, & that the population is regularly though slowly increasing solely by diminution of the number of deaths, which is less in each quinquennial period. I ask any one whether that could be the case if M. Rubichon’s representation of the state & tendency of things in France were true.

Ever truly yours

J. S. Mill.

515.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK1

[Dec.?, 1847]

My dear Chadwick

I have mislaid Mr Stuart’s2 address & as I do not know if a letter addressed simply “Liverpool” would reach him, will you kindly fill up the address of the inclosed & send it to the post with your own letters. It is to inform him that the bill he remitted has been duly paid

I congratulate you on the immediate success of your first recommendation to the Govt.3 It looks promising & like people in earnest

most truly yours

J. S. Mill

516.

TO ROBERT BARCLAY FOX1

• India House

6^th Dec^r 1847

My dear Barclay

I could almost reproach you for having thought it necessary to ask me whether I agree in the sentiments expressed in your letter. They are to me part of my daily bread, & I have expressed them in the book you allude to (which is on the point of going to press) not as things in any way disputable, or requiring to be asserted, but as things undeniable by anybody who has the smallest capacity for speculating on the future. Such people however are miserably few, or we should not see the wretched attempts of newspaper writers at this very moment to persuade the English people that London will be sacked by the French if they don’t protect it by a militia of 180,000 men & batteries all along the coast.2 Such things are enough to drive one mad.

I am very happy that you still think of me sometimes. Pray give my kindest regards & Clara’s to our friends at Falmouth. My other sisters are all away. Ferraboschi3 is Jane’s name. It is an Italian name, not a Slavonic.

Have you heard of the forthcoming reprint of some of Sterling’s writings?4 It is coming out with a kindly & graceful biographical introduction by Archdeacon Hare,5 full of interesting extracts from his letters—doing justice to Sterling & mildly commenting on his heterodoxy—

Yours affectionately

J. S. Mill

517.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

• India House

Monday
[Dec. 6, 1847]

My dear Hickson

I have just received some slips of your article2 which I will read carefully. I do not know anywhere of any full discussion of the difference between the rate of interest & the value of the circulating medium. Writers have generally supposed that it may be sufficient to point out the ambiguity & have noticed it as Tooke does in chap. 13 of his “Inquiry into the Currency Principle.”3 I have gone a little more into it in my forthcoming book.4

yours ever

J. S. Mill

518.

TO J. F. MOLLETT1

[Dec., 1847]

Sir—

I have much pleasure in enclosing a subscription towards the testimonial to Mr. Lovett,2 whom I respect as the chief among that portion of the Chartists who make the improvement of the working classes as much an object as their emancipation, & who are free from the reproach commonly made against democrats of desiring to bring political franchises down to their own level but no further. By including the political equality of women among their principles they shew that their object is the general good & not merely their own.

In expressing however my concurrence in the purpose3 [interlined] of the circular you have addressed to me, may I be allowed to declare my dissent from that portion of it in which a refusal to serve in the militia is put forward as a claim to admiration,4 as I regard such a refusal as one of the mistakes of youthful enthusiasm, & the mention of it as a blunder.5 I am Sir

yr obedient servant

JSM

I have handed the circular to such of my acquaintance as I thought likely to feel interested in the6 subscription.

519.

TO WILLIAM ELLIS1

[Dec., 1847]

Dear Ellis.

Have you seen the inclosed Circular? it may perhaps not have been sent to you, and has only been sent to me within the last few days.2 They do not seem to be taking any effectual means of making it known3

520.

TO J. F. MOLLETT1

30th December 1847

Sir,—

Your note of the 30th places Mr. Lovett’s refusal to serve in the militia2 in a different light from that in which I had considered it. Knowing nothing of the fact except from your circular, I had surmised that it might have been founded on such principles as those professed by the Peace Society,3 principles with which I wholly disagree, as, though I think it an effect of the progress of improvement to put an end to war, I regard war as an infinitely less evil than systematic submission to injustice.

With the principles on which it appears that Mr. Lovett really acted I have much more sympathy, though I do not think, to use your words, that “he would have been false to the principles he professed had he acted otherwise,” any more than I think him bound by those principles to refuse the payment of taxes. To resist a social system which one thinks wrong by disobeying the laws in detail must, I think, depend for its justification in each particular case on the circumstances and motives which dictated it; but if adopted and acted upon as a principle it would render government impossible under any institutions yet devised, since, in a democracy, minorities might claim and exercise the right of obstructing the execution of all laws which they disapproved.

[1. ]MS in Trinity College Library, Cambridge. Undated, but MS has pencilled: 1847?

[1. ]Published in Letters of the Rt. Hon. Sir G. C. Lewis, Bart., ed. G. F. Lewis (London, 1870), pp. 153-54. MS not located.

[2. ]“Centralization,” ER, LXXXV (Jan., 1847), 221-58.

[1. ]Excerpts published in Bain, JSM, p. 87. MS not located.

[2. ]In his leading articles in the Morning Chronicle (see Letter 493).

[3. ]Lord John Russell, later first Earl Russell, was at this time Prime Minister.

[4. ][J. W. Croker], “Agriculture in France—Division of Property,” QR, LXXIX (Dec., 1846), 202-38. JSM published four, not three, articles: on Jan. 9, 11, 13, and 16 (see MacMinn, Bibliog., p. 67, and Letter 514).

[1. ]MS fragment in the possession of Co-operative Union Ltd., Holyoake House, Manchester. Published in Joseph McCabe, Life and Letters of George Jacob Holyoake (2 vols., London, 1908), II, p. 65.

Holyoake (1817-1906), self-styled “secularist,” bookseller, publisher of the Reasoner and other journals, and a leader in the development of the co-operative movement. In 1842 he had been imprisoned for blasphemy.

[2. ]The MS is so dated in another hand. In view of Mrs. Taylor’s discussion of Holyoake, the Reasoner, and morality in her letter to JSM of July 25, 1848 (Hayek, pp. 124-27), it has been suggested by Professor J. M. Robson that the date should be 1848.

[1. ]MS in the possession of Mrs. W. Rosenberg. Copy supplied by Professor J. M. McCrimmon.

[2. ]See Letter 493, n. 2.

[3. ]On Feb. 15, 1847.

[4. ]Sir Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, third Marquis of Lansdowne (1780-1863), then President of the Council under Lord John Russell, led the debate on the Irish Relief Bill on Feb. 15, 1847.

[5. ]March 24, 1847, was so appointed by proclamation that prayers might be made “for the removal of those heavy judgments which our manifold sins and provocations have most justly deserved, and with which Almighty God is pleased to visit the iniquities of this land, by a grievous scarcity and dearth of divers articles of sustenance and necessaries of life . . .” (Annual Register for 1847, “Chronicle,” p. 40).

[6. ]John Pemberton Plumptre (1807-1864), MP for East Kent, on Jan. 20, 1847, in the debate on the Address from the Throne, proposed the appointment of a general fast.

[7. ]See Letter 456, n. 2.

[8. ]Richard Cobden (1804-1865), leader of the agitation for the repeal of the Corn Laws achieved in 1846. From Aug. 5, 1846, to Oct. 11, 1847, Cobden travelled in Europe, preaching everywhere the gospel of free trade.

[9. ]Presumably the “Association pour la liberté des échanges,” founded in 1846, and supported by a number of JSM’s friends and acquaintances, including Michel Chevalier, Charles Dunoyer, and Horace Say (see Journal des Economistes, Sept.-Dec., 1846 and Jan., 1847).

[10. ]Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti (1792-1878), became Pope Pius IX in 1846.

[11. ]Giovanni Vincenzo (or Lorenzo) Ganganelli (1705-1774), Pope Clement XIV from 1769 to 1774, dissolved the Jesuit order in 1773; the story that he was poisoned by the Jesuits has been generally discredited.

[12. ]Daniel O’Connell had made his last speech in the House of Commons in Feb. and had gone to the Continent for his health; he died on May 15, 1847.

[1. ]Published in Bain, JSM, p. 87. MS not located. Dated by reference to Whately’s speech.

[2. ]On March 26, 1847, in opposition to a motion for a select committee on Irish Poor Laws; the substance of it was published as App. D in his Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (4th ed., London, 1855).

[3. ]“Telle est notre condition, qu’il ne nous est point permis d’arriver tout d’un coup à rien de raisonnable sur quelque matière que ce soit; il faut avant cela que nous nous égarions long-temps, et que nous passions par diverses sortes d’erreurs et par divers degrés d’impertinences” (“Digression sur Les Anciens et Les Modernes” in Œuvres de Fontenelle [Paris, 1790], V, 287).

[1. ]Published with errors and omissions in Elliot, I, 128-33. MS draft is in the possession of Dr. James M. Osborn of Yale University; a MS fragment of the draft is at LSE (see n. 8, 10, below).

[2. ]An unheaded leading article on Austin’s article “Centralization” (see Letter 496, n. 2) in Morning Chronicle, Feb. 6, 1847, pp. 4-5.

[3. ]Guizot had broken faith with the British in the affair of the Spanish marriages; by intrigue Queen Isabella II and her sister were induced to marry in 1846 descendants of the French Bourbons.

[4. ]At this point the following passage has been deleted from the draft: “English politicians have generally low objects, & reserve any conscience & dignity they may have, for the choice of means, while Frenchmen I think have oftener aims that one can call elevated but are much more unscrupulous in their expedients, a combination made quite intelligible on a grander scale, by Machiavelli & the Italian [patriots ?] of the Middle Ages.”

[5. ]See Letter 304, n. 8.

[6. ]Comte’s letter of Dec. 18, 1845 (Lévy-Bruhl, pp. 482-98). JSM’s memory here seems not to have been very accurate; most readers would regard Comte’s letter as one long reproach (cf. especially Lévy-Bruhl, p. 495).

[7. ]The remainder of the sentence has been deleted: “& still less in his attempt to impose its obligations on persons who do not admit it, who were in no respect his disciples nor in any other intellectual relation to him than to any other thinker of any eminence with some of whose opinions they agreed.”

[8. ]This paragraph in the draft fragment at LSE is labelled: (A).

[9. ]At this point the following sentences have been deleted in the draft: “But it is discouraging to see how short a time any such impression lasts. In 1834 much ground seems to have been gained [by the adoption of the Poor Law of that year] but how quickly it has all been lost.”

[10. ]This paragraph, not included by Elliot, is labelled (B) in the draft fragment at LSE and crossed through with a red line (Elliot’s usual method of indicating a deletion in a MS). The paragraph was written to replace the deleted sentences quoted in n. 9.

[1. ]Excerpt published in Bain, JSM, p. 88. MS not located. Bracketed portion is Bain’s introduction to the excerpt.

[1. ]MS at the Huntington Library.

[1. ]Addressed: A Monsieur / M. Auguste Comte / Rue M. le Prince / près l’Odéon / à Paris. MS at Johns Hopkins. Published in Lévy-Bruhl, pp. 548-53.

[1. ]MS at the Huntington Library.

[2. ]Mary Elizabeth Mill.

[1. ]MS at UCL. Paper bears watermark 1847. The financial transaction discussed here probably concerned the sale of some of JSM’s and his sisters’ holdings in devalued bonds of some American State governments (see Letter 508).

[1. ]MS at UCL. Endorsed in another hand: “Poor Law Correspondence on matters of E. C.” Paper watermarked, 1847.

[2. ]Probably one of the several Vindicating Letters which Chadwick submitted to the ministry in June of 1847 defending his record as Secretary of the Poor Law Commission against the charges of the commissioners. For the full story of the Andover “scandal,” of 1846 and the parliamentary struggle over the revision of the Poor Law Amendment Bill of June, 1847, see S. E. Finer, The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (London, 1952), pp. 243-91. Chadwick lost his position but was immediately given an appointment in charge of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into London sanitation.

[1. ]MS at UCL Endorsed in another hand: “1847? on E.C. Evidence before Andover Committee,” but internal evidence (see n. 3 below) indicates the period of the June, 1847, debate on the Poor Law Amendment Bill (see preceding letter, n. 2).

[2. ]Edward Carleton Tufnell (1806-1886), Assistant Commissioner of Poor Laws (1835-74). Tufnell on May 28, 1847, had written Chadwick a letter supporting the latter’s charges against the Poor Law commissioners (see Finer, Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick, p. 245). Chadwick circulated the letter widely.

[3. ]In the debate on the Poor Law Amendment Bill on June 17 Lord John Russell criticized Chadwick sharply: “I say that [his] practice of telling assistant commissioners that if they made complaints they would be regarded with displeasure, I do call that undermining the Commissioners appointed to carry out the Poor Law Act” (The Times, Friday, June 18, 1847, p. 3).

[4. ]Probably Chadwick’s major Vindicating Letter, described by Finer, Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (p. 290) as “a massive manuscript dossier of some sixty pages, together with six documentary appendices.”

[5. ]See Letter 506.

[1. ]MS at UCL. Endorsed in another hand: 1847 / On reading Settlement Evidence.

[2. ]See Parliamentary Papers, 1847, XI, The Select Committee on Settlement and Removal, which contains evidence given by Chadwick in March, 1847. The settlement laws dealt with changes of residence by paupers as affecting their eligibility for relief.

[1. ]MS at UCL. Addressed: Edwin Chadwick Esq / Gwydyr House / Whitehall / and marked private. Postmark: AU 20 18?7.

Presumably refers to the financial transactions discussed in Letters 506, 508, and 515.

[2. ]Identified only as William Stuart of Liverpool, evidently an agent in the financial transactions.

[1. ]MS at Pierpont Morgan Library. Parker’s name does not appear on the letter; he had been JSM’s publisher since 1843. Parker took over the publication of Fraser’s beginning with Vol. XXXVI (July to Dec., 1847) from G. W. Nickisson, who published it from Jan., 1842 to June, 1847. The letter is undated, but the paper is watermarked 1847.

[2. ]Not otherwise identified than as the daughter of Robert Hall, MD (1763-1824), explorer and writer on scientific subjects, and Agnes C. Hall (1777-1846), translator, novelist, and contributor to various periodicals, including Fraser’s.

[1. ]MS in the Cornell University Library.

[1. ]MS in the possession of Miss D. Hickson, Claremont, Hove, Sussex, in 1944.

[1. ]MS at UCL.

[2. ]Unidentified.

[3. ]See Letter 497, n. 4.

[4. ]Ibid. The book reviewed by Croker was De l’Agriculture en France. . . . Par M. L. Mounier avec des Remarques par M. [Maurice] Rubichon (2 vols., Paris, 1846).

[5. ]Alfred Legoyt, “Recensement de la population de la France en 1846 . . .” Journal des Economistes, XVI (March, 1847), 337-46, and XVII (May, 1847), 169-94.

[1. ]MS at UCL. Note in another hand: “John Mill / 1847?” Dated by reference in second paragraph.

[2. ]There is in the Chadwick papers at UCL the following receipt dated Oct. 29, 1847, and signed by JSM: “Received from Edwin Chadwick Esq. the three bills of exchange mentioned in a letter from William Stuart Esq. Liverpool, dated 28th October 1847.”

[3. ]Probably refers to the government’s acceptance of the recommendation made by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into London sanitation to which Chadwick had been appointed in Aug. On Nov. 30, 1847, coincidental with the publication of the first report of the Commission, six of the London commissions of sewers were superseded and a new, central Metropolitan Commission of Sewers was established (see The Times for Dec. 2 (p. 4) and 3 (p. 6), 1847, and Finer, Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick, pp. 316-17).

[1. ]MS in the possession of Mr. W. H. Browning.

[2. ]A furore had arisen over the state of the nation’s defences, partly because of the publication on Nov. 29 in the Morning Chronicle of part of a letter of Jan. 9, 1847, by the Duke of Wellington to Sir John Burgoyne, sharply critical of the coastal defences. The Examiner later printed the whole letter (Jan. 8, 1848, p. 25). See also Sir Herbert Maxwell, The Life of Wellington (2 vols., London, 1899), II, 361-64.

[3. ]Jane Stuart Mill had married Marcus Paul Ferraboschi on Sept. 28, 1847.

[4. ]John Sterling, Essays and Tales, collected and edited, with a Memoir of his Life, by J. C. Hare (2 vols., London, 1848).

[5. ]Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855), archdeacon of Lewes; Sterling had been his curate at Hurstmonceaux, 1834-35.

[1. ]MS at the Huntington Library.

[2. ]Presumably the article “History and Exposition of the Currency Question,” WR, XLVIII (Jan., 1848), 448-82.

[3. ]Thomas Tooke, An Inquiry into the Currency Principle (London, 1844).

[4. ]Principles of Political Economy, Book III, chaps. viii and xxiii.

[1. ]Addressed: J. F. Mollett / 27 Nelson Terrace / Stoke Newington. MS draft on folio 32v of the MS of JSM’s Political Economy (the press copy of the first [1848] edition), at the Pierpont Morgan Library. This draft is written over another, pencilled draft of the same letter. The existence of this and the following letter was called to the attention of the editor by Professor J. M. Robson.

J. F. Mollett, identified only as a friend and associate of the Chartist leader William Lovett (see his Life and Struggles of William Lovett [London, 1876], p. 333). Letter 520 is clearly in reply to Mollett’s answer to this letter.

[2. ]Early in the following year Lovett was presented with a public testimonial at the National Hall along with a silver tea-service and a purse of 140 sovereigns (see Lovett, Life).

[3. ]Substituted for object.

[4. ]Lovett had long been an opponent of compulsory military service. In 1831 upon his refusal to serve or provide a substitute some of his household goods had been confiscated (see Lovett, Life, pp. 65-67).

[5. ]This paragraph is a revision of a preceding paragraph of the draft, which reads as follows: If I may be allowed to remark on the contents of the circular you have addressed to me I shd. say that I shd be sorry to [see my name following cancelled] give any countenance which my name might afford to [the cancelled] a refus.

[6. ]The following words, “purpose of it,” have been cancelled.

[1. ]MS draft on folio 33V of the MS of JSM’s Political Economy (see preceding letter, n. 1) at the Pierpont Morgan Library. From its position in the MS of the Political Economy and from its content, the inference seems valid that it refers to the subscription for William Lovett.

William Ellis (1800-1881), economist, insurance executive, and educational reformer and philanthropist. He had been a member of JSM’s Utilitarian Society, 1823-26.

[2. ]This sentence replaces the following cancelled words: As it has only been sent to me within the last few days.

[3. ]The draft bears no signature.

[1. ]Published in Elliot, I, 133-34. MS at Leeds. Evidently a reply to Mollett’s answer to Letter 518.

[2. ]See Letter 518, n. 4.

[3. ]The Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace, usually known as the London Peace Society, founded in 1816 by William Allen (1770-1843), friend of James Mill (see Christina Phelps, The Anglo-American Peace Movement in the Mid-Nineteenth Century [New York, 1930], pp. 37, 43-44).