The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface
• Introduction
• Abbreviations and Short Titles
• The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-1855
• 1849
• 1850
• 1851
• 1852
• 1853
• 1854
• 1855

1850

21.

TO DR. JOHN FORBES ROYLE1

• Ex[aminer’s] Off[ice]

Friday [1850?]

Dear Dr Royle—

I am very sorry to hear of your feverish attack. I suspect there is something in the state of the air very favorable to such attacks where other causes cooperate such as those which have been affecting you. Many thanks for the trouble you have taken about Webb.2 It will be fortunate for me if Mr Wilson Saunders3 has soon done with it.

I have made a few pencil marks on this (rather important) sheet but they are of a very trifling character.

yours ever

J. S. Mill

21A.

TO DR. JOHN FORBES ROYLE1

• I[ndia] H[ouse]

Thursday [1850?]

Dear D^rRoyle—

on arriving this morning I found quite unexpectedly the volume of Webb2 —for which I am extremely obliged to you. It will be of great use to me & I only wish there were more of it. I am on the whole glad that I have not had it until I had gone through the families contained in it, as one ought to use such books to verify rather than to supersede the regular mode of determining plants.

I hope you continue improving & that you will soon be about again. The interruption to all that you were engaged in was most vexatious—but this illness, brought on by overwork, must be used as an additional reason for making a stand against your present position

ever truly yours

J. S. Mill

22.

TO DR. JOHN FORBES ROYLE1

• I[ndia] H[ouse]

Thursday [1850]

Dear D^rRoyle—

I am very sorry that you are not yet recovered from your attack. You will see on this sheet some queries of mine in pencil & some alterations by Prideaux2 in ink—but as I have told him, I think his alteration in p. 450 proceeds on a misconception of your meaning—which however will be of use as shewing some want of clearness in the expression.3 What he has inserted, too, is very much to the purpose, though what I think you meant, is still more so.

Yours (in haste)

J. S. Mill

23.

TO HARRIET TAYLOR1

[1850?]

Thanks dearest dearest angel for the note—what it contained was a really important addition to the letter2 & I have put it in nearly in your words, which as your impromptu words almost always are, were a hundred times better than any I could find by study. What a perfect orator you would make—& what changes might be made in the world by such a one, with such opportunities as thousands of male dunces have. But you are to me, & would be to any one who knew you, the type of Intellect—because you have all the faculties in equal perfection—you can both think, & impress the thought on others—& can both judge what ought to be done, & do it. As for me, nothing but the division of labour could make me useful—if there were not others with the capacities of intellect which I have not, where would be the use of them I have—I am but fit to be one wheel in an engine not to be the self moving engine itself—a real majestic intellect, not to say moral nature, like yours, I can only look up to & admire—but while you can love me as you so sweetly & so beautifully shewed in that hour yesterday, I have all I care for or desire for myself—& wish for nothing except not to disappoint you—& to be so happy as to be some good to you (who are all good to me) before I die. This is a graver note than I thought it would be when I began it—for the influence of that dear little hour has kept me in spirits ever since—thanks to my one only source of good.

24.

TO EDWARD HERFORD1

• India House

22^d January
1850.

Sir—

I have to acknowledge your communication of January 9^th inclosing a statement of the principles & objects of a proposed Association, which you do me the honour of wishing that I should join, & inviting me to communicate any observations which the paper suggests to me.

In some of the objects of the Address, & in some of the doctrines laid down in it, there is much that I agree with. But the question is, I think, more complicated than the writer seems to consider it. The present mode of legal relief to the destitute2 was not adopted on any such absurd ground as that “it is better that the unemployed should be idle than usefully employed,” or better that the funds expended in supporting them should be consumed without a return, than with a return. The “principle” acted on was that by selecting employment for paupers with reference to its suitableness as a test for destitution, rather than to its productiveness, it was possible to make the conditions of relief sufficiently undesirable, to prevent its acceptance by any who could find private employment. But if the state, or the parish, provides ordinary work at ordinary wages for all the unemployed, the work so provided cannot be made less desirable, & can scarcely be prevented from being more desirable, than any other employment. It would therefore become necessary either that the state should arbitrarily limit its operations (in which case no material advantage would arise from their having been commenced) or that it should be willing to take the whole productive industry of the country under the direction of its own officers.

You will perhaps say that these consequences could only arise if the work required in exchange for public pay were (as it usually has been) merely nominal; & that you rely, for preventing such a consummation, on the principle on which you justly lay so much stress, that of payment proportionate to the work done. I confess I have no confidence that this principle could be so applied as to have the effect intended. It was tried (as I have understood) in the Irish Relief Works3 & in the Ateliers Nationaux4 at Paris, & with the result which might be expected—viz. that if the rate of payment by the piece was sufficiently liberal not to overtask the feeble and unskilful, it enabled the strong & experienced workman to earn so much with perfect ease, that all other employment was rapidly deserted for that held out by the public.

My own opinion is that when productive employment can be claimed by every one from the public as a right, it can only be rendered undesirable by being made virtually slave labour; & I therefore deprecate the enforcement of such a right, until society is prepared to adopt the other side of the alternative, that of making the production & distribution of wealth a public concern. I think it probable that to this, in some form (though I would not undertake to say in what) the world will come, but not without other great changes—certainly not in a society composed like the present, of rich & poor; in which the direction of industry by a public authority would be only substituting a combination of rich men, armed with coercive power, for the competition of individual capitalists.

At present I expect very little from any plans which aim at improving even the economical state of the people by purely economical or political means. We have come, I think, to a period, when progress, even of a political kind, is coming to a halt, by reason of the low intellectual & moral state of all classes: of the rich as much as of the poorer classes. Great improvements in Education (among the first of which I reckon, dissevering it from bad religion) are the only thing to which I should look for permanent good. For example, the objects of your Association, & those of the promoters of Emigration, even if they could be successful in putting an end to indigence, would do no more than push off to another generation the necessity of adopting a sounder morality on the subject of overpopulation—which sounder morality, even if it were not necessary to prevent the evils of poverty, would equally be requisite in order to put an end to the slavery to which the existing state of things condemns women; a greater object, in my estimation, both in itself & in its tendencies, than the mere physical existence either of women or men. I am sorry to see in your Circular the ignorant & immoral doctrine that the “separation”5 enforced in the workhouse is among the sources of “degradation” & diminished “self-respect” for the pauper. I consider it an essential part of the moral training, which, in many ways (but in none more important) the reception of public relief affords an opportunity of administering: & the improvement of which would be a reform in Poor Law management, better worth aiming at, I think, than that which you propose.

I am Sir yr ob^t Serv^t

J. S. Mill

Edw. Herford Esq

• Town Hall
• Manchester

25.

TO EDWARD HERFORD1

• India House

1^st Feb^y 1850

Sir—

I am sensible of the compliment paid to me by the promoters of the “Poor Law Reform Association” in their willingness to make some modifications in the terms of their Address if I should thus be enabled to concur in it. But my differences from them are too wide to admit of cooperation. My objection is not founded on any mischief which I expect from the practical recommendations in the Address, but on what seems to me the merely superficial character of everything that it professes or contemplates. The plan will, I conceive, have no effect at all on the permanent & hereditary paupers, who form the great mass of the pauperism of the country. Manufacturing operatives are, as you say, often thrown out of employment in great numbers at once, by the vicissitudes of trade, & to find the means during such intervals, of employing them so as to reproduce their subsistence, would be a useful thing doubtless, but I cannot think that it would amount to any social reform; it seems to me more the concern of the ratepayers than of any one else. Of course I make no objection to considering & discussing the means of doing this, but it is not a thing in which I feel called upon to take a part.

It is not necessary that I should comment on the many things in your letter with which I entirely disagree; I will merely observe on a matter of fact, that though I am aware that piece work was not the original principle either of the Irish relief works or of the ateliers nationaux,2 I have a most distinct recollection that in one or other, & I believe in both, it was had recourse to on failure of the original plans, & with the effects which I mentioned.

I am Sir
yours truly

J. S. Mill

Edward Herford Esq.

26.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

• India House

Tuesday [Feb. 12, 1850]

My dear Hickson

By an odd coincidence I have no sooner sent you Thornton’s article2 than I have to send you another proposition from another new contributor. Stephen Spring Rice3 (the eldest son of Lord Monteagle) has written a paper “On the study of Irish History” which he would like to publish in the Westminster4 and has requested me to ask you to write a line to him saying whether you are willing to take it into consideration. He is a practical & lively writer & has a great deal to say, worth attending to, on Irish subjects. His address is the Custom House (he being a Commissioner). He does not know where to send the article, but this he will probably learn from yourself.

Yours faithfully

J. S. Mill.

27.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

• India House

Thursday [February 14, 1850]

My dear Hickson

I cannot say what the opinions in the article on Ireland2 are, as I have not seen it—I know however that Mr. Spring Rice is of the same opinion with me about the Irish Poor Law3 and not disinclined to peasant properties.

Thornton’s address is:

W. T. Thornton Esq

• India House

Yours faithfully

J. S. Mill

28.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

• India House

19th March
1850

Dear Hickson

I did not intend absolutely to pledge myself to an article for the West^r on the subject you proposed. I should not be disposed to undertake an article limited to the question of divorce. I should treat that as only one point in a much more extensive subject—the entire position which present laws & customs have made for women. My opinions on the whole subject are so totally opposed to the reigning notions, that it would probably be inexpedient to express all of them & I must consider whether the portion of them which the state of existing opinion would make it advisable to express, would be sufficient to make the undertaking a suitable or satisfactory one to me. To decide this I must turn over the subject in my mind for some little time.2

When I have made up my mind I will write again—in the meantime you must not count on me for the July number.

If I decide to undertake it I shall either not accept the pay, or employ it in some mode which will further the objects of the article.

Yours faithfully

J. S. Mill

29.

TO AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN1

• India House

21 July 1850

Dear Sir—

Many thanks for your paper,2 which I shall read with the same care as I have read your larger treatise.3 If you will send here the copy which you destine for Mr Ballantyne4 I think I can get it put into the Company’s packet.

Very truly yours

J. S. Mill

30.

TO HARRIET TAYLOR1

[After Oct. 29, 1850]

You will tell me my own dearest dearest love, what has made you out of spirits. I have been put in spirits by what I think will put you in spirits too—you know some time ago there was a Convention of Women in Ohio to claim equal rights2 —(& there is to be another in May)3 well, there has just been a Convention for the same purpose in Massachusetts4 —chiefly of women, but with a great number of men, including the chief slavery abolitionists Garrison,5 Wendell Phillips,6 the negro Douglas7 &c. The New York Tribune contains a long report8 —most of the speakers are women—& I never remember any public meetings or agitation comparable to it in the proportion which good sense bears to nonsense—while as to tone it is almost like ourselves speaking—outspoken like America, not frightened & servile like England—not the least iota of compromise—asserting the whole of the principle & claiming the whole of the consequences, without any of the little feminine concessions and reserves—the thing will evidently not drop, but will go on till it succeeds, & I really do now think that we have a good chance of living to see something decisive really accomplished on that of all practical subjects the most important—to see that will be really looking down from Pisgah on the promised land—how little I thought we should ever see it.

The days seem always short to me as they pass. The time that seems long, the time that I am often impatient of the length of, is the time till spring9 —the time till we have a home, till we are together in our life instead of this unsatisfactory this depressing coming and going, in which all disagreeables have so much more power than belongs to them, & the atmosphere of happiness has not time to penetrate & pervade in the way I know so well even by the most imperfect experience & which then it will always—

31.

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL1

• India House

19^th November 1850

Sir—

I am not sure that I perceive precisely what is the point on which you ask for a more distinct statement of my opinion.2 If it be this—whether the social arrangements by which the possessors of capital are able to appropriate to themselves the whole excess of the production above the outlay, are good arrangements & such as it is desirable should continue—I answer, no. But if the question be whether, those social arrangements remaining as they are, a capitalist is morally bound to give up to the workpeople whom he employs, all the profits of his capital, after deducting interest at the market rate, & the day-wages of his own labour (if any) my answer is, that I do not consider him to be under this obligation.

The economics of society may be grounded either on the principle of property or on that of community. The principle of property I understand to be, that what any individuals have earned by their own labour, and what the law permits them to be given to them by others, they are allowed to dispose of at pleasure, for their own use, & are not, as you seem to think, bound to hold it in trust for the public or for the poor. This is a great advance, both in justice & in utility, above the mere law of force, but far inferior to the law of community; & there is not & cannot be any reason against the immediate adoption of some form of this last, unless it be that mankind are not yet prepared for it.

But I do not therefore think it is the duty (though it may sometimes be praiseworthy) of conscientious persons who have earned or acquired property in the present imperfect social scheme, to distribute their surplus among the poor. To attempt to give all the reasons for this opinion would require a long ethical discussion: but to consider it only economically:—The rule of private property has at least the advantage, that it stimulates individuals to thrive by their own energies: under communism there would be a just division of exertion & of its fruits: but there is a tertium quid which would be worse than either—namely that those who had failed to exert themselves to thrive, should rely on having the difference made up to them, either in the form of gifts or of a tax, by those who have so thriven.

When you suggest the enforcement by law, if possible, on all capitalists, of this proposed abnegation of any profit beyond a moderate interest, you in fact propose to abolish the law of property “in its present form” (to repeat the words I used). I have no objection to that, but it has to be shewn if there is any halting place, short of communism. I am open to any lights on the subject; but the occasion was not suitable for entering into it before the Committee.3

I am sir
yours very truly

J. S. Mill

32.

TO WALTER COULSON1

I[ndia] H[ouse]. 22^d Nov. 1850

Dear Coulson

Since receiving your note I have read Mr Kingsley’s article.2 I think it an effective piece of controversial writing; & as against the Edinburgh Professor3 whom he attacks, he has the best of the argument. I agree with him that if farmers cannot cultivate with a profit under free trade the fault is in their own ignorance & indolence or the greediness of their landlords—& also that if farmers cannot or will not do it, peasant proprietors or cooperative villages can. If I could really think that free trade would break up the present system of landlords farmers & labourers for hire, I should think the repeal of the corn laws4 a far greater & more beneficial event than I have hitherto believed it.

In the imaginary dialogue between Common Sense & a Protectionist,5 there are several propositions of political economy which I think erroneous, 1^st, Corn laws make food dearer, but I do not agree in the proposition that they make it less plentiful. If, notwithstanding the higher price, the consumers are willing to buy the same quantity, the same quantity will be produced. 2^nd, I do not admit that cheap food makes other things cheap, since it does not diminish the cost of producing or importing other things. 3^rd. Neither do I think that the cheapening of food necessarily lowers wages. When it does so, it is only gradually, by giving a stimulus to population, unless there is already a surplus of unemployed labourers supported by charity. 4^thly. When the fall of wages comes (if it does come) I agree with the writer, that wages do not fall in proportion to the fall in the price of food; for the reason he gives, viz. that wages are not wholly spent on food, but partly on things which have not fallen; & for example if half the labourer’s expenditure consists of food, & food falls ten per cent, the utmost fall of wages which would ensue would be five per cent. But the writer seems to forget that by the hypothesis, a fall of five per cent in wages would be sufficient to deprive the labourer of all advantage from the fall of ten per cent in food; so that his argument proves nothing for his purpose.

On a subject which has been so much & so well discussed as the free trade question one has no right to require new ideas. There is an original idea in the article, but I am afraid it is an erroneous one. The writer says, that animals give back to the soil (when there is no waste of manure) all the material which they take from it in nutriment, & he thinks this proves that however much population might increase production would increase in the same ratio. I apprehend it only proves that the power of production needs never be exhausted, but not that it admits of indefinite increase. To make out his point he must maintain that the soil will yield a double produce on the application of a double quantity of manure. So far from this, it is well known that manuring beyond a certain amount injures the crop.

The remainder of the political economy of the article I agreed with, to the best of my remembrance—but much of the incidental matter I totally dissent from. It is not Mr K’s socialism6 that stands in the way of our agreement; I am far more a Socialist than he is. It is the old, not the new part of his opinions which forms the gulph between us. This very article talks of “the righteous judgments of one who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children.” To such a degree does religion or what is so called, pervert morality. How can morality be anything but the chaos it now is, when the ideas of right & wrong, just & unjust, must be wrenched into accordance either with the notions of a tribe of barbarians in a corner of Syria three thousand years ago, or with what is called the order of Providence; in other words, the course of nature, of which so great a part is tyranny & iniquity—all the things which are punished as the most atrocious crimes when done by human creatures, being the daily doings of nature through the whole range of organic life.

Mr K’s notions must be little less vague about my political economy than about my socialism when he couples my name7 with that of a mere tyro like H. Martineau.8

I am dear Coulson yours very truly

33.

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL1

• India House

27^th November 1850

Sir,

To answer the questions2 you put to me, even in their principal bearings, would be to write an Essay—& my whole time would hardly suffice to give satisfactory answers to all the questions I am asked by correspondents previously unknown to me. I may say briefly, that if an employer of labour felt bound to divide his profits justly, that is, on some principle of equality among all persons concerned, it is by no means certain that he would in the present state of society & education do a benefit to the individuals equivalent to his sacrifice—& still less certain that he could not, in some other manner, make the same amount of sacrifices instrumental to some greater good. These conditions at least seem to be necessary to make such conduct obligatory. I do not give this as a complete but only as an obvious answer.

With regard to the last point in your letter,3 I should be glad to see Leclaire’s system4 generally adopted, and should not object to it being made compulsory by law if I thought such a law could be executed: but the execution of it would require that the state should fix, not only the interest of capital (which it might do), but the wages of the labourers, the salary for superintendence, & the remuneration for risk of capital: & as these are variable elements, they could not be determined by law, but only by some officer pro hac vice. If the state is to exercise this power, it would be better in many respects, & probably not worse in any, that the state should take all the capital of the country, paying interest for it, & become itself the sole employer of labour, which would be communism.

I am Sir
Yours truly

J. S. Mill

[1. ]MS in the possession of Professor John M. Robson.

John Forbes Royle (1799-1858), botanist and teacher of materia medica; superintendent of the East India Company’s botanic garden in the Himalayas, 1823-31; professor of materia medica, King’s College, London, from 1837; from 1838, head of the East India Co. department of correspondence relating to vegetable productions; author of a number of works on the botany of India.

[2. ]Robert Holden Webb (1806-1880), rector of Essenden, Herts, till his death; author, with Rev. W. H. Coleman, of Flora Hertfordiensis; or, a Catalogue of Plants found in the County of Hertford . . . (2 pt., London, 1849; with supplements, 1852 and 1859).

[3. ]Probably William Wilson Saunders (1809-1879), underwriter at Lloyd’s; author of botanical and entomological works.

[1. ]MS in the possession of Professor John M. Robson. Watermark: 1849.

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

[1. ]MS in the possession of Professor Joseph Hamburger of Yale University.

[2. ]Francis William Prideaux, an assistant examiner in JSM’s department at the India House; later, Revenue Secretary in the India Office.

[3. ]JSM and Prideaux were presumably reading proofs of one of Royle’s books, probably his On the culture and commerce of cotton in India, and elsewhere; with an account of the experiments made by the Hon. East India Company up to the present time (London, 1851).

[1. ]MS at LSE. Published in Hayek, pp. 165-66.

[2. ]During this time, 1850-51, JSM published many letters and newspaper articles about various incidents of social injustice, which he often described in his notes as “A joint production” or “Very little of this was mine.” See MacMinn, Bibliog., pp. 72 ff.

[1. ]MS in the Osborn Collection, Yale; MS draft at Leeds. Published in the Constitutional, May 1, 1850, pp. 45-46, and, with omissions, in Elliot, I, 151-53.

Edward Herford (1815-1896), solicitor; coroner of Manchester, 1849-96; a founder and later (1861-63) president of the Manchester Statistical Society. Papers given by him are listed in T. S. Ashton, Economic and Social Investigations in Manchester, 1833-1933 (London, 1934), p. 170. He also established a cheap monthly magazine The Church of the People, 1853-68 (thereafter with varying titles to 1877). Herford had written to invite JSM to join a Poor Law Reform Association, formed with the support of Carlyle, Poulett-Scrope, and others, to combat the notion that enforced labour of paupers should be made as unproductive as possible.

[2. ]For a brief account of the principles of the Poor Law of 1834 and its actual operations, see E. L. Woodward, The Age of Reform, 1815-1870 (2nd ed., London, 1962), pp. 451-55.

[3. ]JSM’s understanding was correct; see R. Dudley Edwards and T. Desmond Williams, eds., The Great Famine (Dublin, 1956), p. 228, and Eric Strauss, Irish Nationalism and British Democracy (New York, 1951), p. 86.

[4. ]Ateliers nationaux (National Workshops) were proposed by Louis Blanc, in L’Organisation du Travail (Paris, 1839), and attempted by the French republican government between Feb. and July, 1848. See Donald C. McKay, The National Workshops (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), pp. 89-90.

[5. ]The segregation of the sexes.

[1. ]MS at Cornell. MS draft at Leeds. Published in Elliot, I, 154. A sequel to the letter of Jan. 22.

[2. ]See preceding Letter, n. 3 and n. 4.

[1. ]MS at Huntington.

[2. ]William Thomas Thornton (1813-1880), author; from 1836 an employee of the East India Co.; long a friend and adherent of JSM. He had thus far published: Over-Population and its Remedy . . . (London, 1845), and A Plea for Peasant Proprietors; with the Outlines of a Plan for their Establishment in Ireland (London, 1848). For JSM’s references to these volumes in Pol. Econ., see Principles, pp. 1148-49. The article by Thornton sent to Hickson may have been “Equity Reform,” WR, LIII (April, 1850), 100-12, signed T.

[3. ]Stephen Edmund Spring-Rice (1814-1865), later deputy chairman of the Board of Customs; son to Thomas Spring-Rice, first Baron Monteagle of Brandon.

[4. ]No such article appeared in WR.

[1. ]MS at Huntington.

[2. ]See preceding Letter.

[3. ]For JSM’s views on Irish Poor Laws see his unheaded leaders in the Morning Chronicle for Oct. 5 and 7, Nov. 3 and 9, Dec. 16 and 18, 1846, and March 17, 1847.

[1. ]MS at Huntington.

[2. ]For some time JSM had been urging Mrs Taylor to complete her projected paper on the disabilities of women (see Letter 6), and the article that appeared in the following year (“Enfranchisement of Women,” WR, LV [July, 1851], 289-311) was the result of their collaboration. During Harriet’s lifetime JSM led Hickson and others to believe that the article was his; when in 1859 he included it in his collected essays (Dissertations, Brit. ed. II, 411-49, Am. ed. III, 93-131), he attributed its authorship to her, “my share in it being little more than that of an editor and amanuensis.”

[1. ]MS at UCL.

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

[2. ]“On the Symbols of Logic, the Theory of the Syllogism, and in particular of the Copula, and the application of the Theory of Probability to some questions of Evidence,” read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society, Feb. 25, 1850, published in Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, IX (1850), 79-127, and reprinted in part in De Morgan, On the Syllogism and Other Logical Writings, ed. Peter Heath (New Haven, 1966), pp. 22-68.

[3. ]De Morgan’s Formal Logic; or, The Calculus of Inference, Necessary and Probable (London, 1847). See in Appendix of the present edition, JSM’s letters of May 10 and Sept. 13, 1847, to De Morgan. JSM’s use of De Morgan’s work may be seen in the Logic (8th ed.), I, 162n, 195n-196n, 198n, 238n, 275n; II, 128n, 387n.

[4. ]James Robert Ballantyne (1813-1864), orientalist, principal of college at Benares, 1845-61; author of Lectures on the Sub-division of Knowledge (3 pts., 1848-49); librarian of the India Office Library, London, 1861-64.

[1. ]MS at LSE. Published in Hayek, pp. 166-67.

[2. ]At Salem, April 19 and 20, 1850.

[3. ]At Akron, May 28 and 29, 1851.

[4. ]At Worcester, Mass., Oct. 23-24, 1850.

[5. ]William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), abolitionist, reformer.

[6. ]Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), orator and reformer, abolitionist.

[7. ]Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895), abolitionist, orator, journalist.

[8. ]New York Tribune for Europe, Oct. 29, 1850.

[9. ]They planned to be married the following spring.

[1. ]MS at Brit. Mus. MS draft at LSE. In reply to Furnivall’s letter of Nov. 13 [1850], at LSE.

Frederick James Furnivall (1825-1910), later a prolific literary scholar and editor, and founder of a number of literary societies, including the Early English Text Society. He was called to the bar in 1849 and in that same year opened a school for poor men and boys. An active Christian Socialist, he published as his first work, Association, a Necessary Part of Christianity (London, 1850), in support of trade unions.

[2. ]Furnivall had written to ask for an explanation of a passage in JSM’s evidence before a parliamentary committee (see n. 3 below) in which he stated that a capitalist has the right to keep his profits as a necessary consequence of the law of property.

[3. ]The Slaney Committee, a Select Committee of the House of Commons. JSM’s evidence was published in “Minutes of Evidence taken before Select Committee on Savings of Middle and Working Classes,” Parl. Papers, 1850, XIX, 77-90, reprinted in Collected Works, V, 405-29.

[1. ]MS draft at Yale. Published in Elliot, I, 155-57.

[2. ]Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), clergyman and novelist, “The Agricultural Crisis,” North British Rev., XIV (1850), 85-121; reprinted in his Miscellanies (2 vols., London, 1859), II, 143-98.

[3. ]David Low (1786-1859), professor of agriculture at the University of Edinburgh. In his article Kingsley attacked Low’s book Appeal to the Common Sense of the Country regarding the present condition of the industrious classes (Edinburgh and London, 1850).

[4. ]The Corn Laws had been repealed on June 25, 1846; thereafter only nominal duties on wheat, oats, and barley were exacted.

[5. ]See pp. 88-90 of Kingsley’s article.

[6. ]For Kingsley’s connection with Christian Socialism, see C. W. Stubbs, Charles Kingsley and the Christian Social Movement (London, 1899), and R. B. Martin, The Dust of Combat (London, 1959).

[7. ]Kingsley in suggesting the possible application of co-operative association in industry had quoted from “On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes” in Pol. Econ., Book IV, chap. 7.

[8. ]P. 120, n. 2. Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), miscellaneous writer. JSM had long been critical of her views on political economy (see Earlier Letters, pp. 140-41, 152, 342, 351-52, 389).

[1. ]MS at Brit. Mus. MS draft at LSE. In reply to Furnivall’s letter of Nov. 23, at LSE.

[2. ]Furnivall asked JSM for the grounds of the conclusions he presented in Letter 31.

[3. ]Furnivall had written, “Could not the working classes be made by law partners with the richer class in works carried on by them both together?”

[4. ]Edmé Jean Leclaire (1801-1872), author of De l’organisation du travail (Paris, 1848). Leclaire was a house painter, in business for himself, who put into effect a system of profit-sharing with his workers. He initially described his system in a pamphlet Des Améliorations qu’il serait possible d’apporter dans le sort des ouvriers peintres . . . (Paris, 1842), an abstract of which JSM saw in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, n.s. III-IV, (Sept. 27, 1845), 193-96. JSM refers to Leclaire’s enterprise in his Pol. Econ., Book IV, chap. vii, sec. 5, 1st ed., and brings the reference up to date in subsequent editions (see Principles, pp. 772-73).