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THE LATER LETTERS OF JOHN STUART MILL 1856-1864 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XV - The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-1873 Part II [1856]Edition used:The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XV - The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-1873 Part II, ed. Francis E. Mineka and Dwight N. Lindley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972).
Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.
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THE LATER LETTERS OF JOHN STUART MILL
 >John Stuart Mill and Helen Taylor (ca. 1869?) Photograph in the Radio Times Hulton Picture Library 1856255.TO LOUIS BLANC1
1856 Mon cher Monsieur Louis BlancJe n’ai reçu votre aimable billet que ce matin—Je regrette bien ne pas pouvoir profiter de votre invitation pour ce soir et je vous prie de croire que je n’en désire pas moins la réalisation de l’espérance que vous m’avez donnée de vous voir plus souvent et de comparer mes idées avec les vôtres sur les grandes questions qui occupent aujourd’hui tous les esprits élevés. Je vous engage à ne pas vous décourager de venir à mon bureau par l’idée que vous me dérangerez. La semaine dernière a été exceptionnelle pour moi. Ordinairement, à l’exception du mercredi, mes occupations de bureau sont de nature à pouvoir être ajournées au moins pour une heure ou deux. votre dévouéJ. S. Mill 256.TO ARTHUR HARDY1
Jan. 21. 1856 My dear Mr HardyMy wife has told you that we were much interested in the account of the Institution2 you have founded at Adelaide. Such means for the education of the young & the useful instruction of the old, are more important, if that be possible, in a new than even in an old country, as the helps & instruments to self cultivation are apt to be more scanty, & what is done or left undone now, will determine in a great measure what part the future Australian nation will take in the advancement of the world. You are aware that Mr Duffy3 has lately emigrated to Australia. His immediate destination is Melbourne but in case anything should lead him to Adelaide I have ventured to assure him that you would be glad to see him or to be useful to him. He is a very valuable acquisition both privately & publicly to any colony in which he may determine to establish himself. My wife’s health has been very precarious since her attack of hemorrhage4 but this last summer & autumn it has improved, & I have great hopes that she at last will now recover from that attack. She has suffered greatly both in feelings & in health from the unprincipled conduct of Arthur Ley & his wife about the Trusteeship of her marriage settlement.5 Her wish alone ought to have been sufficient to make him resign it—but when the immediate ground of our asking it was (tho’ of course not so said to him) that she knew from Caroline herself that he was not only in pecuniary difficulties but that there was a deficiency in his accounts as Treasurer of a Turnpike Trust, a man with the ordinary amount of honour & honesty would have been anxious to do so. Herbert’s not joining in the request6 was entirely immaterial as the settlement gives the power exclusively to her, & his not choosing to ask it was merely an instance of his usual contradictory disposition. My wife has sent you a copy of Caroline’s letter, full of vulgar taunts & malevolent insinuations. You might suppose from this that she had given some offence to Mrs Ley, or that there had been some previous quarrel, but there had been nothing of the kind—for some reason of her own, & very foolishly, Mrs Ley suddenly changed from her usual professions of great affection & regard, to this insulting letter, & this is the only answer she has given. My wife’s last letters both to her & Arthur Ley remain unanswered. I found that the only legal protection in our power against a fraudulent trustee is to lay a distringas7 on the stock which prevents the possibility of its being transferred without notice given. This would enable us to apply to the Court of Chancery for an injunction. I have therefore taken this precaution, without which any accident to the other trustee would leave my wife’s & the children’s property entirely insecure. Pray present my compliments to Mrs Hardy & believe me very sincerely yoursJ. S. Mill 257.TO GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE1
April 1. 1856 Dear SirI am sorry to hear that you have got into the difficulty you mention,2 and am willing to assist. But first I must request you tell me exactly how much of the £130 you see any prospect of raising and whether £130 is the whole of what you can be called on to pay in consequence of bills accepted by you for Mr Leblond. I am yrs faithfully258.TO GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE1
April 5, 1856 Dear SirI inclose a cheque for £70, being a loan of £35 each from myself and another friend of freethinking opinions.2 This sum I think will complete the amount you require.3 You must excuse me for saying that in making yourself liable for Mr Leblond’s bill transactions you were throwing money which you could not spare into the mere gulf of a bankruptcy—injuring yourself and those dependent on you without doing your friend any good, and throwing away the possible means of serving him afterwards. It would have been a totally different thing if by so doing you could have saved him. I am yrs faithfullyJ. S. Mill. 259.TO HARRIET MILL1
Wedy evg I have done pretty well, dearest one, to get here in one day from Besançon—to do which I had to take a char at Orbe but I walked most part of the way, which was very agreeable after going to Pontarlier by the malle poste on a most uncomfortable outside seat, & stewing inside the diligence from Pontarlier to Orbe, seeing little or nothing. But I am well recompensed darling by this place. How very much I wish my own only one could see it. It is the very picture of peace. From my window I look quite up the lake & to the end of its valley which is called even on fingerposts Lavallée (par excellence). It is five or six leagues in length but you see entirely down or rather up the vista as it is quite straight, & the lake, though small compared with those we have lately seen, yet long enough & broad enough for beauty, lies between its bright green slopes which though very high for the Jura, do not shew their height from the great elevation of this valley but are covered with the richest & finest Jura pastures & Jura woods. The villages, this & another smaller one, do not in the least detract from the air of quiet—they are all large well looking houses, evidently inhabited only by their inhabitants, & looking straight upon the lake. The water itself is as peaceful as it is bright & clear. It has no apparent outlet, being entirely imbedded in hills—a bend (the only one) in the valley just at this place separates the Lac de Joux from a very beautiful smaller lake below it, quite shut in by mountains, but the water all seems to come out under ground into the Valorbe, another valley at a great depth below this, & so cut off from it that the road to this does not even lie through that: I enjoy the place much & you may suppose I am very well when I say that after climbing the Mont Tendre, a most beautiful mountain, one of the highest of the Jura, which with a rest on the grass at the top & the return took six hours, I only staid half an hour to eat a crust of bread & drink a whole jug of milk, & set off again to climb another mountain & make a round which took another five hours—& I am not now more tired than is agreeable. The views of the Alps here are splendid, especially that from the Mont Tendre—in spite of a great deal of haze towards Berne & Savoy. I saw the snowy range for a great distance, Mont Blanc tolerably & the Dent du Midi, the nearer Valais mountains & the whole lake of Geneva from end to end well, also the lake of Neuchâtel, the whole Jura, & France I should think nearly to Dijon. The evening walk was still finer: the bit of Valorbe which I descended to get to the source of the Orbe (the place where the water of the two lakes is supposed to come out) equals anything I ever saw—a narrow gorge between precipices but itself full of the richest Jura verdure of pasture & wood so high as almost to hide the precipices: & the source with its exquisite clearness & great mass of water coming out from under an amphitheatre of precipice in the heart of a wood far surpasses Vaucluse. I also went over in the rocks above a really immense cave but without any stalactites. If my beloved one was with me I could stay here with pleasure the whole week—the inn would do—a little below the mark of St. Martin but larger rooms. As it is I shall leave tomorrow: for quiet enjoyment one requires to be two—by oneself there is nothing but activity. I have been much tempted to go to Annecy—being so near & finding that those who left Besançon with me were to get to Geneva the same evening by aid of railway & steamboat. But I have resisted the temptation & shall go to Yverdon tomorrow—if the rest of the Jura were to be like this I should lose nothing. I shall put in this letter probably at Yverdon & I hope to be in time for the steamer & to land not at Neuchâtel but at St Aubin on the west bank from which Murray says it is but four miles to the Creux du Vent. What I shall do afterwards I do not know except that I shall return to Besançon from la Chaux de Fonds & shall try first to see Weissenstein & the Val Moutiers. This place has rather spoilt me for other places & this lake for other lakes. How very different a surroundment my darling’s has been these two days. No doubt she is now in Paris & I so hope in a not unpleasant lodging. Though I am very glad to have been here I am not half reconciled to the separation from my dear one—& the more I like the place the more I long for her presence. But I will try to make the time as useful as possible for my health & you see I have begun well today. Adieu my dearest wife with a thousand loves & kisses—your own J.S.M. 260.TO HARRIET MILL1
Sunday evg My dearest love, I wrote twice to Paris, once on Wednesday & once on Friday,2 which I hope came safely to her dear hands. The last brought me to that pretty little place Sonceboz, which lies at the junction of a valley & two gorges, one going downward & the other upward, both most beautiful: the valley is that of St Imier & is a good deal like the Val Travers. It is a very small neat village & would be very quiet, but as it is on the principal road into Switzerland by way of Bâle, & the diligences & voitures all stop here, there is generally some bustle going on. The inn is decidedly good, as well as decidedly cheap: I was charged 1½ franc a day for a good bedroom & bed, & the same for my usual breakfast: ½ franc a day for service. I got out at ½ past 8 yesterday & explored the whole of the Val Moutiers: going through the upper of the two gorges & through the Pierre Pertuis, which is not a tunnel being not longer than a mere gateway, the gorge being singularly closed by a mere wall of rock. This led into the Val Moutiers at Tavannes, for many miles beyond which it was an open valley in the full glare of the sun: the beauty consists in two narrow defiles, one above the other below Moutiers. I dined at a one o’clock table d’hôte at Moutiers & then walked on to the last turn in the further of the two defiles, from which the end of it is seen at a short distance. They are fine, but to us who have seen so much, not extraordinary: you have only to imagine a cleft winding through precipitous fir clad rocks of great height, in general just large enough for the road & the little river. The oddity is that the flat thick tables of which this rock is composed, instead of lying horizontal one on another, have been thrown up on end & stand vertically—& as many of them have mouldered or been washed out, those which remain are in some places like buttresses or gigantic bits of wall at right angles to the road. From Moutiers I took a car part of the way back (to Tavannes) & arrived a little before 8. This morning I started at ½ past 5 in the coupé of the malle poste along the Val St Imier (green & full of villages) then over a dividing ridge to this place—which is not at all like what I expected. Murray’s description of a great straggling village, composed of cottages each standing in its bit of ground, is as opposite to the truth as can be conceived—it would be thought in England a compact town, & there is not a cottage in it—all large houses & large blocks of houses, abutting at once on green fields at the outskirts, in a way which reminded me of Brighton—there are about half a dozen houses which have bits of garden in front like our suburbs & about half a dozen square patches of garden ground within the limits of the town: it has nothing whatever of a village except that it is macadamized instead of paved. Murray’s description must be copied from some old one: it looks an upstart place, having no promenades or planted trees like Neuchâtel though it has more inhabitants. Murray is equally out as to the country, which he calls bleak, desolate & bare of wood. It is one of the open valleys with sloping sides & those have fewer trees than the narrow ones, but this has many & is most cheerful & inspiriting. I have had a beautiful walk: first to a pass called the Col des Loges, about half way to Neuchâtel which is noted for the view of the Alps, & though it was very hazy, I saw a part of them very well: then a round over the summits climbing another noted mountain called Tête du Rond3 (or something sounding like it) from which the view of the Alps, Jura &c is still finer, then back through woods, over mountains & across the loveliest green valleys. The mountains though high are not a great height above this valley which is itself extremely high. I do not like the town; it is the only blemish in the [paper torn] Tomorrow I go to Locle & the Saut du Doubs, & that will be the finale. I have taken my place for Tuesday for Besançon when I shall have the happiness of finding a letter from her & in two days after I shall see her again. It seems already an enormous time since I parted from her. Time never seems long when I am with her, whether it is at home or travelling. I believe this journey has set me up as to health—I am afraid it has done very little for [paper torn] to the heat [paper torn] 261.TO GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE1
Sept. 21. 1856 Dear Sir—On returning a few days ago from the Continent I found your note inclosing the reprint of my wife’s article in the W.R.2 on the enfranchisement of women. I think you were not justified in reprinting it without asking the permission of the author which you could easily have done through me, still less with many errors in the reprint. I have marked the principal of them in the margin of the copy you sent. One particularly offensive is the excessive vulgarity of substituting “woman” for “Women”; this occurs in several places and in the first paragraph. One of the purposes of writing the article was to warn the American women to disunite their cause from the feeble sentimentality which exposes it to contempt & of which the stuff continually talked & written about “woman” may be taken as a symbol & test,—& it is therefore very disagreeable to the writer to see this piece of vulgarity prominent on the face of the article itself. We are glad to hear that there was one lady at the Convention3 who objected to the nonsense attacked in the concluding paragraph.4 I am yrs vy truly262.TO ARTHUR HARDY1
Sept. 29. 1856. My dear Hardy—I did not receive your letter until more than a fortnight after its arrival, as we had not yet returned from our summer excursion, which this year was to Switzerland—& since we have been at home I have had so many things to write & to do that I have been unable to answer it until now. What you say concerning your Institution for working people appears to me encouraging: the success of the library seems to be everything that you could have hoped for, & that, besides being the thing of most importance, will probably in the end lead to the success of the other part of your plan: it is very satisfactory too that the example has been so speedily followed in other quarters. The trust is in exactly the same state as when I last wrote to you.2 We sent your letter to Mrs Ley, but with no result. Any one who would write such a letter as she wrote to my wife without any other provocation than being asked to act honorably in the matter, has evidently no wish to do so. You are no doubt the only person whose opinion would have weight enough to induce her to do anything she does not like, and we therefore have still some hope that the thing will be done. It will depend on whether or not she thinks the doing it necessary to your satisfaction. I think it most unjust that my wife shd be [hampered?] by feeling that her affairs are partly in the hands of persons in all ways so untrustworthy & so ill affected towards her. We read every book we can get about the Australian colonies always with fresh interest. They seem to be most prosperous & rapidly progressive communities; & that this is not wholly owing to the gold, is proved by the state of your colony where there are no diggings. I certainly think the Wakefield system, unpopular as it now is in Australia, & badly as it has been administered in some of the colonies, has been one of the chief causes of their unexampled growth. Wakefield3 you know has been for several years in New Zealand. If he should ever visit the colony which he planned & founded, & the only one in which his system has been faithfully executed, you will find him well worth knowing: he is not a mere man of one idea, but has great general power of mind & energy of character. My name would be a sufficient introduction to him. I suppose Macaulay’s 3d & 4th volumes4 are as popular at Adelaide as in London. They are as you say, “pleasant reading but not exactly history.” His object is to strike, & he attains it, but it is by scene painting—he aims at stronger effects than truth warrants, & so caricatures many of his personages as to leave it unaccountable how they can have done what they did. If Sarah duchess of Marlborough5 had been nothing but a thoroughly unprincipled shrew without talent or any one valuable or amiable quality (as he makes her) could she have been, by mere personal influence, for many years the most powerful person in England? This disregard of consistency & probability spoils the book even as a work of art. What a difference between it & Grote’s Hist. of Greece,6 which is less brilliant, but far more interesting in its simple veracity & because, instead of striving to astonish he strives to comprehend & explain. It is of no use writing to you about politics, as nowadays in the colonies you are as well up in all political news as we are. Pray present my compliments to Mrs Hardy & believe me yrs very trulyJ.S.M. 263.TO THE SECRETARY TO THE SUNDAY LEAGUE1[November 1856] Sir—I beg to acknowledge your letter of the 3d instant asking my objections to the address of the National Sunday League.2 The passage to which I principally object & which has hitherto made it impossible for me, consistently with my own convictions, to subscribe to the League, is the following: “They themselves would be the first to oppose the opening of any frivolous & vicious places of amusement.” That the Committee should limit their own endeavours to the opening of Institutions of a more or less scientific or literary character on Sundays may possibly be judicious; but it is not necessary for this purpose that they should join in stigmatizing the broader principle, the recognition of which I think should be their ultimate aim. With regard to “vicious places of amusement,” if there be any such, I would not desire that they should be open on any day of the week. Any place unfit to be open on Sunday is unfit to be open at all. But with regard to “frivolous” amusements I no more think myself justified in limiting the people to intellectual than to religious occupations on that day, & the Committee cannot but feel that if their disclaimer does them any service with those whom it is intended to conciliate, it will be by being understood as a protest against permitting, for example, music, dancing, & the theatre, all of which I should wish to be as free on the seventh (or rather the first) as on any other day of the week. I am also unable to give my adhesion to various expressions in the Declaration which partake of the nature of a compliance with cant; such as the “desecration” of the Sunday, & the preservation of “its original purpose of a day of devotion.” The devotion which is not felt equally at all times does not deserve the name; and it is one thing to regard the observance of a holiday from ordinary work on one day in the week as a highly beneficial institution, & another to ascribe any sacredness to the day, a notion so forcibly repudiated in the quotations from great religious authorities on your fourth page & which I hold to be as mere a superstition as any of the analogous prejudices which existed in times antecedent to Christianity. I am Sir
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| Balance end of March — | £ 15.11.8 |
| July div. on consols — | 34.16.1 |
| Brighton div. — | 19. 5 — |
| S. Western do — | 10. 4.6 |
| N. Western do — | 10. 4.6 |
| Cash, (Nov.25) — | 205.18.5 |
| January div. on consols — | 36.11 — |
| 332.11.2 |
| 13Probably Peppercorne and Price, stock and share brokers, 2 Royal Exchange Buildings. | ||
| 14Probably a contribution to the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women, founded in 1859 by Jessie Boucherette and Adelaide Proctor. | ||
| Expended | ||
| Cheque to Hajji — | 40.— — | |
| do to [Peppercorne?]13 | 199.7.6 | |
| do Empl. of Women14 | 5 — — | |
| 244.7.6 | ||
| 244. 7.6 | ||
| 88. 3.10 | ||
| Deduct cheque to J.S.M. | 30 — — | |
| Balance in hand | 58. 3.10 | |
435.
TO HELEN TAYLOR1
- Blackheath
Tuesday Jan. 31 [1860]
Your second letter has just come, dear, your first having arrived yesterday. I need not say how glad I was to receive them. All they tell is satisfactory except the delay in the sawing, which is shameful, as the man got on considerably faster with the former one, in spite of the fêtes, and himself spontaneously told me the day before I left, that it would be done on Thursday. I do not suppose the words Concession Perpétuelle need necessarily be on the monument,2 but I do not know, and I suppose we need not decide till we can ask Pascal or somebody who does know. I was very much interested by the rose plantations and the jonquils. Here there are no signs of spring except a little green on the honeysuckle in a hedge near Plaistow. The weather is excessively wet: yesterday it rained so incessantly till late in the afternoon that I only got out late to Deptford to order potatoes. Saturday was the only really fine day and that was beautiful. I think the scenery here & that at Avignon are exactly suited to make each other more thoroughly appreciated. Here the green, the majestic trees, and the beautiful irregular shining & gleaming outline of the masses of wood, seem all the more beautiful for being so unlike the beauties of atmosphere and form at our other home. I have not been in town again since I wrote, though I should have gone yesterday but for the rain, & I shall go today chiefly to see various people at the I[ndia] House beginning with Willoughby.3 I told you I had seen Coulson. I have not yet taken my second pill, but shall take it tonight. I have hardly had a vestige of indigestion all the time till yesterday evening, when I had a good deal: the direct effect of the pill I suppose had worn itself out, & it had not yet sufficiently acted as an alterative. I could not expect that it should. The experience thus far is very satisfactory. I omitted to tell you that I was weighed the day after my arrival, & had gained some pounds since we left England. As for the plants—the mere preliminary sorting, which every former year has been done in one evening, took four of above six hours each, & the best part of yesterday forenoon: but yesterday evening I got down the first parcel of the herbarium & got on pretty well, having got half through it. I find it extremely interesting but rather bodily fatiguing, as it is any thing but sedentary work. In the “Saturday” I have just got through June. There are many things in it which I should not have liked to miss seeing, though very few that tend to raise the writers in my estimation. I have read nothing else except glancing through one number of Macmillan—which seems to me not at all worth taking. It seems both poor & dull except a tolerable political article by Masson,4 & there is an elaborate review of Tennyson’s last publication by Ludlow,5 (the sometime Christian Socialist, & writer of a bad book about India)6 making out to the writer’s entire satisfaction that the four Idyls are the most splendidly moral & impressing work of the age, chiefly on the point of conjugal infidelity. It is hardly worth sending, at most worth bringing, but Fraser has just come in & shall be sent as soon as read, for it contains Hare’s paper (under a better title).7 I shall be glad to subscribe for Spencer’s large programme of intended works,8 though I think it rather too ambitious a one. I have had a note from Bain saying that he is to be at home till the 6th & will put off going if I cannot come before, but I must try to do so though I grudge all time taken from the reading & the plants at present. I get on well with Hadji, who is less silent than usual though he never speaks about his own concerns. I suppose Ellen9 has given him some taste for neatness, for one day when I left the room untidy I found on coming in that he had arranged everything with quite studious tidiness. He has got on a little with music & his practicing is now quite tolerable. Tell me dear directly you get tired & wish me back. I do not say ennuyé for I know you never can be that. Ever affectionately
J.S.M.
436.
TO THOMAS HARE1
- Blackheath
Feb. 2. [1860]
Dear Sir
Your bulletin of progress has followed me here, where however I am only for a short time. It is, I think, very satisfactory, and I have no fear that the plan2 will fail to make progress if a quiet agitation is kept up on the subject. I hope your paper in Fraser3 will be soon followed up by another4 of a more distinctly practical character. The effect of the present one is I think a little damaged by the introduction of so much of other people’s generalities which (especially those of Carlyle)5 are associated in most minds with anything rather than a plan admitting of actual legislative realization. The same generalities shaped in your own mind and clothed in your own language (which would not have precluded using the authority of the men as far as available) would have had the practical remedial principles much more distinctly imbedded in them and would therefore have made more of the impression which is desirable. I am feeling strongly on this point through the evidence which is always coming before us of the obtuseness of the English practical intellect when any new details are concerned, and the utter absence of Conservative principles among the professed Conservatives. Witness the reform article in the last Quarterly,6 which will not condescend even to discuss the representation of minorities. The suggestion about forming a Committee may prove useful when we have a sufficient number of the right names to put on it—which I hope we shall have by & by.
Yours ever truly
J. S. Mill
437.
TO HELEN TAYLOR1
- Blackheath
Feb. 2. 1860
Dearest Lily—
Your nice letter came by the second post yesterday, just as I was on the point of going out: three letters in three successive days. How does it happen that you get my letters regularly on the second day instead of the third? you answered my Thursday’s on Saty & my Saturday’s on Monday. Do the letters no longer remain a day at Paris? or does the favour of the Director abridge the delay at Avignon? Now for business. I find that, probably by my own fault, I misunderstood the point on which Girling had given an opinion, opposed to Suter’s. It was, the stability of the kitchen wall as now shored up, which G. from his experience guarantees, while S. according to Hadji wants to have a job there. The suggestion of the iron bar to support the arch above the darling’s window came from Suter, & it can, as I & also Hadji conceive it, only be put up from inside. That being the case, what had better be done? Had it better wait altogether till you are here also? Say what you think and feel as best. If needful I will have a fire in the room and remain in it all the time; which would I hope prevent mischief though not obviate the desecration about which I also feel very strongly. Doubtless the job Ross proposes can be done wholly from without, and to this we shall probably come ultimately (viz. next summer) if not to worse, for the house seems at least to be in a more precarious state than it has ever yet been. I will do, in regard to it, exactly what you think best. I do not expect any danger before, at soonest the end of another dry summer.—Mrs Goodenough is to come on Saturday. Eliz. says if she could not have had her, she, knowing your unwillingness to have a stranger, would have gone on as well as she could without. But it seems fair that she should have help once a week in the cleaning.—I have been in town once since I last wrote, doing one or two little jobs, & seeing India House people, which has brought on me the (agreeable) task of reading several very good papers of Willoughby’s. He & all I have seen are in a high state of dissatisfaction, & every fresh thing I hear of Wood shews more & more how much ground there is for it. I would rather have to do with any public affairs now than with India. There is nothing new to say about my health. I have taken the second pill & shall take the third tomorrow. I am in the middle of my second packet and of the Caryophylleae. You can trace my progress in Babington,2 the order of the families being the same. The Cruciferae alone took more than a whole evening, but they contained one or two difficult genera, having got through which, & also the troublesome Helianthemums, amounts to a considerable progress. In the Saturdays I have just finished July 16. The best service they have rendered is by being always strenuous for arming, & against Louis Napoleon, but in doing so they have become anti-French to a degree I do not like—though some of them write candidly enough too on the French people. While I am writing a Times has come from Wray with a message that I can now have one. Thanks dear for your kind feeling about it. The fact is I have been so immersed in last year’s S. Review politics that a glance at the Telegraph has generally been enough for me hitherto. Hare’s paper in Fraser3 rather disappoints me. There is nothing in it that lowers my opinion of his mind, but it is ineffective. On a subject which ought to be studiously presented in the most eminently practical light, his paper is overlaid with quotations of rhapsody from Carlyle & generalities from Maurice & Ruskin, as applicable to any other subject as to this. I have not yet read any more of Fraser, but will lose no time in doing so. I have desired Wray to post the February number of the Englishwoman’s Journal to you: I have read no more of McMillan yet. I found the Westminster at Galignani’s, so perhaps it would not have been stopt if it had been sent to Avignon. I do not know if I mentioned that I glanced (at Galignani’s) at the article in the Quarterly on reform.4 They made a good deal of use & mention of the pamphlet (last spring)5 though they adopted nothing of what it proposed—but they made no use of the ballot part, for though they liked the conclusion, the premises I presume were too un-Tory for them. I was struck with the de haut en bas manner in which they set aside as not worth even consideration any plan for representing minorities. What an illustration such things give of the low state of the general intellect. Is it not surprising that Conservatives have no sense or appreciation of Conservative principles? Conservatism with us means a blind opposition to change. I know no Conservatives who are really so but the Saturday reviewers whose adherence is to principles of stability & principles of unjust domination so far as now practically maintainable, but who have no mere instinctive attachment to details as they are. N. B. To shew our preference for openness I shew Haji your letters. This put me into a dilemma with the last, but on reflection I thought you would not dislike his seeing the few words about him. If I was wrong, say so. I shall see if he shews me your letters to him: if not, I shall shew no more of mine. He did not shew me M. L.’s6 letter, though he told me she had asked him to lend money.—February opened with a beautiful day of hard frost, & there has been a little snow today. Sundridge Park was lovely & Camden too in spite of the new villas. ever affectionately J.S.M.
438.
TO THOMAS HARE1
- Blackheath
Feb. 4. 1860
Dear Sir
I received your note, and by the same post your letter from Avignon with its inclosure. I need hardly say I should be happy to hear from Mr Fawcett, and as to my occupations here I can have none more important than to aid you and him in any mode in my power. I am doubtful about the move you now propose. It seems to me of the utmost importance not to begin with the Lords or in any quarter under suspicion of Toryism. Those who wish not for the equal rights of all but for the despotism of the numerical majority will be only too ready to run down the plan as a fetch of Tory Anti Reform. It is not at all Tory, though, in the best sense, Conservative, and having also the advantage of being a strict logical corollary from the broadest principles of Democracy it ought not to throw away that advantage. If we only are unguarded enough to give any handle for representing it as anti-democratic we shall throw away all our best chances. I think we should rather strive to bring the plan and its recommendations forcibly before individuals of position and influence, & among these Lords Lyndhurst & Brougham2 hold a high rank. With respect to Lord Grey,3 if the question were, who is likeliest in the H. of Lords to see the merits of the plan, and seeing them to do his duty towards it, I should name him without hesitation, but it would be most undesirable that he should identify himself with it early, as he has got so confirmed a character for being crotchetty and unpractical, i.e. (being interpreted) for having no following, that people think they may dismiss anything at once of which he is the most prominent supporter. Any public move should, I am convinced, go to the Commons first, and should turn the Liberal side of the scheme outwards, shewing the other side afterwards.—I have received this morning a note from Mr A. F. Mayo. He says “I am happy to find that Mr Hare’s plan is becoming more talked about. Mr Dilwyn,4 M. P. for Swansea, whom I have been endeavouring to stimulate for months, has at length made a speech in public at Swansea on the subject. It is a pity that Mr Hare did not state his Act synthetically and in order at the beginning of his work.” I give this last opinion for quantum valeat. Pray consider me always at your call while I remain here. I am often in town between 12 and 4 and could call on you in York Street to talk over matters if you are there and at liberty. It is certainly very desirable to make use of the present reform discussions for agitating on so great a principle of reform. The best mode of doing it would depend on the strength we can count on. I will suggest to Mayo to communicate with you. I am not at present in the way of sounding many people. We can count on Bain, and, I should think, Helps.5 While I am writing a note has come in from Mr Fawcett. I am glad he is going to see Lord Stanley. Out of office6 Lord S. will not feel tongue tied, and his advocacy would give both Radical and Conservative support. I am also very glad to find both that Lord Grey approves and that he declines to initiate.
ever truly yours
J. S. Mill
439.
TO HELEN TAYLOR1
- Blackheath
Feb. 4. 1860
I found your letter yesterday, dear, when I came in at five o’clock, & by the same post a note from Hare, who had just heard from Parker of my arrival. I agree entirely in every word you say on that subject & shall write to him accordingly. Most of all do I agree that on no account ought the plan to be propounded under Tory auspices. This morning a note has come in from Mayo (who sent us the Law Magazine). Among other things he says “I am happy to find that Mr Hare’s plan is becoming more talked about. Mr Dilwyn, M. P. for Swansea, whom I have been endeavouring to stimulate for months, has at length made a speech in public at Swansea on the subject.” This is encouragement to go on propagandizing. Mayo also says that before I mentioned Bain’s book2 he had read it with very great approval & had been propagandizing at the Athenaeum for that too. A man with so much zeal should be kept up with. I went yesterday to Richmond to see Bain. The place is getting overrun with building, especially the high ground where the Rose hotel stands, & the whole neighbourhood of the Sheen road (I mean the one which goes down hill from opposite the Star). The space between that road & the park wall is almost entirely filled up, & Bain’s is one of the tiny houses in that slip of ground close to the park wall. He still requires crutches3 (for his stick is almost a crutch) & though he walks with it as fast as I do, he cannot keep up very long, so we had only about an hour’s walk, but the walk to & from Greenwich & between London bridge & Waterloo make up a decent day’s exercise. He is in good spirits on things in general. His first volume has sold 640 in all, & the deficit is now made up. The sale made a start on the publication of the second vol. & another start when the article in the Edin. came out. The second has only yet sold 320, but it is sure to equal the first. He has finished & is sending to Parker the first of his papers on Phrenology which are to appear in Fraser in alternate months.4 He has been staying with Grote & has seen some of his writing on Plato which from the account he gives of it must be very good, & considerably outspoken. He also says that Grote has benefitted much in health by his Surrey house & is getting, for the first time, fond of the country. Their lease in Savile Row is expiring & they do not mean to have any permanent house in town now. All this is good, as it will both prolong his life & increase the amount of work he will do. Of the six people who have the appointment of the St Andrews professor, the two clever men, Ferrier & Tulloch,5 are decidedly for Bain, which is creditable to both & quite remarkably so to Tulloch. Of the four mediocrities, two are against him, the other two doubtful, and likely I should think to vote against him. But he has a chance of a professorship at Aberdeen,6 a more important university: for when the arrangements for the union of the two Colleges there take effect,7 there will be (if all goes as is projected) a separation of the Logic from the Moral Philosophy Chair, & the former will be in the gift of the government, in which case if Lewis8 is still in office Bain considers himself almost sure of the appointment.—I send you two letters relating to Mr Austin. The first, from Miss Duff Gordon9 (whom I never saw, unless perhaps when a child) had been left for me at Prescott’s. I was glad it was from her rather than from her mother or grandmother, & answered it by another about the same length, expressing regret & respect for him & mentioning nobody else. Yesterday evening came one from Mrs Austin which seems to involve the unpleasant necessity of writing to her.10 My principal anxiety is to do as exactly as I am able what would have been done if I had still my darling to guide me, not only for the reasons which exist in all cases, but for the special one that all relations with persons should shew her to be as much present as before. I inclose for your remarks & suggestions what I think of saying.—Archdeacon Allen11 having heard that I am here, has written another letter very like the first, wishes I would visit him next summer, is thinking of going again to London on Feb. 13 for convocation & asks to be allowed to call on me to which I must of course assent. I have a letter from Hardy12 who appears to be making a search himself for M. de Gaillard,13 but as yet without success: I suppose I must write to M. de Gaillard to report progress. So much for general news. For myself, my improvement in digestion has by no means kept up to the degree it attained at first. Last night I took the third pill & will report further in next letter. I have finished Fraser—it is a goodish number & I will send it at latest on Monday: In the Saturdays I have got to August 6, & in the plants to the end of Thalamiflorae & am going to begin my great heap of Leguminosae, which I shall get quickly through as I do not think any of them will require any redetermining.—About the gilding we need not, as you say, decide yet.14 My feeling is strongly against it, as being less grave, & more gaudy & ostentatious, besides being considerably less legible. But we must consider the pros & cons. I am glad the dames were less tiresome than we feared, though their quality of mind was well illustrated by your anecdote. Even provincial women of their station in England would perhaps have been a little better. I am sorry for the man’s accident with the thorn. I hope it can be poulticed out. your ever affectionate
J.S.M.
P.S. A note has just come in from that fine fellow Fawcett, & one from Lady Duff Gordon.15 The last would make the letter too heavy & contains nothing that need affect the present question. I will write again immediately.
440.
TO HENRY FAWCETT1
- Blackheath
Feb. 5. 1860
Dear Sir
It gave me great pleasure to hear from you. One who, suffering under such a calamity as yours,2 has the heart and energy to commence a career of vigorous exertion for great public objects, must be a man of the right mould, and I am proud of being thought to have been of any use to such a man.
You have selected well the object of your present efforts. We can never do enough in pressing forward Mr. Hare’s plan, which, in my deliberate belief, contains the true solution of the political difficulties of the future. It is an uphill race, and a race against time, for if the American form of democracy overtakes us first, the majority will no more relax their despotism than a single despot would. But our only chance is to come forward as Liberals, carrying out the Democratic idea, not as Conservatives, resisting it. To become identified with Toryism would be fatal to the plan, for the Conservative is not only the least powerful, but the silliest party. It has been left behind by all its able men, and the others are daily shewing that of all politicians the Conservatives are the least alive to any real principles of conservation. It is they—it is Disraeli, the Quarterly Review, &c, who go out of their way to insult the idea of representation of minorities. It will be, as it has been through all my lifetime, that in every real pinch, Radicals have had to do duty as Conservatives, often in opposition to those they were attempting to save.
As you so clearly see, Mr. Hare, like many discoverers, has much to learn in the art of presenting his discoveries with a view to popular effect; but he seems truly anxious for advice and help, and we who did not make the discoveries must aid them in that way. I need hardly say that I shall be glad to read the paper you propose sending,3 and to give my opinion on it. I beg that I may be counted on for cooperation whenever wanted, though I am glad that the very useful task of visiting public men, for which I have decidedly no vocation, is undertaken by yourself.
To say the truth, I am rather glad than otherwise that Lord Grey,4 though approving the plan, is unwilling to move actively at present in its favour. It is important at starting to keep clear of those who have the unenviable reputatation of being crotchetty. The case is different with Lord Stanley,4 who would be the most valuable single accession we could obtain. He is reserved, and will not shew the extent of the impression which may be made, but he will take the book and study it, and some day you will see the result.
As I am often in town, and you probably are never at Blackheath, I should be happy to call on you as often as wanted instead of giving you the trouble of coming on purpose.
I am yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
441.
TO HELEN TAYLOR1
- Blackheath
Tuesday Feb. 7 [1860]
Dearest Lily—
I received your Thursday evening letter yesterday & was made very glad by hearing that you are in good spirits & that the work is proceeding satisfactorily. I will make a translation carefully & send it.2 I was in hopes that by this time you would have told me what you think had better be done about the repairs here. Yesterday while I was out a man (a builder) came on the part of Ross, without any definite message, & after looking at the outside, told Haji there was no danger: but I think Suter must look at the great crack near the window of your room. I have been waiting till I hear from you. I write but a short letter this time because I wish to inclose two notes from Fawcett which I think will interest you. I shall meet him & Hare tomorrow & as I shall also see Coulson, there will be much to write to you next morning. I have been doing better again as to health, though I have still occasionally a little acidity even while taking the mercury. I do not think I shall recover a perfectly healthy digestion quickly. My chronic ailments however slight are always a long while in going away. I took the fourth pill last night, so it is time to see Coulson. I am getting on pretty well with the plants. I have finished Leguminosae, Rosaceae & others, & of the fourth packet there remain only the stonecrops & saxifrages, both of which are rather numerous. You should see how plethoric the packets have grown, & what difficulty I now have in making their girdles meet. After next spring’s acquisitions I shall have to build my barns bigger. Of the Saturdays I have just finished Sept. 10. They are wonderfully steady in their quality in all respects. They are certainly however a proof of the influence of my writings, for besides that they are continually referring to me by name, I continually detect the influence of some idea they have lately got from the Dissertations. They must also get me plenty of readers, for they are always treating me & my influence as something of very great importance. Did you notice the death of Dr Todd?3 another great loss. I hope the Evening Mail will give a letter in the Times today from the editor of the Gazette de Nice4 who says the French papers misrepresent & suppress everything & that the anti-annexation party there & in Savoy must look to the English papers only to make the truth known. I send, by this post, Fraser, which I am ashamed to say I forgot yesterday. I saw two days ago the first flowers, being a primrose & some winter aconite: not here, but in the Christmas rose garden in the Park. The laurustinus everywhere is quite as backward as it was this day fortnight at Avignon, & there is not a crocus or a snowdrop visible. your ever affectionate
J.S.M.
442.
TO SARAH AUSTIN1
- Blackheath
Feb. 10. 1860
Dear Mrs Austin
From my remembrance of the Lectures2 I should say, without hesitation—If a bookseller will undertake them, publish them all, with only such revision as may remove needless repetitions & so far reduce the bulk. They are much more calculated for popularity than they would have been if he had, by rewriting, made them (as he would have done) more elaborate, & more difficult reading. I am persuaded that his reputation with all students of his subject would sell the book (if not too voluminous) & I am sure the book would greatly extend his reputation. But you cannot have better advisers than Sir J.R. and Sir G.L.3 I am sorry to say I have sought in vain for my copy of the Tables.4
I am yrs faithfully
443.
TO HELEN TAYLOR1
Saturday, Feb 11. [1860]
Dearest Lily—
I received your letters yesterday & today. I am very glad that you thought I hit the right mark in my answer2 to that letter. I sent it yesterday, except that for the sentence about the Tables, I had to substitute “I am sorry to say that I have sought in vain for my copy of the Tables.” It must be in some recess of the boxroom, not to be found without a general clearance. She will be able to get one from somebody else. You have very truly characterized her letter; which is like all her letters & if you saw her daughter’s you would say she has an apt pupil. Only the daughter has the grace to mention my loss though in a very inadequate manner. As it requires no answer I will not send it but bring it. I cannot translate the inscription at all satisfactorily,3 but for the mere formal purpose a general indication of the sense, even though in bad French, is sufficient. There is no reason at all against putting up the two lower blocks as soon as they are ready. I shall most likely have finished everything else by the end of my second fortnight with Coulson. I am deep in the Compositae, and though I have not yet got through half the number of packets, I am more than half through the work, as after Labiatae the new acquisitions (except the Grasses) are much more thinly scattered. In the Saturdays I am at October 29. But neither of these would keep me here, as you know. Suter has been here; the iron bar is to be outside, & he not only thinks that there is no necessity to put it up at once, but thinks it better not. The great crack in your bedroom he will send a man on Monday to stop. About seeing Hare, Fawcett, &c. you will have seen that I took your advice before I received it. The truth is that though I detest society for society’s sake yet when I can do anything for the public objects I care about by seeing & talking with people I do not dislike it. At the moment of going to do it, I feel it a bore, just as I do taking a walk or anything else that I must & ought to do when not wishing to do it. But I believe the little additional activity & change of excitement does me good, & that it is better for me to try to serve my opinions in other ways as well as with a pen in my hand. With such people as Hare & Fawcett it is a pleasure, & ranks with going to the Pol. Econ. Club (for which by the by, Fawcett asked me to propose him as a member, or rather expressed a wish to be a member & I offered to propose him, which I have done).4 Archd. Allen’s visit would be a bore, but he has written to say he is not coming to town at present. He renews his invitation very warmly. This morning the papers have Gladstone’s budget.5 It is a great success. He turns the edge of the argument about relieving the rich instead of the poor, by raising the income tax to tenpence, & he takes off the paper duty,6 & all the remaining protecting duties, making a clean sweep of all duties on manufactures, on butter, cheese, eggs &c. & leaves a number of other duties, giving for the first time a really good fiscal system. He says wine will still be more heavily taxed than beer, therefore there need be no reduction of the malt tax. The French concessions are larger & better than anybody knew of. His speech was one of principle, good throughout, & pointing out many bad effects to which I had not adverted as produced by the taxes which the French treaty takes off.7 All other wines are to have the same benefit as French. Except a little complaint from the representatives of the silk interest, nobody but the wise Mr Bentinck ventured to complain.8 They only asked for time to consider, & I have no doubt that the intending opponents find their hopes dashed. It will be supported I think zealously by all liberals. Very judiciously they mean to finish this before bringing in the Reform Bill,9 lest the enemy should defeat this by forcing them to dissolve on that.—I hope the really touching appeal to the English public from a number of Savoyards, in yesterday’s Times,10 is in the Evening Mail. There was also a good leading article on that topic.11 Mayo has written again & has sent a paper of notes & criticisms on Bain’s book of which as I told you he is a great admirer.12 I bought at the railway station to read in my journeys to & fro, a shilling copy of Emerson’s Representative Men.13 It seems to me very empty mouthing, with only a foundation of a few vague & general ideas which are right or wrong according as they are taken. Is it a pair of revolvers you want? I ask, because one hears of a pair of pistols (or as the old phrase is, a brace) but revolvers I only remember hearing of in the singular number, & I should think one of their advantages must be that there is no need for people to burthen themselves with two. We have bitter cold weather again here: it was hard frost all day yesterday, to the benefit however of my walk. I have kept my word with you in letter & spirit: according to weather I walk (at five miles an hour) for two hours or for between three & four: the only exception (not counting the days of going to town, when I have plenty of exercise) was the rainy day I told you of, when I went only to Deptford. There are now a few nice snowdrops out near the door but no crocuses. I think the Vichy water is doing me good. It is only like very pure water with a slightly pungent taste.
Your ever affectionate
J.S.M.
[P.S.]
With all help from Boyer’s dictionary14 I cannot find an equivalent for “earnest” for “instructor in wisdom” or for what we mean by “goodness.” If you can amend any part of it, do.
444.
TO HELEN TAYLOR1
- Blackheath
Tuesday Feb. 14 [1860]
Dearest Lily—
Your nice letter of Saturday came yesterday, but not till after I had gone out, though I staid till I thought the time for the second post had passed. I quite understand the way you are affected by spending hours in the company of such people. You do not mean to keep up both the Demoiselles & the Dames? It is a great happiness to me to be a support to you under depression, but it would be very painful to me to think that I should always continue to be the only one, as I must necessarily fail you some day & I can never be at ease unless, either by means of persons or of pursuits you have some other resource besides me, and I am sure my own darling would feel as I do. But to speak of things more germane to the present moment. Suter came yesterday & the crack in your room was filled up. Everything has thus been done which seems necessary or desirable for the moment. His man, who seems intelligent, thinks that the sinking is caused by the foundation not going down below the sand, which being washed away more & more by the landsprings, the wall goes on sinking. In what I said about the shrubs I did not mean to suggest doing anything now. I am even disposed not to have any of them propped up (for they are not actually levelled) & as for cutting them, nothing would induce me to have the dearest one’s shrubs touched without the presence of some one who understands the subject & knows what she would have liked: It is easy however if you think it desirable, to have a few stakes put in the most important places. But it cannot well be done yet for it is hard frost, with cold wind, & snow on the ground. I was caught yesterday in two snow showers. It will be a late spring in both countries evidently. The birds who had begun singing have left off, though there are great numbers of them. The other day looking out of my bedroom window I perceived five bulfinches perched on the thorn near the dining room window.—There have been two notes from Gregson. He seems to take matters very slackly: The first said that he & Cooper thought it was best to sell the securities.2 The second, in answer to an enquiry by Haji, said that he had not seen the will, but only extracts furnished by Cooper & that these satisfied him that the third share is divisible now. I tried to see him to get some explanation of this vagueness, but as he was not at home, I wrote a note to him to say that I think it important that he should see, not extracts, but the will itself, as the difference of opinion between Cooper & his principal makes it necessary to have the best evidence. Meanwhile Haji is under an impression that the consols are already divided, as he says there are £200 more to his account than would be the case otherwise. This ought not to have been done with Gregson’s consent, unless after further communication with you.—Fawcett has sent his MS. pamphlet this morning.3 It is very well done, but I can suggest some additions & a few omissions of things which would be better away, & I am writing to him to say that I will call tomorrow to talk about it. He will probably send over to Hare who is close by. I am glad you thought my advice & notions on the former occasion correct. I had not shewn Fawcett’s letters to Haji but I have shewn him this one. I have not sent Lady D[uff] G[ordon]’s letter as it is heavy, but I shall know by your next whether you would like it sent. I have got through the Compositae & am in Campanulaceae. In the Saturdays I have got into the middle of December. Although not so quick in perceiving such things as dear one was I cannot help seeing continual marks that some of the writers have taken their cue from the Liberty & the Dissertations. A very favorable notice of the Diss. in a Bradford paper has been sent,4 & there is one of the Liberty in a large quarterly review called the London Review5 which I found here, & which had got to a 25th number without my even knowing of its existence. As to health I think I am going on very well. I seldom have any acidity now, but I do not yet feel confidence that after eight pills I shall be able to get on without medicine. I shall see what Coulson says. I do not think of seeing either Clark or Ramadge this time. The success of the Budget seems as far as I can judge to be complete.6 There is something going on about Savoy & Nice, which has induced our Government to ask Kinglake7 to put off his motion for the present. There is another notability dead, Sir W. Napier, aged 74.8 How is poor little Bruno? Another pet, little Goldie, keeps singing very loud in the kitchen. Tell me anything you would like me to bring when I come. You spoke of bulbs, & roots from Halley. It will soon be time to get them. Shall I bring Macmillan? It is hardly worthwhile if we have but a few days to stay at the little place before going our journey. I will bring the Westr in any case. Your ever affectionate
J. S. Mill
445.
TO HELEN TAYLOR1
- Blackheath
Friday, Feb. 17 [1860]
As there is no letter this morning, dear, I will write without waiting for one. Gregson writes that he has seen the will2 at Doctor’s Commons & examined it and that it bears out Cooper’s extracts, which however he is not allowed to compare verbatim. The extracts he has sent. They prove that Arthur’s3 impression is wrong, & that the time for making the division does not in any way depend on Mrs Hardy’s life or death. They do not however clear up all doubt. By the words used, the trustees, after the death of any one of the three legatees, become trustees for that one’s sons till of age, & daughters till of age or married: so that in your case & Haji’s the trust has expired. But this does not shew that it could not be kept alive by consent, unless there be something in the law which makes this impossible. I shall try to see Gregson to ask this question. But on the whole I am now rather for letting the division take effect. Now that the Birkenhead shares are commuted to Liverpool corporation bonds, I do not know that they are likely to rise by keeping. The following words are from Gregson’s note “By it (the will) it is perfectly clear that the children of Mrs Mill became entitled to the principal of one third of the residue immediately on her death. They will also become entitled to a further share on the death of either Mrs Ley or Mr Alfred Hardy without children. The will expressly required that the number of three trustees should always be kept up, which I apprehend has not been done, as I observe that the will was only proved by Mr Harman & Mr Arthur Hardy & not by Mr Booth4 the third executor. It would be proper to see that this is done in order to protect the contingent rights of Mrs Mill’s children in the remaining two thirds of the funds” or rather I should say (if at all) their right to a third of those now appropriated to Mrs Hardy.
I had a long talk on Wedy with Fawcett. Hare was not there, but a young Cambridge friend of F. named Wilson5 was there who seems to be intelligent & a warm supporter of the plan. As we had to go over the pamphlet & discuss all points of it, there was little general conversation. I once tried to lead the talk to the subject of women, but nothing came of it. I shall however have plenty of opportunities. This morning F. has sent the MS.6 revised & I shall call on Monday to talk about it further. I have impressed on him that in the present stage the only thing that can usefully be aimed at is to get access to individual minds likely to be influential. I have discouraged sending the pamphlet to any members of parliament but select ones. I have on the other hand suggested sending it with a few words of remark to all who signed the Memorial to Lord Palmerston for an educational suffrage.7 Though that scheme was not a good one, those who signed it were mostly persons of talent or instruction, & they have all given evidence that they want something out of the common line of parliamentary reform & are alive to one of the strong recommendations of Hare’s plan. Most, no doubt, will disregard it, but if we can recruit only a few of them, it will be a great gain. F. says that Cairnes (whom he knows) is with us. Mayo has sent his remarks on Bain: they are all on one detached point, & without being striking or very good, they are worth shewing to Bain which I shall do, having Mayo’s permission. I have now read up the Saturdays within two numbers. I think they grow worse rather than better, though there are often good things of a kind one finds nowhere else. I am on the point of beginning Labiatae, & I see my way to leaving about Monday week. Haji intends going to Norwich first,8 & following in the middle or at the end of the same week. What is your opinion now about going to Greece? Do you think it would do to cross Italy? I am frightened at the thought of going round by Malta, especially at a stormy season, & I doubt too if there are any regular steamers from Malta to Corfu or Athens. The French steamers to Athens touch I think at Messina but not at Malta. I can perhaps learn this before I go. The frost here may be said to have gone though it still sometimes freezes in the night & is still very cold all day, with continual snow showers (which do not lie) & a great deal of wind. Your ever affectionate J.S.M.
446.
TO HELEN TAYLOR1
- Blackheath
Saturday Feb 18 [1860]
Dearest Lily—
I have just received your Tuesday evening’s letter. We have had nothing here comparable to the weather you describe. There has been no snow that has lain, or none of any depth, & skaiting [sic] had only just begun when the thaw came. It was a slow, cold thaw, but the weather is getting daily milder, & yesterday was beautiful. I saw yesterday in Morden road the first crocus. I wrote to you fully yesterday, & I write again today chiefly to say that Ross has been here, with his man, the same whom Haji saw. They both say that the sinking & cracks can only be finally stopped by underpinning the house at the corners. Tudor House, Ross said, was as bad, but it was underpinned & it never sank afterwards. On the other hand, Suter’s man told Haji that Powell’s2 house had been underpinned long ago & that it did not stop the mischief, which as Powell told Haji has gone so far that he means to leave the house which otherwise he would not. The man said, what I can hardly believe, that it can be done without destroying or much injuring the shrubs: only the rose on the wall nearest the corner must go: I believe there are other stems and roots of roses along the wall though the shrubs hide them. I have asked the man to send a rough estimate of the cost of doing this. The kitchen wall, in the part which has bulged out & is propped up, he says cannot be mended, but only pulled down & rebuilt. Ross, for his part, does not care whether the underpinning is done or no (he avers that there is no danger, as the wall sinks upright) but he cares very much for our having the brickwork of the arch in front taken down & replaced (though it would be evidently absurd to do this with any prospect of more sinking) & he does not seek to disguise that the reason of his caring for this is because Powell’s lease expires at Midsummer & people who see the state of our house may be deterred from taking that. So he evidently hopes to get us to do this immediately, in which he will be disappointed.—I have finished the Labiatae & shall certainly be ready to come by the time I mentioned. I am sorry to perceive by your note to Haji that you do not think they will have finished the work before the end of March or beginning of April. This settles the question against Greece, & therefore in favour of Catalonia & the Eastern Pyrenees. In the Saturdays I have overtaken Haji, having only one to read besides the one which came today. On further consideration I inclose Lady D[uff] G[ordon]’s letter. Ever affectionately J.S.M.
447.
TO HELEN TAYLOR1
- Blackheath
Tuesday Feb.21 [1860]
Dearest Lily—
Your letter of Friday morning arrived yesterday. Let me first say that there is no shop of Colt’s2 from one end to the other of Regent Street. I must therefore go again to town tomorrow & get at the Post Office Directory to trace where it is. I shall then go to the London Library & see if I can find any books worth bringing, though if it is for myself only, I do not think it much worth while. I went over yesterday with Fawcett his pamphlet3 as revised by him, and the alterations which I suggested on his revision. We seemed to agree perfectly, but Hare it seems has not yet seen it. He sent to tell Hare, who came. I like Hare more & more. I like very much the expression of his face. I inclose a note I had just before had from him. The pamphlet is to be sent about privately first & afterwards published. Hare said that Hickson has written to him saying that Rowland Hill some years ago proposed for South Australia the very principle of Hare’s plan4 & that Hickson himself had afterwards proposed it to the Commissioners on the Corporation of London, for adoption in the municipal elections there.5 This has suggested to Hare to make a push for trying the plan in that way & he is going to press it upon Ayrton.6 We had a good deal of talk on the women question. They seemed to go so thoroughly with me in feeling, that there was little or no actual discussion which would have shewn whether they enter into every corner of the subject, but it seemed to me that they will go the whole way with us. They warmly assented to my statement that all employments & positions should be open to women & that then each would fall naturally into what it turned out they were fittest for individually. It appears that Fawcett presses the subject on his friends as he does all things which he cares about, & as he noticed the way in which they seem to be afraid of doing anything in the matter for fear of ridicule, Hare said if he were in Parlt he would bring it forward (the question of the suffrage for women, as I understood). Since I finished the Saturday I have been looking through the Reasoner, & nothing in it has struck me so much as the progress making on that question. Continually some new advocate for it is starting up. A Colonel Clinton,7 a great radical who writes letters to the Reasoner & is for plural voting, is strongly for women’s suffrage, & there is a curious document called the Belfast Resolutions, professing to have been agreed to at a public meeting at Belfast8 & signed by a Mr Scott as Chairman, in which a whole radical system of government & political economy is elaborately set forth & near the beginning is a demand that all women as well as all men shall not only be electors but eligible to Parliament. Fawcett thinks it a great thing to have had a woman (Miss Craig)9 appointed Secretary to the Social Science Association, & so indeed it is. He says it was done by a most strenuous personal canvass by Miss Parkes10 & others & that now everybody is glad of it, as the duties are done most admirably. So also at some place in the North, I forgot which of the large towns, he says that a woman was with great difficulty got chosen Librarian & that the admirable way in which the office is filled is having the most beneficial effects. Various things he says incline me to attach more importance than I did to what Miss Parkes & her set are doing. He says the E[nglish] W[oman]’s Journal increases in sale & has got into places where it was scouted at first. By the bye he said that Miss Craig got her living at Edinburgh as a needlewoman till Miss Parkes found her out, brought her to London & kept her there till she succeeded in getting this Secretaryship for her.—Politics are satisfactory. The first move against the Commercial Treaty & Budget, headed by Disraeli, was defeated last night by an unexpectedly large majority (between 60 & 70)11 though the Metropolitan members whose election depends on the publicans, are up in arms against opening of the wine licenses & Ayrton, as well as Horsman12 (now grown completely factious) spoke on the Tory side. There is to be another attempt made tonight, on the motion of Du Cane,13 member for Essex, which I hope will fail as ignominiously. The general feeling of the country as far as I can judge, seems right, & I think that a great many Tories must have abstained from voting not to drive the ministry to a dissolution. I saw Coulson yesterday. He recommends to me to take no more mercury, but quinine daily for a week & then to leave off medicine. I am very doubtful whether the mercury has done me any permanent good. Yesterday I had more acidity than I have had for some time. I shall probably have to reconcile myself to having a weak stomach & merely take care not to overload it. Perhaps the excursion may do good. But I hardly like going to Spain after what I read in the papers about the bitter feeling against England there. Still I do not suppose it will affect our comfort in a short tour. I am now here alone, Haji having just left for Norwich,14 not to be back while I remain if I go next Monday. I inclose a note from him. There will be nothing to keep me here. I have got into Monocotyledoneae & into the last but two of the fourteen packets. I do not think I shall bring a hat as I intended. In Spain & the Pyrenees a wideawake15 will do better. Even if we go to Greece I can get a hat at Avignon or Marseilles. I shall be glad to bring MacMillan. It improves a little as it goes on, & there is an article by Maurice on Macaulay,16 this month, which I like. The Social Science Association has sent a thick volume of its Transactions17 from which I find that my name is on the Council. I think I ought to write to have it taken off, especially after what I wrote to the Secretary of this very Association about the other subject.18 It is still cold here. Yesterday the frost & snow seemed to have come back. But there is nothing like what you tell me there still is at Avignon. The prospect of a very late spring makes me care much less about the retardation of a mere short excursion, our principal object having been frustrated. An Avignon winter judging from our experience is anything but what one means by a Southern one. What Gregson said about filling up the trustees turns out to be bosh, as the stock certificates he himself gave me are signed by Harman in person & by Cooper in behalf of Booth. Ever your affectionate
J.S.M.
[P.S.]
I will bring 2 doz. sherry from Paris. We shall not, I suppose, want any tea. I have answered Guillaumin’s19 letter.
448.
TO HELEN TAYLOR1
- Blackheath
Thursday Feb. 23 [1860]
Dearest Lily—
Your Sunday evening’s letter arrived yesterday. Your report about the progress of the work seems favorable but if we do not leave before April, it would entirely negative going to Greece as far as I alone am concerned. I should arrive rather later than I did before;2 I wish to see both the places I did not then see, & those I did: we should inevitably do it more slowly; & it is impossible to stay a day later than I did, on account of the heat. Still, if you decidedly preferred that journey to any other, I should do so too, for I have no very strong attraction towards the alternatives, which are Catalonia & the Pyrenees, or some part of Italy or Sicily. If you would rather travel in Greece before trying tent life in the East, we might, next winter, go to Egypt first, & then to Greece, postponing Palestine & Syria. By that however we should lose the approach by Corfu & the Corinthian Gulf which I very much tiens to shewing you first. The same objection applies to going by Malta, for, judging by the long & detailed list of steamers in Bradshaw’s Continental, there is no steamer from Malta or Marseilles to Corfu but only to Syra & Athens. Everybody who sees Greece first by the south coast of the Morea, & Athens, is disappointed. If we go this year it will be best to start from Ancona, stay a week at Corfu, go from there to Athens, then see Attica & the Morea only, which we might do thoroughly, & then return by Italy or by Constantinople as the season, the convenience, or our inclination might determine.—I have bought your revolver. With the case, caps &c. complete it cost £5, & 50 cartridges in addition make three shillings more. It was not too heavy for me to carry home. I hope they won’t stop it at the Custom House. I believe importation of arms is prohibited, not to mention that they may think I intend to fire at the Emperor. I made up a list of books for the London Library, but it was not a very attractive one. If they send half a dozen volumes however that will probably be reading enough for the time we want it, especially as I hope to resume writing. It is again hard frost here: should it be so on Monday I shall perhaps be afraid to come. I have been, however, a good deal better these two days. In the plants I have only now the Grasses to go through, as I have not acquired this time any ferns or other cryptogams. I shall like very much to hear an account of your domiciliary visits with the ladies of the Bienfaisance. I have just been reading a manuscript essay on Strikes,3 by Fawcett: it is the best thing I ever read on the subject, with some new lights even to me, & I hope it will be published. I think we may look to him with great hopes (notwithstanding his misfortune) as one of the successors. A propos, the misfortune, according to what Hare tells me, seems to have happened under most painful circumstances. It was the effect of two stray shots from his father’s gun: only two, but one went into each eye, breaking the spectacles & no doubt forcing in the broken glass. What a sad concurrence of circumstances was necessary to make one poor man (or rather two) afflicted for life! If the coincidence had been the contrary way, would it not have been thought manifestly providential?—Everything looks well for the Budget,4 for though the Tories are making a distinct party opposition to it, they evidently cannot muster their full strength. But I am sadly afraid the Government may be forced to give up the best provision of all, that which destroys the brewers’ public house monopoly; for not only the publican interest is the most powerful, next to the attornies, in all the larger constituencies, but the Teetotallers have with their usual narrow-mindedness come up in great force & are pouring in petitions against what they call a great extension of the trade in intoxicating liquors. By the bye I believe I am very unpopular at present with the teetotallers.5 A correspondent of Holyoake complains that they misunderstand me & think me “opposed to Temperance.” I perceive Francis Newman is a leading Maine law man, & writes papers with his name in the Reasoner, in one of which he obliquely glances at me.6 I think, he, like the Saturday reviewers, is among the greatest enemies to our principles that there now are; such will mostly be found among those who agree with us on many details. After your letter I think I may authorize Gregson to consent to Cooper’s proposed sale & division. Ever your affte
J.S.M.
[P.S.]
Your Brighton dividend, received at Prescott’s, this time is £26.19.
449.
TO HELEN TAYLOR1
- Blackheath
Saty Feb.25 [1860]
I write but a few words, dear, as I shall see you so soon. I shall certainly go on Monday evg & consequently arrive on Wednesday by the express at midday. I have finished the plants, & done everything that requires doing, & though it freezes every night rather hard it does not freeze in the day. I am not taking any medicine, & have had very little indigestion since I wrote last. I have certainly gained a good deal by the course of medicine, & perhaps now the excursion will set me up. Your Wednesday’s letter came yesterday. I have not heard anything further of or from Ross or his man. If I had seen either of them I should have again repeated that I would do nothing till we return, there being in their opinion & in that of every one else who has been spoken to, no immediate or rather no present danger. If it is desirable to write to Ross, this can as well be done from St Véran. I do not know what you mean by Suter’s “job” as the putting up of the iron bar which was what he recommended need not in his opinion be done at present & I do not see why it should not wait till we can decide on everything at once. Gladstone has defeated the second motion of the Tories against the budget by the quite unexpected majority of 116.2 But he has been obliged to limit his measure about licensing to the sale of wine, leaving the beer question as he says to be considered hereafter as a separate subject. I cannot blame him though I am sorry.—Do not feel any anxiety about my passage for there is no wind, to speak of, here. So now dear I leave off, & shall not need to write again before the pleasant moment of seeing you.
Your ever affectionate
J.S.M.
450.
TO HENRY FAWCETT1
- Blackheath
Feb. 26. 1860
Dear Mr Fawcett
It would never for a moment occur to me, seeing what you are in other respects, to regard your loss of sight as excluding you from political life. It could only do so if it had, as in most men it would have done, thrown a damp on your wishes and aspirations. You have only to take every fair opportunity of making yourself known as a public speaker and lecturer. When you have thus proved that you are under no real disqualification, your misfortune will, I am satisfied, be very much in your favour, not only by exciting interest, and neutralizing envy and jealousy, but because it will cause you to be much more and sooner talked about. You will then, I think, have quite as good a chance of being elected to Parliament, as any other man of independent opinions.
I return the pamphlet2 by post. I like the original title best, but either is good. The addition on the back of the title page is very desirable, but instead of “interest in the improvement of the Representation” I would say “interest in improving the quality of the Representation” or, more generally, “in correcting the deficiencies of” &c. or some other and better phrase to distinguish those you address from mere Parliamentary Reformers of the old school.
Parker writes “I am just going to Cambridge, and will see Mr Fawcett and discuss with him further the ‘Strikes’paper.”3 By this I conclude he thinks you are at Cambridge.4 He does not say when he will be back, but I suppose very soon.
I have marked in pencil on the margin of the proof, a few misprints, and two or three slight alterations or additions which occur to me.
ever yours sincerely
J. S. Mill
451.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE1
- Saint Véran
le 7 mars 1860
Monsieur
C’est avec grand plaisir que j’ai reçu votre lettre du 8 février. Elle m’a suivi en Angleterre, où j’étais allé pour affaires, et si j’avais eu le temps de m’arrêter à Paris en retournant ici, j’aurais répondu à votre lettre personnellement plutôt que par écrit. Je me promets de profiter à une meilleure occasion de votre invitation aimable et amicale.
Je suis charmé que votre nouveau livre2 soit à la veille de paraître. Je le suis aussi d’apprendre que la traduction aura, à votre airs, l’avantage de l’à propos, et que l’opinion commence à pencher du côté contraire à la centralisation. Je puis le dire sans blesser vos convictions, car vous conviendrez, je pense, qu’en France l’engoûement pour la centralisation a été excessif, comme j’accorde que de notre côté de la Manche on a dormé un peu dans le fanatisme contraire. Du reste, ni votre point de vue ni le mien n’est exclusif, en notre divergence, quoique considérable, repose sur une différence de nuance plutôt que de principe.
M. Guillaumin3 me fit, il y a quelque semaines, la proposition de faire traduire le petit livre par M. Paillottet.4 Je lui fis savoir sans délai que vous aviez bien voulu charger de cette tâche. Je me suis aperçu seulement hier, par le Journal des Economistes, que M. Guillaumin avait eu l’imprudence d’annoncer sa traduction avant de me faire part de son projet. Si vous avez vu l’annonce, vous avez sans doute compris comme la chose s’est passée.
Agréez, mon cher Monsieur, l’expression de ma haute considération et de mes sentiments d’amitié.
J. S. Mill
452.
TO LORD OVERSTONE1
- Saint Véran
- near Avignon
March 25. 1860.
Dear Lord Overstone
I have just heard that Mr Hare, the Charity Commissioner, and author of the remarkable Treatise on Representation, is to be proposed to the Committee of the Athenaeum on the 27th, for selection without ballot.2 If I could be sure that you had read Mr Hare’s book it would be quite needless, indeed I should hardly feel at liberty, to express to you any opinion of mine on the subject; but in case you have not, I venture to say that there are few books you would find better worth reading, or which are likely to give you a higher opinion of the author. My own conviction is, that Mr Hare has discovered, what the best political thinkers have rather lamented the want of, than hoped to find—an effectual and practicable mode of preventing numbers, in a popular constitution, from swamping and extinguishing the influence of education and knowledge. Whatever your opinion may be on this point, I feel sure that as a mere specimen of intellectual power applied to the great political question of the modern world, the book would amply repay in pleasure, the time spent in reading it.
Believe me
Dear Lord Overstone
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
453.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE1
St. Véran le 6 avril 1860
Mon cher Monsieur—
Je vous remercie beaucoup de l’envoi de votre nouveau livre.2 C’est un ouvrage très remarquable et qui me paraît même supérieur à celui auquel il fait suite.3 Je pense qu’il fera époque dans la grande discussion de la Centralisation. Vous ne vous attendrez pas, à coup sûr, qu’il n’y ait pas une divergence considérable entre nos opinions. Cependant (comme vous avez dit à propos du livre de la Liberté) je suis plus frappé des coincidences d’opinion que des différences: et je crois que vous eussiez dit cela avec encore plus de raison si vous aviez connu un certain manuscrit inédit que j’ai dans mon portefeuille.4 J’attends avec un vif intérêt l’introduction5 promise dans l’annonce de la Liberté. Je suis plus que curieux de voir de quelle manière vous concevrez la différence entre nos deux manières de penser. Il est au reste très convenable que le plus modéré et le moins fanatique des localistes soit présenté et commenté par le plus philosophe des centralistes.
Je n’entre pas ici dans les questions qui nous séparent et que j’espère discuter avec vous de vive voix. Vous êtes un de ceux avec qui on ne peut que gagner à comparer ses idées. Je donnerai seulement un mot d’éclaircissement sur deux points.
L’un des deux me regarde personnellement. Je n’ai jamais entendu nier l’influence des races. Vous pouvez voir dans mon article sur Michelet6 que j’admets pleinement cette influence. Dans la phrase que vous avez citée, je voulais seulement blâmer une tendance qui existe dans tous les temps mais plus particulièrement dans celui-ci (par suite de la réaction du 19me siècle contre le 18me), c’est celle d’attribuer toutes les variétés dans le caractère des peuples et des individus à des différences indélébiles de nature, sans se demander si les influences de l’éducation et du milieu social et politique n’en donnent pas une explication suffisante. Je ne puis comparer cette tendance qu’à l’habitude qu’avaient les peuples primitifs d’attribuer tout ce qu’on faisait, sans pouvoir dire de qui et comment on avait appris à le faire, à l’inspiration directe d’un dieu. Dans le cas dont il s’agit, savoir celui des différences de caractère entre les peuples celtiques et les peuples anglo-saxons, je crois avec vous que la race y entre pour beaucoup; mais quant à leur goût pour ou contre la centralisation, je vous demanderai si la diversité dans le développement historique de la France et de l’Angleterre dont vous avez fait une esquisse si vraie et si instructive, ne suffisait pas à elle seule comme explication.
L’autre point sur lequel je veux dire un mot, c’est celui-ci. Je reconnais pleinement la tendance que vous signalez dans la législation anglaise vers une centralisation plus grande. Non seulement je reconnais cette tendance, mais encore j’y applaudis même. Mais notez bien que ce mouvement centralisateur est plus utile que nuisible chez nous, justement parce qu’il est en opposition tranchée avec l’esprit du pays. De là il arrive que ces changements si grands en apparence, se réduisent dans la pratique à des proportions presque exiguës. Vous croyez peut-être que l’administration de la charité publique est réellement centralisée chez nous depuis la loi de 1834.7 Eh bien, il n’en est rien. L’immense abus qu’on avait fait du pouvoir local avait tellement effarouché le public qu’il est devenu possible de faire cette loi; mais il n’est pas été possible de l’exécuter: le pouvoir local a fini par regagner sa prédominance sur le pouvoir central; et celui-ci n’a pu conserver ses attributions qu’en les exerçant avec une réserve si excessive qu’elles sont restées plutôt une ressource pour des cas extrêmes qu’un ressort régulier d’administration. Il en sera ainsi pour longtemps de tout ce qu’on tentera chez nous dans le sens de la centralisation. On admettra bien l’intervention du pouvoir central comme remède héroique et passager: on ne l’admettra pas comme régime. Maintenant c’est à réfléchir si ces dictatures momentanées du pouvoir central ne remplissent pas suffisamment les conditions de votre système.—Votre tout dévoué
J. S. Mill
454.
TO HENRY FAWCETT1
- Saint Véran
April 6. 1860
Dear Mr Fawcett
I was very glad to hear from you, and was much pleased that you are going to lecture on Strikes. Your being urged to do so by Sir J. Shuttleworth,2 and his presence as Chairman,3 take away all appearance of the proceeding’s being uncalled for; and anything which tends to make you known as a public speaker without looking like a desire on your part to push yourself into notice, is useful for your ulterior views.
With regard to being examined before the Committee on Strikes,4 I should not have anticipated a much more favorable answer than you received, though I should have expected a civil one. It is contrary to the theory of a Parliamentary Committee to examine witnesses on anything but matters of fact; and it is only because members of parliament are not what they are censés to be, that such a practice could ever have crept in. As it is, I have always felt that there was a sort of impropriety in it, and have avoided rather than sought to be examined on questions of argument and theory, though I have once or twice consented5 when particularly asked to do so by the Chairman of the Committee. In the case of the Corrupt Practices Committee,6 the same reasons do not apply, as inventors may always with propriety offer themselves to explain their plan.
Mr Hare’s letter in the Times7 seemed to me a very good move, and I am glad to hear from him that it has met with some response from the press. Mr Martineau’s8 is an important adhesion. If he has made up his mind to do all that he can, it will probably be found to be not a little. In your remarks on the impossibility of making any impression in the House of Commons, you must, I think, have overlooked Sir J. Pakington’s speech.9 He seemed to me to have sought an occasion for separating himself from Disraeli on the question, and to be quite ready to consider any feasible plan for the representation of minorities. I hope he has your pamphlet,10 but I would not counsel any more direct application to him. There is a great deal in leaving an idea time to crystallize.
I expect to leave Avignon in about a week, after which I must refer you to Parker for my address.
Ever yours sincerely
J. S. Mill
455.
TO THOMAS HARE1
- Saint Véran
April 6, 1860
Dear Sir
Your letter of the 29th gave me great pleasure. It is very satisfactory that your proposals in the Times2 were so decidedly supported by the Economist,3 and received so much attention from the papers. Several passages in the leading articles of the Times have since pointed, by slight indications, in the direction we wish for.4 Notwithstanding the inaccessibility of members of Parliament to any idea which will not serve for the hustings, the situation seems to me favourable for gaining the attention of leading politicians to such a plan as yours. Did you notice Pakington’s speech?5 He ostentatiously separated himself from Disraeli, complimenting Lord J. Russell on the provision in his former bill for representation of minorities (which Disraeli had reproached him for as unconstitutional) and altogether seemed on the lookout for some unobjectionable mode of doing what your plan does in the best of all modes. The foundation is evidently laid for making an impression on his mind. But I would not recommend (unless some special opportunity offers) entering into any communication with him, beyond sending him Mr Fawcett’s pamphlet.6 We must be on our guard against the danger of making people feel bored by the subject before they understand it.
What Sir E. Lytton says is true, but not much to the purpose; as he was not asked anything but what was perfectly consistent with his remarks. He was not applied to as a minister, but as one of the leaders of opinion. An important member of parliament has it in his power to help forward materially by incidental notice, ideas with which it may not be yet time for him to identify himself as a practical statesman. And from the tone of Sir E. L’s letter7 I should not despair of his doing so in this case, though he will not commit himself beforehand.
I do not like to discourage any move in favour of the plan, but I confess I should not expect that much good could be done at present by any appeals to the inadequately represented places. Any feeling that might be excited, would be sure, I think, to turn itself into a movement for the more practical object of merely obtaining more members: while the plan would be made chiefly known by its least beneficial feature, the increased representation it would give to the large towns. I say this in ignorance of all that may have occurred to you on the other side.
I was glad to hear from Mr Fawcett that Mr Martineau promises to do his utmost in the National.8 That Review is, I believe, a good deal read by a rather advanced order of liberals; and independently of Mr Martineau’s own abilities as a reasoner and writer, he is attended by a cortège of younger men who can also use their pens efficiently. His adhesion is very valuable, and tends to hasten the time when you will be able to cite an imposing number of thinkers, differing in other respects, but agreeing in their support of your plan.
I have not yet seen the new Fraser,9 but hope to see it in a day or two. Perhaps if a good article were offered to the Westminster, it would be accepted, but it should be by a new person, if possible. If I were in England, I would try to move Herbert Spencer, but I do not know how he is affected by the plan. Have you any means of knowing?
I expect to leave Avignon about this time next week, but I shall keep Parker informed of my address.
Yours ever truly
J. S. Mill
456.
TO ALEXANDER BAIN1
S[aint] V[éran] April 11. 1860
Dear Bain—
I propose leaving Avignon in a day or two to pass a few weeks or months in the Pyrenees & in Spain—during which time as my address will be frequently changing I had better refer you to Parker for it.
I mentioned in my last letter that I had completed the first draft of the new book.2 I have read since my return here, several things which have interested me, above all Darwin’s book.3 It far surpasses my expectation. Though he cannot be said to have proved the truth of his doctrine, he does seem to have proved that it may be true which I take to be as great a triumph as knowledge & ingenuity could possibly achieve on such a question. Certainly nothing can be at first sight more entirely unplausible than his theory & yet after beginning by thinking it impossible, one arrives at something like an actual belief in it, & one certainly does not relapse into complete disbelief.
Another book I have been reading is Baden Powell’s last,4 which though much inferior to Darwin is a wonderful book for a clergyman & an Oxford professor5 to write, & remarkable as an exemplification of one form of modern theism. It is curious to see natural theology reverting to the form in which it was conceived by Aristotle6 —that it is not what cannot be predicted, but what can, that proves an intelligent agency. There is in Powell’s otherwise very consistent system an awkward gap at the point where this doctrine comes face to face with historical Xtianity. What can he mean by holding that miracles are impossible, & yet that those of the new testament may be received as matters of faith, though not of science?7 Is this last a mere saving clause, as when Voltaire said nearly the same thing?8 If so, he must intend it to be seen through, as Voltaire did. But the general tone of his mind, so unlike Voltaire’s, makes this improbable.
When you next write I hope to hear that you have quite got rid of your lameness.
457.
TO WILLIAM ELLIS
[The Letter to William Ellis originally numbered in the sequence here as from Avignon on May 1, 1860, has been transferred to the following year as Letter 488A.]
458.
TO THOMAS HARE1
- Barcelona
May 9. 1860
Dear Sir
On returning here after a tour of more than a fortnight I found your letter—and I inclose a few sentences by way of reply to your circular.2 I hope they may suffice, though they are not so good as I could wish, having been written when I was tired and somewhat pressed for time. I am very glad that Lord Grey has got his Committee.3 It enables you, with a favorable Chairman, to bring forward the whole subject with advantages which you might have waited long for.
The mention of your plan in the H. of Commons both by Bulwer4 and by Walter5 will also do good, notwithstanding the disparaging remarks of the latter. As you observe, he rather misses the matter in saying that I think a proposition has only to be logically proved in order to be universally agreed to. What I do think is that when a thing is “logically proved,” it is the duty of whoever sees that it is so, to stand up for it, whether it is likely to be agreed to or not. This, however, is a view of obligation which M.P.’s and journalists, being “of the day daily” cannot be expected to understand.
I shall be anxious to hear from you. Please direct Poste Restante Perpignan, Pyrénées Orientales, till further notice.
Ever yrs truly
J. S. Mill
459.
TO THOMAS HARE1
- Barcelona
May 9. 1860.
Dear Sir
I beg to acknowledge your letter requesting that I will state my impression respecting the causes of the much greater proportion of parliamentary electors who abstain from exercising the franchise in the large than in the small constituencies.
I am unable to answer this question from experience of my own individual feelings and conduct; since, however imperfectly any of the candidates who offered themselves may have represented my political opinions considered generally, I have not felt myself released from the obligation of voting for that one of them who had most in common with me. But so far as I can form any judgment from the probabilities of the case, and from such opportunities of observation as I have had, I should say that the causes which induce a very great proportion of voters in the numerous constituencies to neglect the exercise of the franchise, are principally two, viz.
1. In the case of the uneducated a habitual indifference to politics, unless in times of great popular excitement, or when some question affecting their class interests or feelings is at stake, or unless they expect to be, in some shape or other, paid for their votes, which they often can be in the smallest, but seldom in the larger constituencies.
2. In the case of the educated, a conviction that any candidate who, in any sufficient degree, represented their sentiments, would not have the smallest chance of being elected. And this state of things is likely, I apprehend, to be permanent, in all constituencies of which the majority are uneducated and give their votes freely; so long as, by an omission in our Constitution as iniquitous as it is impolitic, minorities are denied the right to which they are equally entitled with majorities, of being represented in proportion to their numbers.
I am
Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
Thomas Hare Esq.
460.
TO HENRY FAWCETT1
- Barcelona
May 12. 1860
Dear Mr Fawcett
I have not yet acknowledged two interesting letters from you, dated the 10th and 17th of April. The last I only received a day or two ago, on returning here from making the circuit of Valencia, Madrid, and Saragossa. It gave me much pleasure to hear that your lecture2 was so successful. It is a great encouragement. Respecting Mr Hare’s plan, although Massey’s3 move has come to nothing, and I suppose Capt. Gordon4 has abandoned his projected motion, there have been several incidents that are very favourable. The mention by Bulwer and even that by Walter in the H. of Commons5 will be extremely useful, and Lord Grey’s Committee with the prospect of Mr Hare’s being examined,6 is one of the most fortunate things which could have happened. I received the pamphlet7 but I am sorry to say the Globe8 miscarried. From what you say of it however, there seems to be good fortune in that quarter too. Any newspaper of good circulation which takes up the plan, stamps it in the opinion of commonplace people as at any rate not Utopian, quoiqu’en dise Mr Walter. I still think the two parties will patch up something this year!9 The Lords will alter the bill, and the Commons will accept it altered. Your list of provisions for a temporary Reform Bill is very good, but who will support it? unless Lord Stanley or Pakington take it into their heads that it would be a good compromise, and I fear even they could not carry their party with them. Jones10 I believe to be quite incapable of having a fundamentally new, and at the same time true, idea in Political Economy. His merit was that he called attention to the great variety in the tenures of land as affecting the laws of distribution.
Please direct for the present to Perpignan (Pyrénées Orientales) Poste Restante.
yrs vry truly
J. S. Mill
461.
TO JOHN NICHOL1
- Amélie les Bains
- Pyrénées Orientales
May 19, 1860
Dear Sir
Your letter of April 12 has only just reached me here, and the volume2 you mention has not been forwarded. As I expect to be in England in July I will not expose your book to the risk of loss at the little post office of this remote corner of France. When I return, I will lose no time in reading it. I regret that my absence prevented my seeing you when you were in London, but I hope that I may have at no distant time another opportunity. If, in the meantime, there is anything I can do that would serve you, my publisher Mr Parker (445 West Strand) will forward any letter. I am
Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
462.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE1
- Ax (Ariège)
le 10 juin 1860
Mon cher Monsieur—
Votre bonne et intéressante lettre m’a suivi jusqu’à cet endroit charmant, digne d’une plus grande célébrité qu’il n’a encore acquise.
Il est vrai, comme vous dites, que l’Angleterre n’a plus à lutter contre la tyrannie ou la compression officielle, et en cela elle est sans doute plus avancée que la France—mais de même que beaucoup d’autres progrès, celui-ci promet plus qu’il ne tient. L’opinion a hérité de toutes les autres tyrannies. Son joug paraît léger, parce qu’on ne songe pas ordinairement à lutter contre lui. Il est entré dans les âmes. Tout se fait chez nous par contrainte morale. On trouve tant de petits obstacles à sortir de la voie commune en quoi que ce soit, que peu de monde le fait même en théorie, et il est presque impossible de le faire en pratique. Les classes supérieures, soit par leur position, soit par leur intelligence, n’y songent pas plus que les autres, et c’est ce qui fait que je ne fonde pas sur ces classes autant d’espérance que vous semblez le faire. Toutefois il y a en Angleterre beaucoup de choses qui semblent mortes, mais qui ne font que dormir, et qui sont capables de s’éveiller; témoin la renaissance de l’esprit militaire,2 qui peut-être ne contribuera pas peu à fausser les calculs de l’homme qui gouverne actuellement la France.
463.
TO GEORGE W. HASTINGS1
- Bagnères de Luchon
June 18. 1860
Sir
Allow me, through you, to offer my grateful acknowledgments to the Council of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, for the honour they have done me in nominating me to the distinguished office of President of the Social Economy Department for the next annual meeting of the Association.2 I am, however, under the necessity of declining that honour, as I have occupations in hand which will require all my time and attention during the ensuing autumn; and I feel assured that the Association will have no difficulty in finding some one much better qualified to preside over its deliberations than a person of my little experience in such matters. I am Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
G. W. Hastings Esq.
&c &c &c
464.
TO HENRY FAWCETT1
- Blackheath
July 14. [1860]
Dear Sir
I am glad of the prospect you hold out of my seeing you next week in London. I shall be happy to meet you any day and hour that you may do me the favour to appoint.
Your pamphlet2 (which I liked very much) was so far from having miscarried, that the one you send is the third copy I have received. I am
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
465.
TO HENRY FAWCETT1
- Blackheath
July 18. [1860]
Dear Sir
As I wish in any case to go to town one day this week to see Mr Hare I will if it suits you call on you in Norfolk Street about twelve on Friday. If I do not hear from you, I shall conclude that this arrangement will suit you.
I look forward with much pleasure to seeing you again.
Very truly yrs
J. S. Mill
466.
TO THOMAS HARE1
- Blackheath
July 18 [1860]
Dear Sir
I have been waiting to fix a time for calling on you until I heard on what days Mr Fawcett will be in town. I have just heard from him and have fixed to call on him in Norfolk Street on Friday about twelve. When I have [seen?] him I will call at your office, but if anything should make it inconvenient to you to see me then and there, have no scruple about it, as I can without inconvenience come to town any other day.
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
467.
TO T. E. CLIFFE LESLIE1
- B[lackheath] P[ark]
Aug. 18 1860.
Dear Sir—
Your article2 has interested me very much & its main position is unshakeable, but I suspect we shd differ greatly on a subject into which you do not enter, that of the limitations. Though you do not say so, the whole of your reasoning seems to converge to the conclusion that all Europe (if not the whole human race) will some time or other be brought under one government. That there may one day be a kind of loose federation among the countries of Europe, & a common tribunal to decide their differences, is likely enough. But as for actual incorporation, when there is not identity of language, literature, & historical antecedents, I see no spontaneous tendency to it, nor any likelihood of its being brought about but by that which has produced it heretofore, viz. conquest, which of all tendencies we ought most to execrate.
As you asked me to do so I have made two or three brief notes on particular passages
(a) I would omit the reference to [Roussillon?].3Réunion does not in French necessarily mean reuniting but simply uniting [. . . ?]
(b) Would it not be better to omit Nice & Savoy, or at least to refer to them in a manner which would not recognize their union with France as an accomplished & irrevocable fact?4
(c) These rivers & mountains do not form any conceivable system of natural boundaries5
(d) Kilometre stones are not milestones & I doubt if St Denis is so much as four miles from Paris.6
(e) The bracketed passage is only true in a very strained sense.
The generalities of Buckle’s7 theory are very vulnerable, & I hardly think he could have held by them if any competent person had criticized them before publication. He could have afforded to part with most of them, for the premisses are much broader than was required to support his conclusions, & it is exactly in this unnecessary margin & overplus of premisses that, as it seems to me, the error lies.
468.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
[Originally an excerpt from E. T. Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale (2 vols., London, 1914), was to appear at this point. In the course of printing, however, the full MS has been located. The complete text, correctly dated, is to be found as letter 440A in Appendix II.]
469.
TO HELEN TAYLOR1
- Sandwich
Tuesday evg 4th [Sept., 1860]
Dearest Lily—
We have got here from Canterbury today, having spent eight hours on foot, walking and botanizing, besides seeing Canterbury Cathedral & Richborough by the way. Though these two days journeys were by far the least promising botanically speaking, of our whole route, we have found a great many plants, and though there is not yet much that is quite new to me, I have filled up an immense number of the gaps in my Kent Flora. But the greatest treat was Canterbury Cathedral. I had not the remotest idea that it was so magnificent. We must go and see it together. It is nearly as fine as the fine foreign cathedrals. The time has passed very pleasantly. Mr Irvine2 is a very agreeable companion and seems to me very sensible and right thinking and feeling on things in general; and with the novelty to me of botanizing with a good botanist & the quantity of botany I learn, no excursion that we do not make together could pass more pleasantly. Tomorrow we shall have a botanical exploration of this very rich neighbourhood, and I expect to get many novelties. We shall I suppose be at Deal tomorrow night and at Dover the next. I shall write to you either tomorrow or next day, probably the latter, as there is a great deal to be done tomorrow & I may be too tired. I am writing this previously to having a ‘meat tea’which is going to be an ordinary regimen. N. B. We were out at six this morning, for two hours before breakfast, and shall do the same tomorrow. ever dearest Lily your affectionate
J.S.M.
470.
TO HELEN TAYLOR1
- Royal George Folkestone
Thursday evening [Sept. 6, 1860]
Dearest Lily—
We arrived here at ¼ to 9 tonight, having been on our legs since ¼ past 9 in the morning, besides a short walk before breakfast. So you see we do not lose time. Yesterday and today have been splendid days of walking & botanizing; yesterday was equal in number of new plants to almost any day I ever had even on the Continent & today not very much inferior. I had no idea that Kent was so rich or that there could be such botanizing in it. What contributes as much to make it pleasant is the very great pleasure Mr Irvine takes in it. The country is all new to him and he says he never had so pleasant & altogether so successful an excursion. We expect two more equally good days at Sandgate, Hithe, &c. and in Romney Marsh. I suppose we shall stop tomorrow night at Hithe & have a walk next day before returning to town, but I will write again to tell you for certain at what hour on Saturday I shall arrive. Though the journey is so pleasant I look forward with the greatest pleasure to returning to you and resuming our home life, first at Blackheath, afterwards and better at St Véran. I do not half like amusing myself while you are not even quiet, but fatigued and bored—but I shall soon be back dear. I will not write any more now I have written this to be sure of being in time for tonight’s post, as soon as we arrived, or rather as soon as the bag arrived, which this time was later than we were, though we were so late.
ever your affectionate
J.S.M.
471.
TO HENRY FAWCETT1
- Blackheath
Sept. 9. 1860
Dear Sir
I was very glad to hear from you, and to read your MS.2 Not having seen the paper by Dr Whewell to which it replies I cannot judge how far it is a sufficient answer to the particular mode in which he puts the argument. But at all events it contains a great deal of the matter out of which the answer must be made, and I am glad that Macmillan desires a paper of the kind. I have put down a few notes which occurred to me in reading it, but there are none of them to which I attach importance except the one marked (h.)
I return the MS. by this post.
I hope you may not be disappointed in your anticipations of getting some notice taken at Glasgow3 of Mr Hare’s plan.
I am Dear Sir
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
472.
TO FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE1
Blackheath Sept. 10, 1860
Dear Madam—
Your note should have been answered sooner, but I was from home when it arrived.
I should most willingly do my best to be of use to you in the matter which you speak of, if you think that I am a suitable person to be consulted about a work of the kind. In one respect indeed I am very well fitted to test the efficacy of your treatise,2 since I probably stand as much in need of conversion as those to whom it is addressed. If in spite of this (or perhaps all the more on that account) you would like me to read and give my opinion on it, I will do so with much pleasure.
I am very happy to hear from yourself that you did not mean to convey impressions which I still think the words of the concluding passage of your Notes are calculated to give.3 I did not myself think you could possibly mean it, since in the same passage you also seem to imply that women should not be excluded by law or usage from the liberty of trying any mode of existence open to men, at their own risk in case of failure. But as the advocates of the “rights of women” contend for no more; and are even, in general, ready to make what appear to me far too great concessions as to the comparative unfitness of women for some occupations, I do not think they can justly be accused of jargon, nor of contending that women ought to do certain things merely because men do them.
Believe me
Dear Madam
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
473.
TO WILLIAM THOMAS THORNTON1
[After Sept. 19, 1860]
Your letter of September 19 gave me much pleasure, because it contained better and more encouraging accounts of your health, and also because it said that things were likely to be made pleasanter to you at the India House by changes in the mode of transacting business.2 I shall be greatly interested by hearing more of these changes, since, as you are aware, I think that the practical goodness of a government depends, much more than is generally supposed, on the forms of business. It is a comfort to hear of any changes for the better. Unfortunately, the deteriorations in the structure of the instrument of Government in detail, which I always feared would follow from the substitution of the traditions of the Government Offices for those of the India House,3 seem to be taking place still more rapidly than I looked for. If the Council at Calcutta is to be abolished, and a Cabinet of Secretaries put in its place, as the newspapers say, and as is too probable, the change will be almost fatal: for the Members of Council are the only high administrative Officers not dependent on the will of the Governor-General, and their Minutes are the only Channel through which an independent and ungarbled opinion necessarily reaches the home authorities. The difficulties of governing India have so much increased, while there is less and less wisdom employed in doing it, that I begin to despair of the whole subject, and almost believe that we are at the beginning of the end.
474.
TO FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE1
Blackheath Sept. 23. 1860
Dear Madam—
I have read your Treatise,2 or rather the portion of it which you did me the honour of sending to me. If any part of your object in sending it was to know my opinion as to the desirableness of its being published, I have no difficulty in giving it strongly in the affirmative. There is much in the work which is calculated to do good to many persons besides the artisans to whom it is more especially addressed.3 In point of arrangement indeed, of condensation, and of giving as it were, a keen edge to the argument, it would have been much benefitted by the recasting which you have been prevented from giving to it by a cause4 on all other accounts so much to be lamented. This, however, applies more to the general mode of laying out the argument, than to the details.
With regard to the substance of the book, it is scarcely necessary to say that there is very much of it with which I am in entire agreement and strong sympathy, and when I am not, I neither have any desire to shake your own conviction, if I could suppose myself capable of doing so, nor should I regret the adoption of the same creed by any one to whose intellect and feelings it may be able to recommend itself. It would be a great moral improvement to most persons, be they Christians, Deists, or Atheists, if they firmly believed the world to be under the government of a Being who, willing only good, leaves evil in the world solely in order to stimulate the human faculties by an unremitting struggle against every form of it. In regard however to the effect on my own mind, will you forgive me for saying, that your mode of reconciling the world as we see it with the government of a Perfect Being, though less sophistical than the common modes, and not having as they have the immoral effect of consecrating any forms of avoidable evil as purposes of God, does not, to my apprehension, at all help to remove the difficulty? I tried what I could do with that hypothesis many years ago; that a Perfect Being could do everything except make another perfect being—that the next thing to it was to make a perfectible one—and that perfection could only be achieved by a struggle against evil. But then, a Perfect Being—limited only by this condition, might be expected so to form the world that the struggle against evil should be the greatest possible in extent & intensity; and unhappily our world conforms as little to this character, as to that of a world without evil. If the Divine intention in making man was Effort towards Perfection, the divine purpose is as much frustrated as if its sole aim were human happiness. There is a little of both, but the absence of both is the marked characteristic.
I confess that no religious theory seems to me consistent with the facts of the universe, except (in some form or other) the old one of the two principles. There are many signs, in the structure of the universe, of an intelligent Power wishing well to man and other sentient creatures. I could however shew, not so many perhaps, but quite as decided indications of an intelligent Power or Powers with the contrary propensity. But (not to insist on this) the will of the benevolent Power must find, either in its own incompleteness or in some external circumstances, very serious obstacles to the entire fulfilment of the benevolent purpose. It may be, that the world is a battlefield between a good and a bad power or powers, and that mankind may be capable by sufficiently strenuous cooperation with the good power, of deciding, or at least accelerating, its final victory. I know one man, of great intelligence & high moral principle, who finds satisfaction to his devotional feelings, and support under the evils of life, in the belief of this creed.
Another point on which I cannot agree with you is the opinion that Law, in the sense in which we predicate it of the arrangements of Nature, can only emanate from a Will. This doctrine seems to me to rest solely on the double meaning of the word Law, though that double meaning cannot be more completely and clearly stated than you have done. It is much more natural to the human mind to see a divine will in those events in which it has not yet recognized inflexible constancy of sequence, than in those in which it has. No doubt, this instinctive notion is erroneous; and Will is in its own nature as regular a phenomenon, as much a subject of law, as anything else; but it does seem rather odd that unchangeableness should be the one thing which, to account for its existence, must be referred to a will; Will being, within the limits of our experience, the thing of all others most liable to change. Indeed it cannot be unchangeable unless combined with omnipotence, or at all events with omniscience.
With all that you say in affirmation of the universality of Law, and in refutation of the objections on the subject of Free Will and Necessity, I need hardly say how heartily I agree.
I have made a few cursory remarks in the margin of your book, but what I have now said is the chief part of what I had to say. I do not yet return the volume because, unless what I have said of it takes away your desire to shew me any more of the book, I hope to see the remainder. If so however it should be soon, as I shall leave England for the Continent in about a week.
I have not time or space left to say much on the other subject of our correspondence.5 My opinion of the medical profession is not, I dare say, higher than yours. But it would be dealing very rigorously with the M.D.’s of whom you have so low an opinion, to expect that they should already have made any improvement in medical practice. Neither, when we consider how rare first-rate minds are, was it to be expected, on the doctrine of chances, that the first two or three women who take up medicine should be more than what you say they are, third rate. It is to be expected that they will be pupils at first, & not masters. But the medical profession like others must be reformed from within, under whatever stimulus from without; & it surely has more chance of being so, the more the entrance to it is widened. Neither does the moral right of women to admission into the profession, at all depend on the likelihood of their being the first to reform it. On this point, however, we are agreed.
I am Dear Madam
very sincerely yours
J. S. Mill
475.
TO FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE1
- Blackheath Park
Oct. 4 1860
Dear Madam—
I should have been very sorry to miss reading the sequel of your book.2 If when I had only read the first volume I was very desirous that it should be published, I am much more so after reading the second, as the exhibition it contains of what life is in this country among the classes in easy circumstances, being so earnestly and feelingly, and many parts of it so forcibly done, and so evidently the result of personal observation is at once a testimony that ought not to be lost, & an appeal of an unusually telling kind on a subject which it is very difficult to induce people to open their eyes to. And though the things into which are put the best of one’s heart & mind never do all the good which, to one’s own feelings, seems to lie in them, few books have a better chance than this of doing some good, and that too in a variety of ways. I should not feel any doubt about it if the book were published with your name. Indeed, the mere fact that these are the opinions of such a woman as all the world knows you to be, is a fact which it would be of as much use to the world to know, as almost anything which could at this time be told to it.
I have seldom felt less inclined to criticize than in reading this book; and moreover I have said in my former letter the substance of nearly all the criticism I should have to make. There is however a new point of difference between us, sufficiently a matter of principle to be worth mentioning to you. In one, and only one of your inferences from the doctrine (improperly called) of necessity, I do not agree; it is when you say that there ought to be no punishment (only reformatory discipline) and even no blame. It seems to me that on the principles of your Treatise, retaliation from others for injuries consciously and intentionally done them, is one of these natural consequences of ill doing, which you yourself hold to be the proper discipline both of the individual and of the race. With many minds, punishment is the only one of the natural consequences of guilt, which is capable of making any impression on them. In such cases, punishment is the sole means available for beginning the reformation of the criminal; and the fear of similar punishment is the only inducement which deters many really no better than himself from doing acts to others which would not only deprive them of their own happiness, but thwart all their attempts to do good to themselves & others. With regard to the legitimacy of resentment: a thoroughly evil will, though I well know that it does not come into existence without a cause, seems to me not the less on that account an object of aversion; and a strong indignation against wrong is so inseparable from any strong personal feeling on the subject of wrong and right, that it does not seem to me possible, even if desirable, to get rid of the one, without, to a great degree, losing the other. I write these things for your consideration, and not as pretending to lay down the law on the subject to any one, much less to you.
My address while abroad will be Saint-Véran, près Avignon, Vaucluse, France, and I am very far from wishing that you should do as Frederic’s General said he would.3
I have returned your Treatise today by the Book Post. I am
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
476.
TO PASQUALE VILLARI1
- S. Véran
6 Nov. 1860
Mon cher M. Villari—
Voici bien longtemps que je n’ai pas reçu de vos nouvelles quoique ce soit moi qui ai écrit la dernière lettre. Ce m’est toujours un grand plaisir d’avoir une lettre de vous et je le désire d’autant plus car dans un temps comme celui-ci,2 on ne sait jamais à quel endroit un patriote Italien peut s’être porté ni dans quelle situation il est. Je voudrais aussi m’entretenir avec vous sur les grands événements de cette année. Vous aviez bien prédit l’année passée que les Italiens feraient aujourd’hui de plus grandes choses qu’en 1848, bien que celles-là suffisent assurément pour la gloire éternelle de ceux qui y ont pris part. Vous avez le droit d’être fier de votre pays: aussi est-il, comme vous voyez admiré par l’Europe et les Anglais même qui sont difficiles en cette matière le reconnaissent comme digne d’être libre. Il est vrai que ceux, qui ont tout préparé pendant dix ans, qui ont entretenu le feu sacré par les seuls moyens alors practicables, Mazzini et ses amis, n’éprouvent pas encore la justice qu’ils méritent.3 Cela était inévitable, et ils ont, je crois, assez de grandeur d’âme pour s’y résigner. Je sais par ma propre expérience, ayant toujours avoué sur bien des sujets des opinions qu’on appelle extrêmes, que ce sont ceux-là qui font accepter par les gens de la foule les opinions avancées immédiatement praticables, en leur donnant la satisfaction de se croire dans le juste milieu, et d’avoir d’autres sur qui se décharger du reproche d’être des exaltés ou des exagérés. Maintenant l’avenir est à vous, pourvu toutefois que vous ne provoquiez pas un conflit prématuré avec l’Autriche,4 dans des conditions où vous ne pourriez vaincre que par l’appui d’une puissance étrangère. Peutêtre le prix que cette puissance a exigé de son intervention en 18595 a été presque vrai bonheur pour l’Italie, en la dégageant de tout lien de reconnaissance et en ôtant à un monarque absolu l’influence que, plus désintéressé en apparence, il eût obtenue sur l’esprit public de votre pays. C’est à l’œuvre d’organisation que je vous attends maintenant. Il y aura de grandes difficultés à la fusion de tant de peuples, tous Italiens, mais différents par leurs antécédents et par leurs mœurs; et de plus grandes encore à la profonde rénovation morale dont la population de la moitié méridionale de l’Italie a besoin. Mais vous avez aussi de grandes ressources dans l’enthousiasme général, dans le prestige d’un grand homme,6 dans celui d’un roi fidèle à la liberté,7 et surtout dans le génie Italien qui à aucune époque n’a manqué quelque déplorable que fût d’ailleurs la situation. L’année prochaine sera pour ceux qui pensent, un chapitre de l’histoire tout aussi intéressant que celle qui vient de s’écouler. J’ai grande confiance dans le bon sens dont la partie avancée de l’Italie a fait preuve dans les circonstances présentes, et dans la haute capacité gouvernementale qui a toujours été moins rare en Italie qu’ailleurs.
Si cette lettre vous parvient, donnez moi je vous prie, de vos nouvelles et croyez toujours à mon dévouement et à ma véritable sympathie.
477.
TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL1
- Saint Véran
- near Avignon
Dec. 10. 1860.
Dear Sir
I would with great pleasure accede to your proposal with respect to a reprint of the chapter on the Futurity of the Labouring Classes for separate sale,2 if it rested with me to do so. The current edition however of the Pol. Economy is the property of the publisher Mr Parker, and he alone has the power of authorizing what you propose. Your application therefore should be to him, unless you prefer waiting till the present edition is out of print, which it is likely to be, I believe, in a few months. I propose making some additions to the chapter for another edition,3 so as to bring up the facts of Cooperation to the latest date, and if I have anything to say worth saying in the way of advice to Cooperators, that will be, I think, the most suitable occasion.
I am very glad to hear such good news of the progress of Cooperation. The publicity given to the brilliant results of the Rochdale and Leeds experiments, by Mr Holyoake’s book,4 Mr Bright’s speech,5 and otherwise, was likely to encourage others to do the same. I am
Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
478.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
le 24 Décembre 1860
Mon cher Monsieur
Votre lettre m’est parvenue en même temps que la traduction,2 et si j’ai un peu tardé à y répondre, je vous prie de n’en accuser que mes occupations, car je ne cesse pas de travailler à de nouveaux écrits.
Je ne connais pas de traduction où l’on se soit plus consciencieusement occupé de rendre le sens de l’auteur, non seulement dans toute son exactitude mais dans toute sa force. Cela vaut infiniment mieux qu’une paraphrase fidèle et élégante mais plate, et je vous en sais on ne peut pas plus de gré. Il y a tout au plus cinq ou six endroits où il y a eu de légers malentendus sur le sens de telle ou telle phrase, que je dois attribuer à un défaut de clarté dans l’expression, et qui, du reste, sont très peu importants. Il n’y a que la division en alinéas qui laisse à désirer, et je devine que je dois m’en prendre là dessus à l’imprimeur.
Quant à la préface, j’avais senti qu’elle devait être surtout une critique. Est-il besoin de dire que non seulement je ne m’en plains pas—mais que je l’eûsse au besoin provoquée? Les termes flatteurs dont vous vous servez à mon égard suffiraient pour contenter un amour-propre beaucoup plus exigeant que le mien, et le fait même qu’avec les divergences que vous indiquez, vous avez assez bonne opinion de l’ouvrage pour prendre la peine de le traduire, est lui-même un compliment qui en vaut bien d’autres. Je trouve, au reste, que les grandes reserves que j’ai faites pour les cas où l’on se sert de sa liberté d’une manière nuisible aux autres, répondent suffisamment à une grande partie de vos observations. Je me sens un peu tenté de prendre ma revanche en rendant compte dans quelque revue anglaise de vos deux ouvrages.3 Les questions qui ne peuvent se vuider que par de grandes concessions de part et d’autre, sont celles qui gagnent le plus à une discussion assez prolongée pour devenir serrée.
J’espère, mon cher Monsieur, que nous pourrons causer sur ces matières et sur d’autres en peu de temps, car je me rends en Angleterre au mois prochain. Ce ne sera pas avant le jour que vous désignez pour votre départ de Fontainebleau, mais selon toute probabilité ce sera bientôt après. En attendant donc de vous retrouver à Paris, croyez bien à la sincérité de mon estime et de mon dévouement.
J. S. Mill
479.
TO HENRY FAWCETT1
- Saint Véran
Dec. 24. 1860
Dear Mr Fawcett
I was unwilling to write to you while all your time and thoughts were required for the contest in Southwark,2 and I have not had time to write any letters since the election until today. I shall be most desirous to hear from you vivâ voce when I come to England, all that there must be to tell. At present I only know what I have read in the Times,3 or rather in the Evening Mail.4 From that, although evidently not favourable to you, I can see that a great point has been gained, that you have made a very favourable impression generally, and that people are familiarized with the idea of you as a candidate. The compliments paid you, and the great support you received, will tell much more for you at any future election, than the preference given by the majority to a more known man5 will tell against you. He little deserves the preference, for his public conduct has always seemed to me anything but honorable to him. Still it is some credit to the Southwark people to have preferred a celebrity, though a second or third rate one, to a local or pothouse candidate, and to have elected him free of expense. You must have done considerable good by standing on the footing of no expenses,6 and going about speaking to them in the way you did. I was all the while wishing greatly that I could have helped you, but I have no power of helping anybody with electors. You will be your own best helper if you go on making yourself known by well-considered writings. I shall like much to see the articles you mention in your last letter.7 I left England at the very beginning of October without having seen Macmillan for that month, but when I return I will make a point of seeing all the numbers which contain anything of yours.
I have not been idle since I came here. I have two things finished,8 one of them a considerable volume and have made good progress with a third.9 I wish, when I leave this world, to carry as few of my thoughts away with me as I can; therefore I go on writing even what I do not mean to publish at present. I expect to be in England soon after the middle of January, when I shall hope for an early opportunity of seeing you.
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
480.
TO THOMAS HARE1
- Saint Véran
Dec. 24. 1860.
Dear Sir
I am surprised to find on referring to your letter, how long I have suffered it to remain unanswered. I received your paper in the Statistical Society’s Journal,2 and was very much pleased with it. On the point raised by Mr Hickson I do not exactly recollect all the reasons he gave. I think the chief of them was, that if a voter was allowed to put down an indefinite number of names, he would generally put the latter part of his list at random, or insert the name desired by anybody who asked him. I do not think this argument valid against such strong reasons as those which tell the other way; but it seems worth considering, not with a view of limiting the contingent votes to a small number, but perhaps of limiting them to tens instead of hundreds. All that occurs to anybody on the details of the subject is worth bringing before you as a suggestion for your judgment. It is necessary to look forward to many unfavorable contingencies, for the purpose of contriving the best means of obviating them. For all means will be used to thwart the benefits of the plan. Political parties, as they now have their candidates, will then have their lists of candidates, to catch the contingent votes. These they will make as long as the law allows, putting the names in the order of their importance to the party: and it is a question whether the unlimited number of votes does not give an advantage to the mere party voters who will vote for the whole list of the party, over the independent thinkers who, besides that they will be divided among themselves, will only find a limited number for whom they can vote with thought and conscience. Does not this seem worth thinking of? I have little doubt that whatever your ultimate judgment may be on the matter, you will have sufficient reason for it. I am
very truly yours,
J. S. Mill
481.
TO WILLIAM THOMAS THORNTON1
[1860]
[Here is an interesting remark in a letter to Thornton, in 1860. Thornton had been to see Oxford, and Mill recalls his own visit twenty years before, and says—]
In that same holiday2 I completed the first draft of my Logic, and had, for the first time, the feeling that I had now actually accomplished something—that one certain portion of my life’s work was done.
1861
482.
TO GUSTAVE DE BEAUMONT1
S[aint] V[éran] Jan.15.1861
Mon cher Beaumont—
Je viens d’achever la lecture de la correspondance et des opuscules et fragments inédits de Tocqueville.2 J’y ai trouvé à chaque pas de nouvelles preuves de sa haute valeur comme homme et comme esprit, et de la perte irréparable que l’humanité a faite par sa mort prématurée.3 Si même il nous eût été épargné jusqu’à la complétion de son deuxième grand ouvrage!4 A ce propos vous me pardonnerez j’espère, si j’exprime un regret qui, à ce que je crois, sera général, de ce que vous avez poussé un scrupule, d’ailleurs très louable, jusqu’à ne vouloir rien imprimer qui n’eût absolument reçu la dernière touche de l’auteur. Je sais bien la conscience que mettait notre ami à ne donner au public l’expression de sa pensée qu’après qu’il l’eût amenée à la dernière perfection qu’il se sentait capable d’y donner; mais autre chose est de reserver un écrit pour le rendre plus parfait, et autre de vouloir qu’il soit supprimé lorsque le sort a ordonné que le perfectionnement ne puisse plus avoir lieu. Les brouillons même d’un penseur et d’un observateur comme Tocqueville seraient d’un prix inappréciable pour les penseurs à venir, et à moins qu’il ne s’y soit opposé de son vivant, il me semble qu’il n’y aurait pas d’inconvénient à publier ses manuscrits imparfaits en ne les donnant que pour ce qu’ils sont et en conservant scrupuleusement toutes les indications d’une intention de revenir sur un morceau quelconque et d’en soumettre les idées à une vérification ultérieure.
Quant à la correspondance je me réjouis d’apprendre que la partie sans doute très considérable, qui ne pourrait être imprimée quant à présent, est toute prête à l’être en temps convenable.5 Ce que vous en avez pu donner est d’une grande valeur par lui-même, et encore plus en faisant connaître ce qu’a été l’homme. Quelle idée ne se fait-on pas de la face d’intelligence et de la haute vertu de celui qui a su se maintenir comme penseur et comme écrivain dans une élévation si sereine et si impartiale audessus de toutes les misères de notre temps, quand on vient à apprendre que cet esprit si calme n’était rien moins que calme par nature et par tempérament, qu’il était d’un type tout opposé et que cela même faisait la plus grande souffrance de sa vie. C’est une consolation pour ceux à qui sa mémoire est chère, qu’il fut heureux dans sa famille, qu’il eut des amis vrais, et qu’il fut apprécié de son vivant autant que cela puisse jamais arriver à un homme très audessus du vulgaire par l’esprit et par les sentiments.
483.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK1
- Blackheath
March 1, 1861
Dear Chadwick
It is long since I have read anything on the subject of Education which impressed me so much as the facts and ideas contained in your letter to Senior,2 and I wish they were in the hands of every reading and thinking person in the country. Among several points of great practical importance which you have made out by an irresistible weight of evidence, two appear to me to stand in the very highest rank: the equality, if not superiority, in attainments & intelligence, of the short time pupils over the others; and the immense advantage, both in efficiency & economy of large over small school districts. These results of experience, the first of which was so unexpected as to amount to a discovery, afford the means of overcoming the two principal obstacles to the efforts of the Government and of individuals for the improvement of popular education, namely, the early withdrawal of the children from school owing to the demand of parents for their labour, and the impossibility of obtaining, or, if obtained, of keeping, schoolmasters of a high average of excellence. You have put it in the power of any Education Minister who avails himself of the results of your inquiries, to elevate the general standard of popular improvement to a height & with a rapidity which have hitherto seemed quite hopeless. Too much cannot be done to give publicity to matter so valuable. I am
Dear Chadwick
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
484.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE1
- Blackheath Park,
- Kent
le 4 mars 1861.
Mon cher Monsieur
J’ai reçue l’Illustration2 et la Presse,3 qui sont très satisfaisantes, et dont j’ai trop tardé à vous remercier. Quant à l’article de la Revue des Deux Mondes,4 ne vous donnez pas la peine de l’envoyer. Je suis abonné à la Revue. Il est vrai que je ne la reçois qu’à Avignon, mais j’ai le moyen de la voir ici.
Je suis très sensible à l’intérêt amical que vous témoignez pour tout ce qui peut me faire plaisir.
Je songe toujours à faire un article sur vos deux ouvrages.5 A présent j’ai sous presse un volume sur le Gouvernement Réprésentatif, où je m’occupe entr’autres choses de la Centralisation au point de vue du dernier chapitre de mes Principes d’Economie Politique, auquel vous avez bien voulu donner votre approbation.
Ma fille et moi vous prions de nous rappeler au souvenir bienveillant de Madame Dupont-White et de Mesdemoiselles vos filles.
Votre tout dévoué
J. S. Mill
485.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE1
- Blackheath Park
le 15 mars 1861.
Mon cher Monsieur
L’article de la Revue Nationale2 est très satisfaisant en ce qui me regarde, mais il vous traite avec injustice, surtout quand il trouve que vous ne m’êtes pas assez favorable. Vous m’avez traité le mieux possible, et je préfère être présenté aux lecteurs français par un traducteur qui n’est pas un simple partisan. En cela, je suis conséquent avec ce qui est dit dans le livre même, sur l’avantage de mettre les opinions divergentes en face l’une de l’autre.
L’article de M. Taine3 est un chef d’œuvre en fait de compte rendu. On n’a jamais présenté les doctrines de mon Système de Logique avec une intelligence aussi approfondie et un aussi parfait ensemble.
Ce que vous me dites sur l’état des esprits en France, m’intéresse extrèmement. Malgré tous les obstacles, il me semble que les choses prennent déjà en France un meilleur aspect. Il y a, du moins pour le moment, une liberté de discussion véritable, et cela ne peut manquer d’ébranler la torpeur générale qui était le plus grand fléau du régime actuel. Si l’empereur ne se dégoûte pas de l’expérience qu’il tente en ce moment, c’est qu’il aura pris son parti d’essayer de se réconcilier un peu avec les amis les moins exigeants de la liberté.
Je ne me suis pas occupé du budget des cultes4 dans mon nouveau livre, le regardant comme n’étant pas précisément une question de gouvernement représentatif. Du reste, j’aurais de la peine à me prononcer là dessus en thèse générale. C’est, il me semble, surtout une question de temps et de lieu.
Veuillez offrir à Madame Dupont White et à vos demoiselles mes hommages respectueux. Ma fille vous prie de la rappeler à leur souvenir amical.
Votre bien dévoué
J. S. Mill
486.
TO HIPPOLYTE TAINE1
- Blackheath Park, Kent,
le 15 mars 1861.
Monsieur,
Quoique je n’aie jusqu’à présent l’honneur de vous connaître que par vos écrits, vous ne trouverez, j’espère, pas déplacé que je vous exprime la très grande satisfaction personnelle, aussi bien qu’admiration désintéressée, que m’a fait éprouver le compte que vous avez bien voulu rendre de mon système de logique dans la Revue des Deux Mondes.2 On ne saurait donner, en peu de pages, une idée plus exacte et plus complète du contenu de ce livre, comme corps de doctrine philosophique. J’ajoute qu’il était impossible de présenter aux lecteurs français cet ensemble d’opinions, de manière à lui attirer davantage leur attention, et c’est ce qui importe le plus à un penseur.
Quant à la critique que vous avez faite du point de vue psychologique qui caractérise l’ouvrage, il ne m’appartient point de la juger. Seulement je crois que vous vous trompez en regardant ce point de vue comme particulièrement anglais. Il le fut dans la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle, à partir de Locke, et jusqu’à la réaction contre Hume. Cette réaction, commencée en Écosse, a revêtu depuis longtemps la forme germanique, et a fini par tout envahir. Quand j’ai écrit mon livre, j’étais à peu près seul de mon opinion; et bien que ma manière de voir ait trouvé un degré de sympathie auquel je ne m’attendais nullement, on compte encore en Angleterre vingt philosophes a priori et spiritualistes contre chaque partisan de la doctrine de l’expérience. Pendant toute la durée de notre réaction de soixante-dix ans, on a regardé ici la philosophie de l’expérience comme française, de même que vous la qualifiez d’anglaise. A mon avis, on s’est trompé de part et d’autre. Les deux systèmes se suivent par la loi des réactions dans toutes les parties du monde. En effet, l’Allemagne se tourne aujourd’hui vers la doctrine a posteriori. Seulement les différents pays ne coïncident exactement ni dans les révolutions ni dans les contre-révolutions.
Veuillez agréer, monsieur, l’expression de mon véritable respect et de ma considération la plus distinguée.
J. S. Mill
487.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE1
- Blackheath Park
le 28 mars 1861.
Mon cher Monsieur
Rien ne me saurait être plus agréable que de vous avoir pour traducteur de mon nouveau livre.2 Vous n’aurez qu’à vous entendre là dessus avec M. Guillaumin, qui vient de demander et d’obtenir mon autorisation pour en publier une traduction.
Nous sommes tous deux très sensibles aux souvenirs amicaux de votre famille, et aux amitiés dont elle ne cesse pas de nous combler. Nous comptons sur une prochaine visite à Fontainebleau; seulement nous n’aurons pas le temps de nous arrêter cette fois-ci en route, ne faisant qu’un très court séjour en France.
Agréez, avec mes salutations amicales, l’expression de mon sincère dévoûement.
J. S. Mill
488.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE1
- Saint Véran, près Avignon
le 1 mai 1861.
Mon cher Monsieur
Je vous remercie de l’envoi du Journal des Débats.2 L’article de M. Baudrillart3 fait beaucoup d’honneur au livre, et doit servir notablement le succès de la traduction.
Je suis charmé que vous donniez une si pleine adhésion à mon autre livre,4 et que vous vouliez bien le traduire. Quant à la préface, je suis sûr qu’elle n’eût pas manqué de m’être agréable, quel que fût le nombre “de si et de mais” qu’elle pût contenir. Et quand je prendrai la revanche dont vous parlez, j’espère bien avoir auprès de vous un succès pareil. J’ai écrit au directeur de la Revue d’Edinbourg pour lui proposer un article sur vos deux ouvrages.5 S’il accepte, je m’en occuperai dès mon retour en Angleterre. Je lirais volontiers le livre de M. Odilon-Barrot6 en vue de cet article, mais il ne me sera utile que lorsque je commence à travailler sur la question et il vaudra mieux que je le prenne à Londres, ou en passant par Paris.
Ma fille se rappelle au bon souvenir de Madame Dupont-White et de vos demoiselles, et je vous prie de leur offrir mes hommages respectueux, et de croire à mes sentiments amicaux et à mon dévouement.
J. S. Mill
488A.
TO WILLIAM ELLIS1
Avignon, May 1, 186[1].
Dear Ellis,—
Your letter, which has followed me here, reminds me that I have not yet thanked you for your last publication.2 I have read it, as I had done all your others, with great interest. The line of usefulness you have chosen for yourself is as difficult and quite as important as any other, and you have given it the dignity of an apostolate. With respect to the criticisms and suggestions you invite, I have so little of the appropriate experience compared with yourself, that what I can offer does not amount to much. Besides, you are daily bringing all that you do to the best and only effectual test, actual practice. The only criticism which occurs to me in reference to this little book is, that the answers and remarks which you assign to the boys might perhaps with advantage be put into more eloquent language, knowing as I do the efficacy which your teaching possesses for extracting from the minds of pupils thoughts which hardly anyone would suppose them capable of. I have full faith in all that you say in the Preface, but the scientific and somewhat recondite language in which your boys express themselves, gives an air of improbability to the conversations which they need not necessarily have. With regard to the rest of your letter, I need hardly say that your approval of what I write gives me much pleasure. I have always looked upon you as one of my public, both for old friendship’s sake, and because you are a student of the same subjects as myself. There are enough of people now who praise my writings with exaggeration, without being at all competent to judge of them. But though these are the persons I write to benefit, they are not (it is unnecessary to say) those whose praise, unless as a means to that object, gives me any satisfaction.
I am, dear Ellis,
Very truly yours,
J. S. Mill
489.
TO HENRY REEVE1
S[aint] V[éran] May 1, 1861
Dear Sir—
M. Dupont White, whom you probably know, at least by reputation, has lately published two books (or written one book in two parts) entitled L’Individu et l’État & La Centralisation.2 These from their merit & the sort of theoretic & scientific character which he has endeavoured to give them afford a good occasion for bringing the whole question of the limits of governmental action under discussion. M. D. W. takes decidedly the governmental side, a thing now rather uncommon among thinking men, even in France: & as the things he says in favour of centralization are about the best that can be said for it, there would be some use in a review3 which should concede the portion of truth contained in them & at the same time bring forward the still more important truths which as stated by him they contradict.
If you would like such an article from me I would try to write it, & would send it to you some time in the course of this summer or autumn. I could include M. Odilon Barrot’s new book on Centralisation4 if after reading it I should find that it affords good additional material for an article.
There are two other purposes for which I have been wishing to write to you—one is to recommend a contributor, the other a book. The contributor is Professor Cliffe Leslie of Belfast. He is probably already known to you as a man of an extensive range of thought & acquirements & a clear effective & popular writer—but he is modest & thinks he requires a recommendation & though the offer to give him one came from myself it was warmly accepted by him. The book which I wish to mention to you is a new life of Savonarola by Pasquale Villari,5 professor of history at Pisa, a valued friend of mine. Besides being a very interesting chapter of history which contains much new information interestingly told, the book places the character of Savonarola in a new light, shews him to have been the most enlightened lover of liberty & one of the wisest practical politicians of his time. A person sufficiently acquainted with the religious & political history of Italy at that period could write a review of it which I shd think would be very interesting to many readers of the Edinburgh. Not having that necessary qualification I do not offer to do it myself.
490.
TO JANE MILL FERRABOSCHI1
- [Address undecipherable]
May 13 1861
Dear Jane,
You cannot do better than place your papers in Mr Crompton’s2 hands as he is your trustee, and you have more confidence in him than in Mr Gregson.3 I know of no reason to distrust Mr Gregson and he still has charge of my legal documents, but this is no reason whatever for not putting yours in Mr Crompton’s care. You had better obtain the other Trustee’s control and send a letter from him requesting Mr Gregson to deliver your papers to Mr Crompton.
I was aware that you had lost your first child but I did not know that you had now only one. I am sorry that your health is still delicate. From
Yrs Affy,
J. S. Mill
491.
TO JOHN CHAPMAN1
- St Véran, Avignon
May 18. 1861.
Dear Sir
I am glad that you and Mr Leslie are likely to get on well together,2 and also that you are so well pleased with my book.3 With regard to writing an article for you, I am looking out for a subject that will suit the Review and myself; but on Foreign Policy, I could add little, of a general kind, to what was said in a paper I published a short time ago in Fraser.4 The principles concerned are so mixed up with the specialities of the cases to which they are to be applied, that they can hardly be discussed with fruit unless à propos of some particular application; and at the present moment the only case which offers itself, on which people are not already agreed, is that of Turkey,5 on which I am not master of the details, and in which (as I know by my experience of Oriental nations) details are all-important.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yrs
J. S. Mill
492.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES1
- St Véran, Avignon
May 19. 1861
Dear Sir
I ought to have acknowledged the receipt of Mr Nisbet’s [sic] article.2 But it came in my absence. I had not time to read it immediately on my return, and when I did, I thought it likely that I might see you, or have occasion to write to you on some other matter. I was greatly interested by the article, and thought it a very complete and satisfactory vindication of one of the greatest benefits ever conferred upon Ireland. To me, no vindication was necessary, but I was much gratified by the additional knowledge I obtained of the subject.
No expression of opinion which I have received respecting my book,3 has given me so much pleasure as yours; your adhesion being so much more complete than any knowledge I had of you entitled me to hope for, while that knowledge was quite sufficient to make me feel that there are few persons whose adhesion is more complimentary or more valuable. Such a testimony strengthens my hope that the opinions which I have expressed are not only true, but may, within some assignable length of time, become practical.
What you say of the Irish system of education as a striking example of the right combination of central and local agency, is important, and I should much like to see the illustration fully developed.
I am Dear Sir
with sincere respect
Yours very truly
J. S. Mill
493.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE1
- Saint Véran
le 26 mai 1861
Mon cher Monsieur
Je vous remercie beaucoup de l’envoi de l’article de Monsieur Baudrillart.2 Je l’avais déjà lu grâce au hasard qui m’a fait connaître un négociant d’ici,3 économiste et publiciste, dont les lumières et les opinions dépassent de beaucoup ce que je croyais pouvoir trouver dans l’ancienne ville des papes, et qui est abonné à la Revue Nationale. Je suis de votre avis sur l’article. Personnellement j’ai tout lieu d’en être content; mais M. Baudrillart, ainsi que je le savais déjà, porte l’opinion anti-centralisatrice jusqu’au fanatisme. Lorsque j’ai vu qu’il croyait que la liberté locale eût mieux valu sous le règne d’Acbar4 ou de Charlemagne, je me suis dit—Il n’y a que les Français pour avoir des idées absolues. Cependant je trouve qu’ils sont en train de se corriger de ce défaut, comme les Anglais du défaut contraire.
J’écrivis au directeur de la Revue d’Edinbourg, pour lui proposer un article sur vos deux ouvrages;5 mais il se trouve que le directeur lui même se propose de traiter la Centralisation à propos de l’éducation publique dans son numéro de juillet,6 et à ce que je crains, dans un esprit assez différent du mien. J’attends donc pour voir comment il s’en tirera, et s’il y aura place pour moi après lui. Je n’ai pas encore vu la deuxième édition de votre Centralisation.7 Y avezvous mis du nouveau? Je lirai votre ouvrage de 18468 avec d’autant plus de plaisir, que vous y aurez moins épargné la société actuelle, que je passe pour ne pas estimer beaucoup.
Ma fille est très sensible au bon souvenir de Madame Dupont-White et de vos demoiselles. Je vous prie de me recommander à leur bienveillance, et de croire toujours aux sentiments d’estime et d’amitié de
votre bien dévoué
J. S. Mill
494.
TO GEORGE W. CHILDS1
- Blackheath Park, Kent
June 9. 1861
Dear Sir
On returning from the Continent, I have only now found your letter.
It must be flattering to any author, and is most agreeable to myself, that my writings should obtain the favourable opinion of competent judges in the United States, and that I should have been thought of as a fit person to write a treatise on Representative Government specially for that country. I have, however, so many demands upon my time and exertions, that it will not be in my power to undertake what you propose; an inability which I the less regret, as what I could write would be little more than a rather flat repetition of a volume I have very recently published.2
I have the honor to be
yours very faithfully
J. S. Mill
495.
TO THOMAS HARE1
- Blackheath
July 5 [1861]
Dear Sir
My daughter and I thank you very much for your kind invitation, but I am so very busy just now, and have so much occupation awaiting me for some time to come, that I do not like to make any engagement that can possibly be postponed. There is no visit I should like better than the one you kindly propose and a little later in the summer if it should happen to suit you I hope I may have more time at my disposal.
I have written a few additional pages for the new edition,2 to keep up the fight against the objections to the plan. I am continually meeting with proofs of the increased attention—of which these very criticisms are one. The first time I am in the neighbourhood of St. James’s Square I will return your interesting Sydney correspondence,3 and bring you a German newspaper containing some things which I think will amuse you.
Ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
496.
TO HENRY TAYLOR1
- Blackheath Park, Kent
July 5th, 1861
My Dear Taylor,
Your letter of May 28th came while I was abroad, and I have not hitherto had time to make the acknowledgment which is due to the feelings you express and to the considerate and sympathizing view which you take of what I have been endeavouring to do. I am very glad that my treatment of the subject,2 as a general thesis, has obtained so much of your approbation. With regard to its applicability to this country3 and immediately, I am quite alive to the force of many of the considerations which you bring forward. You only state them as misgivings, and as misgivings I share most of them, though probably in a considerably less degree than yourself. On one thing we are almost sure to be agreed: that whenever the movement for organic change recovers strength, which may happen at any time, and is sure to happen at some time, it will make a great practical difference what general theories of constitutional government are then in possession of the minds of cultivated persons. It is as a preparation for that time that my speculations, if they have as much truth in them as you seem to think they have, may be valuable. In the meantime, while they keep up the faith in possibilities of improvement, they tend rather to moderate than to encourage eagerness for immediate and premature changes of a fundamental character. If the opinions make any way, they will influence, more or less, what is done from time to time in the way of partial improvement; and while changes in right directions will be facilitated, the barriers will, I hope, be strengthened against those of a bad tendency. It is not to you that anything need be said on the necessity of keeping a true ideal before one, however widely the state of facts may differ from it, and the extreme peril, both of having a false ideal, and of having no ideal at all, between which states (with a tendency at present towards the latter) politicians both speculative and practical seem to be divided.
I am very sorry to hear that your health imposes on you so much confinement.4 I hope that is the worst of the inconveniences it causes you. I, too, am not likely to forget the old days you remind me of,5 nor any of those with whom I used to discuss and compare notes, so agreeably and usefully to myself. If I have ceased to frequent them, it is not from estrangement, but because society, even of a good kind, does less and less for me; and I have so much to do in the few years of life and health I can look forward to (though my health is now on the whole good), that I really have no time to spare for anything but what is at once absolutely necessary to me, and the only thing besides reading which is a real relaxation, active out-door exercise. I do not however give up hope of again seeing you & to do so will always be a pleasure.
I am dear Taylor
very sincerely yours
J. S. Mill
497.
TO JOHN CHAPMAN1
- Blackheath
July 12. 1861
Dear Sir
I have my hands so full just now that I shall not for some months be able to undertake any review article, least of all one which would require much reading, and a great deal of careful thinking on a practical subject not familiar to me. Neither do I feel disposed to attempt writing anything comprehensive on the question of national education in the present stage of the discussion. Whether I may be differently inclined some time hence I cannot at present say. But in any case I should not venture to engage myself beforehand. I have however more than one subject in view, which I will mention when I see my way more clearly.
I have read the paper on the ape controversy2 with much interest. I like several of the papers in this number very much; especially the one on Buckle.3 It is the only thing yet written about him which seems to me exactly in the right tone. The article on my own book,4 I can sincerely say, gave me less pleasure by its praises than by its intelligent adhesion to some of the opinions I attach most importance to. I should like much to know, if it be not a secret, the authorship both of that and of the article on Buckle.
I have had some conversation with Mr Cliffe Leslie5 on his proposed article on Income Tax Reform. I think it will be a good one. He will probably set about it as soon as the Report and Evidence are accessible;6 but he does not like the idea of its not appearing till April, and I should certainly think January would be a better time, as giving it a chance of helping to shape the speeches in Parliament or at public meetings, and the newspaper articles, by which alone any impression can be made upon unwilling Finance Ministers.
I am Dear Sir
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
498.
TO HERBERT SPENCER1
- B[lackheath]
July 30. 1861.
Dear Sir
I was very sorry to hear that the state of your health2 had compelled you to suspend the issue of your “First Principles”.3 I sincerely hope that the cause of the interruption has ceased, or will soon do so.
Allow me to thank you for your volume on Education,4 which I have only within the last few days had time to read. It is full of things well worth saying, & contains hardly anything with which I disagree, though I shd sometimes suggest other things as requiring to be taken into consideration along with those on which you lay stress.
As connected with your last chapter,5 some very important & conclusive evidence has been collected by Mr. Chadwick6 (& is now printing by order of the H. of C[ommons]) shewing that the half-time scholars, those who attend school only three hours a day, are not only equal but superior in their attainments to those who attend six hours. I believe we shd hear little of injury to health from over application if people were not kept at one kind of mental work for a longer time than it is possible for them to apply their minds strenuously to it.
I have been in the habit of attributing the diminished strength of constitution of the middle & higher classes (which I believe to be a fact) to a physiological cause not mentioned by you, being the same which explains the strong constitutions of many savage tribes. Formerly all the weakly children died, & the race was kept up solely by means of vigorous specimens. Now, however, vaccinations, & improved bringing up of children, by their very success keep alive to maturity, & enable to become parents, a vast number of persons with naturally weak constitutions. This influence, diffused by intermarriage through the succeeding generations, must necessarily, unless counteracted by powerful causes of an opposite tendency, diminish the average vigour of constitution of the classes in which it occurs.
I am Dear Sir
very sincerely yours
J. S. Mill
499.
TO HARRIET GROTE1
- Blackheath
Aug. 3. 1861
Dear Mrs Grote
I am very happy to hear that Mr Grote is getting rapidly well.2
We will come to you on the 21st with pleasure,3 and as I suppose Bain also will go by way of Caterham, I will leave it to him to fix which of the trains you mention will suit him best—both being equally convenient to us. I am
dear Mrs Grote
Yours very truly
J. S. Mill
500.
TO JOHN CHAPMAN1
- Blackheath
Aug. 4. 1861.
Dear Sir
I have read Mr Harrison’s letter in the Daily News.2 But I do not agree with him to the extent or in the manner which he seems to suppose. I believe that I agree entirely with the view taken in Mr Fawcett’s article.3 But I do so, specifically on the ground stated, I believe, for the first time by him viz. that the power of striking tends to bring about something approximating to what I consider the only right organization of labour, the association of the workpeople with the employers by a participation of profits. I regard the payment of a fixed sum per day as essentially demoralizing, and I disapprove of what the men are doing,4 precisely because as Mr Harrison says they are on the conservative side, standing up for the existing practice, a practice which is making workmen more and more fraudulent in the quality of their labour just as dealers are in that of their goods. I see no hope of improvement but by altering this; and payment by the hour appears to be a step, though but a small one, towards making the pay proportional to the work done. At the same time, I think that the men would be right in standing out for the recognition of a certain length of working day, beyond which the payment per hour should be higher; & that in this way it should be made the interest of the masters, not to overwork the men.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
John Chapman Esq.
501.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK1
- Blackheath
Aug. 8. 1861.
Dear Chadwick
I have had a visit from a Walachian, Mr Alexandre Pétreskou,2 who has been sent to France and England by his Government to qualify himself for being a Professor of Political Economy. I have advised him to go to the Social Science Meeting3 where he will be able to see and hear much that may be useful to him. Do you intend to be there? If yes, I will ask you to give him a little help which will be the more necessary as, though he speaks French excellently, he is probably no great hand at speaking English. If you are not going, it would oblige me much if you would send any introductions that would be useful to him at Dublin. He is evidently a well informed and very intelligent man, and worth our taking a little trouble for him.
Do you wish your two agricultural papers4sent to M. de Lavergne,5 or will it be time enough when I pass through in September?
Yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
Will you kindly direct the inclosed letter6 to Fawcett and send it, as I have mislaid his Wiltshire address.
502.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE1
- Blackheath
le 8 août 1861.
Mon cher Monsieur
Je commencerai par répondre à vos questions.2
Shibboleth,3 page 136, peut se traduire par un quelconque des équivalens que vous proposez. C’est un mot tiré d’une anecdote d’histoire juive, pareille à celle qu’on raconte à l’occasion des Vêpres Siciliennes.4 Les meurtriers palermitains ont (dit-on) reconnu leurs victimes à leur incapacité d’articuler certain mot italien, difficile aux organes français. La Bible dit que le mot Shibboleth a une fois servi aux juifs pour un but social d’une nature semblable. Par suite on a donné ce nom chez nous à tout signe vocal qu’une classe ou un parti exige pour se reconnaître.
Section, mot assez en usage chez les américains, veut dire dans leur langue politique non seulement un parti, mais une subdivision quelconque de la nation. Tout ce qui a un intérêt ou une opinion communs avec lesquels il faut compter, s’appelle une section.
On pourrait traduire stupidest5 (p. 138) par le plus borné. En me servant de ce mot je n’étais pas sans une certaine envie de faire enrager le parti conservateur.
Hobson’s choice6 est une expression proverbiale, dont l’origine m’est inconnue. L’alternative indiquée est “that or none”: “ce que je vous offre, ou bien rien du tout.”
J’aurai, en quelques jours, à vous expédier la seconde édition. Vous n’aurez pas à vous occuper des changemens purement verbaux; et il n’y en a pas d’autres, si ce n’est une courte note au 14me chapitre, et quelques pages ajustées au septième.
Je ne crois pas plus que vous à des projets positifs sur la Sardaigne,7 et je pense même qu’un tel projet ne deviendrait positif que lorsque la réalisation en serait assurée. Je crois seulement qu’il y a quelqu’un qui a les yeux sur tout, et que les agneaux sont tenus à des précautions continues lorsqu’ils ont pour voisin un loup.
Veuillez nous rappeler au bon souvenir de Madame Dupont-White et de vos demoiselles, et agréez mes salutations amicales.
J. S. Mill
503.
TO HENRY FAWCETT1
- Blackheath
Aug. 8. 1861
Dear Mr Fawcett
I have had a very interesting conversation with a young Walachian, M. Alexandre Pétreskou, who has been sent to Paris and London by his Government to qualify himself for being a Professor of Political Economy. He knows some of the best Frenchmen, but nobody at all in England. I have advised him to attend the Social Science meeting, and as I suppose you will be there, I hope you will allow me to give him an introduction to you, and recommend him to your good offices. I do not believe he speaks much English, but his French is excellent. He seems both intelligent and well informed, and eager to inform himself still more; and anything we can do for him will be done for the benefit of his countrymen, who have almost everything to learn, but are very desirous to learn it.
I am very busy revising the Logic for a new edition.2
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
504.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES1
- Blackheath
Aug. 18. 1861
Dear Sir
I have not waited all this time to read your MS,2 though press of occupations has delayed my writing to you about it. I think it may be worked up into a most valuable paper and one particularly wanted at the present time. I have been very much struck with the ignorance which, in nearly all the writing which has appeared in England about the American disruption, has been shewn respecting the necessary conditions of American slavery and the transcendant importance of the stake at issue in the present contest. The English organs of opinion cry out for a recognition of the secession, and for letting slavery alone; but slavery will not let freedom alone. As you have shewn, more powerfully than had been done before, American slavery depends upon a perpetual extension of its field; it must go on barbarizing the world more and more, and the Southern states will never consent to a peace without half the unoccupied country, and the power which it would give of unlimited conquest towards the south. Instead of calling on the North to subscribe to this, it would be a case for a crusade of all civilized humanity to prevent it. I think it very important therefore, that in recasting your lectures in the form of an article, you should connect them expressly and openly with the present crisis, and make them, in effect, a pamphlet on that; though without entering into the mere details or personalities of the quarrel. I am convinced that you could make it most telling; and the only thing I should like better is that it should appear with your name, and be written about in many reviews, instead of being contributed to one.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
505.
TO THEODOR GOMPERZ1
B[lackheath Park]. Aug.21.1861
Dear Sir—
It gave me much pleasure to hear from you again after so long an interval & to receive from you so many expressions of kind and friendly feeling. But I greatly regret that you are suffering so much in health,2 & the more so as the morbid affection which you mention is of a kind to necessitate much temporary forbearance as to mental application, which from the opinion I have of your capacity I consider as a misfortune.
I am sorry you should feel any doubt respecting the interest I must necessarily take in what is occurring in the Austrian Empire. Even in this extraordinary time in which there is scarcely a spot on the globe where some great historical change does not seem to be either dawning or approaching its crisis, I do not know anything more important or more intensely interesting than the progress & chances of the political transformation of Austria. I have read with the greatest pleasure your letters to the Neueste Nachrichten3 & I need say nothing more than that I agree, from beginning to end, in the view you take of the Hungarian question.
I am glad you are not discouraged from prosecuting your translation of the Liberty by the fact of there being another translation in the field.4 You have a full right to state that yours is the translation undertaken with the concurrence & approbation of the author at a time when no other had been announced.
It is a sign of the times that there is a Russian translation of the Liberty published at Leipzig.5 The French translation has been very successful.6
Pray let me hear from you now & then. I shall be here for another month & afterwards at Avignon where I spend fully half the year. Thanks for your kind enquiries about my health. It is now, & generally, very satisfactory.
506.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE1
- Blackheath
le 14 Sept. 1861.
Mon cher Monsieur
Je répondrai à vos questions en suivant l’ordre que vous avez suivi.
1°. Je ne sais pas au juste le nombre des électeurs.2 Il n’est pas bien constaté, et d’ailleurs il varie tous les ans. On croit cependant qu’ils sont au nombre d’un million à peu près.
2°. Il n’y avait primitivement dans l’Inde3 la propriété foncière proprement dite que celle des associations ou communautés villageoises. Là où ces communautés existent encore, on leur a conservé leurs droits. Dans une grande partie de l’Inde ces communautés ont disparu. Depuis lors, en certaines provinces il n’existe pas de propriété foncière complète, mais seulement un droit d’occupation permanente, moyennant un paiement annuel au gouvernement, dont le taux est fixé par des baux à long terme; le plus souvent au terme de trente ans. A la fin du bail, l’ancien cultivateur a droit de priorité pour le renouveler. Dans ces provinces, comme dans les provinces à communauté, il y a, comme vous voyez, impossibilité de fait à ce que des Anglais puissent devenir propriétaires fonciers.
Mais il y a une troisième partie du territoire qui comprend le Bengale, le Behar, et en général les plus anciennes possessions de l’Angleterre dans l’Inde: dans celles-là on a reconstitué la propriété, et même la grande propriété à condition seulement d’un paiement annuel à l’Etat, qu’on peut comparer à l’impôt foncier en France, excepté qu’il est ordinairement beaucoup plus considérable. Dans ces provinces-là un Anglais peut devenir propriétaire par contrat à l’amiable en désintéressant les propriétaires actuels. S’il achète une terre, il est tenu, comme de raison, à payer l’impôt. Depuis quelque temps, les acquireurs britanniques demandent qu’il leur soit permis de racheter cet impôt: et c’est là ce qu’ils entendent en disant qu’ils veulent devenir propriétaires.
3°. Vous avez parfaitement bien compris ce que sont les “assessed taxes”.4 On pourrait peutêtre les appeler des impôts de consommation. On ne pourrait pas les traduire par taxes établiés.
4°. Les repudiating states5 sont ceux qui ont refusé de reconnaître leurs dettes. Le mot repudiate est leur propre mot. Ils les ont désavouées.
5°. Les élections anglaises ne se faisant pas par la voie du scrutin, les électeurs se présentent à un lieu donné qu’on appelle polling place:6 ils déclarent leur nom et leur vote, qui sont écrits par des poll clerks,7 ceux ci s’assurant en même temps que le nom du votant est dans la liste de ceux qui ont droit de voter au même polling place. L’élection commence et finit par un meeting. Au premier de ces deux meetings on propose les candidats; à celui qui suit l’élection, on en déclare le résultat. Comme ces meetings ont lieu en plein air, on a besoin d’une estrade en bois qu’on appelle hustings.7 L’autorité locale, les candidats, les électeurs qui les proposent, et généralement tous ceux qui ont l’intention de parler, montent sur le hustings pour se faire voir et entendre.
6. Un deadlock8 a lieu lorsque les rouages d’une machine ou les roues de deux voitures s’embrouillent de manière à ne pouvoir se dégager à moins d’être démontées. Impasse est une métaphore différente, mais à peu près équivalente.
Je vous félicite d’être si près de la fin de votre travail. Je lirai votre préface avec le plus grand intérêt.
Pour en venir à la dernière question: nous nous proposons, s’il n’arrive rien d’inattendu, de partir d’ici pour Avignon le soir du 23 et ce serait avec beaucoup de plaisir que nous nous arrêterions pour un jour à Fontainebleau. Nous comptons donc pouvoir arriver à Fontainebleau par quelque train de l’après midi du 24.
Nous nous recommandons tous deux très cordialement aux bons souvenirs de toute votre famille.
Votre tout dévoué
J. S. Mill
507.
TO LEONARD H. COURTNEY1
- Blackheath
Sept. 19. 1861
Dear Sir
I am glad to have had the opportunity of reading your objections to my arguments on the Income Tax;2 and I am always glad to receive and consider intelligent objections from all quarters to any of my opinions. I have often profited very much by such criticisms; but their authors cannot expect that I should have time to answer them; and I hope, therefore, that you will excuse me if I do not discuss your arguments, or point out why they do not, in the smallest degree, alter or shake my opinion. It so happened that none of my cross-examiners in the Committee3 took the same view of the subject which you, and the actuaries, take; and their questions, therefore, drew out very little of what I could have said in opposition to that view. I will merely place before you one form of the argument, which appears to me very simple and conclusive. The actuaries argue that income of equal capitalized value should pay equal amounts to the tax. Granted: that is, equal total amounts. But if these equal total amounts are to be made up by equal annual payments, it is implied that the payments are of equal duration, and the owner of the terminable income would be required to go on paying his quota to the tax after his income had ceased.
If you will only consider what would be the payments required from the two supposed taxpayers if each of them was required or empowered to redeem the tax by paying down a gross sum once for all, you would, I think, see that the opinion of the actuaries has no ground whatever to stand on.
I am Sir
yours very faithfully
J. S. Mill
508.
TO [JAMES A. FROUDE?1 ]
- Blackheath
Sept. 20.1861
Dear Sir
Many thanks for the proof of the second part,2 which I return corrected. I leave England for Avignon on Monday next, when my address will be Saint Véran, Avignon, Vaucluse, France.
I am Dear Sir
yours very faithfully
J. S. Mill
509.
TO HENRY PARKES1
- Blackheath Park
Sept. 22. 1861
Dear Sir
I am sorry that I missed you on both the occasions on which I called at your lodgings, and the more so as I am leaving England tomorrow for the winter, and shall therefore have no opportunity of seeing you until my return, if you are still in England at that time. Allow me to thank you for the valuable documents which you did me the favour to send. The reports—I have not yet had time to read the evidence—disclose a state of things among the poorer population, in some respects worse than I should have expected; but it is very satisfactory to find that attention has been so strongly called to the existing evils.2
My address for the present will be, Saint Véran, Avignon, Vaucluse, France, where if there should be any way in which I can be of use to you I hope you will let me know.
I am Dear Sir
yours very faithfully
J. S. Mill
Henry Parkes Esq.
510.
TO HENRY FAWCETT1
- Blackheath
Sept. 26. 1861
Dear Mr Fawcett
I am very glad to receive such a pleasant account of your proceedings at the British Association,2 and glad also to have received it before leaving England. We start for Avignon on Monday, and do not expect to be in England again till after Midsummer, as we meditate a journey for next spring.
I hear you are writing an elementary book on Political Economy.3 Something like a class book on the subject is much wanted, and besides being a useful thing when done, it is a very useful thing to yourself to do, as it is a much more complete exercise of the scientific intellect to construct a treatise on a whole department of knowledge, than to write essays, either scientific or popular, on detached points. My own occupation, however, during this winter, will be of the latter kind, of which I have several subjects. The paper on Utilitarianism which I think I told you of, is coming out in the next three numbers of Fraser.4
In revising my Political Economy for a new edition,5 I have made use of some of your observations on Strikes,6 of course mentioning to whom I am indebted for them. Though they were published anonymously in the Westminster, I hope there is no objection to connecting them with your name. I am
Dear Mr Fawcett
very sincerely yours
J. S. Mill
511.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE1
- Saint Véran
le 10 octobre 1861
Mon cher Monsieur
Bien des remercimens pour votre Préface.2 Sans rien dire des choses amicales et flatteuses que vous avez bien voulu y mettre pour moi personnellement, j’ai tout lieu d’être content de cet écrit comme discours préliminaire. Il établit et caractérise vigoureusement les bienfaits de la liberté, et il pose les questions principales du régime représentatif, avec un sentiment très juste de leurs difficultés et des conditions de leur solution. Il y a, en outre, un grand nombre d’observations vraies et fortement exprimées. Je ne vois nul motif de supprimer aucun des passages que vous avez marqués d’une note d’interrogation. Je ne trouve guère, dans l’écrit, d’autre différence sérieuse entre nos opinions que celle qui regarde la doctrine de l‘Utile, et je suis bien loin de désirer que vous gardiez le silence sur cette différence. A propos, je publie en ce moment même, dans Fraser’s Magazine une exposition sommaire de la doctrine de l’Utile3 comme je l’entends: celle-là, je serais fort curieux de la voir jugée par l’Académie. Quand elle sera complette, elle formera un petit volume dont je me promets de vous faire hommage. Vous verrez là les contorsions que j’ai choisies. Il y a seulement une question de fait où vous me paraissez mal informé. Comme beaucoup de Français, vous semblez être d’avis que l’idée de l’Utile est en Angleterre la philosophie dominante. Il n’en est rien. Je conçois qu’on puisse voir dans cette doctrine une certaine analogie avec l’esprit de la nation anglaise. Mais en fait elle y est, et elle y a presque toujours été, très impopulaire. La plupart des écrivains anglais ne la nient pas seulement, ils l’insultent: et l’école de Bentham a toujours été regardée (je le dis avec regret) comme une insignifiante minorité.
En arrivant ici, j’ai trouvé votre livre sur les relations du Travail avec le Capital.4 Permettez-moi de vous en faire, quoiqu’un peu tard, mon compliment. Cet ouvrage me paraît d’un très grand mérite. Vous y avez montré que pour être Centraliste vous n’en êtes pas moins économiste de la meilleure trempe; très supérieur, ce me semble, à la plupart de ces messieurs dans leur propre spécialité.
Je vous remercie encore de l’envoi du livre sur Phidias.5 Le sujet en est pour moi du plus grand intérêt, comme tout ce qui se rapporte soit aux grandes époques de l’art, soit à celles de l’histoire. J’ai lu avec un grand plaisir, l’année passée, une étude de M. Beulé sur Phidias, dans la Revue des Deux Mondes.6 Je me rejouis de voir que le goût de l’antiquité grecque paraît renaître dans la nouvelle génération en France. Il y a eu dernièrement dans la Revue Nationale un article charmant, et très satisfaisant sous le rapport de la vérité historique, sur la position et le rôle des poëtes à Athènes,7 article auquel la lecture de M. Grote n’a pas été étrangère; et plus récemment encore, un article d’histoire et de critique sur Hyperide,8 qui fait très grand honneur à son auteur.
Ma fille vous prie de la rappeler aux bons souvenirs de Madame Dupont-White et de vos demoiselles. Je vous engage en même temps à leur faire mes hommages, et de croire toujours à mon estime et à mon attachement.
J. S. Mill
512.
TO ALEXANDER BAIN1
[November, 1861]
[In 1861, he began to turn his thoughts to a review of Hamilton’s Philosophy. Writing to me in November, he says,]
I mean to take up Sir William Hamilton, and try if I can make an article on him for the Westminster.2
513.
TO T. E. CLIFFE LESLIE1
[November? 1861]
[In reference to the argument that an exemption of savings would be an exemption in favour of the rich who can afford to save, at the expense of the poor who cannot, an eminent political economist has suggested to the writer that] the rich get this advantage only in so far as they save, and in so far as they do so, they forego the advantage of being rich, and place themselves on a par with the poor. If a rich man saved all the excess of his income above that of his poor neighbour, he would, in fact, be equally poor, since all the rest of his income would in fact be simply managed for him by the public.2
514.
TO WILLIAM THOMAS THORNTON1
- [Saint Véran]
[November, 1861]
[A month before,2 he had written to Thornton, in terms that showed how well he had recovered his natural buoyant spirits, and his enjoyment of life.]
Life here is uneventful, and feels like a perpetual holiday. It is one of the great privileges of advanced civilization, that while keeping out of the turmoil and depressing wear of life, one can have brought to one’s doors all that is agreeable or stimulating in the activities of the outward world, by newspapers, new books, periodicals, &c. It is, in truth, too self-indulgent a life for any one to allow himself whose duties lie among his fellow-beings, unless, as is fortunately the case with me, they are mostly such as can be better fulfilled at a distance from their society, than in the midst of it.
515.
TO JAMES LORIMER1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
Nov. 2. 1861.
Dear Sir
I am much obliged to you for sending me your article.2 The tone in which you write about the book,3 and the importance which, whether deservedly or not, you attach to it, must tend greatly to increase its influence. I am glad that there are so many points on which we entirely, and heartily, agree. Of those on which we differ, only one is practically important—the extension of the suffrage to women. The fact of their not generally desiring it, instead of an argument against its being given to them, is to my mind one of the strongest reasons to the contrary. For it arises from that entire want of knowledge and interest in politics, and of the very first and most elementary notions of duty to the public, which makes the influence that, as you truly say, they exercise, in 99 cases out of 100 destructive of public virtue in the men connected with them. I do not know how to reconcile your refusal of votes to women because they possess social influence, with the main principle of your system, that of granting plurality of votes on account of, and in proportion to, the social influence already possessed.
On this last subject, I confess, your answer to my objections has not convinced me. I do not well understand the sort of social weight or importance which you appear to contemplate; a sort which has no influence either on people’s opinions or on their votes. I do not see how persons whom the democracy, by your supposition, always votes against, can be said to be looked up to by it. Being looked up to in this sense, seems only to mean, being thought to be better off, not better, than other people. And even if it meant the latter, it is surely of more importance to single out, for a superior political position, those who are better, than those who are thought to be so. The former is exactly my plan; for the same general presumptions which must be employed to classify the voters according to their probable degrees of intelligence, correspond almost equally well with their probable degrees of moral trustworthiness also.
What you tell me respecting the North British Review is very satisfactory. It is excellent news that the Free Church party cannot support a Review without the cooperation of persons more liberal than themselves, and better still that one of the organs of opinion has reached the point of discarding routine doctrines in politics, and looking the question, whether universal suffrage shall be made a blessing or a curse, fairly in the face. I wish the conducters of the Review all success and prosperity in their new course, but I am quite unable to accept their proposal of writing a political article for them. My hands are already full, and even if they were not, there are other periodicals which have a prior claim on me.
I am Dear Sir
very faithfully yours
J. S. Mill
516.
TO SAMUEL PAULL1
S[aint] V[éran] Nov. 23. 1861
Sir—
I have received your letter dated Nov. 19. I certainly think with you that the estimates made by architects, engineers & others should be so drawn up as to distinguish clearly the payments for labour from all other payments, specifying both the quantity of labour & the rate at which it is paid. This is essential to the idea of an estimate. & it is on every account proper that the person who has to pay for the labour should know what he pays for, & at what rate he pays it, & should not be paying contractors’ profit when he supposes himself to be paying labourers’ wages.
At the same time I shd not be sincere with you if I allowed you to suppose that I attach much importance to this or any such matter of detail as a means of benefiting the labouring classes, or that I look upon questions of wages as capable of being settled in the way of arbitration, on grounds of equity. The insuperable difficulty is that there being no principle of equity to rest the settlement upon, any decision must be arbitrary, dependent on the direction of the judge’s sympathies. That the workmen should not starve may be said to be equitable, & also that the employers should get some profit. But between these limits I do not see what standard of equity can possibly be laid down. As long as the employers & their families are able to live better, & expend more on themselves than the labourers & their families, it may always be said that wages are not what they ought equitably to be. I can conceive Socialism, in which the division of the produce of labour is made among all, either according to the rule of equality (Communism) or according to any other general rule which may be considered more just than absolute equality. But under a system of private property in past accumulations in which no general rule can be laid down, I think that to give any one the power of deciding according to his own views of equity without a general rule would only perpetuate & envenom instead of healing the quarrel between capital & labour. The only thing which people will in these circumstances submit to as final, is the law of necessity, that is, the demand & supply of the market, tested (when not otherwise known) by the result of a strike. All that I consider practicable in the present state of society is to strengthen the weaker side in the competition, which can only be done by the prudence, forethought, wise restraint, & habit of cooperation, of the working people themselves.
517.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
Nov. 25. 1861
Dear Sir
I am truly glad that matter so important at this time as what you have written on Slavery2 is not to be buried in an anonymous article in a review. It seems to me that what will most help to give a better direction to public opinion, is that persons of talent, the more known and respected the better, should put themselves forward ostensibly, and even what in different circumstances might be called ostentatiously, as champions of the right view of the subject. The abolitionist feelings which were but lately so strong in England cannot have died out; they must be still there, and to rouse them into activity it is perhaps only necessary that the real state of the case should be well brought before them. I shall be only too happy to be associated with you in the demonstration, in the manner you propose. But the passage you think of quoting3 seems to me scarcely fit for the purpose; it is only suited to the expression of individual feelings between friends who think alike on the subject. If I had been writing for publication I should not have used that expression about a crusade without leading the reader up to it by a gradual preparation. I have tried to do this in the inclosed paper,4 which is in the form of a letter to you, and of which you are free to make use in the way you propose or in any other.
As you say, the French are shewing to much greater advantage on this question than the English. The writer in the Revue des Deux Mondes5 deserves all you say of him; he understands the subject and wrote excellently on it in the Revue before the secession. There is in the last number of the Revue Nationale (10th November)6 a noble and stirring article by Pressensé,7 the most distinguished of the French Protestant clergy, and in that character well known to the religious world in England. Have you seen “Un grand peuple qui se reveille” by Agénor de Gasparin?8 I only know it by extracts, but it seems to be very good.
I am happy to find so very near an agreement in our opinions on the utilitarian question. Indeed increased knowledge of each other seems always in our case to disclose fresh points of agreement. I cannot enter into this subject at present, but should like to discuss it with you at some future time. There is to be a third paper in the next number of Fraser,9 on the relation between justice and utility, which will conclude the subject. The mode of treatment suggested in the last page of your letter10 is very much to the purpose, and I should like extremely to see the question handled from that point of view by yourself or by some other competent person.
I am Dear Sir
Yours very truly
J. S. Mill
P.S. Ever since I had the advantage of reading part of your MS. lectures on Slavery, I have been anxious that you should write on the subject, in a manner adapted to the general reader, and with express reference to the American quarrel. Like yourself, I have felt ashamed and grieved at the figure which English public opinion exhibits in the face of mankind at this great crisis of human history.11 The people of this country have amply proved the sincerity and strength of their anti-slavery convictions; and if most of their leading organs now express themselves as if there was no distinction between right and wrong on this momentous subject, it can only be because the public have not yet realized the vastness of the stake which is at issue in the present contest. Had they done so, would our most powerful newspapers be able to argue the question as if the right to rebel in defence of the power to tyrannize, were as sacred as the right of resisting by arms a tyranny practised over ourselves? or as if a community which takes its stand, not upon slavery merely but upon the extension of slavery as the fundamental condition of its existence, and which has broken loose from national ties because it feared lest something might be done to prevent it from carrying this scourge through the whole of the American continent, were a society just like any other—having the same moral rights of every kind, & as fit to take its place in the community of nations, as any body of human beings whatever. It is most deeply to be wished that such a society may be crushed in its commencement, before it has made itself such a pest to the world as to require and justify a general crusade of civilized nations for its suppression.
518.
TO ALEXANDER BAIN1
[December, 1861]
[He soon abandoned the idea of an article on Sir William Hamilton. In December he said:—]
I have now studied all Sir W. Hamilton’s works pretty thoroughly, and see my way to most of what I have got to say respecting him. But I have given up the idea of doing it in anything less than a volume.2 The great recommendation of this project is, that it will enable me to supply what was prudently left deficient in the Logic, and to do the kind of service which I am capable of to rational psychology, namely, to its Polemik.
519.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE1
- Saint-Véran, Avignon
le 4 Decembre 1861.
Mon cher Monsieur
Les traductions que vous donnez sont toutes deux admissibles surtout la seconde; mais l’une et l’autre sont équivalentes plutôt qu’identiques à l’idée que j’ai voulu exprimer. Il doit y avoir quelqu’expression théologique qui rendrait encore plus exactement ce que j’ai voulu dire. Nous entendons par “the canon of inspiration”2 l’ensemble des Ecritures reconnues révélées. Ce canon a été incomplet aussi longtemps qu’on croyait pouvoir y ajouter des écrits nouveaux. Quand on cessa d’y ajouter, il fut complet.
Je ne sais pas si la traduction de l’Economie Politique, qui fut faite sur la 3me édition, a été ou non, retouchée sur la 4me. Celle-ci du reste est presqu’ épuisée et il y aura du nouveau dans la 5me. Mais il n’y aura rien de changé quant au fonds.
Je ne sais pas où en est la 2me édition du représentatif. La préface sera une excellente annonce de la traduction. L’article de Littré,3 dont il m’a parlé, en sera une autre.
Mon écrit sur la Centralisation et sur vos deux volumes est fait et expedié à Reeve.4 Il sera peutêtre trop long pour la Revue d’Edinbourg. Mais je suis sûr de la faire publier quelque part. Je crois que vous n’aurez pas lieu d’en être mécontent, bien que je vous aie passablement maltraité sur plusieurs points.
Ma fille se recommande au bon souvenir de Madame Dupont-White et de vos demoiselles. Je vous prie également de leur offrir mes hommages et de me croire
votre tout dévoué
J. S. Mill
520.
TO ARTHUR W. GREENE1
S[aint] V[éran] Dec. 16 1861
Sir—
Your letter shows such openmindedness & candour, & so much desire of truth for its own sake, that I would most gladly do anything I could to help you through your perplexities. But it is not easy for me to do so without knowing more clearly than your letter tells me, what are the historical facts, which it appears to you difficult to account for except on the Xtian theory, and what particular Christian theory it is which you think accounts for them.
I am desirous to explain, that neither in the Logic nor in any other of my publications had I any purpose of undermining Theism; nor, I believe, have most readers of the Logic perceived any such tendency in it. I am far from thinking that it would be a benefit for mankind in general, if without any other change in them, they could be made disbelievers in all religion; nor would I willingly weaken in any person the reverence for Christ, in which I myself very strongly participate. I am an enemy to no religions but those which appear to me to be injurious either to the reasoning powers or the moral sentiments. Among such I am obliged to reckon all those which, while holding that the world was made by a perfectly good Being, declare that Being to be omnipotent; for such persons are obliged to maintain that evil is good. That the world was made by a good & wise Being, is in itself perfectly credible; but if that Being has done, for Man & other creatures the best that it was possible to do, the Maker must have been limited by extremely severe conditions of some sort, whether the limit was set by the power of other & malevolent beings, as held by Zoroaster,2 or as Plato thought, by the intractability of the material.3
That, however, the world was made, in whole or in part, by a powerful Being who cared for man, appears to me, though not proved, yet a very probable hypothesis. Like all enquiries which ascend to a time beyond credible records, & which suppose powers of the existence of which in the historical times we have no evidence, it is, & must remain, as I conceive, uncertain. In this respect it resembles the geological theories respecting the [evolution?] of the earth, or Laplace’s hypothetical explanation of the solar system.4 Since you have read the “Logic” as attentively as I perceive you have, you will understand me when I put the argument, such as it is, into an inductive form.
The eye, (let us say), is a very complicated phenomenon; it would be begging the question to call it an instrument. But it consists of many different parts, & these parts being found together, in a number of instances far more than sufficient to eliminate chance, their being found in that particular state of coexistence in combination proves that they are connected through some common cause. Going now a step further & comparing these facts together to ascertain if possible something in which they agree, we can find no single point of agreement except one very striking one, viz., that every one of them contributes to render sight possible. We may therefore conclude that there is some connexion through causation between the sight which is to follow & the cause which preceded & as we say, produced the eye. Induction can carry us no further than this. But the only mode supported by any of the analogies of experience, in which a fact to come can contribute to the production of the fact by which it is itself produced, is by the preconception of that fact & the purpose of producing it in the mind of an intelligent being.
In a case like this where a hypothesis has many strong analogies in its favour, such as have not been, & do not seem capable of being established in favour of any other hypothesis, & when there is not & cannot be any evidence against it, I do not think that we are bound, in regard of logic, to reject it. I consider it a case in which it is allowable for each person to let his belief be affected (if such be the tendency of his mind) by his own emotional needs, & the conditions favourable to his moral culture. If (as is the case with all characters of any elevation) he has privately consecrated an internal altar to an ideal Perfect Being, to whose ideal will he endeavour to conform his own; then disposed as he will naturally be to persuade himself that this ideal Being is an actually existing one there is enough in the course of Nature (when once the idea of Omnipotence is discarded) to give to that belief a considerable degree of support. And the more especially so since if we were made by an Intelligence, that Intelligence has made our nobler capacities of feeling & principles of action, & can scarcely be supposed to have made these unless there had been feelings & principles corresponding to them in his own nature.
This is my position in respect to Theism: I think it a legitimate subject of imagination, & hope, & even belief (not amounting to faith) but not of knowledge.
If now we suppose that God made man & the world, not as he would, but as he could, it might follow as a consequence that man’s faculties could only be developed progressively & under many obstructions & the whole course of history would admit of being set forth & explained on that theory. I do not see, however, that the succession of historical events requires any supernatural explanation. We cannot indeed trace its natural laws back to the very beginning, but as far back as we have any record, all that has happened seems perfectly capable of explanation from human & natural causes. Of course I cannot prove this in the compass of a letter; but it is the result to which the study of history leads me. I could hardly recommend to you any one book which treats history from this point of view with much success unless it be Comte’s Cours de Phil. Pos.5 of which the concluding volumes are historical but cannot well be appreciated apart from the earlier ones which are scientific. There is much in the book with which I do not agree, but there are few books from which I have learnt so much or which afford more matter calculated to meet the difficulty you meet in explaining history apart from the supernatural.
I shall be happy to hear from you again & to give such further answer as I can to your difficulties. I shall be here till near the end of January, after which I shall be travelling for some months. I am Sir
521.
TO T. E. CLIFFE LESLIE1
- S[aint] V[éran]
Dec. 20. 1861
Dear Sir—
I received the proof of your article2 only this morning. It is an able & will be a useful paper, & puts some points in a new & forcible way, though I differ from it on several matters of detail & some of principle. The chief of these is the question of exempting savings, on which your arguments have not shaken my conviction. The strongest of them is that a tax on expenditure is unjust to those professional persons who are obliged to spend more than they gain in the early years of their career. It is impossible to answer this argument completely. But the force of it is much weakened by several considerations. In the first place what the professional man is obliged to expend in maintaining himself before his earnings come in, is capital, & as such, would, on my plan, have been previously relieved from the portion of income tax it now pays. The not taxing the capital when it was formed, is an equivalent for taxing it, when it is laid out. In the second place, the tax he pays on this outlay would, if savings were untaxed, be entirely refunded to him by the exemption he would enjoy in the process of replacing the outlay from his subsequent earnings. (This entirely refutes the last sentence of the first par[agraph] of p. 114.) The inconvenience is thus limited to that of making an advance. That is doubtless a special disadvantage. But some inequalities are unavoidable in all modes of taxation; & even your plan would not relieve him from the whole of it, since taxing him on only two thirds of his income would not come up to the requirements of the case of one whose income is less than half of his present expenditure.
I will not go into any of your other arguments on this point except to say that in the note at pp. 114-5 where you reply to the passage from my letter I do not think the words “to the disadvantage of the poor man” state the case fairly.3 In the case supposed, the poor as a body would lose a part of the rich man’s income tax & gain the whole of his income.
At p. 99 I think you overstate the case against taxes on articles of general consumption. You say that a duke’s family does not consume very much more “of certain things” than an artisan’s or a clerk’s. Not nearly so much in proportion to their means; but much more absolutely, since they pay for all that is consumed by their servants & dependants.
In the argument at pp. 101 et 109, you argue that it is unjust to tax the owner of a precarious income on the whole of what he receives in a prosperous year, because he cannot afford to spend it all in that year, as he must lay by a part for an unfavorable year. In this of course I agree, but you do not notice what seems the necessary complement of this doctrine, viz. that when the unfavorable year comes, & what was reserved before is brought out for consumption then on the same principle of justice it ought to pay the tax: for in that (the unfavourable) year he can afford to spend more than the year’s income.
At p. 109 I do not clearly understand the sentence near the bottom beginning “they may well ask.”
P. 113 The concluding paragraph of this page does not seem to me fair to Hubbard.4 His doctrine is that the industrial classes as a body save in the ratio mentioned, (which he thinks he has statistical evidence of) not that every individual among them does so: & that as it is impossible to be just to every individual, we should endeavour to be just to the body as a body.
I do not find anything else that I need touch upon. There are some bad errors of the press, but as the proof seems to be an uncorrected one they have probably been detected by yourself. I will only refer to p. 125 line 2, which is unintelligible, & to the first line of the note at p. 115 where the sense is reversed: it should be by him for the public, instead of “for him by the public.”
I have no idea who wrote the review of Austin & Maine in the Edinb.5 The writer does not seem to know much of the subject beyond what he has learnt from the two books he is reviewing. But they are a good foundation of knowledge. I agree entirely with your admiration of Maine & to some extent though not wholly with your criticism on Austin. He was not addressing himself to the public but to students, & that great quantity of repetition has its use. It is like the repetitions in Euclid. It is much oftener wanted by learners than one is apt to suppose & they often have not the patience to go repeatedly over the ground for themselves. I am glad you are writing on the study of Jurisprudence.6
I hope I am not wrong in directing this to Belfast.
522.
TO ARTHUR W. GREENE1
S[aint] V[éran] Dec. 27. 1861
Dear Sir—
I could easily write out an argument & send it to you on the historical evidences of Christianity considered as a supernatural revelation. But as you seem disposed to pursue, for the present, special studies, & in the meanwhile to bear with whatever degree of uncertainty you may be now feeling respecting these great questions, I will only say, that you do not seem to have yet made yourself acquainted with the principles of historical criticism, which are now familiar to advanced historical enquirers throughout Europe; under the application of which the evidences of the supernatural part of Jewish & Xtian history crumble so completely that almost all theologians deserving the name (in Protestant countries) now rest the proof of the divine origin of Xtianity not so much on external evidence as on the intrinsic excellence of its ethics or (as some think) the philosophical truth of its metaphysics.
On the other point referred to in your letter, the incompatibility of omnipotence in the Creator (supposed morally perfect) with the imperfections of the creation, I will observe, that the theory of the fall only makes the contradiction worse: for (quite independently of the Necessarian doctrine of Volition) no good Being would have created mankind with the sure foreknowledge that they would fall, & thereby condemn themselves to eternal perdition. You say that a Being, capable of what I must call this horrible wickedness, may be perfectly good in some higher sense than our faculties are able to conceive: but it must be a sense not merely different, but contrary, to every sense in which goodness has any claim to be loved or reverenced by us. A Being of great but limited power may be forced to tolerate all the misery, all the meanness & all the wickedness which we see, for the sake of ulterior ends. But omnipotence is not restricted to means, since it can attain all its ends without them; if therefore we maintain that an omnipotent & good Being tolerates these things, we must maintain them to be good in themselves, that is, we must (as I said in my former letter) affirm Evil to be Good.
It seems to me anything but a presumption in favour of a religion that “intolerance” is “of the very essence of it.”2 Other religions are not correctly described as holding that it is a matter of indifference whether they are believed or not. All religions calling themselves Xtian (not to add Mohamedanism) hold that it is unspeakably important to believe the true religion, & each believes itself to be the true: but the Protestant forms of Xtianity, not claiming for themselves any divinely confirmed infallibility, hold as a principle that the mode in which truth ought to be arrived at & the only legitimate mode of obtaining full assurance of it, is by the operation of the individual reason & conscience: which makes the permission & even encouragement of free enquiry indispensable, in theory at least, however much the contrary may often be the case in practice.
1862
523.
TO WILLIAM THOMAS THORNTON1
- Blackheath
Thursday evg
[1862 ?]
Dear Thornton
Louis Blanc is coming to dine with us on Sunday, and it would give us great pleasure if you could come and meet him. We dine at five.
The cheque arrived safely yesterday morning.
Very truly yours
J. S. Mill
524.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
le 10 janvier, 1862.
Mon cher Monsieur
Il est très flatteur pour moi que la Revue des Deux Mondes éprouve le désir d’avoir de ma prose.2 Cela est si bien à ma convenance que j’ai eu quelquefois l’idée de lui en offrir; mais j’ai tant d’occupations et de projets plus au moins en train d’exécution, qu’il m’est difficile, et même, pour le moment, impossible, de m’engager positivement à rien. A ce propos, ma réponse à la Revue Nationale ne fut pas un refus; j’ai seulement dit ne pouvoir rien promettre. Je présume qu’il n’y a pas incompatibilité entre les deux Revues; je sais, du reste, combien l’une d’elles est plus importante que l’autre. Cependant je voudrais conserver, à cet égard, toute ma liberté.
Je suis bien aise que mon livre se soutient dans votre opinion favorable au troisième examen. Peut-être aurais-je dû faire une note sur la Constituante de 1789.3 Cet exemple ne compte pour rien en faveur de l’élection à deux dégrés, car il y a des momens où l’opinion générale se fait jour à travers tout obstacle, et où les modes d’élection les plus divers aboutissent à des résultats à peu près identiques: il en était ainsi en 1789, et je pense que le tiers état aurait nommé, en général, les mêmes députés sous un système électoral beaucoup plus défectueux. La question des renouvellements partiaux n’est pas fondamentale: au reste, je ne crois pas les avoir condamnés d’une manière absolue.
Mon article sur vos deux livres est accepté par Reeve,4 mais pour le numéro d’avril, ou peut-être même pour celui de juillet. L’écrit sur la doctrine de l’utilité a paru dans Fraser’s Magazine (Octobre, Novembre, et Decembre).5 J’ai laissé mon éditeur le maître de décider le moment de le réimprimer en volume, mais n’ayant rien appris sur ses intentions, je présume que cette réimpression est ajournée.
Veuillez offrir à Madame Dupont-White et à vos demoiselles mes hommages respectueux, auxquels ma fille vous prie d’ajouter l’expression de ses sentiments amicaux. Votre tout dévoué.
J. S. Mill
525.
TO GEORGE GROTE1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
Jan. 10. 1862.
My dear Grote
A long letter from you is indeed a pleasure. We are very sorry that you and Mrs. Grote are unable to join us, but the reasons you give are superabundantly conclusive.2 Your life and health are so important to the world, and besides, so valuable to myself, that on either interpretation of our common standard of ethics I have the strongest reason against wishing you to expose them to any danger. I must be content with the minor pleasure of writing to you from Athens, and reporting to you what I have seen after our return.
I do not see that the opinions you express in your letter on practical ethics3 constitute any difference between us. I agree in them entirely, and I consider them to follow conclusively from the conception of our own happiness as a unit, neither more nor less valuable than that of another, or, in Christian language, the doctrine of loving one’s neighbour as oneself, this being of course understood not of the feeling or sentiment of love, but of perfect ethical impartiality between the two. The general happiness, looked upon as composed of as many different units as there are persons, all equal in value except as far as the amount of the happiness itself differs, leads to all the practical doctrines which you lay down. First, it requires that each shall consider it as his special business to take care of himself: the general good requiring that that one individual should be left, in all ordinary circumstances, to his own care, and not taken care of for him, further than by not impeding his own efforts, nor allowing others to do so. The good of all can only be pursued with any success by each person’s taking as his particular department the good of the only individual whose requirements he can thoroughly know; with due precautions to prevent these different persons, each cultivating a particular strip of the field, from hindering one another. Secondly, human happiness, even one’s own, is in general more successfully pursued by acting on general rules, than by measuring the consequences of each act; and this is still more the case with the general happiness, since any other plan would not only leave everybody uncertain what to expect, but would involve perpetual quarrelling: and hence general rules must be laid down for people’s conduct to one another, or in other words, rights and obligations must, as you say, be recognised; and people must, on the one hand, not be required to sacrifice even their own less good to another’s greater, where no general rule has given the other a right to the sacrifice; while, when a right has been recognised, they must, in most cases, yield to that right even at the sacrifice, in the particular case, of their own greater good to another’s less. These rights and obligations are (it is of course implied) reciprocal. And thus what each person is held to do for the sake of others is more or less definite, corresponding to the less perfect knowledge he can have of their interests, taken individually; and he is free to employ the indefinite residue of his exertions in benefitting the one person of whom he has the principal charge, and whose wants he has the means of learning the most completely. These, I think, are exactly your conclusions. And they are consistent with recognising the merit, though not the duty, of making still greater sacrifices of our own less good to the greater good of others, than the general conditions of human happiness render it expedient to prescribe. This last distinction, which I do not think inconsistent with the expressions about perfection attributed to Christ, the Catholic theologians have recognized, laying down a lower standard of disinterestedness for the world and a higher one for the “perfect” (the saints): but Protestants have in general considered this as Popish laxity, and have maintained that it is the duty of every one, absolutely to annul his own separate existence.
I am very glad that you like the papers on Utilitarianism so much.4 I am not more sanguine than you are about their converting opponents. The most that writing of that sort can be expected to do, is to place the doctrine in a better light, and prevent the other side having everything their own way, and triumphing in their moral and metaphysical superiority as they have done for the last half century and as they do in France still more than in England. In Germany the tide seems to be turning; & there is a commencement of turning even here. It was only lately that M. Schérer,5 one of the heretical Protestant theologians of France (who gave up a theological professorship at Strasbourg because he could not believe the doctrine of Biblical inspiration) declared in the Revue des Deux Mondes that the inductive and utilitarian ethics were now shewing that they could produce as good & noble fruits as the other doctrine.6
My meditations on Sir W. Hamilton’s work have shaped themselves into an intention that an examination of his philosophy considered as representative of the best form of Germanism, shall be the subject of the next book I write:7 for it cannot be done in anything less than a book, without assuming points which it is of great importance to prove. I have tolerably well settled in my own mind what I have got to say on most of the principal points. But I do not feel properly equipped for such a piece of work until I have read your account of Plato,8 in which I expect to find much new and valuable thought on the great problems of metaphysics. It is some consolation for your not going over Greece with us, to think that you will be finishing Plato, which I hope may be ready for publication by the end of the year.
I have written nothing since coming here except an article on Centralization,9 which has been accepted by Reeve but not for the January nor perhaps for the April number. There will be nothing in it new or particularly interesting to you. I meant to have written a paper on the American question, but the miserable incident of the Trent10 came in the way. If that goes off favourably, which now seems more probable than the contrary, the world has had a narrow escape from one of the greatest calamities of this century.
I quite agree in your high estimate of Bain’s new book.11
We think of leaving Avignon about the 29th, arriving at Athens about the 22nd of February.
With our kind regards to Mrs Grote I am
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
[P.S.]—As you truly say the Protagorean Socrates lays down as the standard, the happiness of the agent himself;12 but his standard is composed of pleasure and pain, which ranges him, upon the whole, on the utilitarian side of the controversy.
526.
TO HENRY SAMUEL CHAPMAN1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
Jan. 12. 1862.
Dear Chapman
I received your letter of August 26th here, and read it with great interest. I have since watched the progress of politics in your colony by means of the letters in the Times which I read with a degree of confidence that I should not have given them if I had not known their authorship:2 I should now, however, have been able to divine it, if you had not told me. The course of affairs under your present Constitution is exactly what it is likely to be under the falsely called democracy in which manual labourers alone are really represented.3 The old countries will in time come under similar influences, and the only way to mitigate them is to struggle courageously against them, as you do, but as the more educated classes in America do not; and to strive always for a fair representation of minorities. I look upon that as the sheet anchor of the democracy of the future. If it is not adopted, there is no knowing that society may not be barbarized down into not only a dead level of narrow minded stupidity, but into lawlessness; what French writers call la souveraineté du but being accepted as the supreme rule, and the but being, to make everything conform to the will (even the passing and momentary will) of the dominant majority. This particular feature of evil, which had scarcely begun to shew itself in the United States even when Tocqueville wrote, has made fearful advances since. We are here in the heart of a difficulty and danger wholly brought upon us by that spirit. Governments have often enough acted lawlessly, but even the first Napoleon, in the height of his despotism, never professed lawlessness; he seized the Duke of Enghien4 exactly as the Americans seized the senators in New Granada;5 but he never did what the American Government by its organ Mr Seward6 has done within the last month—profess in a public despatch that in the position his country is now in it is not bound by international rules or precedents. That open repudiation of law, and assertion of mere will and convenience, by a great nation, though it has escaped even the bitter comments of the Times, is to my mind the most alarming fact, for the future of the human race, that has occurred for generations past.
In all other respects your country seems to be thriving wonderfully. The particulars in your letter, of the reduction of household expenses from the enormous rates which had kept up for some years after the gold fever began, are very striking, and are most satisfactory indications of the return of society economically considered, to a normal condition. What you say about public libraries, schools, and the University, and about the eagerness for the better sort of new books, is very pleasant to read of, and very creditable to the country. It gives me great pleasure to hear of your own prosperity, and to think of the influence which your position both socially and politically7 is likely to give you in turning things into the best channel which the conditions of the state of society admit of. I was interested also by what you say concerning your son,8 whom I shall be glad to see, and should be still more glad to be in any way useful to. I shall not, however, be in England for a good many months to come, as we set out in a few weeks to travel in Greece and Turkey, and shall return here before going to England.
Many thanks for the Argus.9 I received another number of it lately (but I should think, not from you) containing a letter against Mr Hare’s plan, the objections in which are the same inconclusive ones which have been made in England. But I was glad to perceive by the first sentence that the Argus has itself written in recommendation of the plan. It is decidedly making its way and has now defenders in America and on the Continent of Europe. I am
Very truly yours
J. S. Mill
527.
TO HERMAN MERIVALE1
[Jan. 12, 1862]
[I shall probably be encouraged to ask you a question] now and then about Indian affairs. The rise of prices which you tell me has taken place, I can throw no light on. If permanent it must, I suppose, depend upon the same cause which is slowly raising prices through the whole commercial world, namely, the gold discoveries;2 though why this cause should have acted with so much greater visible force in Bengal than it has hitherto done in Europe, I cannot perceive. Can it be (since India has so long been the gulph into which silver has been constantly sinking and never reappearing) that the great upturning of things and persons which has taken place in India, among its other effects, has had that of bringing some of the hoarded silver into circulation? That would be an adequate cause, but scarcely seems a probable one. In the case of rice, the great export trade to Europe from the Bay of Bengal,3 which had sprung up within a few years previous to my leaving India House, may go far to account for a rise of price.
I am
Yours very truly
J. S. Mill
528.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
Jan. 20. 1862
Dear Sir
You have probably heard from Mr Leslie what is doing in the Political Economy Club with a view to giving the privileges of Honorary Members to the Professors in the Queen’s University. The proposal will be brought before the Club on the 6th of February with the unanimous recommendation of the Committee, consisting of Mr Newmarch, Mr Blake,2 and myself, and I am very confident that it will be adopted.3
I have been hoping to see an advertisement of your essay on the American question,4 or to hear from you respecting its progress. I fear that the Trent affair may have delayed it, as there was no chance of getting a hearing for the Northern side of the question while we seemed on the brink of war with the United States.5 I seldom experienced so great a feeling of consternation on reading a piece of public news, as I was struck with on the arrival of the first intelligence of that affair. But it is ended, and as well ended as such a thing could be; and I have begun to look out again for tidings of your work. I also resumed a purpose which had been suspended by that untoward affair, of myself writing something on the American contest for immediate publication. The article is finished, and is to come out in the February number of Fraser.6 I much wished when writing it, that I had your papers on the subject to help me, and that they had come out first, so that I might have quoted them. But I hope they will follow soon after, and that others will be encouraged by our example, to help in bearing up against the stream.
We propose starting on the 29th of this month for Athens, and letters addressed Poste Restante there, will reach me till near the end of May.
I am Dear Sir
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
529.
TO CÉLESTIN DE BLIGNIÈRES1
- St. Véran
le 22 janvier 1862
Monsieur—
Le livre que vous avez eu la bonté de m’envoyer2 s’est trouvé être en effet le même que j’avais reçu il y a trois ou quatre ans. Il ne m’est pas pour cela inutile; je suis en train de le relire et j’en déjà relu une grande partie. Ce livre me paraît très remarquable sous le rapport de l’exposition et de l’expression. Il résume les plus importantes doctrines de M. Comte avec une clarté que lui-même n’a pas surpassée, et de manière à offrir souvent, pour ainsi dire, de nouveaux reflets de lumière par la manière de présenter les idées. Quant à la question qui fait, à ce qu’il paraît, votre principale différence avec M. Comte je suis assurément et pleinement de votre avis. Je crois, pourtant, que mon dissentiment va plus loin que le vôtre.3 On ne saurait faire mieux sentir que vous ne le faites la distinction fondamentale des pouvoirs temporel et spirituel, la nécessité de ce dernier, son existence universelle sous une forme ou sous une autre, et les suites funestes de sa réunion avec le pouvoir temporel. Voici maintenant en quoi je crois être en dissentiment avec vous. Je suis très porté à croire (sans vouloir décider positivement cette question pour l’avenir) que la nature même d’un pouvoir spirituel légitime ne comporte pas une organisation réelle. Tant qu’un accord essentiel de doctrines n’existe pas parmi les chefs spirituels, toute tentative d’organisation, en la supposant praticable, serait évidemment nuisible. Si au contraire, cet accord existait il me semble que l’organisation en corps ne serait pas nécessaire. L’autorité, qu’exerce dans les sciences positives l’opinion des savants, ne repose pas, ce me semble, sur leur réunion en Académies ou sous tout autre nom, mais sur le fait même de leur unanimité. D’ailleurs, leur organisation me donnerait des craintes sérieuses pour l’indépendance de la pensée. Tout corps scientifique organisé est toujours plus ou moins porté à repousser les innovations scientifiques, qui, pourtant, ne laissent pas d’être quelquefois nécessaires même dans les sciences qui ont reçu définitivement leur constitution positive. J’incline à croire que, lorsque l’accord général des opinions de ceux qui ont fait les études nécessaires s’étendra aux questions morales et sociologiques, la classe spéculative pourra être la classe enseignante, et exercer une grande et salutaire autorité morale, sans être organisée en corps sous une autorité dirigeante qui me semble toujours dangereuse. Je sais que la morale positive repousse toute prétention à se servir de moyens coercitifs pour agir sur les rénovateurs; mais l’opinion générale, ralliée par une puissante autorité morale suffit toujours pour exercer une pression tyrannique sur la pensée; et je ne puis oublier que M. Comte lui-même est allé jusqu’à vouloir détruire, à la manière des premiers chrétiens, les documents historiques du passé.
Cette manière de penser me conduit à admettre une certaine modification dans le principe de la non-participation des esprits spéculatifs au pouvoir temporel. Je conviens non seulement que la capacité philosophique ne doit nullement être un titre aux fonctions politiques, mais encore que les philosophes ne doivent pas, en règle générale, gouverner ni administrer, sauf les cas exceptionnels qui naissent des exigences d’une époque de transition, sauf aussi l’avantage que pourra retirer leur propre développement philosophique d’une certaine initiation dans les affaires pratiques de la vie, laquelle doit avoir lieu dans leur jeunesse et sous une autorité supérieure. Mais il me semble que les philosophes peuvent être très à leur places dans les assemblées politiques délibérantes; ce qui tient à ce que je conçois la fonction de ces assemblées tout autrement que selon l’idée ordinaire. Je les crois très peu propres à faire des lois, mais très utiles comme organes de l’opinion, soit pour critiquer tant la législation que l’administration, soit pour y donner ou refuser, en dernier lieu, la sanction nationale. Vous voyez que c’est une sorte de pouvoir spirituel que je leur accède, au sein même du pouvoir temporel. J’ai développé cette idée dans un volume sur le gouvernement représentatif, dont une traduction française est à la veille de paraître.4 Dès qu’elle aura paru, je vous prierai d’en accepter un exemplaire. Je ne vous offre pas l’ouvrage anglais, ne sachant pas si vous avez l’habitude de la langue anglaise. Cet ouvrage, si vous lui faites l’honneur de le lire, vous mettra au courant de la plupart des différences qui me séparent de quelques opinions de M. Comte auxquelles vous semblez adhérer.
Je compte partir dans huit jours pour un voyage en Orient,5 et ne retourner ici qu’à la fin de l’été. Bien qu’une lettre adressée Poste Restante à Athènes avant le milieu de mai me trouverait probablement, je n’ose vous proposer de m’écrire pendant mon absence; mais ce serait toujours pour moi un plaisir de comparer mes idées avec celles de l’auteur d’un livre si recommandable par les qualités morales et intellectuelles qu’on ne peut pas manquer d’y reconnaître dans le vôtre.
530.
TO REV. LOUIS REY1
- Saint Véran
le 26 janv. 1862
Mon cher Monsieur
Comme je ne serai pas ici cette année, comme à l’ordinaire, au mois d’avril, permettez moi de vous offrir dès à présent ma contribution annuelle aux fonds de l’Eglise Protestante.
Votre tout dévoué
J. S. Mill
531.
TO PASQUALE VILLARI1
- S[t] V[éran]
Jan. 26. 1862
Mon cher M. Villari—
J’ai lu avec le plus vif intérêt votre brochure.2 Elle soulève à chaque page des sujets de discussions et d’entretiens dont l’occasion s’offrira, je l’espère, quelque jour. Je ne trouve pas que vous ayez fait la part trop belle aux peuples latins; d’ailleurs ce n’est pas un mal que de donner aux nations renaissantes une haute idée de leur rôle et de la place qu’ils sont tenus d’occuper dignement dans l’avenir de l’humanité. Je trouve aussi que vous avez à plusieurs égards justement apprécié les qualités et les défauts des peuples germaniques. Après cela, j’aurais bien à vous faire quelques critiques—D’abord, il me semble que, comme presque tous les penseurs des pays latins, vous ne connaissez pas assez le protestantisme. Vous pensez qu’il n’a qu’une efficacité négative. Nul anglais ne pourrait en avoir cette opinion. Son côté négatif est presque accessoire, et a cessé de prédominer, une fois que la séparation avec le catholicisme s’est pleinement effectué. C’est par son côté affirmatif qu’il s’est maintenu dans les pays protestants et surtout parmi les anglo-saxons. Si vous me demandez ce qu’il a produit dans l’ordre moral, je réponds, le sentiment du devoir, sentiment essentiellement religieux, qui est le trait le plus saillant de la moralité anglaise. L’esprit anglais est peu sympathique: il a très peu de point d’honneur national, mais il a, à un plus grand degré que tous les autres peuples, le principe du devoir, et cela lui est tellement particulier que jamais ni les hommes politiques ni les opinions des autres nations ne comprennet ce qui, dans sa civilisation et dans sa conduite, tient à ce principe. Ce qui vous fait croire au peu d’efficacité sociale et politique du protestantisme, c’est qu’en effet toutes les églises nationales protestantes, sauf celle d’Ecosse, ont joué politiquement un fort triste rôle: celle-là seule a été l’église du peuple; toutes les autres on été les églises des grands, c’est à dire, elles sont tombées, dès leur origine, dans les errements que l’église catholique n’a commis que dans sa décadence. Pour connaître le protestantisme il faut l’étudier dans l’histoire écossaise, et dans celle du puritanisme anglais et américain. Je suis très impartial en vous disant cela, puisque je n’aime ni le protestantisme écossais ni le puritanisme bien que la liberté politique leur doive beaucoup à tous deux.
Ensuite, vous dites des peuples germaniques, qu’ils oscillent entre un mysticisme tout abstrait et un matérialisme qui ne songe qu’aux choses de la terre. Cela pourrait être vrai, jusqu’à un certain point de l’Allemagne; mais je pense qu’il y a en Angleterre un plus grand nombre que partout ailleurs de ceux qui, en théorie et en pratique se tiennent à une égale distance de ces deux extrêmes, et dont les sentiments religieux se montrent surtout dans la direction plus spirituelle qu’ils donnent à la conduite pratique de la vie. Que pensez vous à cet égard des quakers? Ce sont eux qui ont commencé tous les grands mouvements philanthropiques modernes, l’affranchissement des nègres, l’instruction populaire, l’adoucissement des peines, la réforme des prisons, etc. Je vois qu’en nous accordant la poésie, vous nous refusez la philosophie; c’est que vous n’estimez guère ni l’école de Locke, ni la forme écossaise de la réaction contre elle. Mais nous avons la prétention d’avoir produit quelques uns des meilleurs penseurs philosophiques qui aient existé en temps modernes dans toutes les écoles.
Je pourrais remplir plusieurs feuilles des observations que vous avez bien voulu me demander sur votre brochure mais j’aime mieux réserver ces questions pour un temps où, soit en Italie, soit ici ou en Angleterre, nous pourrions discuter ensemble d’une manière plus satisfaisante les grandes questions philosophiques. En attendant je vous prie de me tenir au courant de tout ce que vous écrivez, car je tiens extrêmement à suivre vos idées.
Il me reste de vous engager à m’écrire Poste Restante à Athènes, ce que sera une adresse suffisante jusque vers la fin de mai. Lorsque cette adresse ne suffira plus, je vous en donnerai une autre. Nous revenir ici au mois de septembre c.à.d. ma fille et moi. Algernon Taylor ne demeure plus avec nous, il s’est marié et demeure habituellement en angleterre. Croyez toujours aux sentiments d’estime et d’affectation de votre dévoué
532.
TO WILLIAM THOMAS THORNTON1
S[aint] V[éran] Jan. 28. 1862.
Dear Thornton—
I have been very long in answering your letter of 25 Dec. The reason is that I waited for the return from Paris of the only person I know here, who has in any degree the same tastes, pursuits & opinions with myself,2 & from whom I hoped to be able to procure better information than I have respecting the small landed proprietors here. He has not yet returned & I am therefore less able than I hoped I should be to answer your questions. But I hope you will be here next autumn, when you can see him yourself & when we can investigate the matter together, so far as relates to this district, which however is in many respects unlike many other parts of France; as the south, also, is in many particulars unlike the north. One point of unlikeness here, to many other French provinces (but to how many I do not know) is that nearly all the working people have large families—that is, when the greater part of the children do not die. I fear that in many parts of France besides this, the population is kept down more by death, and less by prudence, than I formerly believed. There seems to be hardly such a thing as prudence in pecuniary matters here, on the part of the men, though often a great deal in the women, to whom exclusively the well-doing & prosperity of any working family seems here to be attributable. In consequence probably of the large families the idea of all the children supporting themselves on the parental bit of land seems not to exist in this country. Most peasants who have land, seem to farm other land with it, as metayers or as bailiffs, & the majority of the children go out as domestic servants or labourers or artisans; these (one may suppose, & what little I know confirms it) do not desire, when the parents die, to take their share of the land; as they say, what could they do with it? but take their portion in money. This payment in money, however, as I surmise, helps to encumber the little landed properties. Another mode in which the large families tend to prevent division is that when the parent dies there are usually children under age, & as the legal difficulties of dividing the inheritance are in that case considerable, it sometimes remains undivided in the first instance, & is managed by one of the family on the joint account. There is an example of this in the case of a woman servant of ours, one of a large family, the youngest of whom, a son, is not yet of age, & the land is managed for them by an uncle, who pays them nothing, but is censé to expend the proceeds, whatever they are, on the land itself. Her notion of what should be done is, that when the youngest brother comes of age, those of the family who are well off, among whom she reckons herself, should give up their shares to the rest, that of the remainder one brother should retain the land & the others receive their shares in money. Then, she says, when we are old we can go sometimes to see the home of our childhood. This does not throw any light on the question of indebtedness as regards the land generally. But in this aspect Lavergne’s book,3 which I have read & which is on the whole very favourable to peasant properties, is extremely rassurant. I have never seen the burthens of the small properties estimated at so low an amount by anybody as they are by this most careful and well-informed authority. He says that the average indebtedness of the whole landed property of France does not exceed a tenth of the value, & in the case of rural property, a twentieth. The burthen of interest he estimates up to a late period at 10 per cent, but thinks that it must now be considerably less, as ‘les dernières crises ont amené une tendance générale vers [une] liquidation:’4 which I suppose means that the usurers have sold up: but the previous amount of mortgage debts, you see, is not at all consistent with Louis Blanc’s impressions.
About Lord Canning’s measure5 I entirely agree with you. I have always thought that a general redemption of even the permanently settled revenues must be a bad bargain to the Government, for the simple reason that it cannot answer to the proprietor to give as much for it as it would answer to the Government to take. We know that in all countries in which the good faith of the Govt is relied on, the Govt can borrow at lower interest than an individual can do even on good landed security. Suppose that the difference is no greater than that between 4 & 5 per cent; the Govt makes a losing bargain unless it can get 25 years’ purchase while the proprietor cannot afford to give more than 20, since he must pay 5 per cent. for the money if borrowed, & if he has it of his own, can get that or still better interest for it in other ways. The effect on agriculture of the redemption must be wholly injurious. If the proprietor has capital or can borrow it, he would do much better by expending it in cultivating & improving the land than in freeing himself from an annual payment, which being fixed, in no way diminishes the profits of improvement. I observe that Lord Canning does not mean to sell at less than 20 years’ purchase; this can only answer if Govt will never be able hereafter to borrow under 5 per cent.
We start on Thursday for Athens, where we expect to arrive about the 22nd of February, stopping a week at Corfu by the way. Letters directed poste restante Athens will find us for the next three months & more, for we shall be either there or journeying about Greece till near the end of May, after which we propose going to Smyrna & Constantinople but not returning to England until after the time when I shall hope to see you here, when I look forward to shewing you whatever is best worth seeing in this district & having out the subject of Darwin & many others.
[P.S.] I have been writing a paper on the American question which will come out in the February Fraser6 & which if noticed at all is likely to be much attacked, as it is in complete opposition to the tone of the press & of English opinion, a tone which has caused me more disgust than anything has done for a long time. I shall therefore be glad to know what is thought of the article by people who have not got pens in their hands & shall be obliged to you for any information of that sort which you may be able to communicate.
My kind regards to Major Couper.7 I shd much like to hear from him.
533.
TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
Jan 29. 1862
Dear Sir
I am desirous to see anything of consequence which may be written on the subject of my article in the forthcoming number of Fraser,2 especially any attack; and should therefore be obliged by your sending here, in the usual way, anything that may come out up to the 8th, and to Athens (Poste Restante) anything worth sending that may come out afterwards, and that can either be inclosed in an ordinary letter, or sent by newspaper post.
I hope the remaining sheets of the Logic and Political Economy3 will be looked through carefully. The reader who examines them is evidently a painstaking and careful man, but it nevertheless happens at times that one word is put instead of another with a very awkward effect.
I am
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
534.
TO JOHN NICHOL1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
Jan. 30, 1862
Dear Sir
I hope that you heard of my absence from Messrs Parker in time to be saved the trouble of a fruitless journey to Blackheath. I should be glad to hear that you had succeeded in obtaining the Professorship, but I do not see any way in which I could have helped you towards it. I have no influence, or acquaintance, with either the present Home Secretary2 or the Lord Advocate,3 and I, as yet, know too little of you (I hope this will not always be the case) to entitle any opinion which I am in a position to give in your favour to any attention in deciding a question of this nature.
I write in great haste, as I am on the point of starting for a long journey. If you should have occasion to write to me, a letter addressed care of Messrs Parker, Son, and Bourn with “to be forwarded” written on it, will find me.
I am
Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
535.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE1
Athènes, le 28 février 1862
Mon cher Monsieur
L’adresse de M. Reeve est Henry Reeve Esq. 62 Rutland Gate Hyde Park, London; ou l’on peut lui adresser une lettre, Council Office, Whitehall, London, en mettant “Private” sur l’adresse.
Vous voyez que votre lettre m’a suivi jusqu’ici, ou, pour mieux dire, nous a précédé en arrivant. Ce pays-ci ne fournit pour le moment rien d’intéressant en fait de nouvelles politiques. Vous avez probablement entendu parler d’une tentative de révolution militaire,2 mais on pense qu’elle se terminera, suivant l’usage d’ici, par une transaction sur les intérêts personnels des chefs de l’insurrection.
Je vous félicite d’avoir terminé votre travail sur le Représentatif.3 Je ne verrai la traduction qu’à la fin de mon voyage. La lettre que vous me destinez sera toujours la bien venue, quoique j’eusse hésité à vous en demander une. Jusqu’à la fin de mai mon adresse sera Poste Restante à Athènes.
Votre dévoué
J. S. Mill
536.
TO HENRY FAWCETT1
Athens March 6. 1862
Dear Mr Fawcett
I was very glad to receive a letter from you at this remote place, and this particular letter contained many things which were specially pleasant to me. I was glad that you agreed with me so completely on the American question, glad that you thought the article2 was doing good, glad that the Cambridge petition3 is going on so well, glad above all that you are working with vigour, both orally and by writing, and that your treatise on political economy is making progress.4 The article on Cooperation in McMillan5 I have seen, and liked. Such a paper was wanted, and will be useful. The facts relating to the success of Cooperation require to be kept before the public mind. There will be a good many additional details including the Rochdale history, in the next edition of my Pol. Economy, which I have ordered to be sent to you when published.6 I am glad that a right view of the American question found favour with the Southwark meeting.7 The democracy often has great injustice done it by those who though they think themselves wiser, have not the industry, courage or public spirit to stand up for their wiser opinions, but either remain silent, or if they say anything, truckle to the low feelings and prejudices which they affect to be personally superior to. I am not at all surprised that Thornton is not with us in the American question. Though a superior man on many points, on others he feels with the herd, and one never knows which these last may be. I should be more surprised that Mr Hare is not entirely with us, were it not that he probably has not much studied the subject, nor is well in possession of the antecedent facts. I thought his article in McMillan8 very good, and much better adapted for its purpose than those he formerly wrote in Fraser. I observed in a letter of the Sydney correspondent of the Times that Mr Hare’s plan is attracting great attention there,9 partly through the exertions of Mr Holden,10 and that the Senate has referred it to a Committee, to consider about its practical applicability in that colony.
We have not been favoured by the weather in our journey hitherto: we found the ground covered with snow in the North of Italy, almost incessant rain at Corfu, and of the few days we have been here, very much spoiled by a thick haze. However, we have seen Athens pretty thoroughly, have climbed Hymettus and Pentelicus, and are going to set out on an excursion for a week or ten days to Sunium, Rhamnus, Marathon and other places on the eastern coast, returning here afterwards, and when the weather is sufficiently settled, starting again for Peloponnesus. You have noticed perhaps that the garrison of Nauplia is in a state of rebellion against the government,11 but though the King12 and his ministers are very unpopular, the insurrection has not spread any farther, and the matter will probably terminate as such things usually terminate here, by the submission and pardon of the chiefs of the revolt. It is a strange and half savage country, but advancing most rapidly in material prosperity, which in modern civilization is usually the first step towards moral progress. The worst is that the government, and all or nearly all the politicians, are bent solely on selfish objects, and the revenues of the country are spent in jobbing while there is hardly a road passable to carriages in the whole country; a striking contrast to the splendid roads which the English made all over Corfu and the other islands, but which are now very much falling off, because the legislature will not vote money to keep them up.
My address will be Poste Restante, Athens, probably for two months to come. When you write, pray tell me how the matter is settled about Cairnes and Leslie,13 and also whether judgment has yet been given in Mr Williams’ case,14 and to what effect. Our newspapers sometimes miscarry, and I should not like to lose so interesting a piece of news.
I am
Dear Mr Fawcett
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
537.
TO THOMAS HARE1
[Before June 11, 1862]
[It (proportional representation) has become a matter of philosophical discussion in Germany; and in a letter which I received not long ago from Mr. Mill, he informed me of the attention which the scheme had attracted, and of its adoption by an able writer of Zurich. He adds]
It is encouraging to find that, though practical politicians are only too glad to turn from the whole subject, right ideas, now that they are promulgated, are making rapid way among thinking persons, the future teachers of all parts of the world.
538.
TO GEORGE GROTE1
- Athens
June 11. 1862
My dear Grote
I write, as I promised, from Athens, to tell you how our journey has prospered. It has been a complete success: the tent travelling has answered perfectly, and we have gone everywhere and seen everything, without being in any way disturbed by the Nauplia insurrection,2 nor experienced any of the dire consequences in the form of renewed brigandage, which the English at Athens told us we might expect and no one more than those connected with the Legation, always excepting poor Sir Thomas Wyse and Miss Wyse.3 We have made two expeditions of six weeks each, in which we have seen Greece more thoroughly than it has often been seen: We encamped two days at the foot of Parnassus, and two on the plateau of the mountain, climbed the mountain itself, encamped three days in the valley of the Styx, one day and two nights on Kyllene, saw nearly all Peloponnesus except the northwest corner, almost every foot of Attica and the Megarid, the north of Eubœa, the coast of Phthiotis, Lamia, Thermopylæ, Œta, Phokis and Bœotia, Delphi, the magnificent coast from thence to Naupactus and the strait of Rhium, where we crossed over. I look forward to many interesting conversations with you about localities: for instance, I walked from one end to the other of Sphakteria4 and wondered that there should ever have been any puzzle about that matter. We both thought the beauty of Greece quite incomparable: not so the air and the sky, about which there is as much humbug current as about any purely physical subject I know. The people are very backward, and full of the faults and vices produced by long servitude, but improvement seems to be taking place, though slowly. I hardly know what is most to be desired for them at present. The whole people, even the civil and military officers of the government, shew an unanimity in their detestation of it which I should think has seldom existed in any country not held down by foreign forces without producing a revolution; but though all sympathized with the Nauplia insurgents, the people did not join them, but allowed them to be put down, from fear, as it is said, lest brigandage should be renewed, and the tranquillity by which they have begun to profit in their pecuniary interests, brought to an end. Most people however say that if the King does not now change his policy, there will be a revolution within a year, and nobody with whom I have conversed thinks that he will change it.5
There has been a mission of German archaeologists here, Böttiger6 and another, from the Prussian Government, with whom Curtius7 and others have voluntarily associated themselves. They have made some important excavations—have uncovered the real entrance to the Parthenon, have ascertained on what seems sufficient evidence the boundary which separated the temple itself from the Opisthodomus, and the true position of the statue of the goddess: they have made some discoveries at the Erechtheion, though that subject is still mysterious; have ascertained as they think, the true line of the city walls, and Curtius thinks he has made great discoveries about the Pnyx. But their main achievement is that they have opened up the Dionysiac theatre, have dug down to the stone chairs of the magistrates, which are now seen in fine preservation in the very front of the scene, and have converted the fact of its being a theatre at all from a matter of faith into one of sense. They have begun to publish the results of their operations, and I shall learn from Mr Finlay8 and tell you where you may find them.
A friend and correspondent of mine, Professor Villari of the University of Pisa, is now in England on a mission from the Italian Government,9 to make enquiries into popular education in England, competitive examinations &c. with a view to practical application in Italy, where he holds an important post under the minister of public instruction, and I have ventured to send him an introduction to you. He wishes much to know you, and I think he will both interest you, and derive real benefit from your ideas and conversation. My first knowledge of him was as having commenced a translation of my Logic,10 which however he has never yet had time to finish. When I was in Tuscany seven years ago, I saw him, and we have been frequent correspondents ever since. He is a man of talent and knowledge and I think, much judgment and good sense, and his opinions about Italy seem to me always marked by those qualities. He has at different times sent me things which he has published, always of merit; the most considerable is a life of Savonarola,11 full of new and valuable historical matter from the documents of the period.
I have had an application of another sort with reference to you, from one of my former colleagues in the India House.12 I inclose his note, though the matter with a view to which it was written has probably long since been decided. I have told him in reply, that there is no one more unlikely than you to be influenced by any recommendation, unless, being grounded on personal knowledge, it bears the character of actual testimony; but that no one, also, can be more surely relied on for giving conscientious and impartial attention to everything which comes before you in the shape of evidence.
We propose starting on the 17th for Smyrna, and continuing our tent journey from thence by the Troad to the Dardanelles, where as the season will be getting too far advanced for travelling in Asia, we shall probably take the steamer for Constantinople. One has not seen Greece without seeing Ionia, the Hellespont, and the Bosporus. We had the unexpected pleasure of seeing Mount Athos very clearly from near Oreos in Eubœa.
We were sorry to see in the Times Mrs. Stanley’s death.13 That of Sir Thomas Wyse occurred unexpectedly early, just before our first return to Athens. He had very little the appearance, when I saw him, of a person who had a mortal disease. He is much regretted and will be much missed here.
I suppose you have now nearly if not quite, finished Plato.14 I am very impatient for it. I am
my dear Grote
ever truly yours
J. S. Mill
Our kind regards to Mrs Grote.
539.
TO WILLIAM THOMAS THORNTON1
Athens June 14. 1862
Dear Thornton—
I have been a long time without acknowledging your letter of March 20, but you know enough of the little time which travelling leaves one, not to be surprised at this especially as during the few days I have been stationary here I have received an extraordinary number of letters which required, or the writers thought they required to be answered immediately. Our journey has been successful in every respect & we have sustained no inconvenience at all from the insurrection or its consequences, which, moreover, has been put down;2 but there are few who do not seem to expect a much more serious one before long. This however & all other matters relating to Greece will be better discussed in the conversations I am looking forward to having with you in our little hermitage not long after the conclusion of our journey. As to the time of your coming, as you are engaged elsewhere for the first week in October if it is still equally convenient to you to come to Avignon after or before that time, I will if you allow me decide for the later of the two periods, as it will leave us a wider margin for the time of our return to Avignon. The weather will also probably be cooler for walks & other excursions.
I confess I am surprised that you attach any importance to Forster’s or any other exhibitions of what they call spiritualism.3 Since in all that relates to the communicators with spirits, the men are manifestly impostors, why should one feel any difficulty in believing them to be so altogether, & their apparent marvels to be juggling or other tricks? Their exploits certainly would never do anything to shake my total disbelief in clairvoyance, of which apart from its extreme antecedent improbability, I have never read of any case the evidence of which did not leave the most obvious loopholes for fraud. That so many people should have believed in it is to me one of the many proofs that honest people do not in general at all appreciate either the facility of being cheated or the frequency of the disposition to cheat.
540.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES1
- Athens
June 15. 1862
Dear Sir
Your letter of March 4 gave me great pleasure, but I have delayed answering it, because I have been travelling about Greece for the last three months; and when I was able to write, which was only from Athens, the letters on personal or merely practical matters got themselves answered first. Probably long before this time, your book is in print.2 It is as much wanted as when we first talked about it, and is probably more likely to produce an effect than if published before the reaction which, I was so glad to hear from you, had commenced against the Southern feeling at one time so much fostered by the Times. The victories of the North have had much to do with the change;3 the altered tone of the Times itself is the measure of the greater chance it thinks there is of the North being successful. I think with you that it is a moot point whether the reunion of the North and South would be as desirable an issue of the struggle as a separation confining slavery within the Mississippi. Reunion would be best if the North could be depended upon for not making concessions to slavery, but I agree with you in having no confidence in their staunchness in this respect. I am much obliged to you for the Economist. I liked your letter in it exceedingly, and I value very highly your approbation of my article.4 As to the one point on which you think we differ, I did not mean to defend Seward’s despatch as a whole.5 His arguments to shew that the Trent was violating international law were weak and sophistical, and have been nowhere more strongly repudiated than by so high an American authority as Sumner,6 whose speech in the Senate of the United States on “maritime rights”7 is worth your reading, and who goes the whole length of Thouvenel’s excellent despatch.8 I am not au courant of the discussion on colonial emancipation originated by Goldwin Smith.9 But I think it very undesirable that anything should be done which would hasten the separation of our colonies. I believe the preservation of as much connexion as now exists to be a great good to them; and though the direct benefit to England is extremely small, beyond what would exist after a friendly separation, any separation would greatly diminish the prestige of England, which prestige I believe to be, in the present state of the world, a very great advantage to mankind.
We are about to start for Smyrna and Constantinople, after a very pleasant tour in Greece, and shall go thence by Vienna and Switzerland to Avignon returning to England at the end of autumn. When I return, you are one of the persons I shall most wish to see.
I am Dear Sir
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
541.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES1
- Constantinople
June 24. 1862
Dear Sir
Since I wrote to you from Athens some ten days ago, I have received the copy of your book2 which you did me the favour to send. I read through it immediately, and I cannot help writing at once to tell you how pleased I am with it. It seems to me exactly the thing which was wanted: it brings the true aspect of the case, in all its parts, before the public, in a manner so clear, full, and impressive, that any one who reads it, unless strongly prejudiced beforehand (if he possesses the feelings and moral convictions to which it appeals) can scarcely fail to be convinced by it. The great thing now is to get it read. I wish I was in a position to do something promptly that might assist in making it widely known. I cannot doubt that the Daily News,3 McMillan,4 and probably the National Review,5 will make good use of it. Might it not be a good thing to send a copy to Lord Brougham? He would probably talk about it, and help to get it read.
I do not think there is an opinion or a sentiment in the book with which I substantially disagree; and this is so very generally the case when I read anything you write, that I feel growing up in me, what I seldom have, the agreeable feeling of a brotherhood in arms. This feeling being one of the pleasantest which life has to give, I owe you thanks privately as well as publicly for adding as much to it as you have done by your present volume.
I am Dear Sir
Yours very truly
J. S. Mill
542.
TO HARRIET ISABELLA MILL1
- Therapia, near Constantinople
July 5. 1862
Dear Harriet
My answer to your two previous letters must have reached you after all was over.2 It seems to have been a strange disease. It is frightful to think of the quantity of suffering which so often accompanies the process of going out of life.
I write by this post (the first since receiving your letter) to Messrs Dymock and Paterson,3 to say that I have not the smallest idea of disputing the will. I should never dream of taking advantage of a legal technicality to defeat the moral right of any one to make what disposition he pleased of his own property, even if I did not think, as I do, that disposition to be a very proper one.4
I hope your health will not have suffered materially by what you have gone through.
J.S.M.
543.
TO THEODOR GOMPERZ1
- Vienna,
July 17, 1862
We have just arrived here—somewhat sooner than we expected, and are at the Kaiserinn Elisabeth Hotel. If you are at Vienna, we should be most happy to see you.2 If I knew where to find you, I would call on you myself.
544.
TO HENRY FAWCETT1
- Vienna
July 21. 1862
Dear Mr Fawcett
Many thanks for your interesting letter. None of my correspondents tell me so much of what I want to know as you do; though on the subject of Dr Williams’ affair2 you presuppose a knowledge I do not possess, for though I receive an English newspaper, it sometimes miscarries, and unluckily the paper containing the judgment has not reached me. I am glad that it is on the whole favourable to latitudinarianism and satisfactory to Dr Williams’ friends, though I am sorry to hear that there is any question of recantation. Two other pieces of news in your letter gave me great pleasure—that the Cooperative Cotton Mills hold firm,3 and that Cairnes and Leslie have been elected to the Pol. Ec. Club. Cairnes’ is a splendid book4 and if it is but read, must tell. As it is impressively and popularly written, it has, I hope, a good chance of readers. I see the National Review has an article on it,5 with large extracts, and in an excellent tone. He has one of the clearest intellects I know, combined, I think, with an excellent moral nature, and is capable, if he has anything like fair play, of doing great things. Buckle’s untimely end grieved me deeply.6 I knew of it early, having met at Athens with his travelling companion Mr Glennie,7 a young man of, I think, considerable promise, who occupies himself very earnestly with the higher philosophical problems on the basis of positive science. I look forward to much pleasure from your book.8 I sought for your name in the reports of the Social Science meetings,9 which were unusually interesting this year: Hare seems to have made considerable way,10 and the movement against the disabilities of women appears to be advancing in a most satisfactory manner.11 After what passed at those meetings their admission to University degrees is almost une cause gagnée,12 and that, (next to, if not even before, the elective franchise) is the most important point of all practically, and in its effect on their own minds.
I received at Athens a very pleasant note from Fitzjames Stephen,13 to which I would gladly have returned a fitting answer but had too many other letters to write, that I had not time. When you see him, pray thank him from me, and say that I look forward with pleasure to our better acquaintance.
We have enjoyed our journey extremely, and are bringing back a store of most pleasant recollections from it. We do not go at once to England, but first to Avignon, where we shall remain till the beginning of winter. If you write soon, please inclose to Parker, with the words “to be forwarded,” as he will know when to send your letter, which I should be very unwilling to lose.
Remember me kindly to Mr Hare when you see him. I am
dear Mr Fawcett
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
545.
TO FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE1
[August ? 1862]
[A copy went to John Stuart Mill, who was much pleased with the “Observations”,2 and was certain that] the publication of them would do vast good.
546.
TO JOHN CHAPMAN1
- Salzburg
Aug. 10. 1862
Dear Sir
I have long been wishing to send something to the Westminster but my good intentions have hitherto come to nothing, because I waited in hopes of offering something elaborate, and every paper I planned either required too much space, or I had not time to write it. Without giving up all hopes of this kind, it occurs to me however, that I might be more useful to the Westminster by occasionally sending something slighter and of less pretension, which one has oftener time for, and for which suitable subjects are more easily found. Perhaps it might suit you to take a short paper on Professor Cairnes’s excellent book “The Slave Power”.2 If so, I could perhaps get it ready in time for the October number, though I cannot positively promise it for so soon, as I shall be travelling for the next two or three weeks. If you like the proposal, please write to me at Saint-Véran, near Avignon, Vaucluse, France.
I was very sorry to hear of the loss and inconvenience you sustained by Manwaring’s failure.3 I congratulate you on having produced, under all difficulties, so good a number as that for July.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
547.
TO JOHN CHAPMAN1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
Aug. 31. 1862
Dear Sir
I have just arrived here and found your two notes. I will lose no time in setting to work, and I can promise that you shall have something on Professor Cairnes’ book by the 20th of September at latest.2 It is, however, an unlucky time for writing on the subject, as even in so short an interval events may have given an entirely new colour to the prospect. But it seems better, if only for the purpose of making Mr Cairnes’ book known as widely as possible, to write at once, rather than wait till December. If the article, when it reaches you, appears too slight for the subject, or is in any way superseded by the course of events, I shall not only take in no way amiss your omitting it, but should be obliged to you for doing so, and in that case shall be happy to attempt a better article for the January number.
From the shortness of the time, as well as for other reasons, I should rather not review any other book along with that of Mr Cairnes. I am
Dear Sir,
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
548.
TO HENRY HUTH1
- St. Véran
Avignon
Aug. 31. 62
Dear Sir
On arriving here I found your two letters. I am extremely obliged to you for the interesting particulars you give respecting Buckle whose [death] no one, not personally intimate with him could regret more deeply than I do.2 I sympathize sincerely with Mrs Huth3 and thoroughly appreciate the loss both to herself and to her sons4 of a friend like him in such close relations with them as he was.
I would most gladly respond to her earnest appeal by giving her any advice in my power: but the intimacy and personal influence of a first rate person morally and intellectually not only to young persons but to all who are capable of receiving it, the loss of which as I know by my own experience, nothing can replace—And such are the imperfections of our educational institutions that they can hardly do any thing out of the little which could be done to supply the place of such an influence—If I knew of anyone whom I could recommend as a tutor, or of any place of education fitted for forming the kind of persons whom I conclude Mrs Huth desires her sons to be, I shd be only too happy to recommend them, but I go so little into general society that I am not in the way of hearing even of the best that is to be had. I am truly sorry that I have so little to say which can either help Mrs Huth in her difficulty or comfort her in her distress.
I am very glad to hear of the improvement in your own health and of the approach to completeness of your own work which I expect to read with much interest.
My address will be here, until the beginning of winter.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
549.
TO HENRY PARKES1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
Sept. 2, 1862
Dear Sir
On arriving here after a long journey only three days ago, I found your note of 28th June. Allow me to thank you for the pamphlets on Australian affairs. I take great interest in whatever affects the progress and prospects of communities which are likely to be of so much importance in the future history of mankind.
I shall be here for the next few months, but intend returning to England early in winter. Should you be at that time in England and in London, I shall hope to have the meeting with you which accidental circumstances have so long postponed. I am
Dear Sir
yrs very faithfully
J. S. Mill
Henry Parkes Esq.
550.
TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT1
S[aint] V[éran] le 7 sept. 1862
Mon cher Monsieur
Je ne suis nullement disposé à acheter le pré de M. Cade aux prix de 1000 fr. l’éminée qui me paraît très au dessus de sa valeur. J’ai tout lieu de croire que ce pré ne vaut pas même 700 francs l’éminée prix ordinaire des prairies de ce côté-ci et je propose à M. Cade ce prix-là avec les frais d’achat et la troisième coupe d’herbe. Au reste on m’offre au voisinage des prés de meilleure qualité à un prix très inférieur à ce qu’il demande.
Agréez mon cher Monsieur l’expression de ma considération la plus amicale
551.
TO JOHN CHAPMAN1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
Sept. 11. 1862
Dear Sir
I send the article by this post,2 and I am glad to think that you will receive it before the latest of the dates mentioned in your note of Sept. 2. If you think it good enough for insertion, and are able to send a proof, I shall be much pleased. If time forbids this, I hope that some careful person will collate the proof with the manuscript.
It is hardly necessary for me to say that the article is gratuitous. I am
Dear Sir
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
552.
TO E. R. EDGER1
S[aint] V[éran] Sept. 13. 1862
Sir,—
On returning a few days ago from a distant journey I found your note dated June last & I have read attentively the MS.2 which accompanied it.
I shd have much to say against several of your positions, & especially against your definition of liberty; but I do not understand that you wish to discuss the subject with me, for which in any case I have not time. I understand you as wishing me to tell you whether, as far as I can judge from your MS., I consider you competent in point of ability to pursue enquiries of this nature with a useful result and I need not hesitate to answer, that I do think you competent. But what I seem to myself to see in your paper is promise rather than performance. It gives signs of several of the qualities which go towards making a genuine thinker: a real desire to go to the bottom of a subject, & not merely to skim its surface; a certain faculty of laying out a large subject & looking at it as a whole; finally, whatever you see, you see clearly, & are able to express clearly to others. I would therefore exhort you by all means, not only to continue thinking, but to continue writing; not however (I would recommend) with a view to early publication. The way to cultivate a really philosophical intellect is to go on long thinking out subjects for one’s own instruction—with a view to understand them as thoroughly as possible oneself; reading in the meanwhile whatever is best worth reading on the subjects one is studying, collating one’s own thoughts with those of the books one reads & gathering from them new materials for thinking. Those who do this, patiently & unambitiously, without looking much to any ulterior object, are the most likely to be able, sooner or later, to teach something valuable to others. They may never discover any great new truths; to do this is a good fortune which happens to few persons in a century, & the less we think of it as likely to happen to ourselves, the better for us. But originality does not consist solely in making great discoveries; whoever thinks out a subject with his own mind, not accepting the phrases of his predecessors instead of facts, is original, & it is hardly possible for any one to do this even on the most hacknied subject without turning up some new or neglected aspects of truths, or making some unexpected & perhaps fruitful applications of them.
I would recommend to you, then, by all means to persevere in your speculations; but, were you a Plato, a Locke, or a Bentham, I could not advise you, unless you had a pecuniary independence, to give your time to such pursuits to the neglect of other modes of gaining a subsistence. I believe that to do anything in philosophy, tranquillity of mind, & especially freedom from anxiety as to the means of livelihood, are almost indispensable. To live by philosophy, unless as a public teacher in an University, is wholly impossible; & if your daily occupation leaves you even a little leisure, you will very probably in that little do quite as much, in a favourite pursuit, as you would be likely to do by devoting all your time to it. The mind, if strained too long on one subject, works less pleasurably, & for that reason, even were there no other, less vigorously; while combining two occupations makes each of them, as I have found in my own experience, a rest from the other. Regretting that you could not receive this answer to your application at an earlier period,
I am yours very sincerely
553.
TO JOHN PLUMMER1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
Sept. 13. 1862
Dear Sir
Your letter of Feb. 13 has only reached me within these few days, on my return from a distant journey. I am not likely to forget the correspondence I have had with you, and am glad that you would like to continue it. There are many things which, in your position and with your superiority to the prejudices of that position, you must see and know much better than I do, and on which it would often be of great use to me to receive the facts and remarks which you could give. It may also be useful to both of us to compare our ideas on the practical questions bearing on the elevation of the minds and condition of the operative classes. I agree with you that more is expected from Cooperative Societies than they can, as least immediately, realize, and that the ready money principle is one chief cause of the success of the Rochdale Store.2 As you say, if a private tradesman were always paid ready money he could afford to sell cheaper. But would his goods be certain to be of the perfectly genuine quality which those at Rochdale are? in addition to which, the working people who buy at the Rochdale Store, share the profits among them, and obtain, at the same time, the best possible investment for their savings.
In the new edition of my Political Economy,3 I have somewhat altered and enlarged what I had before said on the subject of Cooperation and on that of Strikes. As you may not have seen the edition, I will, the first time I write to my publisher, desire him to send you a copy; and it would give me great satisfaction to receive any criticism which your experience and judgment may suggest to you, on the view I take of those subjects.
I am
very sincerely yours
J. S. Mill
Mr John Plummer
554.
TO THEODOR GOMPERZ1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
Sept. 17, 1862
We have now been rather more than a fortnight in this quiet harbour, after our journey, and are fully enjoying its peacefulness. We did not see so much of the Alps, as we expected, after leaving Ischl. . . .
I am doing little at present but reading up the French and English reviews. But since I arrived I have written and sent off an article on the American question (à propos of Mr. Cairnes’ book) which will be in the Westminster Review next month.2 A very interesting series of notes on America and on the war have been published this summer in an English periodical (Macmillan’s Magazine)3 and are, I see, lately reprinted as a volume under the title of “Six months in the Federal States”:4 the Author is a Mr. Dicey, who had within the last two years published a book on Rome and Italy.5 He writes very judiciously, as well as with right feeling, on the whole subject, and what he says respecting the people of the North, being evidently a faithful transcript of what he has seen and heard, ought to have some influence. The Times, as might be expected, is as bad as ever, and even more undisguised in the expression of its bad wishes. It let out, however, a curious admission the other day—that, whatever might be in other respects the issue of this war, it must lead to the destruction of slavery.6 This will be true if the North succeeds; but if the South should be successful, I expect the very reverse.—In Europe things appear to be going on well, as far at least, as mental progress is concerned. This is very visible in the higher order of writers in France; among whom I invariably remark that what is bad in thought and sentiment is found chiefly in the publicists who had made themselves known before 1848, and that the generation of those who have risen into notice since that time is both higher in morality, and more philosophic in the intellect.—The Garibaldi affair is very painful, but it has ended as litle mischievously as perhaps it could have done. It has at least given Louis Napoleon no pretext for intervention and less excuse than ever for keeping his troops in Rome; while Garibaldi,7 it is to be hoped, is still reserved for better times. If it also destroys Rattazzi,8 that will be another benefit arising from it. . . . With our compliments to your sister I am yours very sincerely,
J. St. Mill
P.S. I had written the preceding before I received yours. . . . I should have written before, had I thought you would have felt any such anxiety as you mention on our account.9 It will always be a pleasure for me to hear from you; let me know what you are doing and thinking, and how the political affairs of your country are proceeding. I can assure you that, however little expression I may habitually give to such a feeling, you are one of the few persons whose friendship I value and whom I would gladly see asserting an influence on the current of public affairs.
J. St. Mill
555.
TO JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY1
- [Saint Véran, Avignon]
September 17th, 1862.
My Dear Sir,
I value the permission you gave me to correspond with you much too highly not to avail myself of it thus early, although I have very little to say that will be new, and at the same time interesting, to one whose thoughts are engrossed as yours must be. If you see Macmillan’s Magazine, which has from the beginning been steadily on the right side in American affairs, you must have remarked the ‘Notes of a Journey in America,’which have been in the course of publication for some months, ending with a general summing up in the September number.2 This last paper especially appears to me excellent, and likely to do much good in England. The whole series has been reprinted in a volume,3 with the name of the writer, Mr. Edward Dicey, author of a recent book on Italy and Rome. You will probably see the Westminster Review of next month, which will contain an article of mine on the American question, apropos of Mr. Cairnes’s book.4 It is hastily written, and slight, for such a subject, but “every little helps,” as the nursery proverb says. I am not at all uneasy about public opinion here, if only the North is successful. The great number of well-meaning people and sincere enemies of slavery who have been led into disapproving of your resistance to the South, when carried to the length of war, have been chiefly influenced by thinking the re-conquest of the South impossible. If you prove it to be possible, if you bring the Slave States under your power, if you make use of that power to reconstitute Southern society on the basis of freedom, and if finally you wind up the financial results without breaking faith with any of the national creditors (among whom must be reckoned the holders of depreciated currency), you will have all our public with you, except the Tories, who will be mortified that what they absurdly think an example of the failure of democracy should be exchanged for a splendid example of its success. If you come well and honourably through one of the severest trials which a nation has ever undergone, the whole futurity of mankind will assume a brighter aspect. If not, it will for some time to come be very much darkened.
I have read lately two writings of Northern Americans on the subject of England, which shew a very liberal appreciation of the misdirection of English opinion and feeling respecting the contest. One is Mr. Thurlow Weed’s letter,5 which was published in the newspapers, and in which those just and generous allowances are made for us which many of us have not made for you. The other is the Rev. Dr. Thompson’s ‘England during our War,’6 reprinted from the New Englander, which is even over-indulgent to our people, but too severe on our Government. I believe that our Government has felt more rightly all through than a majority of the public.
We shall be at this address until the end of November; afterwards at Blackheath Park, Kent. I need hardly say that if your occupations should allow of your writing to me it would not only give me great pleasure, but would make me better able to be of use to a cause which I have as much at heart as even yourself.
I am, my dear sir,
Very truly yours,
J. S. Mill
556.
TO JOHN CHAPMAN1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
Sept. 24. 1862.
Dear Sir
I am much obliged to you for the proof, of which I now return the concluding page.2
I cannot think of receiving payment for any paper which I may offer to the Review so long as it is not in a position to pay all its contributors.
I shall be very happy to give you my best judgment on any matter on which you may wish to have it. In the case of Italy I am entirely with you as a matter of feeling; but going on the principle that one ought not to urge upon a Government any course which, were one in their place, one would not feel it right to adopt, I cannot think the immediate incorporation of Rome with the Kingdom of Italy3 of such vital importance to Italy or to the cause of freedom and progress, as to be worth a war between England and France, while there would be nothing so likely to turn the French nation against all that we wish for, and make them identify themselves with their present ruler, as any attempt by a foreign power to act upon them by intimidation. Italy has already our moral support and events have proved that this is much. L[ouis] N[apoleon] is detested in Italy; and the longer he remains at Rome, the more certain it becomes that he will have no influence over the destinies of the country but what force, or intrigue and corruption, may give him. This is not a thing of small importance: for it was a great question whether Italy would form its character as a selfgoverning nation on French ideas or on English, and this question is now rapidly deciding itself in favour of English. I am
Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
557.
TO THOMAS HARE1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
Oct. 9. 1862
Dear Sir
It was a curious coincidence that I should receive a letter from you dated Innsbruck, so soon after having left that place. I hope you had better weather than we had during the latter part of our Alpine journey.
Since I wrote last, I am enabled to announce to you another valuable adhesion. The Journal des Economistes (for June last) which now contains some of the most important and thorough discussions not merely on political economy but on morals and politics in general, that are to be found in any periodical, contains a review of my book on Repr. Govt by M. Eugène Véron,2 one of the most promising writers of the Revue Nationale; in which article a clear and intelligent account is given of your system, and a complete approval and support of it.
I have read your little book on what may be called the Building Question,3 with great interest. It is much to be desired that Mr. Peabody,4 whose influence, if exerted, would naturally be paramount in the disposal of his own magnificent gift, may see that the only way of making it useful is to erect such houses as will pay, and by selling them when built, provide a sum to recommence with. Your plan is, I think, evidently the best for combining remunerativeness with the social object in view, by appropriating the upper stories (as in Paris) to working people, the lower ones being laid out in middle class lodgings and the groundfloor in shops. You have also done good service by insisting on the fitness of having a single local government for the whole of London; which gave you, moreover, an opportunity of shewing that your plan of election, adapted as you propose, affords the only mode in which such a government could advantageously be constituted. I hope the writers in the London Review and the Nonconformist5 supported this part of your proposal as well as the other. I hear very good accounts of the London Review, which is said to be fitting itself more and more to take the place of the Saturday.
I suppose Mr. Morin6 of Geneva has sent you his second pamphlet, containing the account of your plan. Competent advocacy of it seems to be multiplying on all sides.
I cannot end my letter without expressing my exultation at the glorious news of Lincoln’s having made up his mind to propose to Congress to declare all slaves in the insurgent States free.7 The same scribes among us who taunted him with not doing it will now, of course, snub him for doing it; this is selon les règles. But it has come sooner than I myself ventured to predict, and however little apparent effect it may have at the first moment, it is the death-blow to negro slavery in America.
We expect to return to England early in December, up to which time we shall remain here, and I need not say how glad I shall be to hear from you.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
558.
TO JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY1
S[aint] V[éran] Oct. 31. 1862
My Dear Sir—
Allow me to thank you most warmly for your long & interesting letter, which if it had been twice as long as it was, would only have pleased me more. There are few persons that I have seen only once,2 with whom I so much desire to keep up a communication, as with you; & the importance of what I learn from you, respecting matters so full of momentous consequences to the world would make such communication most valuable to me even if I did not wish for it on personal grounds.—The state of affairs in America has materially improved since you wrote, by the defeat of the enemy in Maryland & their expulsion from it,3 & still more by Mr. Lincoln’s anti-slavery proclamation,4 which no American, I think, can have received with more exultation than I did. It is of the highest importance, & more so because the manifest reluctance with which the President made up his mind to that decided step indicates that the progress of opinion in the country had reached the point of seeing its necessity for the effectual prosecution of the war. The adhesion of so many Governors of States, some of them originally Democrats, is a very favorable sign,5 & thus far the measure does not seem to have materially weakened your hold upon the Border Slave States. The natural tendency will be if the war goes on successfully to reconcile those States to emancipating their own slaves, availing themselves of the pecuniary offers made by the Federal Govt.6 I still feel some anxiety about the reception which will be given to the measures by Congress when it meets & I should much like to know what are your expectations on the point. In England, the Proclamation has only increased the venom of those who after taunting you so long with caring nothing for Abolition, now reproach you for your Abolitionism as the worst of your crimes.7 But you will find that whenever any name is attached to these wretched effusions, it is always that of some deeply-dyed Tory—generally the kind of Tory to whom slavery is rather agreeable than not, or who so hate your democratic institutions that they would be sure to inveigh against whatever you did, & are enraged at being no longer able to taunt you with being false to your own principles. It is from these also that we are now beginning to hear, what disgusts me more than all the rest—the base doctrine that it is for the interest of England that the American Republic should be broken up. Think of us as ill as you may (& we have given you abundant cause) but do not, I entreat you, think that the general English public is so base as this. Our national faults are not now of that kind & I firmly believe that the feeling of almost all English Liberals, even those whose language has been the most objectionable, is one of sincere regret for the disruption which they think inevitable. As long as there is a Tory party in England it will rejoice at everything which injures or discredits American institutions, but the Liberal party who are now & are likely to remain much the strongest are naturally your friends & allies & will return to that position when once they see that you are not engaged in a hopeless, & therefore as they think an irrational & unjustifiable contest. There are writers enough here to keep up the fight, and meet the malevolent comments on all your proceedings by right ones. Besides Cairnes,8 & Dicey,9 & H. Martineau,10 & Ludlow,11 & Hughes,12 besides the D. News,13 & McMillan,14 & the Star,15 there is now the Westr16 & the London Review,17 to which several of the best writers of the Sat. have gone over; there is Ellison of Liverpool,18 the author of “Slavery & Secession” & editor of a monthly economical journal “The Exchange”19 & there are other writers less known who if events go on favorably, will rapidly multiply. Here, in France, the state of opinion on the subject is most gratifying. All Liberal Frenchmen seem to have been with you, from the first. They did not know more about the subject than the English, but their instincts were truer. By the way, what did you think of the narrative of the Campaign on the Potomac in the R. des deux Mondes of Oct. 15, by the Comte de Paris?20 It looks veracious & is certainly intelligent & in general effect likely I shd think to be very useful to the cause.
I still think you take too severe a view of the conduct of our Govt. I grant that the extra official dicta of some of the Ministry have been very unfortunate, especially that celebrated one of Lord Russell on which I have commented not sparingly in the W.R.21 Gladstone, too, a man of a much nobler character than Ld R, has said things lately22 which I very much regret though they were accompanied by other things shewing that he had no bad feelings towards you & regretted their existence in others. But as a Govt I do not see that their conduct is objectionable. The port of Nassau23 may be all that you say it is, but the U. States also have the power, & have used it largely, of supplying themselves with munitions of war from our ports. If the principle of neutrality is accepted,24 our markets must be open to both sides alike, & the general opinion in England is (I do not say whether rightly or wrongly) that if the course adopted is favorable to either side it is to the U. States, since the Confederates owing to the blockade of their ports have so much less power to take advantage of the facilities extended equally to both. Then again if the Tuscarora was ordered away,25 the Sumter was so too.26 What you mention about a seizure of arms by our Govt must, I feel confident, have taken place during the Trent difficulty, at which time alone (neither before nor after) has the export of arms to America been interdicted.27
It is very possible that too much may have been made of Butler’s proclamation28 & that he was more wrong in form & phraseology than in substance. But with regard to the watchword said to have been given out by Pakenham at New Orleans,29 I have always hitherto taken it for a mere legend like the exactly parallel ones which grew up under our own eyes at Paris in 1848 respecting the socialist insurrection of June.30 What authority there may be for it I do not know, but if it is true nothing can mark more strongly the change which has taken place in the European standard of belligerent rights since the wars of the beginning of the century;31 for if any English commander at the present time were to do the like, he never could shew his face again in English society even if he escaped being broken by a court martial; & I think we are entitled to blame in others what none of us, of the present generation at least, would be capable of perpetrating. You are perhaps hardly aware how little the English of the present day feel of solidarité with past generations. We do not feel ourselves at all concerned to justify our predecessors. Foreigners reproach us with having been the great enemies of neutral rights so long as we were belligerents, & with turning round and stickling for them now when we are neutrals, but the real fact is we are concerned & have no hesitation in saying (what our Liberal party said even at the time) that our policy in that matter in the great Continental war was totally wrong.
But while I am anxious that liberal & friendly Americans should not think worse of us than we really deserve, I am deeply conscious & profoundly grieved & mortified that we deserve so ill; & are making, in consequence, so pitiful a figure before the world—with which if we are not daily & insultingly taxed by all Europe it is only because our enemies are glad to see us doing exactly what they expected, justifying their opinion of us, acting in a way which they think perfectly natural because they think it perfectly selfish.
If you kindly favour me with another letter here, it is desirable that it should arrive before the end of November. After that time my address will be Blackheath Park, Kent.
I am, my dear sir,
Very truly yours,
J. S. Mill.
559.
TO NIKOLAI OGAREFF1
S[aint] V[éran] Nov. 7, 1862
Monsieur—
Je vous remercie très sincèrement de votre lettre et de l’envoi de votre livre.2 Loin de voir avec indifférence l’immense révolution morale, politique et sociale qui s’avance à pas croissants en Russie,3 je la regarde comme un des phénomènes les plus importants d’un siècle déjà si riche en grands événements. J’en observe toutes les péripéties avec le plus vif intérêt, quelque difficulté que j’éprouve à apprécier leur portée autrement que sous un point de vue général. Vous pouvez donc juger de la part que je puis tirer de votre Essai pour préciser mes idées et pour donner plus de détermination à mes espérances.
Quant à vos conclusions dont vous pensez que quelques unes pourraient me sembler douteuses il faudrait que je fusse bien présomptueux pour avoir des opinions décidées sur la manière dont les principes généraux de science sociale doivent être appliqués à un état de choses si éloigné de tous ceux dont j’ai une vraie connaissance. Mais je n’ai aucune répugnance doctrinaire envers l’administration communale des terres, et je ne suis pas éloigné de penser avec vous que la réorganisation sociale de la Russie doit respecter une institution si profondément historique et si enracinée dans les mœurs populaires. Cela admis, la plupart de vos conclusions en découlent naturellement. Quoiqu’il en soit, il me semble impossible de ne pas accepter l’idée qui fait l’esprit de tout votre livre—savoir que le fonctionarisme est le véritable fléau de la Russie et qu’une réforme quelconque ne peut réussir qu’autant qu’elle émancipe les personnes et les choses de ce joug insupportable, et fasse décider les intérêts tant communs que particuliers par les intéressés. Ceci est dans ma conviction plus important que le système représentatif même le mieux ordonné, bien qu’en Russie les deux choses paraissent devoir aller pas à pas et être nécessaires l’une à l’autre.
Agréez Monsieur l’expression de mon respect et de considération toute particulière.
560.
TO SISTER MARIE DE ST. ELIE1
[After Nov. 28, 1862]
Madame—
C’est avec les sentiments du plus sincère respect pour vous et pour votre œuvre charitable que je me trouve dans l’impossibilité de m’associer à cette œuvre par une souscription pécuniaire.
Je ne suis pas Catholique et votre établissement est essentiellement un foyer d’éducation et par là de propagande catholique. Or dans un pays où la très grande majorité des familles riches professe la réligion catholique, il me semble que je suis plus dans mon dévoir en réservant les modiques moyens dont je puis disposer pour être employés à appuyer des efforts, également bienfaisants dans leur but, et plus en harmonie avec mes propres convictions.
561.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES1
- Blackheath Park
Dec. 5. 1862
Dear Sir
Your letter to Constantinople of 8th July arrived there after our departure, and was forwarded here. I have consequently only received it within the last two days. It gave me much pleasure on many accounts. I have also to thank you for the newspapers containing your excellent letters in the Daily News,2 and for a copy of your Lecture,3 which I shall read with great interest. It is very gratifying that your book should have already done so much good. There is certainly a counter current in our favour, though the readers of the Times are not allowed to hear anything about it. You probably recognized me in the review of your book in the October number of the Westminster.4 You may add the editor, Dr Chapman, to the number of those on whom you have made a great and useful impression. I have no doubt that, in opinion, he was with us before; but your book raised him to greater earnestness on the subject.
The article in the Edinburgh5 was in a very odious spirit. I should not wonder if it were Senior’s.6 The wretched thing in Fraser which you so justly characterize,7 with others as bad as itself by which it has been followed, have quite disgusted me with the present conduct of the Magazine.8
I had hoped to see you at the Political Economy Club this evening, but I infer from your letter that you will not be there, as indeed neither shall I; being at present not very well, and indisposed to be out at night without stronger temptation than is held out by today’s question.9 I expect to be here for several months, and I hope it will not be long before I see you. I am
Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
562.
TO JOHN CHAPMAN1
- Blackheath
[December] 13. 18622
Dear Sir
The article I proposed to you is sent by book post today.3 I can answer for the correctness of the information, and I agree generally in the remarks, which are drawn from real and intelligent observation. I am however particularly requested to say that if you do not think the article sufficiently good either in matter or execution to be inserted, the writer will be neither surprised nor discouraged. It was written, and is offered, solely from interest in the subject and in the review, and if thought worthy of acceptance, it will be gratuitous.
I am Dear Sir
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill.
563.
TO AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN1
- Blackheath Park
Dec. 14. 1862
Dear Sir,
I am indebted to you for calling my attention to what certainly seems to have been an oversight on my part,2 and I only wish I had known of it before, instead of just after, the publication of a new edition. My mistake was, that in setting out the number of cases I did not strike out those in which the statement of the two witnesses conflict. As I now understand the matter, out of twelve cases in which both witnesses make an assertion, there will, (according to the figures in my example) be six cases in which both are right: one in which both are wrong: three in which A is wrong and C is right; and two in which C is wrong and A is right. But the last two suppositions being known à posteriori not to have been realized, the cases consistent with known facts are in all only seven out of twelve; and among these the correctness of the joint operation of A & B is realized in six. The probability is therefore six to one, as you state.
I am, dear Sir, yours very truly
J.S.M.
564.
TO THEODOR GOMPERZ1
- Blackheath Park, Kent
Dec. 14, 1862
I will not wait for the further letter which you promise, before saying how glad I shall be to see you in January, and thanking you as well for the kind and friendly feelings shewn in your letter as for the very interesting information contained in it. I am particularly glad of what you have been doing on the Subject of the Principle of Contradiction, as I have commenced writing something2 to which a full understanding of that subject is indispensable, and I do not feel that I have yet thoroughly mastered it. Your account of Austrian politics is very valuable, and I thank you for the American news, which, as you anticipated, was entirely unknown to me. The paper giving an account of my article in Frazer reached me duly.3 I am much gratified that you thought the article worth so full an abstract even for Germany, though I am almost ashamed of the very flattering terms in which you spoke of it and of me. I am very glad that you are so far advanced with the Logic and I return your paper of questions duly filled up.4 I am much interested also with your Herculanean speculations. . . .5
565.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES1
- Blackheath Park
Dec. 16. 1862
Dear Sir
I thank you very much for your very gratifying letter, and also for the Daily News containing the admirable letter signed Anglo Saxon.2 I am much mistaken if Goldwin Smith will not grow into a power in the country, and this letter shews more than anything I have yet seen of his, that he is likely to be a highly beneficent one. But the value of the letter, both here and in America, would be greatly increased if it were known from whom it comes and I greatly regret that he has not published it with his name. Would it be possible to ascertain from him whether he would allow me to make the authorship known to some of my American friends and correspondents? Every new name of importance, which is attached to sentiments like those of his letter, is worth volumes in promoting a return to friendly feelings between the two countries.
Things are already going better in both countries. Today’s Times contains, along with the cheering intelligence of Lincoln’s proposal to Congress to redeem all the slaves,3 the noble as well as wise act of the New York Chamber of Commerce in opening a subscription for Lancashire:4 Meanwhile a strong Lancashire abolitionist5 writes to me as follows: “The tone of public opinion both here [Manchester] and in Liverpool has undergone a slight change for the better during the last three months. Whilst formerly nearly all people frequenting the Manchester and Liverpool Exchanges were openly professing to sympathize with the South, they now mostly declare that they do not have any sympathies for either of the contending parties. I fancy that before long they will come round still more to the right side. As regards the working classes, I find that their opinions on the American question have not altered in the least, notwithstanding the enormous increase of the distress. It is even intended to hold a public meeting in the Free Trade Hall on the 31st of this month,6 the last day of slavery, in order to send an address of the working men of Lancashire to President Lincoln. The address and the resolutions are drawn up by Mr Francis Newman.7 It is not decided yet whether any M.P.’s will be allowed to join in this demonstration; or whether merely working men will be the speakers. At any rate the principal representatives of the operatives will be Hooson8 and Edwards,9 the President and Secretary of the Store in Great Ancoats Street, two very intelligent men and good speakers, and known as the leaders of the most advanced section of the Manchester working men.”
I know this will delight you as much as it does me.
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
566.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES1
- Blackheath Park
Dec. 20. 1862
Dear Sir
I write at once to say that I have no objection to be quoted in the manner you propose, as the writer of the article in the Westminster.2 I should think Dr Chapman would not object, especially as it must be through him that the authorship became so generally known as you tell me it is; but I should prefer that the application should come from yourself.
I have not yet seen the article in the Spectator,3 but will get it. I was extremely pleased with your Lecture,4 and glad to hear that there are several societies in different places anxious to circulate it. I hope the enlarged edition of your book will soon come out.5 I am
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
567.
TO GEORGE FINLAY1
- B[lackheath] P[ark]
Dec. 24. 1862
Dear Mr. Finlay—
I am very much indebted to you for your most interesting letter & for the important memoir2 which accompanied it & which I hope I may shew as yours to any one who may be in a position to benefit by it. I suppose the copy which you gave to Mr Scarlett3 will have served for the information of the Government here; otherwise it might have been as well to send a copy to Gladstone & indeed it would be worth while doing so in any case. I have learnt very much from the paper & as far as I can judge there is only one point in it on which I have any doubt, viz. the preference you give to the abolition of the land tax over any change in the mode of levying it. The rent of land is in itself so fit an object of taxation that if there is any possible mode of rendering such a tax unoppressive it seems desirable to retain it. No doubt the money & valuation necessary for a great assessment would take too long and could not be trusted to the present race of officials, but would it not be possible to take a low average of what each landed property has actually paid for the last five or ten years & lay this as a fixed annual charge on the estate? I do not see that this would create any insuperable difficulties in the event of mutations. If the mutation takes place under the law of inheritance, the law when it decides the share of the estate due to each claimant, would impose on him the same share of the tax. If the case were one of bequest, sale, or gift, the owner might be allowed to charge the whole, or any part, or no part of the tax on the alienated portion as he pleased, provided always that if either the portion alienated or the portion retained were burthened beyond its total value, the remaining portion should be liable for the excess.
If it has been possible for Prince Alfred to accept. . . .4
568.
TO MAX KYLLMANN1
24th December 1862.
Dear Sir—
I thank you very sincerely for your two letters2 & for the important & most gratifying intelligence which they contain. Hardly anything could do more good at present than such a demonstration from the suffering operatives of Lancashire3 —while there is in the fact itself & in the state of mind which prompts it, a moral greatness which is at once a just rebuke to the mean feeling of so great a portion of the public on this momentous subject & a source of unqualified happiness to those whose hopes & fears for the great interests of humanity are as mine are, inseparably bound up in the moral & intellectual prospects of the working classes.
I am very well pleased with the Resolutions & Address. I applaud your endeavour to get the passage about the “rights of husbands” struck out but taken with the context it does not necessarily bear the objectionable meaning, though the phrase would not have been used by any writer who had a just feeling respecting the equal rights of the two sexes.4
On the subject of the query you put to me I perfectly agree in your opinion as far as you have stated it. The improvement in the condition of the working classes through the success of cooperation could not be used up in increase of numbers in less than a generation, & in that time the moral & intellectual influences of cooperation which are of still greater value than the physical, will have had a considerable period in which to operate. If cooperation were universal the necessity of regulating population would be palpable to every one. And even a partial application contains important lessons of the same kind.
569.
TO JOSEPH NAPIER1
B[lackheath] P[ark] Dec. 24. 1862.
Dear Sir—
I have had the honor of receiving your letter of Dec. 22nd.
I have not seen Bishop Fitzgerald’s publication,2 but you are quite right in supposing that what I wrote about Miracles3 had not the smallest reference to Butler, but only to the writers who professed to reply to Hume, & especially Campbell.4 It is many years since I read or looked into the Analogy & I cannot at present remember whether my remarks apply even partially to anything said by Butler. That in their main scope they are inapplicable to him is evident, since it appears from your letter that he fully recognized the distinction between improbability on the doctrine of chances & improbability in the only sense which constitutes incredibility.
My view of the general question is briefly this: That a miracle, considered merely as an extraordinary fact, is as susceptible of proof as other extraordinary facts: That as a miracle it cannot, in the strict sense, be proved, because there never can be conclusive proof of its miraculous nature; but that to any one who already believes in an intelligent creator & ruler of the universe the moral probability that a given extraordinary event (supposed to be fully proved) is a miracle, may greatly outweigh the probability of its being the result of some unknown natural cause.5
570.
TO GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE1
- Blackheath Park
Dec. 29. 1862
Dear Sir
I am glad to hear that Mr Coningham2 intends to recommend your son.3 The recommendation being to the parliamentary distributer of patronage,4 I do not know through what office or for what vacancy it will be available. But if Mr Stansfeld5 is intimate with Sir Charles Wood6 and is willing to speak to him in your son’s behalf, you probably could not have a better channel for promoting your wishes in relation to the India Office. I have myself no title to ask any favour of Sir Charles Wood, nor any reason to suppose that I have any influence with him; but neither on this nor on any other occasion have I any objection to be mentioned as one of those who would be glad of any good fortune which happened to a son of yours, and would applaud any one who would not be deterred by your opinions from giving your son a fair chance. I am
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
G. J. Holyoake Esq.
571.
TO MRS. HENRY HUTH1
- Blackheath Park
Dec. 30. 1862
Dear Madam
It would be very gratifying to me if I had it in my power to say anything which could be either useful or consoling to you. But even if I thought myself competent to give advice in such a matter as that on which you wish to consult me, I could not be qualified to advise concerning the education of those of whom I have no personal knowledge.2 Since, however, you say that the points on which you wish for my opinion are definite, and clearly before your own mind, I should be very happy to give you the best answers I can under the circumstances; but I should be able to do this much better, and should much prefer doing it, in a written form.
I am
Dear Madam
Yours very truly
J. S. Mill
1863
572.
TO ALEXANDER BAIN1
B[lackheath] P[ark] Jan. 7. 1863
Dear Bain—
I have been here now for about a month & as it is a long time since I either wrote to you or heard from you I think it is time to send you a bulletin from myself & to ask for one from you.
I have done a good deal of work on Hamilton2 at Avignon & some here, though in both places I have had & shall have for some time longer, exceptional occupations which make me rather slow in getting on: My plan has been to go deliberately through the whole writings of Hamilton, writing down in the form of notes, the substance of what I as yet find to say on each point. This will make it comparatively easy to write the book3 when I have finished the preparatory work. The only point which I have yet developed at any length is the formation of the idea of externality,4 & consequently of matter, & this, I think I have brought out more fully & clearly than had ever been done before, though my theory does not differ essentially from yours or from Grote’s, as indeed from our premises there can be but one theory. But I have grappled with the details of the subject in a manner which I have nowhere yet seen. I mean in this book to do what the nature & scope of the Logic forbade me to do there, to face the ultimate metaphysical difficulties of every question on which I touch.
By the way, is it not surprising that Hamilton shd have believed & made the world believe, that he held the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge? As held by him the doctrine is little better than a play upon the word knowledge, since he maintains that a great mass of Belief, differing from Knowledge in the mode but not in the certainty of conviction, may philosophically & ought morally to be entertained respecting the attributes of the Unknowable. Nor is even this all, for he does not hold to the doctrine of unknowability even in his own sense; but thinks that the primary qualities of matter are given in Consciousness as attributes of Things in Themselves: I used to wonder at the catena of authorities he brought to prove that almost all philosophers have thought as he did; but I ought to have known that he was more likely to be right in his erudition than in his philosophy, & I now find him so, for his own doctrine amounts to no more than what was thought by the writers whom he quotes. His speculations on the point seem to me of no philosophic value except as refutations of Schelling5 & Hegel,6 while the use they can be practically put to is shown in Mansel’s detestable, to me absolutely loathsome book.7 We are taught there, from Hamilton’s premises, that as we cannot know what God is in himself, nothing that we are told concerning him is in the smallest degree incredible because it is monstrous to the human reason or conscience; & that because we cannot know what Absolute Goodness is, we are at liberty & in some cases are bound to believe that it is not the perfection of human goodness but the direct contrary of it. It is true that these conclusions are very illogically drawn from Hamilton’s & Mansel’s own premises; these being, that we do not know God as he is in himself, but know him as we do other things, in his relation to us; in other words, phenomenally; which places him in exactly the same category, as an object of thought, with our human fellow creatures, & with Matter; which also we do not know as they are in themselves. God, in fact, is a subject of knowledge insofar as thinkable at all, namely as a subject of phenomenal experience, & as such is amenable to the canons of phenomenal credibility; & if any proposition concerning Man or Matter may & ought to be rejected because it violates those canons, so for the same reason may any proposition concerning God.
Having been so much disappointed by Hamilton’s conception of the relativity of human knowledge I shd like to look again at Ferrier to see if his is any better.8 I think you have my copy of the Institutes of Metaphysic; if so, & if you are not at present needing it, I shd be obliged by your sending it, but this need not be done for the next two or three weeks, for I have enough in hand to occupy me during that time.
In Herbert Spencer’s “first principles” I do find a much better conception of the doctrine of relativity9 though if he holds to it in its proper sense he must give up much which he has said in his Principles of Psychology.10 The book is a remarkable one in many respects & its wide reaching systematisation of so many heterogeneous elements is very imposing. But was there ever so strange a notion (for a man who sees so much) as that the doctrine of the Conservation of Force11 is a priori & a law of Consciousness? He expresses himself almost as if he thought that there is no objective standard of truth at all, which is in one sense true, but not in the obvious sense; inasmuch as each person’s phenomenal experience is to him a standard relatively objective, & the correction of error consists to each mind in bringing its ideas & their relations into nearer accordance with what are or would be in the given circumstances, its sensations or impressions & their relations. Of course Grote meant nothing at variance with this,12 but the omission to state it explicitly seems to me both an imperfection in the theory & a great stumbling block to its reception & on my pointing it out he at once said that he would supply the defect.
We have just returned from a visit to Grote during which I had an opportunity of reading some of his MS.13 I chose the Theætetus14 as falling in with the subject of my present thoughts & I was delighted to find how good it is. He has triumphed wonderfully over the difficulty of rendering the thoughts or semi-thoughts of Plato & of those on whom Plato commented, with the language of modern philosophy; the view of Plato himself which goes through it will, I think, be recognized as original & striking; & his own thoughts on the matters discussed are good & well stated. I found however an oversight which you also must have perceived in reading it, viz. that his mode of defending the Protagorean maxim is very open to misconception.15
I do not know if I have told you how great an admirer you have in my translator Mr Gomperz. (I call him my translator because his translation of the Logic is nearly finished.) He is the most clearheaded German I have ever yet known or known of. He is coming to London some time in this winter & I am sorry the time of year will prevent me from bringing you & him together unless indeed he shd travel northward, in which case I am sure he will wish to be introduced to you.
With our kind regards to Mrs Bain
573.
TO MRS. HENRY HUTH1
- Blackheath Park
Jan. 7. 1863
Dear Madam
The plan which has occurred to you for the home education of your sons is excellent, provided that you can succeed in finding any person of the calibre you require, who would be willing and able to exercise the general superintendence which you contemplate. That, however, is the difficulty; and it is one in regard to which I am not able to give the smallest suggestion.
Whether, however, you are able to realize your wishes in this respect or not, I think I should recommend as what would be ultimately desirable, to send your sons to one or other of the two old Universities.2 Twenty years ago these were about the last places which I should have recommended in any parallel case; but they are not very much changed, and free enquiry and speculation on the deepest and highest questions, instead of being crushed or deadened, are now more rife there than almost anywhere else in England. And the places not only afford great facilities for study, but a strong stimulus to it, by the competition for honours. If Oxford should be chosen, Balliol College, where they would be under Jowett,3 would be preferable, not only on account of his liberal tone of thought, but also of his remarkable success in training pupils in the studies of the place. I mention this because I believe it is necessary to apply a long time (even years) beforehand, in order to be admitted to the College.
If you decide to look forward to one of the Universities, what is to be done in the meanwhile will naturally be considerably influenced by that decision. There is little difficulty, I believe, in finding persons well qualified to prepare youths for the matriculation examinations. Meanwhile, both for that purpose and for general cultivation, your sons might probably with advantage attend some of the classes at University College, London; and if they are still of an age for school, and you are not able to do better for them at home, the London University School is, I should think, one of the least objectionable which could be found. Mr Key4 is a good scholar, a man of considerable ability, and free from the ordinary prejudices of schoolmasters, at least those of an ecclesiastical kind.
As you have allowed me to read Mr Buckle’s impressions respecting your sons,5 I cannot help saying that I hope you will not be in the smallest degree discouraged by his having thought one of them naturally slow, since he also testifies to his being painstaking. Not only in the pursuits of ordinary life, but in those of intellect, much more depends on labour and perseverance than on quickness: the last is even often a snare, since those who can do with ease, much that to others requires labour, often get into the habit of not doing at all, anything which they cannot do with ease; a habit as fatal to real and great eminence as hopeless stupidity would be.
I am Dear Madam
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
574.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES1
- Blackheath Park
Jan. 9. 1863
Dear Sir
Many thanks for your note. I shall avail myself of every occasion that offers for making known to Americans how powerful and warm a supporter their cause has in Mr Goldwin Smith.2
Since I wrote last, I have seen the article in the Spectator on a negro army3 and I think as highly of it as you do. That paper (which I had not seen for a long time) pleased me so much both by its opinions and its ability that I have commenced taking it in.
I thought your reply to the Saturday Review4 very good and effective, and I agree in substance with the view you take of the interest of the slaveholders, quoad the renewal of the slave trade. The true parallel case is that which you put, when you compare their position to that of the owners of existing machines, in relation to an improvement in machinery. But I think, both in the one case and in the other, their interest in keeping up the value of their existing stock might, conceivably, preponderate over their interest in cheapening the means of future production. Obviously it does so if they are going to sell their slaves, or machinery. Even if they are not, their present credit, or means of borrowing is increased by the high price of their stock. If neither of these things is of importance to them, still other and new producers starting with cheaper slaves or machinery, would be able to undersell them, and by lowering the price of the produce, diminish the annual returns to their capital in the full ratio of the diminution in the pecuniary value of the capital itself. They could not transfer part of their capital elsewhere, for they have lost part of the capital itself. What would, I think, prevent their interests from suffering on the whole, is the vastness of the market, which is capable of absorbing a greatly increased quantity of produce. By working their slaves harder, they could at once recover at least a part of their loss: when the slaves were worn out by overwork, and replaced by a cheaper article, the loss would cease altogether; and both before and afterwards they would be in the situation of manufacturers [in] a very brisk and thriving trade, who almost always gain more by increasing the total production, than they lose by the depreciation, or in many cases even by the total sacrifice of superseded machinery.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
575.
TO HENRY PITMAN1
- Blackheath Park
13 January, 1863
I am sorry to hear that so useful a publication as the Co-operator has to complain of want of encouragement.
A vehicle for Co-operative news and an organ for discussing the many important practical questions which arise in the progress of Co-operation, is very much wanted; and its discontinuance would be much to be regretted. I have paid £1 . . . for the extension fund.
576.
TO HENRY REEVE1
- Blackheath
Jan. 15. 1860
Dear Sir
In going through Mr Austin’s Lectures,2 I find that one important Lecture,3 numbered as the 40th, is wanting, and that an appeal is made to any of Mr Austin’s pupils who possess notes of it, to supply them.
I made and wrote out rather full notes of the whole course, and though the series is not complete—having been lent to various persons, by some of whom it was returned imperfect—I find on reference that the missing lecture (No. 46 in my numeration) is among those I have left. I shall be very happy if the notes can be made useful to supply, in however imperfect a manner, the hiatus.
All the other notes are equally at Mrs Austin’s disposal, if she should wish to examine them in case the developments they contain of the memoranda which it appears that Mr Austin often made for extemporaneous exposition, should include passages worth subjoining to the Lectures in an Appendix or otherwise. In looking for the missing lecture, my eye fell upon a criticism on the Code Napoleon,4 which is not in the printed sheets, and which seems to me exceedingly well worth preserving.
I am
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
Henry Reeve Esq.
577.
TO HENRY REEVE1
- Blackheath
Jan. 17. 1863
Dear Sir
I have sent to your address by the Parcels Delivery Company, the whole of the notes.2 The Lectures of which no notes remain, are Nos 17 to 24, and 61. I have put separate from the rest No 46 (corresponding to the missing No 40 in the printed sheets) together with the one immediately preceding it, which contains the remarks on the Prussian and French Codes,3 and which, though one of the most important Lectures of the whole course, is also totally absent from the printed series.
I am
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
578.
TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT1
- Blackheath Park
Jan. 17. 1863
Dear Sir
I shall not be able to attend the meeting,2 but if I have an opportunity, I will endeavour to place the tickets you sent advantageously to the cause.
I read with great pleasure the report of your interview with Mr Adams,3 and am particularly glad that in his judgment, public opinion in this country is improving on the subject of the struggle in America. My own impression on the point coincides with his.
I am Dear Sir
yours faithfully
J. S. Mill
579.
TO SAMUEL BAILEY1
B[lackheath] P[ark] Jan. 21, 1863
Dear Sir—
Allow me to thank you very sincerely for the gift of your last two works. The one on Shakespeare2 was very pleasant reading & many of the conjectural emendations seemed to me happy, while in other cases I fancied that a good deal might be said for the received text. But it is almost an impertinence in me to make any observations on a subject on which my opinion is so little worth consideration.
The new volume of your Letters is, I think, at least equal to either of its predecessors.3 Like everything I have read of yours, it is both instructive & interesting, & if, as might be expected on such a subject, I sometimes differ from you, it is always as from a thinker, & from one whose canons of thought are not fundamentally different from my own. You may probably anticipate what are our principal points of difference. I am not able to see how it is possible that the mind shd directly perceive that one event produces another or how the idea of producing could be suggested without repeated experience of the sequence of one event upon the other. Neither can I see how a fact can be known to be necessary by direct perception or how necessity can be in any way a direct subject of human apprehension. Apart from these points & minor ones connected with them I agree with you in essentials on almost [all] the topics discussed. In several instances you have done, & done well, what I have been long wishing to see done. This is particularly true of your remarks on Comte’s depreciation of psychology:4 & on the improper assimilation by Comte & others, of physical to moral laws, an assimilation dictated by their desire to attach the idea of religious obligation to a prudential regard for the warnings of physical science.
In the discussion on Personal Identity5 you have (I think for the very first time) chosen the right starting point for the inquiry by considering first what makes me the same person to the apprehension of others while psychologists have usually started from the far more complex question, what makes me the same person to my own apprehension. You have in fact commenced the examination of personal identity by considering what it is which constitutes identity in the other & simpler cases in which it is predicated; & by thus for the first time applying to the question the only philosophical method of investigation you have as might be expected, arrived at much better results.
On the subject of Language6 I of course agree in your principal thesis. The origin & history of a word are not the appropriate evidence of its present meaning. But have you not a little underrated the worth of this kind of knowledge in its bearing on the great questions of metaphysics? The most keenly contested questions in psychology are those which relate to the origin of certain of our mental notions; & is not light often thrown on this by the origin of the corresponding words? A certain school of psychologists are always contending that such & such notions must be part of the original furniture of the mind, on the ground that there have always been names for them; & we know how strong is the tendency to suppose that whatever has got a name, has a real existence, not as a particular mode of contemplating things which when looked at for other purposes are known by other names, but as an independent entity. It seems to me very pertinent in opposition to this notion, to shew (if it can be shewn) that, for instance, all abstract names were originally concrete, & that all the more general words of relation were once nouns or verbs.
The part of your book which treats of “Moral Sentiments”7 I value even more than all the rest. Several important points of what we agree in holding as the true theory I have not seen so well brought out anywhere else. I am the more interested by what you have done because I have myself been led into a very similar vein of thought & have published it in a series of three papers which unless you are a habitual reader of Fraser’s Magazine, you are not likely to have heard of.8 If I reprint them separately as I am thinking of doing I will beg your acceptance of a copy. In the last of these papers (December 1861) I derive most of the peculiar characters of the moral sentiment from the element of vindictiveness which enters into it. Our modes of developing the idea are different but not conflicting.
I am Dear Sir
580.
TO THOMAS HARE1
- Blackheath Park
Jan. 26. 1863.
Dear Sir
I presume Mr Holden2 has sent to you, as either he or someone else has sent to me, the Sydney paper containing the debate in the Lower House on the bill respecting the Legislative council.3 If you have seen it, you must indeed have been delighted. The second reading carried, and a large majority of the speakers on both sides (including the head of a late ministry4 ) strong supporters of your system, with full understanding of it! How encouraging this is as to the reception it will obtain here, when people once give their minds to it as a question of the day. If we could obtain as good a debate as that for it in the House of Commons, it would not be far from being carried.
I inclose a letter I have received from the Foreign Minister (I believe) of the Sandwich Islands,5 announcing his intention to bring forward there a proposal for the representation of minorities. Surely this is as great a wonder as anything in our time, marked out as it is from all former times by the universality of discussion and progress all over the world. Please return the letter. I am
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
581.
TO JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY1
B[lackheath] P[ark] Jan. 26. 1863
Dear Sir.
You can imagine better than I can tell you how much your letter interested me. I am obliged to you for the information respecting the first settlers in New England. I did not know that there were so many people of family among them though I knew there were some and I was quite aware that the place which the refuse went to was Virginia. All the popular literature of the century following shews that colony to have been the one regarded as the Botany Bay of that time. But my argument did not turn upon this nor was I thinking of race or blood but of habits & principles. New England as I understand it, was essentially a middle class colony: the puritans of the higher classes who took part in its foundation were persons whose sympathies went in a different channel from that of class or rank. The southern colonies on the contrary were founded on aristocratic principles, several of them by aristocratic men as such, & we know that the greatest of them, Virginia, retained aristocratic institutions till Jefferson succeeded in abolishing them.2
Concerning the Alabama, most people of sense in this country, I believe, are reserving their opinion until they hear what the Govt has to say for itself.3 My own first impression was, that the Govt was not bound nor even permitted by international rules to prevent the equipment of such a vessel, provided it allows exactly similar liberty to the other combatant. But it is plain this notion was wrong since the Govt has shewn, by issuing an order which arrived too late, that it considered itself bound to stop the Alabama. What explanation it can give of the delay will be known when Parlt meets; & what it ought to do now, in consequence of its previous default, a person must be better acquainted than I am with international law to be able to judge. But I expect to have a tolerably decided opinion on the subject after it has been discussed.
I write to you in much better spirits than I have been in since I saw you. In the first place things are now going in an encouraging manner in the West. Murfreesboro is an important as well as glorious achievement4 & from the the general aspects of things I feel great confidence that you will take Vicksburg5 & cut off Arkansas & Texas6 which then by your naval superiority will soon be yours. Then I exult in (what from observation of the politics of that state I was quite prepared for, though not for the unanimity with which it seems to have been done) the passing over of Missouri from slavery to freedom:7 a fact which ought to cover with shame, if they were capable of it, the wretched creatures who treated Mr Lincoln’s second proclamation8 as waste paper & who described the son of John Quincy Adams9 as laughing in his sleeve when he professed to care for the freedom of the negro! But I am now also in very good heart about the progress of opinion here. When I returned I already found things better than I expected. Friends of mine who are heartily with your cause, who are much in society & who speak in the gloomiest terms of what the general feeling was a twelvemonth ago, already thought that a change had commenced. And I heard every now & then that some person of intellect & influence whom I did not know before to be with you was with you very decidedly. You must have read one of the most powerful & most thorough pieces of writing in your defence that has yet appeared, under the signature Anglo Saxon in the Daily News. That letter is by Goldwin Smith, & though it is not signed with his name he is willing (as I am authorized to say) that it shd be known.10 Again Dr Whewell,11 one from whom I shd not have expected so much, feels, I am told, so strongly on your side that people complain of his being rude to them on the subject & he will not suffer the Times to be in his house. These, you may say, are but individual cases. But a decided movement in your favour has begun among the public since it has been evident that your Govt is really in earnest about getting rid of slavery. I have always said that it was ignorance, not ill will, which made the majority of the English public go wrong about this great matter. Difficult as it may well be for you to comprehend it, the English public were so ignorant of all the antecedents of the quarrel that they really believed what they were told, that slavery was not the ground, scarcely even the pretext, of the war. But now when the public acts of your Govt have shewn that now at least it aims at entire slave emancipation, that your victory means that & your failure means the extinction of all present hope of it, many feel very differently. When you entered decidedly into this course, your detractors abused you more violently for doing it than they had before for not doing it, & the Times12 & Saturday Review13 began favouring us with the very arguments & almost in the very language which we used to hear from the W. India slaveholders to prove slavery perfectly consistent with the Bible & with Xtianity. This was too much; it overshot the mark. The Anti Slavery feeling is now thoroughly rousing itself. Liverpool has led the way by a splendid meeting14 of which the Times suppressed all mention, thus adding according to its custom to the political dishonesty a pecuniary fraud upon its subscribers. But you must have seen a report of this meeting; you must have seen how Spence did his utmost,15 & how he was met; & that the object was not merely a single demonstration but the appointment of a Committee to organize an action on the public mind. There are none like the Liverpool people for making an organization of that sort succeed if once they put their hands to it. The day when I read this I read in the same day’s newspaper, two speeches by cabinet ministers: one by Milner Gibson16 as thoroughly & openly with you as was consistent with the position of a cabinet minister; the other by the D. of Argyll17 was a simple anti slavery speech, denouncing the proslavery declaration of the Southern bishops, but his delivering such a speech at that time & place has but one meaning. I do not know if you have seen Cairnes’ Lecture18 or whether you are aware that it has been taken up & largely circulated by religious societies & is at its fourth edition. A new & enlarged edition of his great book is on the point of publication19 & will I have no doubt be very widely read & powerfully influential.
Foreigners ought not to regard the Times as representing the British nation. Of course a paper which is so largely read & bought & so much thought of as the Times is, must have a certain amount of suitability to the people that buy it. But the line it takes on any particular question is much more a mere matter of accident than is supposed. It is sometimes better than the public & sometimes worse. It was better—on Competitive Examinations20 & on the revised Educational Code21 —in each case owing to the accidental position of a particular man who happened to write in it—both which men I could name to you. I am just as fully persuaded as if I could name the man, that the attitude it has long held respecting slavery, & now on the American question, is equally owing to the accidental interests or sympathies of some one person connected with the paper. The Sat. Review again is understood to be the property of the bitterest Tory enemy America has, Beresford Hope.22 Unfortunately these papers, through the influence they obtain in other ways & in the case of the Times very much in consequence of the prevailing notion that it speaks the opinion of all England, are able to exercise great power in perverting the opinion of England whenever the public are sufficiently ignorant of facts to be misled. That when once engaged in a wrong line, writers like those of the Times go from worse to worse, & at last stick at nothing in the way of perverse & even dishonest misrepresentation, is but natural to party writers everywhere; natural to those who go on day after day working themselves up to write strongly in a matter to which they have committed themselves, & breathing an atmosphere inflamed by themselves; natural moreover to demagogism both here & in America, & natural above all to anonymous demagogism, which risking no personal infamy by any amount of tergiversation never minds to what lengths it goes, because it can always creep out in time, & turn round at the very moment when the tide turns.
Among the many lessons which have been impressed on me by what is now going on, one is, a strong sense of the Solidarité (to borrow a phrase for which our language has no short equivalent) of the whole of a nation with every one of its members: for it is painfully apparent that your country & mine habitually judge of one another from their worst specimens. You say that if England were like Cairnes & me, there would be no alienation; & neither would there if America were like you. But (I need not use soft words to you, who I am sure detest these things as much as I do) the low tricks & fulsome mob-flattery of your public men, & the bullying tone & pettifogging practice of your different Cabinets (southern men chiefly I am aware) towards foreign nations, have deeply disgusted a great number of our very best people, & all the more so because it is the likeness of what we may be coming to ourselves. You must admit too that the present crisis, while it has called forth a heroism & constancy in your people which cannot be too much admired & to which even your enemies in this country do justice, has also exhibited on the same scale of magnitude all the defects of your state of society, the incompetency & mismanagement arising from the fatal belief of your public that anybody is fit for anything, & the gigantic pecuniary corruption which seems universally acknowledged to have taken place & indeed without it one cannot conceive how you can have got through the enormous sums you have spent. All this, & what seems to most of us entire financial recklessness (though for myself I do not pretend to see how you could have done anything else in the way of finance) are telling against you here—you can hardly imagine how much. But all this may be, & I have great hope that it will be, wiped out by the conduct which you have it in your power to adopt as a nation. If you persevere until you have subdued the South or at all events all west of the Mississippi; if having done this you set free the slaves with compensation to loyal owners & (according to the advice of Mr Paterson in his admirable speech at Liverpool),23 settle the freed slaves as free proprietors on the unoccupied land; if you pay honestly the interest on your vast national debt, & take measures for redeeming it, including the debt without interest which is constituted by your inconvertible paper currency; if you do these things, the United States will stand very far higher in the general opinion of England than they have stood at any time since the war of independence. If, in addition to this, you have men among you of a calibre to use the high spirit which this struggle has raised, & the grave reflexions to which it gives rise, as means of moving public opinion in favour of correcting what is bad & strengthening what is weak in your institutions & modes of feeling & thought, the war will prove to have been a permanent blessing to your country such as we never dared hope for, & a source of inestimable improvement to the prospects of the human race in other ways besides the great one of extinguishing slavery.
If you are really going to do these things, you need not mind being misunderstood—you can afford to wait.
582.
TO JOSEPH NAPIER1
- B[lackheath] P[ark]
Jan. 27, 1863
Dear Sir—
I have at your suggestion reread the second chapter of the second part of the Analogy2 & the result is somewhat different from what you seemed to expect. I am afraid I must admit that Butler’s authority is against me & that he either overlooked, or did not admit the distinction which I endeavoured to draw between two kinds of improbability, improbability before the fact & improbability of an alleged fact. For though as you say he does not deny that there is a certain small antecedent presumption against a miracle, he looks upon this as being exactly the same sort of presumption which there is against any common event (of the conditions of which we have no special antecedent knowledge) before it has happened. Now in my view it is a totally different sort of presumption—one which constitutes, as far as it goes, a ground of disbelief, which the other & universal presumption does not even in the smallest degree. In proof of this: let there be a million tickets in some repository, numbered & placed indiscriminately. Of these I take out one. The antecedent presumption against its being No 72 is a million to one; but when I have selected a ticket & it is affirmed to be No 72 the antecedent presumption does not render this in the smallest degree incredible, because, instead of its being unlikely that an event with a million to one against it could happen it was certain that such an event would happen, & it is certain that such an event did happen when I took out the ticket, whether it was No 72 or not.
Now (without further purpose distinguishing miracles from any other kind of extraordinary event) it seems to me clear that against any extraordinary event there exists not a slight addition to this entirely unimportant kind of improbability, but an improbability generically different from it. And Butler surely must have thought so since he would not have credited a statement that [illegible word] has on only a small fraction more of evidence than that on which he could have believed an ordinary man who said that he rose one morning with a headach[e]. But though he must have habitually acted on this view of the subject I am afraid he forgot it in his argument.
583.
TO JOHN WILSON1
- Blackheath Park
31 January, 1863
Although I am much too occupied to be able to accept your invitation to be present at the Soirée of the Liverpool Co-operative Provident Association, I am glad of the opportunity you have offered me to express, as I have done in my published writings, my warmest sympathy with the Co-operative Cause. Of all the agencies which are at work to elevate those who labour with their hands, in physical condition, in social dignity and in those moral and intellectual qualities on which both the others are ultimately dependent, there is none so promising as the present Co-operative movement. Though I foresaw, when it was only a project, its great advantages, its success has thus far exceeded my most sanguine expectations, and every year adds strength to my conviction of the salutary influence it is likely to exercise over the destinies of this and other countries.
584.
TO GEORGE FINLAY1
- B[lackheath] P[ark]
Feb. 2. 1863
My dear Mr. Finlay—
Many thanks for your letter which was both interesting and encouraging. I now write in high spirits on the subject of Greece as today’s newspapers for the first time state positively & authentically that the Duke of Saxe Coburg consents to be a candidate.2 I earnestly hope that the Greeks will not throw away the opportunity of getting a king who would bring them every possible advantage they could have had from Prince Alfred,3 with the addition of being a man of mature age and tried principles. It seems to me that they have drawn the one solitary prize in the lottery & that his election & acceptance would be the very happiest event which the chances of politics could have turned up for Greece. I had never ventured to hope for anything so good as a prince who is more liberal & constitutional than his German subjects understand or care for & who is looked to by the liberals in Germany at large as a possible head of the future German Empire. If he is elected, it will be his object to make Greece a great country by making her a free & prosperous one to begin with, & all the best European thought will have a greater chance of access to her than to any crowned head in Europe except his uncle Leopold.4
I was very happy to learn from you that there is a real desire in the Assembly for moderate establishments & a great retrenchment of expenditure. This is good not only in itself, but because it implies putting a restriction on the evils of centralization & functionarism. But the land tax or rather a land tax will be wanted nevertheless, for a time at least, if they intend to be honest to their creditors.
Mr Grote was extremely interested by the plans & inscriptions you sent to him through me. He did not know the existence in the character. . . .
585.
TO ROBERT CRICHTON WYLLIE1
- B[lackheath] P[ark]
Feb. 3. 1863
Sir—
I have had the honour of receiving your letter & the printed slips which you have been kind enough to send. These I have read with the attention due to any work of Dr Rae2 & they appear to me quite worthy of his intellect and acquirements. The picture which he draws of the dangers that menace the interesting community of which you are one of the rulers, is most formidable.3 Of the remedies which he proposes, I cannot be a competent judge, but as far as my means of judgment extend he seems to be right in much, perhaps even in all, that he proposes.
The other paper will I think place Dr Rae very high among ethnologists & philologists.4 After having reached by independent investigation the highest generalization previously made, viz., that all languages have grown by development from a few hundred words, Dr Rae seems to have supplied the first probable explanation of the manner in which their primitive words may themselves have originated. If this hypothesis is made out, it is the keystone of the science of philology: it is a priori extremely probable, & the facts he brings forward establish a strong case of verification a posteriori. I hope that Dr Max Müller5 has been put in possession of this important speculation.
It must be of great value to your country to have such a man as Dr Rae settled among you.
It is very gratifying to me that you are disposed to carry the principle of representation of minorities into practical operation. That such should be the questions agitated in a country which three quarters of a century ago was in the savage state, is surely one of the most remarkable signs of the very hopeful times in which we live.
586.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES1
- Blackheath Park
Feb. 7. 1863
Dear Sir
Mr Curtis’2 letter gives one a very favorable impression of his own sentiments, though in some respects a painful one of those of his countrymen. Perhaps, however, it is no worse than was to be expected, and the worse it is the more searching and the more prolific of good is the present crisis likely to be. The danger of American democracy was stagnation—a general settling into a dead level of low morality and feeling. The strenuous antagonism now springing up in the better Americans against the tone of mind of the worse, is the most hopeful feature of the present struggle, and the battle against the devil could not be fought on a more advantageous field than that of slavery.
I was delighted, as you were, with the Exeter Hall meeting, and the Liverpool meeting which preceded it was even better. Leeds, Bradford, Bristol,3 and other places have also roused themselves and there is to be another meeting at Manchester on the receipt of Lincoln’s answer to the Manchester address.4 There is, besides, a latent feeling on the right side in many quarters, which will assert itself in time. For instance; I have it under the hand of the Duke of Argyll that he agrees entirely with my two articles—and I had yesterday a conversation with Sir Stafford Northcote and the Mayor of Liverpool,5 and was surprised and pleased to find how nearly right they both are on the subject. When our whole strength comes to shew itself, it will be seen to be very great. It is fear of the Times that makes public men keep silence. Perhaps they do not overrate the power of the Times, but they ridiculously exaggerate the danger to themselves of braving it. The Times has been very often defeated; but as it is never wrong without a great number of people to keep it in countenance, it never suffers any permanent loss of influence. It has passed unhurt through much severer blows than any it has had lately. It lost no credit by its sudden turn round on Bernard’s trial,6 the very day after he was acquitted—as strong a case as the sharp turn in 1834 from ultra Whiggism to Peel Toryism.7 Such things would have ruined a writer who gave his name; but anonymous journalism can dare anything with impunity.
I was glad that the noble spirit of the Lancashire operatives found an exponent in Bazley,8 when he said in seconding the address, that the work-people do not want cotton made by slaves.
I am Dear Sir
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
587.
TO ALEXANDER BAIN1
- B[lackheath] P[ark]
Feb. 13. 1863
Dear Bain—
I thought Ferrier’s book2 quite sui generis when I first read it, & I think so more than ever after reading it again. His system is one of pure scepticism very skilfully clothed in dogmatic language. To find the meaning of any of his propositions one is obliged to invert it—to turn it as it were bottom upward, and discover the purely negative underside, of which the side turned towards the spectator is but the superficial outcome, and which negative underside contains all the reality there is in the proposition. For example, matter, according to him is the variable element in cognition. But he avers that neither the world at large, nor thinkers, when they discussed the subject of matter, ever imagined that they were affirming or denying the existence of a variable element in cognition. Consequently the entire purport of Ferrier’s proposition is, that if matter is not this, “there is nothing else for it to be” (to use an expression of his own). Again, the whole of his doctrine of the Absolute may be thus expressed: Unless the Absolute is what I say it is, that is, unless a toothache, regarded as my toothache, is the Absolute there is no Absolute. This strikes me as very cool, in a thinker whose doctrines are of this character, to class other people as sceptics, & present his own system as the first & only real safeguard against scepticism. The truth is, it outdoes in scepticism almost all the systems so called, inasmuch as it abolishes noumena. According to it there are no “things in themselves”; they have no locus standi anywhere, not even in Herbert Spencer’s region of the Unknowable.3 To this doctrine I have little to object, but I do object in toto to the mode in which it is arrived at. For the only legitimate mode of arriving at it is by the psychology of which he thinks he can never speak too scornfully, viz. by pointing out the genesis through ascertained laws of the mind, of the belief that people have that they do perceive, or have evidence of things in themselves. Until this is done, this next to universal belief is primâ facie evidence of its own truth, just as the impressions of the senses are. All such attempts however he repudiates, rebuking philosophers in general for commencing their study of the mind with the origin of an idea & not seeing the very obvious truth (which it will be one of the purposes of what I write on Hamilton to enforce) that since we cannot observe the first moments of human consciousness, a theory of the genesis of our notions is an indispensable condition of ascertaining what those are which we possess originally. Despising this instrument of investigation which he does not know how to use, he arrives at all his conclusions, without one single exception that I remember—certainly at all those which he declares to be of primary importance—either by deduction from arbitrary definitions or by reasoning in a circle. How, for example, does he prove the doctrine which he considers it his greatest feat to have established, the principal proposition of the Agnoiology?4 By arguing that as Ignorance is a defect, there can be no ignorance but of things which might possibly be known. He erects the accidental dyslogistic connotation of a word into the chief constituent of its meaning, & from this definition of his own concludes that there are no other things to be ignorant of, & not (which is the only valid conclusion) that if there are we may be ignorant of them without blame. His general mode of settling the questions which divide philosophers is to transfer the names of the things, real or unreal, which they contend about to things the reality of which nobody ever thought of contesting; after which, as there are no names left for the things which people do contest, the conclusion is quietly slid into that there are no such things. I do not in the least dispute that if this negative conclusion be true, there is much to be said for transferring the existing words with all their associations from nonentities to the realities which are the proper objects for those associations; & what makes me to a certain extent tolerant of the book is that I think philosophy will most likely ultimately use the words in something like his sense of them, so that his system serves a mode of stating a connected set of opinions grounded in truth, which connected statement he mistakes for deducing them from one another. But the fact that there is nothing else for the words to mean has to be proved first; which cannot be done by begging it in the definitions of the terms. What, again, can be a more glaring paralogism than that by which he establishes his grand proposition that certain supposed laws of our cognitions are necessary laws of all cognition existing, possible or imaginary, finite or infinite? It all rests upon a double meaning of the word Contradictory. He lays down as a principle that what is contradictory cannot be known, not merely by our intelligence but by any intelligence. He gets this admitted by presenting it as if it meant that our intelligence cannot believe that a thing is & also that it is not. So presented, the reader is not willing to admit that the impossibility does not arise from the limitation of our intelligence, but is a law of all intelligence. But when the time comes for drawing the consequences of the admission, the Contradictory is found to be that which contradicts not itself, but “the necessary laws of cognition,” & from that time forward anything which we cannot, as the author expresses it, “conceive to be conceivable” is placed, on that ground, among things unknowable by any, even infinite, intelligence, though it may not involve any self-contradiction at all. Thus, the proposition that the human capacities of conception (in their second power at least) are a measure of the possibilities of universal intelligence steals in as a demonstrated truth without having been once faced.
Then how strangely absurd are his representations of other writers, above all his romance about Plato. There has been plenty of nonsense written about Plato’s Ideas, but I did not expect to be told that what Plato means by them (though he failed to express his meaning distinctly) was the Ego! This wonderful conclusion seems to be reached by the following syllogism. The Ego is (according to my system) the universal element in cognition; therefore Plato’s Ideas were the Ego. How Plato would have stared at this interpretation of what he conceived as the very opposite pole, the point furthest removed from (& raised above) the Ego, of all the elements which enter into the generation of Knowledge!
In spite of all this, however, & of the flourishing of trumpets which accompanies every fresh paralogism or disguised assumption, one cannot help being struck in almost every page with the ability of the writer, though I cannot think that it lies in the direction of metaphysical speculation. And the book, like all books by persons of talent on difficult subjects of thought, helps more or less to clear up one’s own ideas.
I have not left myself room for saying much on other subjects but I have not much to say. I am reprinting the Utilitarianism5 & will send it to you as soon as published. I have just received Lyell’s new book6 but have not yet read any of it. Littré writes that he will very shortly publish his life of Comte7 which I expect will be interesting & I shall perhaps make it an occasion for writing something about Comte, though I do not like being diverted from Hamilton. I have heard nothing very lately about Grote. His new eight-volume edition is out.8
Your paper on the Methods of Debate9 must have given many valuable ideas to those whom it was addressed to. There is a point in the appended note that I shd like, at some time or other to discuss with you. It strikes me that the principle on which the chances are estimated on the [?subject] of Alexander differs in one respect from the true principle.
588.
TO MAX KYLLMANN1
B[lackheath] P[ark] Feb. 15. 1863.
Dear Sir—
I wish there were somebody like you in every great town in the country, for as soon as you see that anything is true & important you exert yourself to get it acknowledged. The beginning you have made with the operatives on the subject of Mr Hare’s plan2 is most valuable. They are more open to conviction than any other class, being the only class not prejudiced in favour of existing institutions in general. And they have the strongest interest in adopting this plan, since while it gives more complete expression & fuller effect than anything else can do to the democratic principle, it also completely removes the strongest & best founded of the objections which are sincerely felt to that principle, considered as a practical one. When difficulties can be removed not by compromising a principle but by carrying it still more completely out, the advantage is well worth gaining.
I should strongly advise keeping the demonstration respecting the grievances of the working classes as distinct as possible from the movement relating to America. It is good generalship in politics as it is in war not to bring all your enemies upon you at once, but to divide them, and fall upon each division apart from the rest. Bad principles are but too ready to league with each other as it is, without being provoked to it by each receiving a slap in the face at the same moment from the same hands. And you cannot well afford to alienate those who would agree with you as to one of the two objects proposed but not on the other. For the same reason it seems to me desirable that the question of the suffrage shd be kept apart from the other things complained of & shd be made the subject of a distinct demonstration by itself. The changes in the law that have made cooperation possible would not have been obtained so soon if the demand for them had usually been coupled with the question of the suffrage.
Thanks for your information about the Haslingden movement.3 Before I received your letter, one of the circulars had found its way to me & I shall the first time I go to town pay a subscription in the manner directed. I will also send a subscription to Mr Bradlaugh.4
The Anthropological Society I hear of for the first time5 from your letter. I shd suppose from the publications it announces that its objects must be very much the same as those of the Ethnological Socty6 which already existed. The names mentioned are all new to me except two: Capt. Burton, whom I know as other people do from his books more as an enterprising traveller than as a man of science,7 & Mr Luke Burke,8 who I shd think answers to your requisition of willingness to carry out premises to all their consequences, but the little I have seen of his speculations does not give me any confidence in his soundness as a scientific thinker. It is possible that some of the others may be distinguished names, for I am very little acquainted with the present state of this class of studies.
Mr Lincoln’s answer9 is excellent—quite beyond my expectation.
589.
TO JOHN PLUMMER1
- Blackheath Park
Feb. 20, 1863
Dear Sir
I thank you for your letter, and for the book and newspaper you sent. Your friend’s paper in the Coventry Herald2 is of real promise. There is a clearness and discrimination in his mode of expressing his thoughts which augurs well for their quality. I will read Mr Chorley’s book3 as soon as I have time and shall be very glad to see you and him if you are able and disposed to come so far.
I am glad to hear that you are now chiefly employed in writing. Perhaps hitherto your influence with the operatives may have been all the greater for your remaining a factory workman, but henceforward, even if it were not a matter of necessity, you can certainly do more good by devoting yourself to such valuable writing as yours is. I am
Dear Sir
very sincerely yours
J. S. Mill
Mr John Plummer
590.
TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT1
Feb. 21 [1863]
Dear Sir,—
Although I am prevented by pressing occupations from accepting your invitation to join you in celebrating the glorious memory of Washington,2 and the great work of liberation in which he took so important a part, I am thankful for the opportunity afforded me of associating myself, if only by letter, with the principles and purposes which are identified with that illustrious name.
The prospects of the human race are so deeply interested in the success of the great experiment which is working itself out in the United States, that the lovers of freedom and progress in other countries feel whatever injures, and still more whatever dishonours, America as a personal calamity. Foremost among all things which injure and dishonour a country stands the personal slavery of human beings. Rather than consent to the further extension of this scourge, the American people have voluntarily incurred all their present sacrifices; and because what was originally a war against slavery has grown into a war for its extinction, my hopes for the future welfare and greatness of the American Republic were never so high as in this, to superficial appearance, the darkest hour in its history.
I have the honour to be, dear sir, very faithfully yours,
J. S. Mill
591.
TO CHARLES A. CUMMINGS1
B[lackheath] P[ark] Feb. 23. 1863
Dear Sir—
I duly received your letter of Feb. 2 & I thank you for the favour you have done me by sending me the Christian Examiner of January.2
My object in writing is not solely to make my warm acknowledgments for your kindly & generous estimate of my writings but also to set my country right with you in one point & myself in another. You are under some misapprehension in thinking that the writings which you honour with such high praise, have been neglected in England in comparison with my longer treatises. They have been much more widely read than ever those were, & have given me what I had not before, popular influence. I was regarded till then as a writer on special scientific subjects & had been little heard of by the miscellaneous public. I am in a very different position now.
For the other misapprehension I am probably myself accountable & I only advert to it because if it were well founded, there would be less sympathy between my feelings & yours than there really is. I do not, as you seem to think, take a gloomy view of human prospects. Few persons look forward to the future career of humanity with more brilliant hopes than I do. I see, however, many perils ahead, which unless successfully avoided could blast these prospects, & I am more specially in a position to give warning of them since being in strong sympathy with the general tendencies of which we are all feeling the effects, I am more likely to be listened to than those who may be suspected of disliking them. You think from American experience that I have overrated the magnitude of some of the dangers. I am perhaps of all Englishmen the one who would most rejoice at finding that I had done so & who most warmly welcomes every indication which favours such a conclusion. But whatever may be their amount, the dangers are real, & unless constantly kept in view, will tend to increase; & neither human nature nor experience justify the belief that mankind will be sufficiently on their guard against evils arising from their own shortcomings shared by those around them. In order that political principles, requiring the occasional sacrifice of immediate inclinations, should be habitually present to the minds of a whole people, it is generally indispensable that these principles shd be embodied in institutions. I think it therefore essential that the principle that superior education is entitled to superior political might, shd be in some way constitutionally recognised. I suggested plural voting as a mode of doing this: if there be any better mode, I am ready to transfer my advocacy to that. But I attach far more importance to Mr Hare’s system of election, which it gives me the greatest pleasure to see that you appreciate as I do. It would be worthy of America to inaugurate an improvement which is at once a more complete application than has ever been made of the democratic principle, & at the same time its greatest safeguard. With the system of representation of all instead of majorities only & of the whole people instead of only the male sex, America would afford to the world the first example in history of true democratic equality.
I omitted to say that I was not the founder of the W. R. though I was one of its writers from the commencement. At a much later period of my life I was for several years its proprietor & chief conductor.3
592.
TO HENRY SAMUEL CHAPMAN1
- Blackheath Park
Feb. 24. 1863.
Dear Chapman
I am very much obliged to you for the information in your letters and for the newspapers and newspaper articles which you kindly sent, relating to the proceedings in the Legislature of New South Wales. I was not wholly uninformed on the subject, Mr Holden having opened a communication with me and also with Mr Hare: but your information has generally been both earlier and fuller than his. I was delighted with the debate on the second reading of the bill.2 The fact that so many of the speakers had so thorough and intelligent an appreciation of Mr Hare’s plan, is a most satisfactory proof that its advantages will be felt in other legislative assemblies when once they can be induced to look upon it as one of the questions of the day. At present few engaged in practical politics have begun to concern themselves about it. But those few are an increasing body, and by the time the question of the suffrage is again practically raised, it will not be possible to keep this question out of the discussion. The plan is making its way into America. The Christian Examiner, formerly the organ of Channing,3 and still representing the best minds of New England, takes it up very favourably in the number for January,4 and advises testing it by application to State elections.
I had noticed the change for the worse in the Melbourne correspondence of the Times. I used to read those letters with great interest while they rested on your authority, because I knew that matters would be regarded and judged on principles not very different from my own. They cannot have the same interest to me now, even if they were to be depended on as to facts, which you tell me they are not.
Buckle is, as you truly say, a great loss,5 and one which we are not likely to see replaced. Notwithstanding the undue breadth of many of his conclusions, and the want of a proper balance in his mind, he was performing a most valuable function in popularizing many important ideas, and stimulating the desire to apply general principles to the explanation and prediction of social facts. He has left, I am told, a great deal of manuscript, much of it in a state approaching to completion.
If I possessed photographic cards, I would with great pleasure send you one, but I have not adopted that fashion, and am not likely to adopt it; and I have refused so many applications for photographs of myself (some of them from persons whom I should have much liked to oblige) that I could not now with any consistency, comply with any.6
I shall be very glad to see your son7 when he is in town. I cannot have that pleasure at Easter, as I shall not be at home, but in the long vacation I shall hope to see him.
Ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
593.
TO WILLIAM JAMES LINTON1
- Blackheath Park
Feb. 25 [1863]
Sir
My time is so fully occupied that I am quite unable to attend the meeting on Friday or to take any part in the proposed movement in favour of Poland.2 I heartily sympathize in its object, and shall be very glad if the general feeling can be manifested in an imposing manner.
I am Sir
yours faithfully
J. S. Mill
W. J. Linton Esq.
594.
TO HERBERT SPENCER1
- Blackheath Park
Feb. 25. 1863.
Dear Sir
I am obliged to you for your letter, and if the sheet is not struck off (which I fear it is) I will add to the note in which you are mentioned,2 what is necessary to prevent the misapprehension you desire to guard against.
Your explanation narrows the ground on which we differ, though it does not remove our difference; for, while I agree with you in discountenancing a purely empirical mode of judging of the tendencies of human actions and would, on that subject as on all others, endeavour to reach the widest and most general principles attainable, I cannot admit that any of these principles are necessary, or that the practical conclusions which can be drawn from them are even (absolutely) universal.
As I am writing I cannot refrain from saying that your “First Principles” appears to me a striking exposition of a consistent and imposing system of thought; of which, though I dissent from much, I agree in more.
I hope your health is much better than it was some time ago.
I am Dear Sir
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
595.
TO HERBERT SPENCER1
- B[lackheath] P[ark]
Feb. 28. 1863.
Dear Sir—
I send you the leaf of my reprint2 containing the passage in which you are mentioned. I wish to be permitted to say that the corrected statement of your opinion derived from yourself, but I do not feel at liberty to say so without your permission.
I have thought it best to leave the note as it stood, & make the correction in an additional paragraph.3 But if you can suggest any alteration in the first mention of the note which would save me from seeming still to ascribe to you an opinion which you do not hold, I shall be happy to adopt it.
I am happy to hear that your health is so considerably improved.
596.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK1
- Blackheath
March 9, 1863
Dear Chadwick
I send a paper on the Polish question, in the form of a letter to the Editor.2 If you like you can alter the form to that of an article from a correspondent; but on the whole probably it is better as it is. I have signed it with my initials, and have no objection to being known as the author.
I also inclose an article by my daughter on Greek politics,3 which is at your service if you like it. It is entirely her own, but I quite agree in all of it.
I will look out passages from the book on the Alps, and send you references to them.
Proofs would be agreeable if there is time and it is not inconvenient.
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
597.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK1
- Blackheath
March 10 [1863]
Dear Chadwick
I have returned the proof,2 corrected, to the Editor.
I have no objection to being named in your leader, but I wish only my initials to be put to the letter itself; and I would rather that, in your first sentence, my name was introduced more indirectly. You might say “we feel thankful to a correspondent, whose initials sufficiently indicate his name” or some such words, and you might then go on mentioning me by name as at present.3
I would rather you did not add the sentence proposed in your letter, because I do not wish to be understood as having peculiar sources of information. Herzen’s and Ogareff’s writings are open to all the world, and the notification by the Insurrectionary Committee4 to which my letter refers was mentioned by the correspondents of some of the English newspapers.
Many thanks for your offer of separate slips, but I do not care to have any.
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
598.
TO MR. JONES1
- Blackheath Park
March 13. [1863]
Mr Mill requests Mr Jones to make up a parcel for him of such books on the accompanying list as he is able to send by the end of next week.
These are independent of Kinglake’s Crimean War,2 which Mr Mill wishes for as soon as it can be had, and which will be returned within a fortnight from the present time.
The “Inquiry into the Theories of History”3 if not already sent, may be dispensed with. If sent, this also will be returned in a short time.
Several other books in Mr Mill’s possession are sent in the present parcel.
599.
TO [JOHN WILLIAM PARKER?]1
- Blackheath,
March 14, 1863
Dear Sir
I have sent the cover which I have selected.2
Please add to the list of those who are to receive copies, Professor Cliffe Leslie, 1, York Street, Belfast.
I am
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
600.
TO JOHN CHAPMAN1
- Blackheath Park
March 16. 1863
Dear Sir
M. Littré has nearly ready for publication a life of M. Comte,2 which would afford a very good occasion for a general estimate of M. Comte and of his philosophy. If you would like to have such an article from me, I would undertake it.3 I cannot exactly say how soon it could be ready, as I have more than one thing in hand which I should like to finish before commencing it. But I would promise it as early as is possible without a very inconvenient interruption of other things. I am
Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
601.
TO THEODOR GOMPERZ1
- Blackheath Park, Kent
March 22, 1863
Dear Sir,
I thank you very much for your note, and look forward to talking over the subject of it with you, when you come, which I hope will be very soon.—I need hardly say that a translation by you of anything I write, will be, in every sense of the word, an authorized translation.2 —Your idea supplementary to the remarks on the sense of dignity, is well worth following out, and it would give me great satisfaction, if you would write something on the subject, and publish it with the translation.—I am, yours very truly,
J. St. Mill.
602.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK1
- Blackheath
March 24. [1863]
Dear Chadwick
The wine can be had in as few dozens as you please, and I will with pleasure take out, when we leave for Avignon on Saturday next, any order you like to give.
My daughter thinks that you can select passages from Senior2 better than she can. She sends by this post, several scraps about America that she has copied out from books which she has been reading; and will make extracts from Prince Dolgoroukov’s book on Russia3 if we get it, as we expect to do, to take with us to Avignon. She also sends a short article, of no pretension, on one of the points we talked of, the other day—the effect of the cheap press in keeping things right in Lancashire4 —in case you think it is worth putting in your paper. I am,
Dear Chadwick
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
603.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES1
- Blackheath
March 25. 1863
Dear Sir
I am much obliged to you for your note, and for the papers you sent. The letter of the Daily News correspondent2 is good and satisfactory. All recent information seems to confirm the statement that there is a renewal of excitement in favour of the war and that the bulk of the Democratic party now share it. It is impossible not to participate in your doubts as to the success of the North in effecting a complete reunion; but if it could be effected, I am not convinced by your letter that there need be any sacrifice of the principles of free government.
You will have observed Forster’s notice for Friday on the subject of the war ships fitting out for the Confederates.3 I have long been wondering why he did not make this move sooner. There is to be a meeting of Trades Unionists tomorrow in favour of the North, at St James’s Hall, at which Bright will preside. They have sent me an admission, and if I can, I intend to go.4
It will be a disgrace to Cambridge if Macleod gets the Professorship.5 Fawcett’s qualifications I shall be better able to judge of after the publication of his book.6 But at any rate I am very glad that there is a candidate of whom you are able to speak so highly as you do of Mr Courtney.
Honorary members of the P. E. Club can and do bring forward questions, and I will hand in yours (which are excellent) on Friday.7 I regret that you are not to be there, the more as I leave for Avignon on Saturday, but expect to be back for the June meeting and hope I may still see you this summer.—I will return your Daily News today or tomorrow. When at Avignon I shall have it sent to me regularly. The Spectator I shall regret to lose, but I believe it is not admitted into France. I am
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
604.
TO HENRY FAWCETT1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
April 2. 1863
Dear Mr Fawcett
Mr Kyllmann’s office at Manchester is at 28 Brazennose Street; his lodgings are at 35 Ducie Street, Oxford Road. Mr Kyllmann will be very glad to see you, and hopes that he may be of some service to you, if you come to or through Manchester.
The work of Ogareff which I told you of, is entitled Essai sur la Situation Russe,2 and is published by Trübner, in Paternoster Row.
I have brought your book3 with me here, and hope to have time to read it before I return to England. I am
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
605.
TO HENRY SOLLY1
- S[aint] V[éran]
April 6. 1863
Dear Sir—
I am obliged to you for your letter, and am glad of the information it gives respecting the Working Men’s Club & Institute Union2 of which I previously knew very little. I have no doubt that in so far as these clubs take the place of the public house, they will be very useful, but I confess to some uncertainty whether they are a movement sufficiently in advance to meet the demands of the present time. I am doubtful whether an organised movement & subscriptions for the purpose of making the men of the working classes more comfortable away from the women & children, is the thing wanted now, so much as an effort on a large scale to improve their dwellings, & bring cooperative arrangements for comfort & mental improvement home to all of them without distinction of sex or age. I do not say this to discourage you, nor with any fear of its doing so, but to account for my not taking so warm an interest in the scheme as you seem to expect that I should do. I think your plan likely to do good, but that there are others likely to be still more useful.
606.
TO WILLIAM THOMAS THORNTON1
- S[aint] V[éran]
April 17. 1863
Dear Thornton—
The wine merchant yesterday dispatched to you a packing case containing six dozen of the Chateauneuf wine which you drank at Blackheath. According to the rate of speed of the French railways in the transport of goods you may expect to receive it some time between a fortnight & a month hence. I have paid for the wine & all expenses here & I inclose the receipted bill. The duty & charges of carriage you will have to pay on delivery.
It was pleasant to receive a letter from you dated Marlow. I know not only the country but the house, & remember well its view over that beautiful valley.2 I am glad that I have carried you with me to so great an extent on the subject of Utilitarianism. What you say respecting the supposed case of Iphigenia3 does not at all contradict my opinion, as I never contended that the feeling of justice originates in a consideration of general utility, though I think it is that consideration which gives it its binding, & properly moral, character, and you yourself seem to think that in such a case as the one you suppose, the feeling of justice ought to yield to general utility.4 More than this no utilitarian can possibly ask. But I am inclined to think that such a case cannot possibly arise, or that the feeling of justice (except where, being divided against itself, it can be appealed on both sides) never need come into conflict with the dictates of utility. The case of Iphigenia was one of supposed religious duty, which where it intervenes, takes away the conflict, by removing the sense of moral wrong from the sacrifice. The nearest approach to it that occurs to me within the purely social or political sphere is the case of a people required by a powerful enemy under penalty of extermination to surrender some distinguished citizen, say the Carthaginians in the case of Hannibal.5 Now in such a case as this I think there can be no doubt that the morality of utility requires that the people should fight to the last rather than comply with the demand: not only because of the special tie between the community & each of its members, & between the community & a benefactor who in the case supposed is demanded as a victim precisely because of the greatness of his services—but also for a more general reason—namely the reason which makes it right that a people inferior in strength should fight to the death against the attempt of a foreign despot to reduce it to slavery. For such iniquitous attempts, even by powers strong enough to succeed in them, are very much discouraged by the prospects of meeting with a desperate though unsuccessful resistance. The weak may not be able finally to withstand the strong if these persist in their tyranny, but they can make the tyranny cost the tyrant something, & that is much better than letting him indulge it gratis.
I think such a case as that of Hannibal comes within these reasons, & indeed is a mere case of the same principle.
607.
TO THEODOR GOMPERZ1
S[aint] V[éran] April 23, 1863
Dear Sir—
Your letter of the 18th only reached me yesterday evening on our return from an absence of nearly a week.
Come by all means if you like, though I should not for an instant have thought of proposing it to you. I do not invite my friends to this place, unless in very rare cases when I happen to have an interval of leisure—because it is impossible for me when here, to give them the time I shd wish to give, or shew them the attention to which they are entitled. The greater part of all my intellectual work is done in the virtual solitude in which we live here, & the time which is not taken up in writing (in which at present both of us are occupied) we spend in wandering alone about the mountains and wilds of this part of France, gathering the health & spirits which are necessary to render life in England endurable to us.2 If, knowing this, you still like to come, I can only say that I shall be glad to see what I can of you; & I should not have said so much if you had not expressed yourself as if your motive for coming to Avignon was chiefly to see us & I shd very much regret that you shd either be disappointed or think us unfriendly in case you shd see less of us than you expect.3
I am much gratified by what you say about Mr Grote,4 & am glad that you have seen enough of him to appreciate him so fully. I had no doubt that he would be interested by your Herculanean investigations, which I am glad to hear are going on favourably.
608.
TO JOHN PLUMMER1
- Saint Véran, Avignon.
April 23. 1863.
Dear Sir
I am sorry that your visit to London should have been during one of my frequent absences, and no less so that your note could not receive an answer in time. As I expect to return in June, I hope to be more fortunate in the course of the summer. I am
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
609.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
April 24. 1863.
Dear Chadwick
Your letter was put into my hand just as we were starting for an excursion to Mirabeau and among the lower Alps of Provence. We have just returned, and I send by this post an article on Greece by my daughter,2 if you should still think it suitable. She is now occupying herself in translating extracts from some exceedingly interesting articles in the late numbers of the Revue des Deux Mondes on the present state of Turkey,3 which she will forward before long.
I have to ask you to excuse me to Mrs Chadwick for having so long delayed an answer to her letter about the wine, but the delay has been caused by my not having been able to get the facts from the wine merchant before now. I now find that the same wine you tasted at Blackheath will cost 75 francs (£3) for a cask containing 50 litres, or about six dozen; the cask will be about 18 francs extra, and the cost of journey and duty amounts to about eight shillings a dozen. I have since we arrived here, tasted a different quality of wine, which I think good, and even prefer to the other, and of which I mean to lay in a small stock myself—which is considerably cheaper. The Chateauneuf you tasted at Blackheath is of the vintage of 1858; this of which I now speak is also Chateauneuf, but of 1861, and grown by a different proprietor. It is less dry and rough and approaches more to the quality of Burgundy. It is only 50 francs (£2) the 50 litre cask; the other expenses being of course the same. I believe it would be excellent wine for keeping, and very good in two years time. If you should like to have either of these, I shall be very glad to order and forward it for you. If you prefer to have the wine in bottles, I do not think the additional cost would be much, as the wine here is all charged by the litre measure, and the bottles cost scarcely more than the cask.
I quite agree with you about the great importance of the principle of Scholefield’s bill,4 and I was glad to see that it appeared to be received more favourably than most of the former extensions of the principle of limited responsibility. It is a good sign that the Saturday Review supports it,5 which, on such subjects, in general servilely follows Lord Overstone. I will watch the progress of the bill, and if I see need, I will send you something about it, but it seems to me that you have yourself treated it extremely well. I am
Dear Chadwick
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
610.
TO T. E. CLIFFE LESLIE1
- S[aint] V[éran]
May 4. 1863
Dear Sir
It is my full intention to be present at the June meeting of the P[olitical] E[conomy] Club & your letter gives me additional reason for doing so. I am glad your question2 is to come on then instead of in July.
It does not seem to me that taskwork even if it could be made universal would destroy the partial opposition of interests between employers & employed. There would still remain the question of the rate of payment & the employers & workmen, supposing them both to be entirely selfish, could not have the same wishes as to that point. Nothing that I can imagine except cooperation would entirely take away the antagonism. But in order to do so, it is not necessary that cooperation should be universal. If it was only very frequent, a labourer who remained in the employment of an individual & who received from him as much (for labour of the same efficiency) as he could earn under cooperation, would see that he had no reason to complain. The employer’s profits would then be a mere consequence of increased efficiency in the instruments of production, occasioned by private ownership of them. The capitalist would only take from the workmen what he first gave them.
Not to mention that cooperation in the form of participation of the labourers in the profits, would be perfectly compatible with individual ownership & would go much nearer to producing identity of interest than taskwork would.
Hoping to see you in a month’s time, I am
611.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
May 6. 1863
Dear Chadwick
I send you by this post an article on Servia2 by my daughter. You will see she avails herself of your permission to undertake the Eastern question. If however there should be a debate of any consequence on Servia in the H. of Commons in the meantime, this article would not be fit for insertion without alteration, and she would be glad in that case either to alter it or to write another in its place, if you think the subject likely to interest your readers.
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
612.
TO THEODOR GOMPERZ1
Saint Véran, Avignon, May 9, 1863
I did not for an instant make any of the suppositions which you deprecate, in reference to your first note. What I did fear, was that you were perhaps a little hurt at my not having met with greater warmth the intimation of your project of coming to Avignon.2 I should extremely regret if this were the case, and I do not think it would be so, if you were fully aware of the great esteem and respect I have for you and of the sincerity of my wish to cultivate your friendship. I hope the additional letter you promise will set me at ease on this subject.—I am much pleased, though not at all surprised, at the feelings you express towards Mr. Grote.—I am glad that you will see something of Oxford. The two old universities are a feature in English national life which foreigners seldom see enough of to possess the key to many of the peculiarities of character of the lettered classes of England, compared with those of other countries. I suppose you will see Professor Max Müller, who has been there long enough to understand the place, and will be able to assist you with many explanations. I hope your visit will enable you to make good progress with your Herculanean labours.
613.
TO HENRY FAWCETT1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
May 17. 1863.
Dear Mr Fawcett
I inclose a testimonial, which renders it needless for me to express any otherwise the high opinion I have of your book2 and the great pleasure I had in reading it. Through the whole volume I did not find more than a few half sentences here and there which appeared to me defective in point of Political Economy, and even there I found, by things you said elsewhere, that you were in no error on the points involved. Some of the modes you have employed of shortening and simplifying the exposition seem to me happy; others are perhaps discussable. In particular, that of going at once to money prices, without first discussing the general laws of exchange value, answers very well in the simpler questions, but you were not able to adhere to it when you came to international values and in consequence that part of the book has not all the clearness which you have generally succeeded so well in attaining: the natural difficulties of that intricate question being increased by requiring the readers to adopt the statement by barter, for which nothing preceding has prepared them. I think, too (as Ricardo thought) that it is of importance to cultivate in learners the habit of arguing questions at first on the supposition of barter, in order to adjourn the difficulties which arise from the wrong and confused associations which cling to the idea of money. All this however can be better discussed between us viva voce.
I should have liked to hear the discussion on Cooperation.3 I suppose what your opponents questioned was merely the probability of its success in the more difficult kinds of industrial enterprise. Of such a doubt one can only say, Solvitur (or Solvetur) ambulando. The thing is practicable or not, according to the intellectual and moral qualities of those who attempt it. Doubtless many will attempt it and fail, but some, and in the end, many, will succeed. It is not necessary that all should. The success of cooperation on any large scale, will establish a practical minimum of wages, and will strike at the root of the opposition of apparent interest between employers and labourers, since whatever profit the capitalist can obtain in the face of cooperation, must be a mere equivalent for the advantage the enterprise derives from his capital, skill, and unity of management. I have put this view of the case before Leslie in answering a letter from him on the subject.4
Roebuck’s5 and Horsman’s6 speeches were well calculated to provoke a reaction and I am glad that you think they have done so. I am afraid however that Horsman’s will do much harm in the United States. The news from America is encouraging. The North seems to be, for the first time, in possession of the whole Mississippi,7 and cutting off the supplies from Texas must tell on the weakest point of the Slaveholders’ Confederacy. (One should never use any other designation for it than this, the one adopted by the Emancipation Society of Manchester). But the best thing of all is that the North does not seem to be in the least discouraged. If only their patience and determination hold out, they must yet succeed. I am
Yours very truly
J. S. Mill
614.
TO HENRY FAWCETT1
Testimonial to Henry Fawcett.
Having been asked by Mr. Fawcett to express my opinion respecting his qualifications for the office of Professor of Political Economy, I have no hesitation in saying that I think them of a very high order. Mr. Fawcett’s “Manual of Political Economy”,2 a book to which justice is hardly done by so unambitious a title, shews a really scientific knowledge of the subject, both in its principles and in their applications; the exposition is clear and precise, and many of the illustrations of the more difficult points are original, and go into the heart of the subject. The objection which might possibly have arisen from Mr. Fawcett’s inability to read his Lectures is obviated by his great practice and readiness in extemporaneous speaking. Altogether I think that the selection of Mr. Fawcett to fill the Chair of Political Economy in the University of Cambridge would be creditable to the University, and beneficial to the purposes of the Professorship.
J. Stuart Mill
May 17, 1863
615.
TO LOUIS BLANC1
- Saint Véran, Avignon
le 18 mai 1863.
Mon cher Monsieur Louis Blanc
Votre lettre, quoique portant la date du 2 mai, ne m’est parvenue que depuis trois jours. M. Parker ne m’a jamais rien dit de l’intention qu’on lui suppose. Cependant, le bruit dont parle M. Trübner2 ne m’est pas inconnu, m’ayant été porté par un autre libraire qui désirait devenir mon éditeur,3 et à qui je donnai un acceuil assez favorable, sans pourtant me lier par aucune promesse. Si le cas arrivait, et que j’eusse à choisir un nouvel éditeur votre recommandation de M. Trübner et votre amitié pour lui seraient pour moi un grand motif de préférence. Ceci n’est pas un vain compliment, mais l’effet de la véritable estime que j’ai depuis longtemps pour vous.
Nous serons de retour à Blackheath au mois de Juin, et ce serait un vrai plaisir pour moi de vous revoir. Si vous me faites le plaisir de venir me voir, je vous engage à m’écrire un mot la veille d’assez bonne heure pour que j’aie le temps de vous avertir si je suis empêché d’être chez moi le jour que vous aurez choisi. Je voudrais vous éviter l’ennui de faire inutilement une si longue course.4
616.
TO THEODOR GOMPERZ1
Blackheath, June 6 [1863].
We have just returned and shall be very glad to see you.—Will you do us the pleasure of dining with us to-morrow, when I hope to be able to introduce you to Professor Bain, who is in London for a short time. Ever yours truly,
J. St. Mill.
617.
TO THEODOR GOMPERZ1
- Blackheath, Thursday
[June 11, 1863]
M. Louis Blanc . . . has fixed to dine with us on Sunday (at five). We shall therefore hope to see you and Mr. Wessel2 on Sunday . . .
Very truly yours
J. St. Mill.
618.
TO THEODOR GOMPERZ1
Blackheath, June 16, 1863.
Be assured that I shall never refuse to hear anything you may wish to communicate, either about yourself or any other subject. Whatever you desire to say, it is for yourself to judge of the necessity of saying it. As to there being any need of justifying, of excusing, or explaining anything to us, there is not the smallest shadow of anything of the kind. I am not aware of your having been maligned by anyone2 —certainly not to us. Nobody has ever said of you, in our hearing or to our knowledge, so much as an uncomplimentary word. And if anyone had, it would not have produced a particle of effect on either of us. We know enough of you to judge for ourselves, and our esteem and respect could be of very little worth, if it could be lessened either by anybody’s tittle-tattle, or by such small matters as those you mention in your letter, even if we perceived them. So that if this is all, you may be perfectly at ease.—But some expressions in your letter make me fear that this is not all, and that you wish to say something quite unexpected on our part, the answer to which no conviction, however strong, of our regard and friendship could make other than painful to you. If I rightly understand the wishes you speak of3 —which I sincerely hope I do not—, it does not rest with me to say anything, but that I should never willingly be the smallest obstacle to them. But you seem to ask my opinion, and if I give it sincerely, I have no choice but to say—painful as it is to say it—that I do not think you have any chance. If there were any unfavourable impression respecting you, that might be altered. But there is not the smallest particle of it,—but an unchangeable high opinion of you and the most genuine friendly feeling.—If your letter did not mean what I suppose, I must trust to your kindness to forgive the misunderstanding. But if it did, do not for a moment suppose that I am unwilling to hear anything you wish to say. If you think fit to carry the matter farther, either by speech or writing,—even if only for the relief of your own feelings—, you will have my truest sympathy, as you have my sincere friendship and esteem.—We hope to see you and your friend to-morrow, and I hope, nothing that has passed will make any difference in your feelings towards us, who remain unchanged to you, and that you will not allow it to affect in any degree our future intercourse.
I am yours very sincerely
J. St. Mill.
619.
TO HARRIET GROTE1
- Blackheath
June 16. 1863
Dear Mrs Grote
I am extremely obliged to you for Dr Schlesinger’s2 note. When it came, I was on the point of writing to tell you and Mr Grote the same good news about Gomperz. I have seen him twice, the last time for a whole evening, and he was, to all appearance, quite himself again. Dr Schlesinger’s expectation of his immediately returning to Vienna has not been fulfilled. He is not now with Dr Schlesinger, but is at the Victoria Hotel, Euston Square, with a friend named Wessel who has joined him from Vienna. What his intentions are about staying or going, I do not at present know.—Pray thank Mr Grote for his note and the kind trouble he took about the luggage.
I am
Dear Mrs Grote
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
620.
TO F. W. JONES1
[Summer? 1863]
I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your communication dated the 18th inst. and to express my thanks to the Society for having done me the honour to elect me an honorary member. The subject of a Wholesale Agency2 which is occupying the attention of the Society is one of great importance, and I hope it will be found practical to establish such an agency, both as a great means of saving expense, and as a valuable extension of the Co-operative principle. It is the enormous number of mere distributors who are not producers that really eat up the produce of labour, much more than the mere profits of Capital, which, in a great majority of cases, are not more than a reasonable equivalent for the industry which created the capital and the fruga