The Online Library of Liberty

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• Abbreviations and Short Titles
• The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1856-1864
• 1856
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• 1864

1856

255.

TO LOUIS BLANC1

• India House
  Mercredi

1856

Mon cher Monsieur Louis Blanc

Je 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 dévoué

J. S. Mill

256.

TO ARTHUR HARDY1

• East India House

Jan. 21. 1856

My dear Mr Hardy

My 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 yours

J. S. Mill

257.

TO GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE1

• Blackheath

April 1. 1856

Dear Sir

I 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 faithfully

258.

TO GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE1

• East India House

April 5, 1856

Dear Sir

I 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 faithfully

J. S. Mill.

259.

TO HARRIET MILL1

• Le Pont
  on the Lac de Joux

Wed^y ev^g
[Aug. 13. 1856]

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

• La Chaux de Fonds

Sunday ev^g
Aug. 17. [1856]

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

• Blackheath

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 truly

262.

TO ARTHUR HARDY1

• Blackheath

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 M^rs 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 sh^d 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 3^d & 4^th 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 M^rs Hardy & believe me

y^rs very truly

J.S.M.

263.

TO THE SECRETARY TO THE SUNDAY LEAGUE1

[November 1856]

Sir—

I beg to acknowledge your letter of the 3^d 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
yrs very faithfully

263A.

TO HERBERT FRY1

• East India House

Nov. 14. 1856

Sir

I beg to acknowledge your letter dated the 10^th November, expressing a wish to include my portrait in a proposed publication of a series of Photographic Portraits, and in reply I beg to say that I have no desire to figure in a collection as I do not think that my personal appearance can be a matter of any interest to the general public.

I am Sir
yr obt servt

J. S. Mill

264.

TO LOUIS BLANC1

• Blackheath

le 22 novembre [?1856]

Mon cher Monsieur Louis Blanc

J’aurai grand plaisir à discuter avec vous les questions dont vous parlez dans votre lettre et de profiter de vos observations. Justement je suis pour le moment très occupé à mon bureau. Si vous voulez bien venir diner, absolument sans façon, avec nous, vous ferez grand plaisir à ma femme et à moi. Comme nous seront tout seuls, nous pourrons causer d’économie politique et d’autres choses. Mardi nous sommes occupés, et mercredi il y a séance du conseil de la Compagnie, qui me fait ordinairement rester plus tard que les autres jours. Nous sommes libres jeudi ou vendredi, et je vous engage à venir me prendre à mon bureau à quatre heures.

tout à vous

J. S. Mill

265.

TO THE AUTHOR OF “CURRENCY SELF REGULATING & ELASTIC”1

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse] Nov. 24. 1856

Sir—

I have to apologize for the delay in replying to your letter of the 7^th Nov^r requesting my opinion on your plan for the regulation of the Currency.2 I have received so many similar requests on this & other economical or philosophical subjects that my whole time would scarcely suffice for complying with them. I think I might fairly claim to be excused from examining any more plans for an inconvertible currency,3 & if I had not seen, on the first inspection of your book, that it contained more knowledge of the subject & more ability than I have usually observed in such projects, I certainly should not have spared time to read it to the end.

But though I recognize the great distinction between you & the Birmingham school,4 or the writers who are now enlightening the world by their letters in the Morning Post,5 I do not think your scheme more defensible than theirs. To a writer who founds his practical suggestions on theoretic principles (as, in spite of your sarcasms on political economy, you do) it will probably be sufficient to say, that I dispute the basis of your theory, viz. the proposition that in a community which makes large use of credit, an increase of currency does not (unless by promoting speculation) influence prices. I grant that any increase of paper currency which can take place under a convertible system, usually passes off without having influenced any other prices than those of securities: but only because the revulsion comes before the increased supply of money has reached the markets for commodities. Monied capital is not for ever handed to & fro among money dealers; its ultimate destination is to be lent to producers, & when the increase reached them it would raise wages & money incomes, & must consequently raise the prices of all articles of consumption, in the same manner as you allow it would do if it were issued by Gov^t in payment of the public expenses. If you were right, the supplies of gold from California & Australia, to however many thousands of millions they might extend, could not raise general prices, except indeed during the continuance of any speculative mania to which they might give rise; a proposition in which you will find few to agree with you, & which I can scarcely think that you will yourself, on consideration, maintain.

If it were true that no increase of the quantity of money when taking place through the medium of bankers, could lower its value, the principal objection not only to your, but to every other system of inconvertible currency, would be annihilated. But, not admitting this, I need not further explain why I am not of opinion that your plan, which enjoins an issue of paper up to the whole amount of the national debt (or of some definite portion of that debt) on condition that the holder is willing to pay the current rate of interest for it, would offer any security against the kind of depreciation which you, as well as myself, regard as an evil. The provision which you make for a reflux (& which may possibly be, as you suppose it to be, new) depends for its efficacy entirely on the truth of your theory of the non effect of currency on prices; for if prices rise, the increased amount of currency being permanently wanted in the markets will be “absorbed in the circulation” & will not flow back.

I must add that I agree with most of your comments on the Act of 18446 & should think them calculated to be very useful if they were dissevered from so much that I conceive to be erroneous.

266.

TO LOUIS BLANC1

• East India House

le 25 novembre [?1856]

Mon cher Monsieur Louis Blanc

Veuillez m’écrire un mot par le porteur pour me dire quel jour vous viendrez. Si vous m’avez écrit, votre réponse n’est pas arrivée.

Si le messager ne vous trouve pas chez vous, je vous prie d’adresser votre réponse Blackheath Park, Kent.

tout à vous,

J. S. Mill

267.

TO COSTANTINO BAER1

• E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]

Dec. 13, 1856

Monsieur—

Votre lettre du 12 mai ainsi que les articles et brochures2 que vous avez bien voulu m’envoyer ne me sont parvenus qu’en Septembre, à mon retour d’un voyage. Depuis lors, des occupations multipliées m’ont longtemps empêché, même de lire ces intéressants écrits et ensuite de vous en offrir mes remerciments. Je suis heureux de voir non seulement par vos écrits, mais aussi par le receuil où quelques uns entre ceux ont paru, que l’Italie, et surtout sa partie méridionale, qui au dernier siècle s’est placée si haut dans les études économiques et législatives, maintient encore sa position honorable dans cet ordre de recherches. Votre brochure sur la question de l’or me paraît conforme aux plus sains principes et je compte profiter de celle sur le métayage dans une nouvelle édition de mon livre.3 Quant à votre appréciation de ce livre, quoique trop flatteuse, elle est d’un grand prix, attendu que, parmi les notices auxquelles mon ouvrage a donné lieu, je n’en connais presque aucune qui porte autant l’empreinte d’une grande connaissance du sujet, et qui soit, scientifiquement parlant, aussi satisfaisante. Il me semble surtout que vos remarques sur la nature du rapport entre ce qu’on appelle une science abstraite, et la science correspondante d’application, ne sauraient être ni mieux pensées ni mieux exprimées. Quoique partageant, à tout égard, vos idées à ce sujet, je ne m’étais pas étendu là dessus dans mon ouvrage systématique, les ayant exposées dans un petit volume d’Essais,4 cité dans les “Principes” et dont je vous prie d’agréer un exemplaire que j’aurai l’honneur de vous envoyer par la première occasion.

Pour ce qui regarde les applications de l’éc. politique, je vois que, ainsi que la plupart des économistes, vous condamnez le socialisme d’une manière absolue. Vous avez vu par mon livre que je ne suis pas, à cet égard, de votre avis. Le socialisme selon la conception des socialistes les plus éclairés, me paraît inattaquable en principe, et mon dissentiment d’avec eux ne porte que sur la possibilité d’exécution dans l’état présent de la culture intellectuelle et morale de l’humanité. Je ne pense pas que la propriété privée, telle qu’on l’entend aujourd’hui, soit le dernier mot de la société, ni que la nature humaine soit incapable de travailler pour un but plus généreux que celui de l’intérêt individuel et exclusif. Je crois pourtant que les habitudes d’égoïsme sont tellement enracinées dans la grande majorité des peuples mêmes les plus civilisés, qu’elles ne céderont que lentement à des influences meilleures, et qu’aucun socialisme n’est aujourd’hui praticable comme fait général, mais seulement dans la forme d’associations d’ouvriers d’élite.5

268.

TO ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE1

• East India House, London

Le 15 décembre, 1856.

J’ai bien tardé, mon cher Monsieur de Tocqueville, à répondre à votre lettre du 22 juin. Elle m’est parvenue la veille même de notre départ pour un voyage en Suisse, et je n’ai reçu qu’à mon retour l’exemplaire de votre ouvrage2 que vous avez bien voulu me destiner. Je l’ai ensuite lu sans aucun délai; mais il contient trop de choses pour qu’on puisse se les approprier toutes à la première lecture; et j’ai voulu attendre une seconde avant de vous faire part de mes impressions. Bien que des occupations multipliées aient ajourné trop longtemps cette seconde lecture, je me suis bien trouvé de l’avoir attendue puisque ce laps de temps me permet aujourd’hui d’exprimer avec délibération et sans aucun entraînement, l’opinion pleinement favorable qui, exprimée tout de suite, eût pu paraître hasardée. Il était certes difficile qu’après votre premier ouvrage,3 un autre quelconque ne parût pas relativement inférieur. Il est arrivé à peu de monde de frapper deux fois un aussi grand coup. Celui-ci pourtant se soutient parfaitement, même à côté de son prédécesseur. Envisagé seulement comme un chapitre d’histoire universelle, il me paraît un des plus beaux qu’on ait jamais fait; et si l’on peut regarder comme le but principal de votre vie philosophique, celui de caractériser la nature et les tendances de l’époque actuelle, pour mieux diriger ces tendances dans ce qu’elles ont de bon et les corriger autant que possible dans ce qu’elles ont de mauvais, je trouve que vous avez fait un pas important dans l’explication de cet état de choses actuel, en montrant ses racines dans le passé. Pour faire cela, comme vous l’avez fait, il a fallu une patience immense, et une capacité rare de combiner les faits et d’en présenter en peu de mots les traits les plus caractéristiques. Si ensuite cet ouvrage n’ajoute pas d’autres grandes vues générales à celles qui brillent dans votre Démocratie en Amérique, il fait peut-être mieux, il en reproduit les mêmes avec un grand surcroît de lumière, et avec de nouvelles applications. Quant à la critique, je n’en trouve, pour ainsi dire, aucune à faire. Il y a bien quelques différences générales, et même très importantes, entre votre manière de voir et la mienne, en tant que vous tenez beaucoup plus que moi au passé, surtout par son côté religieux. Mais si peu de traces de cette différence d’opinion se rencontrent dans cet ouvrage, que, même de mon point de vue, je n’y trouve presque rien à relever. J’aurais seulement insisté plus sur le bon côté de la philosophie du dixhuitième siècle, que vous ne laissez pas de reconnaître et de faire voir, tout en appuyant davantage sur ce qu’elle avait de défectueux. Je ne puis trop exprimer ma profonde sympathie pour le noble amour de la liberté qui règne dans votre ouvrage et qui en fait une protestation continue contre le triste régime que votre grande patrie, l’œil droit du monde, est réduite à subir dans ce moment.

Acceptez, avec mes remerciements, l’assurance de mes sentiments d’estime et d’admiration.

J. S. Mill

269.

TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER1

• India House

Dec. 16.[1856?]

Dear Sir

I should feel very little doubt of the success of Sir W. Hamilton’s Lectures.2 His reputation for learning (with everybody) and for profundity (with one of the two great divisions of the philosophical world) stands higher than that of any other Englishman of this century; and even those who do not agree in his opinions (of whom I am one) regard his as the most powerful intellect on his own side of the question, and think it important to be well acquainted with all his speculations. Every student of logic and metaphysics will look forward with great interest to the publication as a whole, of a system only fragments of which have yet been printed. The sole obstacle to its pecuniary success is the abstruseness of some of the speculations, and in some degree, of the author’s mode of exposition; though his stile, in a merely literary point of view, is good and clear. Against this may be set the almost certainty that the book will be much read and used at the Universities; and their demand for it is likely I think to last a long while. So that I should suppose it has as good a chance of selling several editions as any book on its kind of subject.

I shall be happy to revise the Pol. Ec. for another edition3 on the terms you propose. Will you be good enough to send me the sheets—and tell me about what time you think you shall require them for the printer? I am engaged about a new book4 (in one smaller volume) which I think I could finish in time for publication in May, and I am not so certain of being able to do so if I put it aside to revise the Pol. Economy. I am

Yrs very truly

J. S. Mill

[1. ]MS at Bibliothèque Nationale. Paper bears watermark: 1856.

[1. ]MS at LSE, with a small envelope addressed in JSM’s hand: Arthur Hardy Esq. / Adelaide / South Australia / and marked across: Jan. 7 1856.

Harriet Taylor Mill’s favourite and youngest brother.

[2. ]An educational institution for working people. See Letter 262.

[3. ]Charles Gavan Duffy had left England for Australia on Oct. 8, 1855. Some time before he left he had conferred with JSM, who deplored his resignation from Parliament (see C. G. Duffy, My Life in Two Hemispheres, II, 124-25).

[4. ]At Nice in the autumn of 1853.

[5. ]Arthur Ley, husband of Harriet’s sister Caroline, and William Thomas Thornton, JSM’s associate at the India House, were trustees of Harriet Mill’s estate from her first husband. At this time Thornton was ill, and Harriet feared that her and her children’s money might be left in Ley’s hands.

[6. ]Ley had said he would resign the trusteeship if Herbert, who managed his mother’s financial affairs, requested him to, but Herbert declined.

[7. ]A distraining writ.

[1. ]MS draft at LSE. In reply to Holyoake’s letter of March 26, 1856, also at LSE.

[2. ]In his letter of March 26, 1856 Holyoake recalled the £10 loan he had received from JSM in 1854 (see Letter 118, n.9) and asked for his help in a new financial crisis. Holyoake explained that he had agreed to accept bills for a friend, Robert Le Blond, whose business had recently failed. Le Blond, secularist, had been active among the Chartists, and treasurer of the Political Refugee Committee. Since Le Blond was both a personal friend and a generous financial supporter of Holyoake’s publishing enterprises, Holyoake felt he “could not be the first to desert him,” though he realized the risk he was taking. Holyoake went on to explain, that Le Blond “quite lost his reason and fled the country, ill, penniless, and insane: and has left three bills amounting together to £130 to meet in May. And I am quite ruined unless aided with some loan.” The Reasoner (Feb. 17, 1856, pp. 49-50) had reported a party given to Le Blond on Jan. 30 by the Secular Society to express sympathy for his illness and troubles.

[1. ]MS in the possession of Co-operative Union Ltd., Holyoake House, Manchester. MS draft in Harriet’s hand at LSE. In reply to Holyoake’s of April 2, MS at LSE, as are also his reply of April 5 and a receipt.

[2. ]George Grote. His letters of March 31 and April 6 to JSM on the subject are at LSE.

[3. ]See preceding Letter.

[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Madame / Madame John Stuart Mill / Poste Restante / à Paris. Postmarks: ORBE / 14 / AOUT / 56, SUISSE; A PONT ??? / 15 / AOUT / 56, and one illegible. Part published in Hayek, pp. 251-52, but misdated 1855.

JSM and his wife, accompanied by Helen and Algernon Taylor, spent much of July and August in Switzerland. At the end of the trip, Harriet went on to Paris, and JSM made a side expedition of a week’s walking tour of the French Jura.

[1. ]MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Madame / Madame John Stuart Mill / Poste Restante / Boulogne sur Mer / France. Postmarks: ??? / 18 / AOUT / 56, LOCLE / 19 AOUT / 56, and others illegible.

[2. ]This letter has not been located

[3. ]Tête de Rang.

[1. ]MS draft at LSE, as is also Holyoake’s reply of Sept. 26, 1856.

[2. ]“Enfranchisement of Women.” See Letters 28 and 35.

Holyoake reprinted and sold as a pamphlet many thousand copies of the article, under the title, “Are Women Fit for Politics? Are Politics Fit for Women?” In his autobiography, Sixty Years of an Agitator’s Life (2 vols., London, 1892), I, p. 225, Holyoake, forgetting this rebuke, says that he obtained permission from Mrs. Mill, through JSM, to circulate her article.

[3. ]The Women’s Rights Convention discussed in the article, at Worcester, Mass., in Oct., 1850.

[4. ]In the next-to-last paragraph of her article Mrs. Mill attacks sentimentality and other vague declamatory elements in women’s struggle for the suffrage, especially in one part of the resolutions introduced at the Worcester meeting (Dissertations, Brit. ed. II, 448, Am. ed. III, 130).

[1. ]MS draft at Johns Hopkins. Filed in envelope addressed: Arthur Hardy Esq. / Adelaide / South Australia. Fourth paragraph published in Elliot, I, 188-89.

[2. ]See Letter 256.

[3. ]Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796-1862), English colonial statesman. The system he devised for the colonization of Australia provided for the sale of land at a fixed price, and for the application of the proceeds to a fund for the promotion of immigration. For JSM’s discussion of the Wakefield system, see Pol. Econ., Book V, chap. xi, sec. 12.

[4. ]The third and fourth volumes of Macaulay’s History of England from the Accession of James II were published in 1855; the first two vols. had been published in 1848.

[5. ]JSM was referring to chaps. vii and xv of Macaulay’s History.

[6. ]George Grote, History of Greece (12 vols., London, 1846-56). For JSM’s reviews of successive vols., see Letter 1, n. 2.

[1. ]MS draft at Yale. Published in Elliot, I, 189-90. Note on verso in JSM’s hand: Answer to Letter dated 3d November 1856 from the Secretary to the Sunday League.

[2. ]The National Sunday League, active particularly between 1856 and 1859, sought to “obtain the opening of the public museums, galleries, libraries, and gardens on Sunday, in London, and in the towns of England, Ireland, and Scotland, for the instruction, recreation, and innocent amusement of the working class.” The League issued The National Sunday League Record, edited by William Duthie, and numerous pamphlets. For a summary of this propaganda, see Robert Cox, The Literature of the Sabbath Question (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1865), II, pp. 313 and 378-80. See also “Sunday in Great Britain,” WR, n.s. IX (April, 1856), 426-56. For JSM’s comments on Sabbatarian legislation, see On Liberty, chap. iv. JSM was elected one of the vice-presidents of the League in 1864.

[1. ]MS in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Herbert Fry (1830-1885), compiler of guide books and handbooks. At this time he was compiling his National Gallery of Photographic Portraits (16 Nos., London [1858]).

[1. ]MS at Bibliothèque Nationale.

[1. ]MS draft at Yale. Published in Elliot, I, 190-92. Added in JSM’s hand: care of Messrs Longman & Co.

[2. ]The pamphlet was entitled, Currency self-regulating and elastic, explained in a letter to his Grace the Duke of Argyll; with introductory chapters on the nature of capital and of money, and an historical sketch of British Currency systems (London, 1855).

[3. ]That is, currency in which the paper bills are not convertible into coinage. In general, JSM argued against inconvertible currency because abuses in issuing paper money could lead to inflation. See his Pol. Econ., Book III, chaps. xiii and xxiv.

[4. ]A group proposing currency reform of an inflationary kind. Its leader was Thomas Attwood (1783-1856), author of pamphlets on political and economic matters. In 1830 he had founded the Birmingham Political Union for the Protection of Public Rights. For JSM’s objections to Attwood’s theories, see Pol. Econ., Book III, chap. xiii, sec. 4.

[5. ]Letters, with one exception headed “The Currency” and signed with pseudonyms such as “West Indian,” appeared in the Morning Post for Nov. 4, 1856, p. 3; Nov. 6, p. 3; Nov. 7, p. 3; Nov. 18, p. 3; Nov. 20, p. 3; Nov. 21, p. 3; and Nov. 24, p. 2.

[6. ]The Bank Charter Act of 1844 was passed under the leadership of Sir Robert Peel; its main provisions called for the separation of the issuing department of the Bank from the department charged with all other banking operations, and, through a complicated series of regulations, a limit upon the amount of paper money the bank could issue. Until the use of cheques late in the century and the extension of credit in other forms, the issuance of paper money was a method of advancing credit. For JSM’s discussion of the provisions of this act, see Pol. Econ., Book III, chap. xxiv. For his 1844 articles on the Bank Charter Question in the Morning Chronicle, see MacMinn, Bibliog., p. 57. In 1857 he gave evidence before the Select Committee on the Operation of the Bank Acts; see Parl. Papers, 1857, 2d session, X, pts. i and ii; reprinted in Collected Works, V, 501-47.

[1. ]MS at Bibliothèque Nationale. Presumably a sequel to Letter 264.

[1. ]MS draft at Yale. Published in Elliot, I, 192-93. Headed in JSM’s hand: à M. Constantin Baer, attaché au ministère de l’Intérieur à Naples. Baer’s letter of May 12 to which this is a reply, is at Johns Hopkins.

Though Baer signed his name as Constantin, his published work was signed Costantino Baer. He was the author of a number of works on government and economics, including L’avere e l’imposta (Torino, 1870) which JSM reviewed (see Letter 1738).

[2. ]Baer in his letter said that he was sending two articles on JSM’s Pol. Econ., a pamphlet on gold, and one on métayage. None of these has been located.

[3. ]The fourth edition, 1857.

[4. ]Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844); reprinted in Collected Works, IV, 231-339.

[5. ]Cf. Pol. Econ., Book IV, chap. vii, sec. 6.

[1. ]MS in the Tocqueville archives. Published in Alexis de Tocqueville, Œuvres Complètes, ed. J.-P. Mayer (9 vols., Paris, 1951-59), vol. VI, Correspondance Anglaise, eds. J.-P. Mayer et Gustave Rudler (1954), pp. 349-50, (c) Librairie Gallimard. Tocqueville’s letter of June 22, 1856, is in Mayer, pp. 348-49, as is also his reply to JSM of Dec. 19, 1856, pp. 350-51. Earlier Letters contains 14 of JSM’s letters to Tocqueville.

[2. ]Ancien Régime et la Révolution (Paris, 1856).

[3. ]Démocratie en Amérique (4 vols., Paris, 1835-40). JSM had reviewed the first two volumes in 1835: “De Tocqueville on Democracy in America,” WR, XXXI (Oct., 1835), 85-129; and the work as a whole in 1840: “Democracy in America,” ER, LXXII (Oct., 1840), 1-47, reprinted in Dissertations, Brit. ed., II, 1-83, Am. ed., II, 79-161.

[1. ]MS now lost. From copy of MS supplied by its owner, Professor Edward A. Shils of the University of Chicago.

[2. ]Sir William Hamilton, at his death on May 6, 1856, left behind him a large body of manuscripts of lectures on logic and metaphysics which he had delivered over the twenty years of his professorship at Edinburgh. These were eventually published, not by Parker but by Blackwood, as Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, eds. H. L. Mansel and J. Veitch (4 vols., Edinburgh, 1859-60). JSM was later to attack Hamilton’s work.

[3. ]If the dating of the letter is correct, this was to be the fourth edition (1857).

[4. ]Possibly On Liberty.