1861
482.
TO GUSTAVE DE BEAUMONT
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. 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. Si même il nous eût été épargné jusqu’à la complétion de son deuxième grand ouvrage! 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. 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 CHADWICK
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, 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-WHITE
le 4 mars 1861.
Mon cher Monsieur
J’ai reçue l’Illustration et la Presse, qui sont très satisfaisantes, et dont j’ai trop tardé à vous remercier. Quant à l’article de la Revue des Deux Mondes, 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. 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-WHITE
le 15 mars 1861.
Mon cher Monsieur
L’article de la Revue Nationale 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. Taine 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 cultes 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 TAINE
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. 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-WHITE
le 28 mars 1861.
Mon cher Monsieur
Rien ne me saurait être plus agréable que de vous avoir pour traducteur de mon nouveau livre. 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-WHITE
- Saint Véran, près Avignon
le 1 mai 1861.
Mon cher Monsieur
Je vous remercie de l’envoi du Journal des Débats. L’article de M. Baudrillart 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, 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. S’il accepte, je m’en occuperai dès mon retour en Angleterre. Je lirais volontiers le livre de M. Odilon-Barrot 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 ELLIS
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. 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 REEVE
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. 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 review 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 Centralisation 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, 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 FERRABOSCHI
May 13 1861
Dear Jane,
You cannot do better than place your papers in Mr Crompton’s hands as he is your trustee, and you have more confidence in him than in Mr Gregson. 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 CHAPMAN
May 18. 1861.
Dear Sir
I am glad that you and Mr Leslie are likely to get on well together, and also that you are so well pleased with my book. 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. 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, 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 CAIRNES
May 19. 1861
Dear Sir
I ought to have acknowledged the receipt of Mr Nisbet’s [sic] article. 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, 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-WHITE
le 26 mai 1861
Mon cher Monsieur
Je vous remercie beaucoup de l’envoi de l’article de Monsieur Baudrillart. Je l’avais déjà lu grâce au hasard qui m’a fait connaître un négociant d’ici, 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’Acbar 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; 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, 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. Y avezvous mis du nouveau? Je lirai votre ouvrage de 1846 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. CHILDS
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.
I have the honor to be
yours very faithfully
J. S. Mill
495.
TO THOMAS HARE
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, 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, and bring you a German newspaper containing some things which I think will amuse you.
Ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
496.
TO HENRY TAYLOR
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, as a general thesis, has obtained so much of your approbation. With regard to its applicability to this country 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. 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, 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 CHAPMAN
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 controversy with much interest. I like several of the papers in this number very much; especially the one on Buckle. It is the only thing yet written about him which seems to me exactly in the right tone. The article on my own book, 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 Leslie 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; 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 SPENCER
July 30. 1861.
Dear Sir
I was very sorry to hear that the state of your health had compelled you to suspend the issue of your “First Principles”. 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, 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, some very important & conclusive evidence has been collected by Mr. Chadwick (& 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 GROTE
Aug. 3. 1861
Dear Mrs Grote
I am very happy to hear that Mr Grote is getting rapidly well.
We will come to you on the 21st with pleasure, 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 CHAPMAN
Aug. 4. 1861.
Dear Sir
I have read Mr Harrison’s letter in the Daily News. 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. 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, 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 CHADWICK
Aug. 8. 1861.
Dear Chadwick
I have had a visit from a Walachian, Mr Alexandre Pétreskou, 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 Meeting 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 paperssent to M. de Lavergne, or will it be time enough when I pass through in September?
Yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
Will you kindly direct the inclosed letter to Fawcett and send it, as I have mislaid his Wiltshire address.
502.
TO CHARLES DUPONT-WHITE
le 8 août 1861.
Mon cher Monsieur
Je commencerai par répondre à vos questions.
Shibboleth, 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. 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 stupidest (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 choice 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, 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 FAWCETT
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.
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
504.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
Aug. 18. 1861
Dear Sir
I have not waited all this time to read your MS, 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 GOMPERZ
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, & 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 Nachrichten & 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. 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. The French translation has been very successful.
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-WHITE
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. 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’Inde 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”. On pourrait peutêtre les appeler des impôts de consommation. On ne pourrait pas les traduire par taxes établiés.
4°. Les repudiating states 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: 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 deadlock 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. COURTNEY
Sept. 19. 1861
Dear Sir
I am glad to have had the opportunity of reading your objections to my arguments on the Income Tax; 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 Committee 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? ]
Sept. 20.1861
Dear Sir
Many thanks for the proof of the second part, 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 PARKES
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.
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 FAWCETT
Sept. 26. 1861
Dear Mr Fawcett
I am very glad to receive such a pleasant account of your proceedings at the British Association, 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. 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.
In revising my Political Economy for a new edition, I have made use of some of your observations on Strikes, 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-WHITE
le 10 octobre 1861
Mon cher Monsieur
Bien des remercimens pour votre Préface. 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’Utile 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. 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. 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. 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, 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, 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 BAIN
[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.
513.
TO T. E. CLIFFE LESLIE
[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.
514.
TO WILLIAM THOMAS THORNTON
[November, 1861]
[A month before, 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 LORIMER
Nov. 2. 1861.
Dear Sir
I am much obliged to you for sending me your article. The tone in which you write about the book, 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 PAULL
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 CAIRNES
Nov. 25. 1861
Dear Sir
I am truly glad that matter so important at this time as what you have written on Slavery 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 quoting 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, 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 Mondes 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) a noble and stirring article by Pressensé, 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? 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, on the relation between justice and utility, which will conclude the subject. The mode of treatment suggested in the last page of your letter 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. 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 BAIN
[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. 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-WHITE
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” 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, 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. 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. GREENE
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, or as Plato thought, by the intractability of the material.
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. 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. 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 LESLIE
Dec. 20. 1861
Dear Sir—
I received the proof of your article 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. 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. 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. 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.
I hope I am not wrong in directing this to Belfast.
522.
TO ARTHUR W. GREENE
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.” 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.
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