1864
670.
TO WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE
Jan. 22. 1864
My dear Sir—
When I took the liberty of sending you Mr Loring’s pamphlet nothing was farther from my thoughts than to engage you in a controversy of any sort. I am much honoured by your having spared time to write to me so fully on the subject, & am very glad to find in the view you take of it, nothing from which I differ in principle. I did not mean to identify myself with all Mr Loring’s sentiments; I think him decidedly unjust to our Government, which has shewn itself throughout in a far more favourable light than the predominant portion of our public. But as he seemed to me to be often right, & when wrong, only in a manner in which it is most natural & scarcely unreasonable that an American shd be so, I thought that his statement would interest you & that your being acquainted with it might perhaps be of use.
In addition to the two important points touched on in your letter, it seems to me that several others are raised by Mr Loring. I pass over those which are evidently untenable, or which have a moral, but not a jurisprudential value. But he argues—
1st. That a State which professing itself neutral does not make all reasonable exertions to enforce the obligations of neutrality upon its own subjects, gives, to the belligerent who is prejudiced by their acts, just ground of complaint, & in certain cases, lays itself open to a demand of indemnity, and that the Gvt of the U. States has faithfully acted on this principle at times when we were belligerents & they were neutrals.
2nd. That the use of neutral territory as a place where an expedition may be fitted out, & from which it may issue & execute warlike operations without having acquired the right to do so in the country of the belligerent whom it serves, is, by international law, not a commercial operation but a hostile act.
3rd. That the Alabama, &c., in burning their prizes before condemnation by any prize court, are acting in a manner forbidden by international law, & which deprives them of any claim to the privileges or immunities which distinguish regularly commissioned cruisers from pirates.
4th. That those cruisers have made use of the British flag in a manner which brings them within the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act, 17 and 18 Vict., chap. 104.
As to the argument which Mr Loring founds on the fact that the ships were built by contract, his reason for insisting so strongly on that point probably is that it makes the precedent of the Santissima Trinidad so far inapplicable. He would no doubt be very glad to get rid of that case altogether, & to have it ruled that ships of war must not be sold at all by a neutral country to a belligerent. This opinion—which I hope I am not mistaken in thinking that you are not far from agreeing in—is forcibly maintained in an article by Professor Cairnes in Macmillan’s Magazine for the present month, which seems to me one of the ablest & most valuable papers which this controversy has called forth. But to return to Mr Loring. He regards the building by contract as intrinsically important simply as evidence of intent. You think that the intent of the Confederate agents may admit of proof, but not that of the builder. Doubtless it is in general neither provable nor probable that the motive of the builder was one of hostility or was any other than the profit of the transaction, but his intention, I apprehend, depends only upon whether or not he knew that he was selling the ship to an agent of a belligerent. I presume that on the general principles of law any one would be held to have intended all such consequences of his actions as he foreknew or expected.
I shd be much to blame in replying to your letter by so long a one as this, did I not add my sincere hope that you will not consider it necessary to make the smallest answer to it.
I thank you heartily for your kind invitation to your breakfasts & I promise myself to make use of the privilege. I do not expect to be in England for the first two months after Easter, but shall be there in June
I am my Dear Sir
very truly yours
671.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
Jan. 24. 1864
Dear Sir
I thank you for the separate copy of your article, which I had already read in Macmillan, and which seems to me extremely valuable. I have recommended it to Mr Gladstone in my answer to a long and on the whole very satisfactory letter which he wrote to me on the subject of Mr Loring’s pamphlet. Though he was not favourably impressed by the pamphlet, he appears to have spontaneously arrived at a conclusion very similar to yours—namely that the whole subject of building warships for foreign belligerents requires an “international overhauling”, as a consequence of which, the case of the Santisima [sic] Trinidad will have to “go to the wall.” I gather from various expressions that he thinks the sale of ships of war by neutrals to belligerents should not be regarded as a legitimate commercial enterprise even in the circumstances and to the extent authorised by that precedent. It is very satisfactory to find a man in Mr Gladstone’s position so far advanced on the subject.
I have not heard from the Duke of Argyll, but that he is with us on this as he is on the main question, there can be little doubt.
Things continue to advance in the right direction in America. It does one good to read of negroes at the President’s levee: One is consoled for the madness of all Germany by the progress of the cause of freedom in America, and by the wonderful resurrection of the spirit of liberty in France, combined with a love of peace which even sympathy with Poland does not prevail over.
Do not write again here, as we return to Blackheath early in February. I wish I could hope that you would be at the meeting of the Political Economy Club but I suppose your professorial functions interfere. I am Dear Sir
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
672.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
Jan. 27. 1864.
Dear Chadwick
I did not answer your last letter when I received it, but waited in hopes that I might have something interesting to say, or to send. But the spirit has not yet moved my daughter to write anything further about Greece. The information seems insufficient as to what is going on there, and it is longer than usual since we have heard from any of our correspondents at Athens. We have received the Penny Newsman regularly, and are very well pleased with it, all but the articles on foreign affairs. I wish you had some regular writer who understands European politics, for respecting America I have no fault to find. You deserve success, for you are working very hard against many difficulties.
Do not write again to Avignon, as we expect to be at Blackheath next month in time for the Club meeting.
We have just sent you some honey from Mount Hymettus which we have lately received from Athens and which I hope you will do me the pleasure to accept. I am
Dear Chadwick
ever yrs truly
J. S. Mill.
673.
TO THOMAS HARE
Jan. 27. 1864
Dear Sir
My chief object in the present letter is to ask you not to write again to Avignon, as we return to Blackheath next month.
I was much interested by what you told me in your last respecting the progress of opinion on the subject of your plan—especially the accounts from Frankfort. I have not seen the article you mention in Fraser, but will make a point of seeing it while in England. I should have very much liked to have seen the article which you wrote on the land and house question. The editor of Macmillan is a great goose for not publishing it. Whatever people may say against Cobden, his controversy with the Times has for the first time in the country turned people’s minds to the question of small properties in land—a thing I tried hard to do, seventeen years ago, at the time of the Irish famine but without the slightest success.
Your labours about Christ’s Hospital are sure to be useful some day, and not a distant one, even if Gladstone is not able to do anything with the subject at present. The overhauling of the great misapplied charitable endowments cannot be long postponed after his great speech.
We have ventured to send you a small portion of some honey from Mount Hymettus which we have just received from Athens, and which you will give us great pleasure by accepting.
Helen joins with me in begging to be remembered to your daughters.
I am Dear Sir
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
674.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
Feb. 17 [1864]
Dear Chadwick
My name is disengaged for the Club meeting, and I hold it at your disposal.
Your appointment by the Institute does them credit and is of some moment, as it authorizes you to invite their attention to various important subjects by sending them your writings and other documents. It is probably owing to Senior and his many friends in the Academy and in Paris generally that you are so justly appreciated there. I am
yrs ever truly
J. S. Mill
675.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
Feb. 22. 1864
Dear Sir
I duly received your interesting letter of the 5th, which I have ever since waited for leisure to acknowledge.
Your article on Ireland seems to me excellent, and, as far as I can see, stands perfectly well without the omitted part; but I much regret the omission, as a discussion by you, of the nature and grounds of property in land, would have been the most valuable part of the article. The editor may have been, and probably was, short of room, but had this reason not existed, I should have expected beforehand that some other would have been found for avoiding the insertion of anything fundamental on that question. It is one of the subjects which the Edinburgh Review and those by whom it guides itself are shy of, and on which they act as long as possible on the maxim quieta ne movere.
The conversation at the P. E. Club was good and interesting, but scarcely a discussion, being all on one side. All thought that financial embarrassments are no hindrance to the carrying on of a really popular war, or of any war by a government strong enough to enforce sacrifices.
I have not yet told you the dénouement of my correspondence with Gladstone. In my answer to him I enumerated a number of points, raised by Loring, to which he had not adverted in his letter. The result was, that he referred the pamphlet and my commentary on it to the Judge Advocate General.
About the time when I heard from you, I received a note from the Duke of Argyll in a very satisfactory tone respecting the pamphlet and the subject generally. I found a copy of the pamphlet waiting for me here, so that if your copies from America have not arrived, I have one at your call which I will send to any one whose attention you may wish to direct to it.
I send this letter to Dublin from whence I presume it will be forwarded if you are still absent.
I am Dear Sir
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
676.
TO WILLIAM LONGMAN
Feb. 24, 1864
Dear Sir—
The prices you mention for the Liberty & the Representative Govt will do very well, but I am disappointed that there is so little difference in the case of the Pol Econ. between the estimated price of a double column edition & one in the ordinary form. In the estimate you favoured me with at Avignon the proposed price for the cheaper of the two forms was 10/6 to 12/. From this & from what seemed to be your own impression I had hoped that a double column edition could be offered at 7/6 or 8/. A smaller difference would not bring the book within reach of a much larger class, and could hardly be an equivalent to the purchasers for the difference of type.
677.
TO WILLIAM LONGMAN
Feb. 29. 1864
Dear Sir—
I am very glad that you will be able to afford the Pol. Econ. at a lower price. I propose giving up all pecuniary advantage to myself from the popular editions, to enable them to be sold cheaper. With regard to advertising you are the best judge. I shd think that the most useful advertising would be in the papers which are most read by the more intelligent of the working classes—namely, I suppose, principally the cheap press, but there may be higher priced papers which are taken at working men’s clubs, mechanics’ institutions &c. It is probable that in revising the book for the cheap edition I may be able to save some space by omitting some of the long quotations in notes, especially those in foreign languages. I do not however expect much saving from this cause, but there is an Appx to the first volume of considerably more than a sheet, which it is quite unnecessary to include in the popular edition. To set against this there may be some small additions to the text, but I do not anticipate their extending to anything like the same number of pages.
I have no objection whatever to the publication of Mr. Stebbing’s analysis of the Logic. I remember thinking very favorably of it.
Thanks for the account. I was quite unprepared to find that the balance is in my favour.
678.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
March 6. 1864
Dear Sir
I beg you to accept the few volumes I sent. Your doing so will be a favour to me more than to yourself, as I am clearing out the books I do not want, to make room for those I do. Lord Brougham’s book is a rich collection of facts respecting the institutions and constitutional history of all countries, and you may find it useful for reference.
I like your Essay on the Colonies very much, though I do not go the length of all you say respecting their advantages. But I agree in many of your arguments and in your conclusion. I have not seen the reply to “Utilitarianism”. The author has not sent it to me, and most of the new books on the foundations of morality are such trumpery that it would be waste of money to buy any of them without first seeing it, or being credibly informed that it is worth reading. I shall endeavour to see it, however, and the more so if you determine on reviewing it, that I may be better able to appreciate your review. Your letter in this week’s Penny Newsman is well calculated for the effect you wish to produce by it.
My daughter and I join in best remembrances to Mrs Plummer, and I am
Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
679.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
March 14. 1864.
Dear Chadwick
I had already read Mr Christie’s paper, and liked it very much. I should be very well disposed to become a member of such an association as is projected if it were started with a fair prospect of support from influential persons of the bribing classes.
ever yrs truly
J. S. Mill
680.
TO THOMAS BAYLEY POTTER
14 March 1864
I am grieved that there is a prospect of a discontinuance of the Co-operator; which is so valuable for the means of keeping before the minds of Co-operators the principles and rules on which their success depends. I hope there will be a few subscriptions towards paying the debt; which is the immediate difficulty: but the Co-operative Societies ought to feel the value of such an organ and not to leave it dependent on outsiders for its existence.
681.
TO THOMAS BAYLEY POTTER
March 17. 1864
Dear Sir
Since receiving your letter of the 14th, I have thought a good deal about the scheme for a Political Science Association. It has prima facie much to recommend it, and your willingness to encounter the many difficulties and great trouble of starting it is worthy of the energy and zeal in a good cause of which you have already given so many proofs. There are, however, many things to be considered before embarking in such an experiment. If the thing cannot be made a decided success, an abortive attempt would only do harm; while, even in case of success, if the composition of the Society and the character of its proceedings were such as to identify it in appearance with any particular set of opinions, it would be equally a failure as to the end proposed, which I understand to be, not a Parliamentary Reform League but a public arena for the discussion of general principles and their applications. The success of the Social Science Association I take to be owing to the fact that it really brings together persons of all opinions consistent with the profession of a desire for social improvement. To be successful, the Society you propose must do the same; to admit all varieties of opinion is not enough, it must be able really to succeed in bringing them together. There is another principle of the Social Science Assocn, adherence to which seems to me indispensable. That body has made a great step in advance by admitting women, in theory and in practice, to take part, equally with men, both in its administration and in its proceedings. Not to do the same in founding a rival society would be a step back, and (speaking for myself) would prevent my feeling justified in giving my adhesion to the project. In any case, while I feel the very high compliment of your thinking of me for such a position as that of President, I must beg to be excused from accepting it. I am convinced that with the same amount of time and trouble I can do more for my opinions as an individual writer than by taking an active part in any Association. Neither is a person with such decided opinions as mine, desirable as President. It would be injurious to the Society to be identified with any unpopular opinions, while it would be a disadvantage to the opinions to be held accountable either for the failure of the Society, or for anything in its proceedings which might be disliked. The sort of President you require would be some one known to be liberal in a general way, and on questions generally (not on some kinds of questions only) but not strongly connected in the public mind with any special opinions which are in a small minority—in a sort of neutral position as to politics, and of a standing and personal position to be looked up to independently of his opinions. After much consideration, I can think of no one but Lord Stanley who would suit your purpose. What chance there would be of his consenting I have no means of knowing. You could not make the proposal to him without having a good list to shew of persons who would consent to be Vice Presidents if he would be President; and it is of importance that these should be of as various a character as possible. I am quite willing to be one of these (if the plan, when matured, seems to me a good one) as that would only shew general approbation, without the grave responsibility necessarily attaching to the President, and which I could not undertake unless I were prepared to give an amount of time and thought to the conduct of the Association which I sincerely think would not, in my case, be attended with any equivalent benefit to its objects.
I return the letters which you inclosed—Mr Cobden’s suggestions seem to me, as far as they go, very right and judicious.
I am not acquainted with M. Renan, otherwise I would with great pleasure have given you an introduction to him. I should think you could easily obtain one.
The Cooperator is most welcome to any use it can make of my note.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
T. B. Potter Esq.
682.
TO ALEXANDER BAIN
B[lackheath] P[ark]. March 18, 1864
Dear Bain—
I was much delighted by receiving your new edition. You must have worked very hard to get it out so soon. I have not yet come to much of the new matter as I am reading the book regularly through from the beginning, but the remaining portion of my task with Hamilton will now be plain sailing. I am very glad the additions are considerable as they will all tend to the more complete clearing up of difficulties.
I have read your Grammar with considerable care & attention. It is a great improvement on any other grammar that I have seen & as far as I can judge I think you right on all the questions of theory. Nobody has so completely got to the bottom of Shall & Will. As to minute details I found myself every now & then differing from you—chiefly though not always in cases where you seemed to me to draw grammatical principles too tight, to the exclusion of modes of speech which have a real raison d’être. But all these are points open to discussion & I should not have much confidence in my own impressions if you did not agree with them when stated. I have not written them down, but I have made references by which I can recal[l] them if wanted.
In consequence mainly of your last letter I have been reading Spencer’s First Principles over again. On the whole I like it less than the first time. He is so good that he ought to be better. His a priori system is more consistent than Hamilton’s, but quite as fundamentally absurd—in fact there is the same erroneous assumption at the bottom of both. And most of his general principles strike me as being little more than verbal or at most empirical generalisations, with no warrant for their being considered laws. As you truly say, his doctrine that the Persistence of Force is a datum of Consciousness is exactly Hamilton’s strange theory of causation. But how weak his proof of it. We cannot (he says) conceive a beginning because all consciousness is consciousness of difference, & when the two terms of the comparison are Something & Nothing, one of the two is not a possible object of consciousness at all. This is surely a play on the word Nothing, very like the one which Hamilton shews up in his discussion of the different theories of Causation. “Nothing” cannot be an object of consciousness, but the absence of Something may be. We can be conscious of x, & conscious of the universe minus x, or of ourselves minus x, and the difference between these two states is the difference required by the law of Consciousness.
Neither does Spencer, any more than Tyndall, remove any of my difficulties about the Conservation of Force. The law of Conservation as exhibited in the cases which go farthest to prove it, consists in this—that one form of force only ceases to manifest itself when a force equivalent in quantity, but of a different form, manifests itself instead. When a ball strikes another ball, the force which the first ball loses does not become latent; the motion lost is either transferred entire to the other ball, or if any of it is lost sight of, the corresponding amount of force reappears in an increase of temperature. As, however, we know that there is latent heat, I can conceive that force in general may become latent, & remain unmanifested even for many geological periods, reappearing identical in quantity at their close. But I have not seen the formulae of the theory so expressed as to place such a fact as this in a rational & comprehensible light. I require a great many explanations respecting the molecular motion which is supposed to be the material antecedent of the phenomenon heat. Force may be latent, but what is the meaning of latent motion? Is the molecular motion supposed to continue during the period of latency? When an object is at a fixed temperature, is then a fixed degree of molecular motion always taking place in it? Spencer’s doctrine, as a connected theory, fails entirely if there is not. Yet surely all that can be proved is that a molecular motion takes place at every change of temperature, and surely it is contrary to all our knowledge of material forces to suppose that a motion either of bodies or of particles can be perpetually going on for a cycle of ages in a resisting medium without diminution.
With regard to the general theory, difficulties multiply round me the longer I consider it. Spencer says, “Just that amount of gravitation force which the sun’s heat overcame in raising the atoms of water is given out again in the fall of those atoms to the same level,” thus implying that the force of gravity is not acting all the while & kept in equilibrium by a counter force, in the cessation of which it again manifests itself, of course neither increased nor diminished in amount; but is actually (so to speak) absorbed & again restored by the annihilation of an equivalent quantity of heat. Now if this be so, none of the heat can be expended as heat; for if the agent which destroys the heat, has its own temperature raised by the process (which it surely has), there remains so much the less heat to be reconverted into gravitation, & the body will not fall, as I apprehend it does, with a force exactly equal to that which was overcome in raising it.
Again, Spencer says “The investigations of Dulong, Petit, & Neumann have proved a relation in amount between the affinities of combining bodies & the heat evolved during their combination.” I should much like to know the numerical law of this relation, as it could not fail to enlarge our conception of the meaning of the negative sign. It would be interesting to know what strength of the affinity corresponds to the “heat evolved” by a freezing mixture.
Again, I do not understand how the theory adjusts itself to the ordinary phenomenon of accelerating force. If the earth were falling into the sun, it would, when it had passed through half the distance, be acted upon by four times the original force to begin with, & in addition, by the enormous momentum generated by the acquired velocity. In what antecedent form did this enormous additional force exist? Is it all acquired at the expense of heat? & would its development be attended by an inconceivably great amount of diminution of temperature? If these are not difficulties to you their being so to me can only arise from my ignorance of the subject; but as I desire very much to understand it, I warn you of the demand which will be made upon your didactic faculties when we have the opportunity of discussing it together.
I am particularly glad that you will be in London up to a later date than last year, as I shall not return to England so early in June as usual; notwithstanding which we shall now have plenty of time for discussion and comparison of notes. I hope to have at least some chapters of the Hamilton in a state to shew to you when we meet.
With kind regards to Mrs Bain
683.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
March 18, 1864
Dear Chadwick
Many thanks for your kind proposals. I have, however, declined the invitation of the Duc d’Aumale. The fact is, my sympathies with the Republican party in France are so strong that I cannot willingly place myself under an obligation to a conspicuous person of any other party, however high a respect I may have for him individually, and however glad I should be to meet him at any other person’s house.
I hope we shall find some other opportunity for a walk together. I am
Dear Chadwick
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
684.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
March 28. 1864
Dear Sir
I thank you very much for the opportunity of reading Mr Loring’s two letters. I do not see how our Government can get over the breach of international obligation (even on the principles of Historicus) in not interdicting to the Alabama all British ports. The question of culpable negligence in letting her get out originally, like all questions which turn on degree, is open to endless dispute, but on the other I cannot see that there is a word to say.
On the question in your postscript, so far as I am qualified to have an opinion, it agrees with yours. Several copies of Loring’s pamphlet have been sent to me from different quarters, so if you want one or two, I can supply you. Do you wish the Boston papers to be returned to you? and in what way shall I return the Bombay documents which I am indebted to you for the pleasure of reading?
“Plutology” has been sent to me, but I have not yet had time to look into it, and shall now think many other duties more urgent than that of reading it. I should ascribe the opinions given of it by the Spectator and Reader not to defects of honesty, but to sheer ignorance and incompetence on the subject.
I am very happy to hear of your intended volume of Essays. Thornton’s book is out of print. In consequence of the popular attention now, for the first time in England, raised on the subject I have urged the author to reprint it, which he will probably do. Meanwhile I will either find you a copy, or send you mine. The discussion of the subject at the Club was interesting and well supported, but, like all discussions by that body of the questions of the future as distinguished from those of the past, it was a sad exposure of the nakedness of the land. I almost think we need a Junior Political Economy Club. But the same end may be better attained by getting good recruits into this. I do not yet know what will be the question for April 8th. Is there a chance of your being there? I shall; but it will be my last time until July.
yours ever truly
J. S. Mill
685.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
March 29. 1864
Dear Sir
I thank you very much for the various writings of yours that you have lately sent me, and which I have read with the usual pleasure. The number of the National Magazine which contained two of your papers that you might like to give the benefit of to others besides us, I included in a parcel which I made up for you, containing the last Westminster Review and some numbers of Fraser. But by the mistake of a servant, it was taken to the office of the London Parcels Delivery Company instead of the Railway Office, and I am afraid that it may not have reached you.
As I have another copy of Herbert Spencer’s “Essays, Scientific, Political and Speculative,” I beg that you will accept as a gift the copy I lent you. I neglected to make a note of the books I lent you, but I think Herbert Spencer’s volume on Education was one: this, and the two volumes of Buckle, are the only books, so far as I remember, which I wish returned; but about those there is not the smallest hurry.
We leave England for the spring about the 10th of April.
With our kind remembrances to Mrs Plummer
believe me always
yours truly
J. S. Mill
686.
TO GUSTAVE D’EICHTHAL
le 30 mars 1864
Mon cher d’Eichthal
Je serais bien aise de lire la préface de Saint-Simon, sachant bien qu’Auguste Comte a été injuste envers lui, comme en général envers tous ceux qui avaient cessé de lui plaire. Du reste, ne vous donnez pas la peine de la faire copier d’abord parceque je ne puis pas encore m’occuper du travail sur Comte, et je pense bien que je vous reverrai auparavant; secondement, parceque dans ce travail il sera peu question de la biographie de Comte; d’autant plus que ceux qui disputent autour de son tombeau sont tellement en désaccord sur les faits, que je désespère d’arriver à la vérité.
J’ai trouvé excellente votre lettre à M. Guéroult, et j’ai vu avec grand plaisir que vous vous proposez de la faire suivre par d’autres lettres ou articles sur le Saint-Simonisme.
Lord Houghton est, comme il vous a paru, un homme d’un mérite réel. Connaissez-vous ses poësies? Il y en a gré méritant de vivre. Comme homme politique, il a toujours eu une conduite très louable, malgré une famille et une éducation Tory de vieille trempe.
Veuillez bien remercier votre frère de son travail sur les banques. Sans partager toutes ses doctrines, je trouve son livre très utile, et fait pour dissiper les nuages qui dans la plupart des esprits français obscurcissent encore les principes les plus élémentaires de la thème du crédit.
Tout à vous
J. S. Mill
687.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
April 1. 1864
Dear Chadwick
There is great justice in what you say in your letter, and the question altogether is an unfortunate one to be presented to the working people. But since the Mazzini and Stansfeld affair has forced the subject on, it seems neither right in itself nor just to individuals that it should be discussed as if there was only one side to it. We think that what you have done is exactly the best that could be done, viz. to publish, from a correspondent, one side, accompanied by your own strong adhesion to the other.
I meant to attend the discussion at the Law Amendment Society even before I heard from you. If it would suit you to take dinner here on Monday at five, we could go to the meeting together, and could thus get an opportunity for a little talk. We leave for Avignon in about a week
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
688.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
April 2. 1864
Dear Sir
I write at once to say that it is needless to send the N. American Review, as I also have received a copy of it, which I have not yet had time to read.
Mr Loring’s last letters seem to me very inferior to his first. His line of argument is sometimes almost silly. How absurd to say that England ought not to recognise the South as belligerents because they have no ports. Have they no ports because their ports are just now blockaded, a blockade which may cease at any moment, or become merely nominal? Besides they were not, I believe, even blockaded when the recognition took place. Again, are inland countries never to be recognised as belligerents? It seems to me that drawing attention to such weak productions would do more harm than good to the cause.
The change of the New York Herald on the subject of slavery is indeed most significant. The Times article is also a valuable indication though it will not prevent, and has not prevented the Times, a day or two afterwards, from returning to the old tone. And such is the obtuseness of the public that it will not discover any contradiction.
I, also, suspect that L.S. is Leslie Stephen, but as I have no proof of his knowledge of the subject, and great proof of yours, I have little doubt that he has in this case shewn ignorance of it.
I will send to you by post two of the three copies of Loring which I believe I possess.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
689.
TO HERBERT SPENCER
April 3. 1864.
Dear Sir
I am fortunately able to send you the letter you want. No Englishman who has read both you and Comte, can suppose that you have derived much from him. No thinker’s conclusions bear more completely the marks of being arrived at by the progressive development of his own original conceptions; while, if there is any previous thinker to whom you owe much, it is evidently (as you yourself say) Sir W. Hamilton. But the opinions in which you agree with Comte, and which as you truly observe, are in no way peculiar to him, are exactly those which would make French writers class you with him; because, to them, Comte and his followers are the only thinkers who represent opposition to their muddy metaphysics.
I myself owe much more to Comte than you do, though, in my case also, all my principal conclusions had been reached before I saw his book. But in speculative matters (not in practical) I often agree with him where you do not, and, among other subjects, on this particular one, the Classification of the Sciences. The fact you mention, of your having read only a portion of his Cours de Phil[osophie] Positive, explains some things to me which I did not understand previously: for, if you had read the entire book, I think you would have recognised that several of the things which you urge as objections to his theory, are part of the theory.
I have lately had occasion to re-read, and am still reading, your Principles of Psychology. I do not agree any more than I did before with the doctrine of the Introduction; but as to the book itself, I cannot help expressing to you how much my opinion of it, though already high, has been raised (I hope from a progress in my own mind) by this new reading. There is much in it that did not by any means strike me before as it does now: especially the parts which shew how large a portion of our mental operations consists in the recognition of relations between relations. It is very satisfactory to see how you and Bain, each in his own way, have succeeded in affiliating the conscious operations of mind to the primary unconscious organic actions of the nerves, thus filling up the most serious lacuna and removing the chief difficulty in the association psychology.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
690.
TO ALEXANDER BAIN
April 10. 1864
Dear Bain—
I hope you have received the number you wanted of the Revue des [Deux] M[ondes]. If not, let me know. I shall wish it returned, as we keep the review for binding, but it will be time enough when you come to London, or later if you have need of it longer.
I have finished your new edition. I have not compared it minutely with the old, but I think you have greatly improved the book; both as to the thoughts & the mode of exposition. The only point on which I find much matter for comment is the account you give of Association by Contrast. No doubt, the relativity of all Consciousness (in your sense of relativity, which is not the same as Hamilton’s) accounts for part of the phenomena, & seems to be the real explanation of some cases which you have very successfully analysed. But I do not think it will do as a general explanation, nor do I think it fits your leading instances. According to the law of relativity the correlative which shd be suggested by large is not small but ordinary. If a thing is only large relatively to what is small we do not call it large, simply. I am myself inclined (I speak under correction) to solve the question of Contrast as a source of Association by denying its existence. I cannot find in myself that present suffering has any tendency to recall my idea of former happiness. On the contrary, it tends, I think, as one might suppose beforehand, in the way of obstructive association to exclude that idea. What is real in the case is, I think, that during the state of suffering, the idea of previous enjoyments may be recalled by something which is associated with it in the way of resemblance or contiguity, & that then the clashing of the two simultaneous emotions arrests the attention upon them, intensifies the consciousness of them both, suggests the additional idea of change or vicissitude, & the painful one of change for the worse, & all this being intimately mixed up with the state of present suffering, people fancy it is the suffering which suggested the remembrance when, in truth, it was an obstacle to it.
I have also read through Spencer’s Princ. of Psychology, which is as much better than I thought, as the First Principles are less good. He is, no doubt, a great deal too certain of many things, & on some he is clearly wrong, but much less so than I fancied (barring the Universal Postulate, on which he now tells me that my difference from him is chiefly verbal, but I do not think so). He has a great mastery over the obscurer applications of the associative principle. As you say, he is particularly good on the subject of resistance & extension. Still his argument against Hamilton does not thoroughly satisfy me. There seems to be an occult petitio principii in it. He argues that we cannot acquire the idea of extension from sight alone because that idea involves muscular feelings, which last is just the point to be proved. Of course the idea such as we now have it involves muscular feelings, & any idea we could have got from sight must have been very unlike our present notion of extension; but that distinction is perfectly well drawn by Reid, in his Geometry of Visibles. What I want to know is, exactly what idea of one thing as outside another we could have obtained by sight: whether merely the vague feeling of two simultaneous colours or what more than this. A similar question arises as to touch: if two distinct parts of the skin came simultaneously into passive contact with objects, should we apart from other experience distinguish two sensations or only one mass of sensation; & if we should distinguish two simultaneous sensations, is this simultaneous consciousness of a plurality of sensations what we mean by outness; as if so, we might acquire that idea from the simultaneity of a taste & a smell.
I cannot quite make out why you advised me to read the Fichte. I find nothing at all in it. It is a fanciful theory to account for imaginary facts. I do not see how his preconscious states can have had the merit even of suggesting to you or Spencer the first germ of what both of you have written with a real science & philosophy to connect our conscious with our purely organic states.
We leave this week for Avignon but it is not quite certain on what day. If you should be writing this week it does not matter whether you address your letter here or to Avignon, as if it does not find us here it will be forwarded.
691.
TO THE SECRETARY OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY
April 13, 1864.
Sir,—
I have the honour of submitting through you to the Council of the Royal Horticultural Society a memorial from twelve botanists, accompanied by vouchers, on the subject of the prizes offered by the Society for country herbaria; also an original memorial from five Manchester botanists on the same subject.—I have the honour to be, sir, your most obedient servant,
J. S. Mill
The Secretary of the
Royal Horticultural Society
692.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
April 15. 1864
Dear Chadwick
As I think you expressed a wish to know something about the history of the American Sanitary Commission, I have sent to you by Book Post a number of the North American Review containing a valuable account of its commencements.
I inclose an expression of gratitude to the Penny Newsman which I have found in one of the best of the American papers—edited by the poet Bryant.
ever yrs truly
J. S. Mill
693.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
Monday evening
[April 18, 1864]
Dear Sir
Your note was only delivered here at six this evening. We were a little anxious on account of your not coming, and are very sorry for the cause. I hope most sincerely that you were sufficiently better today, to be able to see Garibaldi. Mr Thornton was very much pleased when he heard you were coming, and disappointed at not seeing you, but I hope he may be able to meet you here the next time you come.
We leave for Avignon on Thursday.
With our kind remembrances to Mrs Plummer, I am
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
694.
TO ISA CRAIG
April 26. 1864
Dear Madam
I learn with great satisfaction from your letter, which has only just reached me, that the funds of the Society for the Employment of Women are really used for enlarging the number of occupations open to them; and I enclose a donation towards the object from myself and my daughter Miss Helen Taylor.
My absence from England will of course prevent me from attending the meeting on the 29th but I need hardly say that I should consider its object as a most important step in advance towards the improvement both of women themselves and of their position.
I am Dear Madam
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
Miss Isa Craig.
695.
TO EARL GREY
May 13, 1864
My dear Lord
I am much obliged by the opportunity you have given me of reading the new chapters of your Essay on Parliamentary Government in the present stage of their progress. As you have added to the honour of a very flattering mention of what I have written on the subject, that of inviting any remarks which occur to me, I readily avail myself of the invitation, though much of what I have to say has probably presented itself to your own mind.
You already know, as well as I could state, and better than I could state in a few words, in what respects we agree and differ on the general principles of the question. I presume that, my principles being such as you are aware of, what you are desirous of knowing in the present case is the impression made on me by your practical suggestions. I entirely agree with you that Parliamentary Reform is a subject which can only be usefully considered as a whole; since, the unobvious consequences of political changes being still more important than the obvious ones, a change in only one part of a political system, though in itself desirable, may do as much harm as good, while several changes made at once, and well adapted to one another, may secure all the good & guard against the harm. In your various proposals you have been guided by this just idea, and it seems to me that they have been suggested by a more enlarged conception than is at all common among politicians, both of the evils which exist, and of those which there might be danger of introducing by the remedies.
To some of your proposals I attach great importance. The first place among these, I give to the representation of minorities, which would be obtained, to a very useful extent, by the cumulative vote. Mr Hare’s plan, however, seems to me vastly superior both in the direct and in the indirect benefits it would produce; and the supposed difficulty of working it would, I am almost certain, in a great measure disappear after a little experience. The plan has been several times discussed in the legislatures of the two principal Australian colonies, and though not yet adopted, I have been struck by the proof given in the debates how perfectly the great majority of the speakers, both Conservative and Radical, understood it, and how generally the best of them, on both sides, supported it. I feel confident that it would require nothing for success but a real desire in the public to make it succeed. This does not yet exist in England, but in a colony there is less prejudice against novelties. In Australia, Conservatives favour the plan as a check to the absolute power of numerical majorities, and Democrats because it is a direct & obvious corollary from the democratic principle.
Your proposal for allowing the House of Commons to join to itself by cooptation a certain number of members, I am more doubtful about, though quite alive to the inconvenience which it is intended to meet, that of governments with so small a majority that they cannot carry, and dare not propose, anything disliked by even a small number of their supporters. But it does not seem likely that a plan, even if adopted, would be permanent, of which the avowed object would be that a Government or a policy might have a considerable majority in the House for the remainder of a Parliament, though it had ceased to have a majority in the constituencies. This would scarcely, I think, be accepted, unless combined with a great reduction in the duration of parliaments—perhaps even to annual. But there is another mode of cooptation which though it would not attain so completely the particular object, would probably attain it partially, and would be much less objectionable in other respects, viz. that the House should elect a certain number of members, not by lists, but by a modification of Mr Hare’s principle, in the mode which I have recommended for a portion of the House of Lords, and which you yourself propose in another case. This would add a very valuable class of members to the House: while it would effect the objects you have in view in your proposal for the election by Parliament of fifteen life members; a proposal open to objections, both apparent and real, which cannot have escaped your notice.
The objections I have urged against two stages of election are, certainly, considerably weakened, though not removed, by your suggestion that the election of electors should take place in the regular course of affairs, without waiting till Parliament is dissolved or a vacancy occurs in the representation. But if there is to be indirect election, an idea occurs to me which may be worth bringing under your consideration. I attach great importance to giving a vote of some sort to every person who comes up to such an educational standard as can be made accessible to all. But as long as manual labourers are a separate class, I do not wish them to have the complete command of the House. You, again, think it desirable to admit that class to a considerable, though not a preponderant influence. Might not these desirable conditions be all realised, at least for some time to come, by such an arrangement as this: The present electoral qualification, with the improvements it admits of, to remain in force for direct votes: but all the non-electors who can read, write, and calculate to be allowed to choose electors, say one in ten or one in five of their number, who should form, along with the direct electors, the parliamentary constituency? By this plan the working classes would obtain a substantial power in Parliament but not the complete control of it. And this is perhaps the only shape in which the attaching of unequal value to the votes of different electors, which I have proposed in the form of plural voting, would have much chance of being adopted.
The only remark of a non-practical character which I will make on any part of your two chapters, is, that though there are many great faults in the working of democratic institutions in America (some of which the salutary shock that the American mind is now undergoing, will have a tendency to correct) I do not think that the protective tariffs can justly be laid to the charge of democracy; for I believe that Protectionism is the creed, in America, of the majority, both of the wealthy and of the literary classes including even the political economists; & though I am far from thinking that they are in the right, there are some things to be said for their opinion, in the circumstances of America, which are not applicable to the old countries of Europe.
Allow me to add that Mr Hare’s name is not Julius but Thomas, and that his book (not pamphlet) is entitled, A Treatise on Representation, Parliamentary and Municipal. There is a pamphlet by Professor Fawcett which explains the plan more simply and clearly than the book, but I believe it is out of print. Mr Fawcett himself had however some copies a short time ago. I am
my dear Lord
very faithfully yours
J. S. Mill
696.
TO PETER ALFRED TAYLOR
Avignon, May 14, 1864
Dear Sir—
I do not know whether you are aware that Messrs. Currie are returning cheques sent to them for the free testimonial to General Garibaldi. I enclose the letter they have sent to me with two cheques returned, and I send them two new ones for the same amount.
I am, dear Sir, very truly yours,
J. S. Mill
697.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
May 16. 1864
Dear Sir
I was very glad to hear from you, and to hear such good accounts of your proceedings. By good luck I have two French newspapers which together contain the whole of Emile Ollivier’s report. I will send them to you either by this post or the next, and along with them some other numbers I have, containing part of the debate on the subject in the Corps Législatif. I will also procure Casimir Périer’s pamphlet and send it to you.
Having a great deal to do I cannot say more at present. I am
yours very sincerely
J. S. Mill
698.
TO GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE
May 31, 1864
Dear Sir
I think your projected paper has a chance of being very useful, and I will willingly contribute to the “Publicity Fund” £20 if it is to be paid down, or be responsible for £50 if it is a question of guarantee. About literary help I cannot as yet say anything.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
699.
TO THE NATIONAL REFORM UNION
June 9, 1864
Dear Sirs
I have had the honour of viewing your communication dated June 3rd, informing me that I have been nominated one of the Vice Presidents of the National Reform Union and requesting me to accept that office.
I entirely agree in the wish that a new movement should be commenced for Reform and feel myself much honoured in being thought, by a body of my countrymen, a fit person to take a prominent part in it. To justify me, however, in doing so it would be necessary that my opinions, and those of the promoters of the movement, should coincide much more than appears to be the case. I do not agree in all the points of the Society programme; and those which I do agree in, I could not join in agitating for, unless in conjunction with others on which the programme is silent. For these reasons it is not in my power to accept your flattering proposal.
I am,
Very truly yours,
J. S. Mill.
700.
TO THEODOR GOMPERZ
Blackheath Park, June 26, 1864.
. . . I have now been so long without news of any kind from you, that I much wish to know how you are in health, and how you are going on in all respects. You would be very much mistaken if you thought that I feel less interested in you, or less desirous to hear from you, than before the painful circumstances which were the subject of our latest correspondence. If these circumstances make any difference, it is the contrary way. And, besides my interest in you, I feel a strong interest in what you do. I believe you to be capable, as few are, of doing important things, both in philosophy and in erudition—the former of a kind specially required at the present time, and perhaps even more so in Germany than elsewhere: and I am anxious that such a capacity should be turned, as much as possible, to the benefit of the world.—I have little to tell you which regards us. Our life has been going on in the usual manner. I have been working hard at my book on Hamilton, and it is now well advanced towards completion. You are one of the most competent judges of such a book, and one of those whose approbation of it I most desire.—I lately saw M. Littré at Paris and, in conversing with him on the state of German philosophy, I mentioned your name. I was glad to find that he is in correspondence with you and, to the extent of his opportunities, appreciates you justly. . . .
701.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
June 27. 1864
Dear Sir
I write this to thank you for the interesting papers you sent, and to say that we are now here, that you may not send anything more to Avignon. I need hardly say that it will always give us pleasure to see you here, and renew the interesting conversations from which I am very glad that you have derived any encouragement and which have been encouraging also to me.
With our kind remembrances to Mrs Plummer, I am
Ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
702.
TO LOUIS BLANC
le 2 juillet 1864
Mon cher Monsieur Louis Blanc
Quand aurons-nous le plaisir de vous revoir? J’espère que vous viendrez diner avec nous quelque jour, pas trop éloigné, et je vous prie de fixer le jour qui vous conviendra. Nous dinons à 6 heures.
tout à vous de coeur
J. S. Mill
703.
TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT
July 2, 1864.
Sir:
On returning from abroad I have had the pleasure of finding the copy of the “Rebellion Record” and of the pamphlets of the Loyal Publication Society, which the distinguished body of citizens of New York, mentioned in your letter of April 26, have done me the honor to send me.
I beg to return my sincere thanks for the present in every sense so valuable; and in doing so I take the opportunity of renewing the expression of my warm admiration for the energy and constancy displayed by the people of the Free States in their present gigantic struggle, to the success of which I look forward as full of the most important consequences to humanity, stretching into the remotest future.
I am, sir, with greatest respect,
Yours very truly,
J. S. Mill.
704.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
July 4. 1864.
Dear Chadwick
You can of course reprint my letter if you like it, but I should not like to print what has already appeared in one paper, as a letter addressed to another.
I go a certain length with you on the point of resistance against hopeless odds, but not the length you go. There would be a great deal more tyrannical aggression by the strong against the weak, if those who knew they were not strong enough to succeed in the struggle, gave way at once and allowed the aggressors to carry their point without its costing them anything. A big boy will think twice before tyrannizing over a little one if he expects that the little fellow will fight to the last and make him pay for his victory.
Spirit and obstinacy themselves count for much, and for how much can never be known till they are tried. The Greeks would never have resisted Xerxes nor the Dutch, Philip II if they had merely calculated numbers.
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
705.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
July 6. 1864
Dear Sir
I find in the May number of the Journal des Economistes a review of the budget of this year, 1864, which contains the amounts of receipt and expenditure classified under general heads in a manner probably sufficient to answer your purpose. If this does not, I do not think that anything else in the Journal des Economistes will do better. I send it by this post, and I beg you to keep it as long as it can be of any use to you.
I wish you were not so far off and were not going away so soon, as I would gladly see more of you than a mere glimpse once a year.
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
706.
TO LOUIS BLANC
le 7 juillet 1864
Mon cher Monsieur Louis Blanc
Parmi les trois jours que vous offrez, je choisis le plus proche—jeudi 14 juillet, anniversaire mémorable. Nous dinons à 6 heures ¼.
tout à vous
J. S. Mill
707.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
July 18. 1864
Dear Sir
I am very glad the Journal des Economistes will answer your purpose. I am not likely to want the Plea for Peasant Proprietors, but as I do not know whether this will find you at Bangor or whether you would like to have the book sent there, I wait before sending it, to hear further from you respecting time and place.
The news from America looked bad, but the letter of the Daily News correspondent this morning restores one’s spirits.
I am
Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
708.
TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT
July 18, 1864
Dear Sir
I have only recently seen, on returning from abroad, the number of the Hortic. Society’s Journal which records the agitation against their offer of prizes, or rather, against the conditions on which their prizes were offered. I have been surprised to find that a passage from your letter to me, distinguishing the useful from the hurtful part of the proposal, is published in the Journal as a postscript to a letter of mine, so that I have the appearance of tendering as mine what belongs to you. The passage had nothing whatever to do with the letter to which it has been annexed. I sent it as an inclosure in a private letter to a member of the Council, informing him that I had received it from an eminent botanist —and I should have told him from whom, if I had not thought that it would be acting in opposition to your wish that the plan should be brought forward by Mr Babington rather than by yourself directly. By whose mistake or improper liberty it was printed in its present form I have not learned.
I am Dear Sir
very faithfully yours
J. S. Mill
709.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
July 29. 1864
Dear Sir
I return Mr Curtis’s very interesting and encouraging letter. Is he the same Curtis who wrote a book—a clever one I remember it was—about Egypt?
I hope Thornton’s book arrived duly. Keep it for as long as you like; I have no prospect of wanting it for the present. I expect to derive much instruction from what you propose writing on that question in reference to Ireland. I know tolerably well what Ireland was, but have a very imperfect idea of what Ireland is or how far, if at all, the changes there ought to modify my former opinions as to remedial measures. And I shall soon have to give an opinion on the matter myself, in revising my Pol. Economy for a new edition.
I shall not fail to look into the Victoria for your article on Norman. I am
Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
710.
TO HENRY FAWCETT
Aug. 2. 1864
Dear Mr Fawcett
I cannot think of anything to your purpose treating directly of the question of introducing a gold currency into India. There is a very good article by Leslie in this month’s Macmillan on the gold question generally, in which that point is incidentally touched upon. I do not know that it will tell you anything on the particular point, but it is well worth reading on other accounts.
I have never read Morrison’s book, but only reviews of it, which gave me very much the same idea of it which the book itself has given to you.
I am very glad that there is already a demand for a new edition of your Manual. I will endeavour to recollect if anything worth mentioning to you occurred to me when reading it.
You have chosen a good subject for your October lectures, and one which is worth the trouble it will cost you.
I agree with you in seeing nothing discouraging in the state of things in America. The South must be on its last legs to allow Sherman to advance as he has done; and if he has really taken Atlanta I am in hopes we are at the beginning of the end, I am
Dear Mr Fawcett
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
711.
TO HENRY FAWCETT
Aug. 5. 1864
Dear Mr Fawcett
I send by this post a pamphlet published at Bombay, and a Minute by Sir W. Mansfield, Commander in Chief of that Presidency, on the question of introducing a gold currency into India. The author of the pamphlet has probably prompted the author of the Minute, though they differ on some points. There are some decided mistakes in the Minute, but one did not expect to find a Commander in Chief writing so like a practised Political Economist as he does. If the paper does nothing else, it turns over the question in a great number of ways.
I send also, in case you have not seen it, the Report and Circular of the ex-Law-Amendment-Society, on measures to check Bribery and Election Expenditure. You will see their notions of what they can do, and I think we ought to give them what help we can.
I do not want any of the papers back.
yrs vry truly
J. S. Mill
712.
TO GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE
Aug. 7. 1864
Dear Sir
The subscription I sent was intended for yourself, towards preventing you from being out of pocket by your experiment. It was not for the paper, which, I am sorry to say, I do not like. The few numbers I received before leaving Avignon contained many things of which I disapprove, & in those you sent yesterday the first thing I saw was the monstrous assertion that a woman who says, at least in any public manner, that she is “heart-broken” must be out of her mind. It goes on to make a distinction between “ladies” and “women in the humbler ranks” as though it were permitted to “women” to show affectionate feelings which are inconsistent with the dignity of “ladies”. What should we think of this in a Tory paper!
I should very decidedly object to have my name mentioned in connexion with the paper, towards the support of which I could not conscientiously contribute, although I am happy to assist in indemnifying you against pecuniary loss.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
713.
TO LOUIS BLANC
le 11 août 1864
Mon cher Monsieur Louis Blanc
Puisque M. Lytton était en Angleterre, vous ne pouviez faire autrement que vous n’avez fait. Le résultat de vos démarches est très satisfaisant. Maintenant il faut espérer qu’on n’a pas trop supprimé au Foreign Office qui a depuis longtemps une mauvaise réputation à cet égard.
J’ai pris copie du Memorandum pour la communiquer à M. Hare, qui vous saura beaucoup de gré de l’avoir obtenu. M. Hare est maintenant en voyage.
Vos deux lettres sur son système qui ont paru dans Le Temps sont excellentes. J’espère qu’il n’y aura pas d’obstacle à la publication des autres. Elles ne pourront manquer d’être très utiles. Les tentatives de Guadet, d’Emile Augier, etc. prouvent que l’intelligence du public français se porte maintenant vers les questions de cet ordre.
tout à vous
J. S. Mill
714.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
Aug. 16. 1864
Dear Sir
I have just received the enclosed note, which is a complete puzzle to me, as I never had any intention of writing anything of the kind mentioned. If you can in any way account for Mr. Barlow’s misapprehension, will you kindly explain it to me, at the same time returning the note.
I hope you and Mrs Plummer are well. Pray give our kind remembrances. I am
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
715.
TO MRS. HENRY HUTH
Aug. 17. 1864
Dear Madam
I have this morning seen one of the Messrs Longman and have spoken to him on the subject of Mr Buckle’s papers. He seems well disposed to publish any of them that are found suitable for publication, and to take the initiative by applying to Mr Buckle’s sisters for a sight of them. To enable him to do so he asked me for their address, which I was not able to give him. As you have kindly expressed so much interest in the subject, and as you are probably acquainted with the address, may I venture to beg you to make me acquainted with it, or to tell me from whom you think I am most likely to be able to obtain it.
I am Dear Madam
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
716.
TO THEODOR GOMPERZ
Aug. 22, 1864
Soon after I last wrote to you, I received the copy of your Philodemus, for which I thank you cordially. It is a most beautiful edition, and your preface makes me look forward with great interest and curiosity to the dissertation which you promise and without which I scarcely hope to be able to make much of so very fragmentary a production as this wonderfully preserved treatise even now is. —Your edition has had a short complimentary notice in the Saturday Review, which I enclose.—My book on Hamilton is now finished, with the exception of a final revisal which I shall give it a few months hence before sending it to press. The next thing I propose to write will be a paper on Comte for the Westminster Review. —I saw Mr. Grote a few days ago. He told me that part of his book was in the printers’ hands and that he expected it would be ready for publication in January. I doubt not that it will be a most important accession both to history and to philosophy. Mr. Bain, who has seen a great part of the manuscript, expresses the highest admiration of it. . . .
717.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
Sept. 1. 1864
Dear Sir
On receiving your note of Aug. 17, I wrote to Mr. Barlow as you suggested, and I now return his note.
The particulars which you gave me at the same time about your literary occupations were very satisfactory.
I sent you today a few more periodicals on the chance of their being of use.
We leave tomorrow for Avignon, where we shall always be glad to hear from you. Letters sent here will be forwarded at least as often as weekly.
With our kind remembrances to Mrs Plummer, I am
Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
718.
TO LOUIS BLANC
le 6 Septembre 1864
Mon cher Monsieur Louis Blanc
J’ai lu dans le Daily News le support de M. Lytton, et j’en suis extrèmement satisfait. Son exposition du système de M. Hare est très complète, et je n’osais pas même espérer d’y trouver une appréciation aussi philosophique de ce système et une aussi pleine adhésion. Le système de M. Andrae y ressemble en effet à s’y méprendre. Je regarde la publication de ce rapport comme un événement important. Il en est de même de celle de vos lettres dans le Temps. Nous sommes à un moment où cet ordre de questions attire l’opinion publique en France. On se demande maintenant quelles sont les institutions qui conviendraient à une démocratie libre, et c’est le moment où les bonnes idées, une fois plantées, s’enracinent dans le sol. Je serais bien aise de connaître le projet de M. Simiot, mais au lieu de m’envoyer sa brochure, je vous engage à m’en donner le titre la première fois que vous m’écrirez, et je pourrai sans difficulté la procurer ici.
tout à vous bien sincèrement
J. S. Mill
719.
TO WILLIAM DOUGAL CHRISTIE
Sept. 12. 1864
Dear Sir
I have continued to read your letters in the Daily News, as well as those of your adversary. It is a great pity that the public are not told the facts about him which your letter contains, and also those about the Rio correspondent, and the influences at work in the Times. The simple facts without comment are all that would be necessary: for instance, that the writer of the Times City Article, Mr Simpson, is a Director of a Brazilian railway company. For want of knowing plain facts like these, public opinion is poisoned, and not only on the particular subject in question but on others. Who can wonder, for instance, that a man personally interested in a railway leading to a great mining district worked by slaves, should be a strenuous supporter of the Confederates?
Still, I do not see how I can help you by such a communication to the Daily News as you suggest. I cannot claim to have any knowledge of the subject. It adds to the difficulties, and to the merit also, of those who struggle like you to draw attention to a subject which very few but those who have a sinister interest know anything about, that you necessarily struggle almost alone, there being hardly anybody in a position to be able to cooperate with you. I am glad to see that one or two who are so, have come forward to support you by letters in the Daily News. If anything I could write could be useful at all, it would be, I think, when the subject comes up again as you expect in the next session. What is then said on the Brazilian side, collated with the facts in your volume, may admit of comments of a telling kind from a bystander who has no peculiar sources of information. I had rather, therefore, adjourn the subject, as far as relates to my participation. I am
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
720.
TO HENRY FAWCETT
Sept. 12. 1864
Dear Mr. Fawcett
Your note followed me here. I am sorry to have missed you, and only hope you did not take the trouble of going to Blackheath, nor were put to any other inconvenience by not receiving an answer.
We shall be here now for the remainder of the year, and I shall hope to hear from you. I was glad to see the advertisement of your elementary book. I am
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
721.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
Oct. 3. 1864
Dear Sir
Your letter, which has been forwarded to me here, gave me much pleasure. I was already acquainted with Mr Bemis’s book, of which, I think, I had received two copies, but from whom, I do not know. I quite agree in your estimate of it. It is a very effective piece of argument, and makes out a strong case. There are the seeds of very serious mischief in that compensation question, and our public men will probably find things as different from what they expect in regard to the liability of England for the acts of cruisers unlawfully fitted out, as they have already found in regard to the original obligation to prevent the outfit.
The course of military events in America is going very much in favour of the right, and if Lincoln is reelected, I should think that the end is really drawing near. There are such evidences of the exhaustion of the South as there have never been before. But everything depends upon the reelection of Lincoln, or at all events upon the election of some one representing the same opinions and who will continue the same policy. It is impossible not to feel uneasy until the election is over. If the Democratic party is disunited, Lincoln is probably safe, but from the last accounts it would appear that the Peace Democrats were reconsidering their intention of not supporting McClellan.
Lytton’s report is of the greatest importance; the Danish plan is almost exactly identical with Mr Hare’s, and has advanced the quota system from the position of a mere project to t[hat] of an institution actually realized and found workable. It has, moreover, caused an amount of discussion of the subject already, which we might otherwise have waited a long time for. The idea is spreading also on the Continent. It has been discussed and has received some support at the International Congress at Amsterdam, and M. Louis Blanc has published an admirable series of letters in the Temps, showing a thorough understanding of the plan, and a full appreciation of its advantages, indirect as well as direct. One is not at all surprised that English politicians do not catch at it, for when were they in advance of the public in adopting any new idea? I was, like you, disagreeably surprised not so much by Fawcett’s saying nothing about representation of minorities, but by his saying things which are repugnant to the most obvious argument for it. I cannot, however, think that Fawcett meant to throw over the principle, nor does Mr Hare think so. He probably thought only of justifying himself for supporting a great extension of the suffrage without waiting until representation of minorities could be carried too. If so, he will find out his mistake by perceiving how he has made himself misunderstood, both by friends like the Spectator and by enemies like the Saturday Review.
Thornton will be much pleased by your feeling towards him, and will, I am sure, fully reciprocate it. He is a person I particularly respect and like. In perfect candour, sincerity, and singleness of mind, few men come near him.
The Journal des Economistes, I am almost sure, was duly received. Your notice of Norman I missed through its postponement, but will not fail to procure and read it.
We shall be here till January. I have much work cut out for me to do during this autumn and winter, part of which is that of correcting my Political Economy for a new edition. I should be very glad to make any improvement in it which you can suggest, and especially to know if there is anything which you think it would be useful to say on the present state of Ireland. My speculations on the means of improvement there have been in a state of suspended animation, from which it is almost time that they should emerge.
I am Dear Sir
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
722.
TO AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN
Oct. 17. 1864
Dear Sir
Your note of Oct. 10 has followed me here. My abridgements of a few of Plato’s dialogues have not been reprinted, nor are likely to be; but those who wish to get, as you say, at the pith of Plato, will be sure to find it in Mr Grote’s new book, now printing; and there will be, besides, Mr Jowett’s, which, together with a full translation of the Republic, will contain, it is said, some account of all the principal dialogues.
I can assure you from my own case as well as from various others that it is quite possible to admire and enjoy, in a very high degree, both Plato and Aristotle.
I am glad of this opportunity of asking you whether your Elements of Trigonometry (which I have not been able to procure) are really out of print, and if so, whether they are likely to be soon reprinted. The philosophy of Mathematics is a favourite subject with me, and in your Algebra you have treated some of its metaphysical difficulties (especially those connected with the idea of infinity) in so highly philosophical a manner that I am very desirous to read what you have written in the Trigonometry respecting the great mystery of impossible quantities, a part of the subject which I have not yet been able completely to make out from my own thoughts. I know that the square roots of negative quantities are capable of geometrical interpretation, and I have myself found out this very day one such interpretation for them, but I cannot be sure I am right until a mathematician tells me so; and in any case I have a great deal to learn from one who has gone so deeply into these subjects as you evidently have.
I am &c
J. S. Mill
723.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
Oct. 28, 1864
Dear Chadwick
I was glad of the opportunity of reading your Addressin extenso though I had read with attention and interest as much of it as appeared in the Times and Daily News. You have put several important points in a striking light. I attach particular value to the display of the enormous economy which remains to be effected in the expense of distribution. It is the distributors who eat up the greater part of the produce of labour; and the success of cooperation is, no doubt, mainly owing to the minimization of that charge, and to ready money payments: though I attach also much more importance than you do to an identification of the interest of every labourer with the prosperity of the concern, more complete than mere piece work will effect, and I therefore regret, and even blame, the conduct of those Cooperative Societies which engage labourers to receive wages only. This is the sole point on which I find myself differing from your address. I have nothing to suggest except the correction of a few errors of stile. In slip 5, line 3, I would put which for as. At line 18 for price (of production) I would say expense. At line 8 from the bottom, for of read with. I find I have not marked any others.
You ask if I know any writers who have treated your points. The Socialist writers in France especially, and I believe in England also, have said a great deal about the waste from superfluous distributors. Fourier, in particular, is very strong on the point. He calls the middlemen, en masse, the “parasites.” On the other points you are much in advance of anything I have seen written elsewhere. About the economical advantage, touched upon in your letter, of a consolidation of railways, you are not likely to find any help in the French economists. They are, nearly all of them, much more hostile to consolidation and to government action than I am; and I am more so than you.
It is a great pity that the newspapers did not print your dispute with the mercantile public of Liverpool about the rams.
My daughter sends, for your approval, by this post, an article suggested by Lord Stanley’s remarks on America. She had not thought of writing on Turkey until you suggested it, but will do so if anything should occur to her.
I inclose, in case you have not seen it, a circular respecting the rooms just opened in London by the United States Sanitary Commission, chiefly, it would seem, as a place of meeting and resort for Americans and friends of America. You may perhaps be inclined to make some mention of it in the Newsman. I am
Dear Chadwick
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
724.
TO AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN
Oct. 28. 1864.
Dear Sir
I thank you most heartily for the kind present of your Trigonometry, as well as the paper from the Cambridge Transactions, which looks very tempting. I expect great pleasure and instruction from both.
My little bit of speculation has no pretension to be a general solution of the question as to the meaning of imaginary quantities. It relates only to a single case, and there must be hundreds of other cases similar to it. I must premise, that I have forgotten almost all my mathematics; but my memory being more retentive of methods than of results, I have kept a sufficient hold of the former to be able to find my way back to the easier general theorems without book, and I sometimes amuse myself with doing so, especially in my walks. In this way I have re-discovered for myself the general formulae of quadratures, rectifications, tangents, &c. As one of these mathematical exercises, it occurred to me to ask myself what is the curve of which the equation is xy = a2? I soon came to the conclusion that it is a pair of opposite equilateral hyperbolas, referred to the asymptotes. This being the case: what is there to say about the other pair of hyperbolas, considered as referred to the same axes? The coordinates being in this case of opposite signs, the equation must be xy = -a2, from which it follows that the parameter (in the larger sense of the word) of this last pair of hyperbolas, the constant mean proportional between the variable coordinates, has for its symbolic expression a . This (in which I hope there is no mistake) does not shew the way to any large general view of the subject, but it would, if it stood alone, suffice to shew that impossible quantities in algebra do not necessarily point to impossible operations in geometry or applied mathematics. In fact it is no more wonderful that an imaginary numerical quantity should represent a real line (or force) than that a surd should do so, since a surd also represents an impossible numerical operation: and the one like the other is only such an incident as we might expect to arise, in the attempt to represent continuous quantity by discontinuous.
It is so pleasant to be allowed to refer one’s mathematical difficulties to a mathematician who is a psychologist, that I venture to ask whether I am right on another point. One sees it often mentioned as an imperfection and a proof of the little progress made in the integral calculus, that there [are] such multitudes of expressions which no mathematician is able to integrate. Is not this very much as if it were made a reproach to arithmetic that there are so many numbers of which no one is able to extract the square or cube root? Have we any reason to suppose that every combination of differentials which can be put together must correspond to an integral? Is it not, on the contrary, natural, if not even demonstrable, that by far the greatest number cannot—that there must be many more possible differential expressions than possible integrals, for the same sort of reason as there must be many more numbers than there are exact square or cube roots?
I shall be anxious to see your paper on Infinity. I have a controversy with Sir W. Hamilton on that subject in a book I have been writing, which I hope to offer to you next spring. From your letter I have much hope that you will agree with at least that part of the book. You are one of those whose opinion of it I shall feel much interested in.
I am glad that Mr Baynes has a Professorship, though not the one he stood for. The change from writing leading articles (very good ones by the way) to teaching Logic, is not quite so great as that which had been made by a young scholar I met at Corfu during the Crimean war, who had just resigned an Oxford Tutorship for a place in the Commissariat.
I am Dear Sir
very sincerely yours
J. S. Mill
725.
TO WILLIAM LONGMAN
Nov. 6. 1864
Dear Sir—
I this morning received your letter. I have finished revising the “Representative Government” & it will be sent by the Messageries Impériales (that is, in effect, by railway), tomorrow. It can go to press as soon as you please, & if you will have the proofs sent to me here by book post I will return them without delay. I will set about the revision of the Political Economy and get on with it as quickly as possible.
I have no present intentions to publish cheap editions of any of my writings except the three you mention. It is very satisfactory that you are able to publish the Pol. Econ. & Repr. Gov. at the prices you mention. According to the proportion, I shd have thought the Liberty could have been sold at 1/—& I shd be very glad if it could be so. I shall be happy to accept your offer of reducing the Pol. Econ. to 5/—after the sale of 4000 copies. As the books are to be stereotyped, it certainly does seem desirable that some duration should be fixed for the agreement, & I shd be glad to hear what term would, in your estimates afford a sufficient profit.
The number of copies to be printed of the dearer edition, I leave entirely to your better judgment.
It will probably be best that the three cheap editions shd be advertised together & published at the same time, but if you would like to print the two smaller ones at once in order to diminish the pressure afterwards I shall be happy to correct the proofs here. I expect to be in England about the end of January.
I shd very much like to see the papers mentioned by Mr John Buckle with the “fragmentary papers” & the Common Place books & I shd be obliged if you would keep them for me till I return.
726.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
Nov. 8. 1864
Dear Sir
Your letter of the 13th October was as your letters always are, extremely interesting to me. I am very desirous of any suggestions that may occur to you for the improvement of this edition of my Political Economy, as it will be the foundation of a cheap popular edition which will be stereotyped. I have just heard from the publisher that the old edition is so nearly out, as to require that the new one should be got on with sooner than I expected when I wrote to you, and I am therefore obliged to lay aside what I was writing (a paper on Comte for the Westminster Review) to set about the revision. Consequently, the sooner I can have even a part of your remarks, the better: but what is not ready for the revision may easily be in time to be made use of in the proofs.
I expect to learn much respecting the state of Ireland from Judge Longfield’s address. But I at present feel considerably puzzled what to recommend for Ireland. It cannot be said any longer that the English system of landlords, tenant farmers, and hired labourers is impossible in Ireland, as it was in the days before the famine. But it does not seem to me to suit the ideas, feelings, or state of civilization of the Irish. And I cannot see that the changes, great as they are, have abolished cottierism. They have diminished competition for land, and the evil of rackrents, and tenants always in arrear. But I do not see that the tenant has an atom more of motive to improve, or inducement to industry and frugality, than he had. He finds all this in America: if he could find it at home, he probably would not emigrate.
I read with much pleasure the report of your Lecture on the Colonies. The arguments for Separation could hardly, I think, be more clearly and forcibly stated. But I am more unwilling to sever the tie than you seem to be, and I do not at all agree with Goldwin Smith in thinking the severance actually desirable; my reasons for which being in print, I need not repeat them here. The confederation plan for British America seems a very good one. The opposite roads which, as you remark, Canada and the United States are taking to meet the same evil, are natural enough, since they start from opposite positions: Canada from too much union, the United States, as they seem to think, from too little; though the degree of union they have hitherto had would probably suffice them still if they were well rid of the one stumbling block, Slavery. Happily it becomes less and less doubtful that they will get rid of that. Their superiority in arms over the Slaveholders seems now permanently established and Lincoln’s reelection tolerably certain. The latest opinion I have heard on the latter point is in a letter from Hamilton, (the grandson, I think, of the eminent Hamilton) who has just republished the Federalist. He says “I am happy to be able to assure you” (the underlining is his own) “that the President is firm in his purpose to extinguish slavery. He will certainly be reelected—and with him a Congress of which 2/3ds will recommend a National Convention, and this body will so amend the Constitution that Slavery will cease at once.” It will be worth a life, to have lived to see this done.
Merivale’s mode of disposing of Hare’s plan is very like Merivale. His mind is an instrument which works well for some purposes, with as borné a general range as that of men who do not set up for theory at all.
Fawcett excuses himself by laying the blame on bad reporting. He says that the reporters omitted what he said virtually in favour of Hare’s plan. But even by his own account, it seems to have been too veiled; and some of his arguments for extending the suffrage would if well grounded have removed the most obvious and urgent reasons for representation of minorities.
I am Dear Sir
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
727.
TO GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE
Nov. 21, 1864
I have read Messrs. Briggs’ prospectus with very great pleasure. They have done themselves great honour in being the originators in England of one of the two modes of Co-operation which are probably destined to divide the field of employment between them. The importance of what they are doing is the greater, as its success would make it almost impossible hereafter for any recreant Co-operative Societies to go back to the old plan of paying only fixed wages when even private capitalists give it up.
728.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
Dec. 1. 1864
Dear Sir
Am I right in thinking that among the improvements consequent on the Irish famine and emigration, the desuetude of cottier tenancy is not one? My impression is that the land is still mainly let direct to the labourer, without the intervention of a capitalist farmer—and if so, other things in Ireland being as they are, all the elements of the former overpopulation are still there, though for the present neutralized by the emigration. I very much wish to hear from you whether I am right.
Have you formed any opinion, or can you refer me to any good authority, respecting the ordinary rate of mercantile and manufacturing profit in the United States? I have hitherto been under the impression that it is much higher than in England, because the rate of interest is so. But I have lately been led to doubt the truth of this impression, because it seems inconsistent with known facts respecting wages in America. High profits are compatible with a high reward of the labourer through low prices of necessaries, but they are not compatible with a high cost of labour; and it seems to me that the very high money wages of labour in America, the precious metals not being of lower value there than in Europe, indicates a high cost as well as a high remuneration of labour. Supposing profits to be lower than in Europe instead of higher, it is yet quite intelligible that interest might be higher. There is, I apprehend, in America, scarcely any unoccupied class, living on interest: almost everybody is in active business, needing all his own capital and more too. In New England even the banks have scarcely any deposits, the class who in England would be depositors being there shareholders. Consequently the loan market is hardly supplied at all from native sources, except the capital and notes of the banking companies: and when there is a great demand for loans it has to be supplied from the European money market, and therefore at a rate of interest so high as to be a temptation to foreigners. I should be much indebted to you if you could help me on this subject, as, if I have been misleading the readers of my Political Economy, it is very desirable that the error should be corrected in this edition.
I have been obliged to read, with a view to my new edition, the most recent & most voluminous of Carey’s writings, his “Principles of Social Science”: because his attacks on the Ricardo political economy and on free trade are, some of them, if not new, at least made in a new shape, and I have thought it good to give a brief refutation of them, the rather as the book is a good deal thought of by some of the French political economists, and is helping to muddle their ideas. The parts of his speculations which I have had to attack are really the best parts, as it was not worth while to notice any of his errors but those which had some affinity with truths. But it really would be a useful exercise for any clearheaded and painstaking student of political economy to shew up the book, for I think I never met with any modern treatise with such an apparatus of facts and reasonings, in which the facts were so untrustworthy and the interpretations of fact so perverse and absurd. I do not imagine that it would be worth your while any more than mine to take the trouble of reviewing it, but I should very much like to see it properly done. To give a really adequate exposure of the book would be out of the question, for there would be something requiring comment in every page: but a selection might be made, in a moderate compass, which would suffice to destroy any authority the book might have. Withal I cannot dislike the man, for his feelings, and his way of thinking on general subjects, so far as I can perceive, are usually right.
I have not yet had any application from Longman to begin printing, but I think it will not be long before I have.
Lincoln’s triumphant reelection is a grand event; and it is perhaps a still greater that there is now the majority in Congress necessary for the Anti Slavery amendment of the Federal Constitution. The value of this last cannot be overrated, for it ensures not only that there will be no reunion retaining slavery, but that after reunion the Federal Courts will have a right to set aside any tricky legislation in the Southern States intended to reestablish Slavery under another name. I am Dear Sir
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
729.
TO THOMAS HARE
Dec. 1. 1864
Dear Sir
I am much obliged to you for your letter, and for the other things you sent, all of which arrived safely. Your own printed note interested me historically as shewing the gradual progress of your thoughts on the subject, and the Frankfort newspaper as giving a glimpse of the notions of German reformers on constitutional subjects. I am glad that the note I wrote to be appended to my chapter on Personal Representation meets with your approval. I dare say you may be right in limiting your new Preface to something like the same scale, but the matter which you at first intended for the preface, if too long to be used for it, might, I should think, be useful as an Appendix at the end of the volume.
Lord Grey’s book is, I believe, mainly a reprint of his old one, which I happen never to have read; but I have read the new chapters, before publication. His ideas of representation of minorities do not go beyond Marshall’s plan, but the importance he attaches to it helps to stir up the subject, and I expect considerable good of that kind from the publication. The best point is his emphatic declaration that a considerable change is necessary and that changes which only consist in going further in the beaten track are neither safe nor useful; that it is necessary to have recourse to new ideas.
Our Southern climate has been scarcely recognisable this autumn; the rains have only ceased two or three days ago, and now we begin to have winter cold, generally but not always with winter brightness. You had decidedly the best week of the autumnal season during your stay.
With our kind regards to your daughters and son, I am Dear Sir
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
730.
TO ALEXANDER BAIN
S[aint] V[éran] Dec.2.1864
Dear Bain—
I have not written to you since I received your answer to my note concerning Prof. Fraser’s review of Abbott & other matters. I was very glad to hear that Fraser is capable of writing anything so good & that he is editing Berkeley. An account of the subsequent developments of Idealism by the author of that article is likely to be good.
When I last wrote to you I believe I had not yet read Prof. Tait’s articles on the Conservation of Force. They have made some parts of the theory much clearer to me than before. I now understand better what is meant by potential energy & how the force may be said to be constantly preserved even when not acting in its usual way: but I am not sure that my way of comprehending it fits all the cases. When air is compressed a reaction equal to the compressing force exists in the form of pressure against the sides of the vessel. When a projectile is thrown into the air, the force of gravity which ultimately brings it to the ground exists all the while though counteracted, for it shows itself in retarding & finally stopping the upward motion before it begins to determine the downward one, and it is calculably the same amount of force all the time. But the force said to be latent in coal: being that which would be generated by its chemical combination with oxygen does not manifest itself by any pressure or tendency to motion, or neutralisation of counter force for ages on ages. Still, if it can be shewn that a force was lost, or used up, in making coal out of the carbonic acid gas of the atmosphere equal to that which is generated by the reconversion of an equal quantity of coal with carbonic acid gas, I admit that there is a virtual conservation of force, though as force it was non existent during the long interval; but so, you will say, is the latent heat of the water in the ocean, & of the gases comprising the atmosphere. Therefore, though I do not know how the equality of the force lost & that reproduced is in this case ascertained, I can understand that it may be so. But I complain of a great want in Tait as well as in Tyndall, of proper clearness in making out what it is that is conserved. They speak as if the case of the compressed air or the projectile were exactly like that of the coal, when in reality it is extremely different. They would probably say that the force in the coal is alive all the time, creating molecular motion. But this unprovable hypothesis is just the part of the theory which I cannot swallow.
There is a difficulty, to my comprehension, in the old theory of heat, which I have long intended to mention to you, but have always forgotten, and I do not know whether the new theory takes it away. It relates to the common mode of explaining the law by which objects of unequal temperature tend to equalise their temperature by radiation. The theory is namely that all bodies are constantly radiating heat, & if of equal temperature radiate it in equal quantity but every body radiates in proportion to its temperature, so that all bodies constantly exchanging heat, the hotter give more than they receive & the colder receive more than they give. On this theory it seems to me that if two bodies at the temperature of the atmosphere are placed in the foci of opposite parabolic mirrors they ought both to rise in temperature: for there is nothing to make them give out less heat than previously, & they certainly receive more. Even if one of the bodies is a lump of ice it ought even then to raise the temperature of the other body instead of cooling it as it does for even the ice sends out some heat which would not have reached the other focus if it had not been collected & concentrated by the mirrors. There is probably an answer to this, but none is given in the usual explanation of the apparent radiation of cold.
The Association Psychology is decidedly getting into France. Seeing a short newspaper article of an “Etude sur l’Association des Idées” by a writer named P. M. Mervoyer, written as a thesis for the degree of Docteur ès Lettres, we sent for the book & found that it was in great part composed of translated extracts from your writings, for which he professes warm admiration, & has very well mastered a great many of the thoughts. He is a complete disciple of yours, & I may say also of mine, & will do good, though not apparently a person of great vigour of mind, his own part of the exposition contrasting not advantageously, in clearness & precision, with his translations from us, which are very well done. I wish it may come into his mind to translate you into French. I will bring the book with me to England as you will I think be interested, as I have been, by it.
The writer in the N. American Review has followed up his article on Time & Space by one on Hamilton, the most severe one I have seen, but a striking contrast to my controversy with him, being a judgment of him from the opposite point of view: wherever H. is right the reviewer contrives to be wrong, & wherever H. is wrong, he is still more wrong than H.
I am glad you are to lecture at the R[oyal] I[nstitution], though your time of lecturing will probably fall during our absence. The managers of the Inst. seem laudably desirous of recruiting their staff with fresh notabilities. They have invited over Jules Simon to lecture, fortunately not on metaphysics.
After finishing the first draft of my first article on Comte I had to leave off & set about revising the Pol. Econ. for a new edition. This I have now finished & am on the point of returning to Comte. The opportunity is a good one for saying various things that I am glad to say. It is for the April number, as it will not be in time for January.
I suppose Grote has nearly finished his printing by this time.
With our regards to Mrs Bain
731.
TO AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN
Dec. 2. 1864
Dear Sir
Much occupation prevented me from sooner thanking you for your interesting and valuable letter of Nov. 14, as it has also hitherto from studying the Trigonometry. I have found time to go through the paper for the Philosophical Society with some care, and have learnt a good deal from it, though, as you are aware, I do not go with you in regarding even the truths of pure mathematics as necessities of thought—i.e. necessities originating in thought, for that incessantly repeated experience has made them necessities I should not think of denying. Short of that, all that you were aiming at seemed to me, as far as I am a competent judge, to be right. I was much struck with the view taken in your letter of the possibilities of extension of the integral calculus, which opens a way to large and far reaching speculations, if not to great practical applications. I am glad to find that what I ventured to write to you on that subject, as well as about imaginary quantities, was right as far as it went. I never supposed that it went very far. But I expect to be much more competent on such subjects when I have read more of your writings. The real philosophy of mathematics is now fairly launched, and in good hands.
What you say about the origin of + and - is an interesting historical curiosity.
I keep your letters carefully for reference, and will write again when I have gone through the Trigonometry. I am with many thanks
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
732.
TO HENRY FAWCETT
Dec. 2. 1864
Dear Mr Fawcett
I have been a long while without answering your letter of Oct. 31, having at present more work than usual to be got through in a given time. I was sorry to hear of your attack of fever, but very glad that you were able to lecture, and had so numerous a class. It is curious that you should have had fever at Salisbury and got rid of it at Cambridge.
I do not know that your speech at Brighton made any unfavourable impression on Hare, and the impression on me was much more favourable than unfavourable. We were struck with the contrast it presented to electioneering speeches generally, by the number of ideas it contained. What I could have wished otherwise was not the omission to speak more definitely respecting Hare’s plan, but the employment of an argument which tells against the need of such a plan, and which I think unusual, namely, that the working classes are greatly divided in opinion. Like other classes they are divided on points not involving the class interests or prejudices, but not therefore less likely to be united on those which do.
It will be a great triumph of your eloquence to induce the Brighton electors to forego £2000, but there is enough latent honesty and public spirit in any large constituency to make such things possible, and when you have done it you ought to have a gold medal, or perhaps a civic crown would be preferable. I wish equal success to Christie, but he will have still more uphill work.
We are in high spirits about America, not only on account of Lincoln’s triumphant reelection, but also on account of the majority in Congress which is now sufficient to decree an appeal to popular suffrage for an amendment in the Federal Constitution interdicting slavery in the States. The great value of this is that not only will it remove all chance of the sacrifice of Abolition for reunion, but after reunion it will empower the Federal Courts to nullify any State legislation tending to restore slavery under another name: which, moreover, makes it possible to readmit the seceding States with the same constitutional rights as formerly in every other respect. Goldwin Smith’s speech at the dinner given in his honour was good, and promises much valuable matter in his future contributions to the Daily News.
I am Dear Mr. Fawcett
vry truly yours
J. S. Mill
733.
TO HERBERT SPENCER
Dec. 10. 1864.
Dear Sir—
I have had the pleasure of receiving your letter of Dec. 7. An organ such as it is intended that the Reader should be, will be of the greatest use, & when such men as yourself, & Mr Cairnes, Mr Huxley, & Mr Tyndall, to mention no others, are sufficiently interested in it to take a share in its management, there need be no fear of its disappointing any reasonable hopes. With such a list of names as you have it might be possible to run it against the Saturday Review were it not that I am afraid your plan excludes temporary politics. Of course it does not exclude political philosophy, & I hope original articles will be inserted as well as reviews. I shall be happy to take a share & will pay the £80 whenever required.
734.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
Dec. 12. 1864
Dear Sir
I do not know how sufficiently to thank you for all you have done for me. That you should have taken the trouble to write out your thoughts so fully on so many points, only for my use, is a favour such as I should never have presumed to ask from you. It is like nothing but the philosophic correspondences in which the thinkers of the 16th and 17th centuries used to compare notes and discuss each other’s opinions before or after publication—of which we have so many interesting specimens in the published works of Descartes. I shall keep the notes carefully and return them to you, for I do not like that so much thought, so clearly worked out on paper, should have no reader but me: besides, it enables me with a better conscience to use their contents.
On most of the minor points I think you are right, and shall profit by your suggestions. On Ireland I shall cancel all I had newly written on that subject, and wait for the further communication you kindly promise. On the few points of doctrine on which our opinions differ, you have not, thus far, convinced me, though you have taught me much. Among these I do not count the theory of the rate of interest, for I agree entirely with your explanation of the phenomena, and the article in the North British Review appears to me excellent. I had, even before I heard from you, inserted a passage pointing out how the new gold, as long as it continues to flow in, must tend to keep down the rate of interest. We differ, I believe, only on a question of nomenclature, and at present it seems to me that the objections to your phraseology are stronger than to mine. But I have not done thinking on the subject, and I shall in any case have to modify several expressions, if nothing more.
In the matter of the operation of duties on international values, I see that I have omitted one of the elements of the question, viz. the competing demands of other commodities on the purse of the consumer; but it does not seem to me that this omission materially affects the conclusion. Suppose that I have a given sum, say £10 a year, the expenditure of which I am determined, whatever happens, to divide between two commodities, A and B. I conceive that even then, if A rises in price and B falls, the effect in the average of cases will be that I shall buy more of B and less of A.
On the Wakefield system I scarcely understand your argument. In the supposed case of the settlers, and in every other, I apprehend the separation of employments to be a real cause and indispensable condition of a larger production. It is true that territorial separation of employments, by international trade, often suffices: but the main justification of Wakefield’s system is, that this trade does not take effect when families settle, each of them many miles from its next neighbour in the wilderness.
The point on which we seem to differ most, & to be least likely to come to an agreement, is the income tax. You think it fair to take from different people in a single year, an equal percentage of what their incomes, whether permanent or temporary, would sell for in that year: because (you say) the payment in each year should be compared with what the income is worth in that year to its owner. In this I agree; but I answer, that the income is, in that year, worth to him its capitalized value only on the supposition that he actually capitalizes it, and spends the whole value within the year. Then indeed, he will have been fairly taxed: but then, he will not have to pay the tax in any future year, for the income will have passed into other hands. On any other supposition the income is only worth to him its capitalized value spread over the whole of its duration, that is, in each year the total amount divided by the number of years. I agree in what you say about equality of sacrifice, but in estimating this, I only exclude necessaries. I do not think a distinction can be fairly made between comforts and luxuries, or that I am entitled to call my tea and coffee by the one name, and another person’s melons and champagne by the other. I allow for nothing but what is needed to keep an average person alive and free from physical suffering.
Touching colonies, I understand you to differ from me chiefly in thinking that the advantages obtained by a quasi-federal union with them might equally be obtained by an alliance. My answer to this is, that there is no such thing as an alliance. There are only coalitions between countries for a temporary purpose. No nation associates its foreign policy generally with that of another nation, unless either subject to its power, or united with it by a federal tie. As soon as the colonies separate from us, we shall have only the same chance of having them for even temporary allies, as of having any other independent nation.
I have read with the greatest interest Judge Longfield’s address, and two of your articles on it in the Daily News. There may be others which I have missed, as the paper is often stopped at the French post office. Though I thought the Judge wrong in much of what he said on fixity of tenure, I agreed with, I think, every part of his address which was praised in your articles, and I think it altogether a most important paper. I give him the greatest credit for speaking out so plainly, and so much to the purpose. It is particularly timely, coming so soon after the speech in which Gladstone included remedial measures for Ireland among the things which he put in the front of his policy. We see there, as usual in Gladstone, the man who speaks from his own convictions, and not from external influences. No other minister would have put forward Ireland, any more than Reform, just at this time, when there is no public outcry about it.
Did you read Buxton’s three closely printed columns in the Times about Parliamentary Reform? They are a sign of tendencies, and a prognostic of much that the Times and Saturday Review would like to shut their eyes to.
Ever, Dear Sir, yours truly
J. S. Mill
735.
TO JOHN CHAPMAN
Dec. 12. 1864
Dear Sir
You wished me to let you know as soon as I could find a time when I should be able to send you an article on Comte. I find that the subject can only be treated as I wish to treat it, in two articles—one on his principal work, the other on the speculations of his later years. The first of these is all written; except two or three references which remain to be put in when I return to England at the end of January. I can therefore promise it for the April number. But it is very long; sixty pages of the Westminster, if not more; and I see no possibility of either dividing or shortening it, consistently with its being what I meant it to be. It is for you to judge whether, under these conditions, it will suit the Review. If accepted, as I wish it to be known as mine, I should be glad, if you have no objection, to put my initials.
The second article, which will probably be much shorter, I feel tolerably certain of getting ready for the next following number, should you desire it so soon. I am Dear Sir
yours very sincerely
J. S. Mill
Dr Chapman
736.
TO ROBERT HARRISON
Dec. 12. 1864.
Dear Sir—
Your estimate of Black’s character is true to the letter & such as all who were intimate with him would confirm.
I do not know how soon after his coming to London he knew my father. I was a child at the time & up to the beginning of 1814 my father lived so far on the north east side of London that I suppose they did not often meet. All I know is that when Black became editor of the Chronicle, in the autumn I think of 1821, they were already old friends. After that time he constantly frequented my father & no doubt often expressed opinions imbibed from him but he was far from being a mere follower of any one. As an example of this, Black as I well remember, changed the opinion of some of the leading political economists, particularly my father’s respecting poor laws, by the articles he wrote in the Chronicle in favour of a poor law for Ireland. He met their objections by maintaining that a poor law did not necessarily encourage overpopulation but might be so worked as to be a considerable check to it & he convinced them that he was in the right.
I have always considered Black as the first journalist who carried criticism & the spirit of reform into the details of English institutions. Those who are not old enough to remember those times can hardly believe what the state of public discussion then was. People now & then attacked the Constitution & the boroughmongers but none thought of censuring the law or the courts of justice & to say a word against the unpaid magistracy was a sort of blasphemy. Black was the writer who carried the warfare into these subjects & introduced Bentham’s opinions on legal & judicial reform into newspaper discussion. And by doing this he broke the spell. Very early in his editorship he fought a great battle for the freedom of reporting the preliminary investigations in the Police Courts in which Fonblanque who just at that time began to become known occasionally helped him, but he had little other help. He carried his point & the victory was permanent. Another subject on which his writings were of the greatest service was the freedom of the press in matters of religion. His first years as editor of the Chronicle coincided with the prosecutions of Carlile & his shopmen & Black kept up the fight against those prosecutions with great spirit & power. All these subjects were Black’s own. Parl. Reform, Catholic emancipation, free trade, &c, were the liberal topics of the day & on all of these he wrote frequently, as you will see by any file of the Chronicle. One of the remarkable things is that nearly all the leading articles at least in those early years, were his own writing. He now & then had an article sent to him by a friend but there was I believe for a long time no one regularly associated with him as a writer of leaders. This I believe is not generally known. He was constantly bringing into his articles curious passages & scraps of recondite information from old books which people thought must have been furnished by a host of friends behind him: But they all came from his own great miscellaneous reading. He used to walk about London, stopping at all the bookstalls & got together a large collection of books not generally known from which he had a knack of picking out & using whatever they contained that was interesting or instructive.
Why Cobbett attacked him I do not remember & it is scarcely worth knowing. Somebody said of Cobbett, very truly, that there were two sorts of people he could not endure, those who differed from him & those who agreed with him. These last had always stolen his ideas. I do not know that he selected Black for a very special object of attack. If he had a controversy with him about anything he was sure to load him with comical abuse.
I shall be happy to give you any further information I have & to answer to the best of my ability any questions, but the real source of the information you want is the Chronicle itself. He poured out his whole mind into it, as indeed he had much need to do considering how many volumes yearly he wrote in it.
737.
TO DANIEL REAVES GOODLOE
- Saint Véran, Avignon
- Vaucluse, France
Dec. 13th, 1864.
Dear Sir:
Having been absent from England some months, I have but lately received the pamphlet you did me the honor to send me. You are so clearly right as to the political economy of the question, that one is only surprised at its being necessary to take so much pains to make the matter obvious to others. But the absurdest opinions are often the most tenacious of life. What can be more ridiculous than to suppose that a laboring man is an item in the wealth of the country that possesses him, when he is owned by a fellow-man, but not an item in it when he owns himself! But great merit may be shown in explaining truths which ought not to need explanation, and that merit your pamphlet possesses in a high degree.
I am indebted to you for an excellent illustration of the point you notice in my Principles of Political Economy, which I shall not fail to make use of in a new edition which I am now preparing.
As a native of a slave state, who twenty-five years ago saw and proclaimed the doctrine of common sense as well as justice respecting slavery, you must be highly gratified by the prospect now opened of the early realization of your utmost wishes on that subject, however painful to you in many respects may be the process by which it is coming to pass.
With sincere respects, I am,
Dear Sir, very truly yours,
J. S. Mill
Daniel R. Goodloe, Esqr.
738.
TO ROWLAND G. HAZARD
Dec. 13, 1864
Dear Sir
I have not received your work on the Will, nor any copy of “Our Resources” but that which you have now done me the favour of sending. They may have been sent to my house in England since the last parcel I received from thence.
I have read your series of papers with great interest and pleasure. You have the merit of seeing and pointing out clearly that the expense of the war can only come out of the spare produce of the national labour, and that people cannot expend this on the war and on their own indulgences too. It is a question of will, not power. A nation which has increased its wealth by 126 per cent in ten years, cannot be put to really great inconvenience by even a much larger debt than the present one. And I agree with you in thinking that a reunited nation, freed from the incubus of slavery, abundantly provided with the appliances for economizing labour, and resorted to by the superfluous hands of the old countries in so great abundance, will start forward at the end of the war at a pace hitherto unexampled. The question is not whether America can keep her engagements, but whether she will consent to pay taxes for the purpose, and of this I do not permit myself to have any doubt.
Your paper “Contraction versus Expansion” seems to me sound. I do not mean that I agree with every word of it, but I concur in the main drift of your argument. I cannot doubt that a gradual drawing in of the surplus currency is the wisest course for the general prosperity: but its practicability depends on the willingness of American citizens to pay taxes and lend money to the government. For a long time, the issue of inconvertible paper in government payments operated as a forced taxation on all holders of currency, and the reception of it back at a fixed rate in exchange for United States Bonds, redeemable and the interest payable only in specie, operated as a series of forced loans; since the paper, being legal tender, could not be refused in payment, and the holders, to avoid loss by depreciation, were glad to get rid of it by taking bonds. I do not know whether the same practice is followed by Mr. Chase’s successor; but if the Government loses this resource for raising the money indispensable to it, an equivalent can only be found in the patriotism of the monied classes and the tax payers generally. If that can be depended on, the course you propose has everything to recommend it, and the danger from further depreciation is so great that your Government cannot too soon begin the process of contraction.
I cannot close this letter without offering to you, as an American citizen, my warmest congratulations on the result of the late election, and on the present hopeful prospect of affairs. I am delighted to recognize in you feelings like my own on the subject of slavery. I am Dear Sir
very sincerely yours
J. S. Mill
739.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
Dec. 20. 1864
Dear Sir
I wrote to you some days ago a letter addressed Dublin and “to be forwarded,” thanking you for the two packets of notes you kindly sent and remarking generally on their purport. I have since carefully revised all the passages you referred to, and there are very few of the notes by which I have not, to some extent, profited. In a great many cases I have entirely adopted your view. I have rewritten the fourth section of the chapter on the Rate of Interest and have much enlarged it; completing my exposition of the causes on which the rate of interest depends, by adopting nearly all you have said on the subject that involves doctrine. In what merely involves the mode of stating the theory, I still prefer my own: but I see that the whole truth of the subject may be expressed in either way, and may usefully be so in both. Your remarks on the definition of money I have not used, for a different reason: I cannot, in conscience, take without necessity what belongs to you. When it is for the correction of an error I have less scruple, but all I have said on this matter tended to your opinion, though less thorough and conclusive. Even on the Interest question, I should like, if you will permit me, to acknowledge my obligations to you in a note.
One of my American correspondents, Mr Barnard, of Boston, is so obliging as to send me the semiweekly edition of the New York Evening Post, the paper edited by Cullen Bryant, and under him by Parke Godwin, and, teste Barnard, the best paper in the Union. I send you by this post one of the numbers, on account of some fine samples of the theoretical advocacy of slavery by the public writers of the South, which you will find in the first and also in the second page. I inclose a most interesting letter from another correspondent, Mr Brace, the author of a very creditable book on “The Races of the Old World.” Perhaps after reading it, you may think [it] useful to send it, or part of it, to the Daily News or Spectator, as there are things in it which it is highly desirable to make known. To me it is most encouraging. I never expected to see already so much progress made towards the fulfilment of all I predicted. It will cheer every friend of the cause who reads it. I except, of course, from publication, the first page, and the first six lines of the second.
I have taken a share in the Reader, partly influenced by seeing your name in the subscription list, and being told that you were willing to look after the politics and political economy of the paper. With such a set of writers it may be made a most valuable organ. I have advised running it against the Saturday Review.
Ever yours truly,
J. S. Mill
740.
TO ROWLAND G. HAZARD
Dec. 26, 1864
Dear Sir
I shall be very happy to see you if you are passing through Avignon. The people at the Hotel l’Europe can tell you how to find my cottage.
I thank you by anticipation for your book, which will probably arrive tomorrow. I am Dear Sir
very faithfully yours
J. S. Mill
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