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NEWSPAPER WRITINGS BY JOHN STUART MILL December 1822 to July 1831 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I [1822]Edition used:The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).
Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.
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NEWSPAPER WRITINGS BY JOHN STUART MILL
December 1822 to December 18241.EXCHANGEABLE VALUE [1]
This and the next letter, Mill’s first published writings, were occasioned by “Political Economy Club,” Traveller, 2 Dec., p. 3, by Robert Torrens (1780-1864), co-proprietor of the newspaper and a founding member of the Political Economy Club; the subject of Torrens’s article was the meeting of that Club to be held later that day. Mill’s reply brought forth a retort from Torrens in “Exchangeable Value,” Traveller, 7 Dec., p. 3, and the series terminated with a note by Torrens appended to Mill’s second letter. The exchange centred on the theory of value advanced in Elements of Political Economy (London: Baldwin, et al., 1821) by James Mill (1773-1836), J.S. Mill’s father; in his Autobiography Mill says his reply to Torrens was at his father’s “instigation” (CW, Vol. I, p. 89). Headed as title, with the subhead “To the Editor of the Traveller,” the items are described in Mill’s bibliography as “Two letters in the Traveller of [6th Dec.] and [13th Dec.] 1822 containing a controversy with Col. Torrens on the question whether value depends on quantity of labour. Signed S.” (MacMinn, p. 1.) sir,—In your notice of the late Meeting of the Political Economy Club, you have inserted a disquisition, which professes to be a refutation of Mr. Mill’s theory of value. I take the liberty of submitting to you several remarks which occurred to me on reading your article. In the first place, if I rightly understand Mr. Mill’s chapter on Exchangeable Value,1 he cannot be said with propriety to have any theory of value—at least, in that sense in which the word theory is applied to Mr. Ricardo’s doctrines on this subject. Mr. R. renders the word value, as synonymous with productive cost2 —thus introducing a new, and as it appears to me, a needless ambiguity of language. Mr. Mill, on the other hand, never uses the word value in any other than its vulgar acceptation. I am not aware that there is any passage in the Elements of Political Economy, in which the words power of purchasing may not be substituted for the word value, without in any degree affecting the truth of Mr. Mill’s positions. But though the word value is never employed by Mr. Mill, in any other sense than purchasing power, it is nevertheless true that he endeavours to ascertain what are the circumstances which regulate the purchasing power of commodities.3 He agrees with the distinguished political economist whom we have cited, in considering the regulating circumstance to be cost of production. This cost he considers as resolvable into quantity of labour, and it is to this part of his doctrine that your strictures refer. As your arguments on this subject do not appear to me to be conclusive, I beg leave to offer my objections to their validity. You say, “Let the rate of profit be 20 per cent.; let a manufacturer in silver and a manufacturer in iron each advance a capital of a thousand pounds, and let the advance of the former consist of ninety days’ hoarded labour, in the form of material, and ten days’ hoarded labour in the form of subsistence, while the advance of the latter consists of ten days’ hoarded labour in the form of material, and ninety in the form of subsistence.” [P. 3.] You observe that the manufacturer in silver, with ten days’ labour of subsistence, must employ twelve days of immediate labour, in order to realize a profit of 20 per cent.; and that the manufacturer in iron, with his 90 days’ labour of subsistence, will employ 108 days of immediate labour: that therefore the silver goods, when completed, will be the produce of twelve days of immediate labour, and 90 of hoarded labour, in the form of material; while the iron goods will be the produce of 108 days of immediate labour, and 120 of hoarded labour, also in the form of material; forming the two different sums total of 102 and 118 days’ labour. This being the case, you assert that the silver and the iron goods will exchange for one another. To this I cannot assent. You appear to have forgotten, that if profits are taken into the account at all, we must suppose the two manufacturers to make a profit, not merely on that portion of their capital which they expend in maintaining labour, but also on that portion which they expend in furnishing the raw material. By supposition, the capital of each producer consisted of one hundred days’ labour. You assert that when the production is completed, the silver manufacturer has only the produce of 102 days’ labour, while the iron manufacturer has the produce of 118 days’ labour, in remuneration for their capital. The former then has only a profit of 2 per cent. on his whole capital, the latter has a profit of 18 per cent. on the whole. It is evident that, under these circumstances, the two commodities will not exchange for one another: their values will be in the proportion of 102 to 118—that is, of the quantities of labour by which they were produced. This, at least, will be the case, if profits are to be considered as forming one ingredient in cost of production, the position on which your whole argument is founded. If profits are equal in the two cases, as the principle of competition will render them, it is unnecessary to take them into the calculation of exchangeable value, which is, by the force of the term, not something absolute, but something relative. If the whole produce of the one capital exchanges for the whole produce of the other, those parts of them which remain when profits are deducted, will also exchange for one another. But if we exclude profits, your objection falls to the ground. Mr. Mill’s argument must, therefore, be considered as resting on the same foundation as before. You have also started an objection against another of Mr. Mill’s arguments. The value of commodities (says Mr. M.) cannot depend upon capital, since capital is commodities, and if the value of commodities depends on the value of capital, it depends on the value of commodities—that is, on itself.4 You observe, that this argument cuts both ways. If the value of commodities depends upon labour, as the value of labour can only be estimated in commodities, this (say you) is to assert that the value of labour depends on the value of labour. This would be true if Mr. M. had asserted that the value of commodities depends on the value of labour. But he says, that it depends, not on the value but on the quantity of labour:5 there is here no inconsistency. The value of commodities depends upon the quantity of labour employed in producing them. The value of labour, which is not itself produced by labour, cannot be subject to the same laws. Mr. M. in his Chapter on Wages, has expounded the laws which regulate the value of labour.6 S. 2.EXCHANGEABLE VALUE [2]
For the context, heading, and bibliographical information, see No. 1. sir,—In your Paper of Saturday you inserted an article professing to be a refutation of that which you did me the honour of inserting on Friday. Permit me, however, to say, that if I was before convinced of the truth of Mr. Mill’s conclusions, my conviction is strengthened by the weakness of the arguments which are brought against them by the ablest of their opponents. You accuse me of having misunderstood your arguments. I am at a loss to conceive what interpretation can be put upon them, different from that which I have given. In the argument of your first article I can see only two things: first, an elaborate attempt to prove what no one ever thought of disputing—namely, that labour produces more than is necessary for the maintenance of the labourers: and secondly, an inference drawn from this—namely, that labour does not regulate exchangeable value. Your reasoning amounts to this—labour is productive, therefore labour does not regulate value. I hope you will excuse me if I confess that I do not see the connection between these two propositions. One man by one day’s labour may possibly produce food which will maintain him for ten days; but it does not follow from this, that one day’s labour of food will not exchange for one day’s labour of any other commodity. In your last article, you put a different case. You suppose A to have wine, the produce of 100 days’ labour, and B to have food, the produce of equal labour. A keeps his wine in his cellar to improve by age; B employs his capital in maintaining 120 days of labour in the production of a commodity. These commodities, you say, will exchange for one another; and you conceive that here labour does not regulate value. It seems to me, however, that this is not an exception to Mr. Mill’s doctrine. You virtually admit that the value of B’s commodity is regulated by the quantity of labour expended in its production. But if the wine produced by equal capital, and deposited in the cellar of the merchant, did not command the same price, no wine would ever be kept. The value, therefore, of A’s wine is regulated by that of B’s commodity. But the value of B’s commodity depends on quantity of labour. Is it not, therefore, evident that the value of A’s wine also depends on quantity of labour? S. 3.RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
This letter was occasioned by a series of prosecutions for blasphemous libel that received considerable attention in the press (see, e.g., in the last part of 1822, Examiner, 27 Oct., pp. 685-6, 3 Nov., pp. 709-10, 17 Nov., pp. 721-4, 726, 734, 24 Nov., pp. 748-9, 764-5, 15 Dec., pp. 788ff.). Headed as title, with the subhead “To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle,” the letter was the first of Mill’s many contributions to the Morning Chronicle. The item is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A letter in the Morning Chronicle of 1st January 1823 on Free Discussion, signed, An Enemy to Religious Persecution” (MacMinn, p. 1). sir,—I beg leave to submit to you some observations, which may, perhaps, appear too obvious to be deserving of insertion. The importance, however, of the subject, and the state of vagueness in which every thing connected with it has been hitherto suffered to remain, must plead my apology for intruding upon your notice. The late persecutions for matters of opinion have frequently been defended, on the ground that “Christianity is part and parcel of the law of England.”1 This sentence, put together by a Judge, passed from Judge to Judge with solemn and appalling gravity, will be found, on examination, to be, like the many other high-sounding maxims with which our law abounds, utterly unmeaning and absurd. This is so evident, that nothing but the extreme vagueness of the language in which this doctrine is conveyed could have protected it from detection and exposure. A law is a precept, to the non-observance of which, pains and penalties are attached by the Government. Against this definition, I apprehend, no objection can be brought. And the law of England, collectively considered, is a collection of the precepts, thus sanctioned by legal authority. Having thus settled the meaning of one of the words employed, let us pass to the other. Christianity then consists of two parts—a collection of precepts and a collection of opinions. When we speak of the spirit of christianity, of its morality, &c., we allude more particularly to the precepts. When we speak of the doctrines, the dogmas, the truths of christianity, this is with reference to the opinions which it inculcates. This division appears to me to be complete. No one can mention any thing connected with christianity, which is not either matter of precept, or matter of opinion. Now when it is asserted by Judges that christianity is part and parcel of the law, is this meant of the precepts of christianity?—No, certainly: for if so, it would mean that every moral duty is enforced by the law of England; of the impossibility of this, it is scarcely necessary to produce any illustration. Not to notice the frequent admonitions which we find in the Gospel for preserving purity of heart,2 it will not be denied that sobriety and chastity are among the first of moral duties. But what would be the consequence of erecting them into a law? It is enough to say that it would be necessary to place a spy in every house. But if not the precepts, perhaps the opinions which christianity inculcates, may be said with propriety to be “part and parcel of the law.” And how? The law is a collection of precepts. In what sense can an opinion be part of a collection of precepts?—Surely this maxim, which has been made the foundation of proceedings such as we have lately witnessed, is either palpably false, or wholly without a meaning. Unfortunately the protection, as it is sacrilegiously termed, of the christian doctrines, by the persecution of those who hold contrary opinions, is part and parcel of the law. But this, the only intelligible sense in which the maxim can be taken, ought not thus to be made a foundation for itself.—The Judge argues as follows:—I punish infidelity, because christianity is part and parcel of the law. This is as much as to say, I punish infidelity, because such punishment is part of the law.—This may be a very good defence for the particular Judge who pronounces the sentence, but is it not absurd to give it as a justification of the persecuting law? An Enemy to Religious Persecution4.THE WORD “NATURE”
This letter, which reflects Mill’s contemporaneous study of law with John Austin, is addressed to Richard Carlile (1790-1843), the free-thinker, who was editing the Republican from Dorchester Gaol, where he had been imprisoned for publishing the works of Thomas Paine and other writings held to be seditious. Mill seems to have been mistaken in attributing to Carlile the view expressed in his opening paragraph; Carlile appended to the letter a signed note: “My Atheistical friend is, I think, wrong in supposing that I wrote such an assertion as that, there must be a cause to be attributed. I may have said the phenomena of the material world: or that the constant charges [sic] which we behold in materials argue the existence of a cause or active power that pervades them. But I have again and again renounced the notion of that power being intelligent or designing.” The letter, Mill’s only one to the Republican, is headed “To Mr. R. Carlile, Dorchester Gaol,” and is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A letter in the Republican of [3 Jan., 1823,] on the word Nature” (MacMinn, p. 1). sir,—Admiring as I do the firmness with which you maintain, and the astonishing candour with which you defend your principles, sympathising in your opinions and feelings both on the subject of politics and on that of religion; I deeply regret, in common with your correspondent Gallus,1 that you should ever have given currency to doctrines in direct opposition to your other opinions. From among many such doctrines, I select one, which appears to me to be the stumbling block of a great number of Infidels. This is to be gathered from the use which you frequently make of the word Nature as denoting some positive, active, if not intelligent being. In a former No. of The Republican, in allusion to the application which has been made to you of the word Atheist, you observe that although you do not reject this appellation, you consider it as a very absurd one, as you conceive that every man must acknowledge, under the name either of God, or of nature some cause to which the material world is to be attributed. Your exact words I do not remember, but I am certain that this was the import of what you said. Now as I do not myself acknowledge any such cause, I would if it were necessary, endeavour to convince you that there is no foundation for any such belief. But I rejoice to see that this labour is spared me by the admirable letter of Gallus. I will therefore confine myself to a brief examination of the import and application of the word Nature. All human knowledge consists in facts, or phenomena, observed by the senses and recorded by means of language. The study of these phenomena is what is called the study of Nature: the aggregate of the phenomena, or human knowledge as it stands, is called Nature in the abstract. If this be true, you must at once see the absurdity of supposing any thing to be caused by Nature. Nature is that for which the cause is to be sought; or rather, it is that for which it is needless to seek any cause, as if it has any, this must remain for ever unknown. The phenomena which we observe are found to follow one another in a certain order; the same event is invariably observed to be preceded by the same event. When a sufficient number of these sequences has been observed, it becomes possible to express them by a certain number of general propositions, which have been metaphorically termed Laws of Nature, but which have in reality no resemblance to laws. A law is a general command laid down by a superior, most commonly by the governors of a nation. The analogy is very distant between this and a verbal expression for a series of phenomena; which is absurdly called a law of Nature. When once this phraseology was introduced, the poets and mythologists soon took hold of it, and made it subservient to their purposes. Nature was personified: the phrase law of Nature, which originally meant no more than a law for the regulation of Nature, or of the natural world, became a law laid down by the goddess Nature to be obeyed by her creatures. From the poets, this fictitious personage speedily penetrated into the closets of the philosopher, and hence arose the error of attributing a creative power to nature. To make any use of this word, in the explanation of the material phenomena, is only substituting for rational scepticism, a mystical and poetical kind of Theism. Of course, the arguments which serve to explode the belief in an ante-material and intelligent Being, will also suffice to destroy the unmeaning word Nature. Yours, with the greatest respect,
|
| Rate of profits | Quantity of labour required to produce the wages of ten men | Quantity of profits on the advances of labour | Invariable value of the wages of a given number of men |
| 25 per cent. | 8 | 2 | 10 |
| 15.38 | 8.66 | 1.34 | 10 |
| 50 | 6.6 | 3.4 | 10 |
| 16.66 | 8.6 | 1.4 | 10 |
| 27.2 | 7.85 | 2.15 | 10 |
From these elaborate computations he proves that the wages of ten men are in value always equal to ten. To ten quarters of corn, or ten suits of clothing? No.—To ten of what? This we shall see. The number 8 in the second column represents a certain quantity of labour, the labour, namely, of eight men; the number 2 in the next column represents the labour of two men; the number 10, therefore, which is obtained by adding the 8 and the 2, represents the labour of ten men; and Mr. Malthus informs us that the wages of ten men are invariable in value, because they are always equal in value to the labour of ten men! In other words, the wages of a day’s labour are always of the same value, because they are the wages of a day’s labour!
It is therefore evident that the whole of Mr. Malthus’s argument is a begging of the question. His object is to prove that labour is an accurate measure of value, because the value of wages is invariable. But in order to prove this, he covertly assumes labour as the standard; and then, of course, he can easily prove that the wages of ten men, as compared with labour, are always of the same value, because they can always purchase the labour of ten men. But although wages are invariable in value with respect to labour, they are not invariable with respect to commodities in general.
If Mr. Malthus had stated his premises and his conclusion, in the simple form in which we have now stated them, no one could have been misled by so palpable a petitio principii.—But many who can see through a fallacy, in a concise and clear piece of argument, are not able to resist a long succession of obscure paragraphs, and a numerical table of no less than nine columns.
To us, therefore, Mr. M. appears to have entirely failed in proving that labour, as a measure of value, is preferable to any other commodity.
The principle itself being erroneous, we shall give no more than a hasty view of the applications.
“1. On the subject of rents,” says he, “such a standard would determine, among other things, that as the increase in the value of corn is only measured by a decrease in the corn wages of labour, such increase of value is a very inconsiderable source of the increase of rents compared with improvements in agriculture.” (P. 54.) It is difficult to trace the connexion between the premises and the conclusion of this argument. However, the whole must fall to the ground, as the premises themselves are erroneous. There may be an increase in the value of corn, without any decrease in corn wages. When corn rises permanently in exchangeable value, the wages of labour almost uniformly rise along with it. The rise of wages is indeed less than that of corn, but it bears a very considerable proportion to it. The most important practical errors must therefore be the consequence of estimating the rise in corn by a comparison with labour, a commodity which always rises along with it.
“2. If tithes do not fall mainly on the labourer, the acknowledged diminution in the corn rents of the landlord, occasioned by tithes, cannot be balanced by an increase of their value, and consequently tithes must fall mainly on the landlord.” (Pp. 54-5.)—Another most important practical mistake. Corn rents, indeed, are diminished by tithes. But if the exchangeable value of corn is raised, the landlord is indemnified. And although corn may not rise as compared with labour—and therefore, by Mr. Malthus, may be said not to have risen at all—there can be no doubt that, with reference to commodities in general, it has risen, and the landlord, consequently, is indemnified.
The next paragraph we transcribe, as a specimen of the obscure and disjointed mode of reasoning which Mr. Malthus has adopted.
As one consequence of his doctrine concerning the measure of value, he states,
that the increasing value of the funds destined for the maintenance of labour can alone occasion an increase in the demand for it, or the will and power to employ a greater number of labourers; and that it is consistent with theory, as well as general experience, that high corn wages, in proportion to the work done, should frequently occur with a very slack demand for labour; or, in other words, that when the value of the whole produce falls from excess of supply compared with the demand, it cannot have the power of setting the same number of labourers to work.
(P. 55.)
This is Mr. M.’s favourite doctrine of over-production.2 A more mischievous doctrine, we think, has scarcely ever been broached in political economy: since, if we are liable to have too large a produce, a Government must be highly praiseworthy, which in its loving kindness steps forward to relieve us of one part of this insupportable burden. On other occasions, Mr. M. has adduced, in proof of this doctrine, arguments which have at least the merit of being intelligible. That, however, which is couched in the above paragraph, would require the exercise of no small sagacity in its interpretation, were not this task happily rendered unnecessary by the utter unmeaningness of the phrase upon which the whole argument, such as it is, appears to turn. “The value of the whole produce falls.” What does this mean? The exchangeable value? No: for the whole produce can have no exchangeable value, as it is never, at least collectively, exchanged. Any other kind of value? But with no other kind have we any thing to do. By value, we uniformly mean exchangeable value. This is the only legitimate use of the term.
There is another paragraph in proof of the same position.
If the increase of capital be measured by the increase of its materials, such as corn, clothing, &c. then it is obvious that the supply of these materials may, by saving, increase so rapidly, compared with labour and the wants of the effective demanders, that with a greater quantity of materials, the capitalist will neither have the power nor the will to set in motion the same quantity of labour, and that consequently the progress of wealth will be checked, but that if the increase of capital be measured as it ought to be, by the increase of its power to command labour, then accumulation so limited, cannot possibly go on too fast.
(P. 57.)
The above assertion, for there is no attempt at argument, may easily be disproved; but this is not the place for it. The difficulty is, to see why Mr. M. should have given this as a consequence of his doctrine concerning the measure of value, between which and this paragraph we can see no sort of connexion. If, however, it be such a consequence, it must fall with the doctrine which supports it.
Soon after, he continues, “If commodities and the materials of capital increase faster than the effectual demand for them [faster than labour, we presume, he means], profits fall prematurely, and capitalists are ruined, without a proportionate benefit to the labouring classes, because an increasing demand for labour cannot go on under such circumstances.” (P. 59.) Again, we ask, what has this to do with the measure of value? As, however, it can be refuted in few words, we will not grudge the necessary space.
Why do profits fall prematurely? Because, from the increase of capital faster than labour, wages rise. There is no other cause which can lower profits. And yet, in the same breath, Mr. M. tells us, that there is no proportionate benefit to the labouring classes!
If this case were to happen, the only consequence would be, that accumulation would cease to go on at this enormous rate, and would be continued only at the same rate with the increase of population. If Mr. M. confines to this case his doctrine of over-production, we may make the concession with perfect safety.
Another application.
On the subject of foreign trade, it [the doctrine of the measure] would shew that its universally acknowledged effect in giving a stimulus to production, generally, is mainly owing to its increasing the value of the produce of a country’s labour, by the extension of demand, before the value of its labour is increased by the increase of its quantity; and that the effect of every extension of demand, whether foreign or domestic, is always, as far as it goes, to increase the average rate of profits till this increase is counteracted by a further accumulation of capital.
(Pp. 56-7.)
Many and important are the errors contained in this short paragraph. But it would be loss of time to point them out, as all the proof which Mr. M. has given falls to the ground with his doctrine of the measure. All which he himself asserts is, that if that doctrine is true, these applications are also true.
In another paragraph, Mr. M. says, that value does not depend upon cost of production, because value is proportioned, not to the advances merely, but to the advances, together with variable profits. That allowance is to be made for all cases of difference in the amount of profits, as compared with immediate expenditure, is allowed on all hands; but the necessity of this modification does not authorize our rejecting the general expression, unless Mr. Malthus can point out a better one, which he has not even attempted to do, but has contented himself with saying that, “we must have recourse to demand and supply.” [P. 58.] But this is to stop short at the surface of the science. What regulates supply? Surely it is the cost of production, and if we cannot find an accurate expression in one word, or in two, we are not for that reason to content ourselves with a superficial view of the subject.
There are two or three other paragraphs of too little importance to require a refutation. The last and most elaborate of Mr. M.’s applications relates to the variations in the currency. He dissents from those who think that paper was depreciated no more than to the extent of the difference between its value and that of bullion; because, he says, when compared with labour, it had fallen to a greater extent. [P. 67.] Those, therefore, who think that Mr. Malthus has failed in proving that the value of labour is constant, will not be prevented, by any thing which is here stated (though here too there are tables [p. 75]) from attributing to labour, and not to the currency, the whole of the depreciation with respect to labour, over and above the difference between the market and mint prices of gold.
19.
TECHNICALITIES OF ENGLISH LAW
MORNING CHRONICLE, 18 SEPT. 1823, P. 2
Arguing one of Bentham’s central tenets, the absurdity of some English legal practices, Mill in this letter comments on the quashing of cases on technical grounds. He refers to two accounts in the Morning Chronicle, “Police News. Hatton-Garden,” 9 Sept., p. 4, and “Police. Hatton-Garden,” 16 Sept., p. 4. Headed as title, subheaded “To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle,” the letter is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A letter on the Technicalities of English Law, wch. appeared in the Chronicle of 18th September 1823. Not signed.” (MacMinn, p. 3.)
sir,—
In your Paper of Tuesday, the 9th of September, I observed a new instance of legal quashing. A number of bakers were brought up, on the charge of selling bread otherwise than by weight. It was discovered that the Magistrate’s name had not been inserted in the indictment, and in consequence of this omission, the charge fell to the ground. I also found in your Paper of Tuesday the 16th, a similar instance of quashing, because an illiterate informer, instead of writing the word afternoon, had written after-forenoon.1
If English law were really “the perfection of human reason,”2 no one would be acquitted, but because he was innocent—no one condemned, but because he was guilty. To praise a system under which men are acquitted on any ground, except the insufficiency of the evidence of guilt, implies either the grossest insincerity, or the most depraved understanding. All formalities which do not facilitate the attainment of truth, are utterly useless, and as they almost always enhance the trouble and expence, they amount to a tax upon justice, and frequently to the utter denial of it. To this we must add the complicated evils which ensue, if it be discovered that a formality has been omitted. The previous proceedings are invalidated, the chance of impunity to the guilty is increased, and additional trouble and expence are occasioned to the innocent, by the recommencement of proceedings which may already have cost them far more than they can bear.
Will any one assert that the omission of the Magistrate’s name in the indictment, renders it a whit more difficult to determine whether the parties are guilty or innocent? And if it does not, on what principle can the quashing of the indictment be justified?
But quashing is the favourite pastime of lawyers; nor is the motive difficult to divine. Every new indictment brings new fees into the pockets of Learned Gentlemen. Who can wonder, that a circumstance of such importance should outweigh in their minds the ruin of a thousand families.
Quashing is not confined to the prosecution of bakers for selling bread in an illegal manner. A law suit which has lasted for years may be rendered useless by the discovery that an insignificant formality has been omitted at the commencement. And so numerous are these formalities, that no inconsiderable proportion of the law proceedings which are instituted in this country terminate in that way. A gentleman may be deprived of his estate by the discovery of a technical flaw in his title; so frequently does this occur, that there are few estates, in Great Britain, the title to which is not liable to dispute, and Mr. Canning, in Parliament, spoke of an inquiry into the title deeds of estates as being one of the grossest iniquities which can be perpetrated.3
When it is proposed to substitute for the present confused and heterogeneous mass of statutes and cases, a Code constructed, not on a view of what has been done heretofore, but of what ought to be done hereafter—a cry is usually raised that such a reform would annihilate existing rights. Never was accusation more ill-founded, nor does any thing prove more conclusively than the currency which it has obtained, how readily mankind consent to take the opinions of the “constituted authorities” for gospel, on subjects upon which they may and ought to judge for themselves. The fact is, that the first step of an efficient reform of the law would be to pass an Act confirming and establishing all titles in which no flaw could be detected on a retrospect of a very limited number of years.
But now the omission of an unmeaning formality at a distance of forty or fifty years, may cast opulent families into the depth of poverty; and so far is the English law from securing rights, that every owner of land pays, at an average, 5 per cent. on his annual rent into the hands of lawyers, on account of the badness of the law. All this happens under a system which is, notwithstanding, “the perfection of human reason,” although its rules were all framed six or seven centuries ago, and although there is not one of them which, in accuracy, precision, or, if rigidly enforced, even in justice, rises one step above the level of the age in which it was composed.
20.
SECURITIES FOR GOOD GOVERNMENT
MORNING CHRONICLE, 25 SEPT., 1823, P. 2
This letter, like No. 19, employs a particular instance in support of an idea of Bentham’s, in this case the popular removal of judges (see his Draught of a New Plan for the Organization of the Judicial Establishment in France [1790], in Works, Vol. IV, p. 359). The case was that of Richard Battlebar, a tradesman, and Jane Ashwood, “a perfectly respectable woman” (Examiner, 14 Sept., 1823, p. 605), who were sentenced on 12 Sept. to one month’s imprisonment at the treadmill, on suspicion of indecent exposure, by Maurice Swabey (1785-1864), magistrate at Union Hall, Southwark. Mill picks up the argument of a letter to the Editor, “Revision of the Magistracy,” Morning Chronicle, 22 Sept., 1823, p. 4, signed “A True Friend of Morality and Social Order” (not “to Morality,” as Mill says). The case had occasioned much earlier comment in the Morning Chronicle: see 13 Sept., p. 4, 15 Sept., p. 3, and 16 Sept., p. 3 (a letter and a satirical poem, “Love and Justice”). Headed as title, subheaded “To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle,” the item is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A letter on the advantages of a judicial establishment consisting of judges removeable by the people, in the Chronicle of 24th [sic] September [1823.] Signed a Friend to Responsible Governments.” (MacMinn, p. 3.)
sir,—
I perused with great satisfaction the Letter inserted in your Paper of Monday, the 22d, on Police Abuses, signed “A True Friend to Morality and Social Order.” One passage, however, in that very able Letter, appears to me objectionable. The writer recommends as a remedy for police abuses, that several of the individuals at present in the Magistracy should be removed.
Now, Sir, I am one of those who look at measures rather than men,1 and who reprobate the former when I conceive them to merit reprobation, without feeling any peculiar animosity against the latter. My appetite for change would be satisfied, if the welfare of the community were exclusively consulted, no matter whether by one man or another. I know that although some men will yield to a small temptation, while others cannot be moved but by a great one, yet upon the whole there are few exceptions, or rather none at all, to the principle that all men who have power will infallibly abuse it; a principle the truth of which every one admits with regard to other men, although each considers himself to be an exception. My object, therefore, is, to obtain securities for the good conduct of Legislators, Judges, and Ministers; not to substitute one set of men for another set, leaving to those whom you nominate the same facilities for abuse of power which were enjoyed by those whom you remove.
Unless the abuses of the judicial power are such as indicate a radically unsound and depraved intellect, there is no reason for removing the individual, although there is great reason for subjecting him to such responsibility as will effectually prevent the recurrence either of the same or of other abuses. And if there is no particular reason for removing him, there is always this reason against it, that the experience which he has acquired in the exercise of his office, gives him (ceteris paribus) an advantage over any unpractised candidate.
Now in the recent instances of police abuses, no greater weakness of intellect appears, than that which is evinced by sacrificing the public good to the desire of gratifying the whole, or some particular section of the Aristocracy. When Mr. White dismissed the complaint of Lady Caroline Lamb’s waiting-woman, on the word of her Ladyship’s husband, and expelled the Reporters from the Police Office because they had reported the woman’s story,2 it is easy to see that the feeling uppermost in the mind of the Worthy Magistrate was a desire of gratifying such Honourables and Right Honourables as may hereafter be pleased to quarrel with their servants. In like manner when Mr. Swabey consigned two low vulgar people to a month’s torture at the tread mill for indulging in gratifications which their superiors are suffered to enjoy without restraint, a discerning eye might detect in this specimen of Magisterial delicacy, a disposition to curry favour with a certain Society,3 and with the numerous and powerful portion of the Aristocracy by which that Society is patronized. And I am persuaded that this puerile ambition is at the bottom of almost every instance of injustice which is perpetrated in this country by what are called Courts of Justice as well as of Law, but which should only be termed Courts of Law.
Far be it from me to object the desire of pleasing great people to these Magistrates as a crime. It is the unavoidable result of their situation. In a country where there is an aristocracy interested in injustice, and where the judges are dependent upon the aristocracy, the judges will be unjust. Alter the circumstances, and they will be unjust no longer. Place the judicial office on such a footing that it shall not be necessary for them to conciliate the favour of the aristocracy, and that it shall be necessary for them to obtain that of the people; and then it will be no longer the interest of the aristocracy, but that of the people, which will be consulted. For the attainment of this object, I see no other expedient, than that of giving to the people, either immediately or through their representatives, the power of removing judges of all descriptions from their offices. Let the power be given, and the necessity for the exercise of it will rarely occur. If it be not given, then even if the popular voice made itself heard so strongly as to effect the removal of one or a few obnoxious magistrates, there would be no permanent good, for there would be no securities for good judicature, and as soon as the violent excitement of the public mind subsided, misgovernment would return with undiminished vigour.
A Friend to Responsible Governments
21.
PARLIAMENTARY REFORM
MORNING CHRONICLE, 3 OCT., 1823, P. 4
This letter may be read as a Radical corollary of James Mill’s “Government.” Many of its arguments appeared in J.S. Mill’s writings in this period (e.g., the assertion of an unlimited desire for power is also in No. 20). The signature “Quesnai” presumably alludes to François Quesnay (1694-1774), the French economist, who argued that the principle of general interest should govern the economic life of nations, and looked to liberty, security, and justice as the means to prosperity for all classes of society. Headed as title, subheaded “To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle,” the item is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A letter signed Quesnai, on the consequences of denying the capacity of the people, in the Chronicle of 3d October 1823”
(MacMinn, p. 4).
sir,—
The difference between the Reformers and the Anti-Reformers of this country is, that the former are friends to a popular government, and the latter to an aristocracy.
The only ground on which Reform can stand, is the assumption that if the people had the power of choosing their representatives, they would make, if not the best, at least a good choice. This accordingly is the doctrine of the Reformers; and if this be true, it is evident that the question as to reform admits of no farther debate. The Anti-Reformers on the other hand, allege that the people are factious, turbulent, inimical to social order, and to the existence of property. On this ground they maintain that the existing form of Government, over which the people exercise no controul, and which is in the strictest sense of the word Aristocratical, should be preserved.
Let us grant to the Anti-Reformers, the full benefit of the assumption upon which their resistance to the Reformers is grounded. Let us admit that the people, if they had the choice of their Rulers, would infallibly make a bad choice, and so bad a choice, as to render the attainment of good Government in this mode utterly hopeless. That this would silence the claims of the Reformers is unquestionable. Let us examine, however, whether it is not equally unfavourable to the pretensions of their opponents.
It is indisputable, that if any person has the power of pillaging the people for his own benefit, and of forcing them to act in entire subservience to his interests, he will do so. This is implied in the common outcry against despotism. And if this be admitted of one man, it cannot be denied of any set of men less than the majority of the whole population. Against this propensity to pillage the people, and to reduce them to subservience, no check can be opposed, because the people alone have an interest in establishing a check; and the people, by supposition, are not to be trusted. All which can be done, is to vest unrestrained power in such hands, that the motive to abuse it shall be reduced within the narrowest possible limits.
Now it is evident, that as far as pillage is concerned, far less will suffice to satiate the rapacity of one man than of a thousand; and then, as to personal subservience, it is a smaller evil to serve one master than a great number. In so far, therefore, as the personal desires of the Sovereign are concerned, less mischief is likely to arise from the rule of one, than of an irresponsible few.
This appears at first sight inconsistent with history. But if we look back to the annals of despotism, we shall find that the oppressions which they exhibit have been severe exactly in proportion as the Monarch has been insecure. The tyrants in Greece were so sanguinary, only because they were in continual danger of being overthrown. The Pachas in Turkey plunder the people with such grinding extortion, only because they do not hold their office on a week’s tenure. In fact, it is evident, that if the Monarch were perfectly secure, perfectly certain of never being molested in the exercise of his power, he would be satisfied with extracting from the people such a portion of the annual produce of land and labour as would abundantly supply all his appetites and passions; and when there is but one man to satiate, this is but a small portion. Despotism would be very moderately oppressive, if the despot were perfectly secure, but not being so, he is under the necessity of purchasing support by the plunder of the people. He must maintain a large military force to compel passive obedience—a large ecclesiastical establishment to inculcate it.
But as this Army and this Priesthood will employ their power, not for him, but against him, unless he can make it their interest to do otherwise, he cannot support his dominion unless he satiates, not himself alone, but them, with the spoil of the people. Despotism, therefore, owes by far the greatest part of its mischievousness to the insecurity of the Monarch. If he could be made perfectly secure—if he were released, not only from all legal, but from all moral responsibility—if men could be persuaded, that to oppose the behest of their Sovereign, or even to speak of him or of his acts with any thing short of the most unbounded and submissive veneration, was a most important violation of morality—then the Monarchs would be to them nearly as a shepherd to his flock. He would oppress them no farther than by extorting from them the means of satiating every possible desire, and in every other respect, it would be decidedly his interest to leave them perfect freedom of action.
It appears then, that if the people are not to be trusted, the least bad of all possible Governments must be, that in which all the powers of Government are concentrated in the hands of one man, and when that man is entirely exempt from all controul, either from the laws of from public opinion, a more unlimited despotism than has ever yet existed in the world.
There would, it is true, be grave inconveniences attending on this form of government. First, pillage even by one man is an evil, but this is not the worst. An absolute King, having little or no motive to acquire distinguished intellect, weak Monarchs would frequently fill the throne; and although they would not oppress the people more than Monarchs of vigorous intellect, they would be less capable of protecting them from the aggressions of one another. But although the folly and weakness of the Monarch would prove highly mischievous, it could not produce such lamentable effects as infallibly arise from an aristocratic government, whose interest it is to extract from the people as much in every way as they can be prevailed on to part with, and who, in proportion as they are wiser and better instructed, will only pursue that interest with more unerring certainty.
Thus, then, it appears that, to a man who reasons consistently, there is no medium between advocating a popular government, and standing up for absolute despotism. If the people are capable of making a good choice, with them the choice ought to rest. If they are not capable, he with whom the general happiness is the regulating principle of his judgments, will stop no where short of the completest conceivable despotism. But, he who, while he professes a horror of absolute power, opposes all propositions tending to vest an effective checking power in the people—such a man leaves no inference to be drawn, save either that his reasoning faculty is in a deplorable state of depravation, or that he is blinded by being himself a member of the governing aristocracy, whose rule is far more inimical to happiness than a secure and unlimited despotism. Hobbes, who is branded by all Englishmen as the advocate of despotism, had this advantage over the anti-reformers of the present day, that he reasoned consistently from the principle of the incapacity of the people,1 which they equally with him adopt, but from which they reason only so far as suits the particular end which they have in view.
Quesnai
22.
ATROCITIES OF THE TREAD WHEEL
GLOBE AND TRAVELLER, 3 OCT., 1823, P. 3
This article is based on Bentham’s ideas as developed in James Mill’s “Prisons and Prison Discipline” (1823), written for the Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. VI, pp. 385-95. Both the quotation from and reference to the ideas in Prison Labour, Etc.: Correspondence and Communications Addressed to His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, Concerning the Introduction of Tread-Mills into Prisons (London: Nicol, 1823) by John Coxe Hippisley (1748-1825), M.P. for Sudbury, magistrate, actually derive from a letter to Hippisley of 7 June, 1823 (on pp. 23-66 of the work) from Dr. John Mason Good (1764-1867), physician and medical writer. The tread wheel (or treadmill) had been introduced to prisons only five years earlier, in 1818. Headed “Tread Wheel. [From a Correspondent.],” the unsigned article is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article on the atrocities of the Tread Wheel which appeared in the Globe & Traveller of 4th [sic] October 1823”
(MacMinn, p. 4).
by the publication of Sir J.C. Hippisley’s work on Prison Discipline, the public attention has been called to the mischievous effects of a punishment which has been hailed as the great modern improvement in penal legislation—the Tread Wheel.
There are strong objections to the employment of labour, in any case, as a punishment. If we consider from what causes men are induced to commit that species of crimes which are most common—petty violations of property—it will be found that in the great majority of cases, it is aversion to labour which has been the operating motive. To prevent crime, means ought to be taken to counteract the painful associations which give rise to this aversion. For such a purpose no contrivance can be worse chosen than that of forcing labour, and that of the severest kind, upon the offender as a punishment.
When a poor man is at large, earning his bread by his exertions, unless his labour be excessive, there are many circumstances which tend to make it agreeable to him. It is to labour that he owes all the comforts and enjoyments of existence. By labour alone can he hope to advance himself in life and raise the prospects of his family. All this has not been sufficient to counteract his habits of indolence, for those habits have prevailed, and instead of labouring he has turned thief; and yet in order to cure him of his aversion to labour, he is placed in a situation where, instead of being the source of his enjoyments, it becomes an engine of unrequited misery to him, and of misery of the most intense description.
This objection applies strongly to all kinds of labour, when considered merely as a punishment; but most of all, to the tread-mill, the horrors of which, as described by Sir John Cox Hippisley, appear unequalled in the modern annals of legalized torture.
I inspected the men as they descended in rotation from the wheel, at the end of the quarter of an hour’s task-work, and made room for fresh relays. Every one of them was perspiring—some in a dripping sweat. On asking them separately, and at a distance from each other, where was the chief stress of labour, they stated, in succession, and without the least variation, that they suffered great pain in the calf of the leg and in the ham; while most of them, though not all, complained of distress also in the instep. On examining the bottom of their shoes, it was manifest that the line of tread had not extended farther than from the extremity of the toes to about one-third of the bottom of the foot; for in several instances the shoes were new, and between this line and the heel altogether unsoiled—a fact, however, that was as obvious from the position of the foot while at work, as from the appearance of the shoe at rest. Several of the workers seemed to aim at supporting their weight by bringing the heel into action, the feet being twisted outwards; and on inquiring why this was not oftener accomplished, the reply was, that though they could gain a little in this way, it was with so painful a stress of the knees that they could only try it occasionally. The palms of their hands, in consequence of holding tight to the rail, were in every instance hardened, in many horny, in some blistered, and discharging water. The keeper, who accompanied us, admitted the truth of all these statements, and added that it was the ordinary result of the labour; and that use did not seem to render it less severe; for those who had been confined long appeared to suffer nearly or altogether as much as those who were new to the work.
[Pp. 31-2.]
Sir J.C. Hippisley also states on good medical authority, that this kind of labour has a strong tendency to produce varicose tumours and ruptures, also, that the tortuous attitude and uneasy motion totally deprive the prisoner of the healthful advantage of athletic exercise.
On the female prisoners the effects are of a still more serious and distressing nature, in as much, that in the greater number of counties where tread-wheel labour exists, it has not been deemed safe to extend it to females. Nor are these evils chimerical. Sir J. C. Hippisley mentions the particular prisons in which they have been experienced, and gives various details concerning the Cold-bath Fields House of Correction, for which we refer our readers to the work itself. [Pp. 33-7.]
It is true that the communications received from the Governors of the various prisons in which the tread-wheel is in use, in answer to the official circular of Mr. Peel, have not been in any great degree unfavourable to the tread-mill.1 The admissions, however, which they have made, and which are stated by Sir J.C. Hippisley, are fully sufficient to justify the inferences which Sir J. has drawn from them. And were it otherwise, Ilchester gaol has taught us not to judge of prison arrangements on the word of the prison authorities2 —more especially of arrangements so well calculated as the tread-mill to be instruments of oppression in the hands of those authorities themselves.
Among other circumstances which essentially unfit the tread-mill to be a good engine of punishment is the extreme inequality of the labour; which, it is plain, does not admit of being proportioned with any exactness to the constitution and previous habits of the prisoner, nor can it be proportioned at all, without leaving much to the discretion of the gaoler. “A man who has been accustomed to running up stairs all his life, with good lungs and muscular legs, will scarcely suffer by it, while an asthmatic tailor, weaver, or other sedentary artisan, will be half killed by the exercise.”*
As if it had been endeavoured to devise a mode of punishment which should unite the fewest possible advantages, the tread-mill discipline, besides its cruelty, its inequality, and its injurious effects upon health, has not even the advantage of being an efficient kind of labour. There are many ways of turning a mill more advantageously than by human labour. Moreover, it does not, like the hand crank-mill, exercise the muscles which are of use in ordinary labour. It does not give those bodily habits which will render labour less irksome after release, while, as we have shown, it strongly tends to give such habits of mind as will render it more so. Nor is the tread-wheel labour efficient in the way of example. To be so, it should be visible to every eye. But it is unavoidably shut up within the walls of a prison, and can operate directly upon the minds of none but the prisoners.
Let it not be inferred, however, that we are adverse to the employment of labour in prison discipline. Labour, not tread-wheel labour, but mild, and at the same time efficient and productive labour, though highly unfit for purposes of punishment, is the best of all engines of reformation. But these two kinds of discipline must be kept entirely separate. The object of punishment is to inflict pain—pain sufficient to counteract the motives to vice. The object of reformatory discipline is to break pernicious habits, and to substitute useful ones. If, as has been observed, the habit which brings criminals to gaol is usually an aversion to labour, the grand object of reformatory discipline should be to destroy that aversion. The mode of destroying it is not by making labour an engine of torture. It is by making it a source of pleasure; by suffering the labourer to partake of the fruits of his labour, and that in sufficient quantity to make him think of labour with some degree of pleasure. It is evident, then, that if punishment, which is intended merely as an infliction of pain, be mixed up with reformatory discipline, which can be made effectual only by rendering the condition of the prisoner a state of pleasure, either the one of these two objects must be entirely sacrificed to the other, or the ends of both must be incompletely and inefficiently attained. In fact, we think that nearly all the failures which have taken place in the organization of prison arrangements, may be attributed to an ignorance of this fundamental rule, that punishment and reformation are two different objects, and as such, should be kept distinct: a position which appears to have occurred to no writer antecedent to the publication of the article “Prisons” in the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, to which, for farther illustrations we beg to refer our readers.
23.
PRACTICABILITY OF REFORM IN THE LAW
MORNING CHRONICLE, 8 OCT., 1823, P. 4
This letter, reflecting Mill’s continuing interest in Benthamite law reform and his tutoring in the preceding year by John Austin (1790-1859), Benthamite disciple and close acquaintance of the Mills, appears to have no occasional cause. Headed as title, subheaded “To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle,” it is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A letter on the practicability of reform in the law, which appeared in the Chronicle of 8th October 1823. Not signed.” (MacMinn, p. 4.)
sir,—
That numerous and powerful body, the practising Lawyers, whose opinions the public adopt far too implicitly on the subject of Legislation, have an evident interest in the permanence of the confused and unintelligible mass which now bears the name of law in this country. In proportion as the law is complicated, the influence of the only class who can interpret it must increase; and it is as little to be expected that Lawyers should advocate the adoption of an intelligible system of law, as it was in the time of the Reformation, that the Priests should consent to suffer the Laity to peruse the sacred volume.
We need not therefore be surprised that lawyers should have a number of fallacies at command, with which they combat all attempts at reform in the law. Of these dicta, one of the most frequent is, that it is impossible to devise general rules which shall include all particular cases.
This notion originates in a confusion between questions of law and questions of fact. The latter are innumerable: there is no one case which in all its circumstances exactly resembles another case. It is therefore impracticable to make rules for the decision of all questions of fact. But the questions of law which arise may easily be reduced under a very small number of heads.
Let us consider on what questions every law-suit must necessarily turn. In civil cases the subject of the dispute is, to which of two persons a particular right belongs. Each of them, in order to prove the justice of his claim, affirms that one of those events has happened which give commencement to the right; in the case of an article of property, for instance, that he has bought it, inherited it, and the like. His adversary either denies this event, or affirms that another event has occurred, which gives termination to the right, that he has sold the property, or forfeited it by some subsequent transaction. The question of fact, therefore, is, whether the alleged events have happened, which of course must be determined by the evidence. The questions of law are, in the first place, what the right is; and next, whether the alleged events, supposing them to have happened, are of the number of those which commence, or which terminate the right?
The problem, therefore, of making a Civil Code, consists of two parts. It must be determined what rights it is expedient to create; and it must be determined what events shall give commencement, and what shall give termination to a man’s enjoyment of the rights.
Neither of these is surely an impossible task. A right is the permission, granted by the law, to make a particular use of a person or of a thing. Now it may surely be determined what uses a man shall be suffered to make of his property, what rights he shall be allowed to exercise over his servants, his family, &c.; and reciprocally, what services they shall have the power of exacting from him. The events also, on the occurrence of which these rights shall begin or terminate, may surely be defined. These are, the modes of acquiring and of losing property, and the like.
To determine all these questions is to make a civil code, which will apply to every individual case that can be conceived; since there is no case in which, when the state of the facts is ascertained, the dispute can turn on any question, except the extent of a right, the facts which confer the right, or the facts which take it away.
Nor is it more difficult to construct a body of penal legislation which shall extend to all cases whatever. All rights having been defined, it only remains to assign an appropriate punishment to every violation of those rights.
It appears, then, that there is not that inherent impossibility in devising general rules to fit particular cases, which is affirmed by lawyers to exist. Moreover, it is evident that in all cases which are not left absolutely to the discretion of the Judge, whenever any rule is consulted, even if one decision is made a rule for another, this is applying a general rule to a particular case. The Judge says, A shall enjoy a certain right, in consequence of a certain event; because, Sir Matthew Hale says,1 that this event is sufficient to confer the right; or because Lord Chief Justice somebody declared in the case B versus C, that B became entitled to enjoy the same right, in consequence of the same event. Is it not evident that in both these cases, the Judge is deciding according to a general rule laid down by his predecessors, that the event in question shall always confer the right in question? So that the dispute between the Lawyers and the Reformers of the Law, is not whether it is possible to devise general rules, for this is done by both parties alike; but whether these general rules shall be fixed or variable; and whether they shall be formed upon the universal experience of mankind,—in other words, upon philosophic principles, or upon an induction of one or two instances only,—in other words upon precedents and cases.
24.
OLD AND NEW INSTITUTIONS
MORNING CHRONICLE, 17 OCT., 1823, P. 2
This letter is in response to the speech on 9 Oct. to the Chester Whig Club by Colonel William Lewis Hughes (1767-1852), M.P. for Wallingford (1806-31), reported in the Morning Chronicle, 13 Oct., 1823, p. 2, in which Hughes was at pains to put distance between the terms “Whig” and “Radical, and Rebel.” In the passage referred to by Mill, Hughes said, “We seek no new institutions—we claim only for the people their inalienable rights,” a remark galling to the Philosophic Radicals. Headed as title, subheaded “To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle,” the item is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A letter on Old and New Institutions signed ‘No Worshipper of Antiquity,’ which appeared in the Chronicle of 17th October 1823”
(MacMinn, p. 4).
sir,—
In Colonel Hughes’s late speech at the Chester Whig Meeting, most of the principles of which meet with my warmest approbation, I however find one passage to which I cannot agree. The Colonel disclaims a wish to introduce new institutions, and only wishes to restore the Constitution to its pristine purity.
I am well aware that this is the ordinary language of those with whom Reform is only the watchword of a party—of those who wish for the removal only of trifling abuses, leaving untouched those great ones in which all the others originate. But that such a man as Colonel Hughes should give in to this cant is what, certainly, I did not expect.
I am one of those, Sir, who are friends, and not enemies to innovation; for I wish to see the human race well governed—which would certainly be the greatest of innovations. All history proves, that in every nation of the earth, the powers of Government have uniformly been monopolized in the hands of a privileged few, who, accordingly, never failed to abuse those powers for the benefit of themselves and of their connections, with only one difference, that of old, when the public were far more ignorant and prejudiced than they now are, misgovernment was proportionally more flagrant.
We are told of the wisdom of our ancestors. Let us look back to what by an abuse of terms is called venerable antiquity, and which in fact was the nonage of the world; let us consider for a moment who and of what use were these ancestors, whom it is incumbent on us in the nineteenth century to reverence and worship. Those sages who firmly believed, that St. Dunstan tweaked the evil spirit by the nose,1 that Aves and Credos, holy water, and the relics of saints were infallible safeguards in the hour of danger, and that a comet or an eclipse portended the ruin of an Empire—those worthies, whose brutality and licentiousness mastered every good feeling, and yielded only to slavish reverence for ascetic and bigotted Priests. Such “ancestors” as these are indeed worthy of being held up as patterns for us their degenerate “sons.” Why are we not also required, in imitation of them, to put thousands to death by the most excruciating torments, for heresy, magic, witchcraft and sorcery?
Let us consider for one moment what would have been the consequence, if reverence for our ancestors had prevented us from adopting improvements in the physical, as it has in the moral sciences. We should never then have been initiated into the wonders of chemistry and of natural philosophy. We should never have seen the air pump, the spinning jenny, or the steam engine. No canals, no bridges, should we have had; and our roads would have remained inferior to the worst lanes of the present day. The press, and all the wonders which it has produced, would never have had existence.
It were indeed strange, if at that period of our history, when all the other arts and sciences were in their infancy—when the earth was believed to be a flat surface in the centre of the universe, and the sea to flow round its outer circumference—when the philosopher’s stone and the universal medicine were the only objects of chemistry, and to foretel events by the stars, the sole purpose of astronomy; when wool, the only material of clothing, was carded and spun by hand, and when navigators rarely trusted themselves out of sight of the shore. It were strange, I say, if a people among whom these things were, should, amid all their ignorance, superstition, and barbarism, have taken enlarged views of human nature and of human society—should have foreseen all possible modes of oppression, and have provided efficient securities against all—should, in a word, have established a Constitution which could secure in perpetuity the blessings of good government to mankind.
Happily we are much wiser than our ancestors; it were a shame if we were not, seeing that we have all their experience, and much more in addition to it. We look back with contempt upon all which they did in the field of physical and mechanical knowledge. It is only in moral and political science that we are not ashamed to bow submission to their authority.
This will not appear strange, if it be considered what influence the ruling few must necessarily exercise over the opinions and feelings of the subject many. The few profit by the existing Government; if a better were substituted, they would cease to receive more than their due share of the benefit.
Sir James Mackintosh, in his Vindiciae Gallicae ([2nd ed.,] p. 120n), makes the following observations:
Mechanics, because no passion or interest is concerned in the perpetuity of abuse, always yield to scientific improvement. Politics, for the contrary reason, always resist it. It was the remark of Hobbes, that if any interest or passion were concerned in disputing the theorems of geometry, different opinions would be maintained regarding them. It has actually happened (as if to justify the remark of that great man), that under the administration of Turgot, a financial reform, grounded on a mathematical demonstration, was derided as visionary nonsense. So much for the sage preference of practice to theory.2
One word more on innovation. They who do not fall into the egregious absurdity of throwing indiscriminate censure upon innovation, as if it were a necessary inference—because a thing is new, therefore it is bad; but who, nevertheless, wish to keep some measures with those who raise the cry against improvement; these half-and-half-men frequently repel the charge of loving innovation, by giving us to understand that they do not love it for its own sake. A most extraordinary merit, in truth! I will venture to affirm, that I have never yet either seen or heard of any one who loved innovation for its own sake. I have seen men who desired to effect pernicious innovations; but it was always from a view of some real or imaginary good, either to society, or to themselves individually.
To conclude, whenever I hear the cry against innovation, I always presume that the cause, in defence of which it is raised, is a bad one. For I am sure, that if it were a good one, its advocates could find some more substantial reason in its defence than merely the antiquity of the opinions which favour it, and the novelty of contrary opinions. And I cannot but consider, that he who, like Colonel Hughes, has a good cause to defend, calculates very ill if he avails himself of an argument which will serve a bad cause with as much success as a good one, when so many cogent arguments may be drawn from the real merits of the case.
No Worshipper of Antiquity
25.
REPUTED THIEVES
MORNING CHRONICLE, 30 OCT., 1823, P. 2
This letter glosses “Liberty of the Subject,” a letter by “Vindex” (of St. John’s Square), dated 20 Oct., that appeared in the Morning Chronicle of 23 Oct., p. 4. (In that letter Vindex, the employer of the boy sent to the treadmill, refers to his earlier letter, “Unjustifiable Conduct of a Constable,” which was sent to the Morning Chronicle, but not published.) Rogers, the magistrate, is linked by Mill with Maurice Swabey (see No. 20), the quashing of whose convictions is reported in “The Late Convictions under the Vagrant Act,” The Times, 20 Oct., 1823, p. 3. The apprehension of “reputed thieves” by a constable was provided for by 3 George IV, c. 55, Sect. 21 (1822), an addition to the Temporary Vagrancy Act, 3 George IV, c. 40 (1822). Mill’s letter, signed “The Censor of the Judges” as is No. 16, is headed as title, subheaded “To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle,” and is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A letter on the practice of sending reputed thieves to the treadmill, signed the Censor of the Judges, which appeared in the Chronicle of 29th [sic] October 1823”
(MacMinn, p. 4).
sir,—
The case which was communicated to you by your correspondent Vindex, on Thursday the 23d instant, is worthy of attention, as a specimen of the paternal solicitude of Magistrates for the safety of our property. A boy was seen by a petty constable in the street looking at a game at marbles. For this heinous offence, he was carried before the sitting magistrate, Mr. Rogers; and on the oath of the constable that he was a reputed thief (although his master was so entirely ignorant of his true character, as to speak highly in his praise), he was sent by Mr. Rogers to solace himself at the Tread Mill.
This vigilant Magistrate probably took example from one of the Swabey convictions, recently quashed at the Kingston Sessions. On a public occasion, an individual was seen in a crowd by a police officer. He was not, indeed, attempting to commit any criminal act, by the confession of the officer he was merely standing in the crowd like any one else. But then the officer knew him to be a reputed thief, or, at least, to keep company with reputed thieves: besides, on searching his pockets, he discovered a pair of scissors, inclosed in a sheath, whereupon he carried him before that active guardian of public morals, Mr. Swabey, by whom he was sent to the Tread-mill, under the Vagrant Act.
Some incredulous critics, indeed, have presumed to insinuate that a reputed thief means a person thought or said to be a thief, and that it is somewhat hard to punish a man for being so unfortunate as to fall under suspicion; they have farther ventured to hint that a man may have an enemy, sufficiently unprincipled to affirm, in the hearing of an officer, that he is a thief; or that, in a moment of irritation, any one may apply to him that name; and that, in all these cases, an officer of little discernment might, with a safe conscience, swear him to be a reputed thief. Nay, these sceptical reasoners have carried their audacity so far, as to doubt whether the veracity of a police officer always deserves implicit confidence; seeing that he has a strong interest in perjury, as a means of acquiring (not to speak of bribes), a character for zeal and activity, without the trouble of hunting out real offenders; seeing, moreover, that he may perjure himself with perfect safety, since it is utterly impossible for any one to prove that he is not a reputed thief.
But Mr. Swabey and Mr. Rogers are well aware that scepticism is an infallible sign of a narrow understanding. Superior to vulgar prejudices, they know how to place a proper degree of confidence in the virtue of mankind: and indeed it were strange, if that perfect veracity which so eminently distinguishes watchmen, did not extend to their fellow labourers in the cause of social order, the police officers.
With all due deference, however, to such high authorities, I cannot help thinking that this anxiety to punish reputed thieves implies an incapability of detecting real ones. If the perpetrators of every offence were duly brought to trial and punished, is it not clear that every one who is convicted as a reputed thief would, if innocent, be punished for no crime at all, and, if guilty, be punished twice for the same offence? One of two things, therefore, is the case—either the punishing of reputed thieves is utterly absurd and wicked; or the state of the law is such, that crimes frequently escape detection and punishment.
The case is, that the laws against theft are so disproportionately severe, that out of ten who are robbed, nine are unwilling to prosecute; that the expences of the law are so enormous, that out of a hundred who are willing to prosecute, ninety-nine have it not in their power; and, lastly, that be the fact as clear as the sun at noon-day, it is much more than an even chance that the thief escapes by a quibble.
To remove these obstacles, the wise framers of the Vagrant Act permit summary convictions, not for actual, but for reputed theft. There is ingenuity in the contrivance; but I venture to submit as a sort of insinuation, whether it would not be better to remove the obstacles to the detection of criminals, by mitigating the Penal Code, by abolishing law taxes,1 by simplifying the law so that hired advocates shall not be needed, and by abolishing all the absurd fictions, all the quirks and quibbles, by which justice is so often eluded in the English Courts of Law.
They will not do this; it would hurt the interest of Learned Gentlemen. But to see men of unblemished character treading at the mill for being reputed by a Police officer to be thieves, neither hurts their interests nor their feelings. When will the public learn to think for themselves, instead of trusting to those who are interested in deceiving them?
The Censor of the Judges
26.
EFFECTS OF GAMBLING
LANCET, 9 NOV., 1823, PP. 214-16
This article gives early indication of Mill’s participation in the nature vs. nurture debate, in which he enlisted on the side of education and environment, without endorsing the views of the necessitarians or Owenites. The case here referred to is that of John Thurtell (1794-1824), who murdered a fellow-swindler, William Weare, on 24 Oct., 1823, and was hanged on 9 Jan., 1824. Mill’s reference to “students of our profession” is surely a guise intended to associate his argument with the concerns of medicine (or it may have been added by the editor); he had no medical training, and his brief legal training is not specially germane. The article, Mill’s only contribution to the Lancet, the (initially) weekly radical medical journal, is headed “[From a Correspondent] / The Late Murder / Effects of Gambling,” and is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article on the evil consequences of gaming which appeared in the Lancet of 9th November 1823”
(MacMinn, p. 4).
when human nature exhibits, as she occasionally does, an example of all kinds of wickedness concentrated in one man, we feel a melancholy interest in looking back upon the events of his life, and tracing the various circumstances which, by their conspiring influence, formed his mind to guilt, and eradicated all those associations, or prevented them from being formed, which cause an ordinary character to shudder at the thought of shedding the blood of a fellow creature.
Indolent and superficial reasoners would willingly arrest the inquiring mind in the search after those hidden causes by which the human character is formed. If a shocking instance of depravity presents itself to their notice, they do not say. That man was an idler, a drunkard, or a gamester; but That man was naturally of a bad disposition: as if men were robbers and murderers by constitution, and gave proof in the cradle of the atrocities which they were destined to commit.
With what face can a man who believes in innate depravity, hold up the fate of a murderer as an example, and warn all who are witnesses of it, to beware of the vices which conduct men to such an end? As consistently might a believer in fatality enlarge upon the necessity of obeying the dictates of prudence. The person to whom the admonition is addressed, might well reply, that it is unnecessary, since, if his nature is corrupt, it is in vain to struggle against it; but if he has a natural disposition to virtue, all exhortation to follow that disposition is superfluous. This doctrine, therefore, must raise up a blind confidence in the minds of the innocent, and must prevent them from taking the necessary precautions against those baneful habits which lead to vice: while they, who have already entered into the downhill path of wickedness, are prevented from a timely reform, by the thought that all their efforts would be unavailing.
Nor is the doctrine which we are combating less unfounded than mischievous. It is truly astonishing upon how little evidence this opinion has obtained currency in the world—such currency that the phraseology to which it has given rise, is, perhaps, equally universal with the use of language. It remains yet to be proved, that men are born either virtuous or wicked—either predisposed to morality or to vice. The only proof which it has ever been attempted to assign, is the enormous difference which exists between the most virtuous and the most vicious of men. The differences of character are indeed great; but so are the differences of external circumstances. And as it is generally admitted that circumstances often overcome the effect of natural predisposition, while no proof has ever been given that natural predisposition can overcome external circumstances: we are at liberty to conclude, that in ascribing to any person a natural and original disposition to vice, men are following the very common practice of representing as natural that which is only habitual, merely because they do not recollect its beginning, and will not take the trouble to inquire into its cause.
If, then, wickedness is not the effect of nature, but of external circumstances, that inquiry cannot fail to be interesting, which traces up that complicated and lamentable effect to the several causes which produced it. But most of all will such an inquiry be valuable, if it points out to us as the original root of all the evil, not some circumstances peculiar to the guilty individual, but habits and practices common to him with a great number; and which, although they do not conduct their votaries either to equal depravity or to equal punishment, infallibly bring about a radical corruption of character, and lead them continually to the brink of the most atrocious crimes.
Our readers will have long ago anticipated the subject of our present observations. The principal perpetrator of the late murder, John Thurtell, was a murderer only after he had been a gamester, and only, as it appears, because he had been a gamester.
The process by which gaming effects so complete a corruption of the character is two-fold. First, It reduces the gamester, not gradually, but suddenly, to that necessitous state where the temptation to crime is the strongest. Secondly, There is no practice capable of being pointed out, which so entirely roots out all good habits, and implants in their stead so many bad ones.
We are satisfied that if the unfortunate men who are executed for theft, or forgery, were interrogated concerning the original and primary cause of the distress which occasioned the crime, it would be found, in a great proportion of instances, that this distress was brought on by gaming. But it is not even by the distress which it creates, and the temptation which it frequently holds out to crime, that this destructive vice produces its worst effects. A mind which experiences the agonizing vicissitudes of the gaming table, soon becomes so habituated to strong excitement, that, like the body of the habitual drunkard, it is insensible to every stimulus of a gentler kind. It is totally and for ever unfitted to resume habits of diligence and industry; and the habits which it has acquired are in themselves, such as, above all others, tend to produce crime. Continually liable to perish by starvation, the gamester does not consider his perils much enhanced when, to be released from that danger, he exposes himself to the terrors of the law. And the habit of relying upon chance makes him trust to the chance of escape, even when the possibility is next to nothing. In no other way can the apparent coolness and indifference of Thurtell be accounted for, where it must be evident that the chance of escaping detection scarcely deserved the name of a possibility.
It is a question well deserving of consideration, how far Government or its officers are justified in any direct interference to prevent these practices. It would be a chimerical expectation, that the vice of gaming could be eradicated by positive enactment. But there can be no doubt, that public gaming-houses contribute greatly to the encouragement of this vice. Unwary persons, perhaps, recently arrived in London, (and we particularly address our observations to students of our profession,) and not yet aware of the dangers to which they are exposed, are frequently entrapped, and carried into one of these houses, where they are made drunk, cheated of their money, and, perhaps, by frequent repetition, reduced to poverty, while they contract, at the same time, inveterate habits of gaming. We think that the exertions used for the suppression of these houses are not by any means so active as they ought to be. Many notorious hot-beds of vice are still permitted to exist; and we are convinced, that upon diligent inquiry, their existence would be found to be connived at by the police officers, who have no interest in diminishing the number of offences, though they have in obtaining possession of the persons of the offenders. We think that Mr. Dyer, Mr. Swabey, and Mr. Rogers, would be better employed in extirpating this nuisance, than by sending respectable men to the tread-mill for having the misfortune to be taken ill in Hyde Park,1 or for being considered by police officers “reputed thieves.”2
27.
QUESTION OF POPULATION [1]
BLACK DWARF, 27 NOV., 1823, PP. 748-56
This letter is the first of four by Mill to Thomas Jonathan Wooler (1786?-1853), editor and publisher of the populist weekly Black Dwarf, an opponent of the Malthusian principles and practices that Mill had adopted to the point of being arrested for distribution of birth-control literature (probably in May 1823). Mill takes exception to the second part of Wooler’s “Inquiry into the Principles of Population,” printed in two instalments: the first (including a letter by Francis Place, who was responsible for the printing of the Neo-Malthusian literature Mill had distributed) in Black Dwarf, 12 Nov., 1823, pp. 661-3, and the second ibid., 19 Nov., pp. 693-706. The page references in the text are to this second part. For further stages in the controversy, see Nos. 28, 31, and 32. The letter, headed as title, is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A letter on the necessity of checking population, which appeared in the Black Dwarf of November 20th [sic] 1823, signed A.M.”
(MacMinn, p. 4).
sir,—
Although I do not agree in the view which you take of the important subject of population, I cannot sufficiently applaud your liberality in leaving your pages open to the discussion of the question; a degree of toleration, which, I am sorry to say, few persons who take your side of this question, can be prevailed on to allow. I hasten to avail myself of this liberty of discussion, for the purpose of combating the objections which you stated in your last number against the plan of checking population [pp. 695-9]; objections which appear to me founded on a mistaken view of the circumstances upon which the condition of the labouring classes depends.
It is unnecessary for me to prove, that the working people are in a state of miserable poverty, since you admit this, and have long been exerting yourself for the benevolent purpose of improving their condition. We differ only as to the cause of the distress; which I maintain to be, excess of population, as compared with the means of subsistence. You, on the contrary, affirm, that population has no tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence; and that misgovernment is the only cause of the distressed condition of the working classes.
I should be very sorry to extenuate the miseries of misgovernment. I am, equally with yourself, a friend to a Radical Reform in the Commons House of Parliament;—and if I could believe, as you appear to do, that such a Reform can only be effected by keeping the people in poverty, I should perhaps hesitate to urge the plan of checking population, until after a Reform should have been obtained. But I cannot agree with you, that the working classes will not reform the government unless they are miserable. On the contrary, I think that so long as they are in poverty, Reform may be delayed for an unlimited period; but if they were in the receipt of high wages, they would have leisure to turn their attention to the abuses of government; and those abuses could not fail of being speedily reformed.
I.—You maintain that population has no tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence. [Pp. 694-6.] I feel convinced that you are entirely mistaken; but this is a question of some complication; and although I shall be ready to discuss it whenever you please, the practical conclusion, as far as regards the poor man may be shown without making it depend on this question; and to this point attention is now requested.
You admit the fact of the distress; but you ascribe it to misgovernment [pp. 697-8, 703, 705]; meaning, I presume, over-taxation. Now over-taxation cannot lower wages. It may, indeed, you will say, raise the prices of the necessaries of life. It will thus injure the working classes as much as if it operated directly to reduce wages. I shall not enter into this question at present. I shall concede the point. But I hope to convince you that it does not affect the question. I admit, for argument’s sake, that the present rate of wages is such as would enable the labourer to live in comfort and happiness, but for the pressure of taxation.
My argument remains the same:—the labourer is now in distress. If he had double his present wages, with only the same amount of taxation, he would be in distress no longer. Now each man would have double his present wages, if the numbers of the people had not been too rapidly increased.
Does not every working man know, that his employer would give him higher wages, if he were not sure of obtaining as many men as he wants at the present rates? And is it not clear that he could not obtain men, if men in sufficient quantity and out of employment, were not to be had?
There is now a certain quantity of employment. There are as many men as can be employed, and more; for there is a great number of men out of work. These men, who are out of work, must either starve, or agree to take lower wages than their neighbours. The consequence is, that wages are low, and employment being regarded as a favor, the working man is often compelled to submit to incivility and insolence from his employer.
Suppose that, instead of excess, there was a deficiency of labourers. At present a capitalist can always obtain workmen, but a workman cannot always find an employer. Suppose this order of things reversed: suppose that there were fewer men than are wanted for the purpose of production. All the labourers would then be fully employed, and as more would be wanted than it would be possible to procure, some capitalists, in order to allure the men from their former employers, would offer high wages; this would compel the former employers to do the same. Wages would therefore be high, and employment would no longer be considered as a favor, but on the contrary, a labourer would be doing a favor to a capitalist, by working for him, and the capitalists would be compelled to treat their workmen well.
I infer that it is always wise in the labourers, to keep down their numbers a little below the means of employment. No men would then be ever out of work; the difficulty of procuring workmen would compel the capitalists to offer high wages, and this they would do in spite of any law to the contrary, however severe that law might be.
If then so much good is to be done by keeping down the numbers of the working people, the only question is, between one mode of keeping them down, and another. It is for the people themselves to decide. For my own part, I consider the plan of checking population, to be that which unites the most advantages with the fewest disadvantages.
All this, you see, does not depend in any degree upon the tendency of population to increase beyond the means of subsistence. It depends upon nothing but what every working man must know: that if there were fewer men, there would not be any men out of work; and that if there were no men out of employment, the men who are in employment could make their own terms with the capitalists.
II.—You say, that it would be better to take off the taxes than to diminish the population.1 I too am desirous that the taxes should be taken off: but if there were no taxes upon the working classes at all, there would be as many men out of employment as before: although they who are employed would be better off as long as their present wages continued; but, as there would still be more labourers than could obtain employment, the same process of bidding at lower wages against one another would continue, and wages speedily be reduced again to the lowest possible amount; reduced too, observe, by the competition of the working people themselves. Besides, when a mode of benefiting the working classes, viz. by limiting their numbers, is pointed out, it is no answer to point to another mode of benefiting them, viz. by taking off the taxes: for this, unfortunately, you have not yet in your power, (and yet there is no reason why the people should be kept miserable in the interim:) and besides, if you had, why not do both?
I cannot agree in the sentiments which you express in the following sentence; “We do not wish men to be comfortable, if they could be so for a period under a bad system.” [P. 705.] I do wish men to be comfortable, whether under a bad system or a good one. What is it that constitutes a bad system, if it is not the discomfort which it produces. Good government is not the end of all human actions. Though a highly important means, it is still only a means, to an end: and that end is happiness.
I admit that I should desire for the people something more than merely good clothing and plenty of food. But it remains to be shewn that their chance of obtaining that something more, will be in any degree diminished by their being well fed and clothed. I feel confident that it will be increased. Until they are well fed, they cannot be well instructed: and until they are well instructed, they cannot emancipate themselves from the double yoke of priestcraft and of reverence for superiors.
Placed as is your observation, just quoted, among many others of similar import, I cannot but view it as a sort of acknowledgment, that the people would be made more comfortable by limiting their numbers. If they, too, can be convinced of this, I have no fear of their hesitating to adopt the means from apprehension of its retarding the epoch of a Radical Reform.
A circumstance which appears to weigh with you, is, that you think the plan of checking population a device of the rich to oppress the poor. [P. 705.] So far is this from being the case, that it is entirely contrary to the interests of the rich that any check to population should come into general adoption.
It is the interest of the master manufacturers, that a great number of hands should readily offer themselves at low wages. Now I have shewn, that if the numbers of the people were limited to a sufficient degree, wages would be high, and workmen could not always be readily obtained.
III.—You say, “Wages have decreased in England, in a ratio with the accumulation of capital; not because there are too many labourers, but because capital, being the ruling principle, can compel them to labour upon its own conditions.” [P. 701.] It is true, that when the population is excessive, the capitalist can lose nothing by dismissing him—that another man, of equal bodily powers, will immediately offer himself at the same, or even lower wages,—he is forced to cringe to his master, and submit to any indignity rather than be turned out. If labourers were few in comparison to the demand for them—if labour, and not employment for labour, were the article in request:—if every working man knew that when dismissed he could easily obtain employment, while his master could not so readily obtain another labourer, he would then be as independent as his employer.
Look at North America! Is the labourer there the slave of the capitalist? You will say, this is owing to good government. To prove the contrary, I refer you to the English colonies, to Nova Scotia, for instance; and the English colonies are among the worst governed countries in the universe. Yet in Nova Scotia the labourer is highly paid, and perfectly independent; nor does any rich man dare to oppress or insult him. This is only because there is a deficiency of labourers, below the number which capitalists wish to employ.
In some parts of the south of France, the working people are well paid, and well provided with necessaries and comforts. This I affirm from my own observation.2 There however, population is regulated. Yet there the government is not good. The same is the case is some parts of the Austrian dominions, under one of the most despotic governments upon record. In both these countries the people are kept, through the efforts of bad government, in a state of great mental degradation, and consequently unable to avail themselves of the advantages they might otherwise possess, which in time they will possess, and which the people of this country might almost immediately possess.
Not only the master manufacturer but the landowner also, has an interest in over-population. A large population implies a high state of cultivation, and dear corn. Now a high price of corn is the cause of high rents; an highly cultivated farm will yield an increased rent at the expiration of the lease. Both sections of the rich—the landowners and manufacturers—are thus interested in the excessive population; the former for high rents; the latter for low wages, and high profits.
Nor is this all. Both landlords and manufacturers have an obvious interest in keeping the working classes in a state of abject poverty. These gentlemen know that while the great body of the people are compelled to work fourteen hours a day, they cannot turn their attention to the abuses of the government. They can neither instruct themselves, nor send their children to be instructed. From want of leisure, their thinking powers can never be sufficiently developed, to repel the prejudices which make them the slaves of priests and kings.
So long as excess of population was regarded as an irremediable evil, the doctrine was taken up and patronized by the aristocracy: who wished the people to infer, that misgovernment was but a trivial evil, and that it was idle to oppose it, since the lower classes must always be in poverty, under a good, or under a bad government. But now that remedy is pointed out, for excess of population; a remedy, which, if adopted, would produce high wages, and would enable the people to instruct themselves, and to reform their government; I venture to predict that the rich, but above all, the clergy will do all in their power to prevent the adoption of the plan, so well calculated to elevate the scale of being. As soon as they shall perceive that it is coming into use, they will rail against it in the pulpit, will persecute in every possible way, and without mercy all whom they suspect to have made use of it. But all their efforts will be useless; and if the superstitions of the nursery are discarded, we may hope ere long to see the English people well paid, well instructed, and eventually well governed.
IV.—I have only room to say a few words against the objection that this plan is a violation of the laws of nature. [Pp. 700, 705.] Those laws are no more violated by checking population than by any other mode of turning to useful purposes the properties of matter. It is not in the power of man, a being of limited faculties, to violate the laws of nature. But he can avail himself of one law to counteract another. It is a law of nature that the sexual intercourse, if not artificially prevented, occasions the generation of children. But it is also a law of nature, that man shall seek happiness; and that he shall avail himself, for that purpose, of other laws of nature.
You say, in a former article; “With all due deference to those who wish to keep down the population to the means of subsistence, I think this might be very safely left to Providence which has spread so plentiful a table for all his creatures:”3 and in a later article; “We can trust the Ruler of all things, not only with ‘his sky’ but all the principles which he has called into action, to regulate themselves.”4
You do not trust the Almighty with “his sky.” You do not indeed prevent the rain from falling at unseasonable times: the true reason of which I take to be that you cannot. But you do all in your power to shelter yourself from its fall: you put up an umbrella, and cover your house with a roof, to prevent the rain, which Providence has sent, from injuring your person or your property. The charge of violating the laws of nature may thus be retorted upon yourself. To check population is not more unnatural than to make use of an umbrella. If either of these operations is a counteraction of the designs of Providence, both are equally so. Again, when you speak of leaving to Providence the care of checking population, you seem not to be aware of the length to which this argument may be carried. A man who leaves every thing to Providence, will not succeed in many of his undertakings. “God helps those who help themselves:” and you might as well leave to Providence the care of producing food, as that of preventing either the waste or useless consumption of it.
A.M.
28.
QUESTION OF POPULATION [2]
BLACK DWARF, 10 DEC., 1823, PP. 791-8
This is the second of Mill’s responses to the opinions of Thomas Wooler (see No. 27). Wooler had replied to No. 27 in “The Black Dwarf to ‘A.M.’ against the Preventive System,” Black Dwarf, 3 Dec., 1823, pp. 772-83, to which the interpolated page numbers refer. Headed “Question of Population / Arguments of the Anti-Populationists,” the letter is subheaded “To the Editor of the Black Dwarf,” and is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A second letter on the same subject which appeared in the Black Dwarf of December 10th 1823, signed A.M.”
(MacMinn, p. 5).
sir,—
I have perused with attention your reply to my former letter on the plan of regulating the numbers of the people; and I proceed to state the reasons which induce me, notwithstanding all which you have said, to adhere to my former opinion, that any increase of population beyond the actual increase of the means of subsistence and employment, would be highly injurious to the labouring classes, by whatever circumstances the increase of the subsistence may be promoted or retarded.
Before replying, however, to your objections, I think it necessary to correct two mistakes into which you have fallen in your statement of my views. You observe, that it is not the labourer alone who multiplies the candidates for labour; and you quote the instances of Mr. T. Courtenay, and Mr. Canning.1 You then observe, “It is only those who are poor, who are recommended to abstinence. A class almost as numerous, namely, those who may become so, are never taken into the calculation.” [P. 776.] Now, Sir, I have to remark, that I do take into the calculation not only the poor, but all men; and I think it highly unwise in any person, rich or poor, to have more than a certain number of children. But I certainly think it still more unwise in a poor man to have a family whom he cannot maintain, than in a rich man to have a family which he can.
The other instance of misinterpretation to which I allude, is the following:—You say, “you would be satisfied if the people could be made comfortable under a bad system; and while no discomfort is actually felt, you seem to infer that it ought not to be feared, no matter how certain to result from a bad system.” [Pp. 777-8.] Now, Sir, on turning to my former letter, I do, indeed, find these words: “I wish the people to be comfortable under any system, good or bad;” but I also find the following words: “I admit that I should desire something more for the people than merely good clothing and plenty of food. But it rests with you to prove, that their chance of obtaining that something more will be in any degree diminished by their being well fed and clothed.”2 I also avowed myself,3 and again avow myself, a friend to a Radical Reform in the Commons House of Parliament. So much for my views and your misinterpretations. I now proceed to comment upon your arguments.
You say that I have avoided the discussion of the question whether population has ever pressed against the means of subsistence; and yet you say this is the only ground upon which my arguments in favour of keeping down the numbers of the people can be maintained. [P. 783.]
It may, perhaps, be necessary to inform you, that when population is said to press against the means of subsistence, the meaning is, that it presses against the means of employment; in short, that there are more men in existence than can be employed and maintained, in comfort, by the productive capital of the country. That such is the fact, is sufficiently proved, by the universal prevalence of low wages.—There is no country on the earth, if we except America and other newly cultivated countries, where (if no check is in use) the labourer is not underpaid. Now, I ask, how could this possibly be the case, if the population did not press on the means of employment? If there had been fewer workmen than the capital of the world is able to employ, the capitalists would have found great difficulty in obtaining men; they would have been eager to obtain them almost at any cost, and would have bid against one another until wages were raised very high. This, however, is very far from being the case. In every old country, the lowest class of labourers are barely provided with the necessaries of life. This could never be the case, if there were not more than the capital of the country could employ; in consequence of which they bid against one another, and obtain lower wages: nor can they all be employed, even at a low rate, for many are constantly out of work. If now they would adopt means for regulating their numbers, they would have it in their power to make their own terms with their employers; for they could always keep their number below that which can be employed with the present capital. Labour would then always be in request, and wages high.
But you affirm (if I understand you rightly), that even in this case, the employers could keep down wages. [P. 775.] I feel no such apprehensions. The capitalists have been enabled, hitherto, to keep down wages, only by the mutual competition of the labourers. Slaves are at the mercy of their employers, and will be worked as it may suit the convenience of those employers. They can be forced to work. Free labourers cannot.
When there is no excess of population—no competition among the labourers, they are not at the mercy of their employers. Among many proofs of this fact which our history affords, I shall only quote one. After the great plague, in the reign of Edward III, by which the numbers of the people were greatly reduced, complaints were made of a deficiency of workmen, and it was found that they would no longer work without high wages. On this an Act of Parliament was made to prohibit them from taking higher wages than they took before the plague: this Act being found ineffectual, the penalties were raised higher and higher, until, at last, the offence was made capital; and still it was all in vain.4 A striking proof of the disposition of the higher classes to keep down wages, but an equally striking proof of their inability to do so. It may serve as an answer to your assertion, that if half the population of Ireland were cut off by a pestilence, the remainder would not be benefited. I think it very clear that they would be benefited; as the English people were benefited by the plague in the time of Edward III.
I have your own authority, to corroborate my assertion,5 that it is the competition of the labourers which enables their employers to keep down wages. You say
no labour was ever long profitable to the labourer in this country. All sorts of labour, at the same period, cannot be so, particularly in manufactures; the demand for which is influenced by fashions; and the labourer must eat or starve as fashion pleases. When a trade is supposed to be profitable, a rush is made on the part of the rising population to partake of its advantages. This destroys them. Another is rising and the crowd turns in that direction.
[P. 782.]
Is it not clear, from your own statement, that if the “rising population” were not so numerous—if the “crowd” were smaller, their “rush” to partake of high wages would not, as at present, have the effect of lowering those high wages? Is it possible to admit more explicitly than you do, that the lowness of wages is owing to the competition among the people, from which it is a necessary inference, that if the people were less numerous, the competition would be much smaller, and wages would not be so much reduced?
I do not think it necessary to reply to any of the arguments which you have adduced to show that this “check to population”6 would not have the effect of checking population. Whatever other objections may be urged against it, this, at least, is a merit which certainly must be allowed to it. I do not see how you can well doubt that if the people could be prevailed upon to use the method of keeping down their numbers, they would infallibly succeed.
You endeavour to shew that I am wrong in asserting that it is the interest of the landowners and manufacturers, that the country should be over-peopled;7 you do not, however, deny, either that low wages are favourable to the manufacturer, or high rents to the landlord: and it is clear that when there are many mouths to feed, a high state of cultivation is required, which implies dear corn, and high rents. Your only argument is, that Dennis Browne says, that Ireland could spare two millions of its inhabitants.8 Now I cannot hold it to be any proof, that some thousands of men will not see and act according to their interest, because one man, and he, not one of the wisest, either does not see it, or seeing it, affects to preach against it. But without pushing this argument farther, I admit that Ireland is rather too much over-peopled, even for the aristocracy; for their own persons and property are endangered by the despair of a starving people.
You still think that the people will not effect reform until they are driven to desperation by poverty; and you quote the apathy and indifference of the middle classes. [P. 773.] I might quote the apathy and indifference of the agricultural labourers, who are by far the poorest of the working people. Notwithstanding all that you have said, I really cannot admit that the middling classes of this country are more indifferent than the working classes to the blessings of good government; and I am sure that in every other country of Europe the middle classes alone feel any desire for a better government than they possess.
As to the condition of the people in the South of France, and in the Austrian States, you do not deny the truth of my statement, that they regulate their numbers, and that they are well paid and comfortable.9 But you say they are in a state of great mental degradation. [P. 779.] This is true. But who ever asserted, that superstition and mis-government will not brutalize a people? They are the slaves of the priests; and, moreover, the Government, which knows what it has to fear from their mental improvement, discourages the introduction of schools and other means of instruction among them. Our working classes are, by no means, equally priest-ridden, and have much greater facilities for instructing themselves.—You say, “it remains to be proved, that until men are well fed they cannot be well instructed.” [P. 778.] In support of which you quote Shakspeare, rather an extraordinary authority in a question of philosophy. I reply, that if fat paunches make lean pates;10 still it is not the less true, that so long as men stand in need of all the money which they can command, to secure a bare subsistence, they are not likely to spend much, either upon books or upon the instruction of their children. Nor is this all. A man who is compelled to work fourteen hours out of the twenty-four to obtain bread, has no time to instruct himself, and is too much harassed and fatigued to turn his attention to important affairs. How can it be otherwise?
A few words more on the specific plan which has been proposed for the regulation of population. You see in it a tendency to moral evils of the most aggravated description; and you insinuate, that it would lead to infanticide, and even to murder. [P. 780.] You might as well say, that to give true evidence before a Court of Justice, might lead to perjury; that to write your name would lead to forgery; or, in fact, that any useful act might terminate in any mischievous one, if some insignificant collateral circumstance is, in both cases, the same. This looks very like a reason made to justify a feeling. Can you discover any but a fantastic resemblance between checking population, and committing murder? Do you think, that what deters people from committing murder, is an aversion to reduce the population of the country? for this is the only deterring motive, which would be removed by checking population. As to infanticide, I leave you to judge, whether a parent, who has a larger family than it is possible to maintain, or a parent who has only a small family, is most likely to be tempted to destroy a child. I thus retort upon yourself your remark, that men should keep as far as possible from the temptation to commit any crime. [P. 780.]
In my last letter, I replied to the objection, that to check population is to violate the laws of nature, by observing that it is equally a violation of the law of nature to hold up an umbrella.11 This you deny; and you say “I am no party to the operation of the law; and I cannot violate it. The law is, that rain should descend; and I only avoid its descending upon my own head.” [P. 782.] The law is, that rain shall descend upon every man’s head, and every where. But if you do not like this illustration, I will give you another. It is a law of nature that man should go naked. He is born naked; like other animals, all of whom go naked. To put on clothes is clearly a counteraction of the designs of Providence, if Providence intended that we should not violate the laws of nature. Accordingly, upon this principle, some self-called philosophers have written in defence of the savage state, and have exclaimed against every step in the progress of civilization as being an infraction of the laws of nature.
You also say that there is “a great difference between the different laws of nature: and that you do not suspect me of asserting that you have an equal right to hold up an umbrella, and to procure abortion, or to kill a fellow creature.” [P. 782.] This is precisely what I want. You have now brought your doctrines to the same test with myself. I too, affirm, that “there is a great difference between different laws of nature.” The difference is this, there are two sets of actions both of which you chuse to call violations of the law of nature. By the one set misery is inflicted, by the other set, no evil whatever is occasioned. Thus by killing a fellow-creature, pain is inflicted on the murdered person and his connexions, and other persons are alarmed for their own safety. By checking population, no pain is inflicted, no alarm excited, no security infringed. It cannot, therefore, on any principles, be termed immoral; and if the above arguments be correct—if it tends to elevate the working people from poverty and ignorance to affluence and instruction, I am compelled to regard it as highly moral and virtuous; nor can I agree with you in treating as “heartless,” [p. 781] the desire of seeing so inestimable a benefit conferred upon mankind; unless, indeed, the word heartless, be one of the engines of a sentimental cant, invented to discourage all steady pursuit of the general happiness of mankind.
A.M.
29.
PLACE’S ON THE LAW OF LIBEL
MORNING CHRONICLE, 1 JAN., 1824, P. 2
This review deals with a subject that occupied much of James Mill’s attention. The anonymous pamphlet (by Francis Place, as Mill certainly knew) is made up of eight parts published in the British Luminary and Weekly Intelligencer in weekly first-page, unsigned instalments from 3 Nov. to 22 Dec., 1822, under the title “Constitutional Association. Practice of the Courts.—Trial by Jury in Libel Cases,” plus an article added for the pamphlet publication. Francis Place (1771-1854), “the Radical tailor of Charing Cross,” was a loyal associate of Bentham and James Mill, and championed popular causes throughout his life. Mill again reviewed Place’s pamphlet (with Richard Mence’s The Law of Libel) in “Law of Libel and Liberty of the Press,” Westminster Review, III (Apr. 1825), 285-321 (CW, Vol. XXI, pp. 1-34). The unsigned review in the Morning Chronicle is headed “On the Law of Libel, with Strictures on the Self-Styled Constitutional Association, pp. 73. London, John Hunt, 1823” and is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A review of Place’s pamphlet on the Law of Libel which appeared in the Chronicle of January 1st 1824”
(MacMinn, p. 5).
this pamphlet consists of a series of Essays, all of which, except the last, appeared some months ago in a periodical publication. We recommend it strongly to the attentive perusal of every one who desires to know the extent of that boasted liberty of the press, which, we are taught to believe, is the birthright of Englishmen. He will learn from this pamphlet, that the rulers of this country possess as great a power of suppressing obnoxious publications by fine and imprisonment as they can desire: that the comparative free discussion which we enjoy exists only by connivance, and would not exist at all, were it not forced upon the Government by an enlightened public opinion.
A short abstract will convey a better idea, than any general remarks, of the view taken of the subject in this very able production.
There is no statute law on the subject of libel. There is nothing but common or unwritten law. Where the law is unwritten, definition is evidently impossible; much more, accurate and precise definition. What is to be gathered from precedents and cases can be known only to lawyers. Jurymen are not lawyers. They cannot therefore judge for themselves whether a publication is or is not libellous, but are compelled to decide the one way or the other, according to the directions of the Judge. Now, the Judge, in giving these directions, not only is not restrained by any definition of libel, but is not even restrained by precedents and cases; since there is scarcely a single point of law, on both sides of which many decisions are not to be found. Whether then the Judge shall direct the Jury to decide according to the precedents on one side, or according to the precedents on the other, depends almost entirely upon his own good will and pleasure. The law of libel, therefore, is actually and in fact made by the Judge.
When a person is tried for publishing a libel, some one swears that he has purchased a book, and the Judge tells the Jury that he considers it to be a libel. But does the Judge tell the Jury what a libel is? No; for there is no definition of it. If, therefore, the Jury find the prisoner guilty, it is not upon the testimony of witnesses, but upon the authority of the Judge. The witness swears that the prisoner sold the book; but to sell a book is not punishable, unless that book is a libel. For the fact of its being so, the Jury have nothing but the word of the Judge. The latitude which Judges allow themselves in declaring publications to be libellous, may be judged of by the example of the late Lord Ellenborough, who said that a libel was any thing which hurts the feelings of any body.1 Under this definition, if it be one, it is easy to see that all publications disagreeable to the Government may be included. The only legal check, then, upon the Judge, is the disposition of the Jury to set aside his opinion, and refuse to consign a man to imprisonment and fine, merely upon the faith of the Judge’s opinion. But there is a mode of rendering this check equally nugatory with all others, and this mode is constantly resorted to in cases of libel. It is by employing a packed Special Jury. The pamphlet before us contains the most complete exposure in the smallest compass which we have yet seen, of the packing system.2 It investigates the origin of the practice, demonstrates that it was originally an abuse, that the grounds on which it was professedly introduced, have long since ceased to exist, and that Special Jurymen, far from being, as in theory they ought to be, superior in education and respectability to the Common Juries, are for the most part greatly deficient in both. It also explains the mode in which the system is acted upon at present. The Special Jury list is composed in counties, of freeholders; and in Middlesex, of some descriptions of leaseholders also; in London, it consists of all whom it is thought proper to term merchants. From this list, the Jury is selected; in Middlesex and London, by the Master of the Crown Office, who names forty-eight persons, twelve of whom form the Special Jury. It is proved in this pamphlet, from indisputable authority, that the Juries are constantly selected out of a certain very small number of persons known to the selector, who make it a regular trade; and as each receives a guinea for every cause he decides, we leave it to the reader to judge how often he will return a verdict contrary to the will of his employers, knowing well that if he does so, he will be summoned no more.
Since the publication of the bulk of these Essays in The British Luminary, the subject of Special Juries has been brought before the House of Commons; and the facts stated above were met by protestations of the unblemished integrity of Mr. Lushington, the present Master of the Crown Office.3 This, it is to be observed, is the constant practice of all the defenders of abuses; they always endeavour to turn a public into a personal question; to confound attacks upon a system, with attacks upon the character of individuals. We will not merely say that the administration of justice ought not only to be pure, but unsuspected, and that suspicion of injustice is an evil, second only in magnitude to injustice itself: we will not content ourselves with saying, that if Mr. Lushington be a man of honour, future Masters of the Crown Office may be otherwise. We will not confine ourselves to these arguments, though these, were there no others, would be conclusive. We cannot sufficiently reprobate the principle itself, of endeavouring to deter men from exposing a bad system, lest their strictures should be construed into imputations upon the character of individuals.
We assert, that, if a public officer is placed in a situation where his employers will expect him to serve them at the expence of the public—where he must content them or forfeit his subsistence, evil cannot fail to ensue. We are told, in reply, that Mr. Lushington is a pure, a virtuous, an honourable man, and the upshot of the whole is, that we are to surrender up our liberty and our property into the hands of this honourable man; that we are to trust him with a power over us, which no man could, consistently with prudence, confide to his own brother. We give Mr. Lushington full credit for as much virtue as falls to the share of any other man.—But we confess, we think it rather too much for Mr. Lushington’s friends, in his behalf, to lay claim to more, and to think him insulted if the public does not acquiesce in this modest claim. Really, one would think, to hear this language, that a preference of their private interest to that of the community, were something totally unheard of in public men; and that there were no instances of persons who have acquitted themselves admirably well of the ordinary duties of life, but who, nevertheless, when their subsistence depended upon their becoming instruments of misgovernment, have easily persuaded themselves that it was their duty to do so. We do not blame Mr. Lushington for doing what every man in his situation would do: but we cannot help reminding his overwarm supporters, that for men to strain every nerve for the attainment and preservation of power, which never can be desired for any good purpose, is not the conduct of all others best calculated to raise an expectation, that if allowed to retain it they will not make a bad use of it.
If they could prove that Mr. Lushington cannot abuse his power, they would not take so much pains to prove that he will not. But we are to believe that the situation holds out temptations against which no virtue would be proof, save his who actually holds the situation. Another succeeds him; that other is equally immaculate. By this argument, if such it can be called, no abuse would ever be reformed: for there must always be some one in a situation to profit by it; and if the honour of one man is a sufficient guarantee against abuse, it were an affront to suppose that the honour of another was inferior. What tyranny, what oppression, might not be justified in this way? You dare not accuse the man; and if you accuse the system, you are met with protestations that the man is perfectly immaculate.
Where has Mr. Lushington given proofs of such exalted heroism? It is easy to ascertain whether he prefers the public interest to his own, for if so, his salary still remains untouched in the Exchequer. But there is no need of surmises, when facts are before us. Let us look to the list of those who have served on Special Juries for the last ten years:—Let us ask ourselves how it happens that the same small number of men have been always summoned?4 What Judge would listen to attestations of character, when he has positive evidence before him? Nay, the very circumstance of Mr. Lushington’s still remaining Master of the Crown Office, is in itself a sufficient proof that his conduct has been conformable to the interests of his employers: unless Ministers also lay claim to the same super-human virtue for which we are to give credit to Mr. Lushington?
It is probable that this gentleman sincerely believes the custom of packing juries to be right; at all events, we are sure, that he never would set up for himself the same lofty pretensions which are set up for him by his over officious friends; that he desires to be judged by his actions, not by the allegations of his friends as to his character; and that, if he is wise, he wishes for nothing more strongly than to be relieved from a duty which it is scarcely possible to execute without incurring a degree of odium, which, we have no reason to believe, that he personally deserves.
30.
PLEADINGS
MORNING CHRONICLE, 5 JAN., 1824, P. 3
This letter, using one of Bentham’s catch-phrases as signature, is in response to a letter, headed “Pleadings” and signed “Hibernicus,” Morning Chronicle, 3 Jan., 1824, p. 3, which is a rebuttal of another letter headed “Pleadings,” signed “G.J.G. Gray’s Inn,” ibid., 26 Dec., 1823, p. 4. Headed as title, subheaded “To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle,” the item is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A short letter on Indictments, signed an Enemy to Legal Fictions, whch. appeared in the Chronicle of January 5th 1824”
(MacMinn, p. 5).
sir,—
In answer to the letter which you inserted some days ago on the subject of Pleadings, your Correspondent, Hibernicus, observes, that it is incorrect to affirm the Grand Jury to be perjurers, when they return upon oath that the prisoner is guilty; because, in fact, all which they mean is, not that he is guilty, but that a prima facie case is made out against him. I, too, have read the letter on Pleadings, and I am sure that the writer agrees with Hibernicus on this subject. All which he intended was, to shew the absurdity of a system of law which forces the Grand Jury to say one thing when they mean another; and not only to say it, but to swear it. This is innocent perjury, but it is perjury, and though the Jurors do not deserve blame, the law evidently does.
An Enemy to Legal Fictions
31.
QUESTION OF POPULATION [3]
BLACK DWARF, 7 JAN., 1824, PP. 21-3
For the context of this third response to Thomas Wooler, see No. 27. Wooler had replied to No. 28 with “The Black Dwarf to A.M.,” Black Dwarf, 31 Dec., 1823, pp. 905-10, to which the interpolated page numbers refer. The letter by another correspondent that Mill refers to in the opening and penultimate paragraphs immediately precedes Mill’s own letter; headed “Question of Population,” and signed “A Friend to the ‘Lower Classes,’ ” it appears on pp. 15-21 of the issue for 7 Jan. How Mill became aware of its existence is not known. Mill’s letter is headed as title, subheaded “To the Editor of the Black Dwarf,” and described in his bibliography as “A third letter on the necessity of checking population whch. appeared in the Black Dwarf of January 9th [sic] 1824, signed A.M.”
(MacMinn, p. 5).
sir,—
I shall not extend my remarks on your last letter to any great length, as I know that you have on hand another letter on the same subject, which will probably consider the question as you wish it to be considered, with reference to the relative powers of increase possessed by population and subsistence.
I shall only at present remark, that you have made a much more free use, in this paper, of that easy figure of speech called assertion, than of that more intractable one called proof. With reference indeed to the laws of nature, you have, I am pleased to see, given up the point; for although you still dislike the remedy which I propose, you observe, “if it can be proved necessary to check population at all, your means may be the best, and therefore may be tolerated.” [P. 909.] At this also I am well pleased. But you maintain that if three-fourths of the inhabitants of Ireland were to be swept off, and the remainder were sufficient to do all the work required by the rich, the price of labour would not advance. This seems to me rather an extraordinary assertion. First, it supposes a case which can never happen. One-fourth of the Irish population could not possibly do all the work required by the rich, as the whole population does now.* In the next place, I can safely appeal to the experience of every working man (as well as to the reason of the case), whether, if three out of every four of his competitors were removed, he would not feel a very sensible addition to his wages. You admit that if the population is greatly reduced by a plague, wages will rise. [Pp. 907-8.] Surely then, if it is reduced by means less shocking to humanity than a plague, the effect will be the same.
You observe that it is neither wise nor politic to consider “whether a family of two or ten children, were more convenient to the individual, since such matters will always regulate themselves.” [P. 905.] This, Sir, is all that I want. I am far from wishing to regulate population by law, or by compulsion in any shape. I am aware that it will, and I think that it ought, to regulate itself: but you forget that it cannot regulate itself unless the means are known; a man cannot accommodate the numbers of his family to his means of supporting it, unless he knows how to limit those numbers; for I have no belief in the efficacy of Mr. Malthus’s moral check,1 so long as the great mass of the people are so uneducated as they are at present. Therefore I think it highly desirable that the physical check should be known to the people; and I agree with you that each man will then be the best judge of his own convenience.
I consider the question to be practically decided by this admission. If you allow that such things ought to regulate themselves, you cannot consistently object to the diffusion among the people of any information calculated to throw light upon the subject. Nevertheless, if you challenge me to the discussion of the other question, whether population has a tendency to increase faster than subsistence, I am perfectly ready to discuss this question also, when I shall have perused the arguments of your other correspondent, and such remarks as you may think proper to make upon those arguments.
At present I shall trouble you with very few words more, in answer to another of your observations. I consider it a mere play upon words, to say, as you have done, that labour is capital. [P. 907.] Capital is that portion of the annual produce which is set apart for the maintenance of productive labour. Capital, you say, might be made to increase faster than at present. I admit that for a limited time it might; but capital can only be increased from savings. Would you, then, force accumulation? Would you have sumptuary laws? When you shall have answered this question, whether in the negative or in the affirmative, the basis of the discussion will be narrowed, and I shall know what arguments to put forward, among the many which bear upon the case.
A.M.
32.
JAMES MILL ON THE QUESTION OF POPULATION
BLACK DWARF, 25 FEB., 1824, PP. 238-44
For the context of this final letter in Mill’s series (Nos. 27, 28, and 31) in response to Thomas Wooler, see No. 27. Wooler’s response to No. 31, “Further Inquiry into the Principles of Population,” Black Dwarf, 4 Feb., 1824, pp. 143-9, is here answered by Mill with his strongest weapon, an extensive extract (pp. 260-1) from James Mill’s “Colony” (1818), written for the Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. III, pp. 257-73. Because J.S. Mill says his father’s comment is in effect his own reply to Wooler, the extract is here included, with Wooler’s editorial notes in reply. Headed “Question on [sic] Population Resumed,” with a subhead, “To the Editor,” the letter is not in Mill’s bibliography, but its signature (“A.M.”) and contents leave no doubt that it is Mill’s.
sir,—
The accompanying paragraphs are destined for insertion in your Dwarf. They are extracted from the article “Colonies,” in the supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica; a discourse composed by an eminent friend of the people. They contain, I think, a most conclusive answer to your last article on population; and if you insert them, you will be very well able to dispense with the reply which you would otherwise have received from
Sir, your most obedient servant,
A.M.
It should be very distinctly understood what it is we mean, when we say, in regard to such a country as Great Britain, for example, that the supply of food is too small for the population. Because it may be said immediately, that the quantity of food may be increased in Great Britain; a proposition which no man will think of denying.
On this proposition, let us suppose, that in any given year, this year for example, the food in Great Britain is too small for the people, by 10,000 individuals. It is, no doubt, true, that additional food, sufficient to supply 10,000 individuals, might be raised next year; but where would be the amelioration, if 10,000 individuals were, at the same time, added to the numbers to be fed?* Now, the tendency of population is such as to make, in almost all cases, the real state of the facts correspond with this supposition. Population not only rises to the level of the present supply of food; but, if you go on every year increasing the quantity of food, population goes on increasing at the same time, and so fast, that the food is commonly still too small for the people. This is the grand proposition of Mr. Malthus’s book: it is not only quite original, but it is that point of the subject from which all the more important consequences flow,—consequences which, till that point was made known, could not be understood.†
When we say that the quantity of food, in any country, is too small for the quantity of the people, and that, though we may increase the quantity of food, the population will, at the same time, increase so fast, that the food will still be too small for the people; we may be encountered with another proposition. It may be said, that we may increase food still faster than it is possible to increase population. And there are situations in which we must allow that the proposition is true.
In countries newly inhabited, or in which there is a small number of people, there is commonly a quantity of land yielding a large produce for a given portion of labour. So long as the land continues to yield in this liberal manner, how fast soever population increases, food may increase with equal rapidity, and plenty remain. When population, however, has increased to a certain extent, all the best land is occupied; if it increases any farther, land of a worse quality must be taken in hand; when land of the next best quality is all exhausted, land of a still inferior quality must be employed, till at last you come to that which is exceedingly barren. In this progression, it is very evident, that it is always gradually becoming more and more difficult to make food increase, with any given degree of rapidity, and that you must come, at last, to a point, where it is altogether impossible.‡
It may, however, be said, and has been said in substance, though not very clearly, by some of Mr. Malthus’s opponents, that it is improper to speak of food as too small for the population, so long as food can be made to increase at an equal pace with population; and though it is no doubt true, that, in the states of modern Europe, food does not actually increase so fast as the population endeavours to increase, and hence the poverty and wretchedness of that population; yet it would be very possible to make food increase as fast as the tendency of population, and hence to make the people happy without diminishing their numbers by colonization; and that it is owing wholly to unfavourable, to ill-contrived institutions, that such is not the effect universally experienced. As this observation has in it a remarkable combination of truth and error, it is worthy of a little pains to make the separation.§
There can be no doubt that, by employing next year a greater proportion of the people upon the land than this year, we should raise a greater quantity of food; by employing a still greater proportion the year following, we should produce a still greater quantity of food: and, in this way, it would be possible to go on for some time, increasing food as fast as it would be possible for the population to increase. But observe at what cost this would be. As the land, in this course, yields gradually less and less, to every new portion of labour bestowed upon it, it would be necessary to employ gradually not only a greater and greater number, but a greater and greater proportion of the people in raising food. But the greater the proportion of the people which is employed in raising food, the smaller is the proportion which can be employed in producing any thing else. You can only, therefore, increase the quantity of food to meet the demand of an increasing population, by diminishing the supply of those other things which minister to human desires.¶
There can be no doubt, that, by increasing every year the proportion of the population which you employ in raising food, and diminishing every year the proportion employed in everything else, you may go on increasing food as fast as population increases, till the labour of a man, added upon the land, is just sufficient to add as much to the produce, as will maintain himself and raise a family. Suppose, where the principle of population is free from all restriction, the average number of children reared in a family is five; in that case, so long as the man’s labour, added to the labour already employed upon the land, can produce food sufficient for himself and the rearing of five children, food may be made to keep pace with population. But if things were made to go on in such an order, till they arrived at that pass, men would have food, but they would have nothing else. They would have neither clothes, nor houses, nor furniture. There would be nothing for elegance, nothing for ease, nothing for pleasure. There would be no class exempt from the necessity of perpetual labour, by whom knowledge might be cultivated, and discoveries useful to mankind.∥
It is of no use, then, to tell us that we have the physical power of increasing food as fast as population. As soon as we have arrived at that point at which the due distribution of the population is made between those who raise food, and those who are in other ways employed in contributing to the well-being of the members of the community, any increase of the food, faster than is consistent with that distribution, can only be made at the expense of those other things, by the enjoyment of which the life of man is preferable to that of the brutes. At this point the progress of population ought to be restrained. Population may still increase, because the quantity of food may still be capable of being increased, though not beyond a certain slowness of rate, without requiring, to the production of it, a greater than the due proportion of the population.
Suppose, then, when the due proportion of the population is allotted to the raising of food, and the due proportion to other desirable occupations, that the institutions of society were such as to prevent a greater proportion from being withdrawn from these occupations to the raising of food. This it would, surely, be very desirable that they should effect. What now would be the consequence, should population, in that case, go on at its full rate of increase,—in other words, faster than with that distribution of the population, it would be possible for food to be increased? The answer is abundantly plain: all those effects would take place which have already been described as following upon the existence of a redundant population in modern Europe, and in all countries in which the great body of those who have nothing to give for food but labour, are free labourers;—that is to say, wages would fall, poverty would overspread the population, and all those horrid phenomena would exhibit themselves which are the never-failing attendants on a poor population.
It is of no great importance, though the institutions of society may be such as to make the proportion of the population, kept back from the providing of food, rather greater than it might be. All that happens is, that the redundancy of population begins a little earlier. The unrestrained progress of population would soon have added the deficient number to the proportion employed in the raising of food; and, at whatever point the redundancy begins, the effects are always the same.**
What are the best means of checking the progress of population, when it cannot go on unrestrained, without producing one or other of two most undesirable effects; either drawing an undue proportion of the population to the mere raising of food, or producing poverty and wretchedness, it is not now the place to inquire.
It is, indeed, the most important practical problem to which the wisdom of the politician and moralist can be applied. It has, till this time, been miserably evaded by all those who have meddled with the subject, as well as by all those who were called upon, by their situation, to find a remedy for the evils to which it relates. And yet, if the superstitions of the nursery were discarded, and the principle of utility kept steadily in view, a solution might not be very difficult to be found; and the means of drying up one of the most copious sources of human evil, a source which, if all other sources of evil were taken away, would alone suffice to retain the great mass of human beings in misery, might be seen to be neither doubtful nor difficult to be applied.††
33.
EFFECTS OF PERIODICAL LITERATURE
MORNING CHRONICLE, 27 DEC., 1824, P. 3
In this letter Mill quotes from the article “Periodical Literature: Edinburgh Review,” by James Mill, Westminster Review, I (Jan. 1824), 206-68, and defends it against a misinterpretation in an unheaded leader in the Morning Chronicle, 16 Dec., 1824, p. 2. The personal tone in the references to the editor are not pro forma, being addressed to John Black (1783-1855), at this time closely allied to James Mill, who constantly advised him on political matters. The letter is headed “Periodical Literature. / To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle.” There are several indications that this letter corresponds to the entry in Mill’s bibliography, unidentified by MacMinn, which reads “A short letter on [Blank in MS.] which appeared in the Morning Chronicle of 1824” (MacMinn, p. 6): the signature “A.B.” favoured by Mill, the personal interest, and the use of Benthamite phraseology. The cryptic entry appears in the bibliography between items dated October 1824 and January 1825.
sir,—
In your paper of this day (Thursday, Dec. 16th), you controvert certain opinions relative to the probable tendency and effects of Periodical Literature, which were propounded in the first number of the Westminster Review. And you bring forward the inestimable service which you have yourself rendered to mankind by criticizing the conduct of the unpaid magistracy, as an instance of the beneficial effects which sometimes arise from periodical literature.
Now, Sir, you must have interpreted the words of the writer in the Westminster Review in a very different sense from that in which I understand them, if you suppose that he meant to affirm that periodical literature can never be productive of good. His object, as it seems to me, was to point out the motives (hitherto little attended to) which tend to draw the periodical writer out of the path of utility; motives so strong that he did not merely go too far in characterizing them as a sort of necessity; an inducement which generally operates as necessity.
That it is possible for a periodical writer to pursue steadily the greatest good of the greatest number, you, Sir, afford a striking example. But this is no more than the Westminster Reviewer has himself acknowledged, in a passage, which, taking the view which you have done of the article, you ought, I think, in fairness to have quoted.
One word of a personal nature seems to be required. We have described the interests which operate to withdraw periodical writers from the line of utility, and we have represented it as nearly impossible for them to keep true to it. What! Are we, it may be asked, superior to seducements to which all other men succumb? If periodical writing is by its nature so imbued with evil, why is it that we propose to add to the supply of a noxious commodity? Do we promise to keep out the poison which all other men yield to the temptation of putting in? If we made such a pretension, our countrymen would do right in laughing it to scorn; and we hope they would not fail to adopt so proper a course. We have no claim to be trusted any more than any one among our contemporaries; but we have a claim to be tried. Men have diversities of taste; and it is not impossible that a man should exist who really has a taste for the establishment of securities for good government, and would derive more pleasure from the success of this pursuit, than of any other pursuit in which he could engage, wealth or power not excepted. All that we desire is, that it may not be reckoned impossible that we may belong to a class of this description.
There is another motive, as selfish as that which we ascribe to any body, by which we may be actuated. We may be sanguine enough, or silly enough, or clear-sighted enough, to believe, that intellectual and moral qualities have made a great progress among the people of this country; and that the class who will really approve endeavours in favour of good government, and of the happiness and intelligence of men, are a class sufficiently numerous to reward our endeavours.
[P. 222.]
Even had there been no such passage as the foregoing, the very circumstance that the work which thus criticises periodical publications, is itself a periodical publication, might have convinced you, that in ascribing to periodical works a tendency to advocate false and mischievous, rather than true and important opinions, it spoke of the general rule, not of the particular exceptions—of the motives which act upon all mankind, not of those which may govern particular individuals.
I have been induced to trouble you with these few words, because I regretted that two such efficient friends of mankind, as the writer in the Westminster Review and yourself, should appear to be at variance, when I am persuaded that they really agree.
A.B.
September 1825 to October 1828
34.
ABSENTEEISM
MORNING CHRONICLE, 16 SEPT., 1825, P. 3
The letter, dated 15 Sept. (with an additional paragraph oddly inserted in a leading article, Morning Chronicle, 22 Sept., 1825, p. 2), responds to two leading articles in the Morning Chronicle, 7 Sept., p. 2, and 14 Sept., p. 2 (and probably also to “Absenteeism,” a letter signed “A,” that appeared in the Morning Chronicle, 12 Sept., p. 4), all critical of John Ramsay McCulloch’s evidence in “Fourth Report from the Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into the State of Ireland,” PP, 1825, VIII, 807-38. McCulloch (1789-1864), the Scottish economist and statistician, was closely allied to the Philosophic Radicals at this time. Headed as title, subheaded “To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle,” the letter is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A letter on Absenteeism, signed J.S. which appeared in the Chronicle of 16 September 1825” (MacMinn, p. 7); the additional paragraph is not there mentioned.
sir,—
In several of your recent Papers you have combated the opinion expressed by Mr. M’Culloch in his evidence, concerning the effect of the expenditure of Irish absentees on the prosperity of that country from which their incomes are drawn.1 As I agree almost in every particular with Mr. M’Culloch, and think that the arguments which you have urged against him are fallacious, and that the notions which they inculcate are as pernicious as they are, unhappily, common, I submit to your well-known candour the following statement of my reasons for dissenting from your conclusion.
The income of a landlord, like any other income, may be expended in two ways; in the hiring of labourers, or, in the purchase of commodities. In point of fact, it is expended partly in the former way, and partly in the latter; but in one or other of these ways it must be expended, if it be expended at all, unless, indeed, it were given away.
Now I admit that in so far as the income of the landlord is expended in the hiring of labourers, whether these are employed in building a house, in digging a garden, in making or keeping a park, in shooting Catholics or poachers, in washing dishes, or in blacking shoes; to that extent it does give employment to a certain number of persons who would be thrown out of employment if the landlord were to go abroad, and consequently tends to keep wages somewhat higher, or to enable a somewhat larger population to be maintained at the same wages, than would be the case if he were to live in London or Paris, and employ English or French labourers for the above purposes, instead of Irish.
What I do not admit is, that (in so far as his income is expended, not in the hiring of labourers, but in the purchase of commodities,) it has the slightest tendency to keep wages higher, or to give employment to as much as one labourer more, than if he were living at the antipodes: nor do I believe that (in so far as this part of his expenditure is concerned) as much as one man would be thrown out of employment, if every resident landlord in the island were to go abroad, or to send abroad for every article which he had a mind to consume.
If the landlord remained in Ireland, he would (we shall suppose) eat Irish bread and beef, wear Irish shirts and breeches, sit on Irish chairs, and drink his wine off an Irish table. Now, then, I will put a case:—Suppose that he goes to London, leaving directions behind him that all the bread and beef which he would have eaten, all the shirts and breeches which he would have worn, all the chairs which he would have sat upon, and all the tables off which he would have drank his wine, should be regularly sent to him in London. You will not deny, I suppose, that he would give just as much employment to Irish labour as if he had consumed all these articles in the true orthodox way, close to the doors of the very people who produced them.
It would puzzle you, I think, to discover any error in this proposition, or to shew any difference which it can make to the Irish producers, provided they supply the commodities, whether they are consumed on the spot, or at a thousand miles distance. I would advise you to ponder well, however, before you admit this; since you will find, if you do admit it, that you have conceded the whole question.
In fact, this case, which I have put as an imaginary one, exactly corresponds in every thing that is material to the purpose, with the actual state of the facts. The Irish do not, indeed, always send the identical bread, beef, chairs, tables, &c. which the landlord would have consumed on the spot, to be consumed by him in the foreign country; but they either send those very articles, or, what comes to the same thing, they send other articles of exactly the same value. Some readers will say (I do not impute to yourself such a degree of ignorance) that they do not send goods, but money; to which my answer is short—if they sent any money, they could not send much, because Ireland has no gold and silver mines, and, therefore, cannot continue to export money to one place, without getting it back again from another. Every body knows that if a quantity of the precious metals is exported, unless its place is supplied by paper, it always comes back again. In point of fact, however, every body who knows any thing about the way in which the matter is actually managed, knows that no money whatever is sent. The landlord’s steward sends over to him a Bill of Exchange, drawn upon a mercantile house; and the drawer of the bill sends over a quantity of goods to the drawee, to meet the bill when it becomes due.
It appears, therefore, conclusively, that the only difference between the expenditure of the resident landlord, and that of the absentee, is this: the one buys, let us say, a thousand pounds worth of Irish goods, every year on the spot; the other has a thousand pounds worth of Irish goods every year sent to him. Perhaps you may be able to discover some great difference which this makes to the capitalists and labourers in Ireland. Perhaps you may—but if you can, you can do more than I can.
This error (for unless the above argument be incorrect, you must give me leave so to denominate your opinion) appears to me to be a relic of the now exploded mercantile system; of that system, from which emanated those wise prohibitions of the importation of foreign commodities, which might have remained to this day monuments of ancestorial wisdom upon our statute-book, had not Mr. Huskisson been somewhat wiser than that Hibernian genius, whose lucubrations you honoured yesterday by a place in your columns.2 The theory on which these sage regulations were founded, was exactly the same with that which this declaimer and yourself maintain in opposition to Mr. M’Culloch. By consuming foreign commodities, you employ foreign labour; by consuming British commodities, you employ British labour. What Englishman, then, it was triumphantly asked, can be so lost to patriotism as to lay out that money upon foreigners, which might have helped to enrich his native country? Admirably argued, truly; one thing, however, which these sagacious reasoners did not advert to, was, that, in buying foreign commodities, you are giving just the same employment to British labour as if you laid out your whole income in commodities of home growth; you are giving employment, namely, to that labourer which was employed in making the British commodities, with which the foreign commodities, that you consume, were bought.
The case of the man who has French goods sent to him in Ireland, and that of the man who goes himself and consumes them at Paris, are precisely similar. If the one be criminal, so must the other be. If the absentee landlord be an enemy to his country, so is every resident landlord who expends a shilling upon any article that is not produced—I was going to say in Ireland—but even on his own estate; and just in proportion to the number of shillings which he so spends, in that same proportion is the mischief which he does. We ought, therefore, if this notion be correct, not only to reimpose upon commerce all the shackles which Ministers have earned such high and such deserved praise for taking off, but we ought to do, what I suppose no Government ever did, prohibit absolutely all foreign, not to say all internal trade. Such is, perhaps, the wise course that we should pursue, if the councils of the nations were taken out of the hands of his Majesty’s Ministers, and placed in those of a set of declaimers, who either are desirous to mislead, or whose incurable ignorance renders them just as mischievous as if they were.
I am not so unjust, Sir, as to confound you with such as these; and I regret the more that you should have given your powerful support to an opinion so utterly inconsistent with those principles of political economy which you habitually maintain; an opinion which has had, as I believe, so great a share in blinding the public to the real causes of the evils by which Ireland is afflicted.
I remain, Sir, your’s, with the greatest respect,
J.S.
[Addendum]3
What feeds the journeyman tailors, who make the landlord’s coat, is not the rent of the landlord, but the capital of the master tailor; and if the landlord’s rent were all thrown into the sea, the capital of the tailor would remain, and would employ, if not as many tailors, as many labourers of some sort as it did before.—What employs labourers is capital. More income, unless saved, and added to capital, employs nobody; except menial servants. Ireland has just the same capital when her landlords live in Paris as when they live in Dublin. She, therefore, employs as many labourers, except menial servants, as above.
35.
BLUNDERS OF THE TIMES
NEW TIMES, 6 JUNE, 1827, P. 3
This letter, Mill’s only one to the New Times (which he calls “a Tory paper” in No. 41), is also his first to a newspaper editor for almost two years. The New Times frequently criticized The Times (which it often called “The Old Times”); see, e.g., 24 May, 1827, p. 2, and 31 May, p. 3. Mill’s letter, headed “To the Editor of the New Times,” is described in his bibliography as “A letter on the blunders of the ‘Times’ newspaper which app. in the New Times of 6th June 1827, signed A.B.”
(MacMinn, p. 8).
sir,—
Having frequently admired the happy irony with which you expose the profound ignorance and ludicrous self-importance of the Times, I address to you a few lines on the new specimen which it has recently afforded of these qualities.
In one of its late articles, it is pleased to place under the ban of its censure, persons, whom it designates, with characteristic elegance of language, as “those louts and coxcombs united, the landlords, and political economists.”
The poor farmers, [it adds,] have been dragooned into all these petitions against the new Corn Bill, for the mere purpose of keeping up rents, by those two factions of men, whom we above cited; the one, duller than the earth they tread; and the other, a mere batch of fantastical coxcombs, incapable of attaining literature, or fathoming science; and, therefore, distorting and sophisticating common sense, by every kind of paradox and extravagance.1
Leaving, Sir, the defence of the landlords in your hands, which are much more capable of doing it justice than mine, I request your attention to the following sentence, extracted from the very next paragraph to that of which I have already quoted the conclusion:
We are well assured, that there is no resting place for our feet; there is no firm principle upon which our commercial pre-eminence can be based, or even the landed community rest free from shocks, but the unrestricted and untaxed circulation of all the necessaries of life, both for man and beast, throughout the world; and to this point we hope our steps are tending.
I now submit two questions, not to the Editor of the Times, but to every man, who is capable of being disgusted by insolent and ignorant charlatanerie.
1. Here is the Times, professing itself a determined partisan of the most extreme of all the extreme opinions, which were ever maintained by ultra-political economists on the Corn Laws, and, in the same breath, declaring, that the political economists are “fantastical coxcombs,” “louts and coxcombs united,” for professing the same opinion on the same subject. I ask, then, is not that Journal admirably qualified for the office of a public instructor, which ridicules men for their opinions without knowing that their opinions are the same with its own?
My other question is, whether the accusation of being “incapable of fathoming science” does not come with an admirable grace from the Journal, which, only a few months ago, expressed the utmost surprise that the expectation of a war should have depressed the Funds?2 That the expected creation of an immense quantity of new Stock, by new Loans, should lower the price of the Stock already in existence, was too recondite a truth for this sage, who, nevertheless, thinks himself entitled to trancher du maître, and denounce others as ignorant of science!
Your Constant Reader,
A.B.
36.
THE INHABITANTS OF QUEENBOROUGH
THE TIMES, 28 DEC., 1827, P. 3
This letter and its enclosed £1 were elicited by “Meeting of the Inhabitants of Queenborough,” The Times, 26 Dec., 1827, p. 3, in which a subscription was suggested. On 27 Dec., p. 3, The Times printed three letters with subscriptions, with an editorial note saying a responsible gentleman would distribute the money. The Times’ account of the long-lasting distress of the fishing town in the Isle of Sheppy, Kent, emphasized the restrictions on the trade enacted by the ruling “select body,” the kind of closed corporation to which the Philosophic Radicals strongly objected. The letter, Mill’s first to The Times, is headed as title, subheaded “To the Editor of The Times,” and described in his bibliography as “A letter on the Queenborough case, inclosing a subscription for the inhabitants of Queenborough, signed Ph., in the Times of 28th December 1827”
(MacMinn, p. 8).
sir,—
I shall feel obliged by your consenting to be the depositary of the enclosed subscription, towards an object which a nation, which makes greater pretension to humanity than any other will not, I trust, disgrace itself by neglecting—the relief of the ruined and destitute inhabitants of Queenborough, whose misery is so affectingly depicted in your paper of Wednesday.
But if it be a duty to relieve the miserable, the punishment of those who have rendered them so is a still more imperative one. And the 1l. herewith transmitted shall cheerfully be increased to 10l., so soon as any practicable course shall be entered upon to effect that righteous purpose.
Can it be endured that proprietary rights, on which thousands depended as their sole means of support, should be seized by a self-elected body of seven persons, under pretence that the common property of the corporation is their property—that they, the trustees, the depositaries, the executive officers, the servants of the burgesses, have a right to say to their masters, “Go and starve”? Is it to be borne, that when those whom a court of law has declared to have a right to employment in the fisheries, are compelled by starvation to sue for it as a favour, they should be told, with an oath, by one of their magistrates, that he would never give them any employment while breath was in his body, or tauntingly exhorted to go and ask employment of him for whom they had voted? Can Englishmen suffer this, and listen without a blush to the congratulations of foreigners on the felicity with which our Constitution has reconciled the apparently conflicting advantages of freedom and law? No, Sir, I cannot persuade myself that the means of enforcing their right will be withheld from these unfortunate people by a nation which maintains more charitable institutions than all the rest of the world taken together. Our countrymen, whatever may be their faults, have rarely forgotten their reverence for the two great blessings of human life—liberty and property. And will they tamely suffer the whole population of a considerable town to be illegally deprived of the one as a punishment for their inflexible constancy in adhering to the other?
Ph.
Received a pound [Editor].
37.
NEW MINISTERIAL PUBLICATIONS
MORNING CHRONICLE, 31 MAY, 1828, P. 3
These satirical comments (see also Nos. 38, 39, and 40) were prompted by the actions of the Tory ministry formed in January 1828 by Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852), the 1st Duke of Wellington, a target of Radical criticism. The unsigned article is Mill’s first contribution to the Morning Chronicle since September 1825. It is headed as title and described in his bibliography as “A squib on the Wellington ministry, headed New Publications—and two following paragraphs in the Morning Chronicle of 31st May 1828” (MacMinn, p. 9). A printer’s rule (here reproduced) appears in the Morning Chronicle after the 9th paragraph; it is followed by three further paragraphs. Assuming that the entry in the bibliography is accurate, we have excluded the final paragraph from the text, but included it in a footnote.
it is currently reported, that the Duke of Wellington, having become sensible of the detriment which his new Ministry is likely to sustain in public estimation, from the vulgar prejudice, that none except men of talents and information are qualified to administer the affairs of the State, has resolved to establish an office for the publication and distribution of works of a practical character, suited to the composition of the Ministry, and to the exigencies of the times. Doctor Croker being the only Member of the New Administration who can write,1 has undertaken the office of correcting the press; and the following works are confidently announced as shortly about to appear:—
The Dunce’s Manual, or Politics made level with the meanest Capacity: For the use of elderly Gentlemen appointed Cabinet Ministers at a short notice.
Bob Short’s Rules for Governing a State, whereby the whole Science of Government may be learned in a quarter of an hour, without hindrance of amusements, or knowledge of a bookseller.2
The Inutility of Ideas to Public Men, Stated and Exemplified: being an attempt to prove that none but persons totally ignorant of public affairs are competent to administer them. Under the immediate patronage of the Lords of the Treasury, and the three Secretaries of State.
A new edition of Erasmus’s Moriae Encomium, or Praise of Folly:3 with portraits of the New Ministers, beautifully engraven on brass, by George Cruikshank,4 and an Appendix, shewing the peculiar applicability of the author’s Principles to the Government of the British Empire.
Murray’s First Book for Statesmen: Being a Compendious Treatise on the Cavalry Exercise, for the use of Young Members of Parliament, and Candidates for Public Employment. By Lieutentant-General Sir George Murray, K.G.H. and T.S., Col. of the 42d Foot, and Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies.5
Shoulder Arms! A Tyrtaean Poem,6 addressed to the Nobility, Gentry, and Clergy of Great Britain and Ireland. By Field-Marshal his Grace the Duke of Wellington, Drill-Serjeant to the Bench of Bishops, and to both Houses of Parliament.
Moderate Talents best fitted for Affairs of State: an Essay, shewing, from practical Experience, the Dangerousness of confiding political Employments to clever Men. Addressed to the moderately-informed. With Remarks on the unexceptionable Character of the present Administration, in this respect.—Also, by the same Author,
The Vanity of Human Learning; or, The Wonderful Worldly Wisdom of Knowing Nothing:7 wherein are set forth the manifold Advantages, in a practical Point of View, of Ignorance over Knowledge, and the Sufficiency of Reading, Writing, and the Manual Exercise, for the Education of a Cabinet Minister. With a comparative View of Mr. Canning, and the Duke of Wellington, Mr. Huskisson, and Sir George Murray, Turgot, and Sir Thomas Gooch:8 shewing the extreme Ignorance of the latter Statesmen, and calling upon all Persons of moderate Intellect to support them.
On the occasion of a recent schism in the Ministry,9 the Duke of Wellington is reported to have said, “There shall be but one head to my Administration.” Dr. Croker, who was accidentally present, was heard to mutter, “Fait, and sure now, that won’t be your Grace’s own, Duke dear.”
Another on dit of the day is, that in the course of the late Cabinet disputes, Mr. Huskisson formally accused Messrs. Dawson and Goulburn10 of a conspiracy to set the Thames on fire—which those Gentlemen indignantly denied, protesting that all their friends could avouch them to be altogether incapable of such a proceeding.11
38.
ADVERTISEMENTS FREE OF DUTY
MORNING CHRONICLE, 3 JUNE, 1828, P. 4
The second of Mill’s short satiric attacks on the Wellington ministers (see Nos. 37, 39, and 40), this item is described in his bibliography as “Another squib on the same subject, headed Advertisements Free of Duty, in the Morning Chronicle of 3d June 1828”
(MacMinn, p. 9).
wanted immediately, a person qualified to teach Arithmetic with rapidity. The advertiser is desirous to proceed as far as Long Division. Expedition is indispensable, the Budget being positively fixed for this month.—Apply to H. Goulburn, at the Treasury, Whitehall.
Just Published
To the Right About Face; or, Decision. A Farce, in one act, recently performed with unqualified success at the Theatre Royal, Downing-street; the principal characters by the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Huskisson; with the words of the original Laughing Cantata, executed at the conclusion of the performance by Mr. Peel, accompanied by Messrs. Goulburn, Herries,1 Dawson, and the remainder of the Commander-in-Chief’s band.—N.B. It is expected that on the next representation, this piece of music will be repeated by the same performer, on the other side of his mouth.
one guinea reward.—Lost or stolen, from a Cabinet of Curiosities near the Treasury, a Skull. It is extremely thick, and the eyes are so fixed in it, as to be unable to see beyond the length of the nose. It is also remarkably soft to the touch, and the organ of place is very strongly developed. It is entirely empty, and of no use to any person, except the owner. The reward offered, greatly exceeds the value of the article, as the owner having recently been appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, cannot conveniently do without it.
[Advertisement.]2 —In consequence of the repeated complaints against divided Cabinets, Wellington, Cabinet-maker to his Majesty, has the honour to inform the Nobility and Gentry, that after several unsuccessful experiments, he has at length succeeded in constructing one which is all of a piece. This excellent article of furniture is entirely cut out of the old block, and is composed of pure logwood, without the slightest mixture of any other material, except in the facing, which is of brass. One trial will prove the fact.—Exhibited daily at St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster.3 Doors open at Three in the afternoon, begin at Four. Seats may be procured at Gatton and Old Sarum, or of Messrs. Hertford and Lonsdale, House Agents, next door to the premises.4
39.
DR. CROKER’S OPINION
MORNING CHRONICLE, 4 JUNE, 1828, P. 3
This brief satire on the Wellington ministry (see Nos. 37, 38, and 40), headed “Doctor Croker’s Opinion on the Cause of the Late Ministerial Dispute,” is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A third short squib on the same subject in the same paper of 4th June consisting of two paragraphs, beginning, Dr. Croker’s opinion on the cause of the late ministerial dispute”
(MacMinn, p. 9).
doctor croker’s opinion on the Cause of the Late Ministerial Dispute.—Sorrow a bit could he understand how the payple could so desayve themselves, as to fancy that his Grace, dare cratur, was no arithmetician. Sure it was himself that was mad with Mr. Huskisson, about nothing in life, barring that he couldn’t tache him a lesson of cyphering, by Jasus!
Report says, that Sir George Murray, the new Colonial Secretary, yesterday presented the Duke of Wellington with a handsome copy of his English Spelling Book,1 accompanied by a note, recommending to the Duke’s particular attention that part which treats of letters, it appearing, from recent transactions, that his Grace cannot at present understand them.2
40.
ANOTHER OPINION OF DR. CROKER’S
MORNING CHRONICLE, 5 JUNE, 1828, P. 3
The final satire in this series on the Wellington ministry (see Nos. 37, 38, and 39) is an unheaded paragraph described in Mill’s bibliography as “A fourth short squib, on the same subject in the same paper of 5th June, only one paragraph concerning Dr. Croker”
(MacMinn, p. 10).
some person having expressed his surprise that any Minister should have thought of placing the finances of the State under the charge of Mr. George Dawson and of Mr. Goulburn, it being extremely problematical whether those gentlemen had been sufficiently successful in their arithmetical studies, to admit of their being pronounced well-grounded in the multiplication table, Dr. Croker replied, that “He couldn’t spake, any how, consarning that same; but it was themselves that were nate lads at a division, by St. Patrick.”
41.
COMPENSATION TO THE SHOPKEEPERS ON THE APPROACHES TO LONDON BRIDGE
BRITISH TRAVELLER, 29 SEPT., 1828, P. 3
This article is Mill’s contribution to the public controversy (see, e.g., The Times, 10 Sept., p. 3, 11 Sept., p. 3, 17 Sept., pp. 3-4, 23 Sept., p. 3, 2 Oct., p. 3) over a proposal that was enacted as 10 George IV, Private Acts, c. 136 (1829). The expensive and potentially litigious proposal was opposed by the small tradesmen of the area, which included Fish Street Hill; Mill contrasts their position with that of the wealthy of Grosvenor Square in the West End, remote from this governmental interference with the rights of property. The unsigned, unheaded leading article is Mill’s only contribution to the British Traveller. It is described in his bibliography as “A leading article in the British Traveller of 27th September [sic] 1828 on the question of compensation to the shopkeepers on the approaches to London Bridge”
(MacMinn, p. 10).
the approaches to the new london bridge are every day becoming the subject of increased discussion. Perhaps if in deciding upon this point, nothing were requisite to be taken into the account except public convenience, it would have been disposed of in a more summary manner. But it seems that in this, as in so many other projects of improvement, a consideration has intruded itself, which, under our national institutions, and with our national modes of thinking, is apt to be esteemed far more important than public convenience, and this is, the convenience of particular individuals.
Nobody, in this or in any other country, is so impudent as to say, that his individual interest ought to be attended to first, and the public interest afterwards. But instead of one man, put the case that there are two or three score, much more if there be two or three hundred, and what no one of them would have the face to claim for himself, every man among them will boldly demand for himself and company.
If nobody felt and acted in this manner, except the grocers and cheesemongers of Fish street hill, no doubt it would be very justly considered a flagrant enormity. If, however, these shopkeepers are only following the admired and applauded example of their betters, it might be expected that what is thought very proper and patriotic in those betters, would hardly be stigmatized as unjust and selfish in them. We were therefore surprised to find an attempt made, in a recent number of a Tory paper, to hold up these respectable persons to public disapprobation, because they, too, thought it proper to stand up for the interests of their “order.”1
But there is a distinction running through the whole frame of English society, which, when it is fully seized, explains no small quantity of what would otherwise appear altogether enigmatical in the workings of that society. Fielding describes Bridewell as “that house where the inferior sort of people may learn one good lesson, viz.—respect and deference to their superiors, since it must show them the wide distinction fortune intends between those persons who are to be corrected for their faults, and those who are not.”2 The New Times, in its animadversions upon the Fish street hill shopkeepers, intends, no doubt, to read them a similar lesson; to put them in mind of the wide distinction which our institutions intend between those who are to have their interest preferred to the general interest, and those who are not.
There is no other country in the world, says the New Times, in which the best avenues to such a structure as London Bridge would be rejected, for fear of affecting the paltry interests of a few shopkeepers. We hope not; and we hope, likewise, that there is no other country in the world in which the public would be taxed ten or twelve millions in the price of their bread, and exposed to incessant vicissitudes of glut and famine, for fear of affecting the paltry interests of a few landlords.3 We are sure that there is no other country in which a bill, such as the County Courts’ Bill, for extending the benefits of an administration of justice to the largest portion of the people, to whom at present it may be said, with scarcely any exaggeration, to be altogether inaccessible, would be rejected year after year by the legislature on the avowed ground, that it would affect the paltry interests of Lord Ellenborough, and two or three other holders of law sinecures.4
It was doubtless a great piece of presumption in the persons whom the New Times reprehends, to imagine that what might be proper and commendable in so exalted a personage as Lord Ellenborough, was allowable in persons who were no better than shopkeepers, and who lived in no other street than Fish street hill. If the proposed approaches had encroached upon a Nobleman’s park, or had passed so much as within a quarter of a mile of his game preserves, it is probable that we should have heard another story about paltry interests. But it is a mistake, to suppose that cheesemongers can have vested rights. Cheesemongers are only virtually represented. Lords and Landlords not only are actually represented, but virtually represent the Cheesemongers themselves. They may, therefore, possess vested rights: if they possess any thing which they do not like to give up, it is a vested right: and having received this name, however little they may be entitled to it, or however imperatively the public interest may require the sacrifice of it, to demand it would be to infringe upon the sacred rights of property. All this, to the New Times, is gospel: but that journal is far too acute not to seize the distinction between Fish street hill, and Grosvenor square, and to perceive, that with lawgivers as well as other men, there is all the difference in the world between doing a dishonest thing for their own interest, and doing exactly the same thing for the interest of other people.
42.
THE BRUNSWICK CLUBS
MORNING CHRONICLE, 30 OCT., 1828, P. 3
This letter is in response to the agitations promoted by the Brunswick Clubs in opposition to Catholic Emancipation (which was enacted, to the outrage of a large section of his party, by the Duke of Wellington in 1829, 10 George IV, c. 7). The Brunswick Clubs, founded in Ireland in 1827 as an offshoot of the Orange Society, and named for the German House of Brunswick, were spreading rapidly in England in the autumn of 1828 under the active patronage of the Duke of Cumberland (1771-1851), fifth son of George III. The agitation reached a head with a large meeting on Penenden Heath, Kent, on 24 Oct., 1828, at which the attendance was variously estimated between 25,000 and 60,000. The analogy with military “musters” is in “Brunswick Agitation in the Country of Kent,” Spectator, 16 Oct., p. 247. Mill’s signature, “Lamoignon,” probably refers to Nicolas de Lamoignon (1648-1724), Intendant of Montauban, whose administration was marked by vigorous measures against the Camisards, extreme Protestants who took up arms after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The letter is headed “To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle” and is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A letter signed Lamoignon in the Morning Chronicle of 30th October 1828 on the Brunswick Clubs” (MacMinn, p. 10). For nearly two years following this letter, Mill published nothing
(see No. 43).
sir,—
The “Brunswick muster,” as it is aptly denominated by your contemporary, The Spectator, has at length taken place. The party not having, as they are well aware, any great strength to boast of on the score of heads, are at least determined to let the country see how great a number of hands they can put in requisition on an emergency. Their first exploit has given, it appears, great satisfaction to their own minds. They are as elate with their triumph, as if any part of it had been due to the force of their logic, or to the brilliancy of their oratory. They hug themselves on their majority, as if the number of their votes were a proof of any thing whatever but the number of their acres. Had the Freeholders of Kent been free agents, these personages could not have raised a greater din of self-gratulation. They talk as magnificently of public opinion as if every child did not know, that all the opinion in the matter is their own opinion reflected back from their tenantry. The boast of the moment is, that the nation is with them; and the nation is every thing that is excellent and respectable, till it suits their purpose that it should be directly the reverse.
This signal respect for popular opinion, considering from what quarter it comes, is at least new. We were not always accustomed to so much deference, in certain personages, for the will of the people. Expressions of popular feeling were not deemed worthy of so much obedience when the feeling expressed was a reluctance to be starved by a bread-tax for the benefit of rent, and buried in a gaol “on suspicion of being suspected” of an encroachment upon the landlord’s monopoly of game.1 It was not respect which was felt for the voice of the nation, when it complained that the life-blood of the nation was drained from it in exorbitant taxation, to be profligately expended in affording a patrimony to the younger branches of certain families.2 There was a time when public opinion was only named to be insulted; only interfered with to be bound down and gagged. I congratulate these Lords and Gentlemen on their conversion. It is somewhat tardy; but it still is welcome. Some slight shew of external respect towards a people whose bread so many of their relations eat, is at least decent. Pity that they did not see at a somewhat earlier period the error of their ways. The country might have been spared the recollection of more than one act, which will not redound to the honour of the British Aristocracy in future ages, nor perhaps of the nation, which an Aristocracy of such a stamp could so quietly rule.
What strange destiny! By what marvellous overturning and reversing of the established relations of things have English Borough Lords given in their adhesion to the “sovereignty of the people;” and the men who cheered the declaration of the Duke of Wellington, that county meetings were a farce,3 appealed from the Duke of Wellington to a county meeting? I am not one of those who profess a sort of instinctive horror of “new lights;”4 I think little of the wisdom, and not much of the sincerity, of such horrors. But the new lights which break in upon the professed enemies of new lights appear to me an object of very well-grounded distrust. I am suspicious of those, who then first discover the value of a nation’s support, when for some immediate and momentary purpose they happen to need it. A lesson so conveniently learned, may no doubt be as conveniently forgotten, when need requires. I shall give credit to these Lords and Gentlemen for their popular principles when I behold them calling forth the people to join with them in any exalted and generous scheme of philanthropy and benevolence. But, as one of the multitude, I give these Noble Personages no thanks that I am summoned to aid them, not in giving freedom to the oppressed, or relief to the afflicted, but in silencing groans with bayonets, and wading up to the knees in the blood of six millions of my countrymen. I complain that, by these new candidates for my favour, no appeal is ever made to any but the mere grovelling and brutish part of my natural Constitution. I am little flattered when I perceive that I am never thought capable of being used for any services but those to which a wild beast would be perfectly adequate—and that my voice is never deemed worthy to be listened to in affairs of State, but when it is hoped, that swelled into rage by savage and malignant passions, it will emit sounds of hatred and ferocity against those over whom, for purposes in which I have no concern, it has been resolved to tyrannize.
But there is one consolatory assurance which may be gathered from the appeal of the Brunswick faction to the British people. The support for which they condescend to stoop so low, they assuredly need. It is unquestionably from no common necessity that they fly for help to those for whom, in the days of their pride, they have so little made a secret of their utter aversion and contempt. Perhaps, like other scornful persons before them, they have learned by experience, that very high people may need that assistance which very low people can give. They have little hope of other support, when they will throw themselves upon ours. They feel their weakness, and they feel it with mortification and rage. The feeling is excusable. It is new and strange to them as yet to find any difficulty in keeping their foot on any neck upon which it has once been planted. The loss of power is not familiar to them; it is what they have not yet learned to bear. Every sentence of the famous letter of the Duke of Newcastle betrays a deep and painful sense of humiliation.5 Ill does he brook to renounce that tone of lofty authority so natural to the Lord of five Boroughs, and descend to the unaccustomed language of complaint and solicitation. His Grace does not easily use himself to the lachrymose tone. It does not sit gracefully upon him. His first efforts in the comédie larmoyante have all the inexperienced awkwardness of a beginner.—Amidst the most piteous of his complaints, it is easy to discern how much more to his taste the Aristocratic sic volo sic jubeo would be.6 He probably would not be flattered by being told that he excites the commiseration of others; but he evidently is perfectly sincere in pitying himself.
The Ultra faction7 are driven to their last resource. It was pleasanter, it was easier to govern the country by the strong arm of power, wielded by an obedient Ministry. For twenty years this scheme of Government had succeeded to their wish; and great was their surprise when they discovered, on a sudden, that it would endure no longer. They laid the blame of this disappointment at first upon those at the helm, who, they thought, having been formerly overpraised for being useful tools, had been puffed up by self-conceit to aspire above their station, and imagine that they might venture to be tools no longer. The new and unexpected difficulty which the Ultras found in governing the country being thus satisfactorily accounted for, they cast their eyes round the circle of the trading politicians of the day, and explored who among the hacks in office, or the hacks who wished to be in office, were the most narrow-minded and illiberal, the most ignorant and inept, and the most destitute of all moral dignity and decent self-respect. Having found that which they sought—having ascertained, as they conceived, which were the individuals who, in a field where such commodities abound, united in the greatest degree all these requisites; being satisfied with the result of their search, they resolved that of these individuals, thus pricked out, their next Ministry should be composed. Accident rather than their own strength gave them the Ministry of their choice; and if jobbing for them, and truckling to them, in any ordinary mode of truckling and jobbing, would have contented them, few Administrations ever did so much, in so short a time, to justify the selection. But no Ministry dares do all, which, at the present crisis, the interests of these men require, and their tongues do not scruple to demand. They wanted a Tory Ministry; they have had their wish, and they cannot find men who do not shrink from the responsibility of a bellum internecinum8 between the soldiers on one side, and one-third part of the people on the other. Men in conspicuous stations, exposed to the public eye, who know that the opinion of mankind at least will render them personally answerable for the evils which come upon their country through their means, are not hastily or easily brought to the perpetration of a great crime, to uphold a domination which to them is of no advantage, and satiate passions which they do not share. Since, then, the Ultras can find no other instruments to do their work, they hope at least to make instruments of the people. Their last desperate shift is to terrify their own Minister with that popular voice which they had themselves taught him to despise. What portion of the people fair or foul means will procure to back them in their unhallowed enterprise, a few weeks, or at farthest a few months, will disclose. But it is at least the duty of those who detest it as it deserves not to indulge a sleepy inactivity, nor flatter themselves with the idea that, when wicked men are preparing wicked deeds, it is enough for the good to sit still and silently disapprove. What, in all nations and in all ages, has caused the successes of interested villainy, is the indifference of the well-intentioned. The remark has been often repeated,9 but it is little attended to; why? apparently because it has not been repeated enough.
I shall, perhaps, continue to address to you a few occasional remarks, as this great drama unfolds itself.
Lamoignon
July 1830 to July 1831
43.
THE FRENCH ELECTIONS
EXAMINER, 18 JULY, 1830, PP. 449-50
In his Autobiography, after mentioning his ceasing to contribute to the Westminster Review after “Scott’s Life of Napoleon” appeared in April 1828 (CW, Vol. XX, pp. 53-110), Mill says that for “some years after this time” he “wrote very little, and nothing regularly, for publication” (CW, Vol. I, p. 136), and his bibliography lists only Nos. 37-42 between “Scott’s Life of Napoleon” and this leading article on the French Elections of July 1830. In fact he wrote a “treatise” or “tract” on an economic subject, which he submitted to the Library of Useful Knowledge on 23 Jan., 1829 (EL, CW, Vol. XIII, p. 742), about which nothing else is known. The silence ended when the July Revolution in France, following on the elections, “roused [his] utmost enthusiasm, and gave [him], as it were, a new existence” (CW, Vol. I, p. 179). The published result is seen in the flood of articles on France that he wrote in the next four years for the Examiner. During this time, Mill says, he “wrote nearly all the articles on French subjects [for the Examiner] . . . together with many leading articles on general politics, commercial and financial legislation, and any miscellaneous subjects in which I felt interested, and which were suitable to the paper, including occasional reviews of books” (ibid., pp. 179-81). By October 1832 he was, he told Thomas Carlyle, writing “nothing regularly for the Examiner except the articles on French affairs” (EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 125).
In this leading article Mill, in accordance with his belief that the English are ignorant of French affairs (and Continental affairs generally), explains the background of the shift to the left in the recent elections in France and the growing opposition in the country to the regime of Charles X (1757-1836). The previous elections, held in November 1827, had greatly increased the strength of the liberals in the Chamber of Deputies, giving them about two-fifths of the seats, approximately the same number going to the royalist supporters of Charles, and the remainder to the right opposition. This result ended the conservative ministry of comte Jean Baptiste Séraphin Joseph de Villèle (1773-1854), and there followed a period of moderate leadership by the vicomte de Martignac (see No. 45). Displeased by the liberal measures adopted, the King succeeded in 1829 in appointing an ultra-royalist ministry with prince Jules Auguste Armand Marie de Polignac (1780-1847) at its head. Liberal opposition continued to grow, and reached its height in the reply to the King’s address at the opening of the session in March 1830, a protest by 221 Deputies, demanding ministers responsible to a majority in the chambers. Charles dissolved the Deputies on 16 May, and announced new elections.
The Charter to which Mill repeatedly refers is the Charte constitutionnelle, Bulletin des lois du royaume de France, Bull. 17, No. 133 (4 June, 1814). Granted by Louis XVIII (1755-1824) on his accession, and modified in 1815 after the Hundred Days, it established a new constitution for France that, while guaranteeing political liberties and imposing some limits on the monarch, nevertheless left the direction of the government in his hands. On 20 May, 1830, Charles X had intimated indirectly that he was prepared to use the powers he claimed were granted him by Article 14 of the Charter to govern by ordinance if the Chamber of Deputies failed to support his policies.
When Mill writes, the first stage of the French elections—that of the arrondissement electoral colleges, which elected 258 deputies and were made up of all male residents paying 300 francs a year in direct taxes—had taken place on 23 June; the second stage—that of the departmental colleges, which elected 172 deputies and were made up of the top 25 per cent of the taxpayers, who thus had a double vote—had occurred on 3 July, except in twenty departments (not nineteen as Mill thought).
The death of George IV on 25 June necessitated elections in England at this same time, elections which would replace the government of the Duke of Wellington with that of the 2nd Earl Grey and lead directly into the crisis over the Reform Bill.
This item, which begins the “Political Examiner,” headed as title and unsigned, is not in the Somerville College set of the Examiner, which begins with 15 Aug., 1830. It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A leading article on the French Elections in the Examiner of 18th July 1830”
(MacMinn, p. 10).
the departmental, or grand colleges, have now completed their operations throughout all France, except 19 departments. In those departments the elections were postponed by the Government, to afford time for the Court of Cassation to disfranchise a considerable number of electors who had been declared by the inferior Courts entitled to vote.
Exclusive of these nineteen departments, which include Paris, Rouen, and their vicinity, and in which the ministry are sure of a complete defeat, the departmental elections have afforded results as auspicious to the liberal cause as the elections for the arrondissemens. The royalists, indeed, still retain a majority, but that majority is greatly diminished. At no election previous to the last had a single liberal candidate been returned by a departmental college. At the last elections in 1827, about one third of the deputies elected by these colleges were liberal. In the present elections the proportion will be much greater. Without reckoning the deputies for the nineteen departments, of which the elections have been adjourned, the opposition had in the late Chamber 34 departmental members; it has now 46.
As the departmental colleges may be said to be composed of the twenty thousand richest men in a population of 30 millions, the great and rapid increase of the strength of the liberal party in these colleges is a still more striking indication of the progress of the public mind, than the liberal majority in the colleges of arrondissemens. The most bigotted English Tory cannot affect to see in such a struggle as the present any tincture of Jacobinism, if Jacobinism be, as Burke defined it, “an insurrection of the talents of a country against its property.”1 The insurrection, if such it can be called, is an insurrection of the intelligence and property of the country against an attempt to impose on them a ministry who are not only declared enemies to the reform of whatever is bad in the present laws or administration of France, but likewise, as the nation from long experience universally believes, irreclaimably hostile to the existing constitution of their country.
The French nation has been most absurdly reproached, particularly by the Times newspaper, for having condemned the Polignac ministry without trial.2 If Mr. Cobbett were placed at the head of an English ministry, would the Times scruple to declare its hostility to his administration, because Mr. Cobbett had never been First Lord of the Treasury before?3 Men whose whole political life has condemned them, as statesmen and as citizens, are not entitled to be tried over again in the situation of ministers, all measures of national improvement being stopped while the trial proceeds.
The opposition to the Polignac ministry is both of a reforming and of a conservative character. It is a conservative opposition as respects the political constitution of France, established by the Charter, which it defends against the Ministry, and the emigrants and their friends. It is a reforming opposition, as respects the multitude of gross abuses, which the representative system, established by the Charter, has not been able to prevent or extirpate.—The object of the Ministry, on the contrary, is to guard these abuses, to introduce others, and to overthrow either entirely or partially the representative system, which renders the introduction of new abuses extremely difficult, and which now at length seriously menaces the old ones.
The great and leading abuse which exists in France, and from which all the others flow, is the inordinate power of the government,—of the administration, in the common sense,—the crown, and its officers. In England, the ministry are the mere servants of an oligarchy, composed of borough-holders and owners of large masses of property: the abuses of which we complain, exist for the benefit of that oligarchy, not for the private interest or importance of men in office; and any one who should complain of the undue power of the Ministers as such, would be justly ridiculous. But in France, the oligarchy which engrosses all power, and manages and mismanages all public affairs from the greatest to the least, is what has been expressively termed a bureaucratie—it is the aggregate body of the functionaries of Government with the Ministry at their head. The power which in Great Britain is shared in Local Corporations, Parish Vestries, Churchwardens, Commissioners of Roads, Sheriffs, Justices of Peace, acting separately and in Quarter Sessions,* and numerous other local officers or bodies, is in France exclusively exercised by the Government, and by officers appointed and removable at its pleasure. All establishments for education are under the direct superintendance of the Government. Almost all the public works, which in England are executed by voluntary associations of individuals, with all the power and patronage annexed to them, devolve in France upon the Government, partly from the scarcity of capital in France as compared with England, partly from the obstacles which the French laws oppose to all combinations of individuals for public purposes—the extent of which obstacles, and the degree in which the immense natural advantages of France are rendered useless by them, would utterly astonish our readers if we were to lay before them the requisite particulars. The French police has powers over individual security and freedom of action, which are utterly irreconcileable with good government.
The proximate object of the present opposition, so far as it is a reforming opposition, is to limit and curb this all-pervading influence of the Government, by destroying the system of centralization (this most expressive word has no synonym in English) from which it takes its rise. There are now many able and influential persons in France, who have studied England and the English Government, not as it is represented in books, but in its actual working and practical effects. They have seen at home the necessity that local affairs should be managed by local bodies; they have seen in England that when a local body is so constituted as to be an oligarchy, it far surpasses in jobbing and mismanagement even the great Oligarchy itself. They consequently desire the same securities for the integrity of the local bodies, which the Charter has provided for that of the general government. The executive officer, the prefect or mayor, they purpose should continue as at present, to be appointed and removable by the King. But their aim is—that the deliberative body, the council of the town, or of the department, should be chosen by the same electoral body which chuses the members of the representative branch of the general government, namely, the 80,000 persons or thereabouts, who pay 300 francs, or 12l. per annum of direct taxes.
The avowed purpose for which the Polignac Ministry was formed was, to resist this and all similar improvements. The manifesto which they issued the very day after their election, treated elective municipalities as a relic of Jacobinism. In the same document they announced as the principle of their administration, point de concessions, point de réaction,—no further concessions to the public voice, no retractation of the concessions already made.4 The French nation did not believe them when they said, point de réaction: but even on their own showing, they were determined to refuse all concessions. The 80,000 electors and the nation deem concessions indispensable, and the electors would therefore have been guilty of cowardly truckling, if they had not re-elected the 221 deputies who declared to the King that they had not confidence in his ministers.5
If even the professed designs of the ministry warranted the general burst of indignation with which their appointment was received, how much more so the designs which the nation, and even their own party, ascribes to them, and which, though not directly avowed, can scarcely be said to be disguised.
The present ministers, to a man, belong to that section of the party calling themselves Royalists, who from the first dissuaded Louis XVIII from granting the Charter, and who have ever been its declared enemies. All the measures of that party, when in power, have been so many encroachments, or attempts to encroach, upon the constitution established by the Charter, and upon the liberties and privileges which it guaranteed. According to the Charter, all the members of the Chamber of Deputies were elected by the 80,000 electors who form the colleges of arrondissement.6 The Royalists added a fourth to the number of the deputies, and that fourth is elected exclusively by the 20,000 richest.7 By the Charter, one fifth of the Chamber went out by rotation every year.8 The Royalists passed a Septennial Act.9 By a law which still subsists, no community of Jesuits can exist on French soil: the Royalist ministry not only connived at the existence of such communities, but threw the education of the greater part of the French youth, and the nomination to the subordinate public offices, almost exclusively into the hands of the Jesuits.10 This first disgusted with the measures of the court all the most honest and intelligent part of the Royalist party; this it was which threw such men as Montlosier, the ablest literary champion of the royal power, into the ranks of the liberals.11 A Royalist minister abolished the militia, or national guard, because they refused to turn Manuel out of the Chamber of Deputies, for exercising what in England would be considered a moderate and constitutional freedom of speech.12 A Royalist Ministry and a Royalist Chamber restored Ferdinand of Spain to absolute power, by the men and money of a people said to be under a constitutional government.13 A Royalist Ministry and a Royalist Chamber passed the famous law of sacrilege, for punishing the profanation of the sacred elements in the Eucharist,—a law worthy of the days of Calas and La Barre, and which persuaded the civilized world that the reign of despotism was assured for another century, and that France was relapsing into the servitude and superstition of the middle ages.14
A Royalist Chamber of Deputies passed the law of primogeniture,15 which, for the avowed purpose of creating a hereditary aristocracy, offered violence to the strongest and most deeply-rooted sentiment of the most united public mind in Europe. A Royalist Chamber of Deputies passed the law for restraining the press, nick-named by its author, M. de Peyronnet, “une loi d’amour,” by which not only all newspapers but all pamphlets and small books were placed under the almost absolute control of the ministry.16 The hereditary Chamber of Peers rejected both these laws; and a Royalist Ministry attempted to overpower the voice of the majority, by creating from among their hacks in the Lower Chamber seventy-six new Peers at one stroke,17 among all whom there was only one name* not odious or contemptible to all France.
Such is the political history of the party which has raised the Polignac Ministry to power, and by which alone that Ministry is supported. Let us now speak of the individuals. M. de Polignac was one of that portion of the emigrants who, after their return to France, refused to swear to the Charter. M. de la Bourdonnaye proposed that all who had accepted office under Napoleon, after his return from Elba, should be put to death.18 His successor, M. de Peyronnet, is of ill repute, even in his private character, and the most violent and unbending member of the Villèle Ministry. M. de Montbel is the habitual apologist of that Ministry in the late Chamber. M. de Bourmont is odious to the army, for having gone over to the enemy on the field of battle; and finally, M. de Guernon-Ranville was only known, before his elevation to the Ministry, for having publicly declared that he gloried in being a counter-revolutionist, that is, in being an enemy to all benefits which France has purchased by the sacrifice of an entire generation.19
If the intentions of the Ministry are to be judged by the ostentatious declarations of their partizans, they are disposed to carry matters with a higher hand than the most audacious of their predecessors. There is not a royalist journal, including those known to be connected with the Ministry, which does not openly declare that the King will not yield, and that if the Chamber refuses to vote the taxes, they will be levied from the people by a Royal Ordonnance. According to a mode of interpretation by which any thing may be made to mean any thing, they affirm that one of the articles of the Charter authorizes the King, when he sees urgent necessity, to make laws and levy taxes by his own authority,—that is, that one article of the Charter nullifies all the others. By virtue of this article, according to the ministerial papers, the King is determined, if the Chamber refuses the budget, to reassume absolute power, either definitively, or for the purpose of altering the law of election, and obtaining a Chamber which will be a passive instrument of his will. The liberal papers say that this is mere bravado; that the King will not be so imprudent as to attempt the entire subversion of the established constitution; that if he does attempt to levy taxes, either by proclamation or by the vote of a Chamber not constituted according to law, the people will refuse to pay them; that the courts of justice will support the people in their resistance; that if the King abolishes the courts of justice, establishes others, and endeavours to levy the taxes by force, the army will not support him; and that the struggle which will then take place will be dangerous to no one except the Royalists and the King. The strength and unanimity with which public opinion has declared itself, renders the fulfilment of these predictions, in case the King should endeavour to govern without a Chamber, by no means improbable.
Whether, therefore, the Ministers are to be judged by their avowed intentions, by their personal history, by the great acts of their party, or by its present professions, the renitency of the French nation against their yoke is just and expedient, and their success in putting down the manifestations of public displeasure would be one of the greatest, but fortunately also, one of the most unlikely calamities which could befal France and Europe.
44.
PROSPECTS OF FRANCE, I
EXAMINER, 19 SEPT., 1830, PP. 594-5
Between the preceding item (No. 43) and this, the July Revolution had taken place. On 26 July, urged by Peyronnet and with the agreement of Polignac and other ministers, Charles X had issued four ordinances curtailing drastically the liberty of the press, dissolving the newly elected Chamber of Deputies, restricting the number of electors and the number of Deputies, and calling for new elections (Bull. 367, Nos. 15135-8 [25 July, 1830]). He referred to the powers granted by Art. 14 of the Charter of 1814, thus confirming fears that he would use those powers to establish personal government. Three days of riots followed; Charles X revoked the ordinances on 30 July, but it was too late; on 31 July, Louis Philippe, duc d’Orléans, accepted the offer to become Lieutenant-General of the realm; on 2 Aug. Charles X abdicated in favour of his grandson; on 7 Aug. the Chamber of Deputies voted in favour of proposals for a revised Charter, and offered the crown to Louis Philippe on his acceptance of the new version of the Charter (Charte constitutionnelle, Bull. 5, No. 59 [14 Aug., 1830]); and on 9 Aug., in a simple ceremony in the presence of the Deputies and Peers, Louis Philippe, duc d’Orléans, became Louis Philippe, King of the French.
Mill had gone with John Arthur Roebuck (1801-79), a close friend, and others to Paris in the week of 8 Aug., where he “laid the groundwork of the intercourse” he was to keep up “with several of the active chiefs of the extreme popular party” (Autobiography, CW, Vol. I, p. 179); he returned to London in the first week of September. For his exuberant letters from Paris extolling the Revolution and the exemplary behaviour of the working class, which he wrote to his father (in large part published in the Examiner) giving his impressions of the state of France immediately after the Revolution and the first proceedings of Louis Philippe’s government, see EL, CW, Vol. XII, pp. 54-63.
This article, headed “Prospects of France. / No. I,” is the first of a series of seven under that title in the “Political Examiner” (see Nos. 45, 48, 50, 51, 57, and 61; No. 98 is also related). The articles are described in Mill’s bibliography as “A series of essays entitled the Prospects of France and signed S— in the Examiner of 19th Sept., 26th Sept., 3d Oct., 10th Oct., 17th Oct., 14th Nov., and 28th November, 1830, in all seven numbers”
(MacMinn, p. 11).
how will the revolution terminate? This is the question, which every person in England who reads a newspaper has asked, and still continues to ask himself every day. But all do not ask this question in the same spirit, nor with the same hopes and fears.
Those who feel interested in an event which changes the face of the world, chiefly as the security of their own commercial speculations may happen to be affected by it; and those, an equally large class, whose sympathies with their species are of such a character, that in every step which it takes towards the achievement of its destiny, they are more keenly alive to the dangers which beset it, than to the glory and the happiness towards which it is irresistibly advancing; these classes anxiously enquire, whether there will be tranquillity?
Those who feel that tranquillity, though of great importance, is not all in all; that a nation may suffer worse evils than excessive political excitement; that if the French people had not valued something else more highly than tranquillity, they would now have been the abject slaves of a priest-ridden despot; and that when tranquillity has once been disturbed, the best way to prevent a second disturbance is to prevent a second disturbance from being necessary; with these persons the subject of principal anxiety is this, Will the French establish a good government? And grievous will be their disappointment if, when every thing has been put to hazard, little or nothing shall prove to have been gained.
We will endeavour to contribute such materials as are afforded by a tolerably familiar acquaintance with the history of France for the last forty years,1 and by recent personal observation on the spot, towards the solution of both these questions.
We believe, then, that there will be tranquillity; that there will not be another insurrection; and that there will be no outrages on property, or resistance to the operations of Government in detail, but such as will with the utmost facility be put down, and that, too, by the people themselves, if necessary. But we are also convinced that France is threatened at present even with a greater evil than a second insurrection; and that if the people were to follow the advice of some of our contemporaries, by abstaining from all political agitation, and leaving their destinies to the quiet disposal of their present Ministers and Chambers, they would speedily find that all they had gained by the revolution was, to exchange a feeble despotism for a strong and durable oligarchy.
We believe, however, that the people are becoming aware of this; that they are beginning to understand what are the really important securities for good government; that before long they will make their demands heard in so loud a voice as will compel attention to them; and that they will obtain, gradually perhaps, but certainly, the best form of government which could continue to exist, in the present state of society in France, and with the feelings and ideas at present diffused among the French people.
Concurring as we do most heartily in all the demands of the popular party in France; holding those demands, and the tone in which they are preferred, to be not only unexceptionable but signally and laudably moderate; we of course see no ground for the tone of alarm which a highly influential journal suddenly assumed at the beginning of the present week.2 The writer in the Times cannot possibly be unaware that he is most imperfectly acquainted with the past and present state of France, and the fact is that he hardly ever touches on the subject without betraying gross ignorance of it. He should not therefore be in so great a hurry to decide magisterially, that people of whom he seems to know nothing except that they desire the dissolution of the present Chamber, are a criminal faction. It is a besetting sin of the journal to which we allude, that whether its opinion be founded on knowledge or not, it fancies every man a rogue or a fool who ventures to entertain a different one.
We can assure the writer in the Times, without hesitation, that the dissolution of the Chamber is not desired (as he surmises) for the purpose of abolishing the peerage and still further curtailing the functions of the executive. There probably is not a man, certainly there is not a party, in France, whose desire it is that the power of the executive should be further curtailed. On the contrary, it is to the King, Louis-Philippe, that the popular party look, with a confidence not assumed for show, but felt in their hearts, to rid them in proper season of a body which has shewn readiness enough to take power from the Crown, but the greatest reluctance to give to the people any additional securities which it can possibly withhold from them. It is not desired that the Chamber should be immediately dissolved. What is sought is that they should first pass a new election law; that they should then dissolve, and give place to successors chosen under a system of election more favourable to good government than the present.
The whole number of persons having a right to vote at the election of Deputies, does not exceed 88,000. We have seen it asserted that the number of paid places in the gift of the Crown, and to which an elector is admissible, amounts to nearly 50,000. This may be an exaggeration; but when every proper abatement is made, the fact is indisputable that the Government disposes of a sufficient amount of public money to secure, without much difficulty, a majority of the electors; or, what comes to the same thing, the electors, who, in time to come, will have in their own hands the making or unmaking of ministries, have it in their power to distribute the public money, in considerable shares, among themselves and their connexions.
If it be said that, by the retrenchments about to be effected, the means of corruption will be diminished, we answer, that by those very retrenchments, and the accompanying remissions of taxes (the electoral qualification being founded on the amount of taxes paid) the number of voters will be reduced even below what it is at present. The remissions of taxes which have taken place since 1815,3 have already diminished the number of electors to about four-fifths of what it was when Louis XVIII granted the Charter.
It is obvious, primâ facie, that 88,000 electors, in a population of 32 millions, constitute far too narrow a basis for a national representation. But the strenuous and energetic resistance which this body of electors offered to the usurpations of the late Government, appears to have induced many persons, both in this country and in France, to repose almost unlimited confidence in their disinterestedness and public spirit, notwithstanding the contrary presumption founded on their limited number.
To correct this mistake, it is only necessary to repeat an observation, in which the English Globe, to its great honour, preceded not only the other English, but even the French journalists. Under the late Government the electors were not yet the governing body. The powers of Government were substantially in the hands of the King; or at least it was yet a question whether the King or the Chambers should be the real sovereign. The King had not yet, like our own King, submitted himself to the necessity of governing in concert with the body who nominate the Chamber, and of dividing with them the produce of the taxes. Nevertheless a king cannot reign alone. Others besides himself must participate in his power, and in the benefits which result from it. But the Bourbons had never had the cunning to ally themselves with the monied class; the only portion of the nation possessing, by the Constitution, any political rights, by the exercise of which they could endanger the power of the sovereign. That stupid race, who, as Bonaparte said of them, had learned nothing and forgotten nothing,4 were incapable of conceiving one single idea save that of returning to the old regime. Instead of uniting with the new Aristocracy, they had the inconceivable folly to rely for support upon an Aristocracy which had fallen into decay—which had lost all that ever gave it either physical force or moral influence—the titled noblesse and the Catholic hierarchy. These classes, reinforced by all whom they could personally influence, formed but an insignificant minority of the 88,000 electors, and the whole weight of the royal power being thrown into the scale, did not suffice to give it the preponderance. The electors would not tolerate a Government in which they had no share, and the King, persisting in his frantic scheme, appealed to the sword, and was defeated.
The case is now altered. The monied class has stepped into the place both of the King and of his allies, the emigrants and clergy. When itself excluded from the Government, this class made common cause with the people. Now, however, it composes the Government: and being a narrow Oligarchy, it has the same interests with any other Oligarchy. The people, when they made the Revolution, certainly did not intend that it should be a mere change of masters; but those whom they have permitted to assume the Government, have already evinced, in a variety of ways, their desire and intention that it should be little more.
Both in France and in England, the late French revolution has been frequently compared to the English revolution in 1688;5 and there has in fact been up to the present time a striking similitude between the two events. We earnestly hope that they will not resemble each other in their final result.
The English House of Commons, under the Stuarts, was not a much more perfect representation of the people than it is at present. Yet it resisted the Stuarts with the utmost vigour and determination; the most genuine representative assembly could not have evinced more. And why? Because the House of Commons at that time had no separate interest from the people; because it had not yet possessed itself of the powers of government. It fought its own battle against a rival power, the people fought theirs against a tyrannical one. The House and the people marched together in uninterrupted harmony until the common enemy was overthrown. Thus far the conduct of the House of Commons resembled that of the Chamber of Deputies; yet if it had been inferred from their intrepid conduct in opposition to tyranny, that they were incapable of abusing the power of Government when placed in their own hands, we have long since been taught by lamentable experience how little foundation there would have been for such an inference.
The revolution of 1688 occurred. The changes which it produced, the new laws which were made to limit the royal power,6 and the opinions which, for a long time, it was the interest of the new Government to disseminate, have practically had the effect, now acknowledged by every body, of vesting the governing power of this country substantially in the House of Commons. So, in France, it now substantially resides in the Chamber of Deputies: that assembly having, in the first fortnight after the revolution, most expeditiously abolished all those articles of the Charter which imposed any restrictions on their power in favour of the King;7 while they left to be decided hereafter the great questions which relate to the securities in favour of the people against the misconduct of the Chamber itself.
If the composition of the Chamber be retained nearly as it is, without any material modification in the law of election, the French constitution bids fair to be an exact copy of the English, in all except the fraudulent pretexts and the private immorality by means of which the latter habitually works. It will accomplish its ends without the instrumentality of a Gatton or an East Retford,8 but the practical results will be much the same, saving the difference in the play of the machinery.
Where 32 millions are governed by the 88 thousand richest, the Government is of necessity a monied oligarchy; and our own Government is substantially of the same character. We have indeed great families who, by the boroughs which they influence, can secure to themselves a greater share of power and of the profits of misrule, than in proportion to their comparative wealth. Of this blessing the French are destitute. But even among ourselves every wealthy man is virtually a sharer in the Government. Every man who can afford to buy land, may obtain more or less influence in a county election; and every man who desires to have a seat in Parliament, can always obtain one by paying the price. The power which every rich man has thus within his reach, is equivalent to power in possession. Though the vices of our Government are as we see them, there is very little actual difference between the situation of a rich man who has a vote, or the means of influencing votes, and of a rich man who has neither one nor the other.
The French have therefore a genuine example in our Government of the spirit of an aristocracy of wealth, and the fruits which it bears. Let them beware how they suffer such a Government to become consolidated among themselves. It is because we, at our revolution, committed this grand mistake, that we are still, after 150 years, fruitlessly demanding parliamentary reform. The French will not be guilty of a similar error. They will effect their parliamentary reform in two years, perhaps sooner,—not with muskets, but with newspapers and petitions: after which there will be “tranquillity,” if that name can be given to the intense activity of a people which, freed from its shackles, will speedily outstrip all the rest of the world in the career of civilization.
The organs of the English Oligarchy, the Post and the John Bull,9 never fell into so grand a mistake as when they commenced flinging dirt against the new Government of France. For the interest of their employers, they should have upheld that Government by every means in their power. They are committing the same blunder as if they were to declaim in favour of the Jacobites, and against the present Constitution of England and the present settlement of the Crown. The two exiled families, and their respective supporters, are exact models of one another, and the men now in power in France are as exact a copy as could exist in the present day of our own politicians of 1688.
We have unavoidably contented ourselves with generalities in the present article. In the next we shall enter into greater detail.
S—.
45.
PROSPECTS OF FRANCE, II
EXAMINER, 26 SEPT., 1830, PP. 609-10
For the context and the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 44.
the chamber of 1830 was the result of a compromise.1
A glance at the history of the last fifteen years will show what was the nature of the compromise, and what were the motives which led to it.
From 1815 to 1830, the Government of the restored Bourbons had proceeded in almost uninterrupted progression from bad to worse: the eighteen months of the Martignac Ministry, a short-lived experiment on the public forbearance, being the only intermission.2
At every step in this downward movement, the Bourbons lost a portion of their adherents. Recent events have made it sufficiently visible how miserable a remnant finally remained. The very soldiers who fought against the people, fought reluctantly, and against their private conviction. Leave out the foreign mercenaries, leave out all whose sole inducement was a mistaken idea of military honour, and Charles X could not perhaps have mustered a hundred men, not priests nor emigrants, who would voluntarily have fired a musket to save his throne.
Thus unanimous were the French, when tyranny was pushed to extremity; when the reign of the Bourbons became incompatible with a government of law, with the security of men’s persons against the worst excesses of enraged and terrified power; when, if they had not been overthrown, blood must have flowed in torrents on the scaffold, civil war would have raged in every corner of France, and that wretched family would have been ejected after all, or could have been maintained solely by a despotism worse (if worse be possible) than that of the arch-despot, Napoleon.
So striking a unanimity could not have been generated by a less potent cause. The opposition to the Polignac Ministry was composed of the most heterogeneous materials.
Before the feud between the restored dynasty and the people could come to the issue which we have just witnessed—before the dynasty could have the folly to declare war upon the people with a force insufficient to hold out against them for three days—the dynasty had been, and must have been, deserted, not only by all the friends of good government, but by all the prudent and moderate supporters of bad. The Bourbons had parted with the wisdom of the serpent as well as with the innocence of the dove;3 and all who had not made a similar renunciation were in the opposite ranks.
The opponents of the Polignac Ministry, though consisting, as we have already observed, of several different shades of opinion and inclination, may be ranged with sufficient accuracy under two great divisions: the old opposition and the new.
At the head of the former was the ancient côté gauche: the peers, deputies, and writers, who, in bad times as in good, in a minority of 16 as in a majority of 221,4 in the sanguinary reaction of 1815 as in the heroic revolution of 1830, were still true to the cause of good government and social improvement: who faithfully and unremittingly watched over the securities, imperfect as they were, which the Charter of Louis XVIII rather promised than afforded; who were ever at their post to resist the jesuitical evasions of the Charter, long before Royal audacity ventured on its open violation; whose integrity and self-respect excluded them, as well under a Decazes5 as a Polignac, from holding office in a Government, the sole object of which was to wield a constitutional monarchy to the ends and in the spirit of a despotism. Such were the leaders of the old opposition. Its followers were all the incorruptible adherents of the good old cause, re-inforced by the thousands of high-spirited and well-educated young men whom every year brought forward into active life, and by numbers who, duped at first, had their eyes opened as the Bourbon Government and the spirit of the age became more and more irreconcileable.
The leaders of the new opposition consisted, first, of the several knots or bands of ejected placemen, who had been successively dismissed from the councils of the restored dynasty, as the game which it was playing came to require more skilful tricksters, or instruments of greater daring and more devoted subserviency. Secondly, of men who, either from personal attachment to the Bourbon family, or from a constitutional or habitual partiality to the strongest side, adhered to the restored Government in all its successful undertakings, and quitted it only when its projects became such as the state of society and opinion rendered impracticable except by force. A third class of the leaders of the new opposition, and one which circumstances have now elevated into unusual consequence, consisted of a school of philosophical and political writers, pure, we believe, for the most part, from any dishonourable ambition, and comprising in their ranks several able littérateurs and highly accomplished men, but whose metaphysical doctrines were too closely imitated from Scotland or Germany, and their political opinions from those which are current among genteel people in our own island. Like Madame de Staël,6 many of whose opinions they inherit, and with whom their most prominent leader, the present Prime Minister of France, is nearly connected,7 they are ardent sticklers for a representative and constitutional government, but constitutional on the English model. They either supported, or scarcely opposed, the Bourbon Government, when, by the introduction of the double vote, it rendered a national representation, already resting on too narrow a basis, still less popular and more aristocratic than before.8 But when, by making war to restore absolute power in Spain, by an immoral and fraudulent management of the elections, by repeated attempts to stifle the press, by putting down almost all places of general education except those of the Jesuits,9 —we might say by all the acts of the Villèle Administration, the Bourbons showed themselves openly hostile to every kind of representative government, and to every kind of mental instruction by which men could be fitted for such a government, or led to desire it; then the persons of whom we are speaking, being sincere and strong enemies to the despotism of one, joined the popular cause, to which they have rendered, on not a few important occasions, signal service. This portion of the leaders of the new opposition have, as forming a philosophical party or school, received the name of doctrinaires; and, as politicians, bear no remote affinity to the English Whigs, though not stained, like so many of that party, by political duplicity, trick, or charlatanerie.
The above picture of the new and old opposition is probably new to most of our countrymen; but this is merely because it is the peculiar character of English nationality, not, like the French, to court the admiration of foreigners, but to treat them and their concerns with something like indifference and neglect. All who have watched the course of French affairs for the last ten years, have witnessed the gradual rise of the new opposition, and know that its constituent elements are such as we have just described.
These, then, are the two great divisions of the seemingly compact and united body which resisted the Polignac ministry, and by that resistance brought on the great events by which the Government of the restored dynasty has been abruptly terminated.
Of these, the old opposition predominates in the nation; but the new opposition predominates in the Chamber of Deputies, and has had the formation of the present ministry. This happened in consequence of the compromise to which, as we observed in the commencement of this article, the present Chamber owes its existence, and which we now proceed to explain.
At the general election in 1827, and at that in 1830, the one and only purpose of the patriotic electors was the overthrow of an administration, whose very existence precluded the slightest hope of a single step in social improvement, and placed in continual danger all the institutions, and all the liberties, to which the French people were most ardently attached. Among those who were united to attain this paramount object, all other differences of opinion, however important, were sunk. It was far from certain that by any union of efforts a majority could be obtained: and to risk the defeat of the common end for any object which admitted of postponement, and which was impracticable if the other failed, would have been egregious folly.
In the populous towns, where the number of voters was considerable, and the predominance of the popular party admitted of no doubt, members belonging to the côté gauche were returned. But in the poor, remote, and backward provinces of France, where the voters were few in number, composed in great part of functionaries in the pay of Government; and in the great or departmental colleges throughout the country,—it was uncertain whether a majority hostile to the ministry could be obtained. To ensure such a majority, the Liberals almost always endeavoured to select as the popular candidate an individual differing by the slightest possible shade from the obnoxious ministers, provided he would consent to vote against them. By any other selection they would have lost some part of the votes which a candidate of such a character might probably obtain; and have risked the total failure of the paramount object, the exclusion of the ministerial candidate.
In many instances, also, the narrow limits within which the choice of the electors was confined by the conditions of eligibility, did not admit of their making any choice but one which very imperfectly represented their opinion. By the terms of the Charter, half the Deputies of a department must be chosen among the inhabitants of the department, and the whole among persons paying at least 1000 francs (40l.) of direct taxes to the state.10 This, in France, implies no inconsiderable fortune, especially in the poorer departments. And when we mention that there are no less than eight departments in which the totality of the electors, that is, of the inhabitants paying 300 francs or more of direct taxes, falls short of 400, it may be imagined within what narrow bounds the electors were often restricted, in the selection at least of that half of the deputies, whom they were compelled by law to choose from among the inhabitants of the department.
The first which we mentioned of the causes which prevented the popular electors from choosing the men whom the majority of them would have preferred, did not exist in so great a degree in 1830 as in 1827. The popular party were more completely aware of their strength, and could reckon with confidence on a large majority in places where on the former occasion success had been at least doubtful. A considerable proportion of the Deputies who owed their seats to the compromise, would consequently have been ejected from them by men of more decidedly liberal opinions as well as of greater abilities, had not circumstances of which it can only be necessary to remind our readers, rendered it expedient to adopt as a universal rule, the re-election of the 221 who had voted for the address condemning the Polignac ministry.11 Not a few who had lost the confidence of their constituents by their manifest incompetence as legislators, as well as by their inadequacy as representatives of electors sympathising far more than themselves in the feelings and wishes of a vast majority of the French people, are indebted solely to the principle of re-electing the 221, for the advantage which they now possess of assisting in the formation of a new Government: an advantage by no means trifling, as the new Red Book, if the revolutionary era have as yet produced so useful a document,12 bears ample and unequivocal testimony.
The Chamber of 1830, then, was the result of a compromise; in which, as in all such compromises, the timid and hesitating dictated to the bold and decisive; those least in earnest gave the law to those who were most so. A large proportion, therefore, of the present Deputies, represent the opinion but of a minute and impotent fraction of their constituents. They are far from being the men whom even the present electors would again elect, even under the existing conditions of eligibility; and still further from being such as would be re-elected by the present electors, if those intolerable conditions were abrogated, or so far lowered as to leave any sufficient latitude of choice.
Can it be supposed, for example, that the centre droit, a party whose benches in the Chamber are at present only less crowded than those of the ministerial section, the centre gauche,—a body composed, in a great measure, of royalists, a little, and only a little more scrupulous or less audacious than the late ministers themselves, and many of whom adhered to the Ministry of Villèle to a later period than the Spanish war—can it be believed that such men would now be pitched upon by electors freed from the usurpation of the double vote13 (which most of those very men had a hand in fastening upon them), as fit persons to legislate for regenerated France,—for France under a roi citoyen in lieu of a roi cagot,14 and demanding good institutions—not a mere mitigation of bad ones?
The present Deputies were elected for the single purpose of overthrowing the Polignac Ministry. For that end they were admirably adapted. They were not chosen to make laws for a regenerated nation; and fitness to make such laws was not at all considered in the nomination of the greater part of them. A large proportion were re-elected for qualities the very reverse of those which the fulfilment of such a duty would require. They were chosen because they could not be accused of being patriots; because they did not sympathise in the feelings of the French people; because their lives had been spent in serving and in worshipping the Bourbons; and because they were known to be capable of abiding by that family in all save the last extremity.
It is not wonderful that men should be in no hurry to resign their seats, who know that this is the last time they will ever fill them. Least of all is this wonderful, when by losing their seats they lose the whole patronage of their department. But it would be wonderful, if any degree of ignorance and presumption in an average English newspaper could surprise us, that the body of the intelligent classes in France should be treated as something approaching to rebels and traitors, because they are eager to get rid of such a Chamber.
S—.
46.
MR. HUSKISSON AND THE JACOBIN CLUB
EXAMINER, 26 SEPT., 1830, PP. 611-12
This article comments on rumours (see Morning Chronicle, 18 Sept., 1830, p. 2, and 23 Sept., p. 3) about the radical background of William Huskisson, who had died on 15 Sept., after being run over by a train. Headed as title, this leading article in the “Political Examiner” is identified in Mill’s bibliography, with No. 47, as “Two short leading articles in the Examiner of 26th Sept. 1830 headed ‘Mr. Huskisson and the Jacobin Club’ and ‘The recent Combination of the [Journeymen] Printers in Paris’ ”
(MacMinn, p. 11).
in a discussion which has gone the round of the daily papers respecting the very unimportant fact, whether Mr. Huskisson was or was not a member of the Jacobin club,1 the Times remarks that a speech professing to be delivered by him at that club, was published at Paris in 1790.2 “In the title of the speech,” continues the Times, “Mr. Huskisson is described as an Englishman, and a member of the société from 1789. The Right Honorable Gentleman had most probably abandoned the society long before it became formidable under the name of the Jacobin club, and hence he is justified in saying that he never attended the sittings of that club but once.”3
“A member of the société from 1789.” This looks very much like a translation of “membre de la société de 1789.” If so, the editor of the Times, or his informant, is ignorant both of French and of history. Of French, because “a member of the société from 1789,” if expressed in that language, would stand thus, “membre de la société depuis 1789,” not de 1789. Of history, because he apparently is not aware that there existed a society under the name of “La Société de 1789,” more shortly “le club de quatre-vingt-neuf,” which was established by seceders from the Jacobin club, and in opposition to it;4 to defend the original principles of the revolution of 1789, principles which the Jacobin club had by its founders been intended to promote, in opposition to the more democratic views which that club subsequently adopted.
Without pretending to peculiar sources of information, we have always understood that Mr. Huskisson was in fact a member, not of the Jacobin Club, but of the Club of 1789. Our belief is now confirmed, both by his own disavowal of having ever belonged to the former society,5 and by the apparently ill-translated and ill-understood title-page of his speech, as referred to by the Times.
47.
THE RECENT COMBINATION OF JOURNEYMEN PRINTERS AT PARIS
EXAMINER, 26 SEPT., 1830, P. 612
This leader is in response to articles such as those in The Times, 8 Sept., p. 4, 10 Sept., p. 2, 11 Sept., p. 2, and 18 Sept., p. 2. The printers of Paris had petitioned the Chamber of Deputies against mechanical printing presses, and when the printers at the Imprimerie Nationale were asked on 1 Sept. to print the order for money to repair the mechanical presses of the Royal Printing House smashed on 29 July, they refused. At a meeting of printers on 3 Sept. a resolution was taken not to work on mechanized presses and consequently some newspapers failed to appear on 3 and 4 Sept. On 4 Sept. Lafayette told the committee of the printers that such combinations of workmen were illegal, and they issued instructions to return to work. Nonetheless fifteen were arrested. On 14 Sept. they appeared before the Tribunal of Correction and were all acquitted. This leading article, following No. 46 in the “Political Examiner,” is headed as title. For the entry in Mill’s bibliography see No. 46.
the alarms which have been propagated in England on the subject of this combination were almost entirely groundless.—The workmen, indeed, like many persons of far higher rank and greater acquirements than themselves, fell into the mistake of supposing that machinery, in certain cases at least, was injurious to the general interest, and should be prohibited by law. They accordingly refused to work for those newspaper proprietors who persisted in the employment of steam presses. The strike was an offence under the iniquitous combination laws, which still subsist in France, though abolished in England.1 With this exception, the workmen violated no law. The committee which they appointed, immediately issued a placard, formally disavowing all intention of compassing their end by violence or intimidation. No force was employed against the proprietors of newspapers; and if, for one or at most two days, several newspapers did not appear, it was merely because they had not yet procured workmen, to replace those who had left off work. In three days, at the utmost, affairs resumed their accustomed course, and from that time the newspapers have ceased even to allude to the subject.
We subjoin in confirmation of the above facts, the verdict of the Tribunal of Correctional Police, acquitting the members of the committee:
Considering that,—if it is proved that the committee of the journeymen printers who met at the Barrière du Maine entered into an engagement, by which the journeymen bound themselves not to work in work-shops where there are mechanical presses, and that the meeting therefore assumed the character of an illegal combination, such as is contemplated and prohibited in articles 415 and 416 of the penal code,—it is at the same time proved by the speeches of counsel, and in particular by the explanations given at the trial by the civil and military authorities present at the deliberation, that the committee acted only with a view to preserve order, and in the immediate presence of the authorities;
That, if additions appear to have been made to the resolution subsequently to the moment at which it was carried, this seems to have been the effect of a mistake made by the members of the meeting respecting the extent of their rights;
That the men returned to their work almost immediately, and that the members of the committee, when properly informed on the nature of their rights, recommended to their companions to resume their occupations;
That, if these various circumstances, taken together, do not destroy the fact of the commission of the offence, they at least preclude the supposition of any criminal intention, which intention is the basis of the offences designated by the law;
The Court discharges the accused parties, without costs.2
48.
PROSPECTS OF FRANCE, III
EXAMINER, 3 OCT., 1830, PP. 626-7
For the background, heading, and bibliographical entry, see No. 44. This article is the first in Mill’s Somerville College set in which he has inked in corrections in the margin. At 145.39-40 “authority in power” is changed to “persons in authority”; in the next number of the Examiner, 10 Oct., p. 644, this correction appears in an Erratum note.
a contest is commencing—and if it be a prolonged, it will doubtless be an acrimonious one—between the majority of the Chamber of Deputies and the majority of the French nation.
By the majority of the nation we do not here mean the absolute majority, but the most numerous portion of those who as yet take any part or concern in the struggle. A numerical majority of the entire population are undoubtedly quiescent. The agitation has not yet penetrated so deep. Among the working, (we may call them also the fighting) classes, there is, or was very lately, but one feeling; satisfaction at having achieved the overthrow of a bad government, and confidence, that without their intervention, and by persons more instructed, and having better means of judging than themselves, the constitution will be resettled—in a manner the precise nature of which they do not attempt to predict, but which they feel no doubt will be duly considered, and against which if they should see any reasonable objections, they will be at liberty to propound them. We do not believe that the anticipations or reflections of the great mass of the people of Paris go farther. Any deliberate disregard of their interests, to a degree which would call upon them for further armed resistance, we do not imagine to have once entered into their conceptions. For years past they have been accustomed to hear their sentiments proclaimed, and expression given to their political wants, by the almost unanimous voice of the instructed class. They have not lost their feeling of reliance upon that class: to it the present Ministry, and the adversaries of the present Ministry, alike belong; and in its hands they are willing to leave the decision of the dispute, believing, with a conviction in which we participate, that no government which is, or can be, established in France, will have power to resist the deliberate opinion of the educated part of the public, strongly expressed.
The struggle which is commencing is between the majority of the Chambers and the majority of the educated class; the majority in numbers, in talents, in activity, we believe even in property; and including almost all among the class in easy circumstances, who, in the three memorable days, made any exertions or exposed themselves to any danger in the common cause.
Such being the disputants, it remains to be shewn what is the point at issue. Let no one dream that it is a mere question of who shall be in or out. In our late remarks on the composition of the Chamber of 1830,1 we sufficiently settled the question of the unfitness of the present men, but unfitness of men is an evil only in proportion to the unfitness of their probable acts. There is a fundamental difference, pregnant with important consequences, between the practical principles of the persons now in power, and those of their opponents.
The doctrine of the present Chamber and of the Ministry of its choice is, that, the Revolution having been a defensive act, provoked by an attempt to destroy the established Constitution; the existing Charter having been its rallying word, and the maintenance of that Charter its direct object, the people have now obtained this, and ought to be satisfied. Those modifications in the Charter (they add) which the meditations of enlightened men had prepared, and which public opinion had sanctioned, were made by the Chamber, in the first week of its existence, and were assented to by Louis Philippe as the condition of his elevation to the throne. This doctrine respecting the late alterations in the Charter has been several times proclaimed (on one memorable occasion in words of which ours are almost a translation) by Deputies belonging to the majority, and in particular by the two Ministers who take the lead in the Cabinet, and who have the most completely identified themselves with the party predominant in the Chamber.2
The first part of their case, as presented by themselves, they have saved their opponents the trouble of refuting, by making an assertion which is inconsistent with it. For if there were alterations in the Charter, respecting the propriety of which the public mind was so maturely made up as to admit of their being carried into effect after a deliberation of two days, without even the forms which are never departed from in the enactment of an ordinary law, it is a proof that, although the Charter was the war cry, and its violation the immediate incentive to resistance, it was not to the Charter, as such, that the people were attached, nor was its maintenance all that they desired. What the people wanted was, securities for good government. If those which the Charter affords, as at present modified, are sufficient, they are in the wrong in wishing for others; but let not this question be got rid of by a side-wind. The whole matter turns upon this. Any argument which does not go to this single point is foreign to the dispute.
But before we state what are the securities for good government which the people would prefer to those afforded by the modified Charter, it is hardly possible to avoid taking some notice of an argument, which, although it would be just as available in behalf of one set of institutions as of another, is yet well adapted to make an impression on certain minds, as it consists of a phrase. The current phrase in the mouths of the partisans of the Chamber is, that it is desirable the revolution should stop. This maxim finds favour in the eyes both of those to whom the word revolution is synonymous with insecurity, and of those who, without considering the radical distinction between the two periods, remember that in the days of their fathers the first revolution was succeeded by a second, and the second by a third, until, wearied and without hope, the French people surrendered themselves willing slaves to a military despotism.
In answer to the profession of a desire to terminate the revolution, the majority of the nation reply, that if by the revolution be meant the fighting in the streets, it is already terminated, and no circumstances but such as are greatly to be deprecated ought, or are likely, to lead to its renewal. Such means, it is to be hoped, will never again be necessary, either for the attainment or for the maintenance of good government: and unless indispensable for that end, nothing that could possibly occur would warrant so hazardous an expedient. But to join heartily in the wish that the revolution may stop, is not quite the same thing as to admit that the political institutions which existed before the revolution are to remain without any material improvement, or that those, whose sole object is that the defects still remaining in the Constitution may be corrected in the mode prescribed by the Constitution itself, are to be deemed sufficiently answered by having it thrown in their teeth that they wish to continue the revolution, when it is time the revolution should terminate.
It is speciously urged that the present moment is a moment of excitement, and that such times are improper for discussing and maturing great constitutional changes. The popular party do not deny this. They allow that a state of violent excitement is one which no rational and well-intentioned person would voluntarily choose for a work requiring slow and calm deliberation. It is for this very reason that they implore the Government not to delay the deliberation until the excitement is such as to be incompatible with slowness and clamness. That it has yet become so, they deny, and deny truly. That it will become so in a few months, if the demands of the reasonable part of the public be not complied with, one must be blind not to see. When justice and the public interest demand the concession of a foot, it is wretched policy to refuse the people an inch lest they should take an ell. Give the entire foot with a good grace: if you withhold what you yourselves think reasonable till it is torn from you by main force, where are you to find moral strength for resisting pretensions of questionable expediency? The people may have confidence in those who obviously intend their good. But they must be idiots if they placed reliance in men who refuse them justice, for fear lest injustice should come of it.
To return, however, to the doctrine that times of political excitement are unfit times for constitutional reforms; we ask, is it possible to cite one single example of constitutional reforms effected in times which are not times of excitement? Reforms in the Government are not what the Government itself is apt spontaneously to originate. When the public are quiet and satisfied, it is not, we may be sure, the persons in possession of power, who will voluntarily come forward to point out faults in the political arrangements which have placed the power in their hands. Popular excitement is the natural indication to persons in authority, that a general wish exists for something which is conceived to be an improvement. It is their duty to defer to that wish by a solemn deliberation, which shall testify that the cause of the people was not prejudged in advance, and shall give hopes that what is now withheld will, if reasonable, be granted, when experience and discussion shall have overcome the scruples of its opponents. It is the duty of the Government to do this, before excitement has grown into passion, wishes into demands, and friendly remonstrance into clamorous hostility.
Those who accuse the popular party of wishing for another revolution, are accused in their turn by that party of not understanding the meaning nor entering into the spirit of the revolution which has already taken place. It is insisted on by the popular newspapers, and re-echoed by thousands in conversation, that the Chamber mistakes the grande semaine for a mere change of ministry, and fancies it does enough if it gives to France in 1830, all that France called for in 1829;3 forgetting that a revolution carries society farther on its course, and makes greater changes in the popular mind, than half a century of untroubled tranquillity. Why were the demands of the people in 1829 so much more moderate than at present? Because what is now past was then to come, and might have been avoided. They asked for as much as they thought could be obtained without a revolution; and with this, rather than draw the sword, they would have been satisfied. What, however, they were content rather to forego, than to purchase at so terrible a price, it does not follow that they are not disposed to claim now when the price has been paid. The bonds of law and government have been broken, and all the perils incurred, to avert which mankind are content to sacrifice their most cherished wishes. France is entitled to require, that one such convulsion, one such dissolution and reconstruction of the machine of society, shall suffice. Proportioned to the fearful dangers of a violent revolution, would be the moral responsibility of those, by whose fault they who have braved those dangers should have braved them in vain. It is of the utmost importance that what is done now should be done once for all. The field is now open; wait but a little while, and it will again be hedged in by the barrier of an established constitution. The questions, on the solution of which by the French people their future good government will depend, must be now agitated, must be now decided. Let it be attempted so to decide them that it shall not be necessary again to unsettle them in a year to come. To have turned out one bad government would be a poor equivalent for all the blood which has been shed, if the same operation, in one, or two, or fifty years, should have to be performed again upon another. For the sake even of tranquillity itself, the present is the time so to settle the constitution, that the bad government now happily got rid of shall be the last.
How little there is to inspire terror or mistrust, in the means by which the popular party proposes to accomplish this end, will be seen in the ensuing paper.4
S—.
49.
ANSWER TO BOWRING’S CRITICISM OF PROSPECTS OF FRANCE, II
EXAMINER, 3 OCT., 1830, P. 627
Immediately following “Prospects of France, III” (No. 48) in the Examiner of 3 Oct., p. 627, is a letter from John Bowring (1792-1872), a disciple of Bentham who had been chosen by him to edit the Westminster Review; his relations with the two Mills had become difficult in the late 1820s, and they had both withdrawn from the Westminster. Bowring’s letter, commenting on No. 45, is dated from 5, Millman Street, 27 Sept., 1830, and headed “To the Editor of the Examiner”:
The grounds of the unpopularity of the French Chamber of Deputies are obvious. It does not represent the Revolution. The Revolution was the work of the young—of the unopulent. The Chamber has no individual of either of these classes among its members—nor was there one among the electors of the Deputies.
I am greatly surprised that so intelligent a writer as S. should denominate the Chamber of 1830 “the result of a compromise.” Nothing can be farther from the fact. The Chamber of 1830 consisted of the best men that could be found in the narrow circle of the qualified candidates, wherever popular opinion had any—the slightest—preponderance. The electors did all they could in these circumstances; and in no case, that I know of, did they take a worse where they could have returned a better man. The honor that belongs to them they should be allowed to bear; and it cannot, I think, be denied, that, considering the numerous limitations on the expression of the will of the electors, the Chamber of 1830 was a tolerably fair representation of the elective body.
But the ground of complaint, of just and reasonable complaint, lies far deeper. Not more than one individual in three hundred exercises any proportion of the elective franchise, in France. Deduct two-thirds for women, children, &c., and still not one in a hundred has a voice in the constitutive power of the country. That is, indeed, a grievance, severely and widely felt; and, till some steps are taken for its redress, it is desirable that discontent should find expression. I do not mean that a universal, or even a very extended, suffrage is demanded by the men of the revolution. The beautiful machinery of the ballot will extract public opinion from a comparatively small portion of society. If the number of electors were quadrupled, I think that would for the present satisfy the French people.
I never have heard from well-informed electors that their “sole object,” in the late election, was to upset an “obnoxious ministry:” such narrowness of purpose would have done little credit to their sagacity. Still less that the “liberal electors” sought the candidate who “differed the slightest shade possible from the obnoxious ministers.” There were—and I speak from pretty extensive intercourse with the electors of France—no such delicately spun refinements. The electors did the best they could; and I doubt the possibility of your intelligent correspondent’s producing a single instance where the liberals—for it is they who are accused of “compromise”—returned a member because he “differed the slightest shade possible from the obnoxious ministers.”
That the Chamber is unworthy to represent, and unwilling to develope, the Revolution is, to me, perfectly obvious; that the opinion of a hundred new representatives, many of whom will be chosen from among the young, will greatly improve its character, and liberalize its proceedings, is also clear; that the removal of the corrupt influence of the Polignac administration would tend to the rejection of an immense number of the present Deputies, I hold to be indisputable. The king, whose pride it is to be the king of the people, ought not to delay that appeal to the people which is loudly called for. Among the Doctrinaires, the Whigs, and the Aristocracy of France, there are, for him, many pitfalls and precipices; his strength and his security can only be established by his most intimate alliance with the nation. The reluctance of the Deputies to return to their constitutents, grows out of their knowledge that their constituents will now find better servants: and it is truly a grief and a grievance that the “triumphant nation” is not allowed to choose them.
This letter is in turn followed by an editorial comment, “We have communicated the above letter to our correspondent S—, who has furnished us with the following observations in reply:”, which introduces Mill’s unheaded reply on the same page. Mill’s English quotations are from Bowring’s letter. This item is not found in Mill’s bibliography, but the circumstances mark it as certainly his.
it rests with those who know the fact, to pronounce whether it accords with the statement of your other correspondent or with mine. The expression I made use of is not of my own invention, it is a literal translation from the express words of the French popular newspapers. Which of them has not reiterated, again and again, the expression, “La Chambre de 1830, fut le résultat d’une transaction”; and sometimes, “Le résultat d’une foule de transactions.”1 The assertion that the Chamber was elected for the sole purpose of overthrowing the Polignac Ministry, has been repeated by the same newspapers almost to tiresomeness. Nor does such narrowness of purpose, when fairly considered, reflect any discredit on the electors. The overthrow of the Ministry being the condition on which every thing depended, no sacrifice could have been too great which helped to render it more sure. The people universally felt the importance of re-electing the 221, who, it is notorious, were preferred in cases where even the “narrow circle of the qualified candidates” would have afforded persons in all other respects more acceptable to the majority of the electors.
Your correspondent appears not perfectly to have seized the nature of the “compromise” which was stated to have taken place. He denies that the “Liberals” made any compromise; but who, permit me to ask, are the Liberals? If he accounts all such who were enemies of the late Ministry, undoubtedly they made no compromise with its friends. But the majority of them made—and it is matter of praise, not of blame to them—a compromise with the minority. They elected, not the best man who could be got, but the best who could be sure of uniting all their suffrages; throwing thus the nomination into the hands of that portion of the opposition which differed least from the obnoxious Ministry, wherever there was any chance that the votes of that section of the electors might have it in their power to decide the majority. In the large towns, where the really popular party could afford to dispense with the assistance of semi-liberals, and to which places the enquiries of your correspondent have probably been confined, there was no compromise, because none was necessary. The electors did choose the best men who could be found among the persons legally eligible. But this is no more than I had previously asserted, in the paper to which that of your correspondent is a reply.
It is scarcely necessary to add that I fully concur in your correspondent’s estimate of the importance of extending the elective franchise; and I can most confidently add my testimony to his, concerning the very moderate extension which would at present content even the most dissatisfied of the French people.
50.
PROSPECTS OF FRANCE, IV
EXAMINER, 10 OCT., 1830, PP. 641-4
The significance of this article for Mill is seen in his recalling in a letter to Tocqueville of 11 Dec., 1835, the argument here and in Nos. 174 and 177 for the representative rather than the delegative responsibility of elected Deputies (EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 288). For the context and entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 44.
to complete the design with which this series of papers was undertaken, it remains to explain to our readers the demands of the popular party, with some statement of the grounds on which they are founded.
Perhaps it will rather be expected of us that we should commence by stating what these demands are not, than what they are.
The popular party does not demand a republican government. Every one who is au courant of the present state of opinion in France, will affirm that not only there is no party, but possibly not a single individual, who indulges even a wish to disturb the settlement of the crown. Those of our contemporaries in whose daily and weekly columns a republican party figures as the prime mover in all the opposition to the present ministry and chamber, have contrived with singular infelicity to miss the matter.1 Are they so ignorant, both of France and of common sense, as not to know that the sovereignty of the people does not mean republicanism? Since they are so ill informed of its meaning, we will tell them what it does mean. So far as kingship is concerned, it means simply this—that kings shall be first magistrates, and nothing more: which being the admitted doctrine of the British constitution, and literally realized, as it would be easy to shew, in the practice of the British government, stands sufficiently exculpated, we may be permitted to assume, from the imputation of being a republican principle. It is true that the king, with us, is the chief magistrate of an oligarchy; a form of government which, we must needs admit, the partisans of the “sovereignty of the people” cannot abide. But what offends them is the oligarchy, not the king; the monopoly by a few, exempt from all responsibility, of the substantial powers of the government; not the titles or privileges of the functionary who is its nominal head.
The phrase, sovereignty of the people, is, in our opinion, by no means free from objections; though it expresses, we are aware, just as much, and no more, as the maxim transmitted from generation to generation in Whig toasts, that the people are the source of all legitimate power.2 We regret as much as it is possible for any one to do, the habit which still prevails in France of founding political philosophy on this and similar abstractions; of which the cause of popular governments stands in no need, and from the misapplications of which that cause sustains great injury. The demonstrable impossibility of practical good government without the control of the people, is all the reason which we require to convince us that the people ought to have the control. When, under the name of divine right, an original title, independent of all considerations of public good, was set up in behalf of monarchs, the friends of liberty naturally reverted to the origin of political society, for the purpose of exposing the imposture. Just opinions on such a subject have this use, that they prevent the mischievous influence of erroneous ones. But the question, in what manner governments may have originated, is henceforth an idle one: the sole business of ourselves is to adapt them to the exigencies of society as at present constituted.
Considered as a practical principle, the sovereignty of the people is moreover susceptible of a mischievous interpretation, though a different one from that which is put upon it by our sapient journalists. It countenances the notion, that the representatives of the people are to the people in the relation of servants to a master, and that their duty is merely to ascertain and execute the popular will: whereas the proper object of comparison is the office of a guardian, who manages the affairs of his ward, subject only to his own discretion, but is bound by a severe responsibility to exercise that discretion for the interest of his ward, and not for that of himself individually. The true idea of a representative government is undoubtedly this, that the deputy is to legislate according to the best of his own judgment, and not according to the instructions of his constituents, or even to the opinion of the whole community. The people are entitled to be secured against the abuse of his trust. This they can not be, unless he is subject to re-election by them, or by a numerous committee of them, at short intervals. But inasmuch as they have chosen him, it is an allowable presumption that they judged him to be a wiser man than themselves, and that therefore it is at least as likely, when there is a difference of opinion, that he should be in the right, as that they should. The elector who declares by his vote that he deems A.B. the fittest man to make laws for his country, and who presumes at the same time to give instructions to A.B., lays claim for himself to a superiority of knowledge and intellect which it is not very likely should be possessed by him so often as once in a hundred times; and to entitle every elector to make the same assumption, the man whom they have chosen their representative must be not the wisest, but the most ignorant and incapable of them all. Now this misapprehension of the true character of popular governments is manifestly promoted, by applying to those governments, or to the principle on which they are founded, the designation “sovereignty of the people.”
But the phrase, though it disguises the real foundation of good government, and admits of the practical misapplication which we have just pointed out, admits, so far as we can perceive, of no other; and we do not believe that it is thus misapplied by the French of the present day, though it was by their predecessors, the Jacobins. The truth is, that the phrase itself, though it would probably be placed by most Frenchmen at the head of a treatise on the foundation of government, is little used in the actual strife of parties, except as an equivalent expression to the negation of divine right. Thus, they say that the Revolution of 1830 has firmly established as the basis of the French constitution, the sovereignty of the people; meaning that it has rooted out the principle of legitimacy or divine right, since the king, not owing his throne to a hereditary title, but having been called to it by the people themselves, is precluded for ever from setting up any other claim to the powers which he possesses or may possess, than their expediency. A similar boast was made at our Revolution of 1688, and continued to be repeated until our aristocracy became more afraid of the people than they were of the king.
When the Times newspaper expressed its apprehensions, that the party which sought the dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies aimed at a more extensive application of the “sovereignty of the people,” by abolishing the Peers, and curtailing the powers of the executive, it displayed great ignorance. The sovereignty of the people—even according to the mistaken application above noticed, which makes the people the judges of every individual measure—does not mean that the people should not have Peers, and a strong executive, but merely that they should not have them unless they like: which, we beg to assure the Times, is not exactly the same thing.
We are firmly convinced, that not merely the greater part, but the whole, of the French nation, do wish to have Peers, and an executive strong enough to compel obedience to the laws. Their peerage would not indeed be a hereditary peerage, but one which, as we shall shew, would be more powerful, and more independent even of public opinion, than the present House of Peers, or any hereditary body which could be created in France. As for the throne, we are persuaded that, except the few partisans of the exiled family, there is not a man in France, who, if he could overturn it by a wish, would not leave it where it stands. We speak from considerable opportunities of observation, both among the more active and influential of the young men who now head the popular party, and among the patriots of more established character and more mature years. From the latter, and especially from those who had opportunities of intercourse with the King, we heard nothing but eulogiums on the personal character and public inclinations both of himself and of his heir apparent.3 The younger men, even those in active hostility to the present ministry, declared that if it had depended solely upon them, they would have raised Louis Philippe to the throne, not before, indeed, but after, the reform of the constitution. Yet these men had no partiality to a monarchy. Almost all Frenchmen resemble republicans in their habits and feelings, but these are republicans in their opinions. They think,—how should they help thinking?—that the progress of events, and of the human mind, is leading irresistibly towards republicanism. They would rejoice, if they thought their country sufficiently advanced to be capable of such a government. But they are convinced that republican institutions would neither be understood nor relished by the mass of the French people. The transition would be too sudden, and would find their minds unprepared. The habits of obedience, formed under a kingly government, could not be all at once transferred to a republican one. They would have no clear conception either of the rights which it conferred, or of the obligations which it imposed. Former reminiscences, instead of guiding, would serve only to alarm them. We are well assured that most of the addresses from the departments,4 signifying their adherence to the new other of things, testify a kind of horror at the very idea of a republic: and what wonder, when in the minds of the writers it is solely associated with the régime of the proconsuls of the Convention? For these reasons, the speculative republicans, though numerous among the educated class at Paris, and especially among the young men who bore arms in the Revolution, made a complete sacrifice of their republican opinions, and joined heartily in giving effect to the wish of the majority. The conduct of Lafayette was worthy of his previous life. Already, in the former Revolution, he had in like manner renounced his individual inclinations, and though a republican, made sacrifices, greater than which never were made by man, to prevent the establishment of a republic. Nor do we believe that any one of these pure-minded men repents of his acquiescence. We are sure that, even if such a one there be, he would consider the disturbance of the settlement, now when it is definitively made, to be among the highest of crimes.
But the republicans, even such as we have described, form a very small fraction of the party opposed to the ministry. Of the fifteen or sixteen daily newspapers published in Paris, all except four are in the interest of the popular party: the ministerial party has only two; the remaining two belong to the old royalists.5 The two ministerial papers are the Journal des Débats, which supported even Villèle until M. de Chateaubriand was turned out of place, and the Messager des Chambres, which was set up by the Martignac ministry, and was its organ. The same disproportion in numbers between the opposition and the supporters of the ministry, which is seen in the newspapers, is seen every where else; except in the chambers, and perhaps in the timid portion of the monied class. The opposition, however, may be stiled “His Majesty’s opposition.” It does not include the King in its disapprobation of the ministry. We have heard it affirmed in mixed society, oftener than we can venture to state, that the King is in advance both of the ministers and of the chamber; and we once heard the assertion, that the King, Lafayette, and Dupont de l’Eure,6 were the only real liberals in France. Why then, it may be asked, does not the King dismiss his ministry? The public feel confidence that he will do so, whenever he shall become convinced that such is their deliberate wish: and it would be scarcely reasonable to require that he should do it sooner.
Having stated what the popular party do not demand, we have to state as briefly as is compatible with the degree of explanation necessary for making the statement intelligible, what their demands really are.—They are comprised under the four following heads:—
- 1. The conditions of eligibility.
- 2. Those of the elective franchise.
- 3. Municipal institutions.
- 4. The peerage.
In the first place, the popular party demand the entire abrogation of all restrictions on eligibility.
The nation, they say, must be wonderfully backward in civilization, or you, its legislators, must be singularly unacquainted with the nation, if you cannot find in all France a body of electors whom you yourselves dare trust with the right of choosing whatever deputies they please. A law to confine the selection of legislators to a narrow class, when not only you cannot be sure that the fittest men will always form part of that class, but when you may be sure that they generally will not, is a clumsy attempt to create an aristocracy in spite of electors who you suppose would not make themselves the instruments of such an attempt if they could help it. There ought to be no conditions of eligiblity except the confidence of the electors: if your electors are not fit to be trusted, it is your business to find others who are. Bad electors will find the means of electing bad deputies, under any restrictions which you will dare to impose upon their choice. But good electors will not always be able to choose good deputies, if you compel them to select from a small number of the richest men. Is it so easy a matter to find men qualified for legislation? Are the ablest and most instructed men usually to be met with among the richest? Is it the natural tendency of riches, and of the habits which they engender, to produce vigorous intellects, stored with knowledge and inured to laborious thought? We say nothing of sinister interest; we assume that in the class of qualified candidates the electors will always be able to find the requisite number of individuals, sufficiently accessible to motives of a more generous kind, to prefer the good of the whole above the separate interest of the rich. Yet this is assuming far too much, considering within what narrow limits the choice is confined, by the high pecuniary qualification, coupled with the condition that one half the deputies must be residents in the department where they are chosen.
To pass from these general considerations, to others more specially applicable to the present situation of France:—the adjustment of the qualification of candidates involves the entire question between the gerontocracy and the young men.
The youngest of the present deputies must have been in his twenty-fifth year, at the first return of the Bourbons. There probably is not another example in history of so marked and memorable a disparity between one generation and that immediately succeeding it, as exists between the generation to which the deputies belong, and that which has risen to manhood during the last sixteen years.
The government under which a large majority of the deputies received their early impressions, was not merely a despotism; no other despotism which we have known applied so great a power, or applied it so systematically, to the purpose of degrading the human mind. Not only was the press and every other channel of public discussion inexorably closed, but even in private society, to converse with any freedom on public affairs, was to incur imminent danger of being denounced to the police. All scientific pursuits, but such as had a direct bearing upon the military art, or as contributed to procure the sinews of war, were treated with the most marked discouragement. In particular, all enquiries into the first principles of the moral sciences, as well as all preference of political opinion to personal interest, were, under the name of idéologie, the object of avowed contempt and aversion to the low-minded adventurer to whom circumstances had given unlimited power over the French people; and the elimination from the Institute of the department “Sciences Morales et Politiques,” was but one specimen among a thousand of the spirit of his government.7 The very infants were taught to lisp passive obedience, and such was the purpose which dictated the only innovations made by Bonaparte in the catechisms of the priests,8 in whose hands, with a keen perception of the fitness of such instruments for his end, he replaced the management of education.9 So acutely, indeed, was he alive to the dangers to which governments such as his are liable from the virtues of mankind, that he is well known to have looked with an evil eye on public functionaries who saved money in his service, because it rendered them less dependant on their places, and less fearful of risking his displeasure. A man who was always in want of money, suited him above all others: of such men he might always be sure.
Putting aside the selfishness, the paltry ambition, the rage of place-hunting, the pliability of conscience, which were the natural out-growth of such a government; it is not very surprising that men who were trained, and passed the best years of their lives, at a time when the human intellect was chained up, should be a puny race. To read their debates is all that is required in order to be satisfied of the prodigious inferiority of their best men to the best men of the generation which preceded them. Where are now the Adrien Duports, the Thourets, the Alexandre Lameths, the Lepelletier Saint-Fargeaus, of the Constitutent Assembly?10 Need we go farther back, and ask, where are the Gournays and the Turgots?11 M. de Talleyrand, a venerable name, had his political honesty been on a par with his intellect, is all that survives of that constellation of remarkable men, by which the early period of the first French Revolution was rendered illustrious.12 Would these men have been taken unprepared, and found without a single fixed idea, by events which laid open before them a wider field for legislative improvement than they had expected? Read the discussions in the Constituent Assembly on questions of detailed legislation, and you will learn the difference between the men of the Revolution and those of the Restoration. What other men has the present assembly to be compared even with those of its own members who already figured in the latter period of the first Revolution, with Benjamin Constant and Daunou?13
But if the men of forty and upwards, speaking of them as a class, are as poor in intellect and attainments as fifteen years of training under the despotism of Bonaparte could make them, the case is far different with that jeune France, of which, as long ago as 1820, Benjamin Constant and other orators of the côté gauche boasted as of a generation who would far surpass their fathers.14 The men who are now between twenty and thirty-five years of age, have received the strongest and most durable of their early impressions under comparatively free institutions. During the period in which they were educated, political discussion has been free, and books have multiplied to an extent and with a rapidity which surprised the French themselves when the particulars were brought before them by Count Daru.15 The young men have also enjoyed the advantage (it is no trifling one) of living under a government from which they could not, without becoming infamous, accept of place. Being excluded, therefore, from all means of obtaining distinction without the trouble of deserving it, they devoted themselves to serious studies; and (to say nothing of their immense superiority in the higher virtues, above the generation which preceded them), it is among them alone that fit successors will be found in point of intellect, to the best men whom France has produced in the former periods of its history.
By the existing conditions of eligibility, these men are excluded from the chamber. It is true that the limit in respect of age has been lowered from forty to thirty:16 but the pecuniary qualification operates as effectually in excluding the young, as in excluding the poor. In a country like France, where fortunes are generally small, and where the law of equal partibility17 commonly prevents them from descending undiminished to posterity, it is seldom that a man has attained the prescribed degree of wealth before he attains what was originally the necessary age.
In this point of view, therefore, it is even of greater importance than it at first appears, that the qualification for eligibility, if not abrogated, should be greatly reduced. There is another reason of no less moment, which we proceed to mention.
During the last ten years, England has been occupied, with laudable, though not with consistent, good sense, in liberalizing her commercial policy. The conduct of France has been so different from this, that within the same period her commercial legislation, already bad, has been rendered immeasurably worse.18 In addition to the evils common to all restrictive systems, of rendering commodities scarce and dear by forcing the labour and capital of the community to employ themselves in a less instead of a more beneficial employment, the tariff of 182219 is justly chargeable with all the inconvenience and injustice which among ourselves has been imputed to free trade—that of violently altering the channels of industry, and ruining particular classes of producers for the benefit of others. France, thanks to its restrictive laws, has scarcely any external trade; and the vine-growers have been reduced to penury, in order that M. Roy, M. Hyde de Neuville, and a few others having the monopoly of the home market secured to the produce of their vines and of their forests, might accumulate immense fortunes.20 Now, in a great number of departments, such men as M. Roy and M. Hyde de Neuville are the only men who pay a sufficient amount of direct taxes to be eligible to the chamber. In France there are very few large territorial properties which do not consist of vines or of forests. The vine-growers and the consumers together, have never been a match in the Chamber of Deputies, as at present constituted, for the parties interested in a restricted trade. There will never be a free and abundant interchange of commodities between England and France, until the conditions of eligibility are lowered.
The statement and justification of the remaining constitutional changes which the popular party contend for, must be postponed to a succeeding paper.
S—.
51.
PROSPECTS OF FRANCE, V
EXAMINER, 17 OCT., 1830, PP. 660-1
For the context and entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 44.
we shall now pass to the demands of the popular party on the three remaining points—the elective franchise, municipal institutions, and the peerage.
We suppose it is scarcely necessary to prove that the destinies of thirty-two millions ought not to be under the absolute control of eighty-eight thousand, or rather of about thirty thousand; for as the poorest and least populous departments are those which return, in proportion to the number of their electors, the greatest number of deputies, a majority of the deputies is returned by a minority of the electors.
We suppose it will be conceded, that it is not very difficult to convert such a representative system as this into a jobbing oligarchy.
Homer required ten voices and ten tongues to enumerate the vessels of the Grecian fleet.1 We should stand in need of a far greater multiplication of our vocal organs, if we had to enumerate the places which have been filled up, or are to be filled up, by the French ministry. The disposable revenue of France, not mortgaged to the national creditor, is probably the largest in Europe, compared with the average of individual incomes, and maintains, be it said without offence to other governments, the largest and most thriving bureaucratie which the world has ever yet seen. Conceive all this turned out of office at one stroke! and the places to be scrambled for: you will have some notion of what the antichamber of a French minister resembles, at eight in the morning, for his levee, a levee in the original sense of the word, is held at that primitive hour. Place, in France, is at all times in great request, because it is the only kind of unearned distinction which is procurable. In England a man becomes important by wealth, or birth, or fashion, or twenty other adventitious advantages, none of which confer one-tenth of the influence in France, that they do here. But place is a possession of that solid substantial kind, which will ensure consideration to the person who has it, in all states whatever of society; and the fewer his rivals, the greater is his consequence. In England the influence of a placeman is comparatively little, because no mere placeman is so great a man as the Duke of Devonshire, or Mr. Baring, or even Brummell, while his reign lasted;2 but in France the placeman has no rivals in importance, except those who are so by personal qualities, by integrity, intellect, and acquirements. For consideration of this latter kind, there is no where any great multitude of competitors. The other, a shorter and more commodious road to the same end, is far more trodden by the herd. The French accordingly, although, God knows, not a more worldly-minded people than ourselves, but the reverse, are eminently a place-hunting people. Their own admirable Paul-Louis Courier has made this national characteristic the object of some of his most poignant sarcasms.3 “Tant qu’il y aura deux hommes vivans,” says the clever and spirituel Fiévée, “il y en aura un qui sollicitera l’autre pour avoir une place.”4
On the late occasion, moreover, tax-eating was a pleasure which came recommended to the French electors by all the freshness of novelty. Under the late Government the places were given either to the Faubourg St. Germain, or to those who were affiliated to the Congregation.5 Now there are some things which men will not do, even to get what they most desire; and one of these things in France is, to go to mass. When these were the terms on which place was offered, he must have been a bold man who would have accepted them; though it must be admitted that M. Dupin, who is not a very bold man, paid the price without even being so fortunate as to receive any thing in return.6 Others, however, though they might be more courageous men in other respects, were not quite so courageous as M. Dupin in defying contempt, and were fain, whatever might be their secret longings, to remain out of place, until the people of Paris were so good as to take up arms in order to turn out another set of placemen and bring these in.
Imagine, now, if you can, the feelings of an elector, who, never having taken a bribe in his life, or known, otherwise than by rumour and conjecture, the pleasure of living upon the earnings of others, beholds for the first time the treasury doors thrown wide open to receive him, and the public purse exhibited to his enraptured gaze, with the strings hanging temptingly loose, and full liberty to thrust in both his hands. Is it likely that this man will send deputies to the Chamber, to vote for retrenchment? In the enthusiasm which succeeds a revolution, perhaps he might. But give him time to acquire the feelings of a placeholder, and make the experiment then. It is not always safe to judge what will be a man’s conduct in his own case, by the virtue he shews in the case of other people. Things may be exceedingly improper when done by a bad government, which are very fit to be done by a good one; and what government can be so good, as that which puts ourselves into place?
The virtue of the electors will be put to a hard trial even at the next general election. Having five-and-twenty millions sterling a year, or thereabouts, to dispose of in the lump, the ministers had for once their hands loaded with more gifts than they knew what to do with. After providing handsomely for their brothers and cousins, and the frequenters of their drawing-rooms, and making, it is but fair to add, a considerable number of excellent appointments, they were still able to place a large surplus at the disposal of the deputies. The deputies also had brothers and cousins, and many of them had drawing-rooms, though none, it is probable, had so numerous a côterie as Monsieur and Madame Guizot.7 But after the wants of all expectants down to the fortieth cousin had been amply supplied, a considerable amount of patronage remained on hand, which, unless report has greatly belied the deputies, they have unsparingly employed in making friends in their departments, with a view to their own re-election.
The necessity therefore is evident, of increasing the number of electors, by lowering the electoral qualification. In what degree, is the only question upon which there can be a doubt: and as the solution of this question depends in some degree upon facts which we cannot authenticate, we shall content ourselves with relating what, so far as we could collect, appeared to be the prevalent opinion.
The same kind of persons who, when they hear the sovereignty of the people spoken of, make themselves uneasy on the subject of republicanism, are also apt, when there is any mention made of extending the elective franchise, to be disturbed in their minds by the idea of universal suffrage. We shall not here enter into the question, whether it be desirable or not that the suffrage should be universal, which is not quite so simple a question as they imagine; although we should not risk much in undertaking to defend universal suffrage against any arguments likely to be brought against it by persons whom it frightens into fits. With respect to France, however, they may calm their apprehensions. Most thinking persons in France believe indeed that one day the suffrage will be universal; for in France most thinking persons, strange as it may appear, have faith in human improvement. But they reflect that at present no more than a third of the French people can read and write, and they are of opinion that vigorous exertions, continued during a long period, for the improvement and diffusion of education, must precede the extension to the mass of the people of the right of choosing their representatives. If the suffrage were to be universal, they would prefer admitting two stages of election; since it requires less knowledge and discernment to fix on the person who is fittest to elect, than on the one who is fittest to be elected. They affirm, however, that though the people of Paris and a few other large towns may be qualified for such an extension of their political rights, the working classes throughout France are by no means sufficiently advanced even for this step, and they urge the government to take measures for educating the people, with the express view of fitting them for receiving and properly exercising so important a privilege.
With respect to the degree of extension to be given to the suffrage immediately,8 public opinion does not seem to be completely made up. Much will probably depend on the result of the 130 elections on the point of taking place, to supply the vacancies created by resignations, annullation of elections, refusals to take the constitutional oath, and acceptance of paid offices under the Crown. If the present electors, now called upon for the first time since the revolution to exercise their privilege, exercise it in favour of popular candidates, the public will probably be tolerably well satisfied with the electoral qualification as it is, and will not insist upon any great amount of alteration. If, on the contrary, the electors, either influenced by the alarm which has been industriously spread with respect to the progress of the revolutionary spirit, or by an incipient feeling of a separate interest from the people, should return members who will reinforce the centre, or ministerial party, the doom of the present election law is sealed, and public opinion will require a much greater reduction of the qualification, and multiplication of the number of electors, than would content a large majority at the present moment.
From such information as we possess, we are inclined to expect that the popular party will be greatly strengthened by the approaching elections. If so, the hopes of that party will be so great from a dissolution of the Chamber, that we expect to see their efforts directed mainly to that end, and the majority permitted to limit the enlargement of the suffrage almost as much as they please, if on that condition they will compromise the dispute, and consent to a new general election.
It is certain that but a short time ago, a large proportion of the popular party thought that the present electoral qualification, with the suppression of the conditions of eligibility and of the double vote, would form a very tolerable government. We think that they were in the wrong; and we have reason to believe that most of them have since changed their opinion. What misled them was the spirited resistance of the present electors to the Polignac ministry. But this at least shows, how little there is of either faction or fanaticism in their wishes for change. We are firmly persuaded, that the great error which the bulk of the popular party are likely to commit, and the error which they are almost sure to commit, unless their minds become heated by the conflict, is that of resting satisfied with too little concession, with too little security to the people against the abuse of the powers of the government.
The prevailing opinion at present seems to be in favour of extending the suffrage to all who pay 200 francs a year of direct taxes. The qualification is at present 300 francs.9 M. Mauguin advocated this proposal on the ground that the same incomes which paid 300 francs in 1814, pay only 200 at present, owing not only to the diminution of taxation on the whole, but the substitution, to a considerable extent, of indirect for direct taxes, a policy always favoured by the late government for the purpose of narrowing the electoral class.10 It does not, however, appear to be known with any approach to accuracy, what number of additional electors would be created by this reduction of the qualification. Of course this point can be ascertained, and means will be taken to ascertain it before any measure is introduced into the Chamber. It is known that the number of cotes, or separate accounts with the tax-gatherer, from one hundred francs per annum up to 300, amounts to about six or seven times the number of the present electors. As the same individual, however, often pays taxes in several departments, the multiplication of the electors themselves would be in a smaller proportion.
Many persons object, with considerable appearance of reason, to adopting taxation in any shape as the basis of representation. They object to making the constitution of a country dependent upon its financial system, and consequently upon the fluctuating policy or interested views of an existing government. They see no reason that every time the budget is diminished, the rights of the people should be curtailed. They would adopt some other and more direct means of establishing a property qualification.
But whatever may be the pecuniary conditions which should confer the elective franchise, there is one change which all parties are agreed in demanding, and which we do not believe would be withheld even by the present Chamber. This is the extension of the right of suffrage to the members of the intellectual professions, free from all pecuniary conditions whatever.11 A qualification by profession, concurrent with a qualification by property, is not new in French law. It already exists in another important case, that of a juryman.12 A list is annually made out in each department, of the inhabitants of the department qualified to serve on juries. The first part of this list comprises the electors of the department; the second, all judges, advocates, attorneys, surgeons, physicians, professors, and various other classes whose means of livelihood are deemed a sufficient guarantee of their education. The reformers wish that the second part of the list should be included in the first, and perhaps several other professions added to it. You require, say they, in your electors, a certain measure of property, because it is a presumption of a certain measure of education. We cannot suppose you so absurd, as to admit a mere presumption and reject the certainty. You know, that all who practise certain professions must by law have gone through a certain course of education. If the standard of mental cultivation which is sufficient for a judge, an advocate, a physician, or a public teacher, is not sufficient to render a man fit for electing a member of parliament, whom, in the name of common sense, do you expect to find fit for it?
These arguments are so obviously unanswerable, that we do not believe it will even be attempted to attenuate their force. We are convinced that whatever in other respects may be the character of the new election law, one of its provisions will be the admission of all who are qualified to serve on juries, to the elective franchise.
S—.
52.
ATTEMPT TO SAVE THE EX-MINISTERS
EXAMINER, 24 OCT., 1830, PP. 673-4
This article comments on the attempts of the Chamber of Deputies to avoid the consequences of having, on 13 Aug., 1830, unanimously approved a resolution (Moniteur, 1830, p. 902) accusing of treason the ex-ministers responsible for Charles X’s July ordinances: Polignac, Peyronnet, Guernon-Ranville, and Jean Claude Balthazar Victor de Chantelauze (1787-1859), who had become Minister of Justice in May 1830. On 17 Aug. it had accepted for consideration a motion to abolish the death penalty introduced by comte Alexandre César Victor Charles Destutt de Tracy (1781-1864), defender of liberal causes (ibid., pp. 918-19). On 8 Oct., 1830, it adopted, by a vote of 246 to 21, the Projet d’adresse au roi, proposing a major reduction in the number of capital offences (ibid., pp. 1274-6 and 1278-82), which was enthusiastically received by Louis Philippe on 9 Oct. (ibid., p. 1277). This article, the first in the “Political Examiner,” is headed as title. It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A leading article in the Examiner of 24th October 1830, headed ‘Attempt to save the ex-ministers’ ” (MacMinn, p. 12). See also Nos. 68 and 71.
the french chamber of deputies has voted an address to the King, requesting him to propose a law, for the abolition of capital punishment in all cases of political crime, and in all other cases, except those of a few specified offences, the most dangerous to the safety of society and implying the greatest measure of depravity in the criminal.
Before we give utterance to the doubts and apprehensions which this precipitate, and, we fear, ill-timed resolution, has excited in us, we must request indulgence while we dwell for a few moments on thoughts of a more exhilarating tendency. We cannot restrain our delight and admiration on seeing this noble people afford every day some new and splendid example of its progress in humane feelings and enlightened views. When we recal the pitiable exhibition of our ministry and parliament, on a fragment of this very subject, a few months ago,1 and contrast it with what we now behold in France, with the leading statesmen of all parties uniting almost as one man to effect this grand legislative improvement, and its principle approved even by the journalists who lament, and the placarders who inveigh against, its retrospective application—it becomes painfully evident how greatly the educated classes in France, on all questions of social improvement to which their attention has been directed, are in advance of the majority of the same classes in England, and how eminently their practising lawyers, whose opinion must have peculiar weight on such a subject, are distinguished in expansion of ideas and elevation of soul from our narrow-minded technicalists.
The comments, which we cannot help making upon the occasion chosen for beginning the mitigation of the French penal law, are made with the most heartfelt wish that the event may prove them misplaced and inapplicable. No reverence can exceed that which we feel for the constancy of purpose, the unwearied and single-minded philanthropy of such men as Victor de Tracy and Lafayette. They may be better judges of the maturity of the public mind than ourselves, or than the ablest and most enlightened of their own journalists. May they prove so. No one, at least, can mistake the impulses by which their course has been determined. As they were in the beginning, so are they now, and will be to the close of their pure and noble career.2 But it is something new to find the majority of the Chamber marching under their banner. Who compose this majority? The very men who two years ago scouted the same proposition when brought forward by the same individuals. A taste for precipitate reforms is not the failing, of which the rest of the conduct held by these persons since the revolution permits us to accuse them. And wherein consisted the peculiar urgency of the present case? In the circumstance that four men are about to be put upon trial for their lives, by whose guilt more citizens have lost theirs, than usually perish by all other crimes taken together in the course of a century. It is true that these men were ministers. We may be permitted to ask, would as much have been done for four criminals of any other kind? But the fate of a minister concerns all who hope to be ministers. It is well that the zeal which might else, peradventure, have slumbered for some time longer, has been warmed into activity on one subject at least, by motives of a potency so irresistible. Let us hope that this enthusiasm, this generous reliance on the civilization and intelligence of France, will not exhaust itself in one single manifestation. Something of the same spirit will not displease us, when the conditions of eligibility, and the qualification for the elective franchise come to be decided on. Alas! that so great a measure should be presented to a people, so ill prepared, we fear, to receive it, under the auspices of men every one of whose acts is viewed with just suspicion, and on an occasion so well suited to give colour to the worst interpretation.
What becomes of the miserable criminals themselves, whether they die on the scaffold, in gaol, or in dishonoured exile and obscurity, appears to us a matter of consummate indifference. We do not desire their death; though we cannot affect to feel for them any compassion. Our sympathy is with the maimed, the widows and orphans whom they have made. But with the past, punishment has nothing to do. Punishment cannot make that which was, to have never been. The death of the assassin will not bring back to life the victim whom he has slain. Punishment regards the future alone. Safety, not vengeance, is its object, and all thinking men have long been persuaded, that death is far from being the punishment which operates with greatest force upon the minds of delinquents, far even from being the most severe.
The only fit end of punishment is the prevention of crime: but is this truth commonly felt and understood? Are there many, besides persons of cultivated intellects, who have wrought it thoroughly into their convictions, or impressed it deeply upon their feelings? In most minds the idea of punishment has not ceased to be at bottom that of expiation, or the principle of so much pain for so much guilt; the argument most frequently insisted upon even for the alleviation of a penalty, is this, that it is disproportioned to the crime. Why is it that murder is almost invariably excepted from the propositions even of philanthropists, for the abolition of capital punishment? Murder is not the crime which it is most difficult to prevent. The feeling which gave birth to the lex talionis3 has not yet died away. The doctrine of blood for blood has sunk deep into the hearts of the vast majority of every people who have been accustomed to see it put in practice. We should not wonder, if there were some persons here who are so foolish as to suppose, that it is thirst for vengeance which makes the Parisian populace cry out, “Death to the ministers.”4 The supposition is too absurd to be worth reasoning upon. If the people desired vengeance, what opportunities of gratification did they not forego during the three days? The very men who had been firing upon them the moment before, were treated as soon as they were disarmed, with the kindness of brothers. Except those of their own number whom they executed for pillaging, it is not known that they put to death a single person, after he had ceased to resist. The officers who gave the orders to fire, remain unmolested to this day. Marmont himself was allowed to retire in quietness, not a voice being raised for his punishment, not a sign given that the idea of his liability to it had entered into any mind.5 If they cry “death to the ministers,” it is because they do not think it vengeance, but justice. Their sons, their brothers, their comrades, have been slain—the ministers, in their eyes, are the murderers. For death, death in their opinion is the proper return. They cannot seize nice distinctions between political murder and common murder. Numbers have suffered death for state crimes while Peyronnet was minister, and they well knew on what multitudes more it would have been inflicted if their enemies had prevailed. It appears to them right, to try the prisoner by his own law. Their feeling, howsoever we may consider it, is a moral one. It is their conscience which speaks. It is a sentiment of justice, unenlightened, indeed, and misplaced, but in short it is justice, such as they conceive it.
You owe every thing to their sense of justice. It is by their love of justice that your lives and properties are yours at this instant. Never since the beginning of the world was there seen in a people such a heroic, such an unconquerable attachment to justice. The poorest of the populace, with arms in their hands, were absolute masters of Paris and all that it contains; not a man went richer to his home that night. What an instrument, what a safeguard for all that is virtuous have you in such a people! but it is in their moral convictions that you must find your strength. Once forfeit the right of appealing to their justice, and what is there between you and the most enormous evils? Refuse a man favour, and he respects you the more; refuse him what he deems justice, and you excite his indignation. If what the people demand is in itself unjust, withhold it. Real justice is not to be sacrificed to opinion. But it is never unjust to execute upon a real criminal, what was the acknowledged law when he committed the offence. It is only postponing a reform, until it can be effected safely: and this reform, was it for the sake of the criminal that you desired it? No, certainly; but for the sake of the public. And when did a premature and brusque attempt to make men better, ever fail of making them worse? It is dangerous in a revolution to trifle with the moral feelings of a people. If you will not give to the people what they think justice, tremble lest they should take it.
We do not express this apprehension lightly. We hope better things from the Parisian people. Indeed, the moment of greatest danger is perhaps past; though there are appearances which, we confess, alarm us. But if, when Polignac was arrested, and brought from Granville to Paris, it had been known that when convicted he would not be put to death, who can answer that an indignant people might not have rendered a trial unnecessary? Spare the lives of political offenders when you can—spare them always, if that be practicable, and we will gladly give you our applause. But before you enact a law interdicting yourselves from inflicting capital punishment, make yourselves sure that no cases will arise, where what you have said you will not do, will be done for you by the avenging hand of the people themselves, preferring, in the fury excited by some outrage against their liberties or lives, what they deem the substance of justice, to the forms.
Do we, then, attempt to set up the rude, undisciplined feelings of untaught minds, as a rule of conduct for men of more enlightened consciences and more exercised understandings? Is the penal legislation of a country to remain for ever a literal copy of the barbarous conceptions of its least civilized inhabitants? Far from it. We only ask, that a purpose, of which we acknowledge the dignity and excellence, should be pursued by the employment of such means as a rational person would adopt in any other case of equal delicacy and difficulty. We cannot conceive any graver or more solemn occasion, than that of a deliberation which is to change the moral sentiments of a whole people. What zeal and perseverance will not be required, to place the objects and principles of punishment in their true light before the people, and to make them familiar with the right grounds of preference, presented in every possible aspect! What an insight into the human heart, to probe to the bottom the seat of the erroneous moral feeling which lies so deeply fixed in it; and what skill in guiding and working upon men for their good, to find the means of loosing the wrong association of ideas, which has wound itself round and round the mind till it has eaten into the substance itself. Nor can the abolition of capital punishment be considered as an insulated question; it involves the revision of your whole penal code. No nation in Europe is provided with unobjectionable secondary punishments. Your most accomplished jurists have enough to do, in fixing, if not their own ideas on the matter, at least those of the public, and you are to recollect, that this last is a condition which, for persons desiring to be the rulers of a free people, is not to be dispensed with. A despot, indeed, has no need of so much trouble. He gives his fiat, and the law is altered; the people, being accustomed to be so treated, acquiesce in the alteration, however disagreeable to them, and in time the new law gives birth to a new state of feeling. But the legislators of France know full well, that the French people are neither children nor slaves, and that they must henceforth be governed with the assent of their reason and of their conscience, or not at all. And was men’s reason or their conscience ever yet taken by storm?
By postponing the question of capital punishment, you would have prevented, perhaps, an insurrection; a few months or years later you would have carried your point, and retained, and even strengthened, the hold which it is of so much importance that you should not renounce, upon the moral sentiments of the people. All this you would have gained; but you would not have saved the lives of the ex-ministers. Were their lives, then, of sufficient value, to be saved from the course of law at such a price?
53.
THE QUARTERLY REVIEW VERSUS FRANCE
EXAMINER, 24 OCT., 1830, PP. 674-5
The stimulus for this leading article came from an unheaded article on the fall of the Bourbons in the Morning Chronicle, 14 Oct., 1830, p. 3, which criticized “Political History of France since the Restoration,” Quarterly Review, XLIII (Oct. 1830), 564-96, by Charles Ross (1799-1860), Conservative M.P. for St. Germains, 1826-32. Both the Morning Chronicle and Mill get the title of the article wrong, and mistakenly assume that it was by Basil Hall (1788-1844), a retired naval officer with both scientific and political interests, known for his travel books as well as his articles in the Quarterly Review. Among the latter was “Political Condition and Prospects of France” (XLIII [May 1830], 215-42), which probably caused the mistaken attribution and increased the abuse by the Morning Chronicle and Mill. Mill’s unsigned article, headed as title, immediately follows No. 52 in the “Political Examiner.” The description in Mill’s bibliography is of “A leading article in the Examiner of 24 Oct. 1830, headed ‘The Quarterly Review and France’ ” (MacMinn, p. 12), which is identified by MacMinn as this article; however, the title in the Examiner of No. 54 is “France and the Quarterly Review,” which might imply that the bibliography refers to No. 54 only. For the evidence supporting our conclusion that Mill wrote both, see the Textual Introduction, cvi. The epigraph, which may have been supplied by the editor, Fonblanque, has not been identified.
“We’re all a nodding.”
—Kings.
the chronicle has some masterly comments on an article in the Quarterly Review, entitled “The Political History of France, since the Revolution.” This is a subject with regard to which the Quarterly is in a false position. Captain Basil Hall served in the quality of evil spirit to Charles X; he marshalled him the way that he should go; he placed the bloody dagger before his eyes,1 and pointed the road to crime. Charles was hurled from his throne, the sceptre with which he had bruised his people was wrenched from his grasp, but Captain Basil Hall still sits at his desk; the pen with which he outrages reason and disgusts humanity remains in his hand, and he yet asserts his disgraced opinions in the Quarterly.
If we rejoiced in the fall of inimical organs, we should certainly observe with complacency the operations of the Charles X of the High Tory Journal; his magnificence is dealing in ordinances so fatal in recoil.
The writer [says the Chronicle] honestly avows that it would have afforded him great satisfaction had Charles X succeeded in establishing a despotism. “We certainly wished (he says) that in the struggle, which we had long foreseen, the immediate result might be the establishment of something like despotic power in the Throne of France; and we did so because we considered a despotism, in the present condition of the world, as likely to turn out a lesser evil in that mighty country than the other alternative. The past had satisfied us that if Charles X desired the influence of a dictator, he was incapable of using that influence for any unpatriotic purpose; that no fretfulness of idle vanity, no fervor of selfish ambition, had tormented his ‘chair days;’ and that whatever extraordinary power he might obtain, would be held conscientiously, as his only for an extraordinary and temporary purpose—that of endeavouring to lay the foundations of a national aristocracy.”2
Thus the good intentions of Charles were manifested in his breach of faith and violation of the laws. Innocent love! Amiable forsworn! Benevolent man of violence who attempted to upset the rights of his people all for their good, and was himself upset instead! Good-lack! We trust no kindred soul will steal his purse at Lulworth, with the intention of making an excellent use of the money.3 When power is reserved from magistrates, it is meant to place it beyond subserviency to their intentions, good or bad; but what exquisite simplicity in not recognising this design, and seizing unlawfully by virtue of good purposes! The Standard remarks upon the above text:
We must remark that this King, in reliance upon whose good dispositions the writer wishes for the establishment of a despotic power, is seventy-five years old—has passed the allotted period of man’s life by five years; but, non obstante the probability of his death or dotage, the reviewer would establish a permanent despotism, in reliance upon his good disposition.4
The Chronicle observes,
The principle which runs through this “Political History of France since the Revolution” is, that the only legitimate object of a Government is to create and preserve a powerful Aristocracy, and the various Ministries since the Restoration are praised or blamed in proportion as they pursued that object. A Church richly endowed, as subsidiary to the maintenance of a rich Aristocracy, is, of course, also an object of the writer’s admiration. The more important point—the happiness and prosperity of 30 millions of Frenchmen, and how far such happiness and prosperity are reconcileable with a rich and powerful Aristocracy and a richly-endowed Church—is not deemed deserving of his notice. He admits that the country never was more prosperous than during the period when things were advancing to a crisis which justified the establishment of a despotism:—“Beset as the exiled House was (he says), from the hour of its restoration, with jealousies bitterly conflicting, and perpetually threatening an explosion, it will not be denied that France enjoyed under their rule 15 years of greater prosperity than had ever before fallen to her lot. Such is the fact, ‘even their enemies themselves being judges;’5 never since the foundation of the Monarchy were personal liberty and property so safe. . . . Excluding certain political evils from our view, that fine country presented, on the whole, a picture of prosperity, which fixed the admiration of Europe.” But if France, since the foundation of the Monarchy, never exhibited such a picture of prosperity, does not this almost amount to a demonstration, that France was not indebted for that prosperity to the Bourbons, but to the circumstances wherein, during those 15 years, she differed from what she was during the rest of the Monarchy? During the rest of the Monarchy she had a richly-endowed Church and a rich Aristocracy; and during the 15 years she had a comparatively poor Aristocracy and a poor Church; and are we not, therefore, justified in inferring, it was precisely because she had a poor Aristocracy and a poor Church she was so prosperous as to attract the admiration of Europe, notwithstanding she had also foolish Monarchs, who created constant jealousies and heartburnings by their incessant endeavours to bring about the state of things from which the Revolution had liberated her? The Bourbons could not prevent the prosperity which the Institutions, growing out of the Revolution, produced in spite of their endeavours. The country prospered because they were impotent.
“They saw (says the Quarterly Reviewer) that the faction (by faction is meant all but the Aristocracy) which had never ceased to labour for the ruin of the Monarchy, were rapidly attaining the utmost height of rebellious audacity—and that the only question was, who should strike the first blow. They saw, that to go on with the Charter of Louis XVIII as it stood, was inevitably to shipwreck the vessel of the State, and they thought to give it a chance by cutting away the masts. The evolution was not successful, and the Monarchy went down.” It is questionable how far it may be prudent to accustom people to such phrases as Monarchy going down; for after the first shock which such portentous words are calculated to produce is over, men naturally ask themselves what the words really mean, and they find that the going down of a Monarchy is not such a bad thing. They see, notwithstanding the going down of the Monarchy, thirty millions of people exciting the admiration and respect of Europe by their gallant bearing and their magnanimity—they see them busied in improving their laws and institutions, encouraging education, removing the obstacles in the way of industry—and they see a weak and priest-ridden old man, who could not enjoy in quiet the wealth which this people heaped upon him and his family, but would persist in thwarting those to whose industry he was so deeply indebted, notwithstanding his crime, peaceably conducted out of the country he had outraged, and richly pensioned off. Truly there are worse things in the world, at this rate, than the going down of a Monarchy.6
They see, too, that the going down of the monarchy has been the rising up of a magistracy; that the going down of one king has led to the setting up of a better.
France is prosperous and moral, without a rich church or an aristocracy of boroughmongering capacity; this is the sum of the quarrel with her condition. She wants the main-spring of misrule, but she is deficient in no feature of happiness, wisdom, or virtue, nor is it pretended that she is deficient. She has every production but Lords and Squires, and the magistracy of the brambles. From an article on the decline of science in England, in the same number of the Quarterly which contains the pestilent trash quoted, the Chronicle extracts this admirable passage:
“Of all the kingdoms of Europe (says the Reviewer) France is undoubtedly the one in which the scientific establishments have been regulated by the most enlightened and liberal principles, and in which science is most successfully cultivated.” For scientific and literary establishments, 103,791l. is annually voted by the Government. “Nor (says the Reviewer) in her generous care for the respectability and comfort of her scientific men, has France overlooked the most powerful stimulus of genius and industry. All the honours of the State have been thrown open to her philosophers and literary characters. The sage and the hero deliberate in the same Cabinet; they are associated among the Privy Councillors of the King; they sit together in her House of Peers, and in her Chamber of Deputies; they bear the same titles; they are decorated with the same orders; and the arm and the mind of the nation are thus indissolubly united for its glory, or for its defence.” Let us turn to Aristocratical, Oligarchical England. “While (says the Reviewer) the mere possession of animal courage (which, of course, a well-fed Aristocracy, in a temperate country like this, can hardly fail to possess), one of the most common qualities of the species, has been loaded with every variety of honour, the possessor of the highest endowments of the mind—he to whom the Almighty has chosen to make known the laws and mysteries of his works—he who has devoted his life, and sacrificed his health and the interests of his family, in the most profound and ennobling pursuits,—is allowed to live in poverty and obscurity, and to sink into the grave without one mark of the affection and gratitude of his country. And why does England thus persecute the votaries of her science? Why does she depress them to the level of her hewers of wood and her drawers of water?7 It is because science flatters no courtier, mingles in no political strife, and brings up no reserve to the Minister, to swell his triumph or break his fall. She is persecuted because she is virtuous; dishonoured because she is weak.” “England’s liberality to Newton (he elsewhere observes) is the only striking instance which we have been able to record, because it is the only one in which the honour of a title was combined with an adequate pecuniary reward.”8
We prepare to treat Captain Basil Hall more at length in our next number.
54.
FRANCE AND THE QUARTERLY REVIEW
EXAMINER, 31 OCT., 1830, PP. 689-91
This item is a first leader in the “Political Examiner,” headed as title. For the context and bibliographical entry, see No. 53. For the attribution of this and No. 53 to Mill, see the Textual Introduction, cvi. In Mill’s Somerville College set, the word “insult” has been blotted out from the phrase “to insult the illustrious patriot” at 178.20.
in our last paper we made an extract from the comments of the Morning Chronicle, upon the article on the late French Revolution in the Quarterly Review. The reviewer makes a sufficiently pitiful figure in the Chronicle’s hands; and there, perhaps, we might have left him, had he not called down upon his own head a still more signal exposure and castigation, by presuming to insult and calumniate the people of England. The reviewer says, that the people of England have not sympathized in the triumph of the French nation over the attempt to abrogate its constitution, and to govern it by open force. He says, that they have regarded the recent changes in France with “stern suspicion,” and by so doing, have entitled themselves to as much laudation as he can bestow upon them.1 Now this assertion, going forth among many other marks of the worst feelings towards the French people, and amidst an immense heap of blunders and misrepresentations respecting French affairs, in a publication known to have a considerable circulation in England, may be productive of very lamentable effects. It is not impossible that the reviewer’s confident affirmation that the mass of the English nation are of his opinion, may become known to the leading statesmen and to the journalists of France, and may induce them to believe that such is really the fact. If this should take place, the prodigious increase of strength which the expressions of honorable sympathy from the English in the late achievement have given to the disposition to think well of this country, and to keep well with it, might not be permanent, and might be succeeded by a reaction which would be violent in proportion as the previous burst of affection and gratitude (we speak from observation) was cordial, generous, and sincere.
It therefore becomes highly necessary to apprise the French, that the Quarterly Review represents the feelings of nobody except the church and the aristocracy: that with the exception of these peculiar and narrow classes, and their hangers-on and retainers, the readers even of the Quarterly Review do not read it for the sake of its political opinions: that when the reviewer affirms, that the Revolution has met with no sympathy from the English people, all he really means is this, that it has met with no sympathy from the church and the aristocracy: that the great bulk even of the readers of the review, utterly repudiate and disavow the sentiments of this article, and that it is generally felt that the editor,2 by inserting it, has committed, with respect to the pecuniary interests of the concern under his management, one of the greatest blunders which he ever made.
It is not our intention, however, to dismiss this creditable effusion with barely the degree of notice rigorously necessary for the purpose for which we adverted to it. We think it may be instructive to exhibit rather minutely what manner of man this is who thus takes upon himself the character of spokesman for the English people. It is true that we have not been gratified by the discovery of one single endowment in the writer qualifying him to have an opinion. But the more scanty his stock of ideas, the apter an illustration is he of the tendency of such as he happens to be master of. These amount to two; Church, and Aristocracy. He can think nothing but church and aristocracy, he can feel nothing but church and aristocracy. These two ideas compose the entire furniture of his skull.
With an intellectual matériel of this extent, he turns his attention to France; where he speedily discovers that neither of the idols of his homage exists. This nakedness of the land fills him with dismay. Seeing neither “a powerful church establishment,” nor a “wealthy hereditary aristocracy,” he sees nothing but a “monarch” and a “mob.”3 Yes, he scruples not to aver, that whatever is not either church or aristocracy, is “mob.” He accordingly proclaims his wish that Charles X had succeeded in overpowering the French nation. He regrets that the result of the struggle was not “the re-establishment of something like despotic power in the throne of France:”4 feeling certain that it would have been used “conscientiously” for one only purpose, that of endeavouring to create a rich landed aristocracy. This, and a powerful church establishment, are the two “great absent elements,” without which no country is capable of freedom.5 This maxim in politics is assumed throughout, as one which neither needs, nor is susceptible of, proof; and it is easy to perceive, such is the texture of the writer’s mind, that the doctrine really appears to him to be one of those to which the human understanding necessarily and spontaneously assents.
We are thus given to understand that in the opinion of the church and the aristocracy, a church and an aristocracy, each of them the richest and most powerful of its kind, are necessary conditions of what they are pleased to term freedom: and that despotism, naked unmasked despotism, is not only preferable to the want of both or either of these requisites, but is positively the best form of government which can exist in a country not provided with these costly, but indispensable appendages.
It is not, perhaps, very surprising, that the church and the aristocracy should imagine all this. But it does, we confess, somewhat surprise us that in the times we live in, they should expect to find any persons who will receive it on their authority. They may have heard of an opinion which has gone forth rather extensively, that instead of being the causes of freedom, a powerful church and aristocracy are the main obstacles to it, in the present state of society. They may have heard it whispered that from the days of Themistocles to those of Thomas Jefferson,6 every nation which has been conspicuous for good government, or eminence in intellect, arts, or arms, (not excepting England itself) has been one in which either a powerful church and aristocracy did not exist, or in which their power was irresistibly controlled by opposing circumstances. They may have been told, that the nations to which at the present moment, the twofold blessing which they brag of, belongs in the most peculiar degree, are those which have passed into a proverb throughout all Europe as the favourite abodes of barbarism and superstition.7 They may have perceived that in England so far are the merits of the church and the aristocracy as guarantees of freedom from being appreciated, that what the people are seeking is freedom from these very bodies, from their engrossing and irresponsible domination. We can assure them, that they will find few persons besides themselves, who are not very willing just now to listen without either impatience or aversion, to what can be said in behalf of these and similar opinions. Now, if the case be as we state it, we may just submit, whether it might not have been as advisable for such writers as the Quarterly reviewer to make themselves a very little less sure, that their panegyrics upon despotism, in comparison with any other government except that of a church and an aristocracy, would produce exactly the kind of effect which they wish for, upon the public mind.
Thus much with respect to the principles of this performance: what else it consists of is history. We invite attention to its history. The history of the late events comprises, as our readers know, some rather remarkable circumstances. They will, no doubt, feel curious to learn in what manner the reviewer can contrive to turn these to his purposes.
It might have been expected, that a mind of any generosity, though it might be so unfortunate as to see nothing but gloom and desolation in a prospect so full of brightness and joy, would somewhere have exhibited a gleam of human sympathy for a noble people, whose bravery and self-control throw every example of previous heroism into the shade, and exalt, as has been many times exclaimed in our hearing, the dignity of our common nature. The whole population of a vast city, without leaders and without concert, rushing to arms simultaneously with a divinus furor,8 at the first announcement that brute force had usurped the place of law—storming building after building against regular troops—advancing, numbers of them, to certain death, without either ostentation or regret—putting bread into the mouths of their conquered enemies the moment they had thrown down their arms—watching over the safety of every monument of art or taste, with the solicitude of virtuosi—executing summary justice upon every one who sullied their cause by appropriating either private or public property—and returning empty-handed and in rags to their humble homes, without once suspecting that they have done any thing extraordinary—this was a spectacle which might have warmed the heart even of a high-churchman. Even the authors of Blackwood’s Magazine, who, however destitute of principle, are not without occasional touches of generous feeling, could not help paying, at least in their number immediately following the events, a just tribute of admiration to the heroic populace of Paris.9 Some traces of corresponding sensibility in the Quarterly reviewer, might have induced a candid opponent to have looked with less severity upon errors which could then have been attributed to no worse cause than a circumscribed and perverted understanding. But no; the same contraction of soul, which can see no freedom but under the protecting hug of a wealthy church and a powerful aristocracy, can feel for no virtue beyond the same narrow pale. It belongs not to a mind constituted like the reviewer’s, to believe in the possibility of such virtue. He would not credit his senses, if they testified in its favour. He is in the condition sometimes treated of by the Catholic divines, and termed invincible hardness of heart; a state, in which the sinner is not precluded from a chance of ultimate salvation, being scarcely responsible for disobedience to a summons which his nature does not qualify him to hear.10
“Of the transactions of last July,” says the reviewer, “we will say nothing, as they are too recent and too much enveloped in mystery, which time alone can unravel, to form the subject of steady contemplation.”11 We are not at all surprised, that he should be anxious to pass over unnoticed the events of July. He is, however, much mistaken, if he imagines that his readers will pass them over. He will find them capable not only of admiring the conduct of the Parisians, but also of reflecting upon it. He and his fraternity have used the former revolution as an argument against the people long enough, the present one will be used by the people as an argument against them: and the greater has been the success of the well-paid industry which they have employed in heightening and colouring for effect, the excesses of the first revolution, the more eagerly will men enquire and speculate upon the cause which has rendered the present revolution such as it is impossible to calumniate. They will have no help from the reviewer in this investigation. No cause, capable of accounting for such a phenomenon, is to be found in his philosophy.12 Yet it has a cause, though it be one which it was not very likely that such a person as he, should discover:—The people had in the interval shaken off their church and their aristocracy. Such was the blessed effect of this riddance, that all the horrors we are constantly told of, have not been a counterpoise. Those horrors, followed by 25 years of merciless war, which would have been sufficient to brutalize the people of any other country, have been to this people but as a fiery furnace,13 out of which it has issued in a brighter and purer state of being. And has the catastrophe which was to blot out France from the map of Europe, and extinguish the sun of morality from the universe, come to this? Even so: and to this must the worst revolution come, so it only deliver the nation from the curse of a wealthy church establishment and a powerful aristocracy. A revolution may be bungled, it may be misdirected, the wisest and best of the citizens may perish in its storms, all that is generous, all that is aspiring, all that is enlightened, may seem to be destroyed; yet shall not the hopes even of its most sanguine supporters be ultimately frustrated, if it have achieved this deliverance. The first revolution has rendered the French common people the finest in Europe, and the second revolution has found them so.
We pass to another particular of the reviewer’s display.
The events of July are too recent and too mysterious “to form the subject of steady contemplation,” or, peradventure, they are too recent and too indisputable to admit of misrepresentation. But he, to whom the events of July appear “enveloped in mystery,” is perfectly versed in the most secret acts and inmost designs of every conspicuous person in France for the last fifteen years. Nothing is mysterious to him, except what is plain and intelligible to every one else. The incredulity which cannot swallow, perhaps the best attested facts in history, stands open-mouthed to take in every old woman’s tale of treason and conspiracy, which has been got up since 1815 to serve the momentary purpose of a minister, or perhaps only to gratify the readers of the Quotidienne by the excitement of a little gentle apprehension. If the reviewer believes half what he says, he believes, we will take upon ourselves to assert, at least twice as much as his informants. If the ex-ministers had but known, when they penned their Rapport au Roi, half as much as the reviewer knows, of their own case!14 But there are certain things, which would scarcely occur to any one, who is at a less distance than two hundred miles from what he is talking about.
The liberals, as they used to be called, in the Chamber of Deputies, formed, according to the reviewer, an organized body, unintermittedly occupied in conspiring to dethrone the Bourbons. If the assertion should meet the eye of any one who knows them, we envy his amusement. We think we can figure to ourselves the consternation of the 221, if it had entered into their wildest dreams that any act of theirs could bring on a revolution in France. They have scarcely ceased trembling at it, three months after the event. Their object, it seems, “has been, and is,” at once to “delude the nation by the cant of equality,” (a word from which they shrink as a pious man avoids the utterance of a blasphemy,) and to “defy it by such an organization of National Guards as invests them virtually with the whole power of the sword.”15 At the same moment appears the projet de loi for the “organization” of the National Guard, of which the first article declares, that it consists of all males from 20 to 60 not forming part of the regular army. Need we say a word more?16
When men like this reviewer take upon themselves to give their opinion upon a subject, with the facts of which they are wholly unacquainted, and are thrown upon such presumptions and conjectures as are suggested à priori by the old saws which compose the sum total of their little philosophy, this is the pitiable predicament in which they place themselves.
When we find such a man as this, a man possessing not one of the elements which go towards making up a rational conviction, a man in whose head there is nothing but a besotted terror of the people, and a childish admiration of the privileged classes,—when we find this man setting himself up as a judge not only of actions but of motives, and distributing infamy, as if the execrations of mankind belonged to him to dispose of; we feel ourselves absolved on our side, as he has thought proper to absolve himself, from the conventions which prescribe that whatever may be our secret opinion, our language at least shall express no feeling incompatible with respect for our opponent. This man, who would not venture to call his soul his own, if the church or the aristocracy needed it, dares to stile Lafayette a “wretched traitor.”17 If the man to whom we are replying is sufficiently insensible of the place which he himself holds in the creation, to be unaware of the immeasurable distance which exists in point of virtue between such men as him and such a man as Lafayette, let the contempt of Europe apprise him of it. The gulph is far too wide, for eyes like his to reach across; nor will the dirt flung by hands like his, fall near enough to be even perceptible to the illustrious patriot against whom it is aimed.
It may perhaps be supposed from all this, that the reviewer vows eternal enmity to popular governments, and to the government of France in particular. No such thing. He tells us on the contrary in plain terms, that if they succeed in establishing themselves, he will be in their favour. This we readily believe. We do not question in the least, that he will always be found on the side of power, let it be where it may. The following are his words:
If they go on well—if they do establish a government at once free and firm—if they can in practice enjoy a free press, without its running into licentiousness—and all this, without erecting among themselves a wealthy hereditary aristocracy and a powerful church establishment,—we shall freely admit ourselves to have been grievously mistaken; that we have been accustomed to do the French people gross injustice;—nay, that our whole system of political faith has been wrong, and that the age of miracles is come again.18
“A government at once free and firm,” is, it appears, the condition, on which the Quarterly reviewer will give, to the new order of things in France, his valuable adhesion. In the mean time, does he tell us of any thing, which is to prevent the government from being at once free and firm? Nothing whatever; except that it has no wealthy church, or powerful aristocracy; and that neither of the two is very likely to be created, under the government which has now been established. We concede to him both these points, and consent, as he desires, to await the result of the experiment, well assured of the ultimate suffrages of such men as he, who are always found on the successful side.
But what demon, in what evil hour, suggested to him to name a licentious press, as the peculiar evil from which the possession of a church and an aristocracy can alone render a nation exempt? Audacity of assertion does much, but did he imagine that it could do every thing, when he described the French newspapers as “the most basely libellous press that ever disgraced a civilized age and country”?19 When a man does not shrink from asserting, because it suits his purpose, that of which the direct contrary is known to be the fact by every one who can even pretend that he has the means of knowledge, there is scarcely any word but one, and that an extremely short one, which expresses without ambiguity the real character of the affirmation. The French periodical press is probably the most decorous in Europe; the most licentious is unquestionably our own. Foreigners are struck with amazement at the malignity and profligacy of the English periodical press. And of what part of it in particular? Of that part which is peculiarly addressed to, and depends entirely upon the support of, the church and the aristocracy. We have observed and we well remember, that every periodical publication in our time, which has systematically attempted to recommend itself to low-minded readers by scandal and detraction, has shewn by its high-church politics among what class it thought it likely that the greatest number of such readers would be found. Attacks on private character or individual peculiarities, are utterly unexampled in a French newspaper; and it never entered into a Frenchman’s imagination to conceive the possibility of such publications as the fashionable prints of our time. But the meaning of a “basely libellous press” we suppose to be, one which is not favourable to “a wealthy hereditary aristocracy” nor to “a powerful church establishment.”
It has been asserted that the press of the United States of America is licentious. We know not to what degree such is the fact; and the probability is, that the majority of those who parrot the assertion known as little. But the testimony of Jefferson, the head of the democratic party, than whom no one ever underwent in a greater degree the unscrupulous virulence of newspaper opponents, inclines us to believe that the accusation against the press of America is true to a certain extent.20 Allowing this, it surely is probable that the cause is co-extensive with the effect, and is one of the circumstances common to England with the United States, not one of those which are common to the United States and to France. Nor need we search long to discover a perfectly adequate cause. In America as in England, periodical authorship is in the hands of writers who make literature their trade, and pursue it as they would gin-making, in the same sordid spirit, and with the same object, the greatest possible sale of their commodity. In France, on the contrary, it is in the hands of men who labour principally for the respect of their fellow-citizens; who know that their chance of obtaining this, does not depend upon their success in scraping together a greater or a less quantity of money: who belong to the most high-minded and the most highly-cultivated portion of la jeune France,21 and who, if they have any interested motive in their labours, have that of shewing themselves to be fit for those high functions in the State, which are as accessible to them, if properly qualified, as to any other candidate, and which their youth has commonly been spent, as far as in a private station it could, in rendering themselves competent to fill.
But of this on another occasion, and in another manner. It goes too deep into the structure of society, and is connected with too many of the most elevated considerations, to allow of its being mixed up with the exposure which we have thought it useful to perform, of one of the most impotent attempts ever made to palliate a fallen tyranny. That exposure we now consider sufficient. And as the reviewer concludes by congratulating his countrymen that the testimonials of sympathy with France “have been countenanced by hardly one name which any human being will dare to call respectable,”22 we will give utterance, in return, to our feelings of joy and exultation, that even in a periodical press which so ill represents the better part of the national mind, the writers who have thought they could find their account in exciting odium against the new government of France, form a feeble and insignificant minority. And it is due even to that minority to declare, that so far as we have observed, not one of them has exhibited so grotesque a contrast between the presumption of the design and the miserable poverty of the execution, as the writer of whom we now finally take our leave.
55.
FRENCH NEWS [1]
EXAMINER, 7 NOV., 1830, P. 715
This article was prompted by the appointment on 2 Nov. of a new ministry under Jacques Laffitte (1767-1844), the former ministry having fallen as a result of its efforts to save the ex-ministers (see No. 52). It is the first of 107 articles on French politics Mill supplied to the Examiner from this date until 31 Aug., 1834, usually on a weekly basis. We have given serial numbers to these; Mill wrote other articles on France (as well as other subjects) for the Examiner during this period, to which different titles are appropriate. This article is headed “London, Nov. 6” but, like the others in the series, is untitled and unsigned and does not appear in a named section of the Examiner. In his bibliography Mill usually groups several of these articles in one entry as here: “The summary of French affairs in the Examiner from 7th November 1830 to 17th April 1831 inclusive: comprising several long articles” (MacMinn, p. 12). These are Nos. 58-9, 62, 64, 66, 68, 71-2, 74, 76, 79, 81, 83, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95-6, and 100. This article continues with paragraphs on German, Dutch, and Belgian affairs that are here omitted because there is no evidence connecting them with Mill other than their presence in the foreign news section. The Examiner of 14 Nov., p. 729, indicates an erratum: “supposed” should replace “suffered”
(here corrected at 181.27).
the expected change in the French ministry has at length taken place. The fraction of the old administration, which was opposed to popular measures, has given way; and after an ineffectual attempt by M. Casimir Périer,1 to form a ministry of compromise, the vacancies in the Cabinet have been filled by new appointments, said to be made under the auspices of M. Laffitte and M. Dupont de l’Eure.2
In this list, which we have given with our foreign intelligence,3 it will be perceived that M. Odilon-Barrot is not included.4 It is reported that he was passed over at his own request. Whatever be the cause, we regret it; as he enjoys a far larger share of the public confidence than the young peer who has been preferred to him,5 and it is of great importance that those who are raised to power by the popular voice, should be men of sufficient weight of character, to retain popularity without the necessity of constantly courting it and sacrificing to it. We fear that this cannot be affirmed of M. de Montalivet. His devotion, however, to the cause of the revolution was proved by his acting a distinguished part in the glorious three days; and it may be hoped, that the high character of M. Laffitte, and especially of M. Dupont de l’Eure, will give weight to any administration in which they are supposed to be the ruling spirits.
M. Mérilhou is an advocate of great reputation and well-known popular principles.6
M. Maison is the officer who commanded the French expedition to the Morea. His appointment is said by some to be merely a temporary arrangement.7
56.
IGNORANCE OF FRENCH AFFAIRS BY THE ENGLISH PRESS
EXAMINER, 14 NOV., 1830, PP. 723-4
This article is in response to what Mill considered the ignorant and misleading reporting of French affairs and of English attitudes, particularly by The Times. A leading article in the “Political Examiner,” headed as title, it is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A leading article in the Examiner of 14th Nov. 1830 headed Ignorance of French affairs by the English press” (MacMinn, p. 13). Two errata are listed in the Examiner of 21 Nov., p. 740: “mere” should read “more” and “set of people to find acts that” should read “sort of people to find out what”
(these corrections are made at 183.22 and 183.24-5).
the crazy outcries of our newspapers against the changes in the French ministry, are not calculated to do much honour to England in foreign countries. They will not, however, make so unfavourable an impression upon the French, with regard to our national mind, as might be imagined, since that people, with their usual misapprehension of every thing English, will probably conclude that our daily press is in the pay of the Duke of Wellington. They are by no means aware of the true state of the case, namely, that there is a fund of stupidity and vulgar prejudice in our principal journalists, which needs no extraneous inducements to call it forth; and that our journals, speaking of them generally, are faithful representatives of the ignorance of the country, but do not represent, in any degree, its knowledge or its good sense. One would imagine that, among journalists, a moderately accurate acquaintance with France for the last fifteen years, ought not to be a very rare endowment: if a writer in the newspapers does not know the history of his own times, what, in the name of heaven, does he know? Yet, during the recent struggle in France between the men who made the revolution and the men who were seeking to profit by it, the small number among our journalists who dreaded giving a false and mischievous opinion, dared not to give one at all; while the larger number, who were utterly reckless of the consequences of what they wrote, have made a display of ignorance such as all who knew them would naturally expect. At the head of these was the blundering newspaper which recently asserted that Charles de Lameth, a man who was with difficulty saved from the September massacres, was a conventionalist:1 we need scarcely say that we allude to the Times, a paper which seldom lets a week pass without affording satisfactory evidence that for it to have any opinion at all on French affairs, is a piece of presumption which nothing can excuse. This paper announces, that the popular party in France, among various other bad qualities, breathes nothing but war against other states, and hatred of England;2 which assertion it makes with as little diffidence or hesitation as if it really knew any thing about the matter, and enforces the accusation with as much truth and discernment as were displayed in its eulogies on Polignac, in August, 1829,3 and with a refinement and delicacy of expression which reminds us of its abuse of the same person in August, 1830, when “vagabonds” was the most correct and appropriate term which it could invent to characterize his delinquency and that of his master.4
At a time when hundreds of the most influential of our countrymen knew, by personal observation, that there is a kind of furor among the French youth for rejecting territorial aggrandizement, and respecting the rights of other nations, and that it is almost enough to be an Englishman in order to be received every where by them with open arms, we shall not dwell upon the peculiar propriety and good sense of the above denunciations. We have no doubt that, so soon as public opinion shall have declared itself in opposition to them, the Times will, according to its customary practice, back out of them. In the mean time, it is consoling to recollect, that what is now affirmed of the more popular section of the libéraux, is no more than what was laid to the charge of the whole body until a very recent period. It is incredible how long it takes a certain sort of people to find out what they cannot see with their eyes. The Times, in its knowledge of history, is just twenty years behind the facts. It is living, not in 1830, but in 1810.
Periodical writers, however, entitled to far greater respect, have adopted, though in an inferior degree, the same tone of alarm; particularly a writer in the Scotsman, and one in the Foreign Quarterly Review.5 We do not so much blame these writers, as lament these habits of mind in the English public, of which the raw speculations of those two publications on the state of France, are a remarkable exemplification. There is no creature in Europe so timid, politically speaking, as your Englishman of the higher or middle ranks, because he is more sensitive than any other specimen of humanity yet known, on the score of insecurity to property. But it appears to us, that his fears are hardly ever in the right place. Formerly, an Englishman used to pride himself on being a friend of liberty, but now his first impulse always is, to take part with power. It never needs any evidence to satisfy him that men are disaffected without cause. If there arise a dispute between a people and an established government, and he (as is usually the case) does not happen to know what it is about, it would be amusing, if an exhibition of imbecility in the most momentous of earthly concerns could excite any but feelings of the deepest seriousness, to see how instantly and undoubtingly it is taken for granted that the people are in the wrong. Of this, the tone of public feeling respecting Belgium is a pregnant example. Most fortunate it is that Charles X was so imprudent as openly to abrogate the constitution of his kingdom, instead of continuing to evade it, and fritter away its provisions in detail. We have been convinced, from the outset, that if that monarch had not taken as much pains as he did to reduce the question to its simplest terms, despotism or not, in such sort that it did not require any knowledge of France to see that he meditated a different kind of bad government from that which we have been accustomed to;—the English, good easy people, would have continued to believe, that none but enemies of England, and zealots for war and conquest, none, moreover but a faction, contemptible in numbers and abilities, doubted the excellence of the Bourbon government, or were dissatisfied with the share of constitutional freedom which that family was willing that France should enjoy.
The purposes of the popular party have been very fully stated at different times in our own pages. The character of those who have held power for the last three months, but who have now been happily ejected from it, we shall take an early opportunity of delineating. Want of space compels us to defer this work for the present.
57.
PROSPECTS OF FRANCE, VI
EXAMINER, 14 NOV., 1830, PP. 724-5
For the context and the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 44.
we have treated of the demands of the popular party with respect to the conditions of eligibility, and of the elective franchise. We shall next advert to the subject of internal administration.
It is allowed by all philosophers, and felt by all freemen, that securities for the goodness of the Government are not enough; it is also requisite to have as little of it as possible: the Government ought to do nothing for the people, which the people can, with any sort of convenience, do for themselves, either singly or in smaller associations.
The very reverse of this maxim has directed the legislation and administration of France, from the reign of Napoleon to the present time. The principle of the imperial regime, faithfully adhered to by restored legitimacy, was, that the people never should be permitted to do any thing for themselves, which the Government could in any manner contrive to do, or pretend to do, for them.
If a nation could be judged of, from the laws which are made for them by those who hold the right to govern them, not from them, one must needs suppose that the French, being themselves the most stupid of all possible people, were luckily provided with the cleverest of all possible governments. So far as the theory of the French law can be gathered from its practice, the supposition upon which it is founded appears to be, that there is nothing for which the French people are fit, nor any thing for which their Government is not. The French cannot be trusted to construct a road, or a canal; but the French Government, in addition to its other labours, finds time for making and mending all the roads and canals in France, which consequently are on that scale of shabby magnificence, customary in the doings of governments, being twice as broad, and more than twice as bad, as the canals and roads of any other civilized country. Again, no Frenchman is supposed capable of selecting a school fit to be entrusted with the care of his sons or of his daughters; accordingly the Government ordains that no places of education shall exist, except those subordinate to the department of the French administration called the University, or which are licensed and inspected by its officers; whereby it came to pass, that in a country, in many parts of which even the street-sweepers would think themselves degraded by keeping company with a Jesuit, the Jesuits for several years held in their hands the majority of the establishments for education.1 Furthermore, the French Government, in order not to be divested of its proper influence in all affairs of importance which are transacted between the Straits of Dover and the Pyrenees, reserves to a sound discretion residing in its own breast, the exercise of a veto on all evening parties, given, or attempted to be given, within the kingdom of France; no one being permitted to receive more than twenty persons at one time into his house without leave of the police.2 It was under no other than this very law, that the society called Les amis du peuple was recently dispersed.3
But the subject we would chiefly advert to, is one which, next to the constitution of the sovereign body, is the most comprehensive and most important topic of internal policy in all countries whatever, and especially in France; municipal institutions, or the composition of the subordinate legislatures and executives, to whom the authority in matters of purely local regulation is confided.
We are almost certain that there is not any country in Europe except France, in which there exists no vestige of any local authority not emanating from the Crown. We must have recourse to the despotisms of Asia to find a parallel. The municipality, corporation, or commune, was the very first free institution which the countries of modern Europe knew. By its means, the citizens emancipated themselves from the condition of serfs of an aristocracy, who seemed sent from Heaven to perpetuate the savage state. To it they owed that security, and that personal independence, which enabled them to accumulate wealth, to train up a high-spirited and numerous armed population, and with that wealth to buy, and with those armed men to demand, a voice in their own government. The associations of chapmen and artificers to manage their local concerns by their own officers, first taught governments to think of the people as a power in the state. To obtain money from these associations did the kings of Europe call together delegates from them, under the name of representatives of the Commons, and conceded to them, one by one, all the privileges, in virtue of which any nation in Europe claims to call itself a free people. In this mode did England, Scotland, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and, we believe, even Poland, acquire such representative constitution as they do now, or did at any former period, enjoy. In France, the crown grew in power faster than the communes, and a despotic instead of a representative government ensued. But if the citizens acquired no share in the management of the state, they retained that of their own local affairs. Town-governments not emanating from the Crown, and, in many provinces, representative assemblies of a more or less popular character, termed States Provincial, with powers very extensive and diversified, subsisted down to the Revolution; when they were abolished by the Constituent Assembly, but replaced by municipal institutions of a still more popular kind.4 These were swept away by the hand of military usurpation, and a system introduced, founded on the principle of holding all the reins of government in a single hand;5 a system upheld solely, and for a short time, by the préstige of military success, and the impotent attempt to perpetuate which, after the gilding had been rubbed off the chains in which it bound the people, has cost the Bourbons their throne.
In England, the business of local administration is so parcelled out into shares, and cut up into unconnected fragments, that it is hardly either spoken of or thought of, collectively and as a whole. Every parish has its separate government, every corporate town has another, every country has a third; to determine which of the three is the most corrupt, must be left to those who are curious in nice distinctions: local trusts, and commissioners of every variety of denomination, perform a large portion of the public business; for another large and highly important part no provision whatever is made, and when done at all, it is done by the awkward hands of the legislature itself, in the form of an act of Parliament pro hâc vice;6 and finally, a large portion is done, or considered to be done, or considered proper to be done, by the public itself. There is just one possible mode of transacting the public business worse than this, and that is the mode prevailing in France; where every human being, who is empowered to give the most trifling order to the most inconsiderable body of his fellow-citizens, from the préfet down to a sort of village watchman called a garde-champêtre (the judges excepted), holds that power from the direct appointment of an officer of the crown, holds it during the good pleasure of that officer, and without a vestige of accountability to any other being in human shape; for he cannot even be tried by a court of justice for murder committed in the exercise of his authority, without the previous consent of his official superior, or, in the last resort, of a tribunal called the conseil d’état, which deliberates with closed doors, and of which the members are removable at the King’s pleasure.
Hence it is, that in France you cannot cross the street without jostling a placeman. Hence it is, that the bureaucratie is five times more numerous than the army; for the latter does not exceed 240,000 men, while the officers of government, removable at the pleasure of the crown, amounted in 1818, according to M. Fiévée (and there are few more trust-worthy authorities) to the incredible number of between twelve and thirteen hundred thousand individuals, more than a sixth part of the male adult population of France at that period.7
We quote from the Correspondance Politique et Administrative of M. Fiévée a passage containing as curious a picture as was probably ever seen, of the real liberties of a country which boasted of a charter, and whose rulers thought the nation extremely unreasonable, because it would not be persuaded that a Chamber of Deputies was liberty. The nation was wiser, and used that one liberty, as our ancestors used that of withholding the supplies, for the purpose of obtaining by its means all the other liberties which they had not. Speaking of the prerogatives of the crown, M. Fiévée enumerates that of possessing—
Une justice particulière qu’on appelle justice administrative par la nécessité de lui donner un nom, et en vertu de laquelle les douze ou treize cent mille agens soldés de l’administration ne peuvent être traduits devant les tribunaux ordinaires, sans l’autorisation de l’administration; de sorte qu’un percepteur qui, dans l’exercice de ses fonctions, tueroit un comptable, ne pourroit être mis en jugement sans que la royauté y eût consenti. Par le même systême, le plus mince agent de la navigation intérieure peut déranger les spéculations du commerce, sans que le commerce puisse s’en plaindre devant une autre justice que la justice administrative; enfin, nos lois ou décrets encore en vigueur disent qu’un fournisseur qui, sur ses billets, a soin d’ajouter son titre de fournisseur après sa signature, ne peut être poursuivi par ses créanciers devant les tribunaux, sans le consentement préalable de la justice administrative; laquelle justice se rend sans publicité par des agens que l’autorité place et déplace à volonté. En un mot, attirer à soi l’examen et le jugement de toute affaire et de toute cause dans lesquelles se prétend intéressé un pouvoir qui se mêle de tout, tel est le matériel de la royauté en France.8
Well might M. Fiévée add, “Certes, dans aucun temps et dans aucun pays le pouvoir monarchique n’a eu des attributions aussi étendues.”9 We suppose that there never was any other country on the face of the earth, in which the executive, having made a survey and classification of all matters requiring a judicial decision, set apart from the rest all in which it could itself in any way directly or indirectly be considered a party, and determined, that precisely in those would it also be the judge.*
Let it be granted that the rights and constitution of the legislative body will henceforth secure France (as it certainly ought) against the possibility of a profligate ministry. The people of France conceive, that the general affairs of the nation afford ample employment for any seven persons, even admitting that cabinets henceforth are never to consist of any other than the fittest men. They look back with no pleasant reminiscences to the times when Hamburg could not cut down five trees, the property of the town, without an order from Paris, which took eight months to arrive, nor Holland repair the dykes which alone stood between her and destruction, until permission had been applied for to the Ministère de l’Intérieur, and, at the end of six months, obtained.† The people of France are not disposed any longer to keep up, at their expence, a bureaucratie twelve hundred thousand strong, spread over the whole country, and who, if not called to account by seven men in seven large buildings at Paris, are not accountable at all. Accordingly, the French people, from the Restoration to the present time, have never ceased to demand popular municipalities.
They are willing that the executive power, the right and duty of enforcing obedience to the laws, the chief civil authority in the town or district, should reside, as at present, in officers nominated by the Crown, and removeable by the royal authority. But these functionaries are assisted by deliberative bodies, called conseils-généraux de département, or conseils généraux de commune. To these bodies, who are at present named by the officer, to whom they act as assessors, belong several functions of very great importance. Among these are the repartition of the taxes, many of which are granted by the Chamber of Deputies in the lump, such and such a gross sum from each department: and, moreover, the supplies required for local purposes are voted by these local bodies exclusively, the legislature interfering no further in the matter than to fix a limit which the aggregate of these supplies shall not exceed; namely, a certain per centage on the general taxes of the department. Now, these councils, it is maintained, ought to be elected by the people; and by a rather extensive suffrage too—a suffrage, perhaps, co-extensive with direct taxation. To this the most moderate of the popular party attach great importance. It would be absurd, they say, to entertain any apprehension of evil from the predominance of the democratic principle in matters of purely local arrangement; while such a constitution of the local bodies would withdraw an immense amount of patronage and corrupt influence from the Ministry, would be a valuable counterpoise to a mere aristocratic constitution of the legislature, would gradually train the people to the management of their own affairs, and help to qualify them for admission, at no distant period, to political privileges more extended than what any party at present would willingly entrust to them.
Not so thinks the Chamber of 1830! A municipal law is in progress, through that chamber, avowedly transcribed, with a few trifling alterations, from the law proposed by Martignac in 1829, with the amendments of the then chamber,—a law, under which the local bodies would be elected by a more restricted suffrage than even the chamber itself—a law, which is tolerable only when compared to a system, in comparison with which any thing would be endurable.10 Because the French would have accepted this law, bad as it is, rather than fight, the chamber considers it good enough for them after they have fought and conquered. But it will not do; this step has done greater damage to the chamber in public opinion than any other of their proceedings; it was altogether contrary to the expectations even of those whose distrust of their intentions was the strongest. The ministers themselves, though on every other point the sworn allies of the chamber, have not ventured, on this occasion, openly to approve what they have not felt inclined to dissent from. Not a word has escaped their lips.
One topic more remains to be discussed—the constitution of the Upper Chamber. This, however, must be deferred to the next paper,11 which will conclude the present series.
S—.
58.
FRENCH NEWS [2]
EXAMINER, 14 NOV., 1830, P. 729
This article is headed “London, Nov. 13.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. One correction in the text is explained in n6.
the french chamber of deputies has postponed the choice of a President, in the place of M. Laffitte, until its number shall be completed by the arrival of the new members.1 The Government candidate is M. Girod de l’Ain, who has just resigned the office of Prefect of Police.2 It is believed that the doctrinaire party will set up M. Casimir Périer in opposition to M. Girod; but that estimable deputy, who by no means participates in the feelings and purposes of the doctrinaires, and who but two months ago resigned the Presidency on account of ill health, will not, it is believed, allow his name to be employed as an instrument in the hands of a party which has no root in the opinion of the French nation, to oppose the only ministry, in the formation of which, as it now appears, the King and the people could agree.
It is said that the new ministry will introduce an Election Law immediately after the Chamber shall have appointed its President. The provisions of the intended law are expected to be the following: 1st. The entire suppression of all conditions of eligibility—2d. The reduction of the qualification for an elector, from 300 to 200 francs of direct taxation—3d. The admission of the professions now entitled to serve on juries, to the elective franchise, free from any pecuniary condition—4th. If in any department this extension of the franchise shall not produce one elector for every 100 inhabitants, that proportion will be made up from among the persons most highly taxed below 200 francs.3
The elections have not been on the whole so popular as some, nor so aristocratic as others, expected. Among the new members are to be found the highly estimable names of Voyer d’Argenson, de Cormenin, Isambert, Barthe,4 and Odilon Barrot.
The Chamber, since its meeting, has been occupied in disposing of former orders of the day. M. Bavoux’s proposition for diminishing the taxes on newspapers, has not been adopted as a whole,5 but the stamp duty has been lowered from five to four centimes per sheet,6 and the amount of the security required from newspaper proprietors has been somewhat diminished.7
59.
FRENCH NEWS [3]
EXAMINER, 21 NOV., 1830, P. 745
This article is headed “London, Nov. 20.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55.
the debate in the french chamber of deputies, on the motion for reducing the stamp duties on newspapers, is disgraceful to the Chamber.1 M. de Villèle’s famous chambre des trois cents2 would not have made a more discreditable display on this proposition, which was resisted chiefly on the avowed ground of the necessity of curbing the licentiousness of the Press. So rapidly has the new oligarchy succeeded to the worst feelings, and even to the silliest catch-words of its predecessors.
The new ministers, we lament to say, did not support the motion, alleging that they were not prepared to consent to any sacrifice of revenue. This temporizing is very deplorable, as it would be the grossest hypocrisy in the ministers to pretend to suppose that the profuse expenditure of the Bourbon government does not admit of retrenchments far exceeding the trifling revenue afforded by the taxes on discussion.
Several of our newspapers, and their correspondents at Paris, continue to heap abuse upon the popular party.3 There are no wise and moderate men, according to them, but those who think that 88,000 men should have the power of dividing among them, at discretion, a revenue amounting (independently of the interest of the public debt), to thirty millions sterling; all the rest are firebrands, who seek to throw the world into disorder. The 88,000 electors are the nation. The nation is declared to sympathize with the Chamber, because the 88,000 have generally re-elected the old members: although even the 88,000, when they had no old member to re-elect, have in many instances elected new ones of a very different complexion.
The Times takes great pains to represent Mauguin, one of the feeblest declaimers in the Chamber, as the leader of the popular party, and the organ of its sentiments;4 the real fact being that he is a recent and unexpected proselyte to that party. The Times adds, that although an abler man than M. Odilon Barrot, he was never mentioned in the late contest for the ministry. This, in the first place, is incorrect; and secondly, M. Odilon Barrot, if he be not a far abler man than M. Mauguin, ill-deserves the reputation he possesses. The true reason why M. Mauguin was not put forward by the popular party generally, for a place in the ministry, is simply that they did not consider him fit for it.
The chief measures of the Belgian Provisional Government, as specified in their address to the Congress, which we have given in another part of the paper, will form an advantageous contrast to those of the French Chamber.5
All attempts in favour of the Constitutional cause in the north of Spain appear to be, for the present, at an end.6
60.
USE AND ABUSE OF THE BALLOT
EXAMINER, 28 NOV., 1830, PP. 754-5
This article is a reminder that while Mill was writing about the progress of the July Revolution, England was experiencing her own crisis over the Reform Bill; the secret ballot was an issue for radicals in both countries. He later became an opponent of the ballot, but continued to use the passage he here quotes from his father’s History of British India (see CW, Vol. XIX, pp. 331-2). This is a leading article in the “Political Examiner,” headed as title and described in Mill’s bibliography as “A leading article in the Examiner of 28 Nov. 1830, headed, Use and Abuse of the Ballot” (MacMinn, p. 13). Two corrections are indicated by Mill in the Somerville College set, “partial to” is corrected to “protected” (194.34) and “Legislature’s” to “Legislator’s” (194.36); the first of these is also mentioned as an erratum in a note to the Examiner, 5 Dec., p. 770.
the feelings and purposes of the present Chamber of Deputies in France display themselves more and more plainly every day. We invite attention to one of the most recent of its “faits et gestes.”
By the existing laws, no one can follow the business of a printer without a licence from the Government,1 who hitherto have habitually kept the number so far below the demand, that a licence bears a considerable pecuniary price. A bill was brought in by M. Benjamin Constant, for opening the trade to all who chose to engage in it. The several clauses of this bill were successively voted in the Chamber, by open suffrage: but when the question was finally put, “that the bill do pass,” on which, by the regulations of the Assembly, the votes were taken by ballot; the same Chamber, which had voted each of the separate clauses, rejected, by a large majority, the entire bill.2
One good effect at least will result, it is to be hoped, from this exhibition. We trust that we shall hear no further abuse of the French people for the feelings which they justly entertain towards this despicable body.
When the people first began, after the revolution, to show symptoms of dissatisfaction with the Chamber, most persons in England, taking it for granted, as usual, that if there were any difference of opinion, the people must be in the wrong, were astonished to find the French so capricious, so distrustful, so unreasonably suspicious of their public men. We too are astonished, but from rather a different cause. We marvel at the easy good nature, the unsuspecting credulity with which the severest critics of the Chamber, in August last, allowed themselves to believe that its only fault would be a little slowness, timidity, and irresolution in the accomplishment of reforms. We conversed with several leading men of the popular party shortly after the revolution, and no one of them entertained a suspicion that the motion which the Chamber has now rejected would meet with the slightest resistance.
We must add a few words respecting the ballot. We do hope and trust that the French will now see that the voting in a representative assembly is not one of those cases in which secret suffrage is desirable.
Every person who reflects, for a single instant, on the effect of the ballot, must see that it is simply this: to withdraw the voter from the influence of hopes and fears held out by other persons, and leave him free to act according to those interests and inclinations which are independent of the will of other people. Is it not then obvious, without the necessity of discussion, that the ballot may be good or bad, according to circumstances? It is good where the voter’s own interest is to vote right, but when he may be bribed or intimidated by persons whose interest it is that he should vote wrong. It is bad where his own interest is to vote wrong, and where the only means of giving him a sufficient motive to vote right, is responsibility, either to the law or to public opinion.
In the election of members of Parliament, under a really popular system of election, the ballot is indispensable. For if the electoral body is sufficiently large, it is the elector’s own interest to make a good choice. Responsibility, in that case, is not requisite: the use of responsibility is, to control those who have an interest in doing wrong. If the vote is secret, therefore, it will be honest; but if it be known to his landlord, or to any other person on whom he is dependent, and whose interest it may be that he would make a dishonest choice, dishonest it will probably be.
The very reverse of all this is true, when the votes to be protected are those of members of Parliament themselves. There the danger is not from the interest of those on whom the Legislator may be dependent, but from the Legislator’s own interest. Though he be independent of every body else, that is no security for public virtue, when he has the power of making laws in his own favour, and voting the public money into his own pocket. The only check upon a legislator is liability to be turned out for misconduct; and his constituents cannot employ that check unless they know what his conduct is.
The distinction is so obvious, that it might be expected to occur even to the most obtuse: yet in France, as in ancient Rome, the ballot is applied in cases in which it is clearly mischievous; while in England it is not employed in a case in which its employment is indispensable to good government: and we find the Standard and the Times urging against secret voting at elections,3 the argument which holds against secret voting in the House, namely, the inestimable value of public opinion as a check, not adverting to the fact that public opinion, though a necessary restraint upon the representatives and trustees of the public, can be no check upon the public itself.
We subjoin a passage from Mr. Mill’s History of British India, in which the theory of the ballot is clearly and forcibly expounded. We earnestly request the Standard to consider this passage with attention, having it deeply at heart that so able a writer should come to a due sense of the value of the only one among the essentials of a real Parliamentary reform, from which he is as yet a dissentient. As for the Times, we know the condition, and the only condition, on which we can obtain its concurrence. We shall have its support as soon as we can succeed in persuading it that the majority of buyers are on our side.
There are occasions on which the use of the ballot is advantageous; there are occasions on which it is hurtful. If we look steadily to the end to which all institutions profess to be directed, we shall not find it very difficult to draw the line of demarcation. A voter may be considered as subject to the operation of two sets of interests: the one, interests arising out of the good or evil for which he is dependant upon the will of other men; the other, interests in respect to which he cannot be considered as dependant upon any determinate man or men. There are cases in which the interests for which he is not dependant upon other men, might impel him in the right direction. If not acted upon by other interests, he will in such cases vote in that direction. If however he is acted upon by interests dependant upon other men, which latter interests are more powerful than the former, and act in the opposite direction, he will vote in the opposite direction. What is necessary, therefore, is, to save him from the operation of those interests. This is accomplished by enabling him to vote in secret; for in that case the man, who could otherwise compel his vote, is ignorant in what direction it has been given. In all cases therefore in which the independent interests of the voter, those which in propriety of language may be called his own interests, would dictate the good and useful vote; but in which cases, at the same time, he is liable to be acted upon in the way either of good or evil, by men whose interests would dictate a base and mischievous vote, the ballot is a great and invaluable security. In this set of cases is included the important instance of the votes of the people for representatives in the legislative assembly of a nation. It is therefore of the highest importance that they should be protected from that influence. There is however another set of cases in which those interests of the voter, which have their origin primarily in himself, and not in other men, draw in the hurtful direction; and in which he is not liable to be operated upon by any other interests of other men, than those which he possesses in common with the rest of the community. If allowed in this set of cases to vote in secret, he will be sure to vote as the sinister interest impels. If forced to vote in public, he will be subject to all the restraint, which the eye of the community, fixed upon his virtue or knavery, is calculated to produce; and in such cases the ballot is only an encouragement to evil.*
61.
PROSPECTS OF FRANCE, VII
EXAMINER, 28 NOV., 1830, PP. 756-7
This is the final article in the series beginning with No. 44, q.v.
of the great constitutional questions, about to become the subject of discussion, and, it is in vain to disguise the fact, of acrimonious dispute, between the men of the restoration and the men of the new revolution, only one remains to be noticed—the inheritableness of the peerage.
We anticipate some difficulty in making perceptible to the English public, of how little comparative importance this matter is; in fact, we foresee that it will be the source of more misapprehension, and more groundless alarms, than questions of ten times as much consequence as really belongs to it. Men in whose eyes a large extension of the right of suffrage would be no more than what Mr. Canning would have called the infusion of a popular spirit into the constitution,1 will consider the attempt to dispense with a hereditary peerage as a dangerous innovation, establishing the unqualified and formidable ascendancy of the democratic principle. To such a degree are men governed by words rather than things, by forms rather than substance. A house of peers is not necessarily an aristocracy because it is so styled in the traditional phraseology of the British constitution: and the question, whether the French chamber of peers shall be hereditary, does not concern the democratic principle, nor any principle at all except this, that if there be any use in a house of peers, there is use in having one which shall be an object of respect, and not of contempt.
It is well known that for a century or more, the sole idea which the continental nations had of a constitutional government, consisted of the British constitution misunderstood. They took our own word for the theory of our constitution; and were entirely unaware, that the British constitution has no theory. The works of design and intelligence have their laws, but the fortuitous concourse of atoms has no law. Where means have been used to attain an end, an account of the means may be written down, and the record may serve other agents to produce a similar effect: but the seeds of the British constitution fell, sprouted, and grew up, as it pleased God; and the means having pre-existed, ends were found for them by gentlemen in their closets, who seldom proceeded upon any other principle than that of sharing, as fairly as they could, the praises due to all possible forms of government, among the constituent parts of that of England. The doctrine, that the British constitution was a compound of the three simple forms of government, monarchy being represented by the king, aristocracy by the upper house of parliament, and democracy by the lower, a conceit which never could have issued from any head but that of a pedant,2 passed off among ourselves in a manner characteristically national, that is to say, it served as well as any other form of words to swear by, but never assumed a sufficiently definite signification in our minds, to determine the slightest of our actions. To foreign nations, however, this went forth as the true theory and approved explanation of the British government, and became the received formula for making a constitution. Accordingly (not to lose time in irrelevant examples) the framers of the charter of Louis XVIII having a constitution to make, and desiring to make it properly, called together a number of gentlemen, gazetted them as dukes, barons, and counts, settled pensions on them from the public purse, and said, There is an aristocracy.3
This impromptu parody on our House of Lords possesses not one of the attributes from which the political importance of its prototype originates. The House of Lords is one of the oldest institutions of England: it is identified with all our historical recollections, and recognized by the traditional doctrines of our government as an essential part of the most stable constitution which ever existed. Its members are likewise the possessors of enormous wealth, in a country in which wealth exercises over the minds of men a command which it possesses among no other people. We are moreover continually told, and most by the greatest admirers of the institution, that all these sources of moral influence are not enough, and that the House of Lords would be in practice reduced to a cypher, if it did not, besides all this, send, by means of corrupt influence, nearly a majority of members to the lower house. If there be a particle of truth in this asseveration, and even though there be none, we have only to suppose that our peerage were but of yesterday, with incomes averaging from five hundred to a thousand a-year, and a reformed House of Commons, and from the political weight which would attach to such a body, we may approximate to a just conception of the present importance which belongs to the mock-aristocratic branch of the French legislature.
If you nickname three hundred gentlemen in various ways,4 and then declare that they are a branch of the sovereign legislature, equal and co-ordinate with the assembly which represents the people, you must be supposed to intend that they should have a will of their own occasionally, and are not to vote always exactly as the other assembly bids. Now, if they refuse to concur with the Commons in any measure which the latter have much at heart, what is to prevent the lower house from voting the upper one a nuisance, and declaring the law to be a law notwithstanding their dissent? The question reduces itself to this: would the people obey? Has the chamber of peers, or can any hereditary chamber, in the situation of France, have a sufficient hold upon the popular mind, for the people to regard a law as less a law because it has not received the concurrence of that chamber? No one, who has any knowledge of France, will answer in the affirmative.
Every thing is new in France, and neither the chamber of peers nor any other institution has any of that stability which belongs to antiquity. It has none of that weight which is derived from the possession of wealth. There is only one remaining source of moral influence, and that is, personal merit and reputation; and of this the chamber is fast losing the little which it ever had. A hereditary body may be as select as an elective one, when first created; and the French chamber did contain some men of mathematical and chemical celebrity, and some of the very few politicians of honourable notoriety whom the revolution and the empire had left:5 but these are mostly dead, or so old as to be hors de combat, and as mathematical and chemical knowledge are not hereditary though the peerage is, their sons are neither wiser nor better than any other men (English eldest sons excepted): the chamber, therefore, would, by this time, have been rather deficient in notabilités, had it not been a practice since the restoration to elevate to the peerage every minister to whom it was desired to give an honourable dismissal, and had not the statesmen who were in this predicament been luckily very numerous.6 The debates, therefore, of the chamber of peers, now that they are open to the public, and reported in the newspapers, display a list of speakers, the perspective of which ten years ago, considering that a revolution has intervened, would have not a little astonished the parties concerned, nearly all of them being of one or more of the many ministries of Louis XVIII. The president of the chamber is Pasquier, the inévitable, as he is called, a man celebrated for falling always upon his feet, whatever be the turn in affairs: sometime prefect of police under Buonaparte, and orator to every ministry from the restoration to the commencement of the Villèle government.7 The principal speakers are Lainé, Decazes, Portalis, Siméon, Roy, Dubouchage, and, we may add, the late Minister of Foreign Affairs, Molé;8 men highly unpopular when they were formerly in office, and not less so now, saving that the more recent oppressors eclipse the hatred borne to men, some of whom had the redeeming merit (our Shaftesbury had it too)9 of resisting the worst acts of ministers still worse than themselves.
There are so few people who can see an effect after it has come to pass, that we must not be extremely severe on those who merely cannot foresee it while it is yet to come. Therefore we should not, perhaps, quarrel with the Bourbons for having rien appris before the Restoration, if they were found capable of learning any thing thereafter.10 Now this really was the case: for, in a short time after the formation of the chamber of peers, it occurred to its founders, that it somehow was not so influential a body as the British House of Lords. It struck them that the cause of this must be, that the House of Lords possessed large property, and that the Chamber of Peers was possessed of none. If the seat of the evil was that the peers were without property, this might be cured by giving them property; but it is part of the lot of man that he cannot give what he has not got. The Bourbons, nevertheless, determined to do all they could; and it was enacted that majorats, or entails, might be created in the families of peers, and that the peerage should not in future descend to the son of the possessor, unless there had first been created in favour of the son, a majorat of a prescribed amount. But to require a man to transmit to his descendants what he never had, did not seem a very efficacious contrivance for enriching the family. The tarif, therefore, of the peerage, was perforce adapted to the actual fortunes of the peers; and as these did not on the average exceed what would be considered in England a moderate provision for clerks in a public office, the endowment of a baron was fixed at four hundred pounds a-year, and those of the higher grades of nobility in a corresponding proportion.11 Being now the assured possessors of incomes upon this scale, the peers, it seems to have been supposed, had no longer to fear any want of importance arising from want of wealth. Such was the clumsiness of the original work, and such the clumsy attempt to mend it; but any other remedial application would equally have failed to give life or reality to an institution radically incompatible with the circumstances of France, and of which nothing can ever exist in that country except the forms and the name.
The great error was the original error, of imagining that law-makers are like God, who can create matter as well as arrange it and mould it into form. This extent of power is not conceded to man: he cannot create something out of nothing. It is easy to make the charter of a country assert that an aristocracy exists, but that will not make it exist, if materials are not contained in the country for forming one: the maxim holds equally good of governments and of coats, that they must be cut according to your cloth. There do not exist in France any enormously wealthy families. There exist a large number of persons of moderate wealth. By clubbing these together, you might form a tolerably compact basis for an oligarchical representation, but you are merely ridiculous when you single out a few hundred at random, and affect to call them by the name of peers. The moment when, by adopting the hereditary principle, you give yourself only the ordinary chances of meeting with personal merit, there is not the slightest reason why any three hundred whom you encounter in the street should not have been taken instead of those whom you now have.
It is considered desirable, in France, and in most other countries, that there should exist a second legislative chamber, less democratically constituted than the first, in order that it may be less liable to be acted upon by temporary excitement; strong enough to withstand sudden and hasty impulses of the lower house, but not to resist its deliberate and mature conviction, supported by the public voice. Considered as a general principle of politics, it does not belong to us either to enforce or to combat this maxim: it is sufficient that such are the grounds upon which the institution of a house of peers is commonly defended. Now, in contriving means for this end, it must never be lost sight of, that, in a government which is really, and not nominally representative, the body which the upper house is intended to check is one in which the public will, of necessity, have almost unlimited confidence. It will generally comprise the men of whose talents and of whose integrity the people at large entertain the highest opinion; and the people, moreover, feel the full assurance at each instant, that, if they should see reason to alter their favourable opinion, they will have an opportunity of getting rid of the individual before he has time to betray his trust. Unless, therefore, the upper house shall also possess a moral ascendancy, capable, upon occasion, of counteracting and counterbalancing that of the lower, it will, if new, only be suffered to exist on condition of being absolutely inoperative; although, if old, it might be borne with, as so many other things are borne with, for the toleration of which their age is the only reason.
In order to possess this ascendancy, it must conform to the conditions to which the attainment of moral influence is subject in France. Now, respect is not transmitted from father to son, in France, like an heir-loom. Wealth, by the laws of all countries, is hereditary, and, therefore, where the grand source of respect is wealth, respect also descends in the hereditary line. Where the main source of respect is ancestry, respect is, of course, hereditary. But, in France, wealth is not what confers respect, because it never was what conferred political power; and the respect for ancestry, along with its power in the state, foundered in the storms of the revolution. No nation so utterly despises hereditary distinctions. On the other hand, no people, perhaps, ever set a greater value upon personal ones. Yet, instead of endeavouring to accumulate in the upper chamber the greatest amount of personal distinction possible, the Bourbons, in a spirit of blind imitation, founded it upon a hereditary distinction; and, to complete its insignificance, dubbed its members by the titles of the old noblesse, titles so contemned, that perhaps a majority of those who have inherited them, are ashamed to wear them.
If the idea of a peerage necessarily implies hereditary descent, call it a senate: but of this be sure, that it will be efficacious for the purposes for which it is defensible if for any, exactly in proportion as it can be made to consist exclusively of men of established and high reputation. A writer in the Edinburgh Review appears to us to misunderstand the matter, when he is afraid that the senators will generally be the tools of the court, in the hope of being rewarded with the fee-simple of their peerage.12 It has never been observed that the marshals of France, or our knights of the garter, however able to serve the court, or however willing to do it for hire, have claimed as wages that their bâton or their ribbon should descend to their heirs; and this for an obvious reason, that it is easy to bribe them in ways which would excite far less of popular odium. When the chances of birth no longer introduce into the upper chamber, in spite of the greatest purity in the new appointments, a majority of the feeble or of the disreputable, it will evidently be far more difficult than now, for the creator of peers to agglomerate other such particles to the same body. But the objection is not only mistaken in principle, it is also singularly inapplicable in point of fact, since it is generally agreed, in France, that the royal prerogative of creating peers,13 so grossly abused on more than one occasion by the Bourbons, must be subjected to great restrictions, if not entirely done away. More interesting questions having hitherto engrossed the public mind, specific plans have not as yet been suggested for the composition of the senate, but the qualification will probably be that of having served for a given number of years in certain offices, or been re-elected deputy a given number of times; or any other mark which may seem, on consideration, more certainly indicative of the confirmed good opinion of the people.
We have now accomplished our task. The design of these papers was to prepare the English public, or such part of it as might be pleased to listen to us, for the struggle which we knew was approaching between the new oligarchy and the people; to arm them against the misapprehensions, and strengthen them against the false alarms, which were sure to be industriously propagated, and which, in themselves, were not unnatural; to supply facts which we knew that the public were not likely to hear from any other quarter, and without which we are aware that they could not possibly understand the true character of the events which were coming. While we have been thus engaged, the contest has already begun; and all who read the daily newspapers must have seen enough to be convinced that our undertaking was not a useless one. Of the value of our opinions, others must judge, but to the correctness of our facts in every material circumstance, we are certain that any candid person will bear witness who takes the proper means of verifying them. And if, in the mean time, we have only assisted in making it known that France is a subject on which our newspapers, with their vapouring, are profoundly ignorant, and thoroughly to be distrusted, we have not laboured in vain.
S—.
62.
FRENCH NEWS [4]
EXAMINER, 28 NOV., 1830, PP. 761-2
This article is headed “London, Nov. 27.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55.
the chamber of deputies having rejected the bill brought in by M. Benjamin Constant to exempt persons desirous of following the business of a printer from the necessity of obtaining a license from the Government,1 M. Laffitte has declared that the ministers will take up the subject.
M. Laffitte has also introduced a bill for equalizing the pressure of certain taxes which at present press very unequally upon different parts of France.2 The sentiments and views expressed in the speech with which M. Laffitte prefaced his motion, are generally liberal and enlightened.
With these exceptions, the new Ministry has given no indication of its being animated by a popular spirit; and, unless it is reserving itself for the great struggle which is approaching, on the election law,3 it will find in a few weeks, that it has thrown away the popularity which is its only strength, to pay its court to an inept and ill-designing majority, who will give it no thanks for what they will consider with truth, as the effect of mere timidity and irresolution.
The retirement of Marshal Gérard from the war department, has modified, and, we regret to say, materially for the worse, the composition of the Ministry.4 Marshal Soult, the new minister of war, has been, from the beginning of his career, the ready slave of any one who would employ him. He is indeed understood to have been chosen in deference to the general opinion of the army, that there was no other man equally fit for that particular post; but there is not the same excuse for the promotion of Sébastiani, a man almost equally destitute of political integrity, to the Foreign Department:5 his place as Minister of Marine being supplied by d’Argout, a man fitter for the Guizot or even the Martignac Cabinet, than for a ministry of popular principles.6
Meanwhile, the Chamber never lets an occasion slip for displaying its anti-popular spirit; and we see no chance that even a moderate and insufficient reform of the law of elections will be conceded to any thing less than intimidation.
Prosecutions multiply against the popular press. M. Guizot, in a recent speech, attempted to draw a distinction between the old-established papers and the new ones, and complimented the former on their comparative moderation;7 but M. Persil,8 procureur général in the Cour Royale, an obscure provincial advocate who was selected as successor to M. Bernard of Rennes,9 when the latter refused to become an instrument in persecuting the press, has now instituted a prosecution against a newspaper of the class which M. Guizot exculpated, the Journal du Commerce.10
In our next paper we shall make some observations on the ill-advised prosecution of M. de Kergorlay, for his protest against the change of dynasty.11 For the present, we recommend to the reader’s attention, on this subject, the observations of a writer whom we seldom have occasion to commend, O.P.Q., of the Chronicle.12
The change of Ministry in England13 has given the greatest satisfaction in France, being considered a pledge of the pacific character of our foreign policy.
63.
THE BALLOT
EXAMINER, 5 DEC., 1830, P. 769
Mill here continues his general argument in favour of the secret ballot, replying to a leading article in the Standard, 30 Nov., 1830, p. 2, which responded to his assertion in No. 60. For further discussion, see No. 65. This item is the first article in the “Political Examiner,” headed as title, and described in Mill’s bibliography as “The first twelve paragraphs of a leading article on the Ballot, in the Examiner of 5th December 1830” (MacMinn, p. 13). The continuation of the argument, directed against The Times, is presumably by Albany Fonblanque (1793-1872), the radical editor of the Examiner.
the standard has met our challenge of last Sunday, by noticing, we must say rather than answering, our argument respecting the Ballot. Its observations are evidently the result of so little consideration, that we advert to them only because, on a subject of such immense and rapidly-increasing importance, discussion can scarcely be carried too far; and also, because a return is due to the courtesy with which we have always been treated by our able contemporary.
Of that courtesy he has afforded us a new instance, in politely allowing to the substance of our observations on the Ballot, the name of an argument,—indeed, he calls it the first argument he ever heard in defence of the Ballot. Without impugning the truth of this assertion, we will make free to suggest, that if he has never before met with any argument for the Ballot, it very probably was because he did not give himself any great trouble to search for one. Indeed, what could be expected, if, as he now informs us, his opinion was predetermined by a consideration which renders all appeal to the merits of the case utterly superfluous. A sufficient objection to the Ballot, in his mind, he says, was its novelty. It has never been tried before, in a like case. And if its never having been tried, is a reason why it never should, this is a difficulty which is not likely to be soon got over.
On this objection it may be remarked, that if it avail against the Ballot, it would have held equally against steam-coaches.1 Steam may be an excellent thing in a manufactory, but when was it ever tried in a like case?
We need not seriously controvert the proposition, that the plainest dictates of reason are not worthy to be attended to when they recommend any thing which is new; nor need we ask, what improvement is there which may not be called an untried one, if that which is tried in private societies within every one’s knowledge, and in the political constitution of the only two great or intellectual countries which possess a constitution besides ourselves, is to be set aside without even an examination, on this curious plea.
But these experiments, it seems, are not like cases. Does the Standard then, really suppose that a political institution was ever tried in a like case? No two cases in history are alike. This is a logic, by which all reasoning from experience would be rendered impossible. The Standard declares itself favourable to a plan of Parliamentary reform which shall restore our old, and therefore, we presume, our tried institutions. But does the Standard suppose that the state of England when these institutions existed, constitutes a like case to the state of England at the present moment? If that be our contemporary’s real opinion, we should not despair of persuading him that any two cases which ever were mentioned together, are like cases.
The Standard has very candidly extracted from our columns the passage of Mr. Mill’s History of British India, from which our argument was drawn;2 and by the additional publicity which it has given to this passage, it has, we feel assured, done more good to the cause of the Ballot, than it can do harm by such a refutation as it has attempted, though repeated ten times over.
Mr. Mill’s proposition, it will be recollected, was this—that the Ballot is bad, where the voter’s own interest points in a wrong direction, and where the restraint which public opinion imposes, is indispensable as a check to that interest. But if the voter’s own interest accords with the public good, as it must do when the public themselves are the voters, this restraint is not necessary; and the Ballot, consequently, is desirable as often as the voters are liable to be acted upon, either in the way of bribery or intimidation, by the interests of powerful individuals.
On this the Standard remarks, that it is not interest, but passion, which, in all save extreme cases, determines the public conduct of the mass. By passion must here be meant, feelings of violent liking or dislike, independent of any calm consideration of the consequences of the vote either to the voter himself or to others.
If it be true that his vote, supposing it to be known to nobody, would be given not from reflection, but from passion, it seems to us, we confess, a singular mode of keeping passion under controul, to make him vote in the face of a multitude, actuated, as is assumed in the supposition, by the very same violent passion.
But this is losing sight of the true question. All the effect which can follow, or is affirmed to follow from the Ballot, is, that the vote will be given to the candidate whom the voter sincerely prefers. A degree of perfection greater than this, it is not possible to attain by any contrivance of polls or ballot-boxes. If it be impossible to constitute any body of electors but such as will sincerely prefer the wrong man, there is an end to all rational attempts at a representative government. But nobody asserts this; and the only question is, what portion of the community, if allowed to chuse the man whom it prefers, is most likely to chuse the right man. Sincere and upright persons may differ on this point; but we should not have imagined that there could have been any difference of opinion respecting the propriety of taking the suffrages in such a manner, that those who you have determined ought to be the chusers, shall really be the chusers; and that the power which you have pretended to give to them shall not, through the medium of a system of immorality disgraceful to human nature, be really exercised by a petty oligarchy, on whom nobody would have the face to propose conferring the same power directly and avowedly.
As for passion, as long as men are ill-educated, they will sometimes be too strongly excited to attend to their true interest. But we are apt to think that the passions of men whose interest is right, are less dangerous than the passions of men whose interest is wrong. Amidst all this exaggeration respecting passion, the real fact is, that the passions which extend to entire nations, not collected together in mobs, but insulated in their own homes, are almost invariably, in the present state of civilization, generous and amiable ones. The danger in the present condition of society is not from passion, but from selfish calculation of worldly interest. The universal cry periodically raised, from John o’Groat’s House to the Land’s End, for the abolition of slavery, is a specimen of popular passion, such as our own day exhibits: humane and disinterested in its ends, and consenting to appear impatient and inconsiderate only because it knows that the assemblies to which it addresses itself possess coolness sufficient to temper the ardour of the hottest enthusiasm.
It is no doubt true that many voters do not, and would not, give their votes upon a judgment of particular public measures, on which they very often are not, and know that they are not, capable of forming a correct opinion. But if they have no private ends of their own to serve, and cannot be made instruments against their conscience for serving the private ends of other people, they will in general vote for the person whom they think most honest, and most capable of judging correctly. And in this they will seldom be mistaken, unless from blind deference to their superiors in rank and education; for, except where they have learned, by bitter experience, that the higher classes have the most miserably petty personal object more at heart than their physical and moral well-being, the fault of the multitude has never been distrust of the rich, but too habitual and implicit a confidence in them.
64.
FRENCH NEWS [5]
EXAMINER, 5 DEC., 1830, P. 771
This article is headed “London, Dec. 4.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55.
m. laffitte has announced to the Chamber of Deputies that he expects to be enabled to present to the Chamber, in the course of the week which will have expired when our paper is published, the financial laws of most immediate urgency, together with a municipal law, and an election law.1
Nothing is yet known of the character of the intended municipal law; but the election law, we lament to say, is expected to fall far short of even the very moderate parliamentary reform which we announced a short time ago as being under the contemplation of the French ministry. The electoral qualification, it is now said, will be reduced, not from 300 to 200 francs of direct taxation, but from 300 to 250; and additional electors will be admitted at a lower rate of contribution, in sufficient number to make up, not one elector for every hundred, but one for every two hundred inhabitants. To these will be added, free from any pecuniary conditions, the liberal professions composing the second part of the jury list. The total number of electors will, by this arrangement, be raised, it is supposed, to about 200,000, so that the ratio of the amount of the taxes to the number of the electors will not be three hundred pounds sterling per man, as at present, but about 150l. The qualification for eligibility will be lowered from 1000 to 500 francs.
If this be the real scheme of the Ministry, it is a pitiful attempt to compromise with the majority of the Chamber. Why does not M. Laffitte propose a law of election really adequate to produce a good government, instead of the monied oligarchy contemplated by the hommes du lendemain,—and leave to the Chamber the entire discredit of making the law a bad one by its amendments? But we expected nothing better when we found that M. de Montalivet was preferred to M. Odilon-Barrot for the most important department of the ministry.2 There could be no sufficient reason for rejecting M. Odilon-Barrot, excepting that he was thought to be too good for the purposes which it was intended that the ministry should subserve.
We are informed, and the fact is too probable not to be easily credited, that the disgust occasioned by the acts and evident purposes of the men who have got the powers of government into their hands, has resuscitated the republican party. The elevation of Louis Philippe to the throne without first calling together a Congress like that of Belgium,3 and remodelling the Constitution, has long been regretted; but those who regret that a King and a Court were re-established at all, form, we are assured, a numerous and growing body.
For the present, the national mind seems to be nearly engrossed by exaggerated rumours of warlike intentions on the part of the great continental powers. The French are aware of the power they possess in the sympathies of the people throughout the continent, and the first gun fired should be the signal for the proclamation of federation with the oppressed of the hostile nations.
We shall direct the peculiar attention of our readers to the proposed municipal law, when it makes its appearance.
65.
CONTROVERSY ON THE BALLOT
EXAMINER, 12 DEC., 1830, PP. 786-7
This article, continuing the discussion in Nos. 60 and 63, responds to the Standard, 30 Nov., p. 2, and 8 Dec., p. 2, from the latter of which Mill quotes. The promised reply by the Standard, incorporating No. 63, that is referred to by Mill in the opening sentence, actually appeared on 11 Dec., but presumably after this article was completed. This leading article, in the “Political Examiner,” is headed as title and described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘Controversy on the Ballot’ in the Examiner of 12th December 1830”
(MacMinn, p. 13).
the standard has promised a complete reply to our article of last Sunday, on the Ballot, when it shall have room to re-print the article itself. This mode of carrying on an important controversy reflects credit upon our contemporary’s fairness, and is, we confess, very much to our taste. The Standard will, we know, readily believe that nothing but the limited space which is at the command of a weekly newspaper, prevents us from affording a similar proof of our regard for truth, by inserting in our columns such of his articles as we think it useful to controvert. They have sufficient claim to such a place on the score of their intrinsic merits. Powers of vigorous thought, however ill disciplined, or however misapplied, scarcely ever run so completely to waste as not to propagate and call forth similar powers in some, at least, of the minds with which they may come in contact.
The Standard now affirms, that the Ballot does not ensure secrecy; of this it attempts no proof, except an assertion, that, in the United States, every man’s vote is known. There is something, to us, very ridiculous in these appeals from the experience of the human race to the assumed experience of a single country, which not one of the persons so appealing has the assurance to pretend that he knows any thing about. In America, the Ballot may very possibly be an unnecessary protection; for no voter is in a state of dependence, the voters are too numerous to be bribed, and the candidates not in circumstances to bribe. Moreover, the Ballot, in America, may be a mere sham, as at the India House.1 But when there is a real Ballot, to say that the votes can be known, is a manifest absurdity. The vote can never be known, unless the voter has it in his power to shew it. The voter may tell it; but his telling it when nobody can ever know whether he tells the truth, will not cause it to be known. Ballot or no ballot, a man’s vote may be surmised by those who are acquainted with his political opinions; but the Standard cannot suppose that any one would be so silly as either to bribe an elector, or lose a respectable tenant on a mere surmise.
After all that has been said, the Standard seems even now utterly unable to seize the distinction between the case wherein the ballot is a safeguard to the honest, and that in which it is a cloak to the knave. He cannot even yet see, that the temptation sometimes comes from the interests of people who can influence the voter, and sometimes from the voter’s own interests: that in the first case the ballot puts an end to the temptation, while in the second it removes only the restraints. Our contemporary persists in saying, that if the elector needs the ballot to protect him against his landlord, the representative must equally stand in need of it, to remove him from the control of the minister. As if the sovereign body could need protection against the creature of its own will; as if the minister had any means of controlling the legislature, but what the legislature gives him; as if there were any body who does not know that a ministry exists not by commanding the two houses of parliament, but by obeying them. These constitutional fictions belong to a time which is past. Kings and ministers once dictated to the parliament and to the parliament-makers, but have long since sunk down into the humbler office of carving for them.
There is a passage in a late article of the Standard, which we cannot let pass without severer reprobation. After accusing the reformers of attaching little comparative importance to bribery, as contrasted with the influence which is exercised by the threat of turning men out of house and home, our contemporary permits himself to say,
At present when it is known that the electors at such places as Stamford can be bought at two or three guineas a-head, it is the duty of the landlord to dispossess all who have proved their corruption by voting against the legitimate influence of a community of political sentiment, and of that interchange of kindnesses which always obtains between a good landlord and his tenants.
We scarcely remember another equally remarkable instance of the doctrines which men will permit themselves to avow respecting their fellow-creatures, when they have unhappily become entangled in a bad cause, and have not manliness or resolution to extricate themselves from it. Here we have it deliberately declared that every tenant who votes in opposition to the will of his landlord, must do so from the motive of bribery, and ought to be treated by other people as if it were legally proved that he had been bribed; and this whatever be the Lord’s behest, and whether he be whig, tory, or radical: and such is the undistinguishing sweep of this morality, that the tenants of Lord Radnor or of Sir Francis Burdett,2 just as much as those of the Duke of Newcastle,3 are not only bound to vote as the landlord commands, but are so utterly in the condition of cattle, so incapable of a political opinion, a public sympathy, or even a preference of one man over another, that no possible interpretation can be put upon their disobedience to the lordly mandate, except that they have been bribed in actual money—always providing that the superior whom they have failed to obey, is a good landlord, judice the landlord himself.
We make no comment on this doctrine. We leave it to the judgment of its author, who, we have no doubt, in his cooler moments, will recoil from it. But it is a grievous misfortune to be hampered with a Duke of Newcastle, and obliged to prove that his black is white.
66.
FRENCH NEWS [6]
EXAMINER, 12 DEC., 1830, P. 795
This article is headed “London, Dec. 11.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. The article concludes with a paragraph of Swiss news, presumably not by Mill.
the french ministry has not yet produced the expected municipal and election laws, but M. Dupont de l’Eure has introduced a Bill reducing the number of the Judges in each Court of Assize (as the principal Courts of Justice are called) from five to three.1 This is a most important improvement, and a step towards getting rid of those multitudinous judicatories which destroy individual responsibility, and neutralize one able judge by associating him with a crowd of feeble or inexperienced colleagues, who either do nothing or worse.
The clergy of all Christian persuasions existing in France, already received salaries from the Government: the Chamber of Deputies has just passed a Bill extending the same provision to the ministers of the Jewish worship.2
67.
THE TRUCK SYSTEM [1]
EXAMINER, 19 DEC., 1830, P. 803
This article comments on the debate in the House of Commons on the Truck System (14 Dec., 1830; PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 1, cols. 1133-82) occasioned by the request for leave to introduce “A Bill to Consolidate and Amend the Laws Prohibiting the Payment of Wages in Goods,” 1 William IV (16 Dec., 1830), PP, 1830-31, II, 559-71. It was brought in by Edward John Littleton (1791-1863), 1st Baron Hatherton, reforming M.P. from 1812 until he entered the Lords in 1835. His bill was enacted as 1 & 2 William IV, c. 37 (1831). For further discussion, see No. 70. This leading article, in the “Political Examiner,” headed as title, is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘Truck System’ in the Examiner of 19th December 1830”
(MacMinn, p. 13).
all mankind have long known what an English Parliament is capable of when it means ill. If the debate of Tuesday last is to be regarded as a specimen of what it can accomplish when it means well, we know not what prayer remains for us to put up, unless for a speedy deliverance from it.
It is melancholy to see the immense subject of the condition of the working classes paltered with by miserable trifling. Would not any one suppose, from the speeches in the House of Commons on Tuesday, that what makes the labouring population miserable is, not low wages, but the medium in which wages are paid. Parliament is so wise as to believe, that the labourer will receive a larger remuneration, if prevented from receiving it in the shape in which it is most convenient to the master to give it. Mr. Hume (certainly no enemy to the working people) pointed out the absurdity of this;1 but nobody, not one man, had sufficient foresight to perceive that Mr. Littleton’s bill will infallibly lower wages, instead of raising them.
The object of the bill is to compel the payment of wages in money. Now, money is a portion of the national wealth, which costs much, but produces nothing. It administers to no man’s wants. No labourer can subsist upon it, or use it as tools or materials for production. Whatever, therefore, enables the business of the country to be done with less money, increases its productive resources. By being enabled to dispense with the use of money, the employers of labour are enabled to render the whole of their capital available for production—to hire productive labourers to the full amount of their means. But if this bill passes, they will be obliged to withdraw a part of their capital from productive employment; to turn off part of their labourers; and what would have been paid to those labourers, if allowed to be paid in the form of goods, they will be obliged to export, for the purpose of merely procuring a circulating medium, wherewith to pay the wages of the remainder of their labourers.
Thus there will be less real means of employment for labourers than before; and the existing poverty of the working people will be aggravated.
Lord Althorp, from whom we expected better things, said, that he would be against interference between employer and workman, if the contract were a free one on the labourer’s side; but that it is not so, for the employer can dictate terms to the labourer.2 But why can the employer dictate terms to the labourer? Only because there is another labourer standing by unemployed, who will accept the terms if his fellow-labourer refuses them. This is what gives the employer undue power; and undue power he will have, so long as there is a greater number of labourers than can find employment. So long as this is the case, the labourer must accept any terms which are preferable to the parish allowance; and is it really supposed that the matter will be mended, by declaring that his hard lot shall only be dealt out to him in one particular way? If the laws of Parliament could get the better of the laws of nature, why not fix a minimum of wages; that would, at least, be facing the difficulty boldly. But our legislation resembles a cottage-window in Ireland, with three of the four panes of glass entirely out, and a rag carefully stuffed in to close a trifling breach in the only remaining one.
Then it is asserted that the labourer is dependant by being in his employer’s debt; and it is consequently proposed, for the labourer’s good, to deprive the employer of any legal means of recovering wages paid in advance. This amounts to neither more nor less than enacting a law, that if a working man is in temporary distress, he shall either go upon the parish or starve. Such is the upshot of all this humanity and philanthropy.
The Globe had, on Thursday, an excellent article on this question, which we gladly recommend to universal attention.3 This is one of a class of subjects which the Editor of that paper has always understood better than any other of our journalists. The speeches of Mr. Hume and of Mr. Hyde Villiers are worth reading.4
68.
FRENCH NEWS [7]
EXAMINER, 19 DEC., 1830, P. 809
The article is headed “London, Dec. 19.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. The article concludes with a paragraph on Belgian and Swiss news, presumably not by Mill.
the death of benjamin constant is a misfortune to the world.1 France, since the first revolution, has not produced his equal, taking into account purity of purpose, popular principles, and talents as an orator and politician. His absence leaves a deplorable hiatus in the Chamber, which now contains scarcely a man of established reputation and mature years, joined to opinions in harmony with those of the vast majority of Frenchmen between twenty and thirty-five. His health had been for some time declining; but there is no doubt that his death has been hastened by feelings of grievous disappointment at finding France, at the end of four months, from the three days of July last, only at the commencement of, perhaps, a longer and more arduous struggle than that which she appeared to have brought to so glorious and triumphant a consummation. There is reason to fear that the bitterness of these reflections was aggravated by the thought that greater exertions and a more decided tone, on the part of himself and a few others in August last, might have given, perhaps, a materially different character to the settlement of the Constitution.
We are assured that this lamented patriot, almost with his last breath, expressed to the friends who encircled his death-bed, the regret which he felt, while dying, that the revolution of July was manquée, and had fallen into the hands of intrigans.
His house was surrounded by crowds, similar to those which were congregated round the habitation of Mirabeau in his last moments.
The principal subjects of discussion, in the Chambers, for some time past, have been the organization of the National Guard, and the arrangements for putting the army on the war establishment.2 As is usually the case, when a nation is what it calls “prepared for war,” the French seem to desire nothing so much as an opportunity for convincing their neighbours how well prepared they are. A month ago they were as quiet, as could reasonably be required, on the affairs of Belgium; but now the insurrection in Poland3 has kindled them into a perfect flame; so great is the difference in the feelings, either of a man or of a nation, according as their red coat is on or off. We have been shocked and disgusted by the language of the leading French papers on the subject of the Polish revolution. The principle of non-intervention, on which they insisted so strongly a few weeks ago, is now scattered to the winds. If a war, unhappily for France and Europe, were shortly to break out, though undertaken by that country, as it probably would be, for no selfish object, we greatly fear that, under its influence, in less than a twelvemonth, the national character would again be perverted, as it was by Napoleon,—the rage for victory and conquest would become again the dominant passion in the breasts of Frenchmen; and the national feeling once turned in that direction, we know the barefaced profligacy, the systematic and unheard-of disregard of every principle of international morality, and of the most sacred rights of independent nations, which made the foreign policy of the directory, and of the empire, a disgrace to civilisation. That war began with as much purity of purpose, on the part of the French nation, as the present one will do, if the French government accepts the invitation; which, while we now write, is probably under its consideration, to assist the Poles against the three Robber-powers.
The trial of the Ex-Ministers has commenced.—It is expected that Polignac, and, perhaps, Peyronnet, will be sentenced to death; Chantelauze and Guernon-Ranville to some other punishment.4 If Peyronnet be put to death, and Chantelauze spared, it will be from other causes than any which will appear on the proceedings; for it is proved, that Peyronnet was averse to the issue of the ordinances, and that Chantelauze was not.
The municipal and election laws are still delayed, but the Ministry has promised speedily to introduce a Bill for the elementary education of the People.5
M. Isambert laid a proposition before the Chamber, for reducing the Catholic Church Establishment to the standard of 1802;6 but this was rejected, without even a public discussion, by virtue of the mischievous regulation which requires that every proposition must be approved by the whole, or a certain portion of the Chamber sitting in bureaux or committees, and deliberating in secret, before it can be even read, much less discussed, at the public sittings of the Chamber.7
69.
THE LABOURING AGRICULTURISTS
EXAMINER, 19 DEC., 1830, PP. 811-12
This article, prompted by the publication of Nassau William Senior’s Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages (London: Murray, 1830), consists mostly of an extract from that work. Senior (1790-1864), an active member of the Political Economy Club, in 1825 had become the first incumbent of the chair of Political Economy at Oxford (succeeded in 1829 by Whately). The “Poor Laws” in effect at the time of this article went back to 43 Elizabeth I, c. 2 (1601), and included the law of settlement, 13 & 14 Charles II, c. 12 (1662), and the workhouse law, 9 George I, c. 7 (1722). Senior, a member of the Poor Law Commission, wrote its report, which resulted in the famous reform of 1834. This article, headed as title, is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘The labouring Agriculturists’ in the Examiner of the same date [as “The Truck System,” No. 67]”
(MacMinn, p. 13).
mr. senior, lately Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, has just published three lectures on the Rate of Wages, delivered before that University a few months ago, with the addition of a preface on the Causes and Remedies of the present Disturbances. The preface in particular appears to us calculated to produce the most salutary effects at the present crisis. We extract the following important passage, the doctrines and sentiments of which have our fullest concurrence:
The poor-laws, as administered in the southern districts of England,1 are an attempt to unite the irreconcilable advantages of freedom and servitude. The labourer is to be a free agent, but without the hazards of free agency; to be free from the coercion, but to enjoy the assured subsistence of the slave. He is expected to be diligent, though he has no fear of want; provident, though his pay rises as his family increases; attached to a master who employs him in pursuance of a vestry resolution; and grateful for the allowance which the magistrates order him as a right.
In the natural state of the relation between the capitalist and the labourer, when the amount of wages to be paid, and of work to be done, are the subjects of a free and open bargain; when the labourer obtains, and knows that he is to obtain, just what his services are worth to his employer, he must feel any fall in the price of his labour to be an evil, but is not likely to complain of it as an injustice. Greater exertion and severer economy are his first resources in distress; and what they cannot supply he receives with gratitude from the benevolent. The connexion between him and his master has the kindliness of a voluntary association, in which each party is conscious of benefit, and each feels that his own welfare depends, to a certain extent, on the welfare of the other. But the instant wages cease to be a bargain—the instant the labourer is paid, not according to his value, but his wants, he ceases to be a freeman. He acquires the indolence, the improvidence, the rapacity, and the malignity, but not the subordination, of a slave. He is told that he has a right to wages, but that he is bound to work. Who is to decide how hard he ought to work, or how hard he does work? Who is to decide what amount of wages he has a right to? As yet, the decision has been made by the overseers and the magistrates. But they were interested parties. The labourer has thought fit to correct that decision. For the present he thinks that he has a right to 2s. 3d. a day in winter, and 2s. 6d. in summer. And our only hope seems to be, that the promise of such wages will bribe him into quiet. But who can doubt that he will measure his rights by his wishes, or that his wishes will extend with the prospect of their gratification? The present tide may not complete the inundation, but it will be a dreadful error if we mistake the ebb for a permanent receding of the waters. A breach has been made in the sea-wall, and with every succeeding irruption they will swell higher and spread more widely. What we are suffering is nothing to what we have to expect. Next year, perhaps, the labourer will think it unjust that he should have less than 4s. a day in winter and 5s. in summer;—and woe to the tyrants who deny him his right!
It is true, that such a right could not be permanently enforced;—it is true, that if the labourer burns the corn-ricks in which his subsistence for the current year is stored—if he consumes in idleness or in riot the time and the exertions on which next year’s harvest depends—if he wastes in extravagant wages, or drives to foreign countries, the capital that is to assist and render productive his labour, he will be the greatest sufferer in the common ruin. Those who have property may escape with a portion of it to some country in which their rights will be protected; but the labourer must remain to enjoy his own works—to feel that the real rewards for plunder and devastation are want and disease.
But have the consequences of the present system ever been explained to the labourer? Is not his right to good wages re-echoed from all parts of the country? Is he not told—“Dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed?” Does not the Hon. Member, who has affixed this motto to his work,2 assume that the fund out of which the labourer is to be fed is practically inexhaustible? And can words more strongly imply that his sufferings arise from the injustice of his superiors? Have not even magistrates and landlords recommended the destruction, or, what is the same, both in principle and effect, the disuse of the very machines of which the object is to render labour more efficient in the production of the articles consumed by the labourer—in the production of that very fund on the extent of which, compared with the number to be maintained, the amount of wages depends? And is there any real difference between this conduct and the burning of a rick-yard? Threshing-machines are the present objects of hostility, ploughs will be the next; spades will then be found to diminish employment; and when it has been made penal to give advantage to labour by any tool or instrument whatever, the last step must be to prohibit the use of the right-hand.
Have sufficient pains been taken even to expose the absurdity of what appears so obvious to the populace—that the landlords ought to reduce their rents and the clergy their tithes, and then the farmer would give better wages? If the farmer had his land for nothing, still it would not be his interest to give any man more wages for a day’s work than his day’s work was worth. He could better afford it, no doubt, to be paid as a tax; but why should the farmer pay that tax more than the physician or the shopkeeper? If the farmer is to employ, at this advanced rate of wages, only whom he chooses, the distress will be increased, since he will employ only that smaller number whose labour is worth their increased pay. If he is to employ a certain proportion of the labourers, however numerous, in his parish, he is, in fact, to pay rent and tithes as before, with this difference only, that they are to be paid to paupers, instead of to the landlord and the parson; and that the payment is not a fixed but an indefinite sum, and a sum which must every year increase in an accelerated ratio, as the increase of population rushes to fill up this new vacuum, till rent, tithes, profit, and capital, are all eaten up, and pauperism produces what may be called its natural effects—for they are the effects which, if unchecked, it must ultimately produce—famine, pestilence, and civil war.
That this country can preserve its prosperity, or even its social existence, if the state of feeling which I have described becomes universal among the lower classes, I think no one will be bold enough to maintain. That it is extensively prevalent, and that, under the present administration of the poor-laws, it will, at no remote period, become universal in the southern districts, appears to me to be equally clear. But who, in the present state of those districts, will venture to carry into execution a real and effectual alteration of the poor-laws? Remove, by emigration, the pauperism that now oppresses those districts, and such an alteration, though it may remain difficult, will cease to be impracticable.
Again, the corn-laws, by their tendency to raise the price of subsistence, by the ruin which they have inflicted on the internal corn-trade, and the stimulus which they have given to the increase of the agricultural population, have, without doubt, been amongst the causes of the present distress; and if, while the population of England and Wales continues to increase at the rate of 500 persons a-day, the introduction of foreign corn is subject, under ordinary prices, to a prohibitive duty, those laws will become every day more mischievous, and less remediable. But the repeal of those laws, however gradual (and only a gradual repeal can be thought of), would, under the present pressure of pauperism, tend to aggravate the agricultural distress. Lighten that pressure, and we may gradually revert to the only safe system—the system of freedom.
[Pp. ix-xv.]
Mr. Senior then proceeds to argue, with great force and earnestness, in favour of systematic emigration, as the only feasible mode of removing the immediate pressure of pauperism, and rendering practicable the reform of those abuses in our legislation which have contributed to the growth of the evil. [Pp. xvi-xix.] And we join our voice to his in declaring that it is the most imperative among the duties of the legislation at the present crisis, to inquire and ascertain whether there be any mode of emigration by which our unemployed labourers might be removed from penury to comfort, without, by the same operation, withdrawing so much of our national wealth, as to diminish instead of increasing the wages of those labourers who remain behind. We believe that there is such a mode of emigration; and to this momentous subject, which must engage the attention of Parliament speedily and long, we shall return.3
70.
THE TRUCK SYSTEM [2]
EXAMINER, 26 DEC., 1830, PP. 820-1
In response to a correspondent, “W.M.J.,” whose letter is incorporated in the article, Mill here continues the argument of No. 67. The article, headed as title, is in the “Political Examiner,” and is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘Truck System’ in the Examiner of 26th December 1830” (MacMinn, p. 14). The part of the article following the quotation in full of W.M.J.’s letter is enclosed within square brackets (here deleted), which perhaps imply a different authorship; however, there is no other evidence to support such a conclusion.
we have received a clever letter, signed W.M.J., which, among other observations on our article of last Sunday, relating to the truck system, contends that we were mistaken in considering the payment of wages in goods as a means of economizing the circulating medium. “There is a manufacturer in Sheffield, for instance,” says our correspondent, “who pays his wages with drapery goods; but in doing this, how can he be said to dispense with the use of money? If he does not want it to pay wages with, he wants it to pay for the drapery goods with; and there cannot be any difference in the amount, except that which goes to himself for profit.”
This is plausible, but unsound. The wholesale transactions of one dealer with another employ very little money. They take place upon credit, either by means of bills of exchange, or mere entries in the books of the several dealers. When these mutual credits come to be liquidated, money is used to pay balances, and nothing more. The great demand for money is for the retail transactions; and there can be no doubt that when the employer of labour can contrive to feed and clothe his men by one great purchase, instead of leaving the men to do it by a hundred little purchases, the circulating medium is greatly economized.
Besides, even if it were true that the Sheffield manufacturer wanted money to pay for the drapery goods, as supposed in our correspondent’s hypothesis, he is allowed by law to make this payment in paper. Now, paper performs all the functions of currency, without costing any thing, or absorbing any portion of capital which might else be productively employed. But the manufacturer cannot by law pay his labourers in paper, because bankers may not issue paper of a sufficiently low denomination.1 Even, therefore, if the truck system did not economize the currency, it would still serve to economize the only costly part of the currency. It is, as our correspondent partly seems to perceive, a substitute for paper money,—the wisdom of the legislature having thought fit to interdict the more convenient medium.
Our correspondent challenges us to declare our opinions on the subject of currency. We should have done so ere this if we had deemed the occasion favourable, and if we were not, from experience, fully aware that the public attention cannot be advantageously directed to more than two or three great subjects at a time. Now, when we are no longer cursed with a currency, which, being inconvertible into cash, subjected the amount of the circulating medium to the uncontrolled discretion of a close corporation, we deem the question between a paper and a gold circulation to be of immeasurably less importance than is attached to it by most writers on either side of the controversy, and probably by our correspondent.
To the Editor of the Examiner
Sir,—
As a real admirer, I speak sincerely, not in the ordinary cant of newspaper correspondents, of the principles of your journal, I have seen, with pain, your diatribe against the House of Commons for the manner in which it entertained Mr. Littleton’s measure against the truck-system;2 a measure which, as a real friend to the manufacturing labourers, I am actively and zealously engaged in promoting. On their behalf, I request of your impartiality a little space in your columns for this humble effort to counteract what I believe to be the very mischievous tendency of your observations. Allow me to observe, that the conduct of yourself, and other political economists in this matter, is a parody on the foolish maxim—“Fiat Justitia Ruat Coelum;”3 that you in effect say, abandon not one iota of our stern principles, whatever may be the consequences. In this rigid unbending adherence to a favourite theory, you forget that you are sacrificing the end to the supposed means, and lose sight of the very basis of all your science,—the greatest happiness of the greatest number. What has the House of Commons done? What does it propose to do? Many thousands of labourers complain of the frauds and oppressions they suffer from the truck system, not sufferings arising from the low rate of wages, but frauds and oppressions, which the workmen of truck-masters groan under, peculiar to themselves, and which are not shared by the workmen of money-paying masters in the same manufactures in the same districts. To prevent this fraud, we require, that is, we ask for no more than that all contracts between master and workman shall be made, and shall be paid in a medium which does not admit of fraud, and in which the magistrate can understand the rights of, and administer justice between, the parties; instead of in any system of barter, in which it is impossible for the magistrate to know the value that passes between the parties, and consequently impossible for him to do justice to him that is defrauded and oppressed. This is no great restriction on the liberty of contracts. For the truck-master may still keep his store instead of his Tommy-shop, still add the profits of the retailer to those of the manufacturer,—the law merely interfering to provide that the wages of the workman shall be paid in that value which alone the [sic] can ascertain, leaves him to have any dealings he pleases afterwards to have with his master. The continuance of the system has produced a violent discontent, hourly increasing: the money-paying masters, unable to compete with the truck-masters, must either follow the same system, adding immensely to this discontent, or, what many of them would do, stop their works, and turn their men adrift, denouncing the truck system as the cause. The consequence would be, the instant rising of the men, in riots first directed against truck-masters and their property—and where afterwards, who could calculate? What force could check, what concessions or reasons would soothe or control a mob of a hundred thousand persons, flushed with riot and success, and justly complaining of the apathy of the government and Parliament to their sufferings and complaints? The consequences to the kingdom, who could foresee? What character the mob would assume, or what designs it might be led to entertain? And yet there are political economists who would incur this, rather than yield one iota of their theories, and blame the government for not partaking the same strange temerity.
Is there any thing new or wrong in the principle of legislation which would interfere with contracts, when the consequences of those contracts may be so prejudicial to others, to the community?
The table of the House of Commons groans with proofs, the experience of centuries shows that the Truck System invariably leads to the grossest frauds; and there is nothing either new or strange in the principle of law that prohibits contracts between parties, even when the parties are perfectly free agents, where those contracts are injurious to public morality.
But the workman is not a free agent. A workman once entered into the employment of a master is not free; his poverty, the lowness of his wages, the law of settlement, render it impossible for him to leave his service, to remain one, two, or three weeks idle, to travel to other parishes in search of an employer;4 and he is obliged, therefore, to submit to the exactions and frauds of an oppressive and fraudulent master. The workman is not upon equal terms—And why is he not? Because of the law of settlement, and because of those corn laws, and tithe laws5 which create a factitious, not a natural superabundance of population, and cause the workman’s poverty as effectually as if they were enacted for the express and avowed purpose. We do not wish to controul the laws of nature by acts of parliament; but we do wish, by act of parliament, to relieve the workman from some of the evils of the undue advantages which other acts of parliament have given his employer; and which we are not able to repeal.
You say that the effect of the law would be to lower wages. How is the truck-master’s paying in money, instead of in goods, to make the money-paying masters who are still the majority (thank Heaven!) reduce their wages to their men? How is the necessity of purchasing more gold for the extra circulation to diminish the sale of iron, or the quantity of employment which the masters would have to give? If the present masters’ capital is unsufficient, of course other capital would flow into the trade to make the supply equal to the demand. If more gold be required for circulation in consequence, (which is very doubtful considering the amount of capital that lies idle) it would, I admit, cost the country at large something to get that gold. But is that a price we should hesitate to pay, to get rid of a system which defrauds, oppresses, and degrades the workman, and which has brought the midland counties to the verge of a fearful convulsion? Assuredly not.—At all events, to permit paper, and not to permit truck, would be the proper way to get rid of that burden.
W.M.J.
In the last sentence our correspondent has, in our opinion, approached to the true practical conclusion. “To permit paper,” with proper securities for the solvency of the issuers, would effectually abolish the truck system: “not to permit truck,” would then be superfluous legislation. Paper-money is the most commodious, and might be made the safest of all modes of economizing a costly medium of exchange. It is found so in Scotland, where the securities against its abuse approach to the utmost limit of completeness and perfection yet reached by any human institution. From the day when the Legislature, instead of fortifying the small-note circulation by the proper securities, thought proper to abolish it, Parliament has been engaged, as was foreseen and foretold at the time, in an incessant and constantly recurring warfare against all manner of worse modes of effecting that which a properly regulated paper-money accomplishes in a good mode. The truck system is one of those worse modes; and it is worse, simply because, as our correspondent observes, it increases the difficulty of enforcing contracts, and holding parties to the terms of their bargain.
That it is attended with this inconvenience, we have no doubt; but that it can therefore be a cause of impoverishment to the labouring classes in general, we cannot admit. We request the attention of our correspondent to a simple argument. If the truck-master, after paying nominally two shillings a-day to his men, cheats them of sixpence a-day by overcharges in the prices of goods sold at his store, it is evidently the same thing as if he gave to each of them eighteen-pence a-day, and no more. Now, is it not evident, that by giving only eighteen-pence a-day, either directly or indirectly, he is enabled to employ, with a given capital, a greater number of men? And as it is not denied that he now employs men to the full extent of his capital, is it not clear that, if compelled to give two shillings a-day, he must throw a part of his labourers out of employment? The competition of those extra labourers, who would be altogether unemployed if the manufacturer were forced to give really adequate wages, is the true cause which compels the working people to accept wages that are not adequate. To abolish truck would not raise their real wages to the standard of their nominal ones, but would lower their nominal wages to the level of their real ones; and even lower, unless, by the introduction of paper, the necessity were spared of converting productive capital into idle gold and silver.
We have only room further to assure our correspondent, that he wrongs us in supposing that we are tenacious of a general principle without regarding specific consequences. Every general principle that is worth a rush, foresees and provides for all possible consequences; but a man who is not absurdly confident in his own foresight, looks carefully into details, as we always do, not only to avoid error in the application of his principles, but also to guard himself against latent errors in the principles themselves.
71.
FRENCH NEWS [8]
EXAMINER, 26 DEC., 1830, PP. 826-7
The implication of the division of the article into two parts (here signalled by a printer’s rule) is not clear; the initial two paragraphs of the second part are here included, as being presumably by Mill; the final two paragraphs of that part, dealing with Polish and Belgian news, are excluded. The article is headed “London, December 26.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55.
the french ex-ministers have been tried, convicted, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, and the loss of all honours and distinctions. Polignac is, moreover, pronounced civilly dead. The legal consequence of this part of his sentence is, that his property is not confiscated—that punishment being formally abolished by the charter1 —but passes to his natural heirs.
Perpetual imprisonment would be a far heavier punishment than death, if it were enforced; but in practice, it is sure to amount, at least in cases of political delinquency, to confinement for two or three years at the farthest.
No disturbances had broken out when the last advices were received, and it was hoped that none would take place. We join most earnestly in this hope; but we have seen, with ineffable disgust, the Parisian populace—the populace of the three days—reproached with bloodthirstiness for demanding that great criminals shall be treated as mean ones have ever been, and as these very persons would have treated the most intelligent and patriotic men in France, if their criminal enterprise had been triumphant.
The greatest possible care was evidently taken by the Peers to avoid putting to the witnesses, during the trial, any question likely to elicit facts unfavourable to the accused.
The ministers have introduced into the Chamber of Peers a bill for the more effectual suppression of the slave-trade.2 No law could be more indispensable, as the connivance of the Bourbon Government has hitherto been the principal obstacle to the entire rooting out of that abominable traffic.
The ministry have, moreover, introduced a bill into the Chamber of Deputies, granting to the King a civil list of 18 millions a year—about £720,000 sterling. This, which is little more than half the amount of the civil list, which Charles X enjoyed (though he did not think fit to pay his creditors out of it), has given great, and just, dissatisfaction—considering the enormous private fortune of Louis Philippe, and the general wish that no unnecessary pomp should encircle the throne of a citizen king.3
From accounts received from Paris, up to Thursday evening, it appears that tranquillity was still maintained, chiefly by the temperance and excellent conduct of the National Guard, aided by the students of the Polytechnique School, and the Schools of Law and Medicine.
Polignac, and his fellow-culprits, are to be confined in the fortress of Ham, in Picardy.
72.
FRENCH NEWS [9]
EXAMINER, 2 JAN., 1831, P. 8
This ninth article on French affairs, headed “London, January 2,” is covered by the bibliographical entry in No. 55. Beginning in 1831, Mill’s bound set of the Examiner in Somerville College contains, on the front fly-leaf of each yearly volume, a list of his own articles, with page numbers. This article is listed as “Article on France.” At the same time Mill began the practice of enclosing his own articles in square brackets in his set of the Examiner. Of this article, which is divided by rules into three parts, only the first two parts are within brackets, while the third, on Belgian affairs, falls without.
Quand on n’a d’autre politique que de louvoyer selon le temps; quand, sous prétexte de fuir tout extrême, on évite le vrai comme l’extrême du faux; quand on étend l’esprit de conservation à tout, même aux abus, on est fait pour recevoir et non pour dicter des conditions. Assez long-temps les hommes de cette école ont joui d’une influence funeste; assez long-temps les habiles d’entre eux ont corrompu le pouvoir par les suggestions mesquines de leur petite sagesse. Le temps est venu des esprits fermes et des principes décidés.—Revue Française (the Guizot Review) for January, 1829. [Vol. VII, p. 268.]
the above passage is a faithful portraiture of the advisers by whom the King of the French is now swayed. By such advisers princes of honest intentions and weak judgment have always been ruined. They will be the ruin of Louis Philippe, who will never more know a tranquil hour while he remains on the throne.
It has been distinctly notified to the King, that he must now choose between the new oligarchy and the people. The alternative has been accepted. He has chosen the oligarchy; and Lafayette, Odilon-Barrot, and Dupont de l’Eure, are consequently no longer in office.
The breach, therefore, between the people and the government is now as wide and as ostensible as it was in the time of Charles X: with this difference, that as the new oligarchy, unlike the old, rests upon a real foundation of wealth and personal importance; as it has not, like the Bourbon Government, the most powerful of the constituted authorities, the Chamber of Deputies, in the ranks of the opposition; as it is not, therefore, obliged to govern in open defiance of all law, or not at all; and as it is not likely to be so ignorant of the universal feelings of the French people as to attempt to force Jesuits and mass-books down their throats; the future struggle, though probably pacific, will be a more arduous one than the preceding, and possibly more prolonged.
The revolution of July has left France almost exactly in the position in which the revolution of 1688 left ourselves. Both revolutions overthrew the doctrine of divine right; put an end to the political influence of the Catholic church; and established the omnipotence of Parliament. Both left the constitution of Parliament a mere oligarchy—but here we trust the parallel will end. The human mind is further advanced in 1830 than in 1688, and the French people have more sense and spirit than to wait a hundred and fifty years before they cry out for Parliamentary Reform in a voice which will carry all before it.
The ignorant and conceited Newspaper which used to stile itself the Leading Journal of Europe, appears to be of opinion that invectives against the Parliamentary Reformers of France are still saleable.1 It should certainly be the best judge; a successful tradesman is good authority on the tastes of his customers. We derive some consolation, however, from the thought, that ever since his memorable panegyric on the Polignac Ministry, and invectives against the French people for condemning them untried,2 our contemporary has never allowed a month to pass without attempting some disgusting appeal to the low prejudices, the malignant passions, or the dirty self-interest of the British public; which, within the month ensuing, we have had the satisfaction of seeing him compelled to eat up, bit by bit, to the very crumbs. These things have shaken our faith in the infallibility of our contemporary’s judgment in such matters, and have afforded us the satisfactory assurance that the reading public are not altogether in so degraded a state of intellect and feeling, as the daily perusal of his columns, and the reflection how carefully their contents are manufactured for the market, might well have inclined us to suppose.
The introduction of the new Election Law3 was fixed for Wednesday last; we, therefore, shall soon know whether the Ministry, now deprived of all which constituted its slender popularity, intends to place itself at the head of the oligarchy, or to see-saw between that body and the people. One thing, however, is clear; that the people will no longer be trifled with as they have been. The Chamber, notwithstanding the composition of its deplorable majority, contains within its body many of the popular leaders; and their unaccountable inaction and temporizing has caused us much suspicion and uneasiness. It is now accounted for. Their motive was the same which so greatly lowered the tone of the opposition journals while the Ex-ministers were on their trial. They were resolved, and the resolution does honour to the purity and nobleness of their purposes, to abstain from all which might excite or agitate the minds of the people, until it was certain that France would not be exposed to the dangers and evils of an insurrection for so miserable an object as the blood of four guilty and wretched conspirators. To avert this evil they had the virtue to make the greatest sacrifice which honest public men can make,—that of the favourable moment for advocating their opinions. They would not assume a popular tone, or introduce popular measures, while the fears of their opponents might have ensured a more favourable reception. They postponed the rupture until the enemy were flushed with undeserved success.
The exemplary demeanour of the National Guard during the last week, who with equal firmness and gentleness repressed every tendency to tumult on the part of men whose feelings and purposes were identical with their own; the general tranquillity of the people of Paris, under circumstances of all others the most exciting to a people as susceptible of strong emotions as the French; and the success with which the Law and Medical and Polytechnic Schools (“boys” and “lads,” as young men of five-and-twenty are stupidly called by our newspapers),4 exerted for the preservation of order, the popularity which they owed to their admirable conduct in July last; all this must have shown to every honest man throughout France how little reason there is for apprehending anarchical excesses, and with how little danger political rights might be extended at least to the National Guard, to say nothing of any larger portion of the people of France. To the jobbers and intrigans, however, who are at the head of the new oligarchy, these events inspired no other idea than that they were now safe from another Revolution, and might exploiter the people of France just as they pleased.
Although the office of Commander of the National Guard was one which no one pretended ought to be permanent, all until now had been apparently agreed in desiring that so long as it could be held by Lafayette it should continue; but as soon as the popularity of Lafayette was not indispensable to keep the people quiet, the Chamber passed a vote abolishing the office, and thereby declaring, in plain terms, that the Government had no further occasion for his services. He forthwith resigned, without waiting until the law which was to remove him should pass through all its stages.5 Being pressed by the King to resume the office, he refused, except on the two conditions of a more popular Ministry, and a popular Election Law. These conditions having been rejected, Dupont and Odilon-Barrot followed the example of Lafayette, and resigned; together with Mathieu-Dumas, second in command to Lafayette, and Carbonnel, chief of his staff.6
There are now symptoms of a strenuous and united opposition, both in the Chamber and without it. We may hope that now at least the scabbard will be thrown away. Even in the Chamber of 1830, an opposition party headed by Lafayette, and comprising such men as Dupont, de Tracy, de Cormenin, Voyer d’Argenson, de Salverte,7 Isambert, and Odilon-Barrot, (alas! that we cannot add Benjamin Constant), and backed by almost every man in France under five-and-thirty, is a power which no one dares despise; and, by earnest and well-directed exertions, is sure of ultimate victory.
Since the above observations were written, the Election Law has been presented. It just doubles the number of the electors, making them 180,000 instead of 90,000, and it reduces to 500 francs of direct taxation, the qualification for eligibility.
This is poor enough, but it is more than problematical whether even this will be allowed to pass without further alterations by a Chamber constituted like the present.
73.
THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE, I
EXAMINER, 9 JAN., 1831, PP. 20-1
This is the first of a series of articles written, Mill says, “especially to point out in the character of the present age, the anomalies and evils characteristic of the transition from a system of opinions which had worn out, to another only in process of being formed.” The articles, he continues, were “lumbering in style, and not lively or striking enough to be at any time acceptable to newspaper readers; but had they been far more attractive, still, at that particular moment, when great political changes were impending, and engrossing all minds, these discussions were ill timed, and missed fire altogether” (CW, Vol. I, p. 181). These articles had one positive result: they were read by Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish historian and essayist, who praised them as “the first . . . which he had ever seen in a newspaper, hinting that the age was not the best of all possible ages” (EL, CW, Vol. XII, pp. 85-6), and sought out their author as a “new Mystic.” It was the beginning of an anomalous but intense friendship. The title probably echoes William Hazlitt’s The Spirit of the Age; or, Contemporary Portraits (London: Colburn, 1825), which includes an account of Bentham. Hazlitt (1778-1830), man of letters, had in the Examiner itself (1 Dec., 1816, p. 759) referred to Ernst Moritz Arndt’s Der Geist der Zeit (1805), from which the term probably originates, and had used the English version in the London Magazine in April 1820. See also n2 below.
The series of articles has five parts, printed in seven issues (Nos. 77, 82, 92, 97, 103, 107). All appear in the “Political Examiner.” The entry in Mill’s bibliography reads “A series of Essays headed ‘The Spirit of the Age’ and signed A.B., in the Examiner of 9th Jany, 23d Jany, 6 Febry, 13th March, 3d April, 15th May, and 29th May 1831” (MacMinn, p. 14). In Mill’s Somerville College set, all are indexed and enclosed in square brackets. This first article, listed as “The Spirit of the Age, No. 1,” has two corrections: at 233.41, “it true, is” is changed to “is true, it”, and at 234.16, “blew” is changed to “blow”.
the “spirit of the age” is in some measure a novel expression. I do not believe that it is to be met with in any work exceeding fifty years in antiquity. The idea of comparing one’s own age with former ages, or with our notion of those which are yet to come, had occurred to philosophers; but it never before was itself the dominant idea of any age.
It is an idea essentially belonging to an age of change. Before men begin to think much and long on the peculiarities of their own times, they must have begun to think that those times are, or are destined to be, distinguished in a very remarkable manner from the times which preceded them. Mankind are then divided, into those who are still what they were, and those who have changed: into the men of the present age, and the men of the past. To the former, the spirit of the age is a subject of exultation; to the latter, of terror; to both, of eager and anxious interest. The wisdom of ancestors, and the march of intellect, are bandied from mouth to mouth; each phrase originally an expression of respect and homage, each ultimately usurped by the partisans of the opposite catch-word, and in the bitterness of their spirit, turned into the sarcastic jibe of hatred and insult.
The present times possess this character. A change has taken place in the human mind; a change which, being effected by insensible gradations, and without noise, had already proceeded far before it was generally perceived. When the fact disclosed itself, thousands awoke as from a dream. They knew not what processes had been going on in the minds of others, or even in their own, until the change began to invade outward objects; and it became clear that those were indeed new men, who insisted upon being governed in a new way.
But mankind are now conscious of their new position. The conviction is already not far from being universal, that the times are pregnant with change; and that the nineteenth century will be known to posterity as the era of one of the greatest revolutions of which history has preserved the remembrance, in the human mind, and in the whole constitution of human society. Even the religious world teems with new interpretations of the Prophecies, foreboding mighty changes near at hand.1 It is felt that men are henceforth to be held together by new ties, and separated by new barriers; for the ancient bonds will now no longer unite, nor the ancient boundaries confine. Those men who carry their eyes in the back of their heads and can see no other portion of the destined track of humanity than that which it has already travelled, imagine that because the old ties are severed mankind henceforth are not to be connected by any ties at all; and hence their affliction, and their awful warnings. For proof of this assertion, I may refer to the gloomiest book ever written by a cheerful man—Southey’s Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society; a very curious and not uninstructive exhibition of one of the points of view from which the spirit of the age may be contemplated.2 They who prefer the ravings of a party politician to the musings of a recluse, may consult a late article in Blackwood’s Magazine, under the same title which I have prefixed to this paper.3 For the reverse of the picture, we have only to look into any popular newspaper or review.
Amidst all this indiscriminate eulogy and abuse, these undistinguishing hopes and fears, it seems to be a very fit subject for philosophical inquiry, what the spirit of the age really is; and how or wherein it differs from the spirit of any other age. The subject is deeply important: for, whatever we may think or affect to think of the present age, we cannot get out of it; we must suffer with its sufferings, and enjoy with its enjoyments; we must share in its lot, and, to be either useful or at ease, we must even partake its character. No man whose good qualities were mainly those of another age, ever had much influence on his own. And since every age contains in itself the germ of all future ages as surely as the acorn contains the future forest, a knowledge of our own age is the fountain of prophecy—the only key to the history of posterity. It is only in the present that we can know the future; it is only through the present that it is in our power to influence that which is to come.
Yet, because our own age is familiar to us, we are presumed, if I may judge from appearances, to know it by nature. A statesman, for example, if it be required of him to have studied any thing at all (which, however, is more than I would venture to affirm) is supposed to have studied history—which is at best the spirit of ages long past, and more often the mere inanimate carcass without the spirit: but is it ever asked (or to whom does the question ever occur?) whether he understands his own age? Yet that also is history, and the most important part of history, and the only part which a man may know and understand, with absolute certainty, by using the proper means. He may learn in a morning’s walk through London more of the history of England during the nineteenth century, than all the professed English histories in existence will tell him concerning the other eighteen: for, the obvious and universal facts, which every one sees and no one is astonished at, it seldom occurs to any one to place upon record; and posterity, if it learn the rule, learns it, generally, from the notice bestowed by contemporaries on some accidental exception. Yet are politicians and philosophers perpetually exhorted to judge of the present by the past, when the present alone affords a fund of materials for judging, richer than the whole stores of the past, and far more accessible.
But it is unadvisable to dwell longer on this topic, lest we should be deemed studiously to exaggerate that want, which we desire that the reader should think ourselves qualified to supply. It were better, without further preamble, to enter upon the subject, and be tried by our ideas themselves, rather than by the need of them.
The first of the leading peculiarities of the present age is, that it is an age of transition. Mankind have outgrown old institutions and old doctrines, and have not yet acquired new ones. When we say outgrown, we intend to prejudge nothing. A man may not be either better or happier at six-and-twenty, than he was at six years of age: but the same jacket which fitted him then, will not fit him now.
The prominent trait just indicated in the character of the present age, was obvious a few years ago only to the more discerning: at present it forces itself upon the most inobservant. Much might be said, and shall be said on a fitting occasion, of the mode in which the old order of things has become unsuited to the state of society and of the human mind. But when almost every nation on the continent of Europe has achieved, or is in the course of rapidly achieving, a change in its form of government; when our own country, at all former times the most attached in Europe to its old institutions, proclaims almost with one voice that they are vicious both in the outline and in the details, and that they shall be renovated, and purified, and made fit for civilized man, we may assume that a part of the effects of the cause just now pointed out, speak sufficiently loudly for themselves. To him who can reflect, even these are but indications which tell of a more vital and radical change. Not only, in the conviction of almost all men, things as they are, are wrong4 —but, according to that same conviction, it is not by remaining in the old ways that they can be set right. Society demands, and anticipates, not merely a new machine, but a machine constructed in another manner. Mankind will not be led by their old maxims, nor by their old guides; and they will not choose either their opinions or their guides as they have done heretofore. The ancient constitutional texts were formerly spells which would call forth or allay the spirit of the English people at pleasure: what has become of the charm? Who can hope to sway the minds of the public by the old maxims of law, or commerce, or foreign policy, or ecclesiastical policy? Whose feelings are now roused by the mottoes and watch-words of Whig and Tory? And what Whig or Tory could command ten followers in the warfare of politics by the weight of his own personal authority? Nay, what landlord could call forth his tenants, or what manufacturer his men? Do the poor respect the rich, or adopt their sentiments? Do the young respect the old, or adopt their sentiments? Of the feelings of our ancestors it may almost be said that we retain only such as are the natural and necessary growth of a state of human society, however constituted; and I only adopt the energetic expression of a member of the House of Commons, less than two years ago, in saying of the young men, even of that rank in society, that they are ready to advertise for opinions.
Since the facts are so manifest, there is the more chance that a few reflections on their causes, and on their probable consequences, will receive whatever portion of the reader’s attention they may happen to deserve.
With respect, then, to the discredit into which old institutions and old doctrines have fallen, I may premise, that this discredit is, in my opinion, perfectly deserved. Having said this, I may perhaps hope, that no perverse interpretation will be put upon the remainder of my observations, in case some of them should not be quite so conformable to the sentiments of the day as my commencement might give reason to expect. The best guide is not he who, when people are in the right path, merely praises it, but he who shows them the pitfalls and the precipices by which it is endangered; and of which, as long as they were in the wrong road, it was not so necessary that they should be warned.
There is one very easy, and very pleasant way of accounting for this general departure from the modes of thinking of our ancestors: so easy, indeed, and so pleasant, especially to the hearer, as to be very convenient to such writers for hire or for applause, as address themselves not to the men of the age that is gone by, but to the men of the age which has commenced. This explanation is that which ascribes the altered state of opinion and feeling to the growth of the human understanding. According to this doctrine, we reject the sophisms and prejudices which misled the uncultivated minds of our ancestors, because we have learnt too much, and have become too wise, to be imposed upon by such sophisms and such prejudices. It is our knowledge and our sagacity which keep us free from these gross errors. We have now risen to the capacity of perceiving our true interests; and it is no longer in the power of impostors and charlatans to deceive us.
I am unable to adopt this theory. Though a firm believer in the improvement of the age, I do not believe that its improvement has been of this kind. The grand achievement of the present age is the diffusion of superficial knowledge; and that surely is no trifle, to have been accomplished by a single generation. The persons who are in possession of knowledge adequate to the formation of sound opinions by their own lights, form also a constantly increasing number, but hitherto at all times a small one. It would be carrying the notion of the march of intellect too far, to suppose that an average man of the present day is superior to the greatest men of the beginning of the eighteenth century; yet they held many opinions which we are fast renouncing. The intellect of the age, therefore, is not the cause which we are in search of. I do not perceive that, in the mental training which has been received by the immense majority of the reading and thinking part of my countrymen, or in the kind of knowledge and other intellectual aliment which has been supplied to them, there is any thing likely to render them much less accessible to the influence of imposture and charlatanerie than there ever was. The Dr. Eadys still dupe the lower classes, the St. John Longs the higher:5 and it would not be difficult to produce the political and literary antitypes of both. Neither do I see, in such observations as I am able to make upon my contemporaries, evidence that they have any principle within them which renders them much less liable now than at any former period to be misled by sophisms and prejudices. All I see is, that the opinions which have been transmitted to them from their ancestors, are not the kind of sophisms and prejudices which are fitted to possess any considerable ascendancy in their altered frame of mind. And I am rather inclined to account for this fact in a manner not reflecting such extraordinarily great honour upon the times we live in, as would result from the theory by which all is ascribed to the superior expansion of our understandings.
The intellectual tendencies of the age, considered both on the favourable and on the unfavourable side, it will be necessary, in the prosecution of the present design, to review and analyse in some detail. For the present it may be enough to remark, that it is seldom safe to ground a positive estimate of a character upon mere negatives: and that the faults or the prejudices, which a person, or an age, or a nation has not, go but a very little way with a wise man towards forming a high opinion of them. A person may be without a single prejudice, and yet utterly unfit for every purpose in nature. To have erroneous convictions is one evil; but to have no strong or deep-rooted convictions at all, is an enormous one. Before I compliment either a man or a generation upon having got rid of their prejudices, I require to know what they have substituted in lieu of them.
Now, it is self-evident that no fixed opinions have yet generally established themselves in the place of those which we have abandoned; that no new doctrines, philosophical or social, as yet command, or appear likely soon to command, an assent at all comparable in unanimity to that which the ancient doctrines could boast of while they continued in vogue. So long as this intellectual anarchy shall endure, we may be warranted in believing that we are in a fair way to become wiser than our forefathers; but it would be premature to affirm that we are already wiser. We have not yet advanced beyond the unsettled state, in which the mind is, when it has recently found itself out in a grievous error, and has not yet satisfied itself of the truth. The men of the present day rather incline to an opinion than embrace it; few, except the very penetrating, or the very presumptuous, have full confidence in their own convictions. This is not a state of health, but, at the best, of convalescence. It is a necessary stage in the progress of civilization, but it is attended with numerous evils; as one part of a road may be rougher or more dangerous than another, although every step brings the traveller nearer to his desired end.
Not increase of wisdom, but a cause of the reality of which we are better assured, may serve to account for the decay of prejudices; and this is, increase of discussion. Men may not reason, better, concerning the great questions in which human nature is interested, but they reason more. Large subjects are discussed more, and longer, and by more minds. Discussion has penetrated deeper into society; and if no greater numbers than before have attained the higher degrees of intelligence, fewer grovel in that state of abject stupidity, which can only co-exist with utter apathy and sluggishness.
The progress which we have made, is precisely that sort of progress which increase of discussion suffices to produce, whether it be attended with increase of wisdom or no. To discuss, and to question established opinions, are merely two phrases for the same thing. When all opinions are questioned, it is in time found out what are those which will not bear a close examination. Ancient doctrines are then put upon their proofs; and those which were originally errors, or have become so by change of circumstances, are thrown aside. Discussion does this. It is by discussion, also, that true opinions are discovered and diffused. But this is not so certain a consequence of it as the weakening of error. To be rationally assured that a given doctrine is true, it is often necessary to examine and weigh an immense variety of facts. One single well-established fact, clearly irreconcilable with a doctrine, is sufficient to prove that it is false. Nay, opinions often upset themselves by their own incoherence; and the impossibility of their being well-founded may admit of being brought home to a mind not possessed of so much as one positive truth. All the inconsistencies of an opinion with itself, with obvious facts, or even with other prejudices, discussion evolves and makes manifest: and indeed this mode of refutation, requiring less study and less real knowledge than any other, is better suited to the inclination of most disputants. But the moment, and the mood of mind, in which men break loose from an error, is not, except in natures very happily constituted, the most favourable to those mental processes which are necessary to the investigation of truth. What led them wrong at first, was generally nothing else but the incapacity of seeing more than one thing at a time; and that incapacity is apt to stick to them when they have turned their eyes in an altered direction. They usually resolve that the new light which has broken in upon them shall be the sole light; and they wilfully and passionately blow out the ancient lamp, which, though it did not show them what they now see, served very well to enlighten the objects in its immediate neighbourhood. Whether men adhere to old opinions or adopt new ones, they have in general an invincible propensity to split the truth, and take half, or less than half of it; and a habit of erecting their quills and bristling up like a porcupine against any one who brings them the other half, as if he were attempting to deprive them of the portion which they have.
I am far from denying, that, besides getting rid of error, we are also continually enlarging the stock of positive truth. In physical science and art, this is too manifest to be called in question; and in the moral and social sciences, I believe it to be as undeniably true. The wisest men in every age generally surpass in wisdom the wisest of any preceding age, because the wisest men possess and profit by the constantly increasing accumulation of the ideas of all ages: but the multitude (by which I mean the majority of all ranks) have the ideas of their own age, and no others: and if the multitude of one age are nearer to the truth than the multitude of another, it is only in so far as they are guided and influenced by the authority of the wisest among them.
This is connected with certain points which, as it appears to me, have not been sufficiently adverted to by many of those who hold, in common with me, the doctrine of the indefinite progressiveness of the human mind; but which must be understood, in order correctly to appreciate the character of the present age, as an age of moral and political transition. These, therefore, I shall attempt to enforce and illustrate in the next paper.6
A.B.
74.
FRENCH NEWS [10]
EXAMINER, 9 JAN., 1831, PP. 24-5
For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. The article is headed “London, January 9.” In the Somerville College index it is listed as “Article on France”; Mill’s inked closing square bracket comes before the final paragraph of the article, on Russia and Poland, which is therefore not included.
a very mischievous regulation of the French Chambers (whose rules are, in many other respects, superior to those of our parliament) requires that all propositions, before they can be publicly discussed, shall be submitted to the Chamber sitting in bureaux or committees, and deliberating in secret. Unless three of the nine bureaux sanction the proposition, it drops.1 The bureaux have as yet come to no decision on the Parliamentary Reform Bill;2 and it is said that there have been stormy debates in the secret sittings. No one has the least expectation that the Bill will pass, unless mutilated and made almost worthless.
The popular and the oligarchical party are said to be marshalling and organizing their strength for the approaching contest; and it is added that M. Guizot and his friends, with their usual predilection for half measures, are forming a middle party, and endeavouring to trim the balance. The fault of these men is not in their intentions; and their acquirements and powers of mind no one disputes. Their error is a bigotted and coxcombical devotion to their own ways and their own disciples; and incapacity of conceiving that the government can go on well unless it goes precisely as they have settled beforehand.
75.
CONDUCT OF THE UNITED STATES TOWARDS THE INDIAN TRIBES
EXAMINER, 9 JAN., 1831, P. 25
This article was provoked by commentary on the Message of Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), military hero and Democratic President of the United States, 1828-36, in The Times, 4 Jan., 1831, pp. 1-2 (the passage concerning the Indians is on p. 2), and by the leading articles on the subject in The Times, 5 Jan., p. 2, and the Standard, 4 Jan., p. 2. A leading article in “Foreign Intelligence,” it is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A short article on the conduct of the United States towards the Indian tribes, without heading, in the Examiner of 9th January 1831” (MacMinn, p. 14). In the Somerville College set it is listed as “Article on the conduct of the United States towards the Indians” and enclosed in square brackets; there is one correction: at 236.19, “it” is deleted from the phrase “it is assumed”.
we have no room this week for any lengthened observations on the Message of the American President; but we think it an act of bare justice to take the earliest possible notice of some very mischievous remarks which have appeared in the Times and in the Standard on that portion of it which relates to the removal of the Indians. The facts are as follows:—Several of the States contain within their allotted boundaries the possessions of some of the Indian tribes. These possessions have invariably been held sacred; and the Indians have been protected by law against all attempts to encroach upon them. But in order that the lands now occupied by these tribes may be appropriated and cultivated by civilized men, the Government of the United States has proposed to the Indians to resign their present possessions, and accept others not yet included within the boundaries of any State, and which it is proposed should never hereafter be so included. The Indians will therefore retain these lands for themselves and their posterity. The President informs Congress that several of the Indian tribes have accepted these terms.
Hereupon a loud wailing from the Times and Standard, on the hardship and injustice sustained by these unfortunate men, in being turned out to make room for the descendants of Europeans. The pity of the reader is invoked for the extermination which is assumed to be their inevitable lot; and the Times asks “why should no attempt be made to civilize them?”1 This wise public instructor scarcely ever touches upon any topic beyond the range of daily conversation without betraying the fact of his knowing nothing whatever about it. The most prodigal expenditure in a Government like ours, professedly for a public object, generally proves nothing but that some of the “proprietors of Parliament,”2 or their connexions, are to be benefitted thereby. But when a Government like that of America, parsimonious even to excess, devotes money to any purpose, it affords such a proof as it is hardly ever in the power of any other Government to give, of its being deeply in earnest. Now, the Government of the United States has for years expended, for the purpose of civilizing the Indians, sums so large, as to form a very important item in the moderate expenditure of that cheap Government. The conduct of the United States towards the Indian tribes has been throughout, not only just, but noble. The Indians have occasionally been unjustly treated by several of the State Governments, who, like other people, are not the very best of judges in their own cause; but the Federal Government has been the guardian and protector of the rights of the Indians on all occasions, and has recently been very seriously embroiled with one of the State Governments3 on their account. We inform the Times—of what it should have known without our information, viz.—that one of the chief motives which suggested the removal of the Indians from their present lands was the desire that the State Governments might no longer have sovereign controul over them, and that they might be under the exclusive protection of their “great father,” the Government of the United States.
76.
FRENCH NEWS [11]
EXAMINER, 16 JAN., 1831, PP. 40-1
For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. The article is headed “London, January 16.” In the Somerville College set, it is listed as “Article on France”; Mill’s square brackets exclude four opening paragraphs on the situation in Poland, and three concluding ones on Dutch and Belgian affairs; and at 238.7, Mill deleted “above” from the printed phrase “Chamber above alone”.
the french election law has been referred, as usual, to a select committee, the composition of which, if it represents in any degree the intentions of the Chamber, demonstrates that the slender improvements which the bill offers will be pared down to microscopic tenuity. Opinions, still narrower than those of the Guizot party, are represented by no less than four of the nine, and not more than three are supposed to be favourable to the law as it stands.
The municipal law,1 which originated in the Chamber itself, has been recently returned by the select committee to which it was referred, and stands for discussion at an early period. The local bodies, by the provisions of this bill, are elective by a suffrage tolerably extensive, but all the good which would otherwise result from the law is neutralised by an unfortunate provision—that they are elected for six years, one half being changed triennially.2 They will thus be far less amenable to public opinion than at present, for being now named and revocable by the government, they may be turned out when public opinion declares so strongly against them, as to make their continuance in office a source of unpopularity to the King and Ministry.
The bill for reducing the number of judges in each court of assize from five to three, has passed, after much opposition.3 Neither side displayed more knowledge of the subject than might have been looked for in our own country under similar circumstances. M. Renouard, the King’s Commissioner for introducing the bill, who is not even a member of the Chamber alone showed any sense of the immense importance of the principle of undivided responsibility.4
The Ministers are retrenching the public expenditure with good sense and boldness. They have lowered the enormous salaries of the prefects, and have abolished a variety of places, with high-sounding titles and inordinate emoluments, substituting offices with more modest names and more moderate remuneration.
77.
THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE, II
EXAMINER, 23 JAN., 1831, PP. 50-2
For the context and entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 73. In the Somerville College copy, the article is listed as “The Spirit of the Age, No. 2.” There is one inked correction, “power in itself, on earth or in hell,” being altered to “power on earth or in hell itself”
(245.17-18).
i have said that the present age is an age of transition: I shall now attempt to point out one of the most important consequences of this fact. In all other conditions of mankind, the uninstructed have faith in the instructed. In an age of transition, the divisions among the instructed nullify their authority, and the uninstructed lose their faith in them. The multitude are without a guide; and society is exposed to all the errors and dangers which are to be expected when persons who have never studied any branch of knowledge comprehensively and as a whole attempt to judge for themselves upon particular parts of it.
That this is the condition we are really in, I may spare myself the trouble of attempting to prove: it has become so habitual, that the only difficulty to be anticipated is in persuading any one that this is not our natural state, and that it is consistent with any good wishes towards the human species, to pray that we may come safely out of it. The longer any one observes and meditates, the more clearly he will see, that even wise men are apt to mistake the almanack of the year for a treatise on chronology; and as in an age of transition the source of all improvement is the exercise of private judgment, no wonder that mankind should attach themselves to that, as to the ultimate refuge, the last and only resource of humanity. In like manner, if a caravan of travellers had long been journeying in an unknown country under a blind guide, with what earnestness would the wiser among them exhort the remainder to use their own eyes, and with what disfavour would any one be listened to who should insist upon the difficulty of finding their way, and the necessity of procuring a guide after all. He would be told with warmth, that they had hitherto missed their way solely from the fatal weakness of allowing themselves to be guided, and that they never should reach their journey’s end until each man dared to think and see for himself. And it would perhaps be added (with a smile of contempt), that if he were sincere in doubting the capacity of his fellow-travellers to see their way, he might prove his sincerity by presenting each person with a pair of spectacles, by means whereof their powers of vision might be strengthened, and all indistinctness removed.
The men of the past, are those who continue to insist upon our still adhering to the blind guide. The men of the present, are those who bid each man look about for himself, with or without the promise of spectacles to assist him.
While these two contending parties are measuring their sophistries against one another, the man who is capable of other ideas than those of his age, has an example in the present state of physical science, and in the manner in which men shape their thoughts and their actions within its sphere, of what is to be hoped for and laboured for in all other departments of human knowledge; and what, beyond all possibility of doubt, will one day be attained.
We never hear of the right of private judgment in physical science; yet it exists; for what is there to prevent any one from denying every proposition in natural philosophy, if he be so minded? The physical sciences however have been brought to so advanced a stage of improvement by a series of great men, and the methods by which they are cultivated so entirely preclude the possibility of material error when due pains are taken to arrive at the truth, that all persons who have studied those subjects have come to a nearly unanimous agreement upon them. Some minor differences doubtless exist; there are points on which the opinion of the scientific world is not finally made up. But these are mostly questions rather of curiosity than of use, and it is seldom attempted to thrust them into undue importance, nor to remove them, by way of appeal from the tribunal of the specially instructed to that of the public at large. The compact mass of authority thus created overawes the minds of the uninformed: and if here and there a wrong-headed individual, like Sir Richard Phillips, impugns Newton’s discoveries, and revives the long-forgotten sophisms of the Cartesians, he is not regarded.1 Yet the fallacies which at one time enthralled the subtlest understandings, might find, we suspect, in the present day, some intellects scarcely strong enough to resist them: but no one dares to stand up against the scientific world, until he too has qualified himself to be named as a man of science: and no one does this without being forced, by irresistible evidence, to adopt the received opinion. The physical sciences, therefore, (speaking of them generally) are continually growing, but never changing: in every age they receive indeed mighty improvements, but for them the age of transition is past.
It is almost unnecessary to remark in how very different a condition from this, are the sciences which are conversant with the moral nature and social condition of man. In those sciences, this imposing unanimity among all who have studied the subject does not exist; and every dabbler, consequently, thinks his opinion as good as another’s. Any man who has eyes and ears shall be judge whether, in point of fact, a person who has never studied politics, for instance, or political economy systematically, regards himself as any-way precluded thereby from promulgating with the most unbounded assurance the crudest opinions, and taxing men who have made those sciences the occupation of a laborious life, with the most contemptible ignorance and imbecility. It is rather the person who has studied the subject systematically that is regarded as disqualified. He is a theorist: and the word which expresses the highest and noblest effort of human intelligence is turned into a bye-word of derision. People pride themselves upon taking a “plain, matter-of-fact” view of a subject. I once heard of a book entitled “Plain Politics for Plain People.” I well remember the remark of an able man on that occasion: “What would be thought of a work with such a title as this, Plain Mathematics for Plain People?” The parallel is most accurate. The nature of the evidence on which these two sciences rest, is different, but both are systems of connected truth: there are very few of the practical questions of either, which can be discussed with profit unless the parties are agreed on a great number of preliminary questions: and accordingly, most of the political discussions which one hears and reads are not unlike what one would expect if the binomial theorem were propounded for argument in a debating society none of whose members had completely made up their minds upon the Rule of Three. Men enter upon a subject with minds in no degree fitted, by previous acquirements, to understand and appreciate the true arguments: yet they lay the blame on the arguments, not on themselves: truth, they think, is under a peremptory obligation of being intelligible to them, whether they take the right means of understanding it or no. Every mode of judging, except from first appearances, is scouted as false refinement. If there were a party among philosophers who still held to the opinion that the sun moves round the earth, can any one doubt on which side of the question the vulgar would be? What terms could express their contempt for those who maintained the contrary! Men form their opinions according to natural shrewdness, without any of the advantages of study. Here and there a hard-headed man, who sees farther into a mill-stone than his neighbours, and takes it into his head that thinking on a subject is one way of understanding it, excogitates an entire science, and publishes his volume; in utter unconsciousness of the fact, that a tithe of his discoveries were known a century ago, and the remainder (supposing them not too absurd to have occurred to anybody before) have been refuted in any year which you can mention, from that time to the present.
This is the state we are in; and the question is, how we are to get out of it. As I am unable to take the view of this matter which will probably occur to most persons as being the most simple and natural, I shall state in the first instance what this is, and my reasons for dissenting from it.
A large portion of the talking and writing common in the present day, respecting the instruction of the people, and the diffusion of knowledge, appears to me to conceal, under loose and vague generalities,2 notions at bottom altogether fallacious and visionary.
I go, perhaps, still further than most of those to whose language I so strongly object, in the expectations which I entertain of vast improvements in the social condition of man, from the growth of intelligence among the body of the people; and I yield to no one in the degree of intelligence of which I believe them to be capable. But I do not believe that, along with this intelligence, they will ever have sufficient opportunities of study and experience, to become themselves familiarly conversant with all the inquiries which lead to the truths by which it is good that they should regulate their conduct, and to receive into their own minds the whole of the evidence from which those truths have been collected, and which is necessary for their establishment. If I thought all this indispensable, I should despair of human nature. As long as the day consists but of twenty-four hours, and the age of man extends but to threescore and ten, so long (unless we expect improvements in the arts of production sufficient to restore the golden age) the great majority of mankind will need the far greater part of their time and exertions for procuring their daily bread. Some few remarkable individuals will attain great eminence under every conceivable disadvantage; but for men in general, the principal field for the exercise and display of their intellectual faculties is, and ever will be, no other than their own particular calling or occupation. This does not place any limit to their possible intelligence; since the mode of learning, and the mode of practising, that occupation itself, might be made one of the most valuable of all exercises of intelligence: especially when, in all the occupations in which man is a mere machine, his agency is so rapidly becoming superseded by real machinery. But what sets no limit to the powers of the mass of mankind, nevertheless limits greatly their possible acquirements. Those persons whom the circumstances of society, and their own position in it, permit to dedicate themselves to the investigation and study of physical, moral, and social truths, as their peculiar calling, can alone be expected to make the evidences of such truths a subject of profound meditation, and to make themselves thorough masters of the philosophical grounds of those opinions of which it is desirable that all should be firmly persuaded, but which they alone can entirely and philosophically know. The remainder of mankind must, and, except in periods of transition like the present, always do, take the far greater part of their opinions on all extensive subjects upon the authority of those who have studied them.
It does not follow that all men are not to inquire and investigate. The only complaint is, that most of them are precluded by the nature of things from ever inquiring and investigating enough. It is right that they should acquaint themselves with the evidence of the truths which are presented to them, to the utmost extent of each man’s intellect, leisure, and inclination. Though a man may never be able to understand Laplace, that is no reason he should not read Euclid. But it by no means follows that Euclid is a blunderer, or an arrant knave, because a man who begins at the forty-seventh proposition cannot understand it: and even he who begins at the beginning, and is stopped by the pons asinorum, is very much in the wrong if he swears he will navigate his vessel himself, and not trust to the nonsensical calculations of mathematical land-lubbers.3 Let him learn what he can, and as well as he can—still however bearing in mind, that there are others who probably know much with which he not only is unacquainted, but of the evidence of which, in the existing state of his knowledge, it is impossible that he should be a competent judge.
It is no answer to what has just been observed, to say that the grounds of the most important moral and political truths are simple and obvious, intelligible to persons of the most limited faculties, with moderate study and attention; that all mankind, therefore, may master the evidences, and none need take the doctrines upon trust. The matter of fact upon which this objection proceeds, is happily true. The proofs of the moral and social truths of greatest importance to mankind, are few, brief, and easily intelligible; and happy will be the day on which these shall begin to be circulated among the people, instead of second-rate treatises on the Polarization of Light, and on the Rigidity of Cordage.4 But, in the first place, it is not every one—and there is no one at a very early period of life—who has had sufficient experience of mankind in general, and has sufficiently reflected upon what passes in his own mind, to be able to appreciate the force of the reasons when laid before him. There is, however, a great number of important truths, especially in Political Economy, to which, from the particular nature of the evidence on which they rest, this difficulty does not apply. The proofs of these truths may be brought down to the level of even the uninformed multitude, with the most complete success. But, when all is done, there still remains something which they must always and inevitably take upon trust: and this is, that the arguments really are as conclusive as they appear; that there exist no considerations relevant to the subject which have been kept back from them; that every objection which can suggest itself has been duly examined by competent judges, and found immaterial. It is easy to say that the truth of certain propositions is obvious to common sense. It may be so: but how am I assured that the conclusions of common sense are confirmed by accurate knowledge? Judging by common sense is merely another phrse for judging by first appearances; and every one who has mixed among mankind with any capacity for observing them, knows that the men who place implicit faith in their own common sense are, without any exception, the most wrong-headed and impracticable persons with whom he has ever had to deal. The maxim of pursuing truth without being biassed by authority, does not state the question fairly; there is no person who does not prefer truth to authority—for authority is only appealed to as a voucher for truth. The real question, to be determined by each man’s own judgment, is, whether most confidence is due in the particular case, to his own understanding, or to the opinion of his authority? It is therefore obvious, that there are some persons in whom disregard of authority is a virtue, and others in whom it is both an absurdity and a vice. The presumptuous man needs authority to restrain him from error: the modest man needs it to strengthen him in the right. What truths, for example, can be more obvious, or can rest upon considerations more simple and familiar, than the first principles of morality? Yet we know that extremely ingenious things may be said in opposition to the plainest of them—things which the most highly-instructed men, though never for a single moment misled by them, have had no small difficulty in satisfactorily answering. Is it to be imagined that if these sophisms had been referred to the verdict of the half-instructed—and we cannot expect the majority of every class to be any thing more—the solution of the fallacy would always have been found and understood? notwithstanding which, the fallacy would not, it is most probable, have made the slightest impression upon them:—and why? Because the judgment of the multitude would have told them, that their own judgment was not a decision in the last resort; because the conviction of their understandings going along with the moral truth, was sanctioned by the authority of the best-informed; and the objection, though insoluble by their own understandings, was not supported but contradicted by the same imposing authority. But if you once persuade an ignorant or a half-instructed person, that he ought to assert his liberty of thought, discard all authority, and—I do not say use his own judgment, for that he never can do too much—but trust solely to his own judgment, and receive or reject opinions according to his own views of the evidence;—if, in short, you teach to all the lesson of indifferency, so earnestly, and with such admirable effect, inculcated by Locke upon students,5 for whom alone that great man wrote, the merest trifle will suffice to unsettle and perplex their minds. There is not a truth in the whole range of human affairs, however obvious and simple, the evidence of which an ingenious and artful sophist may not succeed in rendering doubtful to minds not very highly cultivated, if those minds insist upon judging of all things exclusively by their own lights. The presumptuous man will dogmatize, and rush headlong into opinions, always shallow, and as often wrong as right; the man who sets only the just value upon his own moderate powers, will scarcely ever feel more than a half-conviction. You may prevail on them to repudiate the authority of the best-instructed, but each will full surely be a mere slave to the authority of the person next to him, who has greatest facilities for continually forcing upon his attention considerations favourable to the conclusion he himself wishes to be drawn.
It is, therefore, one of the necessary conditions of humanity, that the majority must either have wrong opinions, or no fixed opinions, or must place the degree of reliance warranted by reason, in the authority of those who have made moral and social philosophy their peculiar study. It is right that every man should attempt to understand his interest and his duty. It is right that he should follow his reason as far as his reason will carry him, and cultivate the faculty as highly as possible. But reason itself will teach most men that they must, in the last resort, fall back upon the authority of still more cultivated minds, as the ultimate sanction of the convictions of their reason itself.
But where is the authority which commands this confidence, or deserves it? Nowhere: and here we see the peculiar character, and at the same time the peculiar inconvenience, of a period of moral and social transition. At all other periods there exists a large body of received doctrine, covering nearly the whole field of the moral relations of man, and which no one thinks of questioning, backed as it is by the authority of all, or nearly all, persons, supposed to possess knowledge enough to qualify them for giving an opinion on the subject. This state of things does not now exist in the civilized world—except, indeed, to a certain limited extent in the United States of America. The progress of inquiry has brought to light the insufficiency of the ancient doctrines; but those who have made the investigation of social truths their occupation, have not yet sanctioned any new body of doctrine with their unanimous, or nearly unanimous, consent. The true opinion is recommended to the public by no greater weight of authority than hundreds of false opinions; and, even at this day, to find any thing like a united body of grave and commanding authority, we must revert to the doctrines from which the progressiveness of the human mind, or, as it is more popularly called, the improvement of the age, has set us free.
In the mean time, as the old doctrines have gone out, and the new ones have not yet come in, every one must judge for himself as he best may. Learn, and think for yourself, is reasonable advice for the day: but let not the business of the day be so done as to prejudice the work of the morrow. “Les supériorités morales,” to use the words of Fiévée, “finiront par s’entendre;”6 the first men of the age will one day join hands and be agreed: and then there is no power on earth or in hell itself, capable of withstanding them.
But ere this can happen there must be a change in the whole framework of society, as at present constituted. Worldly power must pass from the hands of the stationary part of mankind into those of the progressive part. There must be a moral and social revolution, which shall, indeed, take away no men’s lives or property, but which shall leave to no man one fraction of unearned distinction or unearned importance.
That man cannot achieve his destiny but through such a transformation, and that it will and shall be effected, is the conclusion of every man who can feel the wants of his own age, without hankering after past ages. Those who may read these papers, and in particular the next succeeding one,7 will find there an attempt, how far successful others must judge, to set forth the grounds of this belief.
For mankind to change their institutions while their minds are unsettled, without fixed principles, and unable to trust either themselves or other people, is, indeed, a fearful thing. But a bad way is often the best, to get out of a bad position. Let us place our trust for the future, not in the wisdom of mankind, but in something far surer—the force of circumstances—which makes men see that, when it is near at hand, which they could not foresee when it was at a distance, and which so often and so unexpectedly makes the right course, in a moment of emergency, at once the easiest and the most obvious.
A.B.
78.
FRANCE
EXAMINER, 23 JAN., 1831, P. 55
Here Mill introduces a Paris correspondent, Pierre Martin Maillefer (ca. 1799-?), journalist and member of the Aide-toi Society, whom Mill probably persuaded in August 1830 (see CW, Vol. XII, p. 63) to write for the Examiner (see Nos. 95, 99, 117). Maillefer’s lengthy article (pp. 55-6, dated 11 Jan.) follows the three paragraphs here included. The article, in “Foreign Intelligence,” is headed as title. Described in Mill’s bibliography as “Paragraphs introductory to a series of letters from France, in the Examiner of 23d Jany 1831” (MacMinn, p. 14), the item is listed on the fly-leaf of the Somerville College set as “Introductory remarks to a French correspondence (by Martin Maillefer),” and Mill’s part of the article is enclosed in square brackets.
we have succeeded in obtaining the aid of a most valuable correspondent at Paris, whose first letter appears in this day’s Examiner. England has newspapers enough, which, while hypocritically affecting zeal for Parliamentary Reform at home, make it their daily business to re-echo the most contemptible calumnies propagated by the new Oligarchy against the Parliamentary Reformers of France. The letters of our correspondent will be a faithful picture of the opinions, the feelings, perhaps even the errors, of the younger and more ardent portion of the popular party. Whatever they know, he knows; whatever they feel, he feels; whatever he believes, is believed at least by many of the most active and influential in a party of which he himself is not one of the obscurest members, and of which his position and his sources of information render him an adequate representative.
We are not responsible for all the opinions of our correspondent, nor do we expect that he will never express any sentiments in which we should disagree. But we can answer for the purity and excellence of all the public objects, which he, and his friends, have in view. We cannot, of course, guarantee all the facts which he relates, especially those which are of the nature of anecdotes; but we are certain that he will affirm nothing as true, but what is at least, very generally believed; and it is often of as much, or even of still greater importance and interest, to know what is thought to be true, than what really is so. We are convinced, in short, that as nothing will be disguised in these letters, both the faults and the virtues of the French character, and of the popular party in particular, will be exhibited in them, with the utmost fidelity and naïveté; and that here, and no where else, will the English reader be enabled to judge the more exaltés of the young patriots of France from their own lips. The very first letter, and the picture which it exhibits of public opinion in France, exemplify at once the virtues and the failings most natural to the French people, those connected with great susceptibility and mobility of character. In the most sanguinary excesses of the first revolution, as a word would rouse the popular fury, so a word would calm it: and now, with manners and habits infinitely softened and improved, the French retain the same excitability of spirit: the most lively gratitude and affection towards public men who wish, or seem to wish their good; suspicion and distrust, easily conceived, and easily renounced; political tergiversation punished for a time by bitter resentment, but very slender and inadequate services accepted as a full atonement.
The correspondence will not be continued every week, but as often as events may require and space permit, or as the reception which it meets with from the public, may seem to justify.
79.
FRENCH NEWS [12]
EXAMINER, 23 JAN., 1831, P. 57
This article is headed “London, January 23.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. In the Somerville College copy, the article is listed as “Article on France”; and Mill’s square brackets enclose the part of the article here included (two further paragraphs comment on Polish and Hanoverian affairs).
during the last week, the French Chamber of Deputies has been principally occupied with a bill relating to the Sinking Fund; in one clause of which, the Ministers have sustained what appears to us a merited defeat.1 They proposed, that the nation should pledge itself never to cancel any portion of stock until the whole was redeemed; but to continue paying the interest upon the stock which is bought up, to augment the fund for the redemption of the remainder. As M. Gautier observed, this would be to throw the whole burthen of paying off the debt upon the present generation, although in all probability the next will have greater resources, and fewer demands upon its finances for extraordinary expense.2 The clause was thrown out, members of both oppositions speaking and voting against it.
General Lamarque made another of his vehement exhortations to war.3 He appears to resemble the other Bonapartist officers in their military mania, though not in their baser attributes, the low selfishness and imbecile vanity, which distinguish almost the whole of Napoleon’s parvenu nobility. M. Mauguin followed with a speech of considerable ability, full of just observations on the character of foreign governments, particularly of the English, the Aristocratical character of which he perfectly understands; but too much in the same warlike tone.4 That able and highly-principled paper, the Courrier Français, has answered both speeches in an article, which, we trust, will be read in every corner of France.5
Addresses from the People and from the National Guard of different parts of France to Lafayette, lamenting his retirement,6 and to the King, demanding popular institutions,7 are now to be found in every number of the French newspapers, and they seem to be as numerous from what were thought the backward parts of France, as from any others.
80.
THE QUARTERLY REVIEW ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMISTS
EXAMINER, 30 JAN., 1831, P. 68
Mill in this article replies to “The Political Economists,” Quarterly Review, XLIV (Jan. 1831), 1-52, by George Poulett Scrope (1797-1876), liberal M.P. for Stroud, 1833-68, geologist and writer on economics. The item, headed as title, appears in the “Literary Examiner.” It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘The Quarterly Review on the Political Economists’ in the Examiner of 30th January 1831” (MacMinn, p. 15). It is listed as title and marked as Mill’s in the Somerville College set.
the number just published of the Quarterly Review, contains an article headed “The Political Economists,” which exhibits some proofs of thought and talent, and more of arrogance and self-sufficiency. In criticizing, sometimes with and sometimes without ground, various doctrines of various Political Economists, from some part or other of whose writings, however, he has derived every valuable idea, relevant to the subject, which his article contains, he is careful to assure the reader on every topic which he successively takes in hand, that not a word of sense has been spoken upon it by any of his predecessors: after which he proceeds to lay down the true theory of the subject, with an unhesitating and undisguised confidence in his own infallibility, which is not altogether becoming in one who contends that those who have hitherto written on this extensive and complicated science, many of whom he will not pretend to have been any way his inferiors in mental endowments, have fallen into so many errors.
Though we have said thus much in dispraise of the spirit in which this article is conceived, our object in noticing it is to draw attention to one portion of it, which is on the whole praiseworthy: we mean the concluding pages,1 in which the writer strongly insists upon the insufficiency and sterility of all inquiries which relate to the means by which a community may obtain the greatest accumulation of commodities possessing exchangeable value, unless followed up by the inquiry how far the particular nature of those commodities, and the manner in which they are distributed among the different members of the community, are conducive to human happiness in the largest sense and upon the most extended scale. He adds (and on this important truth he dwells at some length, and in a spirit honourable to his feelings,) that the wealth of a country is upon a footing most favourable to human happiness, just in proportion to the number of persons whom it enables to obtain, by their bodily and mental exertions, a comfortable subsistence; while on the contrary, a further increase of the wealth of particular individuals beyond this point, makes a very questionable addition to the general happiness; and is even, if the same wealth would otherwise have been employed in raising other persons from a state of poverty, a positive evil.
These are precisely our opinions, and it is in the spirit of them that we would wish all legislation to be directed, so far as is consistent with that secure enjoyment, by every man, of the fruits of his industry, or that of his ancestors, which is an essential condition of all human prosperity. But we know not whence the reviewer has derived the idea, that the political economists of the present day are adverse to these views; nor do we see much good sense in his complaint that the science, as it at present exists, is founded upon a wrong principle, because it professes to inquire only how a nation may be made rich, not how it may be made happy. It is not usual to find fault with mathematics, for being conversant only with lines, and angles, and planes, and solids, and numbers; nor is it ever surmised that mathematical science is founded upon a wrong basis, because mankind cannot be made happy by means of that science exclusively. The truth is, that there are, among those who have studied political economy, the same two kinds of men, into which the students of any other subject whatever may be divided: there are the men who know nothing except political economy, and the men whose ideas and whose feelings habitually comprehend the whole range of moral and political truth. This latter class of political economists the reviewer will find to be unanimously, or almost unanimously, of his opinion; and it is no fault of political economy if the other sort of persons, who have studied that and nothing else, judge of all practical questions exclusively by the considerations which their own subject presents to them, simply because they are incapable of appreciating any others; no more than the art of dancing is responsible for the individual absurdity of the dancing-master in Molière—“La philosophie est quelque chose; mais la danse, monsieur, la danse!”*
We have said thus much, because we are really sick of the crazy outcries against the political economists, which seem to be rather increasing than diminishing, at the very time when the public is almost unanimously adopting most of the opinions which principally excited the original uproar against them. It is unworthy of a man like this reviewer, who has really studied the subject sufficiently to have perceived, or at any rate to have profited by, the immense merits of the writers whom he attacks, thus to mingle his voice in the vulgar howl of ignorance against knowledge.
81.
FRENCH NEWS [13]
EXAMINER, 30 JAN., 1831, P. 72
This article is headed “London, January 30.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. The article is listed in the Somerville College copy as “Article on France”; Mill’s brackets indicate that only the first six paragraphs of this article are by him (it continues for six more paragraphs on Russia, Poland, and Hanover).
the king of the french, if a letter in the Courrier des Pays-bas is authentic, has had the inconceivable silliness of announcing to the Belgian Congress, that if they elect for their king the son of Eugène Beauharnais, he will not be recognized by the French Government.1 The sole apparent motive of this act of imbecility, is fear lest some of the few remaining Bonapartists should think of setting up that individual as King of France, in consequence of his father’s connexion with the object of their admiration and regret. This perfectly squares with the accounts we have heard of the panic terror into which Louis Philippe was thrown, by a letter which appeared in France from Joseph Bonaparte, asserting, with an obstinacy worthy of a more legitimate line, the claims of his nephew, the Duke of Reichstadt, to the throne.2 Such is Louis Philippe’s terror of the Bonapartists, that he dares refuse them nothing which they ask for; he has numbers of them about his house and person like tame mastiffs, not knowing, in his foolish fear, that the Bonapartist partakes far more of the nature of the spaniel, and is ever ready to lick the hand which feeds him.
We mentioned last week that addresses were pouring in from the departments, complaining of the conduct of government, and calling for more popular institutions. One of the best of these was from the admirable department of the Meurthe;3 to this several public functionaries, among others the Préfet, and the Procureur du Roi, were parties.4 For this the Préfet has been dismissed, and the Procureur du Roi reprimanded.
The Ministry have been defeated on their bill for altering the mode of levying a portion of the direct taxes. The subject was well and fully discussed on both sides, and it appears to us, on consideration, that the opponents of the measure were in the right.5
A Political Economy Society has been formed at Paris, consisting of thirty-six deputies of all parties, to meet once every week for the purpose of discussing among themselves such questions likely to come before them in their legislative capacity, as require a peculiar acquaintance with political economy.
The Ministry have at length introduced the promised bill for the elementary instruction of the people. It establishes a school in every commune, nearly upon the footing of the excellent parish schools in Scotland; and we doubt not that it will equal in its results that memorable example of great effects produced by small means.6
Another bill has been introduced by the Ministers, to remove the censorship of the theatres, and provide for the trial and punishment of such offences as may be committed by means of theatrical performances. Like our libel law, this bill is somewhat vague and indefinite, but it is to be hoped that French juries will temper it by a large and liberal interpretation.7
82.
THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE, III [Part 1]
EXAMINER, 6 FEB., 1831, PP. 82-4
For the context and entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 73. In the Somerville College set the article is listed as “The Spirit of the Age, No. 3,” and is marked with enclosing square brackets.
the affairs of mankind, or of any of those smaller political societies which we call nations, are always either in one or the other of two states, one of them in its nature durable, the other essentially transitory. The former of these we may term the natural state, the latter the transitional.
Society may be said to be in its natural state, when worldly power, and moral influence, are habitually and undisputedly exercised by the fittest persons whom the existing state of society affords. Or, to be more explicit; when on the one hand, the temporal, or, as the French would say, the material interests of the community, are managed by those of its members who possess the greatest capacity for such management; and on the other hand, those whose opinions the people follow, whose feelings they imbibe, and who practically and by common consent, perform, no matter under what original title, the office of thinking for the people, are persons better qualified than any others whom the civilization of the age and country affords, to think and judge rightly and usefully.
In these circumstances the people, although they may at times be unhappy and consequently discontented, habitually acquiesce in the laws and institutions which they live under, and seek for relief through those institutions and not in defiance of them. Individual ambition struggles to ascend by no other paths than those which the law recognizes and allows. The ruling powers have no immediate interest in counteracting the progress of civilization; society is either stationary, or moves onward solely in those directions in which its progress brings it into no collision with the established order of things.
Society may be said to be in its transitional state, when it contains other persons fitter for worldly power and moral influence than those who have hitherto enjoyed them: when worldly power, and the greatest existing capacity for worldly affairs, are no longer united but severed; and when the authority which sets the opinions and forms the feelings of those who are not accustomed to think for themselves, does not exist at all, or, existing, resides anywhere but in the most cultivated intellects, and the most exalted characters, of the age.
When this is the posture of affairs, society has either entered or is on the point of entering into a state in which there are no established doctrines; in which the world of opinions is a mere chaos, and in which, as to worldly affairs, whosoever is dissatisfied with any thing or for any reason, flies at once to an alteration in the conditions of worldly power, as a means for obtaining something which would remove what he deems the cause of his dissatisfaction. And this continues until a moral and social revolution (or it may be, a series of such) has replaced worldly power and moral influence in the hands of the most competent: when society is once more in its natural state, and resumes its onward progress, at the point where it was stopped before by the social system which it has shivered.
It is the object of the present paper, and of that by which it will be immediately followed,1 to demonstrate, that the changes in the visible structure of society which are manifestly approaching, and which so many anticipate with dread, and so many with hope of a nature far different from that which I feel, are the means by which we are to be carried through our present transitional state, and the human mind is to resume its quiet and regular onward course; a course as undisturbed by convulsions or anarchy, either in the political or in the moral world, as in the best times heretofore, but far more favoured than any former period in respect to the means of rapid advancement, and less impeded by the effect of counteracting forces.
To begin with the conditions of worldly power.
There are two states of society, differing in other respects, but agreeing in this, that worldly power is habitually exercised by the fittest men. One is, when the holders of power are purposely selected for their fitness. The other is, when the circumstances of society are such, that the possession of power of itself calls forth the qualifications for its exercise, in a greater degree than they can be acquired by any other persons in that state of society.
The former state was exemplified in the best constituted republics of antiquity, and is now realized in the United States of America: the latter prevailed throughout most of the nations of Europe in the middle ages.
In the best of the ancient republics all offices, political or military, which were supposed to require peculiar abilities, were conferred upon those who, in the opinion of the best judges, the educated gentlemen of the country (for such the free citizens of Athens, and, in its best times, of Rome, essentially were) possessed the greatest personal qualifications for administering the affairs of the state, and would administer them according to the best ideas of their age. With how much wisdom the choice was usually made, is evidenced in the case of Athens, by the extraordinary series of great men by whom the affairs of that little commonwealth were successively managed, and who made it the source of light and civilization to the world, and the most inspiring and elevating example which history has yet produced, of how much human nature is capable. In the case of Rome, the same fact is as certainly demonstrated, by the steady unintermitted progress of that community from the smallest beginnings to the highest prosperity and power.
In the United States, where those who are called to power, are so by the general voice of the whole people, experience equally testifies to the admirable good sense with which the highest offices have been bestowed. At every election of a President, without exception, the people’s choice has fallen on the person whom, as all impartial observers must admit, every circumstance that the people knew, pointed out as the fittest; nor is it possible to name one person preeminently qualified for the office, who has not, if he was a candidate, obtained it. In the only two cases in which subsequent experience did not confirm the people’s judgment, they corrected the error on the very first lawful opportunity.2
But supposing that, in communities constituted like the United States, the holders of power were not really, as in fact they are, the most qualified persons; they are at least those whom the people imagine to be so. The people, consequently, are satisfied with their institutions, and with their rulers; and feel no disposition to lay the blame of their private ills upon the existing order of society, nor to seek the improvement of their circumstances by any means which are repugnant to that order.
In addition to these instances, where the management of the affairs of the community is in the fittest hands because those hands are deliberately selected and put in charge of it, there is another class of cases, in which power is not assigned to him who is already the fittest, but has a strong tendency to render that person the fittest to whom it is assigned. The extreme case of this state of society is that of a Highland clan: and all other small societies of barbarous people are in the main similar. The chief of a clan is despotic, so far as custom and opinion and habit can render him so. He is not selected for any qualities of his, for his office is in all cases hereditary. But he is bred to it, and practised in it from his youth upwards; while every other member of the community is bred to, and practised in, something else, and has no opportunity of training himself to that. The position, moreover, of the society itself, does not admit of the chief’s being utterly destitute of the necessary qualifications for leading the clan in battle, and guiding them in council. It is the condition of his existence and theirs, that he should be capable of maintaining himself in circumstances of considerable difficulty. As men generally contrive to acquire the faculties which they cannot possibly do without, the head of a clan is scarcely ever absolutely unfit for governing: the clansmen are fit for executing, and sometimes for advising, but seldom for commanding. The leader, therefore, is still the fittest, or at the least as fit as any one else: and the essential character of a natural state of society is realised, for the people have confidence in those who manage their affairs.
Between these two states of society, that in which capacity raises men to power, and that in which power calls forth their capacity, there is this important difference, that the former state does not contain in itself the seeds of its own dissolution. A society which is directed by its most capable members, wheresoever they are to be found, may doubtless come to an end, as is shown by many instances, but at least its dissolution is never the direct consequence of its own organization, since every new intellectual power which grows up, takes its natural place in the existing social order, and is not obliged to break it in pieces in order to make itself way. But when the possession of power is guaranteed to particular persons independently of their capacity, those persons may be the fittest to-day and the most incapable to-morrow: and these social arrangements are exposed to certain destruction, from every cause which raises up in the society itself, fitter persons for power than those who possess it. For although mankind, in all ages except those of transition, are ever ready to obey and love those whom they recognize as better able to govern them, than they are to govern themselves, it is not in human nature to yield a willing obedience to men whom you think no wiser than yourself, especially when you are told by those whom you do think wiser, that they would govern you in a different manner. Unless therefore this state of society be so constituted as to prevent altogether the progress of civilization, that progress always ultimately overthrows it—the tendency of civilization being on the one hand, to render some of those who are excluded from power, fitter and fitter for it, and on the other hand (in a way hereafter to be explained) to render the monopolizers of power, actually less fit for it than they were originally.
Now, the proposition which I am about to prove is, that the above is a correct account of the process which has been going on for a considerable length of time in modern Europe:—that the qualification for power has been, and is, anything rather than fitness for it, either real or presumed: that nevertheless the holders of power, for a long time, possessed, from the necessary circumstances of society, greater fitness for it than was possessed by any other persons at that time; which fitness they have for some time been losing, while others through the advancement of civilization have been gaining it, until power, and fitness for power, have altogether ceased to correspond: and that this is one great cause, so far as political circumstances are concerned, of the general dissatisfaction with the present order of society, and the unsettled state of political opinion.
From the earliest periods of the nations of modern Europe, all worldly power has belonged to one particular class, the wealthy class. For many centuries the only wealth was land, and the only wealthy were the territorial aristocracy. At a later period, landed wealth ceased to be so greatly engrossed by a few noble families, and manufacturing and commercial wealth grew by little and little into large masses. Worldly power, under which expression I include all direct influence over the worldly affairs of the community, became proportionably diffused. It then belonged to two classes, but to them exclusively, the landed gentry, and the monied class; and in their hands it still remains.
For many ages these were felt by all to be the proper depositories of power, because they possessed, on the average, such qualifications for it as no other members of the community, in the then state of civilization, could rationally hope to acquire. It cannot, for example, be imagined that the villeins or serfs, or even the smaller freeholders, in those ages in which nothing was to be learnt from books, but all from practice and experience, could be so fit for commanding the nation in battle, or deliberating on its affairs in council, as those who had been taught to look to these as their appointed functions and occupations, who had been trained to fitness for them in every way which was suggested by the conceptions of those times, and who from constant practice, possessed at least the same kind of superiority in their business, which an experienced workman possesses over one who has never handled a tool.
It is not pretended that the barons were in themselves very fit for power, or that they did not use it very ill; they did so, as history testifies, to a frightful extent: not that I agree in one-half of all that is said in their disparagement by many who, if contemporary with them, would most probably have admired them, having no standard of approbation but the ideas of their own age. But those may be in themselves very unfit, than whom, nevertheless, an uncivilized age affords none fitter: and power, which is not accountable to those interested in its being properly employed, is likely to be abused, even though it be held by the most capable persons, not in a rude age only, but in the most highly civilized one. This is one of those principles which being true in all states and in all situations in which man has been found, or in which we can rationally expect to find him, must be allowed the paramount importance which is due to it, whatever be the state of society that we are considering. This may not always have been duly adverted to by the historical school of politicians (by whom, be it understood, I mean the really profound and philosophic inquirers into history in France and Germany, not the Plausibles, who in our own land of shallowness and charlatanerie, babble about induction without having ever considered what it is, relying on that rhetoric which is defined by Plato as the art of appearing profoundly versed in a subject to those who know nothing at all about it).3 I say, those who have endeavoured to erect an inductive philosophy of history, may be charged with having taken insufficient account of the qualities in which mankind in all ages and nations are alike, their attention being unduly engrossed by the differences; but there is an error on the other side, to which those are peculiarly liable, who build their philosophy of politics upon what they term the universal principles of human nature. Such persons often form their judgments, in particular cases, as if, because there are universal principles of human nature, they imagined that all are such which they find to be true universally of the people of their own age and country. They should consider that if there are some tendencies of human nature, and some of the circumstances by which man is surrounded, which are the same in all ages and countries, these never form the whole of the tendencies, or of the circumstances, which exist in any particular age or country: each possesses, along with those invariable tendencies, others which are changeable, and peculiarly its own; and in no age, as civilization advances, are the prevailing tendencies exactly the same as in the preceding age, nor do those tendencies act under precisely the same combination of external circumstances.
We must not therefore (as some may be apt to do,) blame the people of the middle ages for not having sought securities against the irresponsible power of their rulers; persuading ourselves that in those or in any times, popular institutions might exist, if the many had sense to perceive their utility, and spirit to demand them. To find fault with our ancestors for not having annual parliaments, universal suffrage, and vote by ballot, would be like quarrelling with the Greeks and Romans for not using steam navigation, when we know it is so safe and expeditious; which would be, in short, simply finding fault with the third century before Christ for not being the eighteenth century after. It was necessary that many other things should be thought and done, before, according to the laws of human affairs, it was possible that steam navigation should be thought of. Human nature must proceed step by step, in politics as well as in physics. The people of the middle ages knew very well, whether they were oppressed or not; and the opinion of the many, added to the fear of vengeance from some injured individual, acted in a certain, though doubtless by no means a sufficient, extent, as a restraint upon oppression. For any more effectual restraint than this, society was not yet ripe. To have thrown off their masters, and taken others, would have been to buy a still worse government at the price of a convulsion: to contrive, establish, and work the machine of a responsible government, was an impossibility in the then state of the human mind. Though the idea had been conceived, it could not have been realized. Several antecedent stages in civilization had previously to be passed through. An insurrection of the peasants against their feudal lords, could, in the nature of things, have only been, what it actually was, a Jacquerie:4 for any more rational effort there was needed a power of self-restraint for the purpose of union, and a confidence in each other, which they are not to be blamed for not having, since it could only be the slow result of a habit of acting in concert for other purposes, which, in an extensive country, can only co-exist with a high state of civilization. So soon as any portion of the people did acquire this habit of acting together, they did seek better political securities, and obtained them: witness the rise of the free cities, and corporations, all over Europe. The people therefore of the middle ages had as good a government as the circumstances of the middle ages admitted; their affairs were less badly managed, in that bad age, by their masters, than they could have managed them for themselves. The army of Godefroi de Bouillon in the first crusade, was not quite so efficient an instrument of warfare as that of the Duke of Wellington, in 1815: but it was considerably more so than that of Peter the Hermit, which preceded it.5
From these remarks it will be seen how greatly I differ, at once from those, who seeing the institutions of our ancestors to be bad for us, imagine that they were bad for those for whom they were made, and from those who ridiculously invoke the wisdom of our ancestors as authority for institutions which in substance are now totally different, howsoever they may be the same in form. The institutions of our ancestors served passably well for our ancestors, and that from no wisdom of theirs; but from a cause to which, I am afraid, nearly all the good institutions which have ever existed, owed their origin, namely the force of circumstances: but the possessors of power in the present day are not the natural successors of the possessors of power in that day. They may show a valid title to inherit the property, perhaps, of the ancient Barons; but political power descends, as will be found in the long run, by a different law.
(The conclusion of this Paper in our next.)6
83.
FRENCH NEWS [14]
EXAMINER, 6 FEB., 1831, P. 88
This article is headed “London, February 6.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. In the Somerville College set the article is listed as “Article on France” and square brackets enclose the part here printed; the excluded parts are the first three paragraphs, on Belgium and Poland, and the concluding paragraph, on the French Chamber of Peers passing the bill that was enacted as Bull. 20, No. 85 (10 Feb., 1831), allowing ministers of the Jewish religion to be paid from public funds
(see No. 66).
the unsettled state of belgium, and the approaching struggle in Poland, appear to occupy and agitate the French people fare more than that which is of greater importance to human kind than the very existence of Belgium and Poland taken together—their own struggle for good institutions.1
The French are not, as is sometimes asserted, fond of war, but they have not the deep-rooted abhorrence of it, which so large a proportion of ourselves have; it is one of our few points of national superiority. The French are kept out of unjust war, not by a proper sense of its evils, but by a sentiment of national morality, which forbids infringement upon the rights of other nations. But it is obvious, that they would be ready, at the present instant, to seize hold of any just or plausible ground of quarrel, however trivial, for taking part with the Poles, whom they consider as engaged in the same cause with themselves; and as in reality, defending their own frontiers. When once the sword shall be drawn, and the five hundred thousand French soldiers, now under arms, shall, with a successful general at their head, be overrunning Europe, it is quite impossible to foresee for how long a period the progress of civilization, and that of good institutions all over the world may be stopped, or even for how large a space it may be thrown back.
84.
THE MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS OF FRANCE
EXAMINER, 13 FEB., 1831, PP. 98-9
This article was occasioned by the discussion of the municipal reform law, already frequently alluded to by Mill (see, e.g., Nos. 57 and 76). It is headed as title and printed in the “Political Examiner.” Described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘The Municipal Institutions of France’ in the Examiner of 13 Febry. 1830 [sic]” (MacMinn, p. 15), it is listed as title and marked with square brackets in the Somerville College set.
debates of great interest and importance are now taking place in the Chamber of Deputies, on the proposed municipal law. Our daily journalists, being altogether unaware of the importance of this as of almost every other topic beyond the range of every-day conversation, allow the public to remain utterly unacquainted, both with the debates themselves, and with the facts necessary to understand them. We shall briefly state the nature of the existing municipal institutions of France, and of the alterations proposed to be made in them by the present Bill.
France is divided into departments, and each department into arrondissements. Each arrondissement is likewise divided into cantons; but of this last subdivision it is unnecessary to say any thing further in this place. Below the canton, there remains only the division into communes or townships, consisting of a town or village, with the lands appertaining to it.
At the head of each department is a prefect, at the head of each arrondissement a sub-prefect, and at the head of each commune a mayor. The prefect and the sub-prefect are the delegates of the executive, the subordinate agents or instruments of the general government; and are therefore, very properly, named by the Crown. The mayor has also to perform various duties, judicial and administrative, which are delegated to him by the general government, but he is considered as the representative, not so much of the Crown as of the commune; appointed, not so much to take care that the commune performs its duties, as to see that it obtains its rights; and is therefore supposed to be, and generally is, one of the principal inhabitants of the place. Nevertheless, under the odious system of centralization introduced by Napoleon, and carried still farther by the restored Bourbons, the principle of which was to annihilate every atom or vestige of power not emanating from the central government, the mayors as well as the prefects and sub-prefects are named by the executive.1 In all communes exceeding, we believe, 3,000 inhabitants, they are appointed directly by the Crown; where the population is below that number, by the prefect of the department.
In addition to the prefect, the sub-prefect, and the mayor, there are also bodies, consisting of from twenty to thirty of the principal inhabitants or thereabouts, and termed, conseils généraux de département, conseils d’arrondissement, and conseils communaux or municipaux. These bodies are not boards, sitting constantly, but a kind of local parliaments, holding a session of about a fortnight once every year, and meeting for special purposes at any other time, if called together by the prefect, the sub-prefect, or the mayor, respectively. The duties of these councils are to determine what rates shall be levied for the local purposes of the department, the arrondissement, and the commune, and to what objects they shall be devoted; to audit the accounts of the preceding year; and to assess on each inhabitant of the department his proper share of the direct taxes of the department; for the chambers only determine upon certain general data what sum shall be paid by each department on account of each tax (impôt foncier, impôt mobilier, and portes et fenêtres). The departmental council afterwards shares out this demand among the several arrondissements, the council of each arrondissement among the several communes, and the council of each commune among the inhabitants.
Such are the functions of the various local councils. Their nomination emanates exclusively from the executive. They are named in every case by the Crown, or its delegate and representative, the prefect. Such were the liberties of France under the restoration! and yet there are slaves, both in this country and in France, who aver that the charter of 1814 was faulty by not giving sufficient power to the Crown!
The present bill, which originated with the Chamber of Deputies, not with the ministry, relates to the mayors, and the communal councils, exclusively, and has for its object, not to make any change in their functions, but to alter the mode of their nomination. There is a crying demand for a law for the former of these purposes, as the functions of the councils comprehend but a small proportion of that large part of the business of government, which can be most conveniently and unexceptionably performed by local representative bodies. But any extension of their powers would be pure evil, while they continue, as at present, to be named by the government: for if any part of the people’s business is to be transacted by persons, in the selection of whom they have no voice, it is better that it should be done at Paris, by the ministers and the Chamber, who are at least under the influence of the opinion of a larger public, and who are supposed to be controlled and restrained by the nation whom they profess to represent.
By the present bill, the municipal councils are to be elected by the most highly-taxed inhabitants of the commune, in a number amounting on the average to about one-thirtieth part of the population.2 The mayors are to be named as heretofore, by the King or the prefect, but they must be selected from among the municipal councillors.3 The mayor is to retain his functions for three years, the members of the council for six, one half going out every three years, but being immediately re-eligible.4
The debates on the bill afford a tolerable foretaste of those on the approaching electoral law,5 and it might be added, of those in our own House of Commons on the bill for Parliamentary Reform.6 The popular party contend that the suffrage for the local councils ought to be extended to all who are rated for direct taxes, and are able to read and write. They say, that the proposed law will throw the powers of the local councils in the smaller communes entirely into the hands of landed proprietors, who, though a numerous class in France, will yet, if invested with a monopoly of power, exercise it for their separate interests; and will, in particular, make it their grand object to throw the local expenses off the land, and levy them by octroi, or taxes on raw produce imported into the town or village, which obviously fall, with enormously disproportionate weight, upon the poorer classes, and those who have nothing to support them but their labour. This would be a monstrous evil. It is admitted that in a new country, rent, not being the result of labour, is the most proper fund from which the necessities of the state can be supplied: in France this has already been done to a large extent, and to undo it would be a mere confiscation of the earnings of the productive and industrious, to put into the pockets of a class which in France, we admit, is also for the most part productive and industrious, that which it has in no respect earned.
In answer to this are brought forward all the stale common-places, which are heard whenever a demand is made for irresponsible power; that men of considerable property are alone fit for managing any of the affairs of the public, they alone having a stake in the country, and being the exclusive possessors of intelligence. These insolent assumptions, which we fear mankind will be condemned to hear for a considerable time longer, were refuted by the speakers on the popular side, with an ability and soundness which we wish we could expect to see equalled in our own Honourable House next month. We rejoice at the proofs afforded by these debates of the growing strength of the popular party in the nation. Three highly esteemed deputies, MM. Marchal, Thouvenel, and Gaëtan de la Rochefoucault, who had never belonged to the extrême gauche, have made able and energetic speeches, in which they ally themselves expressly and in the strongest manner with the popular cause.7 The speech of M. Daunou, and that of M. Isambert, were excellent.8
As usual, the party which calls itself moderate, had all the intemperance to itself. It is astonishing to us how the popular leaders find patience to bear up, without any attempts at retaliation, against the reproaches heaped upon them every day by an insolent and corrupt oligarchy, whose shameless greed of places and dignities has equalled or surpassed anything previously known even in the worst times of the Restoration.
85.
FRENCH NEWS [15]
EXAMINER, 13 FEB., 1831, P. 106
The article is headed “London, February 13.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. The item is listed as “Article on France” in the Somerville College set, with the paragraphs here included surrounded by square brackets; the article begins with a paragraph, here excluded, on Belgian affairs.
the government of louis philippe appear to be trying a course of experiment how much the patience of the French people will bear. We mentioned in our last paper the dismissal of M. Merville, the prefect of Meurthe, for signing an address, in which wishes were expressed for more popular institutions.1 This was followed by the resignation of the sub-prefect, the mayor, his deputy, and many officers of the national guard.2 Another prefect has since been dismissed for his democratic inclinations, M. Pons de l’Hérault, prefect of the Jura.3 Such was this magistrate’s popularity, that a few days previously, on a mere rumour that he had been, or was about to be recalled, the people of the neighbouring country thronged into the town, the streets were crowded with people; deputations waited upon the prefect from all quarters to ascertain the fact; and a petition to the King, not to remove M. Pons, was actually sent to Paris, and must have crossed his dismissal on the road.4
The King has taken off the mask: and in his answer to an address from Gaillac, a town of some consequence in the south of France, has dropped at length his hypocritical adulation of the people and the revolution, and, for the first time, adopted the cant of the stationary or stagnation party.5 He has thus (whether from cowardice and weakness, or from original evil intention, we know not, nor need we care,) made his determination to stand, or, as we devoutly trust will be the case, to fall, with the new oligarchy. Posterity at least will know, if contemporaries do not, on whose head the responsibility should rest of all the evils which may result from another struggle, followed by another convulsion.
86.
THE BUDGET
EXAMINER, 20 FEB., 1831, PP. 113-14
Here Mill turns his attention to the British House of Commons, where, on 11 Feb., John Charles Spencer, Lord Althorp, introduced the budget (PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 2, cols. 403-18). The intentions behind the proposals, stated Spencer, were to reduce the burden on the poor, which could best be done by improving manufactures and thus increasing employment; to increase revenue by lowering duties and thereby increasing consumption; and to improve the distribution of taxes by spreading over the whole community those which fell on only one part. He proposed to abolish 210 offices, many in Ireland; to reduce duties on beer, leather, cider, and sugar; to reduce taxes on newspapers, coal, tallow candles, printed calicoes, glass, and tobacco; and to increase the tax on wine, timber, raw cotton, and passengers by steam. He also proposed to impose a one-half percent duty on the sale of funded property, but the outcry over this last proposal caused its immediate withdrawal. The debate continued on 14 Feb. in both Lords and Commons (see ibid., cols. 492-539).
The item, the first in the “Political Examiner,” is headed as title. It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘The Budget’ in the Examiner of 20th February 1831” (MacMinn, p. 15), and is listed as title and marked with square brackets in the Somerville College set.
the budget has given a shock to the influence of the Ministry, from which, it seems to be the general persuasion that they will hardly recover. All that class of politicians, so numerous in times of difficulty, who, in the civil dissensions of the seventeenth century, were termed “waiters upon Providence,”1 are beginning to desert the falling house. They are “losing their confidence in the Ministry,” which from them always means, their confidence in its continuing in place. Those whose respect for a Cabinet is proportioned to their opinion of its durability, have lowered the quota of their respect to three months at most.
It cannot be denied withal, that the present Budget evinces large views of public good, an enlightened perception of the pernicious working of our fiscal system, a discriminating selection of the worst parts of it to be first got rid of, which it would be injustice to compare for a moment with any of the feeble aspirations of preceding financiers: but, unhappily, these generous and enlarged projects of improvement are deformed with blunders of so portentous a magnitude, as have caused all that is admirable in the general scheme to be passed over with little attention and no gratitude: and unhappily the Ministers, who like the remainder of the Parliamentary herd, if they are capable of receiving, are incapable of originating truth and good sense, are indebted to others for all their enlightened views; while their blunders, alas! are all their own.
The taxes which are taken off are such as all who were acquainted with their operation, had long since pointed out as some of the very worst which disgrace our fiscal code. These which are to be laid on, the Ministers, as ministers are wont, reserved in petto, to be first announced in Parliament, when it was too late to retract with any dignity; and of course, they underwent no other consideration or scrutiny than such as could be given them by the feeble, infantine, ministerial, parliamentary minds of their official originators.
Although the tax of one-half per cent. on the transfer of stock has been abandoned, which was the least foolish course a ministry could adopt, which had been so foolish as to propose it; the question which it involves is too deeply important, and too certain to recur again in some other shape, to be let pass without a few words of remark.
A tax on stock is partial taxation; it is taxation imposed upon that class whose property is, from its very nature, more precarious, less protected by the feelings which ordinarily attach to property, and more tempting to financial cupidity, than any other; and it is taxation in breach of a direct Parliamentary pledge, as clear as words could make it, which formed as essential a part of the national contract with the fundholder, as the rate of interest.2
To the assertion, that the proposed tax is partial taxation, in other words, confiscation, aggravated by a direct breach of faith, Ministers had no answer to make, but that they intended to impose a similar tax on the transfer of land, and that their measure was no more a breach of national faith than was the income tax.3
Neither of these pleas in justification, will bear a moment’s thought. The land and the funds together, form a very small portion of the national wealth; and a tax which falls upon them both, and upon nothing else, is partial taxation no less than if it fell only upon one or other of them. A large portion of the funds, moreover, change hands as many times in a year as land does in a century, and would therefore, under the show and pretext of exact equality, be taxed unequally in the ratio of one hundred to one. The allusion to the income tax is actually silly. The income tax was a general measure. The national creditor never stipulated for exemption from bearing his due share, proportional to his property, of the public burthens. He stipulated that he should not be made to pay it in such a way as should enable a profligate ministry and parliament, under the fraudulent pretence of calling upon him for his share, to call on him for more than his share, and place the nation in the disgraceful predicament of a debtor saying to his creditor, God forbid I should refuse you the interest of my debt, but I am free to call part of it a tax, and under that name I mean to keep it in my own pocket.
If the fundholder is not taxed in the same proportion to his property as other people, it is in the power of Parliament to make the matter certain, by laying on a uniform tax in proportion to property. But if inequalities in the pressure of taxation are to be made up for, as this scheme proposes, by partial taxes on those who are supposed to be undertaxed, there is so much unavoidable uncertainty, and so much room for sophistry and quibble, in discussing whether the fundholder pays his share or less than his share, that he is the ready victim of any minister, who with plunder in his heart and jesuitry on his lips, should come down to Parliament with a proposition for throwing two-thirds of the public burthens upon the shoulders of a single class; and that, too, the only class whose property the nation has, by a special obligation, engaged itself to protect.
So far is this from being a hypothetical danger, urged merely for effect, and unlikely to be realized, that the very tax proposed realizes it as far as it goes. For can there be a more impudent assumption than that the fundholder does not pay his due share of the taxes? The rich, truly enough (and sufficiently to our discredit) are more lightly taxed than persons of small, or middling fortunes; but the poor fundholder pays the same taxes as any other poor man, and the rich fundholder pays the same as any other rich man. The fundholder pays all the assessed taxes. He pays all the taxes on consumption. He pays the legacy duty in common with the public in general; this the landholders, in their two Houses of Parliament, have taken good care that their land should not pay. There remain only the taxes which fall peculiarly on the land. Now, without saying any thing of their amount, which has been so grossly exaggerated; or of the counter-balancing advantage of low wages, which, to the greatest national detriment, is occasioned by those very taxes; is there a man in the country who does not know that there has been enacted a Corn Law for the declared purpose of compensating, and more than compensating, the landholders for all these taxes, at the cost of three times the amount, taken from the pockets of all the other classes of the community, the fundholder included? But the lion’s share of the plunder of the people does not content our rent-eating oligarchy; they would have the whole, and, doubtless, will make a desperate effort to seize and engross it, by means of the approaching Sham Reform. This at least is certain—that if, when the facts which prove the contrary are so flagrant and notorious, the impudent pretence is made, that the landlords bear more than their share of the taxes, and the fundholders less, it is a sufficient proof how abundantly needful the stipulation was, which formed part of the contract with the fundholder, that he should not be called upon to pay any tax, unless in common with all the rest of the community; for if a pretext can be found for imposing a partial tax upon him now, when, in the name of Heaven, can such a pretext possibly be wanting?
The other taxes which are to be laid on, are all more or less objectionable. The tax on raw cotton is less mischievous certainly than that on calicoes; but it is justly chargeable, though not quite in an equal degree, with nearly all the vices which a tax can have, together with the accidental one of being a new tax, and therefore disturbing previous expectations and arrangements. It falls heavier on the poor than on the rich; it impedes the increase of intercourse with foreign countries; it renders larger capitals necessary, for carrying on all the branches of manufacture in which cotton is used; it compels the keeping up of two establishments, one to levy the tax, and another to pay back as much (according to some) as two-thirds of it; and it occasions all the frauds inseparable from a system of drawbacks. And while we are on the subject of drawbacks, we may just remark, how much eagerness is always shown to prevent a tax from falling upon our exports, that is to say, upon foreigners, while our own people are suffered to be taxed à merci et à miséricorde, without a tithe of the complaints. This keen anxiety for the interests of our merchants, and indifference to that of the consumers, is quite in keeping with all the rest of the working of our aristocratical government.
The tax on steam-boat passengers is as indefensible an impost, viewed on general principles, as can easily be conceived; and it will, besides, most injuriously affect existing interests. Our fear is, that it is not sufficiently high to prevent the influx of Irish, which degrades and pauperizes our labourers; for if it were, nothing could exceed the delight and gratitude with which we should hail even so bad a means of effecting so virtuous an end.
The modification of the duties on timber is highly objectionable as an increased burthen upon a necessary of life and a material of all manufactures; while it has not, at least if the newspapers have rightly reported it, the redeeming merit of removing the inequality of taxation between Baltic and Canada timber.4 If it accomplished this, it would of itself save the country a sum of one million annually, which is now as completely lost and sacrificed as if it were thrown into the sea, or into the fire. But the measure, we fear, is so distant an approach to this equalization, that its effect in removing the evil of a forced and unprofitable employment of capital, will scarcely be perceived.
But if these were the best of all taxes, instead of ranking among the worst, could the ministers hope to gain the least credit with the public for merely shifting the burthen which oppresses us from one shoulder to the other, when we are all firmly convinced that such retrenchments are possible, as would have enabled taxes of this amount to be dispensed with altogether? What retrenchment, however, is to be expected from a ministry, which expatiates on its own economy in cutting off an Irish Postmaster-General, or a Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance, while it levies nine thousand additional soldiers to fight Swing;5 not having the common sense which would have taught any ploughboy, that Swing will range the country for ever, if he continues at large until regular troops can catch him; nor foreseeing, what has since been boasted of by the Attorney-General,6 that the common officers of justice would quietly go to the spot, and take the offenders and try them and hang them without the smallest impediment.
A Ministry, whose fears can thus far overmaster their reason, may possibly be sincere in making the monstrous assertion, that the public service does not admit of any diminution of taxation.7 But where was Mr. Hume when this was said? Had such a doctrine been advanced by a Goulburn or a Herries, what bounds could have been set to his indignation?
The Ministry should have taken off the duty on cottons, on sea-borne coals, on candles, on glass, and reduced those on newspapers and advertisements,8 without laying on any new tax at all, until they had time to see, first, what expenditure they could retrench, and next, how much revenue they would actually lose. The loss of revenue is never equal to the amount of the nominal sacrifice, because a portion of what the consumers save is sure to be expended in some other taxable article. These taxes in particular, as they take from the consumer very much more than they bring into the public treasury, would, when remitted, have set at liberty a much larger income than the nominal amount of the tax, and would consequently have increased in more than the usual degree, the produce of the other taxes. The abolition of the duty on glass, by leading to a large export of that article, would have caused increased imports, and an increase of the customs revenue. Neither must it be forgotten, that trade and manufactures are now extremely prosperous, and that an increase of revenue is naturally to be looked for from that cause alone. The equalization of the duties on wines, one of the best of Lord Althorp’s propositions, might have been persevered in; and as the abolition of the duty on glass would, we are informed, have been nearly a compensation to the wine merchant, for the small increased duty on Spanish, Portuguese, and German wines, a large increase of consumption and of revenue might have been expected, and a great extension of commercial intercourse with France, leading to manifold advantages, and not without a beneficial effect on the revenue.
If all these sources of increased revenue, together with such retrenchments as the proprietors of Parliament could be induced to permit, proved insufficient to supply the deficit occasioned by the repeal of so many taxes, it would have been a trifling evil to make up the deficiency for a single year by the issue of, certainly, far less than a million of exchequer bills. In the meantime, public attention would have been drawn to the possible necessity of a new tax; the merits and defects of all those which could occur to any one, would have been fully canvassed, and the least objectionable, or the least unacceptable, might have been chosen; unless a Parliamentary Reform, occurring in the meantime, should bring about (as, if not a mere imposture, it undoubtedly would) such retrenchment as would have rendered not these alone, but many others of our taxes altogether unnecessary.
It is not too late, even now, for the Ministers to adopt this course; but we fear there is little chance of it.
In giving up the proposed tax on the transfer of land and stock, the Ministry have abandoned the intended reduction of the duties on tobacco, and the abolition of those on glass. The first we do not lament; as we have no hope that a reduction, which would still have left a duty of 600 per cent. would have had the effect expected from it, and which alone could justify it,—the prevention of smuggling. The change of determination with respect to the duty on glass, we deeply regret.
87.
FRENCH NEWS [16]
EXAMINER, 20 FEB., 1831, PP. 121-2
This item is headed “London, February 20.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. The item is listed as “Article on France” and enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set.
there has been a slight disturbance at paris, in consequence of an attempt of some old royalists to celebrate mass for the soul of the Duc de Berri on the anniversary of his assassination; on the occasion of which celebration royal honours were paid, or believed to be paid to the bust of the Duke of Bordeaux.1 This so incensed the people, that they broke into the church, where they destroyed most of the matériel of the celebration, sparing, however, the painted windows and the pictures, and afterwards proceeded to the house of the Archbishop of Paris, which they completely gutted, throwing the furniture into the Seine.2 Tranquillity seems afterwards to have been completely restored. Several of the royalist leaders have been arrested. Some say, that their absurd demonstrations were connected with ulterior designs. They are sufficiently stupid to have meditated such, but they are also sufficiently stupid to have acted as they have done for mere bravado, without any serious designs.
The discussion on the municipal law still continues.
The Budget for the year has been presented.3 It exhibits some retrenchments on the ordinary expenses, and a considerable amount of extraordinary ones, rendered necessary by placing the army on the war establishment.4 These are to be provided for by the sale of a small part of the enormous extent of forests belonging to the state.5
We learn from M. Laffitte’s statement, a most satisfactory fact, that, notwithstanding the late and present commercial embarrassments, and the temporary privations which they must have caused to the middle and working classes, the produce of the taxes on consumption exhibits a decided increase; and this although, or perhaps because, the duties on wine, which compose a large part of the whole amount, have been considerably reduced.6
The ministry have lately afforded a poor earnest of their disposition towards a relaxation of the restrictive system, by which France partially renounces the use of the natural productiveness of her land and capital. They have re-established the Board of Trade, under the presidence of M. de Saint-Cricq, the Vansittart of France.7
88.
THE EMIGRATION BILL
EXAMINER, 27 FEB., 1831, PP. 130-1
Mill is commenting on “A Bill to Facilitate Voluntary Emigration to His Majesty’s Possessions Abroad,” 1 William IV (22 Feb., 1831), PP, 1830-31, I, 463-75, introduced on 22 Feb., 1831, by Henry George Grey (1802-94), Viscount Howick, later 3rd Earl Grey, an M.P. from 1826 until he succeeded to the peerage in 1845, who was Under-Secretary for the Colonies 1830-33. For his speech on the Bill, see PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 2, cols. 875-906. The Bill was well received by the Commons, but was lost when Parliament was dissolved in April 1831. The item, headed as title, appears in the “Political Examiner.” Described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘The Emigration Bill’ in the Examiner of 27th February 1831” (MacMinn, p. 15), the item is listed as title and enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set.
the government has introduced a bill for facilitating voluntary Emigration, by creating a board of commissioners, authorised to contract with individuals or with parishes, on the security of their poor-rates, for conveying pauper labourers, with their own consent, to Canada or Australia.
In so far as this measure evinces a just conception of the great cause of low wages, excessive competition for employment; and in so far as the board which it will call into existence, may be considered as a commission for inquiring into the means of rendering the vast productive resources of our colonies available for the employment and comfortable subsistence of the unemployed poor of our own country; to that extent Lord Howick’s bill is an indication of laudable dispositions and an earnest of improvement. Our praise can go no farther.
We have no faith in the efficacy of any plan of emigration, which, for every labourer whom it removes, implies the permanent alienation of a portion of the national capital. Lord Howick states that the expense of the emigration of a labouring man, his wife, and two children, is sixty-six pounds, and that their maintenance as paupers costs twenty-five pounds annually; on which text he proceeds to dissert upon the benefits of his plan, saying that an annuity of twenty-five pounds may be redeemed, by the advance of a sum falling short of three years’ purchase.1 But this is not a fair statement of the question. It assumes that the whole expenditure of the country on account of poor-rates is pure uncompensated outgoing, without any return. Now this, we admit, is to a great degree the case at present, but it is so merely from mal-administration; and mainly from the established mode of managing the poor piecemeal, by each parish within itself. Undoubtedly every pauper should be chargeable solely to his own parish, but there is no reason in the world why he should be set to work within that parish exclusively, where perhaps there is no employment for him of a more productive character than drawing gravel. If we had duly-constituted municipal councils, or, in default of such institutions, an officer named by the Crown in each county, and bound to find employment for all the paupers of the county, on public works, in agriculture, in manufactures, in any manner in short in which their labour could be turned to greatest account; or what would be still better, if the poor of the county were farmed by open competition to private contractors, proper securities being taken that no pauper should be mulcted of his due allowance or otherwise oppressed; no one, we believe, who has considered the subject, will doubt, that the paupers of England might be made to reproduce annually the whole amount of their maintenance, in the same manner as other labourers reproduce theirs with considerable profit. In this way the annuity of twenty-five pounds a-year would be redeemed by the advance of that sum once only; and therefore the present measure, which requires an advance of sixty-six pounds for the same purpose, is unthrifty and unadvisable.
Objections of detail present themselves in great numbers against the proposed mode of facilitating emigration: but the consideration which we have just stated applies to the principle, and appears to us to be decisive.
Yet we are friends to emigration; and are persuaded that from it, in conjunction with other measures, material relief might be afforded to the labouring classes from the pressure of their own excessive competition for employment. But, to be entitled to this praise, the scheme must be such as to pay the expenses of a second body of emigrants from the produce of the labour of the first.
Every one admits that the labour of a man in England produces very little; that the labour of a man in Australia or Canada produces very much; and that every labouring man, who could be removed from England to either of these colonies, would, by his change of abode, occasion an increase of the produce of the world, which would suffice in two or three years to repay, with interest, the expense of his passage. Here then, by general admission, is on the one hand a value lost, namely what the pauper would have produced at home, together with the expenses of his passage; on the other hand, a value created in the colony, exceeding the value lost; and it is actually given up as an insoluble problem, to make a portion of the gain available to cover the loss! It is an insult to the human understanding to pretend that there are no means of making emigration pay for itself. If the emigration of a moderate number of labourers in the prime of life were defrayed by an advance from the treasury, and a portion of what was added to the produce of the colony by their labour, were exacted in the form of a tax, and appropriated to form a fund for further emigration, a perennial stream of emigrants might be kept up without further expense to the mother country, until Canada, South Africa, and Australia were fully peopled. Whether this drain could be rendered sufficiently large to prevent overflow—whether emigration on this principle could ever be sufficient to relieve over-population at home—can scarcely be known before trial; but the grounds of hope are amply sufficient to render a trial not only advisable, but imperative.
The best mode which we have seen proposed, of enabling emigration to pay its own expenses, is that to which Mr. Robert Gouger, and Mr. Tennant, the member for St. Alban’s, have so perseveringly called the public attention—that of fixing a price upon waste land, the highest which could be levied without so crowding the inhabitants as to lower wages below their highest rate.2 There is no difficulty or disadvantage in this measure. The government of the United States raises a considerable annual revenue from the sale of unappropriated land; to the great benefit of the inhabitants, which benefit would be still greater if the tax were higher, as it is almost certain that the population of the back settlements is even now far more widely dispersed than is consistent with the most productive employment of their labour. The same principle has been adopted in part by the present ministry, in the colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land. All that is wanting is, that the minimum price of waste land should be higher; that the system should be established by act of parliament, not by a mere regulation, revocable at the pleasure of any colonial minister; and finally, that the produce of the sales of land should be wholly devoted to emigration, and to the emigration of young couples, in order that the greatest effect may be produced on the future growth of population, by the removal of the smallest number of individuals.
89.
FRENCH NEWS [17]
EXAMINER, 27 FEB., 1831, P. 136
This article is headed “London, February 27.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. The item is listed as “Article on France” and enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set.
the late tumults in paris have been viewed by all parties in France in a far more serious light than the accounts at first received in this country made them appear to merit. Moderate, time-serving newspapers, and moderate, time-serving deputies, have now publicly declared their conviction on the following points:—That it is now obvious that the National Guard, and the middle classes, at least, of Paris, are not satisfied with the present state of the government, either in respect to men or measures;—That, until they obtain a government with which they are satisfied, the feeling of security will not revive;—That until there is security, the labouring population will be without work, will be dissatisfied, a prey to agitators, and ready for continual tumults: which tumults, so long as they do not endanger human life or private property, the National Guard will give themselves as little trouble as possible to suppress. All this has been obvious to every man of common sense for the last six months; and the popular journals have been dinning it into the ears of the King and the Chamber since August last. But they would not listen to Reason, when she came with a gentle whisper; and now they must be fain both to hear and feel her, returning with a loud shout and a thundering blow.
One point is now admitted by the unanimous voice of all parties—the necessity of dissolving the Chamber. This measure, so odious to the majority a few days since, is now pressed on by them with indecent precipitation, to escape from the approaching debate on the electoral law, and have the opportunity of presenting themselves once again to the same narrow body of constituents, which elected them before, and by which they believe that they will be re-elected. The côté gauche are now the opponents of an immediate dissolution. They were always so. From the beginning they demanded that the Chamber should (to use their own phrase) make its last will and testament before it expires; should determine, by an election-law, to whom the estate which it leaves behind, its constitutional authority, shall descend.1
The commission, or select committee, on the electoral law, has presented its report.2 This proposes to lower the electoral qualification from 300 to 240 francs of direct taxes: and that of eligibility from 1000 to 500. Trifling as is this diminution of the qualification of an elector, it seems that it will increase the number of the voters to 210,000; and though nothing short of a million of electors ought to be accepted by the sincere Reformers, either in this country or in France, even as a compromise, the chances of some improvement in the composition of the Chamber even from so inadequate a Parliamentary Reform, if adopted previous to the dissolution, are sufficient to be worth a hard struggle.
The usual quantity of absurd misapprehension has displayed itself in England on the subject of the troubles in Paris. The hatred of the populace to the fleurs-de-lis is partly understood; but their antipathy to the crosses, and to the priesthood, is, not unnaturally, somewhat less intelligible to Englishmen who have never stirred from their fire-side, nor imbibed any ideas but those which it suited the purpose of some person or other to carry thither. All persons who have conversed with the working population of Paris must have been forcibly struck with the intensity of their hatred to the Jesuits, and to les mauvais prêtres (as they phrase it) generally; a hatred which has partly for its cause, and partly for its effect, a notion that those against whom it is directed are capable of the worst of crimes; and we have ourselves repeatedly heard persons of the lowest class, subsequently to the revolution in July, expressing their fears that if Louis Philippe persisted in going about without an escort, some Jesuit would be found to assassinate him. But the very persons in whom these feelings appeared to be strongest, always qualified the expression of them, by the unsolicited and unsuggested acknowledgment, that there must be both religion and priests. Even at the summary funeral of the victims of July, who were laid under ground by the collected people in the very place where they fell, a priest was sent for to perform the usual ceremonies. The people of Paris, from the highest to the lowest, have ceased to hate Christianity, and are tired of listening to ridicule of it: but they detest mortally a political religion; and, although their minds are more open than they have been for above a generation, to religious feelings and ideas generally, they are averse from the Catholic religion, and ready, in a moment of excitement, to make the most violent demonstrations of hatred to the Catholic priests. As for the crosses which have been pulled down from the tops of the steeples, it may not be amiss to state that they were put up only a very few years ago by the Bourbons, at the expense of the people, and to their vehement dissatisfaction.
The King seems, of all men in France, to be the least capable of rightly interpreting the passing events. He has chosen a moment like this for dismissing from their offices, Odilon-Barrot, the Prefect of the Seine, and Baude, the Prefect of Police.3 The Times says that Odilon-Barrot is dismissed for being too liberal, and Baude for not being liberal enough; and regards the whole proceeding as a specimen of mere trimming;4 but if this were the case, why was the precise moment selected for removing Baude, at which he had just delivered a speech reconciling him with the popular party?5 That speech is the true cause of his dismissal. He is removed from the same motive as Odilon-Barrot. He is removed because the King wishes to show that he can be firm; as Charles X was firm when he issued the ordinances.6 The rule with Kings is to drive the people to extremity, and then to face their fury by way of showing firmness, and avoiding the humiliation of a retreat. Weak men never take it into their heads to be firm, until the time is come, when it is absolutely necessary to be pliant. Their firmness consists in braving real dangers, for fear of imaginary ones. The feeble King of the French is terrified at giving votes to the million richest among thirty-two millions, but rather than yield an inch to the other thirty-one millions in arms, impavidum ferient ruinae. Alas! a fool can be as tenax propositi as Horace’s hero.7
One of those evil counsellors whom nature seems to have formed as the appointed means to bring the mighty to their ruin, as apt guides to hurry princes and potentates blindfold to the edge of the precipice, and leave them to destruction, exhorts the Aristocracy of England, in an intercalary Quarterly Review, to act as the old King of France did, and as the new King of France intends to do—to be firm.8 Those who would never yield to aught but fear, are tauntingly exhorted not to yield to that. Obstinate cleaving to the taxes, unflinching adherence to the interest of their pockets, constitutes Roman virtue in the eyes of some people. But if the Aristocracy of England are sufficiently unaware of their present situation to hearken to such counsellors, they little know what is in store for them. If the English and the new French government are destined severally to give another lesson to the world on the incapacity of oligarchies, howsoever constituted, to learn wisdom from experience, the trial must be submitted to: but at least those who shall provoke it shall do so knowingly, and must hold themselves prepared to suffer the natural consequences of their own folly.
90.
THE PARLIAMENTARY REFORM BILL
EXAMINER, 6 MAR., 1831, P. 147
One of Mill’s few direct contemporary comments on the British reform agitation of 1830-32, this article appeared in the “Political Examiner” under the heading “[From a Correspondent].” It is described in his bibliography as “Paragraphs on the Parliamentary Reform Bill headed ‘from a Correspondent’ in the Examiner of 6th March 1831” (MacMinn, p. 15); in the Somerville College set it is listed as “Article on the Reform Bill” and enclosed in square brackets, with one inked correction, “had had” to “had led to”
(277.23).
in estimating the nature of the change which Lord John Russell’s Bill,1 if adopted, will produce in the practical working of the Constitution, it is necessary to look somewhat closely at the specific character of the abuses by which our government has hitherto been deformed.
These are of two kinds: 1st, private jobs, for the benefit of individuals possessing Parliamentary influence.—2dly, bad laws, and great naval and military establishments, for the benefit of the higher classes generally.
We expect that the proposed Reform will almost entirely extinguish private jobs. The supporters whom the Minister secures by the direct expenditure of the public money are seldom those who are returned by numerous constituencies. It is worth while, for a minister to purchase a vote in parliament by giving a place to the son or younger brother of a borough patron; it is seldom worth while for the sake of two votes, to give valuable consideration to each man of the majority of the influential landholders of a county. Westmoreland is an exception; but Westmoreland is, in reality, a close borough.2 County members are seldom the paid and regular supporters of an administration; they seldom receive any thing out of the taxes, and are therefore generally friends to retrenchment; but they are, more than any other class of the members of Parliament, the stedfast and unbending supporters of bad laws. For bad laws do not exist for the benefit of borough proprietors, but of the landed, or the landed and monied classes at large. The same may be said of large military and naval establishments, the chief cause of the magnitude of the public burthens.
The proposed Reform will take the nomination of a majority in Parliament from two hundred aristocratical families, and will give it to the Aristocracy generally; for, without the protection of the Ballot, it is absurd to suppose that the nominal electors, except in a few places like Westminster, will be less subject to undue influence than at the present moment.3 Instead of our own old oligarchy, we shall have a French oligarchy: the undue power, instead of being unequally divided,—a large mass being held by one very great man, and small portions by a number of small men, will now be more equally divided among the higher classes at large; but subject to no greater responsibility than at present; with the same sinister interests, and under a more specious appearance.
Heretofore a Minister, hard pressed by public opinion, could carry with him a large portion of the borough members, who, to save their place, would at times separate themselves from their order. Hereafter an immense majority of the House will be the mere men of their order, or would be so, were they not controlled by the irresistible spirit of the age.
If the proposed Reform had been introduced in quiet times, and had led to no ulterior changes, we question whether the alteration which it would have made in the composition of the Houses would have been in any respect an improvement. But with an excited public, and a public fully possessed with the importance of the Ballot, the members whom this measure will send to Parliament must represent, in a considerable degree, the real feelings of their nominal constituents, or the cry for the Ballot will become absolutely irresistible. If we gain this Bill, therefore, we shall gain all; and every nerve ought to be strained by every Reformer throughout the nation, for the success of the ministerial measure.
If there were no other reason for giving it the most strenuous support, the consternation which it has spread among the whole tribe of the people’s enemies would be a sufficient one.
91.
FRENCH NEWS [18]
EXAMINER, 6 MAR., 1831, P. 155
For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. The unheaded item is listed as “Article on France” and these two paragraphs are enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set.
the french chamber of deputies has lowered the qualification of an elector from 300 to 200 francs of direct taxes;1 which will give a constituency of about 200,000, or rather more than double the present number. The Chamber, however, has refused to give votes to advocates, physicians, attorneys, notaries, or judges, unless qualified by paying the same amount of taxes as other people.
The Centres, who were eager for a dissolution when they thought that it could take place under the pre-existing election law, have now resumed their previous attitude of hostility to it. No one can guess whether the declared intention of the Government to dissolve the Chamber will even now be persevered in; so timid and rash (no uncommon conjunction) is the King, and so truckling his Ministry. The destinies of France are in the hands of men more than nine-tenths of whom are not fit to have any part in the government of a parish.
92.
THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE, III [Part 2]
EXAMINER, 13 MAR., 1831, PP. 162-3
This article, headed “The Spirit of the Age, / No. 3, concluded,” is introduced by the following notice: “[It was by mistake that we announced, several weeks since, that this series would conclude with the present paper. It will extend to several numbers more, though the pressure of more urgent matter will not enable us to continue it from week to week.]” The notice presumably refers to the remark at the end of No. 82, “The conclusion of this Paper in our next.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 73. In the Somerville College set, it is listed as heading and enclosed in square brackets.
it is not necessary for me to point out that until a comparatively recent period, none but the wealthy, and even, I might say, the hereditarily wealthy, had it in their power to acquire the intelligence, the knowledge, and the habits, which are necessary to qualify a man, in any tolerable degree, for managing the affairs of his country. It is not necessary for me to show that this is no longer the case, nor what are the circumstances which have changed it: the improvement in the arts of life, giving ease and comfort to great numbers not possessed of the degree of wealth which confers political power: the increase of reading: the diffusion of elementary education: the increase of the town-population, which brings masses of men together, and accustoms them to examine and discuss important subjects with one another; and various other causes, which are known to every body. All this, however, is nothing more than the acquisition by other people in an inferior degree, of a few of the advantages which have always been within the reach of the higher classes, in a much greater degree: and if the higher classes had profited as they might have done by these advantages, and had kept their station in the vanguard of the march of improvement, they would not only at this moment have been sure to retain in their hands all the powers of government, subject perhaps to severer conditions of responsibility, but might possibly even have continued for a considerable time longer to retain them on the same footing as at present. For ample experience has proved that mankind (who, however prone they may be, in periods of transition, to even groundless suspicion and distrust, are as strongly addicted at all other times to the opposite extreme of blind and boundless confidence), will bear even great excesses of abused power, from those whom they recognize as fitter to hold the reins of government than themselves.
But the higher classes, instead of advancing, have retrograded in all the higher qualities of mind. In the humanizing effects of civilization they have indeed partaken, and, to some extent, in the diffusion of superficial knowledge, and are so far superior to their predecessors: but those predecessors were braced and nerved by the invigorating atmosphere of a barbarous age, and had all the virtues of a strong will and an energetic active mind, which their descendants are destitute of. For these qualities were not the fruits of an enlightened education skilfully pointed to that end, but of the peculiar position of the holders of power; and that position is no longer the same.
All is not absolutely unfounded in the notion we imbibe at school, from the modern writers on the decline of the ancient commonwealths, that luxury deadens and enervates the mind. It is true that these writers (whose opinion, truly, was the result of no process of thought in their own imitative souls, but a faint impression left by a ray of the stoic philosophy of Greece and Rome themselves, refracted or bent out of its direction by the muddy medium through which it had passed) were wrong in laying it down as a principle that pleasure enervates; as if pleasure, only to be earned by labour and won by heroic deeds, ever did or ever could enervate the mind of any one. What really enervates, is the secure and unquestioned possession, without any exertion, of all those things, to gain which, mankind in general are wont to exert themselves. This secure and lazy possession, the higher classes have now for some generations enjoyed; their predecessors in the same station and privileges did not enjoy it.
Who, for example, that looks over the catalogue of the Kings who have reigned in Europe for the last two centuries, would not conclude, from that and the nature of the case combined, that the station of a hereditary king was the very most unfavourable to be found in this sublunary world, for the acquisition of any talents for governing? Is not the incapacity of the monarch allowed for, as an inevitable inconvenience, even by the most strenuous supporters of monarchy; represented at best as an evil susceptible of palliation, and preventing other evils far more fatal? From the beginning of the eighteenth century it has passed into a philosophic truism, that kings are generally unfit to govern, and likely even to delegate their power not to statesmen, but to favourites, unless forced to choose those Ministers whom the public voice recommends to them. Yet this maxim is far from being borne out by history. A decided majority of all the kings of England previous to the Revolution, will be found to have been men who, in every endowment belonging to their age, might be compared to the best men in it. The same may be said of the Emperors of Germany, and even of the Kings of France, of Spain, the Dukes of Burgundy, and so on. Would you know why? Think of Edward II and Richard II.1 In that turbulent age, no rank or station rendered the situation of a man without considerable personal endowments, a secure one. If the king possessed eminent talents, he might be nearly absolute: if he was a slave to ease and dissipation, not only his importance was absolutely null, but his throne and his life itself were constantly in danger. The Barons stood no less in need of mental energy and ability. Power, though not earned by capacity, might be greatly increased by it, and could not be retained or enjoyed without it. The possessor of power was not in the situation of one who is rewarded without exertion, but of one who feels a great prize within his grasp, and is stimulated to every effort necessary to make it securely his own.
But the virtues which insecurity calls forth, ceased with insecurity itself. In a civilized age, though it may be difficult to get, it is very easy to keep: if a man does not earn what he gets before he gets it, he has little motive to earn it thereafter. The greater the power a man has upon these terms, the less he is likely to deserve it. Accordingly, as Mr. Hallam has remarked, Great Britain has had since William III no monarch of more than ordinary personal endowments;2 nor will she ever more, unless the chapter of accidents should open at a page inscribed with very singular characters. We may add, that the House of Peers has produced, since the same epoch, hardly any remarkable men; though some such have, from time to time, been aggregated to the order. As soon as these facts became manifest, it was easy to see a termination to hereditary monarchy and hereditary aristocracy: for we never shall again return to the age of violence and insecurity, when men were forced, whatever might be their taste for incapacity, to become men of talents in spite of themselves: and mankind will not always consent to allow a fat elderly gentleman3 to fill the first place, without insisting upon his doing something to deserve it. I do not undertake to say in what particular year hereditary distinctions will be abolished, nor do I say that I would vote for their abolition, if it were proposed now, in the existing state of society and opinion: but to the philosopher, who contemplates the past and future fortunes of mankind as one series, and who counts a generation or two for no more in marking the changes of the moral, than an age or two in those of the physical world, the ultimate fate of such distinctions is already decided.
There was an intermediate stage in the history of our own island, in which it was yet a question whether the Crown should share in the government of the country as the master of the aristocracy, or only as the first and most powerful of its members. Though the progress of civilization had given to the gentry of England, personal security independently of honourable exertion, it had not yet given them undisputed power. They were nothing, except through the Parliament, and the Parliament as yet, was nothing, except through their energy and talents. The great names by which the seventeenth century of English history has been immortalized, belonged almost without an exception to the same class which now possesses the governing power. What a contrast! Think, good heavens! that Sir John Elliot, and John Hampden, and Sir John Colepepper, and Sir Thomas Wentworth, were country gentlemen—and think who are the parliamentary leaders of that class in our own day: a Knatchbull, a Bankes, a Gooch, a Lethbridge!4 Think even of the most respectable names among the English landholders of our time, such as Lord Wharncliffe, or Mr. Coke.5 The remainder of the great politicians of that age, the Bacons, the Cecils, the Walsinghams, the Seldens, the Iretons, the Pyms, the Cokes, were mostly lawyers.6 But what lawyers, and how strikingly distinguished, as well by their origin as by the range of their faculties and acquirements, from our successful Barristers, our Sugdens and Copleys!7 They were almost to a man, the younger or even the elder sons of the first families among the English gentry: who studied the law as being what it then in some degree was, a liberal profession, a pursuit fit for a gentleman, and not for a mere drudge; exercising at least the higher faculties, by the comprehension of principles, (though frequently absurd ones), not the mere memory, by the heaping together of unconnected details: and who studied it chiefly that it might serve them in fulfilling the exalted mission, to which they were called by an ambition justly to be called noble, since it required of them great sacrifices, and could be gratified only by the accomplishment of what was then nearest to their country’s weal.
Applied to these men, the expression, natural leaders of the people, has some meaning: and then and then only it was that our institutions worked well, for they made this country the nurse of more that is exalted in sentiment, and expansive and profound in thought, than has been produced by all other countries in the modern world taken together, until a recent period. The whole of their effect is now the direct contrary—to degrade our morals, and to narrow and blunt our understandings: nor shall we ever be what we might be, nor even what we once were, until our institutions are adapted to the present state of civilization, and made compatible with the future progress of the human mind. But this will, I trust, more clearly appear, when, in the next paper, the historical survey which I have here taken of the conditions of worldly power, shall also have been taken of the conditions of moral influence.
A.B.
93.
FRENCH NEWS [19]
EXAMINER, 13 MAR., 1831, P. 171
This article is headed “London, March 13.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. In the Somerville College set the item is listed as “Article on France” and the first five paragraphs are enclosed in square brackets (the final three paragraphs concern German and Polish affairs and their effect in Paris).
the french chamber of deputies has adopted the article of the proposed election-law, which lowers the qualification of a deputy from 1000 to 500 francs of direct taxes.1
With this improvement in the conditions of eligibility, and the reduction which has already been voted in the elective franchise, there is room to hope for some improvement in the composition of the Chamber, when the new law shall come into operation. It is, therefore, of the greatest importance that the existing Chamber should be promptly dissolved. But doubts are thrown out as to the King’s disposition to adhere to the intentions which his Ministers have expressed on this subject. It is surmised that the present Ministry will be turned out, and another appointed from the ranks of the centre; and that a prorogation, instead of a dissolution, will take place. It is certain that M. Mérilhou has been obliged to resign, because he refused to dismiss M. Comte, Procureur du Roi, one of the wisest and most virtuous men in France.2
There would be something ludicrous, were it not a subject for the deepest melancholy, in the panic terrors and woful plight of the individual whom the Revolution of July has hoisted up to an eminence which he is utterly incapable of creditably filling. He is now suffering under the embarrassments which his own folly, and that alone, has brought upon him; he is feeling the consequences of first raising the hopes of an excitable and confiding people, and then utterly disappointing them.
We know nothing better fitted to convince the French of the ignorance and baseness of the English newspaper writers, than the tone they have assumed with respect to the present party differences in France. Men who are shouting in favour of a plan of Parliamentary Reform, far outrunning anything which the most ardent of the French Reformers have even ventured to suggest, for immediate adoption,—a plan which adds 500,000 at one blow,3 to a constituent body already very numerous, when the question in France is, whether, in a much larger population, a few more or a few less than 200,000 in all, shall be admitted to the elective franchise—these very writers treat as the wildest of democrats men who do not go a quarter of their length in democracy, on the mere word of those who are the avowed enemies of all Reform whatever!
The probabilities of war seem, in the general apprehension, to have increased: in ours they are diminishing. The French may be assured, that the English people will approve of their enforcing the principle of non-intervention against the despotic powers, but will disapprove of their violating that principle, in order to crusade in support of the subjects of other states against their governments, however just the resistance of such subjects may be, or however certain their destruction, if not aided from abroad. The French have their character for moderation and pacific inclinations still to acquire; and should they go to war on grounds in any respect doubtful, those grounds are sure to be interpreted to their disadvantage.4
94.
HERSCHEL’S PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE
EXAMINER, 20 MAR., 1831, PP. 179-80
John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet (1792-1871), astronomer, son of the astronomer Sir William Herschel and President of the Astronomical Society 1827-32, was a brilliant theorist as well as observer and discoverer of stars. This review appears in the “Literary Examiner,” headed: “Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia, Vol. XIV. A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. By John Frederick William Herschel, Esq. A.M., late Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, &c. &c. &c.” The work had been published in London by Longman, et al., in late 1830. Described in Mill’s bibliography as “Review of Herschel’s Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, in the Examiner of 20th March 1831” (MacMinn, p. 15), the item is similarly listed (“Review of Herschel’s Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy”), and enclosed in square brackets, in the Somerville College set.
this work has afforded us great pleasure, and greater hope. It evinces a reach of thought, for which the physical researches of the present day are quite inapt to supply adequate occupation. A greater destiny is reserved for Mr. Herschel. It is his to aspire, and not in vain, to the character of the philosopher—to whom the mere man of science is but a pioneer.
If the utility of the very modern physical inquiries were to be estimated solely by the intrinsic value of their results, by the direct use which has been made, or from their nature ever can be made, of the truths which those inquiries have elicited, we know not that the labours of a savant would be deserving of much higher commendation than those of a bricklayer; and we much doubt whether, if there had not been made a single scientific discovery in the last hundred years, mankind, taken in the mass, would have at this moment enjoyed one jot less of happiness than they actually do. Mere physical comforts and enjoyments, not the most valuable part of happiness, are the best which such knowledge could bestow, while it is too apparent in how niggardly a measure it has dealt out even those, to an immense numerical majority in the most civilized nations; and even the fortunate individuals on whom it has most lavished its gifts, have most frequently found in them not enjoyment, but only means of enjoyment, from which they have never known how to extract real happiness—nor ever will, until their minds are as highly cultivated as their bodies are: until moral and social science have attained the same perfection as physical science: until the theory and practice of education are lifted out of their present depressed and degraded posture: until human beings have learned how to cultivate and nurture their own susceptibilities of happiness, and have made such arrangements of outward circumstances, as shall provide that the means which each adopts of seeking his own well-being, shall no longer damage that of the remainder of his species.
To this blessed consummation, physical science is capable of contributing invaluable assistance; not, however, by the truths which it discloses, but by the process by which it attains to them. It is an example, and the only example, of a vast body of connected truth, gradually elicited by patient and earnest investigation, and finally recognized and submitted to by a convinced and subdued world. If the broad and fundamental differences which exist among the minds which have sought with greatest diligence for truths of a higher order, may be traced, as they clearly may, to differences in their methods, or modes of philosophising; if the uncertainty which hangs over the very elements of moral and social philosophy, proves that the means of arriving at the truth in those sciences are not yet properly understood—that the minds of the majority of inquirers are not yet so formed as to be capable of the successful pursuit of those truths which are essential to the proper use and application of all other knowledge; whither can mankind so advantageously turn, in order to learn the proper means, and to form their minds to the proper habits, as to that branch of knowledge in which, by universal acknowledgment, the greatest number of truths have been ascertained, and the greatest possible degree of certainty has been arrived at?
But physical science has not yet been converted to this its noblest use. Men of science are usually as little conscious of the methods by which they have made their greatest discoveries, as the clown is of the structure of his eye, or the process by which he has learnt to see. With the exception of the analysis of the syllogism, which was performed long ago by the ancients, scarcely any thing has yet been contributed towards an accurate dissection of the mode in which the human understanding arrives at the discovery and the verification of truth. Bacon afforded merely a few hints, which it has scarcely even yet been attempted to improve and follow up: for such scattered suggestions as can be gleaned from books of later date, mankind are indebted to metaphysical writers, not to physical; to Locke and Brown,1 rather than to Newton or Davy.2 Men of science have even, in our own country at least, rather more than their share of the vulgar prejudice against such researches. An inquiry into the nature of the instrument with which they all work, the human mind, and into the mode of bringing that instrument to the greatest perfection, and using it to the greatest advantage, has usually been treated by them as something frivolous and idle: as if the rules of philosophising did not stand fully as much in need of a philosophical foundation, as any of the particular truths which have been, or may be, attained by the observance of them.
From this prejudice, which essentially belongs to minds of the most limited range (though, perhaps, of microscopic vision within that range) Mr. Herschel is wholly exempt; and his work contains (we speak advisedly) a clearer and less incomplete view of the nature of philosophical truth, of the evidence on which it rests, and the means of discovering and testing it, than is to be found in any work which has yet been produced. To point out in what particulars it appears to us to fall short of what is still to be looked for and hoped for, would be inappropriate to the nature of a notice like the present: but there is nothing which may not be hoped for from the author of such a work, if he perseveres in the course of thinking into which he has here entered; and his vast and profound knowledge in every department of physics has enabled him, in this volume, to supply any one who may take up the inquiry where he has left it, with a rich fund of the most apt examples, capable alike of illustrating, and of suggesting, the most profound and important views on the operation of the intellect in philosophising.
The first chapter, being the most vague, is, as usually happens in such cases, the least valuable. There are some points in the higher metaphysics on which we should differ from the author: but these are precisely such as have least to do with the general course of his speculations. The spirit of the work is admirable. We never met with a book so calculated to inspire a high conception of the superiority of science over empiricism under the name of common sense—of the advantage of systematic investigation, and high general cultivation of the intellect. And we quote with delight the following noble passage; showing that one who, by the consent of all our scientific men, is placed first, or among the first, in the knowledge of all which physical science can teach, yet feels that there are truths far more important to human happiness than all these which it is the highest boast of physical science that it may assist in training the mind to be capable of investigating and applying. The first part of the treatise, which is devoted to setting forth the “General Nature and Advantages of the Study of the Physical Sciences,” is wound up as follows:
Finally, the improvement effected in the condition of mankind, by advances in physical science as applied to the useful purposes of life, is very far from being limited to their direct consequences in the more abundant supply of our physical wants, and the increase of our comforts. Great as these benefits are, they are yet but steps to others of a still higher kind. The successful results of our experiments and reasonings in natural philosophy, and the incalculable advantages which experience, systematically consulted and dispassionately reasoned on, has conferred in matters purely physical, tend of necessity to impress something of the well weighed and progressive character of science on the more complicated conduct of our social and moral relations. It is thus that legislation and politics become gradually regarded as experimental sciences; and history, not as formerly, the mere record of tyrannies and slaughters, which, by immortalizing the execrable actions of one age, perpetuates the ambition of committing them in every succeeding one, but as the archive of experiments, successful and unsuccessful, gradually accumulating towards the solution of the grand problem—how the advantages of government are to be secured with the least possible inconvenience to the governed. The celebrated apophthegm, that nations never profit by experience, becomes yearly more and more untrue. Political economy, at least, is found to have sound principles, founded in the moral and physical nature of man, which, however lost sight of in particular measures—however even temporarily controverted and borne down by clamour, have yet a stronger and stronger testimony borne to them in each succeeding generation, by which they must sooner or later prevail. The idea once conceived and verified, that great and noble ends are to be achieved, by which the condition of the whole human species shall be permanently bettered, by bringing into exercise a sufficient quantity of sober thought, and by a proper adaptation of means, is of itself sufficient to set us earnestly on reflecting what ends are truly great and noble, either in themselves, or as conducive to others of a still loftier character; because we are not now, as heretofore, hopeless of attaining them. It is not now equally harmless and insignificant whether we are right or wrong, since we are no longer supinely and helplessly carried down the stream of events, but feel ourselves capable of buffetting at least with its waves, and perhaps of riding triumphantly over them; for why should we despair that the reason which has enabled us to subdue all nature to our purposes, should (if permitted and assisted by the providence of God,) achieve a far more difficult conquest; and ultimately find some means of enabling the collective wisdom of mankind to bear down those obstacles which individual short-sightedness, selfishness, and passion, oppose to all improvements, and by which the highest hopes are continually blighted, and the fairest prospects marred.
(Pp. 72-4.)
95.
FRENCH NEWS [20]
EXAMINER, 20 MAR., 1831, P. 186
This item is headed “London, March 20.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. The piece is identified as “Article on France” and these two paragraphs are enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set.
a change has taken place in the French ministry. Laffitte has resigned; Mérilhou was out of office already; the others, who composed the dregs of the late Cabinet, remain in office, though with some shuffling and changing of places, under the new Premier, M. Casimir-Périer, who takes the department of the interior. Louis, the most narrow-minded and inept of Bonaparte’s clerks, resumes the post of minister of finance, which he held in the administration of Guizot, and in two of the numerous ministries of Louis XVIII.1 His nephew, Admiral De Rigny, who commanded the French fleet at Navarino, becomes minister of marine.2
From the letter of our Paris correspondent,3 it will be seen what the popular party think of this ministry; they conceive, and do not hesitate, through their various organs, to declare, that it is the Polignac ministry of the new government, and will bring that government to the same abrupt termination as that which preceded it. We trust not; for as it is the second blow which makes the quarrel, so it is the second convulsion which annihilates future stability. But if there be such a convulsion, we are as fully convinced that the incredible folly and weakness of Louis Philippe, and the grasping selfishness of his worthy majority, are the sole cause of it, as we are that the wisdom of our public will lay the whole blame upon those who are contending for a Parliamentary Reform about half as extensive as that which an English King,4 and a cabinet of English Noblemen, have thought it safe and necessary to propose to an English Parliament, amidst the acclamations of the people from the Orkneys to the Land’s End.
96.
FRENCH NEWS [21]
EXAMINER, 27 MAR., 1831, PP. 202-3
This item is headed “London, March 27.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. Exceptionally, Mill here comments also on Italian news, as he indicates in the listing in the Somerville College set, “Article on France and Italy”; Mill gives the page number as 201, rather than 202-3, but the paragraphs here included are enclosed in Mill’s square brackets.
it appears that the change of ministry in France has made no alteration in the intention of dissolving the Chamber.
The most recent news from Italy1 seems to imply that the Austrian Government has no purpose of interfering with the new order of things any where in Italy, except the duchies of Parma and Modena—grounding their pretended right of interference upon the circumstance, that these duchies are held, the one by an Austrian princess, the other by an Austrian prince,2 and revert, on failure of direct heirs, to the reigning line. If this be the limit of the interference—though the violation of justice, and the rights of every independent people to change their government, is the same on the smaller scale as on the larger one, the emancipation of Italy will be no way retarded by this act of usurpation. All that is important is, that there should be a state in Italy, governing itself, and sheltering the exiled patriots of the other states. Round that nucleus the whole of Italy will in time cluster itself. That three or four towns more or less should be included this year or the next, in the independent Italian state, is of little account, when every one sees that all Italy will join it on the first opportunity, and that, in the mean time, Italian patriotism and Italian intellect will find in Italy itself a place, not only of refuge, but of healthy nourishment and growth.
97.
THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE, IV
EXAMINER, 3 APR., 1831, PP. 210-11
For the context and entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 73. The article is listed as “The Spirit of the Age, No. 4” and enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set.
it has been stated, in the preceding paper,1 that the conditions which confer worldly power are still, amidst all changes of circumstances, the same as in the middle ages—namely, the possession of wealth, or the being employed and trusted by the wealthy. In the middle ages, this form of government might have been approved, even by a philosopher, if a philosopher had been possible in those ages: not, surely, for its intrinsic excellence; not because mankind enjoyed, or could have enjoyed, the blessings of good government under it: but there are states of society in which we must not seek for a good government, but for the least bad one. It is part of the inevitable lot of mankind, that when they themselves are in a backward state of civilization, they are unsusceptible of being well governed.
But, now, mankind are capable of being better governed than the wealthy classes have ever heretofore governed them: while those classes, instead of having improved, have actually retrograded in capacity for government. The abuses of their power have not diminished, though now showing themselves no otherwise than in forms compatible with the mildness of modern manners, and being of that kind which provokes contempt, mingled with resentment, rather than terror and hatred, as of yore.
Such of the above propositions as required illustration appearing to have sufficiently received it in the foregoing paper, I proceed to take a similar survey of the changes which mankind have undergone in respect to the conditions on which moral influence, or power over the minds of mankind, is dependent.
There are three distinguishable sources of moral influence:—eminent wisdom and virtue, real or supposed; the power of addressing mankind in the name of religion; and, finally, worldly power.
It is not necessary to illustrate the manner in which superiority of wisdom and virtue, or in which religion, pre-engages men’s minds with the opinions and feelings in favour of which those authorities declare themselves. It is equally superfluous to insist upon the influence exercised over the minds of men by worldly power. The tendency of the human mind to the worship of power, is well understood. It is matter of common complaint, that even the Supreme Being is adored by an immense majority as the Almighty, not as the All-good; as he who can destroy, not as he who has blessed. It is a familiar fact, that the vulgar, in all parts of the world, have in general little or no rule of conduct or of opinion, but to do as their betters do, and to think as their betters think: and this very word betters, is a speaking proof of the fact which we allege—meaning, as it does, not their wisers, or their honesters, but their richers, and those placed in authority over them.
All persons, from the most ignorant to the most instructed, from the most stupid to the most intelligent, have their minds more or less under the dominion of one or other, or all, of the influences which have just been mentioned. All bow down, with a submission more or less implicit, to the authority of superior minds, or of the interpreters of the divine will, or of their superiors in rank and station.
When an opinion is sanctioned by all these authorities, or by any one of them, the others not opposing, it becomes the received opinion. At all periods of history in which there has existed a general agreement among these three authorities, there have existed received doctrines: a phrase the sense of which is now almost forgotten. The most marked character of such periods is a firm confidence in inherited opinions. Men cleave with a strong and fervent faith to the doctrine which they have imbibed from their infancy: though in conduct they be tempted to swerve from it, the belief remains in their hearts, fixed and immoveable, and has an irresistible hold upon the consciences of all good men. When, on the contrary, the three authorities are divided among themselves, or against each other, a violent conflict rages among opposing doctrines, until one or other prevails, or until mankind settle down into a state of general uncertainty and scepticism. At present, we are in a mixed state; some fight fiercely under their several banners, and these chiefly the least instructed; while the others (those few excepted who have strength to stand by themselves) are blown about by every breath, having no steady opinion—or at least no deep-rooted conviction that their opinion is true.
Society, therefore, has its natural state, and its transitional state, with respect to moral influence as well as to worldly power. Let us bestow a few words upon the natural state, and upon the nature of those varieties of the social order in which it has hitherto been realized.
It is in states of society in which the holders of power are chosen by the people (or by the most highly civilized portion of the people) for their supposed fitness, that we should most expect to find the three authorities acting together, and giving their sanction to the same doctrines. As men are raised to worldly power for their supposed wisdom and virtue, two of the three sources of moral influence are united in the same individuals. And although the rulers of such societies, being the creatures of the people’s choice, have not, quâ rulers, that ascendancy over the minds of the people, which power obtained and held independently of their will, commonly possesses; nevertheless, the station to which they are elevated gives them greater opportunities of rendering their wisdom and their virtue visible, while it also fixed the outward stamp of general recognition upon that merit, which would otherwise operate upon each mind only in proportion to its confidence in its own power of discriminating the most worthy.
Accordingly, in the best-constituted commonwealths of the ancient world, this unity of moral influence did to a very great degree exist. And in the great popular government of our own times, it exists with respect to the general doctrines of the constitution, and many maxims of national policy, and the list of received doctrines is increasing as rapidly as the differences of opinion among the persons possessing moral influence will allow.
I say, only the best-constituted commonwealths of antiquity—and chiefly Athens, Sparta, and Rome—because, in the others, the form of the government, and the circumstances of society itself, being in a perpetual flux, the elements of moral influence never remained long enough in the same hands, to allow time for constitutional doctrines, or received maxims of policy, to grow up. But, in the three commonwealths which I have named, such constitutional doctrines, and such received maxims of policy, did exist, and the community was intensely attached to them.
The great authority for political doctrines in all these governments was the wisdom of ancestors: their old laws, their old maxims, the opinions of their ancient statesmen. This may sound strange to those who have imbibed the silly persuasion, that fickleness and love of innovation are the characteristics of popular governments. It is, however, matter of authentic history. It is not seen in reading Mitford, who always believed his prejudices above his eyes2 —but it is seen in reading Demosthenes, who shows in every page that he regards the authority of ancestors, not merely as an argument, but as one of the strongest of arguments; and steps out of his way to eulogise the wisdom of the ancient laws and lawgivers, with a frequency which proves it to have been the most popular of topics, and one on which his unequalled tact and sagacity taught him mainly to rely. All the other Athenian orators, down to the speeches in Thucydides; Cicero, and all that we know of the Roman orators; Plato, and almost all the monuments which remain to us of the ideas of Athens, Sparta, and Rome, teem with evidence of the same fact.3 In all this there is nothing but what the known constitution of human nature would have enabled us to surmise: it is precisely what marks these commonwealths to have been in a natural state of society. When a government, whether it be a popular one or not, works well for the people among whom it exists, and satisfies their highest conceptions of a good social order, there is naturally a strong, and generally a very just, reverence for the memory of its founders. This would not have been thought strange three-quarters of a century ago. Robertson, the historian, speaks with the utmost simplicity, of “that attachment to ancient forms, and aversion to innovation, which are the unfailing characteristics of popular assemblies.”4 Europe had not then entered into the state of transition of which the first overt manifestation was the breaking out of the French revolution. Since that epoch, those near-sighted people who can see nothing beyond their own age, have mistaken that desire of novelty, and disregard of the authority of ancestors, which characterise an age of transition, for the properties of a popular government: just as if the same symptoms did not constantly attend every change, no matter of what nature, in the spirit of the age; as if we might not be quite sure that there was as much scoffing at the wisdom of ancestors in the Court of Augustus,5 as in the National Convention of France.
The authority of ancestors, so deeply reverenced at Athens and Rome, was the authority of the wisest and best men for many successive generations. If, instead of upholding and applauding the ancient maxims, the ablest and most experienced contemporaries had affirmed them to be the rude conceptions of barbarians, the many would have lost their faith in them, and would have been as we are now. Nor had authority more than its just weight: it did not supersede reason, but guided it: for every relic which remains to us, of what was addressed to the Athenian Demos, for example, by their orators and politicians, is full of strong sense, cogent argument, and the most manly and forcible appeals to the reason of the people. The speeches of the great orators, and those in Thucydides, are monuments of long-sighted policy, and keen and sagacious observation of life and human nature, which will be prized as long as the world shall endure, or as wisdom shall be understood and appreciated in it.
It is well known that respect and deference for old age formed a conspicuous feature both in the public and private morality of the ancient commonwealths: and there is no surer mark of a natural state of society in respect to moral influence. So deeply, however, have the notions and feelings of an age of transition taken root among us, that if there are some who wonder that this reverence should no longer exist, there are probably many more who wonder that it should ever have existed, and view it as a sort of superstition, or as one of the numerous oddities of those peculiar people, the ancients: if, indeed, they believe it at all; for it may be almost a misapplication of terms to say that a man believes a fact, although he may never dream of doubting it; as religious writers know well, when they treat of what they call practical infidelity. We can hardly be said to believe that, which we do not conceive with any distinctness or vivacity. What we read of Greece and Rome is so remote from what we have ever seen; we are helped by so few familiar analogies to penetrate our minds with its spirit, and make ourselves, as it were, at home in it, that some strength of imagination is requisite to conceive it with the intensity and life which is essential to any thing deserving the name of belief. We do not believe ancient history, we only fancy we believe it—our belief deserves no higher name than simple acquiescence—it scarcely amounts to more than that conventional assent, which we give to the mythology of the same nations.
Unquestionably, if the mental state of the old men of the present day were their natural state, there would be little reason for paying much deference to their modes of thinking. But narrowness of mind, and obstinate prejudice, are not the necessary, or the natural concomitants of old age. Old men have generally both their opinions and their feelings more deeply rooted than the young; but is it an evil to have strong convictions, and steady unfluctuating feelings? It is on the contrary, essential to all dignity or solidity of character, and to all fitness for guiding or governing mankind. It constitutes prejudice, only when society is at one of those turns or vicissitudes in its history, at which it becomes necessary that it should change its opinions and its feelings. There is but little wisdom in any one head, whatever quantity there may be in the society collectively, when the young are wiser than the old. We should not forget that, in the natural state of things, the old would, as a matter of course, be further advanced than the young, simply because they have been longer on the road. If this be not the case at present, it is because we have come to a bend in the road, and they not knowing it, continued to advance in the same line, got to the wrong side of the hedge, and allowed even the hindmost to pass them by. If the old know less than the young, it is because it is hard to unlearn; but society, fortunately, has not so frequent need to unlearn, as to learn.
All old men might have, and some old men really have, knowledge which it is altogether impossible that a young man, however great his capacity, should possess a very large measure of, namely, that which is derived from personal experience. There are some states of civilization in which this is every thing—rude states, it is true. In these, accordingly, the authority of age is almost unlimited. Nowhere is it so great as among the North American Indians: for there, the knowledge and judgment of every man must be nearly in proportion to the length of his individual experience, as the cunning of a fox may be not inaccurately measured by his years. Among the Greeks and Romans, though, in comparison, highly civilized nations, wisdom, notwithstanding, was less the fruit of speculative study, than of intercourse with the world, practice in business, and the long habit of deliberating on public affairs. It was there a recognised maxim, that old men were fittest to devise, and young men to execute.
In an age of literature, there is no longer, of necessity, the same wide interval between the knowledge of the old, and that which is attainable by the young. The experience of all former ages, recorded in books, is open to the young man as to the old; and this, doubtless, comprises much more than the individual experience of any one man; but it does not comprise all. There are things which books cannot teach. A young man cannot, unless his history has been a most extraordinary one, possess either that knowledge of life, which is necessary in the most difficult and important practical business, or that knowledge of the more recondite parts of human nature, which is equally necessary for the foundation of sound ethical and even political principles, but which is almost the exclusive privilege of him who, like Ulysses, has been πολύτλας.6 which he, whose mind has not passed through numerous states, both moral and intellectual, cannot find out by himself—though he may undoubtedly take upon trust from other minds, such faint, uncertain, and shadowy conceptions, as we have of a plant or an animal about which we have merely read. It is true that our old men, educated as they were, have little enough of all these advantages; but young men cannot have them. If they are not in the old men, they are nowhere.
That the habits of old men are fixed, their principles riveted, and that they swerve not easily from them, instead of a defect, should naturally be the highest recommendation. It would be so, if the habits which they acquired in their youth, were still suitable to the state of the human mind in their old age. When it is otherwise, indeed, the greater flexibility of the young, their greater accessibility to new ideas and new feelings, all which would otherwise be termed unsteadiness, renders them the sole hope of society. But this is nothing to be proud of, or to rejoice at; it is one of the great causes which combine to render this state of transition a most dangerous passage to society. The indispensable requisites for wise thinking and wise conduct in great affairs, are severed from each other: they are apart, and are not all found in the same men; nay, they are found in two sets of men, who are, for the most part, warring with each other. The young must prevail, though it were only by outliving their antagonists; but the most important of the qualifications for making a good use of success, are still to be acquired by them during the struggle. In turbulent times, knowledge of life and business are rapidly obtained; but a comprehensive knowledge of human nature is scarcely to be acquired, but by calm reflexion and observation, in times of political tranquillity; for when minds are excited, and one man is ranged against another, there are few who do not contract an invincible repugnance, not only to the errors of their opponents, but to the truths to which those errors are allied. Through this state, however, we must struggle; and happy will be the day when it will once more be true, that with length of years cometh wisdom,7 and when the necessary privations and annoyances of declining life shall again, as heretofore, be compensated by the honour and the gratitude due to increased powers of usefulness, fittingly employed.
A.B.
98.
THE PROSPECTS OF FRANCE
EXAMINER, 10 APR., 1831, PP. 225-6
Though similar in title to the series “Prospects of France” (beginning with No. 44), this article is distinct from it. Mill was concerned now to defend the Revolution of 1830 from accusations that it had not lived up to the expectations of its supporters (a problem that was to recur in Britain after the Reform Act of 1832). The article, the first in the “Political Examiner,” is headed as title. Unlike the earlier series of articles, which were all signed “S—.”, this is unsigned. Described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘The Prospects of France,’ in the Examiner of 10th April 1831” (MacMinn, p. 15), the item is listed as “Prospects of France” and enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set; though not within the square brackets, the epigraph is here included.
- War is a game which, were their subjects wise,
- Kings would not play at; nations would do well
- To extort their truncheons from the puny hands
- Of heroes, whose infirm and baby minds
- Are gratified with mischief; and who spoil,
- Because men suffer it, their toy—the world.1
the situation of france at present is extremely critical, and it is of the utmost importance that it should be rightly understood.
It is not to be denied that, up to this moment, the Revolution of 1830 has brought forth none but bitter fruits;—the ruin of hundreds of opulent families; thousands of industrious workmen thrown out of employment; perpetual apprehension of internal tumults or foreign war; the most grievous disappointments; the most violent political dissensions; and, finally, a Government not more democratic in its constitution—not more popular in its spirit—and, by the necessity of its false position, not less oppressive and anti-national in its acts, than that of Charles X. Seeing this, the enemies of free institutions throughout Europe insultingly exclaim, “What has France gained by her Revolution?” and men look grave, and dilate on the fresh example now afforded of the miseries inevitably attendant even on the most legitimate and best-conducted popular insurrections.
To all this, the answer is, that the circumstances of France and the character of the French nation are grievously mistaken, if it is imagined that the people of France made their Revolution under the conception that it was a thing to gain by. There is no country, probably, in the world, where the evils of a popular convulsion are more highly estimated, or more nervously dreaded, than in France. Can it be otherwise, after the events of the last forty years? It is well known that evils with which we are only acquainted through description, and by means of general terms, scarcely ever affect our imagination with the same proportionate force with which they influence our reason. There are, probably, very few persons in Great Britain who are not convinced that a convulsion in our own country, with its enormous masses of indigent intelligence, and its utter absence of individual sympathies binding together the high and the low, would be a far more terrible catastrophe than a Revolution in France. There are few of us, moreover, who are not convinced in our understandings, that such an event is upon the cards; and yet, so little is the thought, or its attendant emotions, familiar to us—so little are we used to contemplate a Revolution at home as in the category of possible phenomena—that our reason only, not our imagination, believes in the possibility; and we eat, drink, and sleep, with our accustomed regularity, and perform all the round of daily occupations with our wonted tranquillity, knowing and saying all the while, that we are on the brink of an abyss. But such is by no means the case in France. There, even in the midst of that exemplary populace, the “people of property” lock up their strong boxes at every knocking at the door, and hear the roar of anarchy and devastation in every breeze. “The burnt child dreads the fire,” is an every-day truth; but there is an Italian proverb still more accurately suited to their case—“The scalded dog fears cold water.”
L’ordre public in France is a talismanic expression,2 which has power not only to raise, but to charm down the most potent spirits. And it is as much in the interest of one as the other of the two rival idols, Order and Liberty, that the hommes du mouvement3 protest against the “lame and impotent conclusion”4 which the Stationaries are desirous of putting to the Revolution of July.
The Stationaries had nothing to do with the Revolution of July. Not one name of note in their ranks was allowed by its owner to be compromised until the struggle was over. The same terror which now rouses them, then paralysed them. They disliked the late Government—they disliked the Ordinances5 —but they dreaded the people, and the leaders of the people, far more. The Revolution was the work exclusively of the hommes du mouvement; of those with whom the Government which has emanated from the Revolution is at open war. And why of them, and them alone? Not because they were what is absurdly called Revolutionists; as if there were, or ever had been, since the first institution of Governments, any human being who was a Revolutionist. No; but because they alone united a wish for good government, with courage to brave the necessary dangers of the struggle for it; because all the professed Liberals, them alone excepted, were either too lukewarm in their patriotism to be inclined to make any sacrifice for obtaining or preserving free institutions, or else had the misfortune to labour under a panic terror of democracy, which made them tremble at the idea of calling forth the mass of the population to contend against the common enemy. The same lukewarmness, or the same timidity, renders the same men the upholders and instigators of the present Government in its deplorable system of statu quo. Under their guidance, the Government has made an enemy of every man in France, who either stirred, or would have dared to stir, a finger or a foot to place that Government where it is.
But what better is to be looked for, when it is assumed as the fundamental principle of politics, that government exists, not to protect men’s persons and property, and to forward their advancement in civilization, but to uphold a hereditary monarchy; and that to this end all progressive and gradual extension of popular rights is to be avoided, lest in the end it should prove to be a step towards republicanism? Louis Philippe cannot forget that those who desire that the present narrow oligarchy of electors should be widened, are headed by men who believe that a constitutional monarchy, though desirable for France at present, and for a long time to come, is at the best no more than a means of transition, to educate the people for a republic. It is in vain that these very leaders—when they were strong and he was weak—when they might have assumed the government, instead of resigning it to him—magnanimously sacrificed their private and speculative opinions, and consented to accept such a monarchical constitution as should be compatible with the progressive improvement which had been the aim of their whole lives. Louis Philippe, like other kings, made his option in favour of those who were attached to monarchy as an end, not a means, or who were ready to attach themselves to any established government; and, by a natural consequence, his throne is now surrounded almost exclusively by the hired supporters of every government which would pay them—the timid supporters of every government as long as it will stand—and some whose virtue, having never before been assailed by any powerful seductions, wore a goodly appearance, but who have surrendered the citadel at the first summons—have eaten up their words—have broken with their friends and with their principles, and proclaimed themselves in the face of Europe guilty of tergiversation so shameless, as might surprise and grieve their bitterest enemy.
The aversion of the new oligarchy to improvement, is not confined to constitutional changes. If we are truly informed, they do not seek to disguise, either in public or in private, the coldness with which they look upon all aspirations for benefitting mankind on a large scale, or for the further advancement of civilization; but especially for improving the condition of the most numerous and poorest class—a class which, according to them, is as well off as nature and the constitution of society permit it to be, and has no business to be dissatisfied while their property is secure, and they have the disposal of the taxes. Every one, moreover, who reads their parliamentary debates, must perceive that personality and intemperance in discussion are nearly confined to the moderates, who have been most justly, as well as cleverly, called des hommes furieux de modération.6 Their opponents have far too much good sense and magnanimity to retaliate; and whoever wishes for examples of that kind of oratory, in which both what is said, and the manner of saying it, indicates the greatest and the truest moderation, should read the speeches of MM. Mauguin and Odilon Barrot, in the recent debate on the Patriotic Associations.7
It is unfortunate in a thousand ways for all Europe, that the question of peace and war should have come at this moment to complicate the difficulties of the present position of France, to place the popular party, in the estimation of many who would otherwise have sympathized with them, manifestly in the wrong, and to expose all that has been gained, and all that might hereafter have been gained, to new and countless hazards.8 The defeat of France would stop the march of civilization for another half century: successful she could not be, in less than three or four campaigns; in that time, the ignominy of invasion, and the inevitable horrors of war and devastation, would again rouse the national antipathies which a peace of unusual length has so greatly mitigated; while, instead of soldier-citizens, five hundred thousand military ruffians, demoralized and brutalized like those of Napoleon, might once more overspread Europe, and after enslaving foreign countries under the forms of liberty, might return prepared to be the tools of any new usurper in inflicting still worse slavery upon their own.
We must be just, however, to what is called (incorrectly) the war party in France. They do not advocate a crusade for liberty, or a war of propagandism. They know well that the improvement of a nation is not advanced, but retarded, by popular institutions imposed upon it by foreign force. It is not in the power of any one to affirm, with probability, that a nation would be benefitted by a constitutional government, until it puts forth its strength and seizes one; for, whatever be the forms of a government—unless it be vigorously upheld by a preponderance of the physical and intellectual strength of the nation itself, sufficient to overmatch all domestic attempts at its overthrow, it must, as the condition of its existence, be carried on, substantially, in the spirit and with the machinery of a despotism. The so-called war party have not the folly to think of quixotizing through all Europe, giving liberty to nations by the sword. But they say that when a nation has put itself in motion—when it has shown itself eager for liberal institutions, and ripe for them, by subverting all domestic opposition, vanquishing the strength of an established Government, and giving itself, by its own strength, without foreign aid, a constitution more favourable to the progress of civilization,—that then no one ought to be permitted to rush down upon it with the overpowering strength of another nation not equally advanced, not equally prepared for an improvement in its government, and overwhelm a united people by superiority of brute force. They say that non-intervention by one nation in the affairs of another should be laid down by France as an inflexible rule, which she should herself observe, and of which she should enforce the observance on all other Governments. And this, they assert, is the true interest of France herself; and it is in this view mainly, we may say solely, that they contend for it.
The existence, they say, in France, of a government founded on popular will, and established on the ruins of legitimacy and divine right, must necessarily give an impulse to the democratic spirit throughout Europe, by which, if not restrained, the thrones of all absolute monarchs will be every year more and more undermined, and, in no long period, certainly overthrown. The reason and the instinct of those monarchs will therefore join in indicating to them as the sole chance of saving their existence as despots, to extinguish the spirit of liberalism in France. The consequent struggle, the French are aware, will be an arduous and a perilous one: but those, at least, who are called the war-party, believe it to be as inevitable as was the still more terrific struggle in 1792. In this contest they would have for their natural allies the people of every country in Europe which aspires to free institutions. But what, they ask, will be our situation, if we allow all to whom we might appeal in the hour of need to be crushed, one after another, not by their own governments, but by the armies of foreign despots; who will then have no enemy but us, and who, after keeping us for an indefinite period in perpetual agitation, and a state of habitual preparation for war, implying most of the evils of actual war, without its advantages, will seize the first favourable moment for pouring their troops across our frontiers, and reducing us to the necessity of fighting for our very existence at our own doors, and on our own soil? It is therefore that Lafayette, and the numerous body whose opinions he represents, contend for the enforcement, by arms, if necessary, of the principle of non-intervention.9
And if France had been a united nation, headed by a government which could trust the people, which the people trusted, and which was able and dared to call forth the national enthusiasm, this would have been the true policy of France, and its almost infallible result would have been not war but peace. When France declared that the entry of foreign troops into Belgium would be considered a declaration of war, all Europe applauded, and the Cabinets reluctantly acquiesced. Yet France was then almost without an army, and many of her frontier fortresses were in a state almost incapable of defence. But the imposing unanimity which reigned in the July revolution, struck terror into the Powers, and they feared to stir. It is Louis Philippe, and his Chambers, that have marred this glorious position. It is they who, by placing themselves in a state of hostility against the spirit of the nation, have destroyed the préstiges of its power, and impressed the despotic governments with the gratifying assurance that it has too much upon its hands at home to be formidable abroad. This being the melancholy fact, the attempt to enforce non-intervention against Austria in the case of the Papal states would probably lead to war; and the co-operation of such a spiritless people as that of Romagna, in case of future hostilities, is so little worth, that it would be unwise in France to accelerate such a calamity in order to save them. Her policy now is to throw her shield over Belgium and Switzerland;10 leave events in other countries to take their course; and, if war is coming, wait till it comes.
99.
PARAGRAPH ON FRANCE
EXAMINER, 10 APR., 1831, P. 232
This unheaded editorial comment refers to a letter signed “M” from the Examiner’s Paris Correspondent, Pierre Martin Maillefer, in which Maillefer points to the growth of a republican spirit in France, anticipates a republic with Lafayette at its head, and ends with a bitter denunciation of the corruption and duplicity of Louis Philippe’s government and a personal attack on the king and Casimir Périer. The letter (pp. 231-2) is headed “Foreign Intelligence. (From the Correspondent of the Examiner)” and dated 2 Apr. The item is not included in Mill’s bibliography, but is listed as “Paragraph on France” in the Somerville College index. Though the page number is there given as 233, this paragraph on p. 232 is enclosed in square brackets in the bound set.
the state of feeling amongst the young men of France, and the most estimable of the old patriots, is pourtrayed in the letter of our Parisian correspondent. There are no new events of importance of which he does not treat.
100.
FRENCH NEWS [22]
EXAMINER, 17 APR., 1831, P. 249
This item is headed “London, April 17.” For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 55. The item is listed as “Article on France” and enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set.
the fifteen years of the restoration never furnished anything approaching to the deplorable exhibition which the French Government is making in the face of Europe, on the trial of the pretended Republican Conspirators of December.1 The prosecution cannot establish the most trifling point. The witnesses who were most relied on, are brought forward, and have nothing to say; complaining in many cases, that the eagerness of the Judge before whom they made their preliminary depositions, had converted the merest trifles into facts of the gravest import. It is evident that the government has kept innocent men in prison for several months, and now puts them on trial for their lives, on no evidence whatever; proceeding upon idle reports, and the suggestions of its own morbid and unmanly apprehensions. One of the witnesses summed up his opinion of the whole affair, in words which are borne out by every fact which has transpired: “There are two sorts of men who have exaggerated these tumults: terrified men, who take alarm at every thing, such men as may now be seen exhibited at the Théâtre des Variétés; and some others, who were willing to stake the lives of their fellow-citizens against a ribbon, or a place. But they will reap nothing from it but infamy.”2
The Chamber of Deputies have refused to adopt the amendment, by which the Peers had cut off a large proportion of the new electors;3 but it has adopted, on the proposition of M. Casimir Périer, an additional article,4 which provides that the electoral lists shall be made out from the tax-books of 1830, instead of 1831; which will prevent the new taxes, now about to be imposed, from operating to augment still further the number of electors. This distrust and jealousy of the people, shown at the very moment when the hand of the tax-gatherer is to be thrust deeper into their pockets, has created the most lively dissatisfaction among all but the admirers of the “juste milieu,” or statu-quo system.
101.
CAVAIGNAC’S DEFENCE
EXAMINER, 24 APR., 1831, P. 266
For the background, see No. 100, n1. This paragraph introduces a translation that is given in App. A. It is the first item in the “Foreign Intelligence” of the Examiner, subheaded “France,” Not listed in Mill’s bibliography or in the Somerville College set, the translation is acknowledged as his by Mill in a letter to Thomas Carlyle of 25 Nov., 1833 (EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 194); there can be little doubt that the introductory paragraph is also his.
the pretended republican conspirators have been acquitted, and carried in triumph through the streets of Paris. Our daily papers being unable to find room at the present juncture for French news of any interest or importance, but only for loose talk and idle speculation, we think it a duty to present our readers with a translation of part of M. Cavaignac’s defence; that they may see what manner of men those are whom the satellites of power load with abuse, whom the government has not feared nor been ashamed to put on trial upon a capital charge, and who, it has been supposed by good-natured, timid friends of freedom, both in this country and in France, must needs be firebrands and sowers of sedition, seeing that the citizen king and his government cannot rest in their beds on account of them.
102.
FRENCH NEWS [23]
EXAMINER, 24 APR., 1831, P. 267
This item, headed “London, April 24”, is not covered by the inclusive entry in Mill’s bibliography cited at No. 55, which ends at 17 Apr. However, it is listed as “Article on France” and enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set.
the chamber of deputies is prorogued, and will shortly be dissolved. Thus, in the two greatest nations in the world, general elections will simultaneously take place, and the new legislative bodies will be simultaneously called upon to determine the future constitution of their country.1
The speech of Louis Philippe2 expresses his determination to maintain the charter, and speaks of the good disposition of foreign powers towards France: it is empty and formal, and precisely such a speech as might have been concocted by our last administration.
103.
THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE, V [Part 1]
EXAMINER, 15 MAY, 1831, P. 307
For the context and entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 73. The article, listed as “The Spirit of the Age, No. 5” and enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set, is also there corrected in eleven places: “which, it” is altered to “which it” (305.20), “pale, because” to “pale because” (305.26), “Now, when” to “When” (305.39), “that, situate . . . of the rivals . . . him, even . . . chair,” to “that (situate . . . of rivals . . . him even . . . chair,)” (306.6-9), “mankind, the” to “mankind, and the” (306.11), “of menacing” to “for menacing” (306.12), “low.” to “low;—” (306.14), “them; and” to “them and” (306.20), “but when” to “but where” (306.22), “indisputably” to “undisputably” (306.25), and “irretrievable—except” to “irretrievable except” (307.5). These are all accepted here.
in commencing this series of papers, I intended, and attempted, that the divisions of my discourse should correspond with those of my subject, and that each number should comprehend within its own limits all which was necessary to the expansion and illustration of one single idea. The nature of the publication, which, as being read by more persons capable of understanding the drift of such speculations (and by fewer, in proportion, who are unfit for them) than any other single work, I considered myself fortunate in being enabled to adopt as a vehicle for my ideas, compels me to limit the length of each article more than is compatible with my original plan. I can no longer always hope that every paper should be complete within itself; and the present number, had it appeared in its proper place, would have formed the continuation of the last.
In endeavouring to give an intelligible notion of what I have termed the natural state of society, in respect of moral influence—namely, that state in which the opinions and feelings of the people are, with their voluntary acquiescence, formed for them, by the most cultivated minds which the intelligence and morality of the times call into existence; and in drawing attention to the striking differences between this natural state and our present transitional condition, in which there are no persons to whom the mass of the uninstructed habitually defer, and in whom they trust for finding the right, and for pointing it out; I have hitherto illustrated the former state only by the example of those commonwealths, in which the most qualified men are studiously picked out because of their qualifications, and invested with that worldly power, which, if it were in any other hands, would divide or eclipse their moral influence: but which, placed in theirs, and acting partly as a certificate of authority, and partly as a cause, tends naturally to render their power over the minds of their fellow-citizens paramount and irresistible.
But it is not solely in such societies that there is found a united body of moral authority, sufficient to extort acquiescence from the uninquiring, or uninformed majority. It is found, likewise, in all societies where religion possesses a sufficient ascendancy, to subdue the minds of the possessors of worldly power, and where the spirit of the prevailing religion is such as excludes the possibility of material conflict of opinion among its teachers.
These conditions exist among two great stationary communities—the Hindoos and the Turks; and are doubtless the chief cause which keeps those communities stationary. The same union of circumstances has been hitherto found only in one progressive society—but that, the greatest which had ever existed: Christendom in the middle ages.
For many centuries, undivided moral influence over the nations of Europe, the unquestioned privilege of forming the opinions and feelings of the Christian world, was enjoyed, and most efficiently exercised by the Catholic clergy. Their word inspired in the rest of mankind the most fervent faith. It not only absolutely excluded doubt, but caused the doubter to be regarded with sentiments of profound abhorrence, which moralists had never succeeded in inspiring for the most revolting of crimes. It is certainly possible to feel perfectly sure of an opinion, without believing that whosoever doubts it will be damned, and should be burnt: and this last is by no means one of those peculiarities of a natural state of society which I am at all anxious to see restored. But the deep earnest feeling of firm and unwavering conviction, which it pre-supposes, we may, without being unreasonable, lament that it was impossible, and could not but be impossible, in the intellectual anarchy of a general revolution in opinion, to transfer unimpaired to the truth.
The priesthood did not claim a right to dictate to mankind, either in belief or practice, beyond the province of religion and morals, but the political interests of mankind came not the less within their pale because they seldom assumed the authority to regulate those concerns by specific precepts. They gave the sanction of their irresistible authority to one comprehensive rule, that which enjoined unlimited obedience to the temporal sovereign: an obligation from which they absolved the conscience of the believer, only when the sovereign disputed their authority within their peculiar province: and in that case they were invariably triumphant, like all those to whom it is given to call forth the moral sentiments of mankind in all their energy, against the inducements of mere physical hopes and fears.
The Catholic clergy, at the time when they possessed this undisputed authority in matters of conscience and belief, were, in point of fact, the fittest persons who could have possessed it—the then state of society, in respect of moral influence, answers to the description of a natural state.
When we consider for how long a period the Catholic clergy were the only members of the European community who could even read; that they were the sole depositaries of all the treasures of thought, and reservoirs of intellectual delight, handed down to us from the ancients; that the sanctity of their persons permitted to them alone, among nations of semi-barbarians, the tranquil pursuit of peaceful occupations and studies; that, howsoever defective the morality which they taught, they had at least a mission for curbing the unruly passions of mankind, and teaching them to set a value upon a distant end, paramount to immediate temptations, and to prize gratifications consisting of mental feelings above bodily sensation; that (situate in the position of rivals to the temporal sovereign, drafted chiefly from the inferior classes of society, from men who otherwise would have been serfs, and the most lowly among them all having the road open before him even to the papal chair,) they had the strongest motives to avail themselves of the means afforded by Christianity, for inculcating the natural equality of mankind, and the superiority of love and sacrifice above mere courage and bodily prowess, for menacing the great with the only terrors to which they were accessible, and speaking to their consciences in the name of the only superior whom they acknowledged, in behalf of the low;—Reflecting on these things, I cannot persuade myself to doubt that the ascendancy of the Catholic clergy was to be desired, for that day, even by the philosopher; and that it has been a potent cause, if even it was not an indispensable condition, of the present civilization of Europe. Nor is this an apology for the vices of the Catholic religion: those vices were great and flagrant, and there was no natural connection between them and the more civilizing and humanizing features in which all that there was of good in it resided. We may regret that the influence of the priesthood was not superseded by a better influence: but where in those days did any such influence exist?
I conclude, therefore, that, during a part of the middle ages, not only worldly power, as already shown, but moral influence also, was undisputedly exercised by the most competent persons; and that the conditions of a natural state of society were then fully realized.
But the age of transition arrived. A time came when that which had overmatched and borne down the strongest obstacles to improvement, became itself incompatible with improvement. Mankind outgrew their religion, and that, too, at a period when they had not yet outgrown their government, because the texture of the latter was more yielding, and could be stretched. We all know how lamentably effectual an instrument the influence of the Catholic priesthood then became, for restraining that expansion of the human intellect, which could not any longer consist with their ascendancy, or with the belief of the doctrines which they taught.
The more advanced communities of Europe succeeded, after a terrific struggle, in effecting their total or partial emancipation: in some, the Reformation achieved a victory—in others, a toleration; while, by a fate unhappily too common, the flame which had been kindled where the pile awaited the spark, spread into countries where the materials were not yet sufficiently prepared; and instead of burning down the hateful edifice, it consumed all that existed capable of nourishing itself, and was extinguished. The germs of civilization to come were scorched up and destroyed; the hierarchy reigned stronger than ever, amidst the intellectual solitude which it had made: and the countries which were thus denuded of the means of further advancement, fell back into barbarism irretrievable except by foreign conquest. Such is the inevitable end, when, unhappily, changes to which the spirit of the age is favourable, can be successfully resisted. Civilization becomes the terror of the ruling powers, and that they may retain their seat, it must be their deliberate endeavour to barbarize mankind. There has been, since that day, one such attempt, and only one, which has had a momentary success: it was that of a man in whom all the evil influences of his age were concentered with an intensity and energy truly terrific, less tempered by any of its good influences than could appear possible in the times in which he lived—I need scarcely say that I refer to Napoleon. May his abortive effort to uncivilize human nature, to uncultivate the mind of man, and turn it into a desolate waste, be the last!
It remains to trace the history of moral influence in the nations of Europe, subsequently to the Reformation.
104.
MLLE LEONTINE FAY [1]
EXAMINER, 15 MAY, 1831, P. 310
This, Mill’s first artistic notice, perhaps not by chance on a French actress, was followed in the next Examiner by a fuller account (see No. 106) of the talents of Jeanne Louise Baron (called Léontine) Fay (1810-76), who had begun with children’s roles. Her London repertoire included some sixteen plays in thirteen appearances, with Mlle Fay playing in two or even three of the playlets each evening, including three performances each of Yelva, ou L’orpheline russe; Louise, ou La réparation; Valérie, ou La jeune aveugle; Le Quaker et la danseuse, and Une faute. She was engaged in London by Pierre François Laporte (1799-1841), actor and theatrical entrepreneur, who managed the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket, 1828-31 and 1833-41, bringing there such Italian operas as La sonnambula, I puritani, and Norma. The article, headed “French Theatre, Haymarket,” appears in the “Theatrical Examiner.” It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A paragraph on Mlle Léontine Fay, in the Examiner of 15th May 1831” (MacMinn, p. 16), and listed (“Paragraph on Madlle Léontine Fay”) and enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set.
m. laporte, whose French company is usually as miserable a travestie of the French stage as his company at the Opera-house frequently is of an Italian Lyric theatre, has made atonement for all past faults by engaging (alas! only for ten nights) Mademoiselle Léontine Fay; an actress, to see whom, would be of itself a sufficient motive, were there no other, for journeying to Paris. In all these scenes from domestic life, whether of tragic or of comic interest, which are the reigning character, and the peculiar charm of the French stage, this lady is pre-eminent. We shall speak of her at greater length in our next paper; meanwhile, we can only entreat our readers, who are capable of understanding a theatrical performance in the French language, to see her, and admire for themselves.
105.
THE CROIX DE JUILLET
EXAMINER, 15 MAY, 1831, P. 313
This article responds to a leading article on French affairs in The Times, 11 May, 1831, p. 2, which criticizes the French reaction to the Croix de Juillet, a decoration instituted by Bull. 17, No. 81 (13 Dec., 1830). The article, headed “London, May 15,” is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article on the Croix de Juillet in the Examiner of the same date [as No. 104], standing as the summary of French news” (MacMinn, p. 16); it is listed as “Article on France” and enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set, where one correction (here adopted) is made: at 308.29, “incapable of, comprehending” is altered to “incapable of comprehending”.
a law, passed in the late session of the French Chamber of Deputies, had decreed a peculiar decoration to those who had fought for the freedom of their country in the three days of July. A commission was appointed, which, by a careful and protracted investigation, ascertained who were the parties entitled to this national testimonial; and it was supposed that nothing further was necessary to authorise them to wear it: but no; the medal bears the words, “donné par le roi,” and no one is to receive it without taking an oath of fidelity to Louis Philippe. Against this the majority of the parties entitled to the decoration have protested: have refused to accept it, subject to these conditions; and asserted their right, and their intention, to wear it free from any conditions whatever, by virtue of the law, and of the decision of the commission of national rewards.
For this The Times soundly rates them, in the stile in which a nurse scolds a self-willed child; and threatens them with the ridicule of Europe for their frivolity. The Times might have spared itself the pains of demonstrating, by another conclusive proof, that it is not only utterly ignorant of, but utterly incapable of comprehending, the national character of the French. The last of our public writers who still holds fast to the idle phrases of “our lively neighbours,” “our volatile neighbours,”1 has great need of putting himself to school before he gives lectures to a people who, as all mankind know, except himself, have undergone some rather remarkable metamorphoses since the days of their grandfathers. Is it necessary to repeat, once more, that the French of the present day are a far more serious people than the English; that their national character is grave, earnest, and enthusiastic; that frivolity has fled from them with its parent aristocracy, and that the gibes of forty years ago might now, with far greater justice, be retorted by “our volatile neighbours” against ourselves?
If the writer in The Times knew any thing of la jeune France,2 he would know that, by all the more ardent and generous portion of it, a ribbon, a title, a favour, a distinction of any kind proceeding from a king, or a court, is held in supreme contempt. He would know that the medal of July is the only decoration sanctioned by the French law, which nine-tenths of the combatants of the three days of July would accept: and that, because it does not proceed from a King: because it is not a mark that they have dangled in an ante-chamber, and mingled in the crowd of place-hunters, and candidates for court favour: it is the reward of a specific service, attached to that service by inflexible law, and not by a man’s flexible will. Deprive it of this character, and you place it on a level with the Cross of St. Louis, or that of the Legion of Honour,3 which have been made the prize of sycophancy and favouritism by successive governments, until it is considered a degradation to accept them. When the Schools, and the National Guard, with one accord, declined the crosses which the King had offered to confer upon a certain number of the most deserving, the reason which they gave was, that no one of them was more deserving than the rest: the reason which every one knew to be the real one, was contempt for the prostituted distinction. Yet to this the King, unauthorised by the law, thought fit to assimilate the testimonial of a grateful nation to the heroes of July.
Not less offence was given by the oath of fidelity to the King, exacted from men, two-thirds of whom are, from conviction, and without disguise, republicans. A government may have a right to annex conditions to its favours, but not to its justice: it may treat those who will not swear to uphold it, as disqualified for serving it, but not as excluded from the reward of services previously performed. They may disapprove of the existing constitution, but their hands aided to build it up: the deeds which France has thought worthy of a national testimonial were not the less done by them, and a service to their country is entitled to its appointed reward, even though it were achieved by men who have no attachment to their King. It is contended, and justly, that an oath of allegiance may be exacted from a public functionary, but from a private citizen never. These men might have been public functionaries if they would, there are many of them to whom places were offered; but they preferred to retain the freedom of their individual opinion, and upon that no government, they assert, has a right to encroach, by requiring a profession of faith from the labourer before adjudging him worthy of his hire.4
106.
MLLE LEONTINE FAY [2]
EXAMINER, 22 MAY, 1831, PP. 325-6
For background, see No. 104. This article, headed “French Theatre,” appears in the “Theatrical Examiner.” It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article on Mlle Léontine Fay in the Examiner of 22d May 1831” (MacMinn, p. 16), and is listed (“Article on Madlle Léontine Fay”) and enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set.
it is difficult to characterise or to criticise the performances of Mademoiselle Léontine Fay, because it is difficult to try by any standard that which might itself serve as a standard for trying every thing we could liken to it. It is impossible to describe what is her style, or in what character she excels; because she is not one of those persons who have a style, or who excel in any particular parts. If she were, she could not be, as she is, a woman of genius. An actor may distinguish himself in a certain line of characters, from a natural similitude in the turn of his own thoughts and feelings, to those which he is required to represent; or from possessing some incidental endowments, for the display of which such parts afford a peculiar scope. Or he may attain the semblance of greater variety and more abundant resources, by the mere ape-like quality of imitation: by the faculty of making his own voice, and his own face and limbs, reproduce the sounds, the motions, and the attitudes, which he has happened to hear and see. But what is hearing or seeing, without understanding? If he imitate the mere signs, without well knowing and intimately feeling what they are signs of, it matters not how accurately he may observe, nor how ample may have been his opportunities of observing; no care and pains will prevent a thousand inconsistencies from creeping in, or a thousand of the finer traits from escaping his notice. Let the most careful penman attempt to copy a long passage, in a language of which he does not understand one word, and we doubt whether, even if he were a Chinese, he could help making a hundred mistakes in spelling before the end.
A great actor must possess imagination, in the higher and more extensive meaning of the word: that is, he must be able to conceive correctly, and paint vividly within himself, states of external circumstances, and of the human mind, into which it has not happened to himself to be thrown. This is one of the rarest of all endowments; which is the reason why there are so few great dramatists and great actors. But he who is thus endowed, if he can act one character, can act all characters; at least, all which are in nature. And this is what is meant by the universality of genius. Let him who wishes it to be practically illustrated, go to see Mademoiselle Léontine Fay.
There is no mystery in this. If the actor were really such a person as the author conceived, and were really placed in the situation which the play supposes, he would actually have the thoughts and feelings which the author has pourtrayed: or else, the dramatist has not done his duty,—his conception is not in nature. But it rarely happens that the actor resembles the person he represents; and he never is in the precise situation. Yet, if he possesses sufficient sensibility and imagination to conceive vividly the character and the situation, this vivid conception will of itself suggest to him the very thoughts and feelings which he himself would have if he were such a character, and were placed in such a situation. He will think them and feel them, not indeed in so lively a manner as if the case really were his own, but vividly enough to represent them in the true colours of nature. This is the secret of great histrionic as well as of great dramatic genius; and we suspect that the other fine arts might equally be included in the assertion.
By this test, the sensibility and imagination of Mademoiselle Léontine Fay must be of the highest order. From the deepest tragedy to the gayest comedy, she identifies herself with every part, until you would swear that it, and it alone, was her own nature: that is, if the part be in nature. We apprehend, indeed, that in what are commonly called tragedies, or in the hotchpotch of buffoonery and caricature which men call a farce, she would be sadly at fault; for she has nothing conventional; and if she cannot find in herself something which answers to the words of the author, and from which those words might emanate, she would probably be more embarrassed in attempting to utter them than the feeblest and most insipid personage who ever tuned her voice to the sing-song of the theatre. Wherever feeling and taste are hindrances instead of helps, we are persuaded that Mademoiselle Léontine would fail. But this is seldom the case in the little dramas of the modern or recent French stage, in which alone she ever performs. These are of various degrees of merit, but they are always pictures of the real feelings of real human beings; they paint from the life, and not from faded paintings of manners and habits which never existed, or which have passed by. The genius of Mademoiselle Léontine ranges through several hundreds of such pieces, some of them exquisite, all natural and true; some calling forth a part of her wonderful powers; a few, very few, affording adequate scope to the whole.
For ourselves, had we written a drama of real life, whether of serious or comic interest, we should not desiderate any higher proof of its being true to nature throughout, than that it was such a piece as Mademoiselle Léontine could play.
107.
THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE, V [Part 2]
EXAMINER, 29 MAY, 1831, PP. 339-41
This article is the last in the series beginning with No. 73 (q.v.), though the concluding paragraph makes it clear that Mill had further articles in mind; as late as October 1831, he was telling Sterling of his plans “(when the Reform Bill shall have past) to resume [his] series of papers headed the Spirit of the Age” (EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 80). The article is headed: “The Spirit of the Age. / No. V. (concluded.)” and in the Somerville College set is similarly listed (“The Spirit of the Age, No. 5 concluded”) and enclosed in square brackets.
in the countries which remained Catholic, but where the Catholic hierarchy did not retain sufficient moral ascendancy to succeed in stopping the progress of civilization, the church was compelled, by the decline of its separate influence, to link itself more and more closely with the temporal sovereignty. And thus did it retard its own downfal, until the spirit of the age became too strong for the two united, and both fell together to the ground.
I have said that the three sources of moral influence are, supposed wisdom and virtue, the sacerdotal office, and the possession of worldly power. But in Protestant countries, the authority of the ministers of religion, considered as an independent source of moral influence, must be blotted out from the catalogue. None of the churches which were the successors of the Catholic church in the nations in which the Reformation prevailed, succeeded, as churches, to any portion of the moral influence of their predecessor. The reason is, that no Protestant church ever claimed a special mission from the Deity to itself; or ever numbered among the obligations of religion, that of receiving its doctrines from teachers accredited by that particular church. The Catholics received the priest from God, and their religion from the priest. But in the Protestant sects, you resorted to the teacher, because you had already decided, or because it had been decided for you, that you would adopt his religion. In the popular religions you chose your own creed, and having so done, you naturally had recourse to its ministers;—in the state religions, your creed was chosen for you by your worldly superiors, and you were instigated by conscience, or, it may be, urged by motives of a more worldly nature, to resort for religious instruction to the minister of their appointment.
Every head of a family, even of the lowest rank, in Scotland, is a theologian; he discusses points of doctrine with his neighbours, and expounds the scripture to his family. He defers, indeed, though with no slavish deference, to the opinion of his minister; but in what capacity? only as a man whom his understanding owns as being at least more versed in the particular subject—as being probably a wiser, and possibly, a better man than himself. This is not the influence of an interpreter of religion, as such; it is that of a purer heart, and a more cultivated intelligence. It is not the ascendancy of a priest: it is the combined authority of a professor of religion, and an esteemed private friend.
What I have said of the Scottish church, may be said of all Protestant churches, except state churches (which the Scottish church, notwithstanding its national endowment, is not). It may be said of all dissenters from our own establishment; except, indeed, those who inherit their religion, and adhere to it (not an uncommon case) as they would to any other family connexion. To the followers of the Church of England, a similar observation is wholly inapplicable: those excepted, who would abide by that communion for its doctrine, were it a dissenting sect. The people in general have not, nor ever had, any reason or motive for adhering to the established religion, except that it was the religion of their political superiors: and in the same ratio as their attachment to those superiors has declined, so has their adherence to the established church. From the time when the Church of England became firmly seated in its temporalities; from the period when its title to the fee-simple of our consciences acquired the sanctity of prescription, and when it was enabled to dispense with any support but what it derived from the stable foundations of the social fabric of which it formed a part; it sunk from its independent rank, into an integral part, or a kind of appendage, of the aristocracy. It merged into the higher classes: and what moral influence it possessed, was merely a portion of the general moral influence of temporal superiors.
From the termination, therefore, of that period of intellectual excitement and hardy speculation which succeeded the crisis of the Reformation, and which was prolonged in our own country to the end of the seventeenth century;—that moral influence, that power over the minds of mankind, which had been for so many ages the unquestioned heritage of the Catholic clergy, passed into the hands of the wealthy classes, and became united with worldly power. The ascendancy of the aristocracy was not so dictatorial and enthralling as that of the Catholic priesthood; because it was backed in a far inferior degree by the terrors of religion: and because unity of doctrine was not maintained, by the same powerful means, among the dominant class itself. Nevertheless, the higher classes set the fashion, as in dress, so in opinion. The opinions generally received among them, were the prevalent ones throughout the rest of the nation. A bookish man here and there might have his individual theories, but they made no converts. All who had no opinions of their own, assumed those of their superiors. Few men wrote and published doctrines which the higher classes did not approve; or if published, their books were successfully cried down, or at best, were little read or attended to. Such questions, and such only, as divided the aristocracy, were (modestly) debated by the people: whose various denominations or divisions were each headed by an aristocratic côterie. Even the Dissenters made amends for their preference of a vulgar religion, by evincing a full measure of pliability and acquiescence in all that concerned politics and social life; though the banner they in general followed, was that of a section of the aristocracy less wedded than the other section to the monopoly of the sect which possessed advowsons and archbishoprics.
The wealthy classes, then, from the revolution downwards, possessed all that existed both of moral authority and worldly power. Under their influence grew up the received doctrines of the British constitution; the opinions, respecting the proper limits of the powers of government, and the proper mode of constituting and administering it, which were long characteristic of Englishmen. Along with these arose a vast variety of current opinions respecting morality, education, and the structure of society. And feelings in unison with those opinions, spread far, and took a deep root in the English mind.
At no time, during this period, could the predominant class be said, with truth, to comprise among its members all the persons qualified to govern men’s minds, or to direct their temporal interests, whom the state of society afforded. As a whole, however, that class contained, for a long time, a larger share of civilization and mental culture, than all other classes taken together. The difficulties, to men of merit and energy, of lifting themselves into that class, were not insuperable; and the leading and active spirits among the governing body, had capacity to comprehend intellectual superiority, and to value it. The conditions, therefore, of a natural state of society were for some time, upon the whole, tolerably well fulfilled.
But they have now ceased to be fulfilled. The government of the wealthy classes was, after all, the government of an irresponsible few; it therefore swarmed with abuses. Though the people, by the growth of their intelligence, became more and more sensible of whatever was vicious in their government, they might possibly have borne with it, had they themselves remained as they were formerly, unfit, and conscious of their unfitness, for the business of government. But the comparative freedom of the practical administration of our Constitution—the extensive latitude of action which it allowed to the energies of individuals—enabled the people to train themselves in every habit necessary for self-government; for the rational management of their own affairs. I believe it would be impossible to mention any portion whatever of the business of government (except some parts of the defence of the country against external enemies), of which the exact counterpart is not, in some instance or other, performed by a committee chosen by the people themselves: performed with less means, and under incomparably greater difficulties, but performed unexceptionably, and to the general satisfaction of the persons interested. It is notorious that much of the most important part of what in most other countries composes the business of government, is here performed wholly by voluntary associations: and other portions are done by the government in so clumsy and slovenly a manner, that it is found necessary to have recourse to voluntary associations as a subsidiary resource.
When the people were thus trained to self-government, and had learned by experience that they were fit for it, they could not continue to suppose that none but persons of rank and fortune were entitled to have a voice in the government, or were competent to criticise its proceedings. The superior capacity of the higher ranks for the exercise of worldly power is now a broken spell.
It was in the power of those classes, possessed as they were of leisure and boundless opportunities of mental culture, to have kept themselves on the level of the most advanced intellects of the age; not to have been overtopped by the growth around them of a mass of intelligence, superior, on the average, to their own. They might also have preserved the confidence of the people in the integrity of their purposes, by abating each abuse, in proportion as the public conscience rose against it. They might thus have retained, in right of their virtue and intellect, that moral ascendancy which an intelligent people never long continues to yield to mere power. But they have flung away their advantages.
I have already adverted to the decline of the higher classes in active talent, as they became enervated by lazy enjoyment. In the same ratio in which they have advanced in humanity and refinement, they have fallen off in energy of intellect and strength of will. Many of them were formerly versed in business: and into the hands of such, the remainder committed the management of the nation’s affairs. Now, the men of hereditary wealth are mostly inexperienced in business, and unfit for it. Many of them formerly knew life and the world: but their knowledge of life is now little more than the knowledge of two or three hundred families, with whom they are accustomed to associate; and it may be safely asserted, that not even a fellow of a college is more ignorant of the world, or more grossly mistakes the signs of the times, than an English nobleman. Their very opinions,—which, before they had passed into aphorisms, were the result of choice, and something like an act of the intelligence,—are now merely hereditary. Their minds were once active—they are now passive: they once generated impressions—they now merely take them. What are now their political maxims? Traditional texts, relating, directly or indirectly, to the privileges of their order, and to the exclusive fitness of men of their own sort for governing. What is their public virtue? Attachment to these texts, and to the prosperity and grandeur of England, on condition that she shall never swerve from them; idolatry of certain abstractions, called church, constitution, agriculture, trade, and others: by dint of which they have gradually contrived, in a manner, to exclude from their minds the very idea of their living and breathing fellow-citizens, as the subjects of moral obligation in their capacity of rulers. They love their country as Bonaparte loved his army—for whose glory he felt the most ardent zeal, at a time when all the men who composed it, one with another, were killed off every two or three years. They do not love England as one loves human beings, but as a man loves his house or his acres.
Being such persons as has now been described, and being at last completely found out by the more intelligent, they no longer retain sufficient moral influence to give, as heretofore, vogue and currency to their opinions. But they retain—and the possessors of worldly power must always retain—enough of that influence, to prevent any opinions, which they do not acknowledge, from passing into received doctrines. They must, therefore, be divested of the monopoly of worldly power, ere the most virtuous and best-instructed of the nation will acquire that ascendancy over the opinions and feelings of the rest, by which alone England can emerge from this crisis of transition, and enter once again into a natural state of society.
A few months before the first of these papers was written, it would have seemed a paradox to assert that the present aera is one of moral and social transition. The same proposition now seems almost the tritest of truisms. The revolution which had already taken place in the human mind, is rapidly shaping external things to its own form and proportions.
That we are in a state of transition, is a point which needs no further illustration. That the passage we are in the midst of, will conduct us to a healthier state, has perhaps been rendered probable in the preceding papers, to some few who might otherwise have questioned it.
But it greatly imports us to obtain a far deeper insight into the futurity which awaits us, and into the means by which the blessings of that futurity may be best improved, and its dangers avoided.
How shall we attain this insight? By a careful survey of the properties which are characteristic of the English national mind, in the present age—for on these the future fate of our country must depend.
But “fit audience,” even “though few,”1 cannot be found for such discussions, at a moment when the interests of the day and of the hour naturally and properly engross every mind. The sequel of these papers must therefore be postponed until the interval of repose, after the present bustle and tumult. I shall resume my subject as early as possible after the passing of the Reform Bill.2
108.
DEATH OF THE ABBE GREGOIRE
EXAMINER, 5 JUNE, 1831, P. 360
In this, Mill’s first obituary notice, he memorializes Henri, abbé Grégoire (1750-1831), a leading radical and former politician. The Archbishop of Paris, Quélen, having refused him the last rites unless he agreed to renounce his oath to the civil constitution, they were performed without the renunciation by abbé Marie Nicolas Sylvestre Guillon (1760-1847), a priest, writer, and practitioner of medicine during the Revolution. At first no church was permitted to receive his body, but eventually he was buried, to the accompaniment of fiery speeches, in the cemetery of Montparnasse. These unheaded paragraphs are described in Mill’s bibliography as “An obituary notice of the abbé Grégoire in the Examiner of 5th June 1831, included in the summary of French news” (MacMinn, p. 16); in the Somerville College set they are similarly listed (without the “An”) and enclosed in square brackets.
the celebrated abbé grégoire has recently died, after an illness of some length, and in extreme old age. The Archbishop of Paris refused to authorize the sacraments to be administered to him, or the funeral service to be performed, considering him as a schismatic, who had not made his peace with the Church. Clergymen, however, were found to perform these offices, in spite of the Archbishop. His schism consisted in having conformed to the ecclesiastical establishment of the Constituent Assembly, and having accepted the office of a Constitutional Bishop. M. Grégoire never renounced the Roman Catholic faith, but adhered to it openly throughout the reign of Terror, either from conviction, or because he scorned submission to an odious tyranny. Few characters have been the subject of greater calumny; none ever were more highly respected by all to whom they were really known. In 1819, the estimation in which his country held him was evinced in his being returned to the Chamber of Deputies, without any solicitation on his part, by the department of the Isère. This provoked a furious debate on the meeting of the Chamber; and his election was finally pronounced void, on a point of form.
M. Grégoire was a Member of the Convention when Louis XVI was tried.1 Being absent on deputation, he forwarded his vote in writing; it was for a verdict of guilty, but against capital punishment: and he persuaded three colleagues, who were joined with him in the same mission, to do the like.2 He was, and remained to the last, a firm Republican; and was one of the first persons in France (along with Brissot,3 and others) who made any public exertions for the mitigation and final extinction of Negro slavery.
109.
ATTACK ON LITERATURE
EXAMINER, 12 JUNE, 1831, PP. 369-71
This lengthy defence of state pensions for literary worthies was prompted by a leading article, “Literature and Patronage,” in the Brighton Guardian, 8 June, 1831, p. 2, from which the quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken. The Brighton Guardian responded, and Mill replied (see No. 111). The article is the first in the “Political Examiner,” and is headed as title. It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A leading article headed ‘Attack on Literature’ in answer to the Brighton Guardian; in the Examiner of 12th June 1831” (MacMinn, p. 16); it is listed as title and enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set.
in the year 1824, a Society was instituted, under the name of the Royal Society of Literature. With what definite views it was established, or what purposes of utility the association, as such, has ever promoted, we know not; and the members themselves, possibly, know as little. There were annexed, however, to the Institution, ten pensions, of a hundred guineas each, from the Privy Purse; to be held by as many persons, distinguished in the world of letters. And the individuals who were first selected to hold these moderate stipends were the following (we quote from the Englishman’s Magazine):1
Samuel Taylor Coleridge; the Rev. Edward Davies; Dr. Jamieson, the indefatigable compiler of the Scottish Dictionary; the Rev. T.R. Malthus; Matthias, the author of the Pursuits of Literature; James Millingen, Esq.; Sir William Ouseley; William Roscoe; the Rev. Henry J. Todd; and Sharon Turner.*
Perhaps no act of the late King, which is known to the public, was altogether so creditable to him as the grant of these pensions. While the debates on the Civil List are fresh in the recollection of our readers,2 we need scarcely remind them, that, of what is called the Privy Purse, a large part is granted by Parliament avowedly for purposes of liberality and munificence. These pensions were among the best examples which England had long seen, of well-directed munificence. They were too inconsiderable to excite the cupidity of tax-eating idlers. Several of the persons on whom they were bestowed, were in circumstances which rendered the accession to their incomes of real importance. The individuals were not selected on any narrow or exclusive principle; but had distinguished themselves in different modes, and in different walks of literature and philosophy. All, however, were men of reputation in their several departments; all, as writers, had proposed to themselves higher objects than merely to amuse; and none of them could possibly have acquired affluence, or even respectable subsistence, by such works as those to which they had dedicated themselves. A. or B. may think some of the number undeserving of what was bestowed upon them, and may imagine that he himself could have pointed out individuals better entitled to be so provided for. This was inevitable. We ourselves, as well as other people, could have suggested emendations in the list; but the giver was not bound to please us, or to please A. or B., but to satisfy the body of educated and cultivated Englishmen: and taking, as is proper, for the standard, the prevalent opinions and feelings, at the time when the grant was made, of the bulk of those whose approbation had the best title to be considered, it would be difficult to point out ten persons, the selection of whom, as the objects of the Royal liberality, would have been in every respect so unobjectionable.
These pensions, however, his present Majesty has, it appears, seen fit to discontinue. It, undoubtedly, rests with the King himself to decide in what manner that portion of his revenues which is set apart for acts of generosity, can be most worthily employed; and it is proper that, in the choice of objects, he should follow his own opinion, and not ours. On this subject it would be disrespectful to express more than regret, and our firm conviction that the one thousand guineas per annum which the Privy Purse will save by the stoppage of this annual bounty, will be expended, we know not how indeed, but most assuredly in a less useful manner, and for the benefit of less meritorious persons. We might be permitted to add, (what has been insisted upon with great force by some of our contemporaries) that when the odious Pension List, the wages of political, if not even of personal prostitution—the purchase-money of despotic power—the fragments of a nation’s spoil which the feasters have flung from their richly-furnished table to allay the hunger of some of the baser and more subordinate of their tools;—when this monument of iniquity has just been screened from revision, on the ground that, although there had been no promise, persons naturally expect to keep what they have once got;3 —the moment is ill chosen for resuming the scanty pittance which men, whose lives had been devoted to usefulness, had every rational ground to calculate upon retaining for their few remaining years. But it is in this spirit that an English government usually economizes. Whatever is enormous and unearned, it leaves undisturbed to the possessors. Its retrenchments bear uniformly and exclusively upon the ill-paid and the deserving.
But, as Rousseau well observes, one bad maxim is worse than a thousand bad actions,—because it leads to ten thousand.4 A report that Lord Grey, at the instigation of Lord Brougham, had tendered to Mr. Coleridge a grant of two hundred pounds from the Treasury (which, however, Mr. Coleridge declined),5 has furnished the Brighton Guardian with the occasion of an article, equal in length to half a page of The Times; the Vandalism of which, inconceivable, if any Vandalism could be inconceivable, provokes us to take up the pen. The matter with which the article is filled, is indeed, or should be, very little formidable, did the writer merely state the opinion of one rather perverse individual. But, unfortunately, this perverse person is but one man who is bold enough to utter what the whole tribe of the dunces are intimately persuaded of in their hearts, but do not dare to avow. They will soon, however, pluck up courage to proclaim and act upon it, if they find themselves countenanced by one or two persons (as this writer has proved himself to be) not untinctured with letters. It is, therefore, of some importance to analyse a performance, more abounding in the ideas and feelings characteristic of uncultivated minds, than is often the case with the productions of an understanding even superficially cultivated.
The object of the writer is to establish, that men of letters ought, in no case, to be provided for at the national expense. And though this is, in our opinion, a mischievous error, it is shared by too many superior men in the present day, to be matter of serious reproach to any one. It is a maxim in perfect harmony with the laissez faire spirit of the prevailing philosophy—with the idea by which, either consciously or unconsciously, nine-tenths of the men who can read and write, are at present possessed—viz. that every person, however uneducated or ill-educated, is the best judge of what is most for his own advantage, better even than the man whom he would delegate to make laws for him. The scope of the received doctrines is, to make mankind retrograde, for a certain space, towards the state of nature; by limiting the ends and functions of the social union, as strictly as possible, to those of a mere police. The idea that political society is a combination among mankind for the purpose of helping one another in every way in which help can be advantageous, is yet a stranger to the immense majority of understandings.
But if the conclusion at which this writer arrives, is common to him with many wiser men than himself, this is not precisely the case with the premises by which he supports it; for he goes the full length of averring that literary men are of no use; that the improvement of mankind is not, in the slightest degree, owing to them or their writings; and that we should be as far, or farther, advanced in wisdom and virtue than we now are, if the whole tribe had long since