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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 83.: FRENCH NEWS [14] EXAMINER, 6 FEB., 1831, P. 88 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I

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Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

83.: FRENCH NEWS [14] EXAMINER, 6 FEB., 1831, P. 88 - 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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Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


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.

[1 ]For the background on Belgium, see No. 59, n5; on Poland, No. 68, n3.