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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 93.: FRENCH NEWS [19] EXAMINER, 13 MAR., 1831, P. 171 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I

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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

93.: FRENCH NEWS [19] EXAMINER, 13 MAR., 1831, P. 171 - 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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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

[1 ]Art. 59 in Titre V (see No. 72, n3).

[2 ]François Charles Louis Comte (1782-1837),radical publicist, lawyer, and politician, was son-in-law of J.B. Say, the economist and friend of the Mills, with whom J.S. Mill had stayed in 1820 and 1821, and whom he had again met in August 1830. Procureur du roi près le tribunal de la Seine from September 1830, Comte was dismissed on 12 Mar., 1831.

[3 ]I.e., Russell’s Reform Bill (identified at No. 84, n6).

[4 ]For background, see No. 59, n5, No. 68, n3, Nos. 81 and 83.