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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 121.: DR. WHATELY'S ELEVATION TO AN ARCHBISHOPRIC EXAMINER, 25 SEPT., 1831, P. 618 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II

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

121.: DR. WHATELY’S ELEVATION TO AN ARCHBISHOPRIC EXAMINER, 25 SEPT., 1831, P. 618 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II [1831]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II, 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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121.

DR. WHATELY’S ELEVATION TO AN ARCHBISHOPRIC

EXAMINER, 25 SEPT., 1831, P. 618

This unheaded comment, described in Mill’s bibliography as “A paragraph in the Examiner of 25th Sept. 1831 on Dr. Whately’s elevation to an Archbishopric” (MacMinn, p. 19), is listed (“Paragraph on Dr Whately’s elevation to an Archbishopric”) and enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set.

it is stated, in several newspapers,1 that Dr. Whately has been, or is about to be, appointed to the vacant Archbishopric of Dublin. A minister desirous of saving the Church, by the only means by which it has now any chance of being saved—by improving its spirit—could not make a more advisable appointment. Dr. Whately is known to the public chiefly by his writings; and among these, less by the many which are of a religious character, than by such works as his Elements of Logic, his Elements of Rhetoric, and his Introductory Lectures on Political Economy.2 The merits of these are well known. Scarcely any writer of the present day has combined so great talents for popular exposition, with so much power of thought, so judiciously directed, on subjects of great importance in themselves, and not sufficiently cultivated even by the most educated class. His influence cannot but be most salutary in promoting among his clergy that general mental culture, now so rare in a profession which has heretofore produced so many great men. Dr. Whately’s works also display, along with abundant zeal for the established Church, an enlarged and liberal interpretation of religion, remote from the narrow and exclusive spirit of a sect, and more allied to the late lamented Bishop Heber3 than to the modern ascetics, who have inherited the worst qualities both of the Churchmen and the Puritans of former times, without the redeeming virtues of either.

[1 ]See, e.g., Morning Chronicle, 17 Sept., 1831, p. 2; Globe and Traveller, 20 Sept., p. 4. Whately was indeed appointed.

[2 ]Elements of Logic (London: Mawman, 1826); Elements of Rhetoric (London: Murray, 1828); and Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (London: Fellowes, 1831).

[3 ]Reginald Heber (1783-1826) was an active clergyman of High Church views, who made beneficial changes during his years as Bishop of Calcutta, 1822-26.