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

185.: FRENCH NEWS [72] EXAMINER, 25 NOV., 1832, P. 760 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II [1831]

Edition used:

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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185.

FRENCH NEWS [72]

EXAMINER, 25 NOV., 1832, P. 760

Mill here resumes his detailed account of the French legislative chambers, at the beginning of their new session on 19 Nov. The article is memorable for its tribute to Jean Baptiste Say, in whose house Mill had stayed during his boyhood visit to France. For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 181. The item, headed “London, November 25, 1832,” is listed as “Article on France” and enclosed in square brackets in the Somerville College set of the Examiner.

the french chambers have met. As the King was on his way to open the session, a pistol was fired at him. This will probably be found to be one of the low tricks with which the French police has long familiarised us. A real attempt to assassinate Louis-Philippe would probably prolong his lease of bad government for several years. Such acts have always, in modern times, proved fatal to the party in whose name they were perpetrated. We firmly believe that but for the murder of Marat by the unfortunate enthusiast Charlotte Corday, the heads of the Girondists would not have fallen under the guillotine;1 and every one knows that the assassination of the Duc de Berri was the signal of the reaction which brought the royalists into power, and kept them there for ten years.

The King’s speech evinces an obstinacy not unworthy of his Dutch counterpart.2 He means to brazen out the violation of the Charter and virtual suspension of all law through the arbitrary measures of June last,3 and to defy the constantly increasing strength of the hostile public opinion.

It was expected that the contest for the Presidentship of the Chamber would have been decisive of the strength of parties; but the ministry have eluded this trial by instructing their adherents to vote for M. Dupin, who, with a body of supporters, has gone into a qualified opposition. If, by the aid of this junction, M. Dupin obtain the majority over the other candidate, M. Laffitte, the result, we suppose, will be crowed over as a ministerial triumph.

A far greater event than these wretched ephemeral victories or defeats, is the death of an eminent man. France has this week lost another of her most distinguished writers and citizens, the celebrated political economist, M. Say. The invaluable branch of knowledge to which the greatest of his intellectual exertions were devoted, is indebted to him, amongst others, for those great and all-pervading truths which have elevated it to the rank of a science; and to him, far more than to any others, for its popularization and diffusion. Nor was M. Say a mere political economist; else had he been necessarily a bad one. He knew that a subject so “immersed in matter” (to use the fine expression of Lord Bacon)4 as a nation’s prosperity, must be looked at on many sides, in order to be seen rightly even on one. M. Say was one of the most accomplished minds of his age and country. Though he had given his chief attention to one particular aspect of human affairs, all their aspects were interesting to him; not one was excluded from his survey. His private life was a model of the domestic virtues. From the time when with Chamfort and Ginguené he founded the Décade Philosophique, the first work which attempted to revive literary and scientific pursuits during the storms of the French Revolution5 —alike when courted by Napoleon and when persecuted by him, (he was expelled from the Tribunat for presuming to have an independent opinion); unchanged equally during the sixteen years of the Bourbons and the two of Louis Philippe—he passed unsullied through all the trials and temptations which have left a stain on every man of feeble virtue among his conspicuous contemporaries. He kept aloof from public life, but was the friend and trusted adviser of some of its brightest ornaments; and few have contributed more, though in a private station, to keep alive in the hearts and in the contemplation of men a lofty standard of public virtue.

If this feeble testimony, from one not wholly unknown to him, should meet the eye of any who loved him, may it, in so far as such things can, afford that comfort under the loss, which can be derived from the knowledge that others know and feel all its irreparableness!

[1 ]Jean Paul Marat (1743-93), Jacobin leader, advocate of a strong dictatorship, was murdered in his bath by Marie Anne Charlotte de Corday (1768-93), an ardent republican, who was guillotined for the murder. The Girondists, more moderate than Marat and Robespierre, lost the struggle for control in the Assembly and consequently twenty-one of them were guillotined on 31 Oct., 1793. Mill was greatly attracted by them; see, e.g., CW, Vol. I, pp. 65-7, and Vol. XX, pp. 98-109.

[2 ]The speech of 19 Nov. is in Moniteur, 1832, p. 1977. Louis Philippe’s Dutch counterpart was William I (1772-1844), who assumed the title in 1814, and ruled until 1840.

[3 ]For Mill’s earlier reaction, see the latter half of No. 172.

[4 ]See The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning Divine and Humane (1605), in Works, Vol. III, p. 406 (cf. Of the Dignity and Advancement of Learning, ibid., Vol. IV, pp. 452-3).

[5 ]The Décade Philosophique was founded in April 1794 as a moderate republican paper, with articles on philosophy, science, literature, and politics. Called Revue Philosophique after October 1804, it ran until September 1807. The founders, with Say, were Sébastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort (1741-94), Academician and ironist who, threatened with arrest, shot himself, and Pierre Louis Ginguené (1748-1816), a brilliant scholar and literary historian, imprisoned during the Terror, who made his reputation with his L’histoire littéraire de l’Italie (1811).