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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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September 1833 to October 1834

213.

THE QUARTERLY REVIEW ON FRANCE

EXAMINER, 1 SEPT., 1833, PP. 552-3

This article is a response to one by Mill’s consistent foe, John Wilson Croker (see Nos. 37, 39, 40, and 355-8), who had published “French Revolution of 1830,” Quarterly Review, XLIX (July 1833), 464-85. Mill’s unheaded article, which is in the place where the summary of French news normally appeared, is described in his bibliography as “An answer to a paragraph in the Quarterly Review, standing as the summary of French news in the Examiner of 1st September 1833” (MacMinn, p. 33). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Article on France, in reply to the Quarterly Review” and enclosed in square brackets.

towards the conclusion of an article on France, in the last number of the Quarterly Review, written in the true spirit of that review, which may now be defined Toryism pretending to have grown desperate, we find the following paragraph:

The state of siege, and the bold and bloody, yet necessary and justifiable suppression of the sedition in June, 1832, have quieted matters for the present; and the construction of a circle of fortresses round Paris, under the flimsy and disgraceful pretext of guarding against foreign invasion, but for the real and convenient (though not very constitutional) purpose of bridling that turbulent town—will transfer the national force from the populace to the army, and to him who can maintain an ascendency over the army. When Marshal Soult shall have finished the new Bastilles, for the erection of which the reformed Chamber of France has voted so many millions, we shall hear of no more revolutions made by the Faubourg St. Antoine, or the “gentlemen of the press,” or the Elèves of the schools; and so weary is France of her forty years of liberty, that she not only consents to enormous pecuniary burdens to accomplish this astonishing tyranny, but she consents to it for a reason which in other times would have made every Frenchman’s blood boil with indignation—namely, that foreign armies can, when they please, march unresisted to the very barriers of Paris!¹

As an attempt to characterize the spirit and purposes of the present French government, and the fraudulent and impudent pretexts on which Louis-Philippe and Co. are not ashamed to rest the justification of a measure intended to place Paris under the fire of fourteen citadels, the statement of the Tory scribe does not even come up to the mark. To have done justice to the subject, he should have recited some of the evasions, tricks, and direct falsehoods, by which the ministers attempted to palm this precious scheme upon the Chamber, positively asserting (for instance) that no part of Paris was within reach of cannon shot from any of the proposed forts;² until M. Arago, the eminent mathematician, demonstrated, in his place in the legislature, that there is no part of Paris which could not be reached by cannon shot from some one or other of them.³

However, the Quarterly Reviewer is out in one of his parts, and the most important one. The designs he imputes to the French Government were indeed entertained, but (thanks to the spirit of “liberty,” whereof, let him lay it to his soul that France is not yet weary,) they were not executed. The “reformed Chamber of France” did not vote “many millions” for the erection of Bastilles, but, on the contrary, refused to vote a single franc;⁴ and in consequence, the works, which had been already commenced, (a favourite artifice of these Ministers, for extorting money,) have been discontinued.

Let the Quarterly Reviewer look to this: he does not know his lesson; we advise him to learn it better another time.

While we are on the subject, we will pause to ask, what considerable improvement of the public mind is to be looked for under governors whom every patriotic citizen, who mingles in public affairs, must not only be perpetually watching with both his eyes, but perpetually holding with both his hands, to hinder them from seizing on absolute power? It required all the energy of the press and of public discussion applied unremittingly to the subject for six months, to raise such a storm as was sufficient to blow away these fourteen Bastilles; even now it is said, the scheme is only postponed, and the fight must be renewed next year; during all this time spent in repelling encroachments on the ground which has been already gained, no progress is made towards gaining more. While the public mind must be kept by its leaders and instructors perpetually en garde, for the purpose of parrying some expected or unexpected thrust at the very vitals of its freedom, it cannot find time or attention for literature or philosophy, or social morals, or education, or the best part of politics—the improvement of the spirit and details of its institutions. It is this which keeps back France. Great Britain is happy in having no such obstacles. With us it is, at the worst, a question of more or less rapid, and more or less skilful, improvements. We have no usurpation to dread—no coup d’ état, with or without the form of law. That is a boon we reserve for Ireland.

214.

THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY FOR SEPTEMBER 1833

EXAMINER, 8 SEPT., 1833, P. 567

The fourth of Mill’s favourable notices of Fox’s periodical (see Nos. 198, 200, and 207) is headed “The Monthly Repository for September [n.s. VII]. Edited by W.J. Fox”; references are to this volume. The review, in the “Literary Examiner,” is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A notice of the Monthly Repository for Septbr. 1833, in the Examiner of 18th [sic] Sept. 1833” (MacMinn, p. 34). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Notice of the Monthly Repository for September” and enclosed in square brackets.

this excellent periodical maintains its reputation. It continues to pursue unflinchingly the same lofty purposes, and with the same high range of merit in the execution. The best articles in the present number are those entitled “Characteristics of English Aristocracy,” [pp. 585-601,] and “A stray chapter of the Autobiography of Pel. Verjuice, with the Episode of the Dried Font.” [Pp. 623-44.] From the former we have marked several passages to be extracted in another department of our paper.¹ Pel. Verjuice is full of the poetry of narrative and description, with occasional touches of profound observation and reflection. We rejoice to meet for the first time in the pages of this work, the author of “Corn Law Rhymes,” and of other poems of still greater merit.² We regard this as an indication that the character and merits of the Repository are becoming more generally known among those for whom, above all others, it is designed, the single-hearted and ardent reformers. The many have so few periodical writers on their side, that they cannot too highly value one who, like the editor of this work, stands almost unrivalled among those few.

215.

NOTE ON BENEFACTORS OF MANKIND

EXAMINER, 8 SEPT., 1833, P. 570

This unheaded comment is described in the conclusion to the entry in Mill’s bibliography for No. 214: “and a foot-note to an extract from the Repository in the Notabilia of the same paper [i.e., the Examiner for 18 [sic] September]” (MacMinn, p. 34). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the item is listed as “Passage appended to an extract from the Monthly Repository” and enclosed in square brackets.

true;¹ but those who should look to it are not the Miltons and Marvels, but those whom the Miltons and Marvels serve. They are the losers. Such men do not serve for hire, or they would go serve other masters. They say, and have said, in all ages, in the words of Pope,

What then? is the reward of virtue bread?²

216.

THE MINISTERIAL MANIFESTO

EXAMINER, 22 SEPT., 1833, PP. 593-5

This leader, strongly expressing Radical discontent with the Whig ministry, was followed in quick succession by six more (Nos. 217-21 and 223), all in reply to The Reform Ministry, and the Reformed Parliament (London: Ridgway, 1833), which went through nine editions. Though it was written in part by the ministers, its nominal author was Denis Le Marchant (1795-1874), a lawyer, principal secretary to Brougham, and intimate friend of Althorp’s, who had prepared reports for the ministers on the Reform Bill debates. Writing to Carlyle on 5 Oct., Mill says: “I have been very busy and active in writing lately; even on politics; did you detect me in those long-winded answers (in the Examiner) to the ministerial pamphlet? but I tell it not to the profane” (EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 181). At that date only the first had appeared, but obviously the second (which appeared the next day) and almost certainly all the others had been written, for he left for Paris on 10 Oct. for his romantic interlude with Harriet Taylor, not returning until about 20 Nov., by which time the series had concluded. Writing of “The Close of the Session” in the Monthly Repository, n.s. VIII (Sept. 1834), Mill has occasion to recall what the Examiner had said at the end of the previous year’s session (CW, Vol. VI, p. 286), though he does not admit the articles to be his. The whole series appears in the “Political Examiner,” headed as title; this article is a first leader. The leaders are described in Mill’s bibliography as “A series of articles in reply to a ministerial pamphlet which appeared in the Examiner of the following dates and under the following titles: September 22d 1833 ‘The Ministerial Manifesto’ / September 29th 1833 ‘The Marvellous Ministry’ / October 6th 1833 ‘The Review of the Session continued’ / October 13th 1833 ‘Lord Brougham’s Law Reforms’ / October 20th 1833 ‘The Corporation Bill’ (signed A.B.) / October 27th 1833 ‘Conduct of the Ministry with respect to the Poor Law’ (also signed A.B.) / November 10th 1833 ‘Conduct of the Ministry with respect to the Post Office Department, and the payment of officers by fees’ ” (MacMinn, p. 34). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, “The Ministerial Manifesto” is listed as title and enclosed in square brackets, with one correction: at 605.31-2 “from abuses” is altered to “from the reform of abuses”.

some one has remarked, that a political pamphlet is to our modern world what an oration was to the democracies of antiquity: and there is much justice in the comparison. Demosthenes, when all the acts of his administration were made the subject of a state prosecution, directed not against himself but against a friend who had proposed to confer honours upon him, vindicated his aspersed character by the noblest monument of inspiring and dignified eloquence which mankind have inherited.¹ No one that we have heard of has placed himself in jeopardy, by proposing to confer any honours upon the present Ministry: yet they have thought themselves called upon to produce their little “Oration on the Crown,” and here it is.

One of the differences, however, between Demosthenes and Lord Althorp (besides others, which it is unnecessary to particularize) is, that Demosthenes composed and spoke his own vindication; Lord Althorp, or whomsoever else we are to consider as the representative of the Ministry, has caused his to be composed and sent forth by an understrapper. Now we confess a preference for the old ways. We like to hear what a man can find to say in his own justification. We would gladly learn, not what reasons can be found for one man’s doings after they are done, by another man who had no hand in them; but what were the very reasons which influenced the man’s own mind. Any person in office can find somebody to point to what he has done, and cry Huzza! but it is quite another matter when the Minister himself is called upon for his own explanation of the principles of his measures. A compte rendu by the Whig Ministry of the principles of theirs, would be worth having. It would do Lord Althorp infinite good to attempt the composition of one. Could but our Ministers once find in their hearts to commit themselves to a principle, fairly embark themselves with a principle, wed it for better for worse! But no—they are afraid of principles; they are of that kind of persons who never can see the consequences of principles: they are children, and principles are edge-tools: they have no confidence in principles, because they have no confidence, and do not deserve to have any, in their own capacity of either in the first place choosing right ones, or, in the second, of discerning where the dominion of one principle is limited by the conflicting operation of another. They are men of shifts and expedients. What they are from the necessity of their own want of knowledge and judgment, they fancy they are from the necessity of the case. It is their notion of statesmanship. It has been the notion of such statesmen as they are, in all ages.

But if this were statesmanship, and if all their measures, from the greatest to the smallest, had been such as absolute wisdom would have dictated, no Ministers who ever existed have done less, the Reform Bill excepted, to found vanity and self-complacency upon, than these. For, the little tricks and devices and moyens de gouvernement of other Ministers have sometimes been their own; but this Ministry has hardly ever done anything but give way to the suggestions of others. Never was there a Ministry whose own will, or whose own opinions, had so little to do with their actions; if actions they can be called which were the result of mere passiveness. The question with them has seldom been, what is right? but, what will meet with least resistance? what will be easiest to carry? And even in that, they have not looked beyond the two Houses of Lords and Commons to the nation, nor beyond the present year to the next. Yet a more self-complacent, self-applauding Ministry, one possessed with a profounder sense of its own absolute wisdom, is not perhaps recorded in history.

We can understand that a Minister who has taken office to realize some grand and long-cherished scheme of improvement, and who, by the wisdom and vigour of his councils, has triumphed over all the obstacles opposed to him by interest and ignorance, and accomplished his end, may look back to his successful efforts with feelings of self-gratulation and pride. We can pardon the Ministers for feeling considerable exultation at their success in carrying the Reform Bill. We can understand, again, that a Minister whose object has been to resist innovation, to keep things as they are, to uphold institutions, and when abuses are inextricably interwoven with the texture of the institutions, to uphold abuses; that a Minister who has been consistently conservative, who has opposed a bold and unyielding front to the spirit of the age, may feel elevated by the thought that he has done all that man could do for a good cause, and if he has not been wholly victorious, has at least prevented much evil. There is a third kind of Minister whom we could allow to take to himself, to whom we could cheerfully give, a large share of credit for his administration. This would be a man who, taking the reins of office in a period of transition, a period which is called, according to the opinions of the speaker, an age of reform, of destruction, or of renovation, should deem it his chief duty and his chief wisdom to moderate the shock: to mediate between adverse interests; to make no compromise of opinions, except by avoiding any ill-timed declaration of them, but to negociate the most advantageous compromises possible in actual measures: to reform bit-by-bit, when more rapid progress is impracticable, but always with a comprehensive and well-digested plan of thorough reform placed before him as a guide, and so that the partial reforms, one and all, may fit well into the general reform which is ultimately to be effected; to be ingenious in the contrivance of means by which the greatest amount of public good may be attained with the smallest loss to individual interests, and that loss again made up (when made up it ought to be) at the smallest expense to the public. Such a minister might be indulged in some feelings of triumph. But for a Ministry to sing hymns in their own glory for a set of measures in which they have had scarcely any share but as passive instruments, either of a strong popular cry or of some interested parties—which they have never known how to defend, even when defensible—of which they have shown themselves ready to give up the whole or any part, not indeed upon argument, but upon any show of strong opposition—into which they have really put nothing from their own minds, except such crudities as they were obliged to surrender at the first summons—and have had no resource for making the machinery work smoothly, but that of flinging public money to all who were dissatisfied, with a lavishness for which we can seek a parallel in none but the most profligate Governments,—this, truly, is too much. And yet these men are fully persuaded that no one, not perverted by factious motives or a splenetic disposition, can fail to join his voice in the chorus of praise!

It could be worth no man’s while to devote an article to the examination of the pamphlet before us. It is a summary of the legislative measures of the Session;² as such, it serves the convenience of a day: beyond this, it has no merits to stand upon, but those of the cause it advocates; it shines, if at all, solely with the lustre of the deeds which it commemorates. Nearly all it does is to state the substance of each of the measures which the Ministry have carried through Parliament, and after each to applaud long and loudly. When ground is attempted to be laid for the applause by any arguments, it is by the most meagre abstract of those which were employed in the discussion.

This piece of advocacy, we must observe, is grounded on a part only of the facts. It passes over three-fourths of the essentials of the case. It builds a lofty eulogium of the Ministry, exclusively upon what they have done. But their merits or demerits are compounded of what they have done, of what they have opposed, and so prevented from being done, of what they have failed in doing, and of what they have said. This last is by no means the least, is perhaps even the most important. The words of a statesman are deeds: the words of a reforming statesman have often greater results of good or evil than any other of his actions; for doctrines, in times like ours, weigh heavier in the balance of events than Acts of Parliament; and the doctrines which a Minister lays down may be large and comprehensive, and may help to educate the public mind for better things, while the measures of even the best Minister must be, for a long time to come, the result of a thousand compromises with adverse interests and prejudices. The sayings, too, of a Minister, in these times, are so much more his own, so much stronger an indication of the direction of his inclinations, than the remainder of his doings. Public affairs and the public mind are in a state which must compel any Minister to adopt many measures of reform. But it is what he says that enables us to judge whether his heart goes with what he does; whether if he could he would do less, or whether if he could he would do more. Nothing can be more unfortunate in this respect than the conduct of the present Ministers. They might have been excused for proposing half-measures, and even for what it is harder to excuse, giving up half of even the half-measures they proposed; had they but so spoken as to give the public assurance that their will was greater than their power. But instead of this, they made professions and adopted language, which seemed even intended to persuade every body of what we believe to be quite unfounded, that not the doing so little good, but the doing even that little, was forced upon them.

The advocate of the Ministry has judiciously kept all these things out of sight. He sees not, or if he sees, owns not, that men who talk as Tories, will never be trusted to for continuing to act as Reformers; that men who defend sinecures, and impressment, and the jobs in the Post-office, and who say that nine of every ten Englishmen would regret to see the Bishops turned out of the House of Lords, and that triennial Parliaments are inconsistent with the Monarchy, will never gain much credit for loosing their hold of a few abuses which the most inveterate Tory could not any longer hope to maintain.³ The people are ready enough to take the will for the deed, but they will not, in opposition to all appearances, take the extorted deed for the will.

Had the acts of the first Session been all that could be expected, a really reforming Ministry would have declined to be judged by them. It would have said, for it would have felt, “We could not in the first Session rationally hope to effect much; receive ye the little which we have done as an earnest of the much which we intend, and judge whether our doctrines and professions are those of men who are determined to go forward, or of people who are looking both ways at once, and providing themselves beforehand with a cover for an eventual retreat.”

Thus would have felt and spoken a brave and high-minded Ministry. But the advocate of these, is forced to drop all notice of that part of their conduct which might have been grand and comprehensive and courageous, their declarations of opinion and intention; and has rested their claims to admiration upon that part which must, let the men be what they would, have been narrow and petty and half-and-half—their Acts of Parliament.

Take one glance at these Acts of Parliament. Look down the table of contents of this our pamphleteer; see, in heaven’s name, what they are, these gifts of the Reform Ministry, for which we can never laud them too extravagantly, or bow our heads too low to do them homage. Ten years, or even five years ago, some of these things might have been matter of praise; but now! to hear a Ministry deified for the Irish Church Bill! for the Slave Bill! for the East India Bill! for the Bank Bill! for the Factory Bill!⁴

Have we now a reformed House of Commons, or have we not? Is the deliberate and strong conviction of the middle classes, the arbiter of our government, or is it not? If it is, where is the mighty merit, where is the merit of any kind, if some one or two popular objects have been accomplished after the discomfiture of the boroughmongers, more than would have been adopted by Parliament while the boroughmongers were in their strength? Even this moderate claim on our applauses does not belong to all the above measures. What Minister, even with an unreformed Parliament, would not have opened the China trade?⁵ The Duke of Wellington had officially notified his intention of doing so.⁶ What Minister, when the Bank Charter expired, would not have made some new arrangement with the Bank? What Ministry after Parliamentary Reform, could have avoided making some reform in the Irish Church? and what Ministry could have made that reform less? What Ministry could have helped passing some Factory Bill? and what Ministry could have passed the Ten Hours’ Bill, without considerable amendments?⁷ What Ministry could have helped making retrenchments? and what other Ministry could have made so much retrenchment go such a little way in affording relief? What Ministry could have helped, in the excited state of the public mind at the opening of Parliament, introducing some measure to provide for the speedy and complete emancipation of the negroes?

The merit of doing all these things, as is obvious to any person of common sense, could not possibly consist in the things themselves, but in the manner of doing them. And in the manner, which alone could be a ground of either praise or blame to the Ministers, they have deserved scarcely any praise, and a large measure of blame.

Take, first, their Slave Bill. It is scarcely worth while to recall to the memory of the public, which speedily loses the impression of abortive absurdities, what this measure was in its native crudity, in its first unlicked state, when, after a fortnight’s gestation, it started forth, not like Minerva, from the brain of Mr. Stanley, and having staggered for a few paces tottered and fell.⁸ That precious scheme, by which the slave was to be called a freeman, and under that title was to work by compulsion three-fourths of his time for a master, and the other fourth for wages which he was not to receive, but which were to be paid to the Government in order to be repaid to the master; that notable scheme by which the master was to be indemnified out of his own pocket; one-fourth of the labour of his slave being taken from him without compensation, and he being compelled to buy it back, in order that the money thus extorted from himself might be returned to him as compensation for what had been taken away!—these marvellous contrivances deserve to live only as examples of the “strange tricks” which may be played “before high heaven”⁹ by a raw journeyman statesman, aptly, by Mr. O’Connell, denominated a shave-beggar,¹⁰ when he extemporizes an act of legislation in reliance upon intuitive genius, without either knowing, or consulting those who know, anything of the subject.

These nonsensical phantasies, below the intelligence of an average schoolboy, could have passed, we confidently trust, no assembly of sane men in Christendom, and could not pass our House of Commons. Instead of them what have we got? Let us look at the provisions of the measure as they now stand.

The people of England were bent upon immediate emancipation: there were fears that in the imputed parsimony of a democratic Government, they would even demand the flagrant injustice of emancipation without compensation. The result proves one thing at least, that the danger did not lie that way. Have they obtained what they demanded? They have not. The slaves are not wholly and at once emancipated. Compulsory labour continues, and is to continue for six years. But though the slaves have obtained but a part, the people of England have paid the price of the whole. On the best official calculations which could be made, the twenty millions which have been granted are, as nearly as can be estimated, thefull market priceof all the slaves in our colonies. Emancipation without compensation was apprehended; but who ever dreamed that the gift of a reformed Parliament would be compensation without emancipation; that England would buy the slaves out and out, and not make them free! The masters are to have the full price of their slaves and part of the slaves’ labour too. An act of national justice is turned into a job for putting public money into the pockets of the owners of slaves.

And the slaves themselves; how is their well-being provided for? The opponents of immediate emancipation contended, and justly contended, that the good of the slave demanded a gradual relaxation of his bonds, in such a manner and by such steps that habits of voluntary industry, prudence, and self-controul, unnecessary in a state of slavery, but essential to the enjoyment and to the good use of freedom, might take root in his mind before he was altogether set free. To accomplish this purpose, what have the Ministers established? A system of pauper labour! ay, the very system the condemnation of which their own Poor Law Commissioners have made resound through every corner of the country;¹¹ the system which awards subsistence to the labourer not according to his work, but according to his wants, and enforces labour, not by withholding wages, but by the powers of the magistrate; that most unhappy compromise between a state of slavery and a state of freedom, which combines only the evils of both; which renders labour odious by dissevering it from its reward, more completely than in slavery itself; the very system which has destroyed the industry and morality of the industrious and moral English peasant, have these sages adopted as a means of moralizing and training to voluntary industry men who have always been slaves!

It is for this that twenty millions have been added to the amount of the National Debt, and more than a hundred millions, as the event, we fear, will prove, to its unpopularity! Yet the sole chance for the working of such a system without the most calamitous consequences, lies in the very extravagance of the compensation. The only hope for the slaves is now in the colonial legislatures. The unexpected magnitude of the gift may allay their irritated feelings, and leave their eyes so far open to their true interest as to see the policy of exchanging the forced apprenticeship for a voluntary contract between master and servant for work and wages.

Let it not be said, that although this measure has its inconveniences, inconveniences of perhaps equal amount would have attended any attempt to accomplish at once the difficult transition from the disease of slavery to the healthful state of free labour. A most simple modification and extension of the Spanish system of manumission (actually advocated in Parliament by Mr. Charles Buller,)¹² would at just one-sixth of the expense, have united compensation to the planters with a speedier emancipation to the slave. If the Legislature, instead of buying the whole of the slave’s labour, had bought for him the free use of one day in the week, and having fixed his price, had permitted him, on tendering one-sixth part of it, to purchase another and another day until completely emancipated; it may be shown by a simple calculation founded on the known rate of wages in the colonies, that a slave who employed the whole leisure thus obtained in working for wages, and the whole of those wages in purchasing the remainder of his freedom, would have achieved it, not in six but in about three years. Not only would the association have been the closest conceivable between labour and its reward, and the incentive to voluntary labour the strongest possible, but every slave would have had the power, if he chose to exert it, of being emancipated in a much shorter time than by the present plan; by means of voluntary, not as at present of forced labour: the moral, prudent, and industrious slave would have been emancipated first, and those who would have waited longest for freedom would have been precisely those who were least fitted for it. This combination of almost immediate emancipation with the best possible moral education for the negro, would have cost this country between three and four millions; and it is paying twenty for—what we have described.

But the Irish Church Bill! And what have the people gained by the Irish Church Bill? Except the Irish landlords, who will profit by the abolition of the Vestry Cess, what human creature will derive one particle of advantage from the Irish Church Bill? We beg pardon; we had overlooked the better cultivation of the church lands, which is a possible consequence of the abolition of fines for the renewal of leases.¹³ That is the sum total of the public benefit which will be derived from this vaunted Bill.

The few who still believe that there ought to be a Protestant Church of Ireland, may deem it a wonderful gain that the number and emoluments of the Bishops and richer clergy of that Church are to be reduced, and the savings converted to the general purposes of the Establishment. But what rational person sees anything to care for in this? Not the manner in which the plunder is distributed, but that they are plundered at all, is the complaint of the Irish people: that tithes are wrung from them, and their national property is detained from them, for the emolument of a priesthood who are not of them, whose faith they believe not, by whose existence they benefit not. The question is not now concerning the abstract utility of Church Establishments. The warmest friends to the Church of England have thought and think, that rich endowments, if useful for maintaining a religion, are most ineffectual for propagating it, and that the only Protestant Church suited to the condition of Ireland is a Missionary Church. The famous clause which asserted the right of the State to divert, not the endowments, but the additional value which it was supposed was about to be given to the endowments, to other purposes than those of the church, was never of much value as the assertion of a principle; such as it was, however, it was given up, for a reason worthy of quack politicians, that a principle, unless much was to be gained by its being immediately acted upon, was not worth contending about!¹⁴ When will they learn that the assertion of a single great principle of political morality is worth any twenty of such paltry measures as theirs?

The Church of England in Ireland must be swept away altogether. We do not blame the Ministers for not having done this at once, but if we could we would do it at once: the nuisance and insult should disappear from the soil of Ireland without delay, and cease forthwith to irritate her people. Pensions however should be given to the existing incumbents, equal to the amount of their present net incomes, abating the expenses now required by their station. Nor let it be forgotten that in the first edition of this Bill, it was proposed by the Whig Ministers to tax existing incumbents, and that the Radical members were foremost among those who forced them to abandon that meditated infringement of an important principle.¹⁵ Those who are liable to suffer from the reform of abuses may be taught by this, that though they will obtain less favour, they will have more justice, from the thorough, than from the half-and-half reformers; and that it is at least as much their interest, as it is the interest of all the rest of the community, that the reforms which must come, should be effected by those who will effect them on principle—not by those who, remaining motionless till forced to move, and having then no rule but to trim between adverse parties and give a little to one and a little to the other, are as likely to make the just rights, as the unjust pretensions, of both sides, burnt-offerings in the propitiatory sacrifice.

But what consistency, what rational principle of action can be in the minds of men who with one hand eradicate ten Bishops from the Irish Church,¹⁶ with the other, plant a hopeful commencement of an Irish Church in India;¹⁷ adding two new Bishops to the one who already existed, at the expense not of the European residents, who alone can benefit by them, but of the poor, overburthened cultivators of the soil; the pretence at first made of incurring no additional expense being almost immediately abandoned; and, to buy off the opposition of Mr. O’Connell and of Mr. Sinclair,¹⁸ more money wrung from the poor Hindoos to pay more clergy for the Catholics and the Presbyterians! Was this a time to create new Bishoprics, when the word Bishop stinks in the nostrils of two-thirds of the people? Was this a time to add to the expenses of Church Establishments? The only opposition to this enormity was made by several of the Radical members;¹⁹ who almost alone took the trouble to attend the later discussions on the India Bill, and were the cause, almost exclusively, of the few improvements it has undergone. We have no room to show up all the crudities of this most ill-digested Bill; and enumerate all the modes in which it heaps additional expenses on a people, whose taxes, though higher than they can bear, do not even now suffice for the expenses of their government. We will only mention that the Bill originally contained a clause which would have raised a religious war all over India, by turning loose, on account of the mere name of slaves, the inmates of every harem in the country;²⁰ and that in opposition to the unanimous opinion of the Court of Directors, the Bill perpetuates and enlarges the monopoly of the most signally ill-conducted public institution of education in Great Britain (and that is saying much)—the College at Haileybury.²¹

The Bank Bill! here, at least, is a measure, vicious in its very principle, bad almost from the beginning to the end; a Bill for the prolongation and enlargement, not the extinction, of a monopoly which Lord Liverpool, seconded at that time by one of the members of the present Ministry, made no secret of his intention to destroy.²² We have entered fully into the demerits of this Bill on a recent occasion.²³ The subject, no doubt, was intricate, and authorities differed; there is more excuse for the blunders of the Ministry on this question than on some others, but surely no ground for praise. Their mode of making up their opinion on this subject is characteristic of the quality of their minds. Incapable of forming his own judgment, Lord Althorp sought for authority on which he might rely;²⁴ for practical authority, if we may adopt the phrase of those who have faith in blind routine, but not in reason. And whither resorted he for this trustworthy guidance? To the London bankers! as if dealing in money made men conversant with the principles of currency; or as if he should consult the man who drives his coach, concerning the best mode of building it. His coachman, at least, would have no interest different from his own: not so the London bankers; whose habits, whose riches, whose importance, were all identified with the system by which they had thriven, and could not, and cannot, but receive a considerable shock from even so slight a modification of that system as has actually taken place.

We must pause here; but the subject is not half exhausted. Undeserved panegyric provokes the utterance of censure, which else might have remained unspoken. Their own pamphlet has opened up the entire question of the merits of their administration; the papers in their interest have vaunted it as a triumphant display of merits beyond appreciation, to which none but Tories or Destructives²⁵ can affect to be insensible; and by their good leave and that of the public, they shall hear the other side too. They shall learn what men who are neither Tories nor Destructives, but cautious though earnest reformers, think of them and of their measures. We shall resume our examination in the next paper.

217.

THE MARVELLOUS MINISTRY

EXAMINER, 29 SEPT., 1833, PP. 609-11

For the entry in Mill’s bibliography and the context of this second leading article in reply to Le Marchant’s The Reform Ministry, see No. 216. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the article is listed as title and enclosed in square brackets.

we resume our examination of the Ministerial Manifesto.

The first Session of the Reformed Parliament has been prolific in legislation concerning Ireland. Besides producing an Irish Church Bill, it has also produced an Irish Tithe Bill, and an Irish Coercion Bill.¹ Not only for the so-called Church Reform, but for the Tithe Bill, and even for the Coercion Bill, applause is claimed in behalf of the Ministry by this unwearied eulogist. They have placed Ireland under martial law, and outrages have ceased. “They made the giants first, and then they killed them.”² The outrages were wholly a consequence of the insane attempt to enforce the collection of tithe; and have been put an end to, not by the Coercion Bill, but by the cessation of that dignified contest, in which horse, foot, and artillery took the field to enable a collector to sell a poor man’s pig, and the pig returned home unsold! The Tithe Bill set the final legislative seal to the relinquishment of claims which had already been tacitly abandoned. The lawless outbreakings of the Irish are of the nature of rebellion; they are the mode in which that nation resist what they deem oppression, and they have drawn off their forces because the enemy have sounded a retreat. Ministers chose rather to alienate a whole people than confess themselves vanquished, and their Coercion Bill, which looked so fierce and has proved so gentle, turns out to have been, as Lord Grey said of a foolish lord’s foolish speech, “all sound and fury, signifying nothing;”³ a mere flourish of trumpets, to give a defeat the air of a triumph; and John Bull pays for all. No marvel if the Irish are quiet, having got all they desired.

But to understand how far the wisdom, the foresight of Ministers has reached in the matter of Irish Tithe, it is necessary to go a little further back.

When they came into office the passive resistance had commenced: the clergy could not collect their tithe, and that unpopular impost had practically repealed itself. As usual, the redress which would have been denied to justice was granted to force, and the injury we had no longer the power of inflicting, we magnanimously resolved to forbear to inflict. Mr. Stanley, the “shave-beggar,”⁴ as careless of his words as of his actions, and equally incapable of weighing the consequences of either, proclaimed the “extinction of tithes.”⁵ But while tithes were to be extinguished in futurum, the existing arrear was to be exacted at the bayonet’s point; not, to be sure, for the value of the sum, which besides would be almost all swallowed up by the expense of collection, but to “enforce respect for the law.”⁶ And nobly the scheme has succeeded, and glorious is the respect which has redounded to the law and to all law from this well-advised enterprise! After exhibiting the whole strength of a Government, with all its civil and all its military apparatus, arrayed against an unarmed people, and by that unarmed people baffled and disgraced for two entire years; after teaching to the Irish, aye, and to the English and Scotch, a lesson of successful disobedience of the laws, which they will never forget, which they are even now putting in practice all over the land; after wantonly establishing for this single purpose a precedent, the reach of which passes the bounds of human conjecture, a precedent for placing a whole nation out the pale of law—it has even come to this, that the thing is impossible, and must be abandoned. But old rules are reversed; in these our days it is the beaten who triumph! They have not the excuse of the blind, that they had blind guides. They were warned of all this. They were told that the tithe would not be paid. They were told that all their efforts to exact it would only cover themselves with ridicule, and involve the law and the Government in still deeper detestation. They were told that of the two evils, if it were necessary to choose one, it was far preferable that England, even England, which from time immemorial has paid the price whoever else reaped the gain, should indemnify the parsons, and bribe them to let the tithe-payers alone: though the funds which ought on every rational principle to have borne the burthen, were the endowments of the Church of Ireland. The Ministers were deaf to these warnings. They persisted in their folly. As they have sown so have they reaped. We have had the disgraceful contest between the people and the Government. We have had the triumph of anarchy, the successful defiance of the law. We have had their Coercion Bill, their martial law, on the pretext of punishing that defiance. And after all this evil has been incurred we have likewise that other evil, which had it been inflicted to prevent the former, we might better have endured. Since the people of Ireland will not pay tithe, they will not be required to pay, and the people of England are paying it in their stead. Memorable result of the combined wisdom and vigour of a memorable Ministry! Were it only for this, they will live in the remembrance of men as long as a signal example shall be wanted of feebleness joined with presumption.

Even what they have at last done, they had not the good sense nor the courage to do spiritedly, directly, and above board. They could give twenty millions to the West India planters, but they did not like to propose to give one million to the Irish clergy: it was therefore lent. Lent to whom? to the clergy doubtless; to be repaid then by the clergy? not at all: to be repaid by the landlord. But the landlord! why the landlord? by what right? with what colour of justice? Why single out from the nation one class, (a class, it is true, little used to be selected for undergoing injustice,) and require them to pay a debt which is not theirs, which was incurred by the obstinacy and improvidence of the Government? True; it would be unjust to lay it on the landlords, on the landlords therefore it shall not lie. Where then to place it? Now will the historian of a future age open his eyes and stare with astonishment at the device which was hit upon to reconcile all difficulties. The clergy are to be indemnified by the State, the State is to be indemnified by the landlords, and the landlords, bless the mark! are to be indemnified by the tithe-owing tenant. The origin and motive of the whole proceeding was that the Government itself, having gone forth with soldiers and field-pieces to collect the tithes, had been unable to accomplish it; and what the State has given up as desperate, it turns over to the landlords, as satisfaction for what it forces them to pay in quite other coin; as though it should confiscate the whole of their earthly estates, and assign to them a corresponding number of acres in nubibus by way of compensation! The very best supposition the case admits of, for the credit of Ministers, is that the whole transaction was a premeditated fraud. They should instruct their friends to give out that they knew the indemnity was a delusion; that they knew the tenant could not be forced to pay to the landlord what he could not be forced to pay to the State; and that their object was to lay a partial tax upon the Irish landowners without avowing the intention.

We pass to their measures relating to the public revenue and expenditure, and the kindred subject of commercial legislation.

The Ministerial pamphleteer insists with great emphasis upon the retrenchments which have been accomplished, and of which he makes an elaborate display.⁷ He is much in the right; no part of the conduct of his patrons makes a fairer show; pity that it is but a show! Their advocate has seized, perhaps, the only moment in the history of their administration, at which the merit of economy could colourably be attributed to them. The expenses which they have retrenched have just ended, those which they have caused are only about to begin. They have remitted taxes, since they came into office, to the amount altogether of more than three millions; but unless the retrenchments they have effected are but a trifle to those they will yet effect, wait and see what are the new taxes they will be obliged to lay on. Twenty millions to the West India planters, of which all but about three and a half were sheer waste; a million to the Irish clergy; nearly two millions (we forget the exact sum) lent, or what is the same thing, given, to the baby King of Greece;⁸ the interest of all this has to be provided for by new taxes: besides an indefinite annual sum for supplying all the West India colonies with what the mother country has never yet had the good fortune to possess, viz., a stipendiary magistracy, a police, and universal education. Several millions are, moreover, to be repaid to the East India Company and to the Bank: sums which had been lent to Government, part of them, we believe, at no interest at all, the whole of them at less than the market rate. Some of these expenses Ministers proposed to meet by an extra tax on colonial sugar;⁹ but they must be very simple people who can believe that sugar will not already be extra-taxed beyond all endurance. Ministers have looked to that matter already. Perhaps it was an inevitable effect of the emancipation of the negroes in whatever manner, but certainly of their emancipation in the thoughtless and clumsy manner in which our present rulers have decreed it, that the supply of sugar from our colonies must greatly diminish, and its price rise in a corresponding proportion, perhaps to even treble or quadruple the existing prices. In order that this last desirable effect may be made more sure, Ministers, in so far as depended upon them, have guaranteed to the West Indians the continuance of their present monopoly of the home market. It is, indeed, quite out of the question that Parliament should pay the slightest regard to any such pretended engagement; but it will be many years before Asia can afford a supply equal to the demands of Europe: and to admit the produce of foreign slave colonies after abolishing slavery in ours, would be to stultify our own measure; it would be renouncing, not injustice, but only the fruits of injustice, and continuing to be accessaries in the guilt for the profit of others. Instead therefore of increasing, Ministers will, more probably, be compelled to diminish the duties on sugar; and either way, new taxes must be found to make up for the partial drying up of one of the largest sources of our revenue. A similar observation applies to another of the most productive of our taxes, the tax on tea.¹⁰ Hitherto this duty has been collected at absolutely no expense: hereafter the charges of collection will be as great as in the case of other taxes; and it is at least problematical whether the effect of opening the trade to the unlimited competition of buyers, while the sellers in China are a close company of monopolists, and smuggling^* almost impossible, will not be to raise instead of lowering the price of the article in the English market, and consequently to diminish the consumption and the revenue.

Under these financial disadvantages, all of their own creating, Ministers must bestir themselves again, and vigorously, in the work of retrenchment, if they would avoid the humiliating necessity of laying on taxes to more than the amount of those which they have recently taken off.

And their choice of taxes to be remitted; could it have been more unhappily made? To their first Budget, indeed, this criticism does not apply.¹¹ Memorable were the blunders of that Budget; but it was in laying on taxes, not in taking them off. In that one year, Ministers were luckily guided, in their remissions of taxes, by Sir Henry Parnell’s book;¹² following that, they could not go far wrong; and they relieved us from several of the worst of our indirect taxes. There were two features of great merit in that first Budget, which have disappeared from the subsequent ones—an encroachment upon the Canada timber monopoly, (equal to a tax of one million a-year,) and a reduction of the Stamp Duty on Newspapers.¹³ Ministers were frightened out of the former of these meritorious purposes, by a single defeat, in the unreformed House of Commons. As to the latter, their hearts failed them; and whether it was pusillanimity or treachery, Lord Althorp, (disclaiming all the while any agency in the enforcement of the law,) said that the tax ought to be abolished, and took off a million and a half of other taxes instead.¹⁴ And what a selection! A sort of perverted genius was shown in finding the means of giving away a million and a half a-year in perpetuity, and pleasing no one—conferring a perceptible relief upon nobody. The secret of this was, excessive eagerness to do a little for everybody. Not a tax, except a few of trifling amount, was entirely repealed; only halves and quarters of taxes; the remaining part continuing to be collected at the same expense absolutely as the whole, and, of course, at a far greater proportionally; and the worst evil of indirect taxes, the onerous regulations and restrictions imposed for the convenience of collection, being perpetuated. The mere reduction of a tax, when the state of the revenue admits of its entire abolition, is hardly ever advisable; except for the prevention of smuggling, or when the lower duty is expected to be as productive as the higher. In the case of very few of the reductions was either of these results anticipated; nor was there any ground for anticipating them, nor any reason for reducing those particular taxes rather than many others; nor was the reduction in almost any case sufficient to make a perceptible difference in the yearly expenses of the consumer. Perhaps, indeed, if a sensible relief had been afforded to one portion of the dissatisfied, all the others would have been only the louder in their complaints. But a firm Ministry, strong in the authority of pure intentions and determination of purpose, could have overawed the interested and the peevish: our Ministers can overawe nobody, because they are afraid of everybody. These are the occasions which try the quality of men. A weak man cannot even confer a benefit, without losing more influence than he gains.

We are far from joining in the whole extent of the hostility entertained by the shopkeepers of the large towns against the House Tax; which, if impartially assessed, we incline to consider as one of the best of all our imposts, having many of the recommendations of a Property Tax, without its practical difficulties. Viewing it in this light, we should be ready to give some credit to Lord Althorp for the steadiness with which he has resisted the clamours of the representatives of the ten-pound voters for the repeal of the House Tax, had he not, with strange obtuseness, volunteered reiterated defences of those iniquitous inequalities in the assessment, sparing the rich and pressing upon the middle classes, which have disgusted the whole country, and mainly contributed to raise a storm that will scarcely now be allayed but by the destruction of that tax. It was coolly, gravely maintained, not by way of a joke, nor with any apparent consciousness that the proposition at all conflicted with the common sense and feeling of mankind—it was laid down by Lord Althorp as the just principle of assessment for the House Tax, that the overgrown houses of the very rich, which never can be suitable habitations for any other than the proprietor, should be taxed, not in the ratio of what the house, as a place to reside in, costs to the owner, who actually dwells in it, but of the amount which some other person, of far inferior income, could afford to pay for it as a residence!¹⁵ A House Tax is defensible at all, only on the assumption that what a person pays for his habitation is something approximating to a test of his general means of expenditure. Let this test then be applied. What the occupier of another man’s house pays for his habitation, is the house-rent; but what the Marquis of Westminster pays for Eaton Hall, is the interest of what it would cost to rebuild such a mansion if it were destroyed.¹⁶ Were he to let it to Mr. Thompson or Johnson, he might get only 300l. a-year for it; but those 300l. are proportioned to the means of Mr. Thompson or Johnson, and are the measure of what the tax-gatherer ought to demand from him, not from the Marquis of Westminster. It is idle, however, to prove what is self-evident.

Lord Althorp has done more to weaken himself and the Ministry, by standing up night after night in the House of Commons as the vindicator of this odious abuse, than they have done to strengthen themselves by any, the most popular, measure of the Session.

But to return to their retrenchments. Cutting off useless expenditure is always praiseworthy; and to the present Ministers it must in candour be conceded that they have diminished some large salaries as well as small ones, abolished some lucrative offices as well as insignificant ones. Still, it is to be remarked that their large sum-total has been made up by the addition of a great multitude of small savings; what have been termed, by persons interested in disparaging them, savings of cheese-parings and candle-ends: those reductions in the detail of the expenditure, which we have again and again been solemnly assured had been carried to the utmost extent possible, to an extent seriously prejudicial to the conduct of public business. We see, however, that when a real wish was entertained to make a still further reduction of this minimum, the minimum was found to be a maximum. One fifth of the actual expenses of governing the country, as this pamphleteer triumphantly proclaims, cut off in three years!¹⁷ After several retrenching ministries had done their worst—out of about fifteen millions a saving of three millions in cheese-parings and candle-ends alone! “Le mot impossible (said Napoleon) n’est pas Français.”¹⁸ —Credit after this who will, the impossibilities of heads of departments! But it is true, nevertheless, that these three millions are made up of small savings, and that the whole region of large ones is still untrodden. We refer particularly to the diplomatic service, the army and navy, and the colonies.

There are people who say, The diplomatic service is too expensive, it has not yet been reduced, it will bear reduction. We say, the diplomatic service ought to be abolished altogether. Consuls, at some places where the laws of the foreign country are an insufficient protection, we can discern a use for; and sometimes, but rarely, for an extraordinary envoy: for a stationary ambassador, never. At the time when statesmen could barely write their names, and when all business of importance was transacted by word of mouth, there was meaning in ambassadors. But now, when the art of written is so much more successfully cultivated than that of spoken composition; when the communication between court and court is as easy and safe, and almost as expeditious, as between any man and his next-door neighbour; when between the ambassador himself and the government to whom he is accredited, all negociations are conducted by means of written documents—why should not the writings pass between Governments themselves? What is the ambassador, but a middleman uselessly interposed between principal and principal? In the way of intelligence, again, what is there left to communicate, in an age of universal publicity, in an age of daily newspapers? Sufficient proof that there is nothing for an ambassador to do, is the quality of the men who are set to do it. They are fit enough for the purpose for which in reality they are kept up, viz. to give dinners to our aristocracy when abroad, and to keep a table for their idle younger sons in the character of attachés: but for what else?

Then the colonies: all which are worth keeping, all which for the good of the colonies themselves ought to be kept, might be made to defray their own expenses. Read Colonel Napier’s inestimable work on the Ionian Islands, if you would learn how a distant dependency ought not, and also how it ought, to be governed.¹⁹ When a colony cannot pay for its own government, the reason generally is, first, because we insist upon governing it as if it were an opulent nation: we carry out with us from England as the mining associations did to Mexico, and with a similar result, English ideas of efficiency, and English ideas of lavish expense: not knowing, that to a rude state of society the simplest machinery of government is best adapted, we must have the establishments, the salaries, and even the pomps and fripperies, of an old country. That is one cause. Another is, that we entrust the governorship of the colony to one of the family of the Feebles, who either employs his activity in doing mischief, or, by his indolence, allows, that is, encourages others to do it: one who neither knows the right time for spending money, nor the right time for saving it; one who wastes the resources of the colony by mere mismanagement; who alternately strains and relaxes the springs of government; every one of whose blunders costs money to repair its consequences; and whose most expensive blunder of all is his unpopularity. For all which, and much else, see again Colonel Napier; whose book should be in the hands, not only of every statesman and every public writer, but of every Englishman.

If the colonies were made to pay their own expenses, economy in our military establishment would be in a great measure accomplished; for the far greater portion of our army is kept up for the service of our colonies alone. By governing Ireland well, we might dispense with the greater part of the remainder. What need has England of an army, except one or two cavalry regiments, and the artillery? Can we ever be suddenly involved in a continental war? And if we were, can we possibly maintain such an army as would be a match, at the instant, for any one of the continental powers? Then why attempt it?

No nation which is not perpetually at war, can have a veteran army; but to make the rawest new levies fight like lions, there is a sure resource. Proclaim the system of the French army, promotion from the ranks.²⁰ Encourage the non-commissioned officers, even now confessedly the main strength of our army, by the hope of commissions; let every man of them know that if he have the soul of a Hoche, the fortune of a Hoche is open to him.²¹That would be the true substitute for flogging, and for impressment too. Govern men by their hopes, and you need not by their fears: let your generals rise from the ranks, and your admirals from before the mast, and you need neither compel soldiers or sailors into the service, nor treat them like slaves or brutish beasts when in it; dismissal from it will be punishment enough. But neither from the Whig nor from any other Ministers shall we obtain this, until the spirit of aristocracy is completely purged out of our institutions. The monopoly of the army and navy is the last monopoly which will be wrested from the hands of the wealthy. There are many changes yet to come ere that comes. It will be much, when we shall no longer, to provide for gentlemen’s sons, keep up numerous admirals for every ship, numerous generals for every regiment. It will be much, when we shall no longer, to provide for gentlemen’s sons, make a retiring pension a perpetuity, and maintain our Dead Weight scarcely diminished during eighteen years of peace.²²

Curious it is that the apologist of the Ministers reckons the Dead Weight among the public charges not susceptible of reduction. He means then, that officers not on the effective strength of the army, who have not been once on full pay since the peace, who are supernumerary, superfluous, and ought to have retained their half-pay on the footing merely of a life pension, shall, when it would in a very few years have lapsed by death, be allowed to sell their commission to a youth, who steps into the place of an old man, and continues to receive the old man’s retiring allowance after his death—a youth who will never be wanted until the next war, if even then, and in the mean time is only gathering seniority but not experience, eating his half-pay as the bread of idleness,²³ a mere liveried footman of the aristocracy. The Ministry have appointed a Committee on Naval and Military Appointments, and the Committee has not recommended the abolition of this flagrant abuse.²⁴ Ministers do not intend it, then; but unless they correct their intention, their boast of being a Ministry of retrenchment will deserve to count for very little.

Even in their own small way of clipping and paring the details of the public expenses, much is still to be done which they seem to have no thought of doing. To begin with themselves: of what earthly use is a Lord Privy Seal?²⁵ The utility of a President and a Vice-President of the Board of Trade, or, indeed, of either of the two, is very questionable. Why were the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall excepted from the surrender of the hereditary revenues of the Crown?²⁶ The expenditure of those duchies, being sheltered from any kind of publicity, are, we may be sure, the last hiding place of every job too openly disgraceful to be hazarded in the presence of the public. What need of the expensive foppery of household troops? Why should the Guards cost more than an equal number of other regiments? Economy has marched, with pruning-knife in hand, along the grand avenues of the public expenditure, but it has not yet peered into the bye-alleys. The harpies of corruption, frightened out of the open daylight, will be found skulking and cowering in the dark corners. Let Mr. Hume look narrowly into those little modest items of the Miscellaneous Estimates, the grants of 5000l. and 10,000l. under pretence of work to be done off the common highways of public business and public view. The two words Record Commission, alone speak volumes.²⁷ The public eye has been let in, perhaps, upon the most expensive jobs, but we much doubt whether it has yet obtained a view of the most profligate ones.

We have demanded a large share of the reader’s indulgence; our excuse must be, that we are reviewing not a pamphlet, but an administration. We trust that all we shall at present deem it necessary to say, may be brought to a conclusion in another article.²⁸

218.

THE REVIEW OF THE SESSION CONTINUED

EXAMINER, 6 OCT., 1833, PP. 625-6

For the entry in Mill’s bibliography and the context of this third leading article on Le Marchant’s The Reform Ministry, see Nos. 216 and 217. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the article is listed as title and enclosed in square brackets.

a few observations, which the length of our last article compelled us to defer, are still required to bring to a close the subject of retrenchment; after which we shall proceed to another department of the doings of the Ministry.

One of the most important of the measures of economy which still remain to be adopted, is an entire change in the constitution of the public offices. Without such a change, the retrenchments for which Ministry after Ministry have taken such unbounded credit, will cost to the public much more money than they will save. Any fool can carry on the public business cheaply and ill; but such cheap work is the dearest of all in the end. Unlimited pecuniary means may be squandered; but of a limited income every farthing must be turned to the best account. So long as the number of employés could be made as great as the head of the department felt an inclination to make it, the multitude of inefficient hands was a source of useless expense, but they were like so many sinecures, the most plain-dealing and cheapest of all jobs; if they did no good, they prevented none; it was but so many people of “connexion,” quartered upon the public instead of being kept by their “connexions,” or earning an honest livelihood: the incapables consumed their salaries, and capable officers were, or might have been, entertained in addition, to do the work. But when the public will has enforced a reduction of the numerical strength of an establishment to something not, perhaps, greatly exceeding the number which would barely suffice if every man were fit for his situation; from that time every inefficient man who is employed, deprives the public of the services of an efficient one. Has due regard been had to this principle in the reductions of the civil establishments? Is it not a fact, that young men of family continue to be engaged to do mere clerk’s work, but not at clerk’s salaries, and that the money lavished upon them leaves so little for the wages of real services, that the most valuable public officers are, not perhaps underpaid, but so few in number and so overworked, that it is by no means easy, when vacancies occur, to find fitting successors? If this be not so, let it be denied; but if, as we firmly believe, it is so, let it be remedied. There is no economy comparable to that of employing able men. It is the accumulation of useless expenses which weighs down a country; never the magnitude of the useful.

Above all, let the places of trust and power beyond the seas, where the control of the superintending authority is weak, and the surveillance of English public opinion is null—where the wisdom, honesty, and firmness of the delegated functionary are all in all—let those appointments, which are now, whether by Whig or Tory, given to aristocratic or official connexion exclusively, be given solely to merit; and, more scrupulously than even any other appointments, to merit of the highest grade, no matter in what rank of life. An incapable in high place is a more costly abuse than a hundred sinecures. Such a one, governor of a colony, receives a salary of 5000l.; but his caprices and his blunders, his self-conceit and his negligence, his want of foresight, and of capacity to avail himself of opportunities, and make the best use of his instruments, cost the nation forty or fifty thousand. The pamphleteer says nothing for his patrons on this point. We believe that they have followed the good old rule, of appointing, with a very moderate degree of regard for personal qualifications, their political friends.

Of retrenchment, and taking off taxes, no more at present. But there are taxes, which are not called taxes, because not paid to the tax-gatherer, but which are a subject for retrenchment, compared wherewith all that can possibly be cut off from the expenses of government is hardly worth notice; taxes the very existence of which is a crying enormity, and of which the repeal would afford a relief nearly equal to the entire interest of the national debt. Foremost among these is the odious Bread Tax. If, as appears to be the opinion of the best authorities, wheat is kept, by the operation of the Corn Laws, about 10s. a quarter above its natural price; and if, as is commonly assumed, the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, amounting to twenty millions, consume, one with another, one quarter of wheat in the year; here is a tax of ten millions in the article of wheat alone; to which when we add all other agricultural produce, every other retrenchment sinks into insignificance, and the word appears little better than a mockery when applied to anything except getting rid of this intolerable burthen. There is in this kind of retrenchment a further pre-eminence. Retrench by cutting down establishments, and all the gain to the public is loss to the functionaries who are discharged. Retrench by removing restrictions from commerce and industry, and, by restoring capital to its natural channels, an increase of production is created, which is a gain to the public beyond and in addition to what individuals lose.

The Ministry, as a Ministry, profess themselves friends of free trade. And here let us give “honour due” to one of their number, who has entitled himself to a kind of praise, which can be given to no other among them. Lord Palmerston, a short time before the prorogation of Parliament, signalized himself by the only speech of principle which has been made by any Minister during the Session; a speech which compromised nothing, and went to the very vitals of the subject.¹ Lord Palmerston exposed the fallacies of protecting duties and of reciprocity with the hand of one who really understood the question, and without one vestige of Whig seesaw or reservation. But as he speaks, so will his colleagues act? Some minor monopolies and restrictions they have abolished or mitigated, and will, doubtless, relieve us from others. But from the giant monopoly, compared with which the heaviest of all our taxes is scarcely a burthen, it is not they who will deliver us. They have put off the subject for one year, by moving the previous question. Put it off much longer they cannot; certainly not beyond the first deficient harvest; and the day when they must face this great question will probably be the last of their administration. They are not unanimous. Some of them are reputed enemies of the Bread Tax; (Lord Ripon might have been deemed so, until he ate up his free-trade principles, on Lord Fitzwilliam’s motion;)² others (and the Premier is of the number) are said to be among its most obstinate and bigoted partisans. This is enough. A Minister who supports the Bread Tax, is essentially neither a Reformer, nor an economical Minister: not the last, because he seeks to rivet on our necks the heaviest and most unprofitable burthen which the nation bears; not the first, because, whether he is aware of it or not, the interest of the landlords is paramount in his regard to the interest of all the rest of the community. The distinction between such a statesman and a Tory lies wholly in non-essentials; that between him and a Reformer is fundamental.

The topic of Law Reform occupies a very prominent station in the Ministerial pamphlet.³ On this subject more praise is really due to the Ministry, or rather to the Chancellor, than can be given to any other of their measures, except the Reform Bill. Though the substantial value of what has yet been accomplished, is immensely overrated by their panegyrist, the very fact of taking so much credit for law reform deserves praise; and the more, because what can be said of none of their other reforms, is true of this—that it was not forced upon them by the public. Lord Brougham is not in this case a mere passive instrument, for executing, and executing imperfectly, the peremptory mandates of popular opinion. The public are as yet but moderately interested in the subject; sufficiently to reward, yet not sufficiently to compel, the exertions of the Chancellor. And the degree of excitement which does exist respecting it, is mainly of his own creating. It is to those, indeed, who prepared the way, by laying the foundation of the philosophy of law, and dissecting piecemeal the absurdities of English practice; it is to those who fought the up-hill fight, who originated Law Reform, and carried it forward through every species of neglect, discouragement, and insult, to the point at which even a man like Henry Brougham could add to his reputation by adopting it, and making the cause his own; it is to them, no doubt, that the gratitude of mankind is chiefly due—not to him who came at the eleventh hour; yet neither to him should praise be given with a reluctant or sparing hand. He was the first public man who identified himself with the cause; the first who popularized the idea, that the law needed reform as a whole. Mr. Peel’s reforms had done much to discountenance the notion which strangely prevailed, of the absolute perfection of the law even in its form and details;⁴ and a notion was spreading that there was still considerable room for minute improvements. But everything which has been done, or attempted, in the way of reviewing the main body of the law—all idea, among the public at large, of its being susceptible, as a whole, of any considerable amelioration,—takes its date unquestionably from Mr. Brougham’s celebrated speech:⁵ nor, at the time when that speech was made, could any person of less weight than Mr. Brougham have pronounced so bold and sweeping a condemnation of the English law (greatly as even that condemnation fell short of its deserts) with much probability of being favourably listened to. The first fruits of the speech were the appointment of two Commissions, composed of lawyers of the first eminence, whose inquiries and recommendations have done more to bring Law Reform into vogue, and to liberalize the general feeling of the profession, than could have been hoped for in so short a time.⁶ Piecemeal reforms have multiplied in an accelerating ratio ever since. Some considerable changes, proposed by these Commissions, have been carried through Parliament in the Session which has just closed; together with others emanating directly from the Chancellor himself.⁷ And (a praise which the Ministers have seldom deserved) more has been attempted, than could be effected at the first trial, and more has been proclaimed desirable than has been attempted. Lord Brougham’s views of Law Reform, if not always as enlightened, are now at length as extensive, as the most philosophic reformer could desire. He has caused codification to be recommended in a King’s speech:⁸ he has appointed a Commission for making (though on a small scale, and beginning at the wrong end) an actual commencement of it;⁹ and he has committed himself irrevocably to the principle of Local Courts.¹⁰ These things, if accomplished, are the greater part of all which is to be desired. Codify the law, common and statute together, and establish Local Courts with unlimited jurisdiction, and all that will remain to complete a systematic reform of the law, is to simplify the procedure, and establish good courts of appeal.

Lord Brougham’s Law Reforms will be the leading subject of our next Paper.

219.

LORD BROUGHAM’S LAW REFORMS

EXAMINER, 13 OCT., 1833, PP. 643-4

This is the fourth of Mill’s leading articles on the parliamentary session of 1833 prompted by Le Marchant’s The Reform Ministry; see Nos. 216-18. In addition to those specifically mentioned in the text, Brougham’s Law Reforms include 2 William IV, cc. 34, 39 (1832); 2 & 3 William IV, cc. 51, 62, 116, 123 (1832); and 3 & 4 William IV, cc. 44, 67 (1833). For the context and bibliographic entry see No. 216. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the article is listed as title and enclosed in square brackets.

if the remarks by which we are about to qualify our applause of Lord Brougham’s Law Reforms should seem of a disparaging tendency, they are inspired by no love of disparagement, but by the conviction that there is no greater enemy of the good which is to come, than exaggerated praise of the good which has already been effected. Lord Brougham’s vocation is that of a popular orator rather than a legislator. The service which beyond all other men of his day he was fitted to render to Law Reform, was that of discrediting the existing system. This he has done, and is doing, as effectually perhaps as it could have been done by a mind of more philosophic habits and of more enlarged views. He is great as a destroyer; not great as a rebuilder. All that he has overthrown well deserved to fall; nothing that he has established, in the opinion of the most thorough law reformers in the profession, deserves to stand. Not only his reforms are partial and narrow, but they are such as cannot fit into any more comprehensive plan of reform. A great edifice cannot be built in a day; but his hasty erections will form no part of the building when it is completed; they are mere temporary sheds, occupying part of the ground—an actual obstruction in the way of the workmen, though a far less one than the cumbrous ruin which was cleared away to make room for them.

The old Bankruptcy Court was an abomination;¹ the judicial arrangements relating to the affairs of lunatics were a mass of expensive absurdity;² there could not be a worse constituted tribunal than the Privy Council, the sole court of appeal from the tribunals of the colonies;³ the Ecclesiastical Courts deserve to be swept away.⁴ But does any man, capable of forming the conception of a rational judicial establishment, believe that there will much longer be a court for bankruptcy alone, a court for lunacy alone, a court only for marriage causes and for proving wills, a court only to hear appeals from the colonies? Certainly not: and in the mean time all these new judgeships and commissionerships are so many vested interests, which, when the time comes, the public will be expected to buy off. All these nibbling reforms in Chancery, again, what are they? when every enlightened law reformer is convinced that the Court of Chancery as a separate Court must cease to exist, and that the same judges in the first instance, and the same judges of appeal, will ultimately administer both that part of the law which is called Law, and that other part of the law which is called Equity?

Of the defects in the details of Lord Brougham’s reforms, and of his views of reform, we can only select, nearly at random, a few instances as specimens.

He has abolished prospectively many legal sinecures, which yielded immense incomes to sons, nephews, and grandchildren of Chancellors and Judges, at the expense of suitors.⁵ Of the golden streams which flowed into the strong boxes of these lucky foster-children of the nation, a part, indeed, have been dammed up, but the remainder only diverted into the Exchequer of the State.⁶ Of the fees which unfortunate applicants for justice were forced to pay, avowedly for no purpose but to make an income for these sinecure placemen, a part only have been remitted; a part continue to be collected for the benefit of the public revenue! The most odious of all taxes—taxes on justice—abolished in 1823 by Lord Liverpool’s Ministry⁷ —behold them re-established by the Reform Ministry! It was reserved for the Reform Ministry, and for the man who desires to go down to posterity as the reformer of the laws of England, to re-enact an abuse so odious, that it was abolished even by Tories, in the very first hour in which the words law reform were uttered in a public place. Once more it has been decided, that a man is to be selected as a fit object of taxation because he is suffering evil—that because he is put to immense expense by having had his rights disputed, or a wrong inflicted upon him, therefore he shall be put to further expense for the general purposes of the State—that because the King, and the Ministers, and the army, and the navy, and the courts of justice, having succeeded in protecting the rest of the community from injustice, have failed in protecting him, therefore he shall be picked out from the rest of the community as the person who shall be required to pay more money for the support of those establishments! And the Solicitor-General, Sir John Campbell, a man whom we regret to blame, for no person connected with the Government oftener gives utterance to sentiments deserving of praise, actually congratulated the Chancellor of the Exchequer on this accession to his financial resources.⁸ A few thousands a-year, wrung from the needy and from the injured—a noble subject of congratulation!

In a matter nearly connected with this, the House of Commons proved themselves better law reformers than Lord Brougham. The principle of remunerating judicial officers by fees instead of salaries, at the expense of suitors instead of the State, that is, at the expense of those who derive less benefit than any one else from the administration of justice, being put to trouble and expense for that protection which others obtain gratuitously; this pernicious principle, discarded by Lord Brougham in a great variety of cases, had been most inconsistently retained in others: but the House of Commons, in passing the Chancery Reform Bill, extirpated that mischief from it altogether.⁹ This roused the Chancellor; who, when the Bill returned to the House of Lords, entered into a vindication of his own views. He said, that unless the officers of the court were paid by fees, their reward would not be in proportion to their exertions, and they would have motives to retard instead of accelerating the despatch of business.¹⁰ Extraordinary as it may seem, in this doctrine the Chancellor was perfectly serious, and, we are persuaded, sincere. All it proves is, on how slender a foundation of principle his opinions rest, and with how little of reflection they are taken up. Strange not to see that this reason for payment by fees instead of salary, is applicable to all public officers whatever, if to any: still more strange not to see that a superior functionary stultifies himself, when he professes incapability of compelling his subordinates to do their duty, unless they are bribed to do it by the very person who least of all others in the community ought to bear that extra burthen. Formerly almost all public officers were paid by fees: the iniquity of the principle, and the abuses to which it was liable in practice, have caused payment by salaries to be almost universally substituted; and now what is it which keeps public functionaries to their duty? The good sense and vigilance of their official superiors: and is the Chancellor incapable of exercising similar vigilance? Say that it is necessary that his subordinates should have the additional inducement of a pecuniary remuneration proportional to the quantity of the work, (even if at the expense of the quality,) are there no means devisable by human ingenuity for giving them that pecuniary inducement, except out of the pockets of injured men petitioning for justice? When nobody but the public is interested in getting over a difficulty, the easiest effort of thought seems to be grudged for finding a solution. Not that the public good is not dear to these men, but that their zeal for it is a capricious and wavering, not a steady principle of action.

Though the Chancellor defended the principle of remuneration by fees, he did, we believe, throw out something like a condemnation of making those fees contingent upon any incident which the officer receiving the fees has the power of multiplying, for the purpose of increasing his own emoluments. But so completely are the acts of the Chancellor at issue with his professions, that the particular fees which the officers who profit by them have the greatest power of multiplying the occasions for, (and have exercised that power to the most mischievous extent,) those very fees, both in the Court of Chancery and in the Courts of Common Law, instead of abolishing, or diverting into other channels, the Chancellor has largelyincreased. We do not believe that this was done with evil consciousness for jobbing purposes. But is it at all wonderful that there should be thousands who do think so?

We are compelled to select as examples of the Chancellor’s defective notions of legislation, not the most important instances, but those which can be exhibited at least length. We will mention one which is striking, and will occupy little space. Even the unprofessional reader knows that lawsuits are often decided by arbitration, and that after the parties have incurred nearly the whole expense of a suit, the judge frequently advises them to refer the case to a gentleman of the bar; but they do so at their option, and not otherwise. One of Lord Brougham’s Bills contained a clause, which was struck out of the particular Bill, but afterwards revived, and which we understand is still persevered in, empowering the judge at his discretion to nominate an arbitrator, and rendering the decision of the arbitrator so designated compulsory on the parties.¹¹ Now observe the character of this proceeding, and of the process of thought in the Chancellor’s mind, on which it must have been founded. All the presumptions are against arbitration, as compared with a suit in the courts. The arbitrator is wholly irresponsible, even to the opinion of the world; he decides without publicity, and decides upon evidence taken without publicity: he is a person selected almost at hazard, hardly ever of any professional eminence, certainly of less than the judge who selects him, unless the appointment of the judge amounted to an act of the grossest public profligacy. Nevertheless, although there are all these strong presumptions against decision by an arbitrator, the voluntary agreement of the parties to submit to it in preference to the regular tribunal, is a presumption in its favour stronger than these, and outweighing them. Therefore the parties shall be compelled to choose it whether they will or no!

If the law reforms of the Chancellor were analysed in detail, we should be able to exhibit innumerable specimens of loose and imperfect thinking, not inferior to these. We have not room for that minute examination here. But we must notice something of more serious moment, because on a larger scale; what we hold to be an error of principle of the very first magnitude. The whole of the Chancellor’s notions on the subject of appeal, the very key-stone of a good system of judicature, appear to us to be radically erroneous, and all that he is doing or planning with relation to it, to be fundamentally wrong. If there is one principle more than another, which is universal and paramount in public business of almost any kind, but above all in judicature, it is that the functionary should be one. Not indeed where the law is doubtful; for then the question should be referred to the collective body of the highest legal authorities, as now to the fifteen judges, not so much for greater certainty, as to ensure uniformity in the law. But in all other cases, to set three or four judges on a bench to hear one cause, is not only paying three or four persons to do the work of one, but it renders absolutely certain their doing it ill. One judge feels the public eye upon him; he is ashamed to be corrupt, or partial, or inattentive; but when there are several, each dares perpetrate under the sanction of the others, wickedness the undivided obloquy of which he would have shrunk from; each trusts that others have been listening though he has not, that others have given their minds to the cause though he has not; and instead of the services of several judges, the public has something considerably less than the best services of one.

But Lord Brougham carried the prejudices of a Common Lawyer into a Court of Equity, and resolved to assimilate the two, by altering the practice not where it was bad but where it was good. Hitherto in the Court of Chancery the appeal has been from one judge to one judge: when the proposed Bill shall have passed, it will be from one judge to three.¹² A similar change has been effected in the Privy Council.¹³ And this the ministerial pamphleteer lauds as a most glorious improvement. “It must be admitted that a single judge hearing and deciding on questions of great moment was not a very good specimen of a court of appeal.”¹⁴

One ridiculous effect of this so-called reform, which does not appear to be at all thought of, is the following: at present three judges in the first resort sit regularly for the dispatch of business, and one only is ever occupied in hearing appeals from them: but now every appeal will take up the time of three, leaving only one to judge in the first instance. We may look forward therefore to an immense and rapidly accumulating arrear, or to the speedy appointment of several more judges in equity.

We shall only further mention, under the title of Law Reform, two instances of discreditable truckling which we really hope not to see renewed. When the House of Lords was about to reject the Local Courts’ Bill, which had already been mulcted of almost all that was valuable in it except the principle, in order to have a chance of passing, (the jurisdiction, originally of 100l., having been reduced to 20l.)¹⁵ what said the Chancellor?—That if, by rejecting a bill, the utility of which had been pared down almost to a minimum, they proved that no measure for really improving the judicature of the country had any chance of finding acceptance with them, he would give over compromising, and making his measures petty and contemptible to please them, and would propose a large measure containing all that the public welfare imperiously required, leaving them to reject it at their peril?—Nothing of the kind. He told them that if they threw out the Bill they should not daunt him, nor turn him back in the career of Law Reform, and that he would next time present to them a Bill—far less extensive than the preceding!¹⁶ This was tantamount to actually inviting their rejection of the Bill, and promising to do all he could to cover over and shelter the iniquity of their conduct. Let us hope that his acts, in this instance, will be better than his words.

This was truckling to the House of Lords. Their leaving the Registration Bill, the only really important measure which has emanated from the Real Property Commission, in private hands,¹⁷ while all the other Bills of that Commission were adopted as Government measures, this was truckling to the House of Commons. And a notable specimen was the rejection of that Bill, of what that House is—of what are the interests which still predominate there. Still the House of Landlords; still the House of Insolvent Debtors; and when strong public clamour does not compel some regard to the public interest, still as stupidly and as blindly selfish as in the worst times. Every man who voted for throwing out the Registry Bill, stamped himself thereby as a man more deeply in debt that he dared to avow. Not only was there no good motive, there was no other motive, good or bad, which could render a landowner averse to the official authentication of his property, and the claims on it, in the same manner in which his father’s will is authenticated by registry in Doctors’ Commons.

220.

THE CORPORATION BILL

EXAMINER, 20 OCT., 1833, PP. 659-60

This article discusses a plan for municipal corporations outlined by Brougham late in the session in a speech of 22 Aug., 1833 (PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 20, cols. 821-4); the plan did not result in legislation until 1835. It is Mill’s fifth leading article on the parliamentary session of 1833, prompted by Le Marchant’s The Reform Ministry; for the entry in Mill’s bibliography and the context, see Nos. 216-19. Unlike the previous articles in the series, this and No. 221 are signed “A.B.,” Mill’s most common form in these years. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as title and enclosed in square brackets.

the measure which Lord Brougham has introduced for giving municipal constitutions to the new boroughs, is far from an advantageous sample of his talents for legislation.

The elements of a local constitution for the management of the affairs of a town, are obvious enough to common sense. They are, first, a municipal assembly, or sub-legislature, elected by popular suffrage, to enact local regulations, levy local taxes, and direct their application to local purposes. Secondly, a superintendant of police, with a sufficient number of policemen for watch and ward. Thirdly, one or more local judges, who should be magistrates as well as judges; for it requires the very same order of judicial ability to determine whether there is evidence sufficient for commitment, as to decide subsequently whether there is sufficient for conviction. These judges, like all other judges, should not be elected by the people: a multitudinous body is not qualified to select, previous to trial, the fittest among several candidates, for the delicate and arduous functions of a judge. That most difficult and perilous choice can only be made by an officer of great skill and experience, especially appointed to that duty: an officer who, in almost all civilized countries except this, is a member of the Cabinet, under the title of Minister of Justice. But in order to give to the people the necessary security against bad appointments, (the control of Parliament, even if Parliament were other than it is, never could be exerted but in extreme cases,) the local judge ought to be removable by the people of the district, either directly, or through their representatives, the municipal council, not only for malversation, but unfitness of any kind.

The Chancellor having to frame a new municipal constitution, what does he? Place before himself the ends to be attained, and look out for the simplest and straightest means by which to reach them? No; he never applies the force of his intellect to the matter at all; never, it is obvious, puts the subject distinctly before his own mind. But he turns, perhaps, to the most philosophical writers on the subject, and takes their views for the guidance of his own. Just as little. What then does he? Servilely copies the constitution of the Corporation of London: instead of thought, contents himself with mere mimicry. The city of London has a common council and aldermen; therefore the new Corporations must also have a common council and aldermen! Not even tact enough to change the names; names so loaded with associations of vulgarity and imbecility, that, as a correspondent of the Times well remarked, nothing more than that one circumstance is wanted to prevent persons of education and refinement from seeking or accepting the office.¹ But aldermen!—why aldermen? This from the author and enthusiastic promoter of the Local Courts’ Bill!² what need of aldermen when we have Local Courts? and if we have them not yet, shall we not have them next year, or at farthest the year after? Why not insert them in this very Bill? Why build up, what we must immediately pull down? Aldermen! Have we not had a long enough trial of unpaid judicature? of amateur judges, whose first business is their shop, and the bench only their second? If there is an occupation upon the earth which requires the devotion of the entire faculties, it is the function of judicature; and men who would not allow their clerks or their footmen to have any second employment, will allow their judges to make judging the mere délassement of their leisure hours. But so it was in the old Corporations; so, therefore, the reformer of our laws wills that it shall be in the new.

Nevertheless, the anti-popular instinct has guided him most surely to the abridging of whatever privileges the old constitution conferred upon the democracy. For annual, he has substituted triennial elections;³ and the aldermen are not to be elected by the inhabitants at all. In the latter of these two points we think him right by accident; but not in the mode of nomination which he has instituted. The aldermen are to be elected by the common council: and (to put the comble to all the rest) they are to be elected by the common council from their own body.⁴ And mark this: the whole magistracy of each of the new boroughs will have to be selected for life from among the few persons who will be chosen the first time to form the common council.⁵ We stand appalled at the bare imagination of the jobbing, the intriguing, the backbiting, the undermining, the low tricks of all sorts, and the ill blood that will spring out of the contest, first to be elected into these primitive common councils, and afterwards to be elected by them. What a scheme for starting the new municipal constitution—for giving it that prosperous commencement which is of such inestimable importance to all new institutions, and the want of which it takes so many years to repair! But this is the smallest part of the evil of the absurdity. No qualifications whatever being required, apparently, to make a good judicial officer, anybody, who is not absolutely unfit for anything, being supposed to be fit for a magistrate; the choosers of aldermen are to be limited in their choice to the few persons whom the people have selected for a quite other sort of function: just as if the fifteen judges were required to be selected from the House of Commons. Because a man has been deemed fit for vestry business, he is fit to decide the most delicate question of evidence affecting the liberties and fortunes of the people!

This is instructive in more ways than one: it is a specimen which brings strongly into view (what are almost always equally mischievous, but seldom so ridiculous) the consequences of halting between two roads, and not choosing between two principles, but taking half of one and half of another. The Chancellor had renounced the principle of popular election of aldermen; he was alarmed at his own audacity; and we are persuaded, he flattered himself that by requiring those functionaries to be selected from a body which already emanated from popular election, he should still give something of a democratic air to his measure, and ward off a part of the disapprobation which might otherwise fall upon the curtailment of popular privileges. He will fail in this, as all such truckling policy deserves to fail; he will succeed only in ruining the utility of his own measure.

While in these particulars the Chancellor has deviated from the constitution of the city of London, only that the new machinery might be worse than even the old, he has faithfully imitated the most defective parts of his worm-eaten model. Think of proposing aldermen for life! The proposition has excited so universal a shout of condemnation,⁶ that to expend any more words in the exposure of it would be superfluous.

The appointment of a Commission to inquire into the abuses of Municipal Corporations was commendable.⁷ Not that, in any enlarged view there was the least necessity for such an inquiry; it is sufficiently notorious what the corporations are. There is not a man in England, not imbecile, or the rankest of Tories, who would not vote for making maison nette of all the existing filth, and giving the same constitution to the old boroughs at once which ought to be given to the new. The proper municipal constitution for an English town is a question of general legislative policy; not of judicial investigation. However, although the public are completely convinced, they are not yet sufficiently strongly moved; and without the publicity which will now be given to the details of the abominations of the existing town-governments, the disgust of the public would perhaps not yet have been roused to declare itself with the energy, without which no triumph is ever achieved over the hosts of interested enemies fighting as for their daily bread.

Many of the names of those who compose the Municipal Commission, are guarantees to the public that its duties will be performed with honesty and vigour. Indeed, there are few things in which the conduct of Ministers has, on the whole, been more unexceptionable than in the appointment of Commissions. We could find something to criticize there too, if we were disposed; but Ministers have been the subjects of so much vulgar abuse precisely where they have least merited it, that we prefer the more grateful office of defence. Never, surely, was there a more absurd reproach than that of “governing the country by means of Commissions.”⁸ Their Commissions have been so much more efficient than themselves, that we heartily wish the reproach were well-founded. If the Commissioners are fit to govern the country, where would be the great evil if they did govern? We should then, for the first time in this island, have our affairs managed by persons chosen, because they were believed to be fit for their work, not because they were lords, or had a “stake in the country,”⁹ or on any other such despicable ground of recommendation.

We have not quite come to it yet; but there will soon be a time, it will probably be but a short one, during which the country will actually be governed in the manner alleged; that is, all the more important and difficult public business will be carried on by Commissions, or other unacknowledged and comparatively unresponsible subordinates: and this, though but a transition to a more natural state of things, (in which the same men will do the work and gain the credit,) will even in itself be a far better state than that which now exists. But a change which really constitutes a great step in advance often looks so absurd and incongruous on the face of it, that people give it all sorts of bad names.

Thus, for example, when the five great Powers of Europe commanded Belgium and Holland to lay down their arms, and because one of them refused, instead of leaving them to fight out their quarrel in the old-fashioned way, commanded the other party to hold its peace, and took the chastisement of its more obstinate antagonist into their own hands; some people laughed, and others were angry, and exclaimed, Why interfere at all? And, assuredly, the exhibition, if looked at simply in itself, was grotesque enough: but if, on the other hand, we view it as what it really is, a proof of universal anxiety for the preservation of peace, founded indeed on no philanthropy, solely on a sense of interest, but yet so eager and earnest, even in the worst governments of Europe, that instead of coming to blows immediately, as they were wont to do, upon the slightest quarrel, they will not even suffer the most insignificant of their neighbours to go to war, lest the conflagration should spread to them; we then behold in what seemed absurd at first, no less than the commencement of a federative system of police for the European commonwealth: a commencement imperfect and barbarous enough, but such as all government was in its first beginnings. We recognize the same interests at work in the community of nations, which elevated the separate communities of men from a state of nature to a state of peaceful society. We see in the London Conference the first small germ of an international tribunal, an arbiter established by common consent to adjust the quarrels of nations by other means than a recourse to the sword; and what seemed a mere accidental variety of folly, brought about by the temporizing policy of a few individuals, becomes a sign and precursor of a great advancement in civilization, gradually, but surely preparing.^*

A change in progress, of a similar but a still more far-reaching kind, seems to us to be indicated by many symptoms, among which none is more significant than what has been sarcastically called “government by commissions.” We are gradually emerging from a dark period in which mental capacity (with a few exceptions which, when correctly analysed, are scarcely exceptions) was not regarded at all, as a criterion of fitness for high station and power. We are about to enter into a period in which capacity, or the reputation of capacity, will be the sole criterion. In the interval of transition there occurs a particular moment when the Incapables, those who occupy the high places solely on account of their riches or their connexions, are not yet dislodged from their seats, but in which public opinion and the growing difficulty of the times render it necessary that the work should be done better than the Incapables can do it. When this happens the matter is temporarily accommodated in this way: the Incapables retain the offices; but capable men are associated with them for the purpose of relieving them from the more arduous of the duties: and the appurtenances of office are shared between the parties in this way; the Incapable takes all the dignity and the greater part of the emoluments; his capable subordinate receives the minimum of pay and does the work. We are now in the beginnings, the first small beginnings, of this transition.

What is to be lamented is, not that the Ministers have had good sense and honesty sufficient to seek and find men fit to do those things for which they themselves are unfit; but that the fittest men are not themselves Ministers, or Ministers the fittest men. Not being so, they deserve the more praise for finding others who are fitter and trusting to them: would they had deserved it more! we should not then have had inflicted on us a series of legislative crudities, enough to make the very idea of altering any of our institutions almost alarming, and to make even earnest reformers occasionally wish that the attempt could have been deferred until better heads could have been found for planning and better hands for executing it.

Commissions are appointed to investigate all sorts of subjects; and when a commission has thrown every imaginable light upon a subject, has made its principles so intelligible and conspicuous that ingenuity itself can scarcely find a word additional to say in illustration; then the Ministers rush in and legislate in ignorance or disregard of all that the commission recommends and of all the evidence which it has collected. Something of this sort, not certainly in so great a degree, happened in the instance of the Factory Bill; a measure which, but for the alterations suggested by the Factory Commission, never could have been executed, and would have been most mischievous if it could. Ministers did adhere to the salutary recommendations of the commission in respect to infant labour: but made numerous alterations directly in the teeth of those recommendations; and, in particular, contrary to all sound principles of legislation and without the shadow of a case made out in justification, consented to impose restrictions on the hours of labour of certain classes of adults.¹⁰

This was done to gain votes and appease a popular clamour. But something far worse in its tendencies, and which indicates a far more serious and deeper-seated defect in the minds of the men themselves, was the support which some of the principal of them gave to the Labour Rate Bill.¹¹ Of all which they have done, this is to our minds the most decisive of their unfitness for the higher duties of government, and has the most completely divested us of all expectation or even hope of further considerable good from their hands. For in no other case have they sinned so flagrantly, we will not say against knowledge, but against the amplest opportunities of knowledge. In no other case had equal pains been taken to place the subject before them in the proper light. In no other case, if they had been capable of understanding the question, could they have attained to the understanding of it with so little trouble. And in no case perhaps has their absolute want of the very first elements of a knowledge of the subject been so lamentably conspicuous.

A.B.

221.

CONDUCT OF THE MINISTRY WITH RESPECT TO THE POOR LAWS

EXAMINER, 27 OCT., 1833, PP. 675-6

This is the sixth of Mill’s leading articles on the parliamentary session of 1833 prompted by Le Marchant’s The Reform Ministry; for the entry in his bibliography and the context, see Nos. 216-20. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as title and enclosed in square brackets.

who has not read the volume of Selections from the Evidence collected by thePoor Laws Commissioners?¹ Such a body of documents on the condition of the working people of any country never, probably, were brought together. It might be termed, “The Theory and Practice of Pauperism.” It is there we may learn what pauperism is; it is there, too, that we learn by what successive stages the labouring agricultural population of the greater part of England has been pauperized: sunk from the condition and feelings of independent labourers subsisting upon the earnings of their own labour, to the state of mind of reckless sinecurists, whose grand object is to be supported in comfort for doing nothing, and rapidly passing even from that state into the still worse—of extorting the payment they deem adequate to their wants, by riots and nightly incendiarism. This deplorable degeneracy has not arisen from the legitimate application of the original principle of the Poor Laws, that of giving food to those who can work, only in exchange for labour, within the walls of a workhouse. It has sprung from the gradual creeping-in of a series of illegal practices, by which wages have ceased altogether to be the reward of labour;—those who will, and those who will not work; those who have large families and those who have none; those who can obtain employment and those whom, on account of their bad character, no one will employ, being placed exactly on a par; except, indeed, the man who has saved something—he alone is prevented from obtaining employment till it is all spent.

Foremost, and worst among the contrivances by which all this mischief has been effected, is the system of roundsmen, or, as it is otherwise called, Labour Rate. By this plan all the labourers who have settlements in a parish are parcelled out among the rate-payers of the parish, each being required to employ, and pay at a certain rate, a certain number of labourers, (fixed by the vestry,) whether he has occasion for their labour or no! This is a trick to enable the farmers to throw an undue share of the burden of supporting the surplus population upon the shopkeepers and other inhabitants of the parish. Its most striking effect is, that it pauperizes at one stroke all the labourers of a parish. As the Commissioners say,

Under the Labour Rate system relief and wages are utterly confounded. All the wages partake of relief, and all the relief partakes of wages. The labourer is employed, not because he is a good workman, but because he is a parishioner. He receives a certain sum, not because that sum is the value of his services, but because it is what the vestry has ordered to be paid. Good conduct, diligence, skill, all become valueless.²

Another effect is, that by compelling the parishioners to employ all their own poor, however idle and inefficient, this system forces them to cease employing those who have settlements elsewhere; who, consequently are thrown back upon their own parishes; where, if there is no employment for them, they, too, from being industrious and independent labourers, sink into paupers.

While the country is resounding with these lamentable facts, elicited by the inquiries of the Poor Laws Commission, and published by authority, a Cabinet Minister introduces a Bill into the House of Lords for legalizing and extending the system of Labour Rates.³ Lord Althorp requests the opinion of the Commissioners on this precious Bill; unnecessarily enough, but in order to leave his own ignorance still more utterly without excuse.⁴ The Commissioners write to him in reply a most unanswerable letter, (it is printed among the Parliamentary Papers of the Session,) condemning the Bill utterly, and stating its inherent and irremediable vices most lucidly and cogently. One of the Commissioners delivered an able speech against the Bill from his place in the House of Lords.⁵ Nevertheless, the Bill, introduced by one Cabinet Minister, supported by another,⁶ and opposed by none, passes the House of Lords, and is sent down to the Commons. Arrived there, it is supported by Lord Althorp;⁷ and, but for the radical Members, who, headed by Mr. Charles Buller,⁸ mustered to speak and vote against it, (and with whom Mr. Poulett Thomson and the Solicitor-General, to their infinite credit, warmly co-operated,)⁹ the Bill would have become law!

If anything could be more discreditable than the conduct of Lords Lansdowne and Althorp on this measure, it would be the reasons they gave for it. The Bill, they allowed, would be exceptionable as a permanent measure, but good as a “temporary palliative,”¹⁰ until something more effectual could be done. It is scarcely credible, that after all which had been written on the subject by the Commissioners, these Ministers could have remained in such a state of complete ignorance of the very first rudiments of the subject as this implies. As well might they propose, that when a fire breaks out, as the fire-engine is a long way off, the interval till it arrives should be employed in throwing on, as a temporary palliative, all the oil that can be procured. In the very letter which Lord Althorp solicited and obtained from the Commissioners, they had urged with irresistible force, as the crowning evil of the Labour Rate system,

the great additional difficulty which it will create in the already arduous task of Poor Law amendment. When the direct employers of labour for some time have extorted from others the payment of a still greater part of the wages of their labourers, when the best class of labourers, those who are not settled in the place of their employment, have disappeared; when what now remains of repugnance to relief, or of degradation in accepting it, has been destroyed by its being merged in wages; when all the labourers have been converted into a semi-servile populace, ascripti glebae, without fear, but without hope—where (ask the Commissioners,) can we look for the materials of improvement?¹¹

These poor Lords, precisely as they took the word of the licensing magistrates for the horrible effects of the beer-shops,¹² took, in like manner, the words of the country gentlemen, and of their agricultural colleague, the Duke of Richmond, for the “palliative” tendency of the Labour Rate Bill, because it would have “palliated” the immediate burden of poor-rate upon the farmers; that is, upon the landlords. And neither of the two dupes was capable, we do not say of finding out by their own native faculties, but even of understanding after it had been clearly pointed out—that if a Labour Rate alleviated the pressure upon one portion of the rate-payers, it could not do so but by laying an exactly equivalent burden upon another portion; and if it could, what then? There is not one of the abuses of the Poor Laws but was originally introduced for the sake of lowering the rate, and did, at first, actually have that effect. Too great eagerness to lower the rate by “temporary palliatives,” has brought us into our present state; a state from which, instead of being extricated, we shall sink deeper into the vortex every year, till society itself is swallowed up, unless the evil is met and combated by means in every respect the reverse of those contemplated by the authors and promoters of the Labour Rate Bill.

The Ministerial pamphleteer sounds a loud note of preparation for Poor Law Reforms;¹³ and before the introduction of this Bill we had really entertained hopes, that with such advisers as the Commissioners, Ministers, without touching the principle of the Poor Laws, (of which we approve,) would contrive, if not a radical reform, at least the means of a considerable improvement of their administration. Now, it will be our good fortune rather than their merit, if instead of amendment, we do not obtain something which will render all the abuses ten times worse. Men who could not be taught by their own Commissioners to understand the elements of a single branch of the question, will make a hopeful figure in dealing with the general problem of Poor Law amendment!

There is no soundness in their understandings, no power of fathoming a subject even of not extraordinary depth. The person who talks loudest and longest to them carries them along with him; nor have they even the ordinary good sense to distrust suggestions which come from an interested quarter.

A.B.

222.

MARTINEAU’S A TALE OF THE TYNE

EXAMINER, 27 OCT., 1833, PP. 677-8

Writing to Carlyle on 25 Nov., 1833, a week after his return from Paris, Mill asks: “did you detect me in the Exr reviewing Miss Martineau, & Col. Napier?” (EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 197). And, again to Carlyle on 12 Jan., 1834: “The paper on Miss Martineau was really a paper on Impressment” (ibid., p. 209). For earlier reference to her Illustrations, see No. 197. This review, in the “Literary Examiner,” is headed “Illustrations of Political Economy. No. 21. A Tale of the Tyne. By Harriet Martineau. [London:] C. Fox [1833].” Described in Mill’s bibliography as “A review of Miss Martineau’s ‘Tale of the Tyne’ in the Examiner of 27th October 1833” (MacMinn, p. 35), this article is listed in the Somerville College set of the Examiner as “Review of Miss Martineau’s ‘Tale of the Tyne’ ” and enclosed in square brackets. Mill quoted part of this article in his “Notes on the Newspapers” in the Monthly Repository for April 1834 (see CW, Vol. VI, pp. 178-9); in the variant notes “34” indicates Monthly Repository, 1834.

if, as we think must be admitted, some of the more recent tales of this series (though none are deficient in passages of great beauty and power) have not kept up to the high level of the earlier numbers, the illustration of impressment came in time to prove that the inferiority arises from no decline of the author’s talents, nor exhaustion of her vein, but from the more ungrateful nature of some of the topics on which she has recently been engaged. All the truths of her science do not equally admit of being illustrated by a succession of interesting incidents, and she has sometimes, instead of working the principle into the body of her tale, found herself thrown upon the last resource of foisting it in under cover of scientific conversations between her principal characters.

In the present instance, however, her subject was eminently susceptible of striking illustration and powerful enforcement through the medium of a fictitious history. The Tale of the Tyne is a story of impressment; and its appearance could not be better timed, than immediately after our reforming Ministers have not only refused to abolish the odious tyranny, against which the story is directed, but treated those who ventured to express disapprobation of it, as if they had done something vicious and deserving of opprobrium.

Miss Martineau should send a copy of this tale to each of his Majesty’s Ministers. We think it would have lowered the insulting tone of Sir James Graham’s memorable speech on Mr. Buckingham’s motion,¹ if he had read, the evening before, in this little narrative, the meeting, after years of absence, between a pressed sailor who had deserted, and his sister. We quote all we can of this most affecting passage, and regret that our limits do not allow of more:

When Cuddie entered from the garden, his first act was to desire his sister to fasten the door at the foot of the stairs, and hang up blinds against both windows, he standing in the shadow till this was done. Effie timidly objected to blinding the front window which looked down upon the ferry; it was not yet too late for the possibility of passengers. This seemed to serve as a new reason; and she was obliged to hang up her shawl.

“If you want to know the reason,” whispered her brother, “I am a deserter. Hush! No noise! or you will be the death of me, as Adam was near being this morning.”

“Won’t you sit down?” said Effie,—as she might have spoken to an intruder from Bedlam.

“Effie, you always used to say what you felt, and all that you felt. Are you changed too? Come; tell me what you are thinking.”

“I think I am in a dream, and do not know whether you be Cuddie, or a fancy of my own. O, Cuddie, I have always loved you next to Walter, and looked upon you as the pride and hope of the family; and as often as I have started from sleep, these four years past, it has been with dreaming over again your being taken at dead of night, and especially your slipping down the cable. The worst moments I have had from the time you rowed away from this ferry, that bright evening, are those between sleeping and waking, when I saw you cold and altered before me, and I could not by any means make you smile. I never,—no I never believed this last would come true. And now,—and now,” she uttered between her sobs, “you know what I am thinking about.”

Cuddie cast himself on the ground, laid his head on her knee, as he had done in many a childish trouble, weeping so that he could not for long be persuaded to look up.

“You are not altogether altered, I see,” said Effie, striving to speak cheerfully. “You are not come back the round-faced, weather-brown seaman I always fancied you would be, but instead, far too much as if you had been famished. Yet your heart is the same.”

“No, no.”

“O, yes. But you have known want lately, and you are discouraged. I much fear you have known want.”

“’Tis not that which has bowed my spirit. Effie, I am altogether heartbroken.”

“Do not dare to say that. We must bear whatever Providence—”

“But it is not Providence that has done it; it is my king and country,” cried Cuddie, starting up, the flush fading from his face, and leaving it of a deadly paleness. “If it had been the will of Providence, Effie, to take a limb from me, I would have made my way home on crutches, with a stout heart, and none of you should have heard a bitter word from me. If lightning from above had scorched out my eyes, I would have taken Tim for an example, and been thankful through the live-long day. If the fever had laid me low on shipboard, I would have been a man to the last, knowing that my corpse would make the plunge before midnight. But to have one’s king and country against one, is what is enough to break any man’s heart that has ever loved either of them.”

“To be sure it is. What have they been doing to you?”

“Things that I do not hold myself bound to bear, as if they were done according to the will of Providence, and not against it. They first turned my very heart within me with carrying me away, as if I had been a black slave; carrying me away from all I cared about, and the occupation I could most willingly follow. Then, when I had little spirit for my work, and many bitter thoughts to distract me in it, and hurt my temper, the next thing they must do is to flog me. What surprises you in that? Don’t you know that impressment brings flogging? Carry away a man as a slave, and next thing you must whip him as a thief, and that brings hanging like a dog. Yes, they flogged me, and my head grew down on my breast from the time that scornful eyes were for ever upon me. This morning I have been hunted by my countrymen,—by many an one that I knew when nobody dared look scornfully on me. It was my own brother’s doing that they were set on. My country has but one thing more to do with me; and that is to make away with me for desertion.”

“Then you do not mean to do it yourself, thank God!” cried Effie.

“No, Effie. I have been tempted many a time, from the night I slipped down the cable, as you mentioned, till this very afternoon, when I hid in an old coal-pit, and was but too near throwing myself below. I shall make a trial of what is to be done by going where there is no king, and where one may forget one’s country. There is not a saint in heaven that could make me forgive them; but there may be ways of forgetting them. I will make the trial in America.”

“Then we shall lose the best brother, and my mother the child she has looked to through every thing, and your king a servant that may ill be spared during this war.”

“Never mind the king. If he knows no better how to get his subjects to serve him—”

“Hush, Cuddie! You a seaman, and talk so of your king!”

“I am not a seaman now. However, say the country, if you will: if she knows no better how to get served than by first making slaves of her free-born men, let her do as well as she can when they leave her to turn against her. As soon as she takes a man’s birthright from him, his duty ceases. Mine was at an end when they carried me off, neck and heels, and turned me, in one hour, from a brave-hearted boy into a mean-souled man.”

“No, no.”

“Yes, yes, I say; but though it was so, they had gained no right to disgrace me. That flogging might possibly have been thought justifiable by some people, if I had entered the service of my own free will: as I did not, they had no more right to flog me than the showman yonder has to goad the lion he enticed into his trap. If that lion should ever get out a paw to revenge himself, it would go hard with me to help the human brute.”

Effie was confounded. In casting about for an argument wherewith to stop this method of discourse, she could find none out of the Bible. Christian forgiveness of injuries was her plea.

“There is the difference, certainly, between the lion and me,” said Cuddie: “the Bible is out of the question in his case. It shall be minded in my own, so far as this:—I will not lift a hand against my country, and I will go where I may possibly learn to forgive her; but I cannot do it here Effie,—even if my life were safe, I could not do it here. My country loses a stout-bodied, willing-hearted member, and I lose all I have ever lived for; but there the mischief shall stop for me.”

“Aye, for you; but how many more are there lost in like manner? I think some devil, in the service of our country’s enemies, has come to blind our eyes, and harden our hearts, and make us a sad wonder for the times that are to come. Will men believe such a story as yours,—such an one as my father’s,—a hundred years hence?”

“Yes, they will easily believe, because they will look back to what the service now is, and how it is regarded, and contrast these things with what, I trust, will be the state of things in their day. They will look back and see that merchant seamen are now paid more than they need be, because naval seamen are paid so much less than they ought to be, and made subject to violence. If, as I hope, in those days, the one service will be as desirable as the other, (or the king’s, perhaps, the most so of the two,) it will be found that our colliers will man a navy at the first call; and then men will believe that when it was otherwise, there was some fearful cause of wrong that came in between the king and his seamen.”

“It does seem, indeed, as if there was no lack of loyalty among our people, when their minds are not turned from their king by some strange act; and we hear few complaints of the service from those who go willingly to it.”

“There is none that would be liked so well, if it had fair play. Besides the honour of keeping off the enemy, and the glory of helping to preserve one’s country, there is so much variety, and so many adventures, and so many hundred thousand eyes looking on, that a sea-life in his Majesty’s service has many charms. But honour is a mockery to one’s heart, unless it is won by the heart; and what are varieties of adventure to him whose body may be roving, but whose spirit sits, like a gloomy, unseen ghost, for ever by his own fire-side?”

“He who goes of his own will has most likely made provision for those he has left behind; and then the thought of them will come only when it can animate him, and never to discourage him.”

“Oh, you should see the difference between the volunteers and certain slaves like me!—how the one are impatient with the captain till he gets boldly out in search of the enemy; and how the other would fain have the vessel creep for ever along the shore, that he might have a chance of stealing out, and forgetting his present disgraces by daring a worse reproach still. You should see the difference of their patience on the watch, and of their courage before a battle.”

[Pp. 104-10.]

Can any one read this and not see that it is a true picture? that, of such causes, such are the natural consequences? The fictitious Cuthbert Eldred is but a type of the countless multitudes of real living men, who have been immolated, body and soul, like him, and died the living death which he so powerfully describes. ^aIt is not astonishing that in an age of barbarism men should commit barbarities. That Lord Chatham, one of a generation of statesmen among whom common humanity seems to have been almost as rare as common honesty, and in an age in which nothing was esteemed wickedness by which nobody suffered but the common people—that Lord Chatham should have seen no harm in impressment, can surprise no one; but it is equally unexpected and unwelcome to find Lord Chatham’s authority quoted for it now, as conclusive, by a Reform Minister.² Necessity! so well described by Milton as “^bthe tyrant’s plea^b :”³ it is also Sir James Graham’s, and no one has yet, in our own day, or in any preceding, carried impudence so far as to pretend that there can be any other. It is difficult not to feel degraded by the very act of replying to so base a pretext. Necessity! yes; to borrow the apt expression of a vigorous writer, “it is exactly the sort of necessity which men are hanged for:” the convenience of taking the property of other people without paying for it; with the aggravation of its being their sole property, and the slight additional circumstance that the entire wealth of the nation is yours to purchase it withal, if you ^cmust^c have it. If the whole matter were laid before a community of ignorant savages; if they could be made to conceive the clamour, the indignant uproar, which rises from all the benches of a certain assembly at the bare suggestion of laying a sacrilegious finger upon anything which borders upon a vested right, upon anything which by the utmost straining can be construed into property, and then could be shown the spectacle of the same men hallooing on their leaders to denounce and insult men for asserting the vested right of the labourer to his own bodily powers, and calling it injustice to knock him down and rob him, not of his purse, seeing that he has none, but of all the property he has,—his labour, in order to save to their own pockets a fractional part of the wages for which he would consent to sell it,—would not the assembly of savages deem the assembly of civilized Christians fit objects for a hurricane to sweep from the earth? What would they think if they were then told that this same assembly had just voted twenty millions for the redemption of negro slaves? These men are not fools, mere absolute fools they cannot be; they cannot think that kidnapping our own countrymen, and keeping them to forced labour for the whole or the better part of their lives, differs from negro slavery; why, every one of the incidents is the same, down to the very cart whip! call it, if you please, the cat. There is identity even in the wretched apologies which are set up; the captains or masters are an ill-used, calumniated race of men, and free labour, forsooth, would be vastly dearer!^a We are obliged, therefore, when we find the same men, at the same time, actually crusading against everything which is called slavery in the remote parts of the globe, and battling for it at home as for the most precious of our institutions, to conclude that it is not the thing that they are averse to, but only the name; and that their quarrel with tyranny is not with the tyranny itself, but solely with its unpopularity.

223.

CONDUCT OF THE MINISTRY WITH RESPECT TO THE POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT, AND THE PAYMENT OF OFFICERS BY FEES

EXAMINER, 10 NOV., 1833, PP. 706-7

This is the seventh and last of Mill’s leading articles on the parliamentary session of 1833 prompted by Le Marchant’s The Reform Ministry; for the entry in his bibliography and the context, see Nos. 216-21. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the article is listed as title and enclosed in square brackets.

the clerks of the post-office, in addition to their authorized salaries, have large perquisites, not voted annually by Parliament, nor brought upon the public accounts, but which, like all the gains of public functionaries, come out of the pockets of the people, and in this instance in a most objectionable manner. The sources of these irregular emoluments are various, the most considerable being the privilege of franking newspapers, and the entire monopoly which that privilege confers of the supply of foreign journals to persons resident in this country. The extravagance and the manifold evils of this mode of remunerating the post-office establishment were recognised as long ago as 1788, when a Tory commission, appointed by the Tory Ministry of Mr. Pitt, recommended that the practice should be abolished, and all emoluments forbidden to the functionaries of the post-office, except in the form of fixed salaries.¹ The recommendation was renewed by the Tory commissioners of revenue inquiry in their report to the Tory Minister, the Duke of Wellington, in 1829.² Here was ground enough, one would think, for a Reform Ministry to proceed on: but this is not all. A few months ago the French Government, in a spirit of which it were to be wished that Governments afforded more frequent examples, sent M. Conte, their Postmaster-general, to this country on a special mission, to obtain the consent of our Ministry to several measures for facilitating communication between the two countries both by letter and by printed publications.³ Among the foremost of these propositions was one for suffering the newspapers of each country to be conveyed by the mails of the other on the same terms with its own, namely, post free, or at a rate of postage almost nominal. Here was a proposal which a Ministry of enlarged views and a liberal spirit would have grasped at with the utmost avidity. Here was an opportunity for facilitating the circulation of knowledge, the interchange of ideas, and the increase of friendly feeling between the two leading nations of Europe; an occasion scarcely to be looked for in a century, of meeting the liberal overtures of a foreign country for a more extended intercourse in a corresponding spirit of liberality; for proving to the statesmen of France that so creditable a wish is reciprocal, that their aspirations are appreciated and participated in, and that our missions and our negociations to obtain increased facilities of intercourse are not mere show and pretence, nor a trick to cajole the French into granting what are called commercial advantages, but the expression of a sincere and well-considered and disinterested purpose. Was it so easy for the French Ministry to effect improvements, that we could afford to say No, when they voluntarily said Yes? There, as here, we may be sure, abundance of private interests stand opposed to all innovation; there, as here, the ease both of superiors and of subordinates is best consulted by leaving all things as they are. By singular good fortune all these obstacles were got over without any trouble on our part, and the French Ministry spontaneously offered what it would have been worth years of negociation to obtain. Every consideration, not only of liberal and benevolent policy, but of the narrowest political expediency, was in favour of the proposal; nothing was opposed to it but the private interests of the clerks of the post-office. Those interests have triumphed; the French negociator has gone away unsuccessful! A specimen of the Reform Ministry.

All comment upon this would be idle, except Lord Althorp’s own. Among his other endowments, one which Lord Althorp possesses in a supreme degree, is the faculty of making whatever is exceptionable in his actions, still worse by the niaiserie of his excuses. Being challenged on this subject in the House of Commons, he defended himself by saying that if the monopoly were taken from the clerks of the post-office it would be necessary to make an equivalent addition to their salaries!⁴ Suppose it were; what then? But no, my Lord: an addition, perhaps, but not an equivalent addition: gains which do not see the light are apt to be considerably larger than would be tolerated if they did: your Lordship would not dare to propose to Parliament avowed salaries for these officers, of half the amount of the emoluments which they are at present allowed to pick up in a dark corner. Look at the schedule annexed to the Tory Commissioners’ Report, my Lord.⁵ Would Sir Francis Freeling,⁶ for whose office 1000l. a-year was considered by the Revenue Commissioners to be an adequate remuneration, have been permitted to receive as an addition to his salary of 1200l., the 2965l. a-year he now receives as “compensation for loss of the privilege of franking newspapers to the colonies?”⁷ Your Lordship well knows he would not, and so does Sir Francis. Of the paltriness of making a question like this a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence, neither reckoning the injustice of monopolies in general, nor the peculiar and odious mischief of a monopoly in favour of national prejudices and antipathies, and against the most valuable of all intercourse, that of human thoughts and feelings, we will not trust ourselves to say anything.

It would be absurd to suspect the Ministers of having any personal interest in these jobs; what we charge them with is a stupid insensibility to all the higher considerations which ought to govern such questions, joined with a dulness and want of discernment which makes them tools in the hands of any interested person who desires to use them as such. It is this, and the anti-popular instinct together, which makes them uphold the taxes on newspapers and political publications. Who are their advisers in this? The daily newspapers! monopolists, whom the abolition of those taxes would compel to share with a hundred rivals the market which they now engross exclusively. Ministers little know the store of public hatred which they are laying up for themselves by this, and their defence of the corn laws, and one or two things more, which the mass of the working people feel to their heart’s core, and which a Ministry, unexceptionable in every other respect, could not possibly persevere in for three or four years without becoming as odious as the Castlereagh Ministry in its worst times.⁸

But what can Lord Althorp know of public opinion? He, who affirmed that nine-tenths of the people of England would lament to see the Bishops ejected from the House of Lords.⁹ This at a time when their expulsion from that House on merely religious grounds, quite apart from the almost universal disgust (there is no other word) at their conduct as politicians, formed part of every plan of Church Reform brought forward by friends of the Establishment as absolutely indispensable for redeeming its character and preserving it in existence! The very time when the Bishops, as a body, were making themselves the prime agents in every intrigue for “tripping up” the Ministry, and when their votes regularly swelled the minorities or majorities against the most important of the Ministerial measures; this dexterous tactician chooses that very moment for volunteering a gratuitous assurance to his bitterest enemies that they have nothing to fear, and may mature all their machinations against him and his colleagues, and against the people of Great Britain, in confidence and security!

But among the wants of these Ministers, want of the higher qualities of statesmanship is hardly more conspicuous than want of tact, and of understanding their own position. Surely there never before was a Ministry which several times in one Session compromised themselves neck-deep in defence of what they had not strength to hold for a few weeks following. Surely no Chancellor of the Exchequer but Lord Althorp would have courted the odium of defending sinecures as a valuable part of our institutions,¹⁰ against motion after motion for their abolition, and been forced before the end of the Session to appoint a Committee on purpose to recommend that sinecures should be given up.¹¹ Nor would any other Minister have voluntarily taken upon himself the load of obloquy which this foolish Lord incurred by justifying, we know not how many times, not only the Assessed Taxes, but those inequalities in their assessment which fly in the faces of mankind; and this with so little power of maintaining the ground he had so rashly occupied, that in the very same year he has been constrained to yield what, with the persons interested, passed and was intended to pass, as an actual promise to give those taxes up.¹²

If we continued our examination of the Ministry until every thing in their conduct which calls for severity of stricture had been exhausted, we might prolong it till the next Session. But all things must have an end. We must, therefore, pass over the Ballot, Triennial Parliaments, Impressment, and numerous other subjects of the utmost importance, but which unhappily are still alive, and will afford many occasions for every sort of comment before they are finally disposed of. Here, then, for the present, our review of the Session must close.

224.

NAPIER’S THE COLONIES

EXAMINER, 24 NOV., 1833, PP. 740-1

Here Mill returns to a work he had recently praised (see No. 217). He asked Carlyle on 25 Nov.—a little early, for Carlyle was in Craigenputtoch—whether he had spotted the review as Mill’s (see No. 222). This lead review, in the “Literary Examiner,” is headed “The Colonies: Treating of their Value generally; of the Ionian Islands in particular; the importance of the latter in War and Commerce, as regards Russian Policy; their Finances; why an expense to Great Britain; detailed proofs that they ought not to be so; Turkish Government; Battle of Navarino; Ali Pacha; Sir Thomas Maitland; Strictures on the Administration of Sir Frederick Adam. By Colonel Charles James Napier, C.B. [London: Boone, 1833.]” It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A review of Colonel Napier’s Work on the Ionian Isles, in the Examiner of 24th Nov. 1833” (MacMinn, p. 36). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the article is listed as “Review of Colonel Napier’s Work on the Ionian Isles,” and enclosed in square brackets, with one correction: at 649.35 “as bad” is altered to “as loud”.

Motto.—“And a more accomplished old woman never drank cat-lap,” said Maxwell, as he shut the door: “the last word has him, speak it who will; and yet, because he is a whilly-whaw body, and has a plausible tongue of his own, and is well enough connected, and especially because nobody could ever find out whether he is Whig or Tory, this is the third time they have made him Provost.”— Redgauntlet.¹

we have incidentally, in a former article, called attention to this book, but we cannot let it pass without more particular notice. If we could, we would cause it to be in the hands of every reader of our Paper. It is as instructive as if it were the dullest book ever written, and as amusing as if it had no pretensions to be instructive.

The author, Colonel Napier, is brother to the celebrated historian of the Peninsular War,² and a remarkable member of a remarkable family. He was Resident (Lieutenant-Governor) of Cefalonia, the largest of the islands which compose the Septinsular Republic, as this curious specimen of a Government is called.³ Though not a philosopher, (of his general speculations we do not think by any means highly,) Colonel Napier is evidently the shrewdest and most sagacious of practical men; one of the most high-spirited of officers, and, from the style and character of his book, we are quite certain, one of the liveliest and pleasantest of companions.

Colonel Napier has done three things in the present work; which we shall enumerate in the ascending order of their importance. To have done any one of the three was worth writing twice as large a book.

He has presented, quite incidentally, and seemingly without having such a purpose in his thoughts, a most lively and interesting picture of a curious and little known state of society; a rude, scarcely so much as half civilized, state; blending curiously the general features of European society five hundred years ago, with influences derived from the connection and neighbourhood of more civilized nations.

He has supplied to all who may hereafter be called upon to govern, or to superintend the government of the Ionian Isles, or of any other colony in the same stage of improvement, an admirable manual; a collection of precepts and examples, perfectly inestimable. He has shown how these islands may be governed at no expense to Great Britain, and so that the Government shall be a blessing to the inhabitants, who, but for our protection, would lie prostrate at the feet of their own wealthier classes. He has made it clear, both by reasoning and actual experiment, that to render our occupation of that country quite invaluable to its people, nothing whatever is necessary but that the men we send thither shall be men of good sense and discernment, capable of understanding the state of society they are set to preside over, and the nature of the social evils which they have to contend against. On the other hand, he has shown but too plainly how for want of understanding these things, our government there may be made a burden on our own treasury; and with respect to the islands themselves, merely an additional instrument in the hands of the rich to pillage and trample upon the poor.

The last, and greatest, because most far-reaching benefit which Colonel Napier has conferred upon his country by this volume, is to anatomize and exhibit, in the person of Sir Frederick Adam,⁴ a specimen of a class of public men, the sort of men described in his motto; the most numerous class of all; the men who have no character, no will of their own; whom, consequently, nobody is jealous of, or afraid of; and whom, therefore, if aristocratically connected, everybody is ready to thrust into situations for which they are totally unfit; and who then become mere instruments in the hands of those who will take greatest pains to talk them over, (a familiar phrase, exactly expressive of the process,) that is, of those who have a private interest to serve; the men, in short, who answer to the description in Hudibras—

. . . a tool
Which knaves do work with, called a fool.⁵

This sort of men, when placed in situations of important trust, are precisely the most dangerous of all; the mischief they do is quite incalculable. To such men, any man of an active and strong understanding, let him be even a knave, is far preferable. A maxim, strikingly exemplified by the contrast between the administration of Sir Frederick Adam, and that of Sir Thomas Maitland, his predecessor.⁶ Sir Thomas was the corruptest of Tories, and, unless he is greatly wronged, one of the most unscrupulous of Governors; and, as appears from many anecdotes in this book, rough and coarse-minded almost to brutality. But he had a sound and vigorous understanding and a strong will; and that love of the right, when not under great temptation to do wrong, which a clear-headed and determined man always has. He understood his position, and the sphere in which he moved. He saw that the great business of a Governor in a state of society like that of the Ionian Isles, is to protect the weak against the strong. He saw, that if the poor were to be protected at all, the executive government must be their protector; because the courts of justice, to which, in a more advanced state of society, the repression and punishment of injuries may safely be left, cannot in that semi-barbarous state be so constituted as not to be habitually bribed or intimidated by the rich and powerful. Accordingly Sir Thomas made himself the patron of the poor man, and governed the Seven Islands, in spite of many defects, with a more vigorous and a more beneficent rule, than they have probably ever known since they first were inhabited.

Sir Frederick Adam, a man without Sir Thomas Maitland’s bad qualities, and without one particle of his energy and strong good sense, succeeded to him; and, although during the whole of Sir Thomas’s administration he had been second in command, and had the amplest opportunities of profiting by the example, the history of his administration is that of the gradual undoing of the good work which his predecessor had begun. Sir Thomas Maitland had protected the weak against the strong; the practice of Sir Frederick Adam was to believe the representations of the strong against the weak. It was not that he had any preference for the strong; if there had been any one to talk as long and as loud to him on the other side of the question, the other side was as likely to have prevailed. He was simply in the very common case of having no ideas of his own, nor capacity of acquiring them, and consequently adopting those, whatever they might be, which were most frequently presented to him. The rich and powerful, having most access to his ear, had most opportunities of pouring into it the representations which suited their purposes.

Colonel Napier was able for several years, in spite of perpetual counteraction from the knot of interested advisers by whom the Governor was surrounded, to preserve the administration of the island over which he presided from the rapid degeneracy which the others speedily underwent. Having a mind full of resource, fertile in contrivances, being a thorough man of action in the best sense, knowing the world, and judging skilfully of men, he chose his expedients with admirable skill; was always for a little while countenanced and applauded by Sir Frederick Adam; and, as soon as he had been sufficiently successful to give umbrage to any person with whose corrupt gains, or whose arbitrary powers his plans interfered, he had the mortification of finding them all knocked on the head.

After some time, Colonel Napier came to England on leave of absence, receiving on his passage through Corfu, the strongest demonstrations of friendship and confidence from the Governor. During his absence Sir Frederick Adam made a public declaration in Cefalonia, that on Colonel Napier’s return he should not reappoint him to his office, under pretence that an insurrection which had broken out many months after the Colonel’s departure had been provoked by the arbitrary nature of his administration. On learning this, Colonel Napier immediately demanded an inquiry, and having with some difficulty compelled Sir Frederick to make his accusations specific, addressed to the Colonial Office a reply which absolutely levels the unfortunate man with the dust.⁷

The conduct of Lord Goderich was most characteristic. A man like Sir Thomas Maitland, in the situation of Colonial Secretary, from the mere inspection of the controversial correspondence, the accusation and the defence, would have seen enough of the two men to have perceived at once which was fittest to be Governor of the Ionian Isles; and if to Sir Thomas Maitland’s abilities he had added honesty, Sir Frederick would speedily have ceased to fill the office, and Colonel Napier would have been his successor. Lord Goderich, on the contrary, seems to have had no object in view but to spare himself the responsibility of deciding. He would neither put Sir Frederick Adam in the right nor say he was in the wrong. Before the inquiry, and for the purpose of saving himself from the trouble of it, he offered to Colonel Napier a superior appointment, the Residency of Zante.⁸ But as the Colonel refused to pocket the unmerited accusation, and demanded that Sir Frederick Adam should be required either to restore him to his former post or produce charges against him; he obtained the inquiry which he had demanded, made the most triumphant of vindications, and received no redress. Lord Goderich “did not feel authorized to interfere between a Lord High Commissioner and his Resident:”⁹ it was no part of the duty of a Colonial Secretary to exercise any controul over the Governor of a colony. No decision has ever been pronounced. Colonel Napier, who might have obtained a higher appointment if he would have submitted to be disgraced, has lost the situation he held, and it needs no prophet to predict that he will never obtain that or any other from the present Government. He has appealed to the press:¹⁰ the one unpardonable offence. He has shown up the folly and negligence of men in high place. No man who does this need expect public employment. He has written a book which proves him to be the fittest person in the United Kingdom to be Governor of the Seven Islands, and that is the quite sufficient hindrance to his being made either that or anything else.

People of England, how long will these things be?

225.

THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY FOR DECEMBER 1833

EXAMINER, 15 DEC., 1833, PP. 788-9

Once again Mill acknowledged his authorship of an article in the Examiner to Carlyle (12 Jan., 1834; EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 209). Mill had nothing in this number of the Monthly Repository, though his “Comparison of the Tendencies of French and English Intellect” (No. 158) had appeared in November. The review, in the “Literary Examiner,” is headed “The Monthly Repository for December [n.s. VII]. Edited by W.J. Fox”; page references are to this volume. This notice, the fifth in a series beginning with No. 198, is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A review of the December number of the Monthly Repository, in the Examiner of 15th December 1833” (MacMinn, p. 36). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Review of the Monthly Repository for December” and enclosed in square brackets.

we think this the best number yet published of a periodical which is rising rapidly into the high estimation it continues more and more to deserve. The same solidity of thought and justness of judgment, the same ardent sympathy with the emotions, interests, and aspirations of the poorer classes, the same enthusiastic feeling for, that is, of, the good and the beautiful, manifest themselves under more varied forms, and in a still more sustained and more impressive manner. Most of the numerous and diversified articles in this number, scarcely leave room for a wish that they could be better, either in design or execution. They are all that they profess to be, and all that their subjects require.

The volume which closes the year, is inscribed—

To the Working People
of
Great Britain and Ireland;
who, whether they produce
The means of physical support and enjoyment,
or aid the progress of
Moral, political, and social reform and improvement,
are fellow-labourers for the well-being
of the entire community.

To no work could such a dedication be more appropriately annexed, for the well-being of the classes to whom the work is thus addressed, is, indeed, the polar star of its course; and by their well-being is not meant, in this work, their physical comfort, nor even their political independence, but these and likewise the invigorating of their understanding and the refinement of their tastes. Not the frivolous, washy “mental improvement” which lords and gentlemen patronizingly and condescendingly administer when they cater “useful knowledge for the people,” always with an eye to diverting them from the discussion of the great social questions, and “keeping them in their proper station.” If this be philanthropy, Mr. Fox is no philanthropist. Speaking of the mechanics of England, he says, or the Repository says for him:

Their intelligence, their principles, their growing moral power, are indications of approaching change, not merely in political forms, but in the structure of society which it is high time to study, and on which a philosophical and courageous statesman, if such an one the country were but blessed withal, would already begin to act, and that on no petty scale. Happily this growing power is not one of brute force; it is a developement of intelligence. To us, therefore, there is in it nothing fearful. The only evil which we apprehend is in the kind of resistance which may be opposed to it. It may be guided, but it cannot be coerced: and the attempt to mislead it, for the private benefit of other classes, will not fail less signally, nor recoil less destructively, than even coercion itself. We have long been impressed by the conviction that the intellect of poverty must be self-instructed, that it will not feed on the crumbs which fall from the rich man’s table; that the real teachers of the poorer class must themselves be men of that class, imbued with its peculiar feelings, alive to its peculiar interests, influenced even by its peculiar prejudices; but, by their native power of mind, strongly conscious of its peculiar wants, and of capacity to minister to the supply of those wants. Such are the teachers who will be attended to without suspicion: whose words will have many echoes from the multitudes of their brethren, while the voice of condescending instruction dies without response on the empty air. Laughable as it might lately have been deemed, the “producing men” are actually producing their own politicians and poets; and such too as feel it to be grander and a nobler part, to make common cause with their brethren, raising their minds and refining their tastes, than to become, as was the old practice, the flattered appendages of superior station, tame monsters, with the range of the kitchen, rising into the livery dignity of patronage, hot-pressed paper, and a subscription list.¹

In every word of this we concur; but with the qualification, that not only the more vigorous minds in the poorer class, but persons also with the superior opportunities of instruction afforded by a higher station, may be, (and of this the writer himself is an example) most efficient instructors of the poorer classes, provided they have sufficient freedom from the littleness of mind which caste-distinctions engender, and a sufficiently just appreciation of the intelligence of the reading part of the working-classes, to prevent them from being condescending instructors. No gentleman is fit to write for the poor who cannot help betraying in every line that he habitually deems himself a being of a different order from them, and vastly their superior, that he cannot for one half hour lose the consciousness of his artificial and conventional rank, but is perpetually showing it in the most offensive of all ways, that of taking credit for not showing it. He must learn to speak to the working-people as an equal to his equals, as he would speak to persons less informed than himself on the particular subject, but with minds quite as capable of understanding it. When, moreover, the assumption of superiority over their intellect, and the ostentation of descending to make himself intelligible to their ignorant minds is accompanied with an attempt to pass off upon them, even though in a good cause, palpable sophisms which the least discerning of them has intellect enough to see through, he but excites the contempt, mingled with aversion, which a large portion of the reading mechanics feel for the instructions in political economy which have been put forth to the “working man” by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.²

The vigorous and impressive article from which we have quoted is itself a review of a remarkable work, a poem, by a mechanic, entitled Saint Monday.³ The extracts from the poem are as interesting as the review itself, which concludes thus:

We say to him (the Author) and his fellow-labourers, go on and prosper, and so saying we include ourselves in our own benediction, for we have a common purpose with him and them. We adhere to the St. Simonian maxim,⁴ (even though the Times should recommend our being pelted for the same;) we contend that the legitimate object of all political institutions is the improvement of the condition, physical, intellectual, and moral, of the poorest and most numerous class. We hold that this object is paramount in social arrangements. We believe in no real discrepancy; but if there were, coûte qui coûte, the progression of humanity must be exhibited in those who toil. Their rights and interests should be pursued by all honourable means, and at all real risk; by unions, by meetings, by cheap publications, by petitions and remonstrances, and by whatever else circumstances may require; and that, whatever becomes of churches, corporations, or monopolies of peers or princes; the physical comfort, the mental cultivation, the political rights of the working-people of England, that is the motto on our banner; we nail that flag to the mast, and will sink or swim with it flying,so help us God.

[P. 837.]

Next to this unflinching advocacy of the interests of the working-classes the most characteristic distinction of this periodical from others is a keen sensibility to the beautiful in all its kinds and varieties, and the strongest interest, manifested both by precept and example, in poetry and art, not as idle amusements, but important branches of human culture, and agents in the progression of the species.

We quote from a delightful article on the Louvre a description of a picture, itself almost a still lovelier picture:

It is all that a National gallery ought to be. Watch the people clustered round, and being educated by their favourite pictures; look at their eager intelligent faces; listen to their doubly happy remarks, reading all they can from a picture, too poor to purchase a catalogue, and courteously asking the more fortunate to help them to its subject. Soldiers, too, but they are of the National Guard, not your mere legalized cut-throats; generals, colonels, and captains, would do well, if true to their profession, to keep all such from picture-galleries. The arts are meant to refine, their system to brutalize. One fancies that soldiers would choose battle pieces (of which, be it said, there are vastly too many taken as subjects by the French artists—more of that anon). Not so; there is one with his eyes fixed on a picture of Annibal Carracci, the quietest, gentlest, most exquisitely touched! It is called Le Silence, and you hold your breath, and do not speak as you look at it. The catalogue says, La Vierge recommande le silence à St. Jean, pour ne pas troubler le repos de Jésus. That recommande sounds strangely, but what other word could be found? The sweet, earnest face of the mother, whose arm tenderly cradles the sleeping child—sleeping so placidly, that you hear in fancy the gentle breathing through its parted lips; her upraised, hushing finger, her slight bending forward, as if to check the little disciple, who is making his whole body minister to one tiny finger, that it may fall like down upon the foot of the sleeper. . . . The soldier is still gazing, and if you asked him why? he would perhaps answer, Because the woman was so douce, and the children so jolis. We would make answer for him, that he has a human heart—that he is enjoying, perhaps unconsciously, the expression of brotherly affection and expansive benevolence. The mother’s face is alike free from the harshness of rebuke or the weakness of entreaty. She is careful of the feelings of the child of another, as she is watchful over the repose of her own; she is not one to exact obedience through fear, but to change it into pleasure through affection—the face of that mother, the act of that child, are lovely lessons of kindness and gentleness, from which all, whether men, women, or children, may learn equally.⁵

The gallery of the Louvre on a Sunday, and the working men and the working women whom it is filled with, are indeed a spectacle which we have never seen without envying those who have the happiness to live in an unaristocratic country; a country where the rich and the poor having the same enjoyments, do not repel, but attract each other; where the very populace, in the height of an armed insurrection, place sentinels to guard their own gallery of statues and pictures from injury, and chalk up in every street the words, “Respect aux Monuments.”

The “Autobiography of Pel. Verjuice” becomes more and more interesting.⁶ It contains this month a vivid portraiture of the horrors of a man-of-war, which would be deemed one of the most vigorous chapters of the best recent novels, and as an authentic biography will, if generally read, strike a heavier blow at impressment, and the present naval discipline, than twenty of Sir James Graham’s most insolent speeches will be able to parry.⁷

An excellent article on Church Reform,⁸ advocates with equal strength of feeling and vigour of argument, the right of the nation to do what it pleases with the public property, called by an abuse of terms, the “property of the Church,” and the expediency of exercising that right by taking the Church endowments (after the death of existing incumbents) not to be swallowed up in the bottomless pit of the National Debt, but to form a fund for the mental culture of the people in the most extensive sense, by education, and the diffusion and encouragement of all branches of science and art.

There is much more in this number of the Repository, which we would gladly notice, but we must conclude; and we shall do so by a quotation from the address of the editor to his readers at the close of the year:

With a satisfaction, in which I trust my readers will join, do I look back, not only on the accession of so many enlightened and philosophical minds, attracted by congeniality with the spirit of the Monthly Repository, to labour for the extension of its influences, but also on the topics which have exercised their powers. The experiment has, unless I am much deceived in the result, been made successfully, of rendering a periodical interesting without sacrificing to mere amusement, to personal calumny, or to party or private objects. On every great question, however brief the space allowed for its discussion, it has been attempted to penetrate to the true and ultimate principles of solution. Caring comparatively little about particular men or temporary measures, constant regard has been had to those pervading evils of the social condition, and those redeeming and progressive tendencies of the human constitution, which must be understood before the one can be effectually redressed, or the other can have their free and full operation in the production of the happiness which man was created to enjoy. Using words which have been egregiously misapplied, it may be justly said, that on whatever point reform or change has been advocated, we were destructive⁹ only that we might be conservative. And that for the conservation of which, free from all impediment, we are most solicitous, is the principle of progression in humanity; a principle which is ever growing in strength with the growth of knowledge; which must and will burst all the bonds, and demolish all the barriers of antiquated institutions; and on which Governments must learn to act, unless they are content to be regarded as the present enemies of nations, and the speedy victims of revolutions.

[Pp. 868-9.]

226.

FRENCH NEWS [81]

EXAMINER, 29 DEC., 1833, P. 824

As Mill noted in his letter to Carlyle of 12 Jan., 1834 (EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 209), he had resumed his comments on French affairs; again his attention is focused on the French legislature, which opened on 23 Dec. The item is headed “London, December 29, 1833.” This group of Mill’s French news reports is described in his bibliography as “The summary of the French news in the Exam. from 29th December 1833 to 16 February 1834” (MacMinn, p. 36). The next mention of these summaries is of that for 30 Mar., 1834 (see No. 245); however, three articles on 2, 9, and 23 Mar. are identified as his in the Somerville College set of the Examiner (see Nos. 238, 241, and 242). The present article, his last in 1833, is listed in the Somerville College set of the Examiner as “Article on France” and enclosed in square brackets.

the speech of louis-philippe, at the opening of the Session, may be regarded, even among Kings’ speeches, as remarkable for its emptiness.¹ His Citizen Majesty (we beg his pardon, for the days are gone by when even words of revolutionary sound had the honour of his countenance) doubtless shares the opinion next to universal among his supporters as well as enemies, that what is said or done in, to, or by the Chambers, is of the completest insignificance. There are few things more striking in the present state of France, than the contemptuous neglect into which the national legislature has fallen.

Another trial for a conspiracy to overthrow the Government has just terminated by the acquittal of all the accused.² The prosecution had first broken down so completely, that the Advocate-General, in his concluding speech, was forced to admit that there was not sufficient evidence against the two persons whom he had represented as being at the head of the conspiracy.³ But the best purpose of the persecutors is answered; the detestable Code d’Instruction Criminelle, framed by Napoleon as an instrument for his despotism, gives power to the Government in all such cases of keeping the accused in prison for months before bringing them to trial;⁴ this power has been exerted towards the present accused, who have been in prison for five months untried, and numbers of others are now in confinement who will as surely as these be acquitted by the jury, and perhaps sent to prison immediately afterwards on a fresh charge. The French Government, by suborning false or frivolous charges, or even by lending an ear to the denunciations which their police spies are never unprepared with, have the power of converting any man, however innocent, into a prisoner for life. The only person of any note who was implicated in the present trial, Raspail, a young chemist of great eminence, has for three years past been seldom out of prison, though almost all the charges against him have been scouted by the various juries before whom he has successively been brought.

During the present trial, one of the witnesses, by name Vignerte, on hearing the Society of the Rights of Man, of which society he is a member and officer, accused by the Advocate-General of designing confiscation of property and an agrarian law, could not contain his indignation, and gave the Crown lawyer the lie direct in open Court. For this, and for calling the Judges, what they richly deserved to be called, un tas de valets,⁵ the Court sentenced him on the spot to three years’ imprisonment. It is monstrous that a tribunal should thus have the power of judging in its own cause, under the influence, too, of momentary irritation, and inflicting sentences of vindictive severity. A Court of Justice should have the command of adequate physical force to preserve order during its proceedings, but the punishment of words or acts disrespectful to it should be left to another time and to other men.

Three of the counsel of the accused, men who are among the principal of the rising ornaments of the French bar, have been, for pretended disrespect to the Court, suspended by the Court from the practice of their profession, one of them for a year, the other two for six months each.⁶ Is not this also monstrous?

227.

FRENCH NEWS [82]

EXAMINER, 5 JAN., 1834, P. 840

This paragraph is headed “London, January 5, 1834.” For Mill’s bibliographic entry, see No. 226. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the article is listed as “Article on France”; none of Mill’s articles in 1834 is enclosed in square brackets. This first issue of the Examiner for 1834 was misnumbered by the printer, pp. [833]-848; the pagination began anew with each year, and Mill has renumbered the pages in ink, [1]-16, this article coming on p. 8.

the french chamber of deputies has re-elected M. Dupin its President, and Messrs. de Schonen, Benjamin Delessert,¹ Etienne, and Béranger its Vice-presidents, as before. This betokens, as everything does, a Session exactly resembling the last. M. Dupin had 220 votes: the greatest number next to this was 39, for General Lafayette. These 39, together with the General himself, indicate 40 as the number of republicans in the Chamber. A few votes were given to M. Dupont (de l’Eure), and a few to M. Odilon Barrot; the remainder of the non-republican opposition, (the opposition dynastique, as they are now called,) a party which is sinking every day into greater insignificance, voted with the ministry and the tiers-parti for M. Dupin.

228.

WAR WITH RUSSIA

EXAMINER, 5 JAN., 1834, P. 840

This paragraph, which immediately follows that in No. 227 under the dateline “London, January 5, 1834,” is not mentioned in Mill’s bibliography. However, it is listed in the Somerville College set of the Examiner as “Paragraph on a war with Russia”; like No. 227 (q.v.) it is listed by Mill as on p. 8.

the times has this week busied itself in instigating Government and the nation to a war which would infallibly involve not only all Europe, but Asia, Africa, and America also.¹ A Ministry which should go to war to prevent Russia from taking possession of Turkey, especially when it is too late to save Poland, would deserve to lose their heads; and we trust it would not be long ere they would be reminded of the liability.

229.

THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY FOR JANUARY 1834

EXAMINER, 12 JAN., 1834, P. 21

The sixth of Mill’s favourable reviews of the Monthly Repository (see No. 198), this is mentioned, like Nos. 225 and the series on France beginning with No. 226, in his letter to Carlyle of 12 Jan. (EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 215). Again Mill had nothing in this issue of the Monthly Repository, but his series, “Notes on Some of the More Popular Dialogues of Plato,” began in the next number, and continued until March 1835 (see CW, Vol. XI, pp. 37-174). Also, his “Notes on the Newspapers,” a series on British events not unlike his French series, began in the March number, running until September (see CW, Vol. VI, pp. 149-280). This review, in the “Literary Examiner,” is headed “The Monthly Repository for January [n.s. VIII]. Edited by W.J. Fox”; the page numbers refer to this volume. Described in Mill’s bibliography as “A review of the January number of the Monthly Repository of 12th January 1834” (MacMinn, p. 36), the article is listed in the Somerville College set of the Examiner as “Review of the Monthly Repository for January 1834.”

the present number of this excellent and rising periodical maintains the high character of its immediate predecessor. The work becomes every day more worthy of public support. It stands conspicuous among the periodicals of the day, not less in the comprehensiveness of its objects and views, than in its progressive and rapid improvement in point of literary merit.

The number now published commences with a brief review of the political situation of the country at the opening of 1834;¹ in which, while none of the evils and dangers we have yet to struggle with are disguised or extenuated, the tone of the writer is not discouraging but animating, and inspires the reader to arm himself with renewed vigour for the perennial contest, which more or less at all times, but most peculiarly in the present, is the lot of humanity.

The “Case of the Dissenters” is the subject of an article, the spirit of which is all in the following passage:

It is much to be deprecated that Church reform should become, in the Legislature, merely a question between the established sect and the non-established sects. Should that happen, the result will most likely be a stopping short in, and turning aside from, the course which ought to be pursued in order to obtain from change the greatest amount of national good. It is very possible that matters may be compromised between the clergy, who, practically, are the Church, on the one hand; and the leading denominations of dissenters on the other. “Holy Orders,” and “pretended Holy Orders,” may be made to stand (with the exception of the money difference, and of the preference of fashion) on the same step of the social platform; dissenting lovers may be allowed to join hands in the unconsecrated chapel; and the dissenting dead be allowed, with the benediction on their bones of the voice which in life they loved, to rest in the consecrated burial ground. Nay, tithes may be no longer levied, as at present, and church rates be receipted by a pastor’s certificate of membership. All this, and more, may happen, even until insolence and grumbling shall be hushed together, and the “righteousness” of the Church and the “peace” of dissent shall have “embraced each other;” and yet the people remain destitute of advantages to which they have a right, and the prospect of obtaining which, imparts its highest value, its properly national interest, to the subject of Church reform.

All considerations about rival parties, sectarian rights, and ecclesiastical inequalities, shrink into comparative insignificance before the great question—Shall that huge mass of property, which is now unworthily held by the hierarchy, continue to be so perverted, or be applied to its legitimate purpose, the intellectual and moral culture of the entire population?—This is the question which, in proportion as the people understand their rights and interests, they will require of the Legislature to answer. This is the question which every patriotic legislator should moot. This is the question which the press should unceasingly agitate and discuss. It is the “case” of the people, and should swallow up the case of the dissenters.²

The paper headed “The Diffusion of Knowledge amongst the People,” (being the substance of two lectures read at the Mechanics’ Institution by the author of several known works,) is, notwithstanding the title, not at all common-place, and abounds with useful thoughts well expressed.³

The “Autobiography of Pel. Verjuice,” continues and improves every month.⁴ But the article which will be oftenest reperused, and with greatest pleasure, is a notice of the pictures in the Luxembourg Gallery, evidently by the same hand as the paper in the previous number on the Louvre.⁵ We think the criticism too favourable to the modern French school, but the descriptions of the pictures have all the poetical beauty which they ascribe to the pictures themselves.

In this number of the Repository there is a new feature, a song with music, being the first of “Songs of the Months,” the remaining eleven will appear in the succeeding numbers.⁶ The merit both of the poetry and the music is sufficiently vouched for by the fact, that the latter is composed by the accomplished author of the Musical Illustrations of the Waverley Novels.⁷

We heartily applaud this enlargement of the plan of the Repository, which is perfectly in keeping with its spirit. The work is now more than ever entitled to the character it already deserved, of being the cheapest of the monthly periodicals, for the music alone, if printed separately, could not be purchased for less than the entire price of the work which contains it.

230.

FRENCH NEWS [83]

EXAMINER, 12 JAN., 1834, P. 23

For the entry in Mill’s bibliography, see No. 226. This article, headed “London, January 12, 1834,” is listed as “Article on France” in the Somerville College set of the Examiner.

the debate of the French Chamber of Deputies on the address in answer to the King’s Speech is now nearly concluded.¹ We have deemed it useless to lay before our readers a meagre abstract which would utterly fail in conveying any notion of the general spirit of the debate. The circumstance which appears to have made the strongest impression on our English contemporaries, is the distinct disavowal of Republicanism and declaration of attachment to hereditary monarchy, which has emanated from MM. Odilon Barrot, Mauguin,² and other leaders of the Constitutional opposition; on the other hand, MM. Voyer d’Argenson and Audry de Puyraveau, men of the highest character and personal merit, being called to account by a member for having affixed their signature to the Republican manifesto of the Société des Droits de l’Homme, avowed and justified their conduct.³

As we find that some English journals are propagating the same false impressions respecting this society, and making the same indefensible use of the name of Robespierre, for the purpose of discrediting its intentions, as the Government papers in France had already done,⁴ we shall next week do what no English paper, we believe, has yet attempted; we shall state exactly what the society in question is, what are its principles and objects, and in what manner the name of Robespierre has come to be mixed up with it.⁵ At present we shall only say that the Société des Droits de l’Homme represents only a fraction of the Republican party, if party it can be called; a fraction which carries its views of innovation further than even what are considered the most violent of the Republican newspapers: and though it holds the entire insurrectional strength of the party in its hands, or rather is the only Republican party which any person in his senses believes to meditate insurrection, the Republican cause for purposes of discussion and popular enlightenment, is in far more efficient as well as more temperate hands.

In separating itself avowedly from Republicanism, the opposition in the Chamber has taken the only means by which it could have a chance of recovering some political importance. The Chamber is no place for advocating doctrines in advance of the existing charter; for such the press is the proper organ; in the Chamber an orator, even of the most commanding talents, could not obtain a hearing for such opinions as are held by the ablest opponents of the present French Government. There is still room in the Chamber for a Constitutional or Monarchical opposition; but the men whose opinions fitted them for composing such a party, by merely carping at the measures of Government in detail, without wedding themselves to any principle, had allowed all popular influence to pass out of their hands into those of the bolder, more consistent, and, we must add, abler men who form the Republican opposition out of doors. They are now making an effort, and of the right kind, to redeem themselves from the insignificance into which they have sunk; they have declared unequivocally their political creed. They are adverse to a new revolution, adverse to the abolition of hereditary Monarchy; but they contend strongly for a large extension of the suffrage in the election of members of the Chamber of Deputies.

The French people are at last awakening to the truth, of which the English from their longer experience have been for some time aware—that the constitution of the representative body is the really vital question of Government; and that their own rests on far too narrow a basis. For the first time, numerous petitions are now preparing from various parts of France for a more popular system of election.

231.

WILSON’S HISTORY OF ROME

EXAMINER, 19 JAN., 1834, P. 36

The History of Rome was one of an eventual 133 volumes in the popular Cabinet Cyclopaedia, initiated in 1829 by Dionysius Lardner (1793-1859), a prolific writer on science, who had been elected Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at the University of London in 1827. The anonymous work has been attributed to Robert Bell (1800-67), an associate of Lardner’s, but there is little reason to doubt Mill’s attribution of it to his friend, John Wilson, Secretary to the Factory Commission in 1833 and Editor of the Globe and Traveller in 1834, called by Mill “a most valuable man” (EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 211). Mill’s childhood fascination with Roman history (see CW, Vol. I, pp. 17, 583-4) led to little mature writing; see, however, in addition to this review, CW, Vol. I, pp. 523-32 and in Vol. XIII, pp. 498-551, the letters from the early 1840s indicating an abortive plan to write a major article on the subject for the Edinburgh. The review, which heads the “Literary Examiner,” is headed: “The Cabinet Cyclopaedia, conducted by Dr. Lardner; History of Rome. In two volumes; Vol. I. [London: Longman, et al., 1834.]” It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A review of (John Wilson’s) History of Rome in Lardner’s Cyclopaedia, vol. 1, in the Examiner of 19th January 1834” (MacMinn, p. 37). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Review of the History of Rome (Wilson’s) in Lardner’s Cyclopaedia.”

we recommend this work very strongly to the English reader, as being the first compendium of Roman history yet published in England, in which the early ages of the Roman state have been exhibited in the new and striking light thrown upon them by the researches and speculations of Niebuhr, Wachsmuth, and other recent German writers of eminence.¹ Such a work has long been much wanted, and we trust it will be as extensively read as it deserves to be.

The author disclaims any pretension to originality in his remarks on the Roman character, and the structure of Roman society; which he says are mostly drawn from the great historical work of Professor Schlosser, of Heidelberg, on the Civilization of the Ancient World.² To whomsoever these remarks belong, they are such as are to be found in no English book with which we are acquainted; and are generally ingenious, often strikingly just, and always the very reverse of common place. They should induce all who can read German to study Professor Schlosser’s work; and all who cannot, should read the present volume; which, departing so widely from the beaten track, will suggest to all who reflect upon history, even if they do not agree in the writer’s opinions, many trains of valuable reflection.

A work of this character cannot be expected to form a complete treatise on the philosophy of Roman history; that would require far greater labour and even to the highest powers of intellectual combination would be a task of years. But it is much to find in a work of so little pretension all that we find in this.

We are averse to point out particular chapters as peculiarly deserving of notice, when all merit the most attentive perusal; but when we have so recently read in an accredited Tory periodical the astounding assertion, that the senseless measures of the Gracchi, by destroying the Roman aristocracy, occasioned the fall of the republic,³ it is not, perhaps, useless to direct the attention of those whom our judgment may influence to the chapter on the Gracchi, (Bk. III, Chap. ii of this work,) and to the description of the Roman aristocracy in the ninth chapter of the same book.⁴ Truly the notions, even as to mere matters of fact, which are poured into the long ears of our higher classes, and thence infiltrated into their brains, are of an absurdity which, the longer we live, appears to us the more portentous.

232.

FRENCH NEWS [84]

EXAMINER, 19 JAN., 1834, PP. 40-1

This article is headed “London, January 19, 1834.” Mill’s bibliographic entry for this series (from 29 Dec., 1833, to 16 Feb., 1834; see No. 226) does not specifically say that he wrote the summary in each of those weeks, and in the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the listing is “Article on the ‘National’ Newspaper,” which would suggest that only that part here printed after a printer’s rule is his. However, no one else filled in the French news when Mill did not contribute a column, and the internal references to Nos. 230 and 233, as well as the correction to the second paragraph in his hand in the Somerville College set of the Examiner (“debate on the” added before “French King’s speech”) argue strongly for his authorship of the first section. In the second section Mill made three corrections: at 666.7, “Carrels” is altered to “Carrel”; at 667.6 “intruded” to “intended”; and at 667.13 “mark” to “wreak”.

we are under the necessity of deferring till next week our observations on the Société des Droits de l’Homme.¹

The debate on the French King’s speech has now concluded, and the address has been carried by a majority of 288 to 43.²

The Duc de Broglie, whose retractation of acquiescence in M. Bignon’s speech we noticed last week, is reproached with eating his own words, &c.³ Be it so; but the motives which caused him to eat his own words are motives which must restrain the disposition to rush into war. The Times seems to take the disappointment much to heart, and rails against the wickedness of the “low Radicals” who preach peace.⁴ We frankly confess to all the wickedness of an earnest desire for peace, which we would not forego till some greater evil seemed likely to attend it than is certain in war. But these are low politics akin to the low morality so scoffed at by Jonathan Wild the Great, in his history by Fielding;⁵ nevertheless, we have shared in them with worshipful company; witness the following passage from the ministerial Globe, which appeared when Russia was going to war with Turkey in 1828:

If our diplomatists say to Russia, that no matter what provocation she has received, we cannot permit her to resent the injuries, lest she may come in contact with us in India, they may expect to be reminded how, and how lately, those possessions have come into our hands. If we plead, as with some truth we may, that we have been obliged to extend our territory in India by the weakness and folly of our neighbours, the Russians may reasonably be allowed to yield in the same manner, under the pressure of a similar necessity.

If, however, our Indian possessions are endangered by the progress of the Russian power southward—though it is not very apparent that this effect would be produced even by the advance of the Russians to Constantinople—it is by precautions in India itself that we should take measures for our security; not by embarking in a general war in Europe. India, if our power there be consolidated and well managed, has within itself sufficient means of defence. It will fall, like that of the Turks, if it deserves to fall—if it become feeble and odious, and then only; for the people subject to the British dominion in India are probably twice as many as those of the whole Russian Empire.⁶

So wrote the Globe when the Tories were in power. The withdrawal of the fleets of France and England, to Malta and Toulon, has strengthened the supposition that there will be no interruption of peace.

The National newspaper has declared itself defunct, from the close of the year 1833;⁷ and, with the 1st of January, 1834, M. Armand Carrel, its principal editor, assisted by the same body of writers as before, has commenced a new daily paper, entitled Le National de 1834.

The object of this proceeding is to escape from some of the effects of a most profligate sentence recently passed upon the National by the Cour Royale of Paris, and confirmed by the Court of Cassation.⁸ The whole story throws so much light upon the spirit in which justice is administered in France in political cases that we shall relate it at length for the edification of our readers.

The French Government have long smarted under the numerous failures which they have experienced in their attempts to crush by the arm of the law all public writers who are hostile to them. Out of upwards of eighty prosecutions against the Tribune, they have obtained verdicts in no more than ten or twelve; and the vindictive severity of the sentences which have been passed by the Judges in that small number of cases, together with the endless vexation and expense which the detestable Code d’Instruction Criminelle has enabled them to inflict upon the accused in all the cases, previously to the trial,⁹ have not seemed to them sufficient atonement for being frustrated of the ultimate aim of so large a majority of the prosecutions. Their disappointment and irritation have found a vent in various ways; one of which, though not immediately to our present purpose, we shall state. M. Persil, Procureur-Général for the Cour Royale, in the speech which, according to custom, he delivered when the Court resumed its sittings after the vacation,¹⁰ proclaimed the necessity of new laws to facilitate verdicts of condemnation in political cases; and, in particular, expressed his hope that the legislature would enact that jurors should vote by ballot, without any previous consultation with one another; and that a bare majority, not as at present a majority of eight to four, should be requisite for conviction. To the extent of this last proposition M. Persil was warmly supported by the Journal des Débats¹¹ and the other Ministerial papers; and a paltry paper, called the Moniteur du Commerce, either from the excess of its zeal, or at the suggestion of powerful persons who wished by throwing up a feather to ascertain the strength of the wind, went the length of declaring a jury to be altogether an absurd institution in political cases, and expressing a wish that the article which establishes it, might be erased from the Charter.¹² All these indications of an intended inroad upon almost the only check upon tyranny which the French possess, excited a disgust which appears to have prevented the prosecution of whatever projects may have been meditated by the Government: and even in so timid and compliant a body as the Chamber of Deputies, this feeling has manifested itself in the debate on the Address, with a strength to which the Government will be under the necessity of giving way.

Another shift to which Louis Philippe has been driven in order to wreak that vengeance upon his political enemies in which he has found himself unable to induce juries to participate with him, is to stretch to the utmost all those provisions of the law by which the Court is permitted, from any peculiarity of circumstances, to withdraw a cause from the cognizance of a jury. This is the device which has been put in practice against the National. That journal having undergone ten prosecutions, in every one of which it had been acquitted, it appeared clear to Louis Philippe that there were no means of making its proprietors and writers feel the consequences of his resentment but by means of the judges alone, who he well knew would cheerfully consent to be his tools, although juries would not.

There exists in the French law an enactment, an absurd one enough, which enables the Court to convict and pass sentence for offences of the press, without a jury, provided the criminated passages occur in a report of their own proceedings.¹³ Thus it is when the cause is their own that they are empowered to be the sole judges in it. Now it so fell out, that on the occasion of the celebrated trial relating to Mademoiselle Boury and the pistol plot, the National, not in its report of the trial but in its leading article, made some severe strictures on the conduct of the judges.¹⁴ Hereupon the Cour Royale, at that time presided over by a man named Duboys, commonly called Duboys d’Angers, (we name this sycophant because he, with many others of his kind, helps to compose the Government majority in the Chamber of Deputies,) had the audacious profligacy to decide that the leading article of the National, containing remarks on the trial, was a report of the trial; passing over the real report, which stood in another column of the same newspaper, and which was not in any respect criminated. By this creditable proceeding the article in the National was brought within the enactment which empowers the judges to pass sentence without the verdict of a jury;¹⁵ and they proceeded to inflict upon the responsible manager of the paper the penalties of fine and imprisonment, and upon the paper itself that of an interdiction from giving any reports of judicial proceedings for a period of two years.¹⁶

All the world knows what to think of a law which empowers a court of justice, at its own discretion, to impose silence on any voice which has once been raised in condemnation of its proceedings. That a country is under such a law is quite enough to prove that the whole spirit of its Government must be that of arbitrary power. The legality of the decision was called in question by the proprietors of the National;¹⁷ but it was confirmed by the supreme law authority, the Court of Cassation, in every point except one: in one respect, indeed, the Court of Cassation decided that the Court below had exceeded its powers; that it had a right to interdict only from reporting its own proceedings, but not those of any other tribunal.¹⁸

The Cour Royale of Paris, however, is almost the only tribunal whose proceedings a Paris newspaper (except those which devote themselves exclusively to judicial proceedings) usually has occasion to report. The National, therefore, was arbitrarily precluded from furnishing to its subscribers, pursuantly to its contract with them, one of the most important articles of intelligence which a daily newspaper professes and undertakes to supply. In many cases such a sentence would amount to an entire—in all cases to a partial—confiscation of the property in the newspaper.

In order to frustrate the intentions of their oppressors, the proprietors of the National have dissolved their partnership, and a new partnership having been formed, a new paper has been established, to which the iniquitous interdiction put by the Cour Royale upon its defunct predecessor will not apply.

M. Paulin, who for three years has so worthily filled the office of gérant, or responsible proprietor of the National, remains under the interdiction, and is thus disqualified from filling his old office in the new paper. M. Carrel has in consequence come forward personally, and in conjunction with MM. Arnold Scheffer and Prosper Conseil,¹⁹ has assumed the legal responsibility of the journal, of which he will be, as he was of its predecessor, the editor and principal writer. A paper which appears under such auspices cannot fail of brilliant success.

M. Carrel is incontestably, and by the admission even of his political enemies, one of the first living ornaments of his country, as a mere writer, and stands almost alone among the journalists of France in being at an infinite distance on the one hand from any compromise with bad institutions or established errors, and, on the other, from any exaggeration or impatience in his schemes of social improvement; he is no less unrivalled in the union of vigour and audacity with dignity and moderation in the style and tone of his writings.

M. Scheffer is known to those who have attended to the political history of the last twenty years in France, by his able co-operation with MM. Comte and Dunoyer in the Censeur Européen, the first periodical work which, after the return of the Bourbons, again raised the standard of reflecting and philosophic liberalism. M. Conseil, known as the translator of Jefferson’s Correspondence, and the author of the able résumé of the principles of enlightened republicanism which stands prefixed to the translation,²⁰ is a young lawyer of great acquirements as a jurist and economist, and versed to a degree extremely rare among Frenchmen, in the best English philosophy.

Since the above article was written, we have learned that M. Carrel is already prosecuted for violating the order of the Court, by inserting reports of its proceedings in the new paper.²¹ M. Carrel had the authority of eminent lawyers for maintaining that by the course he has adopted, he has set himself free from the interdiction. But he will be tried by the Court without a jury; and that subservient body will scarcely fail to give Louis Philippe the intense satisfaction of inflicting the penalty of imprisonment upon one of the most formidable of his political enemies.

The judgment will be subject to the revision of the Court of Cassation, which has on one memorable occasion afforded a spirited example of resistance to the Court by refusing to sanction the sentences of the Courts Martial after the insurrection in June, 1832.²² But this apparent patriotism and disinterestedness are unfortunately explained by the fact that the Court of Cassation is principally composed of Carlists. In a cause between Louis Philippe and a republican journal, they will join even with the wrong King to put down, by whatever means, the men who are for no King at all; and their decision in this case, whatever it be,²³ cannot be a more profligate perversion of the law than their confirmation of the former sentence.

233.

FRENCH NEWS [85]

EXAMINER, 26 JAN., 1834, PP. 56-7

Promised in No. 230, this continuation of the series beginning with No. 226 is listed in the Somerville College set of the Examiner, as “Article on the Société des Droits de l’Homme,” with one correction: at 672.32 “constitution” is altered to “institution”. The part here included is the fifth section of the news under the heading “London, January 26, 1834,” and is clearly the part intended by Mill’s listing in the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the identification being confirmed by his quotation of most of it in his “The Monster Trial” in the Monthly Repository for June 1835 (see CW, Vol. XX, pp. 123-9); however, the second section in this part of the Examiner, a sentence promising what Mill delivered in No. 235, may also be his. It reads: “There have been some interesting proceedings in the French Chamber of Deputies, but as their interest is rather of a permanent than of an immediate character, we shall defer any comments upon them till next week.” In the variant notes recording the differences between this text and the quotation from it in “The Monster Trial,” the latter is indicated by “35”.

^athe société des droits de l’homme is at present the hobgoblin or bugbear of the juste milieu. The language and manner of the partizans of Louis Philippe with respect to that association are a curious medley of affected contempt and intense personal hatred, not without an admixture of fear. They are constantly and studiously imputing to the members of the society, the absurdest opinions and the most criminal purposes; they are incessantly averring, with a degree of emphasis which betrays a lurking doubt, that those opinions and purposes are abhorred by the French people, and that the society has not and never will have the support of any class whatever, even the lowest. Yet, in the very same breath in which they declare it to be harmless by reason of its insignificance, they proclaim it so mischievous and so formidable that society is certain to perish unless it be put down, by whatever means.

In truth the alarmists are equally wrong in both feelings, whether the feelings be sincere or affected. This much-talked-of association is not to be despised, neither, on the other hand, is it to be feared. It does not aim at subverting society, and society would be too strong for it if it did. Were we to believe some people, the edifice of society is so tottering and its foundations so unstable, that a breath is enough to blow it down; nay, there cannot be any stir in the surrounding atmosphere, nor any knocking upon the ground, without its certain destruction. But we have another idea of society than this; for us it is something more steady and solid than a house of cards. The evil we are apprehensive of is stagnation, not movement; we can anticipate nothing in the present age but good, from the severest, from even the most hostile scrutiny of the first principles of the social union. Instead of expecting society to fall to pieces, our fear is lest (the old creeds, which formerly gave to the established order of things a foundation in men’s consciences, having become obsolete) the fabric should mechanically hold together by the mere instinctive action of men’s immediate personal interests, without any basis of moral conviction at all. Rather than see this we should prefer to see the whole of the working classes speculatively Owenites, or Saint Simonians. We are not frightened at anti-property doctrines. We have no fear that they should ever prevail so extensively as to be dangerous. But we have the greatest fear lest the classes possessed of property should degenerate more and more into selfish, unfeeling Sybarites, receiving from society all that society can give and rendering it no service in return, content to let the numerical majority remain sunk in mental barbarism and physical destitution.^a All experience justifies us in the conviction that unless the ruling few can be made and kept “uneasy,”¹ the many need expect no good; and nothing will make the few uneasy but fears for the security of their property. We are well content, therefore, that there should be cause for such fears. We have no anti-property doctrines ourselves, and therefore cannot honestly give such doctrines any encouragement. But we are quite satisfied that their promulgation has a most salutary effect.

The Society of the Rights of Man cannot, however, be said to have put forward any anti-property doctrines; and nothing can be more absurdly calumnious than the accusations of confiscation, agrarian law, &c., &c. If opinions adverse to the present constitution of property are secretly held by any of the able and accomplished men who guide the proceedings of the association, (which is certainly not to be believed on the evidence of their enemies,) they have not put forward any such opinions. They profess, indeed, democratic republicanism in its fullest extent; and are far more impatient, and willing to take more violent means for obtaining the form of government which they desire, than the more moderate of the Republicans would approve. But on the subject of property they have advanced no doctrines but such as, to an Englishman, sound like the merest truisms; and that these should have been considered dangerous in France, only shows how little peril there is lest in that country anti-property doctrines should ever prevail.

^b The ^cassociation^c some months ago embodied their principles on the subject of property in the form of a manifesto, along with which they republished, as a compendium of their opinions, a Declaration of the Rights of Man, which was proposed by Robespierre² to the National Convention to be prefixed to their Republican constitution, and was by that body rejected. The name of Robespierre was well calculated to excite a prejudice against this document, but any thing more harmless than its contents can scarcely be conceived. Such, however, was not the impression of the Parisian public. The writer of this was at Paris when the document made its appearance, and he well remembers his astonishment at the nature and intensity of the sentiments it appeared to excite. Those who did not deem it too contemptible to be formidable, were filled with consternation. The Government party, the Carlists, the Liberals, were unanimous in crying anarchy and confusion; even Republicans shook their heads and said “This is going too far.” And what does the reader imagine was the proposition which appeared so startling and so alarming to all parties? It was no other than the definition which, in the Robespierrian declaration of rights, was given of the “right of property;” and ran as follows:

“The right of property is the right which every one possesses of using and enjoying the portion of wealth which is guaranteed to him by the law.” (La portion de biens qui lui est garantie par la loi.)³

Such is the superstitious, or rather idolatrous character of the respect for property in France, that this proposition actually appeared an alarming heresy, was denounced with the utmost acrimony by all the enemies of the propounders, and timidly and hesitatingly excused rather than vindicated by their friends. The maxim was evidently too much for all parties, it was a doctrine considerably in advance of them; even Republicans required some time to make up their minds. Ardent revolutionists, men who were ready to take up arms at five minutes’ notice for the subversion of the existing dynasty, doubted whether they could admit as a speculative truth, that property is not of natural right, but of human institution, and is the creature of law. Truly, there is little fear for the safety of property in France. We believe that in no country in the world, not even the United States of America, is property so secure; the most violent convulsion would not endanger it; in a country where nearly two-thirds of the male adult population possess property in land, and where the notions entertained of the inviolability of property are so pedantic and (if we may be permitted the expression) so prudish, that there are persons who will gravely maintain that the State has no right to make a road through a piece of land without the owner’s consent, even on payment of compensation.

Strange as it may appear in the declaration of rights, drawn up by Robespierre, and adopted by the Société des Droits de l’Homme, there is not, with the one exception which we have mentioned, one single proposition on the subject of property, which was considered exceptionable even by those who were so scandalized at the above definition. No limitation of the right of property was hinted at; no new or alarming maxim promulgated; unless such be implied in the recognition of the principle of the English Poor Laws, that society is bound to provide subsistence and work for its indigent members; and this document was rejected by the Convention, by the body which put to death Louis XVI, and created the Revolutionary Tribunal, rejected by that body as anarchical. Yet there are people who believe that the principle of the French Revolution was spoliation of property! For the thousandth time, we say to the English Tories and Whigs, that they are as utterly ignorant of the French revolution as of the revolutions among the inhabitants of the moon. Acts of injustice were done; rights which really partook of the nature of property, were not always treated as such; but the respect of the revolutionary assemblies for all that they considered as entitled to the name of property, amounted to actual narrowness and ^dbigotry; we^d do not affirm this solely of the comparatively moderate and enlightened men who composed the constituent Assembly, but in even a greater degree of the violent revolutionists of the Convention, to whose obtuser and less cultivated intellects such a prejudice was more natural. In the height of the reign of terror, anti-property doctrines would have been scouted, even more decidedly than now; no one dared avow them for fear of the guillotine, nor do such doctrines figure in the history of the revolution at all, save in the solitary instance of the conspiracy of Baboeuf,⁴ greatly posterior to the fall of Robespierre and the Montagne.^b

In so far as the Society of the Rights of Man contends against the narrow and superstitious notions of property which are prevalent in France, and gives currency to more liberal and more rational views, it can do nothing but good; and even if the speculative truths, which it so energetically proclaims, are intended to serve as a foundation for practical corollaries of a more questionable character, we see no cause for alarm; none even for regret. Without infringing the principle of property, much remains to be done, by morality and even by law, to render the practical working of that principle productive of greater good to society at large: much may be done to mitigate the inequalities of wealth which have as pernicious an effect on those whom they seem to benefit, as upon those on whom they apparently press hardest, and to promote all those tendencies in human affairs which cause society to approximate to what, in the literal sense, must always be an unattainable chimera, equality of fortunes. But all this we have little hope to see done, until the rich shall feel that except by making the law of property popular, they will have some difficulty in maintaining it. Society will then only be on the most desirable footing, when the proprietary class shall feel compelled to make a clear case to the world in favour of the existing institutions of society; when they shall act under an habitual sense of the necessity of convincing the non-proprietary multitude, that the existing arrangement of property is a real good to them as well as to the rich; and shall feel that the most effectual way to make them think it so, is to make it more and more so in fact.

234.

FONTANA AND PRATI’S ST. SIMONISM IN LONDON

EXAMINER, 2 FEB., 1834, PP. 68-9

Mill probably had this review in mind, or may have even written it, by 22 Dec., 1833, when he advised Carlyle: “Of the St. Simonians next time; vide also a forthcoming Examiner” (EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 203). The concluding paragraphs on marriage and divorce have a particular force when placed in the context of his relations with Harriet Taylor at this time, just after their sojourn in Paris; from these months also date the companion essays they wrote on marriage (CW, Vol. XXI, pp. 35-49 and 375-7). The review, in the “Literary Examiner,” is headed “St. Simonism in London. The Pretended Community of Goods; or, the Organization of Industry. The Pretended Community of Women; or, Matrimony and Divorce. By Fontana, Chief, Prati, Preacher, of the St. Simonian religion in England.” Actually the pamphlet (London: Effingham Wilson, 1833), which does not further identify Fontana or Prati, does not have the words “The Pretended” before “Community of Goods” or “Community of Women.” It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article on St. Simonism being a review of the pamphlet entitled ‘St. Simonism in London’ in the Examiner of 2d February 1834” (MacMinn, p. 38). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Review of ‘St Simonism in London.’ ”

we notice this rather empty, though in no respect immoral pamphlet, chiefly for the opportunity it affords us of correcting the impression which has gone forth, that its authors are accredited missionaries of some association or sect; the teachers of some creed, some religion, or soi-disant religion, which is believed or professed by other persons besides themselves. We certainly have no ground for imputing to the individuals who are now holding themselves forth as St. Simonian teachers, the assumption of any character which does not belong to them: they have no connexion with any society or body of persons at Paris, but it may be that they do not pretend to any. The style and tone, however, which they have adopted, and even the title which they have given themselves, naturally suggest such an inference, and accordingly it has almost universally been drawn. We, therefore, though without wishing any ill to Messrs. Fontana and Prati,¹ think it but right to state, that they are not the authorised representatives of the St. Simonian Society, nor would have been at all likely to be selected as such by the Society if it still existed.² It had, moreover, ceased to exist, before the young man named Fontana made his appearance in this country. He was sent by no one, had credentials from no one; and after considerable personal inquiry, we have not been able to ascertain that he ever was an acknowledged member of the St. Simonian body, or is known personally to any one of the remarkable men from whom St. Simonism has derived its celebrity. The case is otherwise with Dr. Prati, who has long resided in this country, and who did occupy a place, though never a high one, in the St. Simonian society; but who occupies it no longer, because the society is dissolved.

After casting upon the stormy waters of discussion a greater number of interesting and instructive ideas than have been sent forth to the French public since Rousseau, ideas too of which the profound are not less profound, and the absurd and exaggerated far less absurd and exaggerated, than his; after literally educating a large proportion of the most promising among the youth of the instructed classes in France,—teaching them the lesson which is learnt only once, and from error as often as from truth, viz., to think; after doing all this in the short space of about three years, the St. Simonian religion shared the fate of all religions which profess to be founded on reason: the reason of the different members of the sect, was found to conflict; the divergency of opinion which arose, shook the faith of all in the infallibility of their system, and the sect disbanded itself. To have been hurried by a generous enthusiasm into any vagaries, however strange or absurd, does no permanent injury, in France, to any man’s reputation or prospects in life, when once the delusion is over. The twenty or thirty individuals who were most conspicuous in the sect, have mostly (as all expected who knew the attainments and powers of the men) stepped at once into the very first rank of the several professions or careers which they have since embraced, or to which they have returned. Having renounced all that was bad in their late creed, and generally held fast to all (and there was much) which was good in it; many of them are now exercising, through the press and otherwise, a powerful and highly beneficial influence over the public mind of France. But there is not now remaining at Paris one single individual who calls himself a St. Simonian, or adheres to what was St. Simonism—while St. Simonism was either as a religion or as a philosophy. The late chief and founder of the sect, Enfantin, has quitted France, and gone into Egypt, with the two or three members of the association who still adhere to him, to instruct Mehemet Ali, not in the doctrines of his religion, but how to restore the canal which formerly connected the Red Sea with the Mediterranean.³ We believe that these two Italians, Messrs. Fontana and Prati, are, if not the only St. Simonians extant, the only professed apostles of St. Simonism. It may perhaps be thought that a name which has been dropped by all who held it, belongs of right to those who chuse to pick it up. But if Messrs. Fontana and Prati think fit to hoist the standard of a sect which is extinct, and to identify themselves (as far as names go) with a religious and political system which, though now defunct, once numbered among its adherents men vastly their superiors in talents and attainments; they must expect to be told that nobody besides themselves is responsible for any of their proceedings; and that St. Simonism was a far better thing than it would be supposed if these, its surviving apostles, were considered as a fair sample of all that it could produce.

We have thought it necessary to say thus much, because an impotent attempt, by persons altogether unequal to the task, to fight up a lost cause, is likely to bring discredit upon any truths which, with their nerveless hands, they may attempt to do battle for. The novelties in opinion, broached by the St. Simonian Society, came before the French public in conjunction with evidences of high intellectual powers; and therefore commanded the attention, and even gained the respect, of almost all thinking and disinterested persons, (whatever might be their creed,) who were not religious or philosophical fanatics. But similar opinions thrust into notice here, in a manner which associates them, not with mental power but with mental poverty and weakness, can have no effect but to strengthen the prejudice against all who question established opinions, and increase the cowardice which makes people shrink from exercising their reason on some of the most important questions of legislation and morality.

The St. Simonians are supposed by most of those who have heard of them only through these self-constituted representatives, to be an obscure knot of senseless visionaries, or designing knaves, who inculcate, as the Times says, “community of goods and community of women; in other words, universal profligacy and universal plunder.”⁴ If such were the fact, is it likely that the second man in the sect, the editor and principal writer of their very able and interesting journal Le Globe, would have been released from prison before his sentence had expired, and immediately selected by the Government for an important mission to the United States?⁵ That another of their leading men⁶ would have been appointed one of the principal editors of the Constitutionnel, eminently the journal of the cautious and timid part of the middle class, those who are most shocked at all eccentricities, whether of opinion or conduct? That many who had quitted the service of Government to become apostles of the new creed, would on their abandonment of it have been at once restored to the rank they previously held in the various departments of the administration? That the financial and commercial articles of almost all the principal newspapers, both in Paris and the provinces, and all the articles of the only Review of a high philosophical character now existing in France,⁷ would be, as they are, written either by ex-St. Simonians, or by persons whose intellects have been formed chiefly by the St. Simonians? There is scarcely a thinker of any importance, in France, at the present moment, who is not largely indebted to St. Simonism; and many have the candour fully to acknowledge the obligation. Nor would it be easy to find a parallel in history to the striking improvement which, aided no doubt by the circumstances of the times, the St. Simonians have introduced into the whole character of public discussion in France.

The St. Simonians neither advocated community of goods nor community of women. They did advocate doctrines of a peculiar kind, both with respect to property and marriage. On both subjects they laid down many just and valuable speculative premises, while on neither were their practical conclusions defensible; and the doctrines of some of them relative to marriage created the schism which ultimately broke up the sect. On the subject of property, the system they advocated, was the extension to the whole nation of that kind of “community of goods,” and no other, which already exists in the management of the Bank of England or the East India Company; a sort of joint-stock management of the entire productive resources of the nation: the land, and all the instruments of production, being the property of the State, (as is the case with land already in the East,) and the produce not being apportioned as in Mr. Owen’s parallelograms, in equal shares to the industrious and the idle,⁸ but distributed among the different members of the community on the principle that no one who does not work either with head or hands, shall be allowed to eat, and that each person shall be employed according to his capacity, and paid by a salary proportioned as far as possible to his services, as is now supposed to be the case in the army, or in a public office. A scheme, impracticable indeed—but differing from Owenism, and from every other Utopia we ever read of, in this, that the impracticability is only in degree, not in kind; and that while most other visionary projects for reforming society are not only impossible, but if possible, would be bad, this plan, if it could be realized, would be good. It is the true ideal of a perfect human society; the spirit of which will more and more pervade even the existing social institutions, as human beings become wiser and better; and which, like any other model of unattainable perfection, everybody is the better for aspiring to, although it be impossible to reach it. We may never get to the north star, but there is much use in turning our faces towards it if we are journeying northward. As civilization has advanced, the principle of combination of labour has come into perpetually greater play; and associations for purposes of productive industry have become practicable, and been actually realized, on a continually enlarging scale. We have only to imagine the same progression indefinitely continued, and a time would come when St. Simonism would be practicable; and if practicable, desirable.

As for the pretended “community of women;” were such really the opinion maintained, though a barbarous, and, so far as such an epithet can be applied to opinions, an immoral doctrine, it is not necessarily a licentious or sensual one: it may be connected, as it was in Plato, with a rigid, though an indefensible system of morality;⁹ and may be the result of a train of philosophical speculation, pushed to its extreme consequences. But the doctrine of the St. Simonians, as all know who are really acquainted with it, was objectionable on a directly contrary ground; instead of leaving too much license, it left none at all; it encroached far more than even our present institutions and customs, upon human freedom, and spontaneity of choice; for it made both marriage and divorce depend upon circumstances, of which others, and not the parties themselves, were to be the judges. Their’s was a system much nearer to despotism than to licentiousness, or even rational liberty. Their absurdities on this subject are, however, forgotten, and the memory of them shall not, by us, be revived. But we are at a loss to see how the accusation of immorality can lie against the only doctrine which, if we may judge from their pamphlet, Messrs. Fontana and Prati maintain with respect to the marriage contract—its dissolubility. Surely this is an opinion which it is open to conscientious persons to entertain and advocate, without deserving to be treated as the very scum of the earth—looked down upon even by the Literary Gazette!¹⁰ Surely the accusation of grossness, if applicable any where, may with far greater reason be retorted against the morality at present in vogue. But the same persons who pronounce that to be immoral and irreligious which Milton deemed essential to morality and religion¹¹ —the same persons who pronounce that to be inconsistent with the good order of society, which is the law of the land in all or almost all Protestant Germany—can see no sensuality, no indelicacy, in the continuance of a merely animal connexion between two persons who have become conscious that affection has never existed, or has ceased to exist between them. For our part, our difficulty is to conceive how a people, whose current morality countenances or tolerates such a debasing prostitution, can dare to call any doctrines or practices gross or licentious.

To the impure, all things are impure:¹² a sensualist, let him hold what opinion he may, will hold it in a sensual spirit: to such, marriage as it now exists, is but a guarantee of exclusive property in an instrument of sensual gratification. The most unlimited freedom of divorce could engender no feeling viler than this. But unlimited freedom is not what we contend for. It might be suitable to a people among whom personal profligacy is rare; but in the present state of European society, the degree of latitude allowed must be limited by the varying probability of its being abused for purposes of sensuality, or exercised in mere caprice. We think that divorce should be always pronounced by the Magistrate, in cases defined with more or less strictness according to circumstances, but in which the attempt should be to include all those instances, and no others, in which, after ample trial, the union had obviously and decidedly failed to attain the purposes for which it has been ordained: the interests of children being, of course, always reckoned as part of the account. If in any country, under such a system as this, marriage (as is pretended) would degenerate into a mere temporary concubinage, the state of opinion in that country must be such as would permit the utmost latitude of profligacy, whatever were nominally the law.

But this is too grave a subject, and of too far-reaching an interest, to be disposed of incidentally. Unless we greatly err, a time will come, and soon, when the discussion of it will assume a more serious aspect, and will be conducted on far loftier principles than heretofore. It is a question of the deepest concernment to all who feel interested in the moral and social condition of women; who, it is contended on the one hand, would be degraded, if marriage were rendered dissoluble; while the very ground upon which the dissolubility is defended on the other, is that it is the only means by which woman can be elevated in the social scale. The natural consequence of greater freedom in respect to the dissolution of marriage would be that women, like men, would be either provided for by their parents, or taught to provide for themselves; that they would no longer be under a kind of moral necessity of allying themselves to some man; and would become, what they have never yet been, really the equals of men. Because it is part of the perfection of woman to be dependent, as it is of the perfection of man too, (dependent, we mean, for affection, a dependence, which is, as all dependence ought to be, reciprocal,) is it therefore right that women should hold their subsistence, and their estimation in society at the will of a man? So long as most women depend for actual support, and all for preserving their reputation, upon keeping upon good terms, coûte qu’il coûte, with their husband, while he, affection apart, depends upon his wife for nothing but sitting at the head of his table, or looking after his servants, the ordinary relation between husband and wife can be no other than that of a helpless dependent towards, at best, an affectionate master, at worst, a cruel tyrant. And with respect to the other side of the question, we do not think he can be a man of much fineness of character, who can greatly value any hold that convention can give him over affections which he believes would, if the customs of society permitted, be transferred elsewhere.

235.

FRENCH NEWS [86]

EXAMINER, 2 FEB., 1834, P. 72

This article is headed “London, February 2, 1834.” For Mill’s bibliographic entry see No. 226. See also the headnote to No. 233. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the item is listed as “Article on France.”

the french chamber of deputies has, so far as depends upon itself, disposed of two important subjects—the municipal constitution of Paris¹ and the question of entails.²

The local affairs of every commune or township, and of every department of France, are managed, to a certain extent, by a body, termed in the former case the Municipal, in the latter, the departmental council. Under the empire and the restoration these bodies were named by the Crown, but laws have been enacted since the revolution of 1830, providing for their election in a mode partaking, though in different degrees, of the nature of a popular choice; the electors of the municipal councils, amounting for all France to about one million, those of the departmental councils to about two hundred thousand only.³

Paris was excepted from these enactments, its local administration being reserved to be regulated by a separate Act; and a Bill was accordingly introduced by the Government, which has now passed the Chamber of Deputies. Its provisions are a fresh exemplification of the close spirit of oligarchical monopoly, which pervades all the constituted authorities of France. Paris composing nearly the whole of the department of the Seine, the same body which acts as a municipal council for the affairs of that city, serves also (with the addition of two or three members from St. Denis and Sceaux) as a council for the general affairs of the department.

This system being adhered to in the new Bill, it consequently became necessary to determine whether the members whom Paris is to elect for this twofold purpose, should be chosen by the small number of electors who would fall to the share of Paris, under the provisions of the Departmental Law, or by the more extensive constituency which the Municipal Law would provide. Having this alternative, the Chamber of course made its election for oligarchy. The Departmental Law was the model preferred: and while every other town and every village in France has now the managers of its local affairs elected by something like a really popular system of election, the capital alone is placed under the management of a narrow and exclusive privileged class.

The other Bill which has just gone through the Chamber, without opposition, is of a more democratic character, and will scarcely be allowed to pass the other House. When Buonaparte determined to force an aristocracy, vainly and ignorantly expecting that the pretty exotic would be of as much service to his bad Government as it had been found by other Governments, where it was of spontaneous growth, he so far set aside the law of the equal partibility of property on the death of the proprietor, as to allow the creation of entails (majorats) to accompany a title of nobility, and a considerable number of these majorats have since been created.⁴

These, if the Bill passes the Chamber of Peers, will be set aside, (due regard being had to rights already acquired,) and the future creation of majorats interdicted.

The adoption of this measure, entirely unopposed by an assembly so anti-popular in its general policy, is a striking illustration of the peculiar character of the democratic feeling in France. It is not true, as is often asserted, that the French are lovers of “equality,” in the true sense of the term. There is not a people in Europe more greedy of distinction than themselves; or more ready to do homage to it in others, so long as it is merely personal distinction. But they cannot endure the shadow of a hereditary privilege; an advantage marked out for a particular caste, and not accessible to the remainder of the community. In studying French affairs, this observation will be found a necessary key to much. In this latter sense the passion for equality so pervades the nation, that even the bourgeois oligarchs of the Chamber of Deputies are as completely possessed by it as other people. Hence the abolition of the hereditary peerage, the abolition of majorats, and much else.

236.

FRENCH NEWS [87]

EXAMINER, 9 FEB., 1834, PP. 88-9

There are two sections on France in this report, headed “London, February 9, 1834”; presumably both are Mill’s. For his bibliographic entry, see No. 226. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the item is listed as “Article on France.”

intense interest has been excited at Paris by the duel in which M. Dulong, a Republican Member of the Chamber of Deputies, has sacrificed his life.¹ There is the strongest reason to believe that this catastrophe has been occasioned, not by the resentment of the offended party, Gen. Bugeaud, who is said to have shown himself well disposed to an accommodation, but by the vindictiveness of Louis-Philippe. M. Dulong had written a letter of apology which M. Bugeaud had considered satisfactory, and the quarrel was believed to have terminated; but a paragraph appeared next day in a Government paper, giving to the act of retractation a colour so dishonourable to M. Dulong, that he felt himself obliged to recall it; and when, immediately before the fatal meeting, he demanded back his letter from M. de Rumigny, one of his opponent’s seconds, who is aide-de-camp to the King, it was not forthcoming.² This M. de Rumigny (the same who acted the part of a police spy in getting up the charge of conspiracy against MM. Cavaignac, Guinard, and others, three years since) has subsequently admitted that the letter was at the Tuilleries, and that he destroyed it in the presence of the King, Louis-Philippe is thus publicly and undeniably implicated in the affair, and nobody seems to doubt that it was he who caused the insertion of the offensive newspaper paragraph in order to produce a renewal of the quarrel.

The funeral procession of M. Dulong was attended by a concourse of people, exceeding, it is said, even the assemblage at the funeral of Gen. Lamarque. Not an act of disorder, nor an intemperate word, occurred to furnish the police with an excuse for massacring the people. The impression made upon public opinion by the whole affair is said to be such as Louis-Philippe’s greatest enemies would desire.

The French Government has taken a leaf out of the book of the Castlereagh Ministry. It has proposed the introduction into France of one of the Six Acts.³ A Bill has been introduced for the suppression of cheap political publications.⁴ For some months past there has been growing up in Paris a class of periodical and other tracts, sold by hawkers in the streets, at a price within the reach of the working people, to whom, principally, they are addressed. These publications are mostly republican. The object of the Bill now introduced is, first to require all venders of such publications to take out a license from the police; and next, to subject the works themselves to a stamp.

We shall watch the progress of this Bill. There is no doubt that it will pass; for public opinion is not yet sufficiently advanced among the French, to maintain any struggle in behalf of freedom of discussion for its own sake, when they take no personal or party interest in those who are the victims of its infringement. The proposed law will be considered a measure against the republican press; and, consequently, nobody who is not a republican, will deem himself concerned in opposing it.

The Commission on the Budget is said to make some difficulties about the estimates, and it is even pretended that they will refuse to grant the increased military force which Marshal Soult demands.⁵ This we take the liberty to doubt; a timid and irresolute body like the present Chamber, always succumbs to obstinacy, and Louis-Philippe has more of that quality than any man who has held power in France since Napoleon.

237.

FRENCH NEWS [88]

EXAMINER, 16 FEB., 1834, P. 106

This article is headed “London, February 16, 1834.” For Mill’s bibliographic entry, see No. 226. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the item is listed as “Article on France,” with one correction: at 684.26 “Laquette” is altered to “Laguette”.

the bill introduced by the French Government, and mentioned in our last paper, on the subject of the political publications sold in the streets, has passed the Chamber of Deputies with alterations.¹ That part of the Bill by which hawkers were required to take out a license from the police, which the police at its pleasure might revoke, has been adopted, and the penalties for its infringement actually increased. On the other hand, the provisions subjecting cheap publications to a stamp-duty, have been struck out. Thus far, therefore, the Chamber has not verified our forebodings.

M. Dupont de l’Eure has been induced by affliction for the fate of his near relative and friend, M. Dulong,² as well as by the disappointment of the hopes which he entertained in common with so many others from the Revolution of 1830, to resign his seat in the Chamber of Deputies. This loss, therefore, must be added to those which the Chamber sustained from the same feelings of discouragement last year; by the resignation of two of its worthiest members—MM. Thouvenel and Laguette Mornay.

238.

FRENCH NEWS [89]

EXAMINER, 2 MAR., 1834, P. 137

This article, headed “London, March 2, 1834,” is not covered by Mill’s bibliographic entry (see No. 226), but is listed in the Somerville College set of the Examiner as “Article on France.”

the bill relating to public criers has passed the Chamber of Peers in one sitting, has received the Royal assent, and is now law.¹ On the day on which it came into force, there was not a riot, but sufficient crowd in the streets, to give the police an excuse for some of their usual acts of brutal outrage.

The French government are so pleased with their easy success in passing this Bill, that they have announced another for the suppression of Political Associations.² If this should pass, they have probably another ready for the restriction of the province of Jury Trial, in political cases. We are too distant from the scene of action to know whether the inducement to all these enormities be terror, because they are weak, or because they are strong.

The Cour d’Assises has declared the National de 1834, identical with the old National, and has sentenced M. Carrel and his coadjutor, M. Conseil, to fine and imprisonment.³ Their last resource against this complicated and flagrant act of persecution and tyranny, is in the Court of Cassation; and to rely on that is, we fear, to lean on a broken reed.

239.

THE POOR LAW REPORT

EXAMINER, 2 MAR., 1834, P. 137

Mill is here commenting on the “Report from His Majesty’s Commissioners for Inquiring into the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws,” which was printed in PP, 1834, XXVII, with Appendices A-F in Vols. XXVII-XXXIX; the Report had been issued separately without the Appendices in February. This article appears immediately after No. 238, separated from it by a printer’s rule. See No. 240 for a fuller discussion. It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A paragraph on the Poor Law Report, in the Examiner of 2d March 1834” (MacMinn, p. 38) and listed in the Somerville College set of the Examiner as “Paragraph on the Poor Law Report.”

we observe that the Report of the Poor Law Commissioners will shortly be accessible to the general public at the very low price of half-a-crown, and we doubt if so important a mass, either of facts or of comments upon facts, ever was attainable at so moderate a cost. We exhort all who have that sum to expend, and in particular all who exercise any influence on the public mind through the press, to possess themselves of the Report itself, and read it with the care and attention which its subject requires, and which its merits will amply repay. In the meantime we advise them to shut their ears to whatever they may hear on the subject from the London newspapers, which have in some cases even misstated what the Commissioners recommend, and where they have stated it truly, have separated it from those facts and explanations which alone can place it in its proper light.¹

240.

THE POOR LAWS

EXAMINER, 9 MAR., 1834, PP. 145-6

For the context, see No. 239. This article is in the “Political Examiner,” headed as title, and is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘The Poor Laws’ in the Examiner of 9th March 1834” (MacMinn, p. 38). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as title.

the question of poor law amendment is so complicated in its details, and so much care is needed in discussing it, to guard our meaning from all sorts of perverse misunderstanding and misinterpretation, that we are unwilling to enter into the minutiae of the subject, until we have more thoroughly studied the Report of the Commissioners. There is no reason, however, for not declaring at once that their investigations appear to us to have ended in the most complete justification of the principle of the Poor Laws, and the severest condemnation of their practice.

The principle of securing, by a legal provision, the actual necessaries of life and health to all who cannot otherwise obtain them, we consider as now placed out of the reach of dispute by any unprejudiced person. Many of the wisest men have hitherto doubted of this principle, only because they did not know, what the Commissioners have demonstrated not by argument only, but by the most decisive specific experience, that the effect imputed to compulsory relief, of discouraging voluntary exertion, and promoting improvidence, may be certainly obviated by a proper attention to the conditions on which relief is given.

These conditions, the Commissioners propose should be such as would render the condition of the infirm and helpless more eligible than at present, and that of the able-bodied pauper (whose condition is now far more desirable than the situation of the independent labourer) less eligible; and they have shown, what is of the very utmost importance, that the able-bodied pauper may be secured against cold and hunger, and provided with all the means of bodily health and strength, being at the same time neither overworked nor subjected to any other kind of bodily suffering, and may yet be in a condition inferior to that of the labourer subsisting honestly on his own industry. The mere privation of indulgences, and the sacrifice of so much liberty as is given up by submitting to the discipline of a well-regulated workhouse, are quite sufficient, if properly enforced, to make every able-bodied pauper desire to extricate himself from pauperism; and wherever this has been tried, all, or nearly all, the able-bodied paupers have speedily found employment, not only without a fall, but with an actual rise, of wages throughout the parish.

The Commissioners have in view, as an ultimate end, the abolition of out-door relief to able-bodied paupers, but not to the aged and helpless, nor even to the able-bodied where peculiar circumstances require an exception; though we deem the principle so important, that we trust exceptions will be very rarely allowed. Neither do they propose to introduce the rule suddenly, but gradually. The Times must have read their Report very carelessly, or it could not have taken up, and communicated to its readers the impression that all the relieved poor were to be brought into workhouses.¹

The writer in the Times is in complete contradiction to himself. He begins by admitting that the condition of the pauper must be made inferior to that of the independent labourer, and then raises the cry of inhumanity against the only possible means by which this can be done. To bring a poor family into the workhouse, he says, is to make their poverty a disgrace. We answer, it is simply to make their poverty known, or rather to make the fact known that they are living upon the labour of others. If this is objected to, how is the condition of the pauper to be made inferior to that of the independent labourer? It cannot be by starving him! Yet that is the alternative to which the sentimentality of the Times would reduce us. If living upon parish relief is to be made desirable, there is no more to be said. But why set out with proclaiming that it is to be made undesirable, and then object to the means proposed, because they really have that effect? In America the independent labourer is so well off, that by merely giving to the applicant for relief less money than the ordinary wages of labour, you would give him a strong motive to cease to be a pauper as soon as he could get work. But here, the independent labourer earns so little, that you cannot give the pauper less; you can only give him that little on harder terms. If it be given at his own dwelling he is made better off than the independent labourer, because he will, in that case, whatever you may attempt to the contrary, do less work for it. In the workhouse, and the workhouse alone, can the bodily wants of the pauper be amply cared for, and yet pauperism be rendered not shameful (that is not the object), but undesirable.

241.

FRENCH NEWS [90]

EXAMINER, 9 MAR., 1834, P. 154

This article, headed “London: March 9, 1834,” is not entered in Mill’s bibliography, but in the Somerville College set of the Examiner it is listed as “Article on France.”

the french government has introduced the threatened measure against Political Societies.¹ All such Associations, if exceeding the number of nineteen persons, were already illegal;² but many of them evaded the law by subdividing themselves into smaller Societies, not exceeding the lawful number of members. The present law is intended to meet this evasion. Our prophecy of last week has been more than verified: this very Bill sets aside Jury trial.³ It provides that all infractions of itself shall be tried before the Tribunal of Correctional Police, which decides without a Jury. The reason is, that Paris Juries always acquit persons who are prosecuted for this offence.

Truly there was no very urgent necessity for dispensing with Juries; for if these men obtain a verdict once in twelve times, the sentence in that one case makes ample amends for the eleven failures. M. Cabet, a Member of the Chamber of Deputies, having been found guilty of a libel on the King, in a Newspaper of which he is editor and proprietor, has been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and privation of “civil rights” for two years more.⁴ By this he loses his seat in the Chamber, his rights as an elector, the power of holding any public office, and even of giving testimony in a Court of Justice, except under certain restrictions.

We have often cause to complain of English Judges, but it must be confessed that, in comparison with the French, they are high-minded patriots. The case of M. Carrel would prove, if it were not known before, that there is no stretch of insolent tyranny which French Judges are not eager to perpetrate at the bidding of power.

242.

FRENCH NEWS [91]

EXAMINER, 23 MAR., 1834, P. 185

This summary is headed: “London, March 23, 1834.” Like Nos. 238 and 241, it is not included in Mill’s bibliography, but is listed in the Somerville College set of the Examiner, in this case as “Paragraphs on France.”

the debates in the French Chamber on the new law for the prevention of Political Associations, have commenced.¹ We reserve our observations till they are concluded.

The bill will unquestionably pass; as will any proposition the object of which is to invest any government supported by a majority of the influential classes, with despotic power over the minority.

243.

REPLY TO DR. PRATI

EXAMINER, 23 MAR., 1834, PP. 185-6

This article answers a letter from Prati (which was not printed and has not been located) objecting to Mill’s comments in No. 234. The news item, headed “London, March 23, 1834,” is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A notice in answer to a letter from Dr. Prati, in the Examiner of 23d March 1834” (MacMinn, p. 39). It is listed in the Somerville College set of the Examiner as “Paragraphs on the St Simonian Missionaries.”

we have received a letter from Dr. Prati, the St. Simonian preacher (which from its length and the press of other matter, we are unable to insert) in reply to that part of the article on St. Simonism in our paper of the 2nd of February, which related to himself and his “Chief,” M. Fontana. We had stated that M. Fontana “was sent by no one, had credentials from no one;” and that after considerable personal inquiry, we have not been able to ascertain that he ever was an acknowledged member of the St. Simonian body, or is known personally to any one of the remarkable men from whom St. Simonism has derived its celebrity. Dr. Prati informs us, and has produced such evidence as convinces us, that M. Fontana did belong to the St. Simonian society, and took his departure for England with the knowledge and sanction of those members of the society who were assembled at Ménilmontant. These facts are no doubt of considerable importance to M. Fontana personally, and we are glad, therefore, by publishing them, to remove any impression to his disadvantage which may have been conceived from our former statement. The substance, however, of our assertions remains untouched: the same documents which prove that M. Fontana was recognized as a teacher of St. Simonism, prove that he was not selected as such. His departure took place at the period of a general dispersion of the society, when all organized or concerted propagandism was abandoned, and whosoever chose to go forth of his own accord and teach St. Simonism, received the permission and authority of the père suprême, M. Enfantin, to do so. M. Fontana, therefore, and not the society, remains burthened with the responsibility of whatever discredit may attach to the cause from the feebleness of its advocate.

Dr. Prati further informs us, that there are still St. Simonians, and publications avowedly St. Simonian, in France, and that although the Chief, M. Enfantin, had formally dissolved the society, he subsequently proclaimed its resuscitation. “From on board Le Prince Héréditaire, Sept. 22nd, 1833, he addressed a letter to all the St. Simonian family, in which he reassumed his authority, and issued general orders to all his followers to hold themselves in residence.”¹ So far, therefore, we stand corrected. It remains to be seen whether this resumption of the empire after an abdication, will succeed better with M. Enfantin than it did with the Emperor Dioclesian.²

Dr. Prati enters into some particulars of his own personal literary history, for the purpose, apparently, of proving himself to be no pretender: but this was altogether unnecessary as far as we are concerned; for his name and character were honorably known to us before St. Simonism existed: nor had we ever even a momentary thought to his disadvantage, unless it be such to deem him inadequate to the task he has undertaken of founding a new religion in England. “Our voice,” he says, “begins already to penetrate the mass:” if so, he has our cordial congratulations. He will make no proselytes but at the expense of far worse errors.

The tone and spirit of Dr. Prati’s letter do honour to his candour and good temper; qualities in which we cannot forbear to state, no St. Simonian apostle was ever yet found deficient. We forgive him his sarcasm upon ourselves, for having reserved our praises of St. Simonism until we considered it as defunct. We reserved them until we considered it as calumniated. If he refer to our papers of 29th January, and 9th September 1832, he will see that we formerly expressed ourselves on the subject of St. Simonism exactly as we do now.³ But we did not exert ourselves to force a discussion, which we knew would do no good either to St. Simonism or to the cause of truth. We did not wish to draw down upon men and doctrines that we respect the insults and calumnies which, now when the mischief is done, we are willing and eager to join in repelling.

244.

STATE OF OPINION IN FRANCE

EXAMINER, 30 MAR., 1834, PP. 195-6

One of Mill’s more elaborate attempts to counter what he saw as prejudice against and ignorance of France, this leader in the “Political Examiner,” headed as title, is described in his bibliography as “An article headed ‘State of Opinion in France’ in the Examiner of 30th March 1834” (MacMinn, p. 39). It is listed in the Somerville College set of the Examiner as title. The article (except for the first and last paragraphs) was reprinted, in translation, with an introduction, in Revue Républicaine, 10 July, 1834, pp. 82-8, as “Opinion d’un Anglais sur l’esprit publique en France.”

the tory publications,Blackwood’s and Fraser’s Magazines, the Quarterly Review, and others, have frequently of late indulged in long-winded lamentations on the state of France, which by repetition have established a sort of claim to notice, since there is scarcely any misrepresentation which, if it be often repeated and never contradicted, does not find at last some persons to believe it.¹ What they affirm is in substance this—that the second French Revolution has swept away what little of morality and religion the first had left; and instead of producing any advances in freedom or good government, has substituted for the mild, legal, and constitutional rule (as they term it) of the elder Bourbons, a most oppressive though an unstable despotism. Which proves the folly and wickedness of all revolutions, and of all attempts of the people to control the management of their affairs.

We shall say nothing at present on the state of France in respect to religion and morality, except that to a Tory and High Church observer, there must naturally appear to be none; since what there is of either, differs from his morality and religion, in most of those non-essentials which he has been taught to consider as the essentials. We mean now to confine ourselves to the political state of France, which is represented as so desperate. On this subject the Tories only repeat and exaggerate what we ourselves had said long before. At a time when English journalists were all but unanimous in their laudation of Louis Philippe and his principles of government, and invective against all against whom Louis Philippe’s stipendiary press inveighed, we alone protested against the delusion, and spoke out what is now admitted to be the truth, with respect to the man and his system. Yet we are firmly convinced that even now, under a government as arbitrary, as encroaching, and as much the enemy of popular institutions and social reforms as ever ruled in France with the forms of a constitution, the French nation is making advances in all the most important elements of good government and political improvement, unparalleled at any former period of history; and that for the rapidity of this progress she is wholly indebted to the late Revolution.

If, indeed, the beneficial results of a political convulsion are to be estimated by the improvements which it may immediately bring about in the institutions of a country, or the change which it may at once effect in the spirit which pervades the Government, the French Revolution of 1830 must be pronounced a failure. But if the Three Days of July had been as fruitful as they have hitherto been barren of this kind of improvement, what, after all, would it have amounted to? Something doubtless; but not much. Governments, and the acts of governments, are in themselves no good, but merely the means of good; and not the only, far even from being the principal, means. Governments, besides, are made by men, and can neither be better nor worse than the men who made them. “Governments and Constitutions,” says M. Comte in the Censeur Européen, “create nothing—they declare what already exists.”² —A maxim false as to the ultimate effects of any government, but true of all governments when first established. Till they have fairly struck root, they are of importance far more as symptoms than as causes. That the French people, having the power, did not, in July 1830, establish a better government, proves that the national mind was not ripe for a better: it has been ripening since with wonderful rapidity, and its time will come. Improvement in the government is so sure to follow, and is of so little avail and so little likely to be durable if it precede, improvement in the national mind, that no government, however bad in spirit, which allows that to go on, gives much cause for regret or apprehension. And if that best improvement, which alone renders any other great improvement possible, be taking place as rapidly under the present men and measures as it could under any others, the better part of all which better men and measures could have produced, is already attained; and the rest may be waited for, not passively, for then it would never be had, but without any of the impatience of disappointment.

And such we conceive to be the fact. The public mind of France is now in a state of such rapid progress, that we question whether it could have improved more quickly, even if a better settlement had been made of the government in August 1830. The whole character of public discussion has changed. The Revolution and its consequences have filled the public mind with new ideas. That great event has set so many old questions at rest, that room has been made for new; and has excited a spirit which would not allow the blank to remain unfilled. It has carried discussion onward into another field. It has finally closed the volume of the eighteenth century, and has begun to inscribe that of the nineteenth with distinct and durable characters.

This change, both in the questions discussed and in the spirit of discussion, is equally visible, whether the subject be forms of government, or those great interests of man and society to which all questions respecting forms of government are merely subsidiary.

During the fifteen years of the Restoration, the popular party was altogether on the defensive. Impassable limits were prescribed to political improvement by the provisions of the Charter. To have made profession, or even submitted to the imputation, of a desire to introduce into France more liberal institutions than the Charter had given, was to forfeit all chance of political influence. The Charter itself was perpetually assailed, both covertly and indirectly; and to defend it against the ruling power, which, being the stronger was naturally the encroaching party, was sufficient occupation for the friends of popular government. As they knew that they could not hope for more than the Charter, and were never sure of retaining that, they made it their rallying point, and allowed it to be held sacred even in those of its provisions which they disapproved, that the Government might be forced to observe it in those which they approved. In this defensive position, entrenched behind a piece of parchment, there was little demand for the higher resources of intellectual warfare. Political discussion mostly turned upon a certain small number of ideas, revolving in one unvarying round. The question to be settled always was, Had the Charter been observed? From which an aspiring disputant occasionally ascended to the more comprehensive subject of inquiry, Whether the Charter ought to be observed? viz. whether so much liberty, and security for good government, as the Charter gave, ought to exist; not whether more. And then was to be tried over again daily the cause of the first Revolution. The dispute was, not what should be done now, but, whether what had been done in 1789, to annihilate the privileges of the Nobility and the political power of the Church, were well done? and whether the King and his Ministers were trying to undo it? and whether the means they used were or were not in accordance with the text of the Charter? These discussions certainly were not altogether unfruitful; they cannot be said to have done nothing towards educating the public mind. They helped to confirm the French in their antipathy to sacerdotal ascendancy, and to every description of hereditary rank: sentiments which being thus perpetually called into action, perpetually gained strength, and have taken the deepest root in the national character. By frequent discussion of the limits which a written constitution imposed upon the King’s will, the French became more and more attached to the forms of legal rule, and to a strict definition of the powers of the magistrate. But this was all: beyond these few points, not one great principle of government and social organization was usually appealed to. No progress was made in familiarizing the public mind even with the real essentials of a representative constitution; and the Three Days found the nation so unfurnished with any distinct conceptions on the subject, that months elapsed before it occurred to any one to think what an opportunity had been lost for securing to thirty-three millions of people a larger body of electors than eighty thousand. So backward was not only the popular mind, but even those superior intellects, which in France far more than in England carry the popular mind along with them. If they were so ill prepared on constitutional subjects, which they had thought of, they were still more completely at sea on the questions of detail and application, of which they had not thought. If they had once felt easy about their Charter, they would soon have bethought themselves that a Charter after all is not good laws, but merely permission to make them, and would have instantly set about using the permission. As it was, they never had a moment’s leisure during the fifteen years to think what use they should make of their Constitution when they had secured it. They were like the Roman legionary, who, stationed for twenty years in a distant province, fought for his country until he forgot that he had a country, for any purpose except to fight for.

But the Revolution of the Three Days was the date of a new era. It set free the national mind. Since then, the question has been, not how to defend what was already gained, but how to gain more. Improvement, and not Conservation, has been the prize contended for. The questions of a Hereditary Aristocracy and a Dominant Church are disposed of for ever: the last appeal has been made, it was to the sword, and it has been tried and decided. Louis Philippe, and the bourgeois Oligarchy on whom his power rests, will not repeat the mistake of Napoleon and the elder Bourbons, by encumbering themselves with those detested appendages. That a Government may be very detestable without them, was a lesson which the French people, for want of sufficient experience, had yet to learn, and in which Louis Philippe has proved himself an apt instructor. We question whether anything but the experiment they are now making could have convinced the French that the mischiefs of an Oligarchy do not depend upon its being this or that particular kind of Oligarchy, but upon its being an Oligarchy at all. This they were strangely ignorant of some few years ago. They are now seeing it every day more clearly. The prevailing political opinions, there as elsewhere, still leave much to be desired; but the more active and intelligent portion of the French public are beginning distinctly to perceive, that the first fundamental principle of good government in a civilized country, is protection against the sinister interests of the few by periodical accountability to the many. Nor do the advances which democratic opinions are now making among the French, arise, as is pretended, from a blind passion for equality; but from the exhibition which the now dominant class is constantly making before their eyes, of its own inherent selfishness and corruption.

And now, too, their lips are unsealed, and they dare avow that let Charters say what they may, less than good government will not content them, and good government they are determined to have. The Three Days have given them back the audacity which Leipzig and Waterloo had quelled.³ A dynasty the work of their own hands, and a Charter run up in a few hours to stop the gap made by a Revolution, do not suffice to overawe them.

An attempt has indeed been made to restrain the expression of political opinion within definite bounds, by the trite and vulgar expedient of making all persons in the exercise of a public function, even down to the electors of a village corporation, take an oath of fidelity to the constitution.⁴ When MM. Voyer d’Argenson and Audry de Puyraveau, after having, as deputies, taken this oath, avowed that they held opinions and pursued objects completely at variance with the Constitution, there was much very bad acting of vehement indignation.⁵ Some of those who joined in the outcry, had in the course of their lives sworn fidelity to as many as thirteen Constitutions. But they probably quieted their consciences with the reflection that they had kept their oath, by never failing in their allegiance to any government so long as it was the strongest; which MM. d’Argenson and de Puyraveau have done, and are consequently perjured.

Oaths of allegiance, empty formalities at all times, are most mischievous ones in an age of revolution, by confusing the boundaries of right and wrong, and accustoming men to trifle with the outward symbol of a solemn obligation. They are never observed, and never ought to be so: like our Custom-house oaths (recently abolished)⁶ and the oaths taken by students at our Universities,⁷ they may justifiably be considered as mere forms: their guilt, if guilt there be (though it is rather folly), is in imposing them, not in taking them and in violating them. If such oaths were binding, a Nero or a Charles IX might tie up the consciences of all honest men from resisting their tyranny.⁸ No honest man will accept favours, from a Government which he cannot honestly engage to support: but he will accept from electors the office of watching and controlling the Government. The distinction is broad and obvious. Governments may prescribe conditions to their servants, but not to their masters. If a Government is at liberty to enact that no one shall either elect or be elected a member of the Legislature without swearing to the entire Constitutional Law of the country, as printed in a book; and if no one who thinks any change in any part of this book advisable, feels himself at liberty to take the oath; no change can ever be effected by legal means, and no road is left open for improvement but through a violent revolution. If at our general election in 1831, every elector had been compelled to swear fidelity to the rotten boroughs, would it have been better to let the Reform Bill drop, or to carry it by pikes and muskets instead of votes, or to submit to the degrading formality of the false oath, publicly declaring it to be a mere formality?

The declaration of these two Deputies (men of the highest reputation for honor and integrity, both as men and as politicians), far from being immoral, is an indication of a great progress in the morality of public discussion. Men now speak out plainly; they declare with candour and simplicity their real sentiments, their ultimate purposes; and have discarded the timid, the reserved, the prudent (shall we say?) or the artful policy, to which the clever writers of the St. Simonian Globe gave the name of la comédie de quinze ans.^* There are now no more disguises, no equivocations, no conventional hypocrisies. No one who does not really feel attachment to the first magistrate of the State, holds it necessary to speak of him in the language of loyalty and devotedness. No one who desires the entire abrogation of the existing Constitution and the establishment of a Republic, feels himself restrained from avowing his creed, and saying all that he has to say in defence of it: and it is avowed by Deputies in the Chamber, and systematically advocated by newspapers of the highest merit and character. If opinions subversive of the existing government are thus openly avowed by a powerful and rising political party, it may well be imagined that the freedom is complete for minor differences of opinion. With all the inclination in the world to stifle inquiry, the ruling power is unable to give it even the slightest check: nothing is protected from questioning: all the great principles of government and the social union are brought perpetually into play, either to be contested or to be applied: and the result is a sifting of opinions, and an increased mastery over the first elements of political science, to which there has been no parallel heretofore in France.

The improvement is perhaps most striking in this, that the active politicians, whether speculative or practical, no longer limit their interest, even their immediate interest, to forms of government: on the contrary, the tendency of the rising school of political reformers is, not indeed to be indifferent to forms of government, but to value them chiefly as means to some definite end: not for some supposed inherent excellence in themselves, which has been a very prevalent notion hitherto in France; not even as the surest means for attaining the public good, whatever that may happen to be; but as means for realizing some conception already entertained of good legislation and an enlightened management of the interests of society in detail. French politics, in short, are beginning to partake somewhat of the practical and business-like character of our own. The English indeed require correction the contrary way: under the notion of being practical, they are mechanical, literal, and narrow: what cannot be weighed or counted,⁹ is to them as if it did not exist. They leave out of their calculations almost entirely the influence of the general spirit of the institutions of a country, looking exclusively to the effect of the definite and tangible provisions. The French will never run into that extreme, and we congratulate them heartily upon the prospect of deliverance from the other.

Much more than we have said, and more than we have now room for, is necessary to give any adequate conception of the new spirit which has been infused into political speculation in France, and the altered character of the views now prevalent both on the principles and on the details of legislation and administration. But we must reserve the further prosecution of this subject, either for a separate article, or for occasional notices as suitable opportunities present themselves.

245.

FRENCH NEWS [92]

EXAMINER, 30 MAR., 1834, PP. 200-1

These news items are headed “London, March 30, 1834.” Mill’s bibliography includes this entry: “The summary of French news in the Examiner of 30th March 1834” (MacMinn, p. 39). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, however, there is no listing of any article in this number except for No. 244. There is, therefore, some doubt about Mill’s authorship of the extracts below, which appear where his summaries usually are, but deal with matters he usually ignores.

the globe observes—

Some pointed notice is taken in the Constitutionnel of the language and conduct adopted towards the Swiss Cantons for resisting the dictation by the Russian and German governments of the expulsion of the unhappy Poles. The Constitutionnel, naturally enough, cannot understand the grounds upon which such demands can be reasonably made by Russia upon Switzerland. “In the British parliament,” continues the journalist, “Lord Palmerston denied that the government had received a circular said to have been addressed by the Court of St. Petersburg to the different Cabinets, urging them not to grant an asylum to the Polish refugees and afford them succour. If we are well informed, however, Count Pozzo di Borgo has delivered a note to such an effect to the Duke de Broglie, and is urgent for an answer. We hope and believe that the answer of the Minister for Foreign Affairs will be prompt and dignified. Our territory is Free, and France has never been inhospitable. The government certainly should, by means of the regular police, take care that the refugees do not disturb public order, but this great nation will never suffer the unhappy exiles from Poland to be refused succour and support.”¹

A Petersburgh Journal calculates the number of fugitives so ruthlessly persecuted, and to whom the Autocrat would deny earth, fire, and water, at 250 or 300 at the utmost, scattered over France, Switzerland and England—this, we need hardly observe, is understating the numbers, but according to the showing of the Russian journalist, so heavy is the vengeance aimed against these few harmless, penniless, resourceless wanderers! It is for the people of civilized countries to sustain these victims of a brutal tyranny.²

SATURDAY NIGHT

There is no news of any interest. The French papers mention a rumour that King Leopold³ has asked the French Government for the assurance of military aid in the event of Dutch aggression.

The French Minister of War has stated that a respectable naval force will be maintained in the Mediterranean till the affairs of the East are settled, as a measure of prudence, not of apprehension of any interruption of peace.⁴

246.

FRENCH NEWS [93]

EXAMINER, 6 APR., 1834, P. 215

This article is headed “London, April 6, 1834.” The entry in Mill’s bibliography covers this and Nos. 247, 249, and 250: “The summary of French news in the Examiner of 6th, 13th, 20th, and 27th April 1834” (MacMinn, p. 39). This report is listed in the Somerville College set of the Examiner as “Article on France.”

the law prohibiting all associations in France, without the previous license of the government, has passed the Chamber of Deputies, after a long debate, without the slightest modification.¹ The government refused to tolerate the existence of societies even for purposes the most remote from politics, lest under their cover political associations should find shelter. They refused also to introduce a clause declaring the law to be temporary.

After thus immolating one of the most valuable liberties of their country to the terrors and vindictiveness of Louis-Philippe, the Chamber has left the ministers in a minority on a question where they were probably in the right. The claims of American subjects upon the French government, for losses caused by Napoleon’s anti-commercial decrees,² have remained unsettled to this day. The French government has at last signed a convention with the United States for the liquidation of those claims by the payment of a million sterling. The Chamber has refused to grant the money, and the convention, therefore, cannot take effect.³ In England the whole Cabinet would in such circumstances have resigned; but in France, where ministers are but the clerks of the hereditary and irresponsible minister Louis-Philippe, who we may rely upon it will never resign, it is rather surprising to us that even the Foreign Minister, M. de Broglie, should have thought it incumbent on him to offer a resignation which we take it for granted he will promptly withdraw. That M. Sébastiani, ministre sans portefeuille, should give himself les airs of a resignation, was a still more superfluous piece of self-importance.⁴

247.

FRENCH NEWS [94]

EXAMINER, 13 APR., 1834, PP. 232-3

This item is headed “London, April 13, 1834.” For Mill’s bibliographic entry, see No. 246. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the item is listed as “Article on France,” with one correction: at 702.6, “restricted” is altered to “restrictive”.

the court of cassation has once more made a stand against the attempts of Louis-Philippe to pervert the laws for purposes of despotism and vengeance. The sentence of the Court Royale of Paris, declaring the National de 1834, identical with the National (and condemning MM. Carrel and Conseil to fine and imprisonment for violating in the new journal the interdict against reporting judicial proceedings, so iniquitously passed upon its predecessor), had been appealed against to the Court of Cassation, and has now, by one of the Chambers which compose that Court, been reversed.¹ Thus, for the second time since July, 1830, the highest tribunal in France has interfered to thwart the King in his most cherished and worst purposes.

The struggle, however, is not yet over; for, by the provisions of the French code, the cause must now be reheard before another Cour Royale; and if this should agree with the original decision of the wretched Cour Royale of Paris, the affair must then be carried before, not one Chamber only of the Court of Cassation, as before, but the entire Court;² who, however, it is to be believed, will abide by the judgment of one section of their body.

We needed a decision like this to convince us that there is still such a thing as law in France, where the government is a party concerned.

The vacancy in the Cabinet, made by the resignation of the Duke de Broglie, has been filled by the transfer of Admiral de Rigny, the Minister of Marine, to the Foreign Department; Admiral Roussin, the Ambassador at Constantinople, being appointed in his absence to succeed M. de Rigny in the ministry of marine, which, however, he is not expected to accept.³ Admiral de Rigny, taken from his peculiar province, is a mere nullity: but this is justly deemed of no consequence, as the prime minister, Louis-Philippe, while he exercises a general control over every department, takes that of foreign affairs under his peculiar care.

The opportunity has been taken of laying on the shelf two other members of the cabinet, MM. Barthe and d’Argoût, whose characters have been used up in Louis-Philippe’s service. To make room for M. Barthe, poor old M. Barbé-Marbois has been jockeyed out of the Presidency of the Cour des Comptes;⁴ while Napoleon’s old Finance Minister, Gaudin des Ardennes, Duc de Gaête,⁵ has been removed from the office of Governor of the Bank of France (which, it seems, is in the King’s gift), to make a place for M. d’Argoût. It would be amusing, if, to facilitate a modification in the English Ministry, the King could remove Mr. Horsley Palmer,⁶ and give his place to Lord Melbourne!

The successor of M. Barthe is M. Persil, probably the most unpopular man in France; the frenzied assailant of the Press, and the same who, in a speech delivered in his official character of Procureur-Général, called for a law to alter the constitution of Jury-trial, by making the Jurors vote in secret without any consultation among themselves, and rendering a bare majority sufficient for condemnation.⁷

M. d’Argoût is succeeded by M. Thiers, who gives up the department of commerce to M. Tanneguy Duchâtel.⁸ If the ministers of Louis Philippe had any voice in the determination of their own measures, this would be an admirable appointment. M. Duchâtel is one of the first living political economists, and the author of the celebrated memorial from the vine-growers of the Gironde, the most masterly exposition, in a popular form, of the doctrine of free trade, which has ever been produced. But neither the divided opinions and wishes of the minister, nor the tide of public opinion which has now set in so strongly in favour of relaxing the laws restrictive of commerce, will be able to accomplish anything for a long time to come; and for an excellent reason—Louis-Philippe is personally interested in most of the existing monopolies; and his grasping avarice reigns supreme over the destinies of a great nation.

248.

FLOWER’S SONGS OF THE MONTHS [1]

EXAMINER, 20 APR., 1834, P. 244

Added to a letter of 22 Feb., 1834, to W.J. Fox, is the following gestatory postscript, probably directed to Eliza Flower, concerning Songs of the Months: “The three beautiful children [the ‘Songs’ for January, February, and March] shall have justice done them on the appearance of the third—The birth of the eldest was announced [see No. 229], and a good word spoken for the expected family— / February is a beauty—but March is grand—” (EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 215). This review of the first four songs, in the “Musical Review,” is headed “Songs of the Months, Nos. I, II, III, and IV. By the Author of ‘Musical Illustrations of the Waverley Novels,’ ‘Songs of the Seasons,’ &c. Published in ‘Fox’s Monthly Repository,’ for January, February, March, and April, 1834,” and is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A notice of the ‘Songs of the Months’ in the Examiner of 20th April 1834” (MacMinn, p. 39). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Review of Miss Flower’s Songs of the Months,” with three corrections: at 703.3, “softness of the April song: we” is altered to “softness. Of the April song, we”; at 703.21, “runs” is altered to “seems”; and at 703.23, “fuller a more” is altered to “fuller and more”.

these beautiful songs ought to enlist all lovers of music among the purchasers of Mr. Fox’s excellent periodical. Even the many to whom melody is but melody, delicious in itself, but speaking of nothing beyond, will find an ample feast set before them in these airs; while, to the smaller number, who require that music shall be to poetry what a sweet voice is to the sweet meanings to which it gives utterance, they will yield a still higher enjoyment.

Of the few songs which have appeared, we prefer those for February and March.¹ The February song is like the very note of the birds whose loves it celebrates. The verses for March, finely descriptive of “winds and clouds,” have called forth from the imagination of the composer a strain of inspired grandeur; such, as if arranged on a full band of wind instruments, would blend gloriously with the hollow resounding of the tempest, dying away in a passage of the loveliest and richest softness. Of the April song, we quote the words—their only fault is shortness:

- Her cheek is pale, her eyes are wet,
- Her voice in murmurings
- Grieves lowly to the morn that yet
- No sunshine brings.
- Why linger ye, O laughing hours?
- Uncurl ye buds, unfurl ye flowers!
- Sad April sings.
- The paleness fleets, the tears are dry,
- Her voice with gladness rings;
- The sunshine over earth and sky
- Its brightness flings.
- Come revel through my laughing hours,
- Ye warbling birds, ye buds and flowers!
- Glad April sings.²

The composer has produced a most perfect translation of these words into musical sounds: and by a rare felicity, the same melody which when joined to the longing and yearning of the first stanza, seems as if intended by nature for that expression only, becomes by a change from minor to major and the addition of a fuller and more rapid accompaniment, the no less apt representative of the gladness and buoyancy of the second verse. It seems actually to bound with joy.

We are sensible of the ugliness of crossing at one leap from poetry and music to shillings and pence, but we should leave part of our duty unperformed if we were not to mention that these songs, any one of which if printed in the ordinary way and published separately would be sold for two shillings, or two and sixpence, may be severally purchased, together with the cotemporary number of one of the very best existing monthly periodicals, for eighteenpence.

249.

FRENCH NEWS [95]

EXAMINER, 20 APR., 1834, P. 250

This article comments on the uprisings which took place in Lyons on 9-13 Apr. and in Paris on 13-14 Apr. The concluding paragraphs on Lord Howick have been included as Mill’s, even though they are separated from the rest by a printer’s rule, because Mill alludes to the same speech against combinations in his “Notes on the Newspapers,” Monthly Repository, n.s. VIII (May 1834), 365 (see CW, Vol. VI, pp. 207-8). The article is headed “London, April 20, 1834.” For Mill’s bibliographic entry, see No. 246. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the item is listed as “Article on France.”

we are unable as yet to form any conclusive judgment on the nature of the calamitous events which have just occurred in France. But as far as we are yet informed, the facts seem to be as follows:—

For some time past the silk-weavers of Lyons had been at variance with their employers, and a strike had taken place, to which the emissaries of the republican associations of Paris had endeavoured, but with little success, to give a political character.¹ The strike, like most other strikes, lasted for a certain period and terminated; and the operatives returned to work at the old prices. A well-meaning and prudent government would have rejoiced at this pacific termination of the struggle, and would have spared itself the odium and danger of violent measures when the only rational purpose of such measures had already been attained. But Louis Philippe’s policy is of quite another complexion. After the strike was over, he chose to prosecute its principal leaders. This excited a commotion, and the people would not suffer the trial to proceed. Mutual acts of hostility occurred, and the affair growing serious, the malcontents of all classes, political or not, united their strength, and burst out at once into a Republican and a Trades’ Union insurrection. The insurgents maintained for five days, with the most desperate valour, a sanguinary contest with the troops, which ended in their total defeat. Of the loss of lives and property, and the injury to the town itself, nothing is yet known but that they are immense.

The events at Paris have been of a very different character. The Government placed a formidable force under arms, and gave a military aspect to the whole city. As usual at Paris, and as was perhaps intended, this did not prevent, but, on the contrary, promoted the concourse of people. In one of the most crowded parts of the city (the Place du Châtelet), the police attempted a repetition of those outrages against the persons of unoffending spectators, of which their conduct on the Place de la Bourse, a few weeks ago, afforded so disgusting a specimen.² The people were in too excited a state to brook this; a collision took place; and fighting having once begun, the same consequences followed as in June 1832.³ That portion of the more hot-headed political malcontents who, without having premeditated an insurrection, are always ready to join in one, attempted to form barricades, but were speedily overpowered; and the penalty of their folly will now be borne by the French people, on whose necks they have helped to rivet the yoke of an iron despotism.

The Government has expressed its intention to apply to the Chambers for what even itself calls the strongest measures of repression.⁴ What these are it has not yet disclosed, they are probably such as will confiscate, temporarily at the least, all the remaining liberties of France. Meanwhile the insurgents, and all whom it chuses to accuse as such, are to be tried by the Chamber of Peers, that they may be deprived of the protection of a Jury; and, in direct defiance of law, the Government has taken the opportunity of suppressing the Tribune newspaper—nailing up its printing-office, dismissing the compositors, and depriving the printer, M. Mie (who has also been arrested) of the patent, a license, without which, by an odious abuse, no one in France can carry on the business of a printer.⁵ Of course, no other printer will consent to risk the same fate by giving to this obnoxious paper (which has been prosecuted ninety-six times since the July Revolution), the aid of his types and printing presses.

It is said that no fewer than a thousand arrests have taken place in Paris alone.

Another week will show what sort of vengeance Louis Philippe means on this occasion to execute upon his vanquished enemies. There is no doubt that it will be left entirely to his choice, and there is every reason to believe that it will be most unsparing.

Upon the subject of the Trades’ Unions, and a warning reference to the bloodshed in France, Lord Howick made the following fierce remark:

He could not sit down without noticing the allusion of the honourable and gallant member opposite to the disturbances in France. It was said that this ought to teach them that it was not by a course of rigour that they were to put an end to proceedings of this kind. These proceedings taught him (Lord Howick) a very different lesson. It was a struggle between two classes, and whatever side obtained a victory, a dreadful and lamentable slaughter must take place.⁶

We were convinced that the issue of the unfortunate struggle in France would encourage the Whig Ministry to dare extremities. The proposed procession of the Unions on Monday is most ill-judged, and from any accident or foul play the most frightful consequences may ensue.

250.

FRENCH NEWS [96]

EXAMINER, 27 APR., 1834, P. 265

This item is headed “London, April 27, 1834.” For Mill’s bibliographic entry, see No. 246. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Article on France.”

the french government has introduced two measures; one for increasing the army to 410,000 men, the smallest number with which it professes to be able to coerce the disaffected;¹ the other for the more effectual punishment of all who are taken in arms against the Government, who assist in any insurrectionary acts, or who possess arms or ammunition without the license required by law.² These propositions are of a less despotic character than the public were apprehensive of; but the Committee of the Chamber is expected, and was almost invited by the new Minister of Justice, to amend the latter measure, by subjecting all persons accused of rebellion to the jurisdiction of Courts Martial.³ The état de siège, which so scandalised the public two years ago, is thus to be made permanent.⁴

The horror and disgust of all Paris has been excited by the conduct of some of the soldiers of the 15th regiment of infantry, who, having been fired upon during the late insurrection by a pistol shot from one of the upper windows of a house in the Rue Transnonain, entered the house and massacred all the inhabitants, to the number of between twenty and thirty persons.⁵

251.

FRENCH NEWS [97]

EXAMINER, 11 MAY, 1834, PP. 297-8

This item is headed “London, May 11, 1834.” It and No. 254 are described in Mill’s bibliography as “The summary of French news in the Examiner of 11th and 25 May 1834” (MacMinn, p. 40). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Article on France.”

the preliminary proceedings of the Chamber of Peers for the trial of the persons alleged to be implicated in the late insurrections at Lyons, Saint Etienne, and Paris, have not yet received publicity. In the meantime, however, the French government have resorted to another of their accustomed tricks for evading trial by jury. That mode of trial is limited by the French law to some of the higher class of crimes, and to political offences.¹ A strike for wages, in France is an offence, but not, it seems, a political offence; therefore, the offence of instigating to a strike is not a political offence, and may consequently be tried by the tribunal of correctional police, without a jury. It happened that the Société des Droits de l’Homme a few months ago nominated a committee which placed itself in communication with various trades’ unions, then in the course of formation at Paris, for the express purpose of convincing them that strikes for wages are of no use, and that they ought to concentrate their efforts for the purpose of obtaining redress for their political grievances. This was instigating a strike; for instigating a strike, the members composing the committee have been tried without a jury, convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for periods of two and three years.²

There has been a debate of several days in the Chamber of Deputies, on the estimates for Algiers.³ That possession, which was there shown to be more costly than advantageous to France herself, might yet have been so managed that its annexation to the French dominions might have been a benefit to civilization. But it has been utterly mismanaged, and the people so ill-treated, that we have ceased to wish that France should have the country, and we scarcely regret the symptoms which the Chamber has manifested of a desire to relinquish it.

252.

WALTER ON THE POOR LAW AMENDMENT BILL

MORNING CHRONICLE, 12 MAY, 1834, P. 2

After two years of writing only for the Examiner (which continued to be his main newspaper voice for the next few months), Mill here returns to the Morning Chronicle for which (except for the translation given in App. C) he had not written since 5 June, 1828. He is responding to “The Poor Laws,” The Times, 8 May (Thursday, not Friday, as Mill says), 1834, p. 6, which in turn recommends a pamphlet by John Walter (1776-1847). ALetter to the Electors of Berkshire, on the New System for the Management of the Poor, Proposed by the Government (London: Ridgway, 1834). Walter, son of the John Walter who founded The Times (1739-1812), gave the newspaper its character and importance. The discussion centred around the controversial new Poor Law, “A Bill for the Amendment and Better Administration of the Laws Relating to the Poor in England and Wales,” 4 William IV (18 Apr., 1834), PP, 1834, III, 235-90 (enacted as 4 & 5 William IV, c. 76, in 1834). This unheaded article is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A leading article in the Morning Chronicle of 12th May 1834, on Mr. Walter’s pamphlet against the Poor Law Amendment Bill” (MacMinn, p. 40). See also No. 253, a leader on the Poor Law in the Sun published on the same day as this, and No. 265.

the times, of Friday last, contains nearly two columns of extracts from a Pamphlet against the Poor Law Amendment Bill, which it introduces to the notice of its readers in the following words:

Among the numerous Pamphlets on the Poor Laws which have reached us, we have been struck with the following passages in a Letter from a County Member to his Constituents, which we extract, because we think them deserving the attention of our readers, particularly at this period.

The nameless County Member, whose Pamphlet our contemporary has been struck with, and so studiously explains his motives for quoting, is John Walter, Esq., M.P. for Berkshire, and the principal proprietor of The Times. There is a considerable difference between the tone of the pamphlet and that of the newspaper. When Mr. Walter uses his own voice, he “roars” much more “gently” than when he speaks through his “thundering” Editor.¹ His language is not brought, like that of his journeymen, from Billingsgate; nor does he show any of that canine rabies which is characteristic of his newspaper, whether in a bad or in a good cause, and which has fixed on it indelibly the vulgar epithet originally stamped upon it by a greater master in blackguardism.² In substantial merits, Mr. Walter’s own argumentation, and that of the stronger and coarser hand whom he employs, are much upon a par; but that utter disregard of every fact or argument militating with their conclusion, which is common to the County Member and his penman, has, in the latter personage, every appearance of being intentional, while in the former it seems the involuntary result of a real incapacity to feel, even in ever so slight a degree, the force of any facts and arguments which can be presented to him. There are considerable indications of sincerity in Mr. Walter’s performance. From this specimen we should imagine him to be a fair enough sample, both as to their good intentions and as to the quality of their intellects, of that sort of English country gentlemen, who, by their mode of administering the Poor Laws, have so frightfully demoralized our peasantry, and who (what we care far less about) will in a few years, if such counsels as Mr. Walter’s are listened to, have handed over the whole residue of their own rents to be the patrimony of the paupers, and made the land indeed (in the phrase imputed to Spence and his followers) the people’s farm.³

Mr. Walter, we understand, is reputed in his neighbourhood “the poor man’s Magistrate,” which always means one with whom the pauper is generally in the right, and the overseer in the wrong; one who is liberal in granting orders for relief after the parish officers have refused it. Liberality in a Magistrate is like the liberality of an absolute King; it consists in giving away very freely other people’s money, and, in the one case as in the other, almost always to the undeserving. A “poor man’s Magistrate” is one who is ever ready to compel a parish, in which perhaps he himself has no property, nor pays a single farthing to the rates, to maintain all who choose to demand parish assistance in a style of comfort, ease, and liberty, which makes them objects of envy to those who earn their own subsistence and refuse to be supported by other people. Mr. Walter is understood to be such a person; one of that class of Magistrates who, from compassionate feelings or love of popularity, or both combined, have laid upon their consciences the responsibility of having made the bulk of the agricultural population of England paupers at heart (progressively verging downwards into the condition of paupers in fact). It is, therefore, quite natural that Mr. Walter should greatly dislike the Poor Law Bill, the object of which is to deprive such men of the power of doing any further mischief, and to repair, as far as may be, the incalculable evil they have already done.

It is no very easy matter to chase Mr. Walter’s reasoning through the labyrinth of his pages. The staple of his pamphlet is general denunciations, expressions of alarm, and predictions of evil, with here and there some grains of argument scattered by the way-side. Let us pick them up and examine them.

The chief object of Mr. Walter’s dislike is the proposition of a Central Board. Of this he says,

It is an inversion of what has been esteemed the natural and regular order of all good Government, which rises from the management of families, parishes, towns, counties, to the general Administration of the State. Here the State starts first in the character of a Central Board, and diffuses its regulations below. This is what the French call centralization. Everything springs from Government in France; the people do nothing for themselves; roads, bridges, canals, are all the work of the State. I do not know that this is a happy example to copy.

(P. 5.)

This is one of the finest instances we have lately seen of a common-place, in the original sense of the phrase—an argument which will serve all turns equally well—a standing argument which saves all inquiry into the merits of the case—an argument which you may know beforehand may always be used in all cases of a particular kind, without taking the trouble to look at them—a blank objection, to be filled up with any measure you please. In a book of directions to Members of Parliament how to make out a case, this might stand as one of the instructions: whenever it is proposed to entrust any duty to the Government, or to appoint any officer to superintend and check a multitude of other officers, cry Centralization! Be the measure good or bad, that is one thing which may always be said against it. Any person of sense and candour would think it necessary to inquire what duties may be most advantageously entrusted to local, and what to general functionaries, and whether the case in question fall within the one or the other class: a fool saves himself the trouble, by making an objection which avails against all government whatsoever. The Courts at Westminster are a case of centralization; all the Cabinet Ministers are cases of centralization; it is centralization to have a King; it is centralization to have a House of Lords or of Commons: Mr. Walter’s objection is exactly as strong, neither more nor less, against every one of these institutions, as against a Central Board. Why should not “the people,” as Mr. Walter terms the little knots of jobbers who are called vestries, make their own laws? Why should they not administer justice for themselves? Why not make war and peace, vote the supplies, and keep up their own standing army? “The natural and regular order of all good government rises from families, parishes, towns, and counties, to the State.” But these are things, it seems, which are better done by the State than either by the family or the parish—else why have any Government at all? Take the trouble, then, to examine whether pauper management, in the department of superintendence and control, be not one of these things.

Mr. Walter cannot distinguish between two countries so differently situated as France and England; between a country which has always been overgoverned, and one in which Government scarcely interferes in anything. In France, the King and his Ministers are the real governing power of the country, and it is they who need to be restrained; here the real Government of the country practically resides in the local functionaries, the magistrates, overseers, &c., and if the King and his Ministers need controul, they (i.e. the local functionaries) need it infinitely more, because they are infinitely less under the public eye. France wants local bodies to be a check upon the Government; England wants a Government to be a check upon the local bodies.

Mr. Walter’s next argument is, that the grounds which Ministers have alleged for their proposition make directly against them. They say that their system has been tried in above a hundred parishes, and succeeded.

Now what system is this of which his Lordship thus predicates the success? A system consisting of district workhouses! I have not heard that an additional workhouse has been built. [N.B. The parishes had workhouses already.] A system consisting of District Commissioners and Metropolitan Commissioners—a system without Overseers and Magistrates—finally, the system which is now recommended? No; it was totally impossible. The system, therefore, which produced this wonderful change in the hundred parishes was, in truth, and must have been, the old system. Why then, I say, abolish such a system instead of “improving and well regulating it,” as has been done in these 100 parishes? Why substitute one in its place perfectly theoretic? [&c., &c., &c.]

(Pp. 9-10.)⁴

Now let us just consider what the Ministerial proposition is. There are in England and Wales about 14,000 parishes. Of these about 100 have been managed well, the remaining 13,900 ill. What says Lord Althorp? He says, what 100 parishes out of fourteen thousand have done for themselves, with the most unqualified success, while the other thirteen thousand nine hundred, instead of following the good example, looked on and did nothing; this, we must find some means of inducing the 13,900 to do.⁵ We will adopt the system of management which has been so beneficially tried in the 100 parishes; but in order to introduce that system, we cannot trust to machinery which has succeeded in only 100 cases, and failed in 13,900. “No, [says Mr. Walter,] the system which has succeeded in 100 cases, cannot need any alteration.” But it has failed in 13,900. What then? Let the 13,900 parishes, to be sure, imitate the 100. But they will not. Compel them, it may perhaps be said. Why that is exactly the object of the Bill, and the sole object.

The creation of a Central Board, with discretionary authority, instead of being a harsh measure, is the only one by which the task can be accomplished without harshness. A Board can relax its orders, can grant time, can make exceptions and concessions to peculiarities of circumstance. An Act of Parliament can do none of these things. A superintending functionary can gently untie all those knots which the Legislature, if it proceeded by an imperative statute, must peremptorily cut. The very object which the opponents of the measure stickle for—a relaxation of the proposed rule for confining the relief of the able-bodied to the workhouse—cannot be granted without defeating the whole measure, unless there be a Central Board. To such a Board, a discretionary power of making exceptions to that rule may safely and beneficially be granted. But if the law is to be administered by Vestries, and Magistrates without any superintending authority, there could be no hope of improvement unless out-door relief were entirely prohibited. If the slightest opening be left for it, the same motives which have produced the present deplorable abuse of that mode of relief, will continue to produce the same fatal effects. Every increase of the latitude given to the Central Board is an alleviation of the real or apparent harshness of the measure as it respects the pauper.

Mr. Walter advocates the abolition of the allowance system; he would have no one relieved without coming entirely upon the parish, nor any relief granted except in payment of labour; but he would have labour provided for the paupers without bringing them into the workhouse. Now if there is one thing that is more obvious than another, both from the evidence before the Commissioners and from the common sense of the case, it is that pauper labour anywhere but in the workhouse is merely a particular kind of idleness. A person who is sure of employment whether his labour be efficient or only nominal, will make no exertion that he can possibly avoid. An able-bodied pauper, anywhere but in the workhouse, is necessarily, and is proved to be in point of fact, far better off than the independent labourer. If the allowance system were to be abolished, and no workhouses provided, all, or nearly all, who now receive partial relief, would come upon the parish altogether. If, on the contrary, workhouses are provided and properly regulated, no one will choose to enter them who can obtain an honest living by unaided industry.

Mr. Walter speaks [p. 37] of the “evidence already published by the Poor Law Commissioners as to the immorality and depravity which the present workhouse system daily generates:” the very reason why workhouses are, by the proposed Bill, placed under the superintendence of the Central Board, in order that all this immorality may be restrained by adequate regulations. Mr. Walter says that, under any alteration, if crowds of able-bodied persons are congregated within the same walls, they must be demoralized. True, perhaps; but any parish employment must congregate crowds of able-bodied persons. If they were not congregated, but set to work apart, the parish, for every labourer it employs, must pay a superintending officer to look after him. Accordingly, when they are not “congregated” in workhouses, they are congregated somewhere else—generally in the roads; and if Mr. Walter, in looking at “the Evidence published by the Poor Law Commissioners,” had not confined his attention to what seemed to favour his own views, he would have found the demoralizing effect of the employment of paupers on the roads to be quite as remarkable as even that of “immuring” them in the present abominable workhouses. [P. 37.]⁶ But, in the one case, the evil arises from the very nature of the case—from the impossibility of superintendence, and the unavoidable absence of any kind of classification. In workhouses, there may be the most perfect superintendence, and any degree of classification is deemed advisable.

We have now exhausted everything bearing any semblance of argument which we can find in Mr. Walter’s pages. The rest is such stuff as this:—“The boast of the English Constitution, that it was one of practice rather than of theory”—“worked well though it read ill”—“a scheme theoretic merely”—“speculators knowing little of the habits and usages of Englishmen”—“such a change never took place in this country since the time of the conquest”—“change of which no one can foresee the consequences”—“change in the British Constitution itself”—“revolution in the manners and habits of the British people”—“consequences which cannot be looked at without dismay,” &c. &c. &c. [Pp. 21-3.]

In conclusion, as Mr. Walter’s Editor politely intimates that whoever ventures to say anything in behalf of this measure, after his fiat has gone forth against it, can have no motive but the hope of finding opportunities for profit, “and perhaps for peculation,” by employment under the Bill; it may be as well to state that the writer of the present article has neither had any employment, paid or unpaid, in connection with the Poor Law Enquiry, nor will have any in connection with the authorities to be created by the Bill.⁷

253.

THE POOR LAW AMENDMENT BILL

SUN, 12 MAY, 1834, P. 2

On the same day as Mill’s article on the Poor Law in the Morning Chronicle (No. 252), this leader appeared in the Sun, its concentration being on the parliamentary discussion. This is Mill’s first contribution to the Sun. Headed “London, Monday Evening, May 12, 1834,” it is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A leading article on the Poor Law Amendment Bill in the Sun of 12th May 1834.”

the majority of friday night, the most overwhelming by which any great measure of national improvement has been carried through any of its more important stages within our remembrance, places the fate of the Poor Laws’ Amendment Bill beyond all peril.¹ And many are the instructive lessons which a Ministry capable of profiting by experience may derive from this brilliant instance of successful daring. Ministers have set themselves an admirable example; let us hope that they will follow it; let it not be lost upon themselves, as it certainly will not upon others. The spirit in which this measure was conceived forms a most striking contrast to that of ordinary politicians. They have been moved to exertion by the mere magnitude of the evil to be remedied, without waiting till it was clamorously urged upon their notice from without. Having resolved to do something, they really gave their minds to the consideration, not of the floating opinions which they might be able to collect upon the subject, but of the subject itself; and asked themselves, not what measure was most likely to meet with general acceptance, but what remedy was best adapted to the nature and extent of the disease. Further (and to this, next to the goodness of their cause, they are most indebted for their success), while the subject was still under investigation, they took measures for informing the public mind. The facts and reasonings which were to form the basis of their own conviction, they laid before the nation at large, and supplied to all persons who took an interest in the question the means of acquiring a very competent knowledge of it before they commenced legislating. Having thus laid the foundation of what governments hitherto have so seldom known the value of—a rational and enlightened public judgment—they, with a manly confidence in that judgment, dared to propose all that they clearly saw to be indispensable. They came forward with no truckling half-measure, but threw themselves upon the intelligence of the country, and claimed support simply on the ground of deserving it, and the result is the most signal triumph. Let this be an example to them of what enters so little into the calculations of vulgar statesmen—the vast power, in the present state of the world, of truth and reason. That power is singularly underrated, which is the less astonishing as it is so seldom tried. That knaves should not know how to estimate it can surprise no one. But the multitude of well-meaning persons who prefer any means of influencing the people rather than a direct appeal to their reason, and place their trust anywhere rather than in strong argument strongly stated, is wonderful and lamentable. If the success of poor law reform could cure either Whigs, Tories, or Radicals, of this weakness, it would be the beginning of a new era in the greatness of England, and in the civilization of the world.

What is now of importance is, that Ministers should stand firm, and resist any mutilation of the measure in passing through the committee. There may be room for amendment in some of the minor details; and the great principles of the measure may be considered as safe. The only danger is, that under the appearance of a trifling alteration in the details, the enemies of the Bill may succeed in slipping in something which may clog the main wheels of the machinery.

The point which it is of most importance to protect is the very one which has been most assailed—the powers of the Central Board; a more ridiculous clamour than the outcry against this Board, coming, as it does, from persons who admit the existing evils to be unbearable, we never remember to have met with. All attempts to reform the pauper system by laws, without some person to look after their execution, is visionary. How did the abuses come in? Not for want of laws; for it is notorious that all the practices which have brought on the present intolerable evils, were, from the commencement, and have at all times been, illegal. Declare them so once more, and what will be the effect? Perhaps another hundred parishes in the whole country will follow the example of the hundred, or thereabouts, who have already reformed their administration. In all the others the same motives which have introduced the abuses will cause their continuance, and the progress of ruin will scarcely be retarded, much less stopped. Whatever laws you enact, if you wish them to be obeyed, you must create a special authority, with power to examine whether they are obeyed or not, and to enforce obedience, and this is literally all the power which the bill confers upon the Central Board. The discretionary authority which has been so much declaimed against goes to nothing but the power of tempering in the application, or altogether dispensing with, those rules, which, if there was no such power, must be peremptorily enforced in all places, and under all circumstances.

For instance, the fundamental principle of all poor law reform is, that relief to the able-bodied shall, except in peculiar cases, be given only in the workhouse. The bill accordingly says, that the Board may compel parishes to enlarge their workhouses, and if they do not voluntarily consent, may tax them to the extent of one-tenth of one year’s rates for that purpose.² Therefore we have an outcry as if heaven and earth were coming together; one journal talks of “bashaws,” another of the “star chamber.”³ Meanwhile, how stands the obvious reason of the case? That if the bill had not done this, it must itself have ordained that every parish must provide a workhouse adequate to contain the whole of its pauper population. The discretion of the Board is positively nothing but a power to mitigate those pecuniary and other obligations which the law must otherwise have imposed in their fullest extent upon the whole kingdom, without any exception, or consideration of local circumstances.

Again, the Board has power, by the provisions of the bill, to determine whether any and what relief shall be given to able-bodied persons not resident in the workhouse.⁴ The necessity of putting an end to out-door relief, as a general rule, is so clearly demonstrated, both by theory and experience, that the most violent opponents of the measure go no further than to say that the rule ought not to be inflexible, and that a latitude must be given. A latitude, then, is given, but as the parish authorities are altogether unfit to be trusted with it, the legislature, supposing it to be at all in earnest in desiring poor-law reform, would, if there were no Central Board, have no choice but to prohibit out-door relief altogether. Yet so contemptibly ignorant is the clamour, that the very persons who accuse the bill, even as it now stands, of harshness, are the same who inveigh against the power created expressly for the purpose of moderating its harsher provisions, whenever it is not found necessary to enforce them strictly.

We trust the Ministry will not give ear to Mr. Hawes’s suggestion of what he calls a tribunal of appeal.⁵ Appeals are on questions of fact, or on questions of law, not on questions of expediency; there cannot be an appeal against a regulation. If a body were constituted with power to review and set aside the regulations of the Central Board, that body could only be another Central Board, and instead of one “triumvirate” there would be two, one to watch the other. We have not two treasuries, or two admiralties, one to act, and the other to look on and stop the first when it does wrong. There is no need of paying two sets of officers to share the responsibility between them. Responsibility to Parliament and public opinion is the only check it is possible to have upon either, and that check can only be weakened, or rather annihilated, by being divided.

254.

DEATH OF LAFAYETTE

EXAMINER, 25 MAY, 1834, P. 329

Lafayette died on 20 May, Mill’s birthday. This article is headed “London, May 25, 1834.” Though included in Mill’s bibliographic entry quoted in the headnote to No. 251 as a “summary of French news,” it is listed in Mill’s copy of the Examiner in Somerville College as “Obituary notice of Lafayette,” a more accurate description.

lafayette is no more. The last survivor of the illustrious founders of American independence—the last of the great names of the first French Revolution, has perished from among us: Europe has lost him, who, for forty years, has stood before the eyes of her people as the most virtuous of her public men.

Lafayette is, indeed, one of the most cheering examples in history of the influence exercised over the minds and affairs of mankind, by a life of consistent nobleness. His talents were respectable, but not eminent; neither as a man of action nor of speculation did he possess extraordinary mental endowments. He owed all his ascendancy to his heroic character. It was by his singleness of purpose, his chivalrous generosity, his undaunted courage, and his unfailing self-devotion, that he gained a larger share than has been possessed by any human being since Washington, of the veneration of mankind.

Those who could find no other flaw in his character have accused him of vanity: would to Heaven there were more persons in the world whose vanity was of the same kind! Never, we should imagine, was a man whom two great nations worshipped almost as a god so little intoxicated by his elevation. He never hesitated to confess an error; was never ashamed to retrace a false step; he never failed, when occasion required, to immolate to his country’s good, not only his ambition, his fortune, his liberty, and his personal safety, but what was far dearer to him, the ascendancy of his favourite opinions, and the love of that people whose honest sympathy had been the delight of his life.

A biography of Lafayette, by one capable of comprehending him, would be one of the most inspiring memorials of virtue since Plutarch’s Lives, and would have much of the same potency with that inestimable work, in forming great and good men.

255.

THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHARACTER

MONTHLY REPOSITORY, N.S. VIII (JUNE 1834), 385-95

Though it was published in a monthly review rather than a newspaper, this open letter, signed “A.” (the signature Mill was normally to use in the London and Westminster), was intended for Le National (see letter to John Robertson, 28 July, 1837; EL, CW, Vol. XII, pp. 343-4); the recipient of the open letter was Armand Carrel, editor of Le National, with whom Mill had in 1833 agreed to exchange articles (ibid., 25 Nov., 1833, p. 197). Perhaps because of the difficulties Le National was having (see Nos. 232, 247, and 266), Mill submitted his article to the Monthly Repository. Headed “Letter from an Englishman to a Frenchman, on a Recent Apology in The Journal des Débats, for the Faults of the English National Character,” it is described in his bibliography as “A ‘Letter from an Englishman to a Frenchman, on a recent apology in the Journal des Débats, for the faults of the English national character’ in the Monthly Repository for June 1834”

(MacMinn, p. 40).

at your suggestion I have thrown upon paper, though in a hasty and imperfect manner, some of the thoughts which occurred to me after perusing in the Journal des Débats under the signature C—s, a criticism on Mr. Bulwer’s recent work, England and the English.¹

The well-known author of these articles is a person to whose writings on England some attention is due. He is one of the few Frenchmen who have a considerable acquaintance with English literature; and he knows, for a foreigner, much of England. His knowledge, however, is of a kind which reminds me of a saying of one of my own countrymen. Somebody having, in his presence, praised a third person very highly for the extensiveness of his knowledge, “Yes,” he replied, “he knows exactly enough of every subject to have the wrong opinion.” Precisely of this kind is the knowledge which M. Chales possesses of England. He knows just enough to encourage him to entertain the most erroneous opinions. He knows just enough to believe that whatever he does not know, does not exist. He knows just enough to be able to read a work, by a writer of acknowledged merit, abounding with descriptions and exemplifications of many of the most striking features in the social state of Great Britain, and to close the book without having received a single impression; never dreaming that he can have any thing to learn on the subject of England from an instructed and clever Englishman; setting down, in the quietest manner, as groundless and worthless, every thing in the book which goes beyond what he previously knew.

It would be ungracious in an Englishman to be severe on a foreigner for not being severe upon us. I am glad when a Frenchman praises the English; I am glad when, in a certain stage of his intellectual developement, he even overpraises us, as I am also when an Englishman, in the same stage of his progress, overpraises the French. It is a natural reaction against the national prejudice and antipathy from which both countries have but recently emerged. It is also a very natural middle stage in the expansion of an individual intellect. A vulgar person sees only the virtues of his own nation, only the faults of other nations: but when, ourselves beginning to rise above the herd, we first perceive the faults which are prevalent among our own countrymen, we are apt to pass into the contrary extreme, and to exaggerate the degree of positive excellence which is implied by the absence of those particular faults in other nations. While we continue bigoted, all we see in foreigners is, that they have not our virtues: when we become half-enlightened, we sometimes see only that they have not our faults, forgetting, or not sufficiently recollecting, that they have other faults which may be equally or more pernicious.

This last one-sidedness Mr. Bulwer may have partly fallen into; and even if, as I am more inclined to think, he is not justly chargeable with it, yet the tone of severe animadversion in which he speaks to his own countrymen of their national vices, might require to be modified if he were speaking of those same vices to foreigners; just as we should remonstrate with a brother or a friend in far stronger terms than we should use in speaking of the faults of that brother or friend to a stranger, who is not already familiar with their good qualities. A writer, therefore, who had to introduce Mr. Bulwer’s book to the French public, would have had much to say in mitigation of the unfavourable impression which might be produced by such strictures on the English if taken without qualification. He might have said to the French reader, “Here is a powerfully drawn picture of the faults of the English character; but a character is not to be judged solely by its faults. The characteristic faults, both of an individual and of a people, always point to their characteristic virtues; and if you display the one without the other, you may produce either a panegyric or a satire, which you will, but not a fair judgment. By insisting, in the same manner, upon the faults of the French character, without placing by their side those excellences which are often the bright side of the very same qualities, a picture might be made of France as repulsive as Mr. Bulwer’s picture of England, though with a different kind of repulsiveness.”

Had M. Chales reviewed Mr. Bulwer’s book in this spirit, he would have merited the thanks of both countries. But the course he has adopted is the very reverse. Instead of bringing forward the other half of the truth, he denies that half which Mr. Bulwer has so cleverly delineated. Instead of teaching France to know us, he teaches us not to know ourselves. Instead of using our example to improve his own countrymen, he will not allow us to be improved by theirs. Instead of pointing out to the French how much good, and good of the highest and rarest kind, and good which they are far from having yet equalled, coexists in England with all the evil which Mr. Bulwer describes, he boldly avers that the evil is not evil.

Such commendation of England is worse than the ancient antipathy. It is unnecessary for me, writing to you, to heap up common places on the importance of friendship and sympathy between two such nations; but we want you to sympathize in our virtues, not in our faults. The wiser and better of the English will not thank a Frenchman for stepping in with a denial or a vindication of all that they most disapprove in their own countrymen, all that they are daily and hourly struggling against, all that they are striving to make their countrymen ashamed of. The disposition to hold fast by a favourite vice does not stand in need of any foreign support. The moral teachers of England, those who are labouring for the regeneration of England’s national character, might have hoped for aid and encouragement from the nobler spirits abroad; they are at least justified in presuming that they know their own country as well as M. Chales knows it, that they wish every jot as well to it, and are quite as unlikely to judge it harshly, where harshness is not deserved.

Mr. Bulwer has employed a large part of his work in contending against what every Englishman of the slightest elevation of soul has long cried out against, as emphatically and disgustingly our national vice: the universal and all-absorbing struggle to be or to appear rich, and the readiness to make any sacrifice of ease, comfort, or personal dignity, for the appearance of mixing with, or of being honoured with the notice of, the wealthy. For his spirited denunciation of this vice he is called to account by M. Chales in the following terms:

Supposez qu’un Anglais, qui sait que le commerce c’est toute la Grande Bretagne, et que le commerce sans la garantie de la propriété n’existe pas, écrive deux volumes pour se moquer de la propriété, pour la bafouer, comme fille aînée de l’égoïsme et comme mère de tous les abus; que penseriez-vous de lui?—Qu’il faut l’envoyer à la maison de force s’il est dans son bon sens, et à Bedlam s’il est en délire.—Envoyez-y donc M. Bulwer, l’auteur de Paul Clifford, de Pelham, et de Devereux, M. Bulwer devenu saint-simonien, M. Bulwer qui se moque de la propriété et qui n’épargne pas le commerce. Imaginez ce que ce serait qu’une Angleterre sans commerce, une Angleterre spartiate, qui croupirait dans son ignorance et dans son abrutissement. Le bel esprit M. Bulwer a des railleries très mordantes contre le patriotisme égoïste de l’homme qui aime son pays comme sa propriété personnelle. Tout ce que nous aimons, ne l’aimons-nous pas comme nous appartenant, ou comme devant nous appartenir? M. Bulwer fait des caricatures vives, grotesques, coloriées, et s’attaque surtout au gros commerçant de la Cité, appuyé sur la colonne de chiffres et plein de son importance. Où serait, sans de tels appuis, la prospérité de la Grande Bretagne? Où seraient ses immenses fabriques, ses gigantesques usines, et ses admirables ports? Ces choses ne se font pas avec du dandysme et du bel esprit. M. Bulwer ressemble trop à ces sophistes Athéniens qui amusaient le peuple aux dépens de ce qu’il avait de meilleur et de plus utile, pour lui apprendre les jolies phrases, les images agréables, et les frivoles combats de la parole.²

We have heard of sophists, both at Athens and in other places, who have amused the people at the expense of what are usually considered to be “ce qu’ils avaient de meilleur et de plus utile,” their love of virtue, their love of freedom, their love of their country, their love of the pursuits of intellect, their love of God. But this is the first time we have seen any one reproached with attempting to laugh his countrymen out of the love of money; the first time a people were ever warned not to let themselves be cajoled into laying down the desire to grow rich, or, as Mr. M’Culloch would phrase it, “the desire inherent in all mankind of bettering their condition,”³ by the allurements of “jolies phrases” and “images agréables.” Would to God that there were in the world, that there had ever been in the world since it emerged from chaos, any people, any the smallest, paltriest tribe in the wildest, most inhospitable desert, among whom the danger lay on that side! Alas! it is not against such small weapons as a few declamatory phrases and bons mots, that the aid of moralists and politicians needs be invoked to strengthen a passion, against the excesses of which the highest degree of human culture yet attained is barely able to contribute some small counterpoise, and to neutralize some of its more detestable, of its more pitiable influences!

Did M. Chales ever know what it was to live in a country where the whole of life is but one incessant turmoil and struggle about obtaining the means of livelihood? where the grand object of the existence of him who has five hundred pounds a year, is to make them a thousand? of him who has one thousand, to make them two? of him who has two thousand, to make them ten? where next to getting more, the ruling passion is to appear to the world as if you had already got more, by spending or seeming to spend more than you have? where hardly any branch of education is valued, hardly any kind of knowledge cultivated, which does not lead in the directest way to some money-getting end? where whatever of any higher culture still forms part of the received systems of education, is strikingly in contrast with the spirit of the age, and is kept alive only by some remains of respect for old customs and traditional feelings? where (except a few of the richest of all, who in every country lead idle and useless lives) scarce a man can be found who has leisure to think, leisure to read, leisure to feel? where such a phenomenon is scarcely known, as a man who prefers his liberty to a little more money, who, like so many thousands in France, can sit down contented with a small patrimony, affording him the necessaries and comforts of life, but nothing for ostentation, and devote himself to literature, politics, science, art, or even to the mere enjoyment of quiet leisure? where by most it would scarcely be deemed credible if it were told that such men existed? where one who professed to act upon such principles would be supposed either to have some purpose to serve by assuming a false character, or to have renounced wealth because wealth had renounced him, because he had not talents or industry to acquire it; or, in fine, to be an odd, eccentric, unaccountable person, bordering upon a fool or a madman? For, the mass of what, by a truly English expression, are called “the better classes,” are quite unconscious of any thing peculiar in their eagerness for wealth; they suppose that it is natural, and that all other persons feel as they do; they do not philosophize on it, and make a theory to justify it; they leave that to their French apologist. And the truth is, it is not properly the love of money which is actuating them; in nine cases out of ten it is not properly a passion at all,—it is a mere habit; the acquisition of money is of such immense value in their eyes, not because they really care much for it, but because they care for nothing else. Where they are conscious of a motive, what they are aiming at is consequence: to keep up their importance in the eyes of others, by keeping up what almost alone gives importance in England, the appearance of a large income. But they are often unconscious even of this; they are following a blind mechanical impulse, which renders money, and the reputation of having money, the immediate end of their actions, without their knowing that it is so, far less why it is so, and they are merely astonished and incredulous when they meet with any one who acts as if with him the case were otherwise. But if their eyes could be opened to the real state of their own souls, if their imaginations could be cultured up to the bare perception of the existence of riches which are above money, and which money will not purchase, believe me they would be the last persons to make the kind of defence for themselves which M. Chales makes for them. If they knew what they lose by caring for nothing in the world but to “get on” in it, they would laugh at the bare idea of sacrificing the tranquillity of their lives for the sake of “la prospérité de la Grande Bretagne.” Yes, it is too true that in England a man is but one wheel in a machine; and that the human race, judging from English experience, would seem to have been created in order that there might be “immenses fabriques,” “gigantesques usines,” and “admirables ports.” But though this is the result, it is not the intention. A foreigner lands in London or Liverpool, and seeing such docks, such warehouses, such manufactories as he never saw before, thinks it vastly fine to belong to a country which has such things; but the merchant, or the manufacturer, does he ever think of taking credit to himself for toiling and scraping in order that his country may possess docks and manufactories? The man has no such thought, nor would it afford him any solace if he had: he is only thinking, poor man, of how to escape from bankruptcy, or how to be able to move into a finer house, in a more fashionable quarter of the town.

If the writer to whom I am replying has never known such a country as that which I have endeavoured to place before his imagination, let him bless heaven that he has not; that he lives in a country where money, though it adds to a person’s consequence, is not necessary to it; where a great thinker or a great writer is a more important individual than the richest landowner or banker; where any one who has a whole coat on his back, though he live in a single room on a fifth floor, is thought and thinks himself as fit for any society or any salon in the capital, and is treated on as perfect a footing of equality when there, as the richest man in the nation. Let M. Chales well meditate on these advantages, and if he would learn by contrast how to appreciate them, let him read Mr. Bulwer’s book; for as yet, it is evident, he has but looked into it.

Does not he accuse Mr. Bulwer of having written his book expressly to decry the institution of property? of wishing to put an end to commerce? of demanding “une Angleterre sans commerce, une Angleterre spartiate, qui croupirait dans son ignorance et dans son abrutissement?” Now, every person either in England or France who has read the book, knows that there is not in it, from beginning to end, so much as one word either against the institution of property or against commerce. It is only M. Chales who in his simplicity imagines, that whoever hints that the trading spirit and the love of money-getting can possibly exist in excess, must be an enemy to property and to commerce. All the moral writers who have ever lived, Greek, Roman, German, English, French, were all, according to this writer’s curious definition, “Saint-Simonians.”

Mr. Bulwer is occasionally superficial, and like all epigrammatic writers, frequently attains smartness at the expense of accuracy; he also occasionally temporizes with some classes of the enemies of improvement; but, with all its faults, his book is the truest ever written on the social condition of England; and the French may be assured, that although he misunderstands many of the smaller features of the English character, he has not in greater things at all overcharged the unfavourable side. Because he writes with perhaps somewhat too visible an aiming at effect, M. Chales accuses him of attempting to make fallacies pass by means of lively writing; unconscious that the very liveliness of the writing is acting upon himself in quite the contrary way: he thinks the observations must be shallow because they are brilliantly expressed. Mr. Bulwer’s English readers have, I make no doubt, been very generally impressed in the same manner. It would be a great mistake to suppose that frivolity of manner in this country prepossesses readers in favour of an author’s opinions; on the contrary, it excites a prejudice against them. But Mr. Bulwer probably thought it better to be read, even at a disadvantage, than not to be read. Such is the choice a writer usually has to make, in addressing himself to English readers, at least of the higher and middle classes. If his mode of writing be lively and amusing, they distrust all he says; if he be not amusing, they do not read him at all.

I could easily prove to you by examples that the necessity of being amusing is the cause of almost every blunder in Mr. Bulwer’s book, even in matters of fact. For the sake of being amusing, he could not be content to discuss, he thought it necessary to paint. But, for a picture, details are necessary as well as outlines: and the details which were requisite for correctly filling up the picture, Mr. Bulwer often did not know. This is particularly conspicuous in all that he writes about France. Thus, to take one instance among many, Mr. Bulwer dwells much, and with reason, on the characteristic fact (a fact connected with many other differences between the two countries) of the great personal consideration possessed in France by the leading journalists, while in England men are ashamed rather than proud of a connection with even the most successful newspaper. Almost all Mr. Bulwer’s general remarks on this subject are just and pertinent; but he must needs illustrate his assertions by an imaginary conversation between a supposed editor of The Times and M. Bertin de Vaux. In this conversation there are some clever traits of satire, but the part which is borne in it by the representative of French journalism must, by every Parisian who reads it, be felt as laughably incongruous and absurd; the smallest blunder being that M. Bertin de Vaux, peer of France, late deputy for the department of Seine et Oise, is confounded with M. Bertin l’aîné, principal editor and responsible manager of the Journal des Débats.⁴

This reminds me of a most portentous piece of ignorance of the state of society in England which M. Chales displays, in conjunction with a curiously perverse misapplication of a true principle. We are all familiar with that kind of philosophic pedantry, which, when it has got hold of a few truths which it conceives to be a test of superiority over the vulgar, applies them à tort et à travers, and sees proof of ignorance of them in the bare fact of maintaining an opinion different from its own on any subject. Thus M. Chales declares Mr. Bulwer to be entirely mistaken in deeming the position of a man of letters to be a more desirable one in France than in England; and then favours his readers with a column and a half of observations on the intrinsic worthlessness of the character of a mere man of letters, a writer by profession, a hack, who does not write because he has something to say, but who must find something to say in order that he may write, and by writing may obtain food or praise.⁵ Undoubtedly, this is a character of no great worth or dignity, and the observations of M. Chales on the subject are perfectly just, and the more just the more out of place; for, as M. Chales ought to have well known, Mr. Bulwer was not complaining of any neglect shown to such literary hacks, who, on the contrary, are almost the only prosperous persons among our public writers; but of the almost insuperable obstacles with which those writers have to struggle who are not mere “hommes de lettres,” but students, giving forth to the world the fruits of their studies; and the very inferior estimation in which intellectual pursuits and intellectual eminence are held, in whatever manner exemplified.

It is a fact, that of all the men of scientific eminence now living in Great Britain, whether eminent in moral and political or in mathematical and physical knowledge, there is scarcely one who, if he wanted a subsistence, could gain it by his scientific pursuits. The consequence is, that the finest scientific talents are, in the present state of society, almost lost to the world. Except the one or two in a hundred who possess an independent fortune, all the men of high philosophical intellect in Great Britain depend for food and clothing upon the vulgar pursuits of some mechanical business, which could be quite adequately performed by persons with none, or with a far smaller share of their exalted qualities; and are able to devote to their higher calling only the few leisure hours left them by the intense competition of the multitudes who, for a little bread, are willing to labour incessantly without any leisure at all.

Among “men of letters” it is upon such persons as these that the defects in the present state of society in Great Britain fall the most heavily. As for the hack writers, whom M. Chales with so much justice condemns, they, in a world which, whether it confesses it or not, is really governed by the press, can always, by skilfully playing upon the meaner passions of the public or of particular classes, reap a tolerable pecuniary harvest. Of consideration indeed they have little, and deserve, if possible, less; and this brings me to the statement of M. Chales which I characterized as a portentous piece of ignorance. He says:

M. Bulwer, toujours un peu frivole, a signalé entre la France et l’Angleterre des différences imaginaires. Le rang qu’il attribue à l’éditeur d’un journal français, est tout à fait illusoire. En Angleterre, comme ici, lorsqu’un journal est bon, qu’il représente une masse d’opinions accréditées, et qu’il en est l’organe non seulement fidèle mais actif, mais spirituel, mais éloquent, il devient centre, il conquiert de l’autorité, il influe même sur l’Etat. Le chef et l’âme d’une telle entreprise s’arme d’un pouvoir qui correspond non seulement à la force de l’opinion qu’il représente, mais au degré de talent qu’il déploie et dont il s’entoure.⁶

Mr. Bulwer, not being a fool, did not call in question any thing so obvious as that in every country where newspapers exist, a powerfully written and widely circulated newspaper must have great influence. Some of our newspapers are, as M. Chales truly says, powers in the state. But this influence of the press does not show itself in the shape of respect and consideration for those who wield that great empire; their power resembles that which, in a despotic country, is sometimes exercised by a low-born and disreputable favourite, who is at the same time dreaded and despised. I am not afraid of being contradicted by any Frenchman when I say, that in France the profession of a political journalist is one of the most honourable and most honoured which a man of powerful intellect and popular eloquence can exercise; it is a road to public dignities; a career by which a man who is suitably endowed by nature and education, rises to a position from which he might at his pleasure be a deputy or a minister, if he were not conscious of being already much more than a deputy, or even than a minister: and as men, previously unknown, may and continually do rise to eminence by this profession, so do men already eminent avowedly engage in it, without any other feeling than that they are raising, not lowering, their personal importance and rank. Now, I request it of you, show this which I have just written to any English friend, and hear what he will say. If I were to publish it to all England, I doubt if there would be found a hundred persons in the whole country who would not utterly disbelieve the statement. Englishmen cannot conceive that journalism can be anything but a rather low and disreputable trade. No man of any rank or station in society likes it to be known or suspected that he has anything to do with a newspaper. In France there are editors of daily journals, any one of whom may be considered as individually the head, or at lowest the right hand, of a political party: in England no journalist, however popular, is esteemed anything higher than the powerful and formidable but rather dangerous and disagreeable sting in its tail.

Like all despised classes, they, for the most part, merit their fate. A man of talents condemned to disrespect, generally becomes deserving of it; and makes his talents profitable to himself in such ways as are left open to him, not restrained by the fear of forfeiting the consideration he cannot look to have. In France a journalist of eminent talents, like a deputy of eminent talents, may at the worst have it presumed that the seductions to which he yields are those of a lofty ambition: but if an English journalist is unprincipled, the interest which actuates him is of the most grovelling sort; mere gain. A journalist in England is considered as an adventurer: and in most instances the estimation is just. There are honourable exceptions: men more high-minded, disinterested, and patriotic, than some editors of English newspapers, are not to be met with. But they are not sufficiently numerous to redeem the character of their class. Its reputation they could not redeem if they were five times as numerous. For in England every one who takes part in politics, and who is poor, is presumed to be an adventurer: and in England every one is considered poor who is not rich. In England there is some faith in that kind of public virtue which consists in not being corrupted, but none whatever in that kind which makes the public concerns its own, and devotes its life to them: consequently, if a man appears to make politics his occupation, unless he is already extremely rich, it is always taken for granted that his object is merely to get money.

However great the power exercised in England by the press—and it is a constantly increasing power—there must be a thorough change in the circumstances of society in Great Britain, before the profession of a writer will possess that sort of consideration and respectability which is now possessed, for instance, by the highly gentlemanly profession of the bar. The moral revolution, of which one of the many effects would be to exalt public writers to a station and consequence proportioned to their real power, might be mightily accelerated by their own efforts; but our men of letters have in general no consciousness of being below their proper station; they are too morally abject to be worthy of, or even aspire to, a higher.

But I must pause. Were I to comment upon every unfounded assertion of M. Chales at as much length as I have in this one instance, my criticism would be nearly three times as long as his three articles combined. I will let him off with a remark or two upon one more topic.

One of Mr. Bulwer’s complaints is that moral philosophy, the philosophy of man’s spiritual nature, his intellect, his feelings, and his duties, meets with little cultivation in England.⁷ To this M. Chales makes answer: “Tant mieux, mille fois; la morale scientifique, divisée par chapitres, la morale de parade, m’ennuie; elle est stérile autant que pompeuse: la morale pratique est la seule bonne,” &c. &c.;⁸ and wisely tells us that discussions and subtilties on morals are not morality, and that Greece, Rome, Italy, &c., were least moral, in the ages in which morality was most talked about. True; and if M. Chales can establish that the neglect of moral science in England arises from our being in a state of primeval simplicity, in which a few great and fixed principles of morals are universally acknowledged and firmly rooted in our hearts, and that it is from the unswerving firmness of our habitual regard for our duty that we consider all discussion of it superfluous, I shall agree with him that his fine talk is strictly to the point and altogether conclusive. But it argues no small share of primitive simplicity in M. Chales, that he should ascribe to us that sort of virtue which consists in the ignorance of evil. The fact is, M. Chales is completely out in his philosophy; he has confounded the effect, or rather symptom, and eventual remedy, of a decline in public morals, with the cause. The Greeks and Romans did not become immoral by theorizing on morals, though they did not (perhaps) begin to theorize on morals until they were becoming immoral. When ethical speculations come into vogue, it is generally symptomatic of a decay, or at least (in the medical sense) a critical period in a nation’s morals. And why so? Because it is a proof that the people are no longer united by a common faith; that the popular creed has begun to give way before the progress of knowledge. But there never was, and never will be, a virtuous people, where there is not unanimity, or an agreement nearly approaching to it, in their notions of virtue. The most immoral periods in a nation’s history are always the sceptical periods, when the old convictions are dying away, and no new ones having yet taken their place, each person “does what is right in his own eyes;” and as in those periods alone the doctrines of morals appear to require discussion, those are the only times when (except among casuists by profession) the discussion and the study of them comes into vogue. Such is now the case in Germany and France; but in England we are unfortunately in the predicament of having the will without the remedy. We have thrown off, or are rapidly getting rid of, our old convictions, and are not forming new. We have the diversities of opinion, the noisy conflicts; we do dispute on morality, but we do not philosophize on it, simply because we do not philosophize upon any thing—it is not our way; we set no value on systematic thought. This Mr. Bulwer blames us for, and surely with no little reason. I wish M. Chales would point out to us how, except by the inquiries and studies which he condemns, we can ever recover from the state which he laments; how, except through moral philosophy, we can ever hope to arrive again at unity in our moral convictions, the necessary preliminary to any elevation of the standard of our moral practice. Unless, indeed, we may permit ourselves to hope for a fresh revelation from heaven, which M. Chales, I presume, will hardly be bold enough to prophecy.

And now I must bring to a close these desultory observations, which yet I hope may not fail to answer, in some degree, the purpose for which they were written.

256.

SARAH AUSTIN’S TRANSLATION OF COUSIN

EXAMINER, 1 JUNE, 1834, PP. 341-2

Cousin’s original work, Rapport sur l’état de l’instruction publique dans quelques pays de l’Allemagne, et particulièrement en Prusse (1832-33), new ed. (Paris: Levrault, 1833), was the result of his investigations made under a commission from Montalivet. Sarah Austin (1793-1867), wife of John Austin and teacher and friend to Mill, was an indefatigable translator who had in 1832 alone published Sismondi’s A History of the Italian Republics and Pückler-Muskau’s Tour in England, Ireland and France (2 vols.) and Tour in Germany, Holland and England (2 vols.). Mill’s review of her present translation, in the “Literary Examiner,” is headed “Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia; addressed to the Count de Montalivet, Peer of France, Minister of Public Instruction and Ecclesiastical Affairs. By M. Victor Cousin, Peer of France, Councillor of State, Professor of Philosophy, Member of the Institute, and of the Royal Council of Public Instruction. Translated by Sarah Austin. [London:] Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange. [1834.]” In Mill’s copy of the Examiner in Somerville College, the item is listed as “Review of Mrs. Austin’s Translation of Cousin’s Report,” with one correction: at 728.20 “cultivation” is corrected to “combination”. The review is not listed in Mill’s bibliography, which, however, lists another review of the same work in the Monthly Repository, n.s. VIII (July 1834), 501-13 (CW, Vol. XXI, pp. 61-74). In that review Mill quotes a passage also quoted here; see 729^a-a.

this little volume, and an article in Blackwood’s Magazine for July 1833, on the Prussian Government,¹ are signal memorials of that standing miracle, as we might well call it if we judged from English or French experience—a Government of which the pervading principle is the public good. The article in Blackwood shows how, in about twenty years, in the quiet course of peaceful legislation, two great ministers, Stein and Hardenberg, have scoured the country of abuses; and effected not only a complete clearing-out of feudal privileges and obsolete restrictions, but by the degree in which the people are associated in their own government, laid as fair a foundation for the habits and feelings of a free people, as France has purchased by all her terrible convulsions.² In M. Cousin’s Report, again, we behold the animating spectacle of a government making the civilization, and moral and intellectual culture of every human being among its subjects, one of the direct objects of its own existence; and exhibiting in the pursuit of that object, a combination, probably never seen in any other human government, of wisdom in the choice of means, of patient energy in the employment of them, and of that spirit which the politicians of all other countries despise, that which

. . . Tempers with the sternness of the brain
Thoughts motherly and meek as womanhood.³

The moral to be deduced from the admirable spirit and working of the Prussian Government is manifold; and to evolve it in all its entireness from the facts, as well as to press again and again upon the notice of England such of these as are best calculated to fill her rulers and people with shame at being so far outdone by the government of an absolute king, is an occupation which ought to be neglected by no writer of any pretensions to comprehensive views, or an enlightened public spirit, and shall not by us. We can in no manner so much forward this object as by recommending to attentive perusal this translation of M. Cousin’s Report, by a lady with whose ability as a translator the public are already familiar. All who (we may say it deliberately) having the means of access to this work, do not read it, either in the original or in the translation, are indifferent to the highest interests of their country and of universal improvement.

The remainder of what we have to say, cannot be better said than in the words of the accomplished translator, whose preface has afforded us more pleasure than any composition of equal length which has appeared for years.

^aConstituted as the Government of this country is, and accustomed as it is to receive its impulses from without (a state of things approved and consecrated by the national ways of thinking), it would be contrary to reason and to experience to expect it to originate any great changes. This is not recognised, either by governors or governed, as any part of its duty. It is to the public mind, therefore, that those who desire any change must address themselves.^a

It is not worth while at the present day to discuss, whether or not national education be a good. It is possible to imagine a state of society in which the labouring man, submissive and contented under some paternal rule, might dispense with any further light than such as nature, uncorrupted by varied wants and restless competition, might afford him. But if that golden age ever existed, it is manifestly gone, in this country at least, for ever. Here, the press is hotter, the strife keener, the invention more alive, the curiosity more awake, the wants and wishes more stimulated by an atmosphere of luxury, than perhaps in any country since the world began. The men who, in their several classes, were content to tread step for step in the paths wherein their fathers trod, are gone. Society is no longer a calm current, but a tossing sea. Reverence for tradition, for authority, is gone. In such a state of things, who can deny the absolute necessity for national education?

Supposing, however, all agreed as to this first point; how many weighty and difficult questions still remain! How many obstacles present themselves to the adoption of that which here stands before us, not in theory and conjecture, but in tried and successful practice! It may be useful to consider a few of these objections.

And, first—As to compulsory education, the idea to which I have alluded above—that the prime excellence of a government is, to let alone—is so deeply and universally prevalent here, that there is little chance of a measure, however beneficent, being popular, which is, unquestionably, an infringement of liberty. Leaving, however, the question, whether exemption from restraint is, of itself, the great desideratum for men,^* we may safely affirm, that for the class most deeply interested in the present inquiry, children, no such exemption is, or can be, contemplated or advised. The real point at issue is, whether the constraint shall be a salutary or a pernicious constraint, a constraint by which their whole future lives are sacrificed to the present interests of the persons who have the disposal of them; or a constraint, the object and tendency of which is to secure to them for life the blessings of physical, moral, and intellectual health. “If children,” says the writer of the excellent article in the Foreign Quarterly Review (No. xxiv) “provided their own education, and could be sensible of its importance to their happiness, it would be a want, and might be left to the natural demand and supply; but as it is provided by the parents, and paid for by those who do not profit by its results, it is a duty and is therefore liable to be neglected.”⁴

The interference which Government has lately exercised on behalf of the children of the manufacturing population has, however, settled the question as one of principle. It is no longer anything but a question of degree; for, if the right of parents over their children can be invaded for the purpose of securing to children an exemption from one class of evils, it can in averting another; and, according to all sound reasoning, it might, if those evils be shown to be of sufficient magnitude to claim interference. It is irrational to expect, that persons who have not had the advantages of education, can form any estimate of the nature and extent of those advantages. Are, then, the rudeness and apathy of the fathers a reason for transmitting them unaltered to the children? Or, to go higher, are the false notions, the useless acquirements, the imperfect instruction, of the ill-educated of the wealthier sort a reason that, because they are satisfied with themselves, an enlightened Government should permit the same waste and destruction of moral and intellectual faculties to go on from generation to generation?

[Pp. viii-xi.]

We subscribe perfectly to the justice of this finely thought and expressed defence of the compulsory principle in education; but we require, as a preliminary condition to the adoption of that principle here, what already exists in Prussia, a Government which deserves, and has, the perfect confidence of the people in its good intentions.

Another misconception, which appears to me common in this country, is, that the system of national education delineated by M. Cousin, is some new plan or mode of teaching. I have even seen objections made to it in print, on the score of the tyranny of compelling parents to educate children on this or that “method” approved by government.⁵ It might seem sufficient to refer such objectors to the book, but unfortunately this process is tedious, and in the meanwhile the reader, who supposes they are acquainted with what they discuss, is misled. Not only (as will be seen in this report) is every parent at full liberty to educate his children either in his own house, or at a private school, or at the schools provided by the state; but these latter schools are not even bound to any particular books, or modes of tuition, “in order,” as the law expresses it, “to impose no shackles on the constant onward course of improvement.” The choice of books is left to the masters and the local committees appointed by government for the immediate superintendence of schools, and consisting chiefly of fathers of families resident in the parish which supports the school. The conferences of schoolmasters, which, though voluntary, are encouraged by the government, are also for the express purpose of comparing their views and their experience, and thus carrying forward the improvement of the schools. Whenever a choice of schools is within the reach of parents, that choice is left perfectly free; and on the grand subject of religious differences, it will be seen that nothing can exceed the anxious care of the government that the most delicate conscience should not be even alarmed, much less oppressed. “Masters and inspectors,” says the law, “must most carefully avoid every kind of constraint or annoyance to the children on account of their particular creed,” &c.

[Pp. xiv-xv.]

The sentiments expressed in the following passage reach far beyond the subject immediately before us. We joyfully assist in giving them currency:

It has been asserted by some persons, with an ignorance which, if it be sincere, is so shameless, that it almost deserves to be confounded with dishonesty, that the tendency of the system recommended by M. Cousin is anti-religious.⁶ To this every page of the book is an answer. Indeed, were I to express a fear on this head, it is, that it is far too religious for this country; that the lofty, unworldly tone of feeling, the spirit of veneration, the blending of the love of God, and of the good and the beautiful with all the practical business and the amusements of life, is what will hardly be understood here, where religion is so much more disjoined, both from the toils and from the gaieties of life. To me it appears that there is not a line of these enactments which is not profoundly religious. Nothing, it is true, is enjoined as to forms or creeds; but, as M. Cousin truly says, “the whole fabric rests on the sacred basis of Christian love.”⁷ As the most affecting, and I must say, sublime example of this spirit, I refer my readers—especially the humbler and, as I hope, more numerous class of them—to the description of the little schools for training poor schoolmasters in such habits and with such feelings as shall fit them to be the useful and contented teachers of the humblest cottagers of the most miserable villages.⁸

Here is poverty, to which that of many among our working classes is affluence; and it is hopeless, for no idea is held out of advancement or change. Yet, if ever poverty appeared on earth, serene, contented, lofty, beneficent, graceful—it is here. Here we see men in the very spring-time of life, so far from being made—as we are told men must be made—restless and envious and discontented by instruction, taking indigence and obscurity to their hearts for life; raised above their poor neighbours in education, only that they may become the servants of all, and may train the lowliest children in a sense of the dignity of man, and the beauty of creation, in the love of God and of virtue.

I confess myself almost hopeless of the transplantation of such sentiments hither. Religion is made the theme of the fiercest and most implacable contention; mixed up with newspaper squabbles and with legal discussions; her bright and holy garments are seized and soiled by every angry and ambitious hand.

[Pp. xv-xvi.]

We conclude our extracts with the following recommendation of normal schools, an institution which our ministry is all but pledged to naturalize here, and must not be suffered to rest until the pledge is redeemed:

Time and experience have, it is to be supposed, nearly removed the illusion of “mutual instruction” as a substitute for the instruction communicated by a mature to an immature mind:—as an auxiliary in certain mechanical details, no one disputes its utility. Observation long ago convinced me of the entire truth of the maxim laid down by the Prussian government, and approved by M. Cousin, that “As is the master, so is the school!”⁹ —A system of education is nothing without an unfailing supply of competent masters. It is the fashion to apply the “free trade” maxims to everything. Reasons enough present themselves why such maxims are wholly inapplicable to this matter. It may, once for all, safely be denied, that the public can be judges of the quality of teachers, as they are of bread or of shoes. To this the hundreds of children in the middle classes, whose whole childhood is consumed in experimental wanderings from school to school, and the thousands and ten thousands of the lower, whose parents know little more than the fact that they pass a certain number of hours daily in a given room, can bear witness. The evil is an irreparable one. Not only is the portion of time consumed in a bad or imperfect school irrevocably gone; bad habits of all kinds are acquired, which no future education can entirely eradicate. The candid and rational among the less educated classes are glad to be aided by the friendly judgment of their more instructed neighbours on this point; and would, I doubt not, readily admit the advantage of having some better security than their own opinion, or rather conjecture, for the competency of the instructors of their children.

In every country where primary instruction has been carried to any height, the necessity of establishments of this kind has been felt.

[Pp. xviii-xx.]

257.

FRENCH NEWS [98]

EXAMINER, 1 JUNE, 1834, P. 345

The item is headed “London, June 1, 1834.” This and Nos. 258, 260, and 262 are described in Mill’s bibliography as “The summary of French News in the Examiner of 1st, 22d, and 29th June, and 6th July 1834” (MacMinn, p. 41). In Mill’s copy of the Examiner in Somerville College, this item is listed as “Paragraphs on France.”

the french legislature has been first prorogued, and then dissolved;¹ though it has only sat for three years it has voted five annual budgets,² and is therefore considered to have attained the termination of its lawful existence.

Thus has a Session closed which has been productive of nothing but taxes, and laws for the suppression of insurrections.

258.

FRENCH NEWS [99]

EXAMINER, 22 JUNE, 1834, P. 393

This item is headed “London, June 22, 1834.” For Mill’s bibliographic entry, see No. 257. In Mill’s copy of the Examiner in Somerville College, it is listed as “Article on France.”

we have observed with great regret the announcement of the accidental death, by the oversetting of a boat at Rouen, of M. Conseil, one of the editors of the National de 1834.¹ France knows not the extent of the loss she has sustained by the premature death, at an early age, of one of her most valuable citizens. M. Conseil was one of the most instructed and clear-headed men in France, one who combined the attainments and high qualities of an Englishman and a Frenchman; and no man was more earnestly devoted to the good of his country and the cause of human improvement.

The same unfortunate accident had nearly been fatal to the only other man in France, perhaps, whose loss would have been a still greater calamity—M. Armand Carrel.

A profligate jury has, in contradiction to the strongest evidence, condemned Messrs. Gervais and Guillemot for publishing the details of some of the horrible outrages perpetrated upon defenceless prisoners by the Citizen-King’s Police; but the publicity of the proceedings has answered the purpose of a complete exposure.²

259.

THE NEW COLONY [1]

EXAMINER, 29 JUNE, 1834, P. 403

This return to an old theme (see No. 88) is a leader in the “Political Examiner,” headed as title; see also Nos. 261, 263, and 271. The article is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘The New Colony’ in the Examiner of 29th June 1834.” In Mill’s copy of the Examiner in Somerville College, it is listed as title.

we have had great pleasure in learning that the enlightened views of Colonization, so long pressed upon the notice of the public by the author of England and America,¹ by Mr. Gouger, and others, are about to be realized in the formation of a Colony at the mouth of the newly-discovered river in Southern Australia. The founders of the Colony are men of high public character, including a large proportion of the people’s best friends in the House of Commons. The names of Whitmore, Grote, Clay,² and others, are a guarantee to the public of the honesty and patriotism of the undertaking, and many other names connected with it are a strong assurance of its probable success as an investment of capital.

The full concurrence and cordial aid of Government is extended to the enterprise, which will, however, be conducted at the sole charge of the projectors, without any expense to the State. Mr. Spring Rice has, we are informed, evinced throughout the affair a degree of intelligence, public spirit, and superiority to the influences of official routine, most honourably distinguishing him from those of his predecessors to whom the project had been previously submitted.³

A public meeting will be held to-morrow (Monday) at Exeter Hall, Mr. Whitmore in the chair, to explain the principles on which the Colony will be founded;⁴ and all should attend the meeting who would wish to hear a most instructive analysis of the causes of the success or failure of former colonizations, and the grounds on which the present may be expected not only to advance to prosperity with unexampled rapidity, but, for the first time in the history of colonization, to afford a sensible relief to the overcrowded labourers and capitalists of the mother country.

We shall discuss the subject at some length in our next paper.

260.

FRENCH NEWS [100]

EXAMINER, 29 JUNE, 1834, P. 409

This item is headed “London, June 29, 1834.” For Mill’s bibliographic entry, see No. 257. In Mill’s copy of the Examiner in Somerville College, the article is listed as “Paragraph on France.”

the french elections have nearly concluded: when the returns are complete, we will furnish an analysis of them.¹ The result, as was anticipated, is a great increase of the strength of the ministerial party; the general anticipation, even of those who care for nothing but tranquility, seems to be that this success by increasing the foolhardiness of the present Government, will in reality diminish its security. The Funds instead of rising, actually fell.

261.

THE NEW COLONY [2]

EXAMINER, 6 JULY, 1834, P. 419

This account is an answer to a leading article on the South Australia Association in The Times, 2 July, pp. 4-5, in response to the public meeting of 30 June organized by proponents of the emigration scheme (see No. 259). A leading article in the “Political Examiner,” headed as title, it is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘The New Colony’ and signed A.B., in the Examiner of 6th July 1834” (MacMinn, p. 41). In Mill’s copy of the Examiner in Somerville College, it is listed as title, with one correction: at 735.30 “had previously in view” is altered to “had in view”.

the times has declared war against the New Colony. Everything in the shape of an argument which is urged by the Times against this project, proves only that the writer has not read what has been written about it, nor understands the grounds on which it is supported. From the credulity with which he swallows a suggestion of a correspondent, that the Australian scheme is connected with the Poor Law Bill,¹ we infer that he believes this plan of Colonization to be now for the first time brought forward. It has, on the contrary, been pressed upon the notice of the public with great perseverance for several years. It was under the consideration of Sir George Murray, when Secretary for the Colonies; his successor, Lord Goderich, for some time had in view the adoption of it; Mr. Stanley also was in communication with the South Australian Association, and was understood to be favourable to the project.² The merits of the plan are indeed so clear and so striking to any one who will examine it, that it has triumphed over the strongest prepossessions. Except Mr. Wilmot Horton,³ almost every one who, beginning with an unfavourable opinion, nevertheless gave his mind to the subject, has ended by changing that opinion to a favourable one; of this fact, two of the speakers of the meeting last Monday, Col. Torrens and Mr. Poulett Scrope, are examples;⁴ and we believe that the same thing would happen to the writer in the Times, if he deemed the subject worthy, as it surely is, of attentive consideration.

The grand recommendation of this scheme of Colonization is, that it is a plan of making emigration pay its own expenses. Every one admits, and every one must admit, that if a portion of our labourers could be removed from the country, where they are now earning a scanty and precarious subsistence, and placed in a new and fertile country, under the best arrangements which could be desired for giving the greatest possible productiveness to their labour, the surplus of what they would there produce, above what they can produce in their present situation, would form a fund sufficient, in a year or two at farthest, to repay with interest the whole expense of their emigration. Now, this fund, by the present scheme, is to be taken hold of by the State, by a very simple mode of taxation, the sale of public lands. And thus the expenses of emigration will be paid for out of the increase to the general wealth of the world, produced by emigration itself; the increased produce of the emigrant’s own labour will be made available to pay the expenses of his emigration.

But for this purpose an advance of money is necessary; the emigrant’s passage cannot be paid for out of the funds which are to be afterwards produced by his labour. It can only be paid for out of monies raised by loan on the security of that future fund. And yet the Times cries out against the power given to the King’s Commissioners to raise money by loan, for carrying out the first emigrants.⁵ According to the Times, this proves that fraud is intended, and that the funds to be raised in the Colony will not be sufficient for emigration. The Times forgets that before any funds can be raised in the Colony, the Colony must exist, and that until the first emigrants go out, there is no Colony.

The working of the scheme will be as follows. A sum of money, say 100,000l., is raised on the security of the sale of lands. With this sum a great supply of labour is taken out; this certain supply of labour induces capitalists to emigrate (many have already expressed that intention); these capitalists will purchase lands, and the proceeds of the sale, after paying the interest of the loan, will be employed in carrying out more labour. This, again, leads to further purchases of land, and the price is applied to further emigration; and so the stream of emigration is perennially kept up, without any advance of money beyond the original one. The accumulation of capital in the Colony would take place with a rapidity unexampled in other Colonies, because in all other Colonies the settlers, being dispersed at great distances from each other, afford no market for each other’s produce; and the regular application of the proceeds of the sale of lands to the emigration of additional labourers will enable the increase of labour to keep pace with the accumulation of capital, however rapidly this may take place.

We shall not, at present, enter into the particular grounds on which the artificial concentration, proposed to be given to the settlers, by affixing a price upon all grants of land, is shewn to be eminently conducive to the prosperity of the Colony, and to the rapid growth of the fund for relieving this country of its surplus labourers. It is sufficient, for the present, that, for the first time in the history of overpopulation, emigration will now be made to pay its own expenses; and whatever relief it can allow to the pressure of population against subsistence in our own country, will be clear gain—pure, unalloyed good.

We shall return to this subject frequently; and we do not fear to encounter any scruples, and grapple with any objections, which we have ever heard, or ever expect to hear, urged against the principles on which the South Australian Colony is founded.

A.B.

262.

FRENCH NEWS [101]

EXAMINER, 6 JULY, 1834, P. 425

This item is headed “London, July 6, 1834.” For Mill’s bibliographic entry, see No. 257. In Mill’s copy of the Examiner in Somerville College, it is listed as “Article on France.”

the result of the french elections is that the strength of the Carlists in the Chamber has increased from three or four to nearly twenty, that of the liberal opposition has diminished from about 140 to about 100, and twenty or thirty votes have been gained by the government party. Every avowed Republican has been eliminated from the Chamber; though at Niort, M. Armand Carrel, who was put up without his own consent or knowledge, lost the election only by one vote.

The success of the Government in these elections can surprise no one. The electoral body is an oligarchy of fewer than 200,000 persons; and, as has been forcibly remarked, there are in France twice as many soldiers as electors, and for every elector about four paid places in the gift of the Government. That so narrow a governing body should support, with the utmost warmth, a government carried on for its own benefit, and the whole fruits of which are placed at its disposal, is no way surprising. But all other electoral bodies in France are animated by a very different spirit. In the very places where the Government candidates were returned to the Chamber by the most decisive majorities, the elections of municipal councils, and of the officers of the National Guard, have gone very generally in favour of avowed republicans. The 200,000 electors stand, therefore, in direct opposition to the real voice of the country; and, by natural consequence, the “extension of the suffrage” is now the universal watchword of all French reformers.

263.

WAKEFIELD’S THE NEW BRITISH PROVINCE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

EXAMINER, 20 JULY, 1834, PP. 453-4

Mill’s support for the colonization plans (see Nos. 259 and 261) here takes the form of a review of Wakefield’s anonymous work, the authorship of which was widely known. His review, in the “Literary Examiner,” is headed “The New British Province of South Australia; or a Description of the Country, illustrated by Charts and Views: with an Account of the Principles, Objects, Plan, and Prospects of the Colony. [London:] C. Knight. [1834.]” It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A review of E.G. Wakefield’s book on South Australia; in the Examiner of 20th July 1834” (MacMinn, p. 41). In Mill’s copy of the Examiner in Somerville College, it is listed as “Review of ‘The New British Province of South Australia.’ ”

this little work consists of three parts: first, a description of the natural features of the country in which the new colony is to be established; secondly, an explanation of the intended mode of colonization; and lastly, a statement of the inducements to people of all classes who find themselves ill at ease in the mother country, to establish themselves in the new settlement.

With respect to the soil and climate of Southern Australia, we should have left the author to speak for himself, if the Chronicle of Wednesday last had not, while concurring warmly in the views of colonization entertained by the founders of the colony, expressed doubts of the eligibility of the place which they have selected for the first experiment.¹ The Chronicle does not, indeed, give any satisfactory reasons for its doubts. Its tone reminds us of a remark of Archbishop Whately, that nothing is more common than for a statement supported by the strongest evidence to be met, not by a refutation, but by a “We suspect this statement to be exaggerated,” after which the assertion, thus branded by a note of suspicion, is thrown aside, as if its falsehood had been proved.² “On this subject,” says the Chronicle, “we have our doubts. The fertile land is, we suspect, confined to the immediate banks of the river down which Captain Sturt proceeded.”³ Why does he suspect? What right has any man to proclaim to the public that he suspects what men of character affirm, without assigning a single reason for his suspicion? We cannot call this a reason: “The absence of high mountains will not allow us to indulge in the idea that there is sufficient humidity to allow of the cultivation of the soil at any distance from the river.” Fudge. What “high mountains” are there in the South of England? or the North of France? or Belgium? or Prussia? or Poland and European Russia? the finest corn country in the Old World, though you might travel from the Baltic to the Black Sea without crossing a hill 500 feet in height. As for humidity, “In New South Wales,” says the author of the work before us, “as in similar latitudes of the northern hemisphere, more rain falls during the year than in England.” [P. 14.] If it did not, Australia would be an exception to all the known geographical laws of the distribution of moisture over the surface of our globe.

We have no room for extracting from the work before us any further remarks on the natural advantages of the country about to be colonized. We hasten to the intended method of colonization.

Like the Grecian colonies, which flourished so rapidly and so wonderfully as soon to eclipse the mother cities, this settlement will be formed by transplanting an intire society, and not a mere fragment of one. English colonies have almost always remained in a half-savage state for many years from their establishment. This colony will be a civilized country from the very commencement.

Sir Joseph Banks⁴ [says the tract before us] wishing to ornament a bare piece of ground in front of his house near Hounslow, transplanted into it some full-grown trees. Those trees were torn from the beds in which they had grown to maturity. In order to save trouble in moving them, all their smaller roots and branches were cut off: the trunks, thus mutilated, were stuck into the ground; and there, wanting the nourishment which they had before received through innumerable leaves and fibres, they soon died and rotted. A way, however, has lately been discovered of transplanting full-grown trees so that they shall flourish as if they had not been removed. The art, for a knowledge of which we are indebted to Sir Henry Steuart, consists in removing the whole of the tree uninjured;⁵ the stem, all the limbs, every branch and twig, every root and fibre; and in placing the several parts of this whole in the same relative situation as they occupied before; so that each part shall continue to perform its proper office, the trunk to be nourished by its proper number of mouths above and below; and a due proportion or balance be preserved between the weight of the branches and the strength of the roots, between the action of the roots as well as branches on opposite sides, between the functions of each part and the functions of all the other parts, respectively and together. The work of colonizing a desert bears a curious resemblance to that of transplanting full-grown trees. In neither case is it the ultimate object merely to remove; in both cases it is to establish; and as, in the former case, the immediate object is to remove, not a mere trunk, but an entire tree, so, in the latter case, the immediate object is to remove, not people merely, but society. In both cases equally, success depends upon attention to details. The planters of modern colonies have generally gone to work without much attention to details; as if society might be established in a desert without regard to the numerous and minute circumstances on which society depends. Many a modern colony has perished through the inattention of its founders to little matters which, it was supposed, would take care of themselves. Of those modern colonies which have not perished, many suffered in the beginning the greatest privations and hardships; while, in the least unfavourable cases, it has been as if a full-grown oak, carelessly removed and soon dead, had dropped acorns to become in time full-grown trees. But in the present case, the greatest attention will be paid to details. The present measure of colonization may be likened to the careful removal of full-grown trees from a spot in which they were injured by want of room, to one where they should have ample space to expand and flourish. The details of the measure form the subject of this explanation.

[Pp. 4-6.]

The requisites are—

First, precautions for the removal, not of people merely, but of society; that is, of all the different classes of people who, by means of combining their powers and dividing their employments, obtain every advantage that a society enjoys over a savage life: secondly, precautions for preventing that social colony from degenerating into an unsocial state; for preserving, that is, in the colony, the attributes of society and civilization.

[Pp. 6-7.]

The means selected for these ends evince a just and profound appreciation of the circumstances on which the industrial prosperity of a country (if we may be forgiven the convenient Gallicism) depends.

The three elements of production are land, labour, and capital: and on the proportion of these three to one another depends the prosperity of the people. If any of these elements are in deficiency relatively to the others, suffering or inconvenience is the result. In England land is the deficient element; labour and capital, relatively to land, are both in excess; there is a forced cultivation of bad land, forced over-cultivation of the better soils, and, in a manner understood by economists, and felt, though not scientifically analysed by practical men, low wages and low profits are the consequence. In the backwoods of America, and still more in South Africa, the Pampas, and other imperfectly settled countries, land is in excess, labour and capital in deficiency. Each settler possesses himself at once of a piece of land; the few labourers who originally have not the means of acquiring land, convert the first savings of their high wages to that purpose, and will thenceforth work for none but themselves. There is no co-operation, no combination of labour; no family can raise any kind of produce which requires much more labour than that of its own members, and (to say nothing of the discomfort and moral disadvantages attending a dispersed society) scarcely anything but food and the coarsest clothing can be produced. All have an abundance of the mere necessaries of life, but to all its comforts and luxuries are altogether unknown.

The land of a colony having no natural limit, if the government do not place some artificial limit on the appropriation of it by individuals, every individual in the colony is tempted to become a land-owner and cultivator. Hence two kinds of evil. If each individual, or any great number of individuals, take more land than each can cultivate, the people are dispersed over a wide extent of country, and are separated from each other by intervening deserts. If each person appropriate no more land than he is able to cultivate, still, all being independent proprietors, both capital and labour are divided into fractions as numerous as the cultivators. In either case, society is almost dissolved. The people, whether separated by distance, or, however near they may be to each other, by each one becoming an independent land-owner, are all of one class: there is no class of capitalists, no class of labourers; nor indeed any classification, all being the same. But all being alike, each one is independent of all the others; and, in this state of things (we must not say, society) it is impossible that large masses of capital and many hands should be employed in the same work, at the same time, and for a long period. And yet, without constancy and combination in the employment of capital and labour, the produce obtained never was, and never can be, large in proportion to the capital and labour. Unless the produce be large in proportion to the capital and labour employed in raising it, it cannot be cheap enough for exchange in distant markets; and thus a people, whose capital and labour were divided as in the supposed case, would necessarily be without foreign commerce. When, too, all are of the same class, or rather, there are no classes, all raise the same kind of produce; and there is no motive for exchange amongst the cultivators themselves. The labour, moreover, of each cultivator who does everything for himself, is necessarily divided amongst so many occupations, that only a small portion of it can be bestowed on the work of production; and thus, even if the settlers should have a motive for dealing with each other, no two of them would have any surplus produce to exchange. The result is, that civilized men fall into a state of but half-civilization; preserving, indeed, the knowledge and tools of their former condition, and, by applying these to very rich land, raising plenty of mere necessaries, but losing the powers which arise from mutual assistance, and the wants, tastes, and habits which belong to an advanced society.

In every colony of modern times these evils have resulted, in a greater or less degree, from an excessive proportion of land, and, in most of such colonies, have been partially counteracted by the greater evil of Negro slavery; as, for example, in the West Indies, North America, Brazil, and South Africa. For, whatever the proportion of land, even where it was so great that every freeman became a land-owner, still, with slavery, with human beings who could be prevented from obtaining land, there was constant and combined labour with which to employ large masses of capital in raising a produce cheap enough for distant markets. In the prosperous settlements of New South Wales and Van Dieman’s Land convicts have, to some extent, supplied the want of slaves. But those colonies, without any exception, in which there has been superabundance of land without any kind of slavery, have been eminently poor and barbarous;^* and the last colony founded by Englishmen⁶ affords a striking example of the evils resulting from excess of land.

[Pp. 89-92.]

To counteract this natural tendency of every new settlement, it is intended to fix such a price upon all grants of land as shall prevent the occupation of land from outstripping the growth of population, so that the existing population shall at all times be sufficient for the cultivation of all the land which is occupied, and for raising the other articles of all kinds required by the producers. The proceeds of the sales of land will be applied to further emigration. The attempt will be to make the new colony, not, as the Courier represents, “as like an old country as possible”⁷ (for old countries are mostly over-crowded, and it is not necessary to be in one extreme in order to avoid the other) but to make it as like as possible to a country which is perfectly civilized, but not over-peopled. The proportion of land to labour and capital, in England, is too small; in the backwoods of America, too great: between these two extremes there is a proportion which is the best possible, and to which the founders of the new colony will endeavour to approximate.

If a tract of fertile land, equal in extent to Yorkshire, were to appear off the Land’s End to-morrow morning, no one can doubt that the quantity of labour and capital, which would speedily flow into it from England, would raise both wages and profits throughout the country, and that all the industrious classes, labourers, and capitalists together, would be rendered far more comfortable and contented than at present. But if the land which rose from the ocean, close to our shores, instead of being only as large as Yorkshire, were as large as America, and our people were, in the same manner, to spread over it, taking their capital with them, we should fall back into a savage state. A wise government would therefore endeavour so to provide, that not the whole, but only a portion, equal to Yorkshire, should be occupied at first, and the rest progressively, as population and capital increased. The same is the purpose of the new colony. The aim will be so to limit the appropriation and occupation of land, as to keep both wages and profits at the highest rate possible.

We conclude by most strongly recommending this little tract to the perusal of all who are interested, either as citizens, in the means of relieving the industry of their country from the evils of an over-crowded society, or as individuals, in withdrawing themselves personally from those evils.

264.

FRENCH NEWS [102]

EXAMINER, 27 JULY, 1834, P. 472

Headed “London, July 27, 1834,” this summary is described in Mill’s bibliography as “The summary of French news in the Examiner of 27th July 1834” (MacMinn, p. 41), and is listed in Mill’s copy of the Examiner in Somerville College as “Paragraphs on France.”

marshal soult has resigned the nominal Premiership of France, and has been succeeded by Marshal Gérard.¹ Whether Soult has merely failed to retain his master’s favour, or is to be made the scape-goat of some policy which that master finds it convenient to abandon, we shall know hereafter.

The Chambers are to meet in a few days, in obedience to law;² and after verifying the elections, are to adjourn till November or December.

265.

THE POOR LAW BILL

MORNING CHRONICLE, 2 AUG., 1834, P. 4

Mill returns to the Morning Chronicle for another discussion of the Poor Law (see No. 252). This unheaded article is described in his bibliography as “A leading article on the Poor Law Bill in the Morning Chronicle of 2d August 1834”

(MacMinn, p. 41).

the poor law bill may now be considered as passed;¹ and passed without any material deterioration, perhaps even with some improvement upon the project as it was first submitted to Parliament. But Ministers must not consider their object accomplished, and their responsibility at an end. The difficulties of their task are either terminated, or only beginning, according to the skill and judgment which they demonstrate in the choice of instruments for carrying the bill into execution. The bill itself is not a reform—it only authorizes the appointment of officers to effect a reform. The whole success of the measure depends upon the choice of the Central Commissioners.² If these be but half acquainted with the subject; if they be not thoroughly impressed with the principles of the bill; or if they be destitute of the practical sagacity requisite for doing what it is left to them to do, namely, to devise means adapted to the varying circumstances of different districts and parishes, for carrying those general principles into effect—if they be either timid, wavering, and undecided, or incautious and precipitate, they will certainly defeat all the hopes entertained of them; they will bring disgrace upon the bill and its authors, and may, not improbably, verify the predictions of its enemies, by throwing the whole country into a flame.

The difficulty of the choice would be less, if the services of the late Poor Law Commissioners could be obtained for carrying into operation the measures which they have planned.³ But it is understood that none of those gentlemen have applied for employment under the new Act, and there is not more than one of them, at most, whose circumstances and avocations are not incompatible, not only with his seeking, but with his accepting such employment. We trust, however, that the Commissioners, who, as the authors of the measure, are the best judges of the qualifications necessary for carrying it into effect, and who have as strong an interest in its success as Ministers themselves have, will be the advisers of Government in the selection of the new functionaries, and that no false delicacy will prevent them from watching with parental vigilance the arrangements upon which it will depend whether the enactment, which is their offspring, will be a blessing to the country which has adopted it, or a mere nullity, or an actual curse.

266.

FRENCH NEWS [103]

EXAMINER, 17 AUG., 1834, P. 520

This article is headed “London, August 17, 1834.” This and Nos. 268 and 269 (the last series Mill wrote on French politics for the Examiner) are described in his bibliography as “The summary of French news in the Examiner of 17th, 24th and 31st August 1834” (MacMinn, p. 41). In Mill’s copy of the Examiner in Somerville College, this account is listed as “Article on France.”

a few weeks ago, we had the satisfaction of stating that the highest tribunal in France, the Court of Cassation, had, through its Criminal Committee, solemnly vindicated the liberty of the Press against one of the most impudent outrages ever sought to be inflicted upon it—the sentence by which the interdiction pronounced against the National was extended to the new journal established in its room, the National de 1834. Our congratulations, however, were premature. The Court of Cassation has reversed the decision of its Committee, and confirmed the original sentence of the Cour Royale.¹

1st, Behold, then, the state of French law, as established by a series of judicial decisions. A Court of Justice may try and condemn a newspaper, without a jury, for any article containing reflections on its own proceedings—that is, provided the cause it is called upon to decide be its own cause.

2dly, The Court, thus empowered to revenge its own supposed injuries, may interdict the offending newspaper from giving any further reports of, or remarks upon, its own proceedings—that is, it may peremptorily silence all censure upon itself.

Lastly, if the newspaper thus partially confiscated be dropped, and another paper established by the same parties, the new paper shall remain subject to the interdict.

Such is French law, French liberty, under the King of the Barricades and French Judges.

The Tribune newspaper—which, after nearly a hundred prosecutions, was arbitrarily suppressed in April last, and the license (for in France all printers must be licensed) withdrawn from its printer—this paper has at last succeeded in finding another licensed printer, who is willing to incur the risk of a similar confiscation of his means of livelihood. The Tribune has now reappeared.²

The Chambers have met. In verifying the elections, the Chamber of Deputies has displayed partiality so gross as to have incurred the censure of even the Journal des Débats.³ The debate on the Address has commenced, and promises to be an animated one.⁴ The Address will be either a compromise, or a trial of strength, between the Doctrinaires and the tiers parti, or Dupin party. The former are aristocrats on principle, and would have preferred old institutions, and the old dynasty, with an old British constitution; the latter are the incarnate spirit of modern bourgeois oligarchy—which is for levelling down to itself, but no lower. The latter are a more genuine offspring of the present institutions of France, and will, we have no doubt, ultimately supplant the others if those institutions last, and no new revolution, legal or violent, comes between and parts the combatants.

267.

GARNIER’S DEUTSCHES LEBEN, KUNST, UND POESIE [1]

EXAMINER, 24 AUG., 1834, P. 533

Mill here merely announces an account (No. 270), of the first number of a short-lived periodical edited by Joseph Heinrich Garnier (ca. 1800-55), a German refugee journalist and translator with whom Mill was acquainted, and who later contributed to the London (and London and Westminster) Review and Henry Cole’s Guide. The unheaded note is in the “Literary Examiner.” Described in Mill’s bibliography as “A short paragraph in the Examiner of 24th August, on Garnier’s German periodical: ‘Deutsches Leben, Kunst und Poesie’ ” (MacMinn, p. 42), the notice is listed in Mill’s copy of the Examiner in Somerville College, as “Paragraph on a German Periodical ‘Deutsches Leben.’ ”

we postpone till next week a notice of a new German periodical, intitled Deutsches Leben, Kunst, und Poesie. We had intended to say something of its very interesting and lively Prospectus; but we shall now defer our observations until we have read the first number, which has just appeared.

268.

FRENCH NEWS [104]

EXAMINER, 24 AUG., 1834, P. 536

This item is headed “London, August 24, 1834.” For Mill’s bibliographic entry, see No. 266. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, the article is listed as “Paragraphs on France.”

to the astonishment of all Paris, the Address drawn up by the tiers-parti, and filled with implied reflections upon the Ministry, has been allowed to pass the Chamber without opposition. The Ministry—feeling well that the Chamber, notwithstanding these demonstrations of coquetry, would support, as the last Chamber has done, all their measures—were probably averse to put themselves unnecessarily on the defensive, and, therefore, would not understand the allusions in the Address.

Immediately after receiving the King’s answer to the Address,¹ the Chambers were prorogued to the 29th of December.

269.

FRENCH NEWS [105]

EXAMINER, 31 AUG., 1834, P. 552

This item is headed “London, August 31, 1834.” For Mill’s bibliographic entry for this, his last summary of French news in the Examiner, see No. 266. In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Paragraphs on France.”

the only event worthy of record which has occurred in France since our last publication, is the victory of M. Carrel over another attempt to crush him by the hands of the law. The prosecution was for a libel on the King, consisting in some disrespectful strictures on Louis-Philippe’s Speech to the Chambers.¹ M. Carrel defended himself in person; and maintained that, if the King chuses to be his own Minister, he must be subject to the same freedom of censure as any other Minister—else he were a despot. The jury agreed with this view of the case, and M. Carrel was triumphantly acquitted.²

The Temps thus observes upon this victory:

The National, which during the last two years has been dragged from one tribunal to another, in consequence of a decision of exceptional justice, has at length been brought before a proper tribunal, that of the country, in the Court of Assizes held this day. The charge brought this time against the National by the public prosecutor³ was that of a direct attack on the person of the King, made on the occasion of the Royal speech, delivered at the opening of the Chambers. It pleaded “not guilty,” on the ground that the personal and active part taken by the King in the administration of the Government dispensed that paper from the observance of the law which prescribes that the Royal acts shall be free from censure when they are constitutional. The country has, through its organ, the jury, consecrated that doctrine for the tenth time on this occasion, and absolved the press, doubtless for the purpose of evincing in a striking manner its disapprobation of a violation of principles which the true friends of the constitution and the monarchy have every day cause to deplore.⁴

270.

GARNIER’S DEUTSCHES LEBEN, KUNST, UND POESIE [2]

EXAMINER, 14 SEPT., 1834, P. 581

For the context, see No. 267. The review, the only article in the “Literary Examiner,” is headed “Deutsches Leben, Kunst, und Poesie. Herausgegeben: von J.H. Garnier, No. I and II.” It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A notice of the first two numbers of Garnier’s German Periodical ‘Deutsches Leben, Kunst und Poesie’ in the Examiner of 14th September 1834” (MacMinn, p. 42). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Review of ‘Deutsches Leben’ ”; it is the last item listed by Mill in that set.

this is, we believe, the first German periodical ever published in England; the founder, Mr. Garnier, was the editor of the Swabian Liberal (Freisinnige),¹ and was, we believe, compelled to quit Germany, because he had become obnoxious to the government; but his journal is by no means exclusively political. Indeed, the first number is wholly literary, and consists chiefly of a review, with copious extracts, of the poems of Heine, one of the cleverest of the young German writers, also driven from his country in consequence of his political opinions.² Some of the shorter poems, extracted by Mr. Garnier, from Heine’s volume, are extremely beautiful, and will, we hope, contribute to make the author advantageously known in this country.

The following passage from Mr. Garnier’s prospectus, announces the notion he entertains of the function of a literary critic, and this notion is so remote from the vulgar one, that we cannot refuse ourselves the pleasure of translating it.

Aesthetic subtleties and system work, empty prattle on the beautiful and the not-beautiful, we abandon to the time-killers and the bel esprit journals, for the amusement of fine ladies, so abundant in Germany. We seek in the writer, above all, the man. How he, in and for himself, figures himself to us from his writings, we shall endeavour to unfold; and when we have pictured to ourselves the man, we shall next inquire what phasis, if any, of German life, he and his existence are the reflexion of; in what manner the age, and his individual circumstances, have influenced the formation of his character as a man and as a writer; or, on the other hand, what influence he himself has exercised on the age and on his circumstances; and, in this perpetual reference to actual life, many political leanings may possibly evince themselves, not, we conceive, without cause. This political tendency we shall least of all be able to avoid, if we likewise endeavour to show what the writer did not become, in consequence of the wretchedness of his times; and how often the fairest flowers of the German mind have, by the pressure of circumstances, been snapped off, or prevented from duly unfolding themselves. For it is not the greatness of many of our writers which ought to astonish us, but often that it was possible for them to attain any greatness whatever.³

The second number is more miscellaneous than the first. The longest article relates to the unfortunate Caspar Hauser, whose real parentage the author believes himself to have made out.⁴ We are not yet sufficiently masters of his theory, and of the grounds of it, to express any opinion of our own on the subject.

Mr. Garnier is evidently a man of considerable acquirements and talents, and of some humour; and we heartily wish him success. Harro Harring, the well-known author of Poland under the Dominion of Russia,⁵ will, it seems, shortly arrive in England, to take a share in the editorship of this work; and the aid of other German writers of reputation is confidently promised by Mr. Garnier.

271.

NEW AUSTRALIAN COLONY

MORNING CHRONICLE, 23 OCT., 1834, P. 3

Mill’s last newspaper contribution in 1834 is his first letter to the editor of an English journal since 30 Oct., 1828 (No. 42). Taking up the central issue of Nos. 259, 261, and 263, it is headed as title and described in his bibliography as “A letter in the Morning Chronicle of 23d Oct. 1834, signed A.B. and headed ‘New Australian Colony’ ”

(MacMinn, p. 42).

sir,—The letter which you inserted on Tuesday, respecting the new colony in Southern Australia, evidently proceeds from a writer thoroughly acquainted with the subject;¹ and if I were certain that it would attract the attention of the newly-appointed Commissioners for the government of the colony,² I should not have troubled you with any remarks on a subject which has been treated in so masterly a manner by your correspondent. But the question on which he chiefly insists is of such vital importance to all the objects of the colony, that so long as it is undecided, you will not, perhaps, grudge to devote a portion of your columns to its further discussion.

It would be far better, that the colony had never been thought of, it would be far better it should be thought of no more, than that the price for which land may be purchased in the colony should be so low as 12s. per acre, or even 1l. or 2l.

This must be clear to all who consider the principle on which the peculiarity of the proposed colony is founded. Other colonies have advanced slowly, because every family settles on its own piece of land, attempts to produce for itself all that it requires, and there is no combination of labour, no home market, no division of employments, because there are no hired labourers. Accordingly, the plan of the present colony is so framed as to secure a constant supply of hired labourers. It is not intended, far from it, that the labourer should continue a labourer all his life: it is desired that every labourer should in time become a landholder, but not until another labourer has arrived from Europe to take his place.

Now, your correspondent has clearly shown that if land can be obtained at 12s. an acre, every labourer will be able to become a landholder in less than a year. If so, there will be the same scarcity of labour as in the old colonies; the labourer, when established as a landholder, will depend solely upon the labour of his own family; there will be the same absence of combination, the same absence of a market for anything except food, the same want of motive to produce anything but the commonest necessaries of life, the same absence of society, of comforts, of civilization, as in the wilds of Canada. If so, it were far better that the colony should never be formed. There are enough, and more than enough, of colonies on the old absurd system.

The Commissioners, being men who understand the subject, are, doubtless, well aware of the necessity of a high minimum price; and, if they fix it too low, it will not be for want of knowing better, but for fear lest the object should be misunderstood, and emigrants induced, by the high price of land, to prefer some of the old colonies. But this is a chance which must be undergone. Let the reasons for fixing a high price be explained as fully and as clearly as possible, to all who are disposed to emigrate; but do not, to conciliate emigrants, sacrifice the only object for which the colony is established at all.

Perhaps the Commissioners may think of compromising the matter, by fixing the minimum price at 12s. or 1l., and selling all the land by auction, with that for the upset price; by which means they would obtain a higher than the minimum price for all the lots which are most eligibly situated. Now, the chief object of my writing the present letter is, to point out that this will not remedy the evil. So long as land of good quality can be had for cultivation at 12s. an acre, it is of no consequence that an acre of ground in a town may perhaps produce ten pounds. It is not the average price, but the lowest price, which determines the degree of concentration of the people. With the present artificial feelings of our labourers about property in land, they will spread themselves out on the outer verge of the colony, where land may be had at no more than the upset price; the labourers who first go out will become landholders in the first year, and there will be but few labourers to succeed them; every colonist will be a producer of food; there will be no purchasers for any surplus of food, and no producers for anything to give in exchange for food. Each family will have food in abundance, and nothing else.

The only advantage of selling the land by auction is, that a larger emigration-fund would be afforded than could be obtained at the same minimum price if the minimum were also the maximum. But this is a very trifling advantage. Considering the distance of the colony, and the expense of transport, a slight increase of the emigration-fund would by no means occasion labour to flow into the colony in sufficient abundance to supply the places of the first labourers so rapidly as those places would be vacated, if the minimum price were too low. It would be far better to fix the minimum sufficiently high from the beginning, and never to take more than the minimum for any land whatever. Those who might otherwise be deterred by the high minimum price from settling in the colony at all, would be no longer so, if, by paying that price, they purchased the chance of obtaining lots which could be resold at once for treble the value.

The one thing needful is a high minimum price; and this would probably be more easily obtained by renouncing the disposal of lands by auction altogether.

I am, Sir, yours respectfully,

A.B.

[1 ]Croker, p. 484. The proposal he refers to, which was as Mill indicates turned down, is Projet de loi sur les fortifications de la capitale (3 Apr.), Moniteur, 1833, p. 946; see also the report of the commission (22 Apr.), ibid., pp. 1149-52.

[2 ]For example, Colonel Armand François Lamy (1781-1839), in presenting the report, said: “Les forts détachés, au contraire, sont à 2,000 mètres du mur d’octroi actuel, c’est à dire de l’enceinte de sûreté de Paris. A cette distance, ils préserveront la cité de toute atteinte des projectiles ennemis, et leurs propres batteries n’auront aucune action contre elle.” (Ibid., p. 1151.)

[3 ]Actually, Arago was prevented from speaking in the Deputies because the debate was cut off; he therefore published a letter outlining what he would have said, in Le National, 15 June, 1833, p. 1.

[4 ]On 14 June (Moniteur, 1833, p. 1680).

[1 ]In “Notabilia,” with a comment by Mill, given below as No. 215. For the other instalments of “Pel. Verjuice,” see No. 207, n5.

[2 ]“Famine in a Slave Ship,” p. 602. The author was Ebenezer Elliot (1781-1849), self-educated poet and tradesman, known as the “Corn Law Rhymer” because of his Corn Law Rhymes (London: Steill, 1828).

[1 ]Mill’s note (in square brackets) was appended to this paragraph: “ ‘The Benefactors of Mankind Usually Unpopular during Their Lives’—In scarcely an instance did any great improvement, intellectual, moral, or political, originate with men who stood well with the world during their lives and labours; who were courted, rewarded, honoured, and patronized by the great, and regarded as benefactors by the multitude whom those great ones ruled, and who ended their thriving lives in circumstances of peace and affluence. Our Miltons kept school for bread and cheese. Our Marvels dined on the pickings of cold mutton bones. Our Sidneys perished on the scaffold. The power which theyopposed consents to join in praising their memories, when it thinks they can no longer do it any harm. So it was in Judea. Build and garnish the sepulchres of the prophets of a past generation.—Fox’s Monthly Repository.” (Anon., “Characteristics of English Aristocracy,” Monthly Repository, n.s. VII [Sept. 1833], 585.)

[2 ]Pope, Essay on Man, in Four Epistles, in Works, Vol. III, p. 135 (Ep. IV, l. 150).

[1 ]Demosthenes, De corona, in De corona and De false legatione, pp. 18-228. The friend was Ctesiphon, who had been prosecuted by Aeschines for proposing that Demosthenes receive a crown.

[2 ]This first parliamentary session of the Reformed Parliament ran from 29 Jan. to 29 Aug., 1833.

[3 ]On sinecures, see Spencer, Speech (14 Feb., 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 15, col. 674; on impressment, James Graham (1792-1861), First Lord of the Admiralty, Speech (15 Aug.), ibid., Vol. 20, cols. 676-84; on the Post Office, Charles Gordon Lennox (1791-1860), Duke of Richmond, Postmaster General, Speech (16 Aug.), ibid., cols. 711-12; on Bishops in the Lords, Spencer, Speech (18 June), ibid., Vol. 18, cols. 984-5; and on triennial parliaments, Russell, Speech (23 July), ibid., Vol. 19, cols. 1123-8.

[4 ]Enacted in 1833, respectively, as 3 & 4 William IV, c. 37 (discussed by Le Marchant, p. 8), c. 73 (Le Marchant, pp. 10-18), c. 85 (Le Marchant, pp. 43-5), c. 98 (Le Marchant, pp. 35-42), and c. 103 (Le Marchant, pp. 54-5).

[5 ]By 3 & 4 William IV, cc. 85 and 93 (1833).

[6 ]The Wellington ministry’s intention was referred to in a debate on the East India Company’s Charter by Edward Law, Lord Ellenborough, who had been President of the Board of Control 1828-30, in a speech in the Lords on 21 Apr., 1831 (PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 3, col. 1738).

[7 ]On 17 Jan., 1832, Michael Sadler had introduced “A Bill to Regulate the Labour of Children and Young Persons in the Mills and Factories of the United Kingdom” (2 William IV, PP, 1831-32, II, 1-10), restricting all those under eighteen years of age to ten hours a day or less—a restriction that it was hoped would in practice apply to all workers. On Sadler’s defeat at the election, Lord Ashley reintroduced a slightly strengthened version with the same title on 5 Mar., 1833 (3 William IV, PP, 1833, II, 263-80). The information gathered, first by the Select Committee and then by the Royal Commission prompted by these bills, forced the Home Secretary, Lord Althorp, to steer through the House a Government measure, again with the same title (4 William IV [1 Aug., 1833], ibid., II, 281-95), which was enacted as 3 & 4 William IV, c. 103 (1833). This measure, while it restricted the hours of those under thirteen to nine per day, did not include the ten-hour provision, which was not secured until 10 Victoria, c. 29 (1847).

[8 ]Stanley, Speech on the Ministerial Proposition for the Emancipation of Slaves (14 May, 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 17, cols. 1193-1231; the provisions Mill castigates in the following sentence are in cols. 1223-7.

[9 ]Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, II, ii, 121; in The Riverside Shakespeare, p. 561.

[10 ]Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847), the leader of the battle for political and religious equality for Irish Roman Catholics, applied the term “shave-beggar” to those in authority who wereallowed to learn by practising on Irish affairs as apprentice barbers learned by shaving beggars. See his Speech on the Doneraile Conspiracy (12 May, 1830), PD, n.s., Vol. 24, col. 651.

[11 ]See “Copy of the Letter Addressed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Commissioners for Inquiring into the Poor Laws, Dated 23rd February last; and of the Answer Returned by the Commissioners” (5 Aug., 1833), PP, 1833, XXXII, 342-6.

[12 ]On 11 June (PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 18, cols. 577-8).

[13 ]See 3 & 4 William IV, c. 37, Sect. 65 (vestry cess), and Sect. 130 (abolition of fines for the renewal of leases).

[14 ]In what Mill refers to below as the “first edition” of the proposal, i.e., “A Bill to Alter and Amend the Laws Relating to the Temporalities of the Church in Ireland,” 3 William IV (11 Mar., 1833), PP, 1833, I, 339-416, the provision was in Clause 142; in the second version (22 Apr.; ibid., pp. 417-98), the Clause had become No. 147; after vociferous opposition to the proposal, the Bill as amended by Committee (25 June; ibid., pp. 499-586), which was enacted as 3 & 4 William IV, c. 37, did not include the provision.

[15 ]See the speeches on 14 Mar. by Joseph Hume and Daniel O’Connell, PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 16, cols. 661-2 and 664.

[16 ]By Sect. 31 of 3 & 4 William IV, c. 37.

[17 ]By Sect. 89 of 3 & 4 William IV, c. 85.

[18 ]For O’Connell’s opposition, see n19. For the Speech on the East-India Company’s Charter (17 July, 1833), by George Sinclair (1790-1868), Whig M.P. for Caithness, writer on ecclesiastical questions, see PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 19, cols. 801-2.

[19 ]See the speeches on 17 and 19 July by Hume, and on 19 July by O’Connell and Charles Buller, ibid., cols. 800, 1027-8, 1019-21, and 1028.

[20 ]By Sect. 88 of “A Bill for Effecting an Arrangement with the India Company, and for the Better Government of His Majesty’s Indian Territories,” 3 William IV (28 June, 1833), PP, 1833, II, 192.

[21 ]By Sect. 103 of 3 & 4 William IV, c. 85. For the opinion of the Court of Directors about Haileybury, see “Paper of Observations and Suggestions on Several Clauses of the East-India Bill” (10 July, 1833), Papers Respecting the Negotiation with His Majesty’s Ministers on the Subject of the East-India Company’s Charter (London: Cox, 1833), p. 327.

[22 ]For the view in 1826 of Jenkinson (Lord Liverpool), see the reference at No. 209, n5 (and cf. PD, n.s., Vol. 14, cols. 450-66). He was supported by Frederick John Robinson (1782-1859), Viscount Goderich (later Earl of Ripon), Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1826, and Lord Privy Seal in 1833; see his Speech on the Bank Charter Amendment Bill (14 Apr., 1826), ibid., Vol. 15, cols. 238-40.

[23 ]See No. 209.

[24 ]See Spencer, Speech on the Bank of England Charter (28 June, 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 18, col. 1323.

[25 ]Towards the end of 1832, the term “Destructives” came into use to describe the Radicals. See The Times, 8 Dec., 1832, p. 4; and William Tait, “The Destructives,” Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, II (Feb. 1833), 575-7.

[1 ]For the Church Bill, see No. 216, n4. The others were enacted in 1833 as 3 & 4 William IV, c. 100 (Tithes) and 3 William IV, c. 4 (Coercion); the former is discussed by Le Marchant in The Reform Ministry, p. 10, the latter, pp. 6-8.

[2 ]Henry Fielding, Tom Thumb: A Tragedy (1730), I, v, 33; in Works, Vol. II, p. 24.

[3 ]Charles Grey, Speech on Church Temporalities (Ireland) (17 July, 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 19, col. 720, with reference to the speech in the same debate (ibid.) by Richard Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville (1776-1839), 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. Grey is, of course, adapting Shakespeare, Macbeth, V, v, 27-8 (in The Riverside Shakespeare, p. 1337).

[4 ]For the phrase, see No. 216, n10.

[5 ]Stanley, Speech on Tithes (Ireland) (14 Feb., 1832), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 10, col. 322.

[6 ]Cf. Stanley, Speech on Tithes (Ireland) (8 Mar., 1832), ibid., col. 1367.

[7 ]Le Marchant, pp. 18-34.

[8 ]Otho (or Otto) (1815-67), son of Louis I of Bavaria, accepted the throne of Greece in May 1832 (when he was not exactly a baby). His European supporters supplied a generous loan, Britain being liable for one-third (£800,000). See 2 & 3 William IV, c. 121 (1832).

[9 ]See Spencer, “Resolution on Supply—Sugar Duties” (16 Mar., 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 16, cols. 324-5.

[10 ]Altered by 3 & 4 William IV, c. 101 (1833).

[* ]Tea is a bulky article in proportion to its prime cost, and is understood to be carried several hundred miles by land on men’s backs to Canton; the difficulty of smuggling must, therefore, be almost insuperable.

[11 ]See No. 86 for Mill’s estimate of that Budget.

[12 ]On Financial Reform (London: Murray, 1830), by Henry Brooke Parnell (1776-1842), later 1st Baron Congleton, Secretary at War in Grey’s administration 1831-32, a writer on currency and banking, as well as on Irish grievances.

[13 ]See Spencer, speech of 11 Feb., 1831, cols. 417 (timber) and 411-13 (newspaper stamps). For the defeat of the timber duties, see No. 195, n11.

[14 ]Spencer, Speech on Supply—the Budget (19 Apr., 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 17, cols. 331-2.

[15 ]Spencer, Speech on the House and Window Taxes (30 Apr., 1833), ibid., col. 775.

[16 ]The residence near Chester of Robert Grosvenor (1767-1845), 1st Marquis of Westminster, a Whig who had been an M.P. 1788-1802, and was becoming increasingly wealthy from his properties in Belgravia and Pimlico.

[17 ]Le Marchant, p. 20.

[18 ]Napoleon, Letter to General Count Lemarois (9 July, 1813), in Correspondence de Napoléon Ier, 32 vols. (Paris: Plon, and Dumaine, 1858-70), Vol. XXV, p. 479.

[19 ]Charles James Napier, The Colonies (London: Boone, 1833), reviewed by Mill in No. 224. Napier (1782-1853), a veteran of the peninsular wars, was appointed field inspector in the Ionian Islands in 1819 and Resident at Cephalonia in 1820.

[20 ]See Décrets sur l’avancement militaire (20 Sept., 1790), Moniteur, 1790, p. 1095.

[21 ]Louis Lazare Hoche (1768-97) rose from the ranks, a grenadier at sixteen and general in command of the Army of the Moselle at twenty-five.

[22 ]The “Dead Weight” was Cobbett’s description of the annuities relating to naval and military pensions from the Napoleonic Wars, which the government had argued in 1822 were a “dead expense,” not a part of ordinary expenditure but a dwindling liability (PD, n.s., Vol. 7, col. 164).

[23 ]Cf. Proverbs, 31:27.

[24 ]See “Report from the Select Committee on Army and Navy Appointments” (12 Aug., 1833), PP, 1833, VII, 10-11.

[25 ]The fifth in precedence of the great officers of state (coming before the dukes), his custodianship of the privy seal was virtually formal in Mill’s time, though it originally, in the reign of Edward III, was seen as a check on the royal power.

[26 ]The Royal Duchy of Lancaster, dating from the reign of Henry IV, and that of Cornwall, dating from the reign of Edward III, were royal appanages, the latter reserved for the monarch’s eldest son. They were excepted in Sects. 3 and 9 of 1 George III, c. 1 (1760).

[27 ]Set up in 1800 to arrange and preserve the official records, and to make them available through publication, the Record Commission had a sad reputation for inaction and inefficiency at that time. For the current grant of £10,000, see “Finance Accounts,” PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 20, App., p. xxii.

[28 ]See No. 218, but Mill’s forecast was much in error, so see also Nos. 219, 220, 221, and 223.

[1 ]Speech on the Prussian Tariff (15 Aug., 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 20, col. 700, by Henry John Temple (1784-1865), Lord Palmerston, who had become Foreign Secretary in 1830.

[2 ]On 30 Apr., 1833, Charles William Wentworth Fitzwilliam (1786-1857), an early advocate of Corn Law repeal though a landowner, who had just entered the Lords from the Commons, presented six resolutions on trade in grain (ibid., Vol. 17, cols. 752-5). He was opposed on 14 May by Robinson, Earl of Ripon, Speech on the Corn Laws (ibid., cols. 1179-89).

[3 ]Le Marchant, pp. 56-73.

[4 ]As Home Secretary, Peel was responsible for many reforms, especially in the criminal law: e.g., 7 & 8 George IV, cc. 27-31 (1827), and 9 George IV, c. 31 (1828).

[5 ]Brougham, Speech on the State of the Courts of Common Law (7 Feb., 1828), PD, n.s., Vol. 18, cols. 127-247.

[6 ]The Commission on the Courts of Common Law was appointed in May 1828; that on the Law of Real Property in June 1828. For the Committee members and their First Reports, see PP, 1829, IX, 1-117, and X, 1-82.

[7 ]For Mill’s further comments, see No. 219.

[8 ]Speech from the Throne (4 Feb., 1830), PD, n.s., Vol. 22, col. 3.

[9 ]The Commission on Criminal Law was appointed on 23 July, 1833; for its First Report, see PP, 1834, XXVI, 117-77.

[10 ]Brougham, Speech on Local Judicatures (28 Mar., 1833), PD, 34d ser., Vol. 16, cols. 1190-6.

[1 ]Reformed by 1 & 2 William IV, c. 56 (1831).

[2 ]Reformed by 2 & 3 William IV, c. 107 (1832), and 3 & 4 William IV, c. 36 (1833).

[3 ]The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to hear appeals was established by 3 & 4 William IV, c. 41 (1833).

[4 ]The Ecclesiastical Courts, which had jurisdiction over divorce by annulment and probate as well as Church matters, had had their powers slightly altered by 2 & 3 WilliamIV, c. 92 (1832), but were not significantly reduced in authority until 1857 by the Matrimonial Causes Act.

[5 ]See Brougham, Speech on the Abolition of Chancery Sinecures (2 Aug., 1832), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 14, cols. 1016-19; and the abolishing acts, 2 & 3 William IV, c. 111 (1832), and 3 & 4 William IV, c. 99 (1833).

[6 ]For illustrative details, see 2 & 3 William IV, c. 110 (1832), Sects. 8 and 10; and 3 & 4 William IV, c. 84 (1833), Sect. 7.

[7 ]For the repeal (enacted in 1824, not 1823), see 5 George IV, c. 41.

[8 ]John Campbell, Speech on the Chancery Office Bill (22 Aug., 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 20, col. 829.

[9 ]In its original form, “A Bill Intituled, An Act for the Regulation of the Proceedings and Practice of Certain Offices of the High Court of Chancery in England” (19 July, 1833), PP, 1833, I, 289-97, the measure included fees. As revised by the Committee, the Bill (17 Aug., 1833), ibid., pp. 297-316, had a new Clause 29 providing for salaries. It was enacted as 3 & 4 William IV, c. 94 (1833); for fees, see Sects. 19, 41, and 44.

[10 ]Brougham, Speech on the Court of Chancery Regulation Bill (27 Aug., 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 20, cols. 892-3.

[11 ]The Clause is on p. 13 of “A Bill, Intituled, An Act for Settling Controversies by Arbitration,” 1 William IV (30 Nov., 1830), PP, 1830-31, I, 13-18 (not enacted). A substitute provision is on p. 17 of the Bill of the same title, 2 William IV (23 Aug., 1831), PP, 1831, I, 15-20 (not enacted); it was “revived” as Clause 28 of “A Bill, Intituled, An Act for the Further Amendment of the Law, and the Better Advancement of Justice,” 3 William IV (16 Apr., 1833), PP, 1833, III, 19-34 (enacted in Sect. 39 of 3 & 4 William IV, c. 42 [1833]).

[12 ]See “A Bill Intituled An Act for Appointing a Chief Justice in Chancery, and for Establishing a Court of Appeal in Chancery,” 4 William IV (19 July, 1833), Sessional Papers of the House of Lords, 1833, CCCXV, 217-20 (not enacted). For discussion of an earlier French measure of similar intent, see No. 66, n1, and No. 76, n3.

[13 ]By Sect. 1 of 3 & 4 William IV, c. 41.

[14 ]Le Marchant, p. 63.

[15 ]The clause containing the £100 limit is on p. 60 of “A Bill, Intituled, An Act for Establishing Courts of Local Jurisdiction,” 1 William IV (2 Dec., 1830), Sessional Papers of the House of Lords, 1830-31, CCLXXXIII, 57-104 (not enacted). The limit to £20 is in Clause 15 of the Bill of the same title, 3 William IV (28 Mar., 1833), ibid., CCCXIV (1833), 205-38 (not enacted). For the debate in the Lords that led to its defeat, see PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 19, cols. 307-74.

[16 ]Brougham, Speech on Courts of Local Jurisdiction (9 July, 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 19, col. 371.

[17 ]Those of William Brougham (1795-1886), brother of the Lord Chancellor, a barrister, Master in Chancery from 1831, and M.P. for Southwark 1831-34. He introduced “A Bill for Establishing a General Register for All Deeds and Instruments Affecting Real Property in England and Wales,” 3 William IV (13 May, 1833), PP, 1833, III, 489-540; it was debated and defeated on 19 June (PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 18, cols. 1001-11).

[1 ]“Detector,” Letter to the Editor (26 Aug.), The Times, 28 Aug., 1833, p. 3.

[2 ]See No. 219, n16.

[3 ]Brougham, speech of 22 Aug., col. 823.

[4 ]Ibid., col. 822.

[5 ]Ibid., col. 823.

[6 ]See, e.g., a leading article on the Municipal Corporation Bill, The Times, 26 Aug., 1833, p. 2.

[7 ]The Commission was granted on 18 July, 1833, and began its hearings on 2 Sept. The Commissioners are listed at the beginning of “First Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Municipal Corporations in England and Wales” (30 Mar., 1835), PP, 1835, XXIII, 1-798.

[8 ]See William Maginn, “Specimens of the Art of Governing ‘by Commission,’ ” Fraser’s Magazine, VIII (Oct. 1833), 470-8.

[9 ]For an early use of this catch phrase, see William Howe Windham (1750-1810), M.P. and member of Cabinet under Pitt and Grenville, Speech on Defence of the Country (22 July, 1807), PD, 1st ser., Vol. 9, col. 897.

[* ]Be it well understood that we are not giving credit to the men who ruled the councils of the five powers, for having the slightest foresight of these ultimate results, or being actuated by any other motives than those of immediate convenience. They are unconscious, and if they were conscious, would probably be unwilling agents, in a work which is greater than they know. The Holy Alliance was a mere vulgar union of the strong for keeping down the weak. Now the weak have also become strong and the hostile interests being nearly balanced, have been brought to a compromise. No otherwise than thus were law and order substituted for chaos in any individual community. The strong never would yield submission to a superior authority while their strength would serve them; but when the weak by combination became in their turn formidable to the strong, the latter reluctantly consented to the acknowledgement of a common superior. [In response to the revolt of Belgium from the Netherlands in August 1830, Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia met in the London Conference of November 1830. (For background, see No. 59, n5.) They ordered cessation of hostilities on 20 Jan., 1831, but following the powers’ recognition of the Belgians’ election of Leopold as king in June, the Dutch invaded in August. The French forced the Dutch to retreat, and a treaty was arranged by the London Conference on 15 Nov., 1831.]

[10 ]See “First Report of the Central Board of His Majesty’s Commissioners Appointed to Collect Information in the Manufacturing Districts,” 3 William IV (28 June, 1833), PP, 1833, XX, 1-1125, specifically on infant labour, pp. 36-8, and on adult labour, p. 38. The Factory Act, 3 & 4 William IV, c. 103 (1833), restricted the hours of work of young persons (aged fourteen to eighteen) to twelve.

[11 ]“A Bill to Explain and Amend an Act of the Second and Third Years of His Present Majesty’s Reign, for the Better Employment of Labourers in Agricultural Parishes,” 4 William IV (29 July, 1833), PP, 1833, I, 33-6 (not enacted). See No. 221 for the Ministers who defended the bill, and Mill’s discussion of the issues.

[1 ]Officially entitled Extracts from the Information Received by His Majesty’s Commissioners, as to the Administration and Operation of the Poor-Laws (London: Fellowes, 1833).

[2 ]“Copy of the Letter,” PP, 1833, XXXII, 345.

[3 ]See Lennox, Speech on Employment for Agricultural Labourers (13 June, 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 18, cols. 664-71. For the bill he introduced, see No. 220, n11.

[4 ]For the letter, and the Commissioners’ reply, see PP, 1833, XXXII, 342-6.

[5 ]Speech on Labour Rate (3 July, 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 19, col. 67, by Charles James Blomfield (1786-1857), scholar and reforming churchman, Bishop of London since 1828.

[6 ]Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, Lord Lansdowne, Speech on Employment for Agricultural Labourers (13 June, 1833), ibid., Vol. 18, cols. 675-7.

[7 ]Spencer, Speech on Employment for Agricultural Labourers (5 Aug., 1833), ibid., Vol. 20, col. 357.

[8 ]Buller, Speech on Employment for Agricultural Labourers (5 Aug., 1833), ibid., col. 357.

[9 ]Charles Edward Poulett Thomson, Speech on Employment for Agricultural Labourers (5 Aug., 1833), ibid., col. 358. The Solicitor-General, John Campbell, did not speak, but voted against the Bill (ibid., col. 359).

[10 ]The phrase was used in the debate by Joseph Marryat (ibid., col. 359); “temporary measure” appears in the speeches by Lennox (n3), by Petty-Fitzmaurice (n6), and by Spencer (n7).

[11 ]“Copy of the Letter” (see n2), p. 345.

[12 ]See “Report from the Select Committee on the Sale of Beer, with Minutes of Evidence” (21 June, 1833), PP, 1833, XV, 1-260, which led to “A Bill to Amend an Act Passed in the First Year of the Reign of His Present Majesty, to Permit the General Sale of Beer and Cyder by Retail in England,” 4 William IV (15 Aug., 1833), ibid., I, 165-74 (not enacted, but a similar bill in the next session was enacted as 4 & 5 William IV, c. 85 [1834]).

[13 ]Le Marchant, The Reform Ministry, pp. 78-89.

[1 ]Graham, Speech on Impressment (15 Aug., 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 20, cols. 676-84, in immediate reply to James Silk Buckingham, Speech on Impressment (15 Aug.), ibid., cols. 636-76. Buckingham (1786-1855), traveller, lecturer, and journalist, a social reformer and temperance advocate, was M.P. for Sheffield.

[a-a][quoted by Mill in 34]

[2 ]William Pitt, Lord Chatham, speech of 22 Nov., 1770, in John Almon, Anecdotes of the Life of the Right Hon. William Pitt, 3 vols. (London: Longman, et al., 1810), Vol. II, pp. 197-8, cited by Graham, speech of 15 Aug., col. 684.

[b-b]34[in italics]

[3 ]Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 393-4; in Poetical Works, p. 97.

[c-c]34[not in italics]

[1 ]“Reports of the Commissioners Appointed by Act 25 Geo. III, cap. 19 to Enquire into the Fees, Gratuities, Perquisites, and Emoluments, Which Are or Have Been Lately Received in the Several Public Offices Therein Mentioned. Tenth Report—Post Office” (30 June, 1788), PP, 1806, VII, 755-97, esp. 783.

[2 ]“Eighteenth Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the Collection and Management of the Revenue Arising in Ireland and Great Britain: Post Office Revenue, United Kingdom” (20 Mar., 1829), PP, 1829, XI, 1-90, esp. 31.

[3 ]Antoine Joseph Xavier Conte (1773-1850) was made Director General of the Post Office after the July Revolution. He successfully reorganized the Postal Service and arranged postal treaties with other countries, most notably (though not until 1836) with Great Britain.

[4 ]Spencer, Speech on Newspapers—the Post Office (28 June, 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 18, cols. 1303-4.

[5 ]PP, 1829, XI, 91-101.

[6 ]Francis Freeling (1764-1836), who joined the General Post Office in 1787, in a career of nearly fifty years worked his way up to Chief Secretary. He had been knighted in 1828.

[7 ]See 6 George IV, c. 68 (1825), Sect. 9.

[8 ]Robert Stewart (1769-1822), Viscount Castlereagh, 2nd Marquis of Londonderry, Tory statesman much hated by the Radicals, though never Prime Minister, was leader of the Commons from 1812, and had major responsibility for the “Six Acts” of 1819.

[9 ]See No. 216, n3.

[10 ]Spencer, speech of 14 Feb., 1833, col. 674; cf. his speech of 15 Aug., PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 20, cols. 706-8.

[11 ]As a result of a motion for an inquiry into the sinecure offices on 15 Aug., 1833, which was successfully amended into a motion for a return of all such offices, the committee Mill refers to was set up, but not until the next session, on 28 Feb., 1834. See “Report from the Select Committee Appointed to Examine the Papers Respecting Sinecure Offices Presented to the House on the 26th February Last,” PP, 1834, VI, 339-572.

[12 ]For Spencer’s justification of assessed taxes, see No. 217, n15; for his alleged promise to give them up, see his Speech on Inhabited House Duty (7 Aug., 1833), ibid., Vol. 20, cols. 421-5.

[1 ]Walter Scott, Redgauntlet: A Tale of the Eighteenth Century, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: Constable, 1824), Vol. II, p. 277 (Chap. xii). This is Napier’s motto.

[2 ]William Francis Patrick Napier (1785-1860), distinguished veteran of the Peninsular War, whose History of the War in the Peninsula and in the South of France was completed after this date in 6 vols. (London: Murray, and Boone, 1828-40).

[3 ]The islands of Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante, Santa Maura, Ithaca, Cythera, and Paxo were formed into the “Septinsular Republic” in 1800 by Turkey and Russia. Independent only for seven years, the group was declared part of the French empire in 1807, but the British gradually gained the islands. By the Treaty of Paris in 1815 they were declared independent as the United States of Ionian Islands, but were placed under British protection and in effect ruled by Residents on the individual islands, under the Lord High Commissioner.

[4 ]Frederick Adam (1781-1853), another veteran of the Peninsular War, was Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands 1824-31, and became Governor of Madras in 1832.

[5 ]Samuel Butler (1612-80), Hudibras (1663) (Pt. I, Canto 1, ll. 35-6), 2 vols., ed. Zachary Grey (London: Vernor and Hood, et al., 1801), Vol. I, p. 7.

[6 ]Thomas Maitland (1759-1824), M.P. 1794-96 and 1800-06, had served in the army in India, the West Indies, and France; had been Commander-in-Chief in Ceylon in 1806, and Governor-General in Malta 1813, before becoming Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands in 1815. Charles Napier had served under him as well as Adams.

[7 ]Napier’s letter of 23 Mar., 1832, is given in The Colonies, pp. 392-445.

[8 ]For the offer by Frederick John Robinson, Lord Goderich, see ibid., p. 380.

[9 ]These words are Napier’s report (p. 446) of what he was told by James MacDonald, who had been appointed Governor of the Ionian Islands.

[10 ]See The Colonies, p. 456.

[1 ]“Saint Monday,” p. 830. The article is probably by W.J. Fox.

[2 ]Founded in 1826 by a group including Brougham, James Mill, and Grote, the S.D.U.K. published through Charles Knight inexpensive editions of works on a wide range of subjects including science, history, economics, philosophy, and literature. Brougham’s influence was the dominant one.

[3 ]Saint Monday: A Poem, by the Author of “The Mechanic’s Saturday Night” (London: Steill, 1833) was by Henry Brown, an artisan.

[4 ]The “maxim,” partly paraphrased in English below, reads: “Toutes les institutions sociales doivent avoir pour but l’amélioration du sort moral, physique et intellectuel de la classe la plus nombreuse et la plus pauvre. / Tous les privilèges de la naissance, sans exceptions, seront abolis.” See Doctrine Saint-Simonienne (Nouveau Christianisme) (1830), in Oeuvres de Saint-Simon et d’Enfantin, 2nd ed., 47 vols. (Paris: Dentu, and Leroux, 1865-78), Vol. XLI, p. 55. The maxim was used as a motto by Le Globe.

[5 ]Sarah Flower, “A National Gallery,” pp. 841-2. The marks of ellipsis are hers.

[6 ]The latest instalment of this novel by Pemberton is on pp. 816-29 (for the other instalments, see No. 207, n5).

[7 ]The reference is to Graham’s speech of 15 Aug.; see No. 222, n1.

[8 ]“Church Reform, Considered as a National and Not a Sectarian Question,” pp. 805-13; for the attack on the term “property of the Church,” see p. 809. The article is probably by W.J. Fox.

[9 ]For the origins of the term in this sense, see No. 216, n25.

[1 ]On 23 Dec. (Moniteur, 1833, p. 2487).

[2 ]On 11 Dec., 1833, François Vincent Raspail (for his earlier trial,see No. 137) and twenty-six young men, members of the Société des Droits de l’Homme, were brought before the Cour d’Assises de la Seine on charges of conspiracy. Each session was reported in the Moniteur, the opening one on pp. 2436-8, and the closing one pp. 2484-6. The Société des Droits de l’Homme was a regrouping of the Société des Amis du Peuple, which had been broken up at the end of 1832. The new society, modelled on Robespierre’s Société des Jacobins, was secret, republican, and carefully organized into cells covering nearly all areas of France, and was especially strong in Paris and Lyons. Its newspaper was La Tribune until it was banned, and then the Réformateur.

[3 ]In his concluding speech on 21 Dec. (Moniteur, 1833, p. 2481), Emile Delapalme (1793-1868), the avocat-général, did not admit there was insufficient evidence against Raspail and Joachim René Théophile Guillard de Kersausie (1798-1874), another liberal activist and former Carbonaro. The admission had come earlier; see the account of the trial in La Tribune, 14 Dec., 1833, p. 3.

[4 ]Bull. 214 bis (17 Nov.-16 Dec., 1808), Livre I, Chap. viii, Art. 113.

[5 ]Jean Jacques Vignerte (1806-70), one of the Society’s principal organizers among the working class, made his insulting remark in a speech of 19 Dec. (Moniteur, 1833, p. 2473).

[6 ]Jacques François Dupont de Bussac (1803-73) was suspended for a year, and Louis Chrysostome Michel (1798-1853) and Marie Oscar Pinard (1801-67) were both suspended for six months.

[1 ]The election was on 24 Dec. (see Moniteur, 1833, p. 2494). Jules Paul Benjamin Delessert (1773-1847), philanthropist, botanist, and banker, had been a deputy since 1817.

[1 ]See the leading articles on Turkey, The Times, 1 and 2 Jan., 1834, both on p. 2. Fear of Russian hegemony in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean prompted a proposed increase in the British and French fleets in the area; Russia protested against this proposal, and war seemed imminent.

[1 ]W.J. Fox, “Forwards or Backwards?” pp. 1-7.

[2 ]P. 63. The article is possibly by Fox.

[3 ]On pp. 7-19; the article is by John Phillips Potter (1793-1861), clergyman and writer on classical philosophy.

[4 ]On pp. 21-39, by Charles Pemberton (see No. 207, n5).

[5 ]Sarah Flower, “The Luxembourg,” pp. 54-63; for her article on the Louvre, “A National Gallery,” see No. 225.

[6 ]Eliza Flower, “A Chime for the New Year: Songs of the Months, No. I, January,” p. 41 (words by Sarah Flower). For Mill’s review of the songs for the first four months, see No. 248; for his review of the complete work, No. 273.

[7 ]Reviewed by Mill in No. 112.

[1 ]The address in answer to the Speech from the Throne (23 Dec., 1833) was read and the debate began on 2 Jan. (Moniteur, 1834, pp. 10-16).

[2 ]Mauguin’s speech of 3 Jan. on the address was reported ibid., p. 24; Odilon Barrot’s, of the 4th, ibid., p. 28.

[3 ]For the episode on 6 Jan. and the speeches by Argenson and Audry de Puyravault, see ibid., pp. 40-2. The member who called them to account was Thomas Robert Bugeaud de la Piconnerie, duc d’Isly (1784-1849), who became a general under Louis Philippe, and had been a deputy since 1831. The Société des Droits de l’Homme (see No. 226, n2) had issued in 1833 the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, prefaced to the Constitution of 1793 by Robespierre; see No. 233 for Mill’s fuller discussion.

[4 ]See, for English examples, “Y.,” “Private Correspondence” (Paris, 1 Nov.), The Times, 11 Nov., 1833, p. 1, and “Foreign Intelligence (from our Private Correspondent),” Standard, 16 Dec., 1833, p. 2; for a French example, “Paris: 28 octobre,” Journal des Débats, 29 Oct., p. 1.

[5 ]The promise was not fulfilled until two weeks later (No. 233), there being no room in the Examiner for 19 Jan., to which Mill contributed Nos. 231 and 232, the latter of which usurped the space.

[1 ]Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776-1831), German historian, best known for his path-breaking Römische Geschichte (1811-12), trans. in 3 vols. by Julius Charles Hare, et al., as History of Rome (London: Taylor and Walton, 1828-42). Ernst Wilhelm Gottlieb Wachsmuth (1787-1866), German archeologist and historian, author of Die ältere Geschichte der römischen Staates untersucht (Halle: Reugerschen Buchhandlung, 1819).

[2 ]The disclaimer and acknowledgment appear on the unnumbered Advertisement page preceding the table of contents. He cites Friedrich Christoph Schlosser (1776-1861), Universalhistorische Uebersicht der Geschichte der alten Welt und ihrer Cultur, 3 pts. (Frankfurt am Main: Varrentrapp, 1826-34).

[3 ]Archibald Alison (1792-1867), historian, “France in 1833 (No. II),” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, XXXIV (Dec. 1833), 914. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (163-133 ) and his brother Gaius (153-122 ) were Roman tribunes who implemented agrarian reforms.

[4 ]Vol. I, pp. 268-85 (Bk. III, Chap. ii) and pp. 347-60 (Bk. III, Chap. ix).

[1 ]The promise, made in No. 230, was fulfilled in No. 233, as Mill indicates.

[2 ]Moniteur, 10 Jan., 1834, p. 68.

[3 ]The notice in the Examiner, 12 Jan., p. 21, under “Foreign Intelligence. France,” concludes “ ‘(Abridged from the Standard)’ ” and seems not to be by Mill. In the debate on 7 Jan. (Moniteur, 1834, pp. 53-4), Broglie, Minister of Foreign Affairs, expressed his approval of the speech just given by Bignon, in which the latter argued that peace must never be bought—with the implication that it had—at the sacrifice of France’s interests in allowing any one of the great powers of Europe to set aside treaties and to upset the status quo in Poland, in Turkey, or in Italy. On the next day, Broglie explained that he shared only Bignon’s principle, not his interpretation of recent events (ibid., pp. 59-60).

[4 ]Leading article on Foreign Policy, The Times, 17 Jan., 1834, p. 4.

[5 ]Henry Fielding, The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild, the Great (1743), in Works, 12 vols. (London: Richards, 1824), Vol. IV. See especially Bk. IV, Chap. xv, pp. 215-21.

[6 ]Leading article on the Russian threat to India, Globe and Traveller, 10 Apr., 1828, p. 2.

[7 ]Unheaded leader, signed by Paulin, Le National, 31 Dec., 1833, p. 1.

[8 ]For the sentence, see ibid., 19 Nov., 1833, p. 2.

[9 ]For the relevant laws, see No. 226, n4.

[10 ]For Persil’s speech of 4 Nov., see Moniteur, 1833, pp. 2284-6.

[11 ]Leading articles on juries, Journal des Débats, 20 Nov., 1833, p. 1, and 13 Nov., p. 1.

[12 ]“Du jury considéré comme institution politique,” Moniteur du Commerce, 9 Nov., 1833, pp. 1-2; juries were required by Art. 53 of the Charter of 1830.

[13 ]Art. 3 of Bull. 9, No. 68 (8 Oct., 1830).

[14 ]At the time of Mill’s earlier reports of the incidents (Nos. 185 and 187), Mlle Boury was held to be part of the conspiracy. Subsequently, however, two young men were charged, and she appeared only as a witness in their trial (reported in Le National, 14 Mar., 1833, pp. 2-4). In the same issue (p. 2) a leading article criticized the president of the Cour Royale, Jean Jacques Duboys (1768-1845), professor of law, former procureur-général of Angers and a deputy since 1830, and the two conseillers, Joseph Frédéric Chaubry de Troncenord (1793-1880) and Louis Crespin de la Rachée (b. 1757).

[15 ]For an account of the legal conflicts, see “Des poursuites contre la presse,” Constitutionnel, 16 Mar., 1833, p. 1.

[16 ]On 20 Mar. (Moniteur, 1833, p. 788).

[17 ]Le National, 21 Mar., 1833, p. 2.

[18 ]The decision came on 12 May (Moniteur, 1833, pp. 1337-9).

[19 ]Arnold Scheffer (ca. 1797-1853), radical journalist, one of the French Carbonari, as was his brother Ary, an artist and friend of the Grotes; and Louis Prosper Conseil (1796-1834), a radical lawyer and journalist, associate of Carrel.

[20 ]Mélanges politiques et philosophiques extraits des mémoires et de la correspondance de Thomas Jefferson, précédés d’un Essai sur les principes de l’école américaine, 2 vols. (Paris: Paulin, 1833).

[21 ]The notice of summons is reported in the National de 1834, 10 Jan., p. 2; see also Moniteur, 1834, p. 120.

[22 ]For the spirited example, see No. 176.

[23 ]See No. 247.

[a-a][quoted in 35]

[1 ]Mill may be taking the term from Edward Gibbon Wakefield, England and America, 2 vols. (London: Bentley, 1833), Vol. I, pp. 82-105, where the middle class is described as the “uneasy class”; Wakefield reprinted this section, under the title “The Uneasy Class,” in his Popular Politics (London: Knight, 1837), pp. 26-47.

[b-b][quoted in 35]

[c-c]35 Society of the Rights of Man

[2 ]Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, proposée par Maximilien Robespierre, 24 avril, 1793 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1793), reprinted in Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (1833), by the Société des Droits de l’Homme (see Nos. 226, n2, and 230, n3).

[3 ]Article 6: “La propriété est le droit qu’a chaque citoyen de jouir et de disposer de la portion de bien qui lui est garantie par la loi” (1793 version, p. 3; the 1833 version adds “à son gré” between “disposer” and “de la portion,” also p. 3).

[d-d]35 bigotry. We

[4 ]François Noël Babeuf (1760-97), one of the leaders of the Société des Egaux; under the Directory he advocated socialist and revolutionary doctrines, and was executed as a conspirator. One of the cells of the Société des Droits de l’Homme was named for him.

[1 ]Gregorio Fontana-Rava has left little trace. It is known that he ran a bookshop in Antwerp which became a centre for Italian patriots and that after he came to England in May 1833 he lectured twice a week in the Burton Lecture Rooms on advanced topics. Gioacchino Prati (1790-1863) was a romantic Italian patriot and revolutionary of high birth. He travelled throughout Italy and (after his exile in 1821) Europe, founding secret societies and furthering revolutionary causes. In 1823 he came to England where, he says, through Bowring he wrote for the Westminster Review. He became a Saint-Simonian in 1803-31 and in 1837 was editor of the Penny Satirist, in which he published his autobiography (1837-39), reprinted in Annuario dell’istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, Vols. XVII-XVIII (1965-66) and XIX-XX (1967-68).

[2 ]The Society broke up after the trial of Enfantin and his followers in August 1832; see No. 180.

[3 ]Mohammed (or Mehemet) Ali (1769-1849), the ex-Albanian soldier who had cooperated with the British in expelling the French, by 1811 had command of Egypt. He began investigating the feasibility of a Suez Canal, on which Enfantin advised. Enfantin was accompanied to Egypt by about five disciples, including Marie Jérôme Henri Fournel (1799-1876), a mining engineer; they were preceded by another larger group of former Saint-Simonians, including, as well as Barrault and Rodrigues, Félicien David (1810-76), composer, and Charles Joseph Lambert (1804-64), yet another engineer.

[4 ]The Times, 8 Nov., 1833, p. 2.

[5 ]Michel Chevalier, imprisoned for six months after the trial of August 1832, then was sent to the United States for two years to study transportation systems.

[6 ]Christophe Stéphane Mony Flachat (1810-84), a civil engineer active in organizing Saint-Simonian ateliers, also worked on transportation after the Society broke up.

[7 ]The Revue Encyclopédique included articles by such former Saint-Simonians as Pierre Leroux (1798-1871), its director, and Jean Reynaud (1806-63), who contributed a series on Saint-Simonianism, and who was imprisoned after defending Guinard in the trial of the Société des Droits de l’Homme.

[8 ]See Robert Owen, Report to the County of Lanark, of a Plan for Relieving Public Distress, and Removing Discontent, by Giving Permanent, Productive Employment, to the Poor and Working Classes (Glasgow: Wardlaw and Cunningham, 1821), pp. 27-8.

[9 ]See Plato, Republic (Greek and English), trans. Paul Shorey, 2 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1930), Vol. I, pp. 452-8 (457c-458d).

[10 ]An anonymous, scathingly dismissive review of St. Simonism in London appeared in the Literary Gazette on 7 Dec., 1833, pp. 772-3; much of its scorn was directed at the Saint-Simonian beliefs about women.

[11 ]In his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.

[12 ]Cf. Titus, 1:15.

[1 ]Projet de loi sur le conseil-général et les conseils d’arrondissement du département de la Seine, et sur la municipalité de la ville de Paris (8 Dec.), Moniteur, 1832, pp. 2116-17, finally enacted as Bull. 116, No. 262 (20 Apr., 1834).

[2 ]Proposition de M. Parant, relative à l’abolition des majorats et des substitutions (14 Jan.), Moniteur, 1834, p. 112. Narcisse Parant (1794-1842) was a deputy from the Moselle. Disagreements between the Deputies and the Peers over the existing entails delayed enactment until Bull. 138, No. 308 (12 May, 1835).

[3 ]Bull. 104, No. 235 (22 June, 1833), replaced the various Acts going back to Bull. 17, No. 115 (17 Feb., 1800).

[4 ]The provisions of equal division in Livre III, Titre I, Chap. iii, Sect. iii, Art. 745, and Titre II, Chap. iii, Sect. i, Arts. 913-19 of the Code Napoléon (the Code civil), Bull. 154 bis, No. 2653 bis, were set aside by Napoleon in Art. 5 of Bull. 112, No. 1823 (14 Aug., 1806), which created the majorats.

[1 ]François Charles Dulong (1792-1834), lawyer and politician of the left. On 25 Jan., during a very heated discussion over the rights of young officers, especially those in the artillery, Dulong shouted a remark at General Bugeaud, referring to him as the gaoler of the duchesse de Berry. (The debate but not the interjection appears in Moniteur, 1834, pp. 162-4.) A duel took place on 29 Jan. in which Dulong was wounded; he died next day and was buried on 1 Feb.

[2 ]See La Tribune, 30 Jan., 1834, p. 1, which quotes the offending passage from the Bulletin Ministériel and summarizes the affair. Marie Théodore Gueilly, comte de Rumigny (1789-1860), a colonel under Napoleon, was patronized by Louis Philippe. For details of the earlier charge of conspiracy, see Nos. 100 and 101.

[3 ]For the Six Acts of December 1819, see No. 9; the one specifically referred to is 60 George III & 1 George IV, c. 9.

[4 ]Projet de loi sur les crieurs publiques (24 Jan.), Moniteur, 1834, p. 154. The bill was reported by the commission to the Deputies on 3 Feb., and, after debate on the 5th, 6th, and 7th, was passed; the Peers adopted it on the 15th, and it was enacted as Bull. 110, No. 253 (16 Feb., 1834).

[5 ]The commission was appointed on 18 Jan. to deal with Projet de loi relatif à la fixation du budget des dépenses de l’exercice 1835, and Projet de loi relatif à la fixation du budget des recettes de l’exercice 1835, both of which were introduced on 9 Jan. (Moniteur, 1834, pp. 78 and 146). Soult’s demand of 3 Feb. is in Projet de loi tendant à accorder un crédit supplémentaire pour 1834, au ministère de la guerre (ibid., pp. 213-14).

[1 ]For details, see No. 236, n4.

[2 ]See No. 236.

[1 ]For earlier comment, see Nos. 236 and 237.

[2 ]Projet de loi sur les associations (25 Feb.), Moniteur, 1834, p. 418, enacted as Bull. 115, No. 261 (10 Apr., 1834).

[3 ]See the report in the National de 1834, 15 Feb., 1834, pp. 2-3, and, for earlier comment, No. 232.

[1 ]Mill is probably alluding to reports in The Times, 24 Feb., p. 5, and 25 Feb., p. 2 (see No. 240) and to that in the Courier, 24 Feb., p. 3.

[1 ]Leading article, The Times, 25 Feb., 1834, p. 2.

[1 ]For the measure, see No. 238, n2.

[2 ]By Art. 291 of the Code pénal (Bull. 277 bis, No. 1 bis [12 Feb., 1810]).

[3 ]By its Art. 3.

[4 ]Cabet was called before the Cour d’Assises de la Seine on 28 Feb. for libels in the Populaire (a republican paper founded by him in September 1833) on 12 and 19 Jan., 1834; his sentence also included a fine of 4000 francs. See Moniteur, 1834, pp. 449-50.

[1 ]For the measure, see No. 238, n2.

[1 ]Prati presumably reproduced in his letter Enfantin’s letter to Hoart, Bruneau, Rogé, and Massol (which Mill of course had not seen). The latter may be found in Oeuvres de Saint-Simon et d’Enfantin, Vol. IX, pp. 99-108. The end of the passage (presumably in Prati’s English) renders the original’s “Revenons à notre place” (p. 103).

[2 ]Diocletian (245-313), Emperor of Rome 284-305, abdicated in 305 and retired to Salona, but did not resume power. Mill may be thinking of Maximianus I (ca. 240-310), who had shared power with Diocletian, and abdicated with him. Persuaded to resume power in 306, he had to abdicate again in 307. In 308, he became Emperor for a third time, chosen by the soldiers; later the same year, he was once more removed, and in 310 he committed suicide.

[3 ]Nos. 140 and 180.

[1 ]See Archibald Alison, “France in 1833 (No. I): Its Political State,” Blackwood’s Magazine, XXXIV (Oct. 1833), 641-56, and “France in 1833 (No. II): Effects of the Revolution of the Barricades on Government, Religion, Morals and Literature,” ibid. (Dec. 1833), 902-28; Robert Benton Seeley [?], “Whig Foreign Policy,” Fraser’s Magazine, VI (Dec. 1832), 637-52; and John Wilson Croker, “French Revolution of 1830” (commented on in No. 213).

[2 ]“Considérations sur l’état moral de la nation française, et sur les causes de l’instabilité de ses institutions,” in Le Censeur Européen, 12 vols. (Paris: Au bureau de l’administration, 1817-19), Vol. I, p. 82.

[3 ]The battles of Leipzig and Waterloo, both crushing French defeats, took place on 16-19 Oct., 1813, and 18 June, 1815.

[4 ]By Bull. 6, No. 61 (31 Aug., 1830).

[5 ]For the episode, see No. 230, n3.

[6 ]Abolished by 1 & 2William IV, c. 4 (1831).

[7 ]For details, see No. 6.

[8 ]Nero (37-68), renowned for his profligacy, used murder and massacre to maintain his power; Charles IX of France (1550-74), was duc d’Orléans until, at the age of ten, he succeeded his brother, François II. The religious strife and secret plotting that distinguished his reign culminated in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre.

[* ]This expression, we observe, has found favour in the eyes of English Tories, who, thinking it must mean something disgraceful, employ it ad invidiam, little knowing who were its authors, and neither knowing nor caring in what sense it was intended to be understood. The phrase was invented to characterize the conduct during the Restoration, of those Liberals who, disapproving of the existing Government, and not being permitted to speak or write anything which might bring it into discredit, adopted the only course which seemed left to them for effecting its subversion, by allying themselves with those who made their stand upon the Charter; and contended for the strict observance of the Constitution, not so much for its own sake, as because they in reality believed that its strict observance was incompatible with the Bourbon dynasty, who could only maintain themselves against the growing strength of public odium by perpetual violations of the Charter, and if precluded from these must certainly fall. [The phrase was first used in “Séance d’avant-hier à la cour des pairs,” Le Globe, 24 Nov., 1830, p. 1, and its popularity discussed in “La comédie de quinze ans,” ibid., 22 Apr., 1831, p. 1.]

[9 ]A variant of one of Mill’s favourite texts, taken from Coleridge, Second Lay Sermon (1817), in On the Constitution of Church and State, and Lay Sermons, ed. Henry Nelson Coleridge (London: Pickering, 1839), p. 409.

[1 ]Leading article on French affairs, Globe and Traveller, 28 Mar., 1834, p. 2, translating from “Paris,” Constitutionnel, 26 Mar., p. 1. For the speech of 28 June, 1832, on Poland by Temple (Palmerston), see PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 13, cols. 1131-3. The references are to Carlo Andrea, conte Pozzo di Borgo (1764-1842), Corsican-born Russian diplomat, who became Ambassador to France at the Restoration.

[2 ]The material in this paragraph was taken from the Journal de St. Petersburgh of 11 Mar. by the Globe and Traveller (p. 2) and The Times (p. 2) on 28 Mar. The “Autocrat” was Nicholas I (1796-1855), Czar 1825-55.

[3 ]Leopold I (1790-1865), King of Belgium from 1831, after its separation from the Netherlands.

[4 ]The remark was made not by the Minister of War, Soult, but (on 26 Mar.) by the Minister of Marine, comte de Rigny. See Moniteur, 1834, p. 717.

[1 ]For the measure, see No. 238, n2.

[2 ]Bull. 123, No. 1998 (21 Nov., 1806); Bull. 172, No. 2912 (23 Nov., 1807); Bull. 169, No. 2890 (17 Dec., 1807); and Bull. 171, No. 2904 (11 Jan., 1808).

[3 ]The agreement reached on 4 July, 1831, in “Convention Regarding Claims etc. between France and the United States” (The Consolidated Treaty Series, ed. Clive Parry [Dobbs Ferry: Oceana Publications, 1969- ], Vol. LXXXII, pp. 97-103), presented to the Deputies on 13 Jan., was refused by them on 1 Apr. (Moniteur, 1834, pp. 93 and 770). (Reintroduced on 9 Apr., 1835, it passed the Deputies on 17 Apr. and the Peers on 12 June, and was enacted as Bull. 143, No. 317 [14 June, 1835].)

[4 ]See Moniteur, 1834, pp. 761 and 770. Broglie did not withdraw his resignation, staying out of the government until November. Sébastiani was appointed Ambassador to Naples and then, after a brief spell in the Chamber after being re-elected, became Ambassador to the Court of St. James.

[1 ]On 5 Apr. (Moniteur, 1834, p. 810). For background, see No. 232.

[2 ]By Livre II, Titre III, Chap. ii, Arts. 428, 429, and 440 of the Code d’instruction criminelle, Bull. 214 bis (17 Nov.-16 Dec., 1808), and Art. 4 of Bull. 161, No. 2791 (16 Sept., 1807), which required that all the sections unite in a second hearing.

[3 ]Albin Reine, baron Roussin (1781-1854), began his naval career under Napoleon, was made a baron in 1822 and a peer in 1832; finally, in 1840, he accepted the Ministry of Marine.

[4 ]François Barbé de Marbois (1745-1837) had been President of the Cour des Comptes since 1808. Ill in 1833, he had tendered his resignation, and failed to withdraw it when, on recovery, he returned to his post, thus making it easier for Louis Philippe to remove him.

[5 ]Martin Michel Charles Gaudin, duc de Gaète (1756-1841), a member of the Treasury before the Revolution of 1789, had become Minister of Finance in 1799, and a duke in 1809. After the Restoration he became a deputy for l’Aisne, 1815-20, and Governor of the Bank of France, 1820-34.

[6 ]John Horsley Palmer (1779-1858), an East India merchant, expert on currency and finance, Governor of the Bank of England, 1830-32, and a senior Director until 1857; William Lamb, Lord Melbourne, was then Home Secretary.

[7 ]For the speech, see No. 232, n10.

[8 ]Charles Tanneguy, comte Duchâtel (1803-67), journalist, one of the founders of Le Globe, was named a conseiller d’état in 1830, representing the King in debates in the Chamber. He had been a deputy since 1833. His “memorial” has not been located.

[1 ]“St. Valentine’s Day: Songs of the Months, No. 2, February” (Monthly Repository, n.s. VIII [1834], 99), words by Charles Reece Pemberton; “Winds and Clouds: Songs of the Months, No. 3, March” (ibid., p. 203), words by Sarah Flower Adams.

[2 ]“Tears and Smiles: Songs of the Months, No. 4, April” (ibid., p. 291), words by Pemberton. The key change referred to below is from A minor to A major.

[1 ]There had been trouble in Lyons from the middle of February. One of the republican societies that sent emissaries was the Société des Droits de l’Homme. It was thought by many at the time, and certainly by the French Government, that the uprisings in Paris and Lyons were part of a conspiracy to provide some diversionary incidents, requested by Mazzini, during his (unsuccessful) attempt, begun in February, to liberate Savoy and Piedmont.

[2 ]From 21 to 23 Feb., there were demonstrations against the law limiting crieurs publics in various locations in Paris (for details, see No. 236, n4), but particularly at the Place de la Bourse, where the crieurs publics were accustomed to sell radical newspapers and pamphlets (“Tribunal de première instance de la Seine,” Constitutionnel, 15 Apr., pp. 3-4, 16 Apr., pp. 3-4, and 17 Apr., p. 4).

[3 ]See No. 171.

[4 ]Though Mill evidently had not seen the reports, on 15 Apr. three bills were introduced: Projet de loi relatif aux détenteurs d’armes et de munitions de guerre, Projet de loi relatif à un crédit extraordinaire sur l’exercice 1834, and Projet de loi pour un crédit additionnel au budget du ministère de guerre pour 1835, all of which were enacted on 24 May, as Bull. 125, Nos. 277-9. (For the bills, see Moniteur, 1834, pp. 929-30.)

[5 ]Auguste Mie (b. 1801), a leader in the Three Days, a Carbonaro, and associate of Carrel and Thiers. His premises were closed on 26 July. He was prosecuted under Art. 12 of Bull. 47, No. 395 (21 Oct., 1814).

[6 ]Grey, Speech on the Dorsetshire Labourers (18 Apr., 1834), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 22, cols. 940-4. Grey’s reference is to the speech by Aubrey William Beauclerk (1801-54), M.P. for Surrey East from 1832 (ibid., col. 938).

[1 ]In introducing the bills increasing the supply to his ministry on 15 Apr., Persil indicated the intention to increase the army (Moniteur, 1834, p. 930).

[2 ]For details, see No. 249, n4.

[3 ]See Persil’s speech of 15 Apr., p. 929.

[4 ]For details, see No. 172, n28.

[5 ]Moniteur, 1834, pp. 909-10, quotes accounts of the incident from Journal de Paris, Bulletin du Soir, Constitutionnel, and Journal du Commerce of 14 Apr. Mill had also probably seen the accounts in National de 1834 of 15 Apr., p. 1, and 16 Apr., pp. 1-2.

[1 ]The limitation to the “higher class” of crimes is found in Loi concernant la police de sûreté, la justice criminelle, et l’établissement des jurés (29 Sept., 1791), Lois et actes du gouvernement, IV, 253 (Art. 5); the limitation to political offences, in Bull. 9, No. 68 (8 Oct., 1830).

[2 ]Moniteur, 1834, p. 1067. On 28 Apr., three members of the committee (Lebon, Mathé, and Lemonnier) received three years; one (Vignerte) received two years; one (Defraize) received six months; five (Ephraïm, Ferard, Allard, Sarge, and Labruyère) received two months; twelve others were dismissed.

[3 ]Between 28 Apr. and 3 May (ibid., pp. 1063-7, 1073-84, 1091-5, 1108-10, and 1117-25).

[1 ]The editor (1817-41) was Thomas Barnes (1785-1841).

[2 ]The “greater master in blackguardism” was William Maginn (1793-1842), Irish journalist and poet, who, in the Morning Herald, 17 Feb., 1829, fixed the epithet “Thunderer” on The Times (after it had said, “we thundered out that article,” on 11 Feb., 1829).

[3 ]Thomas Spence (1750-1814), London bookseller and radical land reformer. For the idea, see, e.g., his The Meridian Sun of Liberty; or, The Whole Rights of Man (London: Spence, 1796), p. 5.

[4 ]Walter is quoting Spencer, Speech in Presenting a Bill to Amend the Poor Laws (17 Apr., 1834), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 22, col. 879. The square-bracketed passages are Mill’s.

[5 ]Ibid., cols. 879-80.

[6 ]See Extracts, pp. 216ff.

[7 ]The quotation is from a leading article on the Poor Laws, The Times, 8 May, p. 5. Despite the disclaimer of the last sentence, on 13 May, in a scathing attack, The Times attributed the leader to Mill’s friend Edwin Chadwick, who had taken an active part in the inquiries of the Poor Law Commission and who was thought to be a candidate for the Central Board.

[1 ]On 9 May, the second reading of the Bill (see No. 252) passed the Commons with a majority of 299 (319 to 20) (PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 23, col. 842).

[2 ]By Sect. 19.

[3 ]Leading articles in the Courier, 2 May, 1834, p. 2 (using the variant “Pacha”), and in The Times, 5 May, 1834, p. 4.

[4 ]By Sect. 45.

[5 ]Benjamin Hawes (1797-1862), M.P. for Lambeth from 1832, made the suggestion in his speech of 9 May in the Commons (PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 23, col. 838).

[1 ]Journal des Débats, 31 Oct., pp. 2-3; 21 Dec., pp. 2-3; and 26 Dec., 1833, p. 3, by “Cs.,” i.e., Philarète E. Chasles (spelled Chales by Mill) (1798-1873), journalist, librarian, and later professor at the Collège de France, labelled by Mill in private letters a humbug (EL, CW, Vol. XII, pp. 343, 346). He was reviewing England and the English, 2 vols. (London: Bentley, 1833), by Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer (1803-73), novelist and statesman, and an associate of Mill’s at the time. Bulwer’s book contained material by J.S. Mill on Bentham (see CW, Vol. X, pp. 3-18 and 499-502) and James Mill (see CW, Vol. I, pp. 589-95).

[2 ]Chasles, 21 Dec., p. 3. The references are to Bulwer’s novels: Paul Clifford, 3 vols. (London: Colburn and Bentley, 1830), Pelham, 3 vols. (London: Colburn, 1828), and Devereux, 3 vols. (London: Colburn, 1829).

[3 ]John Ramsay McCulloch, the economist. The quotation echoes his Principles of Political Economy (Edinburgh: Tait, 1825), p. 14, and his Discourse on Political Economy (Edinburgh: Constable, 1824), p. 10.

[4 ]England and the English, Vol. II, pp. 36-40. Louis François Bertin de Vaux (1771-1842), a peer since 1832, is (not surprisingly, since they shared the same names) mistakenly confused with his brother, Louis François Bertin, called l’aîné (1766-1841), proprietor and editor of the Journal des Débats.

[5 ]Chasles, 26 Dec., p. 3.

[6 ]Ibid.

[7 ]Bulwer, Vol. I, pp. 364-72.

[8 ]Chasles, 21 Dec., p. 3.

[1 ]George Moir, “Prussia, or the Progress of Rational Reform,” Blackwood’s Magazine, XXXIV (July 1833), 55-71.

[2 ]Heinrich Friedrich Karl, Baron von Stein (1757-1831), and Prince Karl August von Hardenberg (1750-1822), leading Prussian statesmen, who instigated a wide variety of reforms. Stein, for instance, abolished villeinage and all distinctions in land tenure and occupations (No. 16 [9 Oct., 1807] in Sammlung der für die Königlichen Preussischen Staaten erschienenen Gesetze und Verordnungen von 1806 bis zum 27sten Oktober 1810, pp. 170-2), converted hereditary leaseholders into proprietors (No. 41 [27 July, 1808], ibid., pp. 245-50), and reformed the magistracy in towns and villages (No. 57 [19 Nov., 1808], ibid., pp. 324-60). Hardenberg also reformed the land laws, standardized taxation, and moved towards free trade (No. 2 [27 Oct., 1810], in Gesetz-Sammlung für die Königlichen Preussischen Staaten, 1810, pp. 24-31; No. 3 [28 Oct.], ibid., pp. 33-9; No. 4 [28 Oct.], ibid,, pp. 40-76; No. 482 [26 May, 1818], ibid., 1818, pp. 65-9; and No. 602 [30 May, 1820], ibid., 1820, pp. 72-80), and, in instituting three-year military service, made advancement depend on merit (No. 245 [3 Sept., 1814], ibid., 1814, pp. 79-82).

[3 ]William Wordsworth (1770-1850), “I grieved for Buonaparté” (1801), in Poetical Works, 5 vols. (London: Longman, et al., 1827), Vol. III, p. 130.

[a-a][quoted in review in Monthly Repository of July 1834; see CW, XXI, 64]

[* ]Why men? The logical opposite of children is grown persons. From an imperfection in our language (not found in the French) there is often almost a necessity for using the masculine pronoun where both sexes are equally concerned, but seldom the masculine substantive. The effect upon the mind of this phraseology is bad; it encourages the habit of passing by one-half of the race as not concerned in its highest interests, and we should have been pleased if a woman had avoided sanctioning the practice by her example.

[4 ]“Cousin’s Report on the Prussian System of Education: Necessity and Practicability of a National System of Education,” Foreign Quarterly Review, XII (Oct. 1833), 285; attributed to Austin herself in the Wellesley Index.

[5 ]See No. 126.

[6 ]See Daniel O’Connell, Speech on National Education (30 July, 1833), PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 20, cols. 169-70.

[7 ]Cf. Austin’s translation of Cousin, pp. 170, 182, and 288-91.

[8 ]See ibid., pp. 171-82.

[9 ]Ibid., pp. 280-1.

[1 ]It was both prorogued and dissolved on 24 May (Moniteur, 1834, p. 1341).

[2 ]In addition to those for 1831, 1832, 1833, and 1834 (all previously cited), that for 1835 (Bull. 126, No. 283, dépenses [23 May, 1834], and Bull. 127, No. 286, recettes [24 May, 1834]).

[1 ]Conseil died on 16 June (Moniteur, 1834, p. 1443).

[2 ]Gervais had written a letter on 20 Apr. for the Messager des Chambres, first printed in full in the National de 1834, 23 Apr., p. 3, for which he and Hercule Gilbert Marie Guillemot, the managing editor of the Messager, were tried before the Cour d’Assises de la Seine on 10 May, and found guilty (National de 1834, 11 May, p. 4). The news seems not to have reached Mill that, on appeal, while Gervais was condemned to two months’ imprisonment and a fine of 500 francs, Guillemot was acquitted (ibid., 11 June, pp. 2-4, 12 June, pp. 3-4, 13 June, pp. 2-4; Moniteur, 1834, p. 1426).

[1 ]Wakefield had not yet acknowledged his authorship of England and America.

[2 ]George Grote (1794-1871), banker and intimate friend of James and J.S. Mill, M.P. 1832-41 for the City of London, later famed for his History of Greece; William Clay (1791-1869), M.P. for the Tower Hamlets 1832-57, author of pamphlets on banking and other economic questions.

[3 ]Thomas Spring-Rice (1790-1866), M.P. for Limerick 1820-32, and for Cambridge 1832-39 (when he became Baron Monteagle), had been Secretary of the Treasury 1830-34, and had just been appointed Secretary for War and the Colonies. His predecessors are identified at No. 261, n2.

[4 ]The Morning Chronicle reported on 1 July that 2500 people attended the meeting on 30 June.

[1 ]The elections began on 21 June; the final returns (except for Corsica) appeared in Moniteur, 1834, pp. 1495-7. For Mill’s comments, see No. 262.

[1 ]“Anglicanus,” “Poor Law Report—Emigration,” The Times, 8 May, 1834, p. 6.

[2 ]The Colonial Secretaries before the incumbent, Spring-Rice: Murray, 1828-30; Robinson (Lord Goderich), 1830-33; Stanley, 1833-34.

[3 ]Robert John Wilmot Horton (1784-1841), M.P. for Newcastle-under-Lyme 1818-30, Under Secretary for War and the Colonies 1821-28, an active pamphleteer, frequently aired his views on emigration in the Commons. See, e.g., PD, n.s., Vol. 18, cols. 1547-57, 1567.

[4 ]The speeches on 30 June by Scrope and Torrens are reported in “South Australian Association for Emigration,” The Times, 1 July, 1834, p. 4.

[5 ]Ibid., 2 July, 1834, pp. 4-5.

[1 ]Leading article on South Australia, Morning Chronicle, 9 July, 1834, p. 3.

[2 ]Whately, Remarks on Transportation, and on a Recent Defence of the System (London: Fellowes, 1834), p. 8.

[3 ]Morning Chronicle, 9 July, p. 3. Charles Sturt (1795-1869) explored the Darling River, his discoveries being described in Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia (1833).

[4 ]Joseph Banks (1743-1820), traveller and botanist, President of the Royal Society of London.

[5 ]Henry Seton Steuart (1759-1836), man of letters and arboriculturist, The Planter’s Guide (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1828), esp. pp. 71-83.

[* ]The states of the North American Union in which slavery is forbidden are only parts of a society, whose slaves amount to 2,000,000, and are worth, to sell at market, 120,000,000l. In what way slavery has tended to counteract the evils of superabundance of land in the non-slave-holding states is explained at length in [Wakefield’s] England and America [pp. 22-9; the market-value of the slaves is given on p. 21].

[6 ]The Swan River Settlement in New Holland, Australia.

[7 ]Leading article on the New Colony in South Australia, Courier, 1 July, 1834, p. 4.

[1 ]By ordinance, Bull. 314, No. 5380 (18 July, 1834).

[2 ]By Art. 42 of the Charter of 1830; Louis Philippe issued another ordinance calling the Chambers to meet on 31 July (Bull. 311, No. 5366 [30 June, 1834]).

[1 ]The Poor Law Amendment Bill had been read in the Commons a third time, and passed with a majority of 137, on 1 July, 1834 (PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 24, col. 1061); in the Lords the debate ran from 21 July to 8 Aug., when the Bill passed on third reading by a vote of 93 to 82 (ibid., Vol. 25, col. 1096).

[2 ]In the event, the three Commissioners appointed to put the new law into execution were Thomas Frankland Lewis (1780-1855), M.P. for various constituencies from 1812 to 1834, when he resigned to take on the Chairmanship of the Commission (1834-39); John George Shaw-Lefevre (1797-1879), barrister, recently Under-Secretary in the Colonial Office; and George Nicholls (1781-1865), sailor, collaborator with Telford on canal building, and then banker, former overseer of the poor in Southwell and writer on poor relief who proposed the “workhouse test,” refusing relief out-of-doors except as a last resort. Edwin Chadwick (1800-90), social reformer, disciple of Bentham, lifelong friend of J.S. Mill, was appointed as first Secretary of the Board.

[3 ]The Commissioners appointed in 1832 to study the poor laws were: Charles J. Blomfield, Bishop of London, Chairman; John Bird Sumner (1780-1862), then Bishop of Chester, later Archbishop of Canterbury; William Sturges Bourne (1769-1845), M.P.; Nassau William Senior, major author of the Commission’s Report in 1834; Walter Coulson; James Traill (1794-1873), magistrate; Edwin Chadwick; Henry Bishop (b. 1792), who had written a controversial report on Oxford as an Assistant Commissioner; Henry Gawler (1766-1852), lawyer. The Commission’s Report, dated 20 Feb., 1834, formed the basis of the new Poor Law.

[1 ]For Mill’s congratulations, see No. 247. The account of the decision on 6 Aug. by the full Cour de Cassation is in Moniteur, 1834, pp. 1669-70.

[2 ]For the earlier troubles, involving Auguste Mie as printer, see No. 249. La Tribune reappeared on 12 Aug., after four months’ suspension, the printer being Louis Etienne Herhan (1768-1853).

[3 ]Leading article, Journal des Débats, 7 Aug., 1834, p. 1.

[4 ]Louis Philippe’s Speech from the Throne was delivered on 31 July (Moniteur, 1834, p. 1619); the draft Reply (13 Aug.) was debated on the 14th and 15th, when it was adopted (ibid., pp. 1697-1704 and 1705).

[1 ]The Address and Louis Philippe’s response were both delivered on 16 Aug. (Moniteur, 1834, p. 1711). For the background, see No. 266.

[1 ]Carrel’s attack on Louis Philippe’s Speech from the Throne is in “Ouverture de la session de 1834,” National de 1834, 1 Aug., p. 1. He was prosecuted under the provision of Bull. 13, No. 74 (29 Nov., 1830).

[2 ]Carrel’s speech in defence (23 Aug.) is in the Constitutionnel, 24 Aug., pp. 3-4. His acquittal on the same day is reported in Moniteur, 1834, p. 1743.

[3 ]The public prosecutor was Nicolas Ferdinand Marie Louis Joseph Martin (du Nord) (1790-1847), a legitimist lawyer who moved to support Louis Philippe, and who, in April 1834, had been appointed procureur général in the Cours d’Appel de Paris.

[4 ]Translated from “Bulletin” (23 Aug.), Le Temps, Journal des Progrès, 24 Aug., 1834, p. 1.

[1 ]Der Freisinnige; Freiburger politische Blätter, founded and edited by Karl von Rotteck (1790-1869) and Karl Theodor Welcker (1790-1869), appeared only from 2 Mar. to 19 July, 1832, when it was proscribed by the government. Garnier claimed he was offered the editorship, but seems not actually to have been editor.

[2 ]Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), poet and liberal critic, had lived in Paris from 1831; his Buch der Lieder (Hamburg: Hoffmann and Campe, 1827) was the subject of the review.

[3 ]No copy of the prospectus has been located.

[4 ]Garnier, “Caspar Hauser,” Deutsches Leben, II (5 Sept., 1834), 17-28. Caspar Hauser (ca. 1812-33), a foundling whose rumoured noble birth aroused great curiosity, was stabbed to death at a meeting held to determine his true origins. Garnier argues that he was the eldest son of Carl, Grosherzog von Baden (1786-1818) and his wife, Stephanie Napoleon.

[5 ]Harro Paul Harring (1798-1870), Poland under the Dominion of Russia (1831), trans. from German by I.S. Syzmanski (London: n.p., 1834). A radical German politician and author, friend of Mazzini, Harring appears not to have arrived in London until 1836.

[1 ]“Kangaroo” (Edward Gibbon Wakefield), Letter to the editor (20 Oct., 1834), Morning Chronicle, 21 Oct., p. 1. (Republished in App. II of Torrens’s Colonization of South Australia [London: Longman, et al., 1835], pp. xiv-xix.) Wakefield was arguing for a land price low enough to enable labourers to set up on their own in a few years, and high enough to ensure that those few years would be needed.

[2 ]For the Commissioners, see “Second Report of the Select Committee on South Australia, Appendix of Documents,” PP, 1841, IV, 487-90.

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September 1833 to October 1834 - 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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September 1833 to October 1834

213.

THE QUARTERLY REVIEW ON FRANCE EXAMINER, 1 SEPT., 1833, PP. 552-3

214.

THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY FOR SEPTEMBER 1833 EXAMINER, 8 SEPT., 1833, P. 567

215.

NOTE ON BENEFACTORS OF MANKIND EXAMINER, 8 SEPT., 1833, P. 570

216.

THE MINISTERIAL MANIFESTO EXAMINER, 22 SEPT., 1833, PP. 593-5

217.

THE MARVELLOUS MINISTRY EXAMINER, 29 SEPT., 1833, PP. 609-11

218.

THE REVIEW OF THE SESSION CONTINUED EXAMINER, 6 OCT., 1833, PP. 625-6

219.

LORD BROUGHAM’S LAW REFORMS EXAMINER, 13 OCT., 1833, PP. 643-4

220.

THE CORPORATION BILL EXAMINER, 20 OCT., 1833, PP. 659-60

221.

CONDUCT OF THE MINISTRY WITH RESPECT TO THE POOR LAWS EXAMINER, 27 OCT., 1833, PP. 675-6

222.

MARTINEAU’S A TALE OF THE TYNE EXAMINER, 27 OCT., 1833, PP. 677-8

223.

CONDUCT OF THE MINISTRY WITH RESPECT TO THE POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT, AND THE PAYMENT OF OFFICERS BY FEES EXAMINER, 10 NOV., 1833, PP. 706-7

224.

NAPIER’S THE COLONIES EXAMINER, 24 NOV., 1833, PP. 740-1

225.

THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY FOR DECEMBER 1833 EXAMINER, 15 DEC., 1833, PP. 788-9

226.

FRENCH NEWS [81] EXAMINER, 29 DEC., 1833, P. 824

227.

FRENCH NEWS [82] EXAMINER, 5 JAN., 1834, P. 840

228.

WAR WITH RUSSIA EXAMINER, 5 JAN., 1834, P. 840

229.

THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY FOR JANUARY 1834 EXAMINER, 12 JAN., 1834, P. 21

230.

FRENCH NEWS [83] EXAMINER, 12 JAN., 1834, P. 23

231.

WILSON’S HISTORY OF ROME EXAMINER, 19 JAN., 1834, P. 36

232.

FRENCH NEWS [84] EXAMINER, 19 JAN., 1834, PP. 40-1

233.

FRENCH NEWS [85] EXAMINER, 26 JAN., 1834, PP. 56-7

234.

FONTANA AND PRATI’S ST. SIMONISM IN LONDON EXAMINER, 2 FEB., 1834, PP. 68-9

235.

FRENCH NEWS [86] EXAMINER, 2 FEB., 1834, P. 72

236.

FRENCH NEWS [87] EXAMINER, 9 FEB., 1834, PP. 88-9

237.

FRENCH NEWS [88] EXAMINER, 16 FEB., 1834, P. 106

238.

FRENCH NEWS [89] EXAMINER, 2 MAR., 1834, P. 137

239.

THE POOR LAW REPORT EXAMINER, 2 MAR., 1834, P. 137

240.

THE POOR LAWS EXAMINER, 9 MAR., 1834, PP. 145-6

241.

FRENCH NEWS [90] EXAMINER, 9 MAR., 1834, P. 154

242.

FRENCH NEWS [91] EXAMINER, 23 MAR., 1834, P. 185

243.

REPLY TO DR. PRATI EXAMINER, 23 MAR., 1834, PP. 185-6

THE QUARTERLY REVIEW ON FRANCE

EXAMINER, 1 SEPT., 1833, PP. 552-3

THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY FOR SEPTEMBER 1833

EXAMINER, 8 SEPT., 1833, P. 567

NOTE ON BENEFACTORS OF MANKIND

EXAMINER, 8 SEPT., 1833, P. 570

THE MINISTERIAL MANIFESTO

EXAMINER, 22 SEPT., 1833, PP. 593-5

THE MARVELLOUS MINISTRY

EXAMINER, 29 SEPT., 1833, PP. 609-11

THE REVIEW OF THE SESSION CONTINUED

EXAMINER, 6 OCT., 1833, PP. 625-6

LORD BROUGHAM’S LAW REFORMS

EXAMINER, 13 OCT., 1833, PP. 643-4

THE CORPORATION BILL

EXAMINER, 20 OCT., 1833, PP. 659-60

CONDUCT OF THE MINISTRY WITH RESPECT TO THE POOR LAWS

EXAMINER, 27 OCT., 1833, PP. 675-6

MARTINEAU’S A TALE OF THE TYNE

EXAMINER, 27 OCT., 1833, PP. 677-8

CONDUCT OF THE MINISTRY WITH RESPECT TO THE POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT, AND THE PAYMENT OF OFFICERS BY FEES

EXAMINER, 10 NOV., 1833, PP. 706-7

NAPIER’S THE COLONIES

EXAMINER, 24 NOV., 1833, PP. 740-1

THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY FOR DECEMBER 1833

EXAMINER, 15 DEC., 1833, PP. 788-9

FRENCH NEWS [81]

EXAMINER, 29 DEC., 1833, P. 824

FRENCH NEWS [82]

EXAMINER, 5 JAN., 1834, P. 840

WAR WITH RUSSIA

EXAMINER, 5 JAN., 1834, P. 840

THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY FOR JANUARY 1834

EXAMINER, 12 JAN., 1834, P. 21

FRENCH NEWS [83]

EXAMINER, 12 JAN., 1834, P. 23

WILSON’S HISTORY OF ROME

EXAMINER, 19 JAN., 1834, P. 36

FRENCH NEWS [84]

EXAMINER, 19 JAN., 1834, PP. 40-1

FRENCH NEWS [85]

EXAMINER, 26 JAN., 1834, PP. 56-7

FONTANA AND PRATI’S ST. SIMONISM IN LONDON

EXAMINER, 2 FEB., 1834, PP. 68-9

FRENCH NEWS [86]

EXAMINER, 2 FEB., 1834, P. 72

FRENCH NEWS [87]

EXAMINER, 9 FEB., 1834, PP. 88-9

FRENCH NEWS [88]

EXAMINER, 16 FEB., 1834, P. 106

FRENCH NEWS [89]

EXAMINER, 2 MAR., 1834, P. 137

THE POOR LAW REPORT

EXAMINER, 2 MAR., 1834, P. 137

THE POOR LAWS

EXAMINER, 9 MAR., 1834, PP. 145-6

FRENCH NEWS [90]

EXAMINER, 9 MAR., 1834, P. 154

FRENCH NEWS [91]

EXAMINER, 23 MAR., 1834, P. 185

REPLY TO DR. PRATI

EXAMINER, 23 MAR., 1834, PP. 185-6

STATE OF OPINION IN FRANCE

EXAMINER, 30 MAR., 1834, PP. 195-6

FRENCH NEWS [92]

EXAMINER, 30 MAR., 1834, PP. 200-1

FRENCH NEWS [93]

EXAMINER, 6 APR., 1834, P. 215

FRENCH NEWS [94]

EXAMINER, 13 APR., 1834, PP. 232-3

FLOWER’S SONGS OF THE MONTHS [1]

EXAMINER, 20 APR., 1834, P. 244

FRENCH NEWS [95]

EXAMINER, 20 APR., 1834, P. 250

FRENCH NEWS [96]

EXAMINER, 27 APR., 1834, P. 265

FRENCH NEWS [97]

EXAMINER, 11 MAY, 1834, PP. 297-8

WALTER ON THE POOR LAW AMENDMENT BILL

MORNING CHRONICLE, 12 MAY, 1834, P. 2

THE POOR LAW AMENDMENT BILL

SUN, 12 MAY, 1834, P. 2

DEATH OF LAFAYETTE

EXAMINER, 25 MAY, 1834, P. 329

THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHARACTER

MONTHLY REPOSITORY, N.S. VIII (JUNE 1834), 385-95

SARAH AUSTIN’S TRANSLATION OF COUSIN

EXAMINER, 1 JUNE, 1834, PP. 341-2

FRENCH NEWS [98]

EXAMINER, 1 JUNE, 1834, P. 345

FRENCH NEWS [99]

EXAMINER, 22 JUNE, 1834, P. 393

THE NEW COLONY [1]

EXAMINER, 29 JUNE, 1834, P. 403

FRENCH NEWS [100]

EXAMINER, 29 JUNE, 1834, P. 409

THE NEW COLONY [2]

EXAMINER, 6 JULY, 1834, P. 419

FRENCH NEWS [101]

EXAMINER, 6 JULY, 1834, P. 425

WAKEFIELD’S THE NEW BRITISH PROVINCE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

EXAMINER, 20 JULY, 1834, PP. 453-4

FRENCH NEWS [102]

EXAMINER, 27 JULY, 1834, P. 472

THE POOR LAW BILL

MORNING CHRONICLE, 2 AUG., 1834, P. 4

FRENCH NEWS [103]

EXAMINER, 17 AUG., 1834, P. 520

GARNIER’S DEUTSCHES LEBEN, KUNST, UND POESIE [1]

EXAMINER, 24 AUG., 1834, P. 533

FRENCH NEWS [104]

EXAMINER, 24 AUG., 1834, P. 536

FRENCH NEWS [105]

EXAMINER, 31 AUG., 1834, P. 552

GARNIER’S DEUTSCHES LEBEN, KUNST, UND POESIE [2]

EXAMINER, 14 SEPT., 1834, P. 581

NEW AUSTRALIAN COLONY

MORNING CHRONICLE, 23 OCT., 1834, P. 3