Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 213.: THE QUARTERLY REVIEW ON FRANCE EXAMINER, 1 SEPT., 1833, PP. 552-3 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II

Return to Title Page for The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

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

213.: THE QUARTERLY REVIEW ON FRANCE EXAMINER, 1 SEPT., 1833, PP. 552-3 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II [1831]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


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.

[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).