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215.: NOTE ON BENEFACTORS OF MANKIND EXAMINER, 8 SEPT., 1833, P. 570 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II

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215.: NOTE ON BENEFACTORS OF MANKIND EXAMINER, 8 SEPT., 1833, P. 570 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II [1831]

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

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

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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

[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).