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

10.: The Westminster Election of 1865 [6] 10 JULY, 1865 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII - Public and Parliamentary Speeches Part I November 1850 - November 1868 [1850]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII - Public and Parliamentary Speeches Part I November 1850 - November 1868, ed. John M. Robson and Bruce L. Kinzer (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988).

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

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


10.

The Westminster Election of 1865 [6]

10 JULY, 1865

Daily Telegraph, 11 July, 1865, p. 4. Unheaded; the account comes immediately after the report of Mill’s speech at the hustings on the same day (No. 9). The meeting was not reported in other papers. “Last night, at eight o’clock, Mr. John Stuart Mill addressed a meeting at St. Martin’s Hall, Long-acre. The large room was densely crowded by a most enthusiastic audience, amongst whom was a large number of ladies. The Count de Paris occupied a seat on the platform.”

the honourable candidate,who was received with great applause, referred to most of the subjects upon which he spoke at the meeting at the Pimlico Rooms on Saturday night, which was fully reported in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph,1 especially on the purity of election, the great questions between employers and employed, and co-operation. He next noticed the vast improvements which had taken place in the condition of the working classes. Mr. Gladstone had done a great deal for the working classes. (The name of Mr. Gladstone was received with enthusiastic applause.) Mr. Gladstone was a statesman who did not hold back his good things till they were wrung from him. He employed his mind in conceiving measures for the benefit of his country, whether they had been demanded or not. That was his (Mr. Mill’s) idea of a great Minister. (Applause.) He believed that the future social condition of the working classes was safe. He hoped some day there would be no such thing as a class distinction; but, while it lasted, they had to take care that the House of Commons should not exercise class legislation. They (the working classes) would not be truly represented unless they had their fair share of the voices in the national tribunal. He thought that a Reform Bill would not give the labouring classes an effectual share in and control of the House of Commons, unless they had fully one half of the House of Commons—(cheers)—and the remainder of society the other half. In answer to questions, Mr. Mill said that he would vote for the opening of the Crystal Palace on Sunday. He did not think it would be a wrong thing to open well-conducted theatres on that day, though he should not be prepared to vote for that at present, as he thought it would be considered an affront to the religious opinions of a large and highly respectable portion of the public. Neither upon this nor any other question would he press his opinion on the Legislature, if he thought the vast majority of the people were not prepared for the proposed change. He did not think that the exercise of the franchise should depend on the payment of rates. The duration of Parliament should be from three to five years. Mr. Hubbard’s proposal respecting the income tax was, he thought, a good one.2 If a primâ facie case were made out that it was necessary for convents to be inspected, he would have them inspected; but if there were any such “dreadful mysteries” in the convents,3 he believed the inmates of those places would be a vast deal too clever for her Majesty’s inspectors to find them out. A variety of other questions were put, and answered to the complete satisfaction of the meeting. A resolution expressive of confidence in Mr. J.S. Mill as a fit and proper candidate was carried amidst great applause. Some other speeches were delivered, and the meeting separated.

[1 ]See No. 8.

[2 ]John Gellibrand Hubbard (1805–89), then M.P. for Buckingham, who proposed a different tax rate for incomes derived from investments and from employment. See his “Draft Report” and “Memorandum” as Chairman in “Report from the Select Committee on Income and Property Tax,” PP, 1861, VII, 303–18. For Mill’s evidence before that Committee, see CW, Vol. V, pp. 549–98.

[3 ]For an example of these words used in the context of Roman Catholicism, see a leading article on convents, The Times, 29 Mar., 1854, p. 9.