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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 17.: Representation of the People [3] 16 APRIL, 1866 - 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

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

17.: Representation of the People [3] 16 APRIL, 1866 - 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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17.

Representation of the People [3]

16 APRIL, 1866

PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 182, col. 1477. Reported in The Times, 17 April, p. 10, from which the response is taken. During the adjourned debate on the second reading of Gladstone’s Reform Bill (see Nos. 15 and 16), Mill responded to an interpretation by Hugh Cairns of his remarks in No. 16. Cairns said (cols. 1476–7), “It is saying nothing but what the majority of the House think when I state that, on this point [the whole question of Reform], the speech of the noble Lord the Member for King’s Lynn [Lord Stanley] was both unanswerable and has been unanswered. When I say ‘unanswered,’ I will make one exception. The honourable Member for Westminster did give an answer, and to anybody looking at the question from the same point of view I have no doubt the answer was perfectly satisfactory. The honourable Member said, ‘Here is a Bill which will enfranchise 200,000 borough voters. You are apprehensive that possibly 200,000 or 300,000 more may possibly be enfranchised, when the effect of the redistribution of seats is felt, but I am of opinion that the more enfranchised the better.’ ”

mr. j. stuart mill: I said nothing of the kind.

Sir Hugh Cairns: I should be sorry to misrepresent anything that fell from the honourable Member, but I understood him to say that every considerable enfranchisement in itself was good.

Mr. J. Stuart Mill: I said that the enfranchisement which this Bill gives is an absolute good; and that if it produced an improved Legislature, that Legislature might be entrusted to make the redistribution of seats. (Hear, hear.)