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

35.: BLUNDERS OF THE TIMES NEW TIMES, 6 JUNE, 1827, P. 3 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I [1822]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I, 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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Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


35.

BLUNDERS OF THE TIMES

NEW TIMES, 6 JUNE, 1827, P. 3

This letter, Mill’s only one to the New Times (which he calls “a Tory paper” in No. 41), is also his first to a newspaper editor for almost two years. The New Times frequently criticized The Times (which it often called “The Old Times”); see, e.g., 24 May, 1827, p. 2, and 31 May, p. 3. Mill’s letter, headed “To the Editor of the New Times,” is described in his bibliography as “A letter on the blunders of the ‘Times’ newspaper which app. in the New Times of 6th June 1827, signed A.B.”

(MacMinn, p. 8).

sir,—

Having frequently admired the happy irony with which you expose the profound ignorance and ludicrous self-importance of the Times, I address to you a few lines on the new specimen which it has recently afforded of these qualities.

In one of its late articles, it is pleased to place under the ban of its censure, persons, whom it designates, with characteristic elegance of language, as “those louts and coxcombs united, the landlords, and political economists.”

The poor farmers, [it adds,] have been dragooned into all these petitions against the new Corn Bill, for the mere purpose of keeping up rents, by those two factions of men, whom we above cited; the one, duller than the earth they tread; and the other, a mere batch of fantastical coxcombs, incapable of attaining literature, or fathoming science; and, therefore, distorting and sophisticating common sense, by every kind of paradox and extravagance.1

Leaving, Sir, the defence of the landlords in your hands, which are much more capable of doing it justice than mine, I request your attention to the following sentence, extracted from the very next paragraph to that of which I have already quoted the conclusion:

We are well assured, that there is no resting place for our feet; there is no firm principle upon which our commercial pre-eminence can be based, or even the landed community rest free from shocks, but the unrestricted and untaxed circulation of all the necessaries of life, both for man and beast, throughout the world; and to this point we hope our steps are tending.

I now submit two questions, not to the Editor of the Times, but to every man, who is capable of being disgusted by insolent and ignorant charlatanerie.

1. Here is the Times, professing itself a determined partisan of the most extreme of all the extreme opinions, which were ever maintained by ultra-political economists on the Corn Laws, and, in the same breath, declaring, that the political economists are “fantastical coxcombs,” “louts and coxcombs united,” for professing the same opinion on the same subject. I ask, then, is not that Journal admirably qualified for the office of a public instructor, which ridicules men for their opinions without knowing that their opinions are the same with its own?

My other question is, whether the accusation of being “incapable of fathoming science” does not come with an admirable grace from the Journal, which, only a few months ago, expressed the utmost surprise that the expectation of a war should have depressed the Funds?2 That the expected creation of an immense quantity of new Stock, by new Loans, should lower the price of the Stock already in existence, was too recondite a truth for this sage, who, nevertheless, thinks himself entitled to trancher du maître, and denounce others as ignorant of science!

Your Constant Reader,

A.B.

[1 ]Leading article on the Corn Bill, The Times, 28 May, 1827, p. 2. “A Bill to Permit, until 1st May, 1828, Certain Corn, Meal, and Flour to Be Entered for Home Consumption,” 7 & 8 George IV (19 June, 1827), PP, 1827-28, II, 573-6, was passed by both Houses in June, and enacted as 7 & 8 George IV, c. 57 (1827).

[2 ]See “The Money Market,” The Times, 13 Mar., 1827, p. 3.