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J. S. Mill and Irish Land: a Reassessment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Bruce L. Kinzer
Bruce L. Kinzer
Affiliation:
McMaster University
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Extract

Lynn Zastoupil, in his article ‘Moral Government: J. S. Mill on Ireland’, (Historical Journal, 26, 3 (Sept. 1983)), has made an important contribution to our understanding of the sources and character of Mill's views on Ireland. He is right to suggest that insufficient attention has been paid to the lengthy series of Morning Chronicle leaders written by Mill in response to the Famine. No less instructive is his emphasis on the centrality of moral regeneration to Mill's political and ethical enterprise. Ably analysing the evolution of Mill's opinions on Ireland between the 1840s and late 1860s, Mr Zastoupil effectively demonstrates the way in which Mill's changing position on the issue was at each stage informed by a fundamental moral purpose. What his article does not fully convey, however, is the extent to which the expression of that purpose was shaped and conditioned not only by Mill's assessment of Irish circumstances at any particular time, but also by a certain tension and ambivalence in his attitude towards Ireland and her people.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , March 1984 , pp. 111 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 See ‘Ireland, in Essays on England, Ireland, and the empire, ed. Robson, J. M., Collected works of John Stuart Mill, VI (Toronto, 1982), 59–98Google Scholar.

2 See Hamburger, Joseph, Intellectuals in politics: John Stuart Mill and the philosophic radicals (New Haven and London, 1965)Google Scholar.

3 These articles have been recently published in Essays on England, Ireland, and the empire, CW, VI.

4 Writing to Alexander Bain in mid-1869, Mill observed: ‘The Lords have done all the mischief they could to the Scotch Education Bill…[T]hey will no doubt as you say, revenge themselves for having to eat their leek (if they do eat it) in the Church question by spoiling other Bills. They are becoming a very irritating kind of minor nuisance.’ (Mill, to Bain, , 7 June 1869, The later letters of John Stuart Mill, 1849–1873, ed. Mineka, Francis E. and Lindley, Dwight N., Collected works XIV–XVII [Toronto, 1972], XVII, 1613Google Scholar.)

5 In the 1825 article previously referred to, Mill wrote: ‘It is idle to expect tranquillity in Ireland so long as its inhabitants are the poorest and the most oppressed people in Europe. That they are the poorest, appears from the testimony of all who know them: that they are the most oppressed, no unprejudiced person can doubt, who will read the evidence taken before the Committees of the two Houses in the sessions of 1824 and 1825. [See ‘Minutes of evidence’, Parliamentary papers, 1825, VII, I–499, 501–802Google Scholar; VIII, 4–855; ix, 1–675.] He will there find, that whatever the end of government in Ireland may be, it at any rate is not the protection of the weak against the strong: that government and law exist in that country solely for the benefit of the strong.’ (‘Ireland’, CW, VI, 66.)

6 Mill, to Nichol, John Pringle, 21 Dec. 1837, The earlier letters of John Stuart Mill, 1812–1848, ed. Mineka, Francis E., Collected works, XII–XIII (Toronto, 1963), XII, 365CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He acknowledged, however, even at this time, that a premature development of democracy in Ireland had made such a despotism impossible.

7 Three essays on religion, in Essays on ethics, religion, and society, ed. Robson, J. M., Collected works, x (Toronto, 1969), 480Google Scholar.

8 England and Ireland, in Essays on England, Ireland, and the empire, CW, VI, 523.

9 Indeed, E. D. Steele, in commenting on Mill's view of the Irish higher education system in the 1860s, argues that Mill was narrow and short-sighted. Like the Nonconformists, Mill offered an ‘obdurate resistance to the educational concessions persistently sought by the Catholic Church in Ireland’. Steele concludes that Mill showed himself ‘to be as righteously unsympathetic as any Orangeman to the sentiments of the majority of the Irish population’(‘J. S. Mill and the Irish question: reform, and the integrity of the empire, 1865–1870’, Historical Journal, XIII [1970], 434)Google Scholar. Whether Mill merits such censure is open to question. His concern was to preserve the principle of undenominational education in Ireland – this entailed resisting attempts by the Catholic hierarchy to gain a foothold in the Senate of Queen's University and protesting against state support for the Catholic University. ‘I am prepared to maintain that no public assistance ought to be given in Ireland to any education involving more or other religious teaching than exists in the mixed, or national system. I also think that in Ireland it is so great a point to bring youths of different religions to live together in colleges, as will justify almost any encouragement to the system of the Queen's University, except that of actually refusing degrees to those who have studied elsewhere.’ (Mill, to Cairnes, John Elliot, 6 01 1866, Later Utters, CW, XVI, 1133–4.Google Scholar) Whatever ‘the sentiments of the majority of the Irish population’ may have been, Mill clearly held the conviction that an educational system entirely under the control of the Catholic Church was not in the best interests of Irish society.

10 ‘J. S. Mill and the Irish question: reform and the integrity of the empire’, p. 450.

11 ‘J. S. Mill and the Irish question: the principles of political economy, 1848–1865’, Historical Journal, XIII (1970), 220–34Google Scholar.

12 Principles of political economy, ed. Robson, J. M., Collected works, II–III (Toronto, 1965), II, 326Google Scholar.

13 Even the diagnosis, however, is presented in rather muted tones, mainly because the Principles is a major theoretical discourse (with, of course, important practical ramifications) written for an audience of serious-minded individuals of diverse political persuasions. How very different is the militant temper of a brief manuscript penned by Mill in the aftermath of the 1848 Irish rising. ‘The social condition of Ireland, once for all, cannot be tolerated; it is an abomination in the sight of mankind…Before 1789 the peasantry of most of the provinces of France were even more destitute and miserable than Irish cottiers. By the revolution and its consequences, the property of a great part of the soil of France passed into the hands of the peasantry; and the result was the greatest change for the better in their condition, both physical and moral, of which, within a single generation, there is any record. The Irish leaders believed, that of such a change, or anything equivalent to it under English government, there was no chance. They thought probably, that an Irish government might effect it, or at all events that an Irish revolution would: and that the value of the object was worth the risks of such a revolution. And who will presume to say that they were wrong in any of these anticipations? or that they miscalculated anything except their chances of success?’ (‘What Is to Be Done with Ireland’, in Essays on England, Ireland, and the empire, CW, VI, 503.)

14 ‘Returning nothing to the soil, they consume its whole produce, minus the potatoes strictly necessary to keep the inhabitants from dying of famine; and when they have any notion of improvement, it usually consists in not leaving even this pittance, but turning out the people to beggary if not to starvation. When landed property has placed itself upon this footing it ceases to be defensible, and the time has come for making some new arrangement of the matter.’ (Principles of political economy, CW, II, 229–30.)

15 Ibid. II, 328.

16 Ibid. II, 329 30.

17 Ibid. II, 329.

18 ‘J. S. Mill and the Irish question: reform, and the integrity of the empire’, p. 450.

19 Principles of political economy, CW, II, 326–7.

20 ‘Insecurity of person and property, is as much as to say, uncertainty of the connexion between all human exertions or sacrifice, and the attainment of the ends for the sake of which they are undergone. It means, uncertainty whether they who sow shall reap, whether they who produce shall consume, and they who spare today shall enjoy tomorrow. It means, not only that labour and frugality are not the road to acquisition, but that violence is.’ (Ibid. III, 880.) Admittedly, this argument could have been employed in favour of fixity of tenure had it not been for the fact that for the vast majority of Englishmen security in the psychological sense meant the perpetuation of existing property rights. In 1867, however, Mill would conclude that there could be no security for anyone in Ireland, and none for the Union, without a formal redefinition of Irish property rights.

21 Ibid. II, 329 n.

22 Ibid. II, 330.

23 Considerations on representative government, in Essays on politics and society, ed. Robson, J. M., Collected works, XVIII–XIX (Toronto, 1977), XIX, 550–1Google Scholar. See Zastoupil, fn. 34.

24 Principles of political economy, CW, II, 331 n.

25 Ibid.

26 See Ibid. III, app. H, 1038–95.

27 Ibid. III, 1075–86.

28 Ibid. II, 333–4. No substantive changes were made in this section for the 1871 edition.

29 3 Hansard 181: 705 (17 Feb. 1866).

30 Ibid. p. 706.

31 Autobiography, in Autobiography and literary essays, ed. Robson, J. M. and Stillinger, Jack, Collected works, I (Toronto, 1981), 279Google Scholar.

32 Ibid.

33 Hansard 183: 1087 (17 May 1866).

34 Ibid. p. 1087.

35 Ibid. p. 1088.

36 Ibid. p. 1089.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid. p. 1091.

39 Ibid. p. 1089. The political context of Mill's speech may also be relevant. The 1866 Irish Land Bill was brought in by a government that was already in trouble on the issue of parliamentary reform. Mill wished to do what he could to preserve the Liberal administration, for whose leader in the House of Commons he had a high regard. This factor may have entered into his consideration of the land legislation and the response he should make to it.

40 Mill had taken an active part in the successful campaign to save the Fenian leaders from execution. For his extra-parliamentary defence of the Fenians, a defence rooted in a vehement denunciation of English government in Ireland, see the report of his late May 1867 speech at the St James's Hall in the Daily News, 27 May 1867. The government had intended to permit the execution of one Fenian, Richard O'Sullivan Burke. As Lord Stanley recorded in his diary on 22 May, 'it was determined to take the worst case, and make one example'. Three days later Stanley observed that' after much discussion it was decided in deference to the generally expressed feeling, to commute the sentence of Burke, the Fenian left for execution' (Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative party: journals and memoirs of Edward Henry, Lord Stanley, 1849–1869, ed. Vincent, John [Hassocks, Sussex, 1978], pp. 309, 310Google Scholar).

41 England and Ireland has recently been published as part of the Collected works. See Essays on England, Ireland, and the empire, VI, 505–32.

42 Ibid. p. 510.

43 Ibid. p. 512.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid. p. 513.

46 Ibid. p. 514.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid. pp. 515–16.

49 Ibid. p. 517.

50 Ibid. p. 518.

51 Ibid. pp. 518–19.

52 Ibid. pp. 520–6.

53 Ibid. p. 526.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid. pp. 526–7.

56 These arguments have been lucidly expounded by Mr Zastoupil.

57 England and Ireland, CW, VI, 529.

58 Ibid. p. 530.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid. p. 532.

61 ‘J. S. Mill and the Irish question: reform, and the integrity of the empire’, pp. 437–48.

62 3 Hansard 190: 1516–32 (12 03 1868)Google Scholar.

63 Ibid. pp. 1517–18.

64 Ibid. p. 1524.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid. pp. 1524, 1528.

67 Ibid. p. 1527.

68 Ibid. p. 1531.

69 Ibid. p. 1532.

70 Writing to Cairnes shortly after the publication of the pamphlet and less than two weeks before his speech, Mill maintained that ‘nothing short of what I propose would now tranquillize Ireland, or reconcile the Irish people to the Union. And I am sure that nothing less than some very startling proposal would have any chance of whipping up the languid interest of English public men in the subject, and making them feel the critical nature of the situation, or exert their minds to understand it.’ (Mill, to Cairnes, , 1 March 1868, Later letters, CW, XVI, 1369Google Scholar.)

71 ‘J. S. Mill and the Irish question: reform, and the integrity of the empire’, p. 447.