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John Stuart Mill and the Catholic Question in 1825*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Bruce L. Kinzer
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Extract

John Stuart Mill's connection with the Irish question spanned more than four decades and embraced a variety of elements. Of his writings on Ireland, the best known are his forty-three Morning Chronicle articles of 1846–47 composed in response to the Famine, the section of the Principles of Political Economy that treats the issue of cottier tenancy and the problem of Irish land, and, most conspicuous of all, his radical pamphlet England and Ireland, published in 1868. All of these writings take the land question as their paramount concern. The fairly absorbing interest in the subject disclosed by Mill during the second half of the 1840s arose from the fortuitous conjuncture of the disaster unfolding in Ireland and his engagement with the principles of political economy. Between 1848 and 1871 Mill's Principles went through seven editions (excluding the People's edition) and the substantive revisions he made in the section on Ireland from one edition to the next illumine both the essence and the accidentals of his bearing towards that country. Mill's cogent and controversial advocacy of fixity of tenure in England and Ireland constituted the heart of his answer to the Fenian challenge. The land question aside, Mill was drawn into the battle over the Irish university system in the 1860s largely through his friendship with John Elliot Cairnes, professor of jurisprudence and political economy at the Queen's College Galway. On this subject, however, Mill wrote almost nothing for publication. The longest single piece he ever drafted on Ireland was his first, an essay that predated the Morning Chronicle articles by two decades. In his own bibliography this essay is referred to as ‘An article on the Catholic Question which appeared in the Parliamentary Review for 1825’. Although the essay of 1825 could justly have borne the same title as the pamphlet of 1868, the particulars of course differ markedly. Ireland never ceased to pose a question during the course of the nineteenth century, but the dynamics shaping that question changed much between the mid-1820s and the late 1860s. Even so, the 1825 essay prefigures something of Mill's later involvement with the Irish question, and also invites examination as a quite remarkable piece of political journalism from the pen of a young man not yet twenty, who would subsequently establish himself as the most influential thinker of his generation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , May 1993 , pp. 49 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank the anonymous reader of this article, whose suggested alterations invariably represented an improvement upon the original.

References

1 For Mill, 's Morning Chronicle articles on IrelandGoogle Scholar, see Newspaper Writings, ed. Robson, Ann P. and Robson, John M., 4 vols., Toronto, 1986Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, xxivGoogle Scholar; see also Principles of Political Economy, ed. Robson, John M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1965Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ii. 313–36Google Scholar; and, for England and Ireland, Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1982Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vi. 505–32.Google Scholar

2 For discussion of the significance of these revisions, see Steele, E. D., ‘J. S. Mill and the Irish Question: The Principles of Political Economy, 1848–1865’, Historical Journal, xiii (1970), 216–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kinzer, B. L., ‘J. S. Mill and Irish Land: A Reassessment’, Historical Journal, xxvii (1984), 111–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 See Kinzer, B. L., ‘John Stuart Mill and the Irish University Question’, Victorian Studies, xxxi (1987), 59–77.Google Scholar

4 Bibliography of the Published Writings of John Stuart Mill, ed. MacMinn, Ney, Hainds, J. R. and McCrimmon, James MacNab, Evanston, III., 1945, 7Google Scholar. The essay, simply titled ‘Ireland’, forms part of Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW, vi. 59–98Google Scholar. Subsequent references to the article are given in parentheses in the text.

5 Autobiography and Literary Essays, ed. Robson, John M. and Stillinger, Jack, Toronto, 1981Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, i. 121.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., 706.

7 Ibid., 121.

8 For the history of the Catholic Association, see O'Ferrall, Fergus, Catholic Emancipation: Daniel O'Connell and the Birth of Irish Democracy, Dublin, 1985Google Scholar; a still valuable study is that of Reynolds, J. A., The Catholic Emancipation Crisis in Ireland, New Haven, 1954Google Scholar; see also MacDonagh, Oliver, The Hereditary Bondsman: Daniel O'Connell 1775–1829, London, 1988, pp. 205–80.Google Scholar

9 For the government's view of the problem, see Jenkins, Brian, Era of Emancipation: British Government of Ireland, 1812–1830, Kingston and Montreal, 1988, pp. 216–27Google Scholar. It should be noted that the government had had to cope during the early 1820s with the extensive agrarian violence and disturbances of the Rockites, which were only beginning to subside when the Catholic Association was stepping forward.

10 O'Connell's acceptance of the ‘wings’ produced some dismay within his own organization. It can be inferred from what he did and said that he did not think state stipends for the clergy would significantly undermine the attachment of the priests to the Catholic masses. As for the forty-shilling freeholders, O'Connell insisted that the landlords controlled their votes and that Catholic political interests would not be damaged by their disfranchisement. The leading authority on the Irish electoral system has written:

Briefly put, between 1793 and 1829 the Irish franchise in the counties was open to all those who ‘possessed’ a freehold worth forty shillings a year. But of course the great bulk of county voters did not actually ‘own’ any land at all, they merely held it by means of a lease ‘for lives’ which lasted until the last-named ‘life’ nominated in the lease (there were usually three) had died. Such leases … were accounted ‘freeholds’ for electoral purposes. Landlords could obviously grant and refuse them at will (Hoppen, K. Theodore, Ireland since 1800: Conflict and Conformity, London, 1989, 31).Google Scholar

In assessing O'Connell's acceptance of the ‘wings’, S. J. Connolly observes:

The most straightforward explanation of O'Connell's decision … lies in the temptations held out by Burdett's relief bill itself. In 1825 O'Connell was fifty years old, barred by the penal laws from further advancement in his profession, and burdened by heavy debts. The passage of Burdett's bill would have meant a successful culmination to twenty years of political labour, and at the same time opened the way to a transformation of his personal circumstances (‘Mass Politics and Sectarian Conflict, 1823–30’, Ireland Under the Union, I, 1801–1870, ed. Vaughan, W. E., Oxford, 1989, [A New History of Ireland, vol. v], p. 96).Google Scholar

11 Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW, vi. p. lvii.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., 66. This insight is of considerable interest in view of the distinction drawn by recent historians of the movement between the aspirations of its leaders and the expectations of their followers. In referring to the leadership, Brian Jenkins remarks (somewhat uncharitably perhaps): ‘Lawyers, merchants, and journalists, whose rise in society, advancement in their professions, or entry into political life had been frustrated by religious discrimination, all had an axe to grind’ (Era of Emancipation, p. 216Google Scholar). As for the masses, S. J. Connolly states:

The vision of emancipation that moved the mass of the catholic population was in many cases radically different from that held by the small-town notables and strong farmers who dominated the local rent committees and liberal clubs. Reports from different parts of the country spoke of the expectations that the launching of the new agitation had raised among the rural poor: that the Catholic Association was in fact preparing the way for a new rebellion, that the ‘rent’ was to be used to purchase arms, that after emancipation had been granted the land was to be redivided. … The Catholic Association and its leaders were presented not as the exemplars of a new style of democratic and constitutional agitation, but as the champions of an oppressed Irish Catholicism, who would strike down the traditional protestant enemy (‘Mass Politics and Sectarian Conflict’, 92–3).Google Scholar

13 Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW, vi. 67Google Scholar. Mill gives this theme more uninhibited and sardonic treatment in two debating speeches, one of 1824, and the other of 1826. There is a close resemblance in the passages concerned, and only one need be quoted here.

It has sometimes been disputed whether the evils of anarchy or those of despotism be the worst: but I never heard it disputed that the two together are a greater evil than either of them singly: from one half to the whole of Ireland has been suffering under the two together, ever since it was admitted to the blessings of the British Constitution. With all that insecurity of person and property which had been supposed peculiar to a state of anarchy, is combined a degree of arbitrary power in the functionaries of government which has scarcely been exceeded under the most absolute monarchy. Yet Ireland is in full enjoyment of our excellent Constitution, and not only of that but of an excellent system of law, enforced by an excellent unpaid magistracy, all combined to uphold an excellent landed aristocracy (Journals and Debating Speeches, ed. Robson, John M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1988Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, xxvi. 362Google Scholar; see also ibid., 268–9).

14 For Mill, 's essay on the Edinburgh ReviewGoogle Scholar, see Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW, i. 291–325.Google Scholar

15 For a superb analysis of the problem, see Hamburger, Joseph, Intellectuals in Politics: John Stuart Mill and the Philosophic Radicals, New Haven, 1965.Google Scholar

16 See Machin, G. I. T., The Catholic Question in English Politics, 1820 to 1830, Oxford, 1964, pp. 42–64.Google Scholar

17 Hoppen, , Ireland since 1800, p. 23.Google Scholar

18 See Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW, vi. 76–84Google Scholar. One does sometimes come upon a general observation of more than passing interest. An example: ‘In most other matters it seems to be pretty generally understood that the gift which is meant to be valued must be sparingly bestowed: but no measure, no temperance, is thought necessary in the distribution of praise; people seem in general to be ready to throw it at the first dog they meet’ (ibid., p. 77). It is not odd that Mill should have resented the cheap valuation the world evidently placed upon praise; it is perhaps ironic that he should think of it as a ‘gift’, given the price paid by the eldest son of James Mill for what little praise he received from the source that mattered most to him. Then again, maybe he had come to think that any praise he got from his father could only be in the nature of a ‘gift’.

19 It is regrettable that we do not have access to the manuscript of this essay in view of what Mill says about it in the cancelled text of the Autobiography, where he refers to his ‘annoyance’ at Bingham's having ‘struck out, or obliged me to modify, many of what I thought the most piquant passages’ (Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW, i. 120n).Google Scholar

20 See Himes, N. E., ‘John Stuart Mill's Attitude to Neo-Malthusianism’, Economic History, Supplement to the Economic Journal, iv (1929), 457–84Google Scholar, and Mineka, F. E., ‘John Stuart Mill and Neo-Malthusianism, 1873’, Mill News Letter, viii (1972), 3–10.Google Scholar

21 See Newspaper Writings, ed. Robson, Ann P. and Robson, John M., 4 vols., Toronto, 1986Google Scholar, CW xxii. 80–5, 85–91, 95–7 and 97–100.Google Scholar

22 The recent literature on demographic change in Ireland during the second half of the eighteenth century and first half of the nineteenth century raises more questions than it answers. For a survey ofthat literature, see Mokyr, J. and Gráda, C. Ó, ‘New Developments in Irish Population History, 1700–1845’, Economic History Review, xlvii (1984), 473–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW, vi. 88Google Scholar. Mill allocates little space in this article to discussion of the land question in Ireland—his most interesting observation on it comes in this section, where he denies that the minute subdivision of land arose to any great extent from the ambition of landlords to create freeholds over which they could exercise electoral control. ‘That the lands should be parcelled out in small farms, was no more than is natural in a country where, till of late, scarcely any tenants had capital enough to occupy large ones’. There is no hint of any special sympathy for peasant proprietorship. ‘Now, when capital is flowing into the country, the landlords are rapidly clearing their estates of the wretched cottier tenantry; uniting numbers of small farms into one, and introducing a better system of cultivation’ (ibid., 89). It cannot reasonably be inferred that Mill's reticence on the land question followed from a lack of interest in the subject—in accordance with the purposes of the Parliamentary History and Review, Mill's essay was shaped by the political developments of 1825, in which the land question did not much figure.

24 Hoppen, K. Theodore, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland 1832–1885, Oxford, 1984, p. 1.Google Scholar

25 Connolly, , ‘Mass Politics and Sectarian Conflict’, 96.Google Scholar

26 Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW, i. 121 and 123.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., 113.

28 Ibid., 5.

29 The discussion of Ireland in the Principles of Political Economy forms something of an exception owing to the nature of the work itself.

30 Journals and Debating Speeches, CW, xxvi. 363.Google Scholar

31 Mill, James, ‘State of the Nation’, Westminster Review, vi (1826), 277.Google Scholar

32 The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill, ed. Mineka, Francis E., 2 vols., Toronto, 1963Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, xii. 27–8.Google Scholar