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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2009
John Stuart Mill, Public and Parliamentary Speeches, eds. John M. Robson and Bruce L. Kinzer, 2 vols., Toronto and London, 1989 (Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vols. xxviii and xxix); hereafter cited as CW with volume and page numbers.
1 Bagehot, Walter, ‘Mr. Mill's Address to the Electors of Westminster’, Economist, 29 04 1865, p. 497Google Scholar; repr. in The Colleced Works of Walter Bagehot, ed. Stevas, Norman St. John, 9 vols., London, 1968—, iii. 541.Google Scholar
2 For the ‘lost philosopher’ jibe, see Pall Mall Gazette, 28 07 1866, p. 11Google Scholar; for an example of the obituarists' judgement that he was a ‘manifest failure as a statesman’, see Illustrated London News, 17 05 1873, p. 456Google Scholar. These assessments were, of course, contested by Mill's supporters; see, for example, Fawcett, Millicent Garret, ‘His Influence as a Practical Politician’, Examiner, 17 05 1873, pp. 514–17.Google Scholar
3 Stephen, Leslie, The English Utilitarians, 3 vols., London, 1900, iii. 66–7Google Scholar; Vincent, John, The Formation of the British Liberal Party 1857–68, Harmondsworth, 1976 [first pub. London, 1966], p. 194.Google Scholar
4 Vincent, , pp. 192, 194, 184Google Scholar. Stephen had also already suggested part of this line of criticism in his obituary article on Mill, complaining that he had descended ‘too easily from the judgement-seat into the open arena’: ‘What is the use of being a great philosopher if, after all, you can add nothing to the ordinary cry of every popular agitator?’; Nation, 5 06 1873, p. 382.Google Scholar
5 Collini, Stefan, ‘Introduction’Google Scholar, Mill, John Stuart, Essays on Equality, Law, and Education, Toronto and London, 1984Google Scholar, CW, xxi. pp. vii–lvi.Google Scholar
6 For an overview of the importance of the mid-century periodicals, see Houghton, Walter, ‘Periodical Literature and the Articulate Classes’, in Shattock, Joanne and Wolff, Michael, ed., The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings, Leicester and Toronto, 1982, pp. 3–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 1,460 letters have survived from the last 14 years of his life compared to 880 from the first 52 years up to the end of 1858; see The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill, ed. Mineka, Francis E., 2 vols., Toronto and London, 1963Google Scholar (hereafter EL, CW, xii–xiii)Google Scholar; and The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849–1873, ed. Mineka, Francis E. and Lindley, Dwight N., 4 vols., Toronto and London, 1972Google Scholar (hereafter LL, CW, xiv–xvii)Google Scholar. These figures exclude those earlier letters discovered after the publication of the relevant volumes, and the further letters promised for the final volume of the Toronto edition.
8 For fuller discussion see Collini, , ‘Introduction’, CW, xxi. esp. pp. viii–xix.Google Scholar
9 ‘The Ministerial Manifesto’, Examiner, 22 09 1833, p. 593Google Scholar; repr. in Newspaper Writings, CW, xxiii. 599.Google Scholar
10 There is a helpful discussion of the place of parties in Mill, 's political thought, with particular reference to Considerations on Representative Government (1861)Google Scholar, in Kinzer, Bruce L., ‘J. S. Mill and the Problem of Party’, Journal of British Studies, xxi (1981), 106–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 Part of his admiration for Gladstone came from seeing him as the one man of principle in Palmerston's cabinet, and in the 1868 election he hoped that a resounding victory for Gladstone, ‘would proclaim in thunder to the whole world that the Palmerstonian period was at the end’Google Scholar; Speech to the Electors of Westminster, 13 11 1868Google Scholar, CW, xxviii. 361.Google Scholar
12 Speech of 17 May 1866, CW, xxviii. 75–83Google Scholar. For a helpful discussion of this speech in relation to Mill's earlier writings on the topic, see Kinzer, Bruce L., ‘J. S. Mill and Irish Land: A Re-assessment’, Historical Journal, xxvii (1984), 119–21.Google Scholar
13 Speech of 13 April 1866, CW, xxviii. 58–68, quotation at p. 68.Google Scholar
14 CW, xxviii. 68Google Scholar; Gladstone's diary entry is cited by Bruce Kinzer in his Introduction to this volume, CW, xxviii. p. xxxn.Google Scholar
15 Speech to the Electors of Westminster, 2 11 1868Google Scholar, CW, xxviii. 335.Google Scholar From his Avignon retreat, Mill had not only written to pledge his support for the controversially ‘godless’ Bradlaugh, standing at Northampton against two well-established Liberals, but he had also pressed the candidacy of his friend Edwin Chadwick at Kilmarnock against another sitting Liberal member; see LL, CW, xvi. 1433, 1453–4.Google Scholar
16 ‘Introduction’, CW, xxviii. p. xxxviii.Google Scholar
17 One way in which Mill continued the Radical tradition of representing the unrepresented was his willingness to be the means of presenting petitions to parliament, even where he did not agree with the purposes or arguments of the petitioners. The lists of the titles alone of the petitions he presented occupy over twenty pages in this edition (CW, xxix. 572–93)Google Scholar, ‘an index’, as the editors remark, ‘of his repute nationally as well as locally, and of his exceptionally busy and regular parliamentary activity’ (572).
18 His reference in the Autobiography to his contribution on this issue thus contains, as the editors of the speeches point out (CW, xviii. 114)Google Scholar, a considerable exaggeration, since he there refers to helping to ‘defeat’ the Extradition Bill, whereas the most he seems to have achieved was to insert a clause limiting its duration to one year (Autobiography and Literary Essays, ed. Robson, John M. and Stillinger, Jack, Toronto and London, 1981Google Scholar, CW, i. 282–3)Google Scholar. But it does seem to have been the case that his and others' objections encouraged the Government to set up the Select Committee, whose recommendations led, after Mill had left parliament, to amendment on the point in question.
19 See particularly ‘A Few Words on Non-Intervention’ (1859)Google Scholar and ‘Treaty Obligations’ (1870)Google Scholar, CW, xxi. 109–24 and 341–8.Google Scholar
20 For his speeches on this topic on the 3, 4, and 6 August 1866, see CW, xviii. 115–18, 119, 120–3 (quotation at p. 123)Google Scholar; for his questioning in the 1868 Select Committee, see CW, xxix. 542–71.Google Scholar
21 CW, xxix. 481Google Scholar. At times Mill's ‘leading’ of the witness could be blatant: having asked Hare, ‘I believe you consider one of the recommendations of your plan to be, that persons of great eminence, both socially and mentally, would be disposed to seek municipal distinctions?’, he may have felt that slower members of the Committee, or readers of its report, might miss the point, for he immediately followed Hare's reply by ‘asking’: ‘Persons who are well known to a considerable number of voters would not be in danger of being excluded because they were not known to the majority–Exactly’ (p. 483).
22 CW, xxix. 530Google Scholar. Elsewhere in Chadwick's evidence the smell of pre-arranged ‘questions’ is unmistakable: ‘6637. I believe you have given a statement of your views with reference to the improvement of Poor Law administration as applicable to the metropolis to the President of the Poor Law Board?—I have, especially as to the medical relief of the sick poor’ (p. 535).
23 See speeches of 21 May and 7 August 1867, and 5 May, 17 June, and 30 June 1868, CW, xviii. 162–5, 230–1, 273–5, 290–5, 300–1Google Scholar (quotation at pp. 291–2).
24 Letter of 27 July 1868 to Christie, W. D., LL, CW, xvi. 1425Google Scholar. For Mill's speeches on the Corrupt Practices Bill see CW, xviii. 262–328.Google Scholar
25 Letter of 7 Feb. 1867 to Huge, Arnold, LL, CW, xvi. 1234.Google Scholar
26 Vincent, , p. 185.Google Scholar
27 Speech of 12 March 1868, CW, xxviii. 255–6.Google Scholar
28 See particularly, Steele, E. D., ‘J. S. Mill and the Irish Question: Reform and the Integrity of the Empire 1865–1870’, Historical Journal, xiii (1970), 419–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zastoupil, Lynn, ‘Moral Government: J. S. Mill on Ireland’, Historical Journal, xxvi (1983), 707–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kinzer, , ‘J. S. Mill and Irish Land’Google Scholar; and the ‘Introduction’ by Hamburger, Joseph to Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto and London, 1982Google Scholar (CW, vi).Google Scholar
29 Speech of 12 March 1868, CW, xxviii. 248–9.Google Scholar
30 Letter of 14 Dec 1865 to Rae, William Fraser, LL, CW, xvi. 1126.Google Scholar
31 Autobiography, CW, i. 281–2.Google Scholar
32 Speech of 31 July 1866, CW, xxviii. 113.Google Scholar
33 Presumably the view expressed by Sir Frederic Rogers, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Colonial Office, represented a feeling common among the official classes: writing to his chief, the Earl of Carnarvon, in August 1866 he confessed ‘a personal desire that a courageous & honourable man who has done his best under very trying circumstances and with, advantages—we none of us [know] how much to the whole Western hemisphere—should be generously dealt with’. Carnarvon's Liberal predecessor, Edward Cardwell, expressed a similar perception of the matter in his comment two months earlier that, following the publication of the official report, only ‘extreme men’ would attempt to ‘raise a Jamaica Debate’ when parliament resumed. Both quoted in Knox, B. A., ‘The British Government and the Governor Eyre Controversy, 1865–1875’, Historical Journal, xix (1976), 892, 888.Google Scholar
34 Stephen, , English Utilitarians, iii. 65.Google Scholar
35 In his ‘Introduction’, Kinzer cites the surprisingly sympathetic judgement to be found in the memoirs of William White, Door-Keeper of the House of Commons: ‘Mr. Mill has no oratorical gifts and he knows it. Nor can he be called a rhetorician. He is a close reasoner, and addresses himself directly to our reasoning powers; and though he has great command of language, as all his hearers know, he never condescends to deck out his argument in rhetorical finery to catch applause. His object is to convey his thoughts directly to his hearer's mind, and to do this he uses the clearest medium—not coloured glass, but the best polished plate, because through that objects may be best seen.’ White, William, The Inner Life of the House of Commons, 2 vols., London, 1897Google Scholar, cited in CW, xxviii. p. xliiin.Google Scholar
36 Speech to the Land Tenure Reform Association, 18 03 1873Google Scholar; CW, xxix. 428.Google Scholar
37 Ibid., pp. 430–1.
38 Speech to a Meeting of the London National Society for Women, 's Suffrage on 26 03 1870Google Scholar; CW, xxix. 387Google Scholar. One somewhat neglected discussion of Mill's radicalism in this period, especially on land reform, in its relation to the ‘collectivism’ of the later nineteenth century was Wolfe, Willard, From Radicalism to Socialism: Men and Ideas in the Formation of Fabian Socialist Doctrines 1881–1889, New Haven, Conn., 1975.Google Scholar
39 Speech to a meeting of the Working Men's Peace Association on the government's Army Bill, 10 03 1871Google Scholar; CW, xxix. 411–15Google Scholar. For his involvement with the Campaign for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, see CW, xxi. pp. xxxvii–viii, 349–71.Google Scholar
40 In addition to being Chairman of both the Jamaica Committee and the Land Tenure Reform Association, his final years saw Mill on the Council of the Commons Preservation Society (an organization effectively led by his friend Henry Fawcett), and of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, as well as being one of the initiators and most prominent supporters of the National Society for Women's Suffrage.
41 Gladstone's letter was read out at a meeting of the electors of Westminster, at which Mill, spoke, on 24 07 1868Google Scholar; CW, xxviii. 329.Google Scholar
42 Robson, John M., What Did He Say? Editing Nineteenth-Century Speeches from Hansard and the Newspapers, Lethbridge, Ontario, 1988.Google Scholar