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Mill in Parliament: The View from the Comic Papers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

John M. Robson
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Extract

So, on 22 July 1865 (p. 32), under the title ‘Philosophy and Punch’, did England's premier comic weekly greet the election of J. S. Mill as MP for Westminster. Mill held his seat for only one term, until the general election of 1868, when his Whig-Liberal colleague Robert Wellesley Grosvenor was re-elected, but Mill was replaced by the loser in 1865, the Conservative W. H. Smith, Jr., who, though he never went to sea, became the ruler of the Queen's navy. The reasons for that reversal have engaged the attention of many, including Mill himself; I should like to introduce into the discussion material from an ignored source, the comic weeklies, which took a continued and close look at Mill's behaviour during his parliamentary years. While this evidence generally does not disconfirm earlier judgments—including my own— it does more than merely add to the induction. First, it shows how different political stances led journals to focus on different aspects of Mill's parliamentary career, and to adopt different rhetorical strategies in portraying him in picture and word. Second, it demonstrates how the hardening of party allegiances during the parliament of 1865–68, which accelerated in the preparatory campaigns for the general election of 1868, affected Mill adversely. Third, it suggests strongly that it was not his ‘crotchets’ or ‘whims’, especially women's suffrage and proportional representation, that damaged his chances for re-election, but his advocacy of causes unpopular with the majority of Liberals as well as with Conservatives.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , May 1990 , pp. 102 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 See his Autobiography, ed. Robson, J. M. and Stillinger, J., Toronto, 1981Google Scholar (Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. i), pp. 288–89.Google Scholar

2 See Ibid., p. 276.

3 See the Textual Introduction to Principles of Political Economy, ed. Robson, J. M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1965Google Scholar, CW, ii, p. lxxi.Google Scholar

4 8 July 1868, p. 105. Cf. ‘Gratitude's Ode./ Song for the Voting Person.—“The Maid of the Mill’” (Punch, 12 12 1867, p. 242)Google Scholar; ‘The Use of a Mill./That very low codger,/ Reform League Odger,/… [is] raising the wind by the aid of a Mill’ (Judy, 30 09 1868, p. 229)Google Scholar; ‘Local and Particular Jokes./… (5.) Why would not Westminster have Mill? (A sound good old joke.)… Because it did not want a member who could not raise the wind himself, but might turn at any moment when it happened to blow!!’ (Tomahawk, 5 12 1868, p. 248).Google Scholar

5 This appears in ‘Parliamentary’, where Mill as a woman provides the decorated initial (Judy, 24 07 1867, p. 156)Google Scholar. For Mill as factory and grinding mill, see Punch, 27 06 1868, p. 275, and 10 Mar. 1866, p. 103.Google Scholar

6 Judy, 16 12 1868, p. 77Google Scholar. Cf. ibid., 8 Apr. 1868, p. 310, concerning disestablishment of the Irish Church.

7 One example from Will-o'-the-Wisp (26 09 1868, p. 24)Google Scholar will sufficiently illustrate. Under the title, ‘Smith for Westminster!’ one finds: ‘Elections in Westminster rarely are free/From blows with the fist and abuse from the quill;/We hope though this time all will orderly be,/And voters will show that they won't have a “Mill.”’ Cf. Punch, 15 04 1865, p. 156Google Scholar; 5 Aug. 1865, p. 51; 19 Aug. 1865, p. 72; 30 Mar. 1867, p. 125; 17 June 1868, p. 250, and 7 Nov. 1868, p. 191; Judy, 4 03 1868, p. 240, and 2 Sept. 1868, p. 181Google Scholar; Tomahawk, 14 09 1867, p. 195Google Scholar, and 21 Mar. 1868, p. 121.

8 4 May 1867. Cf. Punch, 8 04 1865, p. 139Google Scholar (‘When Constituencies send such men to Parliament as the great writer on Logic, the political Millennium may be expected.’), and Judy, 24 06 1868, p. 88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Judy: 1 04 1868, p. 296Google Scholar; 8 May 1867, p. 15 (‘Judy's favourite troops are the militiamen (Mill-He-She-men.)’; 12 06 1867, p. 87Google Scholar (‘Why is the House of Commons like an artiste in silk and feathers?—Because it's a Mill-in-her.’), and 26 08 1868, p. 180Google Scholar (Dr. Brewer ‘told the meeting … that if they didn't look out, their “pet” would “go to the wall”, meaning, of course, the Mill-wall. He also said that it was “all square” for Grosvenor.’)

10 Punch, 8 06 1867, p. 233Google Scholar; Judy, 4 11 1868, p. 21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Punch, 3 08 1867, p. 41Google Scholar. Footnotes being more forgiving than text, I may here instance what is being there eliminated. Under the heading, ‘Women's Rights with a Vengeance!’ we are told: ‘A Bill laid before Parliament by a number of gentlemen, including Mr. Mill, the Philosopher, for legalising female rights, provides, amongst other things, that wives shall be capable “of contracting, suing, and being sued, as if they were unmarried women.” Suing and being sued! Wives to have suitors as though they were spinsters still?’

Oh, Mr. Mill!' (Punch, 30 05, 1868.)Google Scholar

12 1 April 1865, p. 134. For the letter to Beal, see Later Letters, 1849–1873, ed. Mineka, Francis E. and Lindley, Dwight N., 4 vols., Toronto, 1972Google Scholar, CW, xvi. 1005–7.Google Scholar

13 Punch, 15 04 1865, p. 156Google Scholar. Mill's election committee featuring medical men, it is not surprising to find a ‘War-Song of the Westminster Doctor’ in Punch: ‘Ye Medical Electors, vote for Mill,/And efficacious draught, and active pill./Grosvenor and inert globules both eschew,/And let him represent the Quacks, not you.’ (24 06 1865, p. 260.)Google Scholar Cf. ‘Medicine and Member for Westminster’, ibid., 8 July 1865, p. 2.

14 Punch, 15 04, 1865, p. 147Google Scholar. For other abuse of Grosvenor at this time, see ibid., p. 155; 8 Apr., p. 137; 29 Apr., p. 178. After the election, a fanciful garland of the elected shows ‘intellectual Mill’ in contrast to Grosvenor, , ‘smoking a cheroot’ (10 02 1866)Google Scholar. Indeed one searches in vain for any eulogies of Grosvenor, the universal tone being that adopted by Tomahawk in 1867, when it employed heavy irony in describing the ‘real service’ he had done the country in calling, with ‘gravity’, the Home Secretary's attention ‘to “certain nocturnal depredations recently committed in Belgravia upon the flowers and plants with which some people delight to decorate their dining-room windows.”… We denounce with him the atrocity of these midnight marauders, and we call upon Sir Richard Mayne to do his duty and place a policeman in front of every flower-pot…’ (29 July 1867, p. 93).

15 8 July 1865, p. 2.

16 15 July 1865, p. 22. Cf. ‘The Tribulation of the ‘Tizer’, ibid., 22 July 1865, p. 24.

17 See, for examples, 10 Feb. 1866, p. 54; 21 May 1866, p. 165; 28 May 1866, p. 216; 2 June 1866, p. 231; 9 June 1866, p. 242; 4 May 1867, pp. 185, 187; 25 May 1867, p. 214; 3 Aug. 1867, p. 46; 18 Jan. 1868, p. 29.

18 See, for the session of 1866, 17 Feb., p. 63 (cited below); 3 Mar., p. 86; 21 Apr., p. 165; 28 Apr., p. 174 (very laudatory; cf. 5 May, p. 183), and p. 175; 6 June, p. 240; 28 July, p. 35; 11 Aug., p. 57.

19 CW, i. 276–77.Google Scholar

20 17 Feb. 1866, p. 63.

21 24 Feb., p. 76. For the speech, see Public and Parliamentary Speeches, ed. Robson, J. M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1988Google Scholar, CW, xxviii. 47–9.Google Scholar

22 26 May, p. 218. For the speech, see Public and Parliamentary Speeches, CW, xxviii. 75–83.Google Scholar

23 See, in addition to the issues cited mentioned below, 2 Mar., p. 84 (on the same page Gladstone's commendation of Mill, 's Inaugural Address at St. Andrews is mentioned)Google Scholar; 15 June, p. 244; 22 June, p. 255; 29 June, p. 265; 6 July, p. 3; 13 July, p. 12; 17 Aug., p. 65.

24 8 June, p. 237. Mill is mentioned in two other contexts in the same article, and Gaselee is again assailed for his insult on 15 June, p. 243.

25 30 Mar. 1867, p. 128.

26 25 April 1868, p. 178. Here he advocates a special ladies' parliament, like the Convocation of the Church of England. Cf. a letter to Punch, , headed ‘Female Self-Emancipation’, from ‘A Lady's Man’, 2 05 1868, p. 195.Google Scholar

27 See Robson, Ann P., ‘No Laughing Matter: John Stuart Mill's Establishment of Women's Suffrage as a Parliamentary Question’, Utilitas, ii (1990), 88–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 6 April 1867, p. 144, and 4 May 1867, pp. 179–80 (the ‘Maid of the Mill’ pun occurs here). Another pleasing example is the letter to Punch headed ‘Political Parlance’, from ‘Cicely Chatsworth’, who wants to know the meaning of such terms as ‘the previous question’: ‘Before Edmund (not the Confessor, but my Edmund) popped the momentous question to me, the previous question he put to my little brother Peter was … “Did Cicely ever make a custard pudding?”’ Cicely, who merely mentions ‘our dear little Mill’ in passing, is also puzzled by the motion that ‘Mr. Speaker do leave the Chair’, which she thinks must be connected with ‘Standing Orders’ (23 05 1868, p. 228.)Google Scholar

29 1 June 1867, p. 223. Punch also said that ‘whether you [Ladies] want votes or not, you will say that the cheers Mr. Mill gained were well earned’.

30 25 May 1867, p. 220, and 1 June 1867, pp. 224–25. In the latter issue there is (p. 228) another passing allusion to Mill's speech: ‘“Women”, observed Mr. Mill, “do not get up monster meetings.” To hint at the possibility of the fair ones doing such a thing is ungallant to the Honourable Member.’ But the (rather blunt) point of the squib is aimed at Mr. Whalley, the fanatic defender of Protestantism, a frequent target in Punch, who would interpret the ‘monster meeting’ in ‘Beauty and the Beast’ as an allegory of a woman going over to Rome.

31 6 April 1867, p. 138.

32 23 May, p. 22 (Punch comments that ‘Right or wrong, the request ought to have been granted to such petitioners’ as Somerville, Mary, ‘Mechanist of the Heavens’Google Scholar, and Nightingale, Florence, ‘Healer on Earth’), and 20 06 1868, p. 265.Google Scholar

33 In addition to those cited below, see following accounts (some of which contain more than one reference): 7 Mar., p. 101; 14 Mar., p. 109; 16 May, p. 247; 23 May, p. 220; 30 May, p. 232; 6 June, p. 247; 20 June, p. 271; 11 July, p. 19; 18 July, p. 24; 1 Aug., p. 51; and 8 Aug., p. 57.

34 See the reference to Bouverie's speech of 5 Mar., attacking Gladstone and the Liberal party (Punch, 14 03, p. 109).Google Scholar

35 29 Feb., p. 97.

36 20 June 1868, p. 271.

37 One relevant instance is its praise for the writings of John Plummer, a young workingman befriended by Mill: see Fun, 15 09 1866, p. 7Google Scholar, and 27 June 1868, p. 164.

38 Of these two I have examined only the very incomplete sets in the British Library, and so my generalizations must be seen as uncertain.

39 Its strong Conservatism is suggested by its favouring the Standard (e.g., Bull, John reads it in a cartoon of 26 09 1868)Google Scholar, and its picking the Morning Star as a main opponent (e.g.: ‘Motto for the discomfited Philosopher of Westminster.—“Ye little Star hide your diminished—Poll”’ (28 11 1868, p. 140).Google Scholar

40 Some relevant issues of The Owl are not in the British Library set.

41 24 June 1865, p. 53; 22 July 1865, p. 92 (Thomas Hughes is coupled with Mill here); and 5 Aug. 1865, p. 112 (with Hughes again, as well as Torrens, Oliphant, Disraeli, and Bulwer Lytton).

42 2 Dec. 1865, p. 112. A month earlier it had put in Gladstone's mouth the opinion that Russell's desire for some ‘new recruits’ to the Cabinet could be met by ‘men like Goschen, like Forster, like Stansfield; aye, or Mill himself, if he'd serve’ (4 11 1865, p. 79).Google Scholar

43 2 Mar. 1867, p. 251. Fun also did Mill the honour to include in its weekly ‘Double Acrostic’ these lines: ‘Oh! fairest maiden that poetic art/E're limned, of noble mould and tender heart;/Women now seek the suffrage, Mr. Mill/Their champion,—you'd have voted for his bill.’ (20 Apr. 1867, p. 58—the answer, as you will immediately have deduced, is ‘Ida’.)

44 28 Nov. 1868, p. 123, just after Mill's defeat.

45 Fun, 30 03 1867, p. 31Google Scholar (cf. 13 Apr., p. 53). Will-o'-the-Wisp also picked up this theme (31 10 1868, p. 81).Google Scholar

46 For instances, see 18 May 1867, p. 107; 8 June 1867, p. 132 (two mentions); 26 October 1867, p. 75 (here, with reference to Edward Miall's campaign in Bradford, , FunGoogle Scholar contradicts the rumour that Mill and his supporters were going ‘to bring forward a ladycandidate, on the ground that “a Miss is as good as a Miall!”’); 4 July 1868, p. 173 (where Mill's name is associated with those of the hated Radicals, Bradlaugh, Beales, and Bright); 5 Sept. 1868, p. 268; and 13 Feb. 1869, p. 233.

47 6 July 1867, p. 181.

48 For example, in a series on ‘The Petticoat Parliament’, 10, 17, and 24 10 1868, pp. 149–50, 161–62, and 173–74Google Scholar. Isolated little jokes apeared at the time of greatest interest, in the issues of 18 May, 1 June, and 8 Aug. 1867, pp. 15, 47, and 155, and in that of 9 May 1868, p. 188.

49 20 May 1868, p. 5; 11 Apr. 1866, p. 4. See also 17 June 1868, p. 6. Will-o'-the-Wisp offers nothing better than a letter from ‘An Admirer’, headed ‘The Conservative Organs’, discussing the results of the election of 1868: ‘And whereas it is deplored on both sides that the new House will certainly be dull, Mr. Mill, with no particular opinion upon any subject, but with logic that shows no logic in the brain, might have been expected, when fairly loosed by his constituents, to keep the House in a perpetual state of “merriment and amazement” by his motions (we may suppose) on women's chignons’ (5 Dec. 1868, p. 143).

50 1 May 1867, p. 3.

51 See, e.g., in addition to those cited elsewhere in this paper, another in the 1st no., 1 May 1867, p. 11; and those of 5 June 1867, p. 70; and 23 Sept. 1868, p. 211 (where there is also the comment that whether or not women are to have the vote is of little concern, but ‘we always like to see ‘em with the “frank eyes!”’).

52 A fairly constant problem is here illustrated: Mill tends—saving the side-whiskers— to look like Judy's sister, if not twin. The third woman here is Lord Granville—for what reason I do not know.

53 25 Mar., 1 and 29 July 1868.

54 For Mill's account of this episode, see Autobiography, CW, i. 278–79Google Scholar; for his speech, see Public and Parliamentary Speeches, CW, xxviii. 102–5.Google Scholar

55 ‘Stereoscopic View of a Reform Meeting’, 11 08 1866, p. 60Google Scholar. The Conservative account says that Mill, ‘of whose speech not a word was audible, gesticulated for some minutes so ludicrously that the mob left off shouting to laugh at his grotesque appearance’, and continues, with heavy irony: ‘The hon. member, who seemed quite bewildered with the hubbub, left in a hurry, in order to describe in his place in Parliament this orderly and majestic demonstration of the people.’ In contrast, the Liberal account says:

Those who are fond of comparing Mr. Mill's present position with that which he occupied before he had proved that the greatest living sage was capable of sustaining himself in the turbulent element of popular politics, and of winning from the populace the admiration he had long enjoyed amongst the highly educated of his countrymen, might well have felt a thrill of curious excitement had they seen the distinguished man's colossal reception by this vast assemblage.

56 3 Nov. 1866, p. 188. Cf., e.g., 4 May 1867, p. 177.

57 30 Mar. 1867, p. 28, and 11 Aug. 1866, p. 220.

58 29 May 1867, p. 61. Cf. ‘Potter to Beales’, 25 09 1867Google Scholar, in which at the Crystal Palace Potter sees Bright seated on his left, and Mill on his right.

59 20 May 1868, p. 29.

60 28 Sept. 1867, p. 215.

61 26 Sept. 1868, p. 24.

62 On 22 Sept. 1866, Fun noted that by ‘general consent’ the Jamaican negro would be known as ‘a man and a brother’.

63 See ‘Don't Dissolve,’ 13 02 1869, p. 236Google Scholar, where it is ironically suggested that the Jamaica Committee should turn its attention to New Zealand, whence came reports of the slaughter of white colonists by natives. This note is repeated in the ‘Preface’ to Fun, n.s. viii. p. ivGoogle Scholar. The French action in New Caledonia, in similar fashion, is given as a cause for the Jamaica Committee on 1 09 1866, p. 250Google Scholar. See also 20 Feb. 1869, p. 239.

64 The list is a long one, including, in addition to those cited above and below, in 1865: 25 Nov., p. 102; 9 Dec, p. 122; 16 Dec, p. 132; 23 Dec, pp. 142, 149; 30 Dec, p. 152. In 1866: 13 Jan., p. 180; 20 Jan., p. 187; 3 Mar., p. 247; 26 May, p. 104; 29 Sept., p. 26. In 1867: 16 Mar., p. 7; 13 Apr., pp. 48, 49; 27 Apr., pp. 68, 75; 25 May, p. 110; 8 June, p. 195; 3 Aug., p. 215; 17 Aug., p. 235; 18 July, p. 201. In 1868, 13 June, p. 149; 20 June, p. 159 (the poetic clue to a double acrostic, beginning, ‘In far-off lands a manful blow/He struck for law and England's right…’).

65 10 Feb. 1866.

66 11 Aug. 1868, p. 219.

67 30 May 1868, p. 132.

68 17 Aug. 1867, p. 245. The link with Exeter Hall is established at the beginning of the incident: see 20 Jan. 1866, p. 184.

69 9 May 1868, p. 92.

70 For the petition (presented 5 June 1868), see Public and Parliamentary Speeches, CW, xxix. 592Google Scholar; for Mill's explanation, see Mill, to Pratten, W. S., 9 06 1868Google Scholar, Later Letters, CW, xvi. 1412.Google Scholar

71 16 Dec. 1865, p. 237. Cf. ibid., p. 138.

72 See, e.g., in addition to others cited below, in 1865: 16 Dec, p. 235; 23 Dec, p. 252. In 1866: 10 Feb., p. 62; 16 Feb., p. 69; 24 Feb., p. 81; 10 Mar., p. 98; 8 Dec, p. 231 (cf. 9 Mar., 1867, p. 94). In 1867: 26 Jan., p. 37; 13 Apr., p. 154; 20 Apr., p. 166. In 1868, 30 May, p. 238; 6 June, p. 245 (a full-page cartoon in which the ghost of Palmerston, pointing to a disconsolate Eyre, says to Disraeli, , ‘Benjamin, Benjamin! I wouldn't have left him in the lurch.’), 20 06, p. 268, and 4 July, p. 114.Google Scholar

73 See, e.g., 6 Apr. 1867, p. 143, where it is suggested that Eyre should be a parliamentary candidate for Middlesex.

74 See 16 May 1868, p. 212, where in curious juxtaposition is found an article about women being appointed as parish officers, in which there is friendly reference to Mill, , as a ‘respecter of persons’ and logician.Google Scholar

75 17 Nov. 1866, p. 202.

76 7 Mar. 1868, p. 107.

77 30 May (cf. 13 July, p. 261), and 6 June 1868, pp. 237 and 241.

78 13 July 1867, p. 14.

79 13 July 1867, p. 111; Beesley's defence of Broadhead is dealt with contemptuously in the issue of 6 July 1867, p. 102.

80 A young lady asks why the members of the Jamaica Committee are all bald (Mill may be intended, but is not named), it being evident that they are ‘so eager for the head of Eyre’ (15 06 1867, p. 69)Google Scholar; the Jamaica Committee is awarded honourable mention in a contest of machines ‘for the Exhaustion of Air’ (27 07 1867, p. 134)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. 18 Jan., 14 Mar., and 13 June 1868, pp. 24, 103, and 240.

81 See, e.g., 30 May 1868, p. 216.

82 6 June 1868, pp. 225–26. Cf. the bitter poem, ‘Black and White’, which again lists Mill ahead of Buxton, and Bright, , 13 06 1868, p. 240.Google Scholar

83 10 June 1868, p. 6.

84 6 and 13 May 1868, p. 6 in both issues. These are prepared for by a notice in the issue of 29 Apr. 1868, p. 6.

85 10 June 1868, p. [3].

86 31 Oct. 1868, p. 91.

87 14 Nov. 1868, p. 105.

88 25 Dec. 1868, p. 176. As this passage suggests, Will-o'-the-Wisp continued a savage attack on Mill after his electoral defeat, unlike the other comic papers, which tended to ignore him. An instance is its attempt to associate him, with Buxton and Taylor, in the New Zealand atrocities, first in ‘The Moral of the Eyre Case’ (16 01 1869, p. 216)Google Scholar, and then in a particularly nasty supposed letter from him to the Editor, headed ‘Gibraltar and New Zealand’, in which, evidently prompted by Jonathan Swift, but not ironically, Mill proposes ‘to boil down our indigent classes and those working men of whom I have asserted in my world-renowned treatise on Political Economy, that when they cease to be servile they become insolent, have them potted and sent off in cases, hermetically sealed, to New Zealand for the consumption of the natives, to whom, as an act of simple justice, we owe some reparation for our long usurpation of territory and sovereignty’ (13 Feb. 1869, pp. 264, 269).

89 27 May, pp. 39–40; see also 4 Mar., p. 246, 27 May, pp. 47 and 48, and 1 July, p. 89.

90 15 July 1868, p. 117.

91 10 June 1868. For other references to Mill in this context, see 17 June, pp. 75 and 77, 1 July, p. 95, and 29 July, p. 131.

92 10 June 1868.

93 See, for instance, Judy, 11 11 1868, p. 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Fun, 28 11 1868, p. 117.Google Scholar

94 Judy was delighted that the Liberals should so go at one another. For her response after the correspondence between Mill and Bouverie was published, see 21 Oct. 1868, p. 251.

95 See The Times, 26 05 1868, p. 11Google Scholar; 24 and 25 July 1868, p. 11 in each; and 21 August. 1868, p. 9.

96 28 Oct. 1868, p. 10. Cf. Tomahawk, 7 and 21 11 1868, pp. 198 and 221.Google Scholar

97 In one of its few cartoons showing Mill, with an accompanying text, headed ‘The Professors’, ‘Professor Benjamin’ outdraws (and puts down) ‘Professor Paucit’ at the country fair. In the background of the cartoon is ‘The Ladies Roundabout’ with a flying banner, ‘J. S. Mill’. The text says: ‘Another Professor, named Mill, used occasionally to pay Paucit a visit, for they were remarkably attached to each other. He always brought with him his “Ladies Roundabout”, because, having proved a miserable failure on the London boards, he knew in his own heart he must prove the same everywhere, and so he took to this “Ladies Roundabout” in the hope of keeping up his popularity in the provinces.’ (12 Sept. 1868, p. 4.)

98 7 Nov. 1868, p. 96.

99 12 Sept. 1868, p. 2; Mill's subscription to Bradlaugh is mentioned again in passing on 26 Dec. 1868, p. 178.

100 14 Nov. 1868, p. 107. Cf. another ‘Advertisement’ of 21 11 1868, p. 126Google Scholar: ‘The undersigned begs philosophically to inform his numerous admirers that he is now prepared, being at present out of an engagement, to undertake the business of returning members to Parliament, at the shortest possible notice and regardless of sex, colour, age, or condition./John Stuart Mill,/Agent./(N.B. References kindly permitted to Mr. W. E. Gladstone, 11 Carlton House Terrace, S.W., whose return for Greenwich, in case of a slip in South Lancashire, has been confided to J.S.M.)’ For similar material, see 7 Nov. 1868, p. 103, concerning Odger, and 21 Nov. 1868, p. 119, and 19 Dec. 1868, p. 174, concerning Bradlaugh (the latter also side-swiping Dean Stanley for his support of Mill).

101 Judy, 16 09 1868, p. 202Google Scholar; Fun, 28 11 1868, p. 116.Google Scholar

102 ‘The Ballad of the Beaten’, 5 12 1868, p. 247Google Scholar, in which the defeats of Odger, , Bradlaugh, , Beales, , Dickson, , and Chadwick, , ‘Mill's joy and pride’Google Scholar, are also celebrated.

103 25 Apr. 1868, p. 165. Cf. Mill, 's design for a new House of Commons, 30 05 1868, p. 221Google Scholar. After his defeat, Tomahawk announced that it had appointed him as ‘our own correspondent’ in Utopia, whence he had reported that the lion had lain down with the lamb, only to add in a later dispatch that unfortunately the lamb was inside the lion (Tomahawk Almanack for 1869, p. [7]).Google Scholar

104 I am not arguing that local issues were insignificant in Westminster in 1868, for indeed they were prominent on the Conservative side, but that national ones had increased prominence.

105 22 Feb. 1868, p. 246.

106 See, e.g., ‘Gladiators Preparing for the Arena’, 2 02 1867, pp. 46–7Google Scholar; ‘D'Israel-i in Triumph; or, the Modern Sphynx’, 15 06 1867, pp. 246–47Google Scholar; and ‘Before the Tournament’, 21 11 1868, pp. 216–17Google Scholar. In none of these, not coincidentally, is Mill portrayed as a woman.

107 The accompanying poem, entitled ‘To Mr. Robertson Gladstone, With Judy‘s Congratulations on his late Speech’, has only one reference to Mill: ‘How affecting it was, when you came to recite/How his toffee he shared, when a boy;/And how, even now, with Mill, Russell, and Bright,/He'd divide any good things with joy!’ (Judy, 17 06 1868, p. 69)Google Scholar. The Owl, though it did not mention Mill, was equally poetic on the subject, offering ‘My Brother. A Poem Recited by Mr. Robertson Gladstone, at Liverpool, on Thursday Last’, which begins: ‘Who saith his prayers every morn,/And did, the moment he was born,/And doth the path of sinners scorn?—/My brother.’ (10 June 1868, p. 5.) (The model here was Ann Taylor's ‘My Mother’, which contains those memorable lines: ‘Who ran to help me when I fell,/And would some pretty story tell,/Or kiss the place to make it well?/My mother’.)

108 Odger retired on the sought advice of the left-Liberals Stansfeld, Hughes, and Taylor, on the ground that his candidacy would harm the chances for a liberal sweep of Chelsea. Punch applauded his decision on 14 11 1868, pp. 209 and 210Google Scholar. Bradlaugh, however, ran and was defeated at Northampton, where he offended Liberals not only by his views but also by jeopardizing the candidacy of a regular party member.

109 In ‘Echoes of the Election’, Punch (21 11 1868, p. 214)Google Scholar, various political figures cry their slogans to the ‘mob’: Amberley, shouts, ‘No large families!’Google Scholar, and Mill, responds, ‘Bravo! They are crimes!’Google Scholar

110 11 Nov. 1868, p. 30.

111 25 Nov. 1868.

112 Tomahawk, 12 12 1868, p. 254.Google Scholar

113 5 Dec. 1868. Tomahawk's feelings for the ‘Frozen-out Candidates’ was less compassionate, as Mill is reduced to ‘writing a work on the Rights and Wrongs of Women, which he intends to dedicate to his future constituents, the Ladies of Westminster’ (5 12 1868, p. 247)Google Scholar—it seems scarcely credible that this is an actual reference to The Subjection of Women, published in 1869.

114 28 Nov. 1868, p. 226.

115 21 Nov., p. 214, and 28 Nov., p. 226. Cf. Punch's earlier strong comments, 24 10 1868, pp. 170 and 171Google Scholar, in the latter of which Bradlaugh appears.

116 Neither, it added, would Bradlaugh, 's ‘vulgar atheism’Google Scholar or Beales, 's ‘windbaggery’ (28 11, p. 231).Google Scholar

117 28 Nov. 1868, p. 232.

118 Even this label was seen to be suspect by Tomahawk, which, under the heading ‘A Peculiar Advertisement’, commented: ‘Messrs. Longmans, on the strength of Mr. John Stuart Mill's recent crushing political defeat by the Conservative Mr. Smith, advertise all his works afresh, adding to the name of the author, late M.P. for Westminster. We should have imagined that “actual M.P. for Westminster” could never have added much lustre to Mr. Mill's literary and philosophical reputation; but how anything can be gained for them by constantly reminding us that he was left at the bottom of the poll by one of the most important constituencies in the Kingdom, we cannot for our lives understand. Mr. Mill has certainly done everything in his power to blacken his own good repute, and to make his great name useless; but we cannot think he has sunk so low as to be exalted by being remembered as late M.P. for anywhere.’ (12 Dec. 1868, p. 254.)