Bain's profound treatise on the Mind, just
then completed by the publication of its second volume.
then completed by the publication of its second volume.
Autobiography by John Stuart Mill
The controversies
with Dr. Whewell, as well as much matter derived from Comte, were first
introduced into the book in the course of the re-writing.
At the end of 1841, the book being ready for the press, I offered it to
Murray, who kept it until too late for publication that season, and then
refused it, for reasons which could just as well have been given at
first. But I have had no cause to regret a rejection which led to my
offering it to Mr. Parker, by whom it was published in the spring of
1843. My original expectations of success were extremely limited.
Archbishop Whately had, indeed, rehabilitated the name of Logic, and the
study of the forms, rules, and fallacies of Ratiocination; and Dr.
Whewell's writings had begun to excite an interest in the other part of
my subject, the theory of Induction. A treatise, however, on a matter so
abstract, could not be expected to be popular; it could only be a book
for students, and students on such subjects were not only (at least in
England) few, but addicted chiefly to the opposite school of
metaphysics, the ontological and "innate principles" school. I therefore
did not expect that the book would have many readers, or approvers; and
looked for little practical effect from it, save that of keeping the
tradition unbroken of what I thought a better philosophy. What hopes I
had of exciting any immediate attention, were mainly grounded on the
polemical propensities of Dr Whewell; who, I thought, from observation
of his conduct in other cases, would probably do something to bring the
book into notice, by replying, and that promptly, to the attack on his
opinions. He did reply but not till 1850, just in time for me to answer
him in the third edition. How the book came to have, for a work of the
kind, so much success, and what sort of persons compose the bulk of
those who have bought, I will not venture to say read, it, I have never
thoroughly understood. But taken in conjunction with the many proofs
which have since been given of a revival of speculation, speculation too
of a free kind, in many quarters, and above all (where at one time I
should have least expected it) in the Universities, the fact becomes
partially intelligible. I have never indulged the illusion that the book
had made any considerable impression on philosophical opinion. The
German, or _a priori_ view of human knowledge, and of the knowing
faculties, is likely for some time longer (though it may be hoped in a
diminishing degree) to predominate among those who occupy themselves
with such inquiries, both here and on the Continent. But the "System of
Logic" supplies what was much wanted, a text-book of the opposite
doctrine--that which derives all knowledge from experience, and all
moral and intellectual qualities principally from the direction given to
the associations. I make as humble an estimate as anybody of what either
an analysis of logical processes, or any possible canons of evidence,
can do by themselves towards guiding or rectifying the operations of the
understanding. Combined with other requisites, I certainly do think them
of great use; but whatever may be the practical value of a true
philosophy of these matters, it is hardly possible to exaggerate the
mischiefs of a false one. The notion that truths external to the mind
may be known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observation
and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times, the great
intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions. By the aid
of this theory, every inveterate belief and every intense feeling, of
which the origin is not remembered, is enabled to dispense with the
obligation of justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its own
all-sufficient voucher and justification. There never was such an
instrument devised for consecrating all deep-seated prejudices. And the
chief strength of this false philosophy in morals, politics, and
religion, lies in the appeal which it is accustomed to make to the
evidence of mathematics and of the cognate branches of physical science.
To expel it from these, is to drive it from its stronghold: and because
this had never been effectually done, the intuitive school, even after
what my father had written in his _Analysis of the Mind_, had in
appearance, and as far as published writings were concerned, on the
whole the best of the argument. In attempting to clear up the real
nature of the evidence of mathematical and physical truths, the _System
of Logic_ met the intuitive philosophers on ground on which they had
previously been deemed unassailable; and gave its own explanation, from
experience and association, of that peculiar character of what are
called necessary truths, which is adduced as proof that their evidence
must come from a deeper source than experience. Whether this has been
done effectually, is still _sub judice_; and even then, to deprive a
mode of thought so strongly rooted in human prejudices and partialities,
of its mere speculative support, goes but a very little way towards
overcoming it; but though only a step, it is a quite indispensable one;
for since, after all, prejudice can only be successfully combated by
philosophy, no way can really be made against it permanently until it
has been shown not to have philosophy on its side.
Being now released from any active concern in temporary politics, and
from any literary occupation involving personal communication with
contributors and others, I was enabled to indulge the inclination,
natural to thinking persons when the age of boyish vanity is once past,
for limiting my own society to a very few persons. General society, as
now carried on in England, is so insipid an affair, even to the persons
who make it what it is, that it is kept up for any reason rather than
the pleasure it affords. All serious discussion on matters on which
opinions differ, being considered ill-bred, and the national deficiency
in liveliness and sociability having prevented the cultivation of the
art of talking agreeably on trifles, in which the French of the last
century so much excelled, the sole attraction of what is called society
to those who are not at the top of the tree, is the hope of being aided
to climb a little higher in it; while to those who are already at the
top, it is chiefly a compliance with custom, and with the supposed
requirements of their station. To a person of any but a very common
order in thought or feeling, such society, unless he has personal
objects to serve by it, must be supremely unattractive: and most people,
in the present day, of any really high class of intellect, make their
contact with it so slight, and at such long intervals, as to be almost
considered as retiring from it altogether. Those persons of any mental
superiority who do otherwise, are, almost without exception, greatly
deteriorated by it. Not to mention loss of time, the tone of their
feelings is lowered: they become less in earnest about those of their
opinions respecting which they must remain silent in the society they
frequent: they come to look upon their most elevated objects as
unpractical, or, at least, too remote from realization to be more than a
vision, or a theory, and if, more fortunate than most, they retain their
higher principles unimpaired, yet with respect to the persons and
affairs of their own day they insensibly adopt the modes of feeling and
judgment in which they can hope for sympathy from the company they keep.
A person of high intellect should never go into unintellectual society
unless he can enter it as an apostle; yet he is the only person with
high objects who can safely enter it at all. Persons even of
intellectual aspirations had much better, if they can, make their
habitual associates of at least their equals, and, as far as possible,
their superiors, in knowledge, intellect, and elevation of sentiment.
Moreover, if the character is formed, and the mind made up, on the few
cardinal points of human opinion, agreement of conviction and feeling on
these, has been felt in all times to be an essential requisite of
anything worthy the name of friendship, in a really earnest mind. All
these circumstances united, made the number very small of those whose
society, and still more whose intimacy, I now voluntarily sought.
Among these, by far the principal was the incomparable friend of whom I
have already spoken. At this period she lived mostly with one young
daughter, in a quiet part of the country, and only occasionally in town,
with her first husband, Mr. Taylor. I visited her equally in both
places; and was greatly indebted to the strength of character which
enabled her to disregard the false interpretations liable to be put on
the frequency of my visits to her while living generally apart from Mr.
Taylor, and on our occasionally travelling together, though in all other
respects our conduct during those years gave not the slightest ground
for any other supposition than the true one, that our relation to each
other at that time was one of strong affection and confidential intimacy
only. For though we did not consider the ordinances of society binding
on a subject so entirely personal, we did feel bound that our conduct
should be such as in no degree to bring discredit on her husband, nor
therefore on herself.
In this third period (as it may be termed) of my mental progress, which
now went hand in hand with hers, my opinions gained equally in breadth
and depth, I understood more things, and those which I had understood
before I now understood more thoroughly. I had now completely turned
back from what there had been of excess in my reaction against
Benthamism. I had, at the height of that reaction, certainly become much
more indulgent to the common opinions of society and the world, and more
willing to be content with seconding the superficial improvement which
had begun to take place in those common opinions, than became one whose
convictions on so many points, differed fundamentally from them. I was
much more inclined, than I can now approve, to put in abeyance the more
decidedly heretical part of my opinions, which I now look upon as almost
the only ones, the assertion of which tends in any way to regenerate
society. But in addition to this, our opinions were far _more_ heretical
than mine had been in the days of my most extreme Benthamism. In those
days I had seen little further than the old school of political
economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social
arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance,
appeared to me, as to them, the _dernier mot_ of legislation: and I
looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on
these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The
notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the
injustice--for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy
or not--involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast
majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by
universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the
portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a
democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We were now much less
democrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to be
so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the
selfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimate
improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly
under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with
the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which
most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward
to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the
industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will
be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the
division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great
a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert
on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer
either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert
themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be
exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to.
The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the
greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the
raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the
benefits of combined labour. We had not the presumption to suppose that
we could already foresee, by what precise form of institutions these
objects could most effectually be attained, or at how near or how
distant a period they would become practicable. We saw clearly that to
render any such social transformation either possible or desirable, an
equivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivated
herd who now compose the labouring masses, and in the immense majority
of their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to labour
and combine for generous, or at all events for public and social
purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. But
the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor
is ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation of
the sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his country, as
readily as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by slow
degrees, and a system of culture prolonged through successive
generations, that men in general can be brought up to this point. But
the hindrance is not in the essential constitution of human nature.
Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the
generality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind
is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on
things which tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity,
as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurred
from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it is
capable of producing, even in common men, the most strenuous exertions
as well as the most heroic sacrifices. The deep-rooted selfishness which
forms the general character of the existing state of society, is _so_
deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutions
tends to foster it; and modern institutions in some respects more than
ancient, since the occasions on which the individual is called on to do
anything for the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequent
in modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity. These
considerations did not make us overlook the folly of premature attempts
to dispense with the inducements of private interest in social affairs,
while no substitute for them has been or can be provided: but we
regarded all existing institutions and social arrangements as being (in
a phrase I once heard from Austin) "merely provisional," and we welcomed
with the greatest pleasure and interest all socialistic experiments by
select individuals (such as the Co-operative Societies), which, whether
they succeeded or failed, could not but operate as a most useful
education of those who took part in them, by cultivating their capacity
of acting upon motives pointing directly to the general good, or making
them aware of the defects which render them and others incapable of
doing so.
In the _Principles of Political Economy_, these opinions were
promulgated, less clearly and fully in the first edition, rather more so
in the second, and quite unequivocally in the third. The difference
arose partly from the change of times, the first edition having been
written and sent to press before the French Revolution of 1848, after
which the public mind became more open to the reception of novelties in
opinion, and doctrines appeared moderate which would have been thought
very startling a short time before. In the first edition the
difficulties of Socialism were stated so strongly, that the tone was on
the whole that of opposition to it. In the year or two which followed,
much time was given to the study of the best Socialistic writers on the
Continent, and to meditation and discussion on the whole range of topics
involved in the controversy: and the result was that most of what had
been written on the subject in the first edition was cancelled, and
replaced by arguments and reflections which represent a more advanced
opinion.
The _Political Economy_ was far more rapidly executed than the _Logic_,
or indeed than anything of importance which I had previously written. It
was commenced in the autumn of 1845, and was ready for the press before
the end of 1847. In this period of little more than two years there was
an interval of six months during which the work was laid aside, while I
was writing articles in the _Morning Chronicle_ (which unexpectedly
entered warmly into my purpose) urging the formation of peasant
properties on the waste lands of Ireland. This was during the period of
the Famine, the winter of 1846-47, when the stern necessities of the
time seemed to afford a chance of gaining attention for what appeared to
me the only mode of combining relief to immediate destitution with
permanent improvement of the social and economical condition of the
Irish people. But the idea was new and strange; there was no English
precedent for such a proceeding: and the profound ignorance of English
politicians and the English public concerning all social phenomena not
generally met with in England (however common elsewhere), made my
endeavours an entire failure. Instead of a great operation on the waste
lands, and the conversion of cottiers into proprietors, Parliament
passed a Poor Law for maintaining them as paupers: and if the nation has
not since found itself in inextricable difficulties from the joint
operation of the old evils and the quack remedy it is indebted for its
deliverance to that most unexpected and surprising fact, the
depopulation of ireland, commenced by famine, and continued by
emigration.
The rapid success of the _Political Economy_ showed that the public
wanted, and were prepared for such a book. Published early in 1848, an
edition of a thousand copies was sold in less than a year. Another
similar edition was published in the spring of 1849; and a third, of
1250 copies, early in 1852. It was, from the first, continually cited
and referred to as an authority, because it was not a book merely of
abstract science, but also of application, and treated Political Economy
not as a thing by itself, but as a fragment of a greater whole; a branch
of Social Philosophy, so interlinked with all the other branches, that
its conclusions, even in its own peculiar province, are only true
conditionally, subject to interference and counteraction from causes not
directly within its scope: while to the character of a practical guide
it has no pretension, apart from other classes of considerations.
Political Economy, in truth, has never pretended to give advice to
mankind with no lights but its own; though people who knew nothing but
political economy (and therefore knew that ill) have taken upon
themselves to advise, and could only do so by such lights as they had.
But the numerous sentimental enemies of political economy, and its still
more numerous interested enemies in sentimental guise, have been very
successful in gaining belief for this among other unmerited imputations
against it, and the _Principles_ having, in spite of the freedom of many
of its opinions, become for the present the most popular treatise on the
subject, has helped to disarm the enemies of so important a study. The
amount of its worth as an exposition of the science, and the value of
the different applications which it suggests, others of course must
judge.
For a considerable time after this, I published no work of magnitude;
though I still occasionally wrote in periodicals, and my correspondence
(much of it with persons quite unknown to me), on subjects of public
interest, swelled to a considerable bulk. During these years I wrote or
commenced various Essays, for eventual publication, on some of the
fundamental questions of human and social life, with regard to several
of which I have already much exceeded the severity of the Horatian
precept. I continued to watch with keen interest the progress of public
events. But it was not, on the whole, very encouraging to me. The
European reaction after 1848, and the success of an unprincipled usurper
in December, 1851, put an end, as it seemed, to all present hope for
freedom or social improvement in France and the Continent. In England, I
had seen and continued to see many of the opinions of my youth obtain
general recognition, and many of the reforms in institutions, for which
I had through life contended, either effected or in course of being so.
But these changes had been attended with much less benefit to human
well-being than I should formerly have anticipated, because they had
produced very little improvement in that which all real amelioration in
the lot of mankind depends on, their intellectual and moral state: and
it might even be questioned if the various causes of deterioration which
had been at work in the meanwhile, had not more than counterbalanced the
tendencies to improvement. I had learnt from experience that many false
opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering
the habits of mind of which false opinions are the result. The English
public, for example, are quite as raw and undiscerning on subjects of
political economy since the nation has been converted to free-trade, as
they were before; and are still further from having acquired better
habits of thought and feeling, or being in any way better fortified
against error, on subjects of a more elevated character. For, though
they have thrown off certain errors, the general discipline of their
minds, intellectually and morally, is not altered. I am now convinced,
that no great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a
great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes
of thought. The old opinions in religion, morals, and politics, are so
much discredited in the more intellectual minds as to have lost the
greater part of their efficacy for good, while they have still life
enough in them to be a powerful obstacle to the growing up of any better
opinions on those subjects. When the philosophic minds of the world can
no longer believe its religion, or can only believe it with
modifications amounting to an essential change of its character, a
transitional period commences, of weak convictions, paralysed
intellects, and growing laxity of principle, which cannot terminate
until a renovation has been effected in the basis of their belief
leading to the evolution of some faith, whether religious or
merely human, which they can really believe: and when things are in this
state, all thinking or writing which does not tend to promote such a
renovation, is of very little value beyond the moment. Since there was
little in the apparent condition of the public mind, indicative of any
tendency in this direction, my view of the immediate prospects of human
improvement was not sanguine. More recently a spirit of free speculation
has sprung up, giving a more encouraging prospect of the gradual mental
emancipation of England; and concurring with the renewal under better
auspices, of the movement for political freedom in the rest of Europe,
has given to the present condition of human affairs a more hopeful
aspect. [3]
Between the time of which I have now spoken, and the present, took place
the most important events of my private life. The first of these was my
marriage, in April, 1851, to the lady whose incomparable worth had made
her friendship the greatest source to me both of happiness and of
improvement, during many years in which we never expected to be in any
closer relation to one another. Ardently as I should have aspired to
this complete union of our lives at any time in the course of my
existence at which it had been practicable, I, as much as my wife, would
far rather have foregone that privilege for ever, than have owed it to
the premature death of one for whom I had the sincerest respect, and she
the strongest affection. That event, however, having taken place in
July, 1849, it was granted to me to derive from that evil my own
greatest good, by adding to the partnership of thought, feeling, and
writing which had long existed, a partnership of our entire existence.
For seven and a-half years that blessing was mine; for seven and a-half
only! I can say nothing which could describe, even in the faintest
manner, what that loss was and is. But because I know that she would
have wished it, I endeavour to make the best of what life I have left,
and to work on for her purposes with such diminished strength as can be
derived from thoughts of her, and communion with her memory.
When two persons have their thoughts and speculations completely in
common; when all subjects of intellectual or moral interest are
discussed between them in daily life, and probed to much greater depths
than are usually or conveniently sounded in writings intended for
general readers; when they set out from the same principles, and arrive
at their conclusions by processes pursued jointly, it is of little
consequence in respect to the question of originality, which of them
holds the pen; the one who contributes least to the composition may
contribute more to the thought; the writings which result are the joint
product of both, and it must often be impossible to disentangle their
respective parts, and affirm that this belongs to one and that to the
other. In this wide sense, not only during the years of our married
life, but during many of the years of confidential friendship which
preceded, all my published writings were as much here work as mine; her
share in them constantly increasing as years advanced. But in certain
cases, what belongs to her can be distinguished, and specially
identified. Over and above the general influence which her mind had over
mine, the most valuable ideas and features in these joint
productions--those which have been most fruitful of important results,
and have contributed most to the success and reputation of the works
themselves--originated with her, were emanations from her mind, my part
in them being no greater than in any of the thoughts which I found in
previous writers, and made my own only by incorporating them with my own
system of thought! During the greater part of my literary life I have
performed the office in relation to her, which from a rather early
period I had considered as the most useful part that I was qualified to
take in the domain of thought, that of an interpreter of original
thinkers, and mediator between them and the public; for I had always a
humble opinion of my own powers as an original thinker, except in
abstract science (logic, metaphysics, and the theoretic principles of
political economy and politics), but thought myself much superior to
most of my contemporaries in willingness and ability to learn from
everybody; as I found hardly anyone who made such a point of examining
what was said in defence of all opinions, however new or however old, in
the conviction that even if they were errors there might be a substratum
of truth underneath them, and that in any case the discovery of what it
was that made them plausible, would be a benefit to truth. I had, in
consequence, marked this out as a sphere of usefulness in which I was
under a special obligation to make myself active; the more so, as the
acquaintance I had formed with the ideas of the Coleridgians, of the
German thinkers, and of Carlyle, all of them fiercely opposed to the
mode of thought in which I had been brought up, had convinced me that
along with much error they possessed much truth, which was veiled from
minds otherwise capable of receiving it by the transcendental and
mystical phraseology in which they were accustomed to shut it up, and
from which they neither cared, nor knew how, to disengage it; and I did
not despair of separating the truth from the error, and exposing it in
terms which would be intelligible and not repulsive to those on my own
side in philosophy. Thus prepared, it will easily be believed that when
I came into close intellectual communion with a person of the most
eminent faculties, whose genius, as it grew and unfolded itself in
thought, continually struck out truths far in advance of me, but in
which I could not, as I had done in those others, detect any mixture of
error, the greatest part of my mental growth consisted in the
assimilation of those truths, and the most valuable part of my
intellectual work was in building the bridges and clearing the paths
which connected them with my general system of thought. [4]
The first of my books in which her share was conspicious was the
_Principles of Political Economy_. The _System of Logic_ owed little to
her except in the minuter matters of composition, in which respect my
writings, both great and small, have largely benefited by her accurate
and clear-sighted criticism. [5] The chapter of the _Political Econonomy_
which has had a greater influence on opinion than all the rest, that on
'the Probable Future of the Labouring Classes,' is entirely due to her;
in the first draft of the book, that chapter did not exist. She pointed
out the need of such a chapter, and the extreme imperfection of the book
without it; she was the cause of my writing it; and the more general
part of the chapter, the statement and discussion of the two opposite
theories respecting the proper condition of the labouring classes, was
wholly an exposition of her thoughts, often in words taken from her own
lips. The purely scientific part of the _Political Economy_ I did not
learn from her; but it was chiefly her influence that gave to the book
that general tone by which it is distinguished from all previous
expositions of Political Economy that had any pretension to being
scientific, and which has made it so useful in conciliating minds which
those previous expositions had repelled. This tone consisted chiefly in
making the proper distinction between the laws of the Production of
Wealth--which are laws of nature, dependent on the properties of
objects--and the modes of its Distribution, which, subject to certain
conditions, depend on human will. The commom run of political economists
confuse these together, under the designation of economic laws, which
they deem incapable of being defeated or modified by human effort;
ascribing the same necessity to things dependent on the unchangeable
conditions of our earthly existence, and to those which, being but the
necessary consequences of particular social arrangements, are merely
co-extensive with these; given certain institutions and customs, wages,
profits, and rent will be determined by certain causes; but this class
of political economists drop the indispensable presupposition, and argue
that these causes must, by an inherent necessity, against which no human
means can avail, determine the shares which fall, in the division of the
produce, to labourers, capitalists, and landlords. The _Principles of
Political Economy_ yielded to none of its predecessors in aiming at the
scientific appreciation of the action of these causes, under the
conditions which they presuppose; but it set the example of not treating
those conditions as final. The economic generalizations which depend not
on necessaties of nature but on those combined with the existing
arrangements of society, it deals with only as provisional, and as
liable to be much altered by the progress of social improvement. I had
indeed partially learnt this view of things from the thoughts awakened
in me by the speculations of the St. Simonians; but it was made a living
principle pervading and animating the book by my wife's promptings. This
example illustrates well the general character of what she contributed
to my writings. What was abstract and purely scientific was generally
mine; the properly human element came from her: in all that concerned
the application of philosophy to the exigencies of human society and
progress, I was her pupil, alike in boldness of speculation and
cautiousness of practical judgment. For, on the one hand, she was much
more courageous and far-sighted than without her I should have been, in
anticipation of an order of things to come, in which many of the limited
generalizations now so often confounded with universal principles will
cease to be applicable. Those parts of my writings, and especially of
the _Political Economy_, which contemplate possibilities in the future
such as, when affirmed by Socialists, have in general been fiercely
denied by political economists, would, but for her, either have been
absent, or the suggestions would have been made much more timidly and in
a more qualified form. But while she thus rendered me bolder in
speculation on human affairs, her practical turn of mind, and her almost
unerring estimate of practical obstacles, repressed in me all tendencies
that were really visionary. Her mind invested all ideas in a concrete
shape, and formed to itself a conception of how they would actually
work: and her knowledge of the existing feelings and conduct of mankind
was so seldom at fault, that the weak point in any unworkable suggestion
seldom escapes her. [6]
During the two years which immediately preceded the cessation of my
official life, my wife and I were working together at the "Liberty. "
I had first planned and written it as a short essay in 1854. It was in
mounting the steps of the Capitol, in January, 1855, that the thought
first arose of converting it into a volume. None of my writings have
been either so carefully composed, or so sedulously corrected as this.
After it had been written as usual twice over, we kept it by us,
bringing it out from time to time, and going through it _de novo_,
reading, weighing, and criticizing every sentence. Its final revision
was to have been a work of the winter of 1858-9, the first after my
retirement, which we had arranged to pass in the south of Europe. That
hope and every other were frustrated by the most unexpected and bitter
calamity of her death--at Avignon, on our way to Montpellier, from a
sudden attack of pulmonary congestion.
Since then I have sought for such allevation as my state
admitted of, by the mode of life which most enabled me to feel her still
near me. I bought a cottage as close as possible to the place where she
is buried, and there her daughter (my fellow-sufferer and now my chief
comfort) and I, live constantly during a great portion of the year. My
objects in life are solely those which were hers; my pursuits and
occupations those in which she shared, or sympathized, and which are
indissolubly associated with her. Her memory is to me a religion, and
her approbation the standard by which, summing up as it does all
worthiness, I endeavour to regulate my life.
After my irreparable loss, one of my earliest cares was to print and
publish the treatise, so much of which was the work of her whom I had
lost, and consecrate it to her memory. I have made no alteration or
addition to it, nor shall I ever. Though it wants the last touch of her
hand, no substitute for that touch shall ever be attempted by mine.
The _Liberty_ was more directly and literally our joint production than
anything else which bears my name, for there was not a sentence of it
that was not several times gone through by us together, turned over in
many ways, and carefully weeded of any faults, either in thought or
expression, that we detected in it. It is in consequence of this that,
although it never underwent her final revision, it far surpasses, as a
mere specimen of composition, anything which has proceeded from me
either before or since. With regard to the thoughts, it is difficult to
identify any particular part or element as being more hers than all the
rest. The whole mode of thinking of which the book was the expression,
was emphatically hers. But I also was so thoroughly imbued with it, that
the same thoughts naturally occurred to us both. That I was thus
penetrated with it, however, I owe in a great degree to her. There was a
moment in my mental progress when I might easily have fallen into a
tendency towards over-government, both social and political; as there
was also a moment when, by reaction from a contrary excess, I might have
become a less thorough radical and democrat than I am. In both these
points, as in many others, she benefited me as much by keeping me right
where I was right, as by leading me to new truths, and ridding me of
errors. My great readiness and eagerness to learn from everybody, and to
make room in my opinions for every new acquisition by adjusting the old
and the new to one another, might, but for her steadying influence, have
seduced me into modifying my early opinions too much. She was in nothing
more valuable to my mental development than by her just measure of the
relative importance of different considerations, which often protected
me from allowing to truths I had only recently learnt to see, a more
important place in my thoughts than was properly their due.
The _Liberty_ is likely to survive longer than anything else that I have
written (with the possible exception of the _Logic_), because the
conjunction of her mind with mine has rendered it a kind of philosophic
text-book of a single truth, which the changes progressively taking
place in modern society tend to bring out into ever stronger relief: the
importance, to man and society of a large variety in types of character,
and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself in
innumerable and conflicting directions. Nothing can better show how deep
are the foundations of this truth, than the great impression made by the
exposition of it at a time which, to superficial observation, did not
seem to stand much in need of such a lesson. The fears we expressed,
lest the inevitable growth of social equality and of the government of
public opinion, should impose on mankind an oppressive yoke of
uniformity in opinion and practice, might easily have appeared
chimerical to those who looked more at present facts than at tendencies;
for the gradual revolution that is taking place in society and
institutions has, thus far, been decidedly favourable to the development
of new opinions, and has procured for them a much more unprejudiced
hearing than they previously met with. But this is a feature belonging
to periods of transition, when old notions and feelings have been
unsettled, and no new doctrines have yet succeeded to their ascendancy.
At such times people of any mental activity, having given up their old
beliefs, and not feeling quite sure that those they still retain can
stand unmodified, listen eagerly to new opinions. But this state of
things is necessarily transitory: some particular body of doctrine in
time rallies the majority round it, organizes social institutions and
modes of action conformably to itself, education impresses this new
creed upon the new generations without the mental processes that have
led to it, and by degrees it acquires the very same power of
compression, so long exercised by the creeds of which it had taken the
place. Whether this noxious power will be exercised, depends on whether
mankind have by that time become aware that it cannot be exercised
without stunting and dwarfing human nature. It is then that the
teachings of the _Liberty_ will have their greatest value. And it is to
be feared that they will retain that value a long time.
As regards originality, it has of course no other than that which every
thoughtful mind gives to its own mode of conceiving and expressing
truths which are common property. The leading thought of the book is one
which though in many ages confined to insulated thinkers, mankind have
probably at no time since the beginning of civilization been entirely
without. To speak only of the last few generations, it is distinctly
contained in the vein of important thought respecting education and
culture, spread through the European mind by the labours and genius of
Pestalozzi. The unqualified championship of it by Wilhelm von Humboldt
is referred to in the book; but he by no means stood alone in his own
country. During the early part of the present century the doctrine of
the rights of individuality, and the claim of the moral nature to
develop itself in its own way, was pushed by a whole school of German
authors even to exaggeration; and the writings of Goethe, the most
celebrated of all German authors, though not belonging to that or to any
other school, are penetrated throughout by views of morals and of
conduct in life, often in my opinion not defensible, but which are
incessantly seeking whatever defence they admit of in the theory of the
right and duty of self-development. In our own country before the book
_On Liberty_ was written, the doctrine of Individuality had been
enthusiastically asserted, in a style of vigorous declamation sometimes
reminding one of Fichte, by Mr. William Maccall, in a series of writings
of which the most elaborate is entitled _Elements of Individualism_: and
a remarkable American, Mr. Warren, had framed a System of Society, on
the foundation of _the Sovereignty of the individual_, had obtained a
number of followers, and had actually commenced the formation of a
Village Community (whether it now exists I know not), which, though
bearing a superficial resemblance to some of the projects of Socialists,
is diametrically opposite to them in principle, since it recognizes no
authority whatever in Society over the individual, except to enforce
equal freedom of development for all individualities. As the book which
bears my name claimed no originality for any of its doctrines, and was
not intended to write their history, the only author who had preceded me
in their assertion, of whom I thought it appropriate to say anything,
was Humboldt, who furnished the motto to the work; although in one
passage I borrowed from the Warrenites their phrase, the sovereignty of
the individual. It is hardly necessary here to remark that there are
abundant differences in detail, between the conception of the doctrine
by any of the predecessors I have mentioned, and that set forth in the
book.
The political circumstances of the time induced me, shortly after, to
complete and publish a pamphlet (_Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform_),
part of which had been written some years previously on the occasion of
one of the abortive Reform Bills, and had at the time been approved and
revised by her. Its principal features were, hostility to the Ballot (a
change of opinion in both of us, in which she rather preceded me), and a
claim of representation for minorities; not, however, at that time going
beyond the cumulative vote proposed by Mr. Garth Marshall. In finishing
the pamphlet for publication, with a view to the discussions on the
Reform Bill of Lord Derby's and Mr. Disraeli's Government in 1859, I
added a third feature, a plurality of votes, to be given, not to
property, but to proved superiority of education. This recommended
itself to me as a means of reconciling the irresistible claim of every
man or woman to be consulted, and to be allowed a voice, in the
regulation of affairs which vitally concern them, with the superiority
of weight justly due to opinions grounded on superiority of knowledge.
The suggestion, however, was one which I had never discussed with my
almost infallible counsellor, and I have no evidence that she would have
concurred in it. As far as I have been able to observe, it has found
favour with nobody; all who desire any sort of inequality in the
electoral vote, desiring it in favour of property and not of
intelligence or knowledge. If it ever overcomes the strong feeling which
exists against it, this will only be after the establishment of a
systematic National Education by which the various grades of politically
valuable acquirement may be accurately defined and authenticated.
Without this it will always remain liable to strong, possibly
conclusive, objections; and with this, it would perhaps not be needed.
It was soon after the publication of _Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform_,
that I became acquainted with Mr. Hare's admirable system of Personal
Representation, which, in its present shape, was then for the first time
published. I saw in this great practical and philosophical idea, the
greatest improvement of which the system of representative government is
susceptible; an improvement which, in the most felicitous manner,
exactly meets and cures the grand, and what before seemed the inherent,
defect of the representative system; that of giving to a numerical
majority all power, instead of only a power proportional to its numbers,
and enabling the strongest party to exclude all weaker parties from
making their opinions heard in the assembly of the nation, except
through such opportunity as may be given to them by the accidentally
unequal distribution of opinions in different localities. To these great
evils nothing more than very imperfect palliations had seemed possible;
but Mr. Hare's system affords a radical cure. This great discovery, for
it is no less, in the political art, inspired me, as I believe it has
inspired all thoughtful persons who have adopted it, with new and more
sanguine hopes respecting the prospects of human society; by freeing the
form of political institutions towards which the whole civilized world
is manifestly and irresistibly tending, from the chief part of what
seemed to qualify, or render doubtful, its ultimate benefits.
Minorities, so long as they remain minorities, are, and ought to be,
outvoted; but under arrangements which enable any assemblage of voters,
amounting to a certain number, to place in the legislature a
representative of its own choice, minorities cannot be suppressed.
Independent opinions will force their way into the council of the nation
and make themselves heard there, a thing which often cannot happen in
the existing forms of representative democracy; and the legislature,
instead of being weeded of individual peculiarities and entirely made up
of men who simply represent the creed of great political or religious
parties, will comprise a large proportion of the most eminent individual
minds in the country, placed there, without reference to party, by
voters who appreciate their individual eminence. I can understand that
persons, otherwise intelligent, should, for want of sufficient
examination, be repelled from Mr. Hare's plan by what they think the
complex nature of its machinery. But any one who does not feel the want
which the scheme is intended to supply; any one who throws it over as a
mere theoretical subtlety or crotchet, tending to no valuable purpose,
and unworthy of the attention of practical men, may be pronounced an
incompetent statesman, unequal to the politics of the future. I mean,
unless he is a minister or aspires to become one: for we are quite
accustomed to a minister continuing to profess unqualified hostility to
an improvement almost to the very day when his conscience or his
interest induces him to take it up as a public measure, and carry it.
Had I met with Mr. Hare's system before the publication of my pamphlet,
I should have given an account of it there. Not having done so, I wrote
an article in _Fraser's Magazine_ (reprinted in my miscellaneous
writings) principally for that purpose, though I included in it, along
with Mr. Hare's book, a review of two other productions on the question
of the day; one of them a pamphlet by my early friend, Mr. John Austin,
who had in his old age become an enemy to all further Parliamentary
reform; the other an able and vigourous, though partially erroneous,
work by Mr. Lorimer.
In the course of the same summer I fulfilled a duty particularly
incumbent upon me, that of helping (by an article in the _Edinburgh
Review_) to make known Mr.
Bain's profound treatise on the Mind, just
then completed by the publication of its second volume. And I carried
through the press a selection of my minor writings, forming the first
two volumes of _Dissertations and Discussions_. The selection had been
made during my wife's lifetime, but the revision, in concert with her,
with a view to republication, had been barely commenced; and when I had
no longer the guidance of her judgment I despaired of pursuing it
further, and republished the papers as they were, with the exception of
striking out such passages as were no longer in accordance with my
opinions. My literary work of the year was terminated with an essay in
_Fraser's Magazine_ (afterwards republished in the third volume of
_Dissertations and Discussions_), entitled "A Few Words on
Non-Intervention. " I was prompted to write this paper by a desire, while
vindicating England from the imputations commonly brought against her on
the Continent, of a peculiar selfishness in matters of foreign policy to
warn Englishmen of the colour given to this imputation by the low tone
in which English statesmen are accustomed to speak of English policy as
concerned only with English interests, and by the conduct of Lord
Palmerston at that particular time in opposing the Suez Canal; and I
took the opportunity of expressing ideas which had long been in my mind
(some of them generated by my Indian experience, and others by the
international questions which then greatly occupied the European
public), respecting the true principles of international morality, and
the legitimate modifications made in it by difference of times and
circumstances; a subject I had already, to some extent, discussed in the
vindication of the French Provisional Government of 1848 against the
attacks of Lord Brougham and others, which I published at the time in
the _Westminster Review_, and which is reprinted in the _Dissertations_.
I had now settled, as I believed, for the remainder of my existence into
a purely literary life; if that can be called literary which continued
to be occupied in a pre-eminent degree with politics, and not merely
with theoretical, but practical politics, although a great part of the
year was spent at a distance of many hundred miles from the chief seat
of the politics of my own country, to which, and primarily for which, I
wrote. But, in truth, the modern facilities of communication have not
only removed all the disadvantages, to a political writer in tolerably
easy circumstances, of distance from the scene of political action, but
have converted them into advantages. The immediate and regular receipt
of newspapers and periodicals keeps him _au courant_ of even the most
temporary politics, and gives him a much more correct view of the state
and progress of opinion than he could acquire by personal contact with
individuals: for every one's social intercourse is more or less limited
to particular sets or classes, whose impressions and no others reach him
through that channel; and experience has taught me that those who give
their time to the absorbing claims of what is called society, not having
leisure to keep up a large acquaintance with the organs of opinion,
remain much more ignorant of the general state either of the public
mind, or of the active and instructed part of it, than a recluse who
reads the newspapers need be. There are, no doubt, disadvantages in too
long a separation from one's country--in not occasionally renewing
one's impressions of the light in which men and things appear when seen
from a position in the midst of them; but the deliberate judgment formed
at a distance, and undisturbed by inequalities of perspective, is the
most to be depended on, even for application to practice. Alternating
between the two positions, I combined the advantages of both. And,
though the inspirer of my best thoughts was no longer with me, I was not
alone: she had left a daughter, my stepdaughter, [Miss Helen Taylor, the
inheritor of much of her wisdom, and of all her nobleness of character,]
whose ever growing and ripening talents from that day to this have been
devoted to the same great purposes [and have already made her name
better and more widely known than was that of her mother, though far
less so than I predict, that if she lives it is destined to become. Of
the value of her direct cooperation with me, something will be said
hereafter, of what I owe in the way of instruction to her great powers
of original thought and soundness of practical judgment, it would be a
vain attempt to give an adequate idea]. Surely no one ever before was so
fortunate, as, after such a loss as mine, to draw another prize in the
lottery of life [--another companion, stimulator, adviser, and
instructor of the rarest quality]. Whoever, either now or hereafter, may
think of me and of the work I have done, must never forget that it is
the product not of one intellect and conscience, but of three[, the
least considerable of whom, and above all the least original, is the one
whose name is attached to it].
The work of the years 1860 and 1861 consisted chiefly of two treatises,
only one of which was intended for immediate publication. This was the
_Considerations on Representative Government_; a connected exposition of
what, by the thoughts of many years, I had come to regard as the best
form of a popular constitution. Along with as much of the general theory
of government as is necessary to support this particular portion of its
practice, the volume contains many matured views of the principal
questions which occupy the present age, within the province of purely
organic institutions, and raises, by anticipation, some other questions
to which growing necessities will sooner or later compel the attention
both of theoretical and of practical politicians. The chief of these
last, is the distinction between the function of making laws, for which
a numerous popular assembly is radically unfit, and that of getting good
laws made, which is its proper duty and cannot be satisfactorily
fulfilled by any other authority: and the consequent need of a
Legislative Commission, as a permanent part of the constitution of a
free country; consisting of a small number of highly trained political
minds, on whom, when Parliament has determined that a law shall be made,
the task of making it should be devolved: Parliament retaining the power
of passing or rejecting the bill when drawn up, but not of altering it
otherwise than by sending proposed amendments to be dealt with by the
Commission. The question here raised respecting the most important of
all public functions, that of legislation, is a particular case of the
great problem of modern political organization, stated, I believe, for
the first time in its full extent by Bentham, though in my opinion not
always satisfactorily resolved by him; the combination of complete
popular control over public affairs, with the greatest attainable
perfection of skilled agency.
The other treatise written at this time is the one which was published
some years[7] later under the title of _The Subjection of Women. _ It was
written [at my daughter's suggestion] that there might, in any event, be
in existence a written exposition of my opinions on that great question,
as full and conclusive as I could make it. The intention was to keep
this among other unpublished papers, improving it from time to time if I
was able, and to publish it at the time when it should seem likely to be
most useful. As ultimately published [it was enriched with some
important ideas of my daughter's, and passages of her writing. But] in
what was of my own composition, all that is most striking and profound
belongs to my wife; coming from the fund of thought which had been made
common to us both, by our innumerable conversations and discussions on a
topic which filled so large a place in our minds.
Soon after this time I took from their repository a portion of the
unpublished papers which I had written during the last years of our
married life, and shaped them, with some additional matter, into the
little work entitled _Utilitarianism_; which was first published, in
three parts, in successive numbers of _Fraser's Magazine_, and
afterwards reprinted in a volume.
Before this, however, the state of public affairs had become extremely
critical, by the commencement of the American civil war. My strongest
feelings were engaged in this struggle, which, I felt from the
beginning, was destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of the
course of human affairs for an indefinite duration. Having been a deeply
interested observer of the slavery quarrel in America, during the many
years that preceded the open breach, I knew that it was in all its
stages an aggressive enterprise of the slave-owners to extend the
territory of slavery; under the combined influences of pecuniary
interest, domineering temper, and the fanaticism of a class for its
class privileges, influences so fully and powerfully depicted in the
admirable work of my friend Professor Cairnes, _The Slave Power_. Their
success, if they succeeded, would be a victory of the powers of evil
which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the spirits
of its friends all over the civilized world, while it would create a
formidable military power, grounded on the worst and most anti-social
form of the tyranny of men over men, and, by destroying for a long time
the prestige of the great democratic republic, would give to all the
privileged classes of Europe a false confidence, probably only to be
extinguished in blood. On the other hand, if the spirit of the North was
sufficiently roused to carry the war to a successful termination, and if
that termination did not come too soon and too easily, I foresaw, from
the laws of human nature, and the experience of revolutions, that when
it did come it would in all probability be thorough: that the bulk of
the Northern population, whose conscience had as yet been awakened only
to the point of resisting the further extension of slavery, but whose
fidelity to the Constitution of the United States made them disapprove
of any attempt by the Federal Government to interfere with slavery in
the States where it already existed, would acquire feelings of another
kind when the Constitution had been shaken off by armed rebellion, would
determine to have done for ever with the accursed thing, and would join
their banner with that of the noble body of Abolitionists, of whom
Garrison was the courageous and single-minded apostle, Wendell Phillips
the eloquent orator, and John Brown the voluntary martyr. [8] Then, too,
the whole mind of the United States would be let loose from its bonds,
no longer corrupted by the supposed necessity of apologizing to
foreigners for the most flagrant of all possible violations of the free
principles of their Constitution; while the tendency of a fixed state of
society to stereotype a set of national opinions would be at least
temporarily checked, and the national mind would become more open to the
recognition of whatever was bad in either the institutions or the
customs of the people. These hopes, so far as related to slavery, have
been completely, and in other respects are in course of being
progressively realized. Foreseeing from the first this double set of
consequences from the success or failure of the rebellion, it may be
imagined with what feelings I contemplated the rush of nearly the whole
upper and middle classes of my own country even those who passed for
Liberals, into a furious pro-Southern partisanship: the working
classes, and some of the literary and scientific men, being almost the
sole exceptions to the general frenzy. I never before felt so keenly how
little permanent improvement had reached the minds of our influential
classes, and of what small value were the liberal opinions they had got
into the habit of professing. None of the Continental Liberals committed
the same frightful mistake. But the generation which had extorted negro
emancipation from our West India planters had passed away; another had
succeeded which had not learnt by many years of discussion and exposure
to feel strongly the enormities of slavery; and the inattention habitual
with Englishmen to whatever is going on in the world outside their own
island, made them profoundly ignorant of all the antecedents of the
struggle, insomuch that it was not generally believed in England, for
the first year or two of the war, that the quarrel was one of slavery.
There were men of high principle and unquestionable liberality of
opinion, who thought it a dispute about tariffs, or assimilated it to
the cases in which they were accustomed to sympathize, of a people
struggling for independence.
It was my obvious duty to be one of the small minority who protested
against this perverted state of public opinion. I was not the first to
protest. It ought to be remembered to the honour of Mr. Hughes and of
Mr. Ludlow, that they, by writings published at the very beginning of
the struggle, began the protestation. Mr. Bright followed in one of the
most powerful of his speeches, followed by others not less striking. I
was on the point of adding my words to theirs, when there occurred,
towards the end of 1861, the seizure of the Southern envoys on board a
British vessel, by an officer of the United States. Even English
forgetfulness has not yet had time to lose all remembrance of the
explosion of feeling in England which then burst forth, the expectation,
prevailing for some weeks, of war with the United States, and the
warlike preparations actually commenced on this side. While this state
of things lasted, there was no chance of a hearing for anything
favourable to the American cause; and, moreover, I agreed with those who
thought the act unjustifiable, and such as to require that England
should demand its disavowal. When the disavowal came, and the alarm of
war was over, I wrote, in January, 1862, the paper, in _Fraser's
Magazine_, entitled "The Contest in America," [and I shall always feel
grateful to my daughter that her urgency prevailed on me to write it
when I did, for we were then on the point of setting out for a journey
of some months in Greece and Turkey, and but for her, I should have
deferred writing till our return. ] Written and published when it was,
this paper helped to encourage those Liberals who had felt overborne by
the tide of illiberal opinion, and to form in favour of the good cause a
nucleus of opinion which increased gradually, and, after the success of
the North began to seem probable, rapidly. When we returned from our
journey I wrote a second article, a review of Professor Cairnes' book,
published in the _Westminster Review_. England is paying the penalty, in
many uncomfortable ways, of the durable resentment which her ruling
classes stirred up in the United States by their ostentatious wishes for
the ruin of America as a nation; they have reason to be thankful that a
few, if only a few, known writers and speakers, standing firmly by the
Americans in the time of their greatest difficulty, effected a partial
diversion of these bitter feelings, and made Great Britain not
altogether odious to the Americans.
This duty having been performed, my principal occupation for the next
two years was on subjects not political. The publication of Mr. Austin's
_Lectures on Jurisprudence_ after his decease, gave me an opportunity of
paying a deserved tribute to his memory, and at the same time expressing
some thoughts on a subject on which, in my old days of Benthamism, I had
bestowed much study. But the chief product of those years was the
_Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_. His _Lectures_,
published in 1860 and 1861, I had read towards the end of the latter
year, with a half-formed intention of giving an account of them in a
Review, but I soon found that this would be idle, and that justice could
not be done to the subject in less than a volume. I had then to consider
whether it would be advisable that I myself should attempt such a
performance. On consideration, there seemed to be strong reasons for
doing so. I was greatly disappointed with the _Lectures_. I read them,
certainly, with no prejudice against Sir William Hamilton. I had up to
that time deferred the study of his _Notes to Reid_ on account of their
unfinished state, but I had not neglected his _Discussions in
Philosophy_; and though I knew that his general mode of treating the
facts of mental philosophy differed from that of which I most approved,
yet his vigorous polemic against the later Transcendentalists, and his
strenuous assertion of some important principles, especially the
Relativity of human knowledge, gave me many points of sympathy with his
opinions, and made me think that genuine psychology had considerably
more to gain than to lose by his authority and reputation. His
_Lectures_ and the _Dissertations on Reid_ dispelled this illusion: and
even the _Discussions_, read by the light which these throw on them,
lost much of their value. I found that the points of apparent agreement
between his opinions and mine were more verbal than real; that the
important philosophical principles which I had thought he recognised,
were so explained away by him as to mean little or nothing, or were
continually lost sight of, and doctrines entirely inconsistent with them
were taught in nearly every part of his philosophical writings. My
estimation of him was therefore so far altered, that instead of
regarding him as occupying a kind of intermediate position between the
two rival philosophies, holding some of the principles of both, and
supplying to both powerful weapons of attack and defence, I now looked
upon him as one of the pillars, and in this country from his high
philosophical reputation the chief pillar, of that one of the two which
seemed to me to be erroneous.
Now, the difference between these two schools of philosophy, that of
Intuition, and that of Experience and Association, is not a mere matter
of abstract speculation; it is full of practical consequences, and lies
at the foundation of all the greatest differences of practical opinion
in an age of progress. The practical reformer has continually to demand
that changes be made in things which are supported by powerful and
widely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent necessity and
indefeasibleness of established facts; and it is often an indispensable
part of his argument to show, how those powerful feelings had their
origin, and how those facts came to seem necessary and indefeasible.
There is therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophy
which discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts by
circumstances and association, and prefers to treat them as ultimate
elements of human nature; a philosophy which is addicted to holding up
favourite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the
voice of Nature and of God, speaking with an authority higher than that
of our reason. In particular, I have long felt that the prevailing
tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as
innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs
that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between
individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally
would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief
hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one
of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement. This tendency has
its source in the intuitional metaphysics which characterized the
reaction of the nineteenth century against the eighteenth, and it is a
tendency so agreeable to human indolence, as well as to conservative
interests generally, that unless attacked at the very root, it is sure
to be carried to even a greater length than is really justified by the
more moderate forms of the intuitional philosophy. That philosophy not
always in its moderate forms, had ruled the thought of Europe for the
greater part of a century. My father's _Analysis of the Mind_, my own
_Logic_, and Professor Bain's great treatise, had attempted to
re-introduce a better mode of philosophizing, latterly with quite as
much success as could be expected; but I had for some time felt that the
mere contrast of the two philosophies was not enough, that there ought
to be a hand-to-hand fight between them, that controversial as well as
expository writings were needed, and that the time was come when such
controversy would be useful. Considering, then, the writings and fame of
Sir W. Hamilton as the great fortress of the intuitional philosophy in
this country, a fortress the more formidable from the imposing
character, and the in many respects great personal merits and mental
endowments, of the man, I thought it might be a real service to
philosophy to attempt a thorough examination of all his most important
doctrines, and an estimate of his general claims to eminence as a
philosopher; and I was confirmed in this resolution by observing that in
the writings of at least one, and him one of the ablest, of Sir W.
Hamilton's followers, his peculiar doctrines were made the justification
of a view of religion which I hold to be profoundly immoral--that it is
our duty to bow down in worship before a Being whose moral attributes
are affirmed to be unknowable by us, and to be perhaps extremely
different from those which, when we are speaking of our
fellow-creatures, we call by the same names.
As I advanced in my task, the damage to Sir W. Hamilton's reputation
became greater than I at first expected, through the almost incredible
multitude of inconsistencies which showed themselves on comparing
different passages with one another. It was my business, however, to
show things exactly as they were, and I did not flinch from it. I
endeavoured always to treat the philosopher whom I criticized with the
most scrupulous fairness; and I knew that he had abundance of disciples
and admirers to correct me if I ever unintentionally did him injustice.
Many of them accordingly have answered me, more or less elaborately, and
they have pointed out oversights and misunderstandings, though few in
number, and mostly very unimportant in substance. Such of those as had
(to my knowledge) been pointed out before the publication of the latest
edition (at present the third) have been corrected there, and the
remainder of the criticisms have been, as far as seemed necessary,
replied to. On the whole, the book has done its work: it has shown the
weak side of Sir William Hamilton, and has reduced his too great
philosophical reputation within more moderate bounds; and by some of its
discussions, as well as by two expository chapters, on the notions of
Matter and of Mind, it has perhaps thrown additional light on some of
the disputed questions in the domain of psychology and metaphysics.
After the completion of the book on Hamilton, I applied myself to a task
which a variety of reasons seemed to render specially incumbent upon me;
that of giving an account, and forming an estimate, of the doctrines of
Auguste Comte. I had contributed more than any one else to make his
speculations known in England, and, in consequence chiefly of what I had
said of him in my _Logic_, he had readers and admirers among thoughtful
men on this side of the Channel at a time when his name had not yet in
France emerged from obscurity. So unknown and unappreciated was he at
the time when my _Logic_ was written and published, that to criticize
his weak points might well appear superfluous, while it was a duty to
give as much publicity as one could to the important contributions he
had made to philosophic thought. At the time, however, at which I have
now arrived, this state of affairs had entirely changed. His name, at
least, was known almost universally, and the general character of his
doctrines very widely. He had taken his place in the estimation both of
friends and opponents, as one of the conspicuous figures in the thought
of the age. The better parts of his speculations had made great progress
in working their way into those minds, which, by their previous culture
and tendencies, were fitted to receive them: under cover of those better
parts those of a worse character, greatly developed and added to in his
later writings, had also made some way, having obtained active and
enthusiastic adherents, some of them of no inconsiderable personal
merit, in England, France, and other countries. These causes not only
made it desirable that some one should undertake the task of sifting
what is good from what is bad in M. Comte's speculations, but seemed to
impose on myself in particular a special obligation to make the attempt.
This I accordingly did in two essays, published in successive numbers of
the _Westminster Review_, and reprinted in a small volume under the
title _Auguste Comte and Positivism_.
The writings which I have now mentioned, together with a small number of
papers in periodicals which I have not deemed worth preserving, were the
whole of the products of my activity as a writer during the years from
1859 to 1865. In the early part of the last-mentioned year, in
compliance with a wish frequently expressed to me by working men, I
published cheap People's Editions of those of my writings which seemed
the most likely to find readers among the working classes; viz,
_Principles of Political Economy_, _Liberty_, and _Representative
Government_. This was a considerable sacrifice of my pecuniary interest,
especially as I resigned all idea of deriving profit from the cheap
editions, and after ascertaining from my publishers the lowest price
which they thought would remunerate them on the usual terms of an equal
division of profits, I gave up my half share to enable the price to be
fixed still lower. To the credit of Messrs. Longman they fixed, unasked,
a certain number of years after which the copyright and stereotype
plates were to revert to me, and a certain number of copies after the
sale of which I should receive half of any further profit. This number
of copies (which in the case of the _Political Economy_ was 10,000) has
for some time been exceeded, and the People's Editions have begun to
yield me a small but unexpected pecuniary return, though very far from
an equivalent for the diminution of profit from the Library Editions.
In this summary of my outward life I have now arrived at the period at
which my tranquil and retired existence as a writer of books was to be
exchanged for the less congenial occupation of a member of the House of
Commons. The proposal made to me, early in 1865, by some electors of
Westminster, did not present the idea to me for the first time. It was
not even the first offer I had received, for, more than ten years
previous, in consequence of my opinions on the Irish Land Question, Mr.
Lucas and Mr. Duffy, in the name of the popular party in Ireland,
offered to bring me into Parliament for an Irish county, which they
could easily have done: but the incompatibility of a seat in Parliament
with the office I then held in the India House, precluded even
consideration of the proposal. After I had quitted the India House,
several of my friends would gladly have seen me a member of Parliament;
but there seemed no probability that the idea would ever take any
practical shape. I was convinced that no numerous or influential portion
of any electoral body, really wished to be represented by a person of my
opinions; and that one who possessed no local connection or popularity,
and who did not choose to stand as the mere organ of a party had small
chance of being elected anywhere unless through the expenditure of
money. Now it was, and is, my fixed conviction, that a candidate ought
not to incur one farthing of expense for undertaking a public duty. Such
of the lawful expenses of an election as have no special reference to
any particular candidate, ought to be borne as a public charge, either
by the State or by the locality. What has to be done by the supporters
of each candidate in order to bring his claims properly before the
constituency, should be done by unpaid agency or by voluntary
subscription. If members of the electoral body, or others, are willing
to subscribe money of their own for the purpose of bringing, by lawful
means, into Parliament some one who they think would be useful there, no
one is entitled to object: but that the expense, or any part of it,
should fall on the candidate, is fundamentally wrong; because it amounts
in reality to buying his seat. Even on the most favourable supposition
as to the mode in which the money is expended, there is a legitimate
suspicion that any one who gives money for leave to undertake a public
trust, has other than public ends to promote by it; and (a consideration
of the greatest importance) the cost of elections, when borne by the
candidates, deprives the nation of the services, as members of
Parliament, of all who cannot or will not afford to incur a heavy
expense. I do not say that, so long as there is scarcely a chance for an
independent candidate to come into Parliament without complying with
this vicious practice, it must always be morally wrong in him to spend
money, provided that no part of it is either directly or indirectly
employed in corruption. But, to justify it, he ought to be very certain
that he can be of more use to his country as a member of Parliament than
in any other mode which is open to him; and this assurance, in my own
case, I did not feel. It was by no means clear to me that I could do
more to advance the public objects which had a claim on my exertions,
from the benches of the House of Commons, than from the simple position
of a writer. I felt, therefore, that I ought not to seek election to
Parliament, much less to expend any money in procuring it.
But the conditions of the question were considerably altered when a body
of electors sought me out, and spontaneously offered to bring me forward
as their candidate. If it should appear, on explanation, that they
persisted in this wish, knowing my opinions, and accepting the only
conditions on which I could conscientiously serve, it was questionable
whether this was not one of those calls upon a member of the community
by his fellow-citizens, which he was scarcely justified in rejecting. I
therefore put their disposition to the proof by one of the frankest
explanations ever tendered, I should think, to an electoral body by a
candidate. I wrote, in reply to the offer, a letter for publication,
saying that I had no personal wish to be a member of Parliament, that I
thought a candidate ought neither to canvass nor to incur any expense,
and that I could not consent to do either. I said further, that if
elected, I could not undertake to give any of my time and labour to
their local interests. With respect to general politics, I told them
without reserve, what I thought on a number of important subjects on
which they had asked my opinion: and one of these being the suffrage, I
made known to them, among other things, my conviction (as I was bound to
do, since I intended, if elected, to act on it), that women were
entitled to representation in Parliament on the same terms with men. It
was the first time, doubtless, that such a doctrine had ever been
mentioned to English electors; and the fact that I was elected after
proposing it, gave the start to the movement which has since become so
vigorous, in favour of women's suffrage. Nothing, at the time, appeared
more unlikely than that a candidate (if candidate I could be called)
whose professions and conduct set so completely at defiance all ordinary
notions of electioneering, should nevertheless be elected. A well-known
literary man[, who was also a man of society,] was heard to say that the
Almighty himself would have no chance of being elected on such a
programme. I strictly adhered to it, neither spending money nor
canvassing, nor did I take any personal part in the election, until
about a week preceding the day of nomination, when I attended a few
public meetings to state my principles and give to any questions which
the electors might exercise their just right of putting to me for their
own guidance; answers as plain and unreserved as my address. On one
subject only, my religious opinions, I announced from the beginning that
I would answer no questions; a determination which appeared to be
completely approved by those who attended the meetings. My frankness on
all other subjects on which I was interrogated, evidently did me far
more good than my answers, whatever they might be, did harm. Among the
proofs I received of this, one is too remarkable not to be recorded. In
the pamphlet, _Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform_, I had said, rather
bluntly, that the working classes, though differing from those of some
other countries, in being ashamed of lying, are yet generally liars.
This passage some opponent got printed in a placard, which was handed to
me at a meeting, chiefly composed of the working classes, and I was
asked whether I had written and published it. I at once answered "I
did. " Scarcely were these two words out of my mouth, when vehement
applause resounded through the whole meeting. It was evident that the
working people were so accustomed to expect equivocation and evasion
from those who sought their suffrages, that when they found, instead of
that, a direct avowal of what was likely to be disagreeable to them,
instead of being affronted, they concluded at once that this was a
person whom they could trust. A more striking instance never came under
my notice of what, I believe, is the experience of those who best know
the working classes, that the most essential of all recommendations to
their favour is that of complete straightforwardness; its presence
outweighs in their minds very strong objections, while no amount of
other qualities will make amends for its apparent absence. The first
working man who spoke after the incident I have mentioned (it was Mr.
Odger) said, that the working classes had no desire not to be told of
their faults; they wanted friends, not flatterers, and felt under
obligation to any one who told them anything in themselves which he
sincerely believed to require amendment. And to this the meeting
heartily responded.
Had I been defeated in the election, I should still have had no reason
to regret the contact it had brought me into with large bodies of my
countrymen; which not only gave me much new experience, but enabled me
to scatter my political opinions rather widely, and, by making me known
in many quarters where I had never before been heard of, increased the
number of my readers, and the presumable influence of my writings. These
latter effects were of course produced in a still greater degree, when,
as much to my surprise as to that of any one, I was returned to
Parliament by a majority of some hundreds over my Conservative
competitor.
I was a member of the House during the three sessions of the Parliament
which passed the Reform Bill; during which time Parliament was
necessarily my main occupation, except during the recess. I was a
tolerably frequent speaker, sometimes of prepared speeches, sometimes
extemporaneously. But my choice of occasions was not such as I should
have made if my leading object had been Parliamentary influence. When I
had gained the ear of the House, which I did by a successful speech on
Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill, the idea I proceeded on was that when
anything was likely to be as well done, or sufficiently well done, by
other people, there was no necessity for me to meddle with it. As I,
therefore, in general reserved myself for work which no others were
likely to do, a great proportion of my appearances were on points on
which the bulk of the Liberal party, even the advanced portion of it,
either were of a different opinion from mine, or were comparatively
indifferent. Several of my speeches, especially one against the motion
for the abolition of capital punishment, and another in favour of
resuming the right of seizing enemies' goods in neutral vessels, were
opposed to what then was, and probably still is, regarded as the
advanced liberal opinion. My advocacy of women's suffrage and of
Personal Representation, were at the time looked upon by many as whims
of my own; but the great progress since made by those opinions, and
especially the response made from almost all parts of the kingdom to the
demand for women's suffrage, fully justified the timeliness of those
movements, and have made what was undertaken as a moral and social duty,
a personal success. Another duty which was particularly incumbent on me
as one of the Metropolitan Members, was the attempt to obtain a
Municipal Government for the Metropolis: but on that subject the
indifference of the House of Commons was such that I found hardly any
help or support within its walls. On this subject, however, I was the
organ of an active and intelligent body of persons outside, with whom,
and not with me, the scheme originated, and who carried on all the
agitation on the subject and drew up the Bills. My part was to bring in
Bills already prepared, and to sustain the discussion of them during the
short time they were allowed to remain before the House; after having
taken an active part in the work of a Committee presided over by Mr.
Ayrton, which sat through the greater part of the Session of 1866, to
take evidence on the subject. The very different position in which the
question now stands (1870) may justly be attributed to the preparation
which went on during those years, and which produced but little visible
effect at the time; but all questions on which there are strong private
interests on one side, and only the public good on the other, have a
similar period of incubation to go through.
The same idea, that the use of my being in Parliament was to do work
which others were not able or not willing to do, made me think it my
duty to come to the front in defence of advanced Liberalism on occasions
when the obloquy to be encountered was such as most of the advanced
Liberals in the House, preferred not to incur. My first vote in the
House was in support of an amendment in favour of Ireland, moved by an
Irish member, and for which only five English and Scotch votes were
given, including my own: the other four were Mr. Bright, Mr. McLaren,
Mr. T. B. Potter, and Mr. Hadfield. And the second speech I delivered[9]
was on the bill to prolong the suspension of the Habeas Corpus in
Ireland. In denouncing, on this occasion, the English mode of governing
Ireland, I did no more than the general opinion of England now admits to
have been just; but the anger against Fenianism was then in all its
freshness; any attack on what Fenians attacked was looked upon as an
apology for them; and I was so unfavourably received by the House, that
more than one of my friends advised me (and my own judgment agreed with
the advice) to wait, before speaking again, for the favourable
opportunity that would be given by the first great debate on the Reform
Bill. During this silence, many flattered themselves that I had turned
out a failure, and that they should not be troubled with me any more.
Perhaps their uncomplimentary comments may, by the force of reaction,
have helped to make my speech on the Reform Bill the success it was. My
position in the House was further improved by a speech in which I
insisted on the duty of paying off the National Debt before our coal
supplies are exhausted, and by an ironical reply to some of the Tory
leaders who had quoted against me certain passages of my writings, and
called me to account for others, especially for one in my
_Considerations on Representative Government_, which said that the
Conservative party was, by the law of its composition, the stupidest
party. They gained nothing by drawing attention to the passage, which up
to that time had not excited any notice, but the _sobriquet_ of "the
stupid party" stuck to them for a considerable time afterwards. Having
now no longer any apprehension of not being listened to, I confined
myself, as I have since thought too much, to occasions on which my
services seemed specially needed, and abstained more than enough from
speaking on the great party questions. With the exception of Irish
questions, and those which concerned the working classes, a single
speech on Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill was nearly all that I contributed
to the great decisive debates of the last two of my three sessions.
I have, however, much satisfaction in looking back to the part I took on
the two classes of subjects just mentioned. With regard to the working
classes, the chief topic of my speech on Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill was
the assertion of their claims to the suffrage. A little later, after the
resignation of Lord Russell's Ministry and the succession of a Tory
Government, came the attempt of the working classes to hold a meeting in
Hyde Park, their exclusion by the police, and the breaking down of the
park railing by the crowd. Though Mr. Beales and the leaders of the
working men had retired under protest before this took place, a scuffle
ensued in which many innocent persons were maltreated by the police, and
the exasperation of the working men was extreme. They showed a
determination to make another attempt at a meeting in the Park, to which
many of them would probably have come armed; the Government made
military preparations to resist the attempt, and something very serious
seemed impending. At this crisis I really believe that I was the means
of preventing much mischief. I had in my place in Parliament taken the
side of the working men, and strongly censured the conduct of the
Government. I was invited, with several other Radical members, to a
conference with the leading members of the Council of the Reform League;
and the task fell chiefly upon myself, of persuading them to give up the
Hyde Park project, and hold their meeting elsewhere. It was not Mr.
Beales and Colonel Dickson who needed persuading; on the contrary, it
was evident that these gentlemen had already exerted their influence in
the same direction, thus far without success. It was the working men who
held out, and so bent were they on their original scheme, that I was
obliged to have recourse to _les grands moyens_. I told them that a
proceeding which would certainly produce a collision with the military,
could only be justifiable on two conditions: if the position of affairs
had become such that a revolution was desirable, and if they thought
themselves able to accomplish one. To this argument, after considerable
discussion, they at last yielded: and I was able to inform Mr. Walpole
that their intention was given up. I shall never forget the depth of his
relief or the warmth of his expressions of gratitude. After the working
men had conceded so much to me, I felt bound to comply with their
request that I would attend and speak at their meeting at the
Agricultural Hall; the only meeting called by the Reform League which I
ever attended. I had always declined being a member of the League, on
the avowed ground that I did not agree in its programme of manhood
suffrage and the ballot: from the ballot I dissented entirely; and I
could not consent to hoist the flag of manhood suffrage, even on the
assurance that the exclusion of women was not intended to be implied;
since if one goes beyond what can be immediately carried, and professes
to take one's stand on a principle, one should go the whole length of
the principle. I have entered thus particularly into this matter because
my conduct on this occasion gave great displeasure to the Tory and
Tory-Liberal press, who have charged me ever since with having shown
myself, in the trials of public life, intemperate and passionate. I do
not know what they expected from me; but they had reason to be thankful
to me if they knew from what I had, in all probability preserved them.
And I do not believe it could have been done, at that particular
juncture, by any one else. No other person, I believe, had at that
moment the necessary influence for restraining the working classes,
except Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, neither of whom was available: Mr.
Gladstone, for obvious reasons; Mr. Bright because he was out of town.
When, some time later, the Tory Government brought in a bill to prevent
public meetings in the Parks, I not only spoke strongly in opposition to
it, but formed one of a number of advanced Liberals, who, aided by the
very late period of the session, succeeded in defeating the Bill by what
is called talking it out. It has not since been renewed.
On Irish affairs also I felt bound to take a decided part. I was one of
the foremost in the deputation of Members of Parliament who prevailed on
Lord Derby to spare the life of the condemned Fenian insurgent, General
Burke. The Church question was so vigorously handled by the leaders of
the party, in the session of 1868, as to require no more from me than an
emphatic adhesion: but the land question was by no means in so advanced
a position; the superstitions of landlordism had up to that time been
little challenged, especially in Parliament, and the backward state of
the question, so far as concerned the Parliamentary mind, was evidenced
by the extremely mild measure brought in by Lord Russell's government in
1866, which nevertheless could not be carried. On that bill I delivered
one of my most careful speeches, in which I attempted to lay down some
of the principles of the subject, in a manner calculated less to
stimulate friends, than to conciliate and convince opponents. The
engrossing subject of Parliamentary Reform prevented either this bill,
or one of a similar character brought in by Lord Derby's Government,
from being carried through.
with Dr. Whewell, as well as much matter derived from Comte, were first
introduced into the book in the course of the re-writing.
At the end of 1841, the book being ready for the press, I offered it to
Murray, who kept it until too late for publication that season, and then
refused it, for reasons which could just as well have been given at
first. But I have had no cause to regret a rejection which led to my
offering it to Mr. Parker, by whom it was published in the spring of
1843. My original expectations of success were extremely limited.
Archbishop Whately had, indeed, rehabilitated the name of Logic, and the
study of the forms, rules, and fallacies of Ratiocination; and Dr.
Whewell's writings had begun to excite an interest in the other part of
my subject, the theory of Induction. A treatise, however, on a matter so
abstract, could not be expected to be popular; it could only be a book
for students, and students on such subjects were not only (at least in
England) few, but addicted chiefly to the opposite school of
metaphysics, the ontological and "innate principles" school. I therefore
did not expect that the book would have many readers, or approvers; and
looked for little practical effect from it, save that of keeping the
tradition unbroken of what I thought a better philosophy. What hopes I
had of exciting any immediate attention, were mainly grounded on the
polemical propensities of Dr Whewell; who, I thought, from observation
of his conduct in other cases, would probably do something to bring the
book into notice, by replying, and that promptly, to the attack on his
opinions. He did reply but not till 1850, just in time for me to answer
him in the third edition. How the book came to have, for a work of the
kind, so much success, and what sort of persons compose the bulk of
those who have bought, I will not venture to say read, it, I have never
thoroughly understood. But taken in conjunction with the many proofs
which have since been given of a revival of speculation, speculation too
of a free kind, in many quarters, and above all (where at one time I
should have least expected it) in the Universities, the fact becomes
partially intelligible. I have never indulged the illusion that the book
had made any considerable impression on philosophical opinion. The
German, or _a priori_ view of human knowledge, and of the knowing
faculties, is likely for some time longer (though it may be hoped in a
diminishing degree) to predominate among those who occupy themselves
with such inquiries, both here and on the Continent. But the "System of
Logic" supplies what was much wanted, a text-book of the opposite
doctrine--that which derives all knowledge from experience, and all
moral and intellectual qualities principally from the direction given to
the associations. I make as humble an estimate as anybody of what either
an analysis of logical processes, or any possible canons of evidence,
can do by themselves towards guiding or rectifying the operations of the
understanding. Combined with other requisites, I certainly do think them
of great use; but whatever may be the practical value of a true
philosophy of these matters, it is hardly possible to exaggerate the
mischiefs of a false one. The notion that truths external to the mind
may be known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observation
and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times, the great
intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions. By the aid
of this theory, every inveterate belief and every intense feeling, of
which the origin is not remembered, is enabled to dispense with the
obligation of justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its own
all-sufficient voucher and justification. There never was such an
instrument devised for consecrating all deep-seated prejudices. And the
chief strength of this false philosophy in morals, politics, and
religion, lies in the appeal which it is accustomed to make to the
evidence of mathematics and of the cognate branches of physical science.
To expel it from these, is to drive it from its stronghold: and because
this had never been effectually done, the intuitive school, even after
what my father had written in his _Analysis of the Mind_, had in
appearance, and as far as published writings were concerned, on the
whole the best of the argument. In attempting to clear up the real
nature of the evidence of mathematical and physical truths, the _System
of Logic_ met the intuitive philosophers on ground on which they had
previously been deemed unassailable; and gave its own explanation, from
experience and association, of that peculiar character of what are
called necessary truths, which is adduced as proof that their evidence
must come from a deeper source than experience. Whether this has been
done effectually, is still _sub judice_; and even then, to deprive a
mode of thought so strongly rooted in human prejudices and partialities,
of its mere speculative support, goes but a very little way towards
overcoming it; but though only a step, it is a quite indispensable one;
for since, after all, prejudice can only be successfully combated by
philosophy, no way can really be made against it permanently until it
has been shown not to have philosophy on its side.
Being now released from any active concern in temporary politics, and
from any literary occupation involving personal communication with
contributors and others, I was enabled to indulge the inclination,
natural to thinking persons when the age of boyish vanity is once past,
for limiting my own society to a very few persons. General society, as
now carried on in England, is so insipid an affair, even to the persons
who make it what it is, that it is kept up for any reason rather than
the pleasure it affords. All serious discussion on matters on which
opinions differ, being considered ill-bred, and the national deficiency
in liveliness and sociability having prevented the cultivation of the
art of talking agreeably on trifles, in which the French of the last
century so much excelled, the sole attraction of what is called society
to those who are not at the top of the tree, is the hope of being aided
to climb a little higher in it; while to those who are already at the
top, it is chiefly a compliance with custom, and with the supposed
requirements of their station. To a person of any but a very common
order in thought or feeling, such society, unless he has personal
objects to serve by it, must be supremely unattractive: and most people,
in the present day, of any really high class of intellect, make their
contact with it so slight, and at such long intervals, as to be almost
considered as retiring from it altogether. Those persons of any mental
superiority who do otherwise, are, almost without exception, greatly
deteriorated by it. Not to mention loss of time, the tone of their
feelings is lowered: they become less in earnest about those of their
opinions respecting which they must remain silent in the society they
frequent: they come to look upon their most elevated objects as
unpractical, or, at least, too remote from realization to be more than a
vision, or a theory, and if, more fortunate than most, they retain their
higher principles unimpaired, yet with respect to the persons and
affairs of their own day they insensibly adopt the modes of feeling and
judgment in which they can hope for sympathy from the company they keep.
A person of high intellect should never go into unintellectual society
unless he can enter it as an apostle; yet he is the only person with
high objects who can safely enter it at all. Persons even of
intellectual aspirations had much better, if they can, make their
habitual associates of at least their equals, and, as far as possible,
their superiors, in knowledge, intellect, and elevation of sentiment.
Moreover, if the character is formed, and the mind made up, on the few
cardinal points of human opinion, agreement of conviction and feeling on
these, has been felt in all times to be an essential requisite of
anything worthy the name of friendship, in a really earnest mind. All
these circumstances united, made the number very small of those whose
society, and still more whose intimacy, I now voluntarily sought.
Among these, by far the principal was the incomparable friend of whom I
have already spoken. At this period she lived mostly with one young
daughter, in a quiet part of the country, and only occasionally in town,
with her first husband, Mr. Taylor. I visited her equally in both
places; and was greatly indebted to the strength of character which
enabled her to disregard the false interpretations liable to be put on
the frequency of my visits to her while living generally apart from Mr.
Taylor, and on our occasionally travelling together, though in all other
respects our conduct during those years gave not the slightest ground
for any other supposition than the true one, that our relation to each
other at that time was one of strong affection and confidential intimacy
only. For though we did not consider the ordinances of society binding
on a subject so entirely personal, we did feel bound that our conduct
should be such as in no degree to bring discredit on her husband, nor
therefore on herself.
In this third period (as it may be termed) of my mental progress, which
now went hand in hand with hers, my opinions gained equally in breadth
and depth, I understood more things, and those which I had understood
before I now understood more thoroughly. I had now completely turned
back from what there had been of excess in my reaction against
Benthamism. I had, at the height of that reaction, certainly become much
more indulgent to the common opinions of society and the world, and more
willing to be content with seconding the superficial improvement which
had begun to take place in those common opinions, than became one whose
convictions on so many points, differed fundamentally from them. I was
much more inclined, than I can now approve, to put in abeyance the more
decidedly heretical part of my opinions, which I now look upon as almost
the only ones, the assertion of which tends in any way to regenerate
society. But in addition to this, our opinions were far _more_ heretical
than mine had been in the days of my most extreme Benthamism. In those
days I had seen little further than the old school of political
economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social
arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance,
appeared to me, as to them, the _dernier mot_ of legislation: and I
looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on
these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The
notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the
injustice--for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy
or not--involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast
majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by
universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the
portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a
democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We were now much less
democrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to be
so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the
selfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimate
improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly
under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with
the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which
most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward
to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the
industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will
be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the
division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great
a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert
on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer
either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert
themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be
exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to.
The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the
greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the
raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the
benefits of combined labour. We had not the presumption to suppose that
we could already foresee, by what precise form of institutions these
objects could most effectually be attained, or at how near or how
distant a period they would become practicable. We saw clearly that to
render any such social transformation either possible or desirable, an
equivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivated
herd who now compose the labouring masses, and in the immense majority
of their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to labour
and combine for generous, or at all events for public and social
purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. But
the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor
is ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation of
the sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his country, as
readily as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by slow
degrees, and a system of culture prolonged through successive
generations, that men in general can be brought up to this point. But
the hindrance is not in the essential constitution of human nature.
Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the
generality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind
is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on
things which tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity,
as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurred
from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it is
capable of producing, even in common men, the most strenuous exertions
as well as the most heroic sacrifices. The deep-rooted selfishness which
forms the general character of the existing state of society, is _so_
deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutions
tends to foster it; and modern institutions in some respects more than
ancient, since the occasions on which the individual is called on to do
anything for the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequent
in modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity. These
considerations did not make us overlook the folly of premature attempts
to dispense with the inducements of private interest in social affairs,
while no substitute for them has been or can be provided: but we
regarded all existing institutions and social arrangements as being (in
a phrase I once heard from Austin) "merely provisional," and we welcomed
with the greatest pleasure and interest all socialistic experiments by
select individuals (such as the Co-operative Societies), which, whether
they succeeded or failed, could not but operate as a most useful
education of those who took part in them, by cultivating their capacity
of acting upon motives pointing directly to the general good, or making
them aware of the defects which render them and others incapable of
doing so.
In the _Principles of Political Economy_, these opinions were
promulgated, less clearly and fully in the first edition, rather more so
in the second, and quite unequivocally in the third. The difference
arose partly from the change of times, the first edition having been
written and sent to press before the French Revolution of 1848, after
which the public mind became more open to the reception of novelties in
opinion, and doctrines appeared moderate which would have been thought
very startling a short time before. In the first edition the
difficulties of Socialism were stated so strongly, that the tone was on
the whole that of opposition to it. In the year or two which followed,
much time was given to the study of the best Socialistic writers on the
Continent, and to meditation and discussion on the whole range of topics
involved in the controversy: and the result was that most of what had
been written on the subject in the first edition was cancelled, and
replaced by arguments and reflections which represent a more advanced
opinion.
The _Political Economy_ was far more rapidly executed than the _Logic_,
or indeed than anything of importance which I had previously written. It
was commenced in the autumn of 1845, and was ready for the press before
the end of 1847. In this period of little more than two years there was
an interval of six months during which the work was laid aside, while I
was writing articles in the _Morning Chronicle_ (which unexpectedly
entered warmly into my purpose) urging the formation of peasant
properties on the waste lands of Ireland. This was during the period of
the Famine, the winter of 1846-47, when the stern necessities of the
time seemed to afford a chance of gaining attention for what appeared to
me the only mode of combining relief to immediate destitution with
permanent improvement of the social and economical condition of the
Irish people. But the idea was new and strange; there was no English
precedent for such a proceeding: and the profound ignorance of English
politicians and the English public concerning all social phenomena not
generally met with in England (however common elsewhere), made my
endeavours an entire failure. Instead of a great operation on the waste
lands, and the conversion of cottiers into proprietors, Parliament
passed a Poor Law for maintaining them as paupers: and if the nation has
not since found itself in inextricable difficulties from the joint
operation of the old evils and the quack remedy it is indebted for its
deliverance to that most unexpected and surprising fact, the
depopulation of ireland, commenced by famine, and continued by
emigration.
The rapid success of the _Political Economy_ showed that the public
wanted, and were prepared for such a book. Published early in 1848, an
edition of a thousand copies was sold in less than a year. Another
similar edition was published in the spring of 1849; and a third, of
1250 copies, early in 1852. It was, from the first, continually cited
and referred to as an authority, because it was not a book merely of
abstract science, but also of application, and treated Political Economy
not as a thing by itself, but as a fragment of a greater whole; a branch
of Social Philosophy, so interlinked with all the other branches, that
its conclusions, even in its own peculiar province, are only true
conditionally, subject to interference and counteraction from causes not
directly within its scope: while to the character of a practical guide
it has no pretension, apart from other classes of considerations.
Political Economy, in truth, has never pretended to give advice to
mankind with no lights but its own; though people who knew nothing but
political economy (and therefore knew that ill) have taken upon
themselves to advise, and could only do so by such lights as they had.
But the numerous sentimental enemies of political economy, and its still
more numerous interested enemies in sentimental guise, have been very
successful in gaining belief for this among other unmerited imputations
against it, and the _Principles_ having, in spite of the freedom of many
of its opinions, become for the present the most popular treatise on the
subject, has helped to disarm the enemies of so important a study. The
amount of its worth as an exposition of the science, and the value of
the different applications which it suggests, others of course must
judge.
For a considerable time after this, I published no work of magnitude;
though I still occasionally wrote in periodicals, and my correspondence
(much of it with persons quite unknown to me), on subjects of public
interest, swelled to a considerable bulk. During these years I wrote or
commenced various Essays, for eventual publication, on some of the
fundamental questions of human and social life, with regard to several
of which I have already much exceeded the severity of the Horatian
precept. I continued to watch with keen interest the progress of public
events. But it was not, on the whole, very encouraging to me. The
European reaction after 1848, and the success of an unprincipled usurper
in December, 1851, put an end, as it seemed, to all present hope for
freedom or social improvement in France and the Continent. In England, I
had seen and continued to see many of the opinions of my youth obtain
general recognition, and many of the reforms in institutions, for which
I had through life contended, either effected or in course of being so.
But these changes had been attended with much less benefit to human
well-being than I should formerly have anticipated, because they had
produced very little improvement in that which all real amelioration in
the lot of mankind depends on, their intellectual and moral state: and
it might even be questioned if the various causes of deterioration which
had been at work in the meanwhile, had not more than counterbalanced the
tendencies to improvement. I had learnt from experience that many false
opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering
the habits of mind of which false opinions are the result. The English
public, for example, are quite as raw and undiscerning on subjects of
political economy since the nation has been converted to free-trade, as
they were before; and are still further from having acquired better
habits of thought and feeling, or being in any way better fortified
against error, on subjects of a more elevated character. For, though
they have thrown off certain errors, the general discipline of their
minds, intellectually and morally, is not altered. I am now convinced,
that no great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a
great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes
of thought. The old opinions in religion, morals, and politics, are so
much discredited in the more intellectual minds as to have lost the
greater part of their efficacy for good, while they have still life
enough in them to be a powerful obstacle to the growing up of any better
opinions on those subjects. When the philosophic minds of the world can
no longer believe its religion, or can only believe it with
modifications amounting to an essential change of its character, a
transitional period commences, of weak convictions, paralysed
intellects, and growing laxity of principle, which cannot terminate
until a renovation has been effected in the basis of their belief
leading to the evolution of some faith, whether religious or
merely human, which they can really believe: and when things are in this
state, all thinking or writing which does not tend to promote such a
renovation, is of very little value beyond the moment. Since there was
little in the apparent condition of the public mind, indicative of any
tendency in this direction, my view of the immediate prospects of human
improvement was not sanguine. More recently a spirit of free speculation
has sprung up, giving a more encouraging prospect of the gradual mental
emancipation of England; and concurring with the renewal under better
auspices, of the movement for political freedom in the rest of Europe,
has given to the present condition of human affairs a more hopeful
aspect. [3]
Between the time of which I have now spoken, and the present, took place
the most important events of my private life. The first of these was my
marriage, in April, 1851, to the lady whose incomparable worth had made
her friendship the greatest source to me both of happiness and of
improvement, during many years in which we never expected to be in any
closer relation to one another. Ardently as I should have aspired to
this complete union of our lives at any time in the course of my
existence at which it had been practicable, I, as much as my wife, would
far rather have foregone that privilege for ever, than have owed it to
the premature death of one for whom I had the sincerest respect, and she
the strongest affection. That event, however, having taken place in
July, 1849, it was granted to me to derive from that evil my own
greatest good, by adding to the partnership of thought, feeling, and
writing which had long existed, a partnership of our entire existence.
For seven and a-half years that blessing was mine; for seven and a-half
only! I can say nothing which could describe, even in the faintest
manner, what that loss was and is. But because I know that she would
have wished it, I endeavour to make the best of what life I have left,
and to work on for her purposes with such diminished strength as can be
derived from thoughts of her, and communion with her memory.
When two persons have their thoughts and speculations completely in
common; when all subjects of intellectual or moral interest are
discussed between them in daily life, and probed to much greater depths
than are usually or conveniently sounded in writings intended for
general readers; when they set out from the same principles, and arrive
at their conclusions by processes pursued jointly, it is of little
consequence in respect to the question of originality, which of them
holds the pen; the one who contributes least to the composition may
contribute more to the thought; the writings which result are the joint
product of both, and it must often be impossible to disentangle their
respective parts, and affirm that this belongs to one and that to the
other. In this wide sense, not only during the years of our married
life, but during many of the years of confidential friendship which
preceded, all my published writings were as much here work as mine; her
share in them constantly increasing as years advanced. But in certain
cases, what belongs to her can be distinguished, and specially
identified. Over and above the general influence which her mind had over
mine, the most valuable ideas and features in these joint
productions--those which have been most fruitful of important results,
and have contributed most to the success and reputation of the works
themselves--originated with her, were emanations from her mind, my part
in them being no greater than in any of the thoughts which I found in
previous writers, and made my own only by incorporating them with my own
system of thought! During the greater part of my literary life I have
performed the office in relation to her, which from a rather early
period I had considered as the most useful part that I was qualified to
take in the domain of thought, that of an interpreter of original
thinkers, and mediator between them and the public; for I had always a
humble opinion of my own powers as an original thinker, except in
abstract science (logic, metaphysics, and the theoretic principles of
political economy and politics), but thought myself much superior to
most of my contemporaries in willingness and ability to learn from
everybody; as I found hardly anyone who made such a point of examining
what was said in defence of all opinions, however new or however old, in
the conviction that even if they were errors there might be a substratum
of truth underneath them, and that in any case the discovery of what it
was that made them plausible, would be a benefit to truth. I had, in
consequence, marked this out as a sphere of usefulness in which I was
under a special obligation to make myself active; the more so, as the
acquaintance I had formed with the ideas of the Coleridgians, of the
German thinkers, and of Carlyle, all of them fiercely opposed to the
mode of thought in which I had been brought up, had convinced me that
along with much error they possessed much truth, which was veiled from
minds otherwise capable of receiving it by the transcendental and
mystical phraseology in which they were accustomed to shut it up, and
from which they neither cared, nor knew how, to disengage it; and I did
not despair of separating the truth from the error, and exposing it in
terms which would be intelligible and not repulsive to those on my own
side in philosophy. Thus prepared, it will easily be believed that when
I came into close intellectual communion with a person of the most
eminent faculties, whose genius, as it grew and unfolded itself in
thought, continually struck out truths far in advance of me, but in
which I could not, as I had done in those others, detect any mixture of
error, the greatest part of my mental growth consisted in the
assimilation of those truths, and the most valuable part of my
intellectual work was in building the bridges and clearing the paths
which connected them with my general system of thought. [4]
The first of my books in which her share was conspicious was the
_Principles of Political Economy_. The _System of Logic_ owed little to
her except in the minuter matters of composition, in which respect my
writings, both great and small, have largely benefited by her accurate
and clear-sighted criticism. [5] The chapter of the _Political Econonomy_
which has had a greater influence on opinion than all the rest, that on
'the Probable Future of the Labouring Classes,' is entirely due to her;
in the first draft of the book, that chapter did not exist. She pointed
out the need of such a chapter, and the extreme imperfection of the book
without it; she was the cause of my writing it; and the more general
part of the chapter, the statement and discussion of the two opposite
theories respecting the proper condition of the labouring classes, was
wholly an exposition of her thoughts, often in words taken from her own
lips. The purely scientific part of the _Political Economy_ I did not
learn from her; but it was chiefly her influence that gave to the book
that general tone by which it is distinguished from all previous
expositions of Political Economy that had any pretension to being
scientific, and which has made it so useful in conciliating minds which
those previous expositions had repelled. This tone consisted chiefly in
making the proper distinction between the laws of the Production of
Wealth--which are laws of nature, dependent on the properties of
objects--and the modes of its Distribution, which, subject to certain
conditions, depend on human will. The commom run of political economists
confuse these together, under the designation of economic laws, which
they deem incapable of being defeated or modified by human effort;
ascribing the same necessity to things dependent on the unchangeable
conditions of our earthly existence, and to those which, being but the
necessary consequences of particular social arrangements, are merely
co-extensive with these; given certain institutions and customs, wages,
profits, and rent will be determined by certain causes; but this class
of political economists drop the indispensable presupposition, and argue
that these causes must, by an inherent necessity, against which no human
means can avail, determine the shares which fall, in the division of the
produce, to labourers, capitalists, and landlords. The _Principles of
Political Economy_ yielded to none of its predecessors in aiming at the
scientific appreciation of the action of these causes, under the
conditions which they presuppose; but it set the example of not treating
those conditions as final. The economic generalizations which depend not
on necessaties of nature but on those combined with the existing
arrangements of society, it deals with only as provisional, and as
liable to be much altered by the progress of social improvement. I had
indeed partially learnt this view of things from the thoughts awakened
in me by the speculations of the St. Simonians; but it was made a living
principle pervading and animating the book by my wife's promptings. This
example illustrates well the general character of what she contributed
to my writings. What was abstract and purely scientific was generally
mine; the properly human element came from her: in all that concerned
the application of philosophy to the exigencies of human society and
progress, I was her pupil, alike in boldness of speculation and
cautiousness of practical judgment. For, on the one hand, she was much
more courageous and far-sighted than without her I should have been, in
anticipation of an order of things to come, in which many of the limited
generalizations now so often confounded with universal principles will
cease to be applicable. Those parts of my writings, and especially of
the _Political Economy_, which contemplate possibilities in the future
such as, when affirmed by Socialists, have in general been fiercely
denied by political economists, would, but for her, either have been
absent, or the suggestions would have been made much more timidly and in
a more qualified form. But while she thus rendered me bolder in
speculation on human affairs, her practical turn of mind, and her almost
unerring estimate of practical obstacles, repressed in me all tendencies
that were really visionary. Her mind invested all ideas in a concrete
shape, and formed to itself a conception of how they would actually
work: and her knowledge of the existing feelings and conduct of mankind
was so seldom at fault, that the weak point in any unworkable suggestion
seldom escapes her. [6]
During the two years which immediately preceded the cessation of my
official life, my wife and I were working together at the "Liberty. "
I had first planned and written it as a short essay in 1854. It was in
mounting the steps of the Capitol, in January, 1855, that the thought
first arose of converting it into a volume. None of my writings have
been either so carefully composed, or so sedulously corrected as this.
After it had been written as usual twice over, we kept it by us,
bringing it out from time to time, and going through it _de novo_,
reading, weighing, and criticizing every sentence. Its final revision
was to have been a work of the winter of 1858-9, the first after my
retirement, which we had arranged to pass in the south of Europe. That
hope and every other were frustrated by the most unexpected and bitter
calamity of her death--at Avignon, on our way to Montpellier, from a
sudden attack of pulmonary congestion.
Since then I have sought for such allevation as my state
admitted of, by the mode of life which most enabled me to feel her still
near me. I bought a cottage as close as possible to the place where she
is buried, and there her daughter (my fellow-sufferer and now my chief
comfort) and I, live constantly during a great portion of the year. My
objects in life are solely those which were hers; my pursuits and
occupations those in which she shared, or sympathized, and which are
indissolubly associated with her. Her memory is to me a religion, and
her approbation the standard by which, summing up as it does all
worthiness, I endeavour to regulate my life.
After my irreparable loss, one of my earliest cares was to print and
publish the treatise, so much of which was the work of her whom I had
lost, and consecrate it to her memory. I have made no alteration or
addition to it, nor shall I ever. Though it wants the last touch of her
hand, no substitute for that touch shall ever be attempted by mine.
The _Liberty_ was more directly and literally our joint production than
anything else which bears my name, for there was not a sentence of it
that was not several times gone through by us together, turned over in
many ways, and carefully weeded of any faults, either in thought or
expression, that we detected in it. It is in consequence of this that,
although it never underwent her final revision, it far surpasses, as a
mere specimen of composition, anything which has proceeded from me
either before or since. With regard to the thoughts, it is difficult to
identify any particular part or element as being more hers than all the
rest. The whole mode of thinking of which the book was the expression,
was emphatically hers. But I also was so thoroughly imbued with it, that
the same thoughts naturally occurred to us both. That I was thus
penetrated with it, however, I owe in a great degree to her. There was a
moment in my mental progress when I might easily have fallen into a
tendency towards over-government, both social and political; as there
was also a moment when, by reaction from a contrary excess, I might have
become a less thorough radical and democrat than I am. In both these
points, as in many others, she benefited me as much by keeping me right
where I was right, as by leading me to new truths, and ridding me of
errors. My great readiness and eagerness to learn from everybody, and to
make room in my opinions for every new acquisition by adjusting the old
and the new to one another, might, but for her steadying influence, have
seduced me into modifying my early opinions too much. She was in nothing
more valuable to my mental development than by her just measure of the
relative importance of different considerations, which often protected
me from allowing to truths I had only recently learnt to see, a more
important place in my thoughts than was properly their due.
The _Liberty_ is likely to survive longer than anything else that I have
written (with the possible exception of the _Logic_), because the
conjunction of her mind with mine has rendered it a kind of philosophic
text-book of a single truth, which the changes progressively taking
place in modern society tend to bring out into ever stronger relief: the
importance, to man and society of a large variety in types of character,
and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself in
innumerable and conflicting directions. Nothing can better show how deep
are the foundations of this truth, than the great impression made by the
exposition of it at a time which, to superficial observation, did not
seem to stand much in need of such a lesson. The fears we expressed,
lest the inevitable growth of social equality and of the government of
public opinion, should impose on mankind an oppressive yoke of
uniformity in opinion and practice, might easily have appeared
chimerical to those who looked more at present facts than at tendencies;
for the gradual revolution that is taking place in society and
institutions has, thus far, been decidedly favourable to the development
of new opinions, and has procured for them a much more unprejudiced
hearing than they previously met with. But this is a feature belonging
to periods of transition, when old notions and feelings have been
unsettled, and no new doctrines have yet succeeded to their ascendancy.
At such times people of any mental activity, having given up their old
beliefs, and not feeling quite sure that those they still retain can
stand unmodified, listen eagerly to new opinions. But this state of
things is necessarily transitory: some particular body of doctrine in
time rallies the majority round it, organizes social institutions and
modes of action conformably to itself, education impresses this new
creed upon the new generations without the mental processes that have
led to it, and by degrees it acquires the very same power of
compression, so long exercised by the creeds of which it had taken the
place. Whether this noxious power will be exercised, depends on whether
mankind have by that time become aware that it cannot be exercised
without stunting and dwarfing human nature. It is then that the
teachings of the _Liberty_ will have their greatest value. And it is to
be feared that they will retain that value a long time.
As regards originality, it has of course no other than that which every
thoughtful mind gives to its own mode of conceiving and expressing
truths which are common property. The leading thought of the book is one
which though in many ages confined to insulated thinkers, mankind have
probably at no time since the beginning of civilization been entirely
without. To speak only of the last few generations, it is distinctly
contained in the vein of important thought respecting education and
culture, spread through the European mind by the labours and genius of
Pestalozzi. The unqualified championship of it by Wilhelm von Humboldt
is referred to in the book; but he by no means stood alone in his own
country. During the early part of the present century the doctrine of
the rights of individuality, and the claim of the moral nature to
develop itself in its own way, was pushed by a whole school of German
authors even to exaggeration; and the writings of Goethe, the most
celebrated of all German authors, though not belonging to that or to any
other school, are penetrated throughout by views of morals and of
conduct in life, often in my opinion not defensible, but which are
incessantly seeking whatever defence they admit of in the theory of the
right and duty of self-development. In our own country before the book
_On Liberty_ was written, the doctrine of Individuality had been
enthusiastically asserted, in a style of vigorous declamation sometimes
reminding one of Fichte, by Mr. William Maccall, in a series of writings
of which the most elaborate is entitled _Elements of Individualism_: and
a remarkable American, Mr. Warren, had framed a System of Society, on
the foundation of _the Sovereignty of the individual_, had obtained a
number of followers, and had actually commenced the formation of a
Village Community (whether it now exists I know not), which, though
bearing a superficial resemblance to some of the projects of Socialists,
is diametrically opposite to them in principle, since it recognizes no
authority whatever in Society over the individual, except to enforce
equal freedom of development for all individualities. As the book which
bears my name claimed no originality for any of its doctrines, and was
not intended to write their history, the only author who had preceded me
in their assertion, of whom I thought it appropriate to say anything,
was Humboldt, who furnished the motto to the work; although in one
passage I borrowed from the Warrenites their phrase, the sovereignty of
the individual. It is hardly necessary here to remark that there are
abundant differences in detail, between the conception of the doctrine
by any of the predecessors I have mentioned, and that set forth in the
book.
The political circumstances of the time induced me, shortly after, to
complete and publish a pamphlet (_Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform_),
part of which had been written some years previously on the occasion of
one of the abortive Reform Bills, and had at the time been approved and
revised by her. Its principal features were, hostility to the Ballot (a
change of opinion in both of us, in which she rather preceded me), and a
claim of representation for minorities; not, however, at that time going
beyond the cumulative vote proposed by Mr. Garth Marshall. In finishing
the pamphlet for publication, with a view to the discussions on the
Reform Bill of Lord Derby's and Mr. Disraeli's Government in 1859, I
added a third feature, a plurality of votes, to be given, not to
property, but to proved superiority of education. This recommended
itself to me as a means of reconciling the irresistible claim of every
man or woman to be consulted, and to be allowed a voice, in the
regulation of affairs which vitally concern them, with the superiority
of weight justly due to opinions grounded on superiority of knowledge.
The suggestion, however, was one which I had never discussed with my
almost infallible counsellor, and I have no evidence that she would have
concurred in it. As far as I have been able to observe, it has found
favour with nobody; all who desire any sort of inequality in the
electoral vote, desiring it in favour of property and not of
intelligence or knowledge. If it ever overcomes the strong feeling which
exists against it, this will only be after the establishment of a
systematic National Education by which the various grades of politically
valuable acquirement may be accurately defined and authenticated.
Without this it will always remain liable to strong, possibly
conclusive, objections; and with this, it would perhaps not be needed.
It was soon after the publication of _Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform_,
that I became acquainted with Mr. Hare's admirable system of Personal
Representation, which, in its present shape, was then for the first time
published. I saw in this great practical and philosophical idea, the
greatest improvement of which the system of representative government is
susceptible; an improvement which, in the most felicitous manner,
exactly meets and cures the grand, and what before seemed the inherent,
defect of the representative system; that of giving to a numerical
majority all power, instead of only a power proportional to its numbers,
and enabling the strongest party to exclude all weaker parties from
making their opinions heard in the assembly of the nation, except
through such opportunity as may be given to them by the accidentally
unequal distribution of opinions in different localities. To these great
evils nothing more than very imperfect palliations had seemed possible;
but Mr. Hare's system affords a radical cure. This great discovery, for
it is no less, in the political art, inspired me, as I believe it has
inspired all thoughtful persons who have adopted it, with new and more
sanguine hopes respecting the prospects of human society; by freeing the
form of political institutions towards which the whole civilized world
is manifestly and irresistibly tending, from the chief part of what
seemed to qualify, or render doubtful, its ultimate benefits.
Minorities, so long as they remain minorities, are, and ought to be,
outvoted; but under arrangements which enable any assemblage of voters,
amounting to a certain number, to place in the legislature a
representative of its own choice, minorities cannot be suppressed.
Independent opinions will force their way into the council of the nation
and make themselves heard there, a thing which often cannot happen in
the existing forms of representative democracy; and the legislature,
instead of being weeded of individual peculiarities and entirely made up
of men who simply represent the creed of great political or religious
parties, will comprise a large proportion of the most eminent individual
minds in the country, placed there, without reference to party, by
voters who appreciate their individual eminence. I can understand that
persons, otherwise intelligent, should, for want of sufficient
examination, be repelled from Mr. Hare's plan by what they think the
complex nature of its machinery. But any one who does not feel the want
which the scheme is intended to supply; any one who throws it over as a
mere theoretical subtlety or crotchet, tending to no valuable purpose,
and unworthy of the attention of practical men, may be pronounced an
incompetent statesman, unequal to the politics of the future. I mean,
unless he is a minister or aspires to become one: for we are quite
accustomed to a minister continuing to profess unqualified hostility to
an improvement almost to the very day when his conscience or his
interest induces him to take it up as a public measure, and carry it.
Had I met with Mr. Hare's system before the publication of my pamphlet,
I should have given an account of it there. Not having done so, I wrote
an article in _Fraser's Magazine_ (reprinted in my miscellaneous
writings) principally for that purpose, though I included in it, along
with Mr. Hare's book, a review of two other productions on the question
of the day; one of them a pamphlet by my early friend, Mr. John Austin,
who had in his old age become an enemy to all further Parliamentary
reform; the other an able and vigourous, though partially erroneous,
work by Mr. Lorimer.
In the course of the same summer I fulfilled a duty particularly
incumbent upon me, that of helping (by an article in the _Edinburgh
Review_) to make known Mr.
Bain's profound treatise on the Mind, just
then completed by the publication of its second volume. And I carried
through the press a selection of my minor writings, forming the first
two volumes of _Dissertations and Discussions_. The selection had been
made during my wife's lifetime, but the revision, in concert with her,
with a view to republication, had been barely commenced; and when I had
no longer the guidance of her judgment I despaired of pursuing it
further, and republished the papers as they were, with the exception of
striking out such passages as were no longer in accordance with my
opinions. My literary work of the year was terminated with an essay in
_Fraser's Magazine_ (afterwards republished in the third volume of
_Dissertations and Discussions_), entitled "A Few Words on
Non-Intervention. " I was prompted to write this paper by a desire, while
vindicating England from the imputations commonly brought against her on
the Continent, of a peculiar selfishness in matters of foreign policy to
warn Englishmen of the colour given to this imputation by the low tone
in which English statesmen are accustomed to speak of English policy as
concerned only with English interests, and by the conduct of Lord
Palmerston at that particular time in opposing the Suez Canal; and I
took the opportunity of expressing ideas which had long been in my mind
(some of them generated by my Indian experience, and others by the
international questions which then greatly occupied the European
public), respecting the true principles of international morality, and
the legitimate modifications made in it by difference of times and
circumstances; a subject I had already, to some extent, discussed in the
vindication of the French Provisional Government of 1848 against the
attacks of Lord Brougham and others, which I published at the time in
the _Westminster Review_, and which is reprinted in the _Dissertations_.
I had now settled, as I believed, for the remainder of my existence into
a purely literary life; if that can be called literary which continued
to be occupied in a pre-eminent degree with politics, and not merely
with theoretical, but practical politics, although a great part of the
year was spent at a distance of many hundred miles from the chief seat
of the politics of my own country, to which, and primarily for which, I
wrote. But, in truth, the modern facilities of communication have not
only removed all the disadvantages, to a political writer in tolerably
easy circumstances, of distance from the scene of political action, but
have converted them into advantages. The immediate and regular receipt
of newspapers and periodicals keeps him _au courant_ of even the most
temporary politics, and gives him a much more correct view of the state
and progress of opinion than he could acquire by personal contact with
individuals: for every one's social intercourse is more or less limited
to particular sets or classes, whose impressions and no others reach him
through that channel; and experience has taught me that those who give
their time to the absorbing claims of what is called society, not having
leisure to keep up a large acquaintance with the organs of opinion,
remain much more ignorant of the general state either of the public
mind, or of the active and instructed part of it, than a recluse who
reads the newspapers need be. There are, no doubt, disadvantages in too
long a separation from one's country--in not occasionally renewing
one's impressions of the light in which men and things appear when seen
from a position in the midst of them; but the deliberate judgment formed
at a distance, and undisturbed by inequalities of perspective, is the
most to be depended on, even for application to practice. Alternating
between the two positions, I combined the advantages of both. And,
though the inspirer of my best thoughts was no longer with me, I was not
alone: she had left a daughter, my stepdaughter, [Miss Helen Taylor, the
inheritor of much of her wisdom, and of all her nobleness of character,]
whose ever growing and ripening talents from that day to this have been
devoted to the same great purposes [and have already made her name
better and more widely known than was that of her mother, though far
less so than I predict, that if she lives it is destined to become. Of
the value of her direct cooperation with me, something will be said
hereafter, of what I owe in the way of instruction to her great powers
of original thought and soundness of practical judgment, it would be a
vain attempt to give an adequate idea]. Surely no one ever before was so
fortunate, as, after such a loss as mine, to draw another prize in the
lottery of life [--another companion, stimulator, adviser, and
instructor of the rarest quality]. Whoever, either now or hereafter, may
think of me and of the work I have done, must never forget that it is
the product not of one intellect and conscience, but of three[, the
least considerable of whom, and above all the least original, is the one
whose name is attached to it].
The work of the years 1860 and 1861 consisted chiefly of two treatises,
only one of which was intended for immediate publication. This was the
_Considerations on Representative Government_; a connected exposition of
what, by the thoughts of many years, I had come to regard as the best
form of a popular constitution. Along with as much of the general theory
of government as is necessary to support this particular portion of its
practice, the volume contains many matured views of the principal
questions which occupy the present age, within the province of purely
organic institutions, and raises, by anticipation, some other questions
to which growing necessities will sooner or later compel the attention
both of theoretical and of practical politicians. The chief of these
last, is the distinction between the function of making laws, for which
a numerous popular assembly is radically unfit, and that of getting good
laws made, which is its proper duty and cannot be satisfactorily
fulfilled by any other authority: and the consequent need of a
Legislative Commission, as a permanent part of the constitution of a
free country; consisting of a small number of highly trained political
minds, on whom, when Parliament has determined that a law shall be made,
the task of making it should be devolved: Parliament retaining the power
of passing or rejecting the bill when drawn up, but not of altering it
otherwise than by sending proposed amendments to be dealt with by the
Commission. The question here raised respecting the most important of
all public functions, that of legislation, is a particular case of the
great problem of modern political organization, stated, I believe, for
the first time in its full extent by Bentham, though in my opinion not
always satisfactorily resolved by him; the combination of complete
popular control over public affairs, with the greatest attainable
perfection of skilled agency.
The other treatise written at this time is the one which was published
some years[7] later under the title of _The Subjection of Women. _ It was
written [at my daughter's suggestion] that there might, in any event, be
in existence a written exposition of my opinions on that great question,
as full and conclusive as I could make it. The intention was to keep
this among other unpublished papers, improving it from time to time if I
was able, and to publish it at the time when it should seem likely to be
most useful. As ultimately published [it was enriched with some
important ideas of my daughter's, and passages of her writing. But] in
what was of my own composition, all that is most striking and profound
belongs to my wife; coming from the fund of thought which had been made
common to us both, by our innumerable conversations and discussions on a
topic which filled so large a place in our minds.
Soon after this time I took from their repository a portion of the
unpublished papers which I had written during the last years of our
married life, and shaped them, with some additional matter, into the
little work entitled _Utilitarianism_; which was first published, in
three parts, in successive numbers of _Fraser's Magazine_, and
afterwards reprinted in a volume.
Before this, however, the state of public affairs had become extremely
critical, by the commencement of the American civil war. My strongest
feelings were engaged in this struggle, which, I felt from the
beginning, was destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of the
course of human affairs for an indefinite duration. Having been a deeply
interested observer of the slavery quarrel in America, during the many
years that preceded the open breach, I knew that it was in all its
stages an aggressive enterprise of the slave-owners to extend the
territory of slavery; under the combined influences of pecuniary
interest, domineering temper, and the fanaticism of a class for its
class privileges, influences so fully and powerfully depicted in the
admirable work of my friend Professor Cairnes, _The Slave Power_. Their
success, if they succeeded, would be a victory of the powers of evil
which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the spirits
of its friends all over the civilized world, while it would create a
formidable military power, grounded on the worst and most anti-social
form of the tyranny of men over men, and, by destroying for a long time
the prestige of the great democratic republic, would give to all the
privileged classes of Europe a false confidence, probably only to be
extinguished in blood. On the other hand, if the spirit of the North was
sufficiently roused to carry the war to a successful termination, and if
that termination did not come too soon and too easily, I foresaw, from
the laws of human nature, and the experience of revolutions, that when
it did come it would in all probability be thorough: that the bulk of
the Northern population, whose conscience had as yet been awakened only
to the point of resisting the further extension of slavery, but whose
fidelity to the Constitution of the United States made them disapprove
of any attempt by the Federal Government to interfere with slavery in
the States where it already existed, would acquire feelings of another
kind when the Constitution had been shaken off by armed rebellion, would
determine to have done for ever with the accursed thing, and would join
their banner with that of the noble body of Abolitionists, of whom
Garrison was the courageous and single-minded apostle, Wendell Phillips
the eloquent orator, and John Brown the voluntary martyr. [8] Then, too,
the whole mind of the United States would be let loose from its bonds,
no longer corrupted by the supposed necessity of apologizing to
foreigners for the most flagrant of all possible violations of the free
principles of their Constitution; while the tendency of a fixed state of
society to stereotype a set of national opinions would be at least
temporarily checked, and the national mind would become more open to the
recognition of whatever was bad in either the institutions or the
customs of the people. These hopes, so far as related to slavery, have
been completely, and in other respects are in course of being
progressively realized. Foreseeing from the first this double set of
consequences from the success or failure of the rebellion, it may be
imagined with what feelings I contemplated the rush of nearly the whole
upper and middle classes of my own country even those who passed for
Liberals, into a furious pro-Southern partisanship: the working
classes, and some of the literary and scientific men, being almost the
sole exceptions to the general frenzy. I never before felt so keenly how
little permanent improvement had reached the minds of our influential
classes, and of what small value were the liberal opinions they had got
into the habit of professing. None of the Continental Liberals committed
the same frightful mistake. But the generation which had extorted negro
emancipation from our West India planters had passed away; another had
succeeded which had not learnt by many years of discussion and exposure
to feel strongly the enormities of slavery; and the inattention habitual
with Englishmen to whatever is going on in the world outside their own
island, made them profoundly ignorant of all the antecedents of the
struggle, insomuch that it was not generally believed in England, for
the first year or two of the war, that the quarrel was one of slavery.
There were men of high principle and unquestionable liberality of
opinion, who thought it a dispute about tariffs, or assimilated it to
the cases in which they were accustomed to sympathize, of a people
struggling for independence.
It was my obvious duty to be one of the small minority who protested
against this perverted state of public opinion. I was not the first to
protest. It ought to be remembered to the honour of Mr. Hughes and of
Mr. Ludlow, that they, by writings published at the very beginning of
the struggle, began the protestation. Mr. Bright followed in one of the
most powerful of his speeches, followed by others not less striking. I
was on the point of adding my words to theirs, when there occurred,
towards the end of 1861, the seizure of the Southern envoys on board a
British vessel, by an officer of the United States. Even English
forgetfulness has not yet had time to lose all remembrance of the
explosion of feeling in England which then burst forth, the expectation,
prevailing for some weeks, of war with the United States, and the
warlike preparations actually commenced on this side. While this state
of things lasted, there was no chance of a hearing for anything
favourable to the American cause; and, moreover, I agreed with those who
thought the act unjustifiable, and such as to require that England
should demand its disavowal. When the disavowal came, and the alarm of
war was over, I wrote, in January, 1862, the paper, in _Fraser's
Magazine_, entitled "The Contest in America," [and I shall always feel
grateful to my daughter that her urgency prevailed on me to write it
when I did, for we were then on the point of setting out for a journey
of some months in Greece and Turkey, and but for her, I should have
deferred writing till our return. ] Written and published when it was,
this paper helped to encourage those Liberals who had felt overborne by
the tide of illiberal opinion, and to form in favour of the good cause a
nucleus of opinion which increased gradually, and, after the success of
the North began to seem probable, rapidly. When we returned from our
journey I wrote a second article, a review of Professor Cairnes' book,
published in the _Westminster Review_. England is paying the penalty, in
many uncomfortable ways, of the durable resentment which her ruling
classes stirred up in the United States by their ostentatious wishes for
the ruin of America as a nation; they have reason to be thankful that a
few, if only a few, known writers and speakers, standing firmly by the
Americans in the time of their greatest difficulty, effected a partial
diversion of these bitter feelings, and made Great Britain not
altogether odious to the Americans.
This duty having been performed, my principal occupation for the next
two years was on subjects not political. The publication of Mr. Austin's
_Lectures on Jurisprudence_ after his decease, gave me an opportunity of
paying a deserved tribute to his memory, and at the same time expressing
some thoughts on a subject on which, in my old days of Benthamism, I had
bestowed much study. But the chief product of those years was the
_Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_. His _Lectures_,
published in 1860 and 1861, I had read towards the end of the latter
year, with a half-formed intention of giving an account of them in a
Review, but I soon found that this would be idle, and that justice could
not be done to the subject in less than a volume. I had then to consider
whether it would be advisable that I myself should attempt such a
performance. On consideration, there seemed to be strong reasons for
doing so. I was greatly disappointed with the _Lectures_. I read them,
certainly, with no prejudice against Sir William Hamilton. I had up to
that time deferred the study of his _Notes to Reid_ on account of their
unfinished state, but I had not neglected his _Discussions in
Philosophy_; and though I knew that his general mode of treating the
facts of mental philosophy differed from that of which I most approved,
yet his vigorous polemic against the later Transcendentalists, and his
strenuous assertion of some important principles, especially the
Relativity of human knowledge, gave me many points of sympathy with his
opinions, and made me think that genuine psychology had considerably
more to gain than to lose by his authority and reputation. His
_Lectures_ and the _Dissertations on Reid_ dispelled this illusion: and
even the _Discussions_, read by the light which these throw on them,
lost much of their value. I found that the points of apparent agreement
between his opinions and mine were more verbal than real; that the
important philosophical principles which I had thought he recognised,
were so explained away by him as to mean little or nothing, or were
continually lost sight of, and doctrines entirely inconsistent with them
were taught in nearly every part of his philosophical writings. My
estimation of him was therefore so far altered, that instead of
regarding him as occupying a kind of intermediate position between the
two rival philosophies, holding some of the principles of both, and
supplying to both powerful weapons of attack and defence, I now looked
upon him as one of the pillars, and in this country from his high
philosophical reputation the chief pillar, of that one of the two which
seemed to me to be erroneous.
Now, the difference between these two schools of philosophy, that of
Intuition, and that of Experience and Association, is not a mere matter
of abstract speculation; it is full of practical consequences, and lies
at the foundation of all the greatest differences of practical opinion
in an age of progress. The practical reformer has continually to demand
that changes be made in things which are supported by powerful and
widely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent necessity and
indefeasibleness of established facts; and it is often an indispensable
part of his argument to show, how those powerful feelings had their
origin, and how those facts came to seem necessary and indefeasible.
There is therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophy
which discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts by
circumstances and association, and prefers to treat them as ultimate
elements of human nature; a philosophy which is addicted to holding up
favourite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the
voice of Nature and of God, speaking with an authority higher than that
of our reason. In particular, I have long felt that the prevailing
tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as
innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs
that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between
individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally
would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief
hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one
of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement. This tendency has
its source in the intuitional metaphysics which characterized the
reaction of the nineteenth century against the eighteenth, and it is a
tendency so agreeable to human indolence, as well as to conservative
interests generally, that unless attacked at the very root, it is sure
to be carried to even a greater length than is really justified by the
more moderate forms of the intuitional philosophy. That philosophy not
always in its moderate forms, had ruled the thought of Europe for the
greater part of a century. My father's _Analysis of the Mind_, my own
_Logic_, and Professor Bain's great treatise, had attempted to
re-introduce a better mode of philosophizing, latterly with quite as
much success as could be expected; but I had for some time felt that the
mere contrast of the two philosophies was not enough, that there ought
to be a hand-to-hand fight between them, that controversial as well as
expository writings were needed, and that the time was come when such
controversy would be useful. Considering, then, the writings and fame of
Sir W. Hamilton as the great fortress of the intuitional philosophy in
this country, a fortress the more formidable from the imposing
character, and the in many respects great personal merits and mental
endowments, of the man, I thought it might be a real service to
philosophy to attempt a thorough examination of all his most important
doctrines, and an estimate of his general claims to eminence as a
philosopher; and I was confirmed in this resolution by observing that in
the writings of at least one, and him one of the ablest, of Sir W.
Hamilton's followers, his peculiar doctrines were made the justification
of a view of religion which I hold to be profoundly immoral--that it is
our duty to bow down in worship before a Being whose moral attributes
are affirmed to be unknowable by us, and to be perhaps extremely
different from those which, when we are speaking of our
fellow-creatures, we call by the same names.
As I advanced in my task, the damage to Sir W. Hamilton's reputation
became greater than I at first expected, through the almost incredible
multitude of inconsistencies which showed themselves on comparing
different passages with one another. It was my business, however, to
show things exactly as they were, and I did not flinch from it. I
endeavoured always to treat the philosopher whom I criticized with the
most scrupulous fairness; and I knew that he had abundance of disciples
and admirers to correct me if I ever unintentionally did him injustice.
Many of them accordingly have answered me, more or less elaborately, and
they have pointed out oversights and misunderstandings, though few in
number, and mostly very unimportant in substance. Such of those as had
(to my knowledge) been pointed out before the publication of the latest
edition (at present the third) have been corrected there, and the
remainder of the criticisms have been, as far as seemed necessary,
replied to. On the whole, the book has done its work: it has shown the
weak side of Sir William Hamilton, and has reduced his too great
philosophical reputation within more moderate bounds; and by some of its
discussions, as well as by two expository chapters, on the notions of
Matter and of Mind, it has perhaps thrown additional light on some of
the disputed questions in the domain of psychology and metaphysics.
After the completion of the book on Hamilton, I applied myself to a task
which a variety of reasons seemed to render specially incumbent upon me;
that of giving an account, and forming an estimate, of the doctrines of
Auguste Comte. I had contributed more than any one else to make his
speculations known in England, and, in consequence chiefly of what I had
said of him in my _Logic_, he had readers and admirers among thoughtful
men on this side of the Channel at a time when his name had not yet in
France emerged from obscurity. So unknown and unappreciated was he at
the time when my _Logic_ was written and published, that to criticize
his weak points might well appear superfluous, while it was a duty to
give as much publicity as one could to the important contributions he
had made to philosophic thought. At the time, however, at which I have
now arrived, this state of affairs had entirely changed. His name, at
least, was known almost universally, and the general character of his
doctrines very widely. He had taken his place in the estimation both of
friends and opponents, as one of the conspicuous figures in the thought
of the age. The better parts of his speculations had made great progress
in working their way into those minds, which, by their previous culture
and tendencies, were fitted to receive them: under cover of those better
parts those of a worse character, greatly developed and added to in his
later writings, had also made some way, having obtained active and
enthusiastic adherents, some of them of no inconsiderable personal
merit, in England, France, and other countries. These causes not only
made it desirable that some one should undertake the task of sifting
what is good from what is bad in M. Comte's speculations, but seemed to
impose on myself in particular a special obligation to make the attempt.
This I accordingly did in two essays, published in successive numbers of
the _Westminster Review_, and reprinted in a small volume under the
title _Auguste Comte and Positivism_.
The writings which I have now mentioned, together with a small number of
papers in periodicals which I have not deemed worth preserving, were the
whole of the products of my activity as a writer during the years from
1859 to 1865. In the early part of the last-mentioned year, in
compliance with a wish frequently expressed to me by working men, I
published cheap People's Editions of those of my writings which seemed
the most likely to find readers among the working classes; viz,
_Principles of Political Economy_, _Liberty_, and _Representative
Government_. This was a considerable sacrifice of my pecuniary interest,
especially as I resigned all idea of deriving profit from the cheap
editions, and after ascertaining from my publishers the lowest price
which they thought would remunerate them on the usual terms of an equal
division of profits, I gave up my half share to enable the price to be
fixed still lower. To the credit of Messrs. Longman they fixed, unasked,
a certain number of years after which the copyright and stereotype
plates were to revert to me, and a certain number of copies after the
sale of which I should receive half of any further profit. This number
of copies (which in the case of the _Political Economy_ was 10,000) has
for some time been exceeded, and the People's Editions have begun to
yield me a small but unexpected pecuniary return, though very far from
an equivalent for the diminution of profit from the Library Editions.
In this summary of my outward life I have now arrived at the period at
which my tranquil and retired existence as a writer of books was to be
exchanged for the less congenial occupation of a member of the House of
Commons. The proposal made to me, early in 1865, by some electors of
Westminster, did not present the idea to me for the first time. It was
not even the first offer I had received, for, more than ten years
previous, in consequence of my opinions on the Irish Land Question, Mr.
Lucas and Mr. Duffy, in the name of the popular party in Ireland,
offered to bring me into Parliament for an Irish county, which they
could easily have done: but the incompatibility of a seat in Parliament
with the office I then held in the India House, precluded even
consideration of the proposal. After I had quitted the India House,
several of my friends would gladly have seen me a member of Parliament;
but there seemed no probability that the idea would ever take any
practical shape. I was convinced that no numerous or influential portion
of any electoral body, really wished to be represented by a person of my
opinions; and that one who possessed no local connection or popularity,
and who did not choose to stand as the mere organ of a party had small
chance of being elected anywhere unless through the expenditure of
money. Now it was, and is, my fixed conviction, that a candidate ought
not to incur one farthing of expense for undertaking a public duty. Such
of the lawful expenses of an election as have no special reference to
any particular candidate, ought to be borne as a public charge, either
by the State or by the locality. What has to be done by the supporters
of each candidate in order to bring his claims properly before the
constituency, should be done by unpaid agency or by voluntary
subscription. If members of the electoral body, or others, are willing
to subscribe money of their own for the purpose of bringing, by lawful
means, into Parliament some one who they think would be useful there, no
one is entitled to object: but that the expense, or any part of it,
should fall on the candidate, is fundamentally wrong; because it amounts
in reality to buying his seat. Even on the most favourable supposition
as to the mode in which the money is expended, there is a legitimate
suspicion that any one who gives money for leave to undertake a public
trust, has other than public ends to promote by it; and (a consideration
of the greatest importance) the cost of elections, when borne by the
candidates, deprives the nation of the services, as members of
Parliament, of all who cannot or will not afford to incur a heavy
expense. I do not say that, so long as there is scarcely a chance for an
independent candidate to come into Parliament without complying with
this vicious practice, it must always be morally wrong in him to spend
money, provided that no part of it is either directly or indirectly
employed in corruption. But, to justify it, he ought to be very certain
that he can be of more use to his country as a member of Parliament than
in any other mode which is open to him; and this assurance, in my own
case, I did not feel. It was by no means clear to me that I could do
more to advance the public objects which had a claim on my exertions,
from the benches of the House of Commons, than from the simple position
of a writer. I felt, therefore, that I ought not to seek election to
Parliament, much less to expend any money in procuring it.
But the conditions of the question were considerably altered when a body
of electors sought me out, and spontaneously offered to bring me forward
as their candidate. If it should appear, on explanation, that they
persisted in this wish, knowing my opinions, and accepting the only
conditions on which I could conscientiously serve, it was questionable
whether this was not one of those calls upon a member of the community
by his fellow-citizens, which he was scarcely justified in rejecting. I
therefore put their disposition to the proof by one of the frankest
explanations ever tendered, I should think, to an electoral body by a
candidate. I wrote, in reply to the offer, a letter for publication,
saying that I had no personal wish to be a member of Parliament, that I
thought a candidate ought neither to canvass nor to incur any expense,
and that I could not consent to do either. I said further, that if
elected, I could not undertake to give any of my time and labour to
their local interests. With respect to general politics, I told them
without reserve, what I thought on a number of important subjects on
which they had asked my opinion: and one of these being the suffrage, I
made known to them, among other things, my conviction (as I was bound to
do, since I intended, if elected, to act on it), that women were
entitled to representation in Parliament on the same terms with men. It
was the first time, doubtless, that such a doctrine had ever been
mentioned to English electors; and the fact that I was elected after
proposing it, gave the start to the movement which has since become so
vigorous, in favour of women's suffrage. Nothing, at the time, appeared
more unlikely than that a candidate (if candidate I could be called)
whose professions and conduct set so completely at defiance all ordinary
notions of electioneering, should nevertheless be elected. A well-known
literary man[, who was also a man of society,] was heard to say that the
Almighty himself would have no chance of being elected on such a
programme. I strictly adhered to it, neither spending money nor
canvassing, nor did I take any personal part in the election, until
about a week preceding the day of nomination, when I attended a few
public meetings to state my principles and give to any questions which
the electors might exercise their just right of putting to me for their
own guidance; answers as plain and unreserved as my address. On one
subject only, my religious opinions, I announced from the beginning that
I would answer no questions; a determination which appeared to be
completely approved by those who attended the meetings. My frankness on
all other subjects on which I was interrogated, evidently did me far
more good than my answers, whatever they might be, did harm. Among the
proofs I received of this, one is too remarkable not to be recorded. In
the pamphlet, _Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform_, I had said, rather
bluntly, that the working classes, though differing from those of some
other countries, in being ashamed of lying, are yet generally liars.
This passage some opponent got printed in a placard, which was handed to
me at a meeting, chiefly composed of the working classes, and I was
asked whether I had written and published it. I at once answered "I
did. " Scarcely were these two words out of my mouth, when vehement
applause resounded through the whole meeting. It was evident that the
working people were so accustomed to expect equivocation and evasion
from those who sought their suffrages, that when they found, instead of
that, a direct avowal of what was likely to be disagreeable to them,
instead of being affronted, they concluded at once that this was a
person whom they could trust. A more striking instance never came under
my notice of what, I believe, is the experience of those who best know
the working classes, that the most essential of all recommendations to
their favour is that of complete straightforwardness; its presence
outweighs in their minds very strong objections, while no amount of
other qualities will make amends for its apparent absence. The first
working man who spoke after the incident I have mentioned (it was Mr.
Odger) said, that the working classes had no desire not to be told of
their faults; they wanted friends, not flatterers, and felt under
obligation to any one who told them anything in themselves which he
sincerely believed to require amendment. And to this the meeting
heartily responded.
Had I been defeated in the election, I should still have had no reason
to regret the contact it had brought me into with large bodies of my
countrymen; which not only gave me much new experience, but enabled me
to scatter my political opinions rather widely, and, by making me known
in many quarters where I had never before been heard of, increased the
number of my readers, and the presumable influence of my writings. These
latter effects were of course produced in a still greater degree, when,
as much to my surprise as to that of any one, I was returned to
Parliament by a majority of some hundreds over my Conservative
competitor.
I was a member of the House during the three sessions of the Parliament
which passed the Reform Bill; during which time Parliament was
necessarily my main occupation, except during the recess. I was a
tolerably frequent speaker, sometimes of prepared speeches, sometimes
extemporaneously. But my choice of occasions was not such as I should
have made if my leading object had been Parliamentary influence. When I
had gained the ear of the House, which I did by a successful speech on
Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill, the idea I proceeded on was that when
anything was likely to be as well done, or sufficiently well done, by
other people, there was no necessity for me to meddle with it. As I,
therefore, in general reserved myself for work which no others were
likely to do, a great proportion of my appearances were on points on
which the bulk of the Liberal party, even the advanced portion of it,
either were of a different opinion from mine, or were comparatively
indifferent. Several of my speeches, especially one against the motion
for the abolition of capital punishment, and another in favour of
resuming the right of seizing enemies' goods in neutral vessels, were
opposed to what then was, and probably still is, regarded as the
advanced liberal opinion. My advocacy of women's suffrage and of
Personal Representation, were at the time looked upon by many as whims
of my own; but the great progress since made by those opinions, and
especially the response made from almost all parts of the kingdom to the
demand for women's suffrage, fully justified the timeliness of those
movements, and have made what was undertaken as a moral and social duty,
a personal success. Another duty which was particularly incumbent on me
as one of the Metropolitan Members, was the attempt to obtain a
Municipal Government for the Metropolis: but on that subject the
indifference of the House of Commons was such that I found hardly any
help or support within its walls. On this subject, however, I was the
organ of an active and intelligent body of persons outside, with whom,
and not with me, the scheme originated, and who carried on all the
agitation on the subject and drew up the Bills. My part was to bring in
Bills already prepared, and to sustain the discussion of them during the
short time they were allowed to remain before the House; after having
taken an active part in the work of a Committee presided over by Mr.
Ayrton, which sat through the greater part of the Session of 1866, to
take evidence on the subject. The very different position in which the
question now stands (1870) may justly be attributed to the preparation
which went on during those years, and which produced but little visible
effect at the time; but all questions on which there are strong private
interests on one side, and only the public good on the other, have a
similar period of incubation to go through.
The same idea, that the use of my being in Parliament was to do work
which others were not able or not willing to do, made me think it my
duty to come to the front in defence of advanced Liberalism on occasions
when the obloquy to be encountered was such as most of the advanced
Liberals in the House, preferred not to incur. My first vote in the
House was in support of an amendment in favour of Ireland, moved by an
Irish member, and for which only five English and Scotch votes were
given, including my own: the other four were Mr. Bright, Mr. McLaren,
Mr. T. B. Potter, and Mr. Hadfield. And the second speech I delivered[9]
was on the bill to prolong the suspension of the Habeas Corpus in
Ireland. In denouncing, on this occasion, the English mode of governing
Ireland, I did no more than the general opinion of England now admits to
have been just; but the anger against Fenianism was then in all its
freshness; any attack on what Fenians attacked was looked upon as an
apology for them; and I was so unfavourably received by the House, that
more than one of my friends advised me (and my own judgment agreed with
the advice) to wait, before speaking again, for the favourable
opportunity that would be given by the first great debate on the Reform
Bill. During this silence, many flattered themselves that I had turned
out a failure, and that they should not be troubled with me any more.
Perhaps their uncomplimentary comments may, by the force of reaction,
have helped to make my speech on the Reform Bill the success it was. My
position in the House was further improved by a speech in which I
insisted on the duty of paying off the National Debt before our coal
supplies are exhausted, and by an ironical reply to some of the Tory
leaders who had quoted against me certain passages of my writings, and
called me to account for others, especially for one in my
_Considerations on Representative Government_, which said that the
Conservative party was, by the law of its composition, the stupidest
party. They gained nothing by drawing attention to the passage, which up
to that time had not excited any notice, but the _sobriquet_ of "the
stupid party" stuck to them for a considerable time afterwards. Having
now no longer any apprehension of not being listened to, I confined
myself, as I have since thought too much, to occasions on which my
services seemed specially needed, and abstained more than enough from
speaking on the great party questions. With the exception of Irish
questions, and those which concerned the working classes, a single
speech on Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill was nearly all that I contributed
to the great decisive debates of the last two of my three sessions.
I have, however, much satisfaction in looking back to the part I took on
the two classes of subjects just mentioned. With regard to the working
classes, the chief topic of my speech on Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill was
the assertion of their claims to the suffrage. A little later, after the
resignation of Lord Russell's Ministry and the succession of a Tory
Government, came the attempt of the working classes to hold a meeting in
Hyde Park, their exclusion by the police, and the breaking down of the
park railing by the crowd. Though Mr. Beales and the leaders of the
working men had retired under protest before this took place, a scuffle
ensued in which many innocent persons were maltreated by the police, and
the exasperation of the working men was extreme. They showed a
determination to make another attempt at a meeting in the Park, to which
many of them would probably have come armed; the Government made
military preparations to resist the attempt, and something very serious
seemed impending. At this crisis I really believe that I was the means
of preventing much mischief. I had in my place in Parliament taken the
side of the working men, and strongly censured the conduct of the
Government. I was invited, with several other Radical members, to a
conference with the leading members of the Council of the Reform League;
and the task fell chiefly upon myself, of persuading them to give up the
Hyde Park project, and hold their meeting elsewhere. It was not Mr.
Beales and Colonel Dickson who needed persuading; on the contrary, it
was evident that these gentlemen had already exerted their influence in
the same direction, thus far without success. It was the working men who
held out, and so bent were they on their original scheme, that I was
obliged to have recourse to _les grands moyens_. I told them that a
proceeding which would certainly produce a collision with the military,
could only be justifiable on two conditions: if the position of affairs
had become such that a revolution was desirable, and if they thought
themselves able to accomplish one. To this argument, after considerable
discussion, they at last yielded: and I was able to inform Mr. Walpole
that their intention was given up. I shall never forget the depth of his
relief or the warmth of his expressions of gratitude. After the working
men had conceded so much to me, I felt bound to comply with their
request that I would attend and speak at their meeting at the
Agricultural Hall; the only meeting called by the Reform League which I
ever attended. I had always declined being a member of the League, on
the avowed ground that I did not agree in its programme of manhood
suffrage and the ballot: from the ballot I dissented entirely; and I
could not consent to hoist the flag of manhood suffrage, even on the
assurance that the exclusion of women was not intended to be implied;
since if one goes beyond what can be immediately carried, and professes
to take one's stand on a principle, one should go the whole length of
the principle. I have entered thus particularly into this matter because
my conduct on this occasion gave great displeasure to the Tory and
Tory-Liberal press, who have charged me ever since with having shown
myself, in the trials of public life, intemperate and passionate. I do
not know what they expected from me; but they had reason to be thankful
to me if they knew from what I had, in all probability preserved them.
And I do not believe it could have been done, at that particular
juncture, by any one else. No other person, I believe, had at that
moment the necessary influence for restraining the working classes,
except Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, neither of whom was available: Mr.
Gladstone, for obvious reasons; Mr. Bright because he was out of town.
When, some time later, the Tory Government brought in a bill to prevent
public meetings in the Parks, I not only spoke strongly in opposition to
it, but formed one of a number of advanced Liberals, who, aided by the
very late period of the session, succeeded in defeating the Bill by what
is called talking it out. It has not since been renewed.
On Irish affairs also I felt bound to take a decided part. I was one of
the foremost in the deputation of Members of Parliament who prevailed on
Lord Derby to spare the life of the condemned Fenian insurgent, General
Burke. The Church question was so vigorously handled by the leaders of
the party, in the session of 1868, as to require no more from me than an
emphatic adhesion: but the land question was by no means in so advanced
a position; the superstitions of landlordism had up to that time been
little challenged, especially in Parliament, and the backward state of
the question, so far as concerned the Parliamentary mind, was evidenced
by the extremely mild measure brought in by Lord Russell's government in
1866, which nevertheless could not be carried. On that bill I delivered
one of my most careful speeches, in which I attempted to lay down some
of the principles of the subject, in a manner calculated less to
stimulate friends, than to conciliate and convince opponents. The
engrossing subject of Parliamentary Reform prevented either this bill,
or one of a similar character brought in by Lord Derby's Government,
from being carried through.
