Volume I Part 19 (1/2)
* ”Principles of Political Economy,” Book ii.
Further instruction of the people upon this subject J. S. Mill might not deprecate, but he never gave it He never went so far as Jowett, who wrote: ”That the most important influences on human life should be wholly left to chance, or shrouded in mystery, and instead of being disciplined or understood, should be required to conform to an external standard of propriety, cannot be regarded by the philosopher as a safe or satisfactory condition of human things.”*
* ”Dialogues of Plato.” Introduction to ”Republic,” vol. ii.
Mill's views, or supposed views, naturally excited the attention of wits. Moore's amusing exaggeration, which, like American humour, was devoid of truth, yet had no malice in it, was:--
”There are two Mr. Mills, too, whom those who like reading What's vastly unreadable, call very clever; And whereas Mill senior makes war on _good_ breeding, Mill junior makes war on all _breeding_ whatever.”
The way in which opinions were invented for Mill is shown in the instance of the London Debating Club (1826-1830), which was attended by a set of young men who professed ultra opinions. Mr. J. A. Roebuck was one. It was rumoured that at a meeting at which Mr. Mill was present, a pamphlet was discussed ent.i.tled, ”What is Love?” attributed to a man of some note in his day, and of
unimpeachable character in private life.
Mr. Mill might have been present without knowledge of the
subject to be brought forward, and may have been a listener without choice.
But in those days (and down to a much later period) the conventional fallacy was in full vogue--that civility to an opponent implied a secret similarity of opinion. Courtesy was regarded as complicity with the beliefs of those to whom it was shown. He who was present at an unconventional a.s.sembly was held to a.s.sent to what took place there--though neither a member, nor speaker, nor partisan.
CHAPTER XXII. JOHN STUART MILL, TEACHER OF THE PEOPLE
(continued)
Mill was so entirely serious in his pursuit of truth, and entirely convinced of the advantages of its publicity, that he readily risked conventional consequences on that account. He held it to be desirable that those who had important convictions, should be free to make them known, and even be encouraged to do so. In thinking this he was in no way compromised by, nor had he any complicity with, the convictions of others. But this did not prevent him being made answerable for them, as in the case of the distribution of papers sent to him by friends in his company. A copy of it came into my possession which a.s.suredly he did not write, and the terms of which he could never have approved, had they been submitted to him. On one occasion he sent to me a pa.s.sionate repudiation of concurrence or recommendation in any form, of methods imputed to him.
These eccentricities of imputation, supposed to have died by time, were found to be alive at Mills death.
The chief resurrectionist was one Abraham Hay-ward, known as a teller of salacious stories at the Athenaeum. He was a man of many gifts, who wrote with a bright, but by no means fastidious, pen. In some unexplained, inconsistent, and inexplicable way, Mr. Gladstone was on friendly terms with him. No sooner was Mill dead, and ill.u.s.trious appreciators of the great thinker were meditating some memorial to his honour, than Mr. Hayward sent an article to the _Times_, suggesting intrinsic immorality in his opinions. He also sent out letters privately to deter eminent friends of Mill from giving their names to the memorial committee. He sent one to Mr. Stopford Brooke, upon whom it had no influence. He sent one to Mr. Gladstone, upon whom it had, and who, in consequence, declined to join the committee.
Hayward was, in his day, the Iago of literature, and abused the confiding nature of our n.o.ble Moor.* Yet, when Mr. Mill lost his seat for Westminster, Mr. Gladstone had written these great words: ”We all know Mr. Mill's intellectual eminence before he entered Parliament.
What his conduct princ.i.p.ally disclosed to me was his singular moral elevation. Of all the motives, stings and stimulants that reach men through their egotism in Parliament, no part could move or even touch him. His conduct and his language were in this respect a sermon. For the sake of the House of Commons, I rejoiced in his advent and deplored his disappearance. He did us all good, and in whatever party, in whatever form of opinion, I sorrowfully confess that such men are rare.”
* My little book, ”John Stuart Mill, as the Working Cla.s.ses Knew Him,” was written to show Mr. Gladstone the answer that could be given to Hayward.
There was no tongue in the House of Commons more bitter, venomous, or disparaging of the people than that of Lord Robert Cecil, afterwards Lord Salisbury; yet I record to his honour he subscribed 50 towards the memorial to Mr. Mill. One of the three first persons who gave 50 was Mr. Walter Morrison. The Duke of Argyll, the Earl of Derby, the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re, Sir Charles and Lady Dilke, Mr. and Mrs. P. A. Taylor were also among the subscribers of 50 each. Among those who gave large but lesser sums were Mr. Herbert Spencer, Stopford Brooke, Leonard H. Courtney, Frederic Harrison, G. H. Lewes, W. E. H. Lecky. Sir John Lubbock, G. Croome Robertson, Lord Rosebery, Earl Russell, Professor Tyndall, and Professor Huxley. So Mr. Mill had his monument with honour.
It stands on the Thames Embankment, and allures more pilgrims of thought than any other there.
Purity and honour, there is reason to believe, were never absent from Mill's mind or conduct; but trusting to his own personal integrity, he a.s.sumed others would recognise it His admiration of Mrs. Taylor, whom he frequently visited, and subsequently married, was misconstrued--though not by Mr. Taylor, who had full confidence in Mr. Mill's honour. No expression to the contrary on Mr. Taylor's part ever transpired. It might be due to society that Mr. Mill should have been reserved in his regard. But a.s.sured of his own rect.i.tude, he trusted to the proud resenting maxim, ”Evil be to him who evil thinks,” and he resented imputation--whether it came from his relatives or his friends. Any reflection upon him in this respect he treated as an affront to himself, and an imputation upon Mrs. Taylor, which he never forgave. A relative told me after his death, that he never communicated with any of them again who made any remark which bore a sinister interpretation. If ever there was a philosopher who should be counted stainless, it was John Stuart Mill.
In the minds of the Bentham School, population was a province of politics. It would seem incredible to another generation--as it seems to many in this--that a philosopher should incur odium for being of Jowett's opinion, that the most vital information upon the conduct of life should not be withheld from the people. To give it is to incur conventional reprehension; as though it were not a greater crime to be silent while a feeble, half-fed, and ignorant progeny infest the land, to find their way to the hospital, the poor house, or the gaol, than to protest against this recklessness, which establishes penury and slavery in the workman's home. Yet a brutal delicacy and a criminal fastidiousness, calling itself public propriety, is far less reputable than the ethical preference for reasonable foresight and a manlier race.
Mr. Mill's success in Parliament was greater than that of any philosopher who has entered in our time. Unfortunately, very few philosophers go there. The author of ”Mark Rutherford” (W. Hale White) writing to me lately, exclaimed: ”Oh for one session with Mill and Bright and Cobden in the House! What would you not give to hear Mill's calm voice again? What would you not give to see him apply the plummet of Justice and Reason to the crooked iniquities of the Front Benches? He stands before me now, just against the gangway on the Opposition side, hesitating, pausing even for some seconds occasionally, and yet holding everybody in the House with a kind of grip; for even the most foolish understood more or less dimly that they were listening to something strange, something exalted, spoken from another sphere than that of the professional politician.”
Mr. Christie relates that in the London Debating Society, of which Mill was a member when a young man, it used to be said of him in argument, ”He pa.s.sed over his adversary like a ploughshare over a mouse.”
Certainly many mice arguers heard in Parliament, who made the public think a mountain was in labour, ended their existence with a squeak when Mr. Mill took notice of them.
The operation of the suffrage and the ballot, questions on which Mill expressed judgment, are in the minds of politicians to this day, and many reformers who dissented from him do not conceal their misgivings as to the wisdom of their course. ”Misgivings” is a word that may be taken to mean regret, whereas it merely signifies occasion for consideration.
The extension of the franchise and the endowment of the ballot have caused misgivings in many who were foremost in demanding them. The wider suffrage has not prevented an odious war in South Africa, and the ballot has sent to the House of Commons a dangerous majority of retrograde members. John Bright distrusted the vote of the residuum. John Stuart Mill equally dreaded the result of withdrawing the vote of the elector from public scrutiny. I agreed with their apprehensions, but it seemed to me a necessity of progress that the risk should be run. While the Ballot Act was before the House of Lords, I wrote to the _Times_ and other papers, as I have elsewhere related, to say that the Ballot Act would probably give us a Tory government for ten years--which it did.
I thought that the elector who had two hundred years of transmitted subjection or intimidation or bribery in his bones, would for some time go on voting as he had done--for others, not for the State. He would not all at once understand that he was free and answerable to the State for his vote. New electors, who had never known the responsibility of voting, would not soon acquire the sense of it Mr. Mill thought it conduced to manliness for an elector to act in despite of his interest or resentment of his neighbours, his employer, his landlord, or his priest, when his vote became known. At every election there were martyrs on both sides; and it was too much to expect that a ma.s.s of voters, politically ignorant, and who had been kept in ignorance, would generally manifest a high spirit, which maintains independence in the face of social peril, which philosophers are not always equal to. No doubt the secrecy of the vote is an immunity to knaves, but it is the sole chance of independence for the average honest man. The danger of committing the fortune of the State to the unchecked votes of the unintelligent was an argument of great power against a secret suffrage.
Lord Macaulay, though a Whig of the Whigs, gave an effective answer when he brought forward his famous fool, who declared ”he would never go into the water until he had learnt to swim.” The people must plunge into the sea of liberty before they can learn to swim in it. They have now been in that sea many years, and not many have learned the art yet. Then was found the truth of Temple Leader's words, that ”if the sheep had votes, they would give them all to the butcher.” Then when reformers found that the new electors voted largely for those who had always refused them the franchise, the advocates of it often expressed to me their misgivings as to its wisdom. Lord Sherbrooke (then Robert Lowe) saw clearly that if liberty was to be maintained and extended, the State must educate its masters.