John Stuart Mill | Page 5

and social condition
of this country, and because the same examination which showed them
the evils showed also that the cause of those evils was the aristocratic
principle in our government,--the subjection of the many to the control
of a comparatively few, who had an interest, or fancied they had an
interest, in perpetuating those evils. These inquirers looked still farther,
and saw, that, in the present imperfect condition of human nature,
nothing better than this self-preference was to be expected from a
dominant few; that the interests of the many were sure to be in their
eyes a secondary consideration to their own ease or emolument.
Perceiving, therefore, that we are ill-governed, and perceiving that, so
long as the aristocratic principle continued predominant in our
government, we could not expect to be otherwise, these persons
became Radicals; and the motto of their Radicalism was, Enmity to the
aristocratical principle."
The period of Mr. Mill's most intimate connection with "The London
and Westminster Review" forms a brilliant episode in the history of
journalism; and his relations, then and afterwards, with other men of
letters and political writers,--some of them as famous as Mr. Carlyle
and Coleridge, Charles Buller and Sir Henry Taylor, Sir William
Molesworth, Sir John Bowring, and Mr. Roebuck,--yield tempting
materials for even the most superficial biography; but we must pass
them by for the present. And here we shall content ourselves with
enumerating, in the order of their publication, those lengthier writings
with which he chiefly occupied his leisure during the next quarter of a
century; though that work was frequently diversified by important
contributions to "The Edinburgh" and "The Westminster Review,"
"Fraser's Magazine," and other periodicals. His first great work was "A
System of Logic," the result of many years' previous study, which

appeared in 1843. That completed, he seems immediately to have paid
chief attention to politico-economical questions. In 1844 appeared
"Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy," which
were followed, in 1848, by the "Principles of Political Economy." After
that there was a pause of ten years, though the works that were issued
during the next six years show that he had not been idle during the
interval. In 1857 were published two volumes of the "Dissertations and
Discussions," consisting solely of printed articles, the famous essay
"On Liberty," and the "Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform."
"Considerations on Representative Government" appeared in 1861,
"Utilitarianism," in 1863, "Auguste Comte and Positivism" and the
"Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," in 1865. After
that, besides the very welcome "Inaugural Address" at St. Andrew's in
1867, his only work of importance was "The Subjection of Women,"
published in 1869. A fitting conclusion to his more serious literary
labors appeared also in 1869 in his annotated edition of his father's
"Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind."
When we remember how much and what varied knowledge is in those
learned books, it is almost difficult to believe, that, during most of the
years in which he was preparing them, Mr. Mill was also a hard worker
in the India House, passing rapidly, and as the reward only of his
assiduity and talent, from the drudgery of a junior clerk to a position
involving all the responsibility, if not quite all the dignity, of a
secretary of state. One of his most intimate friends, and the one who
knew far more of him in this respect than any other, has in another
column penned some reminiscences of his official life; but if all the
state papers that he wrote, and all the correspondence that he carried on
with Indian officials and the native potentates of the East, could be
explored, more than one volume would have to be written in
supplement to his father's great "History of British India."
Having retired from the India House in 1858, Mr. Mill went to spend
the winter in Avignon, in the hope of improving the broken health of
the wife to whom he was devotedly attached. He had not been married
many years, but Mrs. Mill, who was the widow of Mr. John Taylor, a
London merchant, had been his friend since 1835, or even earlier.
During more than twenty years he had been aided by her talents, and
encouraged by her sympathy, in all the work he had undertaken, and to

her rare merits he afterwards paid more than one tribute in terms that
have no equal for the intensity of their language, and the depth of
affection contained in them. Mrs. Mill's weak state of health seems to
have hardly repressed her powers of intellect. By her was written the
celebrated essay on "The Enfranchisement of Women" contributed to
"The Westminster Review," and afterwards reprinted in the
"Dissertations and Discussions," with a preface avowing, that by her
Mr. Mill had been