CORRESPONDENCE

WITH

JOHN STUART MILL.

MY DEAR MILL,

Westover Villas, Bournemouth,

28th May, 1861.

I received your book* in due course, and I should have thanked you for it long ago, but that I wished to read it first, and I should have read it at once, had I not been moving from Sheen to Freshwater-Freshwater to Lymington-and Lymington to Bournemouth; and had I not left it on my way at Freshwater for Charles Cameron to read and ruminate. Indeed I had read the greater part of it a month ago, and had written a letter to you about it; which, however, now that I recur to it after having read the whole, does not seem worth sending.

I have read no book of political philosophy with half so much interest since I read the 'Discorsi' some forty * On Representative Government.

years ago. Your method is to dwell more in the abstract than Machiavel, and this is perhaps a necessity of your theme, at least of a large portion of it; and I found the earlier half of the volume rather a strain upon my attention; and I should imagine that, so far as the average understanding is concerned (which does not find it easy to hold itself long aloof from facts and examples), a closer collocation of fact and generalization (such as Machiavel uses) would have made your doctrines more accessible; and I think that sometimes the examples which you employ might have come better as a base of operations in reasoning than as an illustration after the effort they might have assisted has been undergone. I am aware, however, that your main dealings being with ideal forms and states, this method might have obliged you to treat in some sort incidentally what it is your object to treat as primary.

I should think the doctrines of the book would be still more useful on the Continent than in this country; and I hope it will be translated, as it ought to be without delay, into at least three continental languages. In countries where the founders of polities have almost to build from the ground, more of abstract truth is available for use; and in countries where what exists is intolerable, experiments may be more boldly tried. In our own country, if organic changes shall be hazarded, much of invaluable guidance might be taken from the principles you have set forth; but for my own part I am a political sceptic

at home, and would run no risks. Amidst considerations so composite as those concerned, proportions and degrees are often more important than principles; and he who is right in his principles may so often be wrong in his admeasurements. The degree to which the popular mind, instructed up to this point or that, should be encouraged to venture upon dealing at all with political questions; the degree to which instruction will impart judiciousness; the degree to which it will promote probity; the degree to which equality of representation of conflicting interests or opinions may enable a country to do without political probity in this or that proportion; the degree to which it is possible, by the incitements of political power and action, to bring about an energetic pursuit of worthy ends, without evoking along with it an equal or superior energy in the pursuit of those which are unworthy ;-all these and a thousand other questions of degree are regarded by you no doubt with no imperfect appreciation of their importance; but you would solve them, or some of them, with much more intrepidity than I could bring to the task.

I recollect that after travelling in Germany and Italy for the best part of a year in 1843-4, I came home much impressed with the more contented and independent condition of mind of the people abroad, as well as one could judge from their faces and manners ;—an independence and contentment, partly, I thought, due to temperament, partly to the absence of eagerness for

gain or advancement, which again was owing perhaps to the little room for advancement afforded them by their institutions and political habits. Looking at the face of London on the contrary, in the Strand or elsewhere, I seemed to see-not suffering perhaps-but care and haste. Going into the shops I found a servile eagerness to sell. What may be the proportions of popular debasement and unhappiness which may accompany absolute political impotence and stagnation in one country, or political knowledge and power and the quickenings of political action in another, is a question which I should venture to determine in favour of the polity which lives and moves: but when I come to the further question as to whether I should prefer this country as it is, or this country as it might be made by making it, more than it is, a country of politicians, every man impatient to have things put in the right way according to his own view, I find myself not a little puzzled, and somewhat disposed to inquire into the measure of the difference-wide no doubt, but not immeasurably widebetween the competency of the English people at large to understand political measures affecting India (in which neither you nor I have doubts), and their competency to understand the greater part of political measures affecting England; and I should next be led to inquire into the measure of presumption which attends incompetency.

All these doubts and difficulties of mine make me willing to wait for some manifest and momentous func

tional derangement in the system of government in this country before the risk is run of re-organizing; and make me glad to see that the people also seem willing for the present to acquiesce in the existing organization; and I am less than you disposed to be discontented with contentment as an end, less to be contented with discontentment as a means; and I hardly go along with Costard, who thanked God that he had no more patience than another man.

The two great evils of things as they are, seem to me to be our commercial corruption, and the tyrannical use of irresponsible power by the press, not restrained by any popular dislike of it. As to political corruption and bribery at elections, the inevitable consequence of investing with a political trust those who are incompetent to exercise it, is, that they cannot be made to feel there is much harm in selling it. The man who takes £5 for his vote, may say with truth and sincerity that he does not know which of the two candidates and policies presented for his choice is the best. He does not betray his opinion because he has none. It would probably be inexcusable presumption on his part to pretend to any. When a large proportion of voters are in this predicament, the offence of being bribed is little else than factitious and statutable, and the statute cannot have popular feeling for its support. If indeed it were required of voters to be guided by their estimate of the moral character and general abilities of the candidates, of these they might