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IV. J. S. Mill and the Irish Question: Reform, and the Integrity of the Empire, 1865–1870

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

E. D. Steele
E. D. Steele
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
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Extract

The first part of this study of Mill sought to show how much less radical he was on the subject of Irish land reform than is often supposed. In the earlier editions of the Principles of Political Economy from 1848 to 1857 there were passages which constituted a terrible indictment of landlordism, and insisted on the need for legislation to convert the tenant farmers into joint owners of their holdings: but in another passage this harsh criticism was substantially withdrawn, and the demand for fixity of tenure effectively retracted. Although they continued to reproduce the criticism and the call for a drastic measure, the editions of 1862 and 1865 were more moderate still in their conclusions on Irish land. With the progress of the changes in the economy and society set in motion by the Great Famine, Mill became more strongly convinced that the country should be left to evolve slowly under the existing law of tenure, only slightly amended. One cannot imagine Mill saying, ‘tenant-right…is equivalent to landlords' wrong’: but he and Palmerston were none the less in nearly complete agreement by 1865 on the degree of laissez-faire that was desirable in Ireland. For all his strictures upon aristocratic misgovernment and middle-class prejudice, Mill was too warm an admirer of British institutions to want to undermine their social basis over a wide area of the United Kingdom. The second part of this study deals with his action and his motives, in briefly advocating, without any reservations this time, the revolutionary land legislation from which he had always previously shrunk, despite his brave words written for the earlier editions of the Principles.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , September 1970 , pp. 419 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

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References

1 This paragraph is a summary of the article ‘J. S. Mill and the Irish Question: The Principles of Political Economy, 1848–1865’in the previous number of the Historical Journal.

2 Lord Palmerston in House of Commons Debates, 27 February 1865.

3 An example of this apprehension in official circles: Lord Strathnairn, Commander of the Forces in Ireland, discussed the possibility of such an alliance in a letter to the Duke of Cambridge, C.-in-C, Rose Papers (B.M. Add. MSS. 42824), 20 October 1867.

4 Even before Fenianism captured the attention of this country, W. E. Forster, one of the leading representatives of a more advanced radicalism than John Blight's, issued a warning that the continued denial of agrarian reform to Ireland would have the effect of turning public opinion against the position of the landed class in England. House of Commons Debates, 31 March 1865.

5 Mill-Taylor Collection, British Library of Political and Economic Science, (vol. LV), Mill to Cairnes, 6 January 1866.

6 House of Commons Debates, 17 February 1866.

7 Mill, J.S., Considerations on Representative Government, Everyman's Library edn. (1954), p. 365; hereafter cited as Considerations.Google Scholar

8 House of Commons Debates, 17 February 1866.

9 See the comments of J.E. C.[airnes] in The Economist, 12 May 1866, ‘The Irish Land Bill’.

10 House of Commons Debates, 17 May 1866.

11 E.g. the comments of the Saturday Review, 26 May 1866, ‘The Irish Tenure Bill’.

12 House of Commons Debates, 17 May 1866.

13 Mill-Taylor Collection (vol. LV), Mill to Cairnes, 26 May 1867; Packe, M.St J., The Life of John Stuart Mill (London, 1954), pp. 462–4.Google Scholar

14 Ibid. pp. 463–4.

15 House of Commons Debates, 14 June 1867.

16 Underlying this tendency was the assumption voiced by The Times, 1 May 1867:‘…the Englishman's view of the question is that which must prevail in the end, whatever temporary and partial expedients may be applied’.

17 Mayo Papers, National Library of Ireland (MS 11, 144), Naas to Lord Derby, 23 December 1866.

18 Derby Papers, Cnrist Church, Oxford (Box 155/3), Naas to Lord Derby, 15 August 1866.

19 The Spectator, 9 March 1867, ‘The Insurrection in Ireland’.

20 There is a short study of Hughes in Asa Briggs, Victorian People (London, 1954)Google Scholar, ch. vi; it makes no reference to this speech, which attracted considerable notice. Hughes received a notable rebuke from The Times, 23 December 1867.

21 Papers relating to Foreign Affairs accompanying the Annual Message of the President to Congress, 1868, pt. 1, p. 130. Charles Francis Adams, U.S. Minister in Great Britain, to William H. Seward, Secretary of State, 24 December 1867. Adams observed: ‘It may be doubted whether at any time since the discovery of the scheme of Guy Fawkes there has been so much of panic spread…throughout this community as at this time…I think it would now be very unsafe for Irishmen to attempt to hold a meeting for any purpose in any great town in England.’

22 Mill, J.S., Autobiography, World's Classics edn. (1955), p. 249.Google Scholar

23 Mill, J.S., England and Ireland (London, 1868), p. 6.Google Scholar

24 M. St J. Packe, op. cit. pp. 457–62.

25 See the speeches of Mill and Sir John Pakington in House of Commons Debates, 31 May 1866.

26 Elliot, H.S.R. (ed.), The Letters of John Stuart Mill, 2 vols (London, 1910); II, 68,Google Scholar Mill to David Urquhart, 4 October 1866: ‘…you see’, he wrote, ‘that I am not…standing up for the negroes, or for liberty, deeply as both are interested in the subject—but for the first necessity of human society, law’. Semmel, B., The Governor Eyre Controversy (London, 1962), pp. 178–9Google Scholar eulogizes ‘John Stuart Mill and his comrades’ from the standpoint of a mid-twentiethcentury liberal.

27 Mill, England and Ireland, pp. 25, 43–4, 21.

28 The Duke of Argyll told Gladstone in the autumn of 1866 that ‘Bright's speeches are frightening all Whiggish Liberals into absolute Toryism’, Gladstone Papers (B.M. Add. MSS 44100), Argyll to Gladstone, 4 November 1866; Ripon Papers (B.M. Add. MSS 43522), Lord de Grey to Lord Kimberley, 25 November 1867.

29 Mill, England and Ireland, p. 26. The ‘Congresses’are, of course, those of the First International.

30 Willey, B., Nineteenth Century Studies (London, 1949), p. 161.Google Scholar

31 Mill, J.S., Principles of Political Economy, variorum edn. forming vols. II and III of the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto, 1963– ); II, 331–6;Google Scholar hereafter cited as Works, II or III.

32 Mill, England and Ireland, pp. 14–20; quotations from pp. 15, 19, 17–18.

33 Ibid. pp. 18–19 and footnote to p. 18; for the rejoinder by Viscount Lifford, an Irish landowner, see House of Lords Debates, 12 March 1868.

34 Ibid. pp. 16–19; quotations from pp. 16, 19.

35 Ibid. pp. 38–41, 9–14, 22–3; quotations from pp. 39, 40, 11–12, 22, 23, 13. For Mill's Anglo-Indian disciple see below pp. 448–9.

36 Ibid. pp. 36–40.

37 Ibid. pp. 21–6; quotation from p. 24.

38 Mill, Autobiography, p. 249.

39 Mill, England and Ireland, pp. 7, 21–2, 42–4; quotation from p. 7.

40 Ibid. pp. 21, 36, 30–5; quotations from pp. 21, 36, 35.

41 Ibid. p. 31.

42 Mill, Considerations, pp. 364–5.

43 House of Commons Debates, 5 August 1867.

44 P. 380. He expressed himself similarly to J. E. Cairnes, who was an advocate of Imperial contraction, on more than one occasion, Mill-Taylor Collection (vol. LV), Mill to Cairnes, 15 June 1862 and 8 November 1864.

45 House of Commons Debates, 5 August 1867.

46 Mill, Autobiography, p. 249.

47 The Times, 20 December 1867.

48 Mill, England and Ireland, pp. 26–35; quotations from pp. 29, 30, 27, 32–4.

49 Mill, J.S., On Liberty, Everyman's Library edn. (1954), pp. 90–4.Google Scholar

50 Mill-Taylor Collection (vol. LV), Mill to Cairnes, 6 January 1866.

51 Mill, England and Ireland, pp. 42–3, 30; quotations from his speech in House of Commons Debates, 12 March 1868 and E. & I. p. 30.

52 Ibid. pp. 25–6; M. St J. Packe, op. cit. p. 463.

53 Elliot, op. cit. 11, 44, 190, Mill to J. Boyd Kinnear, 19 August 1865, and to Sir C. Dilke, 9 February 1869.

54 Mill, England and Ireland, p. 22.

55 Mill, Considerations, pp. 178–9.

56 Mineka, F.E. (ed.), The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill 1812–48, forming vols. XII and XII of the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto, 1963–); XII, 365, Mill to J. P. Nichol, 21 December 1837.Google Scholar

57 Mill, England and Ireland, p. 44. This uncomfortable thought had been with him throughout. On an earlier page he had put a question which admitted of only one answer: ‘On what principle did we act when we renounced the government of the Ionian Islands?’ (p. 24). The cession of those islands to the weak, imperfectly civilized kingdom of Greece in 1863, notwithstanding the large claims that had been made for their strategic value, constituted an acknowledgement on the part of this country that she found a genuine and stubborn nationalism morally hard to repress, in a European people at any rate.

58 Mill-Taylor Collection (vol. LV), Mill to Cairnes, 10 and 1 March 1868.

The Economist, 25 January 1868, ‘Lord Stanley at Bristol’.

60 The Pall Mall Gazette, 10 February 1868.

61 Delane Papers (MSS of Times Newspapers Ltd.) (vol. 15), Bessborough to J. T. Delane, 22 February (1868).

62 The Times, 19 February 1868.

63 Ibid. 20 February 1868, ‘Mr Mill on Ireland’.

64 The Economist, 22 February 1868, ‘Mr Mill on Ireland’.

65 The Saturday Review, 29 February 1868, ‘Mr Mill on England and Ireland’.

66 The Daily News, 18 February 1868.

67 The Times, 20 February 1868, ‘Mr Mill on Ireland’.

68 Ibid. 21 February 1868.

69 Ibid. 22 February 1868.

70 Dufferin Papers, P.R.O. Northern Ireland (D 1071 H/B/F. 147) Stanley to Lord Dufferin, n.d. [March 1868].

71 The Times, 28 February and 10 March 1868.

72 The Pall Mall Gazette, 24 February 1868, ‘Mr Mill and Ireland’.

73 The Saturday Review, 29 February 1868, ‘Mr Mill on England and Ireland’.

74 Ibid. 7 March 1868, ‘Ireland’.

75 The Daily News, 25 and 19 February 1868.

76 The Manchester Guardian, 22 February 1868.

77 The Spectator, 22 February 1868, ‘Mr J. S. Mill on the Irish Land Question’.

78 The Economist, 22 February 1868, ‘Mr Mill on Ireland’.

79 Mill-Taylor Collection (vol. LV), Mill to Cairnes, 1 and 10 March 1868.

80 Published in London. ‘You have discussed like a gentleman and Mill has not argued like a philosopher’, wrote an aristocratic friend of the author; Lyall, Sir A., The Life of the Marquis of Dufferin & Ava, 2 vols. (London, 1905); 1, 167, Lord Arthur Russell to Dufferin, 10 March 1868.Google Scholar

81 The Daily News, 25 February 1868.

82 See the speeches of Mayo and Sandford, G.M.W., 18 February and 29 April 1867, and Mayo's reference to this bill on 10 March 1868 in House of Commons Debates; also the Saturday Review, 4 May 1867.Google Scholar

83 Mill-Taylor Collection (vol. LV), Mill to Cairnes, 26 May 1867.

84 Derby Papers (Box 146/4), B. Disraeli to Lord Derby, 4 March 1868.

85 Strachie Papers, Somerset R.O. (H. 324/CP 1), Gladstone to Fortescue, 11 December 1867.

86 The Times, 20 December 1867.

87 House of Commons Debates, 12 March 1868.

88 Ibid. 10 March 1868.

89 Ibid.

90 Disraeli Papers, National Trust, Hughenden Manor (B/XX/S/796), Lord Stanley to Disraeli, 25 January 1868; Mayo Papers (MS 11, 164), Disraeli to Mayo, 7 February 1868; for Disraeli's speech see House of Commons Debates, 16 March 1868.

91 Ibid. 13 March 1868.

92 Ibid. 16 March 1868.

93 Delane Papers (vol. 15), Lowe to Delane, 20 December 1866.

94 See, for example, his speeches in House of Commons Debates, 27 February 1865 and 17 May 1866; his leaders are noted in the diary of contributors among the records of Times Newspapers Ltd.

95 House of Commons Debates, 12 March 1868.

96 Ibid.; Mill, Autobiography, pp. 250–1.

97 Ibid. p. 251.

98 The Pall Mall Gazette, 14 March 1868, ‘Irish Land Question in the House of Commons’.

99 Mill, Autobiography, p. 250.

100 London, 1869. The foregoing paragraph is a summary of the present writer's article in the Historical Journal (1968), ‘Ireland and the Empire in the 1860s. Imperial Precedents for Gladstone's First Irish Land Act’.

101 Mill-Taylor Collection (vol. LV), Mill to Cairnes, 16 November 1869; printed in Elliot, op. cit. 11, 229–30. In the following January Mill told Cairnes that he approved of the latter's article in the Fortnightly Review for that month, on ‘Political Economy and Land’, which endorsed Campbell's scheme, with the suggestion of certain minor changes. Yet while Mill thought the scheme was ‘without doubt the utmost which there is any chance of obtaining at present from Parliament’, he doubted whether anything less than the absolute security of ‘fixity of tenure at a valuation made once for all’ would content the Irish. Cairnes, whose views had undergone a marked change since he first wrote to the master about Irish land, was ‘truly sorry to find you so desponding as to the efficiency of a measure such as Campbell has prepared’. Mill-Taylor Collection (vol. LV), Mill to Cairnes, 11 January 1870; ibid. (vol. LVI), Cairnes to Mill, 13 January 1870.

102 In principle the 1870 Land Act was a measure of great moment: in practice it was much less significant. The Times, 10 August 1870.

103 The Fortnightly Review, June 1870, ‘Professor Leslie on the Land Question’, p. 644.

104 Mill, Works, 11, xciv.

105 Cowling, M. J., Mill and Liberalism (Cambridge, 1963), p. xii.Google Scholar