England's Disgrace: J.S. Mill and the Irish Question 9781442674486

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I. Mill and Ireland in the Age of O'Connell
II. The Famine
III. Ireland and the Principles of Political Economy, 1848-1865
IV. The Irish University Question
V. The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

TTGLAND'S DISGRACE? J.S. MILL AND THE IRISH QUESTION

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BRUCE L. KINZER

England's Disgrace? J.S. Mill and the Irish Question

UTP

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2001 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-4862-5

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Kinzer, Bruce L., 1948England's disgrace? : J.S. Mill and the Irish question Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-4862-5 i. Mill, John Stuart, 1806-1873 - Views on Ireland. 2. Irish question. 3. Ireland - Politics and government - 19th century. I. Title. DA95O.K56 2001

941.5081

000-932439-9

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

In Memory of John M. Robson Mentor and Friend

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

IX

Introduction 3 I

Mill and Ireland in the Age of O'Connell 8 II The Famine

III

Ireland and the Principles of Political Economy, 1848-1865 87 IV

V

44

The Irish University Question 120

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 164 Epilogue 212 NOTES

217

BIBLIOGRAPHY 26l INDEX 275

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Acknowledgments

My initiation as a student of Mill was singularly auspicious. For four years I served as a post-doctoral fellow on the John Stuart Mill Project at the University of Toronto. The tutelage of John M. Robson, the general editor of Mill's Collected Works, shaped my scholarship on Mill. My debt to him before his death in 1995 was incalculable; it has not diminished since. During my years on the Mill Project I also gained from the companionship and support of those who happily shared in the work there was to be done: Marion Filipiuk, Michael Laine, Ann Robson, and the late Rea Wilmshurst. Their connection with this book is remote in time but not in spirit. The same is true of the late J.B. Conacher, who introduced me to the peculiar pleasures of Victorian political history. Friends who at some point had valuable things to say about my work on Mill and Ireland include Brian Harrison, Theo Hoppen, Jeff Lipkes, Trevor Lloyd, and William Thomas. To them I am grateful, as I am to Peter Gray for kindly making available a portion of his important book Famine, Land and Politics before its publication. I also want to thank friends in England and Ireland - Angela Ellis, Ted and Susan Gould, Con and Anne Bushe - who provided hospitality and logistical support during the first half of 1996. The research I did at that time was made possible by a research reassignment granted by the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and by a visiting fellowship awarded by Corpus Christi College, Oxford. To the President and Fellows of the latter I remain much obliged. My absence from home in these months imposed notable burdens on my wife, Deborah, and daughters, Amanda and Anna. For their indulgence I shall always be grateful. The manuscript made possible by that indulgence benefited from the careful reading of two anonymous referees and from the meticulous copy-editing of John St James.

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Acknowledgments

The following institutions furnished access to materials needed for this study: the Randall Library at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington; the Davis Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; the Perkins Library at Duke University; the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University; the Robarts Library at the University of Toronto; the British Library (including the Newspaper Library at Colindale); the Institute of Historical Research; the Library of University College London; the British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics; the Bodleian Library at Oxford University; the Library of Reading University; the National Library of Ireland in Dublin; and the Library of Trinity College Dublin. I thank the staffs of these institutions. For permission to quote from manuscript collections I am grateful to the following: the Council of Trustees, National Library of Ireland (Cairnes Papers); Special Collections Department, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University (John Stuart Mill Letters); Lord Methuen and the British Library of Political and Economic Science (Courtney Collection); the British Library of Political and Economic Science (Mill-Taylor Collection). Publication of this book was generously assisted by Kenyon College. BRUCE L. KINZER

ENGLAND'S DISGRACE?

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Introduction

John Stuart Mill never travelled to Ireland; his words did. The genres through which he imparted the words that had a direct bearing on the Irish question were diverse: periodical and newspaper journalism, chapters in the Principles of Political Economy, a pamphlet, and parliamentary speeches. Ultimately some of these words had a telling effect, if not invariably in the way Mill had intended. Although not all of what he said on the subject of Ireland merited the close attention of his contemporaries, a portion of that output was very striking and noteworthy. It remains so to this day. The fact that many mid-Victorians attended to Mill's thoughts on Ireland stemmed in considerable measure from the stature he enjoyed as a leading public moralist and the pre-eminent mind of his age. In his Dictionary of National Biography entry on Mill, Leslie Stephen justly stated: '[N]o historian of the social and political movement in his time can fail to note the extraordinary influence which he exercised for a generation; the purity and energy of his purpose; and his immense services in the encouragement of active speculation, and of the most important movements of his time.'1 Less heed, naturally, was paid in the years before Mill acquired this stature. The Ireland upon which Mill commented was constitutionally part of the United Kingdom. The Irish rebellion of 1798, coupled with the grave threat to English security posed by Revolutionary France, persuaded the British government of the necessity for a legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland. The Act of Union of 1800 abolished the Dublin Parliament and gave to Ireland one hundred seats in the House of Commons at Westminster. Twenty-eight Irish peers and four bishops of the Anglican Church of Ireland were admitted to the House of Lords. Relative to population, Ireland was underrepresented in the

4 Introduction United Kingdom Parliament. The great mass of the Irish population, Roman Catholic in religion, had no direct representation whatever, inasmuch as Catholics were by law excluded from Parliament. The Anglo-Irish, adherents of the established episcopalian Church of Ireland, had controlled the Dublin Parliament and thought of themselves as the true Irish nation. They constituted approximately 10 per cent of the population. In the province of Ulster there was a concentration of Presbyterians, who made up about 8 per cent of Ireland's population. William Pitt the Younger, prime minister when the Union was created, had hoped to follow the Act of Union with measures to relieve Catholics of their remaining disabilities. This intent was thwarted by resistance from within his own ranks, mightily reinforced by the resolute opposition of George III. From 1801 to 1828 the individuals occupying Irish seats in the House of Commons and senior administrative positions in Ireland were invariably Protestant. While the Anglo-Irish ascendancy was in a sense still in place, its operation after 1800 was constrained in a way that had not been the case before the Union. As K. Theodore Hoppen puts it, '[T]he Protestant ascendancy was no longer in business on its own account but had been taken over by a larger international corporation, which, though itself "Protestant", had different and more complex priorities at heart.'2 J.S. Mill would have to take note of these 'complex priorities.' Mill's involvement with the Irish question, albeit sporadic in character, spanned more than four decades and embraced a variety of elements. One of the earliest essays he composed for publication dealt with Ireland. Published in the Parliamentary History and Review in 1826, this article used the highly charged debate over the admission of Catholics to Parliament to excoriate aristocratic government and its deplorable effects.3 In the 18305, when Mill's career as a political journalist reached its apogee (an inglorious apogee it proved to be),4 Irish issues held a prominent place in public debate. Mill commented upon those issues because he could not ignore them, but he did so without formulating a satisfactory conceptualization of Ireland's relation to his own political agenda. Having abandoned the political fray, Mill in the mid18405 grappled with the practical and the theoretical sides of the Irish land question. A mingling of the great Irish famine and of Mill's great work on political economy, then in progress, was chiefly responsible for this encounter with Ireland. The result was an exceedingly ambitious series of forty-three leading articles, written for the Morning Chronicle over a period of three months in late 1846 and early 1847, m which

Introduction 5 Mill advocated the creation of a peasant proprietary on the waste lands of Ireland. Between 1848 and 1865 Mill's Principles of Political Economy went through six editions (excluding the People's Edition of 1865). The substantive changes he made in the sections on Ireland from one edition to the next provide a broad indication of his evolving views on the subject. Changes he made for the 1865 edition were influenced by John Elliot Cairnes. Mill's seat in Parliament and friendship with Cairnes drew him into the battle over the Irish university system, a battle whose outcome, in Cairnes's judgment (and in that of the Irish Roman Catholic bishops), would have grave consequences for the future of Irish society. The problems this issue caused Mill reveal something of the dilemma faced by liberals when a powerful, authoritarian institution with a mass constituency (such as the Roman Catholic church in Ireland) uses its freedom of action in a liberal state to propagate doctrines inimical to the values upon which that state rests. Mill's part in the Irish university controversy also throws light on the impact his strategy for a radicalization of the Liberal party had on his political action. Like the debate engendered by the university question, the Fenian upheavals of 1866 and 1867 coincided with Mill's years in the House of Commons. His estimation of Irish nationalism and of British rule in Ireland at a critical moment in the history of the Union can be ascertained from his response to the Fenian threat. Mill's 1868 pamphlet England and Ireland, in which he urgently pressed for granting Irish tenants fixity of tenure, was his explosive answer to Fenianism. There is an article literature on Mill and Ireland that examines several of these elements. The seminal contributions were made by E.D. Steele in two articles that appeared in the Historical Journal in 1970.5 Steele's object was to investigate the ways in which Mill's views on the Irish land question changed between the first edition of the Principles of Political Economy and the publication of England and Ireland. He depicts a Mill who, in practice if not in theory, took a rather cautious line on the issue until the Fenians made their mark. In response to Fenianism, Steele argues, Mill adopted a radical position from an imperialistic conviction that the Union must be preserved and that fixity of tenure was the only means to its preservation. Apart from R.N. Lebow's editorial introduction to a collection of Mill's writings on Ireland that came out in 1979,6 Steele monopolized the subject until 1983. In that year an article by Lynn Zastoupil (also in Historical Journal) explored, in a brief compass, Mill's treatment of the famine.7 Zastoupil used this episode to illustrate his central contention that Mill's chief concern was

6 Introduction for the moral improvement of the Irish masses. A challenge to Steele's interpretation was implicit in Zastoupil's account, but he gave only cursory attention to Mill's post-famine association with the Irish question and did not directly engage the crux of Steele's argument. Another 1983 article, by T.A. Boylan and T.P. Foley, focused on the role played by J.E. Cairnes in shaping Mill's treatment of Irish land after i865.8 Although Cairnes deserves the close scrutiny of anyone interested in Mill and the Irish question in the 18605, the case made by Boylan and Foley for his influence on the content of England and Ireland is far from compelling. In an article published in 1984 I took issue with certain features of the interpretations set forth by Steele and Zastoupil, suggesting that the former had given undue weight to Mill's 'imperialism' and that the latter had somewhat misjudged Mill's disposition on Irish nationalism.9 This piece evidently killed all interest in the subject of Mill and Ireland save for that sustained by its author: in 1987 I brought out an article on Mill and the university question and in 1993 one on Mill and the Catholic question in the i82os.10 In addition to this body of journal material, which concentrates on Mill and Ireland, there is a cognate cluster of articles whose epicentre is the issue of peasant proprietorship.11 Discussion of Mill and Irish land can be found in books as well as articles. Studies on Mill that provide some coverage of the topic include David Martin's useful short book John Stuart Mill and the Land Question (Hull, 1981); Samuel Hollander's imposing work The Economics of John Stuart Mill (2 vols., Toronto, 1985); Janice Carlisle's strikingly innovative John Stuart Mill and the Writing of Character (Athens, Georgia, 1991); a monograph by Kinzer, Robson, and Robson on Mill's parliamentary career, A Moralist In and Out of Parliament: John Stuart Mill at Westminster, 1865-1868 (Toronto, 1992); Lynn Zastoupil's study John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, 1994); and Jeff Lipkes's recently published Politics, Religion and Classical Political Economy: John Stuart Mill and His Followers (New York, 1999). Important books by historians of Ireland that consider aspects of the subject include R.D. Collison Black, Economic Thought and the Irish Question, 1817-1870 (Cambridge, 1960); Philip Bull, Land, Politics & Nationalism: A Study of the Irish Land Question (New York, 1996); and Peter Gray, Famine, Land and Politics: British Government and Irish Society, 1843-1850 (Dublin and Portland, 1999). From the books and articles mentioned above much of value can be learned about Mill's connection with the Irish question. None of them, however, purports to supply a comprehensive examination of the sub-

Introduction 7 ject; collectively, they furnish nothing like a coherent or complete account. The aim of what follows is to fashion a thorough and systematic analysis of Mill's multifaceted engagement with the Irish question. An appraisal of that engagement must be embedded in the ebb and flow of the Irish question as it alternately receded from and obtruded upon the English political consciousness from the 18205 to the 18705. Many of the factors governing Mill's handling of the problem were part and parcel of a changing English political environment, one in which he sought to create for himself an influential place as radical critic and purposeful agent. His trenchant assaults on English parochialism notwithstanding, Mill's own perspective on the Irish question had an Anglocentric tilt. The condition of Ireland mattered to him mainly for what it said about the condition of England - moral, intellectual, and political.

I Mill and Ireland in the Age of O'Connell

For J.S. Mill the Irish question in the 18205 and 18305 was political in nature. As a journalist and strategist in the service of Philosophic Radicalism, Mill saw himself as a political player in his own right, though he could not at this time hope to obtain a seat in the House of Commons owing to his employment by the East India Company (which is not to say that such a hope on his part would have been reasonable had he not been so employed).1 What he said about Ireland during this period suggests that he did not find the subject of compelling interest. He infrequently discussed her massive and intractable economic difficulties. The notable ways in which the Irish problem impinged on the flow of English politics nonetheless drew him to the subject. The issues of Catholic emancipation, coercion, the Irish church, tithes, the poor law (whether Ireland should have one and, if so, of what sort), and the reform of municipal corporations in Ireland claimed much ministerial and parliamentary time and attention. Two of these - Catholic emancipation and the Irish church - were among the great topics in English politics between 1825 and 1840. The remarkable political leader of the Irish Catholic nation, Daniel O'Connell, was himself highly controversial.2 Hence, the Irish question projected itself onto the English political stage in numerous configurations, and one seeking to influence the action could not be indifferent to it. Certainly J.S. Mill, who aimed to promote a fundamental redistribution of political power at the expense of the aristocracy, Whig and Tory alike, could not afford to slight the Irish question, aspects of which might be turned to partisan and polemical advantage. 1. THE BENTHAMITE LEGACY

Broadly speaking, J.S. Mill's early politics were forged in a Benthamite

Mill and Ireland in the Age of O'Connell 9 mould. In his Autobiography Mill recounts the experience of reading, in the winter of 1821-2, Dumont's redaction of Bentham's Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. 'When I laid down the last volume of the Traite I had become a different being. The "principle of utility," understood as Bentham understood it, and applied in the manner in which he applied it ..., fell exactly into its place as the keystone which held together the detached and fragmentary parts of my knowledge and beliefs.'3 When it came to Ireland, however, the younger Mill had no systematic Benthamite text upon which to draw. Neither Bentham nor James Mill ever took up the subject in a comprehensive fashion. Bentham, it is true, evinced a sporadic interest in the plight of Ireland's Catholics, as J.E. Crimmins has demonstrated.4 Opposed to all civic and legal disabilities resting on religious grounds, Bentham was especially sensitive to the imposition of penal laws in a society where the victims constituted a large majority of the population. Although Bentham had no use for the principle of state establishment of religion, his papers include a document on Irish education, probably composed in 1800, that lists the advantages of making Catholicism an established religion in Ireland.5 Crimmins observes that a chief aim 'of Church-of Englandism as it was planned by Bentham in 1812 was to aid the cause of Catholic Emancipation.'6 Bentham had a personal acquaintance with Daniel O'Connell, and in 1824 he sent in a five-pound donation to O'Connell's Catholic Association.7 Crimmins exaggerates when he states that Bentham offered a 'sustained commentary on the Irish Question in the Book of Fallacies' (1824), but in this work Bentham did seek to unmask the faulty arguments used to justify the persecution of Catholics in Ireland.8 Bentham plainly grasped that the subjugation of Ireland's Catholics was indispensable to the preservation of the Protestant political ascendancy in that country, an ascendancy inextricably linked to aristocratic domination of the British political system. Bentham's hostility to such domination by the second decade of the nineteenth century informs his increasingly assertive support of the Catholic cause. James Mill, whose animus against the aristocracy probably exceeded Bentham's - This body, sharing among them the powers of government, and sharing among themselves the profits of misrule, we denominate the aristocratical body'9 - seldom referred to Ireland. That the great authority on the history of British India and the author of the essay on colonies for the 1818 Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica made so little of Ireland seems peculiar. James Mill's penchant for abstraction notwithstanding, one might expect to find some allusion to

10 England's Disgrace? Ireland in his 1818 essay. There is none. It must not be supposed that Ireland's absence from a discussion that purported to show why colonies were commonly more trouble than they were worth means that Mill thought Ireland worth the trouble. A point to bear in mind is that Ireland after 1800 was no ordinary colony, and that the categories Mill employed could not readily accommodate the Irish case, which in many respects was sui generis. Albeit England's first colony, Ireland had long since ceased to be a place of settlement for English emigrants. Indeed, early nineteenth-century English commentators expressed concern over the large number of Irishmen flocking to England's shores.10 Nor was Ireland a magnet for English investment capital (a deficiency of capital was frequently cited as one of Ireland's most critical economic problems). Although her economic dependence on Britain, which accounted for the great bulk of Irish imports and exports,11 unquestionably denoted colonial standing, Ireland's constitutional status after 1800, that of an integral member of the United Kingdom, rendered her unlike any other 'colony' in England's possession. These considerations may have figured in the elder Mill's calculations as he wrote his article on colonies, but they do not explain his habitual reticence on the subject of Ireland. The monumental scope of that reticence may be gathered from a curious exchange of letters between James Mill and David Ricardo in the summer of 1819. Ricardo raised with Mill the question of whether the Act of Union, which gave to Ireland something under one-sixth of the seats in the Imperial Parliament, could conceivably protect Irish interests when such interests were perceived by English members to be in conflict with those of England. (In Ricardo's formulation of the problem the granting of Catholic emancipation, which would enable Catholics to hold seats in the House of Commons, was immaterial.) Ricardo acknowledged that the Union served an important political purpose in preventing a fundamental divergence between the two countries in crucial areas of policy-making, but expressed scepticism that Ireland could expect better treatment under such an arrangement than she would receive at the hands of a government - aristocratic or monarchical - wholly unrepresentative in character. If Ireland could not secure just consideration of her claims in a representative system that allotted her an ineffectual minority interest, was there 'any remedy ... but independence?'12 In his reply James Mill barely spoke of Ireland, subsuming the particular under the general so completely as to make it almost invisible.

Mill and Ireland in the Age of O'Connell

11

Eliding altogether the problem of remedy in connection with the highly specific case put by Ricardo, Mill observed: I should think a representative government, in regard to foreign dependencies, would act very much like an aristocracy or monarchy - it would, wherever the interests of the foreign country clashed with those of the home, sacrifice those of the foreign - but as it would be more enlightened, and less guided by caprice, the foreign country would suffer only when the incongruity was real; and when the home population would really be benefited by oppressing the foreign.13

Not much comfort here, for Ricardo or Ireland. That James Mill responded to Ricardo in this vein merely indicates that Ireland did not engage his interest as an example of the defective nature of representative government relative to foreign dependencies. The capacity in which Ireland did engage the elder Mill's interest was as an illustration of aristocratic misrule so proverbial as to require nothing in the way of demonstrative argument. "There [Ireland] is the genuine picture, the beau ideal of an aristocratic government. The principle of aristocracy acts there without any disturbing force.'14 This statement appears near the close of a Westminster Review article of October 1826 - written after the publication of his son's first essay on Ireland.15 In a thirty-page inquiry into the 'State of the Nation/ James Mill devotes one paragraph to Ireland. From what he says it is clear he does not consider Ireland part of the 'nation' whose state is being reviewed. Verily, Ireland gets this nod from James Mill 'for little other purpose than to mark our sense of the evil which that country lays upon this. It is, is fact, the great drawback upon the energy and resources of England. It stands the foremost among our mountainous burthens.'16 Aristocratic government in Ireland, in its secular and ecclesiastical forms, and buttressed by English military force, lives off its Irish host utterly heedless of 'the evils which it brings upon others.' The Irish people would not have tolerated evils of such magnitude had it not been for the presence of 'English bayonets.' Having at their disposal 'English soldiers to kill Irish people, whenever it needed to kill them,' the Irish aristocracy 'had no motive to set any limit to its oppressions.' What remedy for this 'tissue of evils'? The best James Mill can offer is English withdrawal, leaving 'the parties there to settle their quarrels among themselves. A long experience has shown us, that we interfere in them only to exasperate them.' The Irish could not conceivably be 'more

12 England's Disgrace? wretched than they are/ and England must benefit greatly from relinquishing her misplaced military obligations. The elder Mill candidly calls for an unqualified severing of the Union. 'We have not the least doubt, that the expedient thing for England would be, at once to dissolve her connexion with Ireland, and to live with her as we live with Sweden or Denmark, as good neighbours only.' All the same, he has no illusions about the readiness of England's governors to act upon this recommendation. 'While the aristocratical government of England remains as it is, so will that of Ireland.'17 Although James Mill does not hesitate to blame the aristocracies of England and Ireland for Irish evils, those evils concern him only in their bearing on England. His understanding of Ireland's relation to England leads him to advocate separation. The diseased condition of Ireland is something against which England ought to protect herself. Mill's 1826 examination of the 'state of the nation' includes a section on the prospects of the English working classes in which the author grimly refers to the 'perpetual influx ... of starving Irish' into England. He declares that an 'Irish population, wretched and degraded to the last degree, is pouring into this country,' and suggests that this may 'keep wages down to the starving degree, whatever the prudence and morality of the English population.' Insisting that a 'wise and beneficent legislature' would move expeditiously to guard against this dire threat, Mill urges the imposition of 'a cordon against the most dreadful plague that ever infested human nature.'18 Ireland induced revulsion in James Mill, a revulsion that helps explain his usual reserve on the subject. His disgust could do nothing for his political program, which was driven by his rancour towards the aristocracy. As for the transgressions of aristocratic government in Ireland, they were transparent and did not cry out for extended exposure and analysis. With James Mill antipathy for the malefactors tended to trump sympathy for the downtrodden. Bentham himself put it this way: 'He argues against oppression, less because he loves the oppressed many, than because he hates the oppressing few.'19 Apropos of Ireland, Bentham might have said that where he was moved principally by a desire to ease the pain of the Catholics, James Mill was moved principally by a desire to reduce the pleasure of the aristocracy. During his adult life J.S. Mill intermittently searched for an answer to the Irish question, the cumulative result being a body of work whose magnitude went far beyond the meagre Irish legacy left him by Bentham and James Mill. Even before he reached the age of majority J.S. Mill had

Mill and Ireland in the Age of O'Connell

13

written more on the subject than had Bentham and his father combined. Yet the substance of his remarks respecting Ireland during the second half of the 18205 unmistakably displays the effects of his early political education. 2. THE CATHOLIC QUESTION

The longest single piece J.S. Mill ever drafted on Ireland was written in 1825 and published the following year. In his own bibliography this essay is listed as 'An article on the Catholic Question which appeared in the Parliamentary Review for 1825.'20 To understand fully its character something must be said of the journal that printed it. Mill's article opened the first number of the Parliamentary History and Review, a shortlived periodical whose founding stemmed from the financial backing of John Marshall, a wealthy Leeds manufacturer and Member of Parliament for Yorkshire. Mill writes in the Autobiography that Marshall 'had been much struck with Bentham's Book of Fallacies: and the thought had occurred to him that it would be useful to publish annually the Parliamentary Debates, not in the chronological order of Hansard, but classified according to subjects, and accompanied by a commentary pointing out the fallacies of the speakers/21 In all, five volumes of the Parliamentary History and Review were published. The first two were issued as a set - one volume of Parliamentary History, one of Parliamentary Review in 1826. The second pair of volumes, arranged in the same fashion, also appeared in that year. The final volume, entitled The Parliamentary Review, was brought out in 1828.22 Peregrine Bingham, the editor of Bentham's Book of Fallacies, assumed the editorship of the Parliamentary History and Review, assisted by Charles Austin. Contributors, apart from Bingham, Austin, and Mill, included Edward Strutt, John Romilly, Walter Coulson, and James Mill.23 The periodical was especially the vehicle of those younger Benthamites (some of them closely associated with Charles Austin's Cambridge circle) for whom the Westminster Review was proving to be a disappointment as an instrument of sectarian propaganda. The topics treated in the Parliamentary History and Review would be selected from the subjects taken up by Parliament in a particular session; the treatment afforded them would be firmly anchored in Benthamite doctrine. The inception of the Parliamentary History and Review coincided with J.S. Mill's editing of Bentham's Rationale of Judicial Evidence, published in five volumes in 1827. A task of daunting proportions, this project

14 England's Disgrace? exposed the younger Mill to a massive and concentrated dose of Benthamism.24 It was not the first exposure, to be sure, but it is worth remembering that Mill's ardent Benthamite faith, as yet unsullied by the doubts that would intrude with the onset of the subsequent 'mental crisis,' never burned more brilliantly than in 1825. His essay on the Catholic question, unsurprisingly, is tinctured with observations of a Benthamite hue. The actions of public, like those of private, men, are governed by their interests.' 'It will also be allowed, that, if there be a danger, and if security against that danger require the imposition of disabilities on account of religious opinions; at least no disability should exist which does not, in some way or another, conduce to the end in view; that end being, security/ The propensity to pursue their own interests, is not peculiar to Catholic human beings.' 'All men love power: most men love it better than any other thing, human or divine.' Thinking, however, is trouble: to the mass of mankind it is the most insupportable of all kinds of trouble: and trouble being pain, and pain being a thing which every body avoids as much as he can, we find that, as a general rule, a man will never do anything requiring trouble, which he thinks he can, without too great a sacrifice, prevail upon another person to do for him.' 'It is a principle of human nature, as well established as any principle can be, that, taking men as they are (that is, ninety-nine out of every hundred of them), a man's opinion, as such is of no value, on any matter in which his interest is concerned.'25 Granted that a pronounced Benthamite perspective on general principles imbues Mill's essay, it does not follow that the precise issues he addressed, the product of political developments in Ireland and in Parliament, could be managed by way of a ready-made Benthamite formula. When it came to the details, Mill could not find much in the works of Bentham or James Mill to serve as a guide. This he probably did not regret, for he was keen to hoist his own sail up the Radical mast. In a retrospective assessment of his contributions to the Parliamentary History and Review Mill observes: These writings were no longer mere reproductions and applications of the doctrines I had been taught; they were original thinking, as far as that name can be applied to old ideas in new forms and connexions: and I do not exceed the truth in saying that there was a real maturity, and a well-digested character about them, which there had not been in any of my previous performances.26

Mill and Ireland in the Age of O'Connell

15

Here Mill does not claim too much. In the essay on Ireland he sustains an impressive measure of control over his material and his argument, the latter of which is very much his own. The powers of organization and analysis he exhibits are patently those of a young man endowed with abundant intellectual gifts. Writing for the Edinburgh Review, Henry Brougham - Whig lawyer, politician, and prolific essayist - acknowledged Mill's article as an 'extremely able' composition (not without taking exception to some of its content).27 The circumstances engendering this composition called upon its author to form his own political judgments on particular events and proposals, and Mill avidly took up the challenge. The Parliamentary History and Review gave ample coverage to the Catholic question in its first number because it had been the major topic during the 1825 session. The problem, as it presented itself to Parliament at this time, concerned the Catholic Association, founded in 1823 by Daniel O'Connell and Richard Lalor Sheil, whose political reconciliation had paved the way for the launching of the new organization.28 Its primary objective was Catholic emancipation (the removal of the remaining legal disabilities imposed on Catholics, especially the exclusion of Catholics from Parliament). The Association, however, did not restrict itself to the issue of emancipation, tackling a multitude of Catholic grievances, not least those arising from a system of justice that was seen by the Catholics of Ireland as discriminatory.29 O'Connell put the Association on a new footing in 1824 with the introduction of the 'Catholic Rent,' which enabled the mass body of ordinary Catholics to participate in the movement through making modest yet regular contributions to the cause. The collection of the 'Catholic Rent' necessitated the creation of a fairly elaborate political organization, which by the end of 1824 the ministry of Lord Liverpool considered a threat to public order and a challenge to the authority of the British government in Ireland.30 The Liverpool administration resolved to introduce special legislation designed to suppress the Catholic Association. In bringing forward such legislation, however, the government could not evade debate on the issue of emancipation itself. Those who opposed this prescriptive measure (which entered the statute book in early March 1825) argued that the Catholic Association derived its strength from the injustice of the disabilities endured by the Catholic majority in Ireland. In their view, concession rather than suppression was the appropriate response. On i March Sir Francis Burdett,

16 England's Disgrace? veteran Radical MP for Westminster, moved for a committee of the whole to examine the Catholic claims. This motion having passed by thirteen votes, Burdett proceeded to introduce a Catholic Relief Bill on 25 March. This emancipation measure had been drafted in consultation with O'Connell, and it was supplemented by two other bills known as the 'wings/ without which it was assumed emancipation would not fly. One of these proposed state payment of salaries to the Catholic clergy; the other provided for the disfranchisement of the forty-shilling freeholders in Irish counties. (The disabilities suffered by Irish Catholics did not include franchise disqualification on religious grounds.) The Catholic clergy of Ireland had played a conspicuous part in the collection of the 'Catholic Rent' - supporters of state stipends maintained that such payments would reduce the priests' dependence on the masses and enhance their loyalty to the state. Disfranchisement of the forty-shilling freeholders, it was argued, would remove the 'democratic' and 'corrupt' element from the electorate, thereby rendering its make-up more respectable and reliable.31 These 'securities' helped win support for the main measure, which passed the House of Commons by twenty-one votes. The Catholic Relief Bill, however, suffered defeat in the House of Lords by an unexpectedly large margin (forty-eight votes) after a notably strong and uncompromising anti-Catholic speech by Lord Liverpool. Such were the events that occasioned Mill's essay, the sections of which are fairly strictly demarcated. Following an exordium (aptly described by the editor of Mill's Collected Works as 'stiff and almost graceless')32 that sets forth the general purposes of the Parliamentary History and Review, Mill discusses the issue of Catholic emancipation. From there he goes on to the Catholic Association and its suppression by the government. Having shown to his own satisfaction that the arguments against Catholic emancipation lacked validity and that the justification offered for suppressing the Catholic Association was devoid of merit, Mill then provides an extended commentary on specific contributions to the debates on these topics. He subsequently takes up the 'wings,' and closes with a section whose purpose is to throw into high relief the dichotomy between what the governing class said about the virtues of British government in Ireland and the actual state of affairs in that unhappy country. The political motives directing Mill's enterprise are discernible in his treatment of the main question - Catholic emancipation. Mill scarcely feels the need to argue for Catholic emancipation; it is enough to

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uncover the inanity of those who oppose it. The approach he adopts is studiedly hard-headed. He maintains that the public mind is sufficiently advanced to grasp that the imposition of legal penalties on religious grounds could have no warrant other than the vital security interests of the larger community (perhaps a sentimental enough statement on the face of it, but one rooted in rhetorical strategy). Mill proceeds to show that the disabilities imposed on Catholics contributed nothing to those interests, and that the opponents of Catholic emancipation were altogether unable to demonstrate otherwise. 'What they have in their minds is an indistinct feeling that the Catholics are dangerous persons: and this being assumed, it never occurs to them to consider, whether the Catholics not emancipated are not fully as dangerous as the Catholics emancipated would be.'33 Mill makes no claim for the trustworthiness of the Catholics. Like any other body of men, they 'would not be satisfied with equality, if they could obtain superiority.'34 He grants that they would happily appropriate to themselves the temporalities of the Protestant church, and would with equal pleasure substitute a Catholic ascendancy for the Protestant one. The issue, however, is not what the Catholics would do if they could, but whether the concession of emancipation would render them any more of a threat than they were unemancipated. In either instance, Mill contends, the substantial preponderance of Protestants over Catholics in the population of the United Kingdom would preclude the establishment of a Catholic state. If a combination of Catholics and Protestant dissenters constituted a majority of the population of the United Kingdom and exerted sufficient influence to deprive the Anglican church of its privileged position, thereby making all religions 'equal in the eye of the law/ the community as a whole, Mill implies, would be none the worse for it. He thinks such an outcome highly improbable. Indeed, the crux of this portion of his argument is that the conceding of Catholic emancipation can have little practical effect on the distribution of political power. Entirely too much weight had been placed upon the issue. 'We do not think that of itself it would do much for Ireland; the evils by which that country is afflicted, are not to be so summarily cured: and though Catholic emancipation might be a useful preparative to other and more important amelioration, we do not think that it is by any means a necessary one.'35 This being the case, why had the agitation for Catholic emancipation attained such formidable proportions in Ireland? The mass of the population stood to gain nothing by it. 'Eligibility to office would be to them

i8 England's Disgrace? but a nominal privilege: excluded in fact by their situation in life, it is scarcely an additional evil to be excluded in law too/36 Mill goes so far as to doubt that the Irish masses did care deeply about emancipation. But if they did, 'they must expect much more from it than the removal of disabilities; they must expect something which cannot be realized: to them, therefore, the effect of emancipation would be disappointment; and disappointment is seldom followed by tranquillity.'37 Tranquillity could not be had in Ireland 'so long as its inhabitants are the poorest and the most oppressed people in Europe.'38 Mill here places the Irish question within a structure of political analysis typical of Philosophic Radicalism. The evils of Ireland were the product of aristocratic domination. Government and the law in Ireland exist... solely for the benefit of the strong ... [T]he Irish peasant is at the mercy, not only of a whole series of landlords, from the proprietor of the soil down to the lowest middleman, but moreover of the tithe-owner and the tithe-farmer or proctor, to say nothing of vestries and grand juries: ... there is no law, no administration of justice for him; the superior courts being at all times inaccessible to him, and those of the country magistrates who do not take bribes, being for the most part leagued together to deny him redress.39

The source of the misery experienced by the Irish masses was not the legal disabilities suffered by Catholics, and the elimination of those disabilities would do nothing to alleviate the misery. 'It is not the power of the Protestant over the Catholic, which has made Ireland what she is: it is the power of the rich over the poor.'40 Parliament made such a fuss over Catholic emancipation because neither the Tory government nor the Whig opposition, sharing a resolve to preserve aristocratic political hegemony, wished to draw attention to the greater evils. Echoing the diagnosis deduced from his examination of the Edinburgh Review in i824,41 Mill declares that the Whigs, like the Tories, belong 'to those classes for the benefit of which all great abuses exist'; in castigating the Tories, whose places they coveted, the Whigs accordingly fall 'might and main upon the small abuses, and do every thing in their power to cause them to be taken for great ones/42 Mill brings the section on Catholic emancipation to a caustic finish. The Catholic Question, appearing well adapted to the purpose, is eagerly laid hold of by the Whigs, and a part of the Tories, and exalted into a sovereign

Mill and Ireland in the Age of O'Connell 19 remedy for the ills of Ireland. It answers the purposes of the Whigs, by affording a handle for attacking the ministry, who, having such a panacea in their hands, neglect to apply it. It serves the purposes of both sections of the Tories, by diverting the public attention, from much more important grievances. All parties being thus interested in making as much noise about this question as possible, it is not wonderful that so much noise has been made.43

This idee fixe of a factitious Tory-Whig rivalry, created and perpetuated to conceal the fundamental antagonism of interest between the aristocracy and the people, functioned as the explanatory well from which Mill drew much of his elucidation of parliamentary politics during the 18205 and 18305. As such, this view was not without serious shortcomings. Although it furnished Mill with the analytical premise he required to make sense of the political scene, the sense it called upon him to make could not begin to capture the complexity of the political phenomena he tried to explicate.44 Arguably no political theory, however well it fitted the 'facts/ could have enabled Mill and his associates to secure their objectives; what is certain is that the political strategy he devised rested on a defective conceptual foundation. His fault lies not in the perception that Whigs and Tories had vital interests in common as members of the governing class; it lies in the degree to which he allowed his bias to cloud his apprehension of what their differences signified. Part of the reason those differences counted for as much as they did is that 'the people/ conceived by Mill as the political force antagonistic to the aristocracy, simply did not exist, and could not exist, as a coherent entity.45 Mill's theory needed 'the people' because in their absence the Radicals had no legitimate constituency to represent. Whereas 'the people' was an imagined construct, the 'aristocracy' was real enough. Tories and Whigs in the main did agree that aristocratic influence should be sustained. At the same time, they were at odds over the means best adapted to accomplish this end. Their conflicts could even involve differences over not unimportant issues of principle. Of this Mill had some awareness, but not nearly enough judging by the frame of analysis he frequently employed. Catholic emancipation was one of those issues. The Whigs were virtually unanimous in their warm and consistent support of Catholic emancipation. Although in 1825 Robert Peel was the only Commoner in the cabinet opposed to Catholic emancipation, the bulk of the Tory rank and file fervently resisted the admission of Catholics to Parliament. Unbeknownst to Mill, the developments of 1825 drove Lord

20 England's Disgrace? Liverpool and Peel to the brink of resignation, so disturbed were they by what they saw as the dire and irreversible erosion of their antiCatholic position.46 Much of what the Whigs did and would try to do for Ireland in the 18305 could not be easily squared with the presuppositions of the Philosophic Radicals. A distinguished historian of nineteenth-century Ireland observes that 'it was the 18305 which, in a very real sense, prepared the ground for Ireland's development as a modern political and administrative entity.'47 Whether or not the granting of Catholic emancipation was a necessary precondition for the reforms of the 18305 is a moot point. The fact is that the political forces in Ireland and at Westminster responsible for the latter were much the same as those that assured adoption of the former, and that a political environment hostile to Catholic emancipation can scarcely be reconciled with the Irish achievement of the Whigs. Mill's deprecatory treatment of the contest over Catholic emancipation greatly annoyed Henry Brougham. In Brougham's view, Mill's attempt to show that too high a value had been placed on Catholic emancipation by its advocates was 'a great mistake.' He also protested that the Parliamentary History and Review gravely misrepresented the view of the question taken by its supporters. No one pretends that this measure alone would remedy the countless ills under which so many bad laws and so long a course of misrule have almost overwhelmed that unhappy people. Nor is it any discovery of the writers whose work we are examining, that more, far more than Emancipation, is wanting for their redress. But all who best understand the state of the country and all who most deeply weigh the merits of the question without any local knowledge, are agreed in thinking that this measure must be given, whatever reforms are in contemplation - that its immediate effect will be conciliation, and the restoration, rather we ought to say creation, of something like confidence in the Irish people towards England and the Government; and above all, that it will tend to extinguish the sentiments of sectarian animosity, if not to weaken and finally efface the sectarian distinctions, so fatal to improvement, so repellant [sic] of every advance towards a wise system of laws, or a better course of administration.48

It may not be unfair, given the course of events in Ireland after 1829, to suggest that Whig faith in the healing power of Catholic emancipation was naive. To ascribe insincerity to their declarations would be unfair. There can be no doubt that Brougham writes with point and feeling

Mill and Ireland in the Age of O'Connell 21 when he asserts that 'a great object of this disquisition [Mill's article]... is to show, that nobody is in the right; and that all parties are equally wide of the mark ... except that party or sect furnishing these essays.'49 Acknowledging that Parliament and much else was in need of reform, Brougham avers that the 'absurd exaggeration' informing this sect's allegation 'that all are equally interested in, and therefore equally friendly to, every real evil' was anything but helpful to the 'detection' and 'correction' of corruption and abuse. He rejects as utterly unfounded the notion that the self-proclaimed friends of reform were 'only disposed to attack petty abuses, after they have magnified them for the fraudulent purpose of at once exalting their own merits and allowing the great evils to escape.'50 Brougham professes confidence that 'the country' would know that such charges were baseless; nonetheless, the attitude of those who conduct the Parliamentary History and Review injures the 'cause in which they, and we ... are warmly interested' by giving satisfaction 'to our common adversaries, the enemies of all improvement and all reform,' and by diminishing 'the effect of whatever is valuable and judicious in the pages under review.'51 Although Brougham's complaints had some merit, the young Mill evidently did not take much notice of their substance. That he relished the attention paid his composition by the Edinburgh Review can be inferred from a statement in the cancelled text of the early draft of his Autobiography, written almost thirty years after the event. Mill observes: This article was much complimented in the Edinburgh Review by Brougham (who was attacked in it), although to my annoyance, Bingham had struck out, or obliged me to modify, many of what I thought the most piquant passages.'52 The tone of Mill's essay on Ireland is in keeping with this recollection. It carries the trademark of a swaggering and brilliant political sectarian eager to achieve recognition for himself and his cause. The authorial voice strives to convey political maturity and worldliness; strains to give expression to an unyielding toughmindedness. One is reminded of the remark in the Autobiography pertinent to this period of Mill's life: 'Ambition and desire of distinction, I had in abundance.'53 They show, not only in his treatment of Catholic emancipation, but in his handling of the Catholic Association and the 'wings.' By the mid-i82os the struggle in Ireland for Catholic emancipation had become the possession of the Catholic Association. Mill's review of the Association is consistent with his determination to test all aspects of the Catholic problem against the question, Who exercises power over

22 England's Disgrace? whom, and with what results? Be it the stated objectives or the conduct of the Catholic Association, he can find nothing to condemn (neither can Brougham).54 Mill notes that its leaders had urged 'their Catholic countrymen ... to remain peaceable and obedient to the laws/55 The principal purpose of the Association, to agitate for the abolition of Catholic disabilities, "cannot well be said to be a blameable one.'56 Its endeavour to give 'the poor man access to that justice which the expensiveness of the law has put out of the reach of every man who does not come with a full purse in his hand, - this surely was among the most laudable of all purposes/57 Why, then, did the government deem it necessary to suppress the Catholic Association? Simply because its activities gave great alarm to the Protestant aristocracy of Ireland. The few, in every country, are remarkable for being easily alarmed; more especially when any one takes upon himself to censure their acts. So easily are they frightened at censure, that they never seem to feel secure until they imagine that they have put a stop to it entirely; and whenever they have been able, they have treated such censure as a crime which could never be punished too severely.58

Those who wanted the Catholic Association put down used their power to obtain an act of Parliament aimed at accomplishing its suppression. Mill scathingly rejects nearly all the reasons offered by MPs in support of the legislation. He lists twenty-four such reasons, and of these is prepared to discuss only three: '[Wle abandon twenty-one to the justice and mercy of the reader/59 He then examines the charges that the leaders of the Association had made 'inflammatory speeches'; that coercion had been applied in the collection of the 'Catholic Rent'; and that the Association had interfered 'in the administration of justice/60 The burden of Mill's refutation of the first charge is that the seeds of Irish disturbance and agitation were sown not by the Catholic Association but by the flagrant injustices wreaked upon the masses. He defends the organization Parliament had so recently outlawed in a passage of striking political invective. Here is a country, we say, in which ... there is one law for the rich, and another for the poor. Here is a people, who, having the smallest pittance beyond what is barely sufficient to sustain life, are compelled to give up nearly the whole of that pittance to build churches and pay clergymen for about one-fourteenth part of their number: in return for which, that fourteenth part take every

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opportunity of expressing their hatred and contempt for those who furnish them with money for these purposes, and their firm determination to extort as much more money from them, for other purposes of all sorts, as they can. Now then comes the Catholic Association, and, addressing itself to the thirteenfourteenths, tells them that all this misery and degradation is not the work of nature, but of men; powerful men, who produce it for their own advantage, who for their own advantage will continue it as long as they have power, and who therefore, as a first step to effecting any improvement, must be deprived of power. This may be called exasperating animosities; in a certain sense, it is exasperating animosities: to tell the many in what way the few have treated them, certainly has no tendency to make them love the few: and if the Catholic Association are to be tried by this standard, their cause, we fear, must be given up: as must also that of all other reformers, ancient or modern. If it be always a crime to excite animosities, it must be always a crime to expose abuses. If the exposure is to be deferred until it can be made in such language as will excite sentiments of affection and good-will towards the authors of the abuses, it would be as reasonable, and more honest, to say, that it is not to be made at all.61

The question of the 'Catholic Rent' is briskly disposed of. A systematic collection of money by associations of one description or another was a common enough practice, and Mill pointedly makes reference to the Methodist Conference, which 'is accustomed to levy money to a much greater amount [than the Catholic Association], and for purposes much more strictly sectarian.'62 The enemies of the Catholic Association thus had set their sights upon the means by which the funds were raised. They claimed that the collection of the 'Rent' had in many instances been entrusted to priests (which no one denied), and suggested that the priests 'extorted subscriptions by refusing the sacraments to those who did not subscribe.'63 Nothing in the way of proof accompanied these accusations. And if such 'moral coercion' did occur, and 'if the peasant can be persuaded to give money, in order to purchase absolution/ was it sensible to suppose 'that this sort of traffic should be put a stop to by an Act of Parliament?'64 The allegation had been made that the Association recorded in a black book the names of persons refusing to pay the 'Rent.' This charge had been answered in the House by Brougham, speaking on behalf of the Association, who declared that the names of such persons were not set down in any book, black or otherwise.65 The House refused Brougham's request to present evidence at the bar of the House in support of this contention.66 (One

24 England's Disgrace? wonders what sort of material could constitute 'proof that no such entries or books existed.) Mill feels no need to say more about the 'Catholic Rent/ The only other charge he thinks worthy of an answer concerns 'interference with the administration of justice/ The Catholic Association had publicized cases in which it alleged that a Catholic had been wronged, and had assisted the aggrieved party in launching and sustaining a prosecution. Mill gives scant space to the latter issue, implying that what little justice was to be had for poverty-stricken Catholics could be secured solely through such assistance. In reply to the objection that the statements issued by the Catholic Association before trial biased the jurors, Mill observes that in the two prosecutions cited by the Association's detractors the defendants had been acquitted. In any event, he submits, it was no disadvantage to the accused to know in advance of the trial all that might be used and said against him during the trial.67 From this section the reader is meant to conclude that if these are the most credible of the twenty-four charges levelled against the Catholic Association, the author can be forgiven for not bothering to refute the other twenty-one. Does it follow that the ministry and the large majority in Parliament backing it on this matter were simply acting out of spite? Certainly Liverpool and his colleagues did not think so. Inured to dealing with the problem of secret societies and agrarian outrage, the Irish administration had much less experience coping with a highly visible, mass-based movement that aspired to end the Protestant ascendancy through what purported to be constitutional means. Indeed, nothing like the challenge mounted by the Catholic Association had confronted the authorities since the formation of the Union. The Association exhibited an organizational proficiency and a capacity to direct the actions of the Catholic masses that understandably perturbed a government incapable of winning the allegiance of most of the Irish population. A corollary of the commitment to preserve British rule in Ireland was the resolve to do whatever could be done to suppress any significant threat to its survival. Failure to respond vigorously and decisively would call into question the will of the authorities to uphold the existing regime, and thereby undermine the confidence of those forces in Ireland upon which the British government depended for support. Suppression of the Catholic Association lay in the logic of the situation - even the proponents of Catholic emancipation in the government did not question the necessity of that suppression. The government's predicament, as portrayed by Mill, invited mockery.

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If the association had not pacified the Irish, that would have been a reason for putting it down: but it did pacify the Irish: and this also was a reason for putting it down. It was discovered, that, as it had power, to quell disturbances, it probably had power to raise them: and as it was probable that it had the power, it could not but appear certain that it had the will. Upon this principle, we should be justified in throwing a man into prison, for helping a drowning person out of a river. If he had power to drag him out, he has power to push him in: so dangerous a man must not be suffered to go at large: no time must be lost in depriving him of the means of doing mischief.68

Much of the remainder of the essay is devoted to the ancillary measures, the 'wings': state provision for the Catholic clergy and disfranchisement of the forty-shilling freeholders. Mill's treatment of the first proposal borders on the eccentric. He endorses state payment of the Catholic clergy for reasons calculated to give maximum offence to all parties. That endorsement rests chiefly upon his perception of a link between the influence of the Catholic clergy and the excessive rate of population growth in Ireland. As is well known, Mill set much store by the Malthusian principle of population, without necessarily subscribing to Malthus's deeply pessimistic vision of its implications (Malthus himself adopted a somewhat less gloomy view in the second [1803] and succeeding editions of the Essay on the Principle of Population). Mill felt strongly enough about the matter to distribute birth-control literature, for which he was arrested in i823.69 Near the end of that year he wrote two letters on the 'Question of Population' to the editor (Thomas Jonathan Wooler) of the Black Dwarf, and two more on the subject in the early months of 18247° In his Parliamentary History and Review article Mill asserts that one of Ireland's 'greatest evils' is 'a deficiency of employment compared with the numbers of the people, or, what is the same thing, an excess of numbers, compared with the means of employment.'71 Inasmuch as the income of the priests depended so heavily on the fees received from marriages and baptisms (along with funerals), it was in their interest to encourage early marriages, which in turn exacerbated the pressure of population in Ireland.72 State provision for the clergy would reduce substantially that dependence. Mill goes further, suggesting that the fees paid for these services should form part of the public revenue and be used to help defray the cost of the stipends. He brings a second consideration to bear on the issue, arguing that paying the clergy would lessen their involvement in proselytism. As matters stood, the priest's income was markedly affected by the size of his flock, and hence the incentive to win converts corre-

26 England's Disgrace? spondingly large. 'Believing, as we do, the Catholic religion to be a bad one, we of course think it undesirable that proselytes should be made to it/73 Having explained why the Catholic clergy should be put on the state payroll, Mill proceeds to point out why the reasons put forward by members of Parliament in support of the proposal - that the Catholic clergy were a worthy body of men; that they should be formally connected with the state; that the provision of a stipend would attract men from the higher classes into their ranks - were specious where they were not fatuous. And he has an even lower opinion of the arguments presented by those objecting to the proposal, especially the notion that state provision would weaken the hold of the clergy, and that such an outcome ought not to be welcomed. It has not, however, been proved by any sufficient evidence, that the Catholics would like their priests the less for being no longer a burden on them; that they feel the burden most severely, is well known... Further, if it were made out, that the influence of the priests would be diminished by a public provision, we should not consider this an evil, but a good; it appearing to us to be any thing but beneficial, either to religion or morality, that a body of priests should exercise any such influence over the people, as is exercised by the Catholic clergy: and the influence of the priests having besides afforded to the enemies of emancipation their most plausible topic of alarm.74

Mill has even less use for landlords than for priests, and his view of the undue influence the former exercise has much to do with the decided line he adopts on the proposed disfranchisement of the fortyshilling freeholders. He confesses that at first glance the issue presents something of a problem, but the difficulty resides in the failure to distinguish form from substance. It matters little how many have the vote if the power to control those votes rests with 'two or three real choosers; the two or three thousand, who are the nominal choosers, discharging no other functions, in regard to the favoured candidate, than that of committing to memory his name, and repeating it at the hustings, to a person stationed there to hear it.'75 Drawing upon evidence taken by select committees of the Commons and the Lords during 1824 and 1825, Mill concludes that such a characterization fits the state of affairs in the Irish county constituencies, and that the so-called forty-shilling freeholders were merely 'the tools of their landlords/76 There being no prospect of Parliament applying the 'proper remedy/

Mill and Ireland in the Age of O'Connell 27 vote by secret ballot, a strong case could be made for disfranchisement of the forty-shilling freeholders. Disfranchisement there was a chance of obtaining: it could do no harm, and might do good; by taking away from a few lords of the soil the power of bringing their thousands and tens of thousands to the poll, it would tend to give at least somewhat more importance to the small number of electors who can choose for themselves, without drawing upon their heads inevitable ruin. It is no mark of wisdom to reject what is good, because you cannot have what is better77

It may seem odd that Mill should be so blase about the disfranchisement of more than 80 per cent of the Irish county electorate (when the freeholders were disfranchised in 1829 the number of county voters fell from 216,000 to 37,ooo.)78 Yet his approach to the issue is in keeping with the relentlessly consequentialist analysis to which he subjected each of the questions raised by the political developments of 1825. Although the tenets of Benthamism furnished the general standard of measurement against which expected consequences were calculated, the specific criteria employed almost invariably concerned the possession and distribution of political power. It is true that Mill did not fathom the radical potential of the Irish freeholders. At the 1826 general election rebellious freeholders defied their landlords in a number of Irish counties and contributed notably to the success of emancipationist candidates. But if Mill had misjudged, so had O'Connell, who saw the freeholders as 'an impediment rather than an aid to political progress/ a view 'to which he was to cling until the general election of 1826 conclusively proved him wrong.'79 Whatever Mill has to say about forty-shilling freeholders, state stipends for priests, the Catholic Association, or Catholic emancipation, the content of his first essay on Ireland does not signify earnest engagement of author with subject. The article's provenance is to be found in the character and purpose of the Parliamentary History and Review; in the prominence of the Catholic question in the parliamentary session of 1825; and in the ambition of a precocious political journalist to brandish his intellectual power and verbal dexterity. To say that Mill was indifferent to Ireland would be to say too much. The interest he had, however, derived mainly from his conviction that the pernicious consequences of aristocratic government were nowhere more evident than in that country. As Mill put it in an 1826 London Debating Society

28 England's Disgrace? speech: 'But if you wish to see the British Constitution in its unadulterated state, read the Evidence before the Irish Committees [the select committees of the Commons and Lords], and see how Ireland is governed.'80 The inadequacy of English political institutions and the culpability of the English aristocracy were egregiously exhibited across the Irish Sea, and the events of 1825 impelled Mill to situate Ireland in the comprehensive indictment of aristocratic government that he and his Benthamite associates were constructing. A couple of points should be made about topics the 1825 essay does not tackle. Apart from a cursory consideration of the population question, the essay eschews any substantive discussion of the moral and material condition of the Irish masses and what might be done to improve that condition (this component of the Irish question would be central to Mill's major engagement with the famine some two decades after the publication of his first article on Ireland). The land question the nucleus of what might be termed 'the condition of Ireland question' - receives slight treatment from Mill in 1825. What he does say about it appears in the section on landlord electoral influence, where he denies that the minute subdivision of land arose to any great extent from the desire of landlords to create freeholds over which they could exercise electoral control. That the lands should be parcelled out in small farms, was no more than natural in a country where, till of late, scarcely any tenants had capital enough to occupy large ones.' There is no hint of any special sympathy for peasant proprietorship. 'Now, when capital is flowing into the country, the landlords are rapidly clearing their estates of the wretched cottier tenantry; uniting numbers of small farms into one, and introducing a better system of cultivation.'81 From Mill's handling of the land question it cannot be reasonably inferred that he took no interest in the subject - in accordance with the purposes of the Parliamentary History and Review, his essay was shaped by the political developments of 1825, in which the land question did not much figure. Those political developments, however, could have led Mill to consider the fundamental issue of Ireland's connection with England. Unlike the father, whose Irish paragraph of October 1826 would call for a dissolution of the Union, the son steered clear of the subject. To surmise from this silence that the younger Mill did not share his father's opinion would be reckless. Yet if evidence from the 18305 were brought to bear on this problem it would lend support to such an inference. More on this later. In noting what Mill excluded from his 1825 essay it is useful to

Mill and Ireland in the Age of O'Connell 29 remember that in his bibliography he designated it 'An article on the Catholic Question/ and in the Autobiography as an article on 'the Catholic Association and the Catholic disabilities.'82 Does its content enable the reader to predict accurately the character of Mill's response to the advent of Catholic emancipation in 1829? Insofar as the implications for Ireland were concerned, the answer is yes; conversely, one could not deduce, on the basis of the 1825 essay, that Mill would find quite so much 'English' meaning in Catholic emancipation as he in fact did in 1829. Writing to Gustave d'Eichtal shortly after the introduction of the Emancipation Bill, whose passage appeared certain, Mill declared that emancipation's effect in Ireland will be a trifle compared to its effect in England. It forms an era in civilization. It is one of those great events, which periodically occur, by which the institutions of a country are brought into harmony with the better part of the mind of the country - by which that which previously existed in the minds only, of the more intelligent portion of the community, becomes the law of the land, and by consequence raises the whole of the community to its own level ... Besides all this, the alteration of so important and so old a law as that which excludes Catholics from political privileges, has given a shake to men's minds which has loosened all old privileges, and will render them far more accessible to new ideas and to rational innovations on all other parts of our institutions.83

The influence of d'Eichtal and his fellow Saint-Simonians on Mill's thought at this time is reflected in this passage. Between 1826 and 1829 Mill experienced the 'mental crisis' and embarked on a program of selfcultivation aimed at enlarging his sympathies and erecting an intellectual edifice more spacious than that bequeathed him by James Mill and Jeremy Bentham. He became acquainted with d'Eichtal after the latter attended an 1828 meeting of the London Debating Society at which Mill displayed his remarkable intellectual force. Eager to bring Mill into the Saint-Simonian fold, d'Eichtal put in his way an abundance of the school's propaganda and maintained a vigorous correspondence with him. There was much in Saint-Simonianism to which Mill was not drawn, but he proved highly receptive to its philosophy of history, whose pivotal notion was the regular recurrence of organic and critical periods. Society in an organic period possesses a unity rooted in a positive creed that gives coherence to its sentiments and activity. Once that creed has generat whatever progress is immanent in it, it sue-

30 England's Disgrace? cumbs to a critical period marked by intellectual dislocation, negative criticism, and social turbulence. From this philosophy of history Mill obtained an exegetical scheme for construing the discordant features of his own age and their significance. He was living in a critical period. As he put it in 'The Spirit of the Age/ an 1831 series of newspaper articles heavily indebted to Saint-Simonianism, 'The first of the leading peculiarities of the present age is, that it is an age of transition. Mankind have outgrown old institutions and old doctrines, and have not yet acquired new ones.'84 Catholic emancipation stood as a crucial landmark of transition, the signal of a fundamental shift in the intellectual and political terrain. In essence, moreover, it was about England, not Ireland. Such a reading of Catholic emancipation - a reading impervious to the event's association with an extraordinary mobilization of the Catholics of Ireland directed by a hugely resourceful Irish politician - attests to the acutely Anglocentric perspective Mill then brought to political questions bearing on Ireland. The men's minds to which Catholic emancipation 'had given a shake' were the minds of Englishmen. Relative to Ireland, the coming of Catholic emancipation carried little meaning for Mill. As an active journalistic agent of Philosophic Radicalism in the decade that followed, Mill would persist in seeing Irish issues through an English prism. 3. THE 18305 In no decade - not even that of the i86os, when for several years he occupied a seat in the House of Commons - did Mill take a greater interest in British politics than he did during the 18305. Convinced that the political order created by the 1832 Reform Act could be rendered hospitable to radical sway, Mill would try to shape and support a movement that he hoped could foster rapid political and social progress. In April 1835 he became de facto editor of the London Review, which merged with the Westminster Review in the spring of the following year under Mill's editorship.85 His primary goal was to advance the formation of a Radical party that could effectually compete against both Whigs and Tories in the struggle for power.86 When Mill glanced in the direction of Ireland, he did so mainly because Irish issues had the potential to influence the fortunes of English parties. In the two years that followed the passage of the Reform Act, however, Mill did not evince an especially keen interest in political develop-

Mill and Ireland in the Age of O'Connell 31 ments. It was not easy for anyone to know precisely what those developments signified. There was little in the way of an organized opposition to the government of Lord Grey. The anti-reformers had been decimated in the December 1832 general election, and those Tories who did secure seats, perhaps 150 in number, were not ready to turn to Peel for leadership. Yet there was plenty of disarray on the reform side of the House, and to speak of a House of Commons divided along party lines would be inapt. Radicals of various stripes, when combined with O'Connell's Irish contingent, made up a larger group in the Commons than did the Tories. Whereas the Irish had a recognized leader, the Radicals did not. Altogether the House of Commons had an amorphous quality. Had Mill been in a different frame of mind, he might have found some promise in what struck most as an unsettled political environment. As it was, he tended to be rather dismissive about practical politics. Writing to Thomas Carlyle directly after the general election of 1832 Mill observed: 'Almost all the candidates in whose success I took any personal interest, have succeeded. Among them are three men who, I expect, will do something: these are, Grote, Roebuck, & John Romilly: to these, if his inapplication will let him, we shall both be happy to add Charles Duller [at one time Carlyle had been Buller's tutor]. All the rest will talk, & not do: nor will anything worth doing be really done for a while to come.'87 A few months later he reported to Carlyle: T have no news to tell - the Reformed Parliament has not disappointed me any more than you; it is ... so ridiculously like what I expected.'88 Part of this can be put down to his voicing sentiments with which he knew Carlyle would concur. But the fact that Mill was then carrying on an elaborate correspondence with Carlyle was itself symptomatic of his disposition in the wake of the 'mental crisis.' He had abandoned Benthamism as a philosophical system; in its place he had acquired 'a conviction, that the true system was something much more complex and many sided than I had previously any idea of, and that its office was to supply, not a set of model institutions, but principles from which the institutions suitable to any given circumstances might be deduced.'89 In the late 18205 and early 18305 Mill sought to come to grips with the issues of authority raised by Saint-Simonian thought and by the ideas of John Austin, Coleridge, and Carlyle himself.90 The political arena seemed not the place to look for the answers to the questions that then claimed his most earnest attention. For all that, Mill was by no means entirely indifferent to what transpired in that sphere, and he did not fail to notice the prominence of

32 England's Disgrace? Irish questions in the politics of the day. One of the major legislative achievements of the 1833 parliamentary session was the Irish Church Temporalities Act, which reduced the size and revenues of the Anglican establishment in Ireland. The government also showed a readiness to tackle the complex and highly troublesome tithe question, the subject of legislation that would be introduced early in 1834 (this measure did not reach the statute book).91 Considerations of expediency and justice moved the Whigs to conciliate Irish Catholic opinion. At the same time, Grey adopted a hard line in the face of disturbance and disorder in Ireland, for much of which he held O'Connell responsible. The Irish Coercion Act of 1833 manifested this predilection (that coercive acts for Ireland were of limited duration only meant that Parliament habitually deemed it necessary to enact such legislation). Mill found the measures and the men wanting. Not that he expected better from a ministry overwhelmingly aristocractic in composition. On the Irish church he pronounced: 'The Church of England in Ireland must be swept away altogether. We do not blame the Ministers for not having done this at once, but if we could we would do it at once: the nuisance and insult should disappear from the soil of Ireland without delay, and cease forthwith to irritate her people.'92 He poured scorn upon the government's foolish attempt to enforce the collection of tithe in Ireland in the early 18305, and upon its tacit recognition that this policy had been an abysmal failure. The ministers, he declared, 'will live in the remembrance of men as long as a signal example shall be wanted of feebleness joined with presumption.'93 The 1834 tithe legislation, which sought to obtain financial support for the clergy of the established church in Ireland via the conversion of tithe composition into a land tax or crown rent, recoverable by the landlord in the form of an addition to the rent, did not impress Mill, in part because he doubted that it would impress the Irish people. Quite apart from its being seriously flawed in detail, the bill would not meet the desideratum of the Irish masses, the outright abolition of tithe in any form. Mill noted that 'concessions in politics always come too late. When reforms are granted, not because they are eligible in themselves, but because it is not considered safe to refuse them, it seems to be in their very nature that they should always lag behind the demand for them.'94 It was the war over tithe in Ireland, as much as anything, that had given rise to the Coercion Act, which in Mill's view amounted to little more than an inconsequential gesture, 'a mere flourish of trumpets, to give a defeat the air of a triumph.'95 If violence in Ireland had diminished, it was

Mill and Ireland in the Age of O'Connell 33 owing not to the Coercion Act but to the government's belated acknowledgment that the collection of tithe was unenforceable. Mill's most revealing statement on Ireland in the 18305 came in response to O'Connell's motion for a select committee to investigate the effects of the Act of Union, debated by the House of Commons in April i834-96 At this time Mill was writing 'Notes on the Newspapers' for the Monthly Repository. Using O'Connell's motion as his springboard, he devotes his commentary of 25 April entirely to England's connection with Ireland. He summarily dismisses O'Connell's proposal that the Act of Union be revoked and that Ireland again be given a legislature of her own. Those who support such a proposal simply want to enjoy the benefits arising from membership in a powerful and wealthy state security, markets, honours, and imperial offices - while escaping the burdens.97 This would not do. 'Great Britain and Ireland shall either be one country or they shall be two countries; only they shall not be one or the other according as it suits Mr. O'Connell. They must be one people, united under one legislature and one executive, or all connexion must cease, and England and Ireland become as foreign to one another as England and France.'98 Eight years earlier James Mill (who was still alive in 1834) had plainly stated his preference for separation. Ireland could not be worse off, and England would be better off. Like his father, John is of the opinion that England stood to gain by being rid of Ireland: Irish commerce would still gravitate to England and the cost of garrisoning and governing Ireland would be removed.99 Unlike James Mill, he is not persuaded that separation is in Ireland's interest. Although the younger Mill wants England to give Ireland the beneficent government she deserved, he is by no means confident that English statesmanship is up to the mark. Given what England had accomplished in Ireland heretofore, he sees little cause for optimism. To cut Ireland loose after centuries of misrule, when she is in no fit state to govern herself, would aggravate England's offence; so too would holding on if England could do no better by Ireland in the future than she had done in the past. 'By governing Ireland ill for so many centuries, we have made it so difficult to govern her well, that we may be compelled to renounce the attempt.'100 Had England treated Ireland differently, the problem would not have come about. As was his wont, Mill employed a universal proposition to throw light on the particular instance. When a less-civilized country fell under the sway of an advanced state, the latter could reasonably choose one of two alternatives: admit the less fit into the

34 England's Disgrace? larger body on a basis of 'perfect equality' or govern it 'despotically, as a mere province.' When England took over Ireland - Mill never did say precisely when this moment occurred - a judgment should have been made. If Ireland had been deemed to possess the degree of civilization requisite to render her 'fit for the same kind of government for which we were fit... she ought to have been treated exactly like Scotland or Yorkshire.' Conversely, if she had been 'in that stage of advancement at which absolute subjection to a more civilized and a more energetic people, is a state more favourable to improvement than any government which can be framed out of domestic materials/ then 'she ought to have been governed like India, by English functionaries, under responsibility to the English Parliament/ Mill intimates that Ireland's condition should have placed her in the latter category, and he points out the advantages accruing to the people of Ireland had the sort of despotism he had in mind actually been imposed: 'fixed principles of government/ security of person and property, rapid progress 'in all the arts of life/ and appreciation of 'the protection of law.' The outcome would have been a 'civilized' Ireland, whose people would have attained all the qualifications necessary for self-government.101 Those with the power to choose a sensible path had not the wisdom. They opted for a course that united 'the evils of both extremes with the advantages of neither.' Putting 'the military force of England at the disposal of an indigenous oligarchy/ the government 'delivered to their tender mercies, bound hand and foot, the rest of the people.' Instead of giving the Irish 'the despotism of a more cultivated people... we left them their own barbarous rulers, but lent to those barbarians the strength of civilisation to keep the many in subjection. In this one pervading error, not to call it crime, lies the philosophy of Irish history.'102 The verisimilitude of such a picture of the Protestant ascendancy, whose rule, in Mill's view, 'generated a prodigy of odious tyranny/103 would be challenged by some modern historians of Ireland;104 Mill unmistakably believed his delineation to be consistent with the facts. The perpetuation of this system over a period of centuries, Mill held, had ruined the prospects for Irish self-government. They have not acquired that experience of lawful rule, and the reverence for law, without which no people can be any thing but, according to their physical temperament, savages or slaves/105 Ireland has needed what Ireland has been always denied, 'protection for the weak against the strong.' Without such security, the Irish people can gain nothing in the way of political benefits. The wherewithal to create this security

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35

does not inhere in Irish society; it can be obtained only 'if all the powers of government in the Island were in the hands of functionaries responsible to England alone, and not one of whom should be an Irishman/106 Mill accepts, however, that the premature emergence of 'the democratic spirit' in Ireland would not permit the installation of such a system. Ireland's exposure to British culture had generated an irrepressible appetite for democracy, while England's 'deplorable misgovernment' had abjectly failed to prepare the Irish people for the responsible exercise of political freedom. Perhaps statesmanship of an uncommonly high order could devise a policy that to Ireland would be a blessing rather than a curse. What such a policy would consist of Mill does not say, and given the dearth within the governing classes of 'intellects above those of babies/ discussion of details could serve little practical purpose. Mill's concluding assessment of Ireland's prospects is glum. The ineptitude of English statesmanship makes it idle to hope that Ireland will be given a government such as shall redeem a people for whom every thing is still to be done, for whom every thing has first to be undone; among whom opinion and conscience and habit, instead of doing, as with us, much more for the ends of government than government itself, are more obstacles than helps; a people whose national character has run wild, and in many of its most important elements has yet to be created; and, to crown all, who have (and no wonder if they have) the strongest prejudices against the only rulers from whom any kind of good government, of which in their present state they are susceptible, can easily come.107

The bleak content and tenacious negativity of this commentary underscore how difficult it was for Mill to think constructively about Ireland in the 18305. His preferred approach, one he reiterates in a letter to John Pringle Nichol at the end of 1837,was 'f°r a good stout Despotism - for governing Ireland like India/ Yet he knows 'it cannot be done. The spirit of Democracy has got too much head there, too prematurely/108 And if it could be done, who would the despots be? English 'functionaries/ presumably men like James and John Stuart Mill. The reader is not told how a system of government so deeply flawed by aristocratic auspices manages to select functionaries of this character. Both Mills entered the service of the East India Company long before the introduction of a limited form of competitive examination in 1833. If Mill thought the appointment and work of India House officials and of

36 England's Disgrace? the company's political agents in India was in some measure insulated from the forces at Westminster that he found objectionable, he understood nonetheless to whom the company was ultimately answerable. Furthermore, he readily allowed that the power delegated to English 'functionaries/ be they in India or Ireland, derived from the Westminster parliament, to which such officials had to be accountable. Can Mill have it both ways? Can his astringent criticism of aristocratic political leadership be reconciled with his espousal of England's rule of India as a worthy, albeit impracticable, exemplar for the government of Ireland? In Mill's mind the question seems not to have arisen. Although Mill does not fault the Irish for their inability to credit the excellence of the Indian model, his estimation of their political competence is dismal. He depicts the Irish as 'a people whose national character has run wild.' This is not the first occasion Mill held forth on the Irish national character. In January 1832 he wrote a leading article on the 'Irish Character' for the Examiner.109 In this piece Mill briefly discusses what he considers to be the virtues and vices of Irishmen (he thinks it unnecessary to offer 'evidence' for the latter, asserting that 'public notoriety' is sufficient testimony). Their chief virtue is a 'susceptibility of ardent and generous emotion' (a quality they share with the French). They are 'generous, brave, hospitable, keenly alive both to kindness and unkindness, ardent in their private attachments, in their humanity, in their patriotism.' This temperament, however, issues in vices the obverse of these virtues: impulsiveness, self-indulgence, imprudence, irresponsibility, and mendacity. While implying that these are natural propensities in the Irish, Mill does not argue for an Irish incapacity to acquire the virtues they currently lack. His point is that they cannot be expected to value and practise 'stern integrity, justice, forethought, self-denial, veracity' unless they are placed in 'highly favourable circumstances.' Probity and self-control can make their way in Ireland only through 'sedulous moral culture.' The circumstances created by English misgovernment have been inimical to such a culture, and Mill is 'grievously sensible of the load of guilt which lies upon the conscience of England for the vices of Irishmen/110 The moral frailties of the Irish were rectifiable (in theory at any rate) provided the right sort of moral and cultural regime could rigorously be brought to bear on those failings. Mill might think the Whigs had neither the aptitude nor the will to institute such a moral and cultural regime, but after 1835 he could not use Ireland to knock the Whigs. In May 1834 divisions within the

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cabinet over lay appropriation of the surplus revenues of the Irish church led to the resignation of those (Stanley, Graham, Ripon, and Richmond) determined to resist a further measure of Irish church reform. Grey retired in July, and Melbourne became premier of a Whig administration favourable to the principle of lay appropriation. In November William IV dismissed the Whigs from office. The formation of a Tory government led by Peel and the gain of a hundred seats by the Tories at the January 1835 general election brought about a tactical combination of Whigs, Radicals, and O'Connell's Irish party. O'Connell pledged his support to an opposition led in the House of Commons by Lord John Russell, whose April 1835 resolution endorsing lay appropriation toppled Peel's government. Disregarding the resignation of May 1839, which gave rise to the Bedchamber Crisis, the Melbourne/ Russell ministry formed in the spring of 1835 lasted until 1841. Throughout that time it could rely upon the loyal support of Daniel O'Connell. The Whigs needed O'Connell and the votes he could deliver, and O'Connell needed the Whigs. The alternative to a Whig administration was a Tory government headed by Peel, with whom O'Connell felt he could not do business. From the Whigs O'Connell got much worth having, notwithstanding the success of the Tory majority in the House of Lords in thwarting lay appropriation and amending other measures that formed part of the ambitious Irish program of Melbourne's ministry. Between 1835 and 1840 the Irish administration substantially enlarged the opportunities for Catholics to secure official employment. Statutory reorganization of the Irish constabulary in 1836 fostered the enrolment of a sizable number of Catholics. The Tithe Act of 1838 removed the greater part of the sting from this issue as it affected Catholics. In 1840 Parliament finally passed an Irish Municipal Corporations Act. Inadequate though some of these reforms were, as a package they constituted a notable achievement. And for O'Connell there was satisfaction to be had from the spirit as well as the substance of Whig reform. More than mere self-interest informed the alliance between O'Connell and the Whigs. Between the parties concerned there was a reciprocity of 'warmth and ... genuine loyalty and respect.'111 Referring to the Whigs' Irish executive, O'Connell's distinguished biographer Oliver MacDonagh observes that from the Irish leader's 'standpoint, it could scarcely have been bettered ... Lords Mulgrave and Morpeth, lord lieutenant and chief secretary respectively, were able and sincere liberals, Mulgrave excelling in affability and the common touch, Morpeth in depth of knowledge and practical efficiency.'112

38 England's Disgrace? Thomas Drummond, the supremely able under-secretary, appointed numerous middle-class Catholics to official positions, helping to make the Protestant ascendancy a thing of the past. There is no mystery in O'Connell's determination to use his political influence to shore up Melbourne's increasingly beleaguered government. That government had no reason to consider J.S. Mill a friend (of course the cost of having Mill as a political foe in the 18305 was negligible). Mill assumed the editorship of the London Review around the time Melbourne and Russell resumed office in the spring of 1835. During the next several years Mill the political journalist laboured hard to promote the formation of an effective Radical party. From 1835 through most of 1837, however, he was markedly reluctant to urge the Radicals in Parliament to engage in systematic opposition to the government. He knew that most moderate reformers in the House of Commons were not inclined to turn against the ministry with Peel and the Tories waiting in the wings. Moreover, Mill could find good value in certain measures proposed by the Whigs, such as the Municipal Corporations Bill of 1835 and the legislation of 1836 providing for the civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths.113 The Irish initiatives of the Melbourne administration also got a fairly high rating from Mill. Albeit imperfect in its details, the Irish Church Bill of 1835, which incorporated the key principle of lay appropriation of the Church's surplus revenues, was no less than 'a challenge of the House of Lords to mortal combat. We believe that the challenge will be accepted, and that, though the struggle may be protracted, this victory will be the final one.'114 By the same token, Mill commended the government bill of 1836 for reform of Irish municipal corporations, although thinking this measure for giving existing municipalities elective corporations did not do nearly enough to forward the cause of representative local government in Ireland. If Mill had misgivings about the capacity of Irishmen to gain from a major extension of self-government at the local level, he gave no hint of them here. We go the full length with those who assert the claim of the Irish to popular local institutions, as the most efficient of all instruments for training the people in the proper use of representative government. But this benefit ought to be afforded to the whole kingdom, and not merely to the inhabitants of a few small towns. Whether or not the constructive parts of the present measure be rejected by the House of Lords, the Ministers should give notice, for next session, of a general measure for the creation of provincial representative assemblies throughout Ireland.115

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His tone unbelligerent and his criticism of the Whigs rather muted, Mill still called upon the Radicals to retain their freedom of action. 'We do not wish the Radicals to attack the Ministry; we are anxious that they should co-operate with them. But we think they might co-operate without yoking themselves to the ministerial car, abdicating all independent action, and leaving nothing to distinguish them from the mere Whig coterie, except the memory of their former professions.'116 Coming from Mill, this treatment of the Whig administration was almost benign. It would not last. Before the close of 1837 Mill had decided that the Radicals should cashier the Melbourne government, even if in putting the Whigs out they put the Tories in. The general election of the summer, brought on by Victoria's accession, left the government with a very slim majority in the House of Commons. It would not take many • Radical defections to bring down the ministry. Yet it could hardly have been the election results that emboldened Mill, for the Radical cause had taken a beating, with John Arthur Roebuck, Joseph Hume, William Ewart, and others going down to defeat. Charles Greville, diarist and shrewd observer of the political scene, remarked that 'the Radicals being so reduced in numbers ... must support them [the ministers], and cannot expect any concessions in return.'117 Why did Mill, unlike most Radicals, whose conduct generally substantiated Greville's point, adopt a truculent stance? For one thing, the cautious tactical line he had pursued since 1835 had not been congenial. The product of his reading of circumstantial constraints on Radical options, it was at odds both with his political doctrine, in which the aristocracy, Whig and Tory alike, constituted a 'sinister' force hostile to the public interest, and with the political activism characteristic of this period of his life.118 For another, political developments in the autumn of 1837 jolted Mill into an antagonistic posture. When Parliament convened in November, Lord John Russell offered vigorous and unequivocal opposition to Radical motions in favour of franchise extension, the ballot, and shorter parliaments. Russell made it clear that he would resist any proposal he found incompatible with the essential elements of the 1832 Reform Act (this became known as Russell's 'finality' declaration).119 Writing to a correspondent several days later, Mill stated: 'A completely new tone must now ... be taken, since the suicidal declaration of the Whigs against the reform of the reform bill. I do not yet know what the radical members will do, though I know what they ought to do.'120 In January 1838 he publicly urged the Radicals to 'separate from the Ministry and go into declared opposition.'121 Vexed though they were by Russell's

40 England's Disgrace? intransigence, most of the Radicals in the House of Commons were not prepared to take this advice. As for Daniel O'Connell, he was sure that acting upon it would be injurious to Ireland's interests. In late November 1837 O'Connell attended a Reform Club meeting of some fifty Radicals to discuss the import of Russell's declaration. Of those present, only five - William Molesworth and George Grote (both of whom had a close political affiliation with Mill), J.T. Leader, Thomas Wakley, and Whittle Harvey - called upon the Radicals to throw over the Whig ministry. O'Connell answered Molesworth, reportedly saying 'that if they wished to bring in a Tory Government they must not count on the support of the Irish members, and that he in particular would do his utmost to expose them to the indignation of all true Reformers.'122 Setting up an anti-Whig shop troubled Mill not at all; that it should be seen as an enterprise insensitive to the claims of O'Connell and Ireland troubled him a good deal. What he said about Ireland in the last years of the 18305 stemmed from this difficulty. Although not an uncritical admirer of O'Connell, an admirer Mill was. In autumn 1835 he offered this appraisal: 'When we look around us, the only figure which stands erect and prominent, the only man who himself weighs in the balance of events, is Mr. O'Connell; and his influence, though it could not have been acquired but by a man of talents, and, above all, of activity, does not belong to him so much in himself, as because he embodies in his single person all Ireland.'123 O'Connell, as it happens, did not embody 'in his single person all Ireland/ but in Mill's view he did personify the Ireland that merited consideration (the Anglo-Irish, speaking figuratively, were beyond the pale, and Mill, rather like O'Connell himself, seemed not to notice the Ulster Presbyterians). Finding himself on a side different from O'Connell in the political alignments of the late 18303 complicated Mill's defence of the position he had staked out. After all, what hope was there for the emergence of a powerful party dedicated to the cause of true reform if the politically conscious among the Irish Catholics would not throw in their lot with the Radicals? When Mill envisaged the groups such a party would include, he reckoned the Irish a prime candidate. It would be strange, indeed, if a people who have never known any thing but oppression from their government, oppression slowly and reluctantly relaxed under the compulsion of their growing force; a people who have been for centuries, and are still, the most wronged and most suffering in Europe [a dubious dictum that perhaps says more about Mill than about Ireland] - were

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not numbered among the Disqualified Classes [those who have cause to be dissatisfied with the prevailing distribution of power]; if they were not eager to ally themselves with anybody who will be, or who will but seem, the enemy of their enemies. And they well know, that where there is such a mass of mischief to be cleared away, where it is necessary to cut so deep, they will find no real fellow feeling but in the Radicals; that from them alone have they any chance of complete redress; and that their only policy is an alliance with the other Disqualified Classes, to give the ascendancy to the Radical interest in the empire.124

O'Connell understood that the party visualized by Mill was a chimera. For the Irish leader the only political friends worth having were those who could exercise real influence beneficial to Catholic Ireland. Ergo, those who imperilled the survival of the Whig administration - be they Tories or misguided Radicals - were his enemies. The breach between O'Connell and the resolutely anti-Whig faction of the Philosophic Radicals elicited a public response from Mill in the January 1838 issue of the London and Westminster Review. Reverting to type, Mill warned O'Connell that recent developments signalled an imminent fusion of Whig and Tory leaderships, Russell's declaration against further reform coupled with mild utterances by Peel and Wellington suggesting as much. It is enough that the Ministry intend to be Conservatives; that they look henceforth to the support of the Conservatives; and that the Tory leaders are looking towards the same object, and are studiously preparing the way for a coalition.' Should Peel and Wellington decide not to take office alongside Whigs, 'it will be because they think it more for their interest to remain out of it, getting their work done for them by the present Ministers.' In the absence of further constitutional reforms and a strong Radical party, a merger of Whigs and Conservatives, formal or otherwise, would not only impede further advances in Ireland but endanger gains already made. It is a foresight of these things, we must tell Mr. O'Connell, and not insensibility to the interests of Ireland, that makes the bolder part of the English Radicals disapprove and resist his reckless partisanship of the Ministry. The charge of insensibility to Ireland we indignantly deny. Mr. O'Connell may be sincere in accusing us of it; for with him nobody cares for Ireland who cares for anything else. But it is unworthy of Mr. O'Connell's discernment not to perceive, that the good of Ireland, no less than of England and Scotland, depends upon maintain-

42 England's Disgrace? ing the popular influence in the House of Commons, and that when this is in jeopardy, all minor risks must be cheerfully run, rather than lose a moment in taking up the necessary ground for covering our place of strength.

What little cogency this analysis contains is subsequently vitiated when Mill seeks to assure O'Connell that he would not risk much by joining forces with 'the bolder part of the English Radicals.' The Whigs, Mill avers, are 'too honourable' to amalgamate with the Tories 'without making, at least, such conditions in favour of Ireland, as should guarantee Lord Mulgrave's generous and liberal system of government against any infringement.'125 O'Connell had far more confidence in the honourableness of the Whigs than he had in the political judgment of Mill and those few Radicals in Parliament who agreed with the editor of the London and Westminster Review. Mill had given O'Connell little reason to think that Radicals of this sort had a firm grip on political reality. And when Mill, in 'Reorganization of the Reform Party' (April 1839), set before O'Connell the prospect of a Radical ministry serving notice on the Irish church/26 the latter might well have wondered whether Mill's radicalism was not more phantasmic than philosophic. Before the close of 1839 Mill himself recognized that his hopes for fundamental political realignment could not be fulfilled. Conclusively disillusioned by Lord Durham's refusal to convert his grudge against the Whigs over their repudiation of his Canadian policy into political action directed at the creation of a Durham-led Radical party, Mill withdrew from political activity, cutting his ties to the London and Westminster and concentrating his imposing intellectual powers on the treatise that would become A System of Logic.127 Mill's demeanour with respect to Ireland in the second half of the 18305 did not convey a deep interest in her condition. His absorption in English politics occasionally moved him to comment on Ireland, and the comments he then made tend to reflect that absorption. Mill's political understanding told him that Daniel O'Connell and the forces he represented had a legitimate claim on the sympathies of the Philosophic Radicals and should be granted a place in the project of political realignment. Like Durham and others, however, O'Connell would not play the part Mill wrote for him. Although Ireland necessarily gained entry to Mill's political consciousness, he could not effectually integrate Ireland into his comprehension of 'England' as a political entity. Nowhere is this more poignantly revealed than in a passage from his 1840

Mill and Ireland in the Age of O'Connell

43

essay on Coleridge. One of the requisites for political stability, Mill affirms, is a strong and active principle of nationality ... We mean a principle of sympathy, not of hostility; of union, not of separation. We mean a feeling of common interest among those who live under the same government, and are contained within the same natural or historical boundaries. We mean, that one part of the community shall not consider themselves as foreigners with regard to another part; that they shall cherish the tie which holds them together; shall feel that they are one people, that their lot is cast together, that evil to any of their fellowcountrymen is evil to themselves; and that they cannot selfishly free themselves from their share of any common inconvenience by severing the connexion ... In modern times the countries which had that feeling in the strongest degree have been the most powerful countries; England, France, and, in proportion to their territory and resources, Holland and Switzerland; while England in her connexion with Ireland, is one of the most signal examples of the consequences of its absence.128 Four decades after the Act of Union, England and Ireland remained utterly distinct in the vitally important realm of sentiment. No 'active principle of nationality' bound them together. Quite apart from the long-term implications for the 'Union' of such a state of affairs, what might it mean should a calamity of epic proportions strike the weaker party? Mill and the Irish would soon find out.

II The Famine

Between 5 October 1846 and 7 January 1847 tne Morning Chronicle carried forty-three leading articles on 'Irish affairs' (so Mill refers to them in his own bibliography) written by J.S. Mill.1 Among Mill's voluminous newspaper writings there is nothing quite like the series prompted by the famine in Ireland. Suspending his work on the Principles of Political Economy, Mill spent upwards of 50,000 words over a period of three months in an endeavour to persuade the public and the politicians to support and adopt the policy for Ireland he deemed essential. The manner of the writing is no less notable than the quantity and the substance. As Janice Carlisle justly observes, 'The rhetorical power of these essays is equalled only by passages in an essay such as "Nature" or in sections of The Subjection of Women.'2 Fashioned from a discrete motive and conveying an urgency born of the circumstances, this extraordinary chain of leading articles enacts an axial episode in Mill's engagement with the Irish question. In his Autobiography he mentions this intensive journalistic campaign, saying that 'the stern necessities of the time seemed to afford a chance to gain 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.'3 This straightforward statement has limited explanatory value. Mill's treatment of Irish matters in the two decades before the famine did not betoken a major political or intellectual investment in the 'permanent improvement of the social and economical condition of the Irish people.' What brought him to make such an investment in the autumn of 1846? Why did he respond as he did to the famine? What persuaded him that a radical scheme embracing the reclamation of waste lands and the settlement of a peasant proprietary on those lands represented the best hope for Ireland? Why did he

The Famine 45 strenuously object to the introduction of a new poor law for Ireland? What impact did his articles have on the debate engendered by the catastrophe unfolding across the Irish Sea? This chapter will try to answer these questions.4 1. MOTIVE AND OPPORTUNITY

As a man determined to make a difference, Mill could not give up the pursuit of practical politics without a conviction that an alternative approach to reform, one befitting his own talents and aspirations, could yield significant results. In his 1840 essay on Tocqueville, Mill remarked that 'ideas are not always the mere signs and effects of social circumstances, they are themselves a power in history.'5 By 1841 he had reached the conclusion, comforting for one in his situation, that words now counted for more than deeds. To Macvey Napier, editor of the Edinburgh Review, he wrote: 'We are entering upon times in which the progress of liberal opinions will again, as formerly, depend upon what is said & written, & no longer upon what is done, by their avowed friends.'6 For most of the 18405 Mill strove to make his ideas 'a power in history,' the results being A System of Logic, published in 1843, and the Principles of Political Economy, published in 1848. In the former he unequivocally proclaimed the subordination of practice to theory, asserting that 'the state of the speculative faculties, the character of the propositions assented to by the intellect, essentially determines the moral and political state of the community.'7 The same supposition informs the Principles. Concerns evident in both of these treatises affected the genesis and character of Mill's Morning Chronicle articles on Ireland. Precedence here must be given to the Logic, partly because it came first and partly because it set forth Mill's conception of a new science, 'Ethology/ whose link to the newspaper articles on Ireland Janice Carlisle has already discerned.8 In the Autobiography Mill writes that the chief purpose of the Logic was to vindicate the doctrine that all knowledge derived from experience, and that moral and intellectual properties mainly emanated 'from the direction given to the associations.' A work of this nature was essential owing to the predominance of the a priori school of human knowledge, whose influence Mill considered altogether pernicious. 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

46 England's Disgrace? 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.9

Fundamental to the thought of both James and John Stuart Mill was the belief that the formation of ideas was the product of association.10 Sensations of pleasure and pain relative to specific kinds of actions and reflections created either a positive or a negative association. The end of education 'should be to form the strongest possible associations of the salutary class; associations of pleasure with all things beneficial to the great whole, and of pain with all things hurtful to it.'11 Mill's hopes for the improvement of mankind rested on his understanding of the laws of mind. If all human knowledge, and much human behaviour, derived from experience, then education of the right sort - and by 'education' Mill meant far more than instruction in an institutional setting - could foster individual and social advancement. Be it the character of the individual or of society, the decisive formative influences were principally circumstantial. Obstacles to improvement did not have their roots in the elements of human nature, whose malleability was a cardinal tenet of Mill's thought, but in the erroneous notion that observed differences in human character were inherent and hence immutable. Mill contended 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.'12 The function of ethology is to furnish a systematic understanding of how the fundamental laws of mind give rise to varying types of character in disparate circumstances. In book VI of the Logic, which addresses 'the logic of the moral sciences/ Mill has a chapter on 'the science of the formation of character.'13 This new science he dubs 'ethology.' Its laws must be deduced from the universal laws of mind 'by supposing any given set of circumstances, and then considering what, according to the laws of mind, will be the influence of those circumstances on the formation of character.'14 These laws, once established, can form the basis for a subsidiary science, 'political ethology,' that will focus on 'the causes which determine the type of character belonging to a people or to an age.'15 Mill concedes that the science of ethology is in an incipient state, but claims that the materials necessary for its construction are available. The evidence of history has furnished the

The Famine 47 empirical laws required 'to verify its deductions/ while 'the premises for the deductions are now sufficiently complete.'16 (An empirical law, as distinguished from an ultimate law, is derivative in nature; it is 'an observed uniformity, presumed to be resolvable into simpler laws, but not yet resolved into them.')17 Mill's conception of ethology includes a signal practical dimension, one that bears upon his involvement with Ireland several years after the Logic appeared in print. Although the propositions of ethology are 'hypothetical only, and affirm tendencies, not facts/ an awareness of tendencies can be immensely valuable to those in a position to affect circumstances. 'When the circumstances of an individual or a nation are in any considerable degree under our control, we may, by our knowledge of tendencies, be enabled to shape those circumstances in a manner much more favourable to the ends we desire, than the shape which they would of themselves assume.'18 If this could indeed be accomplished, the end in view would not commonly imply revolutionary social transformation. As John Skorupski has pointed out, Mill's associationism gave him 'theoretical grounds for insisting on the historicity of human nature and human institutions, and the consequent gradualness of human progress.'19 Mill's discussion, in book VI, of the means by which 'the laws of the succession of states of society can be ascertained' acknowledges the vast extent to which each generation has been shaped by previous generations.20 His stress on the importance of the historical method in investigating the empirical laws governing social change further confirms that Mill's formal thought did not identify progress with convulsive transfigurations. Yet he had a temperamental affinity for revolution. In the Autobiography he tells of how the great French Revolution 'took an immense hold of my feelings. It allied itself with all my juvenile aspirations to the character of a democratic champion. What had happened so lately, seemed as if it might easily happen again; and the most transcendant glory I was capable of conceiving, was that of figuring ... as a Girondist in an English Convention.'21 The Revolution of 1830 in France 'roused my utmost enthusiasm, and gave me, as it were, a new existence.'22 One so ardent for improvement could not but wish it would come in large doses. In the autumn of 1846 Ireland's social fabric, assailed by a prodigious ecological disaster, seemed to be unravelling with such rapidity as to remove the usual historical constraints on change. Witnessing the dissolution of a morbid social order, Mill believed there existed an unparalleled opportunity to create a new Ireland. In a letter written to the Examiner in May 1848 Mill

48 England's Disgrace? offered the following remarkable assessment of that opportunity: 'A terrible calamity quelled all active opposition to our government, and Ireland was once more a tabula rasa, on which we might have inscribed what we pleased/23 A heady prospect this must have appeared to a thinker and reformer mindful of the new science of ethology and its practical import. Mill's keen interest in the prospects of the new science stemmed from his perpetual attentiveness to the issue of character formation. That attentiveness ineluctably drew him to the crisis in Ireland, whose implications for the future of Irish society seemed to him momentous. Both his aspirations for ethology and his engagement with the famine followed from his reformer's preoccupation with the formation of character. When his Morning Chronicle series examined such subjects as the impact of the system of land tenure on the Irish mentality, the probable effects of peasant proprietorship upon the Irish character, the expediency of extending the Irish Poor Law, and the suitability of the Irish for emigration to frontier societies, that preoccupation shaped his analysis. He sought to come to grips with these practical issues for the same reason that he postulated the new science: individual and social improvement required a concentration on the agencies responsible for the (formation of character. Given his view of the embryonic state of 'ethology,' Mill did not invoke its authority when dealing with the famine. In these dealings he did occasionally refer to the science of political economy. Just before his discussion of 'political ethology' in the Logic, Mill had delineated the science of political economy as a branch of 'sociological speculation.'24 Subjects falling within the province of that science had been a staple of Mill's earliest newspaper and periodical writings.25 Buoyed by the success of the Logic, in 1844 Mill brought out Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, which he had composed in the early i830S.26 In 1845 he began the treatise that became the Principles of Political Economy, a project he temporarily put aside in the autumn of 1846 in order to write 'articles in the Morning Chronicle ... urging the formation of peasant properties on the waste lands of Ireland.'27 An understanding of political economy, Mill believed, had demonstrable practical value, and his concentration on the science in the mid-i84os undoubtedly disposed him to apply some of its principles to the crisis in Ireland. Although Mill refers sparingly to 'political economy' in his Morning Chronicle articles, his readers could reasonably infer from his inquiries

The Famine 49 regarding cottier tenancy, peasant proprietorship, the poor law, emigration, and other matters that the author was well versed in the subject. Indirect claims of this kind suited Mill's purpose; an elaborate investigation of abstract propositions of political economy did not. Ends and means of a highly concrete character were the essence of Mill's Morning Chronicle series, and keeping those ends and means to the forefront was an indispensable element of his polemical strategy. The theoretical foundation of that strategy lies in Mill's distinction between science and art. In his essay 'On the Definition of Political Economy/ with which Mill brought to a close his Essays on Some Unsettled Questions, he proposes the following definition: The Science which traces the laws of such of the phenomena of society as arise from the combined operations of mankind for the production of wealth, in so far as those phenomena are not modified by the pursuit of any other object.'28 In this same essay Mill reiterates the apposition of science and art that he had expounded in the last chapter of A System of Logic.29 The one deals in facts, the other in precepts. Science is a collection of truths; art, a body of rules, or directions for conduct... Science takes cognizance of a phenomenon, and endeavours to discover its law, art proposes to itself an end, and looks out for means to effect it.'30 A sound understanding of the science is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the sound practice of the art. 'No one who attempts to lay down propositions for the guidance of mankind, however perfect his scientific acquirements, can dispense with a practical knowledge of the actual modes in which the affairs of the world are carried on, and an extensive personal experience of the actual ideas, feelings, and intellectual and moral tendencies of his own country and of his own age.'31 In the Principles, whose full title is Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, there is an abundance of the science and the art. As Samuel Hollander observes in his monumental study of Millian economics, '[T]o influence opinion in favour of Mill's own vision of the greatest good is a conspicuous characteristic of the Principles.'^2 In the Morning Chronicle articles the science is largely implicit while the art - the preoccupation with ends and means - is palpable and pervasive. One of these articles bestows high praise on J.C.L. Sismondi as 'the man known to Europe as the proclaimed antagonist of all systems which treat wealth and production, and not human happiness and human improvement, as the ends of political economy.'33 The limited scope of the science gave but scant indication of the expansive moral vision that

50 England's Disgrace? suffused Mill's conception of the art. He wanted his Morning Chronicle series to contribute to the 'happiness' and 'improvement' of the Irish people. Explaining Mill's engagement with Ireland and the famine largely by way of his intellectual preoccupations at the time neglects a personal element of consequence. The fact that he had for a number of years kept his distance from Westminster politics did not mean he had conclusively rid himself of the ambition to act in a political role. Supremely well equipped though he was for heavy speculation, and gratifying though he found the experience of bringing his mental faculties to bear on difficult theoretical problems, Mill never entirely subdued his need for active commitment, practical involvement, and meaningful participation.34 Moreover, his remoteness from the political scene during the first half of the 18403 had tempered his harsh judgment of the system's utility. He informed Sarah Austin, in March 1842, that '[pjolitics here are going smoothly enough. Peel is making a considerable number of petty improvements, such however as would not have been thought petty formerly.'35 Six months later Mill told Robert Barclay Fox that although he had 'almost given up thinking on the subject' of politics, he did believe that ever since the changes in the Constitution made by Catholic emancipation and the Reform Act, a considerable portion of the ruling class in this country, especially of the younger men, have been having their minds gradually opened & the progress of Chartism is I think creating an impression that rulers are bound both in duty & prudence to take more charge, than they have lately been wont to do, of the interests both temporal & spiritual of the poor.36

Mill's political disposition showed little sign of a critical edge in the several years before the famine. In late 1844 he wrote to Henry S. Chapman: 'I fully expect every session to shew concessions to liberalism, and every year certainly helps to disorganise the old order.'37 When Mill embarked on the Morning Chronicle series, he presumed that the politicians had the means and the will (perhaps) to respond productively to the crisis in Ireland. His speculative pursuits, personal inclinations, and perceptions of opportunity conjoined in the autumn of 1846, and Mill the political journalist went vigorously to work. The Morning Chronicle articles do not lack the flavour of radical political journalism, and the idiom of some passages shows that Mill's

The Famine 51 greater political placidity stopped short of mellowness. The following extracts exhibit the relish with which he indulged propensities conspicuous during the 18305. To do anything for the poor by act of Parliament is a thing so unprecedented that it never presents itself in the light of possibility ... When it is to make the rich richer, yes; that is an approved and customary course: any course which assumes that form has a presumption in its favour. But to make the poor less poor, by exactly the same means, is a novelty to startle people.' 'Landlords will be landlords ... They are the spoilt children of society. They have been taught to believe that government, social institutions, and the human species itself exist mainly for their protection and exaltation ... We really must not require that they should renounce the pleasing illusion of their own vast importance to the community.' 'Lending public money to landlords, and getting any of it back, are two ideas that cannot be made to coalesce; and though we sincerely hope that the thing is destined to be tried, we are certain that it never will be believed until it is done.'38 Such declamations were not extraneous to the theme of distributive justice that claimed a prominent place in Mill's answer to the famine; from the perspective of many landlords, however, they probably savoured of gratuitous political bashing of the aristocracy. Why should the Morning Chronicle, whose proprietor and editor had a close affiliation with powerful members of the political establishment, have opened its columns to a person holding such opinions? Mill does not tell us. In the Autobiography he merely states that the Chronicle 'unexpectedly entered warmly into my purpose.'39 That more has not hitherto been made of the word 'unexpectedly' probably owes something to a letter Mill wrote to Alexander Bain in November 1846. 'It is a capital thing to have the power of writing leaders in the Chronicle whenever I like, which I can always do. The paper has tried for years to get me to write to it, but it has not suited me to do it before, except once in six months or so.'40 Allowing for the rise in Mill's stature in the wake of the Logic's appearance and reception, and his offer of certain articles to the Edinburgh Review, the leading Whig periodical, after he severed his link with the London and Westminster, such an arrangement does not seem especially odd.41 Furthermore, a critical perspective on Irish landlordism had shown up in the Chronicle before Mill's leading articles.42 Yet Mill's strictures on landlords, as the quotations in the previous paragraph attest, were not reserved for the Irish variety. His characterization of the Chronicle's attitude with reference to himself goes beyond the readiness of a newspaper on the liberal side of the political spec-

52 England's Disgrace? trum to consider articles authored by a figure of notable intellectual distinction. Ann Robson has written that the then editor of the Morning Chronicle, Andrew Doyle, 'was well known to Mill/43 It is sensible to surmise that there was some kind of personal connection between the two, although Mill's extant correspondence fails to mention Doyle. What is beyond doubt is that the proprietor of the Chronicle, John Easthope - Doyle's father-in-law - had a very cordial political association with Lord Palmerston, as did Doyle himself.44 Palmerston's political business during the second half of the 18405 mainly concerned foreign policy, and he must have used the greater part of his considerable influence with Easthope and Doyle to further his aims in this sphere. As an Irish landowner, however, and a man whose political outlook differed markedly from Mill's, Palmerston could hardly have approved of the Morning Chronicle series. No friend of Palmerston, Mill was a friend of Charles Duller, a member of Lord John Russell's administration on familiar terms with Easthope and Doyle.45 Mill and Duller became acquainted in the 18205. In Mill's Autobiography Duller figures as one of the 'second generation of Cambridge Denthamites' (the 'first generation' included those directly influenced by Charles Austin), as a contributor on 'the radical side' to the debates of the London Debating Society in the late 18205, as a member of the parliamentary contingent of Philosophic Radicals in the 18305, and as the real author of the Durham Report (Buller served on Durham's staff in Canada).46 From Duller Mill got much information and guidance on the Canadian situation in 1838, which he made use of in his London and Westminster political articles that defended Durham's position.47 In 1846 Duller joined Russell's administration as JudgeAdvocate-General and in the next year he accepted the post of Chief Poor Law Commissioner. Acceptance of junior office in a Whig government did not mean that Duller had relinquished his radical opinions, and within that government Duller would be one of the few in 1846-7 to press for large-scale Irish land reform of a kind consistent with Mill's preferences.48 In view of Duller's friendship with Mill, his political convictions and official standing, and his contacts with those who ran the Morning Chronicle, he could well have been instrumental in securing this venue for Mill's response to the Irish famine. 2. PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP

That response featured two ideas Mill insisted had to be joined: recla-

The Famine 53 mation of the waste lands and the settlement of a peasant proprietary on the lands reclaimed. The first notion had been around for some time, and had indeed been the subject of a series of government reports favourable to draining and cultivating the bogs of Ireland issued during the second decade of the nineteenth century. The matter was not then forgotten, select committee reports of 1819 and 1830 and royal commission reports of 1835 and 1836 urging that attention be given to exploiting the waste lands.49 A royal commission chaired by Lord Devon had stated in 1845 that 'under proper arrangements, the reclamation of waste lands, whilst it gives useful and permanent employment to the labouring population, will, at the same time, produce a fair return for the capital employed upon it/5° Those 'proper arrangements/ however, did not include the settlement of a peasant proprietary on the waste lands, which is scarcely surprising given the antipathy to peasant farming prevalent in the economic literature of the first half of the nineteenth century.51 The peasant proprietor, it was thought, had neither the resources nor the incentive to improve. His holding normally secured him against abject poverty, thereby encouraging him to choose leisure over labour whenever there was a choice to be made. Should scarcity arrive, Thomas Malthus observed, The owners of the minute divisions of landed property will be, as they always are, peculiarly without resource, and must perish/52 Small units of cultivation could not be economically efficient, the peasant proprietor being unable to benefit from economies of scale and division of labour. The tendency of peasant societies to divide property equally among heirs upon the death of the holder spurred early marriage and abundant procreation, hence intensifying population pressure. These opinions were shared by such influential writers as Arthur Young, Malthus, and J.R. McCulloch.53 As was already noted, Mill's cursory treatment of the land question in his 1825 article on Ireland identified 'a better system of cultivation' with the introduction of more capital and the clearing of 'the wretched cottier tenantry' from the estates of Irish landlords, implying no drift from orthodoxy on the issue of peasant proprietorship.54 Yet by the mid-i84Os Mill had become a proponent of peasant proprietorship. What changed his mind? According to Alexander Bain, it was William Thomas Thornton, Mill's colleague at the India House, who 'first awakened him to the question of peasant properties. Thornton's Plea [A Plea for Peasant Proprietors] was published before the Political Economy came out, and Mill read the proof sheets as it went through the press/55 A modern com-

54 England's Disgrace? mentator, CJ. Dewey, argues that Mill was heavily indebted to both Thornton and Richard Jones, professor of political economy and history at Haileybury (the college where civilian staff of the East India Company were trained): 'Much of the agrarian theory he [Mill] espoused ... had been worked out by Jones; while much of the factual evidence concerning peasant proprietors which bolstered Mill's policy prescriptions was originally presented by Thornton.'56 Jones's most important work was An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation, published in 1831. This work attacked Ricardo's deductivist method, Jones maintaining that 'a single comprehensive glance at the world as it actually exists' showed Ricardo's system 'of purely hypothetical truths ... to be utterly inconsistent with the past and present condition of mankind.'57 Unlike the inductivist Jones, Mill held that deduction was the proper method for the science of political economy, while admitting that the truths reached via such a priori reasoning were of an abstract kind. They would be true without qualification, only in a case which is purely imaginary. In proportion as the actual facts recede from the hypothesis, he must allow a corresponding deviation from the strict letter of his conclusion.'58 In method, Mill did , not look to Jones for guidance. When Dewey speaks of 'agrarian theory/ he has in mind Jones's examination of various systems of land tenure in different parts of the world and his proposition that Ricardo's theory of rent was irrelevant to the economic conditions in which many societies found themselves. In an essay of 1834 Mill, without mentioning Jones, conceded that some of the presuppositions of English political economists, for example those pertaining to the relation among the factors of production and the division of economic society into labourers, capitalists, and landlords, lacked universal validity. They are inapplicable where the only capitalists are the landlords, and the labourers are their property; as in the West Indies. They are inapplicable where the universal landlord is the State; as in India. They are inapplicable where the agricultural labourer is generally the owner both of the land itself and of the capital; as in France, or of the capital only, as in Ireland.'59 More specifically, Dewey can reasonably point to the resemblance between Mill's critique of cottier tenancy in Ireland and Jones's treatment of the subject.60 All the same, Mill does not refer to Jones's work in his Morning Chronicle series, and makes but sparse use of it in his Principles of Political Economy.61 In part this may be attributable to the fact that Jones did not move from a censure of cottier tenancy to an endorsement of peasant proprietorship, and his polemical value to Mill was conse-

The Famine 55 quently limited. And Mill certainly could not approve of Jones's assault on Ricardo. In sum, the evidence for Jones's influence on Mill is inconclusive. As for the hefty measure of credit both Bain and Dewey assign Thornton, the problem is more serious owing to some misunderstanding, especially on Bain's part, of the nature of Mill's debt to his associate. In one of his leading articles Mill acknowledges that his plan for Ireland had been 'anticipated ... in the excellent work of Mr. William Thornton.'62 The work Mill has in mind, however, is not A Plea for Peasant Proprietors, which he did not see in manuscript until sometime after the Morning Chronicle series had finished, but Over-Population and Its Remedy, a book published not long before Mill's series began (printed and released in 1846, its preface is dated December 1845). In chapter 9 of this work Thornton offers an analysis of the Irish land question very like that set forth by Mill in his leaders, and proposes waste-land reclamation and the creation of a class of peasant proprietors as the antidotes to Ireland's economic ills.63 Thornton's chapter, written before the famine, lacks the urgency of tone informing Mill's series and has none of the latter's rhetorical power. In substance they are similar. The issue is not whether Mill drew heavily upon Thornton; he assuredly did. Instead it is whether Over-Population and Its Remedy was largely responsible for winning Mill over to peasant proprietorship.64 Mill's use of material from Thornton's work does not in itself warrant a conclusion that Mill derived his views on the subject from Thornton, as David Martin has ably demonstrated in a response to Dewey's article.65 Shortly after Mill's death in 1873, Thornton recalled that he and Mill had rarely conversed before 1846. Early in that year he sent Mill a copy of Over-Population and Its Remedy. Thornton says that 'a day or two afterwards he came into my room to thank me for it, and during the half hour's conversation that thereupon ensued, sprang up, full blown at its birth, an intimate friendship.'66 It is probable that Mill's warm embrace of Thornton's book was grounded in prior conviction rather than conversion. In an essay of 1845 entitled The Claims of Labour/ an article conceived in late 1844, Mill had found occasion to suggest that owner-occupiers, unlike cottier tenants, had motives to limit family size. 'A peasant proprietor has inducements to prudence and forethought ... He has a status which he is unwilling to lose.'67 Thornton's treatment of the subject chimed with a judgment Mill had already arrived at. Mill's receptiveness to peasant proprietorship was shaped by his

56 England's Disgrace? acute consciousness of himself as a thinker deeply conversant with European conditions and cultures. His close attention to French thought - be it in the form associated with the Saint-Simonians, Comte, Sismondi, Tocqueville, or the great French historians - made him all the more critical of what he took to be English insularity and smugness.68 Mill's search for greater intellectual breadth, notably pronounced in the decade and a half after the 'mental crisis/ disposed him to draw from an ample fund of thought. His study of Continental and English writers interested in the European experience of diverse systems of land tenure led him to deduce that in certain states of society peasant proprietorship could foster both economic efficiency and moral improvement. The following works, in addition to Thornton's Over-Population and Its Remedy, are cited in both the Morning Chronicle series and the Principles of Political Economy in connection with Mill's arguments on behalf of peasant proprietorship: William Howitt, Rural and Domestic Life of Germany (1842), H.D. Inglis, Switzerland, the South of France, and the Pyrenees, in 1830 (2 vols., 1831), Samuel Laing, Journal of a Residence in Norway, during the Years 1834, 1835, and 1836 (1836) and Notes of a Traveller, on the Social and Political State of France, Prussia, Switzerland, Italy, and Other Parts of Europe, during the Present Century (1842), and J.C.L. Sismondi, Etudes sur I'economie politique (2 vols., 1837-8) and Nouveaux principes d'economie politique, ou De la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population (2nd edition, 2 vols., i827).69 Mill had also read L'Irlande, sociale, politique et religieuse (2 vols., 1839) by Gustave Auguste de Beaumont (a friend and collaborator of Tocqueville) and England im Jahre 1835 (3 vols., 1836) by Friedrich Ludwig Georg von Raumer.70 Visits to Ireland persuaded both Beaumont and Raumer that fixity of tenure should be granted to Irish tenants. When Mill turned to the economic condition of Ireland - something he did not do during the 18305 - his perspective and range of reference were certain to be Continental in scope. The fare Mill had been assimilating made it easy for him to digest the section on Ireland in Thornton's Over-Population and Its Remedy. Was it merely fortuitous, in connection with their treatment of peasant proprietorship, that both Thornton and Mill happened to be employees of the East India Company? Mill surely did not think so. We have already seen that in the mid-i83os he had juxtaposed the manner in which Britain had governed India with her deplorable rule of Ireland. He would also invoke the example of India when explaining to readers of the Morning Chronicle the evils of the Irish cottier-tenant

The Famine 57 system. 'In India, as in Ireland, there is a superabundant population depending wholly on land. In India, as in Ireland, the people will promise to pay anything for the land rather than not obtain it. The owner of the land therefore, who in India is generally the Government, has long since discovered that it will not do to leave the matter to competition.'71 Some two decades later he would write, in England and Ireland, that 'those Englishmen who know something of India, are even now those who understand Ireland best/72 In his book John Stuart Mill and India, Lynn Zastoupil says that 'Mill's views on Ireland bear the unmistakable imprint of Indian administration.' With regard to the Morning Chronicle series, he notes 'the clear parallel in tone and content between Mill's articles ... and James Mill's general views on revenue administration in India.'73 In his History of British India James Mill had condemned Lord Cornwallis's 1793 Permanent Settlement of Bengal. That settlement had sought to convert the zamindars, officials in precolonial India responsible for collecting the land tax, into large landowners on the English model. James Mill's view was that property rights in India should be conferred not upon the despotic and corrupt zamindars but upon the peasantry (ryots), the state itself acting as landlord and using the rent it received from the ryots as its source of revenue. Such an arrangement, he contended, would give to the individual peasant the economic independence and incentives necessary for him to acquire the attributes befitting productive labour and rational calculation. A settlement of this nature would promote the changes in behaviour required for the social and economic improvement of India. The elimination of parasitic intermediaries between the state and the peasant would be of immense advantage to both the government and the cultivator of the soil. Landowners living off rent customarily exploited the masses and spent what they collected lavishly and unproductively. The removal of this 'sinister' interest would enable the state to secure what it needed for its own support without depriving the economy of valuable resources. James Mill subscribed to Ricardo's rent doctrine, which postulated a perpetual clash of interest between private landlords and the rest of the community. According to Ricardo, rent was wealth of a special kind, one that contributed nothing to the economic advancement of society. It emanated from the tendency of population to outstrip the supply of food, which led to the cultivation of ever-poorer soils. Rent represented the surplus yielded by all land superior to the most marginal. It was what remained after deducting from the entire produce the cost of

58 England's Disgrace? labour and the average rate of profit on the capital utilized. Land being finite in extent and uneven in quality, its appropriation as private property gave to rent a monopoly value. The landlord, rendering no economic benefit to society, was a leech. In India, James Mill averred, the opportunity existed to eradicate the leech and to finance the government without encroaching upon wages, profits, or the prices of vital commodities.74 There is indeed a 'parallel in tone and content between Mill's articles ... and James Mill's general views on revenue administration in India.' But what does this 'parallel' signify with respect to the impact of J.S. Mill's East India House experience on his advocacy of peasant proprietorship for Ireland? Although it suited his purpose to claim that men familiar with India were especially well qualified to address Irish topics, he doubtless meant what he said when urging the validity of this claim.75 As Assistant to the Examiner of Indian Correspondence, Mill dealt chiefly with matters germane to political relations with India's princely states rather than with economic issues; still he knew a lot about the variety and importance of land settlements in different parts of the subcontinent, and such knowledge may have encouraged him to conceive of land problems and their solutions in ways that would have seemed odd to most of his contemporaries. Furthermore, it can be assumed that the man who began his Autobiography by referring to himself as 'the eldest son of James Mill, the author of The History of British India/ a book the younger Mill said 'contributed largely' to his education, 'in the best sense of the term,' understood well the grounds upon which his father objected to Cornwallis's Permanent Settlement (indeed, the Principles of Political Economy includes a substantial quotation from the section of the History of British India critical of this settlement).76 What may also be assumed, however, is that James Mill's judgment on land settlements in India was influenced less by his knowledge of India than by his antipathy to English territorial magnates and appreciation of the Ricardian doctrine of rent as the consummate economic analogue of his political enmity. An anti-landlord bias was a constituent feature of the younger Mill's political pedigree, and when it came to peasant proprietorship this element may have counted for more than anything he learned from his connection with India. A proposal that promised to both elevate the character of the Irish peasantry and reduce their dependence on parasitical landords was likely to get from him a sympathetic hearing. India certainly influenced Mill's treatment of the Irish land question in his Morning Chronicle series, but

The Famine 59 the sources of his commitment to peasant proprietorship were multiple and mutually reinforcing.77 3. THE MORNING CHRONICLE CAMPAIGN

Although it is plausible that the Principles of Political Economy would have given peasant proprietorship a favourable assessment had there been no Irish famine, Ireland's great hunger instigated the Morning Chronicle series. In late summer 1845 the fungus Phythophthora Infestans arrived in Ireland, a country whose fragile economic condition offered little margin for withstanding a major blow. The population of Ireland had risen from about five million in 1800 to approximately eight and a half million on the eve of the famine. A slowing of the rate of population growth in the 18205 and 18305 suggests the inability of the economy to sustain the degree of demographic expansion characteristic of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The living standards of the poor, who accounted for about half the population, had indisputably declined in the decades before 1845. For the bulk of their nutrition they depended upon the potato, 'which produced the nutritional value of corn at about one-third the cost.'78 Probably less than half the crop was affected by the fungus in 1845, and it was not until the more general failure of the potato in 1846 that famine conditions set in. Peel, in office until June of 1846, acted swiftly. He had been Irish Chief Secretary at the time of the partial famine of 1817, and had some idea of what the shortfall of 1845 implied. In November Peel quietly arranged for the purchase of 100,000 pounds' worth of maize and meal from American sources. Legislation of March 1846, by which time food depots had also been opened in Ireland, made provision for the employment of the poor on public works, the usual response of the authorities to economic emergency in Ireland. Half the funding for these projects, mainly roadworks, would come from treasury grants, the other half being charged to local taxation. The Whig government of Lord John Russell, concluding that this system had led to inordinate demands being made on central government, converted the grant portion to a loan, making local taxpayers ultimately responsible for payment of the whole. As of October, when Mill's Morning Chronicle series began, over 100,000 people were employed on public works (by March 1847 this figure would rise to nearly three-quarters of a million).79 The measures taken by government in 1846 did not prevent an escalation of the crisis. Policy-makers aimed to hold to an absolute mini-

60 England's Disgrace? mum actions that might impede the natural operation of the market mechanism. The tenets of classical political economy, widely accepted in governing circles by the mid-i84os, predicated a healthy economic order on the functioning of a free market. This axiom should apply to food as to other commodities, and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 184$ exemplified the triumph of this idea. Before the end of 1846 food prices in Ireland had risen to such levels that the wages paid by the Board of Works were insufficient to assure subsistence to those employed and their families. Many of those in greatest distress never got on the public works. When Mill took up his pen he did not fully grasp the magnitude of what was unfolding in Ireland (one suspects few in England did at this juncture). He did know that something momentous was taking place, and believed that government action of an unconventional kind and on a grand scale was imperative. Mill begins his inquiry into Ireland's condition with an assertion that England had made Ireland what she had become, and yet the conscience of most Englishmen seemed quite untroubled by the fact. Mill's call for decisive action had to rest in part on a recognition that the great evils afflicting Ireland carried an English stamp, and this he sought to establish at the outset. What England had ever done to remove those great evils, 'history will be at a loss to discover.'80 If the future of Ireland was to be different from her past, England had to face up to her responsibilities, and the time for doing so had come. Ireland's great economic problem, whose baneful consequences were both moral and material, was 'the cottier-tenant system.' So long as this system remained in place, little could be done to improve her dire state. In typical Irish usage, a cottier was one who rented a cabin and a small plot of land, upon which he grew potatoes for subsistence purposes. More often than not, his landlord was a more substantial farmer, who received labour from the cottier in exchange for access to the soil. In the early 18405 adult male cottiers, whose average holding was five acres, numbered about 300,000. The cottiers, however, did not occupy the bottom rung in the rural social structure - beneath them were a million labourers, many of whom held no more than an acre of land and some of whom held none at all.81 When Mill referred to 'cottiers' he seems to have had both groups in mind. His definition of the cottier system owed less to common usage than to the abstractions of political economy. It was a system 'in which the produce of the land is divided between two sharers - a landlord on one side, and labourers on the other; the competition of the labourers being the regulating principle of the divi-

The Famine 61 sion.' The pressure of competition in England was upon capital; in Ireland, which had too many people and not enough opportunity for labour outside the agricultural sector, it was upon land. In England overpopulation meant reduced wages; in Ireland, it meant increased rent. 'A labourer who bids for land, not for the sake of profit, but for subsistence, and with whom not to have land is to be without the means of living, will offer anything rather than be outbid by his neighbour.'82 An economic system organized in this way offered tenants no incentive to augment their economic efficiency, the value of any such improvements being consumed by a higher rent.83 Nor did it encourage restraint on reproduction. The nominal rent in Ireland was not the real rent, the landlord in practice receiving from the tenant only what remained after subsistence needs had been met. However many children the tenant had, he would see to it that they got their potatoes before the landlord got his rent. The moral effects of such an economic order were malignant. The curse of this system is, that it destroys, more utterly than any other system of nominally free labour, all motive either to industry or to prudence... A people have been for half a thousand years under such a regime as this, and men wonder at them for their indolence, and their want of enterprise, and their improvident marriages. They must be something more than human if they were not, in these particulars, all that they are charged with being.84

But was it practicable to replace the cottier system in Ireland by the English system? Mill thought hot. A change of this nature hinged upon clearing smallholders from the land and dividing it up into sizable portions for management by capitalist farmers. The number of labourers required by such farmers would fall well below the number ejected. The Irish economy held grim prospects for those unable to find employment on the land. The massive dimensions of the social evil that would ensue should discourage those with the power to enforce a clearance policy from attempting it. A project of wholesale clearance would certainly provoke widespead and violent resistance among those imperilled by its implementation. Not yet comprehending what the famine had in store for Ireland, Mill concluded that it was 'impracticable to abolish the cottier system by the simple plan of abolishing the lives of the cottiers themselves.'85 Rather than sweep the people off the land, the land could be made the means of giving economic independence to the people. Mill trench-

62 England's Disgrace? antly propounds the case for fixity of tenure, which would involve the fixing of a tenant's rent either at its current value or at a figure determined by a neutral arbitrator. Provided the tenant met this annual rent payment, he could not be ousted from his holding. In effect the property would be consigned to the tenant, the landlord relinquishing his proprietorship in exchange for a rent-charge redeemed from the produce of the soil. Whereas a policy of clearance 'recognises no rights in anybody connected with the land save him whom the law denominates its owner, and treats those whose hands till it as if they were created for it, and it for the landlord/ fixity of tenure issues from 'a view of the relative moral rights of these classes - strange, we must allow, and paradoxical to minds bred in the traditions of English social economy.' To Mill's mind fixity of tenure was 'a real and thorough remedy,' one that 'goes to the very root of Irish evils.' From its agency Ireland would obtain 'the inestimable blessing of a peasant proprietary.' Once the Irish peasantry understood that they could not be divested of the fruits of their labour, they would modify their conduct accordingly. Industry would supplant indolence; prudence would supersede rashness; thrift would replace prodigality. 'All over Europe, the untiring labourer, the peasant whose industry and vigilance never sleep, is he who owns the land he tills.' Mill knew full well that such a turning of the Irish land system on its head, whatever its merits, would not be taken up by the British Parliament, and he did not reproach the politicians for their presumed opposition to fixity of tenure. Its adoption 'would be a violent disturbance of legal rights, amounting almost to a social revolution'; as a remedy, it was 'drastic' and 'extreme.' Mill acknowledged 'the danger of tampering, in times of political and moral change, with the salutary prepossessions by which property is protected against spoliation.' Yet the comprehensive introduction of fixity of tenure, albeit radical and risky, 'would be justifiable if there existed no other means of overcoming evils like those of Ireland.'86 The transformative power of peasant proprietorship in Ireland, however, did not hang on its universality. Inherent in Ireland's grievous condition, Mill argues, was the opportunity to bring about a fundamental change in the economic, social, and moral order of Irish society, without conferring fixity of tenure on all Irish tenants. Evidence given before the Devon Commission in 1845 indicated the presence in Ireland of a vast acreage of waste land capable of reclamation. Mill calls upon the government to assume responsibility for acquisition of this waste,

The Famine 63 at its existing value, with a view to its reclamation by the state in association with a large number of Irish cottiers to whom the land would be distributed. The labour employed on roadworks of dubious worth should instead be applied to the waste lands. Devoting numerous leading articles to establishing the regenerative properties of peasant proprietorship, Mill proposes a retrieval of the waste lands and their settlement by small farmers in possession of their holdings. The adoption of such a plan would serve the dual purpose of relief and reconstruction. Having become the proprietor of the whole or a sufficient portion of the waste, the State could divide it into portions of the most convenient size, and grant these in absolute property to such of the peasantry as could produce the best certificates of steadiness and industry, or to such as would undertake to bring their lots into cultivation with the smallest amount of pecuniary assistance. If it were necessary to advance to each family a year's food, and a trifle for tools, where would be the difficulty? The interest of this, laid on in the form of a perpetual quit-rent, would save the State from loss, and would be but a small abatement from the value of the boon ... In cases in which it would be desirable to operate on a greater scale, by draining at once the whole of a large tract of country, the State can as easily do this for the peasantry as Lord Besborough [sic] [Bessborough was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland] can now undertake it for the landlords. The work, during its execution, would povide food and employment for the famishing people in the one way as effectually as in the other, and the State could be indemnified by an additional quit-rent, payable from the new peasant proprietors.87

Fixity of tenure would apply mainly to the waste lands, though Mill urges that all landlords receiving assistance from the government for land improvement should be required to grant the tenants of such land perpetuity of tenure at a valuated rent.88 From the execution of this plan Mill expected the elimination of cottier tenancy, to which he imputed much of Ireland's poverty and degradation, and the formation of an agricultural economy embracing both peasant and capitalist farming. The settlement on the waste lands of a large number of peasant proprietors would alleviate the competition for land, render forced clearances unnecessary, and permit a subtantial portion of the Irish agricultural sector to follow the English pattern. Ireland would come to know the value of order and security,

64 England's Disgrace? and a large amount of English capital would flow into the country.89 The peaceful and prosperous development of Irish society, Mill believed, depended upon this scheme for an exploitation of the waste lands and the creation of a peasant proprietary. He argued forcibly for its economic and moral soundness, and joined issue with those who claimed that individual capitalists would have taken on the task of reclamation long before the famine if profits were to be had from such an undertaking. A country must be peaceful and industrious before it can be assumed, that whatever private capitalists cannot be found to do is not worth doing at all... Is it a new proposition in political economy, that land may afford a large gross produce and ample support to labourers, and yet yield no rent? Is it a new doctrine in commonsense, that a bog or a mountain may not remunerate a capitalist for reclaiming it by paying wages to hired labourers, and yet may be a most valuable possession to a peasant who gets the labour for nothing, having but too much of it already idle on his hands?90

Mill's object was the social and moral reconstruction of Ireland, and he saw a peasant proprietary as the chief means to its achievement. Holding that the lethargy, laziness, recklessness, and improvidence characteristic of the Irish masses were spawned by a vicious social and economic system, Mill contended that the experience of other countries-an experience not at variance with the principles of political economy properly understood - revealed the highly salutary moral effects of peasant proprietorship. He looked to the formation of a peasant proprietary as 'a measure of social reform and moral regeneration, a means of abolishing the worst of all forms of landed tenure ... [and of] raising up a class of peasantry to be an example and a guiding influence to the rest.'91 The possession of land would instil in the Irish peasant the moral attributes - industriousness, independence, self-control - whose deficiency in the population Mill ascribed to the noxious system of land tenure prevalent in Ireland. Peasant proprietorship, asserted Mill, 'would be not merely a sovereign remedy for Irish listlessness and indolence, but would do much to correct the still deeper seated and more intractable malady of Irish improvidence.'92 As vigorously as Mill argued for what he favoured did he argue against what he opposed. State-subsidized emigration on the scale necessary to relieve decisively the pressure of population in Ireland would be prohibitively expensive, and there was no prospect of the

The Famine 65 state recovering any of the money spent for this purpose.93 The Irish, in any event, were not promising material for export to Britain's colonies or to America. They lacked the 'individual hardihood, resource, and self-reliance' essential for success in a young society. Evidently oblivious to the fact that between 1815 and 1845 some 1.5 million people had left Ireland (approximately one-third of these went to Britain),94 Mill pronounced the Irish unfit for a frontier environment, and did so on grounds that to twentieth-century readers seem shaky at best. The Irishman has plenty of 'energy and self-will,' but he is the prisoner of 'his previous habits and inclinations'; it is 'the demand of his nature to be led and governed'; he can never 'emerge from old habits by his own innate force/ although 'he may be guided and persuaded out of them'; his character has thus been shaped by 'nature and circumstances.' A people such as this 'are only fit for an old country, and an old country is alone fit for them.' If emigration would not be good for the Irish, neither would their arrival in substantial numbers be good for the country receiving them. They had been 'made lawless and disorderly' by 'five centuries of misrule/ and it made no sense to 'plant them down where there cannot possibly be any law or order to restrain them.'95 That views of this sort should not be regarded as illiberal in the context of English attitudes towards the Irish in the 18405 says a lot about that context. The judgments Mill expresses here are entirely in line with his comments on the Irish national character in 1832 and 1834.96 Yet there is reason to think that his position on emigration in part arises from his conviction that England bore a great moral stain for her treatment of Ireland and that there could be no credit in trying to solve the Irish problem by embracing a policy of mass emigration. In one of his early leading articles he observed that the 'English nation owes a tremendous debt to the Irish people for centuries of misgovernment... If ever compensation was due from one people to another, this is the case for it.'97 Mill believed he knew how that compensation could be provided so as to save the Irish people and salvage the honour of England. Emigration was not the way. When revising the Principles of Political Economy for the edition published in 1865, the preceding two decades having seen an unprecedented outflow of people from Ireland, Mill pointedly remarked: 'The loss, and the disgrace, are England's: and it is the English people and government whom it chiefly concerns to ask themselves, how far it will be to their honour and advantage to retain the mere soil of Ireland, but to lose its inhabitants.'98

66 England's Disgrace? Mill devoted much less space to questioning the expediency of statesponsored emigration than he did to animadverting on the proposal for an extension of the Irish Poor Law, the latter seeming to him a far more threatening spectre. Before 1838 there had been no poor law in Ireland. By 1837 mounting concern over the social and economic effects of rising Irish emigration to Britain, coupled with a desire to give Irish landlords an incentive to employ more labourers on their estates - it was assumed that the alternative of paying rates to support the destitute would encourage them to increase employment opportunities - led many in England to look favourably upon the idea of a poor law for Ireland. Moreover, some of those who linked Ireland's improvement to her adoption of the English agricultural system conceded that a poor law, strictly defined and enforced, was essential during the transition. A means of subsistence would have to be found for those removed from the soil who could not secure gainful employment." The reform of the English Poor Law in 1834, a reform grounded on the principle that the condition of the pauper receiving relief should be rendered 'less eligible' than that of the lowest independent labourer, encouraged policymakers to think that a poor law could be devised for Ireland.100 The result was the Irish Poor Law Act of 1838. This measure should not be grouped with those Whig reforms of the late 18305 that emerged from the alliance between O'Connell and the government, the Irish leader himself being opposed to the provision of relief in Ireland for the ablebodied poor.101 Although modelled on England's New Poor Law, the Irish Act of 1838 was harsher. Unlike the former, it did not acknowledge a legal right to relief and it forbade relief outside the workhouse altogether. Not long before Mill began his Morning Chronicle series, The Times had called for a much expanded poor law for Ireland, one that would impose a compulsory assessment on Irish property for the purpose of providing outdoor relief in exchange for labour on public works.102 Mill denounced this proposal. On the poor-law issue Mill was a hardliner. He greeted warmly the reform of i834.103 He considered definitive the indictment against the system of outdoor relief identified with the Old Poor Law. Quite apart from being ruinously expensive, its operation had demoralized much of the rural population by offering assistance on terms that inevitably fostered dependence, idleness, and improvidence.104 He did not go so far as to deny the need for a poor law that applied to the able-bodied. The state could not justify doing less for its destitute population than it did for convicted criminals, and voluntary philanthropy was too erratic

The Famine 67 and inefficient to achieve the desired ends. Hence, 'the certainty of subsistence should be held out by law to the destitute able-bodied.'105 Following a line of thought advanced by James Mill, in his essay 'Education/ on the unfavourable effects of a 'deficient quantity of food ... upon the moral temper of the mind/ J.S. Mill affirmed that '[elnergy and self-dependence are ... liable to be impaired by the absence of help, as well as by its excess. It is even more fatal to exertion to have no hope of succeeding by it, than to be assured of succeeding without it.'106 What mattered were the terms governing the provision of relief. To Mill the principle of 'less eligibility' was vital and outdoor relief anathema. He insisted that the precept central to the Poor Law Report of 1834 was intrinsic to 'all good government, and all justly-constituted society/ asserting as axiomatic that 'no person who is able to work, is entitled to be maintained in idleness; or to be put into a better condition, at the expense of the public, than those who contrive to support themselves by their unaided exertions.'107 The Irish Poor Law of 1838 satisfied this requirement, to a greater degree even than the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, which did not entirely proscribe outdoor relief. The proposal of The Times flagrantly violated it. Mill's position on the poor law sharply distinguished between shortterm relief granted in response to an emergency and a statute that assigned ratepayers the perpetual obligation to support the destitute able-bodied without enforcement of less eligibility (that is, in the absence of a mandatory workhouse test). 'A poor-law is not a thing for a temporary exigency, and one does not see how any temporary exigency can affect the discussion of it; it must stand or fall by its merits as a permanent institution. A failure of the potato crop cannot make that a good law which would otherwise be a bad one.'108 As has been seen, Mill did not hesitate to recommend a heavy outlay of funds from the Imperial Treasury for a project that was intended to relieve immediate distress as well as generate economic and moral reconstruction. Some of those eager to extend the Irish Poor Law wished to shift the cost imposed by the famine from English taxpayers to Irish ratepayers (the landlords in particular). Commonplace opinion not only traduced the Irish masses for their putative indolence and fecklessness, but charged the bulk of Irish landlords with callousness, irresponsibility, and ineptitude. The demand for an extension of the Irish Poor Law in part betokened England's continued alienation from Ireland, the Act of Union notwithstanding.109 English resources should not be poured into Ireland to spare Irish landlords the unpleasantness of facing up to their

68 England's Disgrace? duty. Inveighing against the landlords of Ireland, the Economist proclaimed that it was a burning disgrace to them, to desert and neglect their country for years, and swell the base cry which ... attributes Irish misery to English oppression and hard-heartedness, and then, when years of famine supervene, or generations of wretchedness, to come whining or bullying to England, to ask her to support the poor whom they have neglected, and the poor whom they have made, and ... to entreat her, in a word, to bear their burdens, and protect them from the consequences of their selfishness and sin.110

The Times was equally emphatic about whose obligation it was to provide for the Irish poor: 'the property of Ireland must be made legally responsible/or the employment or feeding of the people.'™1 However indefensible Mill thought the conduct of the Irish landlords as a class, he was certain they did not possess the means to maintain a poor law of the sort urged by The Times and the Economist. Were the legislature foolhardy enough to enact such a measure, it would 'in a short time ... absorb the whole rental of the country.'112 Yet the lethal impact of poor-law extension on Irish property would be exceeded in gravity by the moral damage done to the Irish masses. Their existing moral infirmities would be immeasurably aggravated, their prospects for economic independence utterly destroyed. 'With their present habits, the only motive which is found sufficient to produce any real exertion ... is the fear of destitution. From that fear it is proposed permanently to relieve them/113 As Mill would have the state do all it could to create an environment advantageous to moral improvement and economic self-sufficiency, so would he have it refrain from all action he considered harmful to these ends. The advocates of poor-law extension did not share Mill's fears, and among them was one Mill could not easily ignore. George Poulett Scrope was a political economist, an MP, and a prolific writer of pamphlets. In late April 1846, some months before Mill began his Morning Chronicle campaign, Scrope introduced a bill in the House of Commons calling upon Parliament to authorize the Irish Board of Works to purchase from landords the cultivatable waste lands of Ireland. These lands were urgently needed for a great public purpose, Scrope said, and they should be purchased compulsorily at a fair valuation. Once acquired by the state, the lands should be drained at government expense, the necessary labour being drawn from that large pool of Irish poor who had recently lost their sole means of support. But this was not all. Scrope proposed that the land thus prepared for cultivation should

The Famine 69 be divided into farms of between five and a hundred acres. The occupiers of these farms, granted either a perpetual lease or a fee-simple, would obtain 'that permanent interest in the improvement of the property which was only to be found in a long and endurable tenure. He thought it would be most desirable for Ireland to create an intermediate class of persons of that description occupying farms of their own, and who would be sure of reaping the fruits of their own industry/114 Thus Scrope publicly fastened an element of peasant propriet6rship to wasteland reclamation well before Mill entered the fray, a fact the latter did not dispute."5 Scrope got Mill's hackles up, however, when he argued that an extension of the Irish Poor Law was the indispensable adjunct to the waste-lands project. The poor law Scrope had in mind would legally recognize the right of all destitute persons in Ireland to relief; it would also permit the granting of such relief outside the workhouse, in the case of the aged and infirm without condition, in the case of the able-bodied in the form of compensation for work of a productive kind. A poor law of this description, Scrope held, would prompt landowners to employ as many labourers as possible in order to keep them off the rates. Those not kept off the rates could be put to work on the waste lands, a productive operation calculated to bring about Ireland's economic regeneration. The achievement of social stability in Ireland depended on the agency of such a poor law, as did provision of the manpower needed to exploit the waste lands. Obversely, this extended poor law could be a force of economic revitalization only if legislation mandating the reclamation and division of the waste lands were enacted.116 Although Scrope was pleased with the Morning Chronicle's vigorous espousal of the waste-lands scheme, he deeply regretted its hostility to an extension of the Irish Poor Law. In a series of letters to the Chronicle he criticized the author of its leaders on Ireland for his failure to grasp the necessary connection between the waste-lands project and an expanded poor law, and endeavoured to explain their fundamental complementarity.117 For Mill's part, it is difficult to know whether his chagrin over Scrope's heresy on the poor law surpassed his embarrassment that a man whose judgment could be so flawed also happened to be a leading proponent of waste-land reclamation and peasant proprietorship. Where Scrope amalgamated extension of the poor law and recovery of the waste lands into a single plan for Ireland's rejuvenation, Mill was at pains to segregate his own approbation of 'waste lands colonisation' from his rejection of poor-law extension, 'to which we should be as inveterately hostile if there were not an acre of waste land in Ireland. We rejoice

yo England's Disgrace? cordially that we have something to propose which may raise a part of the Irish peasantry into proprietors; but if we had not, we should not think it any reason for supporting what would lower them all into beggars or buccaneers.'118 A poor law of the sort Scrope wanted 'would raise an almost insuperable obstacle to his plan of waste-land location, or to any plan whatever for elevating the Irish poor by means of their own industry.'119 To relieve Ireland's destitute able-bodied by assuring them of rate-supported employment would ineluctably make this option more attractive than earning wages in the private sector. The work performed "by those quartered on the poor-rates/ under whatever system of supervision, could never amount to much. Why should such people, guaranteed a maintenance in return for work of a 'nominal' character, consent to do real work in exchange for wages paid by a farmer, entrepreneur, or landlord?120 'The consequence would be that all private industry in Ireland would cease.'121 More than a trace of the dogmatic streak exhibited by the youthful Mill coloured his treatment of the Irish poor-law question in 1846. His rigid opposition to an extension of the Irish Poor Law was not representative of liberal opinion. Although Nassau Senior - Oxford's first professor of political economy, quondam adviser to Whig governments on English poor laws, and Edinburgh Review contributor - shared Mill's intransigence, the Spectator, the Examiner, and even the Economist were amenable to the idea of Irish poor-law extension.122 The stigma invariably attached to the Old Poor Law in the orthodox works of English political economy had left an indelible mark on Mill. That a system of outdoor relief produced economic dislocation and moral debility was for him a datum of unimpeachable authority. To introduce such a system in a country whose population already presented a woeful moral spectacle, he believed, would be the height of folly. It would have been reasonable of Mill or anyone else to doubt whether faminestricken Ireland could afford a poor law of the type Scrope recommended. The categorical language in which he couched his antipathy to Scrope's proposal, however, went well beyond an expression of deep scepticism as to its practical soundness. His formulation of the problem had a decidedly peremptory tone. To give them [the Irish poor] any chance of regeneration they must have food and employment; but it is not necessary that they should have a right to food and employment. They must be enabled to earn it, but not empowered to demand it. Strange that it should be so difficult to seize the distinction between

The Famine 71 these two things. Is it not the testimony of all experience in all branches of human affairs (while human nature is what it is, in its ordinary specimens), that men never trouble themselves to earn what they are able to demand? Is this not true, not of money only, but of all things else which human beings claim from one another? Is it not the source of most of the crime and all the tyranny which exist in the world, and of the greater part of the difficulty experienced in governing mankind?123

Mill's estimation of the issue's importance, and his unshakable conviction that he had mastered its essence, meant that he could not spare Scrope. This cocksure strain imbues the Morning Chronicle series. Its author has certainty of purpose and absolute confidence in his judgment. He writes as one who knows what is wrong and how to fix it. Had he felt otherwise, Mill would not have come forward. Fervent, lucid, and incisive, his prose carries a charge of notable intensity. His leading articles were written to cause a stir. 4. IMPACT In mid-November, by which time the Morning Chronicle had printed about half the leaders on Ireland he would ultimately write, Mill expressed satisfaction with the impact his series had made. He reported to Alexander Bain that his articles had 'excited a good deal of notice, and have quite snatched the initiative out of the Times.'124 The Times, wanting nothing to do with either a waste-lands scheme or peasant proprietorship, had put its weight behind poor-law extension as the only sensible answer to Ireland's predicament.125 Other elements of the metropolitan press, however, began to show interest in reclamation of the waste lands after Mill focused attention on the subject. Within a week of the appearance of his first leader, the Economist, which habitually displayed a fierce opposition to government intervention in the economic sphere, urged that all of the money being spent to support labour on public works in Ireland should be used to bring 'the waste lands under cultivation.' Suggesting that proprietors of waste lands willing to mount such an operation be eligible for government loans at a normal rate of interest, the Economist added that owners preferring to relinquish these lands to the government should be permitted to do so, the Board of Works assuming administrative authority for reclamation.126 More notable than the

72 England's Disgrace? feebleness of this scheme is the Economist's disposition to put forward any proposal at all on the topic. On 17 October, about a fortnight after Mill began his campaign, the Examiner lamented the failure of the government to act boldly in Ireland, specifically emphasizing the opportunity to augment the amount of soil capable of yielding an increased supply of food for the Irish masses. Distribution of the waste lands, the Examiner conceded, would raise irksome issues involving property rights, but no other idea had such great potential for making efficient use of the vast labour surplus in Ireland or for producing desirable 'moral' and 'pecuniary results.'127 The Spectator engaged directly in a periodic commentary on Mill's leaders during the latter half of October and early November. On 17 October it summarized Mill's argument, as it by then had been adumbrated, for the formation of a peasant proprietary on the waste lands. Without pronouncing on the merits of the scheme, the Spectator fully endorsed Mill's notion that respect for property rights not be allowed to obstruct a policy, however radical, that promised a major improvement in Ireland's parlous condition. The government must be permitted 'full scope for action: universal opinion warrants it in carrying its measures to the extent of social revolution.'128 A week later the Spectator praised the Morning Chronicle for its valuable contribution to the public discussion on Irish affairs. The Chronicle 'is ably enforcing the fact that through the cultivation of waste lands landlords might escape from their difficulties.'129 On 7 November the Spectator remarked on the 'great ability' with which the Chronicle pressed its case for 'a compulsory cultivation of the waste lands.'130 To have made this much headway with his waste-lands project in the course of a month understandably gratified Mill, but then again there was little novelty in the idea that the waste lands could prove a highly beneficial resource. It was far more difficult winning people over to peasant proprietorship, the nucleus of Mill's blueprint for the moral reformation of Ireland. Converts to this part of his plan were thin on the ground (in England at any rate). The successful colonization of the waste lands by a large number of impoverished Irishmen struck the Globe, an evening paper with links to the government of the day, as a Utopian notion. 'We ... doubt you can catch up out of the depths of destitution, and convert, with the touch of an administrative Harlequin's wand, into thriving proprietors, masses whose utmost ambition hitherto has been to vegetate on potatoes.'131 Neither the Economist (no surprise here) nor the Spectator found anything to recommend the idea. The former contended that ownership of property would not alter the

The Famine

73

'character or conduct of the Irish peasant/ If peasant proprietorship had recorded successes in countries such as Prussia, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Norway, it was because the peasantry in those societies had evinced the qualities conducive to this kind of farming before gaining control over a portion of the soil. The Irishman was altogether different. We must never forget that the character of the Irishman is singular - full of idiosyncrasies; and among its prominent features are the following: - He will never toil for anything he can dispense with; he will never do anything to-day which he can possibly put off till to-morrow; and he will never do anything for himself which there is any likelihood of any one doing for him. People of whom such things may be predicated, are not in a condition to become proprietors.132 As for the Spectator, it rejected the claim that the experience of France could be taken as a vindication of peasant proprietorship, and maintained that the Prussian experience held no lessons for Britain. The change 'from villeinage to a sort of copyhold' in Prussia embodied progress; in the British context the creation of a small proprietary would be a retrograde step 'that must impede the conveyance of land and diminish its marketable value.'133 That the Spectator, ready to countenance 'social revolution' in Ireland, should choose to subsume Ireland under Britain for the purpose of demonstrating the inaptness of peasant proprietorship underscores the prevailing antipathy to this part of Mill's scheme. Such antipathy was not evident in the Irish nationalist press. The Freeman's Journal, the most important journalistic arm of O'Connell's movement for repeal of the Union, gave Mill's Morning Chronicle series a rhapsodic reception. From mid-October through the latter half of November it reprinted several of his articles in full and gave prominent editorial coverage to what the Chronicle was saying about Ireland.134 It characterized Mill's article on fixity of tenure as 'a very remarkable one/ which 'cannot fail to attract attention.'135 On Mill's scheme for the reclamation and colonization of the waste lands, the Freeman's Journal declared: 'It would give immediate employment - it would permanently improve the condition of the parties employed, and would increase the productive capacities of the kingdom. All this it would effect without increased pecuniary loss to the state, and with immediate as well as ultimate advantage to the landlords.'136 Well before the end of October the Journal was hailing the Chronicle's 'series of remarkably able arti-

74 England's Disgrace? cles/ observing, 'We can scarcely estimate the value of the proposed change. Vast, as it is simple in design, it would be gigantic in its benefits.'137 While expressing unalloyed support for Mill's project, the Journal did not share his reluctance to recommend fixity of tenure for all Irish tenants. Execution of the waste-lands scheme would accomplish a great deal, but the amount of land and the number of cultivators affected by it would not be sufficient to resolve conclusively the problem of land tenure in Ireland. The Freeman's Journal hoped that the Chronicle would ultimately espouse the cause of universal fixity of tenure for Irish tenants.138 This caveat did not constrain the Journal from pronouncing that the Morning Chronicle exhibited 'a far keener insight into the social and economic condition of Ireland than any of its cotemporaries.'139 The chief journalistic organ representing the radical wing of Irish nationalism was the Nation, whose establishment in 1842 had signalled the emergence of the Young Ireland movement.140 Although the Nation devoted much less space than the Freeman's Journal to the Morning Chronicle leaders, their author was paid a compliment the likes of which few Englishmen could expect from this fiercely antiEnglish newspaper. The Chronicle writer was 'one who (a rare thing in an English journalist treating of Ireland) plainly knows what he is writing about, and touches it boldly as well as skilfully.'141 (Nothing uttered by either the Freeman's Journal or the Nation suggests they found Mill's discussion of the existing moral attributes of the Irish masses harsh, unfair, or inaccurate.)142 A proposal embraced by the Irish nationalist press could not expect a friendly reception from the Irish Tory press. The Dublin Evening Mail, a defender of landlord interests, in fact had little to say about the wastelands scheme, reserving its strongest language for Mill's idea that landlords securing aid from the government to improve their estates should be required to grant their tenants fixity of tenure. 'A more monstrous proposition ... was never made in any country since the heigh-day and wild extravagance of the French Revolution ... The matter is, indeed, too absurd - the idea too intolerable - for serious discussion.'143 The Evening Packet, another pro-landlord Dublin gazette, responded oddly to the waste-lands question. In a leader of 10 November the Packet noted that reclamation of the waste lands had become a much-vetted topic, and inferred from the line taken by the Morning Chronicle that the government probably intended to introduce a measure on the subject. Only the state could prosecute such a project, the landlords of Ireland clearly lacking the means to do so. But how was this to be done? 'We

The Famine 75 pass over as wicked and visionary the suggestion thrown out by the Chronicle, that the Government should take forcible possession of such of the waste tracts as the landlords are not in a condition to improve.' Action of this nature would imply that the landlords had no valid claim to their property. 'Of course a proposition so wild deserves only to be mentioned in order to be scouted with universal indignation.' Having dismissed the Chronicle's position as unworthy of serious attention, the Packet proceeded to extol the virtues of Poulett Scrope's plan! The Packet had no problem with the government compelling 'those proprietors who are unable to reclaim the waste lands ... to sell to the state at a fair valuation.' The lands so acquired could be improved at 'public expense' and then 'allotted in comfortable farms, at moderate rents in perpetuity.' Were this policy to be judiciously applied, 'the amount of substantial benefit to the country in a few years would be incalculable.' Asserting that the waste lands had the potential to accommodate 300,000 families, each occupying a farm of twenty acres, the Packet announced that this operation 'would be the actual regeneration of Ireland, nothing less.'144 For the Packet this tack proved a momentary aberration the subject was not further pursued. Yet this peculiar deviation testified to the interest the waste-lands issue had engendered by the middle of November. One of the reasons Mill's leaders stimulated as much curiosity as they did is because they appeared in a newspaper closely tied to the government. Would the Morning Chronicle devote so much space to propounding the case for reclamation of the waste lands and peasant proprietorship if Lord John Russell's ministry did not mean to legislate on the matter? The way the topic was taken up by the Dublin Evening Post, the leading Whig newspaper in Ireland, bears directly on this question. Through October and most of November the Evening Post was notably complacent about the burgeoning crisis in Ireland. Not until 24 November did the Post draw its readers' attention to the Chronicle series, only to decry Mill's scheme as 'utterly Utopian.'145 The Post nonetheless thought it had an obligation to keep its readers abreast of press opinion in England, and thus reprinted one of Mill's leaders along with its criticism of the plan. When the Post next carried a leader from the Chronicle series, on 10 December, the commentary accompanying it reflected a change in tone. Without approving the substance of Mill's argument, the Post now suggested that much of English public opinion had become convinced of the need to reclaim and colonize the waste lands, and intimated that Parliament would act in accordance

76 England's Disgrace? with this opinion.146 Two more of Mill's articles were reprinted in the Post, on 12 and 19 December.147 On 22 December the Post not only conveyed its belief that the government was preparing a waste-lands measure but virtually withdrew its objection to the idea.148 Four days later the Evening Post, while divulging its serious misgivings with respect to the creation of a peasant proprietary on the waste lands, had this to say about Mill's series: [W]e have hardly ever read with greater pleasure, or with a more entire sympathy, any articles in a newspaper than those which have recently been published in the Chronicle on this subject. Let the reclamation proceed by all means. Before it is perfected, something may occur to realise the benevolent views of the writer. In the meantime, the work will give employment and food to thousands and tens of thousands - and beside, in itself, will be a great blessing. It will introduce, too, a new principle into the tenure of land - and it may have the effect of giving the Tenant Farmer some security for his holding.149

It would be foolish to suppose that the cumulative persuasive power of Mill's Chronicle articles accounts for this protean performance. By late December the Evening Post understood that the government intended to include a measure for waste-lands reclamation as part of the package of Irish legislation to be presented to Parliament in January. Among the ministerial supporters of this initiative was Lord Bessborough, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.150 The Post would have been primed by Dublin Castle and encouraged to fall in with the government's design. Paying close attention to Mill's leaders helped ready the ground for the formal announcement of what the Whig administration had in mind. Presumably Mill himself would have heard, through Buller, that the signs were auspicious. He referred to his Chronicle articles in a 28 December letter to Alexander Bain: These last I may slacken now, having in a great measure, as far as may be judged by appearances, carried my point, viz., to have the waste lands reclaimed and parcelled out in small properties among the best of the peasantry.'151 It is not possible to ascertain the extent to which Mill's Chronicle series influenced deliberations in the cabinet on the waste-lands issue. Although Mill's name evidently does not figure in the relevant correspondence of leading ministers, it is probable they knew of his authorship, the proprietor of the Chronicle being a familiar figure in Whig circles and Buller being part of the government.152 Did the content of his articles substantively affect the government's Irish program? The

The Famine 77 individual more responsible than any other for incorporating a wastelands proposal in that program was the prime minister, Lord John Russell. In August 1846, two months before Mill started his series, Russell told the House of Commons, with reference to Poulett Scrope's waste-lands measure, that 'Her Majesty's Government had every wish to introduce a Bill of this kind.'153 This measure, it will be recalled, included the settlement of proprietors on the waste lands, an idea that fared better with some leading Whig politicians than it did with most English political journalists.154 Mill's articles were written in the interval between the close of the 1846 parliamentary session and the opening of the 1847 session, a period during which Russell and his colleagues were trying to reach agreement on a congeries of Irish legislation. Perhaps the Chronicle series fortified Russell's inclination to devise a government proposal broadly consonant with the central features of Scrope's bill; maybe it had no impact on the premier's resolve. In any event, Mill's sustained and forceful advocacy of a waste-lands scheme, albeit one that went well beyond what Russell thought feasible, was an aid rather than a hindrance to what the Whig leader hoped to achieve. It gave public prominence to the subject at an opportune moment and in a manner favourable to government action. On 25 January Russell told the House of Commons that the government 'proposed to undertake the reclamation of a portion of the waste lands of Ireland.' The plan, as laid out by Russell, called for an expenditure of one million pounds, some to be used to acquire waste land from proprietors and the rest for land improvement, road construction, drainage, and the erection of essential buildings (responsibility for acquisition would be vested in the Commissioners of Woods and Forests; for reclamation in the Board of Works). Land sought for this purpose could be purchased compulsorily if its value was appraised below a certain figure and its owners refused to sell it voluntarily. Once the lands had been rendered fit for cultivation, they were to be parcelled into lots ranging in size from twenty-five to fifty acres, which were to be sold or leased for a specified period of years. In the latter instance the land was to be sold when the lease expired. Russell predicted that adoption of this scheme would yield great benefits. I expect that a great number of persons who have hitherto been driven to despair, and many of them into crime, by the great demand for land, will be placed in those holdings, and be able to earn a comfortable living by the produce of their labour. I think likewise, with respect to those who purchase

78 England's Disgrace? them, that we shall, by means of the land reclaimed and purchased, raise a class of small proprietors, who by their industry and independence will form a valuable link in the future social condition of Ireland.155

Although several Irish MPs greeted the proposal hospitably, it generally met with a chilly reception.156 Lord Stanley, Protectionist leader in the Upper House, asserted that the acquisition, reclamation, and sale of land fell outside the legitimate purview of government.157 In the Commons the proposal was condemned on the Radical side by Ralph Bernal Osborne, J.A. Roebuck (Mill's erstwhile friend), and Joseph Hume, each of whom thought it a preposterous notion.158 Sir Robert Peel weighed in with a negative judgment, stating that 'the cultivation of the soil must depend on the energies of the people, and not on the assistance of the government.'159 Russell got little support from his own front bench: his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Charles Wood, let it be known that he did 'not attach so much importance to this measure as some hon. Gentlemen seem to do.'160 How much importance did Mill attach to the measure? He wrote to Bain on 27 February, two days after Russell addressed the House of Commons on the subject: 'You will have seen by this time how far the ministry are from having adopted any of my conclusions about Ireland, though Lord J. Russell subscribes openly to almost all the premises. I have little hope left.'161 Mill thought the government plan ineptly conceived. In one respect, he observed in the Chronicle, the proposed scheme was excessively ambitious. Government involvement in reclamation should be restricted to the provision of general drainage, which could not be successfully undertaken by individuals. Whatever could be 'done well by individuals, should not be done for them by a Government.' The ministry should therefore 'reconsider as much of their waste-land project as implies that any land should be completely prepared for cultivation at the expense of the State.'162 The chief flaw in Russell's scheme, however, was not that it offered too much, but too little. A million pounds spent for the purpose could not possibly bring forth an operation on the scale Mill envisaged. Dividing the deficient quantity of land thus made available into lots of twenty-five to fifty acres would mean that a mere fraction of those calculated to benefit from Mill's project would have the opportunity to secure a holding. If carried out in conformity with the terms set down by Russell, the total effect of the proposal on the economic and moral character of Irish society would be

The Famine 79 negligible. Yet Russell's design seemed 'absolutely resplendent' when gauged against the attitude of those in Parliament who found fault with it. Juxtaposing 'the principles which he propounded, and which he is prepared, though in an inadequate manner, to act upon, with the profound unacquaintance with the subject hitherto manifested by those speakers in Parliament who have constituted themselves his critics ... it is impossible to refuse to Lord John Russell and his colleagues a considerable share of comparative praise.'163 The ignorance of these 'critics' was especially galling in light of all that Mill had done in the preceding months to instruct the politicians and the public on the merits of wasteland reclamation and peasant proprietorship. In the end nothing came of Russell's initiative. The range of opposition it provoked in Parliament persuaded the government that no measure containing a compulsory aspect could be passed. The attempt to shape a bill voluntary in nature prompted the government's legal advisers to cite various difficulties impeding the formulation of a plan capable of swift application. At the end of April Wood informed the House of Commons that the ministry consequently had decided to drop the idea altogether.164 Mill was incensed. His contempt for the English governing classes was obvious in the late 18405, and his anger over their obtuse response to the famine was the principal source of that scorn. In March 1847, before the government officially abandoned the waste-lands proposal, Mill revealed his vexation in a letter to H.S. Chapman. He had 'never felt so thoroughly disgusted with the state of public affairs ... Ireland will be in a state next year that will make the landlords sell the clothes off their backs to get rid of the people.'165 A month later John Austin got a lengthy commentary from Mill on the shameful inadequacies of the English aristocracy as a governing class. Acknowledging that he could see advantages to 'a violent revolution' in England, Mill ruefully declared: 'England has never had any general break-up of old associations & hence the extreme difficulty of getting any ideas into its stupid head.'166 In May, after Wood's announcement to the Commons, Mill told Bain that '[t]he conduct of the ministers is wretched beyond measure upon all subjects; nothing but the meanest truckling at a time when a man with a decided opinion could carry almost anything triumphantly.'167 A full year later, in a letter to the Examiner, he offered the following assessment of the government's performance relative to the famine.

8o England's Disgrace? This was an occasion for English politicians to show what they had in them ... Whatever ideas they had, they must then have displayed; and it proved that they had none. They spent ten millions in effecting what seemed impossible in making Ireland worse than before. They demoralized and disorganized what little rational industry the country contained; and the only permanent thing with which they endowed Ireland, was the only curse which her evil destiny seemed previously to have spared her - a bad poor law.168 5. ASSESSMENT

In Ireland the crepuscular gloom of 1846 made way for the grim and desolating night of 1847. Late-twentieth-century historians who fault Russell's government for its Irish program in 1847 do not complain of the failure to secure passage of a waste-lands measure. The two major pieces of Irish legislation passed during the first half of 1847 were the Temporary Relief Act, better known as the Soup Kitchen Act, and the Irish Poor Law Extension Act. The system of public works in place in 1846 had been widely condemned in England as exorbitantly expensive and as demoralizing to its intended beneficiaries; in Ireland it had manifestly failed to stem the rising death toll. Hence, the government decided to phase out the public-works projects and to provide direct and gratuitous relief to the destitute in the form of soup. The soup kitchens were intended to deal with the immediate problem of widespread dearth while the authorities installed an enlarged poor law. The Extension Act, given the royal assent in June, stipulated that the nonable-bodied should be eligible for indoor or outdoor relief, the decision regarding the appropriate mode of assistance being left to the local boards of guardians. A right to relief was also granted to the destitute able-bodied, but this relief was to be confined to the workhouse unless conditions made it impossible to accommodate them. In the latter case, the poor-law commissioners could empower local guardians to offer relief to the able-bodied in the form of food for a period not to exceed two months. The soup kitchens were shut down by the end of September and virtually the entire burden of supporting the indigent was thrown upon private charity and this extended Irish Poor Law. Cormac 6 Grada considers this policy 'the most cynical move of all. It amounted to a declaration that, as far as Whitehall was concerned, the Famine was over.'169 Over it was not. Although 1847 was the most harrowing of the famine years, a malnourished population highly vulnerable to infectious disease faced further adversity arising from a partially blighted

The Famine 81 harvest in 1848. Excess mortality attributable to famine conditions remained high between 1848 and i850.17° Could any of this been averted had Mill's proposal been acted upon? The absence of action means there is no satisfactory way to answer this question. The problem of giving a fair estimate of the scheme's potential utility as a measure of relief is also hampered by the journalistic mould in which it is cast. Mill does not present a piece of legislation with detailed provisions embedded in specific clauses; instead he offers the outline of a plan whose principles, aims, and justification receive far more attention than do its mechanics. Yet the general terms laid down by Mill, when analysed in the context of what was then happening in Ireland, prompt scepticism about its value as a relief measure. When he links the work of reclamation to the state's determination 'to provide support, during months to come, for a large proportion of the whole Irish people/ one has to wonder what he thought would happen if the land could still not yield a subsistence after those months had elapsed (a not unlikely conjuncture). Colonel Daniel Robinson, managing director of the Irish Waste Lands Improvement Company, estimated that labourers engaged in reclamation of the waste lands would have to be supplied with food from external sources for two years.171 And what was to become of those employed in the reclamation process who could not meet the conditions for permanent occupancy of a holding? Presumably those unable to qualify would constitute a majority of those so employed, and it may be doubted that the Irish economy could absorb their labour once the relief phase of Mill's scheme had drawn to a close. Quite apart from these considerations, the logistical problems attendant upon mounting such an operation, coupled with the acute stage the crisis had reached by the time Russell's administration met Parliament in January 1847, raise grave questions concerning the viability of the project as an effective engine of relief. Mill, however, promoted his scheme chiefly as an instrument of improvement rather than as a mechanism of relief. Could his plan have served as the foundation of Ireland's economic reconstruction? Mill contends that Ireland's cultivatable waste - reckoned at something under 1,500,000 acres by the Devon Commission172 - could support 'one-fourth to one-third of the Irish peasantry.'173 There are grounds for doubt. In the Morning Chronicle series Mill refuses to commit himself to an optimal size for each holding commensurate with the objectives he has in view, tendering no more than suitable guidelines. 'The portion of land should neither be so extensive as to require the aid of hired labour

82 England's Disgrace? ... nor so small as to leave any part of the proprietor's time on his hands which his little estate cannot beneficially occupy.'174 In the Principles of Political Economy he tentatively gives a figure of five acres.175 Census data indicate that the average size of a farm in pre-famine Ireland was between nineteen and twenty acres (a misleading figure inasmuch as some 70 per cent of holdings did not exceed fifteen acres, and of these nearly half did not exceed five acres).176 Witnesses heard by the Devon Commission gave figures ranging from 6.25 to 10.50 acres as the minimum needed to sustain a family of five.177 In his plan Scrope recommended five acres as a minimum, but implied that the mean size should be substantially larger (he offered 100 acres as a maximum).178 Thornton had said eight acres per family would be reasonable.179 In arriving at a farm size they thought practicable, Thornton and Mill factored in the fundamental changes in economic behaviour they assumed proprietorship would engender.180 They did not fix their attention on the issue of differential soil quality. Joel Mokyr states that the reclamation of waste 'needed large quantities of something Ireland was very short of: fertilizer/181 The distinguished Irish economic historian R.D.C. Black observes that the 'deliberate colonisation of reclaimed land could only have offered a very insecure livelihood' to the occupiers. He concludes that 'the reclamation of waste could not have solved the Irish economic problem.'182 Mill's projections seem extravagant. His readiness to go with a farm size of five acres comes from his determination to make peasant proprietorship a conspicuous element in the economic order of Ireland. A prominent place for a peasant proprietary in that order was pivotal to Mill's project of moral reconstruction, the key to 'converting an indolent and reckless into a laborious, provident, and careful people/183 Mill found it expedient to argue that his scheme was functional for relief purposes, but he embraced it for its redemptive properties. He presupposed that a people 'laborious, provident, and careful,' would enjoy a much greater sum of happiness than a people 'indolent and reckless/ Be this as it may, it is reasonable to query the ethical standing of a felicific calculus that gives precedence to a remote good at a time when the immediate need in Ireland was to preserve her people. In Mill's moral vision, however, the good he aimed to secure was of supreme importance and the probability of its attainment high. And he did not propose that a portion of the Irish people should be sacrificed to achieve it. The attitude of Charles Trevelyan furnishes an instructive comparison and contrast. As the senior permanent official at the Treasury,

The Famine 83 Trevelyan was in effect the administrative director of government famine policy. In 1848 he produced a major defence of that policy in a massive essay for the Edinburgh Review, subsequently published in pamphlet form (the pamphlet runs to some 200 pages).184 Impregnating this essay is Trevelyan's conviction that God was doing for Ireland what no government could accomplish. The potato blight signalled a visitation of the Almighty. After cataloguing the multitude of ostensibly intractable economic, social, and moral abominations debilitating Ireland before the famine, Trevelyan praises the Supreme Wisdom for making their removal possible. The deep and inveterate root of social evil remained [after Catholic Emancipation], and this has been laid bare by a direct stroke of an all-wise and allmerciful Providence, as if this part of the case were beyond the unassisted power of man. Innumerable had been the specifics which the wit of man had devised; but even the idea of the sharp but effectual remedy by which the cure is likely to be effected, had never occurred to any one. God grant that the generation to which this great opportunity has been offered may rightly perform its part, and that we may not relax our efforts until Ireland fully participates in the social health and physical prosperity of Great Britain, which will be the true consummation of their union.185

Trevelyan did not relax his efforts, labouring indefatigably to keep the government from interfering with God's will. The salvation of Ireland necessitated the destruction of the potato economy and many of those dependent on it. On the ruins of this pathological state of society would be created an economic system whose operation acknowledged the right and proper order of things, as illustrated by the workings of England's agricultural sector. 'Whether the good order, the physical well-being, or the moral and intellectual progress of rural society, be considered, the best model is that in which the educated and enlightened proprietor, the substantial farmer, and the industrious labourer on regular wages, each performs his appropriate part.'186 The crisis in Ireland would eliminate landlords unfit to promote improvement and put competent landowners in their place. A much-reduced population would foster the consolidation of holdings and the widespread application of English agricultural methods. Rising productivity would generate capital accumulation within Ireland, and capital from without would be attracted by the scope for profitable investment in an environment protective of life and property. Economic diversifi-

84 England's Disgrace? cation suitable to Ireland's needs and capacities would ensue. The preeminent importance of all this was not that it would give the people a far higher standard of material comfort, however valuable this in itself would be. For Trevelyan, as for Mill, moral considerations were paramount. Economic transformation would serve the end of moral reformation. Both Trevelyan and Mill saw the conditions brought about by the famine as constituting a unique opportunity for inculcating in the Irish masses the virtues they needed to acquire. Trevelyan wanted no part of a state scheme of land reclamation; like Mill, however, he was eager to reclaim Ireland's moral waste.187 Over policy they differed profoundly, Trevelyan strenuously sponsoring a minimalist response, Mill vigorously advocating large-scale intervention of a specific kind. Trevelyan's belief that scores of Irish people had to perish so that Ireland might live runs counter to Mill's insistence that the means lay at hand both to preserve the people and to rejuvenate Ireland. And their differences involved more than policy. Mill would consider odious Trevelyan's providentialist reading of events in Ireland, a reading deeply offensive to the moral and philosophical precepts Mill had absorbed from his father.188 Both Mill and Trevelyan presumed that the making of Irish policy was essentially an English responsibility, and both believed England had a moral duty to strive to govern Ireland well. Yet Mill's Anglocentrism was not of the same stripe as Trevelyan's. Unlike the latter, Mill did not take England's moral authority for granted. In her treatment of Ireland, England had yet to show herself worthy of the power and responsibility she undeniably possessed. And Mill cared dearly that in the circumstances of 1846-7 England demonstrate her worthiness. Much of his passion-laced rhetoric emanates from this concern. The present moment is, without exaggeration, the most critical in the history of England's dealings with Ireland. The whole fruits of centuries of oppression and neglect are coming home to us in a single year ... There is no retreating, no putting off. The burden of Irish destitution is now to be borne by us. Ireland can no longer suffer alone. We must take our full share of the evil, or put an end to it.'189 'We want something which may be regarded as a great act of national justice healing the wounds of centuries ... We want England to have the credit of doing something in love to Ireland, or in duty to her, and not that of making her very beneficence subservient to extracting more gain from a soil, her title to which, until confirmed by the lapse of ages, was no

The Famine 85 other than that of usurpation and conquest.'190 Mill shared the conviction of Irish nationalists that England had not earned the right to govern Ireland. He did not concur in their view that this right could not be earned. It was incumbent upon England to show what virtue she had, and vitally important that she have enough. This is not the sort of disposition the Freeman's Journal and the Nation were likely to criticize in 1846 and 1847. Mill's engagement with the famine reveals that he had travelled a considerable distance since the late 18305. The Ireland discussed by Mill in the 18205 and 18303 rotated on an English political axis, and it was the axis that interested him. He had no Irish program. In 1846-7 Mill had an Irish program, and the attention he gave English politics at this time derived from his preoccupation with Ireland. His retreat from political activism and his focus on the logic of the moral sciences and the principles of political economy together with their application had greatly heightened his sensitivity to issues that had a direct bearing on Ireland's predicament and prospects. Still highly critical of aristocratic government, Mill adopts in his Morning Chronicle leaders an angle of assault different from that characteristic of his political journalism in the 18305. By the second half of the 18405 the corruption of aristocratic politics counted for less with him and the economic foundation of aristocractic power counted for more. Peasant proprietorship offered not only the best hope for Ireland's economic and moral regeneration; it also promised ultimately to shrink the relative economic muscle of the elite by putting in place a form of agricultural organization incompatible with aristocratic collection of rent. Consequently, Mill was furious when he learned that Trevelyan's amplification of a Treasury Minute appeared to authorize the lending of relief money to landlords to help them reclaim waste lands. Of all modes ever suggested for dealing with the waste lands, this is the most unjustifiable. What have the landlords done, that the State should double or quadruple their rental for them? ... Must it [the state]... reclaim the unoccupied soil of Ireland from the worthlessness and barrenness in which they [the landlords] have left it, merely to present it to them? Far better were it that the land should remain as it is, and wait for more propitious times and wiser counsels, than that this rare and unequalled opportunity for rooting out the pestilent tenure which is the chief social cause of Ireland's degradation should be thrown away irrevocably, and that five years hence, instead of a peasantry composed

86 England's Disgrace? of a fourth or a fifth landed proprietors, and the remainder labourers at good wages, nothing should have issued for Ireland's benefit from this great crisis of her destiny, except merely a larger surface covered with miserable cottiers!191

Mill conceived of peasant proprietorship as a great measure of distributive justice. In a recent article entitled 'Liberals, the Irish Famine and the State/ George Bernstein asserts that 'by 1848 and 1849 British liberalism needed a Famine mythology rooted in non-interventionism. As the human cost of the Famine became evident, the British ... needed the reassurance that there was nothing they could have done to prevent the tragedy. The laws of political economy provided just such reassurance.'192 This argument is well worth pondering, as is the irony that in 1848 the greatest liberal political economist of the nineteenth century recapitulated his plea for Irish peasant proprietorship in a treatise that would thoroughly dominate its field for a generation.

Ill Ireland and the Principles of Political Economy, 1848-1865

The history of Mill's association with the Irish question from 1848 to 1865 largely concerns changes he made in the Principles of Political Economy, which went through six editions during this period. The sections of this massive treatise dealing with the problem of Irish land underwent significant revision through these editions, and a sustained textual and contextual analysis can uncover much about Mill's changing disposition on the subject. The Principles, together with a brief discussion of Ireland's relation to England in Considerations on Representative Government, supplies most of the direct evidence we have for his views on the Irish question in the years between the Morning Chronicle series and his election to the House of Commons.1 The sixth edition of the Principles (1865) was the last to appear before Mill entered Parliament, an event he certainly had not foreseen during the first half of the i86os. That entry dramatically deepened his involvement with the Irish question at a time when a resurgent Irish nationalism, in the form of Fenianism, seemed to pose the first serious challenge to the Union since O'Connell's repeal agitation of the early 18405. The result was England and Ireland, Mill's radical pamphlet of 1868 that called for granting Irish tenants fixity of tenure. E.D. Steele has forcefully argued that the content of England and Ireland represents an abrupt departure from the moderation evinced in the Principles.2 Before seeking to explain the factors responsible for this departure, he carefully examines the treatment given Ireland in the Principles. The value of the passages in the book devoted to Ireland/ he asserts, 'is that they provide possibly the clearest illustration of the tendency in his thought for pragmatism to get the better of radicalism.'3 On this reading, England and Ireland was an aberration. Yet when full account is taken of authorial intent, contex-

88 England's Disgrace? tual difference, and the waning and waxing of Mill's political engagement, the pamphlet of 1868, although a shock to many of his contemporaries, can be plausibly construed as the fruit of a moral sensibility observable during the preceding two decades. This does not mean that Mill's treatment of the land question in the sundry editions of the Principles is unproblematic. It presents a curious and unsettling blend of moral indignation, bold theory, radical diagnosis, and less radical prescription, the proportions of each fluctuating with time, circumstance, and the degree of interest manifested by the commentator. Understanding these defining elements and the changing prominence Mill assigned to each between 1848 and 1865 requires more than an examination of attitudinal continuity and discontinuity as displayed in the Irish passages of the Principles. Mill's apprehension and interpretation of the trends in Ireland and the climate of opinion in England affected his disposition on the Irish land question. Of those trends and that climate something must be said. 1. THE IRISH SCENE

Reserve is in order when speaking of 'long-term' trends for a span of time encompassing only seventeen years. We know that the huge outflow of people from Ireland characteristic of the famine years and their immediate aftermath - over two million emigrated in the decade after 1845 - would continue, albeit at lower and varying rates, in the following decades (between 1850 and 1914 roughly four million people left Ireland);4 that post-famine Ireland would experience negative population growth, a high rate of marital fertility being offset by a high celibacy rate and heavy emigration; and that tillage would give way to pasture as the predominant sector of the Irish agricultural economy.5 Whatever Mill knew about changes in the society and economy of Ireland between 1848 and 1865, however, took the form of noteworthy developments rather than definitive secular trends. Even these developments would have no bearing on the first and second editions of the Principles, published in 1848 and 1849 respectively. Mill completed the first draft of the Principles in March 1847, a mere couple of months after he had finished his Morning Chronicle series, and his revision of this draft was carried out between March and December. It was published in April 1848. The second edition came out in April of the year following.6 Predictably, the discussion of the Irish land question in these editions corresponds closely to the analyses and

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recommendations set forth in the Morning Chronicle series. Nothing that happened in Ireland between the first and second editions would have moved Mill to moderate the position he had staked out in that series. If anything, political events across the Irish Sea in the spring and summer of 1848 tended to reinforce Mill's poor opinion of Britain's administration of Ireland without modifying his assessment of the land question. The rhetoric of the Young Ireland movement had become increasingly extreme as the famine engulfed the country. Its leaders, the Catholic Northern Irishman Charles Gavan Duffy and the Protestant landlord William Smith O'Brien, had led a secession of Young Irelanders from O'Connell's Repeal Association in the summer of 1846 when the latter called upon the organization to repudiate the use of force in all cases except that of self-defence. Although Duffy and O'Brien were reluctant to use violence to achieve Ireland's liberation from England, their movement was radicalized by the cataclysmic impact of the famine, the revival of the Chartist agitation in England, the revolutions in France and central Europe, the militant republicanism of the journalist John Mitchel (as expressed first in the Nation and then in the United Irishman), and James Fintan Lalor's advocacy of a national rent strike (both Duffy and O'Brien distanced themselves from Lalor's radical land program and Mitchel's reckless rhetoric). The authorities arrested O'Brien and Mitchel in May 1848, securing a conviction for treason against the latter (O'Brien was discharged). In July the government arrested Gavan Duffy, distrained the offices of the Nation, and suspended habeas corpus. A show of defiance was made later that month when Smith O'Brien led a feeble and futile uprising that the authorities easily put down.7 As it happens, Mill did register a response to these developments, but not in the pages of the Principles. That response conveys something of Mill's frame of mind in the interval between the first two editions, and it will be discussed in the section of this chapter that examines the constants and the variables in his treatment of Ireland from 1848 to i865-8 What significant proceedings in Ireland should Mill have been cognizant of when he came to prepare his third edition of the Principles (1852)? By 1852 Mill certainly would have been aware of the vast increase in emigration engendered by the famine. Well over half the more than two million people leaving between 1845 and 1855 departed before i852.9 Mill would not have had access to precise figures, but the exodus was a highly visible phenomenon that naturally prompted widespread comment.10 Its magnitude and visibility, conjoined with

90 England's Disgrace? the gravity of the population question as conceived by Mill, ensured that his attention would be drawn to the subject. Mill also would have known about the emergence of a 'tenant-right' movement in Ireland. Many Irish farmers with economic strength sufficient to maintain a foothold on the land during the famine sought protection in the face of mounting evictions. Such farmers formed societies in various parts of the country with a view to securing legal recognition for the 'Ulster tenant-right.' In Ulster it was customary for landlords to give de facto recognition to a tenant-right that invested tenants with a kind of permanent occupancy conditional upon payment of a more or less fixed rent. An essential component of the Ulster custom, as understood by the tenants, was the capacity to sell this occupancy to a person acceptable to the landlord. Prevalent in Ulster, this practice was not unknown in other regions of the country. In the summer of 1850 representatives of sundry tenant-right groups assembled in Dublin and created the Tenant League, whose program included reduced rents, fixity of tenure, and statutory acknowledgment of the Ulster custom. The League's two leading figures were Charles Gavan Duffy and Frederic Lucas, the latter an Englishman who had converted to Catholicism and established a newspaper, the Tablet, to promote the political interests of his co-religionists in England and Ireland. In 1849 Lucas moved his headquarters to Dublin and subsequently put himself at the centre of the tenant-right movement.11 In March 1851 Lucas and Duffy, familiar with the treatment of the Irish land question in the Principles, invited Mill to stand for Parliament in Ireland as a candidate of the Tenant League. Citing the incompatibility of a seat in the House of Commons with his position in the India House, Mill graciously declined. He did not express reservations concerning the program of the League, declaring that he would be 'highly gratified by being returned for a purpose so congenial to my principles & convictions as the reform of the pernicious system of landed tenure which more than any other cause keeps the great body of the agricultural population of Ireland always on the verge of starvation.'12 An awareness of mass flight from Ireland and of a tenant-right agitation need not imply a grasp of the significant shifts in the structure of landholding that were under way before 1852. Even so, it is perhaps not unreasonable to suppose that Mill at least should have had an imperfect knowledge of some of what was happening, the essential raw material being accessible to him in the agricultural statistics for Ireland printed annually in Parliamentary Papers as of 1847. The conditions

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spawned by the famine encouraged evictions, clearances, and a measure of consolidation. The estimated number of evictions for the years 1846-53 was 70,000, making these eight years 'worse than any period for which statistics exist.'13 Most of these evictions occurred before 1852, the peak year being i850.14 Nearly half were linked to the clearance of entire estates, much of this activity taking place in the west of Ireland.15 The proprietors responsible for clearances generally aimed to create a more efficient and profitable agriculture through a consolidation of holdings. To what extent did the distribution of holdings relative to size change in Ireland between 1845 and 1851? In 1845 just under 15 per cent of the holdings in Ireland were i acre or less in size; in 1851 such holdings claimed 6.2 per cent of the total. In 1845 slightly more than 20 per cent of Irish holdings ranged between i and 5 acres; in 1851 the figure was 14.5 per cent. Holdings between 5 and 15 acres made up 34.4 per cent of the aggregate in 1845, and 31.5 per cent in 1851, while holdings larger than 15 acres composed 30.6 per cent of the total in 1845, and 47.8 per cent in 1851.l6 Although such changes were consequential, an agricultural system in which half the tenants occupied holdings of 15 acres or less still had little in common with the organization of agriculture in England, where any farm under 100 acres was considered 'small.' And the disinclination of Irish cultivators to give up on the potato, notwithstanding the experience of famine, is also striking. In the disastrous year of 1847tne acreage devoted to potato cultivation had fallen to 284,000; four years later the potato acreage was 869,000.17 Ireland clearly had far to go before its agricultural structure could possibly suggest a resemblance to England's. That policy-makers in England wished to make Ireland more like England in this respect is plain, and the Encumbered Estates Act of 1849 was expected to contribute to this end. The selling of estates by insolvent Irish landowners, of whom there were many by the late 18403, was greatly hindered by the difficulty and expense of searching out the legal documents relevant to the encumbrances. In early 1849 Peel told the House of Commons that Ireland's chief need was 'the introduction of proprietors who shall take possession of land in Ireland, freed from its present incumbrances, and enter upon its cultivation with adequate capital, with new feelings, and inspired by new hopes.'18 To bring this about Russell's government secured passage of the Encumbered Estates Act, which created a tribunal of commissioners whose task was to facilitate the transfer of heavily encumbered estates from bankrupt proprietors to profit-minded men with capital to

92 England's Disgrace? invest. Mill was familiar with this legislation when he came to revise the section on Ireland for the third edition of the Principles. When making his emendations he might well have felt able to comment on the measure's tendencies and potential significance, but unready to offer a conclusive judgment given the rather short time that had elapsed between its adoption and the preparation of the 1852 edition. By 1857, when the fourth edition appeared, he would have had little reason to withhold a verdict on the working of the Encumbered Estates Act. Between October 1849 and August 1857 its operation drew 7489 buyers of previously encumbered property, the gross proceeds amounting to 20.5 million pounds. The authors of the act, however, had reason to think that their hopes had not been fully realized. Most of the investors were not English and Scottish capitalists committed to agricultural improvement. Only 309 of the 7489 purchasers were non-Irish, and these 309 put up less than 14 per cent of the total capital involved.19 Yet the paucity of British capital showing up in Ireland in the mid- and late 18505 did not deeply trouble the policy-makers, who could feel cheered by the relatively buoyant state of the Irish agricultural economy in these years. The famine was over; excess mortality and emigration had much reduced pressure on the land; the Crimean War had boosted grain prices; and a growing British market for Irish livestock products had stimulated the increasingly prosperous grazing sector of the Irish economy. Certainly all was not well, but much seemed a good deal better than before. The same could not be said of the 1859-64 period, during which Ireland was plunged into agricultural depression due to frightful weather and a run of poor harvests. In 1860-2 the potato crop fell over a third from its post-famine average. The value of agricultural output declined steeply as a result of crop failures, a drop in the quantity of livestock, and sagging prices. Livestock prices were hit especially hard, low crop yields creating a sizable fodder shortage that in turn glutted the market with livestock.20 Evictions were on the rise. According to W.E. Vaughan, 5000 families were ejected from their holdings between 1861 and 1864, the latter year registering the highest number of evictions (1600) of any single year between 1853 and i878.21 Albeit dwarfed by the figures of 1846-53, these numbers for the early sixties nonetheless reflect a serious deterioration in economic conditions. A further manifestation of worsening conditions was the increase in agrarian crime from 1862 through i864.22 Not that England was compelled to take much notice of what was happening in Ireland at this time. The economic downturn did not

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bring famine or excess mortality. Ireland remained politically quiescent. There was no 'crisis.' The population of Ireland was far smaller in the early 18603 than it had been in the early 18403; the weakest section of that population, the cottiers and labourers, accounted for a diminished proportion of the total; the poor-law structure was in place and in practice furnished both indoor and outdoor relief; the agricultural economy had achieved a higher degree of commercialization by the i86os, and credit could be obtained more easily;23 the emigration rate was sufficiently elastic to adapt accordingly (about 50,000 persons per annum emigrated in the late 18503; 116,000 left Ireland in 1863,115,000 in 1864, and 101,000 in i865);24 and the slump of the early 18603 was categorically different from the catastrophe of the 18405. Neither the public nor the politicians in England saw cause for alarm. But what of England's leading political economist, whose treatise was revised for new printings in 1862 and 1865, and who presumably ought to have felt an obligation to keep abreast of what was going on in Ireland? Before attending to what Mill made of the Irish scene, we must glance at the attitudes prevalent in England on topics related to Mill's preferred remedies for Irish problems. 2. THE ENGLISH CLIMATE

In 1860 Parliament passed a Landlord and Tenant Law Amendment Act for Ireland, often referred to as 'Deasy's Act' for the attorneygeneral who introduced the measure. What this legislation 'amended' lies beyond the scope of this study; what it explicitly stated in the way of principle exemplifies the conviction of most affluent mid-Victorian Englishmen regarding freedom of contract.25 Section 3 of Deasy's Act asserted that 'the relation of landlord and tenant shall be deemed to be founded on the express or implied contract of the parties, and not upon tenure or service.'26 With this declaration legislators in the Age of Palmerston gave unequivocal statutory expression to a tenet they considered axiomatic, one utterly at odds with any Irish notion of 'tenantright' based on custom. The validity of the suppositions upon which the principle rested was self-evident to its proponents. The transaction entered into by landlord and tenant was entirely voluntary in nature; length of tenure should be specified in the engagement; rent should reflect the commercial expectations of the respective parties concerned; proprietorship of the land subject to the agreement belonged absolutely to the landlord; and the state's sole obligation was to enforce the

94 England's Disgrace? terms of the contract should a dispute arise between the parties.27 As Palmerston told the House of Commons two years before the passage of Deasy's Act, '[T]hose who have mutual relations should be left to deal with each other as they please, and ... any law which tends to restrain the freedom of either party in their mutual transactions is most objectionable/28 The Irish idea of tenant-right, in Palmerston's view, was 'equivalent to landlord's wrong.'29 He denounced as 'Communistic' the notion that 'owners of land should be compelled to make such and such arrangements with their tenants, and should receive only such rent as other people adjudge them entitled to.' Doctrines of this ilk transgressed 'the natural rights of property.'30 In voicing these sentiments Palmerston undoubtedly spoke for virtually all English MPs. No tenant-right measure, however modest its scope, stood the slightest chance of passing the House of Commons in the 18505 or early i86os. Few influential midVictorians were prepared to challenge substantively the proposition that a man's power over his own property was indefeasible. Although in certain instances - the compulsory purchase of land for railway construction being the most conspicuous example - a conception of the public interest might take precedence over private property rights, such cases were deemed exceptions that in no way vitiated the soundness or indispensability of the rule. (It will be remembered that Russell, in response to Ireland's grievous state in 1846-7, had favoured the introduction of a limited measure for compulsory purchase of waste land; this idea, it will also be recalled, met with derision in both Houses of Parliament.)31 Strict adherence to the dictum was considered especially imperative when the issue concerned not public need but the contending claims of individuals. The rights of property, as understood by Palmerston and his parliamentary audience, were rooted in the natural order of things. Beyond the sanction of nature, however, they carried the imprimatur of utility. That the individual should have complete security for the possession, use, and enjoyment of his own property was thought essential to both social order and economic progress. The great bulk of English Radicals had no quarrel with Palmerston's defence of free contract and the sanctity of private property. Richard Cobden and John Bright, the two outstanding figures in the history of mid-Victorian middle-class radicalism, assuredly wanted land reform, but not of the sort espoused by the tenant-right movement in Ireland. Their complaint focused on what they saw as the aristocratic stranglehold on land that was perpetuated by the devices of primogeniture and

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strict settlement, the latter of which forbade sale by a current owner who had only a life interest in the property. In the eyes of many English Radicals, these were feudal relics that had no place in a capitalist order.32 The magnates employed these instruments in order to keep their estates intact and to preserve the vast social and political influence attached to the possession of large landed property. Advocating 'free trade in land/ Cobden and Bright wanted primogeniture and strict settlement abolished. The use of artificial contrivances to restrict market access was anomalous and baneful in an economy and society fully alive to the virtues of individual enterprise, free competition, and the unfettered movement of capital. A free market in land, the entrepreneurial Radicals argued, would foster these virtues and create a fairly broad dispersion of land ownership, which in turn would have the salutary effect of diminishing the economic and political clout of the aristocracy.33 And what was apt for England in this respect was also apt for Ireland. In an 1849 speech on Ireland Bright declared: 'We must free the land, and then we shall discover, and not till then, that industry, hopeful and remunerated - industry, free and inviolate, is the only sure foundation on which can be reared the enduring edifice of union and peace.'34 Although Palmerston decidedly disapproved of the position on land reform associated with Cobden's Manchester School, he shared with the entrepreneurial Radicals and, indeed, with all segments of the English political order, an antipathy to the ideas subsumed by the Ulster tenant-right. Such concepts as 'fair rent/ 'fixity of tenure/ and 'free sale' of an occupant's holding could not be reconciled with the thoroughly predominant English understanding of property rights and freedom of contract. This does not mean that Irish farmers enamoured of tenant-right rejected the principle of private property; they considered tenant-right a species of private property.35 The problem faced by any reformer who aspired to promote tenurial security for Irish tenants was that orthodox political opinion refused to concede such status to tenant-right, whose essence was deemed incontrovertibly alien to the conception of property regnant in England. Anyone who took up the cause of tenant-right could scarcely expect to gain from the audience that mattered a serious hearing for his views on the subject. The author of the Principles of Political Economy had a number of reasons for doubting the practicability of fixity of tenure as a remedy for the Irish land problem. His awareness of a powerful English audience totally unreceptive to the doctrine was surely one of these reasons.

96 England's Disgrace? 3- THE PRINCIPLES AND IRISH LAND - WHAT CHANGED AND WHAT DID NOT

The commonly held assumption, understandably, is that Mill drew heavily upon his Morning Chronicle articles when he took up the subject of Irish land in the Principles.36 After all, the substance of Mill's treatment of the matter in the Principles is much the same as that in the Chronicle series. Yet the theoretical foundation of Mill's approach to the Irish land question may well have been elaborated in a portion of his early draft of the Principles completed before his journalistic campaign. The chapters on peasant proprietorship and cottier tenancy that bear upon the issue of Irish land form part of Book II, and in September 1846, a month before the Chronicle series began, Mill informed Alexander Bain that he had finished the first draft of 'the third book.'37 The early draft of the Principles has never turned up, and it is impossible to know if Mill's defence of peasant proprietorship and his presumptive vindication of fixity of tenure had been composed in advance of the Morning Chronicle articles. The specific treatment of Ireland's immediate needs that features in the first edition of the Principles signals the crisis of 1847 and was almost certainly incorporated during the rewriting phase, which lasted from March to December 1847. If the tone of the treatise, as might be expected, is less strident than that of the leading articles, the argument is unaltered. Mill propounds a universal principle respecting property in land, to which he steadfastly adheres through all editions of the Principles. The land of Ireland, the land of every country, belongs to the people of that country. The individuals called landowners have no right, in morality and justice, to anything but the rent, or compensation for its saleable value. With regard to the land itself, the paramount consideration is, by what mode of appropriation and of cultivation it can be made most useful to the collective body of its inhabitants.38

The 'mode of appropriation and cultivation' typical of Ireland had proved highly injurious to its inhabitants. Ireland's misery emanated directly from the system of land tenure prevalent there. The Irish cottier 'can scarcely be either better or worse off by any act of his own. If he was industrious or prudent, nobody but his landlord would gain; if he is lazy or intemperate, it is at his landlord's expense. A situation more devoid of motives to either labour or self-command, imagination itself cannot conceive.'39 Even in a work such as the Principles Mill cannot contain his moral outrage at the conduct of Ireland's landlords.

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Returning nothing to the soil, they consume its whole produce, minus the potatoes strictly necessary to keep the inhabitants from dying of famine; and when they have any notion of improvement, it usually consists in not leaving even this pittance, but turning out the people to beggary if not starvation. When landed property has placed itself upon this footing it ceases to be defensible, and the time has come for making some new arrangement of the matter. 40

That 'new arrangement' could not be the English model. The human costs of the wholesale clearance of estates and consolidation of holdings were unacceptably high, and such an economic transformation of Ireland's agricultural order could not yield significant gains in the sphere of moral improvement. The question, what system of agriculture is best in itself, is, for Ireland, of purely theoretical interest: the people are there, and the problem is not how to improve the country, but how it can be improved by and for its present inhabitants.'41 Mill's discussion seems to lead ineluctably to the conclusion that fixity of rent and tenure was essential. 'Rent paid by a capitalist who farms for profit, and not for bread, may safely be abandoned to competition; rent paid by labourers cannot... Peasant rents ought never to be arbitrary, never at the discretion of the landlord: either by custom or law, it is imperatively necessary that they should be fixed.' Furthermore, Mill holds, 'they should be fixed by authority: thus changing the rent into a quitrent, and the farmer into a peasant proprietor.'42 Yet, as in the Morning Chronicle series, the theoretical leap into a thoroughgoing reconstruction of Ireland's agrarian order does not bring forth a commensurate practical program. Mill does not recommend the granting of perpetual tenure at a fixed rent. Why not? For one thing, it would mean 'a complete expropriation of the higher classes of Ireland.' Such might be justified, 'but only if it were the sole means of effecting a great public good.' Security of person and property was a fundamental requirement of civilized society. A community's social rules engendered a pattern of legitimate expectations upon whose fulfilment general security depended. In the British context, the continuance of existing property rights was integral to that pattern. It might be necessary to encroach upon those rights to achieve 'a great public good,' but Mill was not ready to conclude that the condition of Ireland mandated such an encroachment. Moreover, he did not consider it desirable that Ireland should have nothing but peasant proprietors. There were, even in Ireland, landlords of substantial capital and education working for agricultural modernization. These individuals constituted 'an impor-

98 England's Disgrace? tant part of a good agricultural system ... and it would be a public misfortune to drive them from their posts.' As for practical impediments in Ireland to the effective application of fixity of tenure, there was the size of many existing holdings, 'too small to try the proprietary system under the greatest advantages/ and the suspect fitness of the human material. The tenants of that country were not 'always the persons one would desire to select as the first occupants of peasant-properties. There are numbers of them on whom it would have a more beneficial effect to give them the hope of acquiring a landed property by industry and frugality, than the property itself in immediate possession/43 Mill also takes up the Ulster tenant-right, and argues that its legalization in Ireland would be liable to the same objections raised against fixity of tenure.44 Showing a generally sound grasp of the custom's meaning in the Irish context, Mill says that it is another name for limitation of rent and fixity of tenure. As a custom, he considers it 'highly salutary/ and avers that it 'is one principal cause of the superiority of Ulster in efficiency of cultivation, and in the comfort of the people.' Legalizing this custom and extending it throughout Ireland, however, would be objectionable on the same grounds that Mill had already set forth.45 In Mill's mind these are plainly legitimate concerns to which due weight must be given. His positive opinion of peasant proprietorship notwithstanding, there can be little doubt that Mill genuinely preferred a mixed agricultural system, one that included improving landlords and substantial farms run by men possessing the capital and scientific mentality peasant proprietors usually lacked. In a different section of the Principles he observes that 'a people who have once adopted the large system of production, either in manufactures or in agriculture, are not likely to recede from it; nor, when population is kept in due proportion to the means of support, is there any sufficient reason why they should.'46 Such a system promotes a much more efficient and productive use of labour than can be achieved by small-scale economic organization. And against the real and significant benefits generated by peasant proprietorship there were important non-economic liabilities to be considered. The domination of the head of the family over the other members, in this state of things, is absolute; while the effect on his own mind tends towards concentration of all interests in the family ... and absorption of all passions in that of exclusive possession, of all cares in those of preservation and acquisition.'47 A substantial dose of peasant

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proprietorship could do much to regenerate Ireland; too large a dose could have regrettable side effects. Do Mill's reservations regarding universal fixity of tenure for Irish tenants warrant Steele's judgment that the first edition of the Principles offered Very little ... to upset those who looked on the British land system as an example which other peoples could not do better than strive to imitate'?48 Possibly, but Mill's goal was to provoke thought rather than disturbance, and he had some thought-provoking things to say. Before specifically addressing the issue of Irish land he devoted two chapters to analysing the merits of peasant proprietorship, his treatise allowing him to give the subject a treatment more formal, extended, and systematic than could be presented in the Morning Chronicle series.49 His forcefully expressed views on peasant proprietorship and on fixity of tenure relative to peasant farming were unquestionably heretical. He approved the customary status of the Ulster tenant-right. He went so far as to say that 'a complete expropriation of the higher classes' of Ireland might be excusable 'if it were the sole means of effecting a great public good.'50 His conviction that this great public good could be achieved via the reclamation of waste lands and the settlement of a peasant proprietary upon them made it possible to turn away from universal fixity of tenure. The Principles preserved intact the waste-lands proposal set forth in the Morning Chronicle leaders.51 The moral nucleus of Mill's commitment to the creation of a propertied Irish peasantry was tersely articulated. 'A people who in industry and providence have everything to learn ... require for their regeneration the most powerful incitements by which those virtues can be stimulated: and there is no stimulus as yet comparable to property in land.'52 Mill also supported a 'project ... of Chartist origin,' which called for utilizing a joint-stock company to purchase estates that would be sectioned into small holdings and occupied by labourers who would be advanced the capital necessary to start up cultivation. These labourers would in effect become peasant proprietors, paying the company 'a fixed quit-rent, never in any circumstances to be raised.'53 To recommend a Chartist-inspired scheme at a time when Chartism again was coming to be seen as an importunate threat to public order was perhaps injudicious, but Mill did not share the bias against all things Chartist characteristic of the propertied classes.54 An overall position on Irish land more radical than his could have been formulated, but surely to little purpose when it came to influencing the readership Mill wanted to reach. That he drew back from proposing fixity of tenure for all Irish

ioo England's Disgrace? tenants may well have won him a more attentive audience for his radical exegesis of the land question.55 The tone of the Principles is not a reliable index of Mill's mood in 1848-9. This speculatively ambitious treatise was written for a community of serious-minded individuals of diverse political persuasions. Adopting a polemical posture did not suit Mill's purpose. There is evidence attesting to his militant temper, but it is not to be found in the Principles. One specimen of this militancy is a letter to the Examiner, dated 5 May 1848 (it appeared in the 13 May issue of the Examiner). In late April the Examiner had carried a piece by Thomas Carlyle on repeal of the Union.56 Carlyle, answering the Nation's philippics against English rule and clamour for Ireland's independence, had proclaimed that the repeal of the Union was 'flatly forbidden by the laws of the universe/57 Mill, taking strong exception to Carlyle's slant, utterly rejected the notion that England had demonstrated her fitness to rule Ireland. 'For five centuries has she had Ireland under her absolute, resistless power, to show what she could do in the way of "conquering anarchy" [Carlyle's phrase] - and the result is the most total, disastrous, ignominious failure yet known to history.'58 He did not deny that 'during the present generation, the policy of England towards Ireland has been, in point of intention, as upright and even as generous as was consistent with the inveterate English habit of making the interest of the aristocracy and of the landlords the first consideration.' But if 'nothing can now be more disinterested than the policy of England,' it was also the case that nothing could be 'more imbecile; more devoid of plan, of purpose, of ideas, of practical resource.'59 Mill did not call for repeal of the Union, which he would consider 'a misfortune for all concerned'; maintaining that 'good government' rather than 'separate government' was the desideratum, he nonetheless owned that 'separation is better than bad government.'60 Yet this is mild compared with what Mill had to say in a brief manuscript, unpublished in his lifetime, composed in the wake of the 1848 Irish rising. Here he gives unconstrained expression to his feelings, and his rage is unmistakable. The social condition of Ireland, once for all, cannot be tolerated; it is an abomination in the sight of mankind ... Before 1789 the peasantry of most of the provinces of France were even more destitute and miserable than Irish cottiers. By the revolution and its consequences, the property of a great part of the soil of France passed into the hands of the peasantry; and the result was the greatest change for the better in their condition, both physical and moral, of which,

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within a single generation, there is any record. The Irish leaders believed, that of such a change, or anything equivalent to it under English government, there was no chance. They thought probably, that an Irish government might effect it, or at all events that an Irish revolution would: and that the value of the object was worth the risks of such a revolution. And who will presume to say that they were wrong in any of these anticipations? or that they miscalculated anything except their chances of success?61

As a thinker in search of public influence Mill could not afford to vent such feelings in the second edition of the Principles, which appeared at approximately the same time as the above passage was written. In substance, this second edition did not differ from the first with respect to Ireland. In the 1852 and 1857 editions Mill perseveres in suppressing his anger, although his exasperation with the government and the Irish landlords is plain. These editions communicate Mill's response to the vast human outflow from Ireland brought about by the famine. 'Selfsupporting emigration ... has reduced or is reducing the population down to the number for which the existing agricultural system can find employment and support. The census of 1851, compared with that of 1841, showed in round numbers a diminution of population of a million and a half.' 62 Making no reference to the conspicuous rate of excess mortality caused by the famine, Mill implies that the drop reflected in the census was attributable entirely to emigration. At no point in the Principles (or anywhere else) does he directly confront the fact that not a few people in Ireland had perished for want of food. He could not possibly have been ignorant of what had happened to many who had not got out. 1 believe he was so profoundly troubled by what had occurred that he could not bring himself to acknowledge it, and that at least a small part of his rhetorically charged response to mass emigration stemmed from his inability to face something much more horrifying. Be this as it may, the exit of so many people, and the prospect of a 'flourishing' North American continent perpetually absorbing Ireland's surplus population, ostensibly lessened the urgency of the country's predicament. It being so easy to dispose of the agricultural labour that would become superfluous upon the 'general introduction throughout Ireland of English farming/ some might suppose that this course should now be earnestly pursued. Those who think that the land of a country exists for the sake of a few thousand landowners, and that as long as rents are paid, society and government have fulfilled their function,

102 England's Disgrace? may see in this consummation a happy end to Irish difficulties.'63 Mill, naturally, demurs. To the owners of the rent it may be very convenient that the bulk of the inhabitants, despairing of justice in the country where they and their ancestors have lived and suffered, should seek on another continent that property in land which is denied them at home. But the legislature of the empire ought to regard with other eyes the forced expatriation of millions of its people. When the inhabitants of a country quit the country en masse because its Government will not make it a place fit for them to live in, the Government is judged and condemned.64

So vexed was Mill that he seemed ready to go beyond what he had put forward in 1848 and 1849. "It is the duty of Parliament to reform the landed tenure of Ireland.' Justice enjoined 'that the actual cultivators should be enabled to become in Ireland what they will become in America - proprietors of the soil which they cultivate.'65 After reprising the case for fixity of tenure, however, he reiterates the objections to its universal application in Ireland. Before proceeding to urge once again adoption of his waste-lands scheme, and to suggest that societies promoting peasant proprietorship be formed to purchase land sold under the jurisdiction of the Encumbered Estates Court - measures 'liable to none of the objections urged against the proposal of the Tenant League,' - he admonishes those in positions of authority to act expeditiously. The enactment of universal fixity of tenure was not the best way to establish a peasant proprietary in Ireland, but 'it is far better than no mode at all. If the rulers of Ireland do not exert themselves in time to effect this great public end by means less subversive of existing social relations, they will probably find it extorted from them by the compulsion of circumstances, when they will no longer have any power of controlling its conditions.'66 Mill retains his reservations respecting fixity of tenure for all Irish tenants; furthermore, he is not about to compromise the sway he hoped to exercise over the mind of England by throwing in his lot with the Tenant League. It is nonetheless fair to say that the treatment of Ireland in the 1852 and 1857 editions of the Principles shows a degree of impatience with the governing classes even more pronounced than had been evident in the first two editions. That Mill carried the changes made for the 1852 edition over to the 1857 edition virtually unaltered is peculiar. It is true that the development to which he was most acutely sensitive in 1852, that is, the tide of

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emigration, had only partly receded by the mid-i85os. Yet Ireland's condition in 1856, when Mill prepared the fourth edition for the press, was appreciably different from what it had been in 1852. In the latter year Ireland was still reeling from the effects of the famine. By the mid18508, as has been observed, the country's agricultural economy had experienced a notable recovery. Grain and livestock products were fetching good prices, death and emigration had relieved the demographic stress on the land, seemingly favourable structural changes were in progress, and a fair bit of property had been transferred under the Encumbered Estates Act. The situation appeared to justify a degree of optimism regarding Ireland's future. The 1857 edition of the Principles did not register the gains that had been made. Was Mill merely being obdurate in his refusal to acknowledge the changes? In view of the substantive revision he undertook for the 1862 edition, this seems unlikely. The static character of the 1857 edition probably denotes Mill's inattentiveness. In his correspondence for the decade after 1852 Ireland is seldom mentioned. In May 1853 he was still sufficiently interested in Irish land to propose the following question for discussion at the Political Economy Club: Ts the claim made on behalf of the Irish Tenantry to hold their farms in perpetuity at a rent fixed by valuation, admissible in any shape, or under any conditions'?67 Thereafter, the 18505 are barren relative to Mill's engagement with Ireland. It was not only Ireland from which Mill cut himself adrift in the 18508. In 1851 Harriet Taylor and Mill finally felt free to marry, Harriet's first husband, John Taylor, having died in 1849. In the main they withdrew into seclusion. They had no interest in pursuing relationships beyond the walls of their Blackheath Park domicile, and they had few visitors. During the mid-i85os the health of both Mill and Harriet deteriorated. For Mill it was a time of intense introspection. In 1853-4 he composed the first draft of the Autobiography, and in the latter year he started a diary (which he did not keep up for long).68 He published little that was new in the five years after 1853 - a pamphlet on civilservice reform, two newspaper articles on questions of law, and his briefs on behalf of the East India Company constituting the paltry sum of his output. Of course Mill and Harriet had projects in mind, and the genesis of On Liberty, Considerations on Representative Government, Utilitarianism, the posthumously published Three Essays on Religion, and the incomplete Chapters on Socialism can be traced to these years.69 Apart from a marginal connection with Representative Government, Ireland was extraneous to these projects. More generally, the years with Harriet

104 England's Disgrace? accentuated Mill's remoteness from the world of practical political activism. Had Ireland been more of a topical issue than was in fact the case during this period, it is unlikely that Mill would have had much to say on the subject. Ireland's improved economic fortunes in the mid18505 he apparently overlooked. The content of the section on Irish land in the 1857 edition of the Principles had more to do with negligence than intransigence. Mill's political juices began to stir again in 1859. Harriet had died in 1858, the year of Mill's retirement (with a handsome pension) from the East India Company. He found comfort in the companionship of his step-daughter Helen Taylor, who took over the running of his house and proved more receptive than her mother had been to entertaining guests.70 Mill's revitalized social life included vibrant new friendships, rooted chiefly in shared political convictions, with Henry Fawcett, Thomas Hare, and John Elliot Cairnes. He also burst through his nonpublication shell. The appearance of On Liberty in February 1859 transformed Mill's public presence, the eminent thinker almost instantaneously becoming an influential public moralist.71 Before the year was out he had published, besides On Liberty, the pamphlet Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, 'Recent Writers on Reform' (Fraser's Magazine), his two volumes of Dissertations and Discussions, 'Bain's Psychology' (Edinburgh Review), and 'A Few Words on Non-Intervention' (Fraser's Magazine). Mill's renewed interest in political matters was evident. A renewed interest in Ireland was not. He devotes one ample paragraph to Ireland in Considerations on Representative Government, a work written in 1860 (the year Parliament passed Deasy's Act), and published in early 1861. The passage forms part of Mill's chapter 'Of Nationality, as Connected with Representative Government.' Coming from the author responsible for the gloomy reference to Ireland in the 'Coleridge' essay, the Morning Chronicle series, the Examiner letter answering Carlyle, and the first four editions of the Principles of Political Economy, the paragraph in Representative Government reads oddly. Mill cites the Union between England and Ireland in illustration of his dictum that 'Whatever really tends to the admixture of nationalities, and the blending of their attributes and peculiarities in a common union, is a benefit to the human race.'72 He assigns the English-Irish case to the subcategory of instances involving the 'overpowering' of one nationality by another, where the dominant nationality is also the more advanced. Provided the ruling nationality deals justly with the conquered, the latter 'is gradually reconciled to its

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position, and becomes amalgamated with the larger.' The memory of centuries of oppression, Mill allows, had rendered the Union unacceptable to some Irishmen. So long had they been 'atrociously governed, that all their best feelings combined with their bad ones in rousing bitter resentment against the Saxon rule.' Mill then affirms: This disgrace to England, and calamity to the whole empire, has, it may truly be said, completely ceased for nearly a generation.' No longer victims of discrimination, Irishmen now enjoyed the same freedom, opportunites, and advantages as Englishmen. Their sole remaining grievance was the 'State Church,' and this they shared with the large number of nonAnglicans in England. Mill closes his discussion on a note of happy expectation. There is now next to nothing, except the memory of the past, and the difference in the predominant religion, to keep apart two races, perhaps the most fitted of any two in the world to be the completing counterpart of one another. The consciousness of being at last treated not only with equal justice but with equal consideration, is making such rapid way in the Irish nation, as to be wearing off all feelings that could make them insensible to the benefits which the less numerous and less wealthy people must necessarily derive, from being fellowcitizens instead of foreigners to those who are not only their nearest neighbours, but the wealthiest, and one of the freest, as well as most civilized and powerful, nations of the earth.73

England's good intentions and improved disposition had evidently been an adequate substitute for constructive policy after all. Mill does not point to anything in particular that England had done to elevate Ireland. When he speaks of 'equal justice' and 'equal consideration' he means that England had embraced the idea of civil equality and forsworn the systematic abuse of the Irish people that had disfigured English rule for centuries. He had said as much in the 18305 and 18405 without suggesting that Ireland had cause to be grateful for the association with a nation so civilized as England. On the subject of Ireland he had never shown anything like the serene temper displayed in Representative Government. That temper reveals the distance Mill had put between himself and the Irish problem after 1852. At the end of the 18505 Englishmen could be forgiven for thinking that Ireland had ceased to be a problem. The agricultural depression of 1859-64 was merely incipient. Local concerns tended to dominate Irish political life and the Irish masses manifested no desire to mount a national agitation on

io6 England's Disgrace? behalf of anything.74 At the 1859 general election Tories captured 55 of the 105 Irish seats (the high-water mark of Conservative success in the post-i832 era). The circumstances encouraged English complacency, and a desensitized Mill was not immune. Considerations on Representative Government was written for the educated political public. The tone is measured, circumspect, sober. There is radical substance in the book, but the presentation shuns cacophony.75 Mill seeks to gain the ear of those with influence, not arouse the passions of those without. The English masses were as politically passive as the Irish masses. Mill understood that notable progress had occurred in the late 18405 and the decade of the 18505 despite the relative insignificance of 'pressure from without.' Free trade had carried the day, the repeal of the Navigation Laws and Gladstone's 1853 budget crowning the edifice whose foundations had been laid by the classical economists and their early political exponents. The 'taxes on knowledge' had either been thrown overboard (the newspaper tax in 1854, the advertising duty in 1855) or were in jeopardy (in 1861 the paper duties would be eliminated). Reform of the civil service and the ancient universities had begun. There was still much to do, but Mill recognized the capacity of the existing political order to foster improvement. A placid yet not unprogressive political environment informed the argumentative strategy of Considerations on Representative Government, the work of a purposeful public philosopher. Mill had reforms to promote, but they did not concern Ireland, which got from him none of his radical core and all of his (momentary) imperturbability. That imperturbability lasted long enough to affect the 1862 edition of the Principles. Seeing the incongruity between the section on Irish land he had left standing in the fourth edition of the Principles and the discussion of Ireland in Representative Government, Mill acted to bring the former into line with the latter. He did not repudiate opinions previously imparted; changing cirumstances, however, meant that those opinions were 'no longer susceptible of practical application.' (It should be noted, in this context, that Parliament had not considered any scheme for government-assisted reclamation of the waste lands since i847-)76 The greatly reduced population of Ireland, together with the impact of the Encumbered Estates Act, had made practicable the introduction of the English agricultural system. An improvement in the condition of the masses was already discernible. Ireland could move forward without peasant proprietorship, although she could also still gain from its adoption. Ireland did not require 'heroic remedies.' Mill did not go so

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far as to argue that matters could now be permitted to take their natural course. Long-term improvement hinged on the uprooting of cottier tenancy, and upon Ireland's landlords rested the responsibility for accomplishing 'this the only real, permanent, and radical reform in the social economy of that long-suffering country.'77 Mill did not specify the means by which this desirable end was to be realized. A reader whose judgment on Ireland's vicissitudes depended upon a collation of the 1857 and 1862 editions of the Principles would erroneously deduce that the country had experienced improvement in the interim. The reverse had in fact been the case. Mill knew a lot had changed in Ireland since the early 18505, but he had not taken the trouble to acquire a sound grasp of her situation. He was ill informed, and the 1862 treatment, like its 1857 predecessor, testifies to an absence of engagement. That treatment, however, does not signal Millian sanction for the wholesale importation into Ireland of the English agricultural system. He would not go beyond acknowledging that such a change might now be managed without wreaking havoc on the Irish masses and that it could produce material benefits for important segments of the Irish population. The imperial legislature responsible for Deasy's Act would assuredly not do anything that might impede this transformation. As for major moral uplift, it was perhaps too much to hope for. Mill had nothing distinctive to recommend. In his 1862 conspectus there is more resignation than approbation. The moral urgency absent from Mill's discussion of the Irish land question in the early 18605 was graphically present in his response to the American Civil War. The temperate and aptly proportioned prose of his major treatises partially masked his moral zeal. The civil war in America nakedly exposed that zeal. As Mill put it in the Autobiography: '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.'78 The following excerpts from Mill's 1862 essay The Contest in America' exemplify the volcanic prose bred by his passion. The South are in rebellion not for simple slavery; they are in rebellion for the right of burning human creatures alive ... Secession may be laudable, and so may any other kind of insurrection; but it may also be an enormous crime. It is the one or the other, according to the object and the provocation. And if there ever was an object which, by its [the spread of slavery] bare announcement, stamped rebels against a particular community as enemies of mankind, it is the

io8 England's Disgrace? one professed by the South ... When men set themselves up, in defiance of the rest of the world, to do the devil's work, no good can come of them until the world has made them feel that this work cannot be suffered to be done any longer.79

Although Mill understood that the abolition of slavery was not one of the war aims of the North, he believed that the obliteration of that institution could be a consequence of Northern victory. The military and political exigencies attendant upon a long and costly war would probably raise the stakes and radicalize the objectives. Conversely, a victory for the South would embolden 'the enemies of progress' and depress 'the spirits of its friends all over the civilised world.'80 By a circuitous path the pregnant drama unfolding in America would lead Mill to give Ireland more careful consideration when he again set about revising the Principles. In the summer of 1861 Mill read in manuscript J.E. Cairnes's The Slave Power, a work that powerfully investigated the economic dynamics of American slavery and its expansionist tendencies.81 Cairnes was professor of jurisprudence and political economy at Queen's College Galway. He had met Mill in 1859 at a meeting of the Political Economy Club in London.82 So began a warm and high-minded friendship. Mineka and Lindley suggest that Cairnes may have been the 'most highly valued' of Mill's new correspondents in the i86os.83 Mill vigorously urged Cairnes to publish The Slave Power, and when the book appeared in 1862 he wrote a laudatory essay for the Westminster Review.84 In June 1862 Mill wrote Cairnes: 'I do not think there is an opinion or a sentiment in the book with which I substantially disagree; and this is so very generally the case when I read anything you write, that I feel growing up in me, what I seldom have, the agreeable feeling of a brotherhood in arms/85 Shortly thereafter Mill expressed his esteem for Cairnes in a letter to Henry Fawcett. 'He has one of the clearest intellects I know, combined, I think, with an excellent moral nature and is capable, if he has anything like fair play, of doing great things.'86 In the autumn of 1864 Mill, preparing the sixth edition of the Principles, asked Cairnes to furnish him with information and elucidation on agrarian conditions in Ireland (he also invited Cairnes to comment on other matters taken up in the Principles).87 In July Mill had tellingly confessed to a degree of ignorance about Ireland. 'I know tolerably well what Ireland was, but have a very imperfect idea of what Ireland is or how far, if at all, the changes there ought to modify my former opinions as to remedial

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measures.'88 Echoing this theme in early October, Mill wrote that his 'speculations on the means of improvement there have been in a state of suspended animation, from which it is almost time that they should emerge.'89 He knew he had some catching up to do. The ripening friendship awakened a sensibility in Mill that had lain dormant for a time. Cairnes was an exceptionally able economist keenly interested in Irish affairs (born, raised, and educated in Ireland, Cairnes was a graduate of Trinity College Dublin). The affiliation with Cairnes heightened Mill's consciousness of the possible defects lodged in his treatment of Ireland in recent editions of the Principles. In his approach to Cairnes on the subject, and in the caveat regarding the cottiers included in the 1862 edition, there is a hint of disquiet. He remained sceptical concerning the fit between the English model of agricultural organization and the culture of the Irish masses. Writing to Cairnes in November 1864 Mill observed: 'It cannot be said any longer that the English system of landlords, tenant farmers, and hired labourers is impossible in Ireland, as it was in the days before the famine. But it does not seem to me to suit the ideas, feelings or state of civilization of the Irish.'90 His worries about cottierism persisted. Mill supposed that in Ireland there remained a significant quantity of tenants whose holdings were of insufficient size, relative to the terms of occupancy, to offer anything more than the most precarious existence. In early December he asked Cairnes: Am I right in thinking that among the improvements consequent on the Irish famine and emigration, the desuetude of cottier tenancy is not one? My impression is that the land is still mainly let direct to the labourer, without the intervention of a capitalist farmer - and if so, other things in Ireland being as they are, all the elements of the former overpopulation are still there, though for the present neutralized by the emigration. I very much wish to hear from you whether I am right. 9 '

Mill, feeling his way towards a renewed engagement with Ireland, assumed the initiative and directed Cairnes to the issue he found most troubling. The motive power was internal, but the alliance with Cairnes helped ignite the spark. Cairnes took Mill's request as a great compliment, and in his letter saying he would be 'happy to comply' he offered a preview of the fairly extended examination of Ireland he would forward to Mill before the year was out. Mill must have felt some relief upon learning that Cairnes

no

England's Disgrace?

wholly concurred with the observation made in the 1862 edition of the Principles that the time for 'heroic remedies' had passed. There was very little in Cairnes's initial response to cause Mill to think that his remarks in 1862 had been unduly complacent. Cairnes looked for further improvement in Ireland through such measures as Land Law reform, with a view principally to facilitating the transfer and acquisition of land in small portions, diffusion of agricultural knowledge, and lastly - a point to which I attach some importance - the inculcation through the press and otherwise of sound opinions on the subject of land tenure with a view to the creation of a public opinion capable of controlling landlords in the exercise of their legal rights.

He added his opinion that England needed such reforms no less than Ireland.92 In early December Cairnes received Mill's specific inquiry respecting cottier tenancy. He answered directly, giving his 'impression' on the matter pending completion of the 'pretty full' account he hoped to send Mill 'in about a week.' If anything, his comments imply that Mill's worries were perhaps disproportionate to the magnitude of the problem. 'I believe there is no doubt that the class of cottier tenants has been immensely reduced in Ireland, and that the causes now in operation are tending rapidly to its entire extinction.' All the same, the threat of over population had not evaporated owing to the moral condition of the agricultural population, 'brought almost to the level of the brute by centuries of neglect and oppression.' Cairnes was pessimistic that much could be done about this in the short run. Major improvement in the moral sphere would require 'more than one generation of good influences.' An essential ingredient of all such influences would be their tendency to liberate the Irish masses 'altogether from their present mode of life.' How was this to be achieved? Fostering the formation of a peasant proprietary would contribute to the end desired.93 As Cairnes had indicated in his letter of 13 October, this should be done by reforming the law of conveyance so that small portions of land could be more easily acquired. Even more important was the creation of employment outside the agricultural sector through the expansion of industry and mining. Such a development would bring to bear on Irish workers the forces that had worked 'such wonders in the manufacturing districts of England.' Finally, the conspicuous shift from tillage to pasture would 'render a smaller population necessary; and, now that the emigration

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movement is in full swing, this may be effected without severe suffering.' Cairnes then dwelt on the predicament of erstwhile cottiers who had been compelled to make their way as agricultural labourers. The subjects of this conversion had got nothing worth having from the change. Wage rates, Cairnes conceded, might have risen, but this was due to emigration. Were it not for the huge effluence of humanity from Ireland, 'it might be confidently predicted that within a generation it [the rate of wages] would be reduced once more to the starvation point - even with the emigration I don't feel very sanguine that they [sic] will be avoided.' Cairnes carefully distinguished between the plight of the cottiers and labourers and the situation of the class of tenant farmers 'above them.' The latter had made genuine progress and their prospects were by no means bleak.94 Cairnes's 'Notes on Ireland/ sent to Mill in late December, consisted of synopses of relevant books and articles together with an explanatory exposition of some 5000 words (there are in fact two versions of the latter).95 Responding to Mill's recurrent expressions of solicitude for the cottiers, Cairnes began his essay with an account of cottierism's decline. The class of cottiers, Cairnes maintained, had originated in the rapid expansion of acreage devoted to corn production during the second half of the eighteenth century, England then being hungry for Irish grain. The dearth of circulating capital in Ireland meant that the tillers of the soil brought into cultivation were paid not in wages but in land. This system had been shattered by free trade and by the famine. The former forced Ireland to exploit 'its special capabilities which (speaking generally) are pastoral.' The natural shift from tillage to pasture made superfluous the labour of a multitude of cottiers. What investment capital there was in Ireland moved towards grass. Free trade was not compatible with the 'maintenance of an immense agricultural population in the condition of the cottiers.' The famine had greatly accelerated the process, 'the universal breakdown of the system in 1847' demonstrating to the landlords 'that the system is as ruinous to them as it is demoralizing to the peasantry.' Moreover, the men who had purchased land through the Encumbered Estates Court injected into Ireland's agricultural society a commercial attitude to land wholly inimical to the survival of cottierism. Greatly facilitating the operation of these influences was the emigration escape route open to the surplus population. Although not prepared to state that 'cottierism is tending towards entire extinction,' Cairnes did conclude that 'the dimensions of the phenomenon will soon be so reduced that it will cease to be important.'96

112 England's Disgrace? Cairnes observed that changes in the structure of landholding corresponded with the waning of cottier tenancy. Holdings below 15 acres in size had diminished in number while those between 15 and 30 acres and above 30 acres had risen. Many landlords eager to shift from arable to pasture or to promote more efficient tillage had encouraged cottiers to relinquish their land in exchange for a remission of their arrears. In some instances landlords offered to help cottiers meet the expenses of emigration. At the same time, the Irish already in the United States and Canada were sending passage money to friends and family still in Ireland. Cairnes noted that 'the movement once set on foot is contagious.' Having secured the removal of their cottiers, landlords then consolidated the holdings, the larger units thereby created being let to 'the most promising of the existing tenants' or to solvent new tenants. Occasionally the landlord simply took over the land himself and converted it to grass.97 (Relative to what was happening in the 18505 and early 18605, this characterization has some validity. The reality of what occurred in the period 1846-52, which saw the most dramatic changes in the structure of Irish landholding, was far less benign than the process depicted by Cairnes suggests.) Some of those who had acquired property through the Encumbered Estates Court, Cairnes remarked, had not behaved well, with consequences that damaged more generally the reputation of Irish proprietors. These malefactors, understanding nothing of the duties attendant upon ownership of landed property, were usually 'small traders in towns, who by dint of sheer parsimony frequently combined with money lending at usurious rates have succeeded in the course of a long life in scraping together as much money as will enable them to buy 50 or 100 acres of land.' Determined to maximize the return on their investment, such men imposed oppressive rent increases on their tenants. Cairnes reported a particular case, recently brought to his attention, of tenants, 'formerly in tolerable comfort,' who had been 'reduced to poverty' as a result of landlord greed. Such instances, he added, were "by no means rare,' and their public visibility caused scandal. Disgraceful conduct by landlords of this type tended to discredit 'transactions of a wholly different & perfectly legitimate kind, such as I have described above, where the removal of the tenants is simply an act of mercy for all parties.'98 Although the predominant forces at work in Ireland served to reduce the importance of cottierism, one transitory agent had a countervailing tendency. Cairnes pointed out in his 'Notes' that roughly a quarter of

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the land in Ireland was 'held under long leases; the rent reserved, where the lease is of long standing, being generally under the real value of the land.' Many of these leases would soon expire, and their holders, indifferent to the deleterious effects of cottier farming, had plenty of incentive to sublet to a quantity of small tenants whose combined rent would be well in excess of the rent paid by the lessee. 'Middlemen in this position,' Cairnes noted, 'are as anxious to obtain cottiers as tenants as the landlords are to be rid of them; and the result is a transfer of this sort of tenant from one class of estate to the other/ He did not think this migration was of major proportions, but to the degree it occurred the effects were antithetical to the prevailing trend. In the medium to long term the problem would be eradicated by landlords' insisting that a nosublet clause form part of every lease." Taking up the state of former cottiers who had not emigrated but become agricultural labourers, Cairnes in his 'Notes' expands upon the unfavourable assessment he had adumbrated in his letter of early December. 'I do not believe that any sensible improvement has been effected in their condition.' The rise in real wages during the preceding two decades had been well below the nominal increase. Whatever modest enhancement in purchasing power they might have obtained had not translated into any 'advance in the standard of comfort.' Labourers married young, their aspirations and expectations being equally unassuming. 'Any hope of permanent improvement ... by the conversion of cottiers into labourers I regard as quite chimerical/100 Small farmers, those holding between 15 and 30 acres, had gained a more prominent place in the Irish agricultural order since the famine. From the rise in bank deposits Cairnes had to conclude that the wealth of this group was growing, 'notwithstanding the symptoms of poverty that still everywhere abound/ Yet he was not sanguine about 'the prospects of improvement/ The agriculture practised by small farmers in Ireland was 'backward,' and they showed no inclination to draw upon their savings to better their farms. In trying to account for this behaviour, Cairnes thought it advisable to 'distinguish between proximate and ultimate causes/ In the former category he placed 'the low industrial morale of the farming population/ Most Irish farmers, in Cairnes's view (a view many other observers shared), had no interest in improving the soil they occupied, their object being 'to take as much as they can out of the land and to put as little as they can into it/ Even farmers who enjoyed some degree of security tended to exhibit this attitude because of the pall cast by the prevalent insecurity of tenure

114 England's Disgrace? over the entire system of cultivation. The general absence of security was the main determinative source of the problem, contended Cairnes, and this had to be remedied. He did not, however, subscribe to tenantright, which he regarded as 'a wholesale confiscation of property in favour of existing cultivators/101 The security of tenure Cairnes had in mind was to be achieved principally through 'an improved public opinion in connexion with the reforms suggested by Judge Longfield.' Mountifort Longfield, Whately Professor of Political Economy at Trinity College Dublin from 1832 to 1836, was a justice of the Irish Landed Estates Court. Cairnes had a high regard for Longfield, whose guidance he had sought in preparing the document on Ireland for Mill.102 Longfield argued that a combination of long leases and recognition of the right of outgoing tenants to compensation from landlords for permanent improvements made to their holdings would instil in farmers the confidence necessary for agricultural progress. Security could be established without statutory enactment of fixity of tenure, a nostrum Longfield unreservedly condemned.103 Beyond endorsing Longfield's proposals, Cairnes suggested that more attention be given to devising effective institutions for educating Irish tenants in the agricultural practices most conducive to improvement.104 Cairnes took it for granted that Mill wanted his views on the prospects for the formation of a peasant proprietary in Ireland. He had consulted with various people, Longfield included, on the subject, none of whom thought there was any 'likelihood' of this happening. The reasons offered by Longfield in support of this prognosis Cairnes did not find persuasive. The judge, Cairnes said, maintained that tenants with leases had demonstrated a decided bias in favour of subletting, a practice incompatible with peasant proprietorship; that the Irish people, being innately 'careless' and 'improvident,' lacked the attributes requisite for a successful peasant proprietary; and that peasant proprietorship was a'n archaic economic usage whose introduction into Ireland would be 'antagonistic to strong modern tendencies/ Cairnes explained why he did not consider these propositions conclusive. Subletting had arisen in response to conditions that were 'rapidly passing away/ Irish landlords, increasingly imbued with a commercial outlook, now understood the harmful effects of the practice and were eager to extinguish it. As modern influences had modified the attitudes of landlords, so too could they change the predilections of substantial leaseholders. As for the Irish 'disposition,' Cairnes conceded that it was 'careless and improvident,' but argued, in Millian fashion, that their

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'history' had made the Irish so and that such traits were by no means ineradicable. Indeed, peasant proprietorship would inculcate precisely the characteristics the Irish people most needed. It seemed to Cairnes 'exactly the specific for the prevailing Irish disease.' Longfield's last objection did not strike Cairnes as empirically valid. Peasant proprietorship remained a prominent feature of European agricultural systems and showed no signs of decline. In France 'its definitive establishment and greatest extension have been directly connected with the triumph and growth of democratical ideas - emphatically a modern power.' In the non-slave states of America, 'industrially the most advanced country in the world/ owner-occupiers were predominant within the agricultural sector. Cairnes tended to think that the state of affairs in England was rather 'an exception to the prevailing order of democratic progress than as indicating the rule.' Even if Longfield's premise regarding 'the ultimate tendency' were granted, his conclusion did not necessarily follow in the case of Ireland, whose condition 'is so backward as compared with countries which are now cultivated by peasant proprietors that ... it might ... still be good policy to encourage this system as a transitional expedient to help Ireland forward in its course.'105 Cairnes did not doubt that Ireland's tenants wanted possession of the land they occupied, a point he drove home by furnishing Mill with information on the high prices commonly paid for the 'good will' of a farm in those areas of the country where tenant-right was the norm. The custom in such districts was for the incoming tenant to pay the departing tenant a sum of money for access to the holding, the sum varying not only with the size and quality of the holding but with the confidence placed in the readiness of the landlord to honour tenantright. Some tenants, Cairnes stated, were prepared to offer as much as twenty to twenty-five times the annual rental to secure occupancy.106 Why did these individuals not use the capital at their disposal to purchase land outright? 'I believe the true answer is that the cost of transferring land in small parcels is even in the Landed Estates Court very great, very great that is to say as compared with the purchase money; while the good will of a farm may be transferred without any cost at all.' It was not the propensities of Irish tenants that obstructed the advancement of peasant proprietorship.107 Cairnes felt sure that the overwhelming preponderance of Ireland's people would continue to depend on agriculture for the foreseeable future, the manufacturing sector having made little progress since the

n6 England's Disgrace? famine.108 An immeasurably greater influence than manufacturing upon the fortunes of the population was the opportunity to obtain a better life far from Ireland's shores. Cairnes reported that emigration from Ireland had increased steadily in recent years and that there was no reason to suppose it would slacken. In 1863 90,000 had left, and by October 1864 another 90,000 had gone. The numbers would have been higher (the total for 1863 was indeed higher than Cairnes here states) had it not been for the American Civil War, the conclusion of which would almost certainly bring a surge in the outflow. A further large reduction in Ireland's population should therefore be anticipated, and this 'consummation' seemed to Cairnes 'at once inevitable and desirable.' His remarks on emigration carry little of the moral freight borne by Mill's rhetoric on the subject. This mass movement of people, asserted Cairnes, is the effect of all those causes which are shortening the distance and facilitating the intercourse between nations acting upon a country surcharged with population under the influence of a bad economic and a worse moral and political system. The new and best parts of the world have, for the first time in history, been brought into practical competition with the old and exhausted portions.

The consequence would be a global population more integrated and widely dispersed than ever before, 'and a greater equalization of the conditions of wealth.' The entire earth, Cairnes declared, would 'be turned to the purposes of man.'109 As the triumph of free trade had affected emigration patterns so too had it influenced migration within Ireland. Those regions of the country enjoying 'natural advantages' in the production, transport, and distribution of commodities for an extensive market were growing at the expense of less favoured regions, a fact that went'far to explain 'what is conflicting in the accounts of the country.'110 Mill leaned heavily on Cairnes's account of the country when revising the section on Ireland for the 1865 edition of the Principles. In early January Mill read his friend's 'Notes' and directly acknowledged their great value to him. They are a complete Essay on the state and prospects of Ireland, and are so entirely satisfactory that they leave me nothing to think of except how to make the most use of them.'111 Mill jettisoned the generally optimistic paragraph he had inserted into the 1862 edition. The substantive additions included in the 1865 edition of

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the Principles draw not only on Cairnes's thoughts but on his very words. Mill quotes entire paragraphs from the 'private communication by my eminent and valued friend, Professor Cairnes.'112 In a long note he includes Cairnes's commentaries on the disreputable conduct of some new landlords and on subletting.113 Within the text he incorporates Cairnes's discussion of the sale of tenant-right and the bearing of the custom on the fitness of Irish tenants to appreciate the advantages of peasant proprietorship.114 Over half the words of the section added in 1865 emanate from Cairnes. The issues treated and the manner of their treatment generally derive from the 'Notes.' Mill refers to the large reduction in the number of cottiers; he allows that much of the soil of Ireland was now being cultivated by small capitalist farmers, and that the rise in bank deposits indicates the accumulation of greater wealth by this group; he recommends that action be taken to assure Irish tenants of compensation for improvements; he expresses great concern for the severely impoverished landless labourers who had been displaced by the forces inimical to cottierism; and he remarks upon the dimensions of the emigration phenomenon.115 About this last matter, however, Mill is much more disturbed than Cairnes. He does not dispute that those who left Ireland for America were better off as a result, but he finds the implications for England deeply troubling. In the previous chapter I quoted a passage that Mill inserted into the 1865 edition of the Principles. 'The loss, and the disgrace, are England's: and it is the English people and government whom it chiefly concerns to ask themselves, how far it will be to their honour and advantage to retain the mere soil of Ireland, but to lose its inhabitants.' England will have to choose 'between the depopulation of Ireland, and the conversion of a part of the labouring population into peasant proprietors.'116 It is evident that the section added for the sixth edition amounted to little more than an abridgment of the essay Cairnes had drafted. This should not surprise, for Mill had to get his revisions to the printer very soon after receiving Cairnes's 'Notes.'117 Thanks to Cairnes, Mill knew a lot more about Ireland in 1865 than he had known in 1862; Cairnes's contribution notwithstanding, Mill had not given much additional thought to Ireland in the period between the fifth and sixth editions. In 1862 he had ostensibly taken peasant proprietorship off the table, although his reticence on what should be done by the landlords to put an end to what he then considered the outstanding problem, cottier tenancy, leaves open the possibility that the conversion of some cottiers into owner-occupiers might figure as part of the solution. Peasant

n8 England's Disgrace? proprietorship was back on the table in 1865 in connection with the predicament of Ireland's displaced cottiers, but neither in detail nor in outline did Mill propose a scheme for supplying land to the landless. For an indicator of things to come from Mill on Ireland we should look not to what is derivative in his 1865 revisions but to what carries the author's distinctive signature. His response to the mass flight from Ireland shows a degree of agitation whose origin owed nothing to Cairnes. What made Mill a potentially combustible force on the Irish land question was his inveterate moral edginess. Whenever Ireland managed to capture his sympathies and imagination, he could not forgive England for the mess she had made across the Irish Sea. This was plain in his Morning Chronicle series, in the short pieces he composed on Ireland in 1848, and in the early editions of the Principles. Even in Representative Government, where Mill is at his most emollient, he evoked an Ireland that within living memory had been 'atrociously governed' by England. This iniquitous performance, a 'calamity to the whole empire/ had to England been a 'disgrace.'"8 In 1865 Mill represented the exodus from Ireland as a judgment on England, whose 'loss' and 'disgrace' it was. The people and government of England would have 'to ask themselves, how far it will be to their honour and advantage to retain the mere soil of Ireland, but to lose its inhabitants.' Thus, Mill had grave concerns about the meaning for England of the prodigious outflow of people from Ireland. By itself, this phenomenon was not enough to induce him in 1865 to advocate a thoroughgoing program of land reform. Mill's mentality, however, made him prone to apply a radical interpretation to conspicuous evidence of profound Irish discontent with English rule. Should his attention be riveted by events that in his view called into question England's moral standing relative to her government of Ireland, he would not be averse to prescribing 'heroic remedies.' In the abstract, 'fixity of tenure/ a remedy that would fall into the heroic category, had consistently elicited a favourable consideration from Mill. A crisis in Irish affairs could abruptly stimulate his moral nerve centre and move him to fasten upon fixity of tenure as the one efficacious and righteous answer to the land question. W.E. Gladstone, the one leading English politician deeply admired by Mill, also had a strain of moral edginess. Speaking in Manchester on 14 October 1864, Gladstone expressed misgivings about the condition of Ireland. 'We cannot look across the Channel to Ireland, and especially to the state of feeling in Ireland, and say that that state of feeling, taken as a whole, is becoming for the honour and for the advantage of

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the United Kingdom ... We cannot say that there duty to the people has been discharged.'119 Mill alluded to Gladstone's speech in a letter to Cairnes. 'We see there, as usual in Gladstone, the man who speaks from his own convictions, and not from external influences. No other minister would have put forward Ireland ... just at this time, when there is no public outcry about it.'120 Upon entering the House of Commons Mill would have to weigh his loyalty to Cairnes against his political hopes for Gladstone. The issue was the Irish university question.

IV

The Irish University Question

Mill's election to Parliament as Member for Westminster in July 1865 moved him to the centre of the nation's affairs. A group of electors acting in the Radical interest had invited him to stand. The sense of public duty that led him to accept also directed him to stipulate that he would neither spend money nor canvass in his own cause.1 Enough Westminster electors admired England's most distinguished liberal intellectual and public moralist to assure his return. Irish issues did not figure prominently at the 1865 general election and Mill's speeches to the electors (and non-electors) of Westminster did not focus on Ireland. Yet Mill's brief parliamentary career coincided with a critical period in the history of the Union. Pressing aspects of the Irish question - land, nationalism, the university question - drew him into an important engagement with Ireland. Opportunities and constraints integral to that engagement were shaped in part by Mill's political investment in Gladstone. Mill had stood as an 'independent' Liberal in 1865. Inasmuch as the Liberal party at the time was headed by Lord Palmerston, the incumbent prime minister, Mill had good reason to advertise that independence. Palmerston's liberalism was lukewarm at best, and Mill had little affinity for the brand of politics practised by the jovial and dextrously obstructive leader of the Liberal party. That leadership ended abruptly in October 1865 when the extraordinarily resilient and quite ancient Palmerston finally expired. Palmerston's departure opened up political possibilities that his presence had held back. One consequence of his death was the rise of Gladstone to what was in effect a share of the Liberal leadership (the aged Russell became premier and led the party from the House of Lords). Mill, perceiving Gladstone as the potential leader of an advanced Liberal party, attached much signifi-

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cance to this development.2 In Gladstone he saw a gifted liberal statesman with a conscience. Gladstone's powerful and restless intellect, his capacity for political growth, his proven administrative ability, and his indisputable impact on both the world of Westminster and the imagination of the political public seemed to fit him for the leadership of an advanced Liberal party. Mill's eagerness to foster this outcome encouraged him to refrain from actions that might damage Gladstone's prospects.3 This concern would conspicuously affect Mill's handling of the Irish university question during the first half of 1866, a time when Gladstone faced formidable difficulties. Russell and Gladstone, unlike Palmertson, were proponents of a measure of parliamentary reform that would enfranchise the 'respectable' portion of the working classes, and they made clear their intention to introduce a bill early in the 1866 session. Many who had followed Palmerston feared more would be lost than gained by changing a system that had treated them very well indeed. Some of these men deeply distrusted Gladstone, whose earnestness and unpredictability they found highly unsettling. They disliked the Reform Bill Gladstone introduced in March 1866 and they felt no loyalty to the politician who presented it to them. The Conservatives, relegated to minority status since the split over the Corn Laws, would now seek to exploit the fissures evident in Liberal ranks. Their animus against Gladstone, a Tory renegade, was fierce. The government was vulnerable, and Mill was prepared to limit his own independence in the interest of preserving its leader in the House of Commons. His preoccupation with Gladstone's fortunes would cause Mill to disappoint Cairnes on the Irish university question. 1. THE BACKGROUND

The origins of the university question date from the early and mid18408, when Sir Robert Peel devised a policy for Ireland that he hoped would inoculate middle-class Irish Catholics against O'Connell's 'Repeal' infection.4 Among other things, he aimed to augment provision of higher education for these Catholics. Before 1845 the only university authorized to grant degrees in Ireland was Trinity College Dublin, founded in the late sixteenth century. This well-endowed institution bore an unmistakable Protestant establishment imprint, notwithstanding a 1793 act of the Irish Parliament that empowered Trinity to award degrees to non-Anglicans. The Anglican monopoly on professorships,

122 England's Disgrace? fellowships, scholarships, and prizes would not be ended until the early 18705. Only a small number of Catholics took degrees at Trinity during the first half of the nineteenth century, among them men who attained positions of eminence in Irish society.5 Peel, in the teeth of frenzied Protestant resistance in England, conferred a sizable building grant upon the Catholic seminary at Maynooth and substantially increased its annual subsidy; he did not want to compound his troubles by attacking the Anglicanism of Trinity College. Hence, his government proposed to set up three nondenominational colleges - the Queen's Colleges - in Belfast (intended mainly for Presbyterians), Cork, and Galway. Opened in 1849, these colleges together constituted the Queen's University, chartered in i850.6 The 'godless' colleges - an epithet flung at Peel's creation by the Tory Anglican politician Sir Robert Inglis and eagerly taken up by Daniel O'Connell - did not have enough powerful friends within the Catholic hierarchy either in Ireland or at Rome to escape papal condemnation. Fearing for the 'faith and morals' of Irish Catholic youth, Pope Pius IX issued edicts against the colleges in 1847, 1848, and 1850. A national synod of Irish Catholic bishops was held at Thurles in 1850. Ably directed by Paul Cullen, apostolic delegate and soon to become Archbishop of Dublin, this synod censured the Queen's University plan and admonished Catholics to shun the Queen's Colleges.7 Having nixed Peel's initiative, Cullen and the Vatican took one of their own, calling for the creation of an independent Catholic university in Dublin. With John Henry Newman sitting (very occasionally) in the rector's office, this institution received its first students in i854.8 As of the mid-i86os neither the Catholic University nor the Queen's Colleges (except that at Belfast, which was welcomed by a large Presbyterian constituency) had gone far to fulfil the hopes of their founders. The resources given the Queen's Colleges were meagre enough, yet the funding they obtained probably looked lavish to the supporters of the Catholic University, whose financial predicament was grave. The refusal of the British government to grant a charter to the Catholic University meant that its degrees had no legal standing, a decided handicap. On average it had only 125 students annually enrolled during the i86os. If the Catholic bishops could not make a success of their university in Dublin, they could nonetheless hamper the Queen's Colleges at Cork and Galway. Although there were among the middle-class laity families ready to defy the injunctions of the hierarchy, there can be no doubt that the enmity of Cullen and his colleagues clouded the pros-

The Irish University Question 123 pects of these colleges. From 1862 to 1867, 725 students entered the Cork and Galway institutions, of whom 311 (or just over 40 per cent) were Roman Catholic.9 Cullen might have taken comfort in such figures were it not for his determination to keep all Catholics away from the Queen's Colleges so long as they remained outside his own dominion. Indeed, the object of the Catholic bishops was the denominationalization of all education. The leading historian of the Catholic church in nineteenth-century Ireland, a scholar with some sympathy for his subject, acknowledges that Cullen and his associates sought the destruction of unsectarian education. They refused to give an inch on what they regarded as fundamental - a complete system of denominational education on all levels absolutely under their control.'10 Cullen wanted the colleges at Cork and Galway placed under Catholic auspices and he wanted a charter and endowment for the Catholic University.11 The tireless director of an increasingly confident and aggressive ecclesiastical power, Cullen would work to wring from the government concessions harmful to the collegiate interests of the nondenominational Queen's University system.12 In the summer of 1865 Palmerston's Liberal government displayed a readiness to appease the hierarchy on the university question. Political calculation of a very practical sort presumably informed this inclination. A general election was in the offing; at the previous general election the Tories had won a majority of Irish seats.13 It was disconcertingly evident to Palmerston and his colleagues that Irish Catholic electoral preference for Liberals over Tories could by no means be taken for granted. Equally plain was Cullen's intent to make the education issue the bishops' first political priority.14 Whatever else may have given rise to discord within the ranks of the hierarchy in the 18505 and i86os, the higher-education question, which made allies of Cullen and his usually intractable foe John MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam, afforded the appearance and substance of unity on a fundamental issue (Cullen and MacHale did quarrel over the running of the Catholic University, but on the goal of crippling unsectarian education in Ireland they were as one). Such a national focus for their energies was especially valuable during decades when local rather than national concerns tended to dominate the Irish political scene. It was against this political and ecclesiastical background, and with a general election impending, that Sir George Grey, speaking for the government, took up the Irish university question in the House of Commons on 20 June 1865. In answer to a motion by Daniel O'Donoghue (The O'Donoghue,' MP for Tipper-

124 England's Disgrace? ary) demanding a charter for the Catholic University, Grey announced that the government contemplated presenting a scheme that would permit Catholics to acquire a Queen's University degree without being obliged to attend one of the nondenominational Queen's Colleges.15 Presumably this scheme would make the granting of a Queen's University degree conditional upon the passing of an examination that would be open to students who had matriculated at Maynooth College or the Catholic University. The Queen's Colleges might well remain nondenominational institutions, but they would be deprived of their exclusive identification with the Queen's University. Although falling well short of what the bishops wanted, this proposal alarmed the most ardent friends of the existing Queen's University system.16 That system had no friend more ardent than J.E. Cairnes. 2. CAIRNES'S DEFENCE OF THE QUEEN'S COLLEGES

As the holder of a chair at Queen's College Galway, Cairnes had a personal professional stake in the defence of an institution striving to prevail in an unfriendly environment. Yet the investment he made in the defence of the Queen's University system - a defence that lost none of its intensity after his appointment in 1866 to a professorship of political economy at University College London - suggests that material and career considerations were of secondary importance. For Cairnes the Irish counterpart of the slave power in America was the Roman Catholic church, whose pernicious ambitions it was the responsibility of liberalism to contain. Cairnes did not doubt that Cullen and his coadjutors wished to uproot the nondenominationalism of the Queen's Colleges. He felt that a great battle was at hand, and that a gathering of liberal forces was indispensable if the vital principle of unsectarian education in Ireland was to be saved from the remorseless bigotry of Rome. The most comprehensive and systematic expression of Cairnes's position on the issue is found in a lengthy article he drafted in the autumn of 1865, not long after Grey's declaration in the House of Commons. Published by the Theological Review in January 1866, this article would deeply impress Mill, whose support mattered a great deal to Cairnes.17 The first section of Cairnes's essay discusses the foundation of the Queen's Colleges and the circumstances that led to their condemnation by the Catholic hierarchy, much stress being laid on Cullen's malevolent influence. The author then assesses the record of the colleges in

The Irish University Question 125 light of the charges of the ultramontane party that they had failed to meet the educational needs of the Irish people. Scrutinizing the relevant figures in the context of social conditions in Ireland, Cairnes attempts to demonstrate that the number of Catholic students educated by the Queen's Colleges was not out of line with any sensible estimate of existing demand for higher education among the middle-class laity.18 Cairnes is keen to make the point that despite priestly deprecations the laity had not stood aloof from the Queen's Colleges.19 For those Catholics who could not in good conscience attend one of these colleges, the Catholic University, Cairnes cannot resist telling his readers, had 'abundant space.'20 To assert that the denial of a charter to the Catholic University unfairly penalized its students was to overlook the degree opportunities offered by the University of London (an examination-administering, degree-granting institution prepared to recognize evidence of qualification for a university degree regardless of a candidate's background). Thus, the '"Catholic University"' - Cairnes, intimating that it was not only the absence of a charter that called its status into question, invariably puts the name within quotation marks 'stands in a position little, if at all, inferior to that occupied by a Queen's College; and if we admit that there is something in State prestige, it must be admitted, on the other hand, that there is also something in spiritual prestige.'21 Cairnes does not object to the rivalry between the Queen's Colleges and the Catholic University, but he is cross about the methods employed by the ultramontane party to gain the upper hand. He observes that the Queen's Colleges had achieved an impressive measure of success despite the illegitimate and tyrannical opposition of a priesthood, who have refused to leave the decision to the unbiassed judgment of those whom the question concerned ... an opposition availing itself of all the arts at its command for inspiring superstitious terror, of denunciation from the altar, exclusion from sacraments, in a word of expedients resembling rather the spiritual appliances of Jesuit despots dictating to Paraguayan savages than remonstrances fitted to be addressed to reasonable and civilized men.22

With Grey's announcement in mind, Cairnes cautioned against a move that would have the effect of transforming the Queen's University into an Irish version of the University of London. Such a policy, he argued, would instigate an unhealthy examination competition between the two systems, each seeking to attract candidates, that would

126 England's Disgrace? lower standards and send mischievous signals to students concerning the ultimate purposes of higher education. The collegiate principle was intrinsic to the existing Queen's University system; it fostered intellectual rigour, encouraged the acquisition of valuable social skills, and provided an environment conducive to moral growth. Ireland's peculiar condition especially required that nothing be done to enfeeble the working of that principle: What can be better fitted to qualify the virus of bigotry and engender feelings of mutual consideration and respect, what better preparation for the duties of citizenship in a country of mixed religious faith can be imagined, than a system of education which furnishes to the youths of all denominations neutral ground on which they may meet and cultivate in common, without reference to the causes which divide them, those pursuits in which they have a common interest?23

The final portion of Cairnes's article focuses on the claims of the ultramontane party and the justifications for resistance to them. The charter request made on behalf of the Catholic University, Cairnes insists, had nothing to do with 'freedom of education/ the slogan smugly trotted out by the partisans of sectarianism. Their purpose was to extract a series of concessions that would strengthen the competitive position of the Catholic University and promote an ultramontane takeover of the Queen's University. Returning once again to the venomous campaign conducted against the Queen's Colleges by Cullen and the bishops, Cairnes declares that educational pluralism in Ireland was anathema to the ultramontane party, which sought exclusive control over the education of Irish Catholics at every level. If the state had an obligation (and Cairnes admitted that it did) to allow the Catholic church to do what it could in the educational sphere, that obligation surely did not extend to giving aid and comfort to the sworn enemy of values essential to sustaining a liberal polity. About the depth of Cairnes's feeling there can be no mistake: I confess I am wholly unable to see that this country [England] is called upon by any principle of freedom to yield to a demand of this sort. Tyranny is not the less tyranny when its seat is in the human soul, and when it seeks its ends by threats of torture to be inflicted hereafter instead of now; and though it may be true that in this form it eludes the grasp of human legislation, though it may not be possible to bind the subtle essence of spiritual terrorism without at the same

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127

time endangering the play of legitimate moral influence - though, therefore, intolerance itself when it assumes this garb must needs be tolerated - at least there seems no reason that a liberal State should play into its hands, and make itself by deliberate action the accomplice of its designs. Many unworthy acts have been committed in the name of Liberty; but we question if the sacred word was ever more audaciously prostituted than when invoked by ultramontane bishops against the system of education established by Sir Robert Peel.24

Cairnes expected his eminent friend, newly elected MP for Westminster, to subscribe to these sentiments and make common cause with him on the Irish university question. 3. MILL, THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, AND UNIVERSITY EDUCATION

The anti-clericalism of the Enlightenment was immanent in the liberalism of Cairnes and Mill, although the latter's hostility to the Catholic church was more subdued than the former's. (Had Mill been in Cairnes's cirumstances, there likely would have been nothing to choose between them on this score.) Of course neither of them had any association with the virulent strain of anti-Catholicism sporadically exhibited in midVictorian Britain.25 An unflinching proponent of religious liberty and civil equality, Mill had represented the conflict over Catholic emancipation as one 'between the great principles of justice on the one hand, and vague apprehensions on the other.'26 He welcomed the increased grant for the Catholic seminary at Maynooth as a Victory over religious bigotry.'27 Mill expressed contempt for the author of the 1851 Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, Lord John Russell's demagogic answer to the papacy's restoration of the hierarchy in England (the measure, never enforced, aimed to limit the official titles used by Catholic prelates). 'Russell's truckling to the Times, the parsons and the bigots' was reprehensible; 'he has disgusted all real liberals.'28 Mill was not blind to the achievement of the medieval church or insensitive to the beauty of Catholic art.29 He never demonized the Catholic church or expatiated on its iniquity. At bottom, however, he was an inveterate opponent of its moral and political authoritarianism (the Syllabus of Errors, issued by the papacy in 1864, pugnaciously encapsulated this authoritarianism). Given a choice between Protestantism and Catholicism (not a palatable choice in his case), Mill had an irrefragable preference for the former. In the Autobiography he recounts that his father taught him 'to

iz8 England's Disgrace? take the strongest interest in the Reformation, as the great and decisive contest against priestly tyranny for liberty of thought/30 According to Mill the Reformation made reason rather than authority 'the recognised standard' in the religious sphere.31 In practice Protestants might not always manifest a cordial disposition towards free inquiry, but in principle Protestantism held that 'the mode in which truth ought to be arrived at & the only legitimate mode of obtaining full assurance of it, is by the operation of the individual reason & conscience.'32 Mill criticizes Comte for his insensibility to the 'positive influences' of Protestantism: 'its remarkable efficacy, as contrasted with Catholicism, in cultivating the intelligence and conscience of the individual believer.'33 English conditions were such that Mill never drew upon his polemical resources to mount a full-scale assault on the Catholic church. Scattered disparaging observations he does offer. Mill had no need to resort to subtlety with an English audience happy to endorse his characterization of Catholicism as a 'bad' religion.34 He refers to 'the readiness with which that religion allies itself with arbitrary power.'35 Those who made the Reformation had broken 'the yoke of what called itself the Universal Church' and what Mill called 'the most intolerant of churches.'36 The good qualities of the French owed little to Catholicism, which, together with political despotism, had made 'submission and endurance the common character of the people, and their most received notion of wisdom and excellence.'37 Mill thought the Church feared and condemned what he prized and revered - individuality, intellectual boldness, moral autonomy. The following passage, from his posthumously published Three Essays on Religion, goes to the heart of Mill's conception of the Roman Catholic church as an implacable foe of human improvement: The Catholic Church ... holds as an article of faith that miracles have never ceased, and new ones continue to be now and then brought forth and believed, even in the present incredulous age - yet if in an incredulous generation certainly not among the incredulous portion of it, but always among people who, in addition to the most childish ignorance, have grown up (as all do who are educated by the Catholic clergy) trained in the persuasion that it is a duty to believe and a sin to doubt; that it is dangerous to be sceptical about anything which is tendered for belief in the name of true religion; and that nothing is so contrary to piety as incredulity.38

Mill's opposition to clerical control of education long antedated his

The Irish University Question 129 friendship with Cairnes. Sown in his childhood, the seeds of Mill's anticlericalism had been nurtured in a learning environment that reinforced the bias at every turn. Hence his indictment of Oxbridge, in the essay 'Civilization' (1836), rested on principles antagonistic to the ends governing Catholic institutions of higher education. Holding as he did that unencumbered free inquiry was indispensable both to the formation of mature minds and to the discovery of truth, Mill had an aversion to educational systems whose purpose it was to disseminate sectarian orthodoxy among those under their sway. As he put it, '[I]f they could prevent heresy, they cared not if the price paid were stupidity.' Mill emphatically affirmed that the 'principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy ... requires to be rooted out.'39 Mill's views on this subject did not moderate in the lengthy interval between the writing of 'Civilization' and his involvement with the Irish university question. His treatment of university education in 'Whewell on Moral Philosophy' (1852) adheres closely to the tenets he had laid down in 1836. Those appointed to instruct in church-dominated institutions had in effect bound themselves to teach only what the dogma of the religious body to which they owed their allegiance could accommodate. Mill asked: 'What value is the opinion on any subject, of a man whom every one knows that by his profession he must hold that opinion? and how can intellectual vigour be fostered by the teaching of those who, even as a matter of duty, would rather that their pupils were weak and orthodox, than strong with freedom of thought?'40 In the Inaugural Address Mill gave to the University of St Andrews in 1867 (written in the midst of the controversy over the Irish university question), there was as much for Cairnes to applaud as there was for Cullen to reprove. The subject is the content of university education, the theme intellectual and moral growth. 'Improvement/ Mill observed, 'consists in bringing our opinions into nearer agreement with facts; and we shall not be likely to do this while we look at facts only through glasses coloured by those opinions.' The teacher's function was not 'to impose his own judgment, but to inform and discipline that of his pupil.'41 University education, asserted Mill, could not justifiably keep company with sectarian instruction. The various Churches, established and unestablished, are quite competent to the task which is peculiarly theirs, that of teaching each its own doctrines, as far as necessary, to its own rising generation. The proper business of an University is different: not to tell us from authority what we ought to believe, and make us

130 England's Disgrace? accept the belief as a duty, but to give us information and training, and help us to form our own belief in a manner worthy of intelligent beings, who seek for truth at all hazards, and demand to know all the difficulties, in order that they may be better qualified to find, or recognise, the most satisfactory mode of resolving them ... [W]e should not trust our judgment when it has been formed in ignorance of evidence, and we... should not consent to be restricted to a one-sided teaching, which informs us of what a particular teacher or association of teachers receive as true doctrine and sound argument, but of nothing more.42

That Mill held such convictions meant that he would be amenable to much that Cairnes had to say regarding the Irish university question, a subject upon whose specifics Mill would have to be educated. Yet Cairnes would find that he could not determine the use Mill would make of this schooling. 4. MILL, CAIRNES, AND GLADSTONE, 1865-6

There is no reason to suppose Mill had given serious thought to the Irish university question before August 1865, when Cairnes first broached the subject with him. An issue that at this time meant little or nothing to Mill mattered very much to Cairnes. In a letter written in late July to his great friend William Nesbitt, Cairnes expressed doubt that the government understood 'the effect of the step which they propose to take: if they do, it is as disgraceful a party manoeuvre as this generation has seen.'43 Cairnes, now resident in London and eager to obtain Mill's cooperation in opposing the plan to change the character of the Queen's University system, raised the subject with his friend on 13 August. Although Cairnes did not furnish Nesbitt with specifics respecting this conversation, he did report that 'the general result was satisfactory. He will oppose any thing that imperils the fair working out of the experiment of mixed education in Ireland, which he considers so far a success.'44 The content of a letter Cairnes wrote to Mill on 20 August nonetheless implies that the latter had been somewhat uncertain about the precise nature of the threat the government scheme posed to that experiment. In this missive Cairnes alludes to 'the points which seemed to weigh with you in favour of the Government's proposal.' Sensing Mill's relative detachment from the issue, Cairnes tried to explain why he could not share it.

The Irish University Question 131 I have seen a great work accomplished in Ireland by the steady labours of a band of zealous men who have reaped little other benefit from their toils than the satisfaction arising from success. That success is now imperiled by the disposition to conciliate a party who in the name of freedom of education are seeking to get the control of the education of the country into their own hands in order to corrupt and pervert it.45

Mill had not been a party to the 'great work/ and he could not muster the vehemence displayed by his friend. In his 22 August reply to Cairnes, Mill observed that, undesirable though it was to open up Queen's University degrees to students from outside the Queen's Colleges, Grey's speech had virtually committed the government to that course and there did not seem to be much anyone could do to stop it. Employing a logic innocent of political contingency, Mill declared that 'the ministry cannot retract after the general election what they promised before it. They must either keep their promise, or resign.' In light of the circumstances, the primary objective should be to keep the opponents of the Queen's Colleges off the Senate of the Queen's University: The great point is, to insist that the particular scheme of education which the British nation has instituted because it thinks that (for Ireland) it is the best, shall continue to have fair play; and that the enemies of the scheme shall have no voice in deciding how it shall be carried out.'46 Cairnes, determined to recruit Mill into the ranks of the activists who deplored any tampering with the Queen's University charter to curry favour with the Catholic bishops, would not let the matter rest. In a letter of late August he noted that the government had in mind an affiliation of Catholic higher-educational institutions with the Queen's University in an arrangement that would enable their candidates to obtain Queen's University degrees. Should this be consummated, Catholic institutions could not be denied representation in the Queen's University Senate. Cairnes had learned 'that one half the whole body is the Govt's notion of what would constitute "due" representation'; a sectarian Catholic presence of this magnitude would fatally undermine the purposes for which the Queen's Colleges were established.47 Cairnes thought it far better that the 'Irish ultramontane party' be given a place in the Senate of the University of London, where it could never exercise a dominant voice, than be admitted to the Senate of the Queen's University, 'with which it has no affinity.' Such a concession, Cairnes

132 England's Disgrace? allowed, 'would fail to satisfy the expectations of the party, but so would any concession which fell short of transferring the education of the people of Ireland into their hands.'48 Mill's 2 September response to these points shows that Cairnes had not yet gotten very far with him. He suggested that a reasonable compromise might involve creating a board that would confer degrees but have no governing authority over the Queen's Colleges. 'Perhaps the best mode' of proceeding 'would be to place the whole affair under the University of London,' a few seats in its Senate being reserved for representatives of the ultramontane faction. What Mill means by 'the whole affair' he does not precisely say, but a plausible inference is that the responsibility given the University of London in this connection would make the Queen's University redundant. If the establishment of a formal link between Irish institutions and the University of London proved objectionable, then an examining and degree-granting board specific to Ireland could be constituted. In appointing the members of this board, the government should give representation to the ultramontane element, 'but not to the extent of half ... They are not entitled to half. The Catholic religion is entitled to half, but not any particular section of the Catholic body.' Mill was not optimistic about procuring even this degree of protection for the Queen's Colleges, though he assured Cairnes he would do what he could to help in his capacity as an MP.49

Upon hearing from Mill, Cairnes wrote directly to Nesbitt. Mill's letter, he informed Nesbitt, was 'profoundly unsatisfactory.' Cairnes criticized Mill's coolness in proposing, 'without assigning the least reason for it, to merge the Queen's University in the University of London (if that really be his meaning which I am somewhat doubtful of)/ When Cairnes had floated the idea of giving the ultramontane element a voice in the Senate of the University of London, he had done so with a view to preserving the integrity of the Queen's University as an institution that awarded degrees to students who had completed their course of study at the nondenominational Queen's Colleges. He decidedly did not want the University of London to displace the Queen's University in performing this function. Cairnes did not really know what to make of Mill's letter, which seemed couched in ambiguity. He told Nesbitt that he had 'not answered it, and shall not do so for some time, as he [Mill] has just started on a tour into Germany, and I fancy will prefer for a time to be "let alone."'50 Cairnes prudently left Mill alone throughout the autumn of 1865. The

The Irish University Question 133 latter ensconced himself in his Avignon home following his September excursion to Germany. The parliament elected in the summer of 1865 would not meet until early 1866 and there was no pressing political business demanding Mill's attention in the few months after his electoral triumph. Cairnes meanwhile busied himself with his article for the Theological Review. His correspondence with Nesbitt during these months is full of matter pertaining to the university question.51 Cairnes was engaged in the great political battle of his life. As an Irish liberal deeply involved in the contest over control of education in Ireland, he found the Catholic church both a sinister and a powerful force. Most English liberals did not care for the Catholic church, but had little cause to fear its influence, which in the English context scarcely seemed threatening. By and large, these liberals knew little about the Irish university question, the politics of which carried no resonance in the English electoral environment. Cairnes understood that his main task was to explain to English liberals, Mill included, why they should be troubled by what the government had in mind for the Queen's University. On this score, it appeared that he had not accomplished much with Mill before his friend's departure for the Continent. Yet in early January 1866 Cairnes would discover that Mill had been mulling over the subject in preparation for the opening of the new parliament. In a letter to Cairnes dated 6 January Mill referred to the 'long time' that had passed since they had communicated, and said that he wanted to 'take counsel' with Cairnes on certain topics before the political season began. The first of these was the university question. Mill informed Cairnes that on this matter he had been 'drawing nearer and nearer' to his view, and disclosed that he would take his 'stand against the denominational system in any form for Ireland.' In that country it was vitally important 'to bring youths of different religions to live together in colleges,' and this cause in itself would 'justify almost any encouragement to the system of the Queen's University, except that of actually refusing degrees to those who have studied elsewhere' (Mill does not say whether the granting of degrees to such students should be a function of the Queen's University). From reports in the English newspapers he read while in Avignon, Mill had seen evidence of the Catholic hierarchy's absolute aversion to 'mixed' education in any form. The 'impracticable' conduct of the prelacy, Mill observed, might give the government a pretext for abandoning the stance taken just before the general election. It was the duty of MPs, he continued, to persuade the Russell-Gladstone ministry that a retraction was possible

134 England's Disgrace? and desirable. Mill asked Cairnes whether he had identified a suitable person to initiate the parliamentary defence of the Queen's Colleges, and then closed his discussion of the subject on a belligerent and distinctly unphilosophical note. 'Any tolerable stand made in the House will have powerful support outside, from the mass of feeling in the country always ready to be called forth against any new concession to Catholics/52 Although the publication of Cairnes's lengthy article on the university question coincided with Mill's quasi-conversion, it seems that he knew nothing of this essay when he wrote his letter of 6 January.53 What then accounts for Mill's changed attitude on the issue? Whatever he may have heard or read on the subject since September (it could not have amounted to much), his markedly different approach in January surely did not stem from a new body of information. In the autumn Mill had withdrawn to the Continent. Even before his departure he had psychologically distanced himself from the political scene and the spurt of activism necessitated by his Westminster campaign (Mill's committee had prevailed upon him to address a number of election meetings in the ten days before polling). In August and September Cairnes had caught Mill in a mood unpropitious to the former's purpose. By January 1866 Mill was beginning to focus intently on his impending parliamentary engagement. Steeling himself for the phase of intense political activism upon which he would soon embark, Mill was now ready to come to grips with the problem Cairnes had posed months before. He needed to sort out where he stood on questions that might test the new House of Commons. For Mill, political action involved a species of militancy. It is likely that his operational mode in early 1866 made him receptive to the uncompromising line Cairnes had propounded in the wake of the 1865 general election. Cairnes was greatly pleased. To Nesbitt he reported that he had received 'a most satisfactory letter from Mill.'54 In his reply to Mill, Cairnes observed: 'As you state your views now, there would be nothing at all of difference between us as regards the practical course to be pursued; and I even venture to think that full explanation would reduce any theoretic differences that may exist to a particle inappreciably small.' Cairnes agreed that 'the overweening pretensions of the Catholic prelacy' would assist the defenders of the Queen's University system.55 Yet he confessed to some anxiety regarding the leadership question raised by Mill. The 'general indifference of English liberals' to the subject meant that the lead might fall to such zealously Protestant

The Irish University Question 135 Tories as James Whiteside or Sir Hugh Cairns, whose arguments would probably meet with little sympathy among liberals. Another MP Cairnes thought would strongly object to altering the charter of the Queen's University was Sir Robert Peel (the son of the prime minister responsible for creating the Queen's Colleges). Peel, Cairnes feared, 'is pretty certain to do us mischief.'56 Cairnes was not impugning Peel's motives but his temperament and abilities. K.T. Hoppen says that Peel's tenure of the Irish Chief Secretaryship "between 1861 and 1865 was marked by choleric intemperance, lack of application, and burst blood vessels all round. That Palmerston should have kept so manifestly absurd a man in so important an office ... suggests a profound contempt, not only for most things Irish, but for the Irish Liberal Party in particular/57 Cairnes understandably interpreted Mill's query about leadership to signify a readiness to occupy a front-line position in the coming battle, and he plainly wished to press Mill forward. Peel's unsuitability for the task, Cairnes remarked, made Mill's 'adhesion - I hope I am not too sanguine in thus understanding you - of simply inestimable value.'58 Towards the end of January a worried Cairnes wrote Mill concerning a statement of Lord Wodehouse (Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) that the government planned to affiliate the Catholic University and other colleges to the Queen's University and to reconstitute the governing body of the Queen's University in accordance with this change. Cairnes had expected as much. What upset his calculations was that the government might not bother to consult Parliament about the restructuring, since it did not propose to endow the Catholic University. Both Mill and Cairnes understood that their best hope lay in the House of Commons, whose participation the ministry perchance aimed to circumvent. Cairnes reported that he had communicated with Thomas Hughes and Henry Fawcett, Radical MPs sympathetic to the Queen's Colleges, and they were prepared to ensure that Russell and Gladstone could not pursue such a course without incurring the public wrath of some Liberals in the House.59 At the very end of January Mill, lately returned from Avignon, told Cairnes of his desire to discuss with him 'the critical state of things respecting the education question.' The content of Cairnes's most recent letter had clearly disturbed Mill, who observed: 'If the ministry do not take care, they will commence the breaking up of their party by this measure.'60 Mill's earnestness and his ascription of such significance to the subject seem to denote a marked adherence to Cairnes's position. The discussion took place on 2 February, when Cairnes dined with Mill

136 England's Disgrace? at the Political Economy Club. By this time the latter had read Cairnes's Theological Review article. According to Cairnes, Mill declared on this occasion that the essay '"had completed my conversion, and I now go with you thoroughly."'61 Confident that he had secured a firm pledge of support from Mill, Cairnes set about constructing a parliamentary movement devoted to defending the Queen's University system. Undertaken during the early part of February, this activity was formidable in both reach and concentration. Cairnes brought together Mill and Hughes with a view to devising a strategy for dealing with the issue. According to Cairnes, they agreed to organize a deputation, consisting of Liberals friendly to the government, that would solicit an assurance from the administration 'that nothing shd be done in the way of granting charters or of issuing letters patent without giving Parlt an opportunity for considering & discussing the proposed change.' Should the government refuse to make such a promise, its hand would be forced by giving notice in the House of Commons of a motion for a debate on the subject. Cairnes proceeded to recruit suitable men for the deputation, making successful approaches to Henry Fawcett, Charles Neate, J.G. Shaw-Lefevre, and P.A. Taylor. Along with these English MPs, headed by Mill and Hughes, would be a healthy complement of Scottish MPs.62 Cairnes next tried to find a politician of consequence to take the initiative in the House of Commons should such become necessary. The man Cairnes liked for the task was Robert Lowe, MP for Calne, a leader-writer for The Times, and a resolute opponent of parliamentary reform. Lowe had a lucid and powerful intellect, a keen interest in educational questions, and a notable hostility to all forms of sacerdotalism. Towards the government of Russell and Gladstone he was not kindly disposed. Cairnes wrote Lowe to arrange for an interview. When they met, Cairnes explained the essential elements of the university question. Delighted with Lowe's response, Cairnes invited him to 'take charge of the question in Parlt, a proposal which he at once accepted.' Lowe, however, did not think well of the deputation scheme, and urged that notice of a question to the government be given directly. Cairnes carried this information to Mill and Hughes and found that they did not approve of Lowe's preferred course of action. The divergence of opinion, Cairnes informed Nesbitt, was 'intelligible enough: their object being to effect the end in view with as little loss of credit to the Govt as possible, while Lowe's is precisely the reverse.' According to Cairnes, Lowe then agreed to 'waive his view in favour of that of

The Irish University Question 137 Mill/ although he declined to form part of any deputation (and just as well too, for it is almost certain that Mill and Hughes would not have wanted Lowe in their company).63 Having reached what he considered an understanding with Lowe, Cairnes sought out John Bright, Lowe's polar opposite on the issue of parliamentary reform and England's most famous Radical. Cairnes had heard that Bright had been in touch with representatives of the Irish Catholic hierarchy and that a deal was in the making whereby he would support 'their designs on education' in exchange for their endorsement of electoral reform. Cairnes thought this 'had a very dangerous look, and I thought the best way of meeting it was to set Mill at Bright and his followers, amongst whom Mill is regarded with immense deference.' Mill, Cairnes notes, eagerly embraced this idea. Before anything could come of it, however, Cairnes had occasion to be introduced to Bright by P.A. Taylor in the lobby of the House of Commons. The topic of Ireland came up in the conversation that ensued and Cairnes expressed his concern that the government was about to make 'concessions of a fatal kind to the priests in education, which was the one point in which Catholics had nothing to complain of.' Cairnes stressed the virtues of the Irish educational system compared to England's. Playing upon Bright's well-known American sympathies, Cairnes suggested that Ireland's educational arrangements had much in common with those of New England. Before they parted Bright voiced a desire to speak further with Cairnes on the subject. This 'encounter with Goliath' encouraged Cairnes, who took Bright's 'apparent readiness for discussion' to mean that no conclusive compact had yet been made with the opponents of the Queen's Colleges.64 On 8 February Cairnes dined with George Goschen, who had recently entered the cabinet. Goschen's rapid rise (he was only thirty-five years of age at the time) had been assisted by his forceful speeches in the House of Commons for ending religious tests at Oxford and Cambridge.65 Cairnes assumed that no member of the Russell-Gladstone government was likely to be more sympathetic to the Queen's University system than Goschen. In their conversation the circumspect Goschen avoided specifics while remarking that the sentiments of Ireland's overwhelmingly Catholic population had to be taken into account. This merely reinforced Cairnes's supposition that on the university question the government did not understand its duty. Yet certain impressions he gained from Goschen heartened Cairnes. He deduced from Goschen's words and manner that 'the priests' were proving very difficult to deal

138 England's Disgrace? with and that the government felt 'almost desperate in this regard.'66 Moreover, Goschen implied that the government did not intend to act without consulting Parliament.67 At this juncture Cairnes felt sure that whenever the matter should be brought before the House of Commons Mill could be counted upon to do his part. And it was no small part Cairnes wished and expected him to play. Cairnes told Nesbitt that Mill 'has consented to act as a sort of second "head centre"; he is to get hold of every liberal member, indoctrinate him in the true faith, put him down to read my pamphlet (a supply of which he has in the House of Com. for the purpose) and examine him in it afterwards.' (Precisely what Mill had consented to do it is difficult to know, but this account perhaps speaks more to Cairnes's excited state than to any specific course of action Mill had pledged to undertake.) Through the good offices of Lord Dalhousie, to whom he was introduced by James McCosh, chair of logic and metaphysics at Queen's College Belfast, Cairnes had opened up contacts with a number of Scottish Liberal MPs. They were given to understand that Mill was 'the manager of the movement in Parlt.'68 Cairnes then tried to broaden yet further the organized combination of forces defending the Queen's University system by bringing Mill together with Sir Hugh Cairns and Sir Robert Peel.69 On 10 February Cairnes reported recent developments to Mill. He informed the latter of his conversation with Goschen, from whom he had gathered that the government had not yet struck a 'definitive bargain' with the Irish bishops. He also reported that a special synod of the Presbyterian Assembly of Ulster had unreservedly declared its support for the existing system of 'mixed education' in Ireland at both the primary and university levels. Having previously sought to obtain affiliation with the Queen's University for Magee College, a Presbyterian seminary in Londonderry, the Assembly had now determined to withdraw this application in order to fortify the case for preserving the nondenominationalism of the Queen's University in the face of the bishops' offensive. Cairnes noted that he had been in touch with Sir Samuel Morton Peto, a leading nonconformist MP, and that he had taken the 'liberty of saying to him that you would be glad to communicate with him on the subject.' He had taken a similar 'liberty in writing to Mr. Lowe. I hope in doing so I have not overstepped the limits of your wishes.' Cairnes recounted his Scottish initiatives to Mill and conveyed to him the names of the English MPs who had agreed to participate in the planned deputation, whose task would be to tell the

The Irish University Question 139 government that any attempt to give effect to the policy announced by Sir George Grey the year before 'would encounter opposition from their own party.' In closing he urged Mill to reach an understanding with Cairns and Peel, who would presumably want to cooperate in a defence of the Queen's Colleges, although neither was accustomed to working with advanced Liberals. Inasmuch as such Liberals would be opposed to Cairns and Peel leading the charge, both should be encouraged to act as auxiliaries.70 Cairnes's putative parliamentary 'manager of the movement' would in fact refuse to act in this capacity. In his letter to Cairnes of 13 February Mill expressed grave misgivings about the political damage that 'movement' could inflict. He had been taking soundings of his own. An experienced Scottish MP, Grant Duff, had assured him that the weight of Scotland in the House of Commons would come down against any government initiative unfriendly to the Queen's Colleges. 'Not a single Scotch member (he said) would vote with them, and (he added) as their [the government's] enemies are keenly watching to take the first opportunity of putting them in a minority they would probably be obliged to resign.' Alarmed at the prospect of the Tories' exploiting the issue to topple a fragile Liberal ministry pledged to parliamentary reform, Mill wished to keep his distance from those eager to harm the government. Vigorous opposition to an attack on the Queen's University system was perfectly legitimate; a joint operation involving enemies of the RussellGladstone administration could not be sanctioned. Cairnes was at liberty to seek support wherever he could find it, but Mill could not allow himself such freedom of action. Although Cairnes should not hesitate to tell others that Mill had 'a very strong opinion against the proposed changes,' Mill did not want 'to be held out to any one, even to sincere liberals, much less to false liberals or Tories, as desiring to communicate with them on the subject.' Lowe was a prominent presence among the 'false liberals' Mill had in mind. When first briefed by Cairnes, Lowe had indicated his disapproval of the deputation plan and proposed that a question be put directly to the government in the House of Commons. The reaction of Mill and Hughes had prompted Cairnes to urge Lowe to drop this idea, and Cairnes had understood Lowe to say that he would 'waive his view in favour of that of Mill.' If Lowe said as much to Cairnes, he evidently did not feel bound by what he said. The opportunity to strike at the government proved irresistible. Lowe had spoken to Mill and told him of his intention to draw the government out on the university issue by putting a question in the House. Mill had

140 England's Disgrace? the impression that Lowe would act 'without any further parley or consultation with us and our liberal friends/ True liberals, Mill concluded, should 'endeavour to act directly on the members of the Government, and should avoid even the appearance of concert with any of those who would like to do them an ill turn.'71 Doubtless disturbed by Mill's apparent inconstancy, Cairnes nonetheless held his ground. He had learned from Thomas Hughes that the government intended to adhere to the policy announced the previous summer. This being so, the cost of averting a collision with the government over the issue was too great to be borne by the supporters of the Queen's University system. Sorry though he was to have taken undue liberty with Mill's name - 'My wishes must have in some degree misled my attention & led me to attribute more to slight words than I was warranted in doing' (regret on the surface, resentment beneath) - Cairnes insisted that a government ignorant of its duty to the Queen's Colleges deserved no quarter: 'I shall be exceedingly sorry if this should involve a postponement of reform, but I cannot bring myself to believe that the maintenance of united education in Ireland ... is not worth this sacrifice. It would involve at the utmost but a brief delay, whereas the liberal principle in education sacrificed here would be lost forever.' Probably more confident of victory than he had been hitherto, Cairnes did not demur from Mill's view that Radical and Tory opponents of the government scheme should act independently. What he wanted from Mill was a speech in the House of Commons imparting their shared understanding of the vital liberal principles integral to their cause. 'I believe a speech from you on the subject would produce a moral effect of the highest value; for it would show that, while the true liberals of England were prepared to make any concession which the claims of justice most liberally construed would prescribe, they were not prepared to sacrifice their principles for any amount of parliamentary support.'72 On the 2Oth and 23rd of February Peel and Lowe put questions to the government concerning the ministry's intentions.73 In response Gladstone offered vague assurances, the ambiguity of which would prove to be more real than apparent. 'It will be perfectly practical, right, and convenient that no definite proceeding shall be taken by the Crown before the House has an opportunity of expressing its opinion.'74 Gladstone's purpose was to fend off motions and speeches that might embarrass the government. In this he succeeded. Believing that the danger to the Queen's University system was not imminent and that no

The Irish University Question 141 action would be taken without parliamentary input, Mill and other interested members did not stir. Cairnes was present in the House on the evening of the 23rd and found its disposition wholly satisfactory. He told Nesbitt that the 'feeling in the house tonight was all in our favour, and the Govt is believed by some among its own members to have got itself into a hopeless position.' He exultantly declared: 'Great is truth and will prevail! So far the cause is triumphant, and every thing portends a final victory.'75 Several days later he remained in good heart, conveying to Nesbitt his 'impression that the Govt will back out of the whole business putting their withdrawal on the impracticality of the bishops. If they shd not, then ... I think they must be beaten.' Lowe was steadfast; Hughes, Taylor, and Fawcett could be relied upon; the Scots were 'firm'; Mill was 'perfectly loyal.'76 Mill did not want the government beaten' and hence hoped his 'loyalty' would not be put to the test. The kind of commitment Cairnes wanted from him was more than he could give. The contours of Mill's parliamentary career were largely defined by his investment in Gladstone's future leadership of a radicalized Liberal party. His political strategy, not implausible in light of the unsettled parliamentary climate in the years following Palmerston's death and the ostensible emergence of a dynamic strain of working-class radicalism as manifested in the Reform League, prescribed that Mill show Gladstone every courtesy and consideration. Cairnes, by way of contrast, was absorbed in the Queen's University struggle and had no political investment in Gladstone, whose abilities Cairnes thought wildly overrated. Gladstone seems to me to be any thing but a leader of men; I cannot see that he is even abreast with the time in any single branch of political speculation. His achievements in finance have been exclusively of the administrative kind: he frequently shows that he shares the popular commonplace fallacies in political economy ... As to his views on education, see his conduct in opposing the liberalization of Oxford, and recklessly sacrificing, at the demand of the priests, the great educational achievements in Ireland.77

That Gladstone was an enemy of undenominational education probably coloured Cairnes's estimate of his statesmanship.78 From Cairnes's perspective, Gladstone's sectarian sympathies rendered inauspicious his proclaimed sensitivity to Irish concerns. At the outset of the 1866

142 England's Disgrace? session Gladstone expressed his hope that 'as each subject connected with the condition of Ireland comes before us, we shall be able to treat it, if it be specifically Irish, with a special view to Irish objects and interests.'79 In principle such sentiments were in keeping with Mill's leanings. To Cairnes they embodied peril.80 The obligation of the Liberal government, Cairnes held, was to do for Ireland what was best for Ireland. To be guided chiefly by Irish opinion in this endeavour was to disavow the obligation. Cairnes's opinion on the bill for parliamentary reform introduced by Gladstone in March, a bill whose reception would notably influence the government's handling of the university question during the spring and early summer, was in accord with his general assessment of the Russell-Gladstone government. In crudity, for an entire absence of any indication either of principle to be followed, or of end to be reached, for want alike of theoretical or of practical basis, I think the world has not yet seen its match in constitutional legislation. It entirely confirms the conclusion to which I have felt my mind tending for some time that Gladstone is terribly wanting in all the larger faculties of statesmanship.81

Cairnes did not share these thoughts with Mill. The details of the measure proposed by Gladstone in fact had little in common with Mill's preferences as expressed in Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859) or Considerations on Representative Government (1861). Yet Mill spoke eloquently for the bill mainly because of Gladstone's identification with it.82 Its loss would do serious injury to Gladstone's political fortunes; its enactment would strengthen Gladstone's hold over the party and allow a consequential place for the working classes within the electoral system. Mill's aims in 1866 enjoined his support of the Reform Bill. Those aims could not easily be reconciled with a forceful defence of the existing Queen's University system, however convinced he may have been that it merited a forceful defence. Throughout the spring the government's Reform Bill occupied centre stage, the university question being confined to a remote section of the wings. What activity there was on the university front did not shake Cairnes's 'considerable confidence that the whole scheme [of the government] will be defeated.'83 A discussion he had with Sir Hugh Cairns in early March gave rise to a question put by the latter to the AttorneyGeneral for Ireland (James Anthony Lawson) in the House of Com-

The Irish University Question 143 mons on 6 March.84 Sir Hugh asked whether the structural changes the government had in mind with regard to the Queen's University would be contingent upon a surrender of the existing charter by the corporation of the University (a corporation consisting of the chancellor, senate, professors, graduates, and students). He further inquired whether the government had obtained 'the assent of the University to such surrender.' Cairns knew full well that this assent had not been given and was equally certain that the composition of the Corporation ensured that such assent would not be forthcoming. What he sought was a public statement from the government acknowledging that no new charter could be issued without a cession of the existing charter by the governing body of the Queen's University. In reply the attorneygeneral explained that the government had not yet decided upon the mode by which effect would be given to the contemplated changes. The content of those changes, he informed the House, would 'shortly be laid on the table in the form of a letter from the Secretary of State to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.' He conceded that the consent of the university's governing body to the changes proposed would need to be secured and observed that no action had yet been taken to acquire that consent.85 The promised letter from Sir George Grey to Lord Wodehouse, dated 26 March 1866, was printed and 'laid on the table' in early April.86 Its substance left no doubt of the government's desire to do precisely those things that Cairnes thought so reprehensible. As in June of the previous year, Grey asserted that the Catholics of Ireland had a legitimate grievance respecting access to higher education and that this grievance should be remedied. The remedy, however, lay not in granting a charter to the Catholic University, whose purpose was at odds with the government's 'unshaken conviction of the advantages of mixed secular education.'87 Instead, the government wanted to augment the degreegranting authority of the Queen's University and make a corresponding change in the composition of its senate. Eligibility for a Queen's University degree should not be restricted to those who had matriculated at one of the Queen's Colleges, but should be open to all individuals capable of 'passing the required examination, irrespective of their place of education.'88 (Such an alteration would necessarily diminish the standing of the Queen's Colleges.) Inasmuch as 'the great majority of the inhabitants' of Ireland were Roman Catholic, adherents of this religion should constitute 'a considerable portion of the Senate' of the Queen's University.89 Before asking the Lord Lieutenant to draft a

144 England's Disgrace? charter consistent with these aims and seeking the concurrence of the Queen's University governing body in the changes proposed, the government had referred the matter to the law officers of the Crown. The latter had concluded that although Her Majesty's government could issue a supplemental charter investing the Queen's University with the authority to grant degrees to persons educated at institutions other than the Queen's Colleges, it could not confer upon such persons membership in the corporation of the university or reconstitute the senate without first obtaining 'a valid revocation of the existing Charter.'90 A close scrutiny of the existing charter had persuaded the law officers that the chancellor, senate, and convocation of the Queen's University did not have the power 'to make any valid surrender.'91 Hence, the government intended 'to submit a Bill to Parliament, with a view to remove the obstacle which at present prevents the accomplishment of the object which they have in view.'92 The prospect of such a bill did not greatly trouble Cairnes. He had always suspected the worst of the Liberal ministry, the entire thrust of his campaign being directed at amassing in the House of Commons a force of sufficient quantity and weight to checkmate the government. He believed he had done his work well and that the interests of the Queen's Colleges and the cause of united education in Ireland would be rendered safe by Parliament. Given his antipathy to the government, it is reasonable to suppose that Cairnes would have taken pleasure in seeing Gladstone, Grey, and their colleagues humbled in the House of Commons on the university question. Such a spectacle would have pained Mill, and it must have been a relief to him that no more was heard of an Irish University Bill between early April and the defeat of the government's Reform Bill on 18 June. The debates on the Reform Bill had left no legislative time for the university question, which the government surely would have hesitated to bring forward even if time had allowed. The Russell-Gladstone administration resigned on 26 June, but not before initiating the issuance of a supplemental charter to the Queen's University. This document authorized the Queen's University to hold a matriculation examination, passage of which would entitle the candidate to a Queen's University degree though he may have had no association with a Queen's College.93 Grey's letter to Wodehouse had said this much could be done via a supplemental charter, and done it was. In February Gladstone had told the Commons that it would be 'perfectly practical, right, and convenient that no definite proceeding shall be taken by the

The Irish University Question 145 Crown before the House has an opportunity of expressing its opinion.'94 What was 'right' had not been either 'practical' or 'convenient' between late February and mid-June. Gladstone had said that the House should be consulted; he had not said unequivocally that it would be. When he made his statement he could not have known just how precarious his political position would become. In late February the cabinet had not yet decided precisely how to deal with the Irish university question. Gladstone expected the matter to be placed before the House in some form, but he could not foresee the impact of the reform struggle on the rest of the government's program. As the spring unfolded, that struggle put the ministry in jeopardy and accentuated its general vulnerability. To have pressed the university question in such circumstances would have been foolhardy. Gladstone had not meant to dupe the House, but in using the supplemental charter to fulfil a pledge made to Irish members in June 1865 the government appeared to break a pledge made to Parliament in February 1866. And Mill now had to face an understandably incensed Cairnes. A source informed Cairnes of the supplemental charter on the 28th,95 and he wrote Mill immediately. However critical he had been of the Liberal government, Cairnes found it hard to credit that its leaders were capable of such 'great treachery.' Perhaps for Mill's sake, he expressed scepticism that 'Gladstone can be aware of what has been done/ and asked his friend to raise the subject with the man who had told the House of Commons that 'nothing would be done affecting the status of the Queen's University till Parlt. had an opportunity of pronouncement on its expediency.'96 Gladstone's 2 July reply to Mill's inquiry, when placed alongside other evidence, suggests that most members of the late administration in fact did not grasp what had been done. Seeking information for Mill, Gladstone had contacted Chichester Fortescue, Irish Chief Secretary in the late Liberal government. Gladstone enclosed a memorandum from Fortescue in his letter to Mill. Fortescue's position was that the tabling of Grey's letter to Wodehouse, coupled with a statement made by Fortescue upon the introduction of the Irish Reform Bill, constituted notice of the government's intentions.97 Although Gladstone thought this explanation satisfactory, he did not seem cognizant of the supplemental charter's full import. 'It appears that the House has been fully made aware of the intentions of the Govt with regard to the Charter, in conformity with the pledge of the late Govt. But you will also observe that the aid of Parlt must be invoked before our intentions can take

146 England's Disgrace? effect.' In closing, Gladstone expressed the hope 'that no change has been made or is included in the project as it stands that would meet with yr disapproval.'98 A late 1867 letter to Gladstone from the Duke of Argyll, who had been Lord Privy Seal in the Liberal government, implies that Fortescue had been largely responsible for the issuing of the supplemental charter. Argyll refers to 'the awkward fact that some of the most decisive steps were taken after we had given in our resignations ... I fear C. Fortescue was in far too great a hurry to please the R.C. Bishops.'99 When Gladstone heard from Mill in early July 1866 he very likely had but a vague notion of what had transpired. Having read Fortescue's memorandum and obtained from the former Irish Secretary a 'private explanation' in the House of Commons, Mill wrote Cairnes to confirm that his fears were well founded: '[A]ll the mischief which could be done by the Government without passing a Bill through Parliament has been consummated.' The supplemental charter, Mill noted, 'empowers the Senate to give degrees to all comers.' Had it not been for the government's resignation, Fortescue would have introduced a bill covering all of the ends referred to in Grey's letter to the Lord Lieutenant. Albeit very disappointed by the course adopted by the government, Mill resisted the urge to find Gladstone and his colleagues guilty of bad faith. He acknowledged, however, that the defenders of the Queen's University had been led to expect notice beyond what was provided in the communications mentioned by Fortescue, and observed that had those defenders 'who were holding back on account of the Reform Bill' known of the ministry's intention, they would 'have brought the matter before the House at once, which would have been very disagreeable to the Govt.' (Fortescue could have guessed as much.) Mill preferred to think that poor judgment rather than rank duplicity accounted for what had happened, but there was no gainsaying the regrettable effects. 'Whether treachery or misunderstanding, the fact is most unfortunate in its direct and its indirect consequences.'100 No imputation of 'treachery' figured in Mill's letter to Gladstone of 4 July. He politely corrected Gladstone's impression as to Parliament's anticipated role in giving full force to the supplemental charter. Fortescue had made it plain that the power of the Queen's University 'to grant degrees to all comers is a completed fact.' Mill tried to convey to Gladstone the gravity of what had been done without incriminating the Liberal government in culpable conduct. There had been, Mill indicated, an

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unfortunate misunderstanding ... Whose fault it was I am unable to say; very probably ours. But the fact is that many Liberals who were opposed to the changes fully believed that... in some shape (such as a notice of the introduction of the intended Bill) they should be ... warned before the last moment arrived; being anxious not to stir until the last moment, on account of the Reform Bill. I am afraid that the consciousness of having, or being thought to have, partly themselves to blame, will not tend to soften their feelings, or disincline them to blame others.101

Mill felt the need to keep in good repair a political connection he considered valuable to the future of advanced liberalism. He had almost certainly concluded that the capricious handling of the university question had been the work of Fortescue rather than Gladstone. The views of the latter on the substance of the issue might be lamentable, but Mill had an interest in exonerating Gladstone on the charge of misrepresentation. Cairnes seemed disposed to accept Mill's view that Fortescue rather than Gladstone was the culprit. If 'Gladstone was wholly free from any participation in the designs of those who have brought the business to the present pass/ then Mill might be able to use his proximity to Gladstone to undo some of the damage. Cairnes did not despair of the cause, believing that 'a strong expression of liberal opinion against the course which has been taken would at once relieve the liberals as a party from the responsibility and would show the Tories that they would be held responsible for their part in the transaction, and that they would by abetting it share in the disgrace.'102 Mill made it clear to Cairnes that he did not intend to participate in any 'strong expression of liberal opinion' beyond what he had already conveyed to Gladstone in his letter of 4 July. Sir Robert Peel had given notice of a question on the subject of the Queen's University and the issue would assuredly be aired in the House of Commons. Mill told Cairnes that he did 'not think there would be the smallest use in my speaking or writing further to Mr Gladstone/ He pointedly added that the 'subject is altogether a most unhappy one, and ... full of mischief to the liberal cause.'103 Where Cairnes was preoccupied with the harm done the Queen's Colleges by the Liberal government, Mill fretted over the issue's potential for inflicting further injury on a 'liberal cause' that had just met with a major reverse. The defeat of the government's Reform Bill had been a serious blow to Gladstone's authority and prestige. Whigs and

148 England's Disgrace? Palmerstonian Liberals had joined with Conservatives to detonate the ministry's principal legislative pillar. Gladstone's inept management of the Liberal coaliton had contributed significantly to this outcome. A politically wounded Gladstone caused Mill more concern than did the bearing of the supplemental charter on the status of the Queen's Colleges. Although the formation in late June of a minority Conservative government led by Lord Derby and Benjamin Disraeli increased Mill's freedom to advocate radical views in an aggressive manner, his determination to eschew actions that might cause Gladstone any embarrassment remained unshaken. Hence, when Cairnes entreated him to raise his voice in the House on behalf of the Queen's Colleges - 'I cannot help saying that there is no man in Parlt who is so well fitted by position and antecedents to give the right turn to the transaction as yourself'104 Mill resisted. He doubted that anything he said could practically affect the result, and, as Cairnes reported to Nesbitt, Mill 'is very anxious to save as far as possible Gladstone's credit.'105 Although his friend 'almost implored Mill to speak,' Cairnes did 'not feel certain that he will.'106 The parliamentary discussion engendered by Peel's initiative took place on 16 July.107 Mill said nary a word. It can be assumed that he listened attentively, and some of what Gladstone said on this occasion Mill was certainly meant to hear. On the matter of process, Gladstone would admit no more than that Grey's letter to Wodehouse had left the House with an ambiguous impression of the government's intentions. What the late government had hoped to accomplish required the legislation whose introduction that letter had pointed to. What the supplemental charter provided for fell within the prerogative of the Crown, Gladstone contended, and those responsible for it had no cause to make Parliament a party to its issuance.108 None of this was likely to persuade anyone that the House of Commons had not been misled by the representatives of the Crown, but it was the best Gladstone could make of a bad business. Respecting the principle governing the content of the supplemental charter, Gladstone not only forcefully defended its validity but challened his Liberal critics to re-examine the foundations of their opposition. He may well have had Mill in mind more than any other. And what had we to expect from the supporters of civil and religious liberty in this House? I would speak with the greatest respect of the Gentlemen who are not numerous, but at the same time whose judgment and character entitle what

The Irish University Question 149 proceeds from them to the utmost respect and consideration; and I know that there are Gentlemen on this side of the House - firm friends to Ireland, and firm friends also to liberty - who by some process wholly inexplicable have arrived at conclusions nearly the same as those of the right hon. Member for Tamworth [Peel] - that is to say, who disapprove of this enlargement of the Queen's University ... I must say that if the Parliament of this country is prepared ... to mulct the Irish Roman Catholic in respect of his civil rights, because on account of his conscientious convictions he does the very thing that nineteen-twentieths of the parents of England do in the higher classes of society, and that we encourage the parents of every peasant child to do by schools supported at the public expense in every parish - that is to say, to send his child to be taught at places where the religious instruction conveyed to them by his teachers is made part of the system of education - if this House, while maintaining this system in England ... is to turn round and tell the people of Ireland that, "With all the respect which we entertain for religious convictions in this country, we will show you that Irish feelings and convictions are to be treated with no such deference - that we have one weight and measure for this side of the Channel, and another weight and measure for the other side of the Channel" ... it is well that no time should be lost ... but that the Parliament of this country should arrive at some clear and distinct enunciation of its convictions and intentions upon a question with respect to which ... immediate practical consequences are not to be weighed for one moment in the balance against the enormous weight of the principles involved.109

Mill agreed that the 'weight of the principles involved' was 'enormous.' His 'convictions' on the proper relation between education and religion were at odds with Gladstone's convictions. But what if Gladstone's 'convictions' on this matter approximated those of the great majority of the Irish people? And what if the form of higher education supported by the state in Ireland was irreconcilable with Irish scruples? Cairnes would answer that if the Irish had such misplaced scruples, the state should help them learn a set of values more conducive to the discovery of truth. Although Mill was sympathetic to Cairnes's position, he was not insensitive to the difficulties raised by Gladstone. All the same, Mill no less than Cairnes must have thought Gladstone grossly unjust in condemning the Queen's Colleges for imposing 'severe prohibitions' on those who were 'excluded from the natural and ordinary advantages which crown an educational career for the purpose of fostering an odious monopoly.'110

150 England's Disgrace? About a week after making this speech Gladstone recapitulated his position in a letter to Thomas Cliffe Leslie, a political economist who held a chair at Queen's College Belfast. Leslie had criticized Gladstone for his 'abandonment of the principles of United Education in Ireland.' In reply Gladstone declared that he had always opposed 'the determination to inflict a civil penalty in respect of University degrees on those Protestants & R. Catholics in Ireland who on religious grounds think it right to do what the great bulk of Englishmen do, namely to receive education in establishments where the teaching of their religion, whatever it may be, is incorporated with the system of the place & sustained by its authority.' Underscoring the political isolation of those who complained of the supplemental charter, Gladstone noted that they had abstained 'from inviting the judgment of Parlt on their views.'111 A trace of bitterness lies behind this remark. Had Fortescue brought forward the bill alluded to in Grey's letter to Wodehouse, many Tories would have joined the forces assembled by Cairnes, forces keener to defend the 'odious monopoly' of the Queen's Colleges than to preserve the Liberal government, to defeat the measure. Some of these Tories would have been motivated less by principle than by political opportunism and malice for Gladstone. Now that the Conservatives had moved into office, they much preferred watching Liberals quarrel over the supplemental charter to overturning what had been done. Lacking a majority in the House of Commons, Derby and Disraeli, at least in the short run, aimed to avoid initiatives likely to antagonize any significant group in the Commons, Irish members included. Furthermore, the distaste for Catholicism characteristic of many Tories was often combined with a sympathy for denominational education. If Gladstone's position on the issue of higher education in Ireland appeared consistent with giving a charter to the Catholic University, so too did the attitude of some Tories towards denominational education. As events were to show, Cairnes and Leslie had no less to fear from Derby and Disraeli than from Russell and Gladstone. Mill's problems apropos the university question were not finished. 5. MILL, CAIRNES, AND THE COMPLICATIONS OF l866-/

The promulgation of the supplemental charter did not assure its implementation. Before leaving office the Liberal ministry had appointed to the Queen's University senate six new members friendly to the change. In early October 1866 the senate accepted the supplemental charter by a

The Irish University Question 151 narrow majority (eleven in favour, nine opposed). About a fortnight later the convocation of the Queen's University declined to follow suit. The senate, contending that it had the authority to act independently in this matter, proceeded to draft the regulations required to activate the new policy. Before those regulations went into effect three graduates of the Queen's University took legal action to prevent execution of the supplemental charter. In early December the Master of the Rolls in Ireland granted a temporary injunction that forbade the senate from putting the regulations into effect. Four months later the Master of the Rolls delivered a judgment that dismissed the suit of the petitioners on technical grounds. At the same time he offered a non-binding opinion that the senate lacked the authority to accept the supplemental charter. Subsequently the Irish attorney-general inaugurated a suit that eventuated in the issuing of a permanent injunction prohibiting the assumption of the charter (this judgment was set forth on i February 1868)."2 The contested legal status of the supplemental charter encouraged Cairnes to look for ways to improve the political position of his cause. Believing that this cause rested upon principles incontrovertibly liberal, Cairnes nonetheless knew that the defence of the Queen's Colleges might seem a negative project spawned by illiberal anti-Catholic sentiments. It had been attacked as such by William K. Sullivan, a professor of chemistry at the Catholic University, in a pamphlet published in March 1866.1I3 Much of Sullivan's pamphlet focused specifically on Cairnes's Theological Review article, which Sullivan claimed had seriously distorted the views of Irish Catholics on the issue and unfairly castigated the part played by the hierarchy.114 Fearing the impact this pamphlet might have on liberal opinion, Cairnes took the trouble to compose a lengthy rebuttal, which appeared in July i866.115 By late summer Cairnes had decided that it was not enough for liberal proponents of the Queen's Colleges simply to stand their ground, especially when the ground upon which they stood was also inhabited by men devoid of liberal sympathies (that is, partisans of the Protestant interest). That the Catholics of Ireland had no valid reason to condemn the Queen's Colleges did not mean they had no cause for complaint about state provision of higher education. The problem was not the Queen's Colleges but Trinity College Dublin, and those of liberal conviction who would defend the former had an obligation to come to grips with the exclusiveness of the latter. If they failed to do so, the future of the Queen's Colleges as effective institutions of united education would be in dire jeopardy. The true liberal alternative both to the supplemental

152 England's Disgrace? charter and to a charter for the Catholic University was the throwing open of Trinity College Dublin.116 As things stood, non-Anglicans, Catholics included, could matriculate at Trinity and earn a degree yet were not eligible for Trinity College fellowships or Foundation Scholarships. Dublin Catholics seeking a university degree in their own city had no option but Trinity inasmuch as the Catholic University could not confer degrees and the Queen's Colleges were in Belfast, Cork, and Galway. Although there were more Catholics enrolled at Trinity in the i86os than at the Catholic University, the former was a notable vestige of the Protestant ascendancy. To be a non-Anglican at Trinity College was not to be of Trinity. The same, of course, can be said of Oxford and Cambridge in the i86os. Unlike Oxford and Cambridge, however, Trinity was located in the capital city of a country whose population was predominantly Catholic. Its status as an Anglican instititution represented a visible injustice to Dublin's Catholic community. Religious tests of any kind were anathema to liberals such as Cairnes and Mill. Cairnes had concluded that their retention at Trinity College not only offended liberal principles but gravely compromised the future of united education and the viability of the Queen's Colleges. Were Trinity to distribute its ample resources to qualified individuals irrespective of religious considerations, the claims made by Cullen and his ecclesiastical colleagues on behalf of the Catholic University would be undermined. The bishops resented less the Anglicanism of Trinity than the refusal of the state to make comparable provision for a distinctively Catholic institution in the form of a charter and a substantial endowment. So long as Trinity remained a bastion of Anglican privilege, the opponents of sectarianism were hindered in their fight to deny the bishops the prizes they sought. The advocates of mixed education and the Queen's Colleges could vindicate their liberalism and advance their political objectives by striving to liberate Trinity College from the clutches of Anglicanism. Whatever strategy Cairnes might devise for meeting the university question in the parliamentary session of 1867, could he rely upon Mill's cooperation? In view of the difficulties Cairnes had experienced with Mill in 1866 he could take nothing for granted. He had laboured indefatigably to bring Mill into the struggle, and he had precious little to show for it. Over the course of 1866 Mill had made not a single public pronouncement on the issue. Would this change in 1867? The first test came at the end of May when Chichester Fortescue called upon the House of Commons and the Conservative government

The Irish University Question 153 to attend to the subject in light of the uncertainty created by the dismissal in April of the petitioners' case against the supplemental charter and the extra-judicial statement of the master of the rolls on the incapacity of the senate to accept the charter.117 Lowe squared off against Gladstone in the debate that ensued and Mill remained silent.118 Nothing decisive emerged from the discussion. Cairnes was dismayed by the failure of Mill and Fawcett to speak out. To Leonard Courtney he wrote: The debate on the Colleges was unsatisfactory chiefly for this, that the only assertor of the cause of free education was Lowe. Not that he did not do his work well... but it is unfortunate that a liberal cause, which has been attacked by pseudo liberals [Fortescue and Gladstone, one presumes], and temporarily taken up by tories for party purposes, should have found no other champion in the House of Commons than a man who is unfortunately for the present regarded as a tory ... I cannot quite understand the reticence of Mill, Fawcett and some others.119

Cairnes said much the same to Mill himself, regretting 'that the defence of the liberal scheme of education in Ireland fell exclusively to Lowe' and expressing astonishment at 'the timidity of liberals on this subject.'120 That Cairnes found Mill's reserve hard to understand attests to the markedly different priorities guiding their conduct in the spring of 1867. For Cairnes the university question took precedence over all others. Mill was immersed in the curious parliamentary drama arising from the introduction of a parliamentary reform bill by the government of Derby and Disraeli. This measure provided for a borough household suffrage based on direct payment of rates by male heads of households. In many boroughs local authorities compounded with landlords for the payment of occupiers' rates and these compound householders were to be excluded from the franchise. Gladstone, still sore from the political thrashing he had taken the previous session, denounced the bill as arbitrary and spurious. In April he offered an amendment aimed at establishing a five-pound rateable value qualification and at countering the discriminatory treatment of compounders. There had been no effective regrouping of Liberals between the defeat of the 1866 Reform Bill and the introduction of the 1867 measure. One of Disraeli's objectives was to keep Gladstone down and the Liberals divided, and the outcome of the vote on Gladstone's key amendment did not disappoint

154 England's Disgrace? Disraeli. Repudiating Gladstone's leadership, forty-seven Liberals (Radicals among them) joined with Tory MPs to defeat the motion by a vote of 310 to 289. Gladstone's diary entry noted: 'A smash perhaps without example.'121 Staying with Gladstone, Mill voted in the minority. In early May Gladstone and Disraeli engaged in parliamentary combat on a different facet of the ratepaying issue. In his correspondence Mill referred to this 'most critical debate and division on the Reform Bill.'122 Mill addressed the House of Commons on 9 May and implicitly criticized those Radicals who had disregarded Gladstone's counsel.123 In the division that followed fifty-eight Liberals voted with the government, thereby ending Gladstone's bid to kill the Tory bill. Throughout the rest of May the House of Commons wrestled with important amendments to the Reform Bill. Displaying an infinite tactical flexibility, Disraeli kept Gladstone at bay while making important concessions to the Radicals. Mill would do all in his power to aid the politician whose leadership of a refashioned Liberal party he thought vital and whose political fortunes were in a parlous state in May i867.124 No one had done more damage to Gladstone than Robert Lowe, who had led the assault on the 1866 Reform Bill with brilliance and ferocity. When Lowe went after Gladstone in the debate on the Irish university question at the end of May, there was no possibility Mill would join him. Henry Fawcett, who also did not join Lowe on this occasion, was eager to take the initiative on the subject of Trinity College. On 18 June the House of Commons began a consideration of Fawcett's motion for the abolition of religious tests at Trinity.125 An amendment to Fawcett's motion was offered by William Monsell, Catholic MP for Limerick and a former junior minister in the Russell-Gladstone government. Monsell proposed a reconstitution of the University of Dublin, which hitherto had consisted solely of Trinity College. Prefiguring Gladstone's treatment of the university question in 1873, Monsell called for a reorganization of the University of Dublin that would allow it to comprehend 'Colleges connected with other forms of religion than that of the Established Church' and confer upon 'the members of such colleges ... all the benefits now enjoyed by the members of Trinity College.'126 Following adjournment of the 18 June debate Mill sought input from Cairnes on the merits of Monsell's amendment. Owing to Monsell's ties to both Fortescue and Gladstone, Mill assumed that the latter were not unfriendly to the substance of his motion (Fortescue would support Monsell's amendment when debate resumed on 24 July).127 Mill's provisional assessment of Monsell's scheme was that

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155

though ... a change for the worse, it is less bad than the plan of the late Government because it is compatible with making the governing body of the proposed University impartial, and unconnected with the Colleges; excluding ultramontane Catholics, or at all events greatly diminishing their influence: and less bad also than the plan to which the present Government seem inclined, that of giving a charter to the Catholic University, because that would lead to a bidding for students by lowering the standard required for degrees in all secular subjects.128 With this assessment Cairnes did not agree. Enacting Monsell's design would 'give the death blow to united education in Ireland.' Instead of opening up Trinity College the plan would fix its status as an institution indelibly identified with the Established Church. There were forces within Trinity favourable to liberalization, and their position would be decisively undercut by Monsell's scheme. Once admit Trinity 'as an endowed Protestant college' under the reconstituted university and there could be no grounds for resisting an endowment for the 'present Catholic University, which would then be a directly coordinate institution.' The Presbyterians and Wesleyan Methodists would seek similar recognition within the university, and the triumph of denominationalism would be unmitigated. The Queen's College at Belfast would presumably be 'given up' to the Presbyterians; the Wesleyan Methodists would likely set up a college in Dublin. As for the Queen's Colleges at Cork and Galway, if they 'were not remodeled as "Catholic colleges" they would probably quickly die of inanition.' Even granting a charter to the Catholic University would be Tess fraught with mischief than Monsel's [sic] scheme/ the adoption of which would 'be absolutely & permanently fatal to the liberal cause.'129 Cairnes went on to remind Mill of what that 'liberal cause' required in the way of guiding principle. The eligibility of educational institutions for state recognition, in the form of charters or endowments, should be contingent upon their being 'national' foundations: '[T]heir constitutions shall be such as to admit on equal terms all subjects of the Queen.' Institutions currently benefiting from such recognition while failing to comply with this condition (for instance, Oxford, Cambridge, and Trinity College Dublin) should be brought into conformity with it. The movement for liberalization was already well established, and it was imperative that its adherents grasp the essence of their cause and act accordingly.130 Cairnes hoped Mill would act when the debate on Fawcett's motion

156 England's Disgrace? and Monsell's amendment resumed.131 Yet Mill held his tongue when the House returned to the subject on 24 July. The Conservative government - whose preferred course was to protect Trinity's existing privileges, leave the Queen's University unchanged, and negotiate the grant of a charter to a Roman Catholic university in Ireland - successfully neutralized Fawcett's motion and Monsell's amendment.132 Cairnes could find some solace in the fact that the division on Fawcett's motion produced as many votes in favour as opposed. Mill, however, had once more shrunk from doing his duty and the Liberals had failed to rally in sufficient number to achieve victory. Effective resistance to the policy of the Conservative government depended upon a concerted effort by the Liberals to spring open Trinity College. Their inability to mount such an effort stemmed from the 'betrayal of liberal principle' by the 'late Government.' Cairnes bitterly regretted that the 'disastrous consequences' of that betrayal had not been 'confined to its party effects.'133 Why had Mill let Cairnes down so badly? A letter from Mill to Cairnes of i September contains the rudiments of an answer. What Mill says in this letter shows how his political sensitivity had converted the axiomatic into the problematic. He ignores the Trinity College question altogether, from which it can be inferred that Mill, unlike Cairnes, considered it of peripheral importance relative to the larger issue. On that larger issue his tone was one of resignation rather than defiance. He told Cairnes that the Conservative government intended 'to charter, if not to endow, a Catholic University.' The choice would lie between this proposal and Monsell's plan, which was the 'very best thing' the Liberal leadership could come up with in opposition to the policy of the Tories. 'The worst is that I do not see what there is for a true Liberal to do but to lament.' Although the precept enunciated by Cairnes was unimpeachable in the abstract, 'to stand upon this principle is to bind oneself to vote against all the grants of money by the Privy Council to denominational schools; and neither I, nor, as far as I know, any other Liberal, would think it right to do this.'134 The degree to which Mill was inclined to accept the validity of Gladstone's analysis is evident. 'The misery [Gladstone, to be sure, did not think it a "misery"] is that ninety nine hundredths of England [Gladstone had offered the slightly more modest proportion of nineteen-twentieths]135 wish for only denominational places of education, and will not support any others; & it is not practicable permanently to have only a denominational system in England and only a mixed one in Ireland.' Certainly a defence of the Queen's University system was justifiable, but given the situation in

The Irish University Question 157 England how could fair and reasonable men oppose the creation in Ireland of denominational institutions alongside the Queen's Colleges? Mill went so far as to admit that the 'appeal of the Irish Catholics is irresistible by the English, as soon as the No Popery feeling no longer overrides their principles.' Mill's judgment was that a charter would be given to a Catholic university but that the intensity of 'No Popery feeling' and 'the great strength of Voluntaryism' would stop the Conservative government from endowing such an institution.136 Cairnes vented his exasperation in a letter to Nesbitt: I have been more disappointed with Mill's conduct in connexion with this business than I can well express. Having beaten him out of his original position, and brought him to acknowledge the justice of our cause, I had expected from him nothing less than cordial co-operation. Instead of this, I have from him nothing but fair words: on several occasions when a word from him wd have done us essential service, he has failed to say that word, and now, when the crisis is at hand, and the course for liberals is plainly indicated by the virtual success of Fawcett's motion, he can see nothing "for a true liberal to do but to lament." His bearing throughout this business has, I must confess, greatly shaken my faith in his practical statesmanship.137

Chiefly responsible for the gap between Cairnes and Mill was the Gladstonian hue of that 'practical statesmanship/ The problem Mill presented Cairnes in September 1867 derived not only from the wideranging political strategy being pursued by the former and the pivotal position occupied by Gladstone in that strategy; it also emanated from Mill's readiness to treat seriously Gladstone's substantive argument on the university question. Cairnes, in his response to Mill, would strive to disable that argument. Before doing so, however, he did not conceal from his friend the 'profound sorrow' he had experienced upon reading Mill's letter. He then berated Mill for his passivity and wrong-headedness. The situation is gloomy indeed, not the less so that the gloom, as it seems to me, proceeds mainly from the view taken of it by yourself and so many other liberals.' Acquiescence in the ascendancy of denominationalism was wholly unwarranted. Contemporary trends pointed not to the ultimate triumph of sectarianism in education but to its demise. The movement for the abolition of religious tests at Oxford, Cambridge, and Trinity College Dublin had been gaining in force. Those Liberal MPs who supported these reforms clearly felt no need to do otherwise

158 England's Disgrace? simply because they favoured continuing state subsidies for denominational schools at the elementary level. Although statesmen should seek whenever possible to apply political principle impartially, 'they are at liberty, or rather are bound, to use their discretion, & ... they are not precluded from giving effect to it in particular instances, because they are not able to render it all at once universally operative. The history of all successful political action illustrates, I think, this assertion, and justifies it.' Mill should bear in mind that the tendency of state action in the sphere of higher education - be it the creation of the University of London, the foundation of the Queen's Colleges, or the greater inclusiveness of Oxford and Cambridge mandated by the legislation of the 18503 - furthered the nonsectarian principle. To give a charter to the Catholic University would be a 'retrograde' step. There was good reason to suppose that support for sectarian education in England was on the wane, and hence the notion that the handling of Irish education should be based on the assumption of a perpetual preference for denominationalism in England was misconceived.138 Mill did not reply, but it is possible that Cairnes's fixity of purpose and incisive protest had some modest impact on the author of England and Ireland. Although this radical pamphlet, published in February 1868, devoted scant space to the education issue in Ireland, the gist of what it did say on the subject had a Cairnesian flavour. Delineating Ireland's requirements in the educational sector, Mill advocated 'a complete unsectarian education' for 'the entire people, including primary schools, middle schools, high schools, and universities, each grade to be open free of cost to the pupils who had most distinguished themselves in the grade below it.'139 In the same vein, Mill made the following observation in a March 1868 Commons debate on the state of Ireland: 'Ireland, long before England, received from us an elementary education which came down to the lowest grade of the people; and by degrees she also obtained unsectarian education in the higher branches. This is the most solid, and by far the greatest benefit we have yet conferred upon Ireland.'140 Such constituted the entirety of Mill's public pronouncements on the Irish university question. Better than nothing, Cairnes might well think, but a return far from commensurate with the large investment he had made in Mill. If Mill's 'practical statesmanship' fell painfully short of Cairnes's expectations, it also conspicuously failed to reach Mill's own declared standards. Addressing a gathering of Westminster electors in early July 1865, Mill charged advanced liberalism with the responsibility of un-

The Irish University Question 159 derstanding 'the direction in which things are tending, and which of those tendencies we are to encourage and which to resist.'141 Mill misjudged the tendencies in Britain on the education question. Cairnes was right about the way the breeze was blowing: hand-in-hand with the disestablishment and partial disendowment of the Church of Ireland in 1869 went withdrawal of the parliamentary grants to the Catholic seminary at Maynooth and the Presbyterians' theological college in Belfast (in lieu of these grants Roman Catholics and Presbyterians obtained portions of the wealth now taken from the Church of Ireland); while the Elementary Education Act of 1870 did not end all state support to denominational schools, it did exclude the teaching of religious catechisms and formularies from the rate-supported board schools authorized by the statute; the abolition of religious tests at Oxford and Cambridge was secured in 1871, at Trinity College Dublin in 1873. The tendencies of the mid-i86os, as Cairnes discerned, favoured a relative diminution of state support for denominational education. Mill had misread the prospects and done almost nothing during his tenure in Parliament to advance a trend whose force he imperfectly understood. It would be unfair to underline the inadequacy of Mill's equivocal response to the Irish university question without heeding his purposeful political activism on a range of issues over the course of his Westminster years. Mill introduced amendments to the 1867 Reform Bill that called for the enfranchisement of women on the same terms as men and the adoption of Thomas Hare's scheme of personal representation. The following year he fought hard to render more effective a measure aimed at reducing corruption at elections. He led the Jamaica Committee in its endeavour to make Governor Eyre judicially answerable for the terrible deeds done in Jamaica under the cover of martial law. He promoted a reform of municipal government in London and played a prominent part in the successful battle to block the Conservative government's plan to banish political meetings from Hyde Park. He maintained contacts with leading figures in the world of working-class radicalism.142 And it can be said that in all of these undertakings Mill tried to understand 'the direction in which things are tending, and which of those tendencies we are to encourage and which to resist.' In looking to the future Mill posited an important role for a radicalized Liberal party under Gladstonian leadership. His eagerness to foster the development of such a party sometimes inhibited him from giving forceful public expression to opinions he might otherwise have voiced. Acting as Cairnes would have had him act on the Irish university

160 England's Disgrace? question meant joining up with Gladstone's political enemies. This Mill would not do. Had Mill shared Cairnes's depth of feeling on the subject, his internal struggle would doubtless have proved more acute. The fraught context within which Cairnes located the university question was remote from Mill's experience. Mill did not like the Catholic church but neither did he greatly fear it. Moreover, he never gave primacy to university issues. The Inaugural Address, his major statement on university education, owes its existence to Mill's election as rector by the students of St Andrews. Certainly he had been sharply critical of Oxford and Cambridge in the 18205 and 18303, condemning their social and religious exclusiveness, their narrow and uninspiring curriculum, their neglect of the real purposes that endowed institutions of higher education were intended to fulfil. He saw them as impediments to a regeneration of the nation's political, intellectual, and moral life. This offensive, however, formed but a small part of Mill's political enterprise as a Philosophic Radical and he did not expend much energy on it. By the late 18505 Mill was satisfied that the ancient universities no longer obstructed progress. When he reprinted the article 'Civilization' in 1859 he inserted a note that read: 'Much of what is here said of the Universities has, in a great measure, ceased to be true. The legislature has at last asserted its right of interference; and even before it did so, those bodies had already entered into a course of as decided improvement as any other English institutions.'143 Eight years later Mill referred to the 'new life' displayed by the English universities, 'with so much advantage to the spirit of the time and to the national culture.'144 In the same year (1867) he passed up the opportunity to serve on a select committee considering further reforms of Oxford and Cambridge. Mill told Henry Fawcett that he already had much work to do and suggested that others 'would be much more useful on the Committee.'145 University questions, be they English or Irish, were seen by Mill as largely extraneous to the issues that absorbed most of his attention during the mid-i86os. 6. POSTSCRIPT In the end the Conservative government abandoned the idea of granting a charter to a Catholic university in Ireland. Negotiations between the Tories and the Catholic hierarchy foundered on the issue of ecclesiastical influence over such an institution, Cullen and his colleagues

The Irish University Question 161 being unwilling to approve the establishment of a university for Catholics that was not amenable to clerical dominion.146 The political scene changed dramatically in 1868. Gladstone made disestablishment of the Irish Church the dominant political question of the day and succeeded in mobilizing a revivified Liberal party behind his leadership. He scored a major triumph in the general election of November, the first held on the borough household franchise instituted by the Reform Act of 1867. Mill sought to retain his Westminster seat but was rejected by the electors.147 Consequently, he would not be called upon by Cairnes to uphold the educational values in which they had a mutual interest when the Irish university question again became a significant political issue. Having secured the disestablishment of the Irish Church (1869) and the passage of an Irish Land Act (1870), Gladstone turned to the university question in 1873. In keeping with the features of Monsell's proposal of 1867, Gladstone's measure called for ending Trinity College's monopoly of the University of Dublin. The latter should henceforth become a national university to which Trinity College (minus religious tests), the Catholic University, the Queen's Colleges at Belfast and Cork (but not Galway), Maynooth College, and Magee College (Presbyterian) would be affiliated. This university was to be both a teaching and examining body, though it was not to offer instruction in philosophy or modern history, subjects upon which the affiliated institutions could not be expected to agree regarding content or method. The university was to receive an endowment of 50,000 pounds a year, the grants for the Belfast and Cork colleges were to be sustained, and the Catholic University was to remain unendowed. There was something in the bill to offend each of the interested parties: supporters of Trinity were angered by the attack on its privileged status; Queen's University loyalists were infuriated by the proposed destruction of their system and the obliteration of Queen's College Galway; Catholics were disappointed by the refusal to endow the Catholic University. The bill was defeated in the House of Commons.148 In the wake of the scotching of Gladstone's measure, Cairnes wrote an essay on 'The Present Position of the Irish University Question.' He decried Gladstone's answer to the problem in the strongest possible terms, contending that it would have established a misshapen hybrid institution ruinous to the cause of higher education in Ireland. It is quite impossible that those who accept the intellectual guidance of Cardi-

162 England's Disgrace? nal Cullen and his priesthood should cultivate knowledge in common with those who pursue it in the spirit of modern scientific research. The attempt to effect such a combination, as it began with the mutilation of knowledge, so, if persisted in, could only have ended in the extinction of intellectual life.149

Mill did not comment on Gladstone's initiative (the bill was defeated before Mill's death in May 1873). His final substantive remarks on the university issue came in a letter of May 1872 to John Morley. Morley, an advanced Liberal whose stance on elementary education in England was stridently anti-denominational,150 differed profoundly from Cairnes on the Irish university question. In the case of Ireland, Morley argued, liberals should be guided by the wishes of the Irish people. 'Surely the Irish nation must decide the matter, and if they choose by a decisive and unmistakable majority to have Catholic colleges, ought not the state to accept such a desire and place these colleges in an equally advantageous position with the Queen's colleges and Trinity?'151 Mill demurred, uttering a sentiment with which Cairnes would have wholly concurred: 'Considering ... how very noxious the higher instruction given by the Catholic prelates is sure to be, I think it right to avoid by every means consistent with principle the subsidising it in any shape or to any extent.'152 Yet Mill's observations on what a national university in Ireland ought to look like would not have been well received by Cairnes. Mill affirmed that a really national university for any country, but especially for a country divided between different religions, would be a university in which instead of only one professor of history, of ethics, or of metaphysics, there should be several of each, so that as long as there are subjects on which interested people differ, they might be taught from different points of view; & the pupils might either choose their professor, or attend more professors than one in order to choose their doctrine, examinations & prizes being made accessible to all.153

This rendering of pluralism diverged from Gladstone's, whose projected national university would have had no professors of ethics, metaphysics, or modern history. Mill's conception accorded admirably with the cardinal importance he attributed to liberty of thought and discussion. Cairnes gave precedence to 'the spirit of modern scientific research'; 'points of view' incompatible with this spirit should be excluded from a university supported by the state. Cairnes had no use for

The Irish University Question 163 the notion of a national university in which a free market in ideas gave entry to erroneous and pernicious doctrine. More to the point, Cairnes grasped an elemental truth that eluded both Mill and Gladstone: the creation of a progressive pluralist society in Ireland required the presence of an activist state unremittingly committed to secularist values. Cairnes's objectives were perhaps incapable of realization, but he was right to think that there could be no compromise between what he stood for and what Cullen stood for. Cairnes's liberalism, chiselled from Irish granite, was austere and unyielding. In the long run, no other species of liberalism would stand a chance against the priests and prelates of Ireland. A circumstantial complication for many liberals, Mill included, was that the Irish Roman Catholic church in large measure belonged to the Irish masses. The same could not be said of Irish land.

V

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land

During Mill's parliamentary years the Irish land question became a serious political issue. Legislation providing for a modification of Irish land law was presented to Parliament and discussion in both England and Ireland reflected the topic's heightened political visibility.1 With Mill himself the issue carried great force. Few non-Irish members of the House of Commons had given more thought to the subject before 1865 than had Mill. When he entered Parliament the threat of Irish revolt looked credible. Mill's engagement with the land question in the several years after 1865 both absorbed and transcended the concerns with distributive justice and moral reformation evident in his previous Irish transactions. Once he identified the issue of Irish land with the challenge posed by Fenianism, he descried in the former a crucial test of British imperial statecraft. At stake was the moral standing of the Union itself. Hence the urgency - moral and political - animating England and Ireland, his radical pamphlet published in February 1868. Little of that urgency had been evident in the 1865 edition of the Principles. This chapter will investigate the permutations propelling Mill's leap into radicalism on the Irish land question and consider the consequences of his dramatic intervention. 1. MILL AND FENIANISM

In the fifteen years preceding Mill's election to the House of Commons Irish circumstances had encouraged Englishmen to think that the Union was safe. Mill's jejune discussion of the Union in the pages of Considerations on Representative Government was symptomatic of English insouciance.2 The impact of Fenianism during the second half of the

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 165 i86os dispelled this complacency. In 1858 a group of Irishmen dedicated to revolution and the extinction of English rule formed the Irish Republican Brotherhood, more commonly known as the Fenian organization. Convinced that neither the land question nor any other Irish grievance could be satisfactorily redressed in a Parliament dominated by Englishmen, the Fenians sought justice via the violent expulsion of British power and the creation of an independent Ireland. Fenian cells in Britain, Ireland, and the United States made plans for the emancipation of Ireland through force of arms. They hoped to benefit from an international environment favourable to their ends. The government and people of the United States were not kindly disposed towards the government of the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the Amercan Civil War. Most of the establishment in Britain had been sympathetic to the South. During the conflict a ship constructed in a British port had been sold to the Confederacy. Dubbed the Alabama, this vessel went on to inflict heavy losses upon Union shipping. The U.S. government pursued compensation for damages, and disagreement over the settlement of American claims did nothing to diminish the ill-will felt by many Americans towards the Court of St James. Americans of Irish origin, whose numbers had risen rapidly in the two decades since the famine, were especially hostile to England. The military experience acquired by some Irish Americans during the Civil War could be drawn upon in the struggle against British rule. Tensions between Britain and the United States had potentially grave implications for the security of Canada, whose defensibility in the event of a large-scale attack from the south was highly problematic. (Fear of an increasingly powerful United States contributed to the formation of the Canadian Confederation in 1867.) The Fenians wished to exploit the fraught state of Anglo-American relations to advance their cause. Ineffectual though their actions may seem in retrospect, the Fenians would succeed in piercing British smugness and in refurbishing the Irish revolutionary tradition.3 The British government took the Fenian threat seriously. In September 1865 the authorities raided the offices of the Irish People, the Fenian newspaper launched in 1863, and arrested many of the organization's leaders. British forces in Canada were not caught off guard when a contingent of Irish-American Fenians crossed the border into Canada at the end of May 1866. This invasion was easily repelled. The Fenian movement had been largely disabled before the uprising in Ireland finally came in March 1867. Police and troops had no difficulty suppressing the disorganized, undermanned, and poorly equipped insur-

i66 England's Disgrace? gents. Indictments and stiff sentences ensued. The next notable incidents occurred in England. Two major Fenians were seized in Manchester in September 1867. A party of their comrades attacked the van transporting them to prison and secured their escape. The killing of a police guard in the melee would ultimately lead to the execution of several Fenians. A Fenian gunpowder explosion at London's Clerkenwell prison at the close of the year produced six fatalities and a multitude of injuries, the victims in many cases being residents of the area adjacent to the prison. The Fenians had captured the attention of the English public. What did Mill make of these vivid and extreme manifestations of Irish nationalism? By the opening of the 1866 parliamentary session, before the most spectacular of the Fenian episodes had occurred, Mill was ready to dispatch the self-satisfaction with which Englishmen had viewed the state of Ireland during the previous decade. His third speech in the House of Commons came on a bill brought in by the Liberal government for the suspension of habeas corpus in Ireland. Mill told the House that the bill was 'a cause for shame and humiliation to this country.'4 Members of the House were 'present at the collapsing of a great delusion.'5 Employing a mocking tone that many of his fellow members did not appreciate - a tone perhaps unseemly in one who had himself misconstrued the situation - Mill observed: England had for a considerable number of years been flattering itself that the Irish people had come to their senses; that they were now sensible that they had got Catholic Emancipation and the Incumbered Estates Bill, which were the only things they could possibly want; and had become aware that a nation could not have anything to complain of when it was under such beneficent rulers as us, who, if we do but little for them, would so gladly do much if we only knew how.6

Even more resented was his assertion that every 'foreigner, every continental writer would believe for many years to come that Ireland was a country on the brink of revolution, held down by an alien nationality, and kept in subjection by brute force.'7 Unmistakably plain in this speech was Mill's recognition that commonplace suppositions concerning the condition of Ireland had been spurious, and that the current unrest stemmed from profound problems that had never been squarely faced. On this occasion Mill did not say what might be done to solve those problems; he did, however, express his hope that once 'the imme-

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 167 diate end [the restoration of order! had been effected ... we should not again go to sleep for fifty years, and that we should not continue to meet every proposal for the benefit of Ireland with that eternal "non possumus" which, translated into English, meant, "We don't do it in England/"8 Although his audience could be in no doubt that the speaker blamed English fatuousness and rigidity rather than Irish folly for the troubles in Ireland, Mill wanted to treat Gladstone and the Liberal government gently. He did not dispute the need to suspend habeas corpus in Ireland, notwithstanding his conviction that the necessity itself sprang from the inadequacy of what hitherto had been done for that country. And he pointedly tried to spare the Russell-Gladstone administration in his general condemnation. 'He was not prepared to vote against the granting to Her Majesty's Government the powers which, in the state to which Ireland had been brought, they declared to be absolutely necessary ... They did not bring Ireland into its present state - they found it so, through the misgovernment of centuries and the neglect of half a century.'9 If he could not bring himself to vote against the bill, neither could he bring himself to vote for it. The third reading of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Bill passed the House by a vote of 354 to 6, Mill abstaining. His refusal to cast his vote in favour of this bill betokened his rising indignation on the subject of Ireland. That he spoke as he did certainly aroused the ire of the House, as Mill himself owns in the Autobiography. There he states that 'the anger against Fenianism was then in all its freshness; any attack on what Fenians attacked was looked upon as an apology for them.' His speech 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.'10 The Fenian insurrection of March 1867 did not cause the anger to subside; it did cause Mill's focus to sharpen. Although the participants, in his view, had unquestionably committed culpable acts, they believed themselves to be utterly in the right. Despair rather than wickedrtess had driven them to take up arms against British rule. Such men, Mill deeply felt, should not be executed for what they had done. On 25 May he occupied a leading place in the delegation to Lord Derby that adjured the Tory government to spare the life of Thomas F. Burke, a Fenian sentenced to be hanged for his part in the March uprising. Mill spoke to a large reform meeting at St James's Hall on the evening of the

i68 England's Disgrace? 25th. He reserved his most impassioned rhetoric for Ireland and Fenianism, matters which clearly had kindled in him a potent strain of moral and political engagement. I should like to know ... whether you think that we have any right to hold Ireland in subjection unless we can make Ireland contented with our government? (Cries of No, no.)... Do you think the Irish people are contented with our government (Cries of No, no.)... Do you think those men who have been driven desperate by the continuance of what they think misgovernment... who do not understand the English people, and do not understand that you are determined to do them justice, and do not know that you are going soon to be strong enough to do it [a reference to the anticipated enactment of borough household suffrage] - (cheers) - and because they do not know this, their patience is worn out, and in most desperate circumstances they endeavour to get rid of what they think misgovernment at the risk of their lives - do you think, I say, that those men are not fit to live for that reason? (Cries of No.)11

Mill conceded that the Fenian leaders had undertaken political violence and in so doing had jeopardized the lives of their fellow citizens. They should be duly punished; they should not be executed. 'Political malcontents/ he noted, 'are very seldom bad men; they are generally better than average.' Incarceration would be an expedient and just punishment, although Mill intimates that they should not be made to serve a lengthy prison sentence. They should not be treated like the scum of the earth; and we would always hope that the time would come, and we would do our utmost to make the time come, when an amnesty would let them all out of prison.'12 By this time Mill was no stranger to stump oratory (demagoguery in the eyes of his opponents), but among his speeches during these years there is no more striking example of such oratory than his treatment of Ireland in this performance of 25 May 1867. Mill's less than temperate language mirrored his mood. Whatever pleasure he may have got from rousing his audience was wholly ancillary to the message he wanted to convey. His earnestness on the subject of the Fenian prisoners found expression in his private correspondence as well as in his public declamations. The day after the deputation and the reform meeting Mill wrote to Cairnes: We are not yet safe from the gross blunder as well as crime of shedding the blood of Fenian prisoners. The Government had decided by a majority, to hang

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 169 Burke. About 50 M.P.s, of which I was one, went as soon as possible to intercede with Lord Derby, and at this time of writing I do not yet know what is the result. If they have not given in we shall attack them furiously in the House tomorrow.13

In the wake of the government's positive response to the campaign for commuting Burke's sentence, Mill shared with the House of Commons his views on the conduct and character of the Fenian rebels. He reiterated, albeit in an idiom adapted to the occasion, the sentiments he had voiced in his extra-parliamentary harangue. Speaking to the House on 14 June he acknowledged that the conduct of the Fenians had been 'greatly culpable, because it was contrary to the general interests of society and their country. Still, errors of this character are not errors which evince a vulgar mind - certainly not a mind likely to be guilty of ordinary crime and vice - rather a mind capable of heroic actions and lofty virtue/14 Assessing Mill's response to Fenianism involves entering an attitudinal labyrinth. He disapproved of both the ends and means of Fenianism. Separation from England was not in Ireland's interest. In a letter of November 1867 Mill asserted that 'G. Britain & Ireland are capable of making jointly a much better government for Ireland than Ireland alone is likely to make.' Beyond this consideration, Mill was convinced that the state of English opinion was such that even if a rising were 'supported by the mass of the Irish people/ it would be vigorously suppressed at a cost of 'immense misery in Ireland.' For anyone in England to 'give fresh encouragement to the Irish to seek separation from England' would be irresponsible.15 Simply because Mill appreciated the sources and justification of Irish nationalism does not mean he had especially tender feelings for the phenomenon. Lynn Zastoupil's suggestion that by the late i86os Mill was moving towards a perception of Irish nationalism as an agency of moral development has a weak evidential base.16 Although the Fenian movement was in principle nonsectarian, its members were almost invariably Catholic. Mill perceived that in Ireland nationalism and Catholicism were joined at the hip and that the indelible Catholicism of the Irish masses would irrevocably associate an independent Ireland with the forces of reaction. In England and Ireland he would remark: 'In any Continental complications, the sympathies of England would be with Liberalism; while those of Ireland are sure to be on the same side as the Pope - that is, on the side opposed to modern civilization and progress, and to the freedom of all

170 England's Disgrace? except Catholic populations held in subjection by non-Catholic rulers.'17 In private Mill observed that 'the Irish of the class which furnishes separatists are so excitable & so devoid of common sense that a very little encouragement from any reputable quarter in G. Britain might have a stimulating effect on them such as we cannot limit or calculate/18 Yet might it not be thought that Mill's rhetoric had unwittingly offered such encouragement? Did England have 'any right to hold Ireland in subjection unless we can make Ireland contented with our government?' From this it could be reasonably inferred that Mill believed Ireland had been and was being so held (his comment that England would forcibly put down a genuinely popular rising is consistent with this construction). Granted this inference, the Fenians, who had 'been driven desperate by the continuance of what they think misgovernment,' were not wrong in thinking the Irish people victims of oppression. As men, they were very probably 'better than average/ men 'capable of heroic actions and lofty virtue.' Such men should not be denied hope of eventual amnesty. The purpose of Mill's oratory, to be sure, was to secure clement and compassionate treatment for the Fenian prisoners. In pursuing that purpose, however, his language tended decidedly towards the exculpatory. Hence, there is some wobbling in Mill's stance towards Fenianism, and this follows from his ambivalent conception of England's relation to Ireland. He certainly held that Protestant rule in Ireland had been oppressive and that England carried a heavy burden of guilt for the disabilities inflicted on the Irish masses. Since the coming of Catholic emancipation the sins had been those of omission. No malignant intent had disfigured British policy in Ireland during the preceding four decades, but English inertia, obtuseness, and lack of imagination had precluded the devising of policies capable of creating a union of sentiment between the peoples of England and Ireland. The Fenian commotion had brought this failure home. In a March 1867 letter - fortuitously written only days before the Fenian uprising - to the trade unionist and radical politician W.R. Cremer, Mill discussed the conditions justifying revolution. One such condition was 'when either the system of government does not permit the redress of grievances to be sought by peaceable & legal means, or when those means have been perseveringly exerted to the utmost for a long series of years, & their inefficacy has been demonstrated by experiment.'19 Mill did not say whether Ireland fit this description, but there can be no doubt the Fenian revolt told him that Ireland had major outstanding grievances despite the three score

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 171 plus years that had elapsed since the formation of the Union. He wanted those grievances redressed by England in the very near future. Mill hoped the uprising had opened England's eyes. An independent Ireland was not the answer; a justly governed Ireland was. The Palmerstonian era was over; the urban working classes were on the verge of becoming a political power; a radicalized Liberal party under Gladstone's leadership could answer the challenge and salvage England's honour in Ireland. While Mill did not feel able to condone what the Fenians had done, and certainly was not sorry their attempt had miscarried, neither did he regret what had transpired. This mix of perspectives induced a somewhat unsteady response to Fenianism. 2. IRISH LAND

Fenian violence and a changing political climate turned Mill back to the land question, a turn that would culminate in the publication of England and Ireland. Mill's treatment of the issue in the various editions of the Principles of Political Economy published between 1848 and 1865 had been equivocal enough to allow interested readers to reach different conclusions. As E.D. Steele has noted, both Irish advocates and English opponents of fixity of tenure had cited Mill as an authority in support of their respective claims.20 Only a reader with an extraordinarily sensitive and discriminating palate could gain from the 1865 edition even a mild foretaste of the strong brew Mill would serve up in early 1868. In that edition he had shown much unease over the hitherto unstaunchable outflow of Ireland's population and the moral import for England of this perpetually ebbing human tide. He had also expressed concern for the plight of the displaced cottiers and had modestly restored peasant proprietorship as a worthy component of a future Irish agrarian order. He had not, however, offered any bold prescriptions with regard to the land question. Although he had discarded the relative optimism of the 1862 edition, he had revealed no inclination in favour of a dramatic initiative. It is understandable that foes of fixity of tenure were taken aback by the radicalism of England and Ireland. Such foes who sat in the House of Commons - some Irish MPs aside, the House of Commons consisted almost entirely of foes - must have found it hard to decipher Mill's speech on the Irish Land Bill introduced by the Liberal government in the spring of 1866. A compendium of the oscillations evident in the Principles, this speech acutely manifests the tension between theory and practice that imbues much of

172 England's Disgrace? Mill's activity as a thinker and a reformer. It was occasioned by a bill that sought to encourage improvements and discourage evictions by providing Irish tenants with a legal claim to compensation for improvements in those instances where no written contract between landlord and tenant stipulated otherwise.21 Characterized by Mill himself as an 'extremely mild measure/22 its principle nonetheless ran counter to the presuppositions hegemonic before 1865. Aborted though it would be, this Irish Land Bill, like the 1866 Reform Bill, signalled the raising of a political curtain that Palmerston had striven successfully to hold in place. On its second reading Mill 'delivered one of [his] most careful speeches ... in a manner calculated less to stimulate friends, than to conciliate and convince opponents.' So he writes in the Autobiography.23 One doubts that these 'opponents' managed to grasp exactly what he was trying to convince them of in this 'careful' speech of 17 May. Mill began with a tribute both to the bill and to the Liberal statesmen responsible for its introduction. 'I venture to express the opinion that nothing which any Government has yet done, or which any Government has yet attempted to do, for Ireland ... has shown so true a comprehension of Ireland's real needs, or has aimed so straight at the very heart of Ireland's discontent and of Ireland's misery.'24 Given what Mill thought of previous government efforts, he could say this without being disingenuous. He aimed to praise and support the already beleaguered Russell-Gladstone ministry while instructing the House in the fundamentals of the Irish problem. The oddness of his speech on this 'extremely mild measure' arises from these not altogether complementary objectives. Mill professed to find in the bill a principle to justify his approbation. 'It is a fulfilment of the promise held out by the Chancellor of the Exchequer [Gladstone] at the beginning of the Session ... to legislate for Ireland according to Irish exigencies, and no longer according to English routine.'25 Irish society differed widely from English society, and Englishmen had persistently failed to apprehend that what proved suitable for England might be unsuitable for Ireland. Mill contrasted the singular character of English experience with the generic character of Irish conditions and attitudes. 'Irish circumstances and Irish ideas as to social and agricultural economy are the general ideas and circumstances of the human race; it is English circumstances and English ideas that are peculiar.'25 Mill's estimation of the European agricultural experience almost certainly confirmed most of his listeners in their disposition to find nothing exemplary in Continental patterns:

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 173 It tells us that where this agricultural economy in which the actual cultivator holds the land directly from the proprietor, has been found consistent with the good cultivation of the land or with the comfort and prosperity of the cultivators, the rent has not been determined, as it is in Ireland, merely by contract, but the occupier has had the protection of some sort of fixed usage. (Hear, hear.) The custom of the country has determined more or less precisely the rent which he should pay, and guaranteed the permanence of his tenure as long as he paid it.27

Disturbance in Ireland, Mill affirmed, had its roots in a misbegotten agricultural system. Irish society, overwhelmingly agrarian in nature, could not attain a just equilibrium in the absence of tenant-right and fixity of tenure. Mill had essentially said much the same thing in both his Morning Chronicle series and in the Principles. In neither instance, however, had he made the transition from ratification of fixity of tenure in theory to application in practice. Instead he had put forward his scheme for the settlement of a peasant proprietary on the waste lands, which he had seen as a constructive, practicable, and preferable alternative to the granting of fixity of tenure to all Irish tenants. Post-famine conditions in Ireland, together with an undeniable lack of interest in England, had rendered such a plan anachronistic well before the mid-i86os. Would Mill now take the step he had previously shied away from and come out for fixity of tenure as the only viable answer to the land problem? He would not. In lieu of such a declaration he defended the ministerial measure on the grounds that it would foster the end supported by the English governing class, that is, replicating in Ireland the core features of the English agricultural economy. Mill expressed scepticism regarding the wisdom of this objective, but acknowledged that its achievement hinged on making prosperous farmers of the most capable of the Irish tenantry. Providing compensation for improvements was a sine qua non of the conversion of such men into Anglicized tenant farmers: 'Give the tenant compensation, awarded by an impartial tribunal, for whatever increased value - and only for the increased value - he had given to the land. Do not use the fruits of his labour or of his outlay without paying for them, or without giving him assurance of being paid for them.'28 Juxtaposing the paradoxical lines of thought evident in this speech underscores the interpretative challenge Mill presented his audience. He proclaims that finally a government has taken cognizance of the

174 England's Disgrace? need to treat Irish problems in an Irish context. Analysis of this context relative to Continental experience leads him to conclude that fixity of tenure is the apt solution. Yet the bill he supports shuns fixity of tenure and sponsors a change consistent with the aim of creating in Ireland a system of agriculture resembling that of England. Inasmuch as the measure proposed to vest in Irish tenants rights not enjoyed by English farmers, Mill's initial claim is not completely unfounded. If the means were exceptional, however, the end was not, and it is plain from Mill's discussion of Irish society that 'a comprehension of Ireland's real needs' implied legislation different from the ministerial measure not only in particulars but in purpose. In part Mill welcomed the bill from a conviction that English politicians would not accept the need for a much more radical approach until the modest change proposed by the goverment had demonstrably failed to allay Irish discontent. In the spring of 1866 he believed there was still time to educate the British public and their political leaders concerning Ireland's 'real needs.' Explaining to MPs why he did not ask them to establish fixity of tenure, Mill stated: 'It is perhaps a sufficient reason that I know you will not do it.'29 They would perhaps be more inclined to do it once it had become unmistakably clear that compensation for improvements would not solve the problem. English politics markedly influenced Mill's circumspection and restraint on Irish land in May 1866. He modulated his pitch and cadence in response to the predicament of the Russell-Gladstone government. At this time Mill was doing all he could to bolster the Liberal administration. He certainly wanted to tell the House that Ireland needed fixity of tenure; he also wanted to bestow copious praise upon the ministry responsible for the Irish Land Bill. His acknowledgment that the House of Commons would have nothing to do with fixity of tenure justified a course of action that chimed well with his allegiance to political ends inseparable from Gladstone's fortunes.30 Over the course of the next eighteen months Mill's attitude was transfigured. These months brought the fall of the Russell-Gladstone government, the rising in Ireland, and the Fenian incidents at Manchester and Clerkenwell. By the time Mill wrote England and Ireland Gladstone had begun to recover some of the political ground he had lost in 1866-7. The issue of parliamentary reform, a source of Liberal disunity, had been put to rest. Those opposed to Conservative government had abundant incentive to mend their torn political fabric in preparation for the impending electoral contest with the Tories. For leadership they would

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 175 have to look to Gladstone.31 Four days after the Clerkenwell explosion Gladstone delivered a speech at Southport whose main topic was Ireland. The grievances of Ireland, he told his audience, had to be taken up. Not until satisfactory answers had been found for Irish problems would the British people 'instead of hearing in every corner of Europe the most painful commentaries on the policy of England towards Ireland ... be able to look our fellow Europeans in the face.'32 The search for solutions, Gladstone implied, would require Parliament to consider Irish notions as to what should be done. In matters pertaining exclusively to a single member of the Union - be it England, Scotland, or Ireland - 'no man ought to be able to say that any of these nations is governed according to the traditions, the views or the ideas of another.'33 Gladstone also referred specifically to the land question. Situating compensation for improvements at the forefront of any settlement, he noted that the entire subject of Irish land reform was 'of vast importance.'34 Free of office, his political fortunes on the rise, and his mind focused on Ireland, Gladstone would have no reason to feel uneasy about a bold Millian initiative on Irish land that might well render more attractive to moderates a somewhat less bold Gladstonian initiative. Mill probably pondered Gladstone's activity and prospects as the former prepared to shift into high gear on the land question. Writing to Edwin Chadwick from Avignon on 22 December 1867 (three days after Gladstone's Southport speech), Mill alluded to Gladstone and Fenianism: T infer from the newspapers that the public are half crazy about Fenianism. Gladstone's Lancashire speeches will, however, I hope have some effect in recalling some of them to common calmness and good feeling.'35 The impact of Fenianism led Mill to conclude that decisive action was imperative, the time for half-measures having run out far more rapidly than could have been foreseen in the spring of 1866. The legitimacy of British authority hung in the balance. Any further delay in doing for Ireland what plainly needed to be done would amount to an abnegation of that authority and ultimately lead to a break-up of the Union. England and Ireland reflected Mill's conviction that only a definitive settlement of the land question could avert irreparable damage to the moral and body politic.36 Of modest length - some 10,000 words - England and Ireland paints in very broad strokes. Its analysis of the economic aspects of the land question offers nothing original. Everything its author says about the character of Ireland's agricultural order would be familiar to readers of

176 England's Disgrace? the Principles of Political Economy. Not a work of painstaking (or even non-painstaking) research, the pamphlet eschews empirical discussion of eviction rates, rent levels, agrarian outrages, and the custom of Ulster tenant-right. It is an essay in persuasion conceived in a Fenian-induced epiphany tying the land question to the political future of the Union. The content of that future, Mill believed, carried profound moral ramifications for England. Its purpose polemical and political, England and Ireland registers a call for radical action. The pamphlet begins with a sketch of the historical association between England and Ireland. Mill alludes to the immemorial sources of Irish disaffection, declares that the intensity of that disaffection had never exceeded the current level, and goes on to suggest that the physiognomy of the Irish question had recently acquired a new look. Fenianism, Mill asserted, was an extreme expression of the predominant feeling in Ireland that English rule lacked legitimacy. 'The population is divided between those who wish success to Fenianism, and those who, though disapproving its means and perhaps its ends, sympathize in its embittered feelings.'37 (Here Mill takes no account of Ulster's Protestants.) The governors of Ireland had 'allowed what once was indignation against particular wrongs, to harden into a passionate determination to be no longer ruled on any terms by those to whom they ascribe all their evils.'38 Time and time again Ireland's rulers had failed to see that Irish problems would admit of no 'English' solutions. Impaired by their purblind belief in the superiority of all things English, they had, in formulating Irish policy, foolishly dismissed as irrelevant Ireland's history, traditions, customs, and institutions.39 The endeavour to embed English tissue in an Irish organism had proved futile and virulent. For all her bungling, England could yet save her position in Ireland by furnishing a bold and comprehensive settlement of the land question. Accomplishing this, however, required a repudiation of the English doctrine of 'absolute property in land.' In words very like those used in the Principles, Mill observed that land, unlike movable property, is 'a thing which no man made, which exists in limited quantity, which was the original inheritance of all mankind, and which whoever appropriates, keeps others out of its possession.'40 The English conquest of Ireland brought with it a doctrine of landed property alien to the Irish experience. To the Irish, this doctrine was unforgettably joined with English dominion and spoliation, with confiscation and appropriation. A dictum favouring 'proprietors who reap but do not sow,

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 177 and who assume the right of ejecting those who do' had never acquired moral authority among the Irish masses.41 'In the moral feelings of the Irish people/ Mill avers, 'the right to hold the land goes, as it did in the beginning, with the right to till it.'42 The injection of English bias into Ireland had engendered a shiftless and parasitical landlord class that consumed rent and resources at the cost of its Irish host. Turbulence in Ireland signalled rejection of a land system that affronted the moral sentiments of the masses while harming their interests and thwarting their aspirations. Mill moves from historical conspectus to a comparative delineation of the social economies of England and Ireland. The diversity of the English economy, with its large commercial and manufacturing sectors, found no echo in Ireland, which had remained an essentially agarian society. In a mixed economy, such as England's, 'a bad tenure of land, though always mischievous, can in some measure be borne with. But when a people have no means of sustenance but the land, the conditions on which the land can be occupied, and support derived from it, are all in all.'43 In Ireland, however, where the specifics of landed tenure vastly affected the welfare of the masses, the 'terms are the very worst in Europe.'44 The condition of the Irish peasantry was far removed from that of English farmers. The latter, occupying an important place in a market-oriented agricultural structure, farmed for profit. In the case of the former, survival was the first order of business. Unlike the capitalist tenant farmers of England, 'the peasant farmer will promise any amount of rent, whether he can pay it or not.'45 (As Mill himself must have understood, this was a caricature of the Irish agricultural economy. Following Cairnes, he had acknowledged in the 1865 edition of the Principles that much of Ireland's soil was being cultivated by small farmers producing for the market and claiming an increasing share of the country's wealth.46 It was chiefly Ireland's agricultural labourers, some of whom had access to small holdings, who endured a marginal economic existence.) As a group, Irish landed proprietors also tended to differ markedly from their English counterparts with respect to estate management. Most English landlords, infused with the commercial spirit, were keen to support agricultural improvements calculated to augment the productive capacity of their property. The typical Irish landlord did almost nothing to better his estate. Any improvements made by a tenant might well accrue to the advantage of his landlord in the form of an enhanced property valuation and higher rent. Lacking security for compensation, and having little

178 England's Disgrace? capital to spare, the Irish peasant was understandably loath to improve his holding.47 So what is to be done? Casting aside the irresolution on practical policy characteristic of recent editions of the Principles, Mill declares unreservedly for fixity of tenure. 'When ... the land of a country is farmed by the very hands that till it, the social economy resulting is intolerable, unless either by law or custom the tenant is protected against arbitrary eviction, or arbitrary increase of rent.'48 The choice now facing England could not be more distinct: either grant the Irish peasantry 'permanent possession of the land' or abandon the Union. The consequence of failing to give satisfaction to the Irish masses on this issue would be a mounting fury expressed in insurrections of everincreasing magnitude and intensity. In the end, a sundering of the Union would take place. Mill concedes that his proposals may be revolutionary; but revolutionary measures are the thing now required ... In the completeness of the revolution will lie its safety ... If ever, in our time, Ireland is to be a consenting party to her union with England, the changes must be so made that the existing generation of Irish farmers shall at once enter upon their benefits. The rule of Ireland now rightfully belongs to those who, by means consistent with justice, will make the cultivators of the soil of Ireland the owners of it; and the English nation has got to decide whether it will be that just ruler or not.49

Mill invokes the example of India to show that England was capable of 'shaking off insular prejudices, and governing another country according to its wants, and not according to common English habits and notions.'50 The introduction of the Indian example, it need hardly be said, underlines Mill's supposition that in the 'Union' of England and Ireland one of the two parties in effect monopolized sovereignty. With sovereignty went responsibility. The shirking of responsibility discredited that sovereignty. 'What has been done for India has now to be done for Ireland; and as we should have deserved to be turned out of the one, had we not proved equal to the need, so shall we to lose the other.'51 Mill holds that England cannot rightfully govern Ireland without the consent of the Irish people. If the continuance of the Union required the periodic exercise of brute force in the face of mass hostility, then England had forsaken the grounds of just rule and betrayed a fundamental moral trust in her relations with Ireland. The last opportunity to win Irish consent had arrived. Failure to seize this opportunity by answer-

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 179 ing Ireland's real needs would signify English unfitness to govern. The Union could not long survive such a failure.52 If Mill was not invariably a shrewd judge of discursive strategy in the realm of political advocacy, neither was he squeamish about tossing into the mix whatever he thought might be serviceable to him. This tendency is especially evident in the next section of England and Ireland, which explores the hazards confronting the makers of Irish policy. Mill wants those with power to apprehend the contiguity between expedience and morality in the challenge they faced. He argues that neither the people of England nor the international community would countenance government by martial law in Ireland. Addressing an audience still unsure of the impact that borough household suffrage would have on British politics, Mill pointedly (menacingly?) asserts that the 'time is come when the democracy of one country will join hands with the democracy of another, rather than back their own ruling authorities in putting it down.'53 (It is doubtful Mill believed this, given his privately expressed view, already noted, that 'in the present [November 1867] state of English opinion an attempt at separation even if supported by the mass of the Irish people would be put down by the strong hand, would cause immense misery in Ireland & greatly embitter the feelings between Irish & English & between the two parties in Ireland.')54 Refusal of radical land reform would lead to a severing of the Union and Irish independence. Such a result would be objectionable on several counts, and Mill lays out the serious problems that could flow from it. Awareness of Ulster's existence shows up in his discussion of the possibility of anarchy and civil war in Ireland in the event of separation. Should Ireland fall into this condition, she would be prey to foreign invasion and thereby jeopardize the security of Britain. Even an orderly transition would not place Ireland in a favourable position inasmuch as an independent Irish state responsible for its own defence would incur ruinous financial burdens. Scanning the conceivable alternatives to outright independence that might be substituted for the Union, Mill rejects each in turn as impracticable. Granting Ireland the autonomy enjoyed by Canada could not be reconciled with the former's geographical proximity to England, whose security needs would be seriously compromised. A partnership of equals, on the AustroHungarian model, could not succeed in the case of England and Ireland, the power of one being immensely superior to that of the other. Besides, the legacy of discord and asperity in relations between the masses of each country told against such an association (so much for

180 England's Disgrace? the joining of hands). In sum, separation would be disadvantageous to both Ireland and England and no form of federation offering a reasonable prospect of success could plausibly be devised.55 Although Ireland stood to lose much from separation, in one crucial respect she stood to gain a great deal. An independent Ireland 'would convert the peasant farmers into peasant proprietors: and this one thing would be more than equivalent for all that she would lose.'56 Could not this indispensable reform, however, be attained without a rupturing of the Union? The answer hinged on the force of public opinion and the quality of English statesmanship. This benefit... she can receive from the Government of the United Kingdom, if those who compose that government can be made to perceive that it is necessary and right. This duty once admitted and acted on, the difficulties of centuries in governing Ireland would disappear.'57 Mill then puts forward a simple scheme for the achievement of this objective. He urges Parliament to establish a commission responsible for assessing the rental value of all land held by tenants in Ireland. The commission should then use this valuation to determine the tenant's annual monetary obligation, the state guaranteeing payment of this amount to the landlord by the tenant. The landlord who preferred to terminate his connection with the soil of Ireland should be permitted to receive payment 'directly from the national treasury, by being inscribed as the owner of Consols sufficient to yield the amount.'58 In such instances the government would collect the yearly payment from the tenant. Permanent occupancy of his holding would be assured the tenant provided he paid the fixed rent each year.59 In support of such a settlement Mill presents a synopsis of the defence of peasant proprietorship previously set forth in his Morning Chronicle series and in the Principles. He contends that experience elsewhere had demonstrated the efficacy of peasant proprietorship in fostering a prosperous agriculture and a contented peasantry. The creation of virtual owner-occupancy would also deter excessive population growth, it being 'much more obvious how many mouths can be supported by a piece of land, than how many hands can find employment in the general labour market.'60 Once the Irish tenant stood to profit from assiduous labour and frugality, he would not be slow to manifest these attributes. Mill trenchantly returns to the requirements of justice in his peroration. England must rise above 'the superstitions of landlordism' and distinguish the intrinsic from the contingent in the possession of landed property.61 If this could not be done, there would be no option but 'to

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 181 retire from a country where the modification of landed property is the primary necessity of social life.'62 A powerful passage blending the prudential and moral strands of his argument closes England and Ireland. Let our statesman be assured that now, when the long deferred day of Fenianism has come, nothing which is not accepted by the Irish tenantry as a permanent solution of the land difficulty, will prevent Fenianism, or something equivalent to it, from being the standing torment of the English Government and people. If without removing this difficulty, we attempt to hold Ireland by force, it will be at the expense of all the character we possess as lovers and maintainers of free government, or respecters of any rights except our own; it will most dangerously aggravate all our chances of misunderstandings with any of the great powers of the world, culminating in war; we shall be in a state of open revolt against the universal conscience of Europe and Christendom, and more and more against our own. And we shall in the end be shamed, or, if not shamed, coerced, into releasing Ireland from the connexion; or we shall avert the necessity only by conceding with worst grace, and when it will not prevent some generations of ill blood, that which if done at present may still be in time permanently to reconcile the two countries.63

The content and tone of England and Ireland caught many of Mill's contemporaries unprepared, and the explanatory problem raised by his unqualified embrace of fixity of tenure for Irish tenants has been tackled by several scholars. T.A. Boylan and T.P. Foley, in their article 'John Elliot Cairnes, John Stuart Mill and Ireland/ argue for the importance of Cairnes's role. They submit that 'in attempting to explain Mill's radical deviations in England and Ireland, a major, if not the major influence, must be sought in the writings of Cairnes, especially in the Economist articles.'64 Between early September and early November 1865 Cairnes wrote a weekly series of letters (the 'articles' indicated above) to the Economist.6^ As Drs Boylan and Foley put it: The Economist articles constituted a plea for peasant proprietors, and a rejection of the view that the only possible or desirable future for Irish agriculture lay in the creation of large farms based on the English or Scottish model. At the level of policy the articles modestly set forth a scheme of tenant-compensation [for improvements], compatible with the principles of free-trade, to promote peasant proprietorship. But this scheme was justified on the basis of a searching critique of the accepted theory of private property in land.66

i8a England's Disgrace? It is difficult to see the bearing of any of this on England and Ireland. Mill had obtained a fairly full exposition of Cairnes's views on Irish land before he issued the sixth edition of the Principles. Although Cairnes's Economist letters furnish a more detailed commentary on certain features of the land question than had the 'Notes/ there is nothing in them, descriptive or normative, at odds with the material he had forwarded to Mill. The latter's fervent advocacy of peasant proprietorship antedated Cairnes's Economist contributions by nearly two decades. On the matter of theory, the Principles of Political Economy had propounded a conception of landed property Cairnes could not possibly transcend. There Mill had written: 'No man made the land. It is the original inheritance of the whole species. Its appropriation is wholly a question of expediency. When private property in land is not expedient, it is unjust.'67 In both the Morning Chronicle leaders and in the Principles Mill had found the disposition of landed property in Ireland patently unjust. Any 'new arrangements,' he had made plain, should not be based on the English agricultural model. The policy recommendations of England and Ireland went far beyond Cairnes's proposals of 1865. And Mill had concluded long before the publication of his radical pamphlet that Cairnes had shown undue timidity. In January 1866 he wrote to his friend: 'I have read several of your letters in the Economist, and admired them greatly.' This admiration did not deter Mill from criticizing Cairnes's prescription, which 'seems to me to fall far short of your premises.' The remedy offered by Cairnes, that of 'permitting the tenant to carry away or destroy his improvements, will surely do very little for him.' I am disposed to make a much greater claim for the tenant - to demand for him, not compensation for his outlay, but a full equivalent for the additional value which either by his labour or his expenditure he has given to the land: to be assessed either by a special tribunal or by arbitration. Justice requires no less than this, and its impracticability is not, to my mind, made out.68

Cairnes, out front on the university question, lagged behind on the land question. Both Lynn Zastoupil and E.D. Steele see England and Ireland as emanating from Mill's encounter with Irish nationalism and its implications for England, while parting company on the reasons for Mill's adoption of a radical solution to the land problem. Zastoupil may have misconstrued the bent of Mill's mind apropos Irish nationalism, but he

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 183 instructively advances the notion that a fundamental moral purpose impregnated Mill's engagement with Ireland. Mill's principal objective - the improvement of the Irish masses - remained a constant; the means to this end evolved to correspond with changing circumstances. Not until the latter half of the i86os, Zastoupil suggests, did Mill become persuaded that only wholesale fixity of tenure could hit the mark.69 Although there is much to be said for Zastoupil's perspective, his interpretation, adumbrated within a compact framework, oversimplifies the difficulties posed by Mill's pamphlet. Perhaps the most troubling of the problems left unexamined in his article concerns Ireland's agricultural labourers. It is true that Ireland's farmers constituted a rising proportion of the country's population in the post-famine decades. As of 1861, however, 'there were 890,000 farm servants, labourers, herds, and ploughmen compared with 440,697 farmers.'70 Vaughan points out that the labourers 'had the worst houses; their wages increased, but usually not as rapidly as agricultural prices; their wages were the lowest in the United Kingdom, the highest in Ireland being lower than the lowest in Britain.'71 In the 1865 edition of the Principles Mill had reserved his deepest sympathy for the plight of the landless. Yet the remedy he proposed in England and Ireland would contribute nothing to the welfare of the largest and most impoverished segment of Irish society. He knew better than to assume the labourers would benefit indirectly from a more prosperous tenantry in the form of significantly higher wages. The wealth generated by a productive agricultural system in England had scarcely elevated the position of agricultural labourers. Indeed, Mill judged the failure of England's agricultural economy 'complete' when measured against 'the condition of the mass of the population.'72 Peasant proprietors, 'having scarcely any community of interest... with other human beings,'73 could not be expected to apply themselves to palliating the lot of Ireland's labourers. And Mill clearly was uncomfortable with the emigration solution. Can his virtual abandonment of the labourers in England and Ireland be reconciled with a supreme aim of ameliorating the moral and material condition of the Irish masses? It is not easy to see how. The question does not disquiet E.D. Steele, whose understanding of Mill privileges the political over the moral. England and Ireland, Steele contends, was the work of a 'patriot and ... a convinced "imperialist."'74 Steele argues that Fenianism forcibly placed the Irish problem within Mill's comprehension of imperial requirements and moved him to advocate fixity of tenure as the antidote for Irish nationalism. Above all

184 England's Disgrace? else, Mill wanted to preserve the Union. In a formidable analysis that is by no means flattering to its subject, Steele relentlessly draws attention to a side of Mill that ought not to be glossed over. In doing so, however, he assigns disproportionate weight to Mill's political and imperial motives and fails to discern the moral compass guiding the argument of England and Ireland. Mill was no exponent of an imperialist creed. In empire as an idea he found nothing either inherently good or wicked. Like many of his educated contemporaries, he held that civilization encompassed a considerable developmental range and that nineteenth-century societies inhabited different locations within this spectrum. He similarly believed that England occupied a prominent place in the top tier, her social, economic, and political order being among the most advanced the world had yet seen. As Athens had a 'vocation as the organ of progress' in the ancient world,75 so it was with England in the world of the nineteenth century.76 An advanced civilization, Mill reasoned, had the potential to foster the interests of 'backward populations' that fell under its sway. In Considerations on Representative Government he includes a chapter entitled 'Of the Government of Dependencies by a Free State,' stating that '[tjhis mode of government is as legitimate as any other, if it is the one which in the existing state of civilization of the subject people, most facilitates their transition to a higher stage of improvement.'77 Juridically speaking, Ireland was not a dependency of England, but her de jure participation in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament could not conceal her de facto subordination. England happened to be far more developed than Ireland - a fact Mill was careful not to impute to an innate superiority of one people relative to the other - and a union of the two, if made effective use of by the dominant force, could hasten the improvement of the less advanced. The duty of Westminster was to do for Ireland what needed to be done. If this duty could not now be met there could be no moral justification for sustaining the Union. Although for rhetorical purposes England and Ireland makes much of the imaginable practical difficulties attendant upon a severing of the Union, the pamphlet is not an expression of Mill's attachment to English power. Fenianism had raised the spectre of separation and had given to the land question a political dimension it had previously lacked. His idealism tempered by pragmatism, Mill understood that a satisfactory settlement of the land question necessitated fixity of tenure for Irish tenants. Regrettable though it was, the labourers of Ireland

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 185 were unorganized and politically powerless. There could be nothing for them in any Irish Land Act. The scheme Mill proposed would benefit nearly a half million farmers at the expense of 6,500 landlords. Converting those farmers into the equivalent of peasant proprietors, he believed, would elevate the moral and economic condition of a substantial part of the Irish people: an imperfect incarnation of distributive justice, but still a major gain and the most that could reasonably be hoped for. The moral thrust of Mill's pamphlet, however, has more to do with England than with Ireland. In response to Fenianism Mill's mind seized upon Irish land as the critical test of English moral will. Failure to act would invite a degrading and ultimately fruitless struggle to hold a people bent upon independence. Separation would signify an inadequacy on England's part far more serious than stark political ineptitude. Dishonour, obloquy, shame - such would be the price exacted by failure. Mill's fecund and radical moral consciousness spawned England and Ireland. Unmistakable signs of this sensibility had been displayed long before 1868: 'We want something which may be regarded as a great act of national justice - healing the wounds of centuries ... We want England to have the credit of doing something in love to Ireland, or in duty to her' (i846);/8 'separation is better than bad government' (i848);79 The social condition of Ireland, once for all, cannot be tolerated; it is an abomination in the sight of mankind' (i848?);8° 'When the inhabitants of a country quit the country en masse because its Government will not make it a place fit for them to live in, the Government is judged and condemned' (i852);Sl The loss, and the disgrace, are England's: and it is the English people and government whom it chiefly concerns to ask themselves, how far it will be to their honour and advantage to retain the mere soil of Ireland, but to lose its inhabitants' (i865).82 The only Union worth having was one in which England proved her capacity for upright, responsible leadership. The time had come for England to supply that leadership or get out of Ireland. 3. THE REACTION

'Mr. Mill has in his time written and said a good many startling and unpopular things, but nothing that he ever before said or wrote gave such general offence as the forty-four pages which he has just issued under the above title.' So Mill's friend W.T. Thornton aptly remarked in an April 1868 notice of England and Ireland published in the fortnightly

186 England's Disgrace? Review.8* Mill's imperiously aggressive call for an overturning of established property rights, fixity of tenure for Irish tenants, and the superseding of Irish landlords by the state was not nicely calculated to please the establishment. The politically contentious nature of the subject matter; the indubitably radical treatment of the topic; the stature of the author, commonly considered the most distinguished thinker of his time - such a compound inevitably aroused a forceful response, most of it, as Thornton's statement suggests, hostile. The praise garnered by the pamphlet tended to be somewhat muted, with the exception of that coming from the nationalist press in Ireland and from the Spectator and Lloyd's Weekly London Newspaper in England, whereas the criticism was frequently loud and vituperative. The political leanings of the organs from which condemnation radiated predictably were centre-right Liberal or Tory. For imperiousness within the fourth estate, The Times ('the Thunderer') was unrivalled. Politically independent, The Times, as William Hazlitt had said decades before, usually lined up 'on the side of the big battalions.'84 Within days of the publication of Mill's pamphlet The Times carried a scathing review that excoriated the manner and argument of England and Ireland. Mill had exhibited an 'irritated and impatient' disposition; he seemed 'to express a supercilious contempt for everyone who is not a philosopher, or has not had the experience of an Indian official'; instead of setting an 'example of impartial and calm discussion,' as one might have expected, Mill had 'produced ... the most ill-conditioned political essay which has yet appeared on the subject.' He had greatly exaggerated the scale of disaffection in Ireland (this stricture shows up in many of the negative assessments of Mill's pamphlet), and had proposed a panacea that had not the slightest chance of rectifying the problems of Irish agriculture. Adoption of Mill's plan would give rise to excess population growth, subdivision of property, and accelerated emigration. There was nothing 'in the matter of the pamphlet to make amends for its manner.'85 A day after the review appeared The Times took Mill to task in a leading article: 'Parliament will have better advisers than those who first encourage discontent by representing political anomalies and large defects as systematic oppression, and who then use that discontent as a menace to the British people.'86 Yet another Times leader betrayed an anxiety shared by a large number of English landed gentlemen in the wake of the reform agitation and the passage of the Second Reform Act. It suggested that 'any legislation which should establish the right of the Irish occupier to

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 187 the permanent ownership of the land merely by reason of his occupation must necessarily apply equally to the English occupier.' Alluding to Mill's 'mischievous schemes/ The Times proclaimed its hope and belief 'that the most eminent men in both Houses will at once repudiate these fantastic doctrines, and bring the discussion of Irish affairs once more within the bounds of practical good sense.'87 Albeit unfriendly to the content of England and Ireland, the Whiggishly inclined Pall Mall Gazette was more respectful than The Times. The pamphlet was 'lucid ... and ... written with remarkable vigour'; that Vigour/ however, was 'of a somewhat excited partisan.' Its 'premisses incomplete' and its sweeping conclusions resting on flimsy foundations, Mill's production was 'neither logical nor philosophic.' The objection to the nostrum he proposed was not that it was revolutionary, but that it would not fix the problem. 'Mr. Mill has utterly failed to establish its probable efficacy as a cure - indeed he simply orders it because the patient clamors for it.' Other reforms that might be of value 'he will neither listen to nor look at; he will have his own remedy or none; and he tells the people of Ireland to be content with nothing less.' The predominant impression created by Mill's scheme was 'its crudity/ 88 The Morning Post, once strongly Palmerstonian and at this time turning increasingly towards Disraeli, had harsh words for England and Ireland and its author. Most readers of the pamphlet would find it marred by faulty reasoning, unclear expression, and fragmentary examination of details. His demeanour neither courteous nor calm, Mill had put forward proposals that were 'altogether visionary and unsound.' Had England and Ireland been composed by anyone other than Mill, 'we have no hesitation in saying that public opinion would have pronounced that a more absurd, because violent and exaggerated, pamphlet was never written upon such a serious subject.'8? Tory organs fumed and ridiculed. Espousing a conservatism with a sharp intellectual edge, the Saturday Review had a talent for tart and withering commentary. In 'Mr. Mill on England and Ireland/ the Saturday launched a diatribe that placed Mill in some rather extreme company. The anarchists of Europe will prove themselves to be without a spark of gratitude if they do not crown this most recent and thoroughgoing apostle of Communism in the next convention at Geneva.' Mill had managed 'to gratify the malignity of proletarian envy and the equal malignity of anti-English hatred.' Fenianism, to which Mill ascribed such importance, was no more than a conspiracy 'concocted by a

i88 England's Disgrace? horde of discharged American soldiers who, being too lazy to betake themselves to any peaceful occupation, propose to find excitement and emolument by getting up a civil war in the United Kingdom.' Mill's pamphlet 'really takes one's breath away. One asks, how has this man acquired his reputation?'90 The London daily chiefly responsible for serving the interests of the Conservative party was the Standard, whose leading article on England and Ireland had a decidedly Disraelian flavour. 'To the herds of unorthodox practitioners, of irregular professors, of patent medicine inventors, of advertising universal remedy-mongers, of noisy and violent quacks of all denominations, who are clamoring for a share in the treatment of the Irish malady, it is with considerable regret that we have now to add the illustrious name of John Stuart Mill.' His sarcasm oozing, the writer observed: 'It is hard indeed, that we cannot arrange about the mode in which the Irish tenants are to pay their rents without convulsing the great powers of the world, and agitating the universal conscience of Europe and America.'91 An article in the Tory Quarterly Review vehemently denounced the doctrines propagated in England and Ireland. So outrageous was the 'idea of government' vented in Mill's pamphlet that it 'would be rejected by a confederation of brigands.'92 Of the many adverse commentaries on England and Ireland appearing in the mainstream national press, only Walter Bagehot's 'Mr. Mill on Ireland,' written for the Economist, sought to explore the psychological roots of the pamphlet. Examining the substance of Mill's argument, Bagehot contended that the forces shaping the historical experience of Ireland had made the Irish character unfit for the plan Mill had submitted. 'They have been trained and disciplined in the bad use of land they have acquired worse habits of labour, probably, than any other race of equal mind.' Was it probable that giving 'absolute possession of all the land to such a people will bring happiness, and that it will not increase misery?'93 Mill's scheme was impracticable, and its implementation would intensify rather than diminish political unrest. The Irish no more wanted to pay rent to the state than to the landlords. Might they not organize a rent strike? 'You cannot serve a writ of eviction upon a whole nation.'94 Like other critics of the pamphlet, Bagehot also objected to its tone. 'Mr. Mill relies ... more than he should upon a sort of intellectual terror; he tries to frighten us into his plan by hinting, or even saying, that we shall be thought fools if we do not agree with him.'95 Bagehot, however, wanted to do more than expose the flaws; he wanted to sort out how a thinker of Mill's great distinction came to

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 189 execute a work such as England and Ireland. Those who thought his embroilment in parliamentary and party politics had severely upset his intellectual and moral balance, spoiled his judgment, and made him demagogic misunderstood Mill's essential character. An honester or a more simple-minded man than Mr. Mill - a man more ready, in season and out of season, to maintain an unpopular doctrine - does not live. But the fact is, he is easily excitable and susceptible; the evil that is in his mind at the moment seems to him the greatest evil, - for the time nearly the only evil, the evil which must be cured at all hazards.96 Fenianism, 'the sudden flaring evil,' had 'excited his mind, as such evils so often do.'97 On the matter of Mill's moral excitability Bagehot here showed much insight. Fenianism, however, was not 'the sudden flaring evil,' but rather the most dramatic symptom of English misgovernment, the real 'evil.' Although Bagehot did not register the force of Mill's preoccupation with the moral standing of English rule in Ireland, he did intuit the cathexis present in Mill's pamphlet. One finds tributes to England and Ireland where one would expect to find them: in the centre-left Liberal press, the radical working-class press, and the Irish nationalist press. The Daily News claimed that Mill 'never wrote with more judicial calmness, gravity, and luminosity than in this paper.' England and Ireland would greatly contribute to 'the diffusion of truthful views concerning the radical and national character of Irish discontent.' At the same time, the Daily News expressed scepticism about the fitness of the Irish for peasant proprietorship and shrank from pronouncing in favour of the scheme offered by Mill.98 The Daily Telegraph, without irony, referred to Mill's 'calm, passionless impartiality/ and proclaimed England and Ireland 'a State paper of wonderful ability and great value.' The pamphlet embodied 'a noble plea for justice, uttered by our greatest thinker, on one of the most difficult questions of the day.' Like the Daily News, however, the Telegraph considered it 'rash at once to accept or reject' Mill's 'bold proposition,' and observed that its adoption 'would cause much individual suffering in the period of transition.'99 The Morning Star designated England and Ireland 'the most valuable addition to the political literature of the Irish question that has appeared for a long time.' Contenting itself with a sympathetic summary of the case Mill set forth, the Star too drew back from urging enactment of his plan. Some would consider his views 'rash/ but all had to 'admit that they are courageously and clearly

190 England's Disgrace? stated, and ably reasoned out.'100 These Liberal dailies, clearly well disposed towards Mill and his diagnosis of the Irish problem, were not yet ready to swallow his prescription. The Examiner and the Spectator, advanced Liberal weeklies, gave Mill's pamphlet a warm reception. The former asserted that Mill had put 'the question with a plainness and a freedom which few public men have the moral intrepidity to use.' The language used by the Examiner implied acceptance of Mill's argument that the time for 'palliatives' and 'temporising' had passed, but the journal was reticent on the merits of the specific remedy featured in England and Ireland.™1 Of the 'respectable' Liberal dailies and weeklies, the Spectator alone strenuously upheld the Tightness of Mill's answer to the land question. The pamphlet was 'a tract of incomparable ability and vigour'; the measure it proposed would identify 'the mass of the people with the existing regime,' and guarantee 'their utter hostility to any revolution which would shake that regime and threaten their newly acquired rights.' No other approach could accomplish this end. The alternative to its adoption was 'separation - the frightful evils of which Mr. Mill has pointed out, with even more than his usual power of cogent and lucid exposition.'102 Radical London publications with a substantial working-class readership generally had little to say about England and Ireland. The Bee-Hive, a paper closely tied to London's craft unionism, carried a perfunctory summary of the pamphlet without editorial comment.103 Reynolds's Newspaper appears not to have offered even this slight coverage. Lloyd's Weekly London Newspaper, however, responded with a leading article whose enthusiasm even exceeded that of the Spectator. The pamphlet, affirmed Lloyd's, manifested 'the fearless thinking and speaking of a philosophic politician.' Mill's characteristic 'intellectual courage ... is brilliant in these pages.' The cure he proposed will 'shock many' and 'raise violent opposition on the Tory benches ... but it is the remedy'; anything less 'will not restore harmony between England and Ireland.'104 The nationalist press in Ireland saw the publication of Mill's pamphlet as a major event. The Freeman's Journal announced that it had 'produced a profound impression'; those who dissented from the policy Mill advocated must nonetheless 'agree with him that the disease is formidable and must be arrested, not by temporary expedients, but by a thorough cure.'105 The Nation, running true to form, showed less restraint: 'By far the most important declaration which has appeared for years concerning the question on which the Irish race and their English rulers seem so hopelessly divided, is the great pamphlet which

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 191 has just been published by John Stuart Mill.'106 His argument on the land question was judged 'really conclusive.'107 The Nation did challenge Mill on two political points. The idea that the English masses would not tolerate violent and sustained repression in Ireland struck the Nation as naive. They never were any check on the sanguinary proceedings of the English Government in Ireland, or elsewhere, and we feel profoundly convinced they would not be such at present.' It is not odd that the Nation should have differed from Mill's public position on this point, but the expression of such difference sits uncomfortably with the paper's second reservation: 'We ... think Mr. Mill's views relative to the results of a possible separation of the two countries are not well founded.'108 Such misgivings did not keep the Nation from quoting in full the final paragraph of England and Ireland, which English statesmen should 'take heed of,' for it spoke 'the pure and simple truth.'10? Procuring commendations from the likes of Lloyd's Weekly London Newspaper and the Nation was of dubious value to one who wanted his views on Ireland taken seriously by English statesmen. The Spectator aside, those elements of the press whose opinions could not be so easily dismissed had either come out strongly against Mill or had mingled praise for his eloquence and analytical power with a sceptical or noncommittal stance on his radical plan. As measured by the reaction of the more weighty section of the press, antagonism to Mill's position on Irish land and to his manner of argument clearly predominated. Thornton had no reason to exaggerate when he observed that 'the great bulk of the reading public' had received England and Ireland 'with feelings little short of indignation and disgust. The author's reputation has availed little to bear up the pamphlet; rather the pamphlet seems calculated to bear down the author.' Thornton regretted this response, being himself 'one of the minority of Englishmen who regard the doctrine of "England and Ireland" as substantially sound.'110 Sympathy for the doctrine and friendship for the author render all the more striking Thornton's admission that 'there may be good reasons for scrupling to adopt it [Mill's plan] except as a last resource.' He was 'loath to believe that there were no other ways, and Mr. Mill himself once certainly thought there were.'111 If he conceded this much in public, Thornton's private opinion may have been even more guarded. Cairnes's private judgment on England and Ireland is a matter of record. To Leonard Courtney he wrote: 'I have been much mortified by this last pamphlet by Mill. Though I have as yet [5 March] only seen it in

192 England's Disgrace? extracts by reviewers I have seen enough to feel satisfied that it will neither add to his influence nor help the settlement of Ireland. In fact,... the crudity of the scheme is, after all, that which most impresses one.'112 Cairnes and Thornton were close to Mill personally and politically. The private words of one and the public comments of the other denote the maelstrom of hostility generated by England and Ireland. A random glance at remarks made by sundry eminent Victorians distant from Conservative politics certainly confirms this impression. Harriet Martineau to Henry Reeve: 'A man who wanted to injure Ireland & England to the extremest degree cd have done nothing so fitting as putting out this pamphlet.'113 Benjamin Jowett to Florence Nightingale: Tt [England and Ireland] seems to me very rash - ignores difficulties of climate & race - & turns the state into a huge collecting power.'114 Anthony Trollope, who, like Jowett, and unlike Martineau, admired Mill ('the only man in the whole world for the sake of whom I would leave my own house on a Sunday' - Trollope had been invited to dine at Blackheath), considered Mill's plan Visionary, impracticable, and revolutionary.' It was 'doubly dangerous in that it came from a man with a world-wide reputation for wisdom.'115 Had it not been for Mill's 'reputation,' England and Ireland obviously would not have caused such a furore. He supposed much would be made of his pamphlet (had he thought otherwise he would not have written it). Presumably he did not think so much would be made of it that Lord Bessborough, moderate Whig and Irish landlord, would tell J.T. Delane, editor of the The Times, that its author 'ought to be sent to penal servitude as a Fenian.'116 Lord Dufferin, another prominent Whig and Irish proprietor, was responsible for the most elaborate answer to England and Ireland. In a pamphlet whose length approximates that of Mill's, Dufferin tried to demonstrate that Irish conditions differed notably from the representations given in England and Ireland and that Mill's preferred policy would bring injury rather than relief to the country.117 What especially worried Bessborough and Dufferin, both of whom had reason to take offence at the treatment accorded Ireland's landlords in Mill's pamphlet, was the effect of England and Ireland on Irish opinion. Hence, Dufferin wasted no time in composing his retort, which was ready for publication by early March 1868. In sending a copy to Gladstone he observed that though Mill's 'proposals have not gained much approval here, they will not do the less mischief in Ireland, and it has been on that account that I have thought it advisable to examine them.'118 (Plainly the Irish public could not be left to discover for itself

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 193 the flawed premises and erroneous conclusions of Mill's pamphlet.) Mill had to be condemned for he could not be ignored. What did Mill make of the din caused by England and Ireland? He seemed untroubled by it. Writing to Cairnes at the beginning of March, by which time many reviews had already appeared, he stated that he had 'met with more approbation, and not more abuse,' than he had anticipated. As to the soundness of his judgment, there were no second thoughts. He maintained that all the public signs, and all the authentic private information I have access to, tend to shew that nothing short of what I propose would now tranquillize Ireland, or reconcile the Irish people to the Union. And I am sure that nothing less than some very startling proposal would have any chance of whipping up the languid interest of English public men on the subject, and making them feel the critical nature of the situation, or exert their minds to understand it.119

In using the lexicon he had deployed in England and Ireland - for instance, 'revolutionary measures are the thing now required' - Mill understood perfectly well that his plan would encounter stiff resistance and its author stern reproach. He even recognized that Cairnes was unlikely to welcome the pamphlet, 'with the practical conclusions of which I am afraid you will not agree.'120 Steele argues that 'Mill put a brave face on the treatment he had received,' and that the 'barrage of criticism affected him more than he let Cairnes know.'121 He bases this judgment on Mill's speech in the major debate on the condition of Ireland that absorbed the House of Commons in mid-March. Steele asserts that in this speech 'Mill retracted much that was really challenging in the pamphlet.'122 The hostile press commentaries on England and Ireland, claims Steele, persuaded Mill that he had dealt himself an unplayable hand on the issue of Irish land. His speech of 12 March, on this interpretation, represented a rather feeble attempt to get back into the game.123 Such a reading misapprehends the assumptions directing Mill's political strategy. Two days before he spoke to the House of Commons Mill explained to Cairnes the relation of his pamphlet to the impending debate. The object [of England and Ireland] was to strike hard, and compel people to listen to the largest possible proposal. This has been accomplished, and now the time is come for discussing in detail the manner in which the plan, if adopted, would work. I do not share your hopes that anything much short of

194 England's Disgrace? what I have proposed, would give peace or prosperity to Ireland in union with England: but if there is any intermediate course which would do so, its adoption is likely to be very much promoted by frightening the Government and the landlords with something more revolutionary.124

This statement of intent scarcely suggests that Mill had been in any way unsettled by the press fusillade aimed at his pamphlet. He had struck hard in England and Ireland and had indeed compelled people to pay attention to his radical proposal. The response it aroused had not been wholly unfavourable, and it is plausible Mill meant exactly what he said when observing that he had 'met with more approbation, and not more abuse' than he had expected. His allusion to an 'intermediate course' represents no retreat from the position expounded in England and Ireland. He plainly sets little store in the notion that something less than fixity of tenure could 'give peace or prosperity to Ireland in union with England'; even in his pamphlet, however, he had not rigidly insisted that nothing less would do. 'In the completeness of the revolution will lie its safety. Anything less than complete, unless as a step to completion [emphasis added], will give no help.'125 The retrospective explanation of purpose in the Autobiography is fully consistent with the tenor of Mill's letter to Cairnes, as it is consonant with the content and spirit of England and Ireland. Mill acknowledges in the Autobiography that his pamphlet was not popular, except in Ireland, as I did not expect it to be. But, if no measure short of that which I proposed would do full justice to Ireland, or afford a prospect of conciliating the mass of the Irish people, the duty of proposing it was imperative; while if on the other hand, there was any intermediate course which had a claim to a trial, I well knew that to propose something which would be called extreme was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more moderate experiment.126

Mill conceived of the debate in the House of Commons as 'an opportunity of answering the practical objections to my proposal.'127 In answering those objections he hoped to complement and amplify his tract by showing the fitness of his plan as a cynosure for legislative action. A steady stream of parliamentary criticism of Mill and his scheme preceded his speech of 12 March. The debate, which began on the loth and finished on the i6th, featured frequent references to England and Ireland and its author.128 The tone of the treatment afforded 'the hon-

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 195 ourable Member for Westminster' was established early in the debate. Charles Neate, MP for Oxford City and erstwhile professor of political economy at Oxford, noted that 'most Gentlemen' present 'had read' Mill's 'remarkable work.' Likening Mill to Jack Cade, Neate denounced 'the rashness of his scheme,' and called upon the House to do nothing for Ireland that was 'at variance with those principles of political economy and political wisdom under which England had grown great and prosperous.'129 Allegations of 'confiscation' and animadversions on the deplorable consequences that would surely arise from granting fixity of tenure turned up in several speeches and clearly found a receptive audience, most of whose members owned a large number of acres. The most potent of the parliamentary assaults on Mill's pamphlet came from Robert Lowe. Insisting that Mill had greatly overestimated the Fenian threat, Lowe asserted that Ireland's problems were the result of excessive population and uneconomic holdings. Agricultural improvement in Ireland, he maintained, required an infusion of British capital, provision of which depended on the creation of a stable and secure social environment assuring adequate protection for person and property. Taking up the specific aspects of Mill's proposal, Lowe decreed each in turn unsound in theory and nugatory in practice.130 That Mill had no intention of apologizing for the views expressed in England and Ireland became apparent at the outset of his speech. In reply to Neate's charge that the 'real obstacle to the peace and prosperity of Ireland is the proposal of extravagant and impossible remedies/ Mill declared that 'the real obstacle is ... the persistent unwillingness of the House even to look at any remedy which they have pre-judged to be extravagant and impossible ... Great and obstinate evils require great remedies.'131 Mill's strategy on this occasion included a systematic effort to show that his critics had misunderstood and misrepresented his scheme; in so doing, they had fabricated reproofs that had little or no connection with the actual content of his pamphlet. Some people thought he had urged the state to purchase the land and then sell or lease it to the tenants. This, he informed the House, was not part of his plan.132 Another common misconception was that he wanted compulsion enforced on tenants disinclined to accept perpetuity of tenure. Many Irish tenants, Mill allowed, did not pay a full rent, and some of these might prefer to retain their present arrangement rather than obtain fixity of tenure at a higher rent.133 Mill felt it necessary to assure his audience of landed proprietors that he did not doubt the presence in Ireland of

196 England's Disgrace? patriotic landlords ready to contract an agreement with their tenants more advantageous to the latter than a valuation would provide. He had no desire to interfere with such agreements.134 Apropos his idea that the government could supplant the landlords in collecting the rent charge and distribute to the former owners an annual dividend, Mill emphasized that this option had been inserted for the convenience of the landlords and was not integral to his scheme. In response to the objection that holdings in Ireland were too small to support peasant proprietorship, Mill contended that the virtual cessation of the consolidation movement, coupled with the fact that the number of individual holdings had not diminished over the preceding decade and a half, showed that most were of sufficient size to sustain the occupant.135 Once he had dealt with specific criticisms, Mill undertook a vigorous defence of peasant proprietorship as a valuable mode of social and economic organization in a predominantly agrarian society.136 Mill closed with an appeal for serious consideration of the plan he had advanced, whose fundamental principle could accommodate various combinations of particulars. He instanced modifications the House might reasonably look at: they might prefer to withhold fixity of tenure from tenants of holdings below a certain size, making perpetuity conditional upon an improvement of the land; immediate application of the principle could be confined to arable land. Confessing that he might not be ready to support such 'temperaments' of his scheme, Mill nonetheless wanted it known that in restricting the agency of his principle Parliament would not perforce be nullifying its utility. Mill ended his speech on a hopeful note, confidently predicting that 'as the plan comes to be more considered, its difficulties will, in a great measure, disappear, and the House will be more inclined to view it with favour than at present.'137 To what degree does the speech constitute a retraction of the pamphlet? The difference in tone is certainly striking, and the inevitable focus of the former on the attacks that had been launched on the latter naturally produced a perspective inclusive of elements absent from England and Ireland. Much of the difference arises from the distinct functions Mill assigned the pamphlet and the speech. The purpose of England and Ireland had been to rivet public attention on the need for radical action and to state boldly the form this action should take. Fulfilment of this purpose required a document that was concise, direct, forceful, and uncompromising. The pamphlet propounded Mill's scheme in point-blank terms, unencumbered by a plenitude of detail. In his speech he had to answer objections and defend his plan in light of

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 197 the 'difficulties' others had attributed to it. Nothing in the qualifications and elaborations he felt called upon to offer amounted to a retraction of fixity of tenure as the desideratum for Ireland. Inasmuch as the House of Commons he addressed plainly had no intention of granting fixity of tenure in the form he proposed, Mill thought it his duty to indicate possible ways in which less ambitious renderings could be devised. He carefully refrained from saying that he would support any of the limitations to which he referred. He muffled the militancy of England and Ireland largely for tactical reasons. There was no substantive retreat from the programmatic essence of his pamphlet, of which Mill brought out multiple editions in 1868-9. Leaving aside the issue of policy, the conciliatory strain permeating Mill's speech was influenced far more by the mood of the House of Commons than by the press reaction to his pamphlet. The 'anger against Fenianism/ to which Mill refers in the Autobiography relative to the hostile reception given his 1866 speech on the suspension of habeas corpus in Ireland/38 was now an anger against the author of England and Ireland. The pre-eminence of the landed interest in both Houses of Parliament was manifest, and the publication of Mill's pamphlet had antagonized that interest in the most provocative way. On a matter such as this, the House of Commons could be merciless. We know from a letter Mill sent to Cairnes in December 1869 that his speech of 12 March, unlike that on the 1866 Irish Land Bill, was not a set piece.139 Although he had doubtless mentally prepared himself before entering the House, the tenor and content of much that he had to say took shape in response to what was happening then and there. The House with which he had to deal was fiercely against him, Lowe being merely the lead hound in a pack intent on running him to ground. In the wake of the debate the Pall Mall Gazette remarked: The most signal evidence of political animation displayed by the assembly was its ostentatious disregard of what Mr. Mill had to say. It was not to be expected that his opinions would be much applauded, but it might have been expected that he would be listened to: in fact the House took pains to show him that they did not want to hear him at all.'140 They might not have wanted to hear him, but Mill was not shouted down. Had his tone resembled that of his pamphlet, shouted down he would have been. The atmosphere of the House probably had something to do with John Bright's eagerness to distance himself from Mill's scheme. Before the publication of England and Ireland Bright had been seen as the most threatening adversary of the landed interest and foremost English pro-

198 England's Disgrace? ponent of Irish reform. He had spoken in a spirit similar to Mill's on the bill to suspend habeas corpus in Ireland. On the condition of that country he had stated in the House: 'Let not one day elapse, let not another Session pass, until you have done something to wipe off this blot - for blot it is upon the reign of the Queen, and scandal it is to the civilization and to the justice of the people of this country.'141 Unlike Mill, Bright had gone to Ireland and delivered public addresses focusing on what he deemed the legitimate grievances of the Irish people. He had called for an end to primogeniture and entail, and for the creation of 'a middle class proprietary of the soil.' With regard to absentee landlords he had suggested that were their estates to be purchased and 'sold out farm by farm to the tenant occupiers in Ireland,... it would be infinitely better in a conservative sense, than that they should belong to great proprietors living out of the country.'142 Yet in the debate of March 1868 Bright, speaking the evening after Mill's effort, disavowed any notion of compulsory purchase and emphatically rejected Mill's plan. 'I think it only fair to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster to say, that I do not believe the time is come in Ireland, and I do not believe it ever will come, when it will be necessary to have recourse to so vast and extraordinary a scheme as that which he has proposed to the House.'143 Evidently Bright considered Mill's scheme just as 'vast and extraordinary' after the latter's speech as before it. Both Bright and Mill are mentioned by Lord Stanley - a moderate, thoughtful, and generally fair-minded Conservative (and Irish landlord) who would not oppose the Irish Land Bill of 1870 - in his journal account of this debate. Stanley takes up 'the state of opinion' on the land question in the House of Commons, of which he was a member before his ascent to the Lords in 1869 as the 15th Earl of Derby. He remarks: [T]here is willingness to give a measure of tenant-right, without any strong conviction that it will be of much use, but a steady determination to resist all such projects of confiscation as those of Bright and Mill: perhaps I should say of Mill only, for Bright has greatly softened down his scheme, and now confines it to a plan of voluntary purchase.144

The perception of Bright's position had shifted as a result of the debate; the perception of Mill's position had not changed despite the latter's courteous and placatory demeanour. Stanley was right to think that the substance of Mill's statement did not imply a retreat from the radicalism of England and Ireland. The significance of Stanley's read on the attitude of the House goes

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 199 beyond the issue of where Mill stood in the middle of March. His observation that '[T]here is willingness to give a measure of tenantright' should not be overlooked. (The 'measure of tenant-right' Stanley had in mind would be limited to compensation for improvements.) There had been no vote on the principle of the Liberal bill of 1866, which had aimed to invest tenants with a legal claim to compensation except in cases where a contract said otherwise. Gladstone had been pessimistic about its prospects.145 In early 1867 the Conservative government had brought in a bill similar to the Liberal measure of the preceding year. The ministry's own backbenchers carried an amendment hostile to the principle of the bill, which the government proceeded to drop.146 Probably neither Stanley nor any other considerable parliamentary figure would have said in 1866 or 1867 that 'there is willingness to give a measure of tenant-right.' In light of Mill's pamphlet, compensation for improvements seemed a modest reform. The tumult generated by England and Ireland had altered the political landscape in a sense favourable to 'a more moderate experiment.' Mill had opened up political space to his own right and to Gladstone's left. In the same debate that brought forth Mill's parliamentary defence of his Irish land proposal, Gladstone committed himself to the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. This he surely would have done regardless of Mill's pamphlet, but the venture Mill had in mind made this Gladstonian initiative, broadly hinted at well before March 1868, seem tame indeed. Gladstone also used the occasion of this debate to advance the line he had broached in his speech at Southport: I own I am one of those who are not prepared -1 have not daring sufficient - to accompany my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster ... notwithstanding the powerful and weighty statement with which he supported - or rather introduced - his proposal, for what appeared to me to be the dismissal of the landlords of Ireland. Whether the Irish landlords have done their duty or not I will not undertake to say. But I will say I believe that false legislation, and the miserable system of ascendancy which has prevailed in Ireland have so distorted and disfigured the relations of class to class throughout that country, that, until the evil is effectively cured, we cannot pass a fair judgment upon any of them, or form a conclusion as to what we may reasonably hope to see effected in the future.147

Gladstone's 'conclusion' would differ from Mill's. His freedom to give effect to that conclusion would be enhanced by the impact of England and Ireland,

20O England's Disgrace? 4. MILL, GEORGE CAMPBELL, AND THE IRISH LAND ACT OF iS/O

The publication of Mill's pamphlet and the reaction it elicited certainly did him no good when he unsuccessfully defended his Westminster seat in the general election of November 1868. How much harm it did him it is difficult to say (there were other issues that probably hurt him more).148 The defeat of Mill and many other Radical candidates at the general election did not prevent an impressive Liberal triumph overall, largely on the strength of Gladstonian leadership and the broad-based appeal of Irish Church disestablishment as the single major issue of the campaign. Although Mill warmly supported disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, the cause did not need his aid. As he stated in the Autobiography: The Church question was so vigorously handled by the leaders of the party ... as to require no more from me than an emphatic adhesion.'149 Gladstone gave no lead on the Irish land question and the issue received little attention at the general election except in Ireland. Once the disestablishment of the Irish Church had been accomplished, however, the Liberal government moved towards legislating on the land question. The work that would chiefly influence Gladstone's approach to the problem was not Mill's England and Ireland but George Campbell's The Irish Land (iSeg).1?0 Campbell, an admirer of Mill and a man with extensive knowledge of India/51 visited Ireland in the spring and summer of 1869 to study the land question first hand. Drawing upon this thorough empirical investigation, a powerful intellect, and a conviction that the experience of India could shed much light on the problem of Irish land, Campbell produced two papers that together constitute his small book (190 pages) The Irish Land, which appeared towards the close of 1869. Unlike England and Ireland, The Irish Land is a searching inquiry rich in rigour, subtlety, and precision. Campbell's distinctive contribution was to show the extent to which customary tenure existed in Ireland outside of Ulster and how this usage limited in practice the authority of the law of landlord and tenant recognized by the courts. Legislators, he contended, should seek to fashion a rubric of agarian law rooted in the custom of tenant-right. In effect, this would entail the legalization of fixity of tenure both in Ulster and in those other parts of Ireland where the custom had taken hold. Where the custom had not established a presence, the law of contract should continue to apply. In certain portions of India practices intrinsic to the structure of the indigenous society had guided the East India Company in its formulation, interpre-

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 201 tation, and administration of land law, with highly beneficial results. Parliament should now make reasonable allowance for the force of custom in Ireland with a view to solving the land question and reconciling the Irish people to the Union.152 In contrast with England and Ireland, which trumpeted the radical character of its diagnosis and the 'revolutionary' nature of its cure, The Irish Land articulated a justification for fixity of tenure that could be construed as conservative. In his volume Campbell points out what he sees as the defects in Mill's scheme. Sympathizing with Mill's wish to make fixity of tenure the nucleus of a settlement, Campbell nonetheless thinks he 'goes too far' in coupling fixity of tenure with fixity of rent, thereby turning 'all tenures into perpetuities.'153 The figure at which the rent would be set, he understood Mill to say, would be somewhat above the current charge so as to compensate the landlord for the anticipated periodic increases in rental value he could not accrue under Mill's plan. Although such an arrangement, Campbell suggests, would find ready acceptance in Ulster, in most of Ireland tenants would probably resist paying an increased rent in exchange for a 'prospective benefit: they might have the feeling, which often crops up in India, that the time to come is not safe to count upon.'154 The most objectionable aspect of Mill's scheme, however, concerned the vast outlay of English money that would be needed to recompense those landlords who preferred the ownership of government funds to the collection of rent. Given conditions in Ireland, few landlords would choose to collect the annual rent charge rather than obtain from the state consols yielding an income equal to the rent. Estates in Ireland, Campbell informed his readers, usually sold for eighteen to twenty times the value of the annual rent. This multiple, together with the increase in rent proposed by Mill, would have to be taken into account in calculating the quantity of national treasure to be made over to Ireland's former landlords. On Campbell's reckoning, 'we should have Ireland as a State property at a very heavy cost.'155 In the summer of 1869 Campbell sent Mill a printed copy of his first paper, which included his criticism of the plan outlined in England and Ireland. Mill was deeply impressed: T agree with all your principles, and (as far as I can judge) with your details too.' The difference between them perceived by Campbell was imaginary. 'You think that my proposal would give more to the landlords than the value of their property; but what I proposed was, that there should be a Commission to adjudicate what the present income and future prospects of the estates

2O2 England's Disgrace? was really worth to the landlords, in order to give them that; not a farthing more/156 Retention of the passage critical of Mill's landlord compensation scheme in the published version of The Irish Land implies that this epistolary clarification did not satisfy Campbell. The private circulation of Campbell's paper brought it to the attention of Cairnes, who immediately apprehended its significance. Towards the end of August he urged Leonard Courtney to read it. 'I think you will find that he [Campbell] has a very correct appreciation of the problem to be solved.' Cairnes added that his 'own ideas on the subject are becoming every day more and more revolutionary.'157 A letter Cairnes wrote to Mill in November, after visiting Henry Fawcett at Cambridge, shows the forceful impact of Campbell's work. He reported to Mill that 'Fawcett and I are quite at one on the subject [of Irish land], and both much nearer to you than we were two years ago.' They had concluded that 'in the case of the mass of the small farmers, who are mostly tenants from year to year, no mere tenant compensation scheme will meet the exigency, virtual fixity of tenure must somehow be established.' This should be done 'by legalizing the Ulster tenant right custom, accompanying this measure with a provision for adjusting rents from time to time with reference to the price of agricultural produce.' Larger tenants with leases should be excluded from these arrangements and instead be assured compensation for improvements. Cairnes then asked Mill whether he had seen Campbell's essay, which Cairnes thought 'the ablest' that had yet appeared.158 In reply Mill noted that he had seen Campbell's paper and appreciated 'its great merit.' In an oblique reference to Campbell, Mill expressed some exasperation with the propensity of his critics to speak of his plan 'as a simple proposal to buy out the landlords and hold all the land as the property of the State,' when 'it is palpable to every one who looks at the pamphlet that my proposal was simply a permanent tenure at a fixed rent, and that I only offered to any landlord who disliked this, the option of giving up his land to the Government instead.'159 With regard to Cairnes's substantive observations on the land question, Mill noted: 'I hardly think it possible that you and I should not agree entirely, when discussion has thrown sufficient light upon the details of the question.' (Campbell's pamphlet, it would seem, had provided that 'light,' and had much to do with bringing Cairnes closer to Mill on the issue.) Mill conceded that fixity of tenure was needed by the 'labourer-farmers' rather than by 'capitalist farmers, for whom leases suffice.' Moreover, converting the larger farmers into proprietors could

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 203 create agitation 'on the part of the labourers whom they employ.' All the same, Mill saw a real problem in 'having different laws for large and for small tenants/160 In late November Cairnes told Mill that he had 'lately been in frequent communication' with Campbell and had read the latter's second paper. 'I think you will like it even better than his first.' Cairnes thought Campbell's ideas were having a telling effect 'in some important quarters.' Impressed though he was by Campbell's work, Cairnes did find it wanting in one respect. The weak side of his book seems to me to be in his evasion of the question - what is a "fair" rent? - a question which, it seems to me, holds the very key of the position of settlement by status which he advocates. I have called his attention to this, and he admits the defect, and talks of remedying it when he makes good what he has attempted.' As for Mill's complaint that far too much had been made of his suggestion that the government permit landlords to give up their estates in exchange for consols, Cairnes sensibly observed that the offer 'was such an exceedingly favourable one that it might not unreasonably be assumed it wd be universally accepted.' Cairnes then focused on what he took to be the main difference between the plans of Mill and Campbell. Campbell's plan reserved a limited field of action for landlords, in the way of superintending!,] assisting!,] and to a certain extent controlling the operations of the tenant.' He provided for this 'even in the case of status tenants [i.e., those covered by tenant-right].' The scheme proposed in England and Ireland excluded landlords altogether from estate management. Mill could easily guess which of these Cairnes was partial to without the latter having to say. Addressing Mill's concern about the creation of legal distinctions between different types of tenant, Cairnes admitted the difficulty but believed it could be overcome. A distinction already existed between tenants with leases and those without. It was reasonable to assume that many tenants in the former category were in a position to profit from a covenant made with their landlords. Conversely, it could with equal reason be supposed that occupiers whose holdings fell 'below a certain acreage (whether under lease or not) are not in the eye of the law fitted to contract.' Campbell had presented a compelling rationale for differentiating contract tenants from status tenants. The means for giving practical legal effect to this separation, Cairnes reflected, could be devised from the materials at hand.161 In a letter to Cairnes dated 4 December Mill took up the issue of 'fair' rent. Cairnes had faulted Campbell for failing to specify the criteria to

204 England's Disgrace? be employed for determining such a rent. Mill did not think the problem especially complicated. A fair rent, Mill announced, 'is the highest which any respectable tenant, capitalist or peasant, could afford to give, consistently with proper cultivation of the land according to the standard of good farming received in the country, and this, though difficult to define in general terms, could certainly be determined with considerable accuracy in each particular case, by an experienced land agent or manager, such as many in Ireland are.'162 That Mill could suppose a 'fair' rent in the Irish context could be calculated without reference to the 'custom' of the district is peculiar. Mill had told Campbell that 'Englishmen who know India are the men who can understand and interpret the social ideas and economic relations of Ireland.'163 Those ideas and relations in Ulster and in some other parts of the country acknowledged the tenant's interest in his holding by allowing him to sell that interest to an incoming tenant. When Nassau Senior was told by a landlord that one tenant had sold his interest for five pounds an acre, Senior observed that this meant the landlord was not collecting anything like a full rent. He asked the landlord why he did not increase the rent. '"I cannot", he answered, "ask a larger rent than that which is usually paid in this neighbourhood for land of this quality."'164 The amount he did ask would have been considered the 'fair' rent in that district. W.E. Vaughan concludes that this aspect of tenant-right was 'mainly a capitalization of the rental.'165 Campbell was somewhat evasive on the issue of 'fair' rent because he grasped the intricacy of the problem in a way that Mill did not. Mill did not ask Cairnes to comment on his notion of 'fair' rent and Cairnes took no notice of it in his reply, which instead focused on the formula for discriminating contract tenants from status tenants. On this matter, so critical to the working of Campbell's plan, Mill had explicitly sought Cairnes's opinion.166 The latter specified the concurrent conditions that should define a tenant as belonging to the contract category: (i) the presence of a lease; (2) non-recognition in practice of the tenantright custom; (3) a minimum farm size of fifty acres.167 These criteria may well have seemed apt to Mill, for he did not raise the subject again. His correspondence with Cairnes at this time attests to the extraordinary effect of Campbell's contribution. Cairnes registered this effect in an essay published in the Fortnightly Review, where he speaks of Campbell's scheme as 'incomparably ... the best deserving of attention of any that have solicited public notice.'168 In December Mill read the volume that brought together Campbell's

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 205 two papers (Campbell had sent him a complimentary copy). Mill told the author: 'I wish it was in the hands of everybody who will have any voice in the decision of the Irish Land question, for I have read nothing that comes near it in the fullness and clearness of the knowledge it communicates of the real "situation" in Ireland.' Mill expressed full agreement with the principles of Campbell's plan, including that which would sustain contractual arrangements for lands currently 'administered on the English system.' On a procedural issue, however, Mill struck a note of scepticism. Campbell's scheme provided for the appointment of a commission that would have responsibility for designating individual holdings either 'contract' or 'status' in accordance with the prevailing practice of the locality. Mill feared that the discretionary power vested in this commission would create difficulties when decisions were rendered in particular cases. It would not always be easy to verify what constituted the 'ordinary practice' of the area. Moreover, 'a very large proportion of the discontent of the tenantry is on the part of those who have not yet succeeded in establishing any custom in their favour; and these, if your plan is adopted, will find themselves cut off from hope. I am not shaken in my belief that the land difficulty is a knot which cannot be untied, and will have to be cut.'169 Campbell's side of this correspondence regrettably has not been located, but we learn from a letter Mill wrote to Campbell on 24 January 1870 that the latter did furnish Mill with 'explanations.' Although Mill conveyed his 'great pleasure' at finding that their opinions were virtually identical, these 'explanations' evidently did not alleviate his uneasiness. 'I have no doubt that your plan would work to the ends you intend it, if the Commission were an entirely unprejudiced one. But all the probabilities are that it will be a Landlords' Commission.'170 (Landlords had not cornered the market on prejudice.) Did Mill suppose that the commission whose creation he had recommended in England and Ireland would be less of 'a Landlords' Commission'? The charge of Mill's commission, to be sure, was merely to determine the rental value of land and then fix the annual monetary obligation of tenants. As has been noted, he was not sufficiently conversant with conditions in Ireland to appreciate in full the problem of defining a 'fair' rent. Entrusting a government-appointed commission with this responsibility apparently did not trouble him when he wrote his pamphlet; entrusting such a commission with the taxonomical function prescribed by Campbell did worry him, even though he accepted in principle the validity of distinguishing contract tenants from status tenants. With

206 England's Disgrace? regard to the occupiers who would benefit from the legalization of tenant-right, the valuation proposed in Campbell's plan would not be fixed and final, but would be subject to periodic adjustment. This too caused Mill concern, and he presumably saw this provision as part of Campbell's attempt to 'untie' the 'knot' when it needed 'to be cut.' In a letter to Cairnes of mid-January Mill summed up his misgivings. He voiced his doubts whether, at the point which Irish demands and expectations have now reached, any measure which makes the amount of rent and the grounds of eviction in each individual case depend on the decision of a public authority, can settle the question, or can possibly be final. Every possible suspicion will be thrown on the intentions of the Commission, and every possible hostile criticism will be made on its decisions; and all whom it suffers to be evicted, or whom it requires to pay an increase of rent, will think that they ought to have had fixity of tenure at a valuation made once for all.171

Mill understood that his own plan could not be carried. That he supported the adoption of Campbell's scheme - if it 'gets into operation, no one will be better pleased than I shall be'172 - did not mean that he thought its approach superior to his own. His radical preferences had not receded. The Irish Land Act of 1870 embraced the principle if not the procedural details of Campbell's plan. It gave legal recognition to tenantright in the province of Ulster and elsewhere in Ireland where the custom existed; it allowed tenants to claim compensation for improvements; it provided a scale of compensation for disturbance with respect to tenants who did not hold leases and whose eviction was due to causes other than non-payment of rent.173 Mill welcomed the legislation in a Fortnightly Review article on T.E. Cliffe Leslie's Land Systems and Industrial Economy of Ireland, England, and Continental Countries (1870): 'It is a great step in advance, and a signal triumph of political necessity over inveterate prejudice, that Parliament is now passing a bill which recognises that in Ireland at least, security of tenure is indispensable to enlist the self-interest of the occupier of land on the side of good cultivation, and that this security cannot, in Ireland, be trusted to the operation of contract, but must be provided by law.'174 He adopted a similarly sympathetic but somewhat more neutral tone in his preface to the seventh edition of the Principles of Political Economy (1871). There he informed his readers that he would defer comment on the change 'until

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 207 experience shall have had time to pronounce on the operation of that well-meant attempt to deal with the greatest practical evil in the economic institutions of that country.'175 In the Autobiography Mill is none too modest about his contribution to the passage of the 1870 Irish Land Act. It is most improbable that a measure conceding so much to the tenantry as Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Bill, would have been proposed by a Government, or could have been carried through Parliament, unless the British public had been led to perceive that a case might be made, and perhaps a party formed, for a measure considerably stronger. It is the character of the British people, or at least of the higher and middle classes who pass muster for the British people, that to induce them to approve of any change it is necessary that they should look upon it as a middle course: they think every proposal extreme and violent unless they hear of some other proposal going still farther, upon which their antipathy to extreme views may discharge itself. So it proved in the present instance; my proposal was condemned, but any scheme of Irish Land reform, short of mine, came to be thought moderate by comparison.176

The arrogance and condescension are off-putting, and the conspicuous indisposition to give credit to those who had been instrumental in the framing and passing of this important piece of legislation is unworthy of Mill. Yet the sentiments are readily explicable. Mill had come under heavy fire for his conduct in and out of Parliament (especially the latter). His transgressions included England and Ireland, a zealous pursuit of Governor Eyre, meddling in a Scottish constituency on behalf of Edwin Chadwick, and donating to the campaign chest of Charles Bradlaugh (England's best-known atheist). Westminster voters had rejected Mill at the 1868 general election, a defeat still vivid to his mind when he composed the paragraph in the Autobiography that mentions the Irish Land Act. This paragraph forms part of a disproportionately lengthy section of his final chapter in which Mill sets forth an apologia of his Westminster years.177 Its tone is that of a man in search of vindication, a quest that coloured his discussion of the Land Act. Be this as it may, there is more than a grain of truth in what he says. It is plain that neither the form nor the content of the 1870 Land Act owed much to Mill, and he does not claim otherwise. What he does suggest is that his ambitious and notorious plan had lent a cloak of moderation to all schemes noticeably less radical than his own. No proposal deemed immoderate could gain acceptance. That the government's legislation

208 England's Disgrace? generally escaped such condemnation was due in no small measure to Mill. His pamphlet had set the radical extreme for what could be conceived in English political circles relative to the land question in Ireland. A huge gap separated Mill's notion of what ought to be done from what was commonly considered politically prudent and viable. But the gap was fathomable because Mill had established a boundary. Some of the ground between him and those who were prepared to contemplate compensation for improvements could be taken up by Campbell and Gladstone, ground that would have been more difficult for them to occupy effectively had it not been for Mill. How much credit he deserves for the Land Act of 1870 is arguable. He does deserve some. Just eleven years after its passage, Gladstone would secure enactment of a measure that gave fixity of tenure to Irish tenants. This Mill did not live long enough to see. 5. ENGLISH LAND AND IRISH LAND

In the years between his defeat in 1868 and his death in 1873 Mill devoted most of his political energy to the movements in England for women's suffrage and land reform. The latter engagement compels inquiry into his conception of the relation between land reform in England and Ireland. In 1869 Mill served as chairman of the provisional committee responsible for launching the Land Tenure Reform Association. He took an active part in drafting the program of the association, which was published by Longmans as a pamphlet in the spring of 1871.178 The principal aims of the association were to reduce significantly the concentration of land ownership and to promote forms of land use favourable to the public interest. Reforms advocated by the association included the removal of impediments to the selling and buying of land; the quashing of primogeniture; the curtailment of strict settlement; the taxation of the unearned increment of land rent (i.e., the increase in rental value arising from social and demographic change), certainly the most radical plank in the association's platform (proprietors who found this prospect unpalatable were to be given the option of selling their land to the state at market value); the fostering of cooperative agricultural ventures and peasant proprietorships on land acquired by the state; and the preservation of common land and the conservation by the state of land possessing unusual beauty. Apart from his involvement in establishing the association and formulating its program, Mill also wrote articles and delivered speeches in support of the cause.179

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 209 Mill's activities in this area are the practical expression of theoretical propositions he consistently upheld in the Principles of Political Economy.180 In the decade before Palmerston's death the prospects for land reform had been dim; in the years directly after his death the issue of parliamentary reform had dominated the political scene. The terms on which that issue had been settled, and the manner of its settlement, had stimulated the aspirations of Radicals. Although the experience of the 1868 general election had somewhat subdued their buoyancy, they still felt warranted in pressing reforms whose promise had been heightened by the coming of borough household suffrage. Mill's connection with the land issue in the late sixties and early seventies is easy to account for. He had the independence, economic and political, to act as he pleased. Although he understood that his most cherished reforms could not be achieved in the near future, he believed conditions were auspicious for identifying and utilizing the fulcrums on which ambitious progressive movements could turn. His concern for distributive equity had invariably thrown into high relief the acute concentration of landed wealth in England. In Mill's mind that wealth had enabled the aristocracy to exercise a generally nefarious political influence. Effective land reform would break up the concentration of landed wealth, make land accessible to resourceful and industrious members of society hitherto deprived unfairly of its enjoyment, sap the political sinews of the aristocracy, and generally advance the welfare of the community as a whole. Although an anti-landlord bias and a due regard for distributive justice clearly informed Mill's Irish and English land initiatives, that bias and regard had mingled for decades without engendering anything comparable to England and Ireland or the Land Tenure Reform Association. The 1867 Reform Act contributed to both the writing of the pamphlet and the founding of the organization, but it is necessary to note that there is virtually no temporal overlap between these two undertakings. If everyone knew where Mill stood on Irish land in the years after the publication of England and Ireland, the pamphlet was the reason why. By the time he took up English land reform in earnest, Mill had pretty well ceased to comment publicly on the Irish land question. He brought out a handful of editions of England and Ireland in the interval between his March 1868 speech in the House of Commons and the passage of the 1870 Irish Land Act, the changes from one edition to the next being inappreciable. Otherwise, he had little to say on the topic. In any event, Mill commonly treated the land questions of Eng-

210 England's Disgrace? land and Ireland each in isolation from the other. Elemental differences argued against lumping them together for either analytical or programmatic ends. The economic and social structures of the two societies varied widely. Opportunities for employment outside the agricultural sector were plentiful in England and sparse in Ireland. The social, religious, and cultural distance between landlords and farmers in Ireland had no analogue in England. The political, economic, and social predicament of Irish landlords was infinitely more precarious than that of their English counterparts (the economic fragility of English agriculture did not become apparent until the late-Victorian years). Many occupiers in Ireland were essentially peasant farmers, a species of cultivator almost unknown in England. In his 1870 essay on 'Leslie and the Land Question,' Mill drew a sharp distinction between the fundamentals of the land problem in the two countries. The land question in England ... is unlike the land question in Ireland; but the evils of the system are different in kind rather than inferior in degree. The land question in Ireland is a tenant's question; and what the case principally requires is reform of the conditions of tenure. The land question in England is mainly a labourer's question.'181 An answer to the problem in England was for the state to move into the land market with a view to acquiring property that could then be leased to small individual cultivators and cooperative groups of labourers.182 Even if Gladstone had not legislated on Irish land, the Land Tenure Reform Association would have excluded Ireland from its purview. Given his disapproval of the aristocracy, it is tempting to assume that Mill envisaged the emasculation of landlordism in Ireland as a vital preliminary to the English campaign against the power and privilege of the landed elite. Such an assumption would not be misplaced in the case of Karl Marx, who wrote, in November 1869, that '[t]he primary condition of emancipation here [England] - the overthrow of the English landed oligarchy - remains impossible because its position here cannot be stormed so long as it maintains its strongly entrenched outposts in Ireland.'1*3 Hence, Marx favoured the establishment of an autonomous Ireland that would act to extirpate those 'outposts.' Mill, of course, would not have minded the cancellation of English landlordism in Ireland. Yet it would be a mistake to think that his wish to reduce the sway of the oligarchy had much to do with the writing of England and Ireland. Nothing he says implies a belief that the dissolution of landlordism in Ireland would seriously weaken the landed elite in England. Removal of its diseased Irish lateral root would not impair the function-

The Fenian Challenge and Irish Land 211 ing of its English taproot. Mill's attack on the prerogatives of Irish landlords did not arise from a comprehensive strategy aimed at dismantling the power of the oligarchy, and the political filaments connecting his land-reform initiatives for Ireland and England were incidental rather than fundamental. The mission of England and Ireland was not to prepare the ground for a political and economic assault on the British landed elite. Its task was to instruct political opinion in England on the means by which the Union could be anchored in a morally sustainable foundation.

Epilogue

The economic experience of Ireland during the 18703 featured notable highs and lows, the latter of which would have a momentous impact on Irish politics and society. Agriculture fared reasonably well during the better part of the decade, the nominal value of output reaching a peak in 1876.1 In the late 18703, however, the Irish economy went into a tailspin. Poor weather in 1877 resulted in a dismal harvest, and conditions improved only moderately in 1878. The exceptionally cold and wet summer of 1879 greatly reduced agricultural yields. The impact on both the tillage and pastoral sides of the economy was severe, the latter depending on fodder crops whose price had risen owing to the shortfall. Meanwhile the unprotected British market, vital to the health of Irish agriculture, was being penetrated by ever greater quantities of American grain. The precipitous decline in the fortunes of Irish agriculture placed intense pressure on Irish tenants, many of whom proved receptive to a mobilization drive spearheaded by Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell, leaders of uncommon ability. The formation of the Irish Land League marked a major turning point. The League called upon landlords to grant a sharp reduction in rents and urged tenants to withhold payment from landlords who refused to comply. Rent strikes, evictions, widespread agrarian violence, and suspension of habeas corpus were among the weapons employed in the land war of 1879-82, a struggle that galvanized the forces of Irish nationalism and contributed mightily to the emergence of a formidable Home Rule movement under Parnell's leadership.2 It cannot be assumed that legislation modelled on the scheme proposed by Mill would have staved off the land war or discouraged the rise of a powerful Home Rule movement. The international economic forces and technological changes in trans-

Epilogue 213 port responsible for the steep and lingering decline in the rental value of arable land in the late nineteenth century fell outside the experience of the mid-Victorians. The premises from which Mill worked could readily accommodate temporary fluctuations in agricultural rent; they could not be reconciled with an irreversible depreciation in the value of tillage. In fixing the annual monetary obligation of Irish tenants, the commission whose creation Mill proposed in England and Ireland was expected to give some weight to the anticipated rise in land values. The suppositions of such a commission would inevitably have produced payment levels well above what Irish tenants could have afforded in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. In the crisis of the late 18705 and early i88os tenants would have demanded that their 'fixed' annual charge be significantly lowered. Had the government and the landlords resisted this demand, a land war would have ensued. The passage of such a measure as Mill recommended, of course, would have placed the onus more on the government than on the landlords, and an adjustment meeting the requirements of the tenants might have been forthcoming before a confrontation of major proportions materialized. What can be said with confidence is that an unadjusted Millian settlement would not have averted a land war. Mill's posthumous association with the land war is striking. Lord Dufferin's fears concerning the effects of Mill's radicalism in Ireland proved warranted. As Philip Bull has said in his recent study of the Irish land question, Mill 'contributed substantially to a renewed assertion in Ireland of instinctive and inherited beliefs about land occupancy.'3 Donald Jordan has persuasively argued that the 'eradication of landlords and the establishment of peasant proprietors was at the centre of the League's code.'4 He also observes that Mill's 'writings were often quoted from land agitation platforms.'5 Commenting on the rhetoric wielded by both land agitators and Irish politicians, Roy Foster states: 'the John Stuart Mill view of Irish landlordism as unprincipled in historicist terms, and indefensible in terms of current practice, was whole-heartedly adopted, with no allowance made for variations.'6 T.W. Moody asserts that Mill's writings became 'the bible of landreformers.'7 The circumstances in which these writings were invoked would have dismayed Mill, who had hoped to see English politicians grapple effectively with the land issue so as to preclude the onset of a daunting social and political crisis. The crisis of the land war palpably exposed the deficiencies of the 1870 Land Act and led to the passage of possibly the most radical piece

214 England's Disgrace? of legislation enacted by Parliament during the course of the nineteenth century. The far-reaching Irish Land Act of 1881 granted to the Irish tenant, leaseholders excepted, the 'three Fs': a fair rent to be determined by an independent Irish Land Commission; fixity of tenure, provided the tenant paid his rent; and free sale of the tenant's interest in his holding. In practice this statute gave legal recognition to the precept of dual ownership; it also incontrovertibly shifted the balance of power in favour of the tenantry. A great many of the latter used the legislation to secure a rent reduction of sizable dimensions.8 Although this legislation did not offer landlords the opportunity to turn their land over to the state in exchange for consols, it was otherwise every bit as radical as what Mill had proposed in his pamphlet and essentially consistent with his aims. Whether he would have quibbled over some of the details it is impossible to know. In the circumstances of 1881 he might well have seen the wisdom in not fixing rents in perpetuity. Mill had wanted radical Irish land reform to exemplify the value of the Union to Ireland and the virtues of English statecraft in the postSecond Reform Act era. Irish opinion had little cause to see the 1881 Land Act in this light. Gladstone could not get the measure through his cabinet without first acquiescing in a Coercion Act giving the Irish executive the authority to arrest at will those suspected of acts against person or property. In the House of Commons the Parnellites furiously opposed this legislation, which was also vehemently condemned by supporters of the land agitation in Ireland. Even the Land Act met with criticism from these quarters, chiefly for its failure to extend its protective clauses to tenants in arrears. That the government was prepared to go as far as it did to satisfy the demands of the tenantry could be attributed less to the beneficence of English politicians than to the strength and belligerence of Parnell and the Land League. Parnell successfully hitched the land agitation to the Home Rule cause and the 1881 Land Act did nothing to stifle the increasingly potent nationalist movement. It is possible that a premise fundamental to Mill's analysis in England and Ireland was mistaken. A conclusive settlement of the land question came in 1903 when the British government agreed to subsidize a wholesale buy-out of Irish landlords in the interests of the tenants, thereby converting the latter into owner-occupiers.9 The means utilized to accomplish this end differed from the scheme Mill put forward in 1868; the end itself was compatible with his objectives. Long before 1903 Irish aspirations for self-government had subsumed the land question. A

Epilogue 215 final answer to the land question, when it arrived, did not diminish the capacity of nationalist forces to sustain a drive towards self-rule. Had such an answer been given in 1868, and Ireland's tenants then become owner-occupiers, would the Union have been safe? Mill thought so, but there is room for doubt. In the crucial area of sentiment, Victorian England, Scotland, and Wales constituted Britain. What did England and Ireland constitute? The English and Irish remained peoples apart, even when they happened to live on the same island. Daniel O'Connell, no champion of radical land reform, had mounted a major campaign for a repeal of the Union several decades before Parnell emerged as a powerful force. The Anglo-Irish War of 1919-21 was fought decades after Parnell's demise and quite some time after the resolution of the land question. Whatever was done for Ireland would not weaken the pulse or still the voice of Irish nationalism.10 A decisive settlement of the land question, even in 1868, could not have answered England's Irish question. Indeed, it is arguable that giving Irish tenants economic independence would have whetted their appetite for political independence and enhanced their ability to gratify that appetite. Although Mill's record on the Irish question is of uneven quality, his leaving a record worthy of close and extensive examination distinguishes him from nearly all of his English contemporaries whose work did not include official responsibility for the government of Ireland. Posterity will not best remember J.S. Mill for his connection with the problem Ireland posed to England. In light of the turn taken by this problem in the decades after his death, Mill would have got small satisfaction from the knowledge that he had given Ireland cause to remember him best for this connection.

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Notes

INTRODUCTION

1 Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee (1885-1900), new edition, 22 vols. (Oxford, 1921-2), 13: 399. 2 K. Theodore Hoppen, Ireland since 1800: Conflict and Conformity (London, 1989), 14. 3 See 'Ireland/ in John M. Robson, ed., Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6 (Toronto, 1982): 59-98. 4 For a powerful study of Mill's political activity during the 18305, see Joseph Hamburger, Intellectuals in Politics: John Stuart Mill and the Philosophic Radicals (New Haven and London, 1965). 5 E.D. Steele, 'J.S. Mill and the Irish Question: The Principles of Political Economy, 1848-1865,' Historical Journal 13 (1970): 216-36, and 'J-S. Mill and the Irish Question: Reform and the Integrity of the Empire, 18651870,' Historical Journal 13 (1970): 419-50. 6 John Stuart Mill on Ireland, ed. R.N. Lebow (Philadelphia, 1979). For Lebow's introductory essay, see pages 3-22. 7 Lynn Zastoupil, 'Moral Government: J.S. Mill on Ireland,' Historical Journal 26 (1983): 707-17. 8 T.A. Boylan and T.P. Foley, 'John Elliot Cairnes, John Stuart Mill and Ireland: Some Problems for Political Economy/ Hermathena, no. 135 (1983): 96-119. 9 'J.S. Mill and Irish Land: A Reassessment/ Historical Journal 27 (1984): 111-27. 10 'John Stuart Mill and the Irish University Question/ Victorian Studies 31 (1987): 59-77; 'John Stuart Mill and the Catholic Question in 1825,' Utilitas 5 d993): 49-67-

2i8 Notes to pages 6-11 11 See W.C. Bush, 'Population and Mill's Peasant Proprietor Economy/ History of Political Economy 5 (1973): 110-20; C.J. Dewey, The Rehabilitation of the Peasant Proprietor in Nineteenth-Century Economic Thought/ History of Political Economy 6 (1974): 17-47; David Martin, The Rehabilitation of the Peasant Proprietor in Nineteenth-Century Economic Thought: A Comment/ History of Political Economy 8 (1976): 297-302; and Michael E. Bradley, 'Mill on Proprietorship, Productivity, and Population: A Theoretical Reappraisal/ History of Political Economy 15 (1983): 423-50. CHAPTER i: MILL AND IRELAND IN THE AGE OF O'CONNELL

1 For Mill's discussion of this problem, see Autobiography and Literary Essays, ed. John M. Robson and Jack Stillinger, C W i (Toronto, 1981): 85. 2 For an excellent monograph on O'Connell's leadership of the Irish party, see Angus Macintyre, The Liberator: Daniel O'Connell and the Irish Party (New York, 1965). 3 Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 69. 4 James E. Crimmins, Secular Utilitarianism: Social Science and the Critique of Religion in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford, 1990), 138-48. 5 Bentham Papers, University College, University of London, Box CVI, folder 7, sheets 76-80. 6 Crimmins, Secular Utilitarianism, 138. 7 Ibid., 144; for an illuminating discussion of the Bentham/O'Connell relationship, with particular reference to Bentham's endeavour to bring O'Connell within the orbit of British radicalism between 1828 and 1831, see James E. Crimmins, 'Jeremy Bentham and Daniel O'Connell: Their Correspondence and Radical Alliance, 1828-1831,' Historical Journal 40 (1997): 359-87. 8 Crimmins, Secular Utilitarianism, 145; Bentham's Handbook of Political Fallacies, ed. Harold A. Larrabee (1952; repr., New York, 1971), 91,173, 175-79 Quoted in Hamburger, Intellectuals in Politics, 41. 10 See R.D. Collison Black, Economic Thought and the Irish Question 1817-1870 (Cambridge, 1960), 209-10, and Donald Winch, Classical Political Economy and Colonies (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 51. 11 Cormac 6 Grada, Ireland: A New Economic History, 1780-1939 (Oxford, 1994), 4312 Ricardo to Mill, 10 Aug. 1819, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. Piero Sraffa, 8 (Cambridge, 1973): 50. 13 Mill to Ricardo, 14 Aug. 1819, in ibid., 52-3.

Notes to pages 11-15 14 15 16 17 18 19

20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29

30

21

9

James Mill, 'State of the Nation/ Westminster Review 6 (1826): 277. For a discussion of J.S. Mill's essay, see above, pp. 13-29. James Mill, 'State of the Nation,' 277. Ibid., 277-8. Ibid., 264. Quoted in Hamburger, Intellectuals in Politics, 41. It should be noted that J.S. Mill took strong exception to this characterization of his father. The statement is attributed to Bentham by the editor of his Works, John Bo wring (see 'Memoirs of Bentham,' in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols. [Edinburgh, 1838-43], 10: 450). In response the younger Mill composed a vindication of his father, which appeared as a letter to the editor of the Edinburgh Review in January 1844. See Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 533-8. Bibliography of the Published Writings of John Stuart Mill, ed. Ney MacMinn, J.R. Hainds, and James MacNab McCrimmon (Evanston, 111., 1945), 7. The essay, simply titled 'Ireland/ forms part of Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 59-98. Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 121. Appendix I ('Bibliographic Index'), in ibid., 706. Ibid., 121. Ibid., 117-19. Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, C W 6: 61, 63, 64,69, 80. Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 121 and 123. 'Parliamentary History/ Edinburgh Review 44 (1826): 470. For the growth and rising confidence of the Catholic movement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, see Thomas Bartlett, The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question, 1690-1830 (Dublin, 1992). For a study of the Catholic Association, see Fergus O'Ferrall, Catholic Emancipation: Daniel O'Connell and the Birth of Irish Democracy (Dublin, 1985); a still valuable study is that of J.A. Reynolds, The Catholic Emancipation Crisis in Ireland (New Haven, 1954); for an illuminating exploration of the issue's resonance in English politics, see G.I.T. Machin, The Catholic Question in English Politics, 1820 to 1830 (Oxford, 1964); for a recent monograph on the Catholic emancipation controversy, see Wendy Hinde, Catholic Emancipation: An Anglo-Irish Episode (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); see also Oliver MacDonagh, The Hereditary Bondsman: Daniel O'Connell, 17751829 (London, 1988), 205-80. For the government's view of the problem, see Brian Jenkins, The Era of Emancipation: British Government of Ireland, 1812-1830 (Kingston and Montreal, 1988), 216-27. It should be noted that the government had had

220 Notes to pages 16-18

31

32 33 34 35 36 37

to cope during the early 18205 with extensive agrarian violence and Rockite disturbances, which were only beginning to subside when the Catholic Association was coming forward. O'Connell's acceptance of the 'wings' produced some chagrin within his own ranks. It can be inferred from what he did and said that he did not think state stipends for the clergy would significantly undermine the attachment of the priests to the Catholic masses. As for the forty-shilling freeholders, O'Connell argued that the landlords controlled their votes and that Catholic political interests would not be damaged by their disfranchisement. The leading authority on the Irish electoral system has written: 'Briefly put, between 1793 and 1829 the Irish franchise in the counties was open to all those who "possessed" a freehold worth forty shillings a year. But of course the great bulk of county voters did not actually "own" any land at all, they merely held it by means of a lease "for lives" which lasted until the last-named "life" nominated in the lease (there were usually three) had died. Such leases ... were accounted "freeholds" for electoral purposes. Landlords could obviously grant and refuse them at will' (K. Theodore Hoppen, Ireland since 1800: Conflict and Conformity [London, 1989], 31), In assessing O'Connell's acceptance of the 'wings,' S.J. Connolly observes: 'The most straightforward explanation of O'Connell's decision ... lies in the temptations held out by Burdett's relief bill itself. In 1825 O'Connell was fifty years old, barred by the penal laws from further advancement in his profession, and burdened by heavy debts. The passage of Burdett's bill would have meant a successful culmination to twenty years of political labour, and at the same time opened the way to a transformation of his personal circumstances' ('Mass Politics and Sectarian Conflict, 1823-30,' W.E. Vaughan, ed., Ireland under the Union, I, 1801-1870 [Oxford, 1989] [A New History of Ireland, vol. 5], 96). Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: Ivii. Ibid., 63. Ibid. Ibid., 66. Ibid. Ibid. This insight is of considerable interest in view of the distinction drawn by recent historians of the emancipation movement between the aspirations of its leaders and the expectations of their followers. In referring to the leadership, Brian Jenkins remarks (somewhat uncharitably perhaps): 'Lawyers, merchants, and journalists, whose rise in society, advancement in their professions, or entry into political life had been frustrated by religious discrimination, all had an axe to grind' (Era of

Notes to pages 18-19 221

38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45

Emancipation, 216). As for the masses, S.J. Connolly states: The vision of emancipation that moved the mass of the catholic population was in many cases radically different from that held by the small-town notables and strong farmers who dominated the local rent committees and liberal clubs. Reports from different parts of the country spoke of the expectations that the launching of the new agitation had raised among the rural poor: that the Catholic Association was in fact preparing the way for a new rebellion, that the "rent" was to be used to purchase arms, that after emancipation had been granted the land was to be redivided ... The Catholic Association and its leaders were presented not as the exemplars of a new style of democratic and constitutional agitation, but as the champions of an oppressed Irish Catholicism, who would strike down the traditional protestant enemy' ('Mass Politics and Sectarian Conflict,' 92-3). Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 66. Ibid., 66-7. Ibid., 67. Mill gives this theme more uninhibited and sardonic treatment in two debating speeches, one of 1824, and the other of 1826. There is a close resemblance in the passages concerned, and only one need be quoted here. 'It has sometimes been disputed whether the evils of anarchy or those of despotism be the worst: but I never heard it disputed that the two together are a greater evil than either of them singly: from one half to the whole of Ireland has been suffering under the two together, ever since it was admitted to the blessings of the British Constitution. With all that insecurity of person and property which had been supposed peculiar to a state of anarchy, is combined a degree of arbitrary power in the functionaries of government which has scarcely been exceeded under the most absolute monarchy. Yet Ireland is in full enjoyment of our excellent Constitution, and not only of that but of an excellent system of law, enforced by an excellent unpaid magistracy, all combined to uphold an excellent landed aristocracy' (Journals and Debating Speeches, ed. John M. Robson, 2 vols. [Toronto, 1988], CW26: 362; see also ibid., 268-9). For Mill's essay on the Edinburgh Review, see Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 291-325. Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 68. Ibid. For an insightful analysis of the problem, see Hamburger, Intellectuals in Politics. For a valuable discussion of the meaning of 'the people' in postNapoleonic War constitutional debate, see Jonathan Fulcher, The English People and Their Constitution after Waterloo: Parliamentary

222 Notes to pages 20-5

46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

70 71 72

Reform, i8i5-i7/ in James Vernon, ed., Re-reading the Constitution: New Narratives in the Political History of England's Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1996), 52-82. See Machin, Catholic Question in English Politics, 42-64; for a somewhat different perspective on Peel's response, see Boyd Hilton, The Ripening of Robert Peel/ in Michael Bentley, ed., Public and Private Doctrine: Essays in British History Presented to Maurice Cowling (Cambridge, 1993), 64. Hoppen, Ireland since 1800, 23. 'Parliamentary History/ Edinburgh Review 44 (1826): 472. Ibid. Ibid., 473. Ibid., 474. Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: i2On. Ibid., 113. 'Parliamentary History/ 470. Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 69. Ibid. Ibid., 69-70. Ibid., 70. Ibid., 71. Ibid. Ibid., 71-2. Ibid., 73. Ibid., 74. Ibid. See Hansard, new ser., 12: 590 (18 Feb. 1825). Ibid., 12: 591. Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 74-6. Ibid., 73. See N.E. Hirnes, 'John Stuart Mill's Attitude to Neo-Malthusianism/ Economic History, supplement to the Economic Journal 4 (1929): 457-84, and F.E. Mineka, 'John Stuart Mill and Neo-Malthusianism, 1873,' Mill News Letter 8 (1972): 3-10. See Newspaper Writings, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, 4 vols. (Toronto, 1986), CW22: 80-5, 85-91, 95-7, 97-100. Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW6: 84. The recent literature on demographic change in Ireland during the second half of the eighteenth century and first half of the nineteenth century raises more questions than it answers. For a survey of that literature, see

Notes to pages 26-32 223

73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

86 87 88 89 90

91

92

J. Mokyr and C. 6 Grada, 'New Developments in Irish Population History, 1700-1845,' Economic History Review 37 (1984), 473-88. Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, C W 6: 85. Ibid., 87. Ibid. Ibid., 88. Ibid. See K. Theodore Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 18321885 (Oxford, 1984), i. Connolly, 'Mass Politics and Sectarian Conflict/ 96. Journals and Debating Speeches, CW 26: 363. Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 89. See above, and Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 121. The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill, 1812-1848, ed. Francis E. Mineka, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1963), CW 12: 27-8. Newspaper Writings, CW22: 230. For analyses of Mill as Radical journalist, see two essays co-authored by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson: '"Impetuous Eagerness": The Young Mill's Radical Journalism/ in Joanne Shattock and Michael Wolff, eds., The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings (Leicester, 1982), 59-77, and 'Private and Public Goals: John Stuart Mill and the London and Westminster Review,' in Joel H. Wiener, ed., Innovators and Preachers: The Role of the Editor in Victorian England (Westport, Conn., 1985), 231-57. See Hamburger, Intellectuals in Politics. Earlier Letters, C W 12: 134. Ibid., 12: 145. Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 169. This preoccupation with the problem of authority is most evident in the newspaper articles that constitute 'The Spirit of the Age/ which appeared in the Examiner in 1831; see Newspaper Writings, CW 22: 227-34, 238-45, 252-8, 278-82, 289-95, 3°4~7/ 312-16. For a suggestive treatment of Mill's thoughts in this realm, see Richard B. Friedman, 'An Introduction to Mill's Theory of Authority/ in Mill: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. J.B. Schneewind (Notre Dame, Ind., 1969), 379-425. For an illuminating examination of the tithe question, see Macintyre, The Liberator, 167-200. For a valuable canvassing of the overall Irish policy of Lord Grey's administration, see A.D. Kriegel, The Irish Policy of Lord Grey's Government/ English Historical Review 86 (1971), 22-45. Newspaper Writings, CW23: 605.

224 Notes to pages 32-8 93 94 95 96

Ibid., 610. Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW6:168. Newspaper Writings, CW 23: 608. For O'Connell's motion and lengthy supporting speech, see Hansard, 3rd ser., 22:1092-1158 (22 Apr. 1834); see also Oliver MacDonagh, The Emancipist: Daniel O'Connell, 1830-47 (London, 1989), 98-100. 97 Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, C W 6: 215. 98 Ibid. 99 According to W.E. Vaughan, Ireland's contribution to imperial revenue during the nineteenth century in fact considerably exceeded the cost of the services she received, including military expenditure in Ireland; see 'Ireland c. 1870,' in Ireland under the Union, 1,1801-1870,784-94. 100 Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW6: 216. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid. 104 For a useful discussion of recent works on eighteenth-century Ireland, see T.C. Barnard, 'Historiographical Review: Farewell to Old Ireland,' Historical Journal 36 (1993): 909-28. 105 Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW6: 217. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid., 217-18. 108 Earlier Letters, CW 12: 365. 109 Newspaper Writings, CW23: 397-8. no Ibid. 111 See M.A.G. 6 Tuathaigh, Thomas Drummond and the Government of Ireland, 1835-41 (Dublin, 1977), 4. 112 The Emancipist, 127. 113 Mill's political disposition at this time is reflected in the following essays: 'Parliamentary Proceedings of the Session' (July 1835), 'Postscript: The Close of the Session' (October 1835), and 'State of Politics in 1836' (April 1836), in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW6: 295-308, 309-17, 319-28. 114 Ibid., 301-2; the appropriation clauses of the bill were thrown out by a large majority in the House of Lords, leading the government to abandon the measure. The idea that the government might be looking for a definitive confrontation with the Upper House does not merit serious attention. Mill and the London Review had a connection with a different aspect of the Irish church question through an article by George Cornewall Lewis that advocated 'concurrent endowment' of the Anglican, Catholic, and

Notes to pages 38-44 225 Presbyterian churches in Ireland. See D.A. Smith, The Birth of "Concurrent Endowment": George Cornewall Lewis, the London Review and the Irish-Church Debate, 1835-6,' English Historical Review 114 (1999): 658-63. 115 Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW6: 324-5. 116 Ibid., 315-16. 117 The Greville Memoirs (Second Part): A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852, ed. Henry Reeve, 3 vols. (London, 1885),1: M (28 July 1837). For a thorough consideration of the problems facing the Whigs during the last several years of the 18303, see Ian Newbould, Whiggery and Reform, 1830-1841 (Stanford, 1990), chap. 9, 210-41. 118 For a full discussion of Mill's doctrinal politics at this time, see Hamburger, Intellectuals in Politics. 119 Hansard, 3rd ser., 46: 69-70 (20 Nov. 1837). 120 Mill to George Cornewall Lewis, 24 Nov. 1837, Earlier Letters, CW 12: 360. 121 'Radical Party and Canada: Lord Durham and the Canadians/ in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 412. 122 From the diary of John Allen, in The Holland House Diaries, 1831-1840. The Diary of Henry Richard Vassall Fox, Third Lord Holland, with Extracts from the Diary of Dr. John Allen, ed. Abraham D. Kriegel (London, 1977), 375. Allen was 'Lord Holland's occasional amanuensis and, at Holland House, dilettante, clerk, and librarian-in-residence' (xiv). 123 Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 314. 124 'Reorganization of the Reform Party/ in ibid., 477-8. 125 'Radical Party and Canada/ in ibid., 411-12. 126 'Reorganization of the Reform Party/ in ibid., 494. 127 For Mill's wasted investment in Durham, see 'Radical Party and Canada' (January 1838), 'Lord Durham and His Assailants' (August 1838), and 'Lord Durham's Return' (December 1838), in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 405-35, 437-43, 445-64. The episode is discussed in some detail by Hamburger, Intellectuals and Politics, and by William Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817-1841 (Oxford, 1979), 338-405. 128 Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society, ed. John M. Robson, CW 10 (Toronto, 1969): 134-6, and variants, 135-6. CHAPTER 2: THE FAMINE

i

See Bibliography of the Published Writings of John Stuart Mill, ed. MacMinn et al, 60-7. The series on Ireland claims the great bulk of the pages

226 Notes to pages 44-6

2 3 4

5 6 7 8

9 10

11 12 13 14

between 879 and 1035 in the penultimate volume of Mill's Newspaper Writings (CW 24). Janice Carlisle, John Stuart Mill and the Writing of Character (Athens, Ga., 1991), 151. Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 243. The secondary literature treating Mill's response to the famine at any length is sparse. Lynn Zastoupil emphasizes the theme of moral regeneration in explaining the significance of Mill's Morning Chronicle project: 'Moral Government: J.S. Mill on Ireland/ Historical Journal 26 (September 1983): 707-17; Carlisle, in Mill and the Writing of Character, 144-52, asserts that Mill conceived of his Morning Chronicle series as an important instance of applied 'ethology'; Peter Gray usefully places Mill's response within a wide-ranging analysis of the political ramifications of the famine in his valuable study Famine, Land and Politics: British Government and Irish Society, 1843-1850 (Dublin and Portland, 1999), see esp. 156-9; Ann Robson presents a brief historical overview in her 'Introduction' to Mill's Newspaper Writings, CW 22: Ixxx-lxxxii. Essays on Politics and Society, ed. John M. Robson, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1977), CWi8:i98. Earlier Letters, CWi3: 483. A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, ed. John M. Robson, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1973), CW8: 926. Mill and the Writing of Character, 144-52. Much of what Carlisle says about the relation between Mill's notion of 'ethology' and the Morning Chronicle articles is persuasive, but I do not think she has adequately shown why Mill decided to make famine-ridden Ireland the subject of ethological analysis. In particular, I am sceptical of her idea that Mill's consciousness of his own 'marginality' drew him to 'the geographically and politically marginal Irish' (145). Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 233. For James Mill's account, see his Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, ed. J.S. Mill, 2 vols. (2nd ed., London, 1869). The first edition of James Mill's Analysis was published in 1829. J.S. Mill's most extended treatment of association psychology is found in An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, ed. John M. Robson, CW 9 (Toronto, 1979). Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 141. Ibid., 270. System of Logic, C W 8: 861-74. Ibid., 869.

Notes to pages 46-52 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

45

227

Ibid., 905. Ibid., 873. Ibid., 517. Ibid., 869-70. John Skorupski, John Stuart Mill (London, 1989), 264. System of Logic, C W 8: 915-16. Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 65, 67. Ibid., 179. Newspaper Writings, CW 24: 1098. System of Logic, CW8: 900-4. Newspaper Writings, CW22, and Essays on Economics and Society, ed. John M. Robson, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1967), CW 4. See Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 189; these essays form part of Essays on Economics and Society, CW 4. Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 243. Essays on Economics and Society, CW 4: 323. See System of Logic, CW 8: 943-52. Essays on Economics and Society, CW 4: 312. Ibid., 333. Samuel Hollander, The Economics of John Stuart Mill, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1985), 2: 672. Newspaper Writings, CW24: 989. See Bruce L. Kinzer, 'John Stuart Mill and the Experience of Political Engagement/ in Michael Laine, ed., A Cultivated Mind: Essays on }.S. Mill Presented to John M. Robson (Toronto, 1991), 182-214. Earlier Letters, CW 13: 507. Ibid., 544. Ibid., 642. Newspaper Writings, CW24: 903, 959, 967. Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 243. Earlier Letters, C W 13: 705. See Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 227. See Gray, Famine, Land and Politics, 156. Newspaper Writings, C W 22: Ixxviii. See Stephen Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain: The Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill, 1981), 74-7, and Kenneth Bourne, Palmerston: The Early Years, 1784-1841 (New York, 1982), 485-6. For evidence of this familiarity see a letter from Buller to Doyle of 21 December 1845, the salutation being 'Dear Doyle.' This letter is located in the Easthope Papers at Duke University, and it suggests that Buller him-

228 Notes to pages 52-4

46 47

48 49

50 51

self was writing the occasional leader for the Morning Chronicle. In 1848, when Easthope was looking to sell the Chronicle, Harriet Taylor refers to his having made 'an overture' to Mill (see Harriet Taylor to John Taylor, 18 Jan. 1848, in The Complete Works of Harriet Taylor Mill, ed. Jo Ellen Jacobs [Bloomington, 1998], 467). Had Easthope been inclined to sell the paper before Mill wrote his series on the famine, would he have then known the latter well enough to have made such 'an overture'? I have not found the evidence necessary to answer this question. Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 133, 203, 205, 225. See Joseph Hamburger, .'Introduction/ Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, C W 6: xliv; for a study of Buller's politics, see David A. Haury, The Origins of the Liberal Party and Liberal Imperialism: The Career of Charles Buller, 1806-1848 (New York, 1987). Gray, Famine, Land and Politics, 163. For the reports of the bog commissioners, see Parliamentary Papers, 1810, 10: 389; 1810-11, 6: 579; 1813-14, 6:167. For discussion of the waste lands in the reports of 1819,1830,1835, and 1836, see Parliamentary Papers, 1819, 8: 462; 1830, 7: 45-6; 1835, 32:11; and 1836, 30:19. 'Report from Her Majesty's Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of the Law and Practice in Respect of the Occupation of Land in Ireland/ Parliamentary Papers, 1845, X9: 3°See C.J. Dewey, The Rehabilitation of the Peasant Proprietor in Nineteenth-Century Economic Thought/ History of Political Economy 6 (1974): 17-47-

52 Thomas Malthus, Principles of Political Economy, 2nd ed. (London, 1836), 377. 53 See Dewey's discussion of the issue in 'Rehabilitation of the Peasant Proprietor/ 17-19. 54 See above, chap. i. 55 Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections (London, 1882), 86n. 56 Dewey, 'Rehabilitation of the Peasant Proprietor/ 22. 57 Richard Jones, An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation (London, 1831), vii. 58 'On the Definition of Political Economy/ in Essays on Economics and Society, C W 4: 326; the most comprehensive analytical account of Mill's method is found in Hollander, Economics of John Stuart Mill, chaps. 2-3. 59 'Miss Martineau's Summary of Political Economy/ in Essays on Economics and Society, CVV4: 226. 60 For Jones's discussion of 'cottier rents/ see Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, chap. 5,143-55.

Notes to pages 54-7 229 61 The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill, 1849-1873, ed. Francis E. Mineka and Dwight N. Lindley, 4 vols. (Toronto, 1972), CW15: 699. 62 Newspaper Writings, CW24: 911. 63 Over-Population and Its Remedy: or, an Enquiry into the Extent and Causes of the Distress Prevailing among the Labouring Classes of the British Islands, and into the Means of Remedying It (London, 1846), 400-40. 64 Dewey in fact ignores both Mill's Morning Chronicle articles and Thornton's Over-Population and Its Remedy; his basis for comparison is Mill's defence of peasant proprietorship in the Principles of Political Economy and Thornton's A Plea for Peasant Proprietors. 65 David Martin, 'The Rehabilitation of the Peasant Proprietor in NineteenthCentury Economic Thought: A Comment/ History of Political Economy 8 (1976): 297-302. 66 W.T. Thornton, 'His Career at the India House/ in ]ohn Stuart Mill: Notices of His Life and Works, ed. H.R. Fox Bourne (London, 1873), 22. 67 Essays on Economics and Society, CW4: 389. 68 For Mill and French thought, see Iris Wessel Mueller, John Stuart Mill and French Thought (Urbana, 111., 1956); J.C. Cairns, 'Introduction/ Essays on French History and Historians, ed. John M. Robson, C W 20 (Toronto, 1985); and Marion Filipiuk, 'John Stuart Mill and France/ in Laine, ed., A Cultivated Mind, 80-120. 69 For the use made of these works in Mill's Morning Chronicle series, see Newspaper Writings, CW24: 968, 969-70, 970-1, 984, 985-7, 988-9, 990, 1008,1010. 70 See ibid., 897; von Raumer's work was translated into English by Mill's friend Sarah Austin. 71 Ibid., 890. 72 Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 519; in late 1869 Mill corresponded with George Campbell, a man of considerable Indian experience, regarding the Irish question, upon which Campbell had recently completed an important work. In his letters to Campbell, Mill was emphatic on the link between knowledge of India and understanding of Ireland: 'Englishmen who know India are the men who can understand and interpret the social ideas and economic relation of Ireland'; There is nothing like Indian experience for enabling men to understand Ireland ... My own official knowledge of Indian matters has greatly helped me to put the right interpretation on Irish phenomena' (Additional Letters of John Stuart Mill, ed. Marion Filipiuk, Michael Laine, and John M. Robson, CW 32 [Toronto, 1991]: 209, 214). 73 Lynn Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, 1994), 184,131.

230 Notes to pages 58-9 74 This discussion follows the authoritative account on James Mill and Indian land revenue presented in Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford, 1959), 81-93. See also On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, in The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, i (Cambridge, 1951): 67-84, and James Mill, The History of British India, 2nd ed., 6 vols. (London 1820), 5: chaps. 5-6. An interesting recent study by Javed Majeed, Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill's 'The History of British India' and Orientalism (Oxford, 1992), argues that Mill's object in writing this history 'was to attack the powerfully dominant ideology of British society at the time and his History used British India as a matrix in which to do so' (200). 75 For a study of the other side of the coin, i.e., 'how Ireland served as a colonial prototype, a provider of policy precedents that the British drew upon in governing India,' see S.B. Cook, Imperial Affinities: Nineteenth Century Analogies and Exchanges between India and Ireland (New Delhi, 1993); the quotation is from p. 7. 76 Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 5, 27; Principles of Political Economy, CW 2: 321. 77 Perhaps it is worth mentioning that Charles Trevelyan, Assistant Secretary to the Treasury at the time of the famine and an opponent of Irish peasant proprietorship, had spent some dozen years in India in official positions before entering the Whitehall bureaucracy; conversely, Poulett Scrope, MP, political economist, and proponent of Irish waste-land reclamation and peasant proprietorship, had no affiliation with India. 78 Cormac 6 Grada, The Great Irish Famine (Basingstoke, Hampshire, 1989), 11. 79 Until fairly recently the historiography on the Irish famine lacked weight and range. This is no longer the case. Some of the more notable works include: Austin Bourke, 'The Visitation of God'? The Potato and the Great Irish Famine (Dublin, 1993); Mary E. Daly, The Famine in Ireland (Dundalk, 1986); James S. Donnelly's essays in Ireland under the Union, 1,1801-1870, chaps. 12-19; The Great Famine: Studies in Irish History, 1845-1852, ed. R. Dudley Edwards and T. Desmond Williams (Dublin, 1956); Donal A. Kerr, 'A Nation of Beggars'? Priests, People, and Politics in Famine Ireland, 1846-1852 (Oxford, 1994); Christine Kinealy, This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine, 1845-1852 (Dublin, 1994); Joel Mokyr, Why Ireland Starved: A Quantitative and-Analytical History of the Irish Economy, 1800-1850 (London, 1983); Cormac 6 Grada, The Great Irish Famine, and Black '47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory (Princeton, 1999); and Cecil Woodham Smith, The Great Hunger: Ireland, 1845-1849 (London, 1962). Helpful historiographical surveys of recent contributions and trends

Notes to pages 60-1 231

80 81 82 83

84

include SJ. Connolly, 'Revisions Revised? New Work on the Irish Famine/ Victorian Studies 39 (1996): 205-16; Mary Daly, 'Revisionism and Irish History: The Great Famine/ in D. George Boyce and Alan O'Day, eds., The Making of Modern Irish History: Revisionism and the Revisionist Controversy (London and New York, 1996), 71-89; and Cormac 6 Grada, 'Making Irish Famine History in 1995,' History Workshop, no. 42 (1996): 87-104. Newspaper Writings, CW24: 880. Hoppen, Ireland since 1800, 38. Newspaper Writings, 0^24: 890. The degree to which Mill's representation of the Irish economy corresponded to the reality is not the issue here, but some economic historians would certainly consider his description a distortion. Respecting the 'incentive' theory, Joel Mokyr states: 'Ireland, on the whole, was predominantly an economy of self-employed tenant farmers. Demesne agriculture, in which the landlords or their agents were in complete control and in which labor was hired, was rare. Farmers and graziers employed some workers, but there seems to be little evidence that somehow the way in which they supervised and monitored the labor force was radically different than in England. Task work in agriculture, except perhaps during harvesting, was never easy due to the difficulties involved in measuring the quality of output. In any event, the weakest part of the Irish economy was the mass of self-employed smallholders and the notion that they somehow had insufficient incentive to work hard is difficult to accept. If terms such as "exertion" and "industry" mean increasing output by increasing labor input, there is little reason to doubt that tenants would have been able to keep their additional earning whether they had leases or not' (VWiy Ireland Starved, 219). Newspaper Writings, CW24: 891. Although it has been estimated that agricultural output per worker in Ireland on the eve of the famine was perhaps just half that in Britain, Cormac 6 Grada notes that '[r]esource constraints rather than laziness and inefficiency may well have been responsible for this gap.' 6 Grada points out that in the decades before the famine Ireland managed both to increase exports and to feed a rapidly growing population. He suggests that 'in view of the historiographical tradition which maintains that the Irish agriculturist was either too shiftless to achieve much or too persecuted to be industrious, the most significant point is that mass starvation was avoided for so long' (The Great Irish Famine, 30, 29). Neither 6 Grada nor anyone else will have the last word on this issue.

232 Notes to pages 61-7 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

Newspaper Writings, CW24: 895. Ibid., 896-8. Ibid., 900. Ibid., 934-5. Ibid., 951. Ibid., 1060-1. Ibid., 996. Ibid., 977; for an insightful discussion of the moral thrust of Mill's Morning Chronicle series, see Zastoupil, 'Moral Government.' 93 Newspaper Writings, CW 24: 915 and 974. 94 Cormac 6 Grada, Ireland: A New Economic History, 1780-1939 (Oxford, 1994), 7495 Newspaper Writings, CW24: 973. 96 See above, chap. i. 97 Newspaper Writings, CW24: 903. 98 Principles of Political Economy, CW 2: 334. 99 See, e.g., George Cornewall Lewis, On Local Disturbances in Ireland (London, 1836), 319-32. 100 For an illuminating discussion of economic theory and policy vis-a-vis a poor law for Ireland, see R.D. Collison Black, Economic Thought and the Irish Question, 1817-1870 (Cambridge, 1960), 86-133. 101 Macintyre, The Liberator, 211. 102 See leaders in The Times, 19, 20, 24, 25, 28 Aug., and i Sept. 1846. 103 See 'Notes on the Newspapers,' in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 203-4. 104 Ibid. 105 Principles of Political Economy, CW 3: 962. 106 See James Mill, Political Writings, ed. Terence Ball (Cambridge, 1992), 171-3; Principles of Political Economy, CW 3: 961. 107 Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, C W 6: 203. 108 Newspaper Writings, CW24: 930; George Nicholls, the author of the report upon which the 1838 poor-law legislation was based, had himself stated: The occurrence of a famine, if general, seems to be a contingency altogether above the powers of a Poor Law to provide for' ('Report of Geo. Nicholls, Esq., on Poor Laws, Ireland,' Parliamentary Papers, 1837, 51: 38). 109 Signs of this estrangement were conspicuous. A passage from Charles Greville's political diary offers a notably blunt instance of what many were thinking: The state of Ireland ... is deplorable, not so much from the magnitude of the prevailing calamity as from the utter corruption and demoralisation of the whole people from top to bottom; obstinacy, igno-

Notes to pages 68-72 233

no 111 112 113 114

115 116

117 118 119 120 121 122

123 124 125

126 127 128

ranee, cupidity, and idleness overspread the land. Nobody thinks of anything but how they can turn the evil of the times to their own advantage. The upper classes are intent on jobbery, and the lower on being provided with everything and doing nothing. It sickens and disgusts me, and it is necessary to bear constantly in mind how much we have to reproach ourselves for letting Ireland become so degraded and corrupt to endure the spectacle with any sort of patience' (The Greville Memoirs [Second Part]: A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852, ed. Henry Reeve, 3 vols., 2: 426 [4 Nov. 1846]). Economist, 3 Oct. 1846,1283. The Times, 14 Dec. 1846, 4. Newspaper Writings, CW24: 886; see also 24: 999. Ibid., 1006. For Scrope's motion and speech, see Hansard, 3rd ser., 85: 1198-1206 (28 Apr. 1846); the quotation is from col. 1204. In August Scrope withdrew his bill, Russell indicating in the Commons that his government was sympathetic to its principle but needed additional time to develop such a measure as part of a broader Irish program (ibid., 88: 346 [5 Aug. 1846]). Newspaper Writings, CW24: 911. Scrope worked tirelessly in 1846 to get his message across; see How Is Ireland to be Governed (London, 1846), and Letters to the Right Honourable Lord John Russell, on the Expediency of Enlarging the Irish Poor-Law to the Full Extent of the Poor-Law of England (London, 1846). See Morning Chronicle, 9 Nov. 1846, 6; 18 Dec. 1846, 3; and 25 Dec. 1846, 6. Newspaper Writings, CW24: 991. Ibid., 944. Ibid., 999. Ibid., 944. For Senior's position, see his essay 'Proposals for Extending the Irish Poor Law/ Edinburgh Review 84 (October 1846): 267-314. For the Spectator, see 12 Dec. 1846,1187, and 27 Feb. 1847, 2°6; for the Examiner, see 27 Feb. 1847,129; f°r ^e Economist, see 3 Oct. 1846,1282. Newpaper Writings, CVV24: 1005. Earlier Letters, CW 13:705. For The Times's negative commentary on proposals favourable to reclamation of the waste lands, see 21 Nov. 1846, 4; i Feb. 1847, 4; and 4 Feb1847, 4Economist, 10 Oct. 1846,1317. Examiner, 17 Oct. 1846, 658. Spectator, 17 Oct. 1846, 998.

234 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142

143 144 145 146 147 148 149

Notes to pages 72-8

Ibid., 24 Oct. 1846,1009. Ibid., 7 Nov. 1846,1068. Globe, 22 Dec. 1846, 2. Economist, 31 Oct. 1846,1419. Spectator, 7 Nov. 1846,1068. See Freeman's Journal, 16 Oct. 1846, 2; 19 Oct. 1846, 4; 23 Oct. 1846,2; 4 Nov. 1846,2; 21 Nov. 1846, 3. Ibid., 16 Oct. 1846,2. Ibid., 17 Oct. 1846,2. Ibid., 20 Oct. 1846,2. Ibid., 23 Oct. 1846,2. Ibid., 9 Nov. 1846, 2. For this development, see Richard Davis, The Young Ireland Movement (Dublin, 1987). Nation, 24 Oct. 1846, 40. The Freeman's Journal was incensed by the calumnies heaped upon the Irish masses by much of the English press: 'Let them [the Irish people] not be told that they are a race of idle beggars, who will not work for bread, where neither the work nor the bread exist' (29 Dec. 1846, 2). Dublin Evening Mail, 6 Nov. 1846, 2. Evening Packet, 10 Nov. 1846, 2. Dublin Evening Post, 24 Nov. 1846, 3. Ibid., 10 Dec. 1846, 2. Ibid., 12 Dec. 1846, 6; 19 Dec. 1846, 4. Ibid., 22 Dec. 1846, 2. Ibid., 26 Dec. 1846, 2.

150 See Gray, Famine, Land and Politics, 159,160. 151 Earlier Letters, CW13: 705. 152 Robert John Montague, the author of a valuable 1976 Oxford dissertation entitled 'Relief and Reconstruction in Ireland, 1845-49,' has made extensive use of this correspondence, and seems entirely unaware of Mill's association with the Chronicle series on Ireland. He states: 'No economic writer of authority advocated peasant proprietorship until J.S. Mill published his Principles of Political Economy in 1848' (94). I am grateful to Peter Gray, who has also examined this correspondence, for his impression that no mention is made of Mill. 153 Hansard, 3rd ser., 88: 346 (5 Aug. 1846). 154 See Gray, Famine, Land and Politics, 159-61. 155 Hansard, 3rd ser., 89: 442-3 (25 Jan. 1847). 156 For the favourable response of Irish MPs, see ibid., 89: 641,719, 721,737 (i Feb. 1847).

Notes to pages 78-83 235 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169

Ibid., 89: 383 (27 Jan. 1847). Ibid., 89: 629-30, 647-8, 674 (i Feb. 1847). Ibid., 89: 763 (2 Feb. 1847). Ibid., 89: 688 (i Feb. 1847). Earlier Letters, CW13: 707. Newspaper Writings, CW24: 1061-2. Ibid., 1058-9. Hansard, 3rd ser., 92: 216 (30 Apr. 1847). Earlier Letters, CW 13: 710. Ibid., 711-15. Ibid., 715. Newspaper Writings, CW25: 1098. 6 Grada, Great Irish Famine, 46. 6 Grada's recently published major study of the famine reiterates this judgment: '[W]ith the winding up of the soup kitchens in October 1847 Westminster left the Irish virtually to their own devices' (Black 47 and Beyond, 77). 170 For harsh criticism of the government's performance with respect to the famine, see O Grada, Great Irish Famine, James Donnelly's chapters (1219) on the famine in Ireland under the Union, 1,1801-1870, and Christine Kinealy, This Great Calamity. For a study of the famine less hostile to the record of the British government, see Mary Daly, The Famine in Ireland. 171 'Report and Minutes of Evidence from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on Colonization from Ireland,' Parliamentary Papers, 1847, 6: 522. 172 Prliamentary Papers, 1845,19: 53. 173 Newspaper Writings, CVV24: 900. 174 Ibid., 1018. 175 Principles of Political Economy, CW y. 998. 176 See Mokyr, Why Ireland Starved, 19 (table 2.4). 177 Ibid., 175. 178 Hansard, 3rd ser., 85: 1204 (28 Apr. 1846). 179 See Thornton, Plea for Peasant Proprietors, 230-3. 180 Some modern theoretical work lends credibility to the associations made by Mill and Thornton between peasant proprietorship and certain behavioural tendencies. See W.C. Bush, 'Population and Mill's Peasant Proprietor Economy,' History of Political Economy 5 (1973): 110-20; and Michael E. Bradley, 'Mill on Proprietorship, Productivity, and Population: A Theoretical Reappraisal,' History of Political Economy 15 (1983): 423-50. 181 Mokyr, Why Ireland Starved, 174. 182 Black, Economic Thought and the Irish Question, 189. 183 Newspaper Writings, CW24: 897. 184 Charles Trevelyan, The Irish Crisis (London, 1848).

236 Notes to pages 83-9 185 Ibid., 201. 186 Ibid., 178. 187 For Trevelyan's hostility to a state-organized reclamation project and to peasant proprietorship, see ibid., 172-7. 188 For the providentialist strain in English social and economic thought during the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century, see Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795-1865 (Oxford, 1988). This strain occupies a prominent place in Peter Gray's treatment of the English response to the famine; see Famine, Land and Politics. 189 Newspaper Writings, CW 24: 979. 190 Ibid., 929. 191 Ibid., 1029-30. 192 George Bernstein, 'Liberals, the Irish Famine and the State/ Irish Historical Studies 29 (1995): 513-36; the quotation is from p. 536. CHAPTER 3: IRELAND AND THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

1 The key chapters of the Principles are 9 and 10, titled 'Of Cottiers' and 'Means of Abolishing Cottier Tenancy' respectively, CW 2: 313-36, although the three chapters preceding these are all relevant to the topic, especially 6 and 7, both of which examine peasant proprietorship. Appendices B and C of the Toronto edition of the Principles, y. 988-1005, are devoted to the heavy revisions Mill made in chapter 10. For the pertinent pages in Considerations on Representative Government, see Essays on Politics and Society, CW 19: 550-1. 2 E.D. Steele, 'J.S. Mill and the Irish Question: Reform, and the Integrity of the Empire, 1865-1870,' Historical Journal 13 (1970): 419-50. 3 E.D. Steele, 'J.S. Mill and the Irish Question: The Principles of Political Economy, 1848-1865,' Historical Journal 13 (1970): 236. The article runs from pages 216 through 236. 4 6 Grada, Ireland: A New Economic History, 224; for Irish emigration over the entire period of the Union, see David Fitzpatrick, Irish Emigration, 1801-1921 (Dublin, 1984). 5 A fine recent study of the post-famine agricultural economy is Michael Turner, After the Famine: Irish Agriculture, 1850-1914 (Cambridge, 1996). 6 See J.M Robson's 'Textual Introduction' to the Principles, CW 2: Ixvi. 7 Davis, The Young Ireland Movement, chaps. 3-5. 8 See above, pp. 100-1. 9 J.S. Donnelly, 'Excess Mortality and Emigration,' in Vaughan, ed., Ireland under the Union, 1,1801-1870, 353.

Notes to pages 89-94

2

37

10 No official estimates of emigration were compiled before 1825, and those produced for the 1825 to 1851 period were of a crude character. See Deirdre Mageean, 'Nineteenth-Century Irish Emigration: A Case Study Using Passenger Lists/ in P.J. Drudy, ed., The Irish in America: Emigration, Assimilation, and Impact (Cambridge, 1985), 40. 11 For a valuable study of the Tenant League, see J.H. Whyte, The Tenant League and Irish Politics in the Eighteen-Fifties (Dundalk, 1966). 12 The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-187), ed. Francis E. Mineka and Dwight N. Lindley, 4 vols. (Toronto, 1972), CW 14: 5. Mill recounts this episode in the Autobiography, CW i: 272. 13 W.E. Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants in Mid-Victorian Ireland (Oxford, 1994), 2414 Ibid. 15 Vaughan puts the number of clearances for these years at over 400; see ibid., 26. 16 See P.M.A. Bourke, 'The Agricultural Statistics of the 1841 Census of Ireland: A Critical Review/ Economic History Review 18 (1965): 380, and Donnelly, 'Landlords and Tenants/ in Ireland under the Union, I, 18011870, 344. 17 Turner, After the Famine, 21. 18 Quoted in Black, Economic Thought and the Irish Question, 38. 19 Donnelly, 'Landlords and Tenants/ 348. 20 For a useful article on this depression, see J.S. Donnelly, The Irish Agricultural Depression of 1859-64,' Irish Economic and Social History 3 (1976), 3354; see also 6 Grada, Ireland: A New Economic History, 251, and Turner, After the Famine, 25. 21 Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants, 23. 22 Ibid., 156, 157. 23 Donnelly emphasizes the importance of this factor in 'The Irish Agricultural Depression of 1859-64. 24 See Emmet Larkin, The Consolidation of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1860-1870 (Chapel Hill, 1987), 102-3. 25 Those keen to understand the technical legal issues addressed by this legislation can consult J.C. Brady, 'Legal Developments, 1801-79,' in Vaughan, ed., Ireland Under the Union I, 1801-1870, 458-63. 26 Ibid., 459. 27 It should be noted that most Irish farmers occupied their land on a yearly tenancy and did not have leases; the government wanted to encourage landlords and tenants to move towards formal written agreements, but did not propose to require such engagements. 28 Hansard, 3rd ser., 149:1088 (14 Apr. 1858). For a wide-ranging examina-

238 Notes to pages 94-9

29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

tion of the history of freedom of contract in England, see P.S. Atiyah, The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract (Oxford, 1979). Atiyah treats the midVictorian decades as the heyday of freedom of contract. Hansard, 3rd sen, 177: 823 (27 Feb. 1865). Ibid., 171:1375 (23 June 1863). See above, chap. 2, pp. 77-8. Harold Perkin observes that the Villain was strict settlement, the device by which, through successive resettlements at the marriage of the eldest son in each generation, an estate could be kept out of the market ostensibly forever' ('Land Reform and Class Conflict in Victorian Britain,' in Perkin's The Structured Crowd: Essays in English Social History [Brighton, Sussex, and Totowa, NJ, 1981], 111). For a discussion of these views and their exponents relative to land reform, see ibid., 104-19. Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by John Bright, M.P., ed. James E. Thorold Rogers, 2 vols. (London, 1868), i: 347. See Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants, 10. See, e.g., Black, Economic Thought and the Irish Question, 30. Earlier Letters, CW13: 704. Principles, CW 2: 326. Ibid., 319. Ibid., 229-30. Ibid., 3: 991. Ibid., 2: 328. Ibid., 329. For Mill's appreciation of the importance of security in preserving a stable and rational society, see ibid., 3: 880, and Utilitarianism, in Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society, CW 10: 251. Lucas and Gavan Duffy evidently chose to ignore this paragraph when identifying Mill as one who favoured their program. Principles, CW y 996. Ibid., 768. Ibid. 'J-S. Mill and the Irish Question: The Principles of Political Economy,' 228. Chapters 6 and 7 of Book II, C W 2: 252-96. See above, p. 97. Principles, CW y. 996-1000. Ibid., 2: 326-7. Ibid., 3:1001. In 1842 Mill had written a long and highly complimentary letter to

Notes to pages 100-3

55

56 57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66 67

2

39

William Lovett, the London Chartist leader and head of the National Association for Promoting the Political and Social Improvement of the People. He said he could not endorse universal suffrage, 'in the present state of civilization at least.' Mill would give the working classes 'the choice of only a part, though a large & possibly progressively increasing part of the legislature but that part you should elect conformably to all the six points of the Charter & I should object as much as any of you to surrendering one iota of any of them' (Earlier Letters, CW13: 533). For the response to Chartism in 1848, see John Saville, 1848: The British State and the Chartist Movement (Cambridge, 1987). For a valuable consideration of the reception of Mill's Principles, see N.B. de Marchi, The Success of Mill's Principles,' History of Political Economy 6 (1974), 119-57. One reviewer who had high praise for Mill's treatment of Ireland in the Principles was Walter Bagehot: 'Principles of Political Economy/ Prospective Review 4 (1848), 489-95. Examiner, 29 April, 275-6. Ibid., 275. Newspaper Writings, CW 25: 1097. Ibid., 1098. Ibid., 1096. Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 503. In light of these comments, it is no surprise that in 1849 Mill published his essay 'Vindication of the French Revolution of February 1848'; see Essays on French History and Historians, ed. John M. Robson, CW2O (Toronto 1985): 317-63. Principles, CW 2: 325. Ibid. Ibid., 326. Ibid. Ibid., 329. Miscellaneous Writings, ed. John M. Robson, CW 31 (Toronto, 1989): 409. Mill did mention Ireland in his 'Memorandum of the Improvements in the Administration of India During the Last Thirty Years' (1858). In discussing the difficulty faced by the East India Company in reforming the agrarian system prevalent 'in the most fertile and valuable portion of the Indian territory,' Mill observes that 'the Government has had, during the last sixty years, no more power of correcting the evils of this system, than the Government of the mother country had, during the same period, of remedying the evils of a similar system in Ireland' (Writings on India, ed. John M. Robson, Martin Moir, and Zawahir Moir, CW3O [Toronto, 1990]: 96).

240 Notes to pages 103-8

68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81 82

83 84 85 86 87

That Mill still thought of Ireland as a colony is obvious from this statement, which nonetheless does not suggest that Ireland was much on his mind at this time. See Journals and Debating Speeches, CW 27: 639-68. See Mill to Harriet Taylor Mill, 7 Feb. 1854, Later Letters, CW 14:152. See Ann P. Robson, 'Mill's Second Prize in the Lottery of Life/ in Laine, ed., A Cultivated Mind, 215-41. For a perspicacious discussion of this transformation and what followed from it, see Stefan Collini, Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1850-1930 (Oxford, 1991), 121-69. Essays on Politics and Society, CW 19: 549. Ibid., 550-1. This is a central theme of K. Theodore Hoppen's splendid work Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 1832-1885. Dennis F. Thompson has written an illuminating analysis of Considerations on Representative Government as a work of political thought: John Stuart Mill and Representative Government (Princeton, 1976). Black, Economic Thought and the Irish Question, 181. Principles, CW 2: 331. Autobiography, CW i: 266. Essays on Equality, Law, and Education, ed. John M. Robson, CW 21 (Toronto, 1984): 136, 137,139. Autobiography, CW i: 266. A useful study of Cairnes and the American conflict is Adelaide Weinberg, John Elliot Cairnes and the American Civil War (London, 1970). To his great friend William Nesbitt, who also taught at Galway and was married to the sister of Cairnes's wife, Cairnes reported the occasion of his first personal contact with Mill. After the meeting, 'J.S. Mill happened to be going the same way, and actually took my arm & walked down Pall Mall with me! You wd suppose from his manner that I was conferring the compliment upon him' (Cairnes to Nesbitt, 9 May 1859, Mill-Taylor Collection, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics, vol. XLIX, item 23, fol. 53). Later Letters, CWi4: xxxviii. Ibid., 15: 738-9; for Mill's article see The Slave Power,' in Essays on Equality, Law, and Education, CW2i: 143-64. Later Letters, CW 15: 785. Ibid., 787. Ibid., 959, 967. For a lucid and acute treatment of the Mill-Cairnes relationship apropos questions central to classical political economy, see Jeff

Notes to pages 109-14 241

88 89 90 91 92

93

94

95 96 97 98 99

100

101 102 103

Lipkes, Politics, Religion and Classical Political Economy in Britain: John Stuart Mill and His Followers (New York, 1999), 44-68, and 83-100. Later Letters, CW15: 949. Ibid., 959. Ibid., 965. Ibid., 967. Cairnes to Mill, 13 Oct. 1864, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 16, fols. 98-9. Appendix H of the Toronto edition of the Principles prints those sections of the letters exchanged between Mill and Cairnes that pertain to the revisions for the 6th edition. See CW y. 1038-95. For the printed version of the passage relevant to Ireland in Cairnes's 13 October letter, see this appendix, 1040. In a letter of 18 September, Cairnes had pronounced Thornton's A Plea for Peasant Proprietorship 'a very perfect essay' (Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 15, fol. 93). For Cairnes's letter of 6 December, see Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 18, fols. 110-16; the comments dealing specifically with Ireland span fols. 111-14. For the printed version of these comments, see Appendix H, Principles, CW y. 1056-7. See appendix H, Principles, CW y. 1039. Ibid., 1075-6. Ibid., 1076-7. Ibid., 1077. Ibid., 1078. This discussion hints at the diversity of arrangements in place in the agricultural sector. W.E. Vaughan states 'that many landlords were farmers, that many tenants were labourers, and that many labourers had land' (Landlords and Tenants, 8). Appendix H, Principles, CW 3: 1078. With regard to the relative advances in agricultural income made by landlords, farmers, and labourers between the early 18505 and the early 18705, Turner concludes that the labourers did 'least well of the three broad classes of society' (After the Famine, 205). Discussing the state of the labourers in the 18605, Vaughan remarks that 'they had the worst houses; their wages increased, but usually not as rapidly as agricultural prices; their wages were the lowest in the United Kingdom, the highest in Ireland being lower than the lowest in Britain' (Landlords and Tenants, 7). Appendix H, Principles, CW y. io8on. See Cairnes to Mill, 23 Dec. 1864, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 19, fol. 118; for printed version, see appendix H, Principles, CW y. 1074. In late autumn 1864 Longfield delivered an address on the land question

242 Notes to pages 114-19 to the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, of which he was president. In his letter to Cairnes of 12 December Mill mentions having read the address, presumably in the Daily News, which carried reports on 29 November (p. 5), and i December (p. 2). See Later Letters, CW15: 967. Formal publication of Longfield's address came in early 1865: 'Address by the President, Hon. Judge Longfield, at the Opening of the Eighteenth Session,' Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland 4 (January 1865): 129-46; 'Appendix to the foregoing Address/ ibid., 146-54. 104 Appendix H, Principles, CW y. 1080-1. 105 Ibid., 1081-2. 106 Vaughan observes that 'tenant right was as valuable as the fee simple and tenants had as substantial an interest in their land as the landlord' (Landlords and Tenants, 71). 107 Appendix H, Principles, CW y. 1082-3. 108 Ibid., 1083-4. 109 Ibid., 1084; for Cairnes's amplification of these views, see his 'Fragments on Ireland,' Political Essays (London, 1873), 141-51. no Appendix H, Principles, CW y 1085-6. It is perhaps noteworthy that Cairnes at no point says that Ireland had recently experienced unusual economic difficulties. The agricultural 'depression' of 1859-64 brought a sharp deterioration in conditions relative to the half-decade that preceded it. Economic historians know that the mid-Victorian period as a whole was passably kind to Irish agriculture, the first half of the 18605 being the only protracted bad patch. From the perspective of an intelligent observer of 1864, however, there was no reason to suppose that the tough times of recent years constituted a deviation from the norm. Had Ireland not recovered nicely from the depression of the early 18605 economic historians might well think of the mid-i85Os as an aberration. in Later Letters, CW 16: 985. 112 Principles, CW2: 334. 113 Ibid., 332-3n. 114 Ibid., 334-6. 115 For the section added in 1865, see ibid., 332-6. 116 Ibid., 334. 117 The 6th edition went to press in eajly February. See Later Letters, CW 16: 989118 Essays on Politics and Society, CW 19: 550-1. 119 The Times, 15 Oct. 1864, 8. 120 Later Letters, CW 15: 977.

Notes to pages 120-3

2

43

CHAPTER 4: THE IRISH UNIVERSITY QUESTION

1 For a full account of the 1865 Westminster election, see Bruce L. Kinzer, Ann P. Robson, and John M. Robson, A Moralist In and Out of Parliament: John Stuart Mill at Westminster, 1865-1868 (Toronto, 1992), chap. 2. 2 For Mill's attitude towards party, see Bruce L. Kinzer, 'J.S. Mill and the Problem of Party,' Journal of British Studies 21 (1981): 106-22. 3 Chapter 3 of A Moralist In and Out of Parliament examines issues relevant to Mill's hopes for a radicalization of the Liberal party and his conception of Gladstone's role relative to this aim. 4 For an excellent study of Peel's Irish policy, see Donal A. Kerr, Peel, Priests and Politics: Sir Robert Peel's Administration and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland (Oxford, 1982). 5 For an institutional history of Trinity, see R.B. McDowell and D.A. Webb, Trinity College Dublin, 1592-1952 (Cambridge, 1982). 6 The literature on the establishment of the Queen's Colleges includes T.W. Moody, The Irish University Question in the Nineteenth Century,' History 43 (1958): 90-109; T.W. Moody and J.C. Beckett, Queen's Belfast, 1845-1949: The History of a University, 2 vols. (London, 1959), i: chaps, i and 2; and Kerr, Peel, Priests and Politics, 290-351. 7 The key votes on the subject of cooperation with the government on the university proposal were only narrowly carried by Cullen, whose uncompromising position on the issue met with the disapproval of Daniel Murray, then Archbishop of Dublin; for a full account of the synod, see Emmet Larkin, The Making of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 18501860 (Chapel Hill, 1980), 3-57. 8 For the establishment of the Catholic University, see Fergal McGrath, Newman's University: Idea and Reality (Dublin, 1951). It was in connection with the founding of the Catholic University and his rectorship that Newman delivered the lectures and wrote the essays that make up his book The Idea of a University (1873). A disillusioned Newman gave up his post and returned to England in 1858. 9 K. Flanagan, The Godless and the Burlesque: Newman and the Other Irish Universities,' in J.D. Bastable ed., Newman and Gladstone: Centennial Essays (Dublin, 1978), 244, 246. 10 Emmet Larkin, The Consolidation of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1860-1870 (Chapel Hill, 1987), 492. 11 Larkin, Making of the Roman Catholic Church, 465. 12 For the Catholic bishops and the university question in the i86os, see Larkin, Consolidation of the Roman Catholic Church, 441-532, and E.R.

244 Notes to pages 123-7

13

14 15 16

17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27

Norman, The Catholic Church and Ireland in the Age of Rebellion, 1859-1873 (London, 1965), 190-280; for a useful historiographical survey of the literature on the Catholic church in Victorian Ireland, see John Newsinger, The Catholic Church in Nineteenth-Century Ireland/ European History Quarterly 25 (1995): 247-67. This is not to suggest that the education issue was of outstanding importance in influencing the outcome of the 1859 general election in Ireland, but simply to point out that Liberal leaders might well have wanted to do what they could to see that it did not adversely affect their fortunes at the forthcoming general election. For a fine article on the 1859 election in Ireland, see K.T. Hoppen, Tories, Catholics, and the General Election of 1859,' Historical Journal 13 (1970): 48-67. Larkin, Consolidation of the Roman Catholic Church, 310. Hansard, 3rd ser., 180: 549-56 (20 June 1865). Whether or not this shift in government policy did the Liberals any good at the summer general election cannot be ascertained. The Tories did less well than in 1859, but still managed to capture forty-seven seats (see Hoppen, Tories, Catholics, and the General Election of 1859,' and the study, by the same author, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 18321885, 289). The article was initially titled 'University Education in Ireland,' Theological Review 3 (1866), 116-49; it was reprinted as Thoughts on University Reform,' in Cairnes's Political Essays, 256-314. Thoughts on University Reform/ Political Essays, 262-72. Recent scholarship lends some weight to Cairnes's case: see Flanagan, The Godless and the Burlesque/ in Newman and Gladstone, 239-77. Thoughts on University Reform/ 275. Ibid., 276. Ibid., 277. Ibid., 291-2. Ibid., 307-8. Important works on Victorian anti-Catholicism include Walter L. Arnstein, Protestant versus Catholic in Mid-Victorian England: Mr. Newdegate and the Nuns (Columbia, Mo., 1982); Edward R. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (London, 1968); Dennis G. Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian England (Stanford, 1992); and John Wolffe, The Protestant Crusade in Great Britain, 1829-1860 (Oxford, 1991). 'Ireland/ in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 62. Mill to Macvey Napier, 21 Apr. 1845, Earlier Letters, CW 13: 663.

Notes to pages 127-31 245 28 Mill to George Grote, 8 Apr. 1851, Later Letters, CW14: 59. 29 For Mill's treatment of the medieval church, see 'Michelet's History of France/ in Essays on French History and Historians, CW 20: 239-45. On Catholic art Mill made the following observations: 'A certain Solemnity, a feeling of doubting and trembling hope, like that of one lost in a boundless forest who thinks he knows his way but is not sure, mixes itself in all the genuine expressions of the pure Gothic cathedral; conspicuous equally in the mingled majesty and gloom of its vaulted roofs and stately aisles, and in the "dim religious light" which steals through its painted windows' (Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties/ in Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 354n). Travelling on the Continent in 1855 to recover his health, Mill reported to his wife: 'Wherever one goes after Rome, must be inferior in the way of art' (Mill to Harriet Taylor Mill, 18 Jan. 1855, Later Letters, CW 14: 297). 30 Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 45. 31 The Claims of Labour/ in Essays on Economics and Society, CW 4: 369. 32 Mill to Arthur W. Greene, 27 Dec. 1861, Later Letters, CW 15: 759. 33 Auguste Comte and Positivism, in Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society, CW 10: 321. 34 'Ireland/ in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW6: 85. 35 'Brodie's History/ in ibid., 6:10. 36 On Liberty, in Essays on Politics and Society, CW 18: 222,232. 37 Considerations on Representative Government, in ibid., 19: 408. 38 Three Essays on Religion, in Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society, CW 10: 480. 39 'Civilization/ in Essays on Politics and Society, CW 18: 142,144. 40 'Whewell on Moral Philosophy/ in Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society, CWio: 168. 41 Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews, in Essays on Equality, Law, and Education, CW 21: 226, 249. 42 Ibid., 250. 43 Cairnes to Nesbitt, 24 July 1865, Cairnes Papers, National Library of Ireland, P. 8508. 44 Cairnes to Nesbitt, 14 Aug. 1865, Cairnes Papers, P. 8508. 45 Cairnes to Mill, 20 Aug. 1865, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 30, fols. 177-8. 46 Later Letters, CW 16: 1094-5. 47 Cairnes's source on this matter was reliable if the opinion of Lord Wodehouse, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, can be taken to reflect the disposi-

246 Notes to pages 132-7

48 49 50 51

tion of the government. In a letter to Grey of 28 June 1865, Wodehouse recommended that the number of members of the Queen's University Senate be increased 'so as to admit as many more as would render the Roman Catholics and non-Roman Catholic members equal as they now are on the National Board [Board of National Education] and the Bequest Board [Charitable Bequests Board]' (Papers on the Irish University Question, Trinity College Dublin, MS 21613, fols. 4-5). Cairnes to Mill, 28 Aug. 1865, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 31, fols. 179-84. Later Letters, CW16:1101-2. Cairnes to Nesbitt, 3 Sept. 1865, Cairnes Papers, P. 8508. For Cairnes's letters to Nesbitt for these months, see Cairnes Papers, P. 8508.

52 Later Letters, CW 16:1133-4.

53 When looking at Mill and the Irish university question some years ago, I carelessly, and mistakenly, linked his change of mind to Cairnes's Theological Review article: see Bruce L. Kinzer, 'John Stuart Mill and the Irish University Question/ Victorian Studies 31 (1987): 67. 54 Cairnes to Nesbitt, 9 Jan. 1866, Cairnes Papers, P. 8508. 55 In a memorial addressed to the government in mid-January, the Irish bishops plainly stated that a satisfactory settlement would necessarily include not only a reconstruction of the Queen's University but a charter and endowment for the Catholic University. See 'Copies of Memorials addressed to the Secretary of State,' Parliamentary Papers, 1866, 55: 248-56. 56 Cairnes to Mill, 9 Jan. 1866, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 32, fols. 187-90. 57 Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society, 261. 58 Cairnes to Mill, 9 Jan. 1866, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 32, fols. 187-90. 59 Cairnes to Mill, 25 Jan. 1866, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 33, fols. 194-6. 60 Mill to Cairnes, 31 Jan. 1866, Later Letters, CW 16:1143. 61 Cairnes to Nesbitt, 3 Feb. 1866, Cairnes Papers, P. 8508. 62 See Cairnes to Nesbitt, 9 Feb. 1866, Cairnes Papers, P. 8508. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 See Thomas J. Spinner, George Joachim Goschen: The Transformation of a Victorian Liberal (Cambridge, 1972), 16.

Notes to pages 138-42 247 66 For a detailed account of the negotiations between the government and the bishops during this period, see Larkin, Consolidation of the Roman Catholic Church, 460-79. 67 Cairnes to Nesbitt, 9 Feb. 1866, Cairnes Papers, P. 8508. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70 Cairnes to Mill, 10 Feb. 1866, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 35, fols. 200-5. 71 Mill to Cairnes, 13 Feb. 1866, Later Letters, CW16:1148-9. 72 This paragraph conflates the substance of two letters written by Cairnes on 14 Feb. 1866; see Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, items 36 and 37, fols. 206-9. 73 Hansard, 3rd ser., 181: 811-12, 967-8 (20 and 23 Feb. 1866). 74 Ibid., 968 (23 Feb. 1866). 75 Cairnes to Nesbitt, 23 Feb. 1866, Cairnes Papers, P. 8508. 76 Cairnes to Nesbitt, 28 Feb. 1866, Cairnes Papers, P. 8508. 77 Cairnes to Nesbitt, 4 Nov. 1865, Cairnes Papers, P. 8508. 78 For a fine discussion of Gladstone's position on the education question, see J.P. Parry, Democracy and Religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party, 18671875 (Cambridge, 1986), 164-7, 295~3o6, and 353-68. Parry's study is a major work of research and interpretation on the place of religious and educational issues in Gladstonian politics. 79 Hansard, 3rd ser., 181: 272 (8 Feb. 1866). 80 In an April 1866 memorandum on Irish National Education, Gladstone indicated that he wanted 'to be well assured that what we do is in conformity with the prevailing course of Irish opinion' (Gladstone Papers, British Library, Add. MSS. 44,536, vol. CCCCLI, fol. 44). 81 Cairnes to Leonard Courtney, 18 Mar. 1866, Courtney Collection, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics, vol. I, item 40, fol. 112. 82 Mill favoured adult suffrage limited only by an educational qualification, plural voting founded not on property but on mental fitness, and a system of personal or proportional representation based on a scheme devised by Thomas Hare. The government's bill provided for a reduction in the borough household qualification from 10 pounds to 7 pounds and for a county franchise of 14 pounds. A franchise bill pure and simple, it would have made working-class voters approximately a quarter of the electorate of England and Wales. Gladstone made reference to Mill's fine speech on the measure in his diary entry for 13 April, the date of Mill's address to the

248 Notes to pages 142-7 House: 'Reform Debate. Mill admirable' (Gladstone Diaries, 1855-1868, ed. H.C.G. Matthew, vols. 5-6 [Oxford, 1978], 6: 430). For a more comprehensive consideration of Mill and the Reform Bill of 1866, see Kinzer, Robson, and Robson, A Moralist In and Out of Parliament, 86-93. For a dazzling exegesis of Mill's major speech on the Reform Bill of 1866, see Janice Carlisle, 'Mr. J. Stuart Mill, M.P. and the Character of the Working Classes,' in Eldon J. Eisenach, ed., Mill and the Moral Character of Liberalism (University Park, Penn., 1998), 143-67. 83 Cairnes to unidentified correspondent, 5 Mar. 1866, Cairnes Papers, P. 8509. 84 Cairnes reported this conversation to Nesbitt on 2 March; see Cairnes Papers, P. 8509. 85 Hansard, 3rd sen, 181:1615-16 (6 Mar. 1866). 86 See 'Copy of a Letter dated 26th March 1866, from the Secretary of State to the Home Department to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, on the Subject of University Education in Ireland,' Parliamentary Papers, 1866, 55: 285-7. 87 Ibid., 285. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid., 286. 90 Ibid., 286-7. 91 Ibid., 287. 92 Ibid. 93 For this document, see 'Copy of Patent granting Supplemental Charter to the Queen's University in Ireland,' Parliamentary Papers, 1866, 55: 217-18. 94 Hansard, 3rd ser., 181: 968 (23 Feb. 1866). 95 Cairnes's source was George J. Stoney, Secretary of the Queen's University; see Cairnes to Nesbitt, 3 July 1866, Cairnes Papers, P. 8509. 96 Cairnes to Mill, 28 June 1866, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 39, fols. 214-15. 97 Cairnes refers to this matter in a 3 July letter to Nesbitt; see Cairnes Papers, P. 8509. 98 Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS. 44,536, vol. CCCCLI, fol. 66. 99 Argyll to Gladstone, 21 Dec. 1867, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS. 44,100, vol. XV, fols. 178-9. 100 Mill to Cairnes, 3 July 1866, Later Letters, CW16:1177-8. 101 Mill to Gladstone, 4 July 1866, ibid., 1179-80. 102 Cairnes to Mill, 7 July 1866, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 40, fols. 218, 219.

103 Mill to Cairnes, 10 July 1866, Later Letters, CW 16:1183.

Notes to pages 148-54 249 104 Cairnes to Mill, 12 July 1866, Mill-Taylor Collection, Vol. LVI, item 41, fols. 221-2. 105 Cairnes to Nesbitt, 12 July 1866, Cairnes Papers, P. 8509. 106 Cairnes to Nesbitt, 16 July, Cairnes Papers, P. 8509. 107 For this discussion, see Hansard, 3rd ser., 184: 842-910 (16 July 1866). 108 Ibid., 184: 898. 109 Ibid., 184: 902-3. no Ibid., 184: 904. in Gladstone to Cliffe Leslie, 24 July 1866, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS. 44,534, vol. CCCCLI, fol. 72. 112 See Larkin, Consolidation of the Roman Catholic Church, 493-4. 113 William K. Sullivan, University Education in Ireland. A Letter to Sir John Dalberg Acton, Bart., M.P. (Dublin and London, 1866) 114 See ibid., 33-63. 115 J.E. Cairnes, University Education in Ireland. A Letter to J.S. Mill, Esq. M.P. (London, 1866). 116 For Cairnes's sense of the importance of this matter, see Cairnes to Nesbitt, 25 Aug., 8 Oct., 15 Nov., 27 Nov., 3 Dec., and 13 Dec. 1866, Cairnes Papers, P. 8509. 117 For this discussion, see Hansard, 3rd ser., 187:1431-63 (31 May 1867). 118 For Lowe's speech, see ibid., 187:1451-6. Lord Stanley mentions this debate in his journal entry for 31 May: 'Sharp debate on Irish Universities, in which Lowe attacked Gladstone on the score of having broken faith with parliament: Gladstone in reply almost unable to speak when he first rose, from passion: the House amused rather than interested' (Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party. Journals and Memoirs of Edward Henry, Lord Stanley, ed. John Vincent [Hassocks, Sussex: 1978], 310-11). 119 Cairnes to Courtney, 7 June 1867, Courtney Collection, vol. I, item 43, fol. 123. 120 Cairnes to Mill, 10 June 1867, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 44, fols. 236-7. 121 Gladstone Diaries, 1855-1868, ed. Matthew, 6: 513. 122 Mill to Thomas Hare, 6 May 1867, Later Letters, CW16:1267. 123 Public and Parliamentary Speeches, ed. John M. Robson and Bruce L. Kinzer, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1988), CVV28 : 147. 124 For an examination of Mill's response to the 1867 Reform Bill, see Kinzer, Robson, and Robson, A Moralist In and Out of Parliament, 99-107. 125 For this debate, see Hansard, 3rd ser., 188: 55-80 (18 June 1867). 126 Ibid., 188: 58-63. 127 Ibid., 189: 17-20 (24 July 1867).

250 Notes to pages 155-60 128 Mill to Cairnes, 30 June 1867, Later Letters, CW16:1283-4. 129 Cairnes to Mill, 7 July 1867, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 45, fols. 241-4. 130 Ibid., fols. 244-6. 131 Cairnes reported to Nesbitt on 7 July: 'If I am fortunate enough to carry him [Mill] with me, I should not be surprised if he were to speak on the resumed discussion' (Cairnes Papers, P. 8509). 132 For the debate of 24 July, see Hansard, 3rd ser., 189: 3-31. 133 Cairnes to Mill, 2 Aug. 1867, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 46, fols. 257-8. 134 Since 1833 the state had furnished grants to elementary schools affiliated with the Anglican National Society and the British and Foreign School Society. The latter tended to draw support from Nonconformists prepared to sanction state support for education as opposed to those who were voluntaryists. For a discussion of Mill's disposition regarding the politics of the elementary-education question, see Bruce L. Kinzer, 'The 1870 Education Bill and the Method of J.S. Mill's Later Politics/ Albion 29 (1997): 223-45. 135 See above, p. 149. 136 Mill to Cairnes, i Sept. 1867, Later Letters, CW 16:1313-14. 137 Cairnes to Nesbitt, 11 Sept. 1867, Cairnes Papers, P. 8509. 138 Cairnes to Mill, 7 Sept. 1867, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 48, fols. 260-4; the Duke of Argyll had said much the same thing to Gladstone in September 1866: 'So long as we kept up "Denominationalism" in Education in Britain, and reserved our love for "Common" Education to be carried into effect in a Catholic country, the Catholics had grounds for suspecting our "Liberality." But every day makes it more certain that "Common" Education is the system to which we are tending both in England and in Scotland - and I do not much like a retrograde step being taken in Ireland - where it really seems as if the common system was being successfully established. I fear the Priests will defeat the Queen's Colleges altogether - which wd be a misfortune.' (Argyll to Gladstone, 16 Sept. 1866, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS. 44,100, vol. XV, fols. 133-4) 139 England and Ireland, in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW6: 531140 Public and Parliamentary Speeches, CW28: 252. 141 Ibid., 28: 23. 142 All of these matters are discussed in Kinzer, Robson, and Robson, A Moralist In and Out of Parliament. 143 'Civilization,' in Essays on Politics and Society, CW 18: i43n.

Notes to pages 160-9 251 144 145 146 147 148 149

150 151 152 153

An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, CW 9: 49211. Mill to Fawcett, 7 June 1867, Later Letters, CW 16:1279. See Larkin, Consolidation of the Roman Catholic Church, 529-32. See Kinzer, Robson, and Robson, A Moralist In and Out of Parliament, chaps. 7 and 8. Parry, Democracy and Religion, 353-68, offers a valuable analysis of the divisions engendered by the 1873 Irish University Bill. Cairnes, Political Essays, 342; it should be noted that Cairnes gave up his Galway chair in 1870, and hence the proposed dissolution of Queen's College Galway did not threaten his professional position. See Morley's The Struggle for National Education (London, 1873). Later Letters, CW 17: i892n. Mill to Morley, 11 May 1872, ibid., 17:1893. Ibid., 17: 1892-3. CHAPTER 5: THE FENIAN CHALLENGE AND IRISH LAND

1 The shift in the subject's political status is insightfully examined in E.D. Steele, Irish Land and British Politics: Tenant-Right and Nationality, 18651870 (Cambridge, 1974), 43-73. 2 See chapter 3 above, pp. 104-5, and Considerations on Representative Government, in Essays on Politics and Society, CW 19: 550-1. 3 For the Fenians in Ireland, see R.V. Comerford, The Fenians in Context: Irish Politics and Society, 1848-82 (Dublin, 1985); for the Anglo-American factor, see L. 6 Broin, Fenian Fever: An Anglo-American Dilemma (London, 1971); important aspects of the movement are also treated in T.W. Moody, Davitt and Irish Revolution, 1846-82 (Oxford, 1982). 4 Public and Parliamentary Speeches, CW28: 52. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 52-3. 7 Ibid., 53. 8 Ibid., 54. 9 Ibid., 53. 10 Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 277. 11 Public and Parliamentary Speeches, CVV28:172. 12 Ibid., 172-3. 13 Later Letters, CW 16:1272. The government did give in. Lord Stanley, Derby's son and a member of the Conservative cabinet, recorded in his journal: '[AJfter much discussion it was decided in deference to the generally expressed feeling, to commute the sentence of Burke, the Fenian left for execution' (Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party, 310).

252 Notes to pages 169-75 14 Public and Parliamentary Speeches, CW28:189. 15 Mill to John Henry Bridges, 16 Nov. 1867, Later Letters, CW16:1328. 16 Zastoupil, 'Moral Government/ 717; there is otherwise much to praise in Zastoupil's treatment of Mill and Ireland, especially his emphasis on the centrality of moral regeneration to Mill's political and ethical enterprise. 17 England and Ireland, in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 523. 18 Mill to Bridges, 16 Nov. 1867, Later Letters, CW 16:1328-9. 19 Mill to W.R. Cremer, 3 Mar. 1867, in ibid., 16:1248. 20 Steele, Irish Land and British Politics, 52-4. 21 The bill was introduced by Chichester Fortescue, Irish Chief Secretary, on 30 April; see Hansard, 3rd ser., 183: 214-22. 22 Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 279. 23 Ibid. 24 Public and Parliamentary Speeches, C W 28: 75. 25 Ibid. The reference to Gladstone derives from a passage included in his 17 February speech on the Habeas Corpus Suspension Bill: Hansard, 3rd ser., 181: 721-2. 26 Public and Parliamentary Speeches, C W 28: 76. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., 79. 29 Ibid., 77; such a consideration did not deter Mill from bringing forward his amendment to the 1867 Reform Bill for enfranchising women on the same basis as men. 30 Revisiting this speech several years later, Cairnes remarked to Mill: 'I am charmed with your speech on Fortescue's Bill... One fault only I find with the speech that it was a thousand times too good for the measure' (Cairnes to Mill, 13 Jan. 1870, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 55, fol. 327). 31 Before 1867 ended Russell informed Gladstone that he did not intend to lead the Liberal party into the next election, thereby opening the way for Gladstone to assume sole leadership of the party. 32 Quoted in J.L. Hammond, Gladstone and the Irish Nation (1938) (London, 1964), 80. 33 Ibid., 81. 34 Quoted in Steele, Irish Land and British Politics, 63. 35 Later Letters, CW 16:1335. 36 Both the first and second editions of England and Ireland, each with a print run of 1500 copies, appeared in February, the third in April (250 copies), the fourth in May (250 copies), and the fifth in October 1869 (250 copies). The fifth was reissued in April 1870. Longman Archive, Reading University.

Notes to pages 176-80 253 37 England and Ireland, in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, C W 6: 508. 38 Ibid., 509. 39 Mill was not necessarily friendly to customary attitudes and practices simply because they were customary. His treatment in the Subjection of Women of 'custom' relative to conjugal relations in England was hostile in the extreme. With regard to land tenure in both Ireland and India, he happened to find the customary assumptions of the masses in line with considerations of reason and justice. 40 England and Ireland, in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 512; for the relevant passage in the Principles, see CW2: 230. 41 England and Ireland, in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 512-13. 42 Ibid., 513; it is possible that this portion of Mill's pamphlet owes something to the publication in 1865 of the first volume of the Brehon law tracts. The editorial introduction to this volume offered a reconstruction of early Irish society that could have influenced Mill's views on the primitive Celtic social order. For a useful discussion of the Brehon law tracts, see Clive Dewey, 'Celtic Agrarian Legislation and the Celtic Revival: Historicist Implications of Gladstone's Irish and Scottish Land Acts,' Past and Present, no. 64 (1974): 43~5543 England and Ireland, in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 514. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., 515-16. 46 Principles of Political Economy, CW 2: 333. 47 W.E. Vaughan suggests that most Irish tenants probably had little interest in the kind of improvements favoured by agricultural reformers; he also examines the range of factors influencing the expenditure (or lack thereof) of Irish landlords on improvements. See Landlords and Tenants, 85-6 and 124-30. 48 England and Ireland, in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 517. 49 Ibid., 518-19. 50 Ibid., 519. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., 519-20. 53 Ibid., 521. 54 Mill to Bridges, 16 Nov. 1867, Later Letters, CW 16:1328. 55 England and Ireland, in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW 6: 520-6. 56 Ibid., 526. 57 Ibid.

254 Notes to pages 180-5 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

66 67 68

69

Ibid., 527. Ibid., 526-7. Ibid., 529. Ibid., 530. Ibid. Ibid., 532. Hermathena, no. 135 (1983): 96-119. These pieces went by the title 'Ireland in Transition/ and they appeared in the following issues of the Economist: 9 Sept., 1087-8; 16 Sept., 1116-17; 23 Sept., 1146-7; 30 Sept., 1173-5; 7 Oct., 1204-5; *4 Oct., 1238-9; 21 Oct., 1268-9; 28 Oct., 1301-3; 4 Nov., 1333-4. 'John Elliot Cairnes, John Stuart Mill and Ireland,' 104. Principles of Political Economy, CW 2: 230. Mill to Cairnes, 6 Jan. 1866, Later Letters, CW16:1134-5. It is of some interest to note that even Lord Wodehouse, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, considered Cairnes's proposal inadequate: 'It has been suggested that the tenant should be allowed to remove or destroy his improvements. This suggestion was made in some able articles by Professor Cairnes in the "Economist", but this power would not be sufficient, as in many cases the tenant could not remove his improvements' (Wodehouse to Gladstone, 12 Feb. 1866, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS. 44,224, vol. CXXXIX, fols. 33-4). Zastoupil, 'Moral Government.'

70 Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants, 7.

71 Ibid. 72 'Leslie on the Land Question/ in Essays on Economics and Society, C W 5: 681. 73 Principles of Political Economy, CW3: 768. 74 'J.S. Mill and the Irish Question: Reform and the Integrity of the Empire/ 450. 75 'Grote's History of Greece [I]/ in Essays on Philosophy and the Classics, ed. John M. Robson (Toronto, 1978), CW 11: 321. 76 For a general investigation of Mill's defence of the British Empire, see Eileen P. Sullivan, 'Liberalism and Imperialism: John Stuart Mill's Defense of the British Empire/ Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (1983): 599-617. Zastoupil's John Stuart Mill and India is an important monograph relevant to this theme. See also J.S. Mill's Encounter with India, ed. Martin I. Moir, Douglas M. Peers, and Lynn Zastoupil (Toronto, 1999). 77 Considerations on Representative Government, in Essays on Politics and Society, CWi9:567. 78 Newspaper Writings, CW 24: 929.

Notes to pages 185-92 255 79 Ibid., 25:1096. 80 'What Is to Be Done with Ireland?' in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, CW6: 503. 81 Principles of Political Economy, CW 2: 326. 82 Ibid., 334. 83 'Critical Notices,' Fortnightly Review 9 (April 1868): 472. 84 Quoted in Koss, Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain: The Nineteenth Century, 39. 85 'Mr. Mill on Ireland/ The Times, 20 Feb. 1868,10-11. 86 The Times, 21 Feb. 1868, 9. 87 Ibid., 22 Feb. 1868, 9. 88 'Mr. Mill and Ireland,' Pall Mall Gazette, 24 Feb. 1868,1-2. 89 Morning Post, 21 Feb. 1868, 4. 90 'Mr. Mill on England and Ireland,' Saturday Review, 29 Feb. 1868, 282-3. 91 Standard, 20 Feb. 1868, 4. 92 The New School of Radicals,' Quarterly Review 124 (1868): 489. 93 Economist, 22 Feb. 1868, 202; Bagehot's article is reprinted in his Historical Essays, ed. Norman St John Stevas, Collected Works of Walter Bagehot, vols. 3-4 (London, 1968), 3: 547-53. 94 Economist, 22 Feb. 1868, 203. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid., 201. 97 Ibid., 202. 98 Daily News, 19 Feb. 1868, 4. 99 Daily Telegraph, 19 Feb. 1868, 6. 100 Morning Star, 19 Feb. 1868, 4. 101 Examiner, 22 Feb. 1868,113. 102 'Mr. J.S. Mill on the Irish Land Question,' Spectator, 22 Feb. 1868, 216-18. 103 Bee-Hive, 22 Feb. 1868, 4. 104 Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, 23 Feb. 1868, 6. 105 Freeman's Journal, 3 Mar. 1868, 2. 106 'Mr. Mill on Ireland/ Nation, 29 Feb. 1868, 441. 107 Ibid. 108 'Mr. Mill's Pamphlet/ Nation, 7 Mar. 1868, 459. 109 Ibid. no 'Critical Notices/ Fortnightly Review 9 (April 1868): 472. 111 Ibid., 474. 112 Cairnes to Courtney, 5 Mar. 1868, Courtney Collection, vol. I, item 50, fol. 151. 113 Harriet Martineau, Selected Letters, ed. Valerie Sanders (Oxford, 1990), 220.

256 Notes to pages 192-6 114 Dear Miss Nightingale: A Selection of Benjamin Jowett's Letters to Florence Nightingale, 1860-1893, ed. Vincent Quinn and John Prest (Oxford, 1987), 140. 115 See N. John Hall, Trollope: A Biography (Oxford, 1991), 278. 116 Quoted in Steele, 'J.S. Mill and the Irish Question: Reform and the Integrity of the Empire/ 438. 117 Lord Dufferin, Mr. Mill's Plan for the Pacification of Ireland Examined (London, 1868). One cannot fail to be struck by the esteem Dufferin expressed for Mill, England and Ireland notwithstanding. He acknowledged that 'Mr. Mill justly enjoys the admiration and reverence of his countrymen' and conveyed his 'profound respect for the intellectual power and pure integrity of purpose displayed in every word that has been written or said by one of the great thinkers of our time' (38-9). 118 Dufferin to Gladstone, 9 Mar. 1868, Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS. 44,151, vol. LXVI, fol. 24. 119 Mill to Cairnes, i March 1868, Later Letters, CW16:1369. 120 Ibid. 121 'J.S. Mill and the Irish Question: Reform and the Integrity of the Empire/ 442, 443122 'J.S. Mill and the Irish Question: The Principles of Political Economy/ 217. 123 'J.S. Mill and the Irish Question: Reform and the Integrity of the Empire/ 446-8. 124 Mill to Cairnes, 10 Mar. 1868, Later Letters, CW 16: 1373. 125 England and Ireland, in Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, C W 6: 519. 126 Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 280. 127 Mill to Cairnes, 10 Mar. 1868, Later Letters, CW 16:1373. 128 The Daily News went so far as to say, 'If Mr. Mill's pamphlet had not furnished a theme, there really would have been little or nothing to talk about' (13 Mar. 1868, 4). 129 Hansard, 3rd ser., 190:1316-17 (10 Mar. 1868). 130 Ibid., 190:1492-9 (12 Mar. 1868). 131 Public and Parliamentary Speeches, C W 28: 248. 132 Ibid., 254. 133 Ibid., 254-5. 134 Ibid., 255, 260. 135 Ibid., 258. The total number of holdings in 1851 was 608,066; in 1866 the number stood at 597,628 - a decrease of insufficient size to discredit Mill's contention. See Turner, After the Famine, 80. 136 Public and Parliamentary Speeches, CVV28: 259-61.

Notes to pages 196-203 257 137 Ibid., 261. 138 139 140 141 142

Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 277. Mill to Cairnes, 4 Dec. 1869, Later Letters, CW 17:1668. Pall Mall Gazette, 13 Mar. 1868, i. Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by John Bright, i: 360. Ibid., 374. The speech from which this passage derives was given at a public banquet in Dublin on 30 October 1866. 143 Ibid., 403. 144 Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party, 331-2. 145 Steele, Irish Land and British Politics, 63. 146 Ibid., 58. 147 Hansard, 3rd ser., 190: 1758-9 (16 Mar. 1868). 148 For a detailed examination of Mill and the 1868 Westminster election, see Kinzer, Robson, and Robson, A Moralist In and Out of Parliament, 218-96; for an assessment of the part played by his views on Ireland in the outcome of this contest, see ibid., 287-8. 149 Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 279. 150 For Campbell's influence, see Steele, Irish Land and British Politics, 104-8, and 'Ireland and the Empire: Imperial Precedents for Gladstone's First Irish Land Act,' Historical Journal 11 (1968): 64-83. 151 Campbell had been a servant of the East India Company and had assisted the governor-general, Lord Canning, in the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny. Following the dissolution of the Company as an agency of government, Campbell became a judge of the High Court of Bengal (1863-6) and then chief commissioner of the Central Provinces (1867-68). 152 George Campbell, The Irish Land (London and Dublin, 1869). 153 Ibid., 78. 154 Ibid. 155 Ibid., 79. 156 Mill to Campbell, 9 July 1869, Additional Letters of John Stuart Mill, ed. Marion Filipiuk, Michael Laine, and John M. Robson (Toronto, 1991), CW 32: 209. 157 Cairnes to Courtney, 27 Aug. 1869, Courtney Collection, vol. I, item 56, fols. 170-1. 158 Cairnes to Mill, 9 Nov. 1869, Special Collections, Milton Eisenhower Library, The Johns Hopkins University, Hut 4, box i, folder 31. 159 Mill to Cairnes, 16 Nov. 1869, Later Letters, CW 17:1666. 160 Ibid., 1665. 161 Cairnes to Mill, 26 Nov. 1869, Special Collections, Eisenhower Library, Hut 4, Box i, folder 31.

258 Notes to pages 204-8 162 Later Letters, CW17:1667. 163 Mill to Campbell, 9 July 1869, Additional Letters, C W 32: 209. 164 Nassau William Senior, Journals, Conversations and Essays Relating to Ireland, 2 vols. (London, 1868), 2:171. 165 Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants, 75. 166 Mill to Cairnes, 4 Dec. 1869, Later Letters, CW 17:1667. 167 Cairnes to Mill, 21 Dec. 1869, Mill-Taylor Collection, vol. LVI, item 54, fol. 320. 168 See 'Political Economy and Land,' in Cairnes's Essays in Political Economy, Theoretical and Applied (London, 1873), 220. 169 Mill to Campbell, 31 Dec. 1869, Additional Letters, CW 32: 215. 170 Mill to Campbell, 24 Jan. 1870, ibid., 215-16. 171 Mill to Cairnes, 11 Jan. 1870, Later Letters, CW 17:1676-7. 172 Ibid., 1676. 173 Steele's Irish Land and British Politics is a fine study of the making of the Irish Land Act of 1870; for the working of this legislation between 1870 and 1881, see Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants, 93-102. 174 'Leslie on the Land Question,' in Essays on Economics and Society, C W 5: 674. 175 Principles of Political Economy, CW2: xciv; that Mill did not overhaul his treatment of Ireland for this edition to bring it into conformity with the position set forth in England and Ireland signifies only his disinclination to make substantive revisions for this edition, which included many fewer changes than had each of the previous five (see 'Textual Introduction/ CW2: Ixix). In the preface to the seventh edition Mill announced that 'with the exception of a few verbal corrections,' it corresponded 'exactly with the last Library Edition and with the People's Edition [both published in 1865]' (ibid., xciv). 176 Autobiography and Literary Essays, CW i: 280. 177 See ibid., 272-85. 178 See 'Land Tenure Reform,' in Essays on Economics and Society, CW 5: 687-95179 See 'Leslie on the Land Question,' in ibid., 5: 669-85; 'Maine on Village Communities,' in Writings on India, CW 30: 213-28; three 1873 contributions to the Examiner, in Newspaper Writings, CW25:1227-43; and two speeches on the subject, in Public and Parliamentary Speeches, C W 29: 416-24, 425-31. For useful treatments of Mill and the land question, see David Martin, John Stuart Mill and the Land Question (Hull, 1981); Hollander, Economics of John Stuart Mill, 2: 833-46; and Willard Wolfe, From Radicalism to Socialism: Men and Ideas in the Formation of Fabian Socialist Doctrines, 1881-1889 (New Haven, 1975), 52-63.

Notes to pages 209-15 259 180 See especially book V of the Principles, entitled 'On the Influence of Government.' 181 'Leslie on the Land Question/ in Essays on Economics and Society, CW 5: 679. 182 Ibid., 683. 183 Marx to Dr Kugelmann, 29 Nov. 1869, quoted in Nicholas Mansergh, The Irish Question, 1840-1921 (1965), 3rd edition (Toronto, 1975), 118. EPILOGUE

1 See Turner, After the Famine, 198. 2 Important works dealing with the land war include Paul Bew, Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858-82 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1979); Samuel Clark, Social Origins of the Irish Land War (Princeton, 1979); and Moody, Davitt and Irish Revolution. 3 Philip Bull, Land, Politics & Nationalism: A Study of the Irish Land Question (New York, 1996), 32. 4 Donald Jordan, 'The Irish National League and the "Unwritten Law": Rural Protest and Nation-Building in Ireland, 1882-1890,' Past and Present, no. 158 (1998): 158. 5 Jordan, Land and Popular Politics in Ireland: County Mayo from the Plantation to the Land War (Cambridge, 1994), 157. 6 R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600-1972 (London, 1988), 405. 7 Moody, Davitt and Irish Revolution, 38. Access to some of Mill's words on the Irish land question was facilitated by the publication in 1870 of a collection consisting of the pertinent chapters from the Principles of Political Economy and his speeches in the House of Commons of 17 May 1866 and 12 March 1868. This volume, entitled Chapters and Speeches on the Irish Land Question, was published in response to 'a call from Ireland' (see Mill to Cairnes, 16 Nov. 1869, Later Letters, CW 17: 1665). 8 'During the period of over four decades in which its fair-rent provisions were in force they greatly improved the lot of the Irish tenant. In the twenty-six counties which constitute the modern Republic some 275,000 original rents were reduced by about 21 per cent. Some 93,000 which had already been fixed for a first fifteen-year term were further reduced for a second fifteen-year term by about 18 per cent, and 3,000 were reduced for a third term by 9 per cent' (Bew, Land and the National Question, 235-6). 9 For the land question in the late nineteenth century, see Bull, Land, Politics & Nationalism; Barbara Solow, The Land Question and the Irish Economy, 1870-1903 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971); and Turner, After the Famine. 10 The best general study of Irish nationalism is D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (London, 1982).

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Bibliography

The writing of this book would have been far more arduous had there existed no definitive edition of Mill's collected works. The following titles, published between 1963 and 1991 and arranged by volume number, constitute the 33-volume University of Toronto Press edition of Mill's Collected Works. i Autobiography and Literary Essays (1981). Edited and introduced by John M. Robson and Jack Stillinger. 2-3 Principles of Political Economy (1965). Textual editor J.M. Robson. Introduction by V.W. Bladen. 4-5 Essays on Economics and Society (1967). Textual editor J.M. Robson. Introduction by Lord Robbins. 6 Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire (1982). Textual editor John M. Robson. Introduction by Joseph Hamburger. 7-8 A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (1973). Textual editor J.M. Robson. Introduction by R.F. McRae. 9 An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1979). Textual editor J.M. Robson. Introduction by Alan Ryan. 10 Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society (1969). Textual editor J.M. Robson. Introductions by F.E.L. Priestley and D.P. Dryer. 11 Essays on Philosophy and the Classics (1978). Textual editor J.M. Robson. Introduction by F.E. Sparshott. 12-13 Earlier Letters, 1812-1848 (1963). Edited by Francis E. Mineka. 14-17 Later Letters, 1848-1873 (1972). Edited by Francis E. Mineka and Dwight N. Lindley. 18-19 Essays on Politics and Society (1977). Textual editor J.M. Robson. Introduction by Alexander Brady. 20 Essays on French History and Historians (1985). Textual editor John M. Robson. Introduction by John C. Cairns.

262 Bibliography 21 Essays on Equality, Law, and Education (1984). Textual editor John M. Robson. Introduction by Stefan Collini. 22-25 Newspaper Writings (1986). Edited by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson. Introduction by Ann P. Robson. 26-27 Journals and Debating Speeches (1988). Edited and introduced by John M. Robson. 28-29 Public and Parliamentary Speeches (1988). Edited by John M. Robson and Bruce L. Kinzer. Introduction by Bruce L. Kinzer. 30 Writings on India (1990). Edited by John M. Robson, Martin Moir, and Zawahir Moir. Introduction by Martin Moir. 31 Miscellaneous Writings (1989). Edited and introduced by John M. Robson. 32 Additional Letters (1991). Edited by Marion Filipiuk, Michael Laine, and John M. Robson. Introduction by Marion Filipiuk. 33 Indexes (1991). Edited by Jean O'Grady and John M. Robson. Introduction by Jean O'Grady. MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS

Bentham Papers, University College, University of London Cairnes Papers (Microfilm), National Library of Ireland Courtney Collection, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics Easthope Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University Gladstone Papers, British Library John Stuart Mill Letters, Milton Eisenhower Library, The Johns Hopkins University Longman Archive, Reading University Mill-Taylor Collection, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics Papers on the Irish University Question, Trinity College Dublin NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS

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Index

Abbreviations used: JSM = John Stuart Mill; PPE = Principles of Political Economy Act of Union (1800), 3, 4,10, 33, 43, 67, 171. See also Union, of Great Britain and Ireland advertising duty, 106 agrarian violence, 24, 92,176, 220 n. 30 agricultural labourers: JSM on, 54, 202-3; condition of, 60,177,183, 184-5, 241 n. 100; diminished number of, 93; Cairnes on, no, 113; JSM's concern for, 117 Alabama, 165 Allen, John, 225 n. 122 Anglo-Irish War, 215 Argyll, Duke of, 250 n. 138 aristocracy: JSM's hostility to, 4, 8, 18-19, 27-8, 39, 51, 79, 85, 209-11; Bentham's hostility to, 9; James Mill's hostility to, 11-12, 58; James Mill on, 11; JSM on, 22,100, 221 n. 40; and Britain's rule of India, 356; English Radicals and influence of, 94-5; Marx on Ireland and power of, 210

art, distinction between science and, 49-50 association, doctrine of, 46, 226 n. 10 Athens, 184 Atiyah, P.S., 238 n. 28 Austin, Charles, 13,52 Austin, John, 31, 79 Austin, Sarah, 50, 229 n. 70 Austria-Hungary, 179 Avignon, 133,135,175 Bagehot, Walter, 188-9, 239 n- 55 Bain, Alexander, 51, 53, 71, 76, 78, 79,96 Beaumont, Gustave Auguste de, 56 Bedchamber Crisis, 37 Belfast, 122,152,155,159,161 Belgium, 73 Bengal, 57, 58, 257 n. 151 Bentham, Jeremy, 8-9,12-14, 29 Benthamism, 8-9,13-14, 27, 31 Bernstein, George, 86 Bessborough, Lord, 63, 76,192

276 Index Bingham, Peregrine, 13, 21 Black, R.D. Collison, 6,82,232 n. 100 Black Dwarf, 25 Boyce, D. George, 259 n. 10 Boylan, T.A., 6,181 Bradlaugh, Charles, 207 Brady, J.C., 237 n. 25 Brehon law tracts, 253 n. 42 Bright, John, 94-5,137,197-8 British and Foreign School Society, 250 n. 134 Brougham, Henry, 15, 20-1,22, 23 Bull, Philip, 6,213 Buller, Charles, 31, 52,76,227 n. 45, 228 n. 47 Burdett, Sir Francis, 15-16, 220 n. 31 Burke, Thomas F., 167,169, 251 n. 13 Cade, Jack, 195 Cairnes, John Elliot: JSM's friendship with, 5,104,119,128-9; and PPE, 5,108-18,177; and JSM's treatment of Irish land question, 5, 6, 108-18,177,181-2,191-2, 193, 252 n. 30; and Irish university question, 5, 124-7,130-63 passim, 182, 245 n. 47, 246 nn. 51, 53, 248 nn. 84, 95, 97, 249 n. 116, 250 n. 131, 251 n. 149; and American Civil War, 108,240 n. 81; JSM on, 108,117, 202; and 'Notes on Ireland,' 111-17; and emigration, 118; JSM disappoints, 121,153; and JSM's Inaugural Address, 129; on Gladstone's inadequacies, 141,142; holds low opinion of Gladstone, 141-2; opposes religious tests, 152; on JSM's

conduct, 157; on England and Ireland, 191-2; and Campbell's work on Irish land, 202-4; and classical political economy, 240-1 n. 87; correspondence between JSM and, 241 nn. 92,94,242 n. 103; on Thornton's Plea, 241 n. 93; and economic fluctuations in Ireland, 242 n. no; Wodehouse on proposal of, 254 n. 68; mentioned, 168,197,206 Cairns, Sir Hugh, 135,138,139, 142-3 Calne, 136 Cambridge University, 13, 52,106, 129,137,152,155,157,158,159, 160, 202

Campbell, George: and Irish land question, 200-6, 208, 257 n. 150; Cairnes on Irish land question and, 202, 203, 204; JSM's correspondence with, 229 n. 72; Indian experience of, 257 n. 151 Canada, 42, 52,112,165,179 Canning, Lord, 257 n. 151 Carlisle, Janice, 6, 44, 45, 226 nn. 4, 8, 248 n. 82 Carlyle, Thomas, 31,100,104 Catholic Association: Bentham and, 9; and grievances of Catholics, 15; suppression of, 16, 22, 24; JSM's treatment of, 21-4; JSM on, 22, 22-3, 25; Connolly on, 221 n. 37 Catholic clergy, 16, 23, 25-6, 27. See also Roman Catholic bishops Catholic disabilities, 4, 9,15,17,18, 22, 29 Catholic emancipation: as issue, 8; Crimmins on Bentham and, 9; and Catholic Association, 15,24;

Index 277 Parliament's treatment of, 16; JSM's treatment of, 16-21, 27; JSM on, 17-18, 26, 29, 50,127; Brougham on, 20; Brougham criticizes JSM's treatment of, 20-1; JSM's response to granting of, 29-30; expectations of Irish supporters of, 220-1 n. 37; Connolly on Catholic masses and, 221 n. 37; mentioned, 10, 83,166,170 Catholic question, JSM's 1825 treatment of, 6, 13-29 'Catholic Rent,' 15,16, 22, 23-4, 221 n. 37 Catholic University: founding of, 122, 243 n. 8; Irish Catholic bishops and, 122,123,152, 246 n. 55; issue of charter for, 124, 143,150,152,155,157,158; Queen's University degree and students at, 124; Cairnes and, 125, 126,135; Dublin Catholics and, 152; JSM on, 155,156; Cairnes on, 155; and 1873 Irish University Bill, 161; mentioned, 151 Catholicism: JSM on, 26, 169-70; Frederic Lucas and, 90; Tories' distaste for, 150; Irish nationalism and, 169. See also Roman Catholic church Catholics: excluded from Parliament, 4; Bentham and, 9,12; Catholic Association and grievances of, 15; JSM on emancipation of, 17; and Whigs, 32, 37-8; JSM on political interests of, 40-1; Irish university question and, 121-2, 123,124,125,126,132,137,143, 151-2,161, 246 n. 47; electoral preferences of, 123; JSM on Irish

university question and, 132, *34/ !55/157; Cairnes on Irish educational system and, 137; Gladstone on denominational education and, 149,150; and disendowment of Church of Ireland, 159; O'Connell's view of political interests of, 220 n. 31; Connolly on emancipation movement and, 221 n. 37; Argyll on education and, 250 n. 138 Chadwick, Edwin, 175,207 Chapman, Henry S., 50, 79 Chartism, 50, 89, 99, 239 n. 54 Church of Ireland, 3,4,17, 32,105, 159,161,199, 200. See also Irish church question Civil War, American, 107-8,116, 165, 240 n. 81 Clerkenwell explosion, 166,174,175 Cobden, Richard, 94-5 Coercion Act (1881), 214 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 31 Collini, Stefan, 240 n. 71 Commissioners of Woods and Forests, 77 compensation for improvements, 114,117,172-8 passim, 181,182, 199, 202, 206, 208 Comte, Auguste, 56,128 Connolly, S.J., 220 n. 31, 221 n. 37 Conservatives. See Tories contract, freedom of, 93-4, 95, 237-8 n. 28 conveyance, law of, no Cook, S.B., 230 n. 75 Cork, 122,123,152,155,161 Corn Laws, 60,121 Cornwallis, Lord, 57 cottiers: JSM on, 28, 61, 86,100;

278 Index JSM's view of, 55; and reclamation of waste lands, 63; reduced number of, 93,117; JSM's concern for, 109; Cairnes's treatment of, 111; condition of displaced, 118, 171. See also cottier tenancy cottier tenancy: JSM's treatment of, 49, 53, 54, 56-7, 60-1, 63, 96,107; Jones criticizes, 54; JSM on, 61, 96, 109; Cairnes and, no, 111-12; Cairnes on, no, in, 113; agricultural labourers and decline of, 117. See also cottiers Coulson, Walter, 13 Courtney, Leonard, 153,191, 202 Cremer, W.R., 170 Crimean War, 92 Crimmins, J.E., 9 Cullen, Paul: and Irish university question, 122,123,124,126,129, 152,161,163, 243 n. 7; Cairnes on Irish university question and, 161-2 Daily News, 189, 241 n. 103, 256 n. 128 Daily Telegraph, 189 Dalhousie, Lord, 138 Daly, Mary, 235 n. 170 Davitt, Michael, 212 Deasy's Act (1860), 93-4,104,107 d'Eichtal, Gustave, 29 Delane, J.T., 192 Denmark, 12 Derby, Edward Stanley, 14th Earl of, 37, 78,148,150,153,167,169, 251 n. 13 Devon Commission, 53, 62, 81 Dewey, C.J., 54, 55, 229 n. 64, 253 n. 42

Disraeli, Benjamin, 148,150,153, 154,186,188 Donnelly, J.S., 235 n. 170, 237 nn. 20, 23 Doyle, Andrew, 52, 227 n. 45 Drummond, Thomas, 38 Dublin, 74, 90,109,114,121,122, 151,155,157,161, 243 n. 7, 257 n. 142 Dublin Castle, 76 Dublin Evening Mail, 74 Dublin Evening Post, 75-6 Dublin Parliament, 3, 4 Duff, Grant, 139 Dufferin, Lord, 192-3,213,256 n. 117 Duffy, Charles Gavan, 89, 90, 238 n. 44 Dumont, Pierre Etienne, 9 Durham, Lord, 42, 52, 225 n. 127 Durham Report, 52 Easthope, John, 52, 76, 227-8 n. 45 East India Company, 8, 35-6, 54, 56, 58,103,104, 200-1, 239 n. 67, 257 n. 151 Ecclesiastical Titles Bill (1851), 127 Economist, 68, 70, 71, 72-3,181-2, 188 Edinburgh Review, 15,18, 21/45, 51/ 70, 83,104 Elementary Education Act (1870), 159 emigration, Irish: JSM and, 48, 49, 64-6, 89-90,101-3, n8,171, 183; concerns in Britain respecting, 66; trends in, 88; reduces pressure on land, 92; and Irish economy in early 18605, 93; JSM on, 101,102,109,117; Cairnes

Index 279 on, 110-11,116; and decline of cottier tenancy, in; Cairnes's treatment of, 116; official estimates of, 237 n. 10; mentioned, 236 n. 4 Encumbered Estates Act (1849), 91-2,103,106,166 Encumbered Estates Court, 102, 111, 112

England: and JSM's response to Ireland, 7; Ricardo and subordination of Ireland to, 10; James Mill on Ireland and, 11,12; James Mill's view of Ireland's relation to, 11-12; JSM's view of political institutions of, 28; JSM on Catholic emancipation and, 29; Catholic emancipation and, 30; JSM considers Ireland's association with, 33-6, 87; JSM on Ireland's association with, 33, 43,104,105; JSM on Ireland's rule by, 33, 34, 35, too, 101,118; JSM on Ireland and moral obligation of, 36, 65, 84, 178,185; and rule of India, 36; JSM on interests of, 41; Ireland and JSM's conception of, 42; insularity and smugness of, 56; and Irish famine, 60, 67, 80; pressure of economic competition in, 61; agricultural system of, 61, 83, 91,101,106-7,1O9-1?3/ J-74; JSM on fixity of tenure and social economy of, 62; moral stain borne by, 65; JSM on Irish emigration and, 65,117; and Irish poor law, 66; poor law in, 66; Economist on Irish landlords and, 68; and peasant proprietorship, 72,115; press opinion in, 75; JSM

and governing classes of, 79; JSM on stupidity of, 79; Trevelyan, JSM, and moral authority of, 84-5; JSM's shift respecting Ireland and, 85; Irish land question and opinion in, 88,93-5; Irish nationalism and, 89,165,182; Lucas and Catholics in, 90; and Irish economy in early 18605, 92-3; JSM seeks to influence mind of, 102; JSM goes easy on, 105; complacency of, 105-6; JSM on agricultural system of, 109; need for land reform in, no, 208-10; and demand for Irish grain, ill; mess made by, 118; JSM's standing in, 120; opposition to Maynooth grant in, 122; Cairnes on Irish university question and, 126, 140; restoration of Catholic hierarchy in, 127; conditions in and JSM's treatment of Catholic church, 128; Catholic church and liberals in, 133; JSM on antiCatholic feeling in, 134; educational systems of Ireland and, 137; Gladstone on denominational education in, 156; and denominational education, 156-7, 158; JSM on elementary education in, 158; JSM and ancient universities of, 160; Morley and elementary education in, 162; and Irish land question, 164,176; Fenian incidents in, 166; JSM on illusions of, 166,167; JSM opposes Ireland's separation from, 169,179-80; JSM on European liberalism and sympathies of, 169; Fenianism and JSM's

280 Index conception of Ireland's relation to, 170-1; JSM on peculiarity of circumstances and ideas in, 172; needs of Ireland different from needs of, 172; and JSM's wastelands scheme, 173; Gladstone on Ireland and, 175; and political future of Union, 176; social economies of Ireland and, 177-8; choice facing, 178; JSM on land question and reconciling of Ireland and, 178,181,193-4; JSM on India and, 178; and survival of Union, 178-9; and superstitions of landlordism, 180; plight of agricultural labourers in, 183; as advanced civilization, 184; moral obligation of, 184-5; press response to England and Ireland in, 186-90; Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper on Ireland and, 190; Nation on people and government of, 191; Martineau on JSM's harming of, 192; Neate on prosperity of, 195; best-known atheist in, 207; movements for women's suffrage and land reform in, 208; Marx on aristocratic power in, 210; England and Ireland and shaping of opinion in, 211; and settlement of Irish question, 2i5;'Mokyr on agricultural labour force in, 231 n. 83; Newman returns to, 243 n. 8; electorate in, 247 n. 82; Argyll on education in, 250 n. 138; conjugal relations in, 253 n. 39. See also Great Britain Enlightenment, 127 ethology, and JSM's response to Irish famine, 45, 46-8,226 n. 4

Europe, 18, 40,49, 56, 62, 89,175, 177,181,187,188 Evening Packet, 74-5 Ewart, William, 39 Examiner, 36, 47, 70, 72, 79,100,104, 190 Eyre, Governor, 159, 207 famine. See Irish famine Fawcett, Henry, 104,108,135,136, 141,153,154,156,157,160, 202 Fenianism: JSM's response to, 5, 87, 164,166-71,176,183,184-5; impact of, 165-6,174-5; JSM on, 167, 175,176,181; Saturday Review on, 187-8; Bagehot on JSM and, 189; dismissed by Lowe, 195; anger against, 197 Fenian prisoners, 168-9,17O/ 251 n. 13 fixity of tenure: embraced by JSM, 5, 87,178,181,183,184,186,194; supported by Beaumont and Raumer, 56; JSM propounds case for, 62, 96,118; and waste lands, 63; Freeman's Journal and, 73, 74; opposition to, 74, 95,195,196; Tenant League and, 90; JSM doubts practicability of, 95; treatment of in PPE, 97-100,171; JSM on peasant proprietorship and, 102; question of raised by JSM, 103; condemned by Longfield, 114; JSM on European agriculture and, 173; JSM's treatment of in House of Commons, 173-4, 197; and issue of full rent, 195; Campbell and, 200, 201; Campbell on, 201; Cairnes on, 202; JSM on Irish landlords and, 202; JSM on ten-

Index 281 ants who need, 202; JSM on rental valuation and, 206; and 1881 Irish Land Act, 208,214 Foley, T.P., 6,181 Fortescue, Chichester, 145-7,15°< 152,153,154, 252 nn. 21, 30 Fortnightly Review, 185-6, 204, 206 Foster, Roy, 213 Fox, Robert Barclay, 50 France, 3, 33, 43, 54, 56, 73,100-1, 115,128 Fraser's Magazine, 104 free trade, 106, in, 116 freeholders. See Irish freeholders Freeman's Journal, 73-4, 85,190, 234 n. 142 French Revolution (1789), 47, 74, 100-1 French Revolution (1830), 47 French Revolution (1848), 89 Galway, 108,122,123,124,152,155, 161, 240 n. 82, 250 n. 149 Geneva, 187 George III, 4 Germany, 132, 133 Gladstone, W.E.: 1853 budget of, 106; JSM's political investment in, Il8, 119, 12O-1, 139, 141, 142, 148, 157, 159-60, 167, 172, 174-5, 243

n. 3; on condition of Ireland, 118-19; JSM on Ireland and, 119, 172, 207; and parliamentary reform, 121,153-4; and Irish university question, 133,135, 140, 144-7,148-9,150,153-154,157161-2,162-3, 25° n - J-38; Lowe and, 136; Goschen and, 137; Cairnes on, 141,142,145,147, 148, 161-2; Cairnes's unfavour-

able estimate of, 141-2; Cairnes and humbling of, 144; defeat of, 147-8,174; on denominational education in Ireland, 150; and denominational education, 156; Irish program of, 161; and England's honour in Ireland, 171; and Irish land question, 175, 199, 200,206,207,208, 210, 214; Dufferin's pamphlet and, 192; and disestablishment of Church of Ireland, 199; and 1868 general election, 200; and elementary education question, 247 n. 78; on Irish opinion, 247 n. 80; Stanley on Irish university question and, 249 n. 118; and Habeas Corpus Suspension Bill, 252 n. 25; succeeds Russell as leader, 252 n. 31 Globe, 72 Goschen, George, 137-8 Graham, Sir James, 37 Gray, Peter, 6, 226 n. 4, 234 n. 152, 235 n. 188 Great Britain: and Act of Union, 3; Irish economy and, 10, 92; JSM on Ireland's Union with, 33,169; Irish emigration to, 65, 66; Spectator and agricultural system in, 73; Trevelyan on Ireland and, 83; and administration of Ireland, 89; notion of property rights in, 97; anti-Catholicism in, 127; and Irish higher education, 131; education question and tendencies in, 159; Fenian cells in, 165; and American Civil War, 165; JSM on Irish separatists and, 170; Ireland and security of, 179; and

282 Index bonds of sentiment, 215; agricultural output in, 231 n. 84; Vaughan on wages in, 241 n. 100; Argyll on education in, 250 n. 100. See also England, Scotland, Wales Greville, Charles, 39,232-3 n. 109 Grey, Sir George, and Irish university question, 123-4,125,131,139, 143-4,146,148,150,246 n. 47 Grey, Lord, 31, 32, 37, 223 n. 91 Grote, George, 31, 40 Habeas Corpus Suspension Bill (1866), 166-7, *97, !98, 252 n. 25 Hare, Thomas, 104,159, 247 n. 82 Harvey, Daniel Whittle, 40 Hazlitt, William, 186 Hilton, Boyd, 236 n. 188 Holland, 43 Holland, Lord, 225 n. 122 Hollander, Samuel, 6, 49, 228 n. 58 Home Rule movement, 212, 214 Hoppen, K.T., 4, 20,135, 220 n. 31, 240 n. 74, 244 n. 13 Howitt, William, 56 Hughes, Thomas, 135,136,137,139, 140,141 Hyde Park, 159 India: James Mill and, 9, 57-8, 230 n. 74; JSM on Ireland and, 34, 35, 57,178, 204,229 n. 72, 239 n. 67; England's rule of, 36; JSM on state as landlord in, 54; and JSM's conversion to peasant proprietorship, 56-8; and Irish land question, 200-1,253 n. 39; Campbell on attitude of tenants in, 201; Majeed on James Mill's

treatment of, 230 n. 74; Cook on Ireland and, 230 n. 75; Trevelyan's experience in, 230 n.77 Indian Mutiny, 257 n. 151 Inglis, H.D., 56 Inglis, Sir Robert, 122 Irish Board of Works, 60, 68, 71, 77 Irish Church Bill (1835), 38 Irish church question, 8, 32, 37,42. See also Church of Ireland Irish Church Temporalities Act (1833), 32 Irish Coercion Act (1833), 32, 33 Irish famine: JSM's response to, 4, 44-5,47-8, 50, 51, 52, 59-71; Zastoupil's treatment of JSM and, 5-6; initial impact of, 59; initial government response to, 59-60; Whigs and, 59-60,76,77-9; England and, 60,67; and poor law, 67-70; JSM and government's response to, 79-80; JSM on response of government to, 80; and record of Russell's government, 80, 235 n. 170; value of JSM's proposals respecting, 81-2; differences between Trevelyan and JSM respecting, 82-6; Bernstein on liberalism and, 86; effects of, 88, 89, 90-1, 92,103,111; JSM on cottier tenancy and, 109; literature on JSM and, 226 n. 4; historiography on, 230-1 n. 79; Greville on, 232-3 n. 109; 6 Grada on government and, 235 nn. 169, 170; Gray's treatment of English response to, 236 n. 188; mentioned, 28, 55,109,113,116,165,

Index 283 i?3/183, 228 n. 45, 230 n. 77, 231 n. 84 Irish freeholders, 16, 25, 26-7, 220 n. 31 Irish Land Act (1870), 161, 206-8, 209, 257 n. 173 Irish Land Act (1881), 208, 214, 259 n. 8 Irish Land Act (1903), 214-15 Irish Land Bill (1866), 171-4,197, 199, 252 nn. 21, 30 Irish Land Bill (1867), 199 Irish Land Bill (1870), 198, 206 Irish Land League, 212, 214 Irish Landed Estates Court, 114,115 Irish landlords: JSM's view of, 26, 68, 96,177; JSM on, 26, 27, 28, 51, 79,85, 97-8,101,102,107,201-2; Morning Chronicle and, 51; and clearing of estates, 53, 91; and poor law, 66, 67; Economist on, 68; The Times on, 68; and reclamation of waste lands, 74, 75; Irish Tory press and, 74; Trevelyan and, 83; and tenant-right, 90; treatment of in PPE, 96, 97-8,101-2; Cairnes on, no, 113, 203; and cottier tenancy, 112, 117; reputation of, 112; and subletting, 114; and radical land reform, 185,196; JSM and superseding of, 186; treatment of in England and Ireland, 192; Bright on absentee, 198; Gladstone on JSM and, 199; Campbell's view of JSM's treatment of, 201; predicament of, 210; JSM attacks prerogatives of, 211; and Land League, 212; influence of Millian view of, 213; and 1881 Irish Land Act, 214;

Mokyr on, 231 n. 83; and tenancies in Ireland, 237 n, 27; income of, 241 n. 100; and improvements, 253 n. 47 Irish land question: JSM's involvement with, 4; Cairnes and JSM's treatment of, 6,109-17,181-2; literature on JSM and, 6; JSM's cursory treatment of in 1825, 28, 53; Thornton's analysis of, 55; and climate of opinion in England, 93-5; PPE and treatment of, 87-9, 90, 92, 95, 96-118 passim, 171; JSM on, 96, 97-8,99,102, 210; JSM's combustibility on, 118; JSM's parliamentary career and, 120; JSM's radical leap on, 164; Fenianism and, 165; JSM returns to, 171; JSM's 1866 treatment of, 171-4; England and Ireland and, 175-85; JSM, Campbell, and, 200-6; and land reform in England, 208-11; JSM's posthumous association with, 212-15; Longfield and, 241-2 n. 103; shift in political status of, 251 n. i; publication of JSM's Chapters and Speeches on, 259 n. 7; in late 19th century, 259 n. 9. See also fixity of tenure, Irish Land League, peasant proprietorship, waste lands Irish Municipal Corporations Act (1840), 37 Irish Municipal Corporations Bill (1836), 38 Irish nationalism: JSM's response to, 5, 6,166-7,183; Nation and, 74; resurgence of, 87; and JSM's parliamentary career, 120; and

284 Index land war, 212; and 1881 Irish Land Act, 214; force of, 215; mentioned, 259 n. 10 Irish People, 165 Irish Poor Law Act (1838), 66, 67 Irish Poor Law Extension Act (1847), 80 Irish Reform Bill (1866), 145 Irish Republican Brotherhood. See Fenianism Irish University Bill (1873), 161-2, 251 n. 148 Irish university question, 5, 6,119, 120-63,182, 243 n. 7, 245-6 n. 47, 246 n. 53, 249 n. 118 Irish Waste Lands Improvement Company, 81 Jamaica, 159 Jamaica Committee, 159 Jenkins, Brian, 220 n. 37 Jones, Richard, 54-5 Jordan, Donald, 213 Jowett, Benjamin, 192 Kerr, Donal A., 243 n. 4 Kinealy, Christine, 235 n. 170 Laing, Samuel, 56 Lalor, James Fintan, 89 landlords. See Irish landlords Land Tenure Reform Association, JSM and, 208-10 land war, 212, 213 Larkin, Emmet, 123, 247 n. 66 Lawson, James Anthony, 142,143 Leader, J.T., 40 Lebow, R.N., 5 Leeds, 13 Leslie, Thomas Cliffe, 150, 206, 210

Lewis, George Cornewall, 224-5 n. 114 Liberal party: JSM and radicalization of, 5,120-1,141,154, 159,171, 243 n. 3; Hoppen on Palmerston and Irish, 135; JSM on Irish university question and, 135; Irish university question and, 139; Cairnes on supplemental charter and, 147; Gladstone and revivified, 161; Gladstone's leadership of, 174-5, 252 n- 31 liberalism: Bernstein on Irish famine and, 86; Palmerston's brand of, 120; and Roman Catholic church, 124,126; of Cairnes and JSM, 127; JSM and advanced, 147; and Trinity College Dublin, 151-2; JSM on advanced, 158-9; Cairnes's, 163; and creation of pluralist society in Ireland, 163 Limerick, 154 Lindley, Dwight, 108 Lipkes, Jeff, 6, 240-1 n. 87 Liverpool, Lord, 15,16, 24 Lloyd's Weekly London Newspaper, 186,190,191 London, 124,130,159,166,190, 239 n. 54 London Debating Society, 27,29, 52 Londonderry, 138 London Review, 30, 38, 224 n. 114. See also London and Westminster Review London and Westminster Review, 41, 42, 51, 52. See also London Review, Westminster Review Longfield, Mountifort, 114, 241-2 n. 103

Index 285 Longmans, 208 Lovett, William, 239 n. 54 Lowe, Robert: and Irish university question, 136-7,139-40,141,153, 154, 249 n. 118; Cairnes on Irish university question and, 136,138, 153; damage done to Gladstone by, 154; attacks JSM, 195,197; Stanley on, 249 n. 118 Lucas, Frederic, 90, 238 n. 44 MacDonagh, Oliver, 37 MacHale, John, 123 Magee College, 138, 161 Majeed, Javed, 25, 53 Malthus, Thomas, 25, 53 Manchester, 166,174 Manchester School, 95 Marchi, Neil de, 239 n. 55 Marshall, John, 13 Martin, David, 6, 55 Martineau, Harriet, 192 Marx, Karl, 210 Maynooth College, 122,124,127, 159, 161 McCosh, James, 138 McCulloch, J.R., 53 McDowell, R.B., 243 n. 5 Melbourne, Lord, 37, 38, 39 Methodist Conference, 23 Mill, Harriet Taylor, 103-4, 228 n. 45, 245 n. 29 Mill, James: and Ireland, 9-13,14, 28, 33; and aristocracy, 9, 58; and Parliamentary History and Review, 13; and JSM's mental crisis, 29; and East India Company, 35; and doctrine of association, 46; and property rights in India, 57-8; and Ricardo's theory of rent, 58;

and education, 67; and Protestant Reformation, 127-8; JSM's defence of, 219 n. 19; literature on India and, 230 n. 74 Mill, John Stuart, works: Autobiography, 9,13, 21, 29, 44, 45, 47, 51, 52, 58,103,107,127-8,167,172, 194,197,200,207; 'Bain's Psychology/ 104; Chapters on Socialism, 103; Chapters and Speeches on the Irish Land Question, 259 n. 7; 'Civilization/ 129; 'The Claims of Labour/ 55; 'Coleridge/ 43,104; Considerations on Representative Government, 87,103,104-6,118, 142,164,184, 236 n. i, 240 n. 75; The Contest in America/ 107-8; 'De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [II],' 45; Dissertations and Discussions, 104; England and Ireland, 5, 6, 57, 87-8,158,164, 169-215 passim, 252 n. 36, 256 nn. 117,128,258 n. 175; Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, 48,49; 'A Few Words on Non-intervention/ 104; Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 129,160; 'Ireland/ 4,13-29, 53; 'Leslie on the Land Question/ 206,210; 'Memorandum of the Improvements in the Administration of India during the Last Thirty Years/ 239 n. 67; Morning Chronicle series, 4-5, 44-89 passim, 96, 97, 99,104,118,173,180,182, 226 nn. 4, 8, 229 n. 64; 'Nature/ 44; 'Notes on the Newspapers/ 33; 'On the Definition of Political Economy/ 49; On Liberty, 103,

286 Index 104; PPE, 3,4,5,44,45,49,53,56,58, 59,65,82,86-118 passim, 164,171-83 passim, 206-7,2°9/ ^9 n- 64,234 n. 152,236 n. i, 239 n. 55,241 n. 92,258 n. 175,259 n. 7; 'Recent Writers on Reform/ 104; 'Reform of the Civil Service/ 103; 'Reorganization of the Reform Party/ 42; The Slave Power/108; 'Spirit of the Age/ 30; The Subjection of Women, 44,253 n. 39; A System of Logic, 42,45-51 passim; Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, 104,142; Three Essays on Religion, 103,128; Utilitarianism, 103; 'Whewell on Moral Philosophy/ 129 Mineka, Francis, 108 Mitchel, John, 89 Mokyr, Joel, 82, 231 n. 83 Molesworth, William, 40 Montague, Robert John, 234 n. 152 Monthly Repository, 33 Moody, T.W., 213 Morley, John, 162 Morning Chronicle: JSM's leading articles in, 4-5,44-89 passim, 96, 97, 99,104,118,173,180,182, 226 nn. 4, 8, 229 n. 64, 232 n. 92; opportunity given JSM by, 51-2; Buller and, 52,227 n. 45; sale of, 228 n. 45 Morning Post, 187 Morning Star, 189-90 Morpeth, Lord, 37 Mulgrave, Lord, 37, 42 Municipal Corporations Bill (1835), 38 Murray, Daniel, 243 n. 7 Napier, Macvey, 45

Nation, 74,85,89,100,190-1 national character, 35, 36,46,65 National Society, 250 n. 134 Navigation Laws, 106 Neate, Charles, 136,195 Nesbitt, William, Cairnes's correspondence with, 130,132,133, 134,136,138,141,148,157, 240 n. 82, 246 n. 51, 248 nn. 84, 97, 249 n. 116, 250 n. 131 New England, 137 Newman, John Henry, 122,243 n. 8 Newsinger, John, 244 n. 12 newspaper tax, 106 Nichol, John Pringle, 35 Nicholls, George, 232 Nightingale, Florence, 192 North America, 101 Norway, 73 'Notes on Ireland/ Cairnes's, 111-17,182 O'Brien, William Smith, 89 O'Connell, Daniel: as controversial figure, 8; Bentham's acquaintance with, 9; and Catholic Association, 15; and 1825 Catholic legislation, 16; and Irish freeholders, 27,220 n. 31; and Catholic emancipation, 30; leads Irish contingent in House of Commons, 31; Grey's view of, 32; and repeal of Union, 33,73,87,121, 215; JSM on, 33,40,41-2; as ally of Whigs, 37-8,42; breach between anti-Whig Radicals and, 40-2; JSM's view of, 40,42; and Irish poor law, 66; and Young Ireland, 89; and Queen's Colleges, 122; Connolly on, 220 n. 31 O'Donoghue, Daniel, 123

Index 287 6 Grada, Cormac, 80, 231 n. 84, 235 n. 169 Old Poor Law, 66, 70 Osborne, Ralph Bernal, 78 Oxford City, 195 Oxford University, 70,106,129,137, 141, 152, 155, 157, 158, 159,160, 195 Pall Mall Gazette, 187,197 Palmerston, Lord, 52, 93-4,120,121, 123,135,141,148,171,172,187, 209 paper duties, 106 Parliamentary History and Review, 13-15, 16, 20, 21, 25, 27, 28 parliamentary reform, issue of, 121, 136, 137,139, 142, 153-4,174, 209 Parnell, Charles Stewart, 212, 214, 215 Parry, J.P., 247 n. 78, 251 n. 148 peasant proprietorship: JSM's advocacy of, 5, 44, 62-4, 82, 85-6,171, 180,182,185,196, 229 n. 64; literature on JSM and, 6, 235 n. 180; JSM shows no sympathy for, 28; and formation of character, 48; problem of JSM's conversion to, 52-9; political economists and, 53; JSM on, 55, 76, 97, 99, 117, 180; Scrope favours, 68-9, 230 n. 77; The Times and, 71; press response to proposal for, 72-3; Economist on Irish and, 73; Freeman's Journal and, 73; Whig government and, 75; Dublin Evening Post and, 75-6; PPE and, 86, 96, 97-9,102, 106, 117-18, 236 n. i; Cairnes favours, no, 114-15; Cairnes on, 114, 115; and sale of

tenant-right, 117; Boylan and Foley on Cairnes and, 181; Daily News on Irish and, 189; Land Tenure Reform Association and, 208; Trevelyan and, 230 n. 77, 236 n. 187; Montague on JSM and, 234 n. 152; mentioned, 49 Peel, Sir Robert (1788-1850), 19, 20, 31, 37, 38, 41, 50, 78, 91,121-2, 127,135, 222 n. 46, 243 n. 4 Peel, Sir Robert (1822-1895), 135, 138,139,140,147,148, 149 Perkin, Harold, 238 n. 32 Permanent Settlement of Bengal, 57, 58 Peto, Sir Samuel Morton, 138 Philosophic Radicalism, 8,18-20, 30 Philosophic Radicals, 20, 41, 42, 52. See also Radicals Pitt, William, the Younger, 4 Pius IX, Pope, 122 political economy: and JSM's response to famine, 48-50, 60, 85; JSM on science of, 49; science and art of, 49-50; method appropriate to science of, 54; Irish famine and tenets of classical, 60; JSM on peasant proprietorship and, 64; peasant proprietorship and, 64; Old Poor Law and orthodox, 70; Bernstein on famine mythology and, 86; Cairnes on Gladstone and fallacies of, 141; Neate on England's prosperity and principles of, 195; JSM, Cairnes, and classical, 240-1 n. 87 Political Economy Club, 103,108, 136 poor law, Irish: question of, 8; JSM and, 45, 48, 49, 66-71; JSM on,

288 Index 70-1, 80; Scrope and, 69-70; liberal opinion and, 70; burden placed on extended, 80; and Irish economy in early 18605, 93; Nicholls on famine and, 232 n. 108; Senior and, 233 n. 122. See also Irish Poor Law Act (1838), Irish Poor Law Extension Act (1847) Poor Law Amendment Act (1834), 67 population question, 25,28, 89-90 Presbyterian Assembly of Ulster, 138 Presbyterians, 4, 40,122,155,159 primogeniture, 94-5,198,208 Protestant ascendancy, 4, 9, 24, 34, 38,152,170,199 Protestantism, JSM's view of, 127-8 Protestant Reformation, 128 Prussia, 73 public-works projects, and famine, 59, 63, 80 Quarterly Review, 188 Queen's College Belfast, 122,138, 150,155,161 Queen's College Cork, 122,123,155, 161 Queen's College Galway, 108,122, 123,124,155,161, 251 n. 149 Queen's Colleges: founding of, 122, 158, 243 n. 6; Pius IX and, 122; fortunes of, 122-3; Irish bishops and, 123,124; Cairnes's defence of, 124-7,130-63 passim; and Grey's announcement, 124; and Queen's University degrees, 130; JSM and protection for, 132;

Scottish MPs and defence of, 139; government plan and standing of, 143; and Queen's University charter, 144; harm done by Liberal government to, 147; supplemental charter and status of, 148; Gladstone and, 149,150; Cairnes on debate on, 153; Cairnes on Monsell's plan and, 155; denominational institutions and, 157; and 1873 Irish University Bill, 161; Morley on, 162; Argyll on priests and, 250 n. 138 Queen's University: founding of, 122; Irish bishops and, 122,123, 131,134, 246 n. 55; government's intentions regarding, 124,143-4; Cairnes's defence of, 124-7, 130-63 passim; JSM and system of, 131-42 passim, 146,156; charter of, 131,135,143; senate of, 131,143,146,150-1, 246 n. 47; Presbyterian Assembly of Ulster and, 138; and supplemental charter, 144-7,151; Cairnes on Gladstone's pledge regarding, 145; JSM on supplemental charter and defenders of, 146; Gladstone on supplemental charter and enlargement of, 149; Tories and, 156; and 1873 Irish University Bill, 161 Radicals: and notion of 'the people,' 19; JSM and cause of, 30; no recognized leader of, 31; combine with Whigs and Irish, 37; JSM on Whigs and, 39; Greville on position of, 39; and Whig ministry, 38-40; JSM on Irish Catholics and, 41; O'Connell and English, 41;

Index 289 and Russell's waste-lands scheme, 78; and property rights, 94-5; and 1867 Reform Bill, 154; at 1868 general election, 200; post-i867 aspirations of, 209. See also Philosophic Radicals Raumer, Friedrich Ludwig Georg von, 56, 229 n. 70 Reeve, Henry, 192 Reform Act (1832), 30, 39, 50 Reform Act (1867), 161,186,209,214 Reform Bill (1866), 121,142,144, 146,147-8,153,154,167,172, 245 n. 82 Reform Bill (1867), 153-4, 159, 249 n. 124, 252 n. 29 Reform Club, 40 Reform League, 141 rent, Ricardian doctrine of, 54, 57-8 Repeal Association, 89 Reynolds's Newspaper, 190 Ricardo, David, 10,11, 54, 55, 57-8 Richmond, Duke of, 37 Robinson, Colonel Daniel, 81 Robson, Ann, 6, 52, 226 n. 4 Robson, John ML, 6, 16 Rockites, 220 n. 30 Roebuck, John Arthur, 31, 39, 78 Roman Catholic bishops, and Irish university question, 5,122,123, 124, 126-7, 131/ *33' !34/ !36,138, 141, 146,162, 243-4 n. 12, 246 n. 55, 247 n. 66 Roman Catholic church, 5,124,126, 128,133,160, 163, 244 n. 12. See also Catholicism Rome, 122,124 Romilly, John, 13, 31 Russell, Lord John: gains O'Connell's support, 37; JSM and

government of Melbourne and, 38-9; and 'finality' declaration, 39-40, 41; Buller in government of, 52; Irish famine and government of, 59, 80, 81; and reclamation of waste lands, 77-8; JSM on waste-lands scheme of, 78, 79; Irish encumbered estates and government of, 91; succeeds Palmerston, 120; and parliamentary reform, 121; JSM on Ecclesiastical Titles Bill and, 127; Irish university question and government of, 130-50 passim; Lowe and government of, 136; JSM and government of, 167,172,174; gives up leadership, 252 n. 31; mentioned, 150,154 Saint-Simonianism, 29-30, 31, 56 Saturday Review, 187-8 Saville, John, 239 n. 54 science, distinction between art and, 49-50 Scotland, 34, 41,136,138,175, 215, 250 n. 138 Scrope, George Poulett, 68-70, 71, 75, 77, 82, 230 n. 77, 233 nn. 114, 116 secret ballot, 27, 39 Senior, Nassau William, 70, 204, 233 n. 122 Shaw-Lefevre, J.G., 136 Sheil, Richard Lalor, 15 Sismondi, J.C.L., 49, 56 Skorupski, John, 47 soup kitchens, and Irish famine, 80 Southport, 175,199 Spectator, 70, 72-3,186,190,191 Standard, 188

290 Index Stanley, Lord (i^th Earl of Derby), 198-9, 249 n. 118, 251 n. 13 Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 241 n. 103 Steele, E.D., 5, 6, 87, 99,171,182, 183-4,193/ 25* n -1/ 258 n. 173 Stephen, Leslie, 3 Stokes, Eric, 230 n. 74 Stoney, George J., 248 n. 95 strict settlement, 95, 208, 238 n. 32 Strutt, Edward, 13 Sullivan, William K., 151 supplemental charter, for Queen's University, 144-53 passim Sweden, 12 Switzerland, 43, 73 Syllabus of Errors, 127 Tablet, 90 Tamworth, 149 'taxes on knowledge/ 106 Taylor, Harriet. See Mill, Harriet Taylor Taylor, Helen, 104 Taylor, John, 103 Taylor, P.A., 136,137,141 Temporary Relief Act (1847), 80 Tenant League, 90,102, 237 n. 11 tenant-right, 90, 93-5, 98,114,115, 117,176, 198, 199, 200, 203, 204, 206, 242 n. 106 Theological Review, 124,133,136, 151, 246 n. 53 Thompson, Dennis F., 240 n. 75 Thornton, William Thomas, 53-5, 56, 82,185,191,192, 229 n. 64, 235 n. 180, 241 n. 93 Thurles, 122 Times, The, 66, 67, 68, 71,127,136, 186,187,192, 233 n. 125

Tipperary, 123-4 Tithe Act (1838), 37 tithe question, 8, 33, 223 n. 91 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 56 Tories: JSM as opponent of, 8; and Catholic emancipation, 18,19-20; JSM on Catholic emancipation and, 18-19; differences between Whigs and, 19; and Radical party, 30; weakness of, 31; and 1835 general election, 37; rising strength of, 39; O'Connell's hostility to, 40; issue of amalgamation of Whigs and, 41, 42; JSM on Whigs and, 41; electoral success in Ireland of, 106,123,244 n. 16; and 1866 Reform Bill, 121,148; and Irish university question, 139, 150,156,157,160-1; Cairnes on Irish university question and, 147, 153; and political meetings in Hyde Park, 159; Liberals seek to displace, 174; Standard and, 188; Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper on England and Ireland and, 190; 1867 Irish Land Bill of, 199; mentioned, 38 Trevelyan, Charles, 82-4, 85, 230 n. 77, 236 n. 187 Trinity College Dublin, 109,114, 121-2,151-62 passim, 243 n. 5 Trollope, Anthony, 192 Tuam, 123 Turner, Michael, 236 n. 5, 241 n. 100 Ulster: Presbyterians in, 4, 40,138; tenant-right in, 90, 95, 98, 99,176, 200,204, 206; JSM on efficiency of cultivation in, 98; JSM and Protestants of, 176; and implications of

Index Ireland's independence, 179; JSM's scheme and tenants in, 201; Cairnes on tenant-right in, 202 Union, of Great Britain and Ireland: Fenian challenge to, 5, 87,164-5, 175; Steele's view of JSM and, 5, 183-4; Ricardo's view of, 10; James Mill's view of, 12; and Catholic Association, 24; JSM and repeal of, 33, 100; JSM on, 33, 104, 178, 193; O'Connell's movement for repeal of, 73, 215; Trevelyan on, 83; Carlyle and repeal of, 100; Carlyle on repeal of, 100; and centuries of oppression, 105; critical period in history of, 120; England's moral duty and survival of, 164, 178-9, 184,185, 211; land question and, 176,178,179, 180, 214, 215; JSM on land question and, 178; and sovereignty, 178. See also Act of Union United Irishman, 89 United Kingdom, 3, 4,10, 17, 118-19, 165, 180, 183, 184, 187-8, 241 n. 100 United States, 65,102,107-8,112, 115, 116, 117, 124, 165,188 University College London, 124 University of Dublin, 154,162. See also Trinity College Dublin University of London, 125, 131, 132, 158 University of St Andrews, 129,160 Vaughan, W.E., 92,183, 204, 224 n. 99, 237 n. 15, 241 nn. 99,100, 242 n. 106, 253 n. 47, 258 n. 173 Victoria, Queen, 39,198

291 Wakley, Thomas, 40 Wales, 215, 247 n. 82 waste lands: JSM's scheme respecting, 5, 44, 53, 62-4, 69, 71-6, 81-2, 99, 102, 173; JSM on reclamation of, 48, 63, 70, 76, 78, 79, 85; Thornton favours reclamation of, 55; Scrope's scheme respecting, 68-9, 230 n. 77; press response to JSM's scheme respecting, 71-6, 233 n. 125; Whigs and reclamation of, 75, 76, 77-9; Russell and reclamation of, 77-8; JSM and Russell's scheme respecting, 78-9; Black on reclamation of, 82; fate of Russell's scheme respecting, 94; Parliament and reclamation of, 106; Trevelyan and reclamation of, 236 n. 187 Webb, D.A., 243 n. 5 Weinberg, Adelaide, 240 n. 81 Wellington, Duke of, 41 Wesleyan Methodists, 155 West Indies, 54 Westminster, constituency of, 120, 127, 134, 158, 161, 200, 207 Westminster Review, 11,13, 30,108. See also London and Westminster Review Whigs: JSM's view of, 8, 38-9; and Catholic emancipation, 18-19; JSM on, 18-19, 39, 41, 42; differences between Tories and, 19; Irish policies of, 20, 32, 36-8, 66; and Radical party, 30; O'Connell's confidence in, 37, 38,40,41, 42; issue of amalgamation of Tories and, 41; Durham's grudge against, 42; and Irish famine, 59,

292 Index 75-9; and 1866 Reform Bill, 147-8; problems facing, 225 n. 117; mentioned, 70 Whiteside, James, 135 Whyte, J.H., 237 n. 11 William IV, 37 Wodehouse, Lord, 135,143-4,145, 146,148,150, 245-6 n. 47, 254 n. 68 women's suffrage, 159, 208, 252 n. 29

Wood, Sir Charles, 78, 79 Wooler, Thomas Jonathan, 25 Young, Arthur, 53 Young Ireland, 74,89 Zastoupil, Lynn, 5-6, 57,169,182-3, 226 n. 4,232 n. 92,252 n. 16,254 n. 76