Bygones Worth Remembering, Vol. 1 (of 2)Holyoake, George Jacob
Philosophy
Bygones Worth Remembering, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Holyoake, George Jacob
Holyoake, George Jacob, 1817-1906; Social reformers -- Great Britain -- Biography; Working class -- Great Britain -- Biography
"Dear Sir,--I have received your pamphlet (the 'Liberal Situation')
which I think is one of the best of your writings, and well calculated
to stir up the thinking minds among the working classes to larger views
of political questions. So far as I am myself concerned I cannot but
be pleased to find you in sympathy with some of the most generally
unpopular of my political notions. For my own part, I attach for the
present more importance to representation of minorities, and especially
to Mr. Hares plan, combined with opening the suffrage to women, than
to the plural voting which, in the form proposed by Mr. Buxton, of
attaching the plurality of votes directly to property, I have always
thoroughly repudiated. But I think what you say of it likely to be very
useful by impressing on the working people that it is no degradation to
them to consider some people's votes of more value than others. I would
always (as you do) couple with the plurality the condition of its being
accessible to any one, however poor, who proves that he can come up to a
certain standard of knowledge.--I am, yours truly,
"J. S. Mill.
"G. J. Holyoake."
One night when a great Reform League meeting was held in the
Agricultural Hall, Islington, I accompanied him from the House of
Commons to it. There were rumours of danger in attending it. This did
not deter him. The meeting itself was ill spoken of by the press--still
he went. The crowd about the place made it perilous for one so
fragile-looking as he, to force a way in. He never hesitated to try it
When we arrived on the thronged platform, it was a struggle to get to
the front. The vast amphitheatre, with its distant lights and dense
crowds--the horsepit presenting a valley of faces, the higher ground
hills of men, the iron rafters overhead were alive with hearers who had
climbed there--was a strange Miltonic scene. No sooner did the stout
voice of Manton--which alone all could hear--announce the arrival of Mr.
Mill than every man was silent; though few would catch the low, wise,
brave words he uttered. Afterwards I returned to the House of Commons
with him, he being interested in an expected division.
The Islington meeting that night had been denounced as illegal. He went
to justify the right of public meeting by his presence, and to share the
responsibility of those who convened it. What man eminent as a
thinker, save he, or Mr. John Morley, would incur the odium, peril, and
discomfort of attending, for such a purpose, a workman's meeting such as
that?
The first time he made a speech at a public meeting was at the
Whittington Club, before a gathering of co-operators. I asked him to
address them. I was as glad as surprised when he consented. Had it not
been for the presence of women taking interest in co-operative economy,
he probably had not spoken then. In a sentence he defined the higher
co-operation. He never spoke in vain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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