Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical SketchesMcCarthy, Justin
History
Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical Sketches
McCarthy, Justin
Biography
There is something fascinating, moreover, about the singular blending of
the emotional, and even the romantic, with the keen, vigorous, logical
intellect, which is to be observed in Mill. Even political economy, in
Mill's mind, is strangely guided and governed by mere feeling. Somebody
said he was a combination of Ricardo and Tom Hughes--somebody else said,
rather more happily, I think, that he is Adam Smith and Fénélon revived
and rolled into one. The "Pall Mall Gazette" found his picture well
painted in Lord Macaulay's analysis of the motives which influenced
Edmund Burke, when he flung his soul into the impeachment of Warren
Hastings. The mere eccentricities, the very defects of such a nature
have in them something captivating. The admirers of Mr. Mill are
therefore not unusually somewhat given to exalting admiration into
idolatry. The classes who most admire him are the scholarly and
adventurous young Radicals, who have a dash of Positivism in them; the
extreme Radicals, who are prepared to go any and all lengths for the
mere sake of change; and the working-men.
This is the Triumvirate of the English Liberal Party. Combined they
represent, guide, and govern every section and fraction of that party
that is worth taking into any consideration. Mr. Gladstone represents
official Liberalism; Mr. Bright speaks for and directs the
old-fashioned, robust, popular Liberalism of which Manchester was the
school; Mr. Mill is the exponent of the new Liberalism, the Liberalism
of Idea and Logic. Bright's programme is a little ahead of Gladstone's,
but Gladstone will probably be easily pulled up to it. Mill goes far
beyond either, far beyond any point at which either is ever likely to
arrive. Indeed, Mr. Mill may be fairly described by a phrase, which I
believe is German, as a man in advance of every possible future--at
least in England. But he is quite prepared to act loyally and steadily
with his party and its leader on all momentous issues. On some minor
questions he has lately gone widely away from them, and given thereby
much offence; and indeed I am sure there are not a few of the
old-fashioned Liberals and the Manchester men who would rather Mr. Mill
had never come into Parliament and sat at their side. But on nearly all
questions of Parliamentary Reform, and on that of the Irish Church, Mill
and his Liberal colleagues will pull cordially together. So, too, on
most economic questions, reduction of taxation, imposition of duties and
the like. Where a sharp difference is likely to arise will only be in
relation to some subject having an idea behind it--some question of
foreign policy perhaps, something not at present imminent; and, let us
hope, not destined in any case to be vital to the interests of the
party. Only where an idea is involved will Mr. Mill refuse to allow his
own judgment to bend to the general necessities of the party. It was his
objection (a very unwise one, I think) to the idea behind the system of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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