Reflections and Comments 1865-1895Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
General
Reflections and Comments 1865-1895
Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
Essays
In short, Bridget is the legitimate product of our economical,
political, and moral condition. We have called her, in our
extremity, to do duties for which she is not trained, and having
got her here have surrounded her with influences and ideas which
American society has busied itself for fifty years in fostering
and spreading, and which, taking hold of persons in her stage of
development, work mental and moral ruin. The things which
American life and manners preach to her are not patience,
sober-mindedness, faithfulness, diligence, and honesty, and
eagerness for physical enjoyment. Whenever the sound of the new
gospel which is to win the natives back to the ancient and noble
ways is heard in the land, it is fair to expect that it will not
find her ears wholly closed, and that when the altar of duty is
again set up by her employers, she will lay on it attractive
beefsteaks, potatoes done to a turn, make libations of delicious
soup, and will display remarkable fertility in "sweets," and an
extreme fondness for washing, and learn to grow old in one
family.
JOHN STUART MILL
Mr. Mill was, in many respects, one of the most singular men ever
produced by English society. His father was a prominent member of
the small sect or coterie of Benthamites, whose attempts to
reform the world, during the whole of the earlier part of the
present century, furnished abundant matter for ridicule to the
common run of politicians and social philosophers; and this
ridicule was heightened, as the years rolled on, by the
extraordinary jargon which their master adopted for the
communication of his discoveries to the world. The author of the
"Defence of Usury," of the "Fragment on Government," and of the
"Book of Fallacies," had, however, secured a reputation very
early in his career which his subsequent eccentricities could not
shake, but the first attempts of his disciples to catch the
public ear were not fortunate. Macaulay's smart review of James
Mill's book on "Government" gives a very fair expression to the
common feeling about them in English literary and political
circles during John Stuart's boyhood. About the value of the
father's labors as a mental philosopher there are of course a
variety of opinions, but he gave two proofs of capacity for the
practical work of life which there was no gainsaying. He came to
London an obscure man of humble origin, but managed, without ever
having been in India, and at a period when authors were held in
much less esteem by politicians than they were at a later period,
to produce such an impression of his knowledge of Indian affairs,
by his elaborate history of that country, on the minds of the
Directors of the Company, that they gave him an important office
in the India House, and this, too, in spite of the fact that he
lived in a circle generally considered visionary--answering, in
fact, in some degree to what we call the "long-haired people."
Besides this, he himself personally gave his son an education
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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