Any work from the pen of John Stuart Mill will arrest the attention of readers and thinkers wherever the English language is spoken, and, indeed, wherever the spirit of inquiry and improvement has aroused the intellect of man. This author has proved himself a veritable instructor and benefactor of his race. His writings have been always grave and valuable, addressed to the understanding of men, indicating arduous study on his own part, and eliciting reflection of the profoundest character in the mind of his reader. In his well known work 'On Logic,' published twenty years ago, he exhibited the highest capacity for abstract speculation, and placed himself by the side of Aristotle and Bacon in the rank of philosophers; while that 'On the Principles of Political Economy,' more practical in its aims, entitles him to the reputation of an able and enlightened statesman. Last year we had published in this country, a treatise from the same fertile pen on the subject of 'Representative Government,' which, however, was subsequent in the order of composition to that which has just now appeared in the United States from the press of Ticknor & Fields, of Boston. Both these productions, that on 'Representative Government,' and that 'On Liberty,' are valuable to the American people, teaching lessons important to be learned even by them. From the nature of our institutions, and especially from the vainglorious sentiments too generally entertained by us, we are apt to consider ourselves so well versed in the principles of civil liberty and of representative government, as to be incapable of learning anything on these subjects, especially from English writers. Unfortunately, recent events are calculated rudely to disturb our self-satisfaction, and to arouse within us a serious distrust, not indeed of the principles embodied in our institutions, but of our practical ability to carry them out to their legitimate results, and thus to enjoy, fully and permanently, the advantages of the system of free government of which we have always been so boastful.