John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works: Twelve Sketches by Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison, and Other Distinguished Authors — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works: Twelve Sketches by Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison, and Other Distinguished Authors
John Stuart Mill · en
Many of these friends were contributors to the original "Westminster
Review," which was started by Bentham in 1824. Bentham himself and the
elder Mill were its chief writers at first; and in 1828, if not
sooner, the younger Mill joined the number. In that year he reviewed
Whately's Logic; and it is probable that in the ensuing year he
contributed numerous other articles. His first literary exploit,
however, which he cared to reproduce in his "Dissertations and
Discussions" was an article that appeared in "The Jurist," in 1833,
entitled "Corporation and Church Property." That essay, in some
respects, curiously anticipated the Irish Church legislation of
nearly forty years later. In the same year he published, in "The
Monthly Repository," a remarkably able and quite a different
production,--"Poetry and its Varieties," showing that in the
department of _belles-lettres_ he could write with nearly as much
vigor and originality as in the philosophical and political
departments of thought to which, ostensibly, he was especially
devoted. Shortly after that he embarked in a bolder literary venture.
Differences having arisen concerning "The Westminster Review," a new
quarterly journal--"The London Review"--was begun by Sir William
Molesworth, with Mr. Mill for editor, in 1835. "The London" was next
year amalgamated with "The Westminster," and then the nominal if not
the actual editorship passed into the hands of Mr. John Robertson. Mr.
Mill continued, however, to be one of its most constant and able
contributors until the Review passed into other hands in 1840. He
aided much to make and maintain its reputation as the leading organ of
bold thought on religious and social as well as political matters.
Besides such remarkable essays as those on Civilization, on Armand
Carrel, on Alfred de Vigny, on Bentham, and on Coleridge, which, with
others, have been republished in his collection of minor writings, he
contributed many of great importance. One on Mr. Tennyson, which was
published in 1835, is especially noteworthy. Others referred more
especially to the politics of the day. From one, which appeared in
1837, reviewing Albany Fonblanque's "England under Seven
Administrations," and speaking generally in high terms of the
politics of "The Examiner," we may extract a few sentences which
define very clearly the political ground taken by Mr. Mill, Mr.
Fonblanque, and those who had then come to be called Philosophical
Radicals. "There are divers schools of Radicals," said Mr. Mill.
"There are the historical Radicals, who demand popular institutions as
the inheritance of Englishmen, transmitted to us from the Saxons or
the barons of Runnymede. There are the metaphysical Radicals, who hold
the principles of democracy, not as means to good government, but as
corollaries from some unreal abstraction,--from 'natural liberty' or
'natural rights.' There are the radicals of occasion and circumstance,
who are radicals because they disapprove the measures of the