Autobiography by John Stuart Mill (easy books to read txt) 📖

most essential of all recommendations to

their favour is that of complete straightforwardness; its presence

outweighs in their minds very strong objections, while no amount of

other qualities will make amends for its apparent absence. The first

working man who spoke after the incident I have mentioned (it was Mr.

Odger) said, that the working classes had no desire not to be told of

their faults; they wanted friends, not flatterers, and felt under

obligation to any one who told them anything in themselves which he

sincerely believed to require amendment. And to this the meeting

heartily responded.

 

Had I been defeated in the election, I should still have had no reason

to regret the contact it had brought me into with large bodies of my

countrymen; which not only gave me much new experience, but enabled me

to scatter my political opinions rather widely, and, by making me known

in many quarters where I had never before been heard of, increased the

number of my readers, and the presumable influence of my writings. These

latter effects were of course produced in a still greater degree, when,

as much to my surprise as to that of any one, I was returned to

Parliament by a majority of some hundreds over my Conservative

competitor.

 

I was a member of the House during the three sessions of the Parliament

which passed the Reform Bill; during which time Parliament was

necessarily my main occupation, except during the recess. I was a

tolerably frequent speaker, sometimes of prepared speeches, sometimes

extemporaneously. But my choice of occasions was not such as I should

have made if my leading object had been Parliamentary influence. When I

had gained the ear of the House, which I did by a successful speech on

Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill, the idea I proceeded on was that when

anything was likely to be as well done, or sufficiently well done, by

other people, there was no necessity for me to meddle with it. As I,

therefore, in general reserved myself for work which no others were

likely to do, a great proportion of my appearances were on points on

which the bulk of the Liberal party, even the advanced portion of it,

either were of a different opinion from mine, or were comparatively

indifferent. Several of my speeches, especially one against the motion

for the abolition of capital punishment, and another in favour of

resuming the right of seizing enemies' goods in neutral vessels, were

opposed to what then was, and probably still is, regarded as the

advanced liberal opinion. My advocacy of women's suffrage and of

Personal Representation, were at the time looked upon by many as whims

of my own; but the great progress since made by those opinions, and

especially the response made from almost all parts of the kingdom to the

demand for women's suffrage, fully justified the timeliness of those

movements, and have made what was undertaken as a moral and social duty,

a personal success. Another duty which was particularly incumbent on me

as one of the Metropolitan Members, was the attempt to obtain a

Municipal Government for the Metropolis: but on that subject the

indifference of the House of Commons was such that I found hardly any

help or support within its walls. On this subject, however, I was the

organ of an active and intelligent body of persons outside, with whom,

and not with me, the scheme originated, and who carried on all the

agitation on the subject and drew up the Bills. My part was to bring in

Bills already prepared, and to sustain the discussion of them during the

short time they were allowed to remain before the House; after having

taken an active part in the work of a Committee presided over by Mr.

Ayrton, which sat through the greater part of the Session of 1866, to

take evidence on the subject. The very different position in which the

question now stands (1870) may justly be attributed to the preparation

which went on during those years, and which produced but little visible

effect at the time; but all questions on which there are strong private

interests on one side, and only the public good on the other, have a

similar period of incubation to go through.

 

The same idea, that the use of my being in Parliament was to do work

which others were not able or not willing to do, made me think it my

duty to come to the front in defence of advanced Liberalism on occasions

when the obloquy to be encountered was such as most of the advanced

Liberals in the House, preferred not to incur. My first vote in the

House was in support of an amendment in favour of Ireland, moved by an

Irish member, and for which only five English and Scotch votes were

given, including my own: the other four were Mr. Bright, Mr. McLaren,

Mr. T.B. Potter, and Mr. Hadfield. And the second speech I delivered[9]

was on the bill to prolong the suspension of the Habeas Corpus in

Ireland. In denouncing, on this occasion, the English mode of governing

Ireland, I did no more than the general opinion of England now admits to

have been just; but the anger against Fenianism was then in all its

freshness; any attack on what Fenians attacked was looked upon as an

apology for them; and I was so unfavourably received by the House, that

more than one of my friends advised me (and my own judgment agreed with

the advice) to wait, before speaking again, for the favourable

opportunity that would be given by the first great debate on the Reform

Bill. During this silence, many flattered themselves that I had turned

out a failure, and that they should not be troubled with me any more.

Perhaps their uncomplimentary comments may, by the force of reaction,

have helped to make my speech on the Reform Bill the success it was. My

position in the House was further improved by a speech in which I

insisted on the duty of paying off the National Debt before our coal

supplies are exhausted, and by an ironical reply to some of the Tory

leaders who had quoted against me certain passages of my writings, and

called me to account for others, especially for one in my

_Considerations on Representative Government_, which said that the

Conservative party was, by the law of its composition, the stupidest

party. They gained nothing by drawing attention to the passage, which up

to that time had not excited any notice, but the _sobriquet_ of "the

stupid party" stuck to them for a considerable time afterwards. Having

now no longer any apprehension of not being listened to, I confined

myself, as I have since thought too much, to occasions on which my

services seemed specially needed, and abstained more than enough from

speaking on the great party questions. With the exception of Irish

questions, and those which concerned the working classes, a single

speech on Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill was nearly all that I contributed

to the great decisive debates of the last two of my three sessions.

 

I have, however, much satisfaction in looking back to the part I took on

the two classes of subjects just mentioned. With regard to the working

classes, the chief topic of my speech on Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill was

the assertion of their claims to the suffrage. A little later, after the

resignation of Lord Russell's Ministry and the succession of a Tory

Government, came the attempt of the working classes to hold a meeting in

Hyde Park, their exclusion by the police, and the breaking down of the

park railing by the crowd. Though Mr. Beales and the leaders of the

working men had retired under protest before this took place, a scuffle

ensued in which many innocent persons were maltreated by the police, and

the exasperation of the working men was extreme. They showed a

determination to make another attempt at a meeting in the Park, to which

many of them would probably have come armed; the Government made

military preparations to resist the attempt, and something very serious

seemed impending. At this crisis I really believe that I was the means

of preventing much mischief. I had in my place in Parliament taken the

side of the working men, and strongly censured the conduct of the

Government. I was invited, with several other Radical members, to a

conference with the leading members of the Council of the Reform League;

and the task fell chiefly upon myself, of persuading them to give up the

Hyde Park project, and hold their meeting elsewhere. It was not Mr.

Beales and Colonel Dickson who needed persuading; on the contrary, it

was evident that these gentlemen had already exerted their influence in

the same direction, thus far without success. It was the working men who

held out, and so bent were they on their original scheme, that I was

obliged to have recourse to _les grands moyens_. I told them that a

proceeding which would certainly produce a collision with the military,

could only be justifiable on two conditions: if the position of affairs

had become such that a revolution was desirable, and if they thought

themselves able to accomplish one. To this argument, after considerable

discussion, they at last yielded: and I was able to inform Mr. Walpole

that their intention was given up. I shall never forget the depth of his

relief or the warmth of his expressions of gratitude. After the working

men had conceded so much to me, I felt bound to comply with their

request that I would attend and speak at their meeting at the

Agricultural Hall; the only meeting called by the Reform League which I

ever attended. I had always declined being a member of the League, on

the avowed ground that I did not agree in its programme of manhood

suffrage and the ballot: from the ballot I dissented entirely; and I

could not consent to hoist the flag of manhood suffrage, even on the

assurance that the exclusion of women was not intended to be implied;

since if one goes beyond what can be immediately carried, and professes

to take one's stand on a principle, one should go the whole length of

the principle. I have entered thus particularly into this matter because

my conduct on this occasion gave great displeasure to the Tory and

Tory-Liberal press, who have charged me ever since with having shown

myself, in the trials of public life, intemperate and passionate. I do

not know what they expected from me; but they had reason to be thankful

to me if they knew from what I had, in all probability preserved them.

And I do not believe it could have been done, at that particular

juncture, by any one else. No other person, I believe, had at that

moment the necessary influence for restraining the working classes,

except Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, neither of whom was available: Mr.

Gladstone, for obvious reasons; Mr. Bright because he was out of town.

 

When, some time later, the Tory Government brought in a bill to prevent

public meetings in the Parks, I not only spoke strongly in opposition to

it, but formed one of a number of advanced Liberals, who, aided by the

very late period of the session, succeeded in defeating the Bill by what

is called talking it out. It has not since been renewed.

 

On Irish affairs also I felt bound to take a decided part. I was one of

the foremost in the deputation of Members of Parliament who prevailed on

Lord Derby to spare the life of the condemned Fenian insurgent, General

Burke. The Church question was so vigorously handled by the leaders of

the party, in the session of 1868, as to require no more from me than an

emphatic adhesion: but the land question was by no means in so advanced

a position; the superstitions of landlordism had up to that time been

little challenged, especially in Parliament, and the backward state of

the question, so far as concerned the Parliamentary mind, was evidenced

by the extremely mild measure brought in by Lord Russell's government in

1866, which nevertheless could not be carried. On that bill I delivered

one of my most careful speeches, in which I attempted to lay down some

of the principles of the subject, in a manner calculated less to

stimulate friends, than to conciliate and convince opponents. The

engrossing subject of Parliamentary Reform prevented either this bill,

or one of a similar character brought in by Lord Derby's Government,

from being carried through. They never got beyond the second reading.

Meanwhile the signs of Irish disaffection had become much more decided;

the demand for complete separation between the two countries had assumed

a menacing aspect, and there were few who did not feel that if there was

still any chance of reconciling Ireland to the British connection, it

could only be by the