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

generally at

all enthusiastic in my support. It has already been mentioned, how large

a proportion of my prominent appearances had been on questions on which

I differed from most of the Liberal party, or about which they cared

little, and how few occasions there had been on which the line I took

was such as could lead them to attach any great value to me as an organ

of their opinions. I had moreover done things which had excited, in many

minds, a personal prejudice against me. Many were offended by what they

called the persecution of Mr. Eyre: and still greater offence was taken

at my sending a subscription to the election expenses of Mr. Bradlaugh.

Having refused to be at any expense for my own election, and having had

all its expenses defrayed by others, I felt under a peculiar obligation

to subscribe in my turn where funds were deficient for candidates whose

election was desirable. I accordingly sent subscriptions to nearly all

the working class candidates, and among others to Mr. Bradlaugh. He had

the support of the working classes; having heard him speak, I knew him

to be a man of ability and he had proved that he was the reverse of a

demagogue, by placing himself in strong opposition to the prevailing

opinion of the democratic party on two such important subjects as

Malthusianism and Personal Representation. Men of this sort, who, while

sharing the democratic feelings of the working classes, judged political

questions for themselves, and had courage to assert their individual

convictions against popular opposition, were needed, as it seemed to me,

in Parliament, and I did not think that Mr. Bradlaugh's anti-religious

opinions (even though he had been intemperate in the expression of them)

ought to exclude him. In subscribing, however, to his election, I did

what would have been highly imprudent if I had been at liberty to

consider only the interests of my own re-election; and, as might be

expected, the utmost possible use, both fair and unfair, was made of

this act of mine to stir up the electors of Westminster against me. To

these various causes, combined with an unscrupulous use of the usual

pecuniary and other influences on the side of my Tory competitor, while

none were used on my side, it is to be ascribed that I failed at my

second election after having succeeded at the first. No sooner was the

result of the election known than I received three or four invitations

to become a candidate for other constituencies, chiefly counties; but

even if success could have been expected, and this without expense, I

was not disposed to deny myself the relief of returning to private life.

I had no cause to feel humiliated at my rejection by the electors; and

if I had, the feeling would have been far outweighed by the numerous

expressions of regret which I received from all sorts of persons and

places, and in a most marked degree from those members of the liberal

party in Parliament, with whom I had been accustomed to act.

 

Since that time little has occurred which there is need to commemorate

in this place. I returned to my old pursuits and to the enjoyment of a

country life in the south of Europe, alternating twice a year with a

residence of some weeks or months in the neighbourhood of London. I have

written various articles in periodicals (chiefly in my friend Mr.

Morley's _Fortnightly Review_), have made a small number of speeches on

public occasions, especially at the meetings of the Women's Suffrage

Society, have published the _Subjection of Women_, written some years

before, with some additions [by my daughter and myself,] and have

commenced the preparation of matter for future books, of which it will

be time to speak more particularly if I live to finish them. Here,

therefore, for the present, this memoir may close. 

NOTES:

[1]In a subsequent stage of boyhood, when these exercises had ceased

to be compulsory, like most youthful writers I wrote tragedies; under

the inspiration not so much of Shakspeare as of Joanna Baillie, whose

_Constantine Paleologus_ in particular appeared to me one of the most

glorious of human compositions. I still think it one of the best dramas

of the last two centuries.

 

[2] The continuation of this article in the second number of the

_Review_ was written by me under my father's eye, and (except as

practice in composition, in which respect it was, to me, more useful

than anything else I ever wrote) was of little or no value.

 

[3] Written about 1861.

 

[4] The steps in my mental growth for which I was indebted to her were

far from being those which a person wholly uninformed on the subject

would probably suspect. It might be supposed, for instance, that my

strong convictions on the complete equality in all legal, political,

social, and domestic relations, which ought to exist between men and

women, may have been adopted or learnt from her. This was so far from

being the fact, that those convictions were among the earliest results

of the application of my mind to political subjects, and the strength

with which I held them was, as I believe, more than anything else, the

originating cause of the interest she felt in me. What is true is that,

until I knew her, the opinion was in my mind little more than an

abstract principle. I saw no more reason why women should be held in

legal subjection to other people, than why men should. I was certain

that their interests required fully as much protection as those of men,

and were quite as little likely to obtain it without an equal voice in

making the laws by which they were bound. But that perception of the

vast practical bearings of women's disabilities which found expression

in the book on the _Subjection of Women_ was acquired mainly through her

teaching. But for her rare knowledge of human nature and comprehension

of moral and social influences, though I should doubtless have held my

present opinions, I should have had a very insufficient perception of

the mode in which the consequences of the inferior position of women

intertwine themselves with all the evils of existing society and with

all the difficulties of human improvement. I am indeed painfully

conscious of how much of her best thoughts on the subject I have failed

to reproduce, and how greatly that little treatise falls short of what

it would have been if she had put on paper her entire mind on this

question, or had lived to revise and improve, as she certainly would

have done, my imperfect statement of the case.

 

[5] The only person from whom I received any direct assistence in the

preparation of the _System of Logic_ was Mr. Bain, since so justly

celebrated for his philosophical writings. He went carefully through the

manuscript before it was sent to the press, and enriched it with a great

number of additional examples and illustrations from science; many of

which, as well as some detached remarks of his own in confirmation of my

logical views, I inserted nearly in his own words.

 

[6] A few dedicatory lines acknowledging what the book owed to her, were

prefixed to some of the presentation copies of the _Political Economy_

on iets first publication. Her dislike of publicity alone prevented

their insertion in the other copies of the work. During the years which

intervened between the commencement of my married life and the

catastrophe which closed it, the principal occurrences of my outward

existence (unless I count as such a first attack of the family disease,

and a consequent journey of more than six months for the recovery of

health, in Italy, Sicily, and Greece) had reference to my position in

the India House. In 1856 I was promoted to the rank of chief of the

office in which I had served for upwards of thirty-three years. The

appointment, that of Examiner of India Correspondence, was the highest,

next to that of Secretary, in the East India Company's home service,

involving the general superintendence of all the correspondence with the

Indian Governments, except the military, naval, and financial. I held

this office as long as it continued to exist, being a little more than

two years; after which it pleased Parliament, in other words Lord

Palmerston, to put an end to the East india Company as a branch of the

government of India under the Crown, and convert the administration of

that country into a thing to be scrambled for by the second and third

class of English parliamentary politicians. I was the chief manager of

the resistance which the Company made to their own political extinction,

and to the letters and petitions I wrote for them, and the concluding

chapter of my treatise on Representative Government, I must refer for my

opinions on the folly and mischief of this ill-considered change.

Personally I considered myself a gainer by it, as I had given enough of

my life to india, and was not unwilling to retire on the liberal

compensation granted. After the change was consummated, Lord Stanley,

the first Secretary of State for India, made me the honourable offer of

a seat in the Council, and the proposal was subsequently renewed by the

Council itself, on the first occasion of its having to supply a vacancy

in its own body. But the conditions of Indian government under the new

system made me anticipate nothing but useless vexation and waste of

effort from any participation in it: and nothing that has since happened

has had any tendency to make me regret my refusal.

 

[7] In 1869.

 

[8]The saying of this true hero, after his capture, that he was worth

more for hanging than any other purpose, reminds one, by its combination

of wit, wisdom, and self-devotion, of Sir Thomas More.

 

[9] The first was in answer to Mr. Lowe's reply to Mr. Bright on the

Cattle Plague Bill, and was thought at the time to have helped to get

rid of a provision in the Government measure which would have given to

landholders a second indemnity, after they had already been once

indemnified for the loss of some of their cattle by the increased

selling price of the remainder.

 

[10] Among the most active members of the Committee were Mr. P.A.

Taylor, M.P., always faithful and energetic in every assertion of the

principles of liberty; Mr. Goldwin Smith, Mr. Frederic Harrison, Mr.

Slack, Mr. Chamerovzow, Mr. Shaen, and Mr. Chesson, the Honorary

Secretary of the Association. 

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Publication Date: 04-21-2015

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