John Stuart Mill and the London and Westminster Review

IN the summer of 1834, the party of political reformers in England ” who thought themselves, and were called by their friends, the philosophic Radicals ” came to the conclusion that the importance of their convictions made it necessary for them to have, as an organ of their own, the exclusive command of a quarterly periodical. The most notable men of this party were James and John Stuart Mill, George Grote, Arthur Roebuck, Charles Buller, and Sir William Molesworth. Personal circumstances, which are fully detailed in John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography, had justified these gentlemen in withdrawing their support from the Westminster Review, which had been founded in 1823 by Jeremy Bentham for the diffusion of his own advanced theories and doctrines. Sir William Molesworth, the member for East Cornwall, was a young man of twenty-five, full of ardor for political, ecclesiastical, and colonial reform. He very generously resolved to supply the funds required to start the London Review, four numbers of which were accordingly published, and sufficiently exhibited the distinctive characteristics of the party. The experience of a year, however, taught the proprietors both of the London and of the Westminster Review that the direct rivalry of two periodicals, neither of which had ever paid its own expenses, was, financially, far from desirable, and Sir William Molesworth again came forward and bought the Westminster Review from its proprietor, General Perronet Thompson, for £1000. The four numbers of the London Review were added to those of the Westminster, and the periodical was henceforth called the London and Westminster Review.

John Stuart Mill, largely aided by his father, was the real, while General Thompson was the ostensible editor, as the acknowledged holding of such a position was incompatible with an India House appointment. On the death of James Mill, in June, 1836, John Stuart Mill associated with himself as editor a young Scotchman named John Robertson, whose articles on Bacon and Shakespeare, in the London Review, had attracted a good deal of favorable notice. After the issue of the first number under the new editorship, Sir William Molesworth abandoned the proprietorship to Mill, having become tired of a loss of about £100 a number. John Robertson continued as editor until 1840, when Mill gave the Review to Mr. Hickson, on the stipulation that the old name, Westminster Review, should be resumed. During this period, 1836-40, many letters were received by John Robertson from John Stuart Mill, which, read by the light of subsequent events and elucidated by Mill’s Autobiography, are singularly interesting reading to the present generation, and are here printed for the first time.

The first letter of note was sent to Boulogne, France, where John Robertson bad gone for a brief holiday : —

July 12, I[NDIA] H[OUSE], 1837.

DEAR ROBERTSON-, — , . . I have had a letter from Tocqueville which shows that we can scarcely have his book before our April number, and one from Nisard, alluding to a previous letter, which I never received, coming into our plans, and having no doubt of hrs being in time for this number. I send you a letter to him.

I do not think I can write anything worth having about Whewell this time. Blackte’s I do not think will do, for an article on Menzel is an article on Goethe. of whom Menzel is the great literary enemy. Moore, if favorable, is not worth doing; if unfavorable. Peacock should do it, and it should not be in the same number as Southey. . . .

If I had known you meant to write to Harriet Martineau, I should have wished for a consultation first, as the manner of doing it is of considerable interest to me personally. She and I are not upon terms, and I know her too well to make it likely that we ever shall be. I am therefore desirous, 1st, that she should not be identified with the Review more than its interest requires : 2d, that all communications with her should take place through another medium than mine ; 3d, that nevertheless she should not think, as she is exactly the person to think, that her connection with the Review is in spite of me, — that I would prevent it if I could, but am unable.

If I knew exactly how you have written to her, I should know how to comport myself with a view to making the other impression. There is a letter for you from her at Hooper’s : have you left any instructions with Hooper about forwarding letters ? I have read her book, and like it less than I expected. I like all the feeling of it, but not the thought; but I should think an article by her on Miss Sedgwick’s writings, such as you suggest, would be interesting and useful to us.

Besides the letter to Nisard I send you one to Guilbert; if he is not in town he is at Saint-Germain, and you should go to him there. Those will be the most useful letters to you. Both Guilbert and Nisard speak English well; Guilbert excellently, and Nisard is married to an Englishwoman. I do not know anybody else who is likely to be in town except the D’Eichslials : Adolphe is too busy to be of any use to you, and Gustave you can always, if you like, call upon and use my name; he is the exSt. Simonian author of a book on Greece (and the East generally) which he wants reviewed, but which will scarcely do for us. ... I advanced £25 to Bisset on my own account, not for the Review. I do not wish to have anything more to do with the Review in that capacity. . . .

I saw Dickens yesterday ; he reminds me of Carlyle’s picture of Camille Desmoulins, and his “face of dingy blackguardism irradiated with genius.” Such a phenomenon does not often appear in a lady’s drawing-room.

Yours ever,

J. S. MILL.

On July 28 Mill again writes to Robertson, who had by that time left Paris, and after mentioning how vexed Guilbert was to have missed him goes on : —

Guilbert’s offer, however, promises fair, but I have never found that a Frenchman’s promise to do anything punctually could be depended upon. They promise everything and do nothing. They are not men of business. Guilbert is better, being half an Englishman. Do you, however, decide.

The sheets of Mignet will be a catch. Those of Hugo not, because he is exhausted and effete. Châles is a humbug, whom I showed up iu a letter intended for the National, but published in the Monthly Repository, and the bare idea of his reviewing George Sand is enough to make one split. I would not give a farthing for the opinion of Galebert, or anybody connected with his review, about writers, for they are mere milksops themselves ; and Hugo’s opinions, like most French literary men’s opinions of one another, are affairs of coterie and puffery. I thought your Statistical Society article was for the January. I of course defer to you about all questions of timing. But I differ from you about geology not being called for. I think the zoölogical speculations connected with geology are quite in season just now, and Nichol, I am sure, would do it with originality and well, judging from his articles for us, both of which were written when ill or in a hurry. You may think him not a popular writer, but you will think quite differently when you read his Architecture of the Heavens.

The falling off to be guarded against in substantial merit and originality does not arise from our having lost any of our writers, but in our not using them. I do not understand the false position you speak of, nor do I know what friends of ours we have attacked. Written, as you see, in a great hurry, and just as one chatters in walking quick from the India House to Hooper’s.

Ever truly,

J. S. MILL.

This third letter was also sent to France : —

INDIA HOUSE, (Saturday, August 6, 1837.

DEAR ROBERTSON, - I entirely approve your intention of remaining at Boulogne as long as possible, and I hope you will remain as long as what requires to be done here can be done by me, of which yon are the most proper judge.

None of the three articles you expect are at Hooper’s, nor any other article except one on Poland by a Pole, which I have not looked at. There are a few books, chiefly Spencer’s Circassia (from Colburn) and a translation of the King of Bavaria’s Poems. Hooper says he was mistaken about 1025 copies having been sold; it was only 925. That is only 25 since you went away. . , . Nichol says his article will be here next week. You do not know Nichol. He is one of the three or four persons living for whom I would answer that whatever they think and say they can do they can. He says : “ I expect that the article will direct scientific attention to some few moot points in a mode not quite so limited as that of existing discussion regarding them. At all events, I shall show general readers at what geology has arrived.” I will write to him immediately about connecting it with the geological transactions.

As for me, I am so immersed in Logic and am getting on so triumphantly with it that I loathe the idea of leaving off to write articles. I do not think you are right about the elections. The Tories, where they have gained, have gained impartially from the Whigs and Radicals, and so where they have lost. The only exceptions are Middlesex and the City ; in both of which many Tories chose to split with Whigs for the express purpose of turning out Hume and Grote. Whenever the Tories choose to do this, of course the Radical candidates will, in the present state of parties, be in great danger. The Radicals seem to have lost most only because they have lost some of their most lending men, but those will come in again for some other place very soon; and a great number of the new members are very decided Radicals, though generally not intemperate ones. Neither are the Tories who are turned out the extreme Tories. They almost all belong to the hack official jobbing adventurer Tories, who are seldom ultras, as Twiss, Bonham, Ross, and such like. On the whole, this election will so increase the already great difficulties of the Whigs that they must either propose the ballot and dissolve on it, or contrive to divide the Tory party, and make a compromise with one section of it. They stand much nearer to both goals than they ever did before, and have, I think, got clean up to the parting of the two roads. Either would be a decided improvement on the present aspect of affairs. For the present politics are wonderfully dull; and for the first time these ten years I have no wish to be in Parliament. If the offer you speak of is made me, which I shall not think at all probable until it is done, I shall not accept it unless I find by inquiry here that I can hold it with my situation in this house. For an object of importance I should not mind sacrificing my own pleasures and comforts, and obliging all connected with me to alter their style of living and go (as the vulgar phrase is) down in the world ; but I certainly would not do it in order to exchange the speculative pursuits which I like, and in which I can do great things, for the position of a Radical member of this coming Parliament.

Ever yours faithfully,

J. S. MILL.

I can do nothing about Hanover without you. Châles is the man I mean. Me writes in the Journal des Débats and is a humbug; his reputation is, however, high.

It was now Mill’s turn to take a holiday, it would appear, as the date of the next letter of importance shows : —

LEAMINGTON [probably September, 1837], Friday morning.

DEAR ROBERTSON,I agree with you in thinking the Sedgwick quite unobjectionable, though there is less in it than I expected. . . . I think your Theodore Hook a much better article, though I have canceled one or two portions of sentences positively... There are one or two ideas which I think questionable, but with those I have not meddled, nor do I propose to do so. In reading the article this time, it has struck me that there is a fault in some of your best sentences which there used to be very often in mine, and perhaps is still: that of crowding too much into them, and, in doing that, falling into a Latinism of construction which, in our non-inflected language, leaves it doubtful what substantives some of your adjectives are intended for. In this article there is also, I think (but not so often as I should have expected in an article written as you said this was, invita Minerva), the fault of using three or four words which do not exactly fit, instead of one which does. In the few instances where this fault appeared to me to amount to a serious one I have tried to correct it, and I hope you will find not at the sacrifice of any portion of your meaning. In other respects I like the article. The subject is, I think, viewed in the right light, and disposed of by making a few points, and those the important ones, and treating them in a decided manner.

The Italian article came to me in, I suppose, a proof from which corrections had already been made, but as I have made many more it will require to be carefully gone over. . . , 1 doubt very much the expediency of the deviation from the old plan of keeping the same heading throughout a whole article. I think, in our last number, the headings puzzled and displeased people: and though the modification you now propose is not so objectionable. I think it is still rather so; . . . but if you wish decidedly to try the experiment, I do not object, provided you will follow the old plan as to my own particular articles. ... I hope exceedingly you will be able to finish your other article as it was begun, and for this number. If you cannot, it must lie over to the next, for the subject is not pressing, and it is much better to have it later in time than inferior in quality ; in which case it will not do us the good we expect from it. . . . Of course you have carte blanche about fill-up matter as long as I see it at some stage or other. I would not be particular about going to the extent of sixteen sheets, when we have a good number and plenty of bills so as to make it look thick. . . .

I have written to Napier. Most likely his terms are per article, and may not be higher than ours when the article is long, which I hope this will be. You will see that I have attended to your suggestions about the political article, and have altered besides some passages which were rather declamatory. Pray attend carefully to the revise. I tremble for it. As we shall so soon meet, I leave off.

Ever yours,

J. S. MILL.

To this period seem to belong some undated letters: —

Saturday.

DEAR ROBERTSON, —To my great satisfaction Carlyle consents to do at least the Scott, and wishes to begin on Monday morning.

I should not like to baffle him in that, but in order to do it he wants Volume I. of the Scott; so, pray, if you can buy, beg. or borrow it before that time, do. He has also a great wish to have the two books of and about Colonel Crockett, and I think has a “ month’s mind ” to write about them. So, pray, send those too, and if the Review does not find its account therein I will pay for them.

Yours in haste,

J. S. MILL.

DEAR R.,— I shall not be in town this evening, but will meet you at Hooper’s to-morrow. I wish you would verify two queries of mine in the second sheet of Montaigne. You will see them in a corrected proof which I have returned to Reynell’s, and from which, when that is done, it may be printed off. S. has overlooked some bad mistakes.

I send the Arctic with my corrections. They relate solely to small matters, but I do not think you are aware how often your sentences are not only unscholarlike, but absolutely unintelligible, from inattention to ambiguities of small words and of collocation. This article is a splendid instance of it.

Simpson has made all his corrections in such a manner that the printers are sure not to attend to them, but I have left this to you to remedy when you have determined how far to adopt them. J. S. MILL.

If we are much above our fourteen sheets, I think H. M. ought to wait till October. It will do as well then, if not better, and I am very anxious to save expense of that kind.

It will be expedient here to give part of a letter from Harriet Martineau, as it led to a short but sharp controversy between Mill and Robertson, of which Mill’s letters only are preserved : —

Swiss COTTAGE; CHESHUNT. HERTS, August 20, 1837.

DEAR SIR, - Here is my say about the Queen. It will appear to you very obvious, I fear, and perhaps too sermonlike ; but indeed I think this strain of meditation much wanted to be uttered.

I have put my address in full above, that you may find fault through the post if you wish to alter. I have avoided the subject of the Rights of Women (except in the way of passing allusion) as not being absolutely necessary. If you dislike the reference to Sydney Smith’s reference to Singleton. I have not the least objection to its being expunged. It was something that Mr. Roebuck said that put it into my head to write this article. . . .

Mill’s three letters on this article now follow : —

Ross, 28 September, 1837.

DEAR ROBERTSON, — I have read Harriet Martineau’s article with the greatest desire to do it justice, and the result is more unfavorable to it than ever before. I always thought the notion it presupposes of the Queen’s position an incorrect one, and I now think that even if that notion were correct she does not speak to the Queen in the right tone or give her the right advice. It seems to me that if we occupy ourselves with the Queen at all, we ought to make her believe that people feel interested about her just at present from mere curiosity, and not because they really believe she can do much ; and that unless she has the qualities of an Elizabeth she will be nothing, but that she should aspire to have these qualities, and that if she has she may be as great a ruler as Elizabeth.

Instead of that, H. M. says to her that Elizabeth in these days could do comparatively little for us, and that she must not aim at being like her; and why ? Because she has many wills besides her own to consult — as if Elizabeth had not!—and a giant democracy to struggle with ; yes, to struggle with ! (is that what we should teach her ?) as if Elizabeth had not Catholicism and Puritanism, and Philip and Catherine di Medici and Mary! I think this paper altogether contrary to the character which we are trying to give to the Review, namely, a character of dignity, and besides of practicalness. It is most completely unpractical; it is what a woman’s view of practical affairs is supposed to be, and what the view of a person ignorant of life always is. She always treats the Queen like a young person. Now the Queen cannot be young, except in ignorance of the world, and kings and queens are that even at sixty. She always treats the Queen as artless. She cannot be artless, as a person full of anxieties, or who will be so, about doing her duty to her subjects. I am convinced she is just a lively, spirited young lady, thinking only of enjoying herself, and who never is nor ever will be conscious of any difficulties or responsibilities, — no more than Marie Antoinette, who was a much cleverer woman and had much more will and character than she is ever likely to have. She is conscious, I dare say, of good intentions, as every other young lady is ; she is not conscious of wishing any harm to any one, unless they have offended her, nor of intending to break any one article of the Decalogue. That is the nature of the well-meanings of a person like her, and if we wish to give her any higher feelings or notions about her duties, we cannot go a worse way to work than H. M. does. If she reads us, she will not recognize any one of her own feelings in what the article says, and therefore will not mind us at all; besides, the article is a ready-made apology to her for being and for doing nothing.

This is a very small part indeed of what this last reading of the article has made me think to its disadvantage. It seems to me childish, and if we take away the prettiness and masculine structure of some of the sentences it, is what people may forgive and like well enough in a woman, but not in a parcel of men. There is continual trying hard for philosophy in the article, and not an opinion or observation that you may not drive a coach and six through. I could not have believed how much this was the case till I examined it minutely, for I was imposed upon at first by the writing, which is in the style of a better kind of thought, and yet just the writing one would expect from Miss Mitford, or any other woman who has written tragedies, and learnt to put good woman’s feelings into men’s words, and to make small things look like great ones. It is not like a person who knows what she is writing about, or who knows life in the world or the feelings produced by particular circumstances, and it will give us an air of attempting and not attaining, the sort of ignorance of courts which most excites the ridicule of those who know them, especially when exhibited in sententious, goody, small moralizing.

Altogether I cannot reconcile myself to its insertion in any shape, nor can I think of any note to prefix to it which would not in my view have a still worse effect, if possible, than inserting it just as it is, though even Dilke, you see, thinks we ought to separate ourselves from it to a certain extent; and Dilke’s opinion in favor of inserting it may be influenced by a wish to do her a good turn which might serve his turn in many ways, and this without any impeachment, of his sincerity. I would not tell H. M. all I think of the article, but I would tell her what is true, — that I think it all very well from a woman to a woman, but not such as should he addressed by a body of men who aim at having authority to a woman and the public of that woman. We want now to give a character to the Review, as Carrel gave one to the National; and I am sure, if you attempt to scheme out to yourself the sort of article which with that view it would suit us to write to and of the Queen, you would arrive at an idea of one which this would not at all answer to. I dare not violate my instinct of suitableness, which we must the more strive to keep up the more we are exposed to swerve from it by our attempts to make the Review acceptable to the public. If you are not convinced by my reasons, consider it as a caprice which I cannot help. I hope you do not consider my putting a negative upon any article on such grounds as inconsistent with our conventions. ... I will write to you from Chepstow to tell you where next to write to me. I want to hear how you are getting on, and whether your foot is recovered.

Ever yours,

J. S. MILL.

I will try to send you my article from Chepstow further improved.

BRECON, Thursday, October 6, 1837.

DEAR ROBERTSON, - I sent off my article from Chepstow yesterday. . . . I got your letter the same morning. I detest that vile Queen thing more than ever for being the cause of the first real difference we have ever had about the Review. But I cannot see the force of what you say about our being committed. I am not committed, nor are you in any way which you cannot get rid of by throwing all upon me. You cannot be serious in what you say about Dilke. . . . We never thought of taking his opinion but in conjunction with others. As for H. M., you have only to Say to her that it is necessary for the Review to ménager me, and that I have seen the article and decidedly object to it. You may say, if it will assist you, that you tried to overcome my objection, and thought you had succeeded, but were mistaken. This will relieve you entirely, at the price only of admitting y ourself to be under the restraint of considerations of expediency from which no editor is or can be free. As for me, I am willing, as in this case I am bound, to take entirely upon myself the resentment of a very spiteful person rather than admit the article. The truth is, I feel that I never can have stronger objections to any article, nor justified to myself by stronger reasons, and that to let them be overruled would be to give up all power whatever over the Review; for a power which does not amount even to the power of excluding in an extreme case is no power at all. You completely misunderstood my meaning in what passed between us that evening: I never considered anything as settled, and I expressly Said, two or three times, that I would take time to consider. I did think, towards the end of the evening, that you were assuming rather too confidently that the compromise we proposed would be adopted, and I blame myself exceedingly that I led you into mistake by a foolish repugnance to put myself on the defensive and weigh words when I was discussing confidentially with you. Until I had made up my mind to say no decidedly, it was unpleasant to be constantly pulling up and drawing in. We should never have been in this embarrassment if I had not been so extremely averse to bring a matter about which you had so strong an opinion to a direct “ collision,” as they say in Parliament ; one house throwing out a Bill which the other has passed. I caught eagerly every straw which offered in the shape of a compromise, and the one you suggested of sending the article forth as H. M.’s, and not as our own, seemed to me the last chance of our settling the matter “without a division.” But on reading the thing again I felt my objections to it so much strengthened, and my idea of its counterbalancing good qualities so much lowered, that nothing could reconcile me to its being inserted with any note which did not express dissent from it, with the reasons ; and you must see how ridiculous that would make us. Putting it in an obscure place only adds a fresh ridicule to the rest; no place but a conspicuous one suits the subject, the first place or the last. I did not think that anything relating to the Review would have given me the worry and annoyance this has, from first to last. It was in an evil hour we asked her to write. But it was she who proposed the subject. I only said it promised the best of several which she proposed. If it is but left out of this number, we will leave the question open for next number if you like. If we cannot settle it so, I must come to town, which will be a great bore to me.

Ever yours,

J. S. MILL.

FARNBOROUGH, Sunday, October 31, 1837.

... As to the H. M. matter. I have no objection to discussing it in any way you think best, though if your feelings did not appear to be so much involved in it I should say the way you propose was making very much of a small matter. At all events, I can say little about it until I know how and why you consider your honor implicated or your self-respect endangered. To me these seem words greatly disproportioned to the occasion, which appears to me a very simple one. Did I, or did I not, give you sufficient reason to think that I had waived my objection to the insertion of the article ? I say I did not; you, I suppose, say I did: if so, we have only for the future to take care to understand one another better, and to settle everything finally and clearly between us two before we implicate ourselves with contributors,—a caution which it would have been well if I had observed with Bisset as well as you with H. M. Unless indeed you understood our conventions to be such that while they lasted I could not exercise any veto. But if you understood that, then certainly we quite misunderstood each other. I not only did not, but could not so long as I was carrying on the Review for another person (who looked to me, and not to you, as responsible for its maintaining a certain character and a certain general spirit), give up all control over the contents. But it is of no use saying any more about it till I hear from you.

Ever yours,

J. S. MILL.

These letters, if they do nothing else, afford abundant proof of Mill’s gentleness, calmness, and tact, and show how strong was his personal attachment to the fiery young editor, who was risking a valuable friendship as well as personal advantage for the sake of a woman about whom he could have known little, and whose character Mill judged more correctly than himself. We do not know to what extent Harriet Martineau was aware of the strong objections urged by Mill to her article, or the zeal with which Robertson pressed its insertion ; but we can be quite sure that Mill’s criticism would have wounded her to the quick by its reiteration of her weakness in argument, her “goody” tone, her vain assumption of philosophy, and by the contrasting of her imitation of a masculine style with her feminine feebleness of reasoning. For Miss Martineau prided herself on seeing things as men did, and on being admitted by them to a certain equality on account of her mental superiority to her sex.

Here is an undated critique by Mill of another article : —

DEAR ROBERTSON, -I cannot bestow upon B.’s article any milder name than despicable, and nothing could reconcile me to inserting it in any shape but the absolute impossibility of finding any substitute for it in time. I have drawn my pen through some of the stupidest and most conceited things, and sent the rest to press ; and God grant that nobody may read it, or that whoever does will instantaneously forget every word of it.

Ever yours,

J. S. MILL.

From another undated letter it appears that other writers failed to come up to Mill’s standard of review article writing : —

13 PALL MALL, EAST, Friday.

DEAR Robertson,—Though I cannot find fault with you for not coming to town this week, it has happened unluckily, as I was waiting impatiently to talk with you about Horne’s article and Mrs. Hall’s.

The former I send. You will hardly believe that the fellow has not even mentioned any one of the plays he pretends to review. It is a mere dissertation (though for him tolerably well done) on his dreadful ennuyeux subject of the “ precarious state of the drama,” which nobody on earth cares for except playwriters by profession, and which he and a few others have made so dreadfully vulgar by their raving about it that the very sight of the words is disgusting to everybody of common good taste. Will you decide as to this article as you like, and write to Horne about it ? He has already been at the printer’s, it seems.

As for Mrs. Hall’s, I have not yet dared to touch it. It is beyond all measure bad, and impossible to be made better. It has no one good point but a few of the stories towards the end, and those are told cleverly and with sprightliness, no doubt, but in the tone of a London shopkeeper’s daughter.

If I have my way we shall reject it totally, but if you could possibly suggest to me any means of making it endurable I should be happy to try them.

One thing I am determined on : nothing shall go to Paris under my sanction and responsibility showing such ignorance and such cockney notions of France and French matters as this does.

J. S. M.

Leigh Hunt’s article is with the printers, and with some leaving out it does very well.

A letter from Mrs. Samuel Carter Hall explains the “ badness ” of the article alluded to by Mill: —

MY DEAR SIR, — Do what you like with it. I will work it up greatly in the proof. It is not my best, but when I tell you that I have been up with poor Carter two nights your kind heart will forgive me if it is not quite as good as you expected. It wants unity, oneness, and a purpose; a little of your philosophy will give it a backbone. Adieu, dearsir. I really don’t know what business a woman has with literature, for when her home fears are roused or her domestic affections disturbed it ’s little she cares for her pen s doings. A literary woman ought never to marry if she would be great; but my husband has the sin to answer for ; he made me so, — not great, but literary. I won’t be the least bit in the world angry at any changes you may make.

Most sincerely yours,

A. M. HALL.

In a letter dated Axminster, October 2, 1838, Mill writes : —

I have been thinking very little about the Review, but a good deal about my Logic, of which I have, since I left town, completely planned the concluding portion and written a large piece of it, which I hope I shall add to during my stay at Weymouth.

I have also read the third (newly published) volume of Comte’s book, which is almost, if not quite, equal to the two former.

This is much pleasanter work than planning the next number of the Review, for which I have not a single idea beyond what we had when we last talked on the subject.

Our not coming out in October is of no consequence at all, for people will hardly say, after our last brilliant number and our second edition, that the Review is dropped.

I have seen scarcely any newspapers, and none which contain reports of the Palace Yard meeting. Those particulars about the arming are very ominous of important results at no long distance, but I cannot see in the menacing attitude of the working classes anything to prevent a Tory ministry ; and the middle classes are still very far indeed from the time when they will cry Concede; they will be much more likely to cry Res ist!

Your idea about Mazzini’s article seems to me good. If Carlyle cannot take to either of the subjects we had in view for him, we must be thankful for anything he can take to.

I am sorry James Martineau has given up the Catholic subject.

What answer have you given to Lucas ? As for the American Slavery article, I think it a good subject for making the number interesting and salable, and more likely to be well treated by H. M. than any subject on which she has yet written for us ; but it must be a condition that she shall not be sentimental, which she has more tendency to than any other writer we have.

You do not think of it for this number, I believe. I cannot judge of the other two subjects you mention, and, as I said before, I have not a single idea of my own, and am too glad at not having to think on the subject for a fortnight yet to come.

I am sorry you have been unwell. I have not been quite well myself, but am getting better. It was only a cold.

Ever yours,

J. S. MILL.

P. S. I think we are bound to give some answer to the Globe man, driveler or not. I have no doubt he is a driveler, or in the hands of drivelers on that subject.

In the April number of 1839 there appeared an article by Robertson which, under the title of Criticism on Women, was a defense of women generally, and of literary women more particularly, from what he calls “ Crokerism,” meaning thereby the personal attacks on the reputation of certain women, and the satirical depreciatory sneers on others, by a party known at the time by that nickname, of which J. W. Croker was one. The young Queen, the Hon. Mrs. Norton, Lady Morgan, Miss Edgeworth, and Miss Martineau are shown in this article to have been among those attacked and taunted by anonymous writers, and Robertson does battle in their defense with his pen as chivalrously as ever did knight for fair ladies in the olden times of romance.

The article, however, brought down on Robertson an angry letter from Mill: —

DEAR ROBERTSON, — I have been very much annoyed by seeing announced in the advertisement of the Review the article which, in a letter that must have reached you in time, I so very particularly requested you to omit; and my annoyance has not been diminished by the manner in which the announcement is made, which is fitter for the Satirist or the Age than for any periodical which lays claim either to a literary character or a gentlemanly one.

I certainly never contemplated making any work in which I was engaged a vehicle for either attacking or defending the reputation of women, and in whatever way it has been done, it must make the Review consummately ridiculous. However, it is of no use writing more about what is past mending.

The same article was the cause of the following : —.

Saturday.

DEAR ROBERTSON, - I am going to have to fight a duel on your account. I have had a half-hostile, half-expostulating letter from Hayward on the subject of that passage in the Martineau article, in reply to which I have owned the proprietorship, disowned authorship and editorship, admitted having seen the article before it was printed off, and said that J did not consider the terms “blackguardizing ” and “ lying ” as applied to any one individually, but to a class, to which it was made matter of complaint against certain superior men that they allowed themselves to be assimilated. I of course did not tell him either who wrote the article or who edited it, and I told him that I had ordered any letter he might send to be forwarded to me ; ... so hold yourself prepared in case he should write a letter to you.

N. B. I told him that the writer had no malice against him, and I believed had never seen him.

Ever yours,

J. S. MILL.

We must now go back to 1837, when the important subject of the Canada coercion and rebellion was agitating the minds of statesmen and engrossing the attention of the public. J. S. Mill published in the Review a vindication of the Canadians, and the Radical Working Men of England sent forth, through William Lovett, a spirited address of sympathy and encouragement, viewing the rebellion as a struggle for popular freedom against the oppression of aristocratic and bureaucratic government. When some of the rebels were sent to England for trial, the sympathies of all advanced and liberal minds were on their side. Lord Durham had shown himself disposed to be advised by the Radicals, and in his appointment by the government to ascertain and remove the grievances of the Canadians Mill saw an occasion for the triumph of Radical opinions. Towards this end he and his friends were working by letters, by conversations, and by the influence of the Review. But the men he could rely upon were few ; not but what a certain number of waverers were pretty sure to join this set, did they see it to be to their advantage. The first letter on this subject is undated, as also is the second: —

13 PALL MALL, EAST, Monday.

DEAR ROBERTSON-, — The inclosed is from Bulwer, and is exactly what we would expect from him. In the mean time Rintoul has shown me a letter from Wakefield, enthusiastic about Lord Durham, and full of the predictions respecting him which we most wish to see realized, though in general terms.

There is no concealing from ourselves that there is almost an equal chance of Lord D. acting either way, and that his doing the one or the other will wholly depend upon whether Wakefield, we ourselves, and probably Buller and his own resentment, or Bulwer, Foublanque, Edward Ellice, the herd of professing Liberals, and the indecision and cowardice indigenous to English noblemen, have the greatest influence in his councils.

Give us access to him early and I will be d—d if we do not make a hard fight for it.

Ever yours,

J. S. MILL.

I. H., Tuesday.

DEAR ROBERTSON, — It seems to me that in any future communication we have with Bulwer the points which it is our interest to make him feel, with the least possible appearance of intending to do so, are these : first, that we have the power, from our next number inclusive, either to begin preparing the Radicals to support, and even to call for, their* ministry, or to begin impressing them with the uselessness of their looking to any ministry for a long time to come, — that we shall certainly take one line or the other, and it will depend upon the opinion we form of them which; and secondly, that our support of them will depend not only upon their embracing the policy which we think suitable to rally the body of moderate Radicals round them, who are to be our party whoever is minister, but also upon our confidence in their personnel. That Ellice and Stanley (and we need not add himself, but he will see that we see through him, which always vastly increases such a man’s respect for one) will make it their object to render the ministry a ministry of intrigans. That we need only call it that and treat it as that to damage it exceedingly, and that we will treat it as that if it is that. That we have no earthly objection to act with intrigans, but that we do not choose to act under intrigans; that therefore, if their ministry is made up of loose fish, and does not contain a due proportion of men who have a high character for private integrity and political earnestness, we will, even if we support their measures, attack and ridicule their persons; and then beware, Messrs. Bulwer, Ellice, and even Lord Durham himself. The ways and times proper for insinuating such of these things as are to be insinuated, and for stating such of them as are to be stated, will present themselves to you as occasion arises.

I have written to Fonblanque as I wrote to Black, informing him of the facts, telling him I think him excessively unfair towards us, and that no provocation shall induce me to attack him, and appealing to his love of truth not to mix us up with Roebuck, etc.

Ever yours,

J. S. MILL.

At the end of December, 1838, Mill left England for Paris, en route for Marseilles, not being able, without risk to his health, to wait to witness what would have been of the greatest interest to him, — the return of Lord Durham and Charles Buller from Canada, and the reception given to the former, a reception which doubtless owed its tone to Mill’s previous articles.

From Paris Mill wrote under date

28th December, 1838.

DEAR ROBERTSON, - The steamboat by which I shall go from Marseilles does not leave till the tenth ; therefore you may direct to me there as late as the 2d, or you may risk oven the 3d, if there be any reason for it.

Use Browning’s means of conveyance as much as you can, but if he sends Sordello we must not let him suppose that we can promise a review of it in the February number.

I cannot, on looking forward to my movements, and the time it will take before I feel settled enough to write, feel it at all likely, if even possible, that I can do more than the organization in time to send you for publication in February. When we asked him for Bordello, it was in hopes of finishing it before I set out.

If it must be reviewed in the February number, somebody else must do it; and perhaps that is best, at any rate, for I cannot honestly give much praise either to Strafford or Paracelsus. Yet I do not know whom we could get to do it.

Is the account I have seen copied from the English papers of Lord D.’s Canada plans authentic ? They seem good mostly, but the notion of a separate colonial office for North America seems rather foolish in itself (as if, instead of curing the defects of the whole system, we were to try to get one set of colonies excepted from it) and quite unpractical to propose, because impossible to carry out, or even to make acceptable to anybody.

The idea of adding British America to the Queen’s title is laughably pedantic and absurd, and the notion of giving the colonies representatives in the H. of C. cannot be entertained by anybody who has one grain of statesmanship in his head.

I do hope the report will contain no such nonsense, and if you think there is the slightest chance of it pray tell me, that I may write strongly to Buller against it.

I have inquired yesterday morning and this morning for letters, but found none. I doubt not I shall find some from you (if not from other people) at Marseilles.

Yours ever truly,

J. S. MILL.

Write fully to me on the reception Lord D.’s plans meet with, if these be his plans, and the sort of attacks made on them.

Write long letters and often, — you will have so much to write about. your letters will be a great pleasure to me, as I expect from them the particulars of a game well played in which I have a deep stake.

J. S. MILL.

That the policy of Lord Durham was the cause of serious disappointment to Mill is very evident from the following letter : —

ROME, 6th April, 1839.

I have, as you see, taken plenty of time to consider about the manner in which what you told me about Lord Durham in your last letter affects the position of the Review and the question of continuing or not to carry it on.

The result is to strengthen very greatly the inclination I had before to get it off my hands. I shall form no sudden resolution, and above all shall wait till I see Lord Durham myself before I make up my mind finally. But if his purposes are such as he appears to have declared to you, I do not feel myself particularly called upon to tender him any other aid than that of my good wishes. He may be quite right, and there may be no better course to be taken than the one he means to take, but it cannot lead to the organization of a radical party, or the placing the radicals at the head of the movement, — it leaves them as they are already, a mere appendage of the Whigs ; and if there is to be no radical party there need be no Westminster Review, for there is no position for it to take, distinguishing it from the Edinburgh.

For my own part, I feel that if the time is come when a radical review should support the Whigs, the time is come when I should withdraw from politics. I can employ myself much better than in conducting a ministerial review, and should think my time and money ill spent in doing only what the Examiner and the Chronicle and all that class of publications can do and are doing much more effectually. In short, it is one thing to support Lord Durham in forming a party ; another to follow him when he is only joining one, and that one which I have so long been crying out against.

If he shows any desire to cultivate my acquaintance I shall respond to it, shall give him my opinion freely whenever he asks it, and any help in a private way which he may think that he needs and that I can give ; but as for the Review, even if he would bear the whole expense and leave me the entire control, I doubt now whether I should accept it. On the other hand, any chance of the Review’s paying its expenses without being considered as his organ, or that of persons who are acting in concert with him, is still farther off than before.

I am sorry that my political article should have been inserted in any shape in a posture of affairs so unsuitable to it, and as I am sure it must have been very much altered to be put in at all, I do hope you have not put my signature to it.

I do not feel clear about publishing even another number. I have not put pen to paper except to write letters since I left Pisa, and I do not intend to do so : when I reach England I shall for some time be extremely busy ; and to work hard for a thing one has almost determined to give up seems waste of labor. I shall be glad if you can avoid entering into any positive engagements about articles for the July number till I return and can look about me.

I have begun to improve in health (I think so, at least) since the weather grew hot, — it is now complete summer here, — and I expect much more benefit from the three months to come than I have derived from the three that are past. When will you write again ?

Ever yours,

J. S. MILL.

The following letter from Buller to Robertson explains to some extent what was going on behind the scenes : —

LONDON, May 21, 1839.

MY DEAR ROBERTSON, — I have written John Mill a very full letter and sent it to Munich.

There is nothing, I fear, in the consequences of the late strange events on which you should congratulate either individuals or the public. This golden opportunity will be let slip by like so many others, and the Liberal party be only more discredited and divided thereby.

I know something of what is going on behind the scenes : and it is nothing. There will be no change, or at least no useful change, in persons. My only hope is that Lord John will bring in his plan of reform — repeal of rate-paying clauses — extension of county franchise to £10 householders and of the class of freemen. Our policy is to insist on nothing further. Let him once do this: the quarrel between the two sections of the aristocracy will then be irreconcilable and the coalition impossible, and the Whigs embarked in a boat which they must get better men to steer.

This is my most favorable idea of things; but I must own that I much doubt whether any good will come. And to tell the plain truth, I feel both on public and far more on personal grounds great regrets that the Tories have been interrupted in making their government.

I don’t believe in their being able to carry on the government a year. We should have formed again in Opposition, and I should have been in the next cabinet.

What are your plans for dividing the Tories ? Pray let me know them.

Yours very truly,

CHARLES BULLER, JR.

Mill’s last letter from abroad is dated

MUNICH, 31 st May,1839.

DEAR ROBERTSON, — On arriving here I found your letter of the 13th of May from Edinburgh.

Another letter had followed me from Rome to Venice, though it must have reached Rome in time to have been given to me there.

I hope by this time yon see your way through your troubles and annoyances, and are in better spirits and health.

About the state of politics and about the Review it is of no use writing much when we shall see each other so soon. I have seen no English papers since the turn-out and turn-in of the ministry, and what I know of it is chiefly from letters, the latest and most explicit of which is from Buller. But I expect no change whatever in the polities of the ministry as long as Melbourne is at their head ; and when a change does come it will be so gradual and imperceptible that the Review will not profit much by it. I must get rid of the Review not only on account of the expense, but the time and exertion. I think myself, and still more everybody else, including the doctors and the India House people, will think, that I must not undertake so much work; especially when I first come back and have a long arrear of business at the I. H. It will be quite impossible for me to write anything for the Review, and the next number must certainly appear without anything of mine in it. I can better spare even money than time and labor for that number.

And I see no prospect of Lord Durham or anybody else taking it off my hands, as matters stand at present. I ought not to drop it without trying to preserve an organ for radicalism by offering it to any radical who would carry it on, on radical lines. Do you think Dilke would now be willing to take it, and would you sound him on the subject ? I have not yet seen the last number, for though the reading-room at Florence takes it, everything is so long in coming that they are always far behind. I shall probably see it at Brussels. Will you thank Buller for his letter, and say I would answer it if I were not likely to see him so soon? — but I am so little able to judge of the present state of the public mind in England that I cannot judge whether he or the ten radicals who voted against the ministry were in the right. I think it likely that I should have done as he did, because the ministerial measure was probably right in itself, however absurdly defended; but if Grote and Molesworth thought the measure bad, I think they were right in voting against it. Buller’s remarks on the general state of politics seem to me sensible and right; whether his practical views are right or not will depend very much on the conduct of the ministry, which I feel persuaded will entirely disappoint both him and you. The radicals will not insist on any conditions, and if they did the ministry would reject them.

I shall leave this place in a day or two for Mannheim and the Rhine, from whence I shall go to Brussels, where I hope to find a letter from you. I shall be in London at latest on the 30th of June. I am coming back not at all cured, but cured of caring much about cure. I have no doubt I shall in time get accustomed to dyspepsia, as Lafontaine hoped he should to the regions below.

Ever yours,

J. S. MILL.

The correspondence following this period leads us to suppose that Mill had endeavored to gain some position for Robertson on the Review, when it passed from his hands. There then seems to have been an idea of coöperation between Henry Cole as proprietor and Robertson as editor ; but after due consideration Cole came to the conclusion, not without pain, that such an arrangement would not and could not be successful, and after much deliberation Mill concurred in that conclusion.

Mill writes : —

I am exceedingly grieved by the consciousness that I must appear to you (what I never have been nor could be intentionally) unkind to you. The thought of this matter has been, ever since it was first mentioned by you in a letter last July, but especially of late, no small addition to the burthens of various sorts that have lain upon me.

I feel, however, that I have meant rightly to you and to every other interest concerned, and that I have acted to the best of my judgment; and though I feel painfully the impossibility of my convincing you that I am right, I am sure you will respect me more for acting upon my own conviction than for giving way, from feelings of friendship and confidence, without being convinced.

Cole repeatedly expressed his wish not to stand in the way of any arrangement more beneficial to you and independent of him; but we seemed to have already exhausted the possibilities of such, and as it was impossible to keep Hickson any longer without an answer, I have told Cole that I considered the Review as made over to them, although the formal transfer has not yet taken place.

I am sure you have that in you which a disappointment in so poor a hope as this cannot unnerve or permanently discourage.

Ever yours,

J. S. MILL.

The “ hope" entertained by Robertson was one, however distant, of getting into Parliament; and he would have used the Review, had he continued his editorship, to support the Whigs,— that is, the radical section among them, — which Mill had felt himself unable to do conscientiously. Lord Normanby had had one interview, if not more, with Robertson with reference to this subject.

The last letter we shall quote is undated, but fully explains itself: —

KENSINGTON, Monday.

DEAR ROBERTSON, - Some points in your letter positively require from me a few words to set right a few matters in which you have quite misunderstood me, aiul in which it would be very unpleasant to me that you should continue to do so.

First. I did not allude to that number of the Review for any purpose of disparagement. Why should I? It has fully less of the defects to which I alluded than I thought it would have. I referred to it bona fide, as I professed to do, namely, as evidence you could appeal to in contradiction to my opinion if I was wrong.

Second. When I spoke of unconciliativeness to contributors, I never meant that you were in the wrong in your disputes with them, but that you gave them unnecessary offense by matters of mere manner, and did not spare their vanity, which I am sure I have often said to you before; and also that I think you, in that particular, extremely unpractical, since no one can use others as instruments unless he makes them like his service.

Third. When I spoke of subserviency, I carefully explained that I was not speaking of your intentions or feelings, but of their expectations.

Fourth. I never said that you would get a character like Fonblanque’s, but that the Review would. I have distinctly said to you several times that you personally would not suffer in any way, and I said it most distinctly in the very same sentence by saying I should be glad to aid you in a ministerial course by any other means than the Review.

Fifth. Finally, I do feel that I can and ought to support the ministry, but not connect myself with them (unless I had a voice in their councils) ; that is, I can neither take their money nor make over power which is in my hands and put it into theirs, though any power in my own hands I would, while I see as much cause as I now do, use in their support.

Having endeavored to put myself right in these points, I will now say that your readiness to give up a project, in my objections to which you do not at all concur, is a thing which, you may rely upon it, I shall not forget.

I think your letter to Lord N[ormanby] in perfectly good taste, as well as right feeling towards him.

Ever yours,

J. S. MILL.

Thus ended John Stuart Mill’s four years’ proprietorship of the Review, — a period spoken of by Dr. Thomas Chalmers as “ the palmy days of the London and Westminster Review.” Opinions may differ as to the importance of the Review as a factor in the great events of those days; but that Mill was thoroughly sincere and earnest in his support of the cause the English Radicals of fifty years ago had at heart there cannot be the slightest doubt. Outside his labor and anxieties the publication of the Review caused him a very serious financial loss, as will be seen from a letter now before us dated 1856, in which Mr. Robertson says: “The loss on the Review during the proprietorship of Sir William Molesworth had been about £100 a number. As I was a paid editor, and every contributor (with the only exception, I believe, of John Sterling) was paid a pound a page, the loss on my first number exceeded £100. We printed 2000 copies, of which 1500 were generally taken off by the first sales, and the rest in the course of time. Mill’s article in vindication of the Canadians at the time of the rebellion had a singularly unfavorable effect on the sale of the Review. Of that number we sold only 1303. The loss on the last number I edited amounted to £33. It should be observed that Mr. Hooper, the publisher, in addition to his publishing dues, was allowed to farm the advertisements for his own profit.”

It seems only just to give here the testimony of Dr. Channing to John Robertson’s merits as editor of the London and Westminster Review: —

“ Mr. Robertson gave a noble character to the Westminster. What gratified me particularly in that work was its enlarged, candid, liberal tone of thought. It was just to conservatism, just to the past, — rare merits amongst us Liberals. Perhaps we have been as bigoted as our opponents ; nor is it to be wondered at. The terrible abuses of the past, contrasted with the bright hues which the imagination throws over the future, naturally enough put us out of patience. . ..

“I ought to be more just, and some articles in the Westminster have helped me in this particular. I do not mean that this is its only merit, but in this way it has done much for the Liberal cause ; for nothing serves a cause more than to give a large wisdom to its advocates.” ¹

C. Marion D. [Robertson] Towers.