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II. J.S. Mill and the Irish Question: The Principles of Political Economy, 1848–1865

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

E. D. Steele
E. D. Steele
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
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Extract

A hundred years ago there appeared Mill's England and Ireland, long since among the least known of his writings. At the time of publication it caused a furore, and gave its author a kind of notoriety that he had not previously experienced. In his pamphlet of some forty pages Mill issued a condemnation of Britain's conduct, past and present, towards Ireland, which surprised by its violence, in contrast to the judicious if superior tone that people had come to expect from him. This was startling; but the pamphlet's arresting novelty lay in its uncompromising demand for an immediate agrarian revolution in Ireland, as a long overdue act of justice, an inescapable moral obligation, and as the price of Irish loyalty in the future. Mill could not, of course, expect to convince his readers that he was justified in calling for such a sweeping measure without challenging assumptions which seemed built into the social foundations of nineteenth-century Britain. His impatient dismissal of these received notions was another aspect of the pamphlet eliciting a very unfavourable reaction. It is this aspect which is usually mentioned. England and Ireland is seen, when noticed at all, as the compact and forceful expression of ideas which Mill had been trying to inculcate for the best part of a generation.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , June 1970 , pp. 216 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

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References

1 The writer is indebted to those who have kindly allowed him to see and use material in their ownership or care when he was engaged on this essay and its continuation.

2 Black, R.D. Collison, Economic Thought and the Irish Question 1817–1870 (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 245,Google Scholar 31. 51, 61, 246.

3 Ibid. p. 53.

4 For modern expositions of Mill's politics along generally accepted lines see Anschutz, R.P., The Philosophy of J.S. Mill, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1963),Google Scholar and Britton, K.W., John Stuart Mill (London, 1953),Google Scholar ch. III in both.

5 Dufferin Papers, P.R.O., Northern Ireland (D. 1071 H/B/F. 150), Sir Roundell Palmer, Q.C. to Lord Dufferin, 4 January 1867, expressing the doubts mentioned above; in a second letter Palmer emphasized that nothing but ‘a plain case of great public evil to be redressed, or great public benefit to be obtained’ could vindicate the circumscription of landlords' rights, and that to his mind no such case had been made out in respect of Irish land; ibid. Palmer to Dufferin, 10 January 1867. Gladstone and Lord Granville had to justify the restrictions placed on freedom of contract under the Irish Land Bill of 1870 by such inadequate precedents as the Passenger Acts and legislation controlling hackney cabs in London, House of Commons Debates, 15 February 1870; House of Lords Debates, 14 June 1870.

6 House of Commons Debates, 23 June 1863.

7 Ibid.. 10 February 1852.

8 Bright Papers (B.M. Add. MSS 43383), Bright to Cobden, 12 October 1850. At its foundation conference in Dublin in August 1850, the Irish Tenant League declared for fixity tenure, subject to payment of a fair and fixed rent, and the tenant's freedom to sell his interest, Curtis, E. and McDowell, R.B., Irish Historical Documents 1172–1922 (London, 1943), pp. 250–1.Google Scholar

9 House of Commons Debates, 13 March 1868.

10 See his speeches on Irish policy in House of Commons Debates, 13 December 1847, 25 August 1848, 2 April 1849.

11 Rogers, J.E. Thorold, Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by the Rt. Hon. John Bright, M.P. (London, 1878), pp. 188–91, 196–9;Google Scholar quotation from pp. 196–7.

12 The Pall Mall Gazette, 5 February, ‘The Radical Chief on Ireland’.

13 Rogers, op. cit. p. 458.

14 House of Commons Debates, 13 March 1868; Clarendon Papers, Bodleian Library (MS Clar. Dep. c. 499), Bright to Lord Clarendon, 14 October 1869. The great radical was not at all enthusiastic about the infringement of property-rights and freedom of contract by the Irish Land Bill of 1870, and needed ‘very plain speech’ from the Prime Minister before falling into line; Gladstone Papers (B.M. Add. MSS 44112) Gladstone to Bright, 4 December 1869.

15 House of Commons Debates, 14 April 1858.

16 Bentham, Jeremy, The Theory of Legislation, ed. Ogden, C.K. (London, 1931), p. 113.Google Scholar

17 Roebuck, J.A., Member for Sheffield in House of Commons Debates, 23 06 1863.Google Scholar

18 Mill, J.S., Autobiography, World's Classics edn (1955) p. 199.Google Scholar

19 Ibid. p. 195.

20 Edwards, R. Dudley and Williams, T.D. (eds.), The Great Famine: Studies in Irish History 1845–52 (Dublin, 1956).Google ScholarLynch, P. and Vaizey, J., Guinness's Brewery in the Irish Economy 1759–1876 (Cambridge, 1960),Google Scholar ch. IX, ‘Ireland in the Great Famine and After’, is kinder to the landlords (see esp. pp. 165 and 171).

21 Clarendon Papers (Box 43), Russell to Lord Clarendon, Viceroy of Ireland, 10 November 1847.

22 Mill, J.S., Principles of Political Economy, variorum edn forming vols. II and III of the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto, 1963–).Google Scholar This source will in future be cited as Works, II or III.

23 Ibid. II, 226–34. The quotations may be found on pp. 230, 227, 228, 229.

24 Ibid. III, 758–96, esp. pp. 792–5.

25 Ibid. II, 229, 295.

26 Ibid. II, 229–30.

27 Ibid. II, 313–19; quotation from p. 319.

28 P. Lynch and J. Vaizey, op. cit. ch. II, ‘The Economic Background’.

29 Ibid. ch. IX, pp. 161–71.

30 Ibid. p. 171; O'Hegarty, P.S., A History of Ireland under the Union 1801 to 1922 (London, 1952), p. 462;Google Scholar P.P. (1865), XI, 459–60, Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on the Tenure and Improvement of Land (Ireland) Act, questions and answers 2092–2105.

31 There is a graphic description of the obstacles and risks faced by improving landlords in Nassau Senior, W., Journals, Conversations and Essays relating to Ireland, 2 vols. (London, 1868), e.g. II, 224–7, 241–2.Google Scholar

32 The diffusion of the ‘custom of tenant-right’ throughout Ireland was confirmed by the Poor Law Inspectors' (Ireland) Reports on the Relations between Landlord and Tenant, P.P. (1870), XIV,Google Scholar 37 ff. Yet nearly a quarter of a century earlier John Pitt Kennedy remarked in the introduction to his digest of the evidence before the Devon Commission that ‘The disorganized state of Tipperary, and the agrarian combination throughout Ireland, are but a methodized war to obtain the Ulster tenant-right’, and Mill quoted this observation in a footnote, found in all editions of the Principles, to the chapter ‘On Cottiers’; Works, II, 315–16.

33 Mill, Works, III, 993.

34 Senior, op. cit. II, 167 ff. ‘Journal of a Visit to Ireland in 1862’; unlike Mill, Senior knew the country at first hand.

35 Mill, Works, III, 988–93.

36 Ibid. II, 319–23.

37 P.P. (1857–8), XLIII, 1–8; Memorandum (prepared at the India House) of the Improvements in the Administration of India during the last Thirty Years.

38 Mill, Works, III, 993–4.

39 Ibid. III, 994–5.

40 Ibid. II, 229.

41 Ibid. III, 995.

42 Ibid. II, 319.

43 Ibid. III, 995–1000, 1003; quotations from pp. 996 and 998.

44 Ibid. II, 325–7.

45 Ibid. II, 329–30; III, 1003. In 1851 Mill declined a proposal from the Council of the Tenant League that he should stand for an Irish constituency under its aegis. He pleaded his unwillingness to leave the E. India House. It is difficult to see how, holding the views here described, he could have accepted: despite the terms of his letter in which he asserted that ‘If it were in my power to go into Parliament at present, I should be highly gratified by being returned for a purpose so congenial to my principles and convictions as the reform of the pernicious system of land tenure which, more than any other cause, keeps the great body of the agricultural population of Ireland always on the verge of starvation.’ Elliot, H.S.R. (ed.), The Letters of John Stuart Mill, 2 vols. (London, 1910), II, 159,Google Scholar Mill to Frederick Lucas, 28 March 1851; Mill Autobiography, p. 237.

46 Lynch and Vaizey, op. cit. pp. 167–73.

47 Mill, J.S., Considerations on Representative Government, Everyman's Library edn (1954), p. 365:Google Scholar hereafter cited as Considerations.

48 Mill, Works, II, 331.

49 This is the impression derived from the countrywide survey in the Poor Law Inspectors' Reports (Ireland) on the Relations between Landlord and Tenant, P.P. (1870), XIV,Google Scholar 37 ff.

50 E.g. The Times, 13 April 1861: ‘The regeneration of Ireland has been achieved slowly but surely…The slovenly farming…the unstable tenures and the agrarian crimes, which were revealed by the “Devon Commission”, and made an estate in Ireland less enviable than a few acres in Lincolnshire or the Lothians, if they are not already things of the past are fast becoming so’; and more in the same strain. This was an exceedingly complacent gloss upon the Irish agricultural returns, for which see note 51 below.

51 These statistics had been collected and printed in Parliamentary Papers for every year since 1847. Moreover, Mill apparently consulted them, Works, II, 332.

52 P.P. (1867–8), LV, 631. Return of the Number of Agricultural Holdings in Ireland in 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1867. P.P. (1863), LXIX, 555.Google ScholarAgricultural Statistics of Ireland for the Year 1861. In Great Britain the average size of farms was 102 acres; in England and Wales farms of 200 acres or more covered 12:8 million of the 24:7 million acres of farmed land. P.P. (1852–3), LXXXVIII, Pt I, lxxix, lxxxi; Census of Great Britain (1851), Population Tables II, I, Report; Results and Observations.

53 Evictions fell from 104,163 persons (of whom 30,292 were re-admitted) in 1850 to 9,338 (of whom 525 were re-admitted) in 1855 and 2,985 (of whom 65 were re-admitted) in 1860. ‘Agrarian Outrages’ fell from 1,362 in 1850 to 255 in 1855, and stood at 232 in 1860. The proportion of ‘Outrages’ to evictions was thus steadily rising. P.P. (1881), LXXVII, 727, 891–6;Google ScholarReturn…of Cases of Evictions…from 1844 to 1880 (inclusive); Return of Outrages…from 1st January 1844 to 31st December 1880.

54 P.P. (1868–9), L, 490; Emigration. Returns of the Number of Emigrants during the Ten Years ending December 1857 and also…December 1867…

55 Mill had recognized this in successive editions of the Principles to 1857; Works, III, 990.

56 Mill-Taylor Collection, British Library of Political and Economic Science (LV), Mill to Cairnes, 29 July 1864; Mill, Works, III, 1039, Mill to Cairnes, 3 October 1864.

57 Ibid. III, 1040–1095, passim; esp. pp. 1056–7, 1075–1086, 1091.

58 Ibid. II, xciv, Preface to the 6th edn; pp. 332–3, note*, 334–6; III, p. 1080, note*.

59 Ibid. II, 331–6; quotations from pp. 333, 334; P.P. (1867), LIX, 249 ff. Landed Estates Court (Ireland). Returns, gives the area and value of sales in the Court for 1865 and 1866.

60 Mill, Works, III, 1080, note*.

61 Ibid. II, 319, 325.

62 House of Commons Debates, 27 February 1865.

63 Mill, Works, II, 230, note*, 317–19, 327–33.

64 The Spectator, 17 February 1866, ‘Mr Gladstone on Irish Policy’; the quotation was wrongly stated to have been written by Mill in 1847.

65 The Westminster Review, July 1866; quotations from pp. 4, 6, 16, 21.

66 The Spectator, 5 May 1866, ‘Mr Chichester Fortescue's Bill’, and 30 November 1867, ‘Fancy-Statesmanship for Ireland’.

67 The Pall Mall Gazette, 27 February 1866, ‘Ireland—Irish Notions about Tenant-Right’.

68 P.P. (1865), XI, 464–5; Minutes of Evidence before the Select Committee on the Tenure and Improvement of Land (Ireland) Act. Dillon was quoting from the 4th, or an earlier, edition of the Principles.

69 Butt, Isaac, The Irish People and the Irish Land (Dublin, 1867), pp. 262,Google Scholar 275.

70 Dufferin Papers, (D. 1071 H/B/F. 147), Stanley to Dufferin, [n.d. but March 1868].

71 The Spectator, 9 June 1866, ‘Lord Dufferin on Irish Land Tenure’.

72 Dufferin, Lord, Irish Emigration and the Tenure of Land in Ireland (London, 1867) pp. vii,Google Scholar 65, note*.

73 Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, Belfast Meeting, 1867 (London, 1868), p. 15.Google Scholar

74 Stephen, James Fitzjames, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, ed. White, R.J. (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 53–4.Google Scholar