第15章 Chapter I(15)

Under these conditions Mill's position is characteristic.He wrote much and forcibly.Some of his articles of this period in the Westminster are collected in the first volume of the dissertations.He omitted others which refer to matters of more ephemeral interest.They show great power,but they also indicate the real difficulty.Mill writes as a philosopher and an expounder of general ideas.But he also writes as a partisan --insisting,for example,upon the ballot of which he afterwards came to disapprove --and it is always a very difficult matter to reconcile the requirements imposed by these different points of view.Mill was scarcely immersed enough in the current of political agitation to plant telling personal blows;and,on the other hand,his theories seem to be cramped by the necessity of supporting a platform.He aimed,he says,at two points.He tried,and,he thinks,with partial success,to supply a philosophy of Radicalism,wider than Bentham's,and yet including what was permanently valuable in Bentham.He tried also,and this aim was,from the first chimerical,'to rouse the Radicals to the formation of a powerful party.The articles upon Durham were partly prompted by this purpose;and,though unsuccessful in that respect,he spoke,he thinks,the 'word in season,'which at a critical moment directed public opinion towards the concession of self-government to the Colonies.(29)The articles in the Westminster show,now that we can see later developments,how clearly he saw the real difficulty,and yet how far he was from estimating its full significance.They are of essential importance to an understanding of his whole career.(30)In the article which was his farewell to politics for the time,he elaborately states the problem.He considers what are a man's,natural,politics.He claims more than the usual faith in the influence of reason and virtue over men's minds;but then it is in the influence 'of the reason and virtue upon their own side of the question.'A man is made a Liberal or a Conservative on the average by his position;he is made a Liberal or a Conservative of a particular kind by his 'intellect and heart.'In other words,parties,in the main,represent classes;and the fundamental opposition is between the,privileged,and the,disqualified,classes.The line,then,as with the old Radicals,is drawn between the privileged,who are chiefly the landowners and their adherents,clerical,legal,and military,and the,disqualified,'who are chiefly the lower middle classes and the working classes.Now,the Radical party ought to combine the whole strength of the disqualified against the privileged.Why do they not?Among the superficial reasons is that want of a leader,which Mill hoped to supply by Durham.

Another personal reason is that,as he complains rather bitterly,(31)the Radicals never spoke so as to secure the sympathy of the working classes.This points to the real difficulty.There was a gulf between the middle and the working classes,as well as between the,privileged,and the 'disqualified.'The real aim of Mill's articles is to show how this gulf could be surmounted.All the,disqualified,might be brought into line if only the philosophical Radicals could be got to attract the working classes,and the working classes to follow the Radicals.Mill therefore endeavours to prove that the Radical measures were in fact intended for the benefit of the working classes,and might consequently be made attractive.The position was in fact precisely this.The Chartist agitation was becoming conspicuous,and the Chartists had broken off from the Radicals.

Mill had to persuade them that they did not know their true friends.His sincerity and the warmth of his sympathy are unmistakable,but so is the difficulty of the task.

In the first place,he repudiates universal suffrage (one of the six points).He thinks it bad in point of policy,because to propose it would alienate the whole middle class at once,who would see in it a direct attack upon property.But universal suffrage was also bad in itself,because the mass of the very lowest class was ignorant,degraded,and utterly unfit for power.

The intelligent working man ought to recognise the fact,and therefore not to grant the suffrage to the lowest class.What,then,was to be done?The answer,given emphatically in his last article,is that we should govern for the working classes by means of the middle classes.That,he says,should be the motto of every Radical.The ideal is a government which should adopt such a policy as would be adopted under universal suffrage in a country where the masses were educated so as to be fit for it.In other words,the great aim of Radicals should be to redress practical grievances.

Did,then,the Radical platform aim at such redress?Mill's proof that it did is significant.The Radicals were unanimous against the Corn-laws;and the Corn-laws,as he argues,(32)injure the poor man because they lower the rate of profit,and are ruining the small capitalist and destroying our trade.The philosophical Radicals were supporters of the new Poor-law.It had often been said that the sinecurists were in fact rich paupers living on other men's labours.Mill inverts the argument by saying that the paupers under the old system were poor sinecurists,equally living upon other men's labours.To say nothing of some smaller grievances,such as taxes on articles consumed by the poor,logging in the army,and enclosure of commons,which were attacked by the Radicals,the Radicals also wished to discharge,one of the highest duties of government,by setting up a system of national education.It is now easy to see why these proposals failed to satisfy the class to whom the Radicals were to appeal.A great part of them,he says,were,Owenites,or,in other words,inclined to Socialism.They had,as Mill regretfully admits,crude views upon political economy.