TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. MILL AND THE TEN-POUNDERS.
SOME of the humbler electors of Westminster are under a curious impression, which is working injuriously for Mr. Mill. They think they are asked to vote for a mere philosopher, a "man who is always thinking," whom the "upper-crust Liberals" wish to see in the House, but who if elected can be of no use to them. They do not expect to be benefited by writings which they do not read, or by an eloquence which they have scarcely heard. They are willing indeed to elect a man who, they are told, will redeem the credit of the City, and therefore of vast constituencies, in whom Sir de Lacy Evans declares himself strongly interested, and who they see will receive votes from men whom they respect, and who on ordinary occasions never go to the poll. But they say they want something more, a man who has secured or will secure them some appreciable benefit, who will represent common-place interests as well as those of political science, who in short, to use their own expression, does something besides think. It is to be regretted that the higher view of Mr Mill's qualifications as a member has been put forward in the press so completely to the exclusion of the lower. For the popular idea of his merits is based on only half the facts. There is probably no politician in England, certainly no abstract thinker, who has such especial claims on the small-tradesman class as Mr. John Stuart Mill, who has fought their special battle with such energy, or who has risked more to get them the justice which in some matters they some- how always miss. The very worst tendency of those who call themselves "educated Liberals" is, while praising the work- ing man to despise and run down the small tradesman, to exalt the men who make at the expense of those who dis- tribute, and the tendency makes itself manifest in every de- partment of legislation and reform. There is not in England a class upon whom taxation presses so heavily as the smaller tradesmen, for even the next worse off, the professional man with 200Z. a year, is exempted from those crushing rates which in winter are collected only by the issue of summonses by the score. The small tradesman, with profits scarcely equal to the average weekly wages of artizans, has to pay all the direct taxes which press on the rich and the indirect taxes so severely felt by the poor—has to pay a proportion of his earn- ing for beer, sugar, and tea as heavy as that of the work- man, and a tax on his house and shop as heavy as that of the millionaire. Let the workman plead for State aid towards the education of his promising son and he has it, but let the greengrocer make the same request and he is rebuffed with talk about the "sectarian difficulty." Even in matters of ordinary justice the little tradesman is the worst off. Peers will descant on the wrongs of the workman whose wife is tempted by a rascally tally-man to run up bills she can neither check nor pay, and every measure proposed for softening the law to the debtor is readily swept through the House of Commons, but who stands up to plead the cause of the tradesman who, with rent and taxes to pay, competing costermongers to outbid, and goods to see daily spoiling, finds himself as his sole return in possession of a mass of small claims, all due, but which he has no power to enforce, or without enforcing to collect in anything like due time ? We do not say the tradesman ought to be petted, or deny that he is often in the wrong, but he certainly ought to be heard, and the reason that he, with his immense vote in the constituencies, is not fairly heard is the social contempt against which Mr. Mill has struggled all his life, and in many instances not in vain. He has pleaded con- sistently throughout his life as philosopher and politician and India House official that social barriers should be removed, that the "tools should be to the workman," that careers should be open equally to all Englishmen without reference to birth, or station, or occupation, or any quality except capacity and cha- racter. On one occasion he really carried for the class a very considerable object. The Peers could not bear the idea of throwing open the Indian Civil Service to all competitors, and badgered Mr. Mill in committee with the view of extracting an opinion in favour of some restriction. They wanted com- petition indeed, but competition among gentlemen only, or at most among gentlemen and agricultural labourers, and kept over and over asking whether he thought the son of a little horse doctor or small tradesman could be fit for the Civil Service. Mr. Mill stuck to his text that birth or occu- pation had nothing to do with the matter, that eceteris paribus the son of a tailor was as fit as the son of a clergyman, that if he was not fit, the examiners could discover unfitness in tM sou of a greengrocer just as easily as in the son of a peer. It was not pleasant to fight that battle before men who, as he knew, would despise him for fighting it, who would if they had spoken out have said they thought the son of so, ploughman more honourable than the son of a petty trades- man, but he fought it, and it was mainly due to his firmness that the battle was won. At this moment the only great position open to every clever lad in England without nomina- tion, or favour, or proof of anything except cultivation and character, is the Indian Civil Service, and it has been won repeatedly by very small tradesmen's sons, by three or four who could barely scrape together the means to purchase any education at all.
Mr. Mill would to-morrow advocate the same course with reference to English appointments, would commence in earnest the great battle still remaining to be fought even in England for equality of career. This is the greatest poli- tical object still to be gained, which it is worth the while of men like the poorer electors of Westminster to set before their eyes. There is no danger of Parliament raising the suffrage, or of a Ministry disobeying a vote, or of any class passing special laws against any other poorer, or, weaker, or less educated than itself. But there is danger of a system of social disqualification, of the maintenance of that barrier, so impassable and so invisible, which even now stops the careers of men otherwise thoroughly qualified, of a new and subtle restriction the more dangerous because undefined by law, as imperceptible and as unconquerable as. the feeling which the other day excluded one of the first astronomers in England, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, from a scientific club—because, forsooth ! he had grown rich in trade ! In the work of banishing it from political life, the lower middle class will never find an ally equal to Mr. Mill- It is not to his face that an eldest son will talk of the.
governing classes as the proper depositaries of power, or that a professor will propose to exclude from appointments all who cannot bring evidence that they are skilful riders, or that a Minister will refuse to include a tradesman or professional man in the Hampshire commission of the peace. He is the steady antagonist of disabilities social as well as legal, of caste as well as of creed, and that is precisely the advocate whom the trading classes need, and whom, if Westminster- rejects Mr. Mill, they are not again likely to find in a man to. whom aristocrats of the ancient type, men whose severest sentence against a struggling man is to call him a "cad," listen as willingly as the humblest. It is no "mere phi/o- sopher " who is asking their suffrages, but a man whcr besides being that has cleared for them one career and will yet clear others, and who sympathizes with wants which alone among English wants never attract legislative atten- tion, who can give intellectual expression to demands which- when unintellectually expressed are certain to be refused. Are the ten-pounders really going to refuse such a man because he is something more than their advocate, a man of wisdom and mark in letters, because he has not purchased any beethouses, and because the beerhouse organ chooses to think that to believe holiness the first attribute of the Deity is to be an atheist..
Since when have the electors of Westminster, who once sent Sir Francis Burdett to Parliament to maintain a principle, looked for their guidance to a journal whose primary notion of freedom is the free right to denounce free thought as the unforgivable sin ?
It is said, too, that Mr. Mill is crotchety, and "rising men" who ought to know better mutter that he will be of no.
use to the party organization. The use of a man who can obtain a hearing for ultra-Liberal ideas from ultra-Tory land- owners is not measured by his vote, but on Wednesday night Mr. Mill avowed his readiness to acknowledge Mr. Gladstone as his leader, to accept, that is, the crucial test of an efficient Liberal member. What more do the electors want ? His. opponents forget entirely that, though unfettered by conven- tional thought, and so honest that he raises enemies for himself by over-explicit declarations on subjects, like female suffrage, of no earthly importance, he has been for thirty years an official, trained to labour and subordination, who comprehends com- promise and can endure defeat, who has received orders and limited folly by enforcing strict routine. If his life has not been that of a " practical " man, whose has ?—that perchance of the Guardsman who is cousin to a marquis, and who is at this moment missing his best chance of being useful in life by not supporting his illustrious colleague ? An active and suc- cessful official who has won battles for the working-man and the struggling tradesman, and has besides impressed his thoughts on all men with brains to comprehend and hearts to feel—that, and not "philosopher," is the true description of the candidate for Westminster.
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