Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/353

 criticisms that he has ever received. Still, when Carlyle, in his "Life of Sterling," refers to that article as the first marked recognition he had received in the press, he was unfairly oblivious to what Mill's article had previously done for him.

In this number the political article has to advert to the death of King William, and the events that followed. The Radicalism is as strong as ever; but the signature (E) is not Mill's, and I do not know the author.

The next number is October, 1837. The opening chapter is the political one, and is by Mill. Its text is the opening of the new Parliament of 1837. It is, if possible, more energetic and outspoken than ever. It addresses first the Ministers, and demands of them the ballot, as a special measure, and a number of other reforms, the Church included. It addresses the Radicals in Parliament in the usual strain. It hits the Tories very hard for their disingenuous dealing on the new Poor Law at the elections, and demonstrates that not they, but the Radicals, were the real upholders of the rights of property. The incitements to action are redoubled, as the power of the Liberals has diminished. I do not know of any compositions that better deserve to be compared with the Philippics of Demosthenes than Mill's political onslaughts in those years.

This number contained also the article on Armand Carrel. The best part of it is, perhaps, the history of French politics from the restoration of the Bourbons, on which he was thoroughly informed. The personality of Carrel is sketched chiefly from Carrel's biographers, to which he adds the impressions made by Carrel on himself. The distinguishing aim of Carrel's political life is remarkable for its common sense and intelligibility—to mitigate the mutual hostility of parties as a preparation for a constitutional régime. In the summing up of Carrel's personality Mill displays himself: "Like all persons of fine faculties, he carried the faculties with him into the smallest things; and did not disdain to excel, being qualified to do so, in those things which are great only to little men." This doctrine, I conceive, was held by Mill to an erroneous excess; the counter-doctrine of the limitation of the human faculties he never fully allowed for. He believed in large minds without any qualification, and saw very little incompatibility between the most opposite gifts.

In January, 1838, appeared the first "Canada and Lord Durham" article. In the "Autobiography" he celebrates the influence exerted by this and his subsequent article on the return of Lord Durham, and believes that they were a turning-point not merely in the settlement of Canada, but in the future of all our British colonies. Besides writing these articles, Mill exercised great personal influence on Lord Durham's Canadian measures, chiefly through his secretary, Charles Buller, who was always very open to Mill's suggestions. The present article apologizes for not reviewing the home political situation at large,