Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Vol. 32: Additional Letters

Alexander Craig, a journalist in Lennoxville, Quebec, was a political
science professor at the University of Western Ontario.

The University of Toronto Press and a committee of professors at the
University of Toronto are collating, editing, and publishing the
complete works of John Stuart Mill. This is the 32nd volume in this
major academic project.

Mill lived from 1806 to 1873. This was a period of great international
turmoil—the U.S. Civil War, revolution and national unification in
Europe, and much else—and the great philosopher took a keen interest
in many of its most central aspects. At home in Britain, too, there was
much reform and talk about reform; one of Mill’s correspondents,
Charles Edward Trevelyan, for instance, wanted to reform the civil
service by substituting competitive examination for patronage.

A 42-page introduction gives the necessary bibliographical and
biographical background. There are no fewer than six appendixes,
including a list of letters to Mill, an index of correspondents, and an
index of persons cited, with variants and notes.

This is very much a scholarly work, destined for use in universities.
Many of the more than 300 letters (discovered since earlier volumes and
published in 1963 and 1972) are short and routine, and of interest only
to the earnest and meticulous Victorian historian. Nonetheless, in
Mill’s correspondence encouraging such great reformers as Josephine
Butler, the vigorous advocate of women’s rights, we get some idea of
how one of the founding fathers of modern liberalism expressed so
clearly his humanitarianism.