England's Disgrace?: JS Mill and the Irish Question

Paul T. Phillips is a professor and chair of the Department of History
at St. Francis Xavier University. He is the author of The
Controversialist.

While John Stuart Mill is better remembered for his major works on
political economy, government, and the status of women, he also wrote
and spoke on Irish affairs for more than 40 years. In this thorough
treatment of Mill’s views on Ireland, Bruce Kinzer fills an important
void in Victorian studies.

Mill’s Irish concerns revolved mainly around the land question. By
the late 1840s, he became convinced that Ireland was misgoverned through
such developments as the great famine. Believing that an expanding body
of peasant proprietors would be Ireland’s salvation, he was influenced
by the advanced economic and social thought of the Irish academic J.E.
Cairnes. But he also saw in Cairnes’s controversial stand on the
Queen’s Colleges that an uncompromising liberal vision of a secular
Ireland could be at odds with the sentiments of most Irishmen. Mill took
note, and as he was also trying to be a dutiful Gladstonian Liberal MP
by the 1860s, creeping moderation was evident in some of his public
utterances.

Nevertheless, Kinzer documents a growing conviction on Mill’s part
that bold action would have to be taken if the union between England and
Ireland was to be preserved. By drawing on the experience of British
India, Mill concluded that successful governance rested on satisfying
the most basic needs of the governed. Also prompted by the Fenian
challenge, Mill’s great initiative came in the form of his unequivocal
support for fixity or permanence of tenure for agricultural tenants,
assisted by a more interventionist state. This was announced in his
controversial pamphlet England and Ireland (1868).

According to Kinzer, Mill believed that such action was a moral
necessity for the continuance of English rule in Ireland as much as it
was a beneficence to the Irish people. While Mill lived to see a land
act passed in 1870, it was hardly a solution even for this facet of
Ireland’s woes. An attractive feature of this book is Kinzer’s
willingness to point out the shortcomings of Mill’s thoughts on
Ireland.