has gone on under a protective system, | Why, then, should he not compete abroad those products have, by degrees, forced as well as at home? Why should not themselves upon the American markets to American manufacturers challenge the the exclusion of European commodities. supremacy of English in the markets of Protection made the latter artificially dear, continental Europe, of the East, and even and as in time the American manufacturer of our own colonies? This prospect, it is began to produce something which could said, is tempting the American manufacfairly stand comparison with the European, turers to the side of free-trade. They and which, though costly also, was not so find that the tariff which doubtfully procostly as the European article, weighted tects them at home, for prices artificially with the duty, had become, the state of raised are devoured by competition and things came about on which Captain Gal-over-production, prevents them from enterton looks with admiring amazement, and ing into anything like equal rivalry with the representatives of some English indus- England abroad. This conviction, accordtries with undisguised dismay. But what ing to some shrewd observers, has given has been the result to the American man- the death-blow to protection, and freeufacturers themselves? They may com- trade will soon, we are told, be the acceptmand their own home markets, but they ed policy of the American government. do so at something approaching to an Then we shall find that America will step absolute loss. Protection has been fol- forward as a formidable competitor in lowed by excess of competition and by every foreign market, and if we do not over-production, almost unparalleled, it is take care we shall find it hard to hold our said, in the history of trade. To this is own. attributed the present prostration of the By all means let us take care, but, in leading American industries. This would truth, if we cannot hold our own in the not seem to furnish any very striking ar- conditions stated, we deserve to be beaten. guments in favor of the protective system; The course of events indicated is precisebut the fears of the manufacturers, who ly what we have always contended the write in doleful language to the Times, use question of the tariff in the United States the very failure of the system as a proof would develop. There, as elsewhere, we that having done the maximum of mischief felt certain that the over-impatience of to English industry in one way, the policy consumers against high prices would never of the United States will now be turned make free-trade a political question of about, and will do us equal or greater the first order; but that when the produinjury in the opposite direction. It is cers themselves began to feel the system argued that the American manufacturer, pinch them the solution would soon be unsuccessful as he has been in making reached. If it should be, we have no large profits of late years, has succeeded fear of the industrial pre-eminence of Enat any rate, in doing two things-in beat- gland. Granting that the Americans have ing England and Europe out of the Amer-made progress astonishingly in the last ican markets, and in placing American twenty years, we have the traditions and manufacturers, at least, on a level in point the habits of a period ten times as long, of excellence with those of Europe. The and our national energies have not assurlatter fact, we are assured, will be proclaimed to the world by the Philadelphia Exhibition, and the world will be ready to receive the information eagerly. But the American manufacturers, already able to lower their prices by the diminution in the rate of wages, will be still more relieved by the operation of the late crisis, which has transferred factories and machinery into new hands at a comparatively trifling cost. The manufacturer who has come into possession of his buildings and plant at one-fourth of the original outlay, and who pays workmen forty per cent. less than he would have been obliged to pay them four years ago, is plainly so much the better able to enter into competition on the ground of cheapness as well as of quality. edly lost their elasticity and adaptive power. It is absurd to suppose that the present "shrinkage " in the value of American factories and machinery can be taken as a permanent element in the competition between the manufacturers of the United States and those of the Old World, and still less justifiable is it to count upon the recent fall in wages as a lasting deduction from the burdens on American industry. As yet the Americans have never been able to stand up before us in the open field of competition, and the conclusion that they will be able to do so, because under protection they have improved production and got the command of their own markets, is a wholly illegitimate infer[ence. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check. or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & GAY. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. From The Contemporary Review. plus ultra of wickedness, and had no small effect in demoralizing the world. AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF These opinions he taught his child, warn MR. JOHN STUART MILL. MR. MILL'S autobiography was written in order to let posterity know how his education was conducted and his intellect formed. To those who share his opinions it is interesting as showing what he desires to show. To others it is hardly less so, as exhibiting (on their view) a struggle of human nature against the adverse bias of a powerful theory and an elaborate training. It is in this point of view that I desire to examine it, so far as it relates to the history of Mr. Mill's moral sentiments, and some of the philosophical tenets which grew out of them. ing him at the same time that they could not be prudently avowed. "He was With regard to morals, he believed (with Bentham) that the exclusive test of right and wrong was the tendency of acticus to produce pleasure and pain. But in pleasure he had scarcely any belief. not insensible to pleasures, but he deemed very few of them worth the pain which in the present state of society must be paid for them." On The pleasures of the benevolent affections he placed high in the scale of enjoyment. "But he never varied in rating intellectual enjoyments above all others, even in value as pleasures, independently of their ulterior benefits." the whole "he thought human life a poor thing after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by." Passionate emotion (pleasurable as it unquestionably is) he despised as a kind of madness (pp. 43-49). It would seem, however, that he was able to laugh heartily (p. 102). His account of his childhood is like nothing else in the world. Remembering the nature of the man, our first wonder is to find him so much of a manufactured article. In general, influences which go to make up character are complex and heterogeneous. The varied discipline, the pleasures, the pains, the quarrels and attachments of family and school, Feelings, as such, he considered to be no chance companionships, chance advenproper subjects of praise or blame. Right and tures, chance books, sicknesses, mishaps, wrong, good and bad, he regarded as qualities escapades and their consequences, com- solely of conduct-of acts and omissions, — bine beyond possibility of analysis to make there being no feeling which may not lead, and the boy what he becomes. But the boy does not frequently lead, either to good or bad John Stuart Mill was the creation of a sin-actions; conscience itself, the very desire to gle force, applied by a single mind to a act right, often leading people to act wrong. responsive material. His history, accord- Consistently carrying out the doctrine, that ing to his own' representation, is the his- the object of praise and blame should be the discouragement of wrong conduct and the entory of paternal discipline applied relentlessly, unceasingly, exclusively of other couragement of right, he refused to let his influences, from the cradle, and with a defi- praise or blame be influenced by the motive of the agent. He blamed as severely what he nite and inflexible purpose. It is evident thought a bad action, where the motive was a that, clearly to understand Mr. John Mill, feeling of duty, as if the agents had been conyou must first understand his father. Isciously evil-doers. He would not have acabridge the son's account of him, retaining where I can his words: Respecting the creation and government of the universe, he believed that nothing positive could be known. Only he held that the prevalence of evil in this planet was a conclusive proof that its author could not be at once absolutely good and absolutely powerful. But he thought that as the world had grown older its conception of the Deity had grown worse and worse, till in Christianity it reached the ne❘ cepted as a plea in mitigation for inquisitors that they sincerely believed burning heretics to be an obligation of conscience. But though he did not allow honesty of purpose to soften his disapprobation of actions, it had its full effect on his estimation of characters. No one prized conscientiousness and rectitude of intention more highly, or was more incapable of valuing any person in whom he did not feel assurance of it. But he disliked people quite as much for any other deficiency, provided he thought it equally likely to make them act ill. He disliked, for instance, a fanatic in any bad cause as much or more than one who had adopted the same course from self-interest, because he thought him even more likely to be practically mischievous. (Pp. 49, 50.) science affects to cover, there exists by its side a prophetic subtlety which outstrips the lagging methods of reason, and, with a tact beyond analysis, detects a harmony "All this," says Mr. John Mill, meaning or discord which philosophy has to accept the paragraph which I have quoted at at its hands and account for at its leisure. length, "is merely saying that he in a And on ground where science can scarcely degree once very common but now very find a footing (as among first principles or unusual, threw his feelings into his opin- the construction of a musical melody) it is ions." It is in fact, however, saying very generally supposed that intuition reigns much more. And what it says is very supreme and furnishes the very data on material in the formation of his son's which science has to plant its foundations. character.' It says that pushing to its Here and there a person is to be found, legitimate results the philosophy of Mr. who with a correct ear has scarcely a tinge Bentham, which he adopted, he valued his of musical taste. Such a person, if also a fellow-creatures not according to any con- mathematician, can understand and apply ception of intrinsic dignity, nobility, purity, the laws according to which music perelevation, or tenderness (whatever mean- forms its office; and can appreciate, no ing may be attached to these words), but doubt, with a certain satisfaction, the fact like a watch or a spinning-jenny on account that this or that composition is an applicaof their tendency to produce pleasure, and tion of these laws. But the sweetness, the in proportion to that tendency. Ordinary elevation, the pathos, the majesty, the playmoralists would impute to a man who tor- fulness that indescribable thrill which tured others for his own personal amuse- may be all or none of these the whole ment or advantage, an intrinsic baseness, range of various enjoyment which music is which would not attach to one who tor- capable of furnishing over and above the tured them because he was seriously sense of uniformity to law - all this is to though wrongly convinced that the good him simply inaccessible. He may tell you of the world or of the man himself re- as long as he likes, and tell you truly, that quired it. Mr. Mill refused to admit of he is a better musician than you are. intrinsic differences, and disliked the zealot not the less are you privileged to enter a more than the knave "because he thought sphere of experience — the experience that him more likely to be practically mischiev- beauty is beauty — to which he can no more ous." In valuing a horse we ask whether attain than a beast to the comprehension of he can do our work. If he cannot, we do Euclid. I do not examine how closely this not care whether it is because he is vicious applies to a man who closes his mind to the or because he is blind. Mr. Mill estimated appreciation of intrinsic moral excellence, his fellow-men as he would have "priced" and measures the nobility of a human chara hack. A blunder, or habit of blunder-acter (as I understand Mr. James Mill to ing, would have been to him as odious as have done) by the probable utility of the a lie or a habit of lying, provided he motives which constitute that character. thought it likely to do as much harm. To Thus much is at any rate plain- that he this dethronement of the moral instincts, excludes himself from a world of feelings much of the son's peculiar character is which in some respects constitute knowltraceable. edge, and which give life and value to knowledge which they do not constitute. He puts from him that affectionate admiration of what is called beauty of character which affects us in actual life apart from consideration of results-that tranquil reverence or buoyancy of heart which is called up by certain great poetical representations only because they are what they are. This whole field of refreshing, con If these instincts, instead of being indiscriminately poured forth upon mankind, were confined to some intellectual or other aristocracy, I cannot help thinking that they would be recognized as bearing somewhat the same relation to moral philosophy that genius does to learning-say that musical genius does to a knowledge of thorough-bass. Even in the fields which But |