John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

132 CO-OPERATES WITH THE WORKING-MEN. 1849-1872.
tration known to me of what is perhaps one of the strongest,
and what appears to me to be by far the most ignoble and
mischievous of all the popular feelings of the age."
Sir James s concessions, however, are important :
"
I freely admit that in many particulars the stronger party
has in this, as in other cases, abused his strength, and made
rules for his supposed advantage, which in fact are greatly to
the injury of both parties.
It is needless to say anything in
detail of the stupid coarseness of the laws about the effects of
marriage on property, laws which might easily be replaced by
a general statutory marriage settlement analogous to those
which every prudent person makes who has anything to settle.
As to acts of violence against women, by all means make the
law on this head as severe as it can be made without defeating
itself. As to throwing open to women the one or two em
it is rather
ployments from which they are at present excluded,
a matter of sentiment than of practical importance."
A considerable portion of his labours during the last three
years of his life was given to the Land Question,
which he
greatly helped to mature for future settlement. Under this
movement he renewed his former fight for peasant properties,
and started the new heresy of the unearned increment. It was
his pride to co-operate in all these questions with the working
classes and their leaders, and, had he lived, he would have been
of unspeakable value as a mediator in the impending struggles
between labour and capital, and between the working population
generally and the heads of political parties. He would not, how
ever, I think, ever have been a working-men s champion on their
own lines. He would not have held out any. tempting bribe of
immediate amelioration such as to inspire the highest efforts of
the existing generation. His most sanguine hopes were of a very
slow progress in all things ; with the sole exception, perhaps,
I of the equality-of-women question, on which his feelings went
farther than on any other.