John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

DEDICATION OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 165
of hemorrhage from the lungs. During all the years of her
marriage with Mill, she was properly described as an invalid.
The behaviour of her husband was, in the circumstances,
exceedingly generous.
tions, he accepted the situation ;
After some remonstrances and explana
a modus vivendi, as the phrase
is, was agreed upon ; and he was a consenting party to the in
tercourse that Mill describes. No doubt he and his children
were sufferers by the diversion of his wife s thoughts and atten
tions ; to what extent I will not presume to say.*
The first occasion when Mill gave publicity to his admiration
for Mrs. Taylor was in bringing out his Political Economy. In
a certain number of copies, stamped
"
Gift copies," he intro
duced a dedication, in the following terms, as near as I can
remember :
" To Mrs. John Taylor, who, of all persons known
* A Divorce law, such as exists in Germany, and in some of the United
States of America, would have been the best thing for all parties in this anoma
lous situation. Mill repeatedly exposed the weakness of the common argu
ments for indissoluble marriage, yet never advocated divorce under any
conditions. Mr. Morley details a conversation with him, not long before his
death, during which he touched upon this question, and said he would not have
it raised until women had an equal voice with men in deciding it. I am afraid
if it can lie over till that time, it will lie over a good while longer.
Bentham argues the question with his usual incisiveness and his ; arguments
are rarely met. An attempt, on the part of Whewell, to meet them, is thus
Mill himself :
disposed of by
"
Finally, Dr. Whewell says No good rule can be established on this
subject without regarding the marriage union in a moral point of view; without
assuming it as one great object of the law to elevate and purify men s idea of
marriage : to lead them to look upon it as an entire union of interests and
feelings, enjoyments and hopes, between the two parties . We cannot agree
in the doctrine that it should be an object of the law to lead men to look
upon marriage as being what it is not. Neither Bentham nor any one who
thinks with him would deny that this entire union is the completes! ideal of
marriage ; but it is bad philosophy to speak of a relation as if it always was
the best thing that it possibly can be, and then infer that when it is notoriously
not such, as in an immense majority of cases, and even when it is the extreme
contrary, as in a considerable minority, it should nevertheless be treated exactly
as if the fact corresponded with the theory. The liberty of divorce is contended
for, because marriages are not what Dr. Whewell says they should be looked
upon as being ; because a choice made by an inexperienced person, and not
allowed to be corrected, cannot, except by a happy accident, realise the condi
tions essential to this complete union."