John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

48 LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW. 1820-1840.
The Liberal Press is too much given to truckling to the
Ministry. The bull must be taken by the horns ; the Tories
must be awakened by the apparition of a HOUSE OF LORDS
AMENDMENT BILL.
In the fourth number, January, 1836,
he has an article
entitled State of Society in America, reviewing a number of
books of American Travels, and following up the article on
De Tocqueville. It is occupied with an attempt to connect
the features of American Society with the industrial position
and political constitution of the country. It may be called
one of his minor sociological studies.
The fifth number is the first of the union of the London with
the old Westminster, hereafter called The London and West
minster. It appeared in April, 1836. Mill contributes to it
his article on Civilisation, contained in the Dissertations, and
a short political article on the State of Politics in 1836. I
never felt quite satisfied with the article on Civilisation. The
definition given at the outset seems inadequate ; and the re
mainder of the article is one of his many attacks on the vicious
tendencies of the time. He regards as consequences of our
civilisation, the decay of individual energy, the weakening of
the influence of superior minds, the growth of charlataneric,
and the diminished efficacy of public opinion, and insists on
some remedies for the evils ; winding up with an attack on the
Universities. To my mind, these topics should have been
detached from any theory of Civilisation, or any attempt to
extol the past at the cost of the present. The political article
is a survey of the measures pending in Parliament. He is very
much excited, as his father was, about the spoiling of the
country with unnecessary railways. There is the usual com
plaint of the torpidity of Radicals, Joseph Hume being his
only exception.
For the July number, he contributes only the opening article,
which is a political survey, on the text of Sir John Walsh s
Contemporary History. It retraces the history of Reform,