John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

ARMAND CARREL : CANADA AND LORD DURHAM. 5 1
The best part of it is, perhaps, the history of French politics
from the restoration of the Bourbons, on which he was
thoroughly informed. The personality
of Carrel is sketched
chiefly from Carrel s biographers, to which he adds the impres
sions made by Carrel on himself. The distinguishing aim of
Carrel s political life is remarkable for its common sense and
intelligibility to mitigate the mutual hostility of parties as a
preparation for a constitutional regime. In the summing up of
Carrel s personality Mill displays himself:
"
Like all persons of
fine faculties, he carried the faculties with him into the smallest
things ; and did not disdain to excel, being qualified to do so,
in those things which are great only, to little men." This
doctrine, 1 conceive, was held by Mill to an erroneous excess ;
the counter-doctrine of the limitation of the human faculties he
never fully allowed for. He believed in large minds without
any qualification, and saw very little incompatibility between
the most opposite gifts.
In January, 1838, appears the first Canada and Lord
Durham article. In the Autobiography he celebrates the in
fluence exerted by this and his subsequent article on the return
of Lord Durham, and believes that they were a turning-point,
not merely in the settlement of Canada, but in the future of
all our British colonies. But, independently of this, Mill
exercised great personal influence on Lord Durham s Canadian
measures, chiefly through his secretary, Charles Buller, who was
always very open to Mill s suggestions. The present article
apologizes for not reviewing the home political situation at large,
because "a question has arisen, which suspends all united
action among Radicals ".
" On
this most grievous subject, we
shall, in the course of this article, declare our whole opinion."
He yet, however, finds it necessary first to denounce in fitting
terms Lord John Russell s declaration of hostility to all reform
on the first night of the session. The discussion of the
Canadian problem is in his very best style, and is as well worth
reading even now as any of his reprinted papers. /