John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

6o COMPLAINT AGAINST THE RADICALS. 1820-1840.
though slowly, beginning
to read him which I do not believe
but for me." His
they would be doing yet, in this country,
admiration of Guizot persisted some time longer, and led to
his most elaborate article of all, in the Edinburgh Revieiv, five
years later, which article he has seen fit to reprint ; but we may
suppose that Guizot s subsequent career and writings
disenchanting effect on him as on many others.*
had a
Reverting to the salient idea of his political articles for those
seven or eight years the fatality of there being no leader of
the Radical party, although it was composed of very able men
I have often wondered in vain what he expected a leader to
do or to be. Everything is not possible even to the greatest of
chiefs ; and it is doubtful whether any of the men that ever
wielded the fierce democracy, from Demosthenes to Gambetta,
would have headed a conquering majority in the last years of
the Melbourne Ministry. He nearly admits as much, but not
without reservation. He says explicitly that his father might
have been such a leadei ; and even implies that he himself
could have made the state of .matters very different We may
well hesitate on both heads. That his father would have made
an able minister or party-leader, we must cheerfully allow ;
his sentiments and views would have required a thick covering
of disguise to allow even his being elected to Parliament, and
but
still more to qualify him for meeting that most pressing want
of the time Reform of the Church.
This chapter may fitly conclude with the remaining event of
importance in the year 1840 the last illness and death of
* I cannot identify all the signatures of the articles in the Review ; but in
addition to the contributors incidentally brought forward in the text, I may
mention the names of Lytton Bulwer, Charles Buller, J. A. Roebuck, James
Martineau, Harriet Martineau, Blanco White, Andrew Bisset, W. J. Fox,
Mazzini, George Fletcher, Henry Cole, J. P. Nichol. Never was so much
good blood infused into a periodical of the same duration. Of old Reviews,
I think it would be difficult to produce nine volumes possessing the same
amount of interest and stimulus.