II. J.S. Mill and the Irish Question: The Principles of Political Economy, 1848–1865

Abstract

A hundred years ago there appeared Mill's England and Ireland, long since among the least known of his writings. At the time of publication it caused a furore, and gave its author a kind of notoriety that he had not previously experienced. In his pamphlet of some forty pages Mill issued a condemnation of Britain's conduct, past and present, towards Ireland, which surprised by its violence, in contrast to the judicious if superior tone that people had come to expect from him. This was startling; but the pamphlet's arresting novelty lay in its uncompromising demand for an immediate agrarian revolution in Ireland, as a long overdue act of justice, an inescapable moral obligation, and as the price of Irish loyalty in the future. Mill could not, of course, expect to convince his readers that he was justified in calling for such a sweeping measure without challenging assumptions which seemed built into the social foundations of nineteenth-century Britain. His impatient dismissal of these received notions was another aspect of the pamphlet eliciting a very unfavourable reaction. It is this aspect which is usually mentioned. England and Ireland is seen, when noticed at all, as the compact and forceful expression of ideas which Mill had been trying to inculcate for the best part of a generation.