WERE IT NOT for his Westminster years (1865-68), there would be very little to do in the way of editing or introducing John Stuart Mill’s post-London Debating Society speeches. Mill had an impressive facility for putting thoughts into words, written or spoken, but he recognized that he could usually accomplish much more with his pen than with his tongue. He also understood that formal prose was the only medium capable of doing complete justice to the ideas and arguments he wished to convey to his audience. It can be assumed that Mill felt more comfortable at his desk than on...

MOST OF MILL’S LATER SPEECHES have never been republished.¹ Those here collected² are mainly fromParliamentary Debatesand newspapers; one uniquely exists in manuscript and one in typescript, and four others are also extant in manuscript as well as in print; a handful appeared in pamphlets, and one was reprinted inDissertations and Discussions.

Our goal, to include all Mill’s speeches in the House of Commons and in public,³ remains ideal, for several reasons. First, Mill kept no record of his speeches, and we have had to follow many trails, some clear, others overgrown. Locating the public, non-parliamentary speeches gave...

SIR, the commencement at Manchester of a movement for a national education not under the control or management of either established or non-established clergy has already, it would seem, made no inconsiderable impression on the public, or elseThe Timeshas made a false move and miscalculated the signs of the coming public opinion; for already at the very beginning of the agitation that journal has discovered, what it did not find out in the case of the Corn Law League until the fourth or fifth year of its existence, that the thing is not merely a good thing, but...

MR. J. STUART MILL SAID, THAT in the course of the discussion on the Bill many important points had been raised, respecting some of which he was not in a position to form an opinion; and that being the case, he thought it better that he should leave all other topics to Her Majesty’s Government, who had the best means of information, and who were responsible for the failure or success of the measures they might introduce. There was one question, however, which it required no agricultural or special Knowledge to understand—that of compensation—it was a purely economical...

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN, you have done me the honour of associating my name with the words of “political progress.” It is with you, it is with the men of Lancashire, that that idea should be more particularly connected. We of the south are accustomed to look to you—to the north—as invariably leading the van, not only in the industrial and the commercial progress, but in the political progress of this country. And in doing so you have only confirmed the idea which we have heard from our childhood, which is admitted and even asserted as a general...

I ONLY WISH, SIR, that when I may have the good fortune to address another assembly¹ on this subject I may have the further good fortune of hearing as intelligent a discussion on it as it has been my pleasure to listen to this afternoon. Although, judging from the past, I have not any great expectations on the subject, I cannot but think that if the question is discussed in that other assembly on as good grounds, and with as much knowledge of the subject as has been showed to-day, we shall be very near carrying Mr. Hare’s plan(Cheers) I...

WHEN I ENTERED THE ROOM I had no expectation of being selected, as the organ of this society, to propose the health of their distinguished honorary members and guests. Fortunately, it is the less necessary that I should say much on this topic, as your grace has already expressed the sentiments of this club with your accustomed skill and good taste. As to the gentlemen who are the subjects of my toast, it is quite superfluous that I should say much of them; for among those who desire and watch the progress of European opinion, where is it that Mr....