tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7781646534201708629.post3762298581167567938..comments2024-01-08T00:08:53.008+00:00Comments on ombhurbhuva: Mill on the Irish Question / Carlyle on the Negro Questionombhurbhuvahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07789523088428270027noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7781646534201708629.post-83795309964786157822016-02-06T07:36:55.065+00:002016-02-06T07:36:55.065+00:00Even given that doesn’t Mill appear to be saying i...Even given that doesn’t Mill appear to be saying in his own voice - ‘there is no point in giving them immediate relief before the underlying causes are put right’.<br /><br />"Under such a mass of impending evil it is no longer enough not to make the eleemosynary system permanent. That system must be promptly put an end to. We must give over telling the Irish that it is our business to find food for them. We must tell them, now and for ever, that it is their business. We must tell them that to find or make employment as an excuse for feeding those who have a head to seek for work and hands to do it, is a thing they are not to expect either from the Government, or from the barony, or from the parish. They have a right, not to support at the public cost, but to aid and furtherance in finding support for themselves.”<br /><br />Richard Reeves, <i>Victorian Firebrand</i>, is critical of this and also of Mill’s resistance to mass emigration as a solution. Instead the waste lands must be put to use. In the City of London Baring and Rothschild were setting up a fund to alleviate the immediate suffering which was more to the point.<br /><br />Zizek is realistic in his assessment of underlying causes and their symptoms but is also I think more humane than Mill is dealing with the immediate situation in a regulated fashion. <br /><br />ombhurbhuvahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07789523088428270027noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7781646534201708629.post-39035502351570871362016-02-05T21:25:45.820+00:002016-02-05T21:25:45.820+00:00I think Farrell and yourself are misreading Mill h...I think Farrell and yourself are misreading Mill here. The reference to the Irish as "indolent, unenterprising, careless of the future, doing nothing for themselves, and demanding everything from other people", for example, is not in his own voice. He's throwing the Times' own words back at them, to show how their own views of Irish character render their proposed aims worthless. <br /><br />You can't judge the piece without taking into account Mill's final recommendation in the last part (part 5) of the Condition of Ireland articles that are being quoted from (all five are at Crooked Timber's link): it's for fixity of tenure for the peasantry. This is what the Tenant Right League campaigned for in the 1850s, and later the Land League, so Mill was actually ahead of his time here!<br /><br />There was an interesting exchange between Carlyle and Mill on Ireland in 1848: Carlyle's 'Repeal of the Union' is in Rescued Essays; Mill's response is no. 372 (vol. 25) in his collected works on the Online Library of Liberty. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com