Autobiography
of immediate success which it deserved, though it had made a deep
impression on many individual minds, and had largely contributed,
through those minds, to create that more favourable atmosphere for the
Association Psychology of which we now have the benefit. Admirably
adapted for a class book of the Experience Metaphysics, it only required
to be enriched, and in some cases corrected, by the results of more
recent labours in the same school of thought, to stand, as it now does,
in company with Mr. Bain's treatises, at the head of the systematic
works on Analytic psychology.
In the autumn of 1868 the Parliament which passed the Reform Act was
dissolved, and at the new election for Westminster I was thrown out; not
to my surprise, nor, I believe, to that of my principal supporters,
though in the few days preceding the election they had become more
sanguine than before. That I should not have been elected at all would
not have required any explanation; what excites curiosity is that I
should have been elected the first time, or, having been elected then,
should have been defeated afterwards. But the efforts made to defeat me
were far greater on the second occasion than on the first. For one
thing, the Tory Government was now struggling for existence, and success
in any contest was of more importance to them. Then, too, all persons of
Tory feelings were far more embittered against me individually than on
the previous occasion; many who had at first been either favourable or
indifferent, were vehemently opposed to my re-election. As I had shown
in my political writings that I was aware of the weak points in
democratic opinions, some Conservatives, it seems, had not been without
hopes of finding me an opponent of democracy: as I was able to see the
Conservative side of the question, they presumed that, like them, I
could not see any other side. Yet if they had really read my writings,
they would have known that after giving full weight to all that appeared
to me well grounded in the arguments against democracy, I unhesitatingly
decided in its favour, while recommending that it should be accompanied
by such institutions as were consistent with its principle and
calculated to ward off its inconveniences: one of the chief of these
remedies being Proportional Representation, on which scarcely any of the
Conservatives gave me any support. Some Tory expectations appear to have
been founded on the approbation I had expressed of plural voting, under
certain conditions: and it has been surmised that the suggestion of this
sort made in one of the resolutions which Mr. Disraeli introduced into
the House preparatory to his Reform Bill (a suggestion which meeting
with no favour, he did not press), may have been occasioned by what I
had written on the point: but if so, it was forgotten that I had made it
an express condition that the privilege of a plurality of votes should
be annexed to education, not to property, and even so, had approved of
it only on the supposition of universal suffrage. How utterly
inadmissible such plural voting would be under the suffrage given by the
present Reform Act, is proved, to any who could otherwise doubt it, by
the very small weight which the working classes are found to possess in
elections, even under the law which gives no more votes to any one
elector than to any other.
While I thus was far more obnoxious to the Tory interest, and to many
Conservative Liberals than I had formerly been, the course I pursued in
Parliament had by no means been such as to make Liberals generally at
all enthusiastic in my support. It has already been mentioned, how large
a proportion of my prominent appearances had been on questions on which
I differed from most of the Liberal party, or about which they cared
little, and how few occasions there had been on which the line I took
was such as could lead them to attach any great value to me as an organ
of their opinions. I had moreover done things which had excited, in many
minds, a personal prejudice against me. Many were offended by what they
called the persecution of Mr. Eyre: and still greater offence was taken
at my sending a subscription to the election expenses of Mr. Bradlaugh.
Having refused to be at any expense for my own election, and having had
all its expenses defrayed by others, I felt under a peculiar obligation
to subscribe in my turn where funds were deficient for candidates whose
election was desirable. I accordingly sent subscriptions to nearly all
the working class candidates, and among others to Mr. Bradlaugh. He had
the support of the working classes; having heard him speak, I knew him
to be a man of ability and he had proved that he was the reverse of a
demagogue, by placing himself in strong opposition to the prevailing
opinion of the democratic party on two such important subjects as
Malthusianism and Personal Representation. Men of this sort, who, while
sharing the democratic feelings of the working classes, judged political
questions for themselves, and had courage to assert their individual
convictions against popular opposition, were needed, as it seemed to me,
in Parliament, and I did not think that Mr. Bradlaugh's anti-religious
opinions (even though he had been intemperate in the expression of them)
ought to exclude him. In subscribing, however, to his election, I did
what would have been highly imprudent if I had been at liberty to
consider only the interests of my own re-election; and, as might be
expected, the utmost possible use, both fair and unfair, was made of
this act of mine to stir up the electors of Westminster against me. To
these various causes, combined with an unscrupulous use of the usual
pecuniary and other influences on the side of my Tory competitor, while
none were used on my side, it is to be ascribed that I failed at my
second election after having succeeded at the first. No sooner was the
result of the election known than I received three or four invitations
to become a candidate for other constituencies, chiefly counties; but
even if success could have been expected, and this without expense, I
was not disposed to deny myself the relief of returning to private life.
I had no cause to feel humiliated at my rejection by the electors; and
if I had, the feeling would have been far outweighed by the numerous
expressions of regret which I received from all sorts of persons and
places, and in a most marked degree from those members of the liberal
party in Parliament, with whom I had been accustomed to act.
Since that time little has occurred which there is need to commemorate
in this place. I returned to my old pursuits and to the enjoyment of a
country life in the south of Europe, alternating twice a year with a
residence of some weeks or months in the neighbourhood of London. I have
written various articles in periodicals (chiefly in my friend Mr.
Morley's _Fortnightly Review_), have made a small number of speeches on
public occasions, especially at the meetings of the Women's Suffrage
Society, have published the _Subjection of Women_, written some years
before, with some additions [by my daughter and myself,] and have
commenced the preparation of matter for future books, of which it will
be time to speak more particularly if I live to finish them. Here,
therefore, for the present, this memoir may close.
NOTES:
[1]In a subsequent stage of boyhood, when these exercises had ceased
to be compulsory, like most youthful writers I wrote tragedies; under
the inspiration not so much of Shakspeare as of Joanna Baillie, whose
_Constantine Paleologus_ in particular appeared to me one of the most
glorious of human compositions. I still think it one of the best dramas
of the last two centuries.
[2] The continuation of this article in the second number of the
_Review_ was written by me under my father's eye, and (except as
practice in composition, in which respect it was, to me, more useful
than anything else I ever wrote) was of little or no value.
[3] Written about 1861.
[4] The steps in my mental growth for which I was indebted to her were
far from being those which a person wholly uninformed on the subject
would probably suspect. It might be supposed, for instance, that my
strong convictions on the complete equality in all legal, political,
social, and domestic relations, which ought to exist between men and
women, may have been adopted or learnt from her. This was so far from
being the fact, that those convictions were among the earliest results
of the application of my mind to political subjects, and the strength
with which I held them was, as I believe, more than anything else, the
originating cause of the interest she felt in me. What is true is that,
until I knew her, the opinion was in my mind little more than an
abstract principle. I saw no more reason why women should be held in
legal subjection to other people, than why men should. I was certain
that their interests required fully as much protection as those of men,
and were quite as little likely to obtain it without an equal voice in
making the laws by which they were bound. But that perception of the
vast practical bearings of women's disabilities which found expression
in the book on the _Subjection of Women_ was acquired mainly through her
teaching. But for her rare knowledge of human nature and comprehension
of moral and social influences, though I should doubtless have held my
present opinions, I should have had a very insufficient perception of
the mode in which the consequences of the inferior position of women
intertwine themselves with all the evils of existing society and with
all the difficulties of human improvement. I am indeed painfully
conscious of how much of her best thoughts on the subject I have failed
to reproduce, and how greatly that little treatise falls short of what
it would have been if she had put on paper her entire mind on this
question, or had lived to revise and improve, as she certainly would
have done, my imperfect statement of the case.
[5] The only person from whom I received any direct assistence in the
preparation of the _System of Logic_ was Mr. Bain, since so justly
celebrated for his philosophical writings. He went carefully through the
manuscript before it was sent to the press, and enriched it with a great
number of additional examples and illustrations from science; many of
which, as well as some detached remarks of his own in confirmation of my
logical views, I inserted nearly in his own words.
[6] A few dedicatory lines acknowledging what the book owed to her, were
prefixed to some of the presentation copies of the _Political Economy_
on iets first publication. Her dislike of publicity alone prevented
their insertion in the other copies of the work. During the years which
intervened between the commencement of my married life and the
catastrophe which closed it, the principal occurrences of my outward
existence (unless I count as such a first attack of the family disease,
and a consequent journey of more than six months for the recovery of
health, in Italy, Sicily, and Greece) had reference to my position in
the India House. In 1856 I was promoted to the rank of chief of the
office in which I had served for upwards of thirty-three years. The
appointment, that of Examiner of India Correspondence, was the highest,
next to that of Secretary, in the East India Company's home service,
involving the general superintendence of all the correspondence with the
Indian Governments, except the military, naval, and financial. I held
this office as long as it continued to exist, being a little more than
two years; after which it pleased Parliament, in other words Lord
Palmerston, to put an end to the East india Company as a branch of the