John Stuart Mill's political essays are a blend of the practical and the theoretical. In this volume are gathered together those in which the practical emphasis is more marked; those in which theory is predominant are found in Essays on Politics and Society, Vols XVIII and XIX of the Collected Works. The Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire are mainly from Mill's early career as a propagandist for the Philosophic Radicals (a term he himself coined). They provide a contemporary running account of British political issues at home and abroad, with a vigorous and sometimes acerbic commentary. Historians as well as political scientists will find interesting details of the view from the radical side, and all students of Mill will welcome the further elucidation of his development. Of special interest are his precocious if tendentious attack on Hume's History of England, and his reactions to Canadian and Irish issues, the latter being the subject of a previously unpublished manuscript. The textual apparatus includes a collation of the manuscript materials and identification of Mill's quotations and references.

One of the English-speaking world’s most influential philosophers, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) wrote on countless topics, including logic, politics, women’s rights, legal history, medicine, and the philosophy of science.

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JOHN M. ROBSON was born educated in Toronto, graduating from the University of Toronto (B.A. 1951, M.A. 1953, PH.D. 1956). After lecturing at the University of British Columbia and the University of Alberta, he joined the staff as Victoria College, University of Toronto, where he is now Professor of English. He is Associate Editor of the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, and he also edited Edmund Burke’s Appel from the New to the Old Whigs, J.S. Mill: A Selection, and Editing Nineteenth-Century Texts.

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Joseph Hamburger (1922-1997) was the Pelatiah Perit Professor Emeritus of Political and Social Science at Yale University. He was a leading authority on 19th-century British intellectual history and political theory and wrote books on James Mill and the Art of Revolution, Intellectuals in Politics, and Macaulay and the Whig Tradition.

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