One reason for commencing with the remark that John Stuart Mill was born on May 20, 1806, at No. 13, Rodney Street, Islington, London, is to notify the coincidence that Gladstone, another man of contemporaneous distinction, was born in Rodney Street, Liverpool, three years later. Rodney Street, London, where Mill was born, was a small, narrow, second-rate, odd, out-of-the-way suburban thoroughfare. But in those days Islington had the characteristics of a rural retreat A little above this Rodney Street, in what is now known as the Pentonville Road, stood the "Angel," a favourite hostelry, where Thomas Paine wrote part of one of his famous books, near the period of Mill's birth. The familiar books concerning J. S. Mill,* treat mainly of his eminence as a thinker.
     * Notably those of Professor A. Bain and Mr. Courtney.
I concern myself with those personal characteristics which won for him the regard and honour of the insurgent industrial classes—insurgent, not in the sense of physical rebellion against authority, but of intellectual rebellion against error, social inferiority and insufficiency of means. Mill regarded the press as the fortress of freedom. All his life he gave money to establish such defences, and left the copyright of his works to Mr. John Morley, to be applied in aid of publications open to the expression of all reasoned opinion, having articles signed by the names of the writers. Mr. Mill was the first who made provision for the expression of unfriended truth. It would be a surprising biography which recorded the causes he aided and the persons whom he helped. He was not one of those philosophers, "selfish, cold and wise," who, fortunate and satisfied with their own emancipation from error, leave others to perish in their ignorance. Mill helped them,* as did Place, Bentham, Grote, Roebuck, Molesworth, and other leaders of the great Utilitarian party. For ten years I knew Mr. Mill to receive and write letters of suggestion from the India House. He would see any one, at any hour, interested in the progress of the people. As Mr. John Morley has said in the Fortnightly Review, "It was easier for a workman than for a princess to obtain access to him."
     * Like Samuel Morley, he took trouble to aid honest
     endeavour, often irrespective of agreement with it.
A pamphlet by me on the "Liberal Situation" in 1865* being sent to Mr. Mill, he wrote me the following letter:—
     * It was in the form of a letter addressed to Joseph Cowen.
"Avignon,
"April 28, 1865.
"Dear Sir,—I have received your pamphlet (the 'Liberal Situation') which I think is one of the best of your writings, and well calculated to stir up the thinking minds among the working classes to larger views of political questions. So far as I am myself concerned I cannot but be pleased to find you in sympathy with some of the most generally unpopular of my political notions. For my own part, I attach for the present more importance to representation of minorities, and especially to Mr. Hares plan, combined with opening the suffrage to women, than to the plural voting which, in the form proposed by Mr. Buxton, of attaching the plurality of votes directly to property, I have always thoroughly repudiated. But I think what you say of it likely to be very useful by impressing on the working people that it is no degradation to them to consider some people's votes of more value than others. I would always (as you do) couple with the plurality the condition of its being accessible to any one, however poor, who proves that he can come up to a certain standard of knowledge.—I am, yours truly,
"J. S. Mill.
"G. J. Holyoake."
One night when a great Reform League meeting was held in the Agricultural Hall, Islington, I accompanied him from the House of Commons to it. There were rumours of danger in attending it. This did not deter him. The meeting itself was ill spoken of by the press—still he went. The crowd about the place made it perilous for one so fragile-looking as he, to force a way in. He never hesitated to try it When we arrived on the thronged platform, it was a struggle to get to the front. The vast amphitheatre, with its distant lights and dense crowds—the horsepit presenting a valley of faces, the higher ground hills of men, the iron rafters overhead were alive with hearers who had climbed there—was a strange Miltonic scene. No sooner did the stout voice of Manton—which alone all could hear—announce the arrival of Mr. Mill than every man was silent; though few would catch the low, wise, brave words he uttered. Afterwards I returned to the House of Commons with him, he being interested in an expected division.
The Islington meeting that night had been denounced as illegal. He went to justify the right of public meeting by his presence, and to share the responsibility of those who convened it. What man eminent as a thinker, save he, or Mr. John Morley, would incur the odium, peril, and discomfort of attending, for such a purpose, a workman's meeting such as that?
The first time he made a speech at a public meeting was at the Whittington Club, before a gathering of co-operators. I asked him to address them. I was as glad as surprised when he consented. Had it not been for the presence of women taking interest in co-operative economy, he probably had not spoken then. In a sentence he defined the higher co-operation. He never spoke in vain.
When in business in Fleet Street I signed bills for the convenience of a city friend, who, like William Ellis—Mill's early associate—was a munificent supporter of progressive endeavour. By putting my name on his bills I incurred a liability beyond my means of meeting. My more than imprudence was indefensible because it involved the business in which the money of others was invested. Learning that my resources fell short by ￡70 of the amount for which I was answerable, Mr. Mill sent me the ￡70 from himself and a friend. When the bills were repaid me from the estate of him for whom I had signed them, I sent the ￡70 to Mr. Mill, who returned me half as a gift, on the condition that I did not sign another bill, which I never did, unless I was able to pay it if my friend did not, and I was willing to pay it if he could not.
Mr. Mill had quoted portions of my "History of the Rochdale Pioneers," in his "Political Economy," which was a great advantage to a cause whose success I much desired. In many ways I was much indebted to his friendship, and have never changed in my regard for him. Yet this did not involve spontaneous acquiescence in all his views. Upon the ballot I dissented from him. It seemed to me a just condition that the people should be, for one minute in seven years, free to vote for their political masters (as members of Parliament are) without control, intimidation, or fear of............