Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 EARLY IMPRESSIONS: SIR JAMES, ETON AND CAMBRIDGE
- 2 A CONTROVERSIALIST IN THE MAKING: LITERARY CRITICISM AND LEADER-WRITING
- 3 A SCIENCE OF CRIMINAL LAW
- 4 ‘LAW LIVING AND ARMED’ – THE MECHANISM OF ENFORCEMENT
- 5 THE THREAT OF ‘HOOFS AND HOBNAILS’
- 6 INDIA AND THE IMPERIAL ETHIC
- 7 LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY: REFUTATION AND APOLOGIA
- 8 RATIONALISM'S BURDEN
- 9 THE BENCH AND BEYOND
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY: REFUTATION AND APOLOGIA
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 EARLY IMPRESSIONS: SIR JAMES, ETON AND CAMBRIDGE
- 2 A CONTROVERSIALIST IN THE MAKING: LITERARY CRITICISM AND LEADER-WRITING
- 3 A SCIENCE OF CRIMINAL LAW
- 4 ‘LAW LIVING AND ARMED’ – THE MECHANISM OF ENFORCEMENT
- 5 THE THREAT OF ‘HOOFS AND HOBNAILS’
- 6 INDIA AND THE IMPERIAL ETHIC
- 7 LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY: REFUTATION AND APOLOGIA
- 8 RATIONALISM'S BURDEN
- 9 THE BENCH AND BEYOND
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In April 1864 Stephen wrote seeking Mill's advice as to whether his recently published General View of the Criminal Law of England and other writing showed the intellectual promise able to produce a significant work on religion and morals. Mill's response to this slightly curious request was to suggest that if he ‘threw [his] whole mind’ into the venture Stephen was likely to write something of value; although a critical discussion of particular legislative or practical questions, for which Mill thought Stephen had a ‘decided talent’, would possibly be of greater use than a treatise of abstractions. During the following half-dozen years Mill and Stephen corresponded cordially, if spasmodically, occasionally meeting at the Political Economy Club, of which they were both members. Their correspondence and contact appear to have ended with a letter written at the beginning of August 1871, over a year before Stephen's return from India, in which he issued Mill a form of friendly warning of the impending appearance of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. After soliciting Mill's ‘marginal notes’ on a draft of what was to be the Indian Evidence Act, Stephen casually expressed the hope ‘some day to set forth certain qualifications to your essay on Liberty’ confirmed by his experiences in India.
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- James Fitzjames StephenPortrait of a Victorian Rationalist, pp. 160 - 214Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988