England's disgrace? : J. S. Mill and the Irish question / Bruce L. Kinzer.

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Bruce L. Kinzer provides the first comprehensive investigation of J.S. Mill's multifaceted engagement with the Irish question, the fundamental issues inherent in British-Irish politics.

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CHOICE Review

John Stuart Mill (1806-73), 19th-century Great Britain's most distinguished economist and philosopher, was also a redoubtable political journalist and public speaker, and served a term in Parliament. Kinzer (Kenyon College), a prolific Mill scholar, has analyzed the savant's numerous writings and speeches on Irish issues from the 1820s to the 187Os. As befitted an economist, Mill was chiefly interested in the Irish land question (advocating peasant proprietorship long before it was taken seriously,) but also wrote on government, civil rights, religious discrimination, education, the Great Famine, emigration, Fenianism, and much else relating to Ireland. While a Liberal MP (1865-68), Mill took outspokenly radical positions on many Irish questions but was pragmatic enough to avoid embarrassing his admired party leader, W.E. Gladstone. Kinzer argues that despite Mill's sympathy for the Irish people, he always viewed Ireland through Anglocentric lenses and considered its governance to be essentially an English moral problem. This thoroughly researched study is likely to be definitive. Upper-division undergraduate students and above. D. M. Cregier University of Prince Edward Island