It was only to be expected that Mr. Mill would take much interest in
the American civil war, and sympathize strongly with the Abolitionist
party. His interest in politics had been keen, and his judgment on
them had been remarkably sound all through life, as his early articles
in "The Morning Chronicle" and "The London and Westminster Review,"
and his later contributions to various periodicals, helped to testify;
but towards the close of his life the interest was perhaps keener, as
the judgment was certainly more mellowed. It was not strange,
therefore, that his admirers among the working classes, and the
advanced radicals of all grades, should have urged him, and that,
after some hesitation, he should have consented, to become a candidate
for Westminster at the general election of 1865. That candidature
will be long remembered as a notable example of the dignified way in
which an honest man, and one who was as much a philosopher in practice
as in theory, can do all that is needful, and avoid all that is
unworthy, in an excited electioneering contest, and submit without
injury to the insults of political opponents and of political
time-servers professing to be of his own way of thinking. The result
of the election was a far greater honor to the electors who chose him
than to the representative whom they chose; though that honor was
greatly tarnished by Mr. Mill's rejection when he offered himself for
re-election three years later.

This is hardly the place in which to review at much length Mr. Mill's
parliamentary career, though it may be briefly referred to in evidence
of the great and almost unlooked-for ability with which he adapted
himself to the requirements of a philosophical politician as distinct
from a political philosopher. His first speech in the House of
Commons, delivered very soon after its assembling, was on the occasion
of the second reading of the Cattle Diseases Bill, on the 14th of