Mill's philosophical activity culminated in his searching "Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," originally published in 1865, and reissued later with replies to critics. In this work he reviewed thoroughly all the main points of difference between the empirical and the intuitional schools; and though, with the shifting of issues in the progress of philosophic thought, the controversy has now died down, the criticism remains an interesting and lively example of Mill's acuteness and skill as a controversialist.
So far Mill's part in politics had been confined to the writing of pamphlets and articles, but in 1865 he was elected to Parliament as member for Westminster. In spite of a weak voice and a nervous manner, he impressed the House by his fluency and exactness in speech, and by his honesty and independence of judgment. He favored the extension of the franchise, and the reform of the Irish land laws; and he argued in favor of a number of projects which long after his time were carried into effect. When Parliament dissolved in 1868, he was not re-elected.
He now returned to literature, writing frequently in the "Fortnightly Review," then edited by his friend John Morley; and in 1869 he issued his "Subjection of Women," in the production of which both his wife and his step-daughter had had a share. During his Parliamentary career he had urged the granting of the voting power to the other sex, and this work is still a standard plea for the rights of women. His health now began to give way, and he died on May 8, 1873.
Although the dominant impression conveyed by the record of Mill's life in his candid and interesting "Autobiography" is one of intellectuality, he was a man of high sensibility and of a tender and affectionate nature. The purity of his motives, the vigor of his thinking, and the energy and independence with which he strove for the realization of his ideals, had their effect not merely on the large circle with whom he came into personal contact, but in the stimulating and elevating of the general intellectual and moral life of his time.
It is as the story of such a man's life, told by himself when it was about six years from its close, that his "Autobiography" is here printed. The "Essay on Liberty" has an interest of a different kind. It belongs to ihat splendid series of pleas for intellectual freedom, which, beginning with Milton's "Areopagitica," or speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, and coming down through Locke's "Letters concerning Toleration" to the utterances of Mill himself and his friend and fellow liberal Morley, form the literary expression of the gradual realization of the passion for individual freedom which is one of the glories of the English-speaking peoples.
