never again the opportunity of stating
his doctrines so completely. Those doctrines are far from popular, nor
do I personally agree with them. They are, however, characteristic not
merely of Fitzjames himself, but of some of the contemporary phases of
opinion. I shall therefore say something of their relation to other
speculations; although for my purpose the primary interest is the
implied autobiography.

The book was perhaps a little injured by the conditions under which it
was published. A series of letters in a newspaper, even though, as in
this case, thought out some time beforehand, does not lend itself easily
to the development of a systematic piece of reasoning. The writer is
tempted to emphasise unduly the parts of his argument which are
congenial to the journalistic mode of treatment. It is hard to break up
an argument into fragments, intended for separate appearance, without
somewhat dislocating the general logical framework. The difficulty was
increased by the form of the argument. In controverting another man's
book, you have to follow the order of his ideas instead of that in which
your own are most easily expounded. Fitzjames, indeed, gives a reason
for this course. He accepts Mill's 'Liberty' as the best exposition of
the popular view. Acknowledging his great indebtedness to Mill, he
observes that it is necessary to take some definite statement for a
starting point; and that it is 'natural to take the ablest, the most
reasonable, and the clearest.' Mill, too, he says, is the only living
author with whom he 'agrees sufficiently to argue with him profitably.'
He holds that the doctrines of Mill's later books were really
inconsistent with the doctrines of the 'Logic' and 'Political Economy.'
He is therefore virtually appealing from the new Utilitarians to the
old. 'I am falling foul,' he says in a letter, 'of John Mill in his
modern and more humane mood--or, rather, I should say, in his
sentimental mood--which always makes me feel that he is a deserter from
the proper principles of rigidity and ferocity in which he was brought
up.' Fitzjames was thus writing as an orthodox adherent of the earlier
school. He had sat at the feet of Bentham and Austin, and had found the
most congenial philosophy in Hobbes. And yet his utilitarianism was
mingled with another strain; and one difficulty for his readers is
precisely that his attack seems to combine two lines of argument not
obviously harmonious. Still, I think th