I am reading, with much enjoyment, a biography of John Stuart Mill. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on his time in the British Parliament ( 1865 -1868 ).While he was not the Liberal party leader ( Gladstone was ), there is much our current Liberal leader could learn from his trials and tribulations as a new MP. His erudition and fame as an intellectual, while helping to elect him, was no advantage, as he was criticized for his “superior tone”, “too clever for this house” and lamented by newspapers as the “lost philosopher”.
He soon found his stride, however, and left us with some memorable quotes, viz. after being taken to task for a derogatory statement in his Representative Government, he rose in the house and said:
What I stated was that the Conservative party was, by their own constitution, necessarily the stupidest party. Now, I do not retract this assertion; but I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conserative.
Where is Mill now that we need him.
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