Bruce L. Kinzer provides the first comprehensive investigation of J.S. Mill's multifaceted engagement with the Irish question. Mill, the pre-eminent thinker of his generation, sought to come to terms with the fundamental issues inherent in British-Irish politics. The Irish famine, the question of land reform, the controversy over higher education, and the various dimensions of the Fenian challenge, hallmark the landscape of Mill's more than forty years of writing on the Irish question.

Kinzer's discussion of these episodes pays close attention to the ebb and flow of the issues as...

When John Stuart Mill was elected in the "blue-ribbon" liberal constituency of Westminster, there was great interest in seeing how a man of intellect would stand the practical political test. The watershed parliament of 1865-8 in which he served saw the growing polarization of politics between the new Liberal Party and the Conservatives. Mill gained greater eminence - and notoriety - by promoting women's suffrage, proportional and working-class representation, Irish land reform, and racial justice, and generall attempting to radicalize the Liberal party. But in 1868 he was defeated in...