User talk:Madame Pratolungo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My sources are Mill's autobiography, specifically Chapter 7, and election results for 1865, in which only Liberals and Conservatives were elected. Given that he writes in his autobiography that "I was returned to Parliament by a majority of some hundreds over my Conservative competitor.", and only Liberals and Conservatives were elected, this combined with the other detail in the rest of Chapoter 7 seem to me to speak to his being a Liberal.

Autobio, Ch. 7: http://www.utilitarianism.com/millauto/seven.html 1865 Election info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1865 Enigma00 (talk) 05:52, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I should note however, that given this page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_%28UK_Parliament_constituency%29#General_Notes), it seems that Mill was not formally a member of the Liberal party, but mainly associated with them in parliament. That page says that the importance of parties was much less, and party lines much looser back in Mill's time, and so it seems he ran as an independent but frequently associated with the Liberals. This leaves unexplained the results in the previously quoted page, but perhaps decisions were made on who to lump in to what catagory. Enigma00 (talk) 05:58, 26 March 2008 (UTC)