“It is the character of the British people, or at least of the higher and middle classes who pass muster for the British people, that to induce them to approve of any change, it is necessary that they should look upon it as a middle course: they think every proposal extreme and violent unless they hear of some other proposal going still farther, upon which their antipathy to extreme views may discharge itself. So it proved in the present instance; my proposal was condemned, but any scheme of Irish Land reform, short of mine, came to be thought moderate by comparison.”

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/294/mode/1up pp. 294-295

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John Stuart Mill179

British philosopher and political economist 1806–1873

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