MILL, John Stuart.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Autograph working draft, with deletions and revisions, of a review article on political economy. The copy text, signed by Mill on the final leaf, for the final article to be published in his lifetime. This manuscript is among the last that Mill ever wrote for publication, and the latest such item known to survive. Any example of Mill's manuscripts is rare in commerce: no similar copies have appeared at auction in over ten years. Mill divided his final years between London and Avignon, where he died on 7 May 1873. This manuscript was probably written from November to December 1872 (Mill treats it as finished in a letter dated 9 December) and was published on 1 March 1873 in the Fortnightly Review. We trace only one other publication to appear later in Mill's lifetime, when a speech that he made at the Land Tenure Reform Association was printed in the Daily Telegraph and Daily News on 19 March. This is, however, primarily a statement of political principles, and there is no evidence that Mill intended it for wider publication. He wrote one further paper, "The Right of Property in Land", in April, which was posthumously printed on 19 July in the Examiner. A note in the Collected Works (Volume XXV) states that the manuscript for this final paper is now lost.The final months of Mill's life were primarily spent travelling, socializing, and botanizing. His main intellectual concerns in this period were focussed on property. Constantino Baer, an Italian economist, attracted his atten

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