Mill, John Stuart.

in two parts, extensively revised draft, text mostly on rectos only, marked up for the press in pencil and with a note ("MS to Mr. Morley"), 50 pages plus blanks, 4to (257 x 215mm.), blue paper, mounted in a red half morocco album with part two bound before part one, 1869, some inky fingerprints from the printing house

Retained by the editor of the Fortnightly Review, Mill's friend John Morley, later Viscount Morley; presented by Lord Morley to the 5th Earl of Rosebery, 1888, note on front free endpaper, armorial bookplate

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing, where appropriate
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

"...Since there is a certain range, wider than has been generally believed, within which the price of labour is decided by a conflict of wills between employers and labourers, it is necessary, as in every other case of human voluntary action, to ascertain the moral principles by which this conflict ought to be regulated..."

Mill's defence of trade unionism: the manuscript of a review that marked the decline of classical economic theory. In his extended review of Thornton's work, published in two parts in the Fortnightly review in the summer of 1869, Mill rebutted Thornton's criticisms of supply and demand theory, but in accepting Thornton's criticisms of the wages-fund doctrine he recanted his earlier position. The wages-fund doctrine was the argument that the amount of capital available to pay labour was fixed and immutable, so any increase in wages for one group of workers (by the actions of trade unions, for example) would inevitably lead to a rise in unemployment elsewhere in the workforce. In his recantation of this theory Mill engaged in a sophisticated exploration of whether, given that the market would not necessarily determine the most appropriate wages for workers, "there are any rights, of labour on the one hand, or of capital on the other, which would be violated if the opposite party pushed its pretensions to the extreme limits of economic possibility". This review was therefore of great moment both to the development of Mill's late political thought and to the history of economic theory, and as such it has generated considerable comment and interpretation. The appearance of this manuscript, with its many textual changes, sheds new light on the development of Mill's ideas.