John Austin
I AM often asked, “ What was your grandfather like?” “What was it that prevented Mr. John Austin from achieving the success that seemingly ought to have been his ? ” In answer, I feel impelled to write a short sketch of this remarkable man, whose splendid abilities, owing to constitutional drawbacks, never received that public recognition and meed of fame which were his due.
John Austin was the eldest son of Mr. Jonathan Austin, a substantial miller and corn merchant, who had mills at Greeting and Ipswich, in Suffolk, England, and at Longford, in Essex. All his children were distinguished by force of character and brilliant intellectual qualities. I have heard that his grandmother, Anne Adkins, had gypsy blood in her veins. Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin, only daughter of my great-uncle, Mr. Alfred Austin, tells me that years ago she went with her father to Foxearth, where the Austins of five generations ago lie buried. There they found an old woman who remembered Anne Adkins, and gave them a striking description of her vivacity and her ringing laugh, her large dark eyes and her high temper. Her husband was not an easy man to live with, and, I suppose, made every one about him miserable, for one of the sons enlisted in the ranks and went to America. On her tombstone these few pregnant words are inscribed: “She died of a broken heart.”
Her son Jonathan married Anne Redhouse, only daughter of a small gentleman farmer, or yeoman. Well educated, gently nurtured, and possessed of exceptional abilities, she must have inspired her husband with her love for learning. His education had been neglected, but he was always fond of reading, and acquired a great deal of knowledge of both history and political economy. He had a very exact mind, and particularly disliked any kind of exaggeration. To an acute sense of fun was joined considerable enthusiasm, and a touching story or a noble action moved him deeply. Even as quite an old man he was strikingly handsome, with silver-white hair. His wife was deeply religious, though in no narrow way. She was charitable and helpful, but a strong tinge of melancholy, probably increased by delicate health and fits of nervous depression, overshadowed her whole life. This she transmitted to several of her children, tempered with the Austin family characteristic of wit and fun. Her sense of duty was exceptionally high, and above all things she hated a lie. She died at about sixty.
John Austin was born on the 3d of March. 1790. He inherited his mother’s delicate health and nervous organization. She must have imbued him with her deep religious feeling, for when three years old he would kneel before a chair with the Bible laid upon it and read aloud to her. Later, as a boy of seven, he was found by his eldest sister on his knees, in the garden, praying earnestly for a bow and arrows he had long coveted. The gift of eloquence he evidently possessed when a child, and turned it to better account than in after life; for he used to sit by his father at dinner, and so engage him in talk that the worthy miller never noticed that John drank up his glass of beer.
He entered the army before he was sixteen, serving under Lord William Bentinck at Malta and in Sicily. There is in my possession a mutilated diary which the young officer kept during the year 1812, and from these pages we may glean hints which to some extent explain the problem of his comparative failure in after life. The diary shows him, at the age of twenty-two, to have been endowed with an introspective and critical temper, haughty in his intellectual attitude and almost morbidly conscious of his inert temperament. He speaks of “indolence, always the prominent vice of my character,” “this lethargy of the faculties,” “ the listlessness of indolence and ennui.” He complains that, while sharing in the sports and follies of his comrades, he finds but little pleasure in that “relaxation which none but the industrious can relish.” It does not appear that these expressions are merely the outcome of a passing mood of melancholy. The tone of the diary is gray, austere, and inelastic. The passages in which the writer shows the greatest warmth and spring of energy are those dedicated to the analysis of philosophical works which he was studying, — Dugald Stewart’s Essays, Enfield’s History of Philosophy, and Drummond’s Academical Questions. Of the preface to the last-mentioned book the young soldier remarks, “ Though tainted with a little schoolboy pedantry, it is the most energetic and eloquent apology for the study of metaphysics that I recollect to have seen.” Enfield’s History he notes as “ an abstract freely drawn from Brucker’s work on the same subject. The book is not characterized by much philosophical depth, but the author displays a mild and liberal spirit truly edifying in a theologian. He now and then discovers the cloven foot in his attempts to enforce Dr. Priestley’s modification of Christianity, but in a manner very different from that of his arrogant principal. I was much pleased with the clear statement given of the skeptical doctrines advanced by Pyrrho and his followers.” Critical in his judgment of others, he was still more severe upon himself. After composing certain reports, he observes : “ The style of these papers, though labored with great care, was stiff and monotonous. Indeed, whatever I write is wanting in copiousness and simplicity. The only excellences of my style are clearness and precision.”
These early memoirs show that John Austin’s vital energy was insufficient for the rough work of the world. Later on in life, the physical troubles which must even in youth have been dormant in his constitution manifested their presence in chronic depression and hypersensitiveness. Making enormous demands upon himself and others, refusing to acknowledge any work except of the most perfect quality, he exhausted his nervous strength in preparations, and stumbled repeatedly upon the very threshold of great undertakings. The travail of the brain reacted on the digestive organs, produced sickness and fever, and culminated in excruciating headaches which laid the powerful thinker and eloquent orator prostrate, before the thoughts with which his mind was teeming found their channel of relief in expression.
On the death of his second brother, in 1812, John Austin obeyed the earnest request of his parents and resigned his commission. Friends had already strongly urged him to quit the military profession for one more suited to his studious tastes, and, after due reflection, he determined to study for the bar. Till the end of his life my grandfather retained a strong love and respect for the military character. As his wife says : “ The high and punctilious sense of honor, the chivalrous tenderness for the weak, the generous ardor mixed with reverence for authority and discipline, the frankness and loyalty, which were, he thought, the distinguishing characteristics of a true soldier, were also his own ; perhaps even more preëminently than the intellectual gifts for which he was so remarkable.” 1
Lord Brougham, Sir S. Romilly, and Sir W. Erle have all told me that the eminent lawyers under whom Mr. Austin studied, as well as his fellow-students, were astonished by the force and clearness of his mind, his retentive memory, and the scholarly aptness of his language. All were confident that he would attain the highest place in the profession. In 1818 he was called to the bar, being probably spurred on to considerable effort by his passionate attachment to Miss Sarah Taylor, who became his wife in the following year.
After their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Austin occupied for some years part of a house in Queen’s Square, Westminster. The windows looked into Mr. Bentham’s garden, and just round the corner lived Mr. James Mill. This close neighborhood and a strong congeniality of tastes and opinions led to a great intimacy between Bentham, the Mills, and the Austins. Mr. J. S. Mill became as one of their own family, reading Roman law with Mr. Austin, and learning German from his wife. Of my grandfather Mr. J. S. Mill writes : “On me his influence was most salutary. It was moral in the best sense. . . . There was in his conversation and demeanor a tone of highmindedness which did not show itself as much, if the quality existed, in any of the other persons with whom at that time I associated. My intercourse with him was the more beneficial owing to his being of a different mental type from all other intellectual men whom I frequented, and he from the first set himself decidedly against the prejudices and narrowness which are almost sure to be found in a young man formed by a particular mode of thought or a particular social circle.” 2
This coterie was the foundation of the Westminster school of utilitarian philosophy which afterwards produced important results.
After Mr. Austin was called to the bar, he went on the Norfolk circuit, but I never heard that he held a brief. The attorneys were afraid of him, and he was apt to be too late for a consultation. It is singular that the extraordinary eloquence which he displayed in private deserted him in public, and he felt great difficulty in addressing the court. I suspect that the legal studies to which he dedicated his powers, when he left the army, were injurious to a man of his peculiar temperament. They rendered him even more fastidious about the exact poise and verbal nicety of phrases, still more scrupulous in searching after that “ clearness and precision ” which he recognized to be the leading qualities of his style. Of this he seems to have been conscious, for he wrote as follows to his future wife about the influence of his training in a lawyer’s chambers: “I almost apprehend that the habit of drawing will in a short time give me so exclusive and intolerant a taste (as far, I mean, as relates to my own productions) for perspicuity and precision chat I shall hardly venture on sending a letter of much purpose even to you, unless it be labored with the accuracy and circumspection which are requisite in a deed of conveyance.” This precision of expression gives to his style something of an archaic and severe tinge ; but his command of vigorous and apt language is remarkable, and the very reiteration to which some might object tends to impress his meaning on the mind of his reader.
His habitually calm and dispassionate judgment was allied to a naturally enthusiastic character, which found vent in severe blame or in generous admiration, and even veneration ; as when he speaks of Locke to praise “ that matchless power of precise and just thinking, with that religious regard for general utility and truth which marked the incomparable man who emancipated human reason from the yoke of mystery and jargon ; ” 3 and again in the masterly vindication of Hobbes.4
Mr. Austin was as intolerant of confused habits of thinking or of unmeaning expression in himself as in others, for we find him referring in one of his lectures to something he had stated in a former lecture, and which Mr. J. S. Mill (who was one of his class) had questioned : “ I said that a negative servitude might be jus in rem, if it were possible for any but the owner or other occupant to violate the right. But that remark was absurd. For as Mr. Mill very truly observed,” etc.5 Again, with characteristic self-refutation, he remarks: I said in a former lecture that an obligation to will is impossible. Why I said so I am somewhat at a loss to see. For it is quite certain that the proposition is grossly false, and is not consistent with my own deliberate opinion.”
The legitimate hopes entertained by all who knew Mr. Austin were soon doomed to disappointment, for the constitutional peculiarities which lay at the root of the maladjustment between mental faculties of the highest order and their natural outcome in action or expression assumed in middle life the form of a real though apparently intangible malady. The pride and lofty standard which he cherished as an ideal rendered him incapable of doing rough-and-ready work, and after a painful struggle he gave up practice at the bar in 1825.
At this time the foundation of the London University occasioned the opening of a school of jurisprudence, and by common consent John Austin was chosen to till the chair. He determined to spend the interval between his appointment and the commencement of his duties in enlarging his knowledge of Roman law and jurisprudence by some months’ study among the German lawyers. For this purpose he resided for a time at Bonn. There was probably no man in England at that time who had studied Roman law with so much care as Mr. Austin ; he was a master of the science. This visit to Germany made him acquainted with the works of Von Savigny and Mittermaier. The former afterwards became a personal friend. It also led to the warm interest taken by Mr. and Mrs. Austin in German literature, which they contributed to make known in England.
In the Law Magazine (May, 1860) Lord Brougham wrote: “For a teacher his [Mr. Austin’s] qualifications were most eminent: profound learning, great reach and force of mind, and a wonderful faculty of exposition. . . . His lectures were admired by all, but mostly by those whose knowledge and sagacity made their approval of greatest value, and everything seemed to promise a continuance of the success with which his labors began, and which conferred upon the college a reputation in this department even beyond expectation. But, in spite of the brilliant commencement of his career as a professor, it soon became evident that this country could not afford such a succession of students of jurisprudence as would suffice to maintain a chair; and as there was no other provision for the teachers than the students’ fees, it followed of necessity that no man could continue to hold that office unless he had a private fortune, or combined some gainful occupation with his professorship. Mr. Austin, who had no fortune, and who regarded the study and exposition of his science as more than sufficient to occupy his whole life, and who knew that it would never be in demand amongst that immense majority of law students who regard their profession only as a means of making money, found himself under the necessity of resigning his chair in 1832.” As Mrs. Austin wrote to her sister, “ We cannot live on air, but must go somewhere where our small means will support us.” The Province of Jurisprudence Determined was published in the same year, and gradually became the recognized textbook in this department of law.
In 1833 Mr. Austin was appointed a member of the Criminal Law Commission, " but,” to quote again from Lord Brougham, “it soon appeared to his colleagues that his views were too abstract and scientific; they desiring to prepare a more practical report. Further, he differed from his colleagues as to the mode in which they were attempting to perform their duties; and the opinion, indeed, of Mr. Austin has been justified by the event. It is deeply to be regretted that an arrangement should not have been made for his forming a complete mass of the whole field of criminal law. He was of all others the man most capable to do this.”
From every meeting of the commission Mr. Austin returned disheartened, and agitated by the notion that he was receiving public money for work which would be of no public utility. To his wife he said : “ If they would give me two hundred pounds a year for two years, I would shut myself up in a garret, and at the end of that time I would produce a complete map of the whole field of crime and a draft of a criminal code. Then let them appoint a commission to pull it to pieces.”
A few blotted and much-corrected sheets in my grandfather’s bold handwriting, and the beginning of a criminal code, which are among his papers in my possession, show the painful struggle that was going on in his mind between a lofty sense of duty to the nation and a natural disinclination to sacrifice the well-being of his wife and child. Duty won the day, and he resigned his place.
The society of the Inner Temple had for some time desired to make an attempt to teach the principles and history of jurisprudence, and in 1834 Mr. Austin was engaged to deliver a course of lectures. This appointment could be regarded only as an experiment. The demand for anything like scientific legal education had to be created, and Mr. Austin was by nature disqualified from tentative or temporary work. Depressed by failure, bestowing an amount of labor hard to be appreciated on all he did, and harassed by anxiety about the future of his family, his health broke down completely, and he determined to abandon a conflict in which he had met with nothing but defeat. “ I was born out of time and place. I ought to have been a schoolman of the twelfth century or a German professor ! ” he exclaimed.
Mr. Austin had been living at Boulogne for a year and a half when he was appointed royal commissioner to inquire into the grievances of the Maltese. Sir George C. Lewis (then Mr. Lewis), who had been his pupil at London University, went with him as second commissioner. To this day Austin’s name is revered in the island. Justice and humanity were inherent parts of his nature, He had small sympathy until the insolence of a dominant race, and at the same time was too sagacious to be imposed upon by groundless complaints. Every measure he proposed was adopted, and Sir James Stephen used to say that the reform of the tariff which was accepted by government on Mr. Austin’s recommendation was the most successful piece of legislation he had seen in his time. Mr. Lewis having been recalled to England, my grandfather was about to apply himself to legal and judicial reform when he was abruptly recalled. He had been appointed when Lord Glenelg was colonial secretary, whose removal was as abrupt as his own, and whose successor probably thought that the termination of the commission was the most acceptable report he could give of it to the House of Commons.
Residence at Malta had not improved Mr. Austin’s health, and he was advised to try the waters of Carlsbad. From 1840 till 1844 he passed the summers there, and the intervening winters at Dresden and Berlin. He used to tell with great gusto how once, when traveling in Germany with his wife, they came to a country inn. Mrs. Austin felt tired and went early to bed, setting, as is the custom, her little shoes outside the door. She had very small and beautiful feet. Mr. Austin went out for a walk, and on his return found that a party of students had arrived. As he entered the dining-room they were at supper, and drinking with many ' Hochs ” and great enthusiasm the health of the unknown owner of the little shoe which one of them had picked up in the passage and was holding aloft.
In 1844 the Austins settled in Paris, where, shortly afterwards, he was elected by the Institute a corresponding member of the Moral and Political Class. Mrs. Austin’s small salon was a centre where Frenchmen of every shade of opinion met eminent representatives of England, Germany, and Italy. She spoke all three languages well, and was a good Latin scholar. Her beauty was still great and her intellectual power extraordinary, accompanied with a vigor of mind and body which was tempered by an excellent judgment and a kind heart.
During the revolution of 1848 Mr. Austin was in Paris, and in a long letter to his daughter, Lady Duff Gordon, I find a remarkable passage: “ It is important to recollect that the present revolutionary tendencies are social rather than political; aiming at equality of possessions, or an equal distribution of the national revenue, rather than the mere establishment of democratical constitutions. This is the alarming feature in the present condition of France. In England socialist opinions and feelings have not as yet a definite shape; they are rather dispositions or tendencies than distinct theories or formules. But, in consequence of the vast inequalities of our social positions, these dispositions, though yet latent, are probably more strong and general than in France; for in this last country a large proportion of the people are small landowners, and have a visible and urgent motive to respect the properties of the rich. . . . The only remedy is the education of the people ; especially the diffusing amongst them a knowledge of the natural causes which determine the distribution of the products of labor and capital. This knowledge, if diffused amongst them, would cut up revolutionary tendencies by the roots; for this last revolution has proved (what I always believed) that they arise from popular ignorance, and not from popular envy.”
Convinced that permanent tranquillity was not to be looked for in France, Mr. and Mrs. Austin took a cottage at Weybridge, in England, and here the last ten years of my grandfather’s life were passed in retirement and content.
I am not sure but I have unwittingly painted him in too sombre colors. The few people still left who knew Mr. Austin all dwell on his extraordinary eloquence. One writes : " It was beyond anything I ever heard, and it was of all kinds. A touching incident, a humorous situation, a satirical description, — all were equally good.” Phrases which struck my fancy when, as a child, I walked by my grandfather’s side over the purple heather recur to my mind; and I seem still to see his erect figure, his white hair, and his large dark eyes, as, in his musical, rich voice, he told me that it was most important to think distinctly and to speak my thoughts with meaning. Mr. Burke and Mr. Bentham were names I learnt to revere as a very small girl, — long before I knew who they were; indeed, I have an idea I thought they had something to do with the Bible.
Janet Ross.