John Stuart Mill and Fourierism: ‘association’, ‘friendly rivalry’ and distributive justice

John Stuart Mill’s self-description as ‘under the general designation of Socialist’ has been under-explored. It is an important feature of something else often overlooked: the importance of the French context of Mill’s thought. This article focuses on the role of Fourierism in the development of Mill’s ideas, exploring the links to Fourierism in Mill’s writing on profit-sharing; his use of the words ‘association’ and ‘friendly rivalry’; and his views concerning distributive justice. It then reconsiders his assessment of Fourierism as a desirable, workable and immediately implementable form of social reform, ultimately arguing it was Mill’s most-preferred form of ‘utopian’ socialism

Establishing a constitutional 'right of asylum' in early nineteenth-century Britain

For several generations before the First World War, the idea that the British constitution contained a ‘right of asylum' for foreign nationals was commonplace. Though this belief had profound consequences for Britain's treatment of political and religious exiles, its relations with foreign states, and the drafting of its extradition and immigration laws, there has been little enquiry into its origins. This article delineates the emergence of the idea of a constitutional ‘right of asylum', locating it in a series of political clashes over the ‘Alien Act' that took place during the decade after the Napoleonic Wars. This legislation, which established controls over foreigners during the French Revolution and the quarter-century of war that followed, was increasingly challenged by the Whig and radical oppositions after Waterloo, both for its specific arbitrary provisions and as a more fundamental violation of the rights of aliens guaranteed by key constitutional documents like Magna Carta and the Habeas Corpus Act. By the mid-1820s these objections cohered into a conviction that asylum itself could be claimed as a right. This conviction and the arguments that spawned it were repeated for many subsequent decades, forming the basis of the widespread Victorian belief in the ‘right of asylum’