To the argument still urged against that principle—the argument that most women are against it—he gave his answer in 1870:
"You will always find that in the case of any class which has been despotically governed—and though I do not wish to use strong language, it cannot be denied that women have been despotically governed in England, although the despotism has been of a benevolent character—the great majority of that class are content with the system under which they live."
He pointed out that to admit women to the franchise did not compel those to vote who did not desire to do so.
In this matter Jacob Bright was his leading associate in Parliament; but outside Parliament he was working with Mill.
To the two questions already dealt with—Education and Woman's Suffrage— was now added a third, which Sir Charles describes as 'chief of all the questions I had to do with in 1870—the land question.' There is this endorsement on one of Mill's letters written in 1870:
"I acted as his secretary for above a year on (a) his land movement = taxation of land values; (b) the women's suffrage proposal, which followed the carrying of his municipal franchise for women by me in 1869 and the School Boards, 1870."
The Radical Club was founded, with Sir Charles as Secretary, in 1870, and Mill was among the original members of the Club. [Footnote: The others were Professor Cairnes, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Frank Hill (editor of the Daily News), Leslie Stephen, Mr. Leonard Courtney, Mr. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. W. C. Sidgwick, Mr. McCullagh Torrens, and Mr. Fawcett. Sir David Wedderburn, Mr. Peter Taylor, and Mr. Walter Morrison were added at the first meeting, as also was Mr. Hare. At the first meeting it was decided that women should be eligible. Half the Club was to consist of members of Parliament, half of non-members.] From this platform Mill propounded, in 1870, his views on land—views which forty years later became the adopted principles of the Liberal party; and at the inaugural public meeting of the Land Tenure Association in 1870 Sir Charles for the first time promulgated the doctrine of taxing the "unearned increment." He insisted that England's system of land tenure was "unique in the world," and answerable for tragic consequences.
"One who has seen our race abroad under fair conditions knows how frank and handsome the Englishman is elsewhere, and might be here. But when he looks around him in Sheffield or in East London, he sees none but miserable and stunted forms. The life of the English labourer is a steady march down a hill with a poorhouse at the bottom. At the same time the observer finds, when he asks for the remedy, that in these matters there is not a pin to choose between the two parties in the State." [Footnote: A note sent to Lord Courtney in 1909 will show exactly what Sir Charles's position had been on this fundamental matter from the very outset of his political career:
"Mill's object was—
"To claim for the benefit of the State the interception by taxation of a great part of the unearned increase of the value of land which is continually accruing, without effort or outlay by the proprietors, through the growth of population and wealth.