I am fortunate enough to be the possessor of the original Ms. of this admirable state paper, which I mention, because I once heard its real authorship denied in that quarter of all others in which it might have been supposed to be least likely to be questioned.  On one of the last occasions of the gathering together of the Proprietors of East-India Stock, I could scarcely believe my ears, when one of the directors, alluding to the petition, spoke of it as having been written by a certain other official who was silting by his side, adding, after a moment’s pause, “with the assistance, as he understood, of Mr. Mill,” likewise present.  As soon as the Court broke up, I burst into Mill’s room, boiling over with indignation, and exclaiming, “What an infamous shame!” and no doubt adding a good deal more that followed in natural sequence on such an exordium.  “What’s the matter?” replied Mill as soon as he could get a word in.  “M——­[the director] was quite right.  The petition was the joint work of ——­ and myself.”—­“How can you be so perverse?” I retorted.  “You know that I know you wrote every word of it.”—­“No,” rejoined Mill, “you are mistaken:  one whole line on the second page was put in by——.”

In August, 1858, the East-India Company’s doom was pronounced by Parliament.  The East-India House was completely re-organized, its very name being changed into that of the India Office, and a Secretary of State in Council taking the place of the Court of Directors.  But a change of scarcely secondary importance to many of those immediately concerned was Mill’s retirement on a pension.  A few months after he had left us an attempt was made to bring him back.  At that time only one-half of the Council were nominated by the Crown, the other half having been elected, and the law prescribing that any vacancy among these latter should be filled by election on the part of the remaining elected members.  On the first occasion of the kind that occurred, Mill was immediately proposed; and I had the honor of being commissioned to sound him on the subject of the intended offer, and to endeavor to overcome the objections to acceptance which it was feared he might entertain.  I went accordingly to his house at Blackheath, but had no sooner broached the subject than I saw that my mission was hopeless.  The anguish of his recent bereavement was as yet too fresh.  He sought eagerly for some slight alleviation of despair in hard literary labor; but to face the outside world was for the present impossible.

Here my scanty record must end, unless I may be permitted to supplement its meagreness by one or two personal—­not to say egotistical—­reminiscences.  The death of Mr. Mill senior, in 1836, had occasioned a vacancy at the bottom of the examiner’s office, to which I was appointed through the kindness of Sir James Carnac, then chairman of the Company, in whose gift it was.  Within a few months, however, I was transferred to a newly-created branch of the secretary’s