
Luke Batterham
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SUPPING WITH AN AMERICAN RADICAL: Simon Sterne, who is here being invited to Blackheath, was a distinguished New York lawyer, radical, and expert on constitutional law. He was lecturer on political economy in Cooper Union, editor of The Social Science Review, a founder of the Proportional Representation Society and author of Representative Government and Personal Representation (1870). Mill's own Considerations on Representative Government had appeared in 1861. No doubt consideration for his American visitor prompted Mill to be so particular regarding train times: the train service from Charing Cross to Blackheath, as presently constituted, takes 43 minutes which, with approximately ten minutes walk at the other end, would have got Sterne to Mill's house more-or-less on the dot of five (those wishing to retrace the journey should note that Sunday trains now leave at four minutes to, rather than five minutes past, four). This letter is not printed in the Collected Works.