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• Preface
• Editorial Note
• I.: Biographical Sketch
• II.: Early Economic Writings: 1804-1808
• An Essay of the Impolicy of a Bounty On the Exportation of Grain
• Introduction
• Essay On the Corn Laws
• Chap. I: Of the History of the Corn Laws
• Chap. II: Influence of the Principle of Population Upon the Corn Trade
• Chap. III: Effects of the Bounty On the Rent of Land
• Chap. IV: Effects of the Bounty On the Profits of the Farmer
• Chap. V: Effects of the Bounty On the Value of Silver
• Chap. VI: Exportation
• Chap. VII: Importation
• Chap. VIII: Landlords, Farmers, and Corn-dealers
• Postscript to Essay On Impolicy
• Commerce Defended.
• Introduction
• Chapter I: On the Security Or Insecurity of the British Commerce
• Chapter II: On Land, As a Source of Wealth
• Chapter III: Of the Definition of the Terms Wealth and Prosperity
• Chapter IV: Of Manufactures
• Chapter V: Commerce
• Chapter VI: Consumption
• Chapter VII: Of the National Debt
• Chapter VIII: General Reflections
• Smith On Money and Exchange
• III.: James Mill and David Ricardo
• Elements of Political Economy,
• Preface
• Preface (to the 2nd Edn.)
• Introduction the Subject—its Limits—and Division
• Chapter I: Production
• Chapter II: Distribution
• Chapter III: Interchange
• Chapter IV: Consumption
• Mill On Scope and Method
• Whether Political Economy Is Useful London Review, Jan. 1836, Vol. Ii, Pp. 553–572.
• V.: James Mill and India
• Book Ii of the Hindus
• Chapter I: Chronology and Ancient History of the Hindus
• Chapter II: Classification and Distribution of the People
• Chapter III: The Form of Government
• Chapter IV: The Laws
• Chapter V: The Taxes
• Bibliography

POSTSCRIPT TO ESSAY ON IMPOLICY

As a postscript to this essay the following extract from a review by Mill of Sir James Steuart's collected works may be of interest; it concerns Steuart's plan for dealing with fluctuations in grain prices.

According to Sir James's system, by which nothing is to be left to itself, but every thing done by regulation, the corn trade must be put under management. In good years when the country produces more corn than the inhabitants can use, prices would fall so low that the farmers would be ruined, unless they could dispose of the surplus to other nations. But according to him it is not enough that they should be allowed to sell it wherever they can find a purchaser; they ought, moreover, to get a bounty for selling it to that purchaser; and this bounty should operate till prices rise to a certain rate. This is one part of the plan. This saves the farmers, and always keeps prices at a certain height. But very plentiful years are not the only inconvenience in a nation; there are also very scanty years; and in those years, not the farmers but the people suffer. According to our present regulations as we save the farmer by a bounty on exportation, so we propose to save the people by a bounty on importation. But this last part of the plan Sir James Steuart does not adopt. He wants to have granaries erected in every part of the country, which the government is to fill by purchase in cheap years, and to open for the supply of the market at the current prices in dear years. This subject is too much obscured by prejudice for us to undertake the exposure of these notions on the present occasion. The author, it is evident, had never reflected with any accuracy upon the operation of free trade, and therefore sees not the equalizing results which it is calculated to produce. He proposes, accordingly, to do that very imperfectly, by a great number of very troublesome regulations, which perfect freedom of trade would do completely of its own accord. Nothing more is wanting than to leave the farmer at perfect liberty to sell his corn wherever he can get the best price for it, and the consumer to buy it wherever he can get it cheapest, without any restriction, without either burthen or encouragement. The necessary effects of this are to secure to the farmer and to the people at all times those exact prices which are best adapted to their mutual interests. To depart from this course is only to disturb the laws of nature, to gratify the freaks or the interests of particular men.14

COMMERCE DEFENDED.

an Answer to the Arguments
by which MR. SPENCE, MR. COBBETT,
and others,
have attempted to prove that
Commerce
is not a
Source of National Wealth.

Second Edition.

By JAMES MILL, Esq.
Author of an Essay on the Impolicy of a Bounty on
the Exportation of Corn.

London:
Printed for C. and R. Baldwin, New Bridge-Street.

1808
Price Four Shillings.

[14][Literary Journal, Mar. 1806, pp. 234-5. Mill wrote a further article criticising the Corn bounty in the Eclectic Review, Jan. 1809, vol. V, pp. 50-61.]